Do I think the former Essex postgraduates would publish a single line?, W. says. Do I think the former Essex postgraduates would seek philosophical immortality? Do I think they would care about what posterity made of them?
Do I think the former Essex postgraduates saw themselves as thought-archers, firing arrows ahead for others to find and shoot on? They shot their arrows upward, into the sky, upwards to the stars. They shot them into impassable thickets, into the surging ocean, into the deep desert. Or they held their bows at arm’s length and shot them into their own breasts …
Ah, the former Essex postgraduates wanted no legacy, W. says. They'd seen too much to want a legacy. They knew the end was coming. The knew the end was nigh. They knew that there was little time left, that the disaster to come laughed in the face of any endeavour of thought.
The former Essex postgraduates took the long view, W. says. The very long view. The view from eternity, from the other end of eternity, when everything was dead and the stars burnt out. They've seen it, W. says, the former Essex postgraduates: the end of all things, the great dispersal. It was going to end, and endlessly to end, that's what they knew.
Lars Iyer's Blog 