Lars Iyer's Blog, page 90

At the conference. Why don't I ask questions anymore?, W. wonders. Why don't I intervene, after the presentations?

He remembers the questions I used to ask, W. says. After every presentation! My voice, booming out! My voice, resounding beneath the vaulted ceilings! For a time - a long time - no conference presentation was complete without one of my booming questions. There'd be no conference discussion in which I didn't have my say.

W. remembers the questions I asked in the warmest and stuffiest of lecture rooms. He remembers my interventions in the final hour of a long day of presentations. In the final minute! I cut through the fog. I broke through the torpor. It was marvellous, W. says. - 'Your lucidity. Your far-sightedness'.

Then what happened?, W. wonders. How did I end up so sullen and uncommunicative? I became silent. Surly. I sat with folded arms, and took no notes.

W. remembers the notes I used to take. Pages and pages of them! With diagrams! In different colours! He remembers the array of pencils and pens I used to line up beside my notepad. He remembers my underlinings and exclamation points. He remembers me writing No!, or Yes! beside my notes in capital letters.

What happened?, W. wonders. Do I still have questions in my head? Do questions still burn somewhere inside me? There's no sign of it, W. says. I sit, W. says. I slouch. I let it all wash over me - presentation after presentation, speaker after speaker. I let the waves break over me.

It means nothing to me now, does it, W. says. All thought, all philosophy. I am a mollusic on the shore, W. says. I am a pebble on the beach, simple and impermeable. I am lost in the single, as the waves break over me.

How did I become so passive, so inert?, W. wonders. When did I give up any effort to think? When did I stop externalising myself in questions and comments?

He knows the end of times suits me, in some way. He knows that it might allow me to come into my own.

It's as if the world were my nightmare, W. says. As if the whole would is nothing but a fever-dream of mine, in which he, W., has no real existence.

It's a kind of gnosticism, W. says. I'm the bad demi-urge, who made everything go wrong, and he's the divine principle which struggles for the good.

But in the end, W. knows that he's no match for me. The world's coming to meet me, W. says. Everything's heading in my direction, and happening on my terms. And there I am laughing in the midst of the apocalypse. There I am, a little piece of it - a sample, like the tester pots of paint you can buy in B & Q.

This is what it's going to be like: that's what W. discovers in my company. The end times are going to be exactly like this.

How do I bear it, my day to day reality?, W. asks. But it's quite clear: I don't bear it. My life is in a state of collapse, anyone can see it. Lars is in the final act, W. always tells himself. It can't go on, can it? But it does go on, W. says. Empires have collapsed more slowly.

And there's my smile, W. says. My dreadful smile. It's as though I were enjoying some kjind of revenge, W. says. As though I was exacting a kind of revenge on myself, for what, he doesn't know.

'You have that look which says: everything's over, it's all finished', W. says. 'But it hasn't finished, has it? And it won't be finished until that dreadful smile, the mockery of the whole of existence, is wiped from my face.

Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer, W. says. But what when your friend is your enemy? What, when you friend is your saboteur and discourager?

W.'s question: 'Would you consider yourself a man of ambition, a man of persistence, a man who will leave a legacy?' And then, 'Are you a man who has honoured philosophy, or dishonoured it?' Are you a man of wisdom, or a man of folly? Are you a man of sound judgement and discrimination, or a man of foolishness and panic?'

And then: 'What do you think is your best feature: your wit? Your grace? Your elegance?'

W. is in a questioning mood. - 'Would you call yourself a moral man?', he asks. 'Would you call yourself a man of honour?' And then, 'Do other people look up to you? Are others moved by you, inspired by you?' And then, 'Do you think you've touched other people's lives - in a good way? Have your students changed the way they live because of you?' And then, 'Do you think you deserve the title, lecturer? Do you think you stand in the tradition of other great lecturers in the past?

More questions. - 'What do you think you've imparted to your students? What do you think they've taken from you?' And then, 'What does teaching mean to you?', he asks me. 'What is your method of teaching? Do you think they've learned from your example?' And then, 'Do you regard yourself as an inspiring presence, or an inhibiting presence? Have you been an open road, or a living obstacle? Have you pointed beyond yourself like a seer, like a prophet, or have you only ever pointed to yourself as a living warning?'

'Do you teach by example?', W. says. 'Do you tell your students about your life, about the way you've sought to exemplify the philosophical ideal?' He tells his students about my life, he says. He uses me as an example. Of the vices of thought. Of thought's compromise and destruction. Lars is where philosophy crashed and burned, he tells them. Lars is where philosophy shot itself in the head.

Tatiaana L. Laine reviews Dogma for The Brooklyn Rail.

Here in Turin I exercise a perfect fascination. Everybody glances at me as if I were a prince ..., Everything comes easily to me, everything succeeds, although it is not likely that anyone has ever had such great things on his hands ... there is a special satisfaction in the way doors are held open for me, meals set out.

Nietzsche

The last philosopher, I call myself, for I am the last human being. No one converses with me beside myself and my voice reaches me as the voice of one dying.

Nietzsche

A human being must live in such a state of anguish that if he were a pagan he would not hesitate to commit suicide. In that state, then, he must – live! Only in that state can he love God.

Kierkegaard

RM reviews Spurious at The Crack magazine.