Philosophy and Christmas Cards, Soup to Nuts

‘Tis the season, so I designed a card. (You may purchase it here if you like. Or any other comparably inappropriate product. I do feel more people ought to confound loved ones by gifting them my socks.)

On to further scholarly matters!

Ludwig Wittgenstein, his friends said, insisted on ‘soupy’ Christmas cards.

In Wittgenstein in Cambridge: Letters and Documents, 1911-1951 we read that Moore, Russell and Keynes were scrupulous about document preservation, as a result of which many Christmas cards from Wittgenstein are preserved:

It is of some interest to note that while from Vienna Wittgenstein would send chaste cards with Biedermeier views of the Josefplatz or the like – the sort of thing his sisters would oder from a Kohlmarkt stationer in boxes – his English cards were chosen especially for the banality of the illustrations and of the accompanying verses, as for example:

If wishes count, you’ll surely have
Life’s blessings rich and true
For I am wishing from my heart
Such good things all for you.

These were not the cards usually exchanged at Cambridge, but (it is legitimate to suppose) the clumsy sincerity of a different level of English life was more acceptable to him; and, as for taste, he was chiefly concerned to avoid the half and half.

At this point there is a footnote, indicating his friend Thomas Redpath described him as ‘avoiding the aesthetic’ on such festive occasions. And, in a letter to Norman Malcolm, he instructed: “tell Doney, his Christmas card wasn’t soupy enough.”

One of Wittgenstein’s soupy cards can be viewed here.

And the interior shows this:

And now it gets interesting! You see how Wittgenstein notated, by hand, in ink, the meter – the stresses – for proper reading of the poem.

At this point we shift to read in Lectures and Conversations on Aesthetics, Psychology and Religious Belief.

Take the question: “How should poetry be read? What is the correct way of reading it?” if you are talking about blank verse the right way of reading it might be stressing it correctly – you discuss how far you should stress the rhythm and how far you should hide it. A man says it ought to be read this way and reads it out to you. You say: “Oh, yes. Now it makes sense.” There are cases of poetry which should almost be scanned – where the metre is as clear as crystal – others where the metre is entirely in the background. I had an experience with the 18th century poet Klopstock. I found that the way to read him was to stress his metre abnormally. Klopstock put u-u (etc.) in front of his poems. When I read his poems in this new way I said: “Ah-ha, now I know why he did this.” What had happened? I had read this kind of stuff and been moderately bored, but when I read it in this particular way, intensely, I smiled, said: “This is grand,” etc. But I might not have said anything. The important fact was that I read it again and again. When I read these poems I made gestures and facial expressions which were what would be called gestures of approval.

In short, what a nut.

He sent his friends ‘soupy’ Christmas cards as a sort of determined embrace of the ordinary – or avoidance of the aesthetic, or call it what you will. If you know Wittgenstein you know that he went in for this a lot, one way or another. A blog post isn’t the place to settle the fraught issue of Wittgenstein’s relationship with ‘ordinariness’. But note the irony. It wasn’t enough just to send soupy cards. He had to notate the metre to tell his friends exactly how to read them just right. Again, this was a thing with him. You might even say: his whole later philosophy was all an attempt to instruct students in how to be properly ordinary about it all. Like, exactly.

At any rate, noticing this about his card caused me to make gestures and facial expressions which were what would be called gestures of bemusement.

What sort of philosopher cares so much about Christmas cards?