And she trained us, didn’t she? She took it upon herself.
Trained us! Insulted us, more like.
it was a kind insulting. It was meant to spur us on.
It was meant to crush us –
Do you remember how she used to criticise your shoes. She said they weren’t smart enough.
She thought you wouldn’t take yourself seriously without proper shoes. Look, you’re wearing them now. Brogues in the snow.
And how she’d make us read Hölderin out loud! In German! Just to mock us!
She’d ask us what we thought it meant. How we might translate this word, or that word …
And she’d make us read the great commentaries on Hölderin. Cicero on Heidegger’s reading of Der Ister, as we read Der Ister. Agamben on Hölderin’s late fragments, as we read the late fragments.
As if we’d understand!
And there was our Sophocles reading group …
Of course! How could we forget?
Sophocles! In ancient Greek! Which she’d quiz us about.
Mouthing over our words as we read them. Following lines of text with our fingers.
Near illiteracy, she marvelled! What did they teach us in our British schools? In our British universities? What happened to the long tradition of working class education? How did it pas us by?
And yet we seemed to need to read. And books that were too hard for us – obviously.
We were drawn to high seriousness, despite our irreverence. Despite our flippancy. High seriousness! Why did we need it? Why did we look for it? How could we even recognise it? And yet recognise it we did.
We were maulers, distorters, primitives, but still … There was something there. Crude, primitive insights. Feelings – intensities. Identifications – entirely illegitimate, no doubt.
She sometimes dreamt of a whole new school of barbarous interpretation, Cicero said. A whole college of idiot’s hermeneutic? Wasn’t that something we could contribute to the intellectual life of the world? Had Cicero stumbled upon a unique philosophical method – a stupid method? Outsider philosophy, in some sense? Probably not, Cicero said.
But there was reverence about us, despite everything. When we’d fall silent, and listen, in wonder. When we’d marvel … Despite our stupidity! Notwithstanding our stupidity! As if it awakened something in our soul. From a previous life! A previous incarnation!
How else could she account for it? How could Hölderin reach us? And Sophocles? But they did. It did, old European culture. All the books no one reads anymore … All the forgotten names …
Was there hope yet? Was the memory of Europe still alive after all? Were there those who could still be moved by its ruins?
Our uneducated enthusiasm. Our autodictat’s instinct. We’d led ourselves through so many European pages? All by ourselves. Alongside our formal studies. Alongside our BAs, Our MAs, Our PhDs …
She loved our seriousness. She was amused by our being moved. She used to ask to see our notebooks. She’d ask us to read our favourite quotations. She loved it when we stumbled over our words. When we looked to her for correction. There we were, in our thirties, still reading like children! And stupid children, not gifted children! No one hand corrected us before! No one had taught us to pronounce this, or that! Until now!
And even better when we were drunk and reading out loud. Best of all, when we were slurring, too. When we were full of drunken pathos. Soaring on our own drunken oratory, such as it was.
Better to get lost in the passion than to lose the passion, she said, quoting Kierkegaard. The passion of thought is to discover something that thought itself cannot think, she said, quoting Kierkegaard again.
Work in Progress 