DIARY
FREDERIC RAPHAEL The proposition says some- thing" is identical with: It has a particular relation to reality, whatever this may be.' Who can fail to recognise Wittgenstein dans ses oeuvres? What makes me think of this observation just now? Its German equivalent was written in W's notebook on Christmas Day 1914, while he was serving in the Austrian army. It is the mark of the genius, as it is of the fool, to pursue his own thoughts irrespective of carol-singers or bombardments. The outside world im- pinged, it seems, as little on young Ludwig as it did on Archimedes, who was involved in higher mathematics when a Roman soldier split his skull. Is there any sense or use in worrying about whether Events in the Gulf will have a happy outcome? Should one's notebook bear evidence of sleepless concern with what lies wholly beyond one's control? Am I naive to reveal that my Dream Office put out a feature- length programme which culminated in Shamir upstaging the whole belligerent world by withdrawing, voluntarily, from the Occupied Territories? In my idealistic, oneiric world, this unprecedented act wrong-footed Saddam, embarrassed Sir Ian Gilmour (and his son), and led to Palestinians and Israelis realising their common, secular interests in a world where fanaticism must now have its right to rant in any 'balanced' display of public opin- ions.
Yes, I have now woken up. Having returned to the Perigord, on a tour of inspection, I have been promptly reminded that border disputes are not rational, even in cases where the border itself is not in question. Soyons clair. We are building a wall. It is within our own territorial limits. It will, when completed, chime perfectly with the local style (being built from old stones from a ruined barn). Our neigh- bours — once called peasants but now designated agriculteurs — are very nice people, with whom we have spent more than 20 years of proximity without a cross word. They hate us to leave; they welcome us back. But they do not welcome our intention to wall off our courtyard from the chemin which goes past our place to theirs. How can I prove that not the least of the reasons why we have taken this measure is defensive? Our neighbours — both French and Dutch — have become summer land- lords. The Volvos and the Cavaliers, the Jags and the Granadas start driving up in May. One in two of them pulls in at our place and the driver claims that he has the house for a fortnight. We dispute this, and they proceed further up the road to where the mats have welcome on them. We have, in short, grown weary of playing the concierge du coteau. All around us, things have been improved with expressways, caravan parks and the other unchallenged evidence that Europe is descending on the Perigord, but our tasteful addition to the scene has become a casus belli. War, I am confident, is evitable, but the froideur is chilling, and sad.
In Paris, the debate is a outrance. De- nunciation and abuse, charge and counter- charge fill the air-lanes and clog the televi- sion channels. Left surges against Right; Right ridicules Left. L'Affaire du Golfe? No, no, that does not, we are told, involve any vital French interest. Mourir pour Koweit? Pas likely. The serious battle is between those who would reform French spelling and those who decline to withdraw one inch from the circumflex accent. For them, the vrai inter& frangais is menaced not by their ex(?)-buddy Saddam, but by nouveau-speak. French resentment of the Anglo-Saxon — a term of abuse hurled at me (!!) by a French film director when traditional expressions of esteem failed him — is no less linguistic than economic. If it were not for the Anglo-American conspiracy, the world would speak French, bon dieu! The frenzy on parade in a debat ostensibly about war and peace was man- ifestly about France's cultural subordina- tion to a country, the United States, 'sans histoire, un pays de fast food et chewing gum'. One Savonarola — as wild-eyed as Hazlitt's Shelley — was off to pack his Baghdad bag, so that he might die under American bombardment, not because he loved Saddam but because he hated ham- burgers.
What would you do if you had only a few hours to live? Or even a few minutes? George Steiner (as one might expect) supplies the prize-winning example: the French duke who, while in the tumbril, was seen to be reading a book. Arriving at the steps of the guillotine, he turned down the corner of his text, as if for a temporary absence, and took the steps to the Great Library in the Sky. Are such things possi- ble in a classless society?
Among the joys of returning to a longish-empty house is the heap of mail. Back numbers of the TLS, rancid with unrefrigerated rancour, give off their sul- phur; tradesmen repeat their charges; Christmas blooms again in January as old friends' cards prove they have not forgot- ten (though some, alas, have been by us). The nicest, unexpected treat was from Lavinia Greacen, whose biography of `Chink' Dorman-Smith I alone declared a `book of the year'. (Who was it who preferred to toady to a literary biography which he had not yet read?) Lavinia sent me a framed letter-cover, addressed to Hemingway — Chink's bob-sleigh brake- man — in the Twenties. Justice, I re- minded her in my stern thank-you, is not a favour and need not be rewarded.
The most depressing item in my now-it- can-be-opened stack was a magazine called CAM, a new publication aimed at Cam- bridge graduates. It is a missile against which all precautions are warranted. In appearance, the kind of three-colour pros- pectus which time-share-pushers might circulate to the guileless, this 'Alumni Magazine' (complete with facsimilitudi- nous Royal Good Wishes) would be wholly appropriate if Cambridge were the kind of place to which applicants for no-work- involved-doctorates sent their buck. What would Wittgenstein say? I suggest the entry for 29.12.14: . . but there is also the common cement'. And there is also Byron's Pool, for deep-mixing the cement envelope and its common three-colour contents.
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