268 music, philosophy, and modernity
What is surprising about the austere reading is that, on the one hand,
it constitutes a rejection of metaphysics, but, on the other, does so via
a sternly philosophical approach which is attached to a remarkably
narrow conception of meaning, based on constative sentences that rep-
resent states of affairs. The reason for this narrowness (which echoes
one aspect of theTractatus, while ignoring those relating to music)
is the desire to counter the possibility of an ‘external’, metaphysical
view of language, and this desire requires certain kinds of locution
to be radically nonsensical. However, the price of this narrowness is
very high. Hacker cites a comment by Wittgenstein to Engelmann in
1917 : ‘The poem by Uhland is really magnificent. And this is how it
is: if only you do not try to utter what is unutterable thennothinggets
lost. But the unutterable will be – unutterably –containedin what has
been uttered’ (ibid.: 372 ). It is already clear from this that, whatever
is meant by nonsense in theTractatus, Wittgenstein takes the idea of
unsayability seriously, and he continues to do so well beyond the period
of theTractatus.In 1931 , for example, he says: ‘The unsayable (‘das
Unaussprechbare’) (what appears mysterious to me and which I cannot
say) perhaps gives the background against which what I could say gains
its meaning’ (Wittgenstein 1980 : 16 ).
The nature of the text of theTractatusand the disputes about its
meaning suggest that there are contradictory impulses in the early
Wittgenstein. One impulse is to seek pure solutions to philosophical
problems, so that we could give an account of the logical structure of
reality, which would mean that the problems of philosophy are solved
by his text, as indeed he claims they are. The other impulse leads to
the realisation that, even if one were to succeed in obtaining such
answers, much that is vital to human life would be left unaddressed,
hence his assertion that solving the problems does not add up to hav-
ing done anything substantial. If the impulse that leads to the unsayable
really just results in saying things equivalent to ‘piggly wiggle tiggle’, this
raises questions about the other forms in which this impulse appears
in Wittgenstein’s work, as his response to the Uhland poem, and his
concern with how little philosophy can really say, suggest. From what
perspective is it possible to separate the sense in which poetry or music
shows things from the ‘austere’ demonstration that certain kinds of
philosophical assertion that are supposed to show what they cannot
say are nonsense, given that Wittgenstein undeniably associates the two
kinds of showing?
Take the following example. In Wittgenstein’s 1932 – 5 Lectures, in
remarks on aesthetics, he discusses the idea of bringing a thing ‘nearer