Wittgenstein: Letter to Bertrand Russell (1919).

McGrath, Campbell

    In 1914, as the Austrian army retreated before the Russians,
   while I was stuck with an engineering unit, repairing vehicles
   and reading Tolstoy's version of the Gospels, I received a
postcard
   from a friend in Vienna, informing me that the poet Georg Trakl
   was recuperating from wounds not far away, in Krakow,
   and urging me to visit him at my convenience. What delight
   to discover a fellow voice in the midst of war's monotony!
   I struggle not to hate all those around me, and to recognize
   in them some common humanity with myself.
   Survival in these times, as you will understand, Russell,
   can depend on having even a single real companion, a single soul
   to comprehend one's ideas, one's mode of thought,
one's vision.
   Needless to say I rushed to the military hospital, only to discover
   that Trakl had killed himself two days earlier. What misery!
   In 1916 at last I received my requested transfer to the front,
   where I volunteered for the most hazardous duty,
   manning the forward observation post, to be certain of drawing fire.
   Fear of death proved to be both harrowing and clarifying.
   At heart we are animals, Russell. By day I was corresponding
   with Frege on logic, but at night, during the Brusilov Offensive,
   with the Russian artillery barrages exploding around me,
   I found myself driven toward ontological inquiry.
   What do I truly know about life, the world, about God?
   What can be proven or derived, and via which calculus?
   What means of situating oneself to receive such knowledge?
   God grant me insight. Enlighten me. I am a worm.
   I resemble the man in a storm, whose friends, behind their window,
   cannot conceive the wild winds raging against him.
   Now, as you know, I am taken prisoner by the Italians,
   along with most of the Austrian army, which, in essence,
   abandoned the war and surrendered en masse last autumn.
   The good news is that I have at last solved all of our problems
   and succeeded in completing my Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.
   Logic and ontology are syntactically parallel, and hereafter
   no further questions remain to be answered in either realm.
   I do worry, however, that my method may not be understood,
   as even Frege seems unable, or unwilling, to grasp it.
   Certainly your own recent writings suggest that my meaning
   will pass you by completely, without lengthy explanations,
   impossible unless you can somehow arrange to visit me
   here, at the prisoner of war camp, in Cassino,
   as I carry with me the only copy of the manuscript.
   The war has changed me. Cambridge is a fond memory
   but I have decided to become an elementary school teacher,
   working, I hope, in the most isolated Alpine districts.
   Friends in the Vatican have worked for my early release
   but of course I will refuse any special considerations.
   I have a rather funny anecdote to relate from the other day.
   Some of the officers, one of them a reputable Viennese sculptor,
   were talking of the painting by Klimt of "Fraulein
Wittgenstein,"
   and when I said I knew it well, being a portrait of my sister,
   they fell back in amazement, having taken me for a common soldier.
   It is very hard not to be understood by any single other
   person in the world--the entire world, Russell.
   There is a perilous loneliness in this state of affairs,
   and a planetary sorrow in my soul. Yours, Ludwig.