Wittgenstein's Mistress (19 page)

Then again it is quite possible that Willem de Kooning does not remember the cat's name in either case, it being some years
since the cat may or may not have climbed into his or William Gaddis's lap.

Now Vincent Van Gogh is in Giotto's studio.

This would be Vincent Van Gogh the painter, naturally, since Vincent Van Gogh the cat is there already.

The newer Vincent's ear is bandaged.

I have just decided to put El Greco into the studio, as well.

Which is perhaps why everything now appears slightly elongated, or even astigmatic.

The number on the back of Willem de Kooning's soccer shirt would appear to be an eleven, however.

Unless it is a seventeen.

As a matter of fact Willem de Kooning now looks a good deal like Jackson Pollock.

I had also just thought to make Rembrandt bend over as if to pick something up from the floor, and to have Carel Fabritius find this extremely amusing, but I am not certain whether that happened.

Things are actually getting cluttered, to tell the truth.

Especially now that there are sheep.

Still, any one of these figures remains indisputably equidistant from any other.

Well, as I myself do from each, in turn.

Although perhaps I am not equidistant from a single one of them, come to think about it, since they are all only in my head.

Which would again be somewhat like the Christians after they had been eaten by the lions, doubtless.

Then again it is doubtless not like that at all.

Meanwhile the artist who painted the painting of this very house has just come into my head in place of all that, and in this instance I not only do not know what she looks like, but I do not even know her name.

For that matter her painting itself is now in my head as well, even though I have not given that a thought for a week or more.

The reason I have not given that a thought for a week or
more, as it happens, is because it is in the room with the life of Brahms, and the atlas, and to which the door is closed.

But which has therefore now brought the life of Brahms and the atlas into my head, likewise.

Although what I am next forced to wonder is what might happen if I were to decide that I have Brahms himself in my head.

Would it be the real Brahms, or the Brahms from the life of Brahms?

And which one of them wrote
The Alto Rhapsody,
then?

Or do I perhaps have no idea what on earth I mean by this distinction?

At least it has suddenly occurred to me that the Achilles from the seventh grade who could not catch the tortoise is the same Achilles I have been writing about for all of this time.

Well, it had simply not struck me that way before, is all.

Even if I now realize that this means the tortoise was faster than Hector was too, since Achilles did finally catch Hector, even though Hector ran and ran.

Then again, I doubt that the tortoise was the same tortoise that an eagle was said to have dropped on Aeschylus's bald head, which is how Aeschylus was said to have died.

There is an explanation for the eagle having done this, incidentally.

The explanation being that presumably the eagle wished to crack the shell of the tortoise, and believed that Aeschylus's bald head was a rock.

On my honor, it was said that this was how Aeschylus died.

When Aeschylus wrote about all of that bloody business in the bath with Agamemnon and Clytemnestra and the net, by the way, he put in a terribly sad part for while Cassandra is waiting to die herself.

What Cassandra thinks about is how lovely everything had been when she was a little girl, at Troy, and used to sit and play.

Beside the banks of the Scamander.

This being another sort of thing that artists do.

Then again Cassandra is not carried off to Greece at all, in
Les Troyens.

What Berlioz does, instead, is have her kill herself, once Troy falls.

Perhaps Hector Berlioz was named after the same Hector also, come to think about it.

I do not remember anything in the opera about anybody lurking at windows, on the other hand.

Although it was Herodotus who wrote the line about the entire war having been because of a single Spartan girl, which I do believe I was trying to remember a good number of days ago.

Raphael and Giulio Romano were two more artists who painted versions of Helen being abducted, incidentally, just as Rubens and Van Dyck both painted versions of Achilles hiding among the women.

I find it interesting, when teachers and pupils do that.

Although Rubens was sometimes not very much happier about Van Dyck than Titian was about Tintoretto, actually.

Even if he did not kick Van Dyck out, what he did was always give him just faces to do, so that he himself could keep on being the best at the parts where everybody is always touching everybody else.

Rubens also spoke five languages, which I mention only because of having mentioned that Rembrandt could speak only one.

Have I said that I brought in an armful of red roses, earlier this morning?

Or that Utrillo actually painted certain canvases by copying scenes he found on picture postcards?

Meantime that question of things existing only in one's head may still be troubling me slightly, to tell the truth.

Basically this is because it has just now come to mind that the fire I am perhaps going to build at the garbage disposal area, in order to watch it glisten on the broken bottles, is something else that exists only in my head.

Except that in this case it is something that exists in my head even though I have not yet built the fire.

In fact it exists in my head even if I may possibly never build the fire.

Moreover, what is really in my head is not the fire either, but that painting by Van Gogh of the fire.

Which is to say the painting by Van Gogh that one can see if one squints just a little. With all of those swirls, as in
The Starry Night

And with anxiety in it, even.

Even if a certain amount of the anxiety may be simply over the likelihood that the painting will not sell, of course.

Although as a matter of fact what has now suddenly happened is that I am not actually seeing the painting itself, but am seeing a reproduction of the painting.

In addition to which the reproduction even has a caption, which says that the painting is called
The Broken Bottles.

And is in the Uffizi.

Now obviously there is no painting by Van Gogh called
The Broken Bottles
in the Uffizi.

There is no painting by Van Gogh called
The Broken Bottles
anywhere, in fact, including even in my head, since as I have said what is in my head is only a reproduction of the painting.

I suspect I am getting mixed up.

All I had started to say, I think, is that I am seeing a painting that Van Gogh did not paint, and which has now become a reproduction of that painting, and which to begin with is of a fire that I myself have not built.

Although what I have entirely left out is that the painting is not actually of the fire either, but of a reflection of the fire.

So in other words what I am ultimately seeing is not only a painting which is not a real painting but is only a reproduction, but which is also a painting of a fire which is not a real fire but is only a reflection.

On top of which the reproduction is hardly a real reproduction
itself, being only in my head, just as the reflection is not a real reflection for the same reason.

No wonder Cezanne once said that Van Gogh painted like a madman.

At this rate the next thing I am going to ask is if my roses will still be red after it gets dark.

On second thought I am not going to ask if my roses will still be red after it gets dark.

Or even if Cezanne ever happened to talk to anybody about Van Gogh personally, before he said that.

Which would naturally make his insight rather less than memorable, if he had.

I mean if Gauguin had taken Cezanne off into a corner somewhere and muttered a thing or two, for instance.

Or if Dostoievski did.

The dog which would not stay off Emily Brontë's bed was named Keeper, incidentally.

And the way Euripides was said to have died was by having been attacked by dogs, in fact, although I mention this only because of having mentioned Aeschylus and the eagle.

But what this reminds me of is that how Helen died, according to one old legend, was by being hanged from a tree, by jealous women.

Then again, another story insisted that she and Achilles became lovers, and lived forever on a magic island.

Although the identical story was sometimes told about Medea and Achilles.

Well, doubtless both of those stories arose because people were distressed at the notion of Achilles being left in Hades, as when Odysseus visits him there, in the
Odyssey.

This does not occur until after Achilles is killed by Paris, of course, by being struck in the heel with an arrow.

In fact Paris himself has gone to Mount Ida to die by then, as well, because of still another arrow.

Even if one is forced to read books by people with names like
Dictys of Crete, or Dares the Phrygian, or Quintus from Smyrna, to learn such things, since the
Iliad
does not go that far.

I dropped the pages from those books into the fire after reading the reverse sides of each too, as I recall.

In the Louvre, this would have been, which is perhaps three bridges away from the Pont Neuf.

Once, that same winter, I signed a mirror. In one of the women's rooms, with a lipstick.

What I was signing was an image of myself, naturally.

Should anybody else have looked, where my signature would have been was under the other person's image, however.

Even in late spring, from the ruins at Hisarlik, one can still see snow on Paris's mountain.

There is a painting in the Louvre of Helen and Paris, by the way, by Jacques Louis David, which is perhaps the only convincing representation of Helen that I have ever seen.

As a matter of fact the painting itself is silly, since Helen has all her clothes on while Paris is wearing only sandals and a hat.

Still, there is a wistfulness in Helen's face, that suggests that she has been thinking about a good many things.

I am quite taken by the idea of Helen having been thinking about a good many things.

Doubtless I would never have signed that mirror had there been anybody else to look, on the other hand.

Though in fact the name I put down was Jeanne Hebuterne.

I am also still staining, incidentally.

At a guess, I would say it is nine or ten days, now.

I would appear to have been failing to indicate a good many more of the latter too, as it happens.

Even if that has nothing to do with the staining, which as I have said is scarcely unusual.

Any more than would be waiting for some months without getting my period at all.

Although I have had to go to the spring again, to wash fresh underpants.

Ah, me.

Naturally I did not wash fresh underpants. Naturally the underpants were not fresh until after I had washed them.

In either case I have also left everything outside once more, since there is always something pleasurable about changing into garments that are still warm from the sun.

Conversely I am not extraordinarily happy about this new habit of skipping days so frequently, to tell the truth, even if I am less than positive why.

Although possibly it has something to do with the question I was writing about yesterday.

By which I perhaps mean a day or two before yesterday.

Nor am I certain that I remember the question very clearly.

Or perhaps I did not define it that well.

Although doubtless all I have in mind is that if so many things would appear to exist only in my head, once I do sit here they then turn out to exist on these pages as well.

Presumably they exist on these pages.

If somebody were to look at these pages who could understand only Russian, I have no idea what would exist on these pages.

Not speaking one word of Russian myself, however, I believe I am able to state categorically that the things which had existed only in my head now also exist on these pages.

Well, some of such things.

One can hardly put down everything that exists in one's head.

Or even begin to be aware of it, obviously.

In fact I have no doubt that I have more than once written things that I did not even remember I remembered until I wrote them.

Well, I have commented on that.

Though as a matter of fact there are also certain things that one remembers while one is writing that one did not remember one remembered but does not happen to put down, either.

For instance when I was writing about the fact that Rembrandt and Spinoza had lived in Amsterdam at the same time, which I had learned from a footnote, I suddenly remembered from a different footnote entirely that when El Greco had lived in Toledo such people as St. Teresa and St. John of the Cross had lived there, too.

Even though I remembered that, however, I did not put it down.

Basically my reason for not doing so may have been because I do not know one solitary thing about either St. Teresa or St. John of the Cross.

Except obviously that they were both in Toledo when El Greco was in Toledo.

Although there is more to what I am talking about than this.

Still another person who lived in Toledo when El Greco lived in Toledo was Cervantes, except that I had a different sort of reason for not bringing up Cervantes just now when I brought up St. Teresa and St. John of the Cross.

When I brought up St. Teresa and St. John of the Cross it was because, as I said, I had thought about them in connection with El Greco at the time when I was thinking about Rembrandt in connection with Spinoza.

As I also said, however, the fact that El Greco may have known St. Teresa and St. John of the Cross was something I did not remember I remembered until the very moment in which I was writing what I wrote about Rembrandt and Spinoza.