Wittgenstein's Mistress (18 page)

Tell me, Fabritius, what am I to do about this pupil of yours, who keeps on buying pastry for his eleven children? How long must I wait before any of these paintings become worth anything?

Unfortunately there would appear to be no record of Carel Fabritius's answer, here.

Neither is there any in regard to the connection between Rembrandt and Spinoza, actually, which it occurs to me I had not intended to leave hanging as I did.

Even if there was no connection between Rembrandt and Spinoza.

The only connection between Rembrandt and Spinoza was that both of them were connected with Amsterdam.

Although on the other hand Rembrandt may have painted a portrait of Spinoza.

People often made what they called an educated guess that he had painted such a portrait, in any event.

Most of the subjects of Rembrandt's portraits being unidentified to begin with, naturally.

So all that people were really doing was guessing that one of them may as well have been Spinoza.

In the end this is one more of those questions in art history that has always had to remain elusive, however.

On the other hand it is probably safe to assume that Rembrandt and Spinoza surely would have at least passed on the street, now and again.

Or even run into each other quite frequently, if only at some neighborhood shop or other.

And certainly they would have exchanged amenities as well, after a time.

Good morning, Rembrandt. Good morning to you, Spinoza.

I was extremely sorry to hear about your bankruptcy, Rembrandt. I was extremely sorry to hear about your excommunication, Spinoza.

Do have a good day, Rembrandt. Do have the same, Spinoza.

All of this would have been said in Dutch, incidentally.

I mention that simply because it is known that Rembrandt did not speak any other language except Dutch.

Even if Spinoza may have preferred Latin. Or Jewish.

Come to think about it, Willem de Kooning may have spoken to my cat in Dutch too, that afternoon.

Although what I am actually now remembering about that cat is that it climbed into certain other laps beside de Kooning's, as it happens.

As a matter of fact it once climbed into William Gaddis's lap, on an occasion when Lucien brought William Gaddis to my loft.

I believe there was an occasion when Lucien brought William Gaddis to my loft.

In any event I am next to positive that he did bring somebody, once, who made me think about Taddeo Gaddi.

Taddeo Gaddi scarcely being a figure one is otherwise made to think about that frequently, having been a relatively minor painter.

One is made to think about Carel Fabritius much more frequently than one is made to think about Taddeo Gaddi, for instance.

Even if one is rarely made to think about either of them.

Except perhaps when slightly damaging a painting by the former in the National Gallery, say.

Which happened to be a view of Delft, in fact.

Well, fame itself being basically relative in any case, of course.

An artist named Torrigiano having once been much more famous than many other artists, for no other reason than because he had broken Michelangelo's nose.

Well, or ask Vermeer.

And to tell the truth William Gaddis was less than extraordinarily famous himself, even though he wrote a novel called
The Recognitions
that any number of people spoke quite well of.

Doubtless I would have spoken quite well of it myself, had I read it, what with having gathered that it was a novel about a man who wore an alarm clock around his neck.

Although what I am now trying to recall is whether I may have asked William Gaddis if he himself were aware that there
had been a painter named Taddeo Gaddi.

As I have suggested, certainly many people would not have been aware of that.

Then again, if one were named William Gaddis, doubtless one would have gone through life being aware of it.

As a matter of fact people had probably been driving William Gaddis to distraction for years, by asking him if he were aware that there had been a painter named Taddeo Gaddi.

Possibly I was sensible enough not to ask him.

In fact I hope I did not even ask him if he knew that Taddeo Gaddi had been a pupil of Giotto.

Well, doubtless I would not have asked him that, having not even known I remembered it until the instant in which I started to type that sentence.

And in any event the cat may not have climbed into William Gaddis's lap after all.

The more I think about it, the more I seem to remember that Rembrandt rarely went anywhere near strangers.

Even if he and William Gaddis would have remained equidistant from each other at all times, of course.

Well, as any other cat and any other person.

Or even as the cat I saw in the Colosseum and each of those cans of food I put out, also.

Even though there were as many cans as there must have been Romans watching the Christians, practically.

In fact each Christian and each lion would have always remained equidistant from each other, too.

Except when the lions had eaten the former, naturally.

Although I can now actually think of another exception to this rule, as well.

I myself and the cat which is presently scratching at my broken window again might both normally be presumed to be equidistant from each other, too.

Except when the tape happens to stop scratching, at which time there is no cat.

And surely one cannot be equidistant from something that does not exist, any more than something that does not exist can be equidistant from whatever it is supposed to be equidistant from either.

Or can any donkey see that?

It is easier to think about the cat as not existing than about Vincent as not doing so, incidentally.

And meanwhile for some reason I am extraordinarily pleased to have remembered that, about Taddeo Gaddi and Giotto.

Well, and it makes for an interesting connection from Cimabue to Giotto to Taddeo Gaddi, also.

Like the connection from Perugino to Raphael to Giulio Romano.

Even if I have perhaps not mentioned that Raphael had been a pupil of Perugino. Or for that matter that Perugino in turn had been a pupil of the Piero who did not hide under tables, which connects everything even farther than that.

In fact I have now suddenly solved the entire question as to whom Willem de Kooning was descended from.

Willem de Kooning was not descended from anybody. Willem de Kooning's teacher was.

Now heavens. Or should I perhaps give up troubling to correct such nonsense altogether, and simply let my language come out any way it insists upon?

In fact even before I just wrote that Willem de Kooning was not descended from anybody, which was obviously hardly what I meant, I happened to be thinking about
Les Troyens
again.

What I would have written about
Les Troyens,
if I had stopped to put that in, was that nobody ever pays attention to a word Cassandra says in the opera any more than they do in the plays.

Except that if nobody ever pays attention to a word Cassandra says, how can anybody know that nobody pays attention to her to begin with?

Now I suspect I have put that badly, as well.

Certain things can sometimes be almost impossible to put, however.

Once, when I was in the seventh grade, the teacher told us Archimedes's paradox about Achilles and the tortoise.

How the paradox went was that if Achilles was trying to catch the tortoise, but the tortoise had a head start, Achilles could never catch it.

This was because by the time Achilles had caught up the distance of the head start, the tortoise would have naturally gone another distance. And even though each new distance the tortoise could go would keep on getting smaller and smaller, Achilles would still always be that new distance behind.

Now I knew, knew, that Achilles could certainly catch that tortoise.

Even when Achilles was only the tiniest fraction behind, however, and the tortoise could go only the tiniest fraction past that, what the teacher showed on the blackboard was that there would still always be more fractions.

This finally almost made me want to cry.

So now I know that nobody ever pays attention to a word Cassandra says in the opera, but I also know, know, that the way I know it is by having paid attention.

Philosophy is not my trade.

And in fact it was not Archimedes who had the paradox but was Zeno.

Archimedes was killed by soldiers during some war at Syracuse while he was doing his geometry in the sand. With a stick.

Or have I now just done it all over again?

Oh, well, I suppose it is not one hundred percent impossible that Archimedes was killed with the same stick I was trying to say he was writing with.

I have not forgotten Willem de Kooning's teacher.

What I had meant to write about Willem de Kooning's
teacher, however, was not that I had suddenly realized whom he was descended from, but whom he was connected to.

As in the connection from Rembrandt to Carel Fabritius to Vermeer, this obviously is.

Except that what I am now thinking about is the person who was next in line, as a pupil of Vermeer. And then the person who was a pupil of the pupil of Vermeer.

And after that all the way down until the next to last pupil of a pupil had a pupil of his own named Willem de Kooning.

Surely this is much more likely than Willem de Kooning himself having been descended from the man who taught Claude Lorrain how to make pastry?

Ralph Hodgson was born fifteen years before Rupert Brooke, and was still alive almost fifty years after Brooke had died on the same island where Achilles had made one of the women pregnant.

And when Bertrand Russell was more than ninety years old, he could still remember hearing his grandfather talk about remembering the death of George Washington.

As a matter of fact, suppose one day when Willem de Kooning was a pupil, his teacher told him something.

Suppose this was something quite simple, even, such as that russet is not a name one gives to a color.

But also suppose that when Willem de Kooning's teacher said that, he was really repeating something he had been told when he himself was a pupil.

And suppose that the teacher who told it to Willem de Kooning's teacher had been told the same thing when he himself was a pupil.

And so on.

So who is to argue that one day Rembrandt might not have been standing next to Carel Fabritius's easel, and Carel Fabritius said he was going to paint something russet, and Rembrandt said that russet is a color one calls a bedspread?

So in a manner of speaking Willem de Kooning was actually
a
pupil of Rembrandt.

This is scarcely to suggest that it was Willem de Kooning who painted the gold coins on the floor of Rembrandt's studio, of course.

Although who is to additionally argue that he might not have finished that quiz even more quickly than Carel Fabritius did?

Come to think about it, however, why is it not possible that all of this might go back even farther still?

Why couldn't it just as readily have been Cimabue who told Giotto about bedspreads, for instance, even long before Gilbert Stuart happened to mention it in passing to George Washington?

This is scarcely to suggest that Willem de Kooning was anywhere in the vicinity when Giotto was drawing the perfect circle freehand either, of course.

Unless, on the other hand, I suddenly make up my mind to imagine that he was.

This very sort of imagining being the artist's privilege, obviously.

Well, it is what artists
do.

There is a famous canvas in the National Gallery, of Penelope weaving, and nobody stopped the painter from putting everybody from Ithaca into clothes that people did not wear until practically three thousand years later, during the Renaissance.

In fact it was similarly Leonardo's own doing when he made the table in
The Last Supper
far too small for all of those Jewish people who are supposed to be eating at it.

Or Michelangelo's, when he took away superfluous material on his
David
but left the hands and feet too big.

I have now made up my mind to imagine Willem de Kooning in Giotto's studio.

In fact Giotto is wearing clothes from the Renaissance, but Willem de Kooning is in a kind of sweatshirt.

Actually I have just made the sweatshirt into a soccer shirt. With the word Savona across its front.

Giotto and Willem de Kooning are both equidistant from each other, naturally.

Well, and from the circle.

In fact all points on the circumference of the circle are equidistant from the center of the circle as well, as Zeno proved.

And now Cimabue and Rembrandt and Carel Fabritius and Jan Vermeer are in the studio also.

There is nothing astonishing in my ability to arrange any of this, of course, although in certain ways it is perhaps interesting.

What is especially interesting is that I do not have any idea what Giotto or Cimabue or Jan Vermeer look like.

In the case of Rembrandt and Carel Fabritius I have seen self-portraits. Even if it does not appear necessary for me to visualize which of the many of those on Rembrandt's part happens to apply at the moment.

Willem de Kooning is a special case as well, having once visited my loft.

As a matter of fact I have now put my russet cat into Giotto's studio, also.

Even if russet is traditionally not a name anybody present would give to a color.

I think I will put the cat that scratches at my broken window in, too.

Both cats are now in Giotto's studio.

I suspect I would prefer that Rembrandt not discover what the first of these cats is named, however.

Although in fact Willem de Kooning is aware of the name of that one.

I have no way of telling whether Willem de Kooning might mention to Rembrandt what that cat's name is.

Even though it is I who am imagining Willem de Kooning and Rembrandt in the same studio, I would appear not to have any control over this.