must be clear to what extent my thought belongs to the present, to the
future, or to the past. For with this I have also revealed myself to be
someone who cannot quite do what he wishes he could do.^7What does this enigmatic statement mean? If we note that the cognate noun
Dichtung also refers to ¤ctionality, as in Goethe’s title Dichtung und Wahr-
heit, where Dichtung (“Fiction”) is opposed to “Truth,” why should philoso-
phy, traditionally the search for truth, be presented as poetic ¤ction? Given
Wittgenstein’s concern for “meaningful” statement, aren’t the two discourses
antithetical? And why should as rigorous a thinker as Wittgenstein declare
that he himself is not quite up to the task of formulating this new role for
philosophy?
Wittgenstein’s overt commentary on poetry sheds little light on this ques-
tion. His impatience with aesthetic theory is legendary: in the Lectures on
Aesthetics, for example, he declares, “One might think Aesthetics is a science
that tells us what’s beautiful—it’s almost too ridiculous for words. I suppose
this science would also be able to tell us what sort of coffee tastes good.”^8
And the notebook entries collected in Culture and Value are given to state-
ments like the following:
If I say A has beautiful eyes someone may ask me: what do you ¤nd
beautiful about his eyes, and perhaps I shall reply: the almond shape,
long eye-lashes, delicate lids. What do these eyes have in common with
a Gothic church that I ¤nd beautiful too? Should I say they make a
similar impression on me?” (24)“The concept of ‘the beautiful,’ ” says Wittgenstein, “has caused a lot of mis-
chief ” (55). And again, “Am I to make the inane statement, ‘It [the musical
theme] just sounds more beautiful when it is repeated’? (There you can see
by the way what a silly role the word ‘beautiful’ plays in aesthetics.) And yet
there is just no paradigm other than the theme itself ” (52).
At the same time, the Wittgenstein who refused to theorize about art was
quite ready, in his letters, journals, and conversations, to pronounce on a
given work with great conviction. The words großartig and herrlich appear
again and again with reference to a Mozart symphony, a Mörike poem, to
Lessing’s Nathan the Wise, or Dostoyevsky’s Brothers Karamazov. Schubert’s
Quintet in C Sharp, op. 163, is von phantastischer Großartigkeit (“exhibits fan-
tastic brilliance”), Mozart and Beethoven are called die wahren Göttersöhne
(“the true sons of God”), the second movement of Beethoven’s Eroica is un-
glaublich (“unbelievable,” “fabulous”), Brahms’s “Handel-variationen,” un-
Wittgenstein on Translation 65