Lars Iyer's Blog

Yes, we have been fortunate to meet real thinkers, W. and I agree. It was our great good fortune – but wasn't it also our curse; didn't we have confirmed for us that of which we would not be able – that of which we above all would not be able? It's important to know one's limitations – on that we're agreed – but to have them reconfirmed so often; to have the sense of them closing around you like a cage?

We're being suffocated, we agree. How can we breathe? But an encounter with a real thinker is precisely that breath. How is possible, the sense that, with a thinker, a thought is shared between us? How is possible that we believe ourselves to participate in thinking? Thought seems to occur between us. It seems to flow there, are though we were gathered around a mountain stream, around thought in its freshness, eternally streaming.

Ah to be near the source, at the beginning point! To have reached the highest, widest plateaus with only the flashing stars above us! That that's where these thinkers bring us; that's the vista their thought provides. Yes, we have seen the heights; thoughts, pure and fresh, have passed beside us.

Were we the condition of thought? We were only its occasion, alas. Someone spoke to us. We looked interested; someone spoke, we listened - that was it. And thinking welled up around like a great flood, and there were fishes in that flood, fish-thoughts streaming by us.

That was it, and nothing more. And with what were we left when the flood subsided? Where we were beached but on the valley-bottom of our stupidity, on the parched sands that no thought might cross?

You have to know you're not Kafka, says W., that's the first thing. But you have to know that the person you're speaking to might be Kafka, that's the second. This is why conversation, for W., is always a matter for hope. The very ability to speak, to listen and respond is already something, he says.

Of course, to speak to the other, to respond is already to betray. Whatever you say is a betrayal, even if at the same time it is suffused with hope. That the other person is Kafka is a perpetually present possibility. And that you are also the Brod who betrays Kafka is the destruction of this possibility, its disavowal.

In what sense is he Brod?, W. wonders. He never listens enough. He never gives himself over to what is being said. He comes up short, says W., very short, which is why he always feels troubled when he speaks, yet at the same time always wants to push conversation towards the Messianic.

In my case, W. says, I am untroubled by guilt, and therefore by the sense of a perpetually present possibility. History is not about to be blown off its hinges for me. There's no escape, no plurality. What can Kafka mean to me? But Kafka means everything to W., and especially the sense that the other person, the speaker, might be Kafka.

'Even you', says W., 'even you might be Kafka, which would be a great miracle'. Of course, on the other hand, I'll never be Kafka for myself, but only for him, my conversationalist. The other person is never other for himself, says W. Or only rarely.

For haven't we along the way met thinkers – real thinkers – who speak without a concern for themselves, without any sense of self-preservation? It's as though what they say is indifferent to them, we agree. As though they are borne by thought, thought by it, rather than the other way round.

You should never hang onto a conversation, says W. Once it's finished, pfft, it's finished. He snaps his fingers in the air. – 'I forget everything you say as quickly as that', W. says. 'You, on the contrary, remember everything, and not only that'. I make things up, W. says. I wholly invent conversations we are supposed to have had, but in fact we never did have. I'm a fantastist, W. says, a dreamer, but for all that, I'm not without guilt. I'm no holy fool, W. says, no innocent. A fool, yes, but holy – not a bit of it.

I am neither an Eckermann or a Boswell, W. says. I'm his ape, says W. and, remembering Benjamin's comment on Max Brod, a question mark in the margin of his life. Well, more like an exclamation mark, says W., or a shit stain.

Of course, W. never mistakes himself for Kafka, as I do. He's never thought himself anything other than a Max Brod. But the point is – this is W.'s first principle – the other person is always Kafka, which is why you should never write about them or hold on to their conversations, let alone make them up. The other person is always Kafka, W. says, even me. He knows that, says W., why don't I?

Everything begins when you understand that you, and you above all, are Max Brod: this, for W., is the founding principle. That you (whoever you are) are Max Brod, and everyone else (whoever they might be) is Franz Kafka. Which is to say, you will never understand anyone else and are endlessly guilty before them, and that even with the greatest effort of loyalty, you will betray them at every turn.

Do I have a real sense of that?, W. wonders. Do I really know I am Max Brod rather than Franz Kafka? He doubts it, he says, which is why I never know the extent of my usurpation. For I'm a usurper, says W.; I've stolen his place and the place of everyone. Who haven't I betrayed? What crime haven't I committed?

Still, says W., his burden is to take on my wrongdoings as though they were his own. It's all his fault, says W., even though it's all my fault. This is because he is certain he is Max Brod, while I still think I'm Franz Kafka.

I'm going to be found out, that's what I worry about, says W. Someone's going to find out about me and shoot me, W. says, it's only right. '"How have I survived this long?"', W. says, 'that's your only thought. "By what miracle have I survived?"'

W. has thought up many excuses for me. He's had to account for me at length to his friends. Explain him!, they demand. What's going on? And W. has to explain, as best he can, how it all started, how our collaboration began.

But what can he say, really? There's a limit to every explanation, which is to say the sheer physical fact of my existence. There you are, says W. And before that fact, what can anyone do but shrug?

Isn't it all our fault, all of it? Isn't the whole thing our problem in some way, as though we were behind everything? Yes, we're responsible. We're resigned to it; we're not just part of the problem, we are the problem.

The road is blocked – our road, everyone's road. We should just get out of the way. But how can we get out of the way of ourselves? We should throw ourselves off the cliffs, we agree. We should get the water taxi out to Mount Batten, and then head up to the cliffs, and …

But what good would it do, our bodies prone and bloody on the rocks, seagulls pecking out our eyes? How could we apologise then? Because that's what we ought to do – we should spend our whole lives saying nothing but sorry: sorry, sorry, sorry, and to everyone we meet. Sorry for what we're doing, and what we're about to do, sorry for what we've done: who would be there to say that for us if we jumped from the cliffs?

How are you? Depressed as usual? Of course we're never really depressed, W. says. We know nothing about real depression. We're men of the surface, not of the depths. What do we know of those blocks and breaks in the lives of real thinkers? What can we, who are incapable of thought, understand of what the inability to think means for a thinker? And what of real writer's block – what understanding can we have of that terrible incapacity to write a line for those who have thoughts to set down?

We're melancholic, that W. grants. Who wouldn't be? Melancholic, vaguely rueful, knowing we should not be where we are, that we've been allowed to much, overindulged … And for what? With what result? We're completely irrelevant in the broader scheme of things. We can make no contribution to the issues of the day. Where are we heading but down?

All we have is our pathos, our melancholia and a sense that things are not right. But we are not right either. We're part of the problem; our own obstacle. But if you yourself are the obstacle, then what? What is to be done? Lie down and let it all pass over you. But we won't allow ourselves that. We want to do something, think something, and that's our trouble.

True thoughts pass infinitely far above us, as in the sky. They're too far to reach, but they're out there somewhere. Some place where we are not. Some great, wide place where thoughts are born like clouds over mountains.

To be able to think! To write in good conscience! But what idea could we have of that? We're men of the valleys, not men of the peaks. We know nothing of real highs and real lows, of mountain peaks or abysses.

What's it all for?: that's our vague question. Why have we been fitted with the desire to think but not the means to do so?: that's our vague resentment. We'll accomplish nothing: it was obvious, and from the first. We read and write in vain. And all the while, a vague melancholy and a vague sense that things should be otherwise.

Whose fault was it? Who can we blame? Because we have to blame someone. It has to be someone's fault. Who allowed us to read these books? Who, who would give us the right to read them and the right to write about them? Because something went very wrong at that point. Someone's guard was relaxed. Someone wasn't watching. And then it happened, the great catastrophe. The library was breached, we found ourselves a place at a desk and read, and wrote.

But who allowed it? Who got us into this mess? Who raised our aspirations to the sky? Who set these great books alongside us? Who granted us commerce with great ideas? Because they were too great for us. They were more than our heads could contain. We wandered around dazed. What had had happened to us? How could we account for it?

But there was no chance of that: accounting for it. Someone's back was turned. We were mistaken for real readers, for real thinkers. Who allowed it? Who can we sue? Because our horizons were opened too widely. We saw too much – and what could our lives ever be thereafter? And could we be blamed for taking ourselves, too, to be thinkers? For confusing ourselves with people capable of thought? And didn't we write, too – what temerity! Didn't we confuse ourselves with writers, by some cosmic error?

Someone wasn't watching – but who, and what does it mean? Perhaps something had come to an end. Yes, that must be it: something was at an end, a whole phase of civilisation. It's time to let the wreckers in: someone must have decided that, and in we came. We thought it was by chance – thought it was our luck (or our curse) that we were admitted, but it was a sign of something else, some great collapse.

The most lofty and serious of works had become a playground. The greatest of thoughts, toys. In came the degredators and paraphrasers! In came vandal scholars and idiot writers!

Once, they would have kept us out. High walls would have kept us from looking in, and rightly so. What business had we in there? But the walls have crumbled, and the gate stands open. What happened? Who left it deserted? These are the end of times, W. says. They must be. It all ends here, with us, The Star of Redemption open on our desks.

There isn't anything anywhere anymore. There's nothing left anywhere, not anymore: what was it Kraznohorkai wrote? Kraznohorkai: he knows we're at the end, says W. He knows it's over. W. likes to read me great passages from War and War, especially the ones near the end.

They have ruined the world, he reads, they have ruined everything they've managed to get their hands on, and by waging an endless treacherous war of attrition they have managed to get their hands on everything, ruined everything – seized it, ruined it and carried on in this way until they had achieved complete victory, so that it has been one long triumphal march of seizing and ruining.

Did you hear that?, says W. One long triumphal march of seizing and ruining. There's nothing left anymore, not anywhere, says W., as we pull into the station.

Messianism has driven us mad, or half mad, we decide. What else have we been thinking about since Christmas? What else has driven us through our reading and writing? We'll be glad when it's over: but when will it be over? There's no sign yet. Messianism hasn't had done with us.

We're fated in some way. We're circling round and round what we cannot possibly understand. And isn't that why we're drawn to it? Isn't that the lure? You cannot understand this idea. You'll never understand it, not today, not tomorrow. But the day after that?, we ask. The day after tomorrow?

That's our faith: it's not faith in the Messiah, but that we might be brought into the vicinity of the idea of the Messiah, that a little of its light might reach us. The Messiah: isn't he forever beyond us, just beyond? We've always just missed him. The appointment was cancelled.

Wasn't he supposed to arrive here, now? Not today, and not even tomorrow. But the idea of the Messiah: might we reach that? Is there something left of his passing, some trace – some sign? The day after tomorrow: that's when it will reach us, if it does, the idea of the Messiah.

But won't it have been too late? Won't the page have already been turned? But perhaps that's what it means: the idea can burn only for those who cannot see it, who have already gone under. It's on the other side of the mirror, although all they can see are their own stupid faces.

And what do we see, in the reflective surface of the train windows? Whose faces are those behind the glass? My God, look at us, says W. Look what we've become.

These are the End Times, but who knows it but us? No one. We're quite alone with our knowledge, which is really a kind of feeling. We're on our own, we decide. That's what we have in common: a sense of the apocalypse. A sense that the time has come, and these are the days of our Judgement.

We'll be found wanting, we know that. We two above all – we're terribly guilty. What's to become of us – of us in particular? No one believes in us. No one listens. We're out on a limb – terribly far – and we're sawing it off. We'll fall off the edge of the world. We are falling – who believes us? Who believes in us?

These are our thoughts on the train that rushes through the night. We're drinking gin with great determination. We have to drink!, drink! until we can no longer say the word, Messiah. That's our punishment, and we must be punished. This is to where it has come, here in the dark rushing forward.

What place do we have in the world? None. Where's it all going? To perdition. To desolation. And we are going with it? All the way! It's where we're heading now with our gin and our apocalypticism, full speed into the night.  

What would it be to write a real book?, we reflect. A real book – with scholarly rigour, of course; the product of years of research, of archive-reading, of reading books in many languages, including ancient ones.

A real book – but one that was framed by some real interest, some real and unimaginable engagement – a commitment of the sort we could barely imagine. A book that streamed above us in the sky, very distant, and paying us little heed as its author. A book that would ignore us, almost.

A real book! It would be dense and difficult, to be sure, but would have a quiet luminescence it would keep to itself. A sober book, glowing quietly in the dark that would reveal itself only to one likewise sober, obscure, prepared to follow it into the stillest corner, to sit hunched over its pages, to cross the night with it. 

Wouldn't she finish it just as dawn broke? Before dawn broke, waiting for it to break, and knowing that for her something had changed in the world, that something had been redeemed?

Ah, but what would we know of real books? What would we know of sobriety?, we ask ourselves on the train, with half a bottle of gin drunk between us.

The disaster has already happened, said W. during our talk. That's what we're committed to, he said, meaning him and me. It's already happened! It's all finished! Can't you see that it's finished? But no one agreed with us. We're quite alone, we agreed afterwards, walking to the train. 

Alone with the apocalypse! The only thing for it is to drink. Luckily we have a bottle of gin in our bag. We are sober men, terribly sober. It's only those who are most sober of all who have to drink, and then to the point when they can no longer pronounce the word apocalypse. It's only then, drunk as lords, that we will know God's plan, which we will immediately forget.

Are we capable of religious belief? Of course not. We're not capable of anything, that's the trouble. We're up against the apocalypse with no means to fight it. The disaster has already happened. We were born, for one thing. We're going to die, that's another. And the oceans will boil and the skies burn away into space …

It's all over, it's all finished. This is the interregnum. A little reprieve, an Indian summer. But we're deep into autumn, and winter is coming – or should that be the other way round? Deep into spring – a new kind of spring, a boiling spring – and a summer is coming that will set fire to everything.

Maybe it will come later, after we're dead. Maybe sooner – tomorrow. But in another sense, it's already come; it's spread its wings around us. We're men of the End, of the Very End. We're men of the Disaster, which no one else knows but us. Which no one else feels. Drink, drink, we have to drink. So we unscrew the top of our gin bottle as the train rolls out of the station …

No more Messianism, no more!, I wail to W. I've had enough, I'm finished … Ah, but it's only then that the Messiah might arrive, W. says, when all hope is lost and you've run out of will and patience and you can't work anymore. 'Which means, in your case, almost at once.

'You've no patience, have you? You've no capacity for the long haul. You think you're going to be caught out at any moment; that it's about to come to an end. But it continues nevertheless, doesn't it? It goes on, and on and on. Did you ever think you'd get this far? That you wouldn't be found out?' W. is a scholar of much greater patience and forebearance, he says, which means the Messiah might come later for him than for me, which seems unfair.

W. reminds me of the old story of the Messiah who remains hidden with the lepers and beggars at the gate of Rome. There he was all along; but is he there? When the Rabbi stands before him to ask when he will come, what does he say? Today, if you will hear my voice. Today! Then the Messiah is here! But he is not here. There are conditions to his coming, and the leper-Messiah, who binds his wounds alongside the beggars at the gates of Rome, is not here yet.

There's a great lesson in this, W. says, but he's not sure what it is. When's the Messiah going to come? Today? Tomorrow? The tomorrow-in-today? He's not sure, W. says, but it's only when you've exhausted everything, when there's no more hope that the Messiah might appear.

Of course, I've always worn him out, W. says. He's exhausted by my apparent exhaustion; he's long since given up all hope for me. I'm hopeless, he says. I'm unredeemable. Why does he talk to me? Why does he continue with our collaboration?

Perhaps he hopes for something nonetheless, W. reflects. And perhaps it's only when he gives it up that the Messiah will arrive. Which would make me some kind of antichrist, W. surmises. A kind of living embodiment of the apocalypse. 

But then, too, might he be an antichrist for me? Doesn't he listen to my wailing like an indulgent mother? Doesn't he put up with me and my parody of good faith and scholarship for year after year? We're sons of perdition, W. decides as we wonder through the shopping mall, each for the other.

We should be content to write ragged books, W. says. There's no time for polished ones. Time is running out! These are the Last Days! We should write books made of pathos and nothing else, W. says. We should aim for pure declamation, statements without argument. Rosenzweig's example leaps ahead of us.

Of course, I'm halfway there already, W. says. What does argument mean to me? What does logic? There's a kind of purity to my stupidity, W. says. It's instructive. But it can also be misleading. Who, one might think, would be better to speak about the end of the world and the Last Days?, W. says. Who has a more vivid instinct for apocalypse?

But I've never managed it have I? It's never come right, for all that I write, for all that I type away, day and night. I can't spell, for one thing. I have no sense for the rudiments of grammar. Have I ever written a single clean sentence? Just one? That would be the coming of the Messiah for me, W. says, a single clean sentence.

No one had any faith in me but W., he reminds me. No one expected anything; I was never a figure to watch. Quite the contrary, W. says, they tried to ignore me, and I, sensing that, was forever placing myself in the field of their attention. 'There you were', says W., 'bobbing up and down, and everyone doing their best to ignore you'. In the end, what was there left but for me to skulk off to my room?

'You became a skulker', W. says, 'and that's what you are still, though you've long since given up getting anyone's attention'. What would I have been if it hadn't been for him, W. wonders. Has he helped me? Hindered me? Has he prevented something from running its course? It's not as if I am waiting in darkness to make my return, W. notes. But perhaps something's waiting in me.

Why was he drawn to me?, W. wonders. What was it about me, when there were so many others? He has certain instincts, W. says. He's sure of certain things. But in this case? It's not that I'll achieve anything, W. says, he knows that. Everyone does. But there's something about the extent of my inability. He wonders whether I am an entirely new kind of failure. Whether there is something symptomatic about me, from which could be deduced great truths about our age.

How is it I've got anywhere in life?, W. wonders. How was I able to make any progress at all? Somehow, the world parted for me. Somehow there were openings, opportunities. I thrived, in my own way, though no one else could call it thriving. Of course I couldn't be called a success. That least of all. But the way in which I failed … It's enticing, says W. It drew him to me, he's no doubt of that. I'm like a living car-crash, W. says. A catastrophe entirely unto myself. What process is completing itself in me? What world is coming to an end?

Sometimes W. wonders if I am a living allegory, even a kind of warning. My life is a cautionary tale, or it should be. But who is there left to warn? I've outlived any kind of decency, W. says. We both have. Who could understand my significance except W.? And even he's beginning to lose sight of it. 'Your shamelessness', says W. 'Your laziness. Your inability to see anything through. Your endless appetite for celebrity gossip'. Towards what does it point?

The eschatologist would see me as a sign. 'You're a sign of the End', says W., 'of the very end'. History has run amok. The skies have turned red and the oceans are boiling away. 'And you are writing post after post in your corner'. Is this what it's come to? Are things really this bad?

It was worse when I wanted attention, W. says. When I bobbed up and down. And now? It as though someone had flicked a switch. The disaster is ON. 'It's never going to end, is it? You're never going to finish'. And I'll drag W. down with me. W., who must have wanted to be dragged down, he says. Who must have wanted to hang out with the Son of Perdition.

Of course, as a Hindu, I have no real concept of the End Times, W. says. Haven't I told him about the great Cycle which sees the degradation of civilisation and its rebirth? Haven't I told him that the Iron Age, full of violence and disease, is succeeded by the Golden Age?

I see nothing but chaos and degradation around me, W. knows that. Nothing but perversity, greed and conflict, but it doesn't touch me, not really. To the Hindu, there are no end times, W. says, that's what I've told him on several occasions. Even our age, the worst age of all, will see the birth of another of God's avatars, W. says, I've got that consolation. And there's no such thing as eternal damnation.

W. was brought up with the idea of eternal damnation, he says, and the thought of it still makes him shiver. Hindus are immune, W. says. I should try living as a Catholic and then I'd see. And as a Jew (W. is Jewish by bloodline). It's the guilt that's worst, says W. The sense you can never measure up.

Detachment, that's what you have to achieve to escape the wheel of rebirth, isn't it?, W. says. The cessation of desire. It makes sense to him, W. says. Look at my flat, for one thing. It's disgusting. Do I desire to clean it up? No. Do I desire to deal with the damp? Not really.

It's a kind of test for you, isn't it, your damp? It's the Iron Age in person, isn't it? It's the apocalypse. All I have to do is to desire not to change it, W. says. That would be moksha, wouldn't it? Ah, if only it were as simple for him, W. says.

Pathos is my milieu, W. says. It's where your heart really lies. I am a pathetic thinker, W. observes, if I can be called a thinker at all. Of course, so is he. He learnt it from me. In its way, it's quite impressive – the way everything I say is marked with urgency, as though it was the last thing I will ever say! As though I were going to expire at any moment!

Then there's the way I raise my voice, reaching great shouting crescendoes entirely arbitrarily, W. says. It bears no relation to what I'm actually saying. And then I like to go all quiet, too, don't I?, W. says. All hushed! As if you'd drawn everyone back to the moment of creation! As if something momentous was about to happen! 

All in all, it's always an amazing performance from me, W. says. I always look as though I want to start a cult. Schwarmerei, W. says, that's what marks everything you write. It means swarm and enthusiasm, W. says. I'm one of the enthusiasts that Kant hated. It's all Schwarmerei with me, isn't it?, W. says.

Sometimes he thinks it's because I'm working class. I can't get over the idea someone is listening to me, W. says. that I have an audience. Which, come to think of it, is rather extraordinary. I think I'm speaking to people better than me, more refined. Which is, of course, almost always true. I hate them and I love them, W. says; I want only their approval, but at the same time I don't want it; it's the last thing I want.

W. has his pathetic moments, he admits. Sometimes he feels the Schwarmerei rising in his breast. Sometimes his voice begins to climb the decibels. But then he knows that I am to follow him, and who will notice his excesses then? I make audiences flinch, he says. I make them twitch in involuntary horror. All that Schwarmerei! All that pathos!

He can picture me, W. says, working at my desk, or attempt to work, or at least what I call working, covered in crumbs from the packed lunch I eat four hours early, surrounded by books by Schelling and Rosenzweig and Cohen, and by other books that explain Schelling and Rosenzweig and Cohen, and then by still other books with titles like The Idiots Guide to Jewish Messianism and Rosenzweig in Sixty Minutes …

He can picture me, he says, hungover as usual, bleary-eyed as usual but full of a vague, stupid hope, with the sense that this time, despite its resemblance to all other times, will be different. This time it'll be okay. This time it'll come good. That's my Messianism, W. says, and it's all I'll ever know or understand about Messianism, that vague sense that things will be different this time, even as everyone else knows it will be exactly the same.

Even you feel it, don't you, that Messianic hope? Even you, like the animals who come out of their burrows after winter, shivering but excited. But do you actually think you're going to be redeemed?

W. himself can't shake it free, that hope, that springtime of the spirit. One day, he feels, he will be able to think. One day, his thoughts will rise as high as Messianism, the sun in the sky of the future. Oh he knows it's impossible, he says, he knows he'll never have an idea, but that's what the coming of the Messiah must mean: the impossible, which is to say, an idea, an idea that would belong to W.

Is that why he writes?, W. wonders. Is that why he accepts invitations to speak? Is that why the hope is reborn eternally in him that it will be different this time? In the end, that's what we share, W. decides. A sense that the apocalypse isn't quite complete, and that there are still grounds for hope.

W. is sure he heard somewhere or another – at a lecture, symposium or suchlike – about the stupid Messiah, and this has oriented his research ever since. The stupid Messiah, whatever can that mean? When did this figure appear? In what circumstances?

Of course, there is a long tradition of the occultation of the Messiah, W. says. The idea, that is, that the Messiah has already arrived, if only we could find him (if only we could set out to find him.) And then of course, the idea that certain conditions would have to be satisfied such that the Messiah could appear. The moral improvement of humankind, for example.

But what could it mean to think of a Messiah so stupid that he is occulted from himself? Of a Messiah who does not have the intelligence to know he is the Messiah? There's a tradition, of course, that the Messiah would be the one who broke the law rather than simply fulfilling it. Whence the apostasy of Sabbatai Zevi, whose followers likewise committed apostasy, it being a sign for them of a kind of test the Messiah would ask them to undergo.

Would the stupid Messiah have stupid followers?, W. wonders. Followers so stupid they wouldn't know who they were following, or what it meant to follow? Mystery upon mystery, says W. But at least it goes some way to understand my significance vis-a-vis Messianism. Because I'm attracted to it, aren't I, in my own stupid way? Even I have a sense of the importance of the Messianic idea and circle around it in my stupidity.

W. is a little less unwitting than I, he says, a little less stupid. And perhaps that means I'm a truer follower of the stupid Messiah, he says, he's not sure.

Reading Scholem makes me melancholy, I tell W. on the phone. He knows everything! He's an expert on all matters! That's because studied for 40 years and then wrote, says W. How many years did you study? Are you studying now? But you're writing, aren't you? You're writing constantly.

My problem, says W., is that I don't know anything at all. I have no base of knowledge upon which to draw. I'm an abyss of ignorance, W. says, which I think I can overcome through frenzied reading and frenzied writing, working as close to the deadline as possible. But in fact, it's obvious to anyone that everything I have written is a product of frenzy and not patient, calm scholarship, which has no aim but the cultivation of knowledge.

W. remembers his scholarly years with quiet reverence. He had no aim other than reading, thinking, and broadening his intellectual horizons. Great vistas opened themselves to him at his desk. He was close to the great names and the great books, which he always read in the original language, however long that took him. He sought out the oldest and most obscure of volumes. He wandered through the archives of great European cities.

But what would I understand of all that?, W. muses. What would I know of the life of a scholar? In truth, I am only a product of my time, a depthless age, an age of surfaces and first impressions. What book have I read that I did not first encounter in some online summary? What idea that I did not meet through a hyperlink? Wikipedia: that's my research tool. Google Scholar: that's the closest I've been to the great archives.

That was all long ago, says W. of his scholarly days, it's all gone now. He hadn't met me then, for one thing. Didn't I teach him about the value of writing? Wasn't I the one who drew him up from the musty depths to the bright light of publication? My shamelessness taught him a lesson, says W., he admits that. My shamelessness and my depthlessness: didn't he learn something from that?

He would like to say, says W. that he longs for nothing other than to plunge back into the murky waters of scholarship, but it's no longer true. My example fascinates me, he admits that. I am a man of the new world, as he is not, says W. He is a man of the old world, and I of the new one, shameless and free of profundity.

What sense have I of the true measure of European civilisation? What of the mountain range of thinkers behind us, and the desert that is growing all around us? And by what curse was he led to me, the ape of knowledge, the ape of seriousness? But he was led to me, W. admits, and now there is something apish about him.

Scholem notes that there is a tradition of doubling the figure of the Messiah, W. tells me. The first Messiah belongs to the old world, and to the catastrophe that destroys the old world (Messianism always entails catastrophe, W. says). Every horror of the old world is concentrated in him. He can redeem nothing, and what can he desire but his own catastrophe?

But then there is the Messiah ben David, in whom all that is new announces itself, and who finally defeats the antichrist. He is the redeemer, W., says. He brings with him the Messianic age.

Which one are you, do you think?, says W. Which one am I?

I've no time and no money, I tell W. on the phone. Why would I need time?, says W. What would I do with it? What great work would I realise? Now, no money, that's more serious. He's poor himself, W. says. He's living on toast, he says, nothing but toast. 

But with my appetite, he sees the problem. He knows how upset I get when I don't eat. In fact, he knows that my appetite is greatest when I am upset. 'You're at your worst'. For his part, W. enjoys his penury. His life is being stripped down to its barest dimensions, he says. Soon it will just be W., a room and his books on Messianism.

How are my studies in Messianism?, W. wonders. What have I learned? What am I reading? It's the most unlikely of subjects for me, W. says. It requires the deepest learning and the greatest loftiness of thought. And what do I bring to the study of Messianism? The greatest absence of learning and the greatest triviality of thought. What do I know of revelation? What of the great tradition of Messianism across all three of the religions of the Book?

I'm obsessed with celebrity gossip for one thing, W. says. And I'm lazy, lazy beyond all belief. And I'm shameless. There's no sense of guilt in me, despite everything. No desire to repent, despite everything I've done.

The Messiah comes when he is least expected, says W. He comes when hope is almost entirely lost, which it is when someone likes you is drawn to write about Messianism. And perhaps that is why my studies are pecularly appropriate in these times of apocalypse, W. muses. Perhaps that's when the Messianic idea will shine most brightly.

The Talmudic teachers were continually asked was whether it was right to force the coming of the Messiah, W. reflects. Should one exacerbate the horrors of the present time? Should one break the law even to the extent of committing apostasy, like Sabbatai Zevi? W. wonders whether it's the apocalypse that's pressing forward in me. Maybe my ignorance and love of celebrity gossip are its attempt to force the coming of the Messiah, but then again, maybe not.

Are you the Messiah? – Am I? The apocalypse is very close, we're agreed on that. The game's up … the game that pushed us around on its table like counters. What good were we? What good did we do? Did we ever take a stand? Did we ever insist on a single point of principle?

Our endless chatter. Our inanities and idiocies … Speech went one way and then another. I spoke to W., W. spoke to me, back and forth it went. We could always talk, grant us that. We were never entirely mesmerised by our own stupidity. But with what idiocy, with what stupidity! It was all a waste of time, a terrible waste. What was it ever going to come to? Where was it going to lead?

We ran our talents into the ground (but what talents did we have?) We wore our chances away (but did we ever have any chances?). We drove everyone away. Who was left but us? What were we left with but each other and our endless chatter?

Of course the Messiah would never wear a moldy jacket, W. says. Look at it, it's turned green. I point out I only bought it because of W.'s ceaseless complaints about my last jacket, my velvet one. – Your velvet jacket! It was shapeless and made you look obese, says W., whereas this one just makes you look cheap. Doesn't it bother you that your jacket's turned green and you've got stains down your trousers?

W. always carries a suit with him on our foreign visits. He doesn't want to insult our hosts, he says. I never had any concern about insulting our hosts, W. says, going on about blowholes and wearing one of my disgusting jackets. It's always been entirely up to him to make up for me, W. says. He brings respectability to our collaborations. And sartorial sense. What would I wear if I were the Messiah?, is always W.'s question to himself.

That's why he always carries two pairs of trousers, he says. For emergencies. What do I do to them, my trousers?, W. asks. Why are they always so stained? And why do they never sit properly on your waist? My trousers always sag, notes W. They're like a metaphor for my life. Could I be any less Messianic?

Are you the Messiah? Am I? W.'s drunk and confused, and I am drunk and confused. What's gone so wrong with our lives? How did we end up where we are? What are we doing here? What will we ever do? There's been madness and compromise every step of the way. We should hang ourselves immediately.

What's it all been for? Where will it lead? Could it ever lead anywhere? No! It's led us nowhere. It's always and already led us nowhere. And here we sit, two idiots alone with their idiocy. Oh God how did it get to this? At what point did we lose our souls? When did we give up all hope for cynicism?

These are the End Times, we are agreed on that. We're men of the End, of the Very End, a dreadful symptom, a dreadful malady. And it's not as if our extinction will make the world any better. It's not as if we could hang ourselves and be done. Everything's on fire and we're on fire. The oceans will boil away, the sky will burn red … What's the point of it all? Where else could it go? How else might it have been otherwise? 

Are you the Messiah? Am I? Is W. really the Messiah for me, and I for him? Would the Messiah ever wear a shirt like that? Would he ever wear those trousers that are flapping round your ankles? The Messiah wouldn't buy his clothes from Primark, says W., he's sure of that.

W. wishes he hadn't left his suit behind at a bus stop in its carry case. He was going to get it dry cleaned, he says, his Messiah suit. He always looked like Gary Glitter in his Messiah suit, I tell him. Like Gary Glitter on trial. But I looked like M.C. Hammer in my interview suit with its tapered trousers, W. says. What were you thinking when you bought it? The Messiah doesn't wear parachute pants.

Every conversation can be driven towards the apocalyptic, W. says, the shared sense that it's all at an end, it's all finished. He loves nothing better than conversations of this kind, W. says, when everything's at stake, when everything that could be said is said.

That's when Messianism begins, W. says. You have to wear out speech, to run it down. And then? And then, W. says, inanity begins, reckless inanity. The whole night opens up. You have to drink a great deal to get there. It's an art. The Poles have it, W. says. They understand what it is to drink through the whole night. And that's what the Hungarians are doing in the bars in Bela Tarr films, W. says. Steadily, patiently, they're drinking their way through the night.

All drunks have something of the Messiah about them, W. says. They speak a lot, for one thing. They feel they're on the verge of something, some great truth. He does when he speaks, W. says. Once he starts drinking, says W., he can never stop, it's quite impossible. It's because of the faith it gives him, says W. It's because of what drinking opens: the whole night, the apocalypse, but also the patience to get through the apocalypse, to dream of the twenty-second century, or the twenty-third, when things might get better again.

You can't be alone to experience the Messiah, W. says. Not really. And you can't be sober. The Messiah is drunk, says W. Or he's what drunkenness allows. He's what you become when you're drunk and what I become. Anyone can be the Messiah when he's drunk, W. says. But of course, it all depends on a relation, W. says, a kind of reaching out. He's not the Messiah for himself, W. says, just as I am not the Messiah for myself. He's the Messiah for me, and I'm the Messiah for him. Do you think of me as the Messiah?, W. asks. Well, you should.

We have to live two lives, says W., one turned to the world and to the horror of the world, and one turned to our friends. Two lives! One turned to the apocalypse and the other to the Messiah, which is another name for the friend, but only the drunken friend, only the one with whom the night opens and the future opens even beyond the twenty-second century or the twenty-third …

Eternity in time, that's the Messiah, W. says. Have you any idea what that means? Sometimes W. does, he says. When he's very, very drunk and just about to pass out. Of course, by then it's too late, much too late …