Grimm is full of random acts of brutality and bad luck- yep I can identify with that.
Grim describes a place that is dark and forbidding – yep I am in one of those.
Happily before getting into that I had a pleasant lucid hour writing to a neighbours granddaughter about Wittgenstein. She is super smart, only 13 and super interested in literary and philosophical theory and sent me a substantial paper on Wittgensteins theories in relation to a poem she was working on at Tad Grammar. Bizarrely I am in conversation with another bright family member female 19 who is similarly keen on Wittgenstein. Must be getting well taught in schools because it seems to capture the teenage imagination..
I had sent some well deserved praise to Grandma for her gradaughters whole approach which frankly was well above Ug general standard but when she asked for more I gave her some more personalised feedback, which I feel turned out quite well if tough because it made me try to explain my very naïve understanding of Wittgenstein being merely a fan not a reader or expert. To that end I got why it has become so central to my other work namely it reveals the mechanisms of absurdism which is currently my creed.
I will leave it in italics so you can easily skip it and move onto to the next cancer treatment episode ie my daily frustrated vent.
[15:48, 24/05/2025] Chris Newell: L’s work is remarkable !! There are things in there I need to study – she is truly insightful as well as intuitive – I will read it properly and do my homework but I think she’s covered every point I would have tried to make – what did R make of it?
[19:49, 24/05/2025] +44 7367 061711: This is L. Thank you Chris I’m pleased you liked it. I would like to know if you agree with what I thought about Wittgensteins theory.
[04:12, 25/05/2025] Chris Newell: Ok L.
It 3:00 o’clock in the morning. I don’t have your paper with me in bed to respond to all your points but I will do my best to remember some of them
I agree that in order for our society to function we need common languages. That’s a very practical point and even Wittgenstein would have agreed after all how could he have done his job as a school teacher. Although I think he once refused to agree, there wasn’t a rino in the room (something like that). That would fit in with his Language Game idea.
I don’t agree with the way you draw Wittgensteins ideas into an analysis of the poem. It’s a completely valid point and very eloquently made but I think your point is really a poetic one and aside from Wittgenstein I have very strong ideas about the purpose of poetry so of course I am not going to agree with you.
Let’s suppose that rather than thinking practically he was thinking philosophically ie. not what was useful or sensible or practical, but what was true. Now you can probably already see a problem in my definition of the problem, namely the word “true” may not defineable and therefore cannot be true in any meaningful way – but let’s leave that for now. By the way if you want to make grandpa mad, this way of talking is post modernist thought and grandpa does not like it.
A word that can name something by showing it, like a table or a shoe is useful but I think you go on to suggest that the use of words in the poem to make emotions, feelings, memories, connections are as useful or important. At least without your paper in front of me I think you did.
He said: would suggest that Wittgenstein would not accept that and nor would I.
“Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.” L. Wittgenstein
Grandma and I often talk about religion and we have very strong opposing views that we enjoy discussing. I would not wish to set out her ideas but I am not a believer in any god or follower of any religion.
I think we both get frustrated when discussing the topic by falling into the language game way of trying to find agreement. We will both present words or phrases to each other in an effort to win the argument. The sort of words that might appear would be –
God, faith, hope, love, belief but also words like pragmatic, verifiable, mathematical, statistically significant and of course the word true. These sort of words are miles away from words that simply show what something is.
These words are loaded with our own experiences, even the word ‘chain’ as in your poem can mean multiple contradictory things to different people of even the same person in a different situation. You might use the same word to mean completely things in different situations or to make a different point. So if we were to use as an example of a expression from Christian philosophy, say, “god is love” then you can see that expression is meaningless, just as the expression “then you can see that expression is meaningless,” is also meaningless the argument turns upon itself and can reach no conclusion. It’s a word game.
Wittgenstein believed at the end of his life that philophical debate was a word game. He probably believed a lot of other contradictory things as well but I haven’t studied them.
Here are a few popular quotes you can find on wikis – I find them fun and helpful
• “The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.”
• “Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language.”
• “If a lion could talk, we could not understand him.”
I will study you paper again to see if I have misunderstood anything – ok?
It’s now 3.57 night night.
So back to my venting literally and metaphorically.
The one thing you don’t expect, is the number of different chemotherapy drugs that can be applied to your condition. I spoke to nurse Ebi last night in the middle of the night when I became a bit desperate with the nausea and she ran through a list of different chemotherapy approaches that I could be undergoing. It seems the systematic chemotherapy I’m going through at the moment has a tendency to make you sick and my body has decided, while not making me very sick to make me continuously nauious. The nausea has a partner in crime namely, diarrhoea which is now occurring about every 30 minutes. My body is doing its best I believe, to throw out all the nonsense that its keeps having thrown into it. Trouble is it has no discretion as to how to do it or when to do it, so I’m like a lemon chocolate water fountain constantly on tap. Not the most sociably desirable asset in the household particularly as I haven’t eaten for about 3 days so I’m very weak and Maria has to deal with me. Somehow I can’t think of any witty things to lighten this script that doesn’t insult Maria’s incredible grit.
Instead I will tap into my other obsession with grimm and imagine this benign creature with the sweetist face bearing benign tools that just hint at a grim purpose bearing incomprehensible labels. She is visiting me at night knocking politely on my tree bark door. She is calling “Nurse” I am looking completely knackered a little scared but grateful.