Lars Iyer's Blog

He's about to publish his essay on Cohen and Rosenzweig, W. says on the phone. His essay on the meaning of messianism. The time has come. But where will he publish it? Somewhere as obscure as possible, W. says. Somewhere it definitely won't be read.

An obscure Polish journal has asked him for an essay, W. says. They'll translate it. That's where he'll publish it, after seven years of research. That's where his thoughts on messianism and mathematics will be archived: in a journal no one will ever read, in a language only the Poles know.

How many times has W. buried his thoughts in an obscure academic journal? How many times has his work disappeared into foreign languages no one in Britain reads? They come to him, the editors of these obscure journals, asking for something to publish. They must sniff him out. He'll do anything, if asked nicely, and by an Old European. What won't he do for a Mitteleuropean?

He hasn't really finished it, his paper, W. says. He never really understood the infinitesimal calculus, for one thing, he says, which means the long footnote he wrote on page six will never be complete. No one will know that but him, of course. No one will read the paper but him – oh, I will, of course. I might even do my best, but what could I make of it?

W.'s paper. Will he turn the world of Cohen, Rosenzweig and messianism scholarship on its head? Will he have given the world a new Cohen, a new Rosenzweig, and a new sense of messianism? Will he have transformed the scholarly field? Will he become an obligatory point of reference for the scholars who come after him?

Will papers for and against his interpretation of Cohen, Rosenzweig and messianism be presented at colloquia and conferences, and he published in academic journals? Will whole editions of journals be dedicated to his thought on Cohen, Rosenzweig and messianism, and to responding to his scholarly respondents?

Will doctoral students write these discussing the new Cohen, Rosenzweig and messianism debates with references to W.'s Cohen, W.'s Rosenzweig and W.'s messianism? Will a sense of the paradigm-busting significance of W.'s Cohen, W.'s Rosenzweig and W.'s messianism pass down into the popular imagination, into the pages of broadsheets and Radio 4 interviews?

Will the scholars of Oxford whisper of W.'s Cohen, W.'s Rosenzweig and W.'s messianism as they cross college quadrangles? Will the governing bodies of Cambridge wonder whether to offer W. a Chair ('he's not really one of us, but still …')? Will he receive offers of American lecture tours and plenary talks? Will fellow scholars stand on their chairs and cry, 'hurrah', throwing their mortar boards in the air when they hear him speak? Will a ticker-tape parade be held in W.'s hometown of Plymouth, W. being driven along and waving to cheering crowds?

It's not likely, is it?, W. says.

It'll be like Chernobyl, our future, W. says. They'll be like Chernobyl children, our descendants, each with his deformity, each his own cancer. That's how they'll know each other, in the future – by their cancers. Everyone will have cancer, only a different kind of cancer. One will cancer of the toenail, the next cancel of the colon, a third cancer of the eyes, and so on.

And they'll die before they are teenagers, our descendants, like Chernobyl children. They'll die with no one to care for them, gasping in the boiling air. They'll die alone and trembling, thousands of them, as the atmosphere boils away.

W. imagines them like giant crabs, the destroyers of philosophy. As giant crabs with great metallic claws. But in the end, they'll only be managers. Manager-murderers, with profit and loss spreadsheets.

We've been abandoned, W. says. But abandoned to what? To our lives, the wretchedness of our lives. To our failure. Again and again, our failure.

What has he learned?, W. muses. What are his four noble truths? He knows only that I am wrong, and that I have always been in the wrong. He's certain of that.

He's not bright enough, that's his tragedy, W. says. That there is another dimension of thought, another dimension of life he will never attain; that the murk of his stupidity has a gleaming surface: he half understands, half knows; but he doesn't understand, he doesn't know.

But isn't that his mercy, too; isn't that what saves him? For if he understood, really understood, how immeasurably he had failed, wouldn't he have had to take his life in shame? If he knew, really knew, the extent of his shortcomings, wouldn't his blood have had to mingle with the water?

But then, if he really understood, he wouldn't be stupid, W. says.

There are some thoughts that will be forever beyond us, W. says. The thought of our own stupidity, for example; the thought of what we might have been if we weren't stupid. The thought of what he might have been, W., if he hadn't been dragged down by the concrete block of my stupidity. The thought of what I might have been, if my stupidity had simply been allowed to run its course … W. shudders.

'The elephant in your room was your stupidity', W. says after our presentation. 'Actually, you were the elephant in the room. My God, you're fatter than ever'.

We're in enemy territory. We've been parachuted deep behind enemy lines. And what's our mission? A suicide mission, it can only be that, W. says. A soiling ourselves mission. – 'Go on, you start'.

If anything, I am too punctual, W. says. I'm always there before everyone, anxiously pacing about. What do I think I'm going to miss?

I know something's going to happen, W. can see that, but what? What can I possibly understand of what is going to happen?

I'm straining my intelligence, W. says. He sees it on my face. But you can't replace intelligence with punctuality.

It's coming, the end, as great and fearsome as a hurricane. It's coming, the great wind that will blow out all the candles.

We want only to watch it come. Mesmerised, we want only to watch the towers fall and the cities drown.

We should have enemies, terrible enemies, W. says. We deserve them. There should be satellites in low orbits, tracking our movements. There should be snipers in the bushes, ready to finish us off.

That we haven't been killed yet is a puzzling sign. Why have we been allowed to live? But perhaps that is our punishment: being permitted to live.

W. sees me as an augur, cutting open his life in order to read the future. Cutting him open, lifting out his guts, spreading them on the table. – 'What do you see, fat boy?' What do I see, now I've eviscerated his life?

We love reading about friendship because we know nothing whatsoever about friendship. We love reading about philosophy because we know nothing whatsoever about philosophy. We love reading about God because we know nothing whatsoever about God. We love reading about life because we know nothing whatsoever about life.

I'm impatient, W. can see that. I wait for judgement like a millenarian. What have I ever wanted but the end? What, but to put an end to waiting for it, the end?

The mythical pelican feeds strips of its own flesh to its young, W. says. It tears strips from its own breast and feeds them to its young. And isn't that how he's fed me – by tearing strips of living substance from his breast?

Idiocy is always unwitting, W. says. It doesn't really know itself. It doesn't really suffer itself, that's its lightness. The idiot is an innocent, a child.

Others laugh at him, the idiot, and he laughs along. Everyone's laughing!, he thinks. Great! He even laughs at himself – but what does he understand of what he's laughing at? Everything's funny. He's an idiot – and that's funny, too. Everything's funny! Everything's hilarious.

W.'s not laughing anymore, he says. He's done with laughing. His laughter has stuck to his thoat. These are serious times, he says. When have things ever been more serious than this?

W. finds me strangely silent. Why have I never learned to talk?, he wonders. Why has it always been left to him, when we're in company, to speak for both of us?

For long periods, I'm mute, thinking of God knows what, W. says. I'm like some great block of stupidity. Like some great stupid Easter Island statue …

What does stupidity think about?, W. wonders. Does it ever come into an awareness of its own stupidity? Ah, but stupidity can never uncover its own truth, that's its tragedy. Stupidity can never look itself in the face.

If he has been able to speak of his stupidies, of his idiocies, that's only a sign of the incompleteness of his stupidity, of the partialness of his idiocy. But when I speak of my stupidity? I never quite grasp it, W. says. I never really reach my target.

Sometimes he likes my silence, he says. Sometimes he imagines it to be a kind of integrity- a way of guarding something, some secret. He knows something, W. says to himself, looking across at me. Or, better: something knows itself in him.

One day, they'll decrypt me, W. likes to think to himself. One day, the Rosetta Stone of my stupidity will yield up its secrets. You see!, W. will say. I told you so!, he's say, when they solve the riddle of me. But in the meantime? 

Somehow I'm on the same side as the apocalypse, W. says. I'm on the same side as everything that is wrong with the world.