fact they are no such thing.—‘You always get the Greek wrong. Always’.
But sometimes, for a moment, the clouds do clear.—‘You manage to speak sense’, says W., ‘or something like sense’.
‘There was that time in the pub in Oxford’, W. remembers. ‘We all fell silent and listened in wonder. Not to what you said, which may or may not have been sensible, and in fact probably wasn’t—it was probably the usual pathos and hot air—but that you could say it’.
‘You of all people. No one expects it of you. Quite the opposite in fact. Which is why it’s so surprising’. W. himself was amazed. And there was that time on the long pier at Mount Batten.—‘The clouds parted. You spoke sense for nearly an hour’. What did I speak about? W. can’t remember. But he’d been amazed, he remembered that.
‘Write it down!, write it down!’ W. often cries during my moments of illumination, but when I read back my notes, I find only incomprehensible scrawls and random words without sense.
When I die, W. says, he’s going to be my literary executor. Delete, delete, delete, that’s what he’s going to do.
Which one of us is Kafka and which Brod?, W. muses. We’re both Brod, he says, and that’s the pity of it. Brods without Kafka, and what’s a Brod without a Kafka?
We are both Brod, W. says, and Brod for one another. When an ass looks into the gospels, no apostle looks back; when Brod looks into Kafka, it’s only Brod who looks back. I am his Brod, W. tells me, but he is my Brod, too.
I am his idiot, but he is mine, and it’s this we share in our joy and laughter, as we wake each day into the morning of our idiocy, wiping the sleep from our eyes and stretching.
‘These are the last days’, says W. ‘It’s all finished. Everything’s so shit’, says W., ‘but we’re happy—why is that? Because we’re puerile’, he says. ‘Because we’re inane. It saves us’, W. says, ‘but it also condemns us’.
We’ve been singled out for something, W. has decided. We’ve been marked. Look at us in our flowery shirts, and everyone else slim and wearing black.
We’re men of the end, W. says. Do we take nothing seriously? Not even ourselves. Least of all that, says W.
W. reminds me of when I inspected his teaching. He drew diagrams for the students, two stick men. What was he explaining? Hegel and religion, he thinks.—‘This is Lars’, he said, and drew a tiny cock on one of the stick men, ‘and this is me’, he said, and drew a huge cock on the other.
‘Why do you think we’re so puerile?’, he asks me later. We’ve always cursed our sense of humour. We’re not witty, we know that. It lets us down. We disappoint everyone.
W.’s got a higher IQ than me, he’s decided. A few points higher: that makes all the difference, he says. Intellectually, he stands slightly higher than I do; he has a wider view, a greater panorama. But perhaps this is why he despairs more than I do, and has a keener sense of his failure.
He can see more, says W., and he can also see himself in the context of the whole. He can see the great achievements of the past heaving up behind him like a plateau, and the open space from which great achievements will come in the future. And he can see his own inability to contribute in any way to these achievements, and that, indeed, he is a living obstacle in his body and soul to anything that might happen.
If W.’s on his dung heap perched up and looking around like a meerkat, he says, I’m still playing in the dung. What could I understand of achievement or failure or any of these issues?, W. says. What can I understand of the magnitude of our failure?
‘What do you think your effect is on others?’, W. asks. ‘Do you motivate them, inspire them, spur them on? Do you make them think more than they could think on their own? Does the fact of your friendship change the way in which they see the world or vice versa?’
Every time he meets someone (except me), W.
But sometimes, for a moment, the clouds do clear.—‘You manage to speak sense’, says W., ‘or something like sense’.
‘There was that time in the pub in Oxford’, W. remembers. ‘We all fell silent and listened in wonder. Not to what you said, which may or may not have been sensible, and in fact probably wasn’t—it was probably the usual pathos and hot air—but that you could say it’.
‘You of all people. No one expects it of you. Quite the opposite in fact. Which is why it’s so surprising’. W. himself was amazed. And there was that time on the long pier at Mount Batten.—‘The clouds parted. You spoke sense for nearly an hour’. What did I speak about? W. can’t remember. But he’d been amazed, he remembered that.
‘Write it down!, write it down!’ W. often cries during my moments of illumination, but when I read back my notes, I find only incomprehensible scrawls and random words without sense.
When I die, W. says, he’s going to be my literary executor. Delete, delete, delete, that’s what he’s going to do.
Which one of us is Kafka and which Brod?, W. muses. We’re both Brod, he says, and that’s the pity of it. Brods without Kafka, and what’s a Brod without a Kafka?
We are both Brod, W. says, and Brod for one another. When an ass looks into the gospels, no apostle looks back; when Brod looks into Kafka, it’s only Brod who looks back. I am his Brod, W. tells me, but he is my Brod, too.
I am his idiot, but he is mine, and it’s this we share in our joy and laughter, as we wake each day into the morning of our idiocy, wiping the sleep from our eyes and stretching.
‘These are the last days’, says W. ‘It’s all finished. Everything’s so shit’, says W., ‘but we’re happy—why is that? Because we’re puerile’, he says. ‘Because we’re inane. It saves us’, W. says, ‘but it also condemns us’.
We’ve been singled out for something, W. has decided. We’ve been marked. Look at us in our flowery shirts, and everyone else slim and wearing black.
We’re men of the end, W. says. Do we take nothing seriously? Not even ourselves. Least of all that, says W.
W. reminds me of when I inspected his teaching. He drew diagrams for the students, two stick men. What was he explaining? Hegel and religion, he thinks.—‘This is Lars’, he said, and drew a tiny cock on one of the stick men, ‘and this is me’, he said, and drew a huge cock on the other.
‘Why do you think we’re so puerile?’, he asks me later. We’ve always cursed our sense of humour. We’re not witty, we know that. It lets us down. We disappoint everyone.
W.’s got a higher IQ than me, he’s decided. A few points higher: that makes all the difference, he says. Intellectually, he stands slightly higher than I do; he has a wider view, a greater panorama. But perhaps this is why he despairs more than I do, and has a keener sense of his failure.
He can see more, says W., and he can also see himself in the context of the whole. He can see the great achievements of the past heaving up behind him like a plateau, and the open space from which great achievements will come in the future. And he can see his own inability to contribute in any way to these achievements, and that, indeed, he is a living obstacle in his body and soul to anything that might happen.
If W.’s on his dung heap perched up and looking around like a meerkat, he says, I’m still playing in the dung. What could I understand of achievement or failure or any of these issues?, W. says. What can I understand of the magnitude of our failure?
‘What do you think your effect is on others?’, W. asks. ‘Do you motivate them, inspire them, spur them on? Do you make them think more than they could think on their own? Does the fact of your friendship change the way in which they see the world or vice versa?’
Every time he meets someone (except me), W.
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