Dogma (8 page)

W. is a man who wants to
see the night through
he says. But the afternoon … that’s my time, W. concedes. That’s when I come into my own. When everyone around me is tired and can put up no defence. When everyone’s too tired to make me shut up, that’s Lars-time, W. says.—‘That’s when
you pounce’. The afternoon: it’s when I’m at my strongest and he’s at his weakest, W. says. It’s when I can really get going. It’s when I wear everyone out.

But it’s also when I’m most afraid, of course, that’s what I’ve told him, W. says. He’s always been struck by that: for him, the afternoon is a time of repose, for the gathering of strength, but for me, it’s a time of fear.

It must be my years of unemployment, W. says. Didn’t I tell him my afternoons used to sag like a
drooping washing line
? Didn’t I complain of the
eternullity
of those afternoons, of their
infinite wearing away
? It was
post-Neighbours
time, the afternoon, that’s what I told him. Post
This Morning
, post
Kilroy
, and deep into the time of American cop-show repeats.

Columbo-time
, W. says, I could never bear that, could I? Instead I’d go out for walk, that’s what I told him. Instead, it was time for a bike ride. Anything to be active! Anything to have something to do! I’d head up to
Tesco
for discounted sandwiches, wasn’t that it? I’d head into the library for another video, all the time full of fear, all the time anxious about—what? How did I put it?
The infinite wearing away
, I said, quoting Blanchot.
Eternullity
, I said, quoting Lefebvre.

It’s no wonder I’m no night-owl, W. says. No wonder that I’m always worn out by dinnertime. I always revive myself, when I visit him, with a slab of Stella and some pork scratchings. That’s my pre-dinner snack.

W., meanwhile, would have been refreshed from his nap, if I’d allowed him to sleep. He would have come downstairs, a man refreshed, reborn, having had a power-nap, he says.
But instead, I insist on conversation, W. says. I insist on wearing him out: he lying on the sofa; I, sitting up at the table. I insist we make some wild plan or other, W. says.

For me, the afternoon’s always planning-time,
world-conquest-time
, as W. calls it. I have to pretend to some kind of hold on the future, W. has noticed. It’s like a climber throwing up a grappling hook, or Spiderman swinging by his squirted webs. I’m never
happy in the moment
, W. says. I’m never happy
in the belly of the afternoon
.

St Hilda’s College, looking at the river. Capitalism and religion, W. muses. He hasn’t got much further with his thinking, he says. His notebook’s nearly empty. I flick through it.

Where there is hope there is religion
:
Bloch
, I read.
Sometimes God
,
sometimes nothing: Kafka
, I read.
I have seen God
,
I have heard God: a ray of light under the door of my hotel room: Celan
. Beautiful! But there are few thoughts of W.’s own. He’s going through a dry period, W. says.

Maybe he should try his hand at poetry, like me, W. says. He could write haiku: ‘
Half ton friend / in trouble again
’. ‘
Fuckwit in a vest / Friend I love best
’. Or he could draw some pictures.
Study for a Divvy. Landscape with Idiot
.

Here’s his favourite quotation, W. says. They should put it on his gravestone. It’s by Hermann Müller, he says. It’s called ‘The Luckless Angel’:

The past surges behind him, pouring rubble on his wings and shoulders and thundering like buried drums, while in front of him the future collects, exploding his eyeballs, strangling him with his breath. The luckless angel is silent, waiting for history in the petrification of flight, glance, breath. Until the renewed rush of powerful wings swelling in waves through the stones signals his flight
.

Sometimes, W. thinks it’s fallen to us: the great task of preserving the legacy of Old Europe. It’s our task, he thinks, our allotted mission, to keep something alive of continental Europe in our benighted country, W. says.

Ah, how was it coupled in us, the fear and loathing of the present world
and
the messianic sense of what it might have been?, W. wonders. How, in us, are combined the sense that our careers—our lives as so-called thinkers—could only have been the result of some great collapse,
and
the conviction that we are the preservers of a glorious European past, and that we have a share in that past?

How, in us, was joined the sense that our learning—which is really only an
enthusiasm
for learning, for our philosophy, for literature—is of complete irrelevance and indifference,
and
the mad belief that our learning bears upon what is most important and risky of all, upon the great questions of the age?

We’re delusional, W. says. He knows that. We’ve gone wrong, terribly wrong, he knows that, too. But don’t we belong to something important, something greater than us, even if we are only its grotesque parody?

We’re hinderers of thought, W. says. We trip it up, humiliate it. There’s thought, flat on the floor. There it is, drunk as we are drunk and throwing up over the side of the bridge …

But thought is here, right here, very close to us, that’s the thing, W. says. Thought’s here, it must be desperate. There must be no one else for thought to hang out with. We’re its last friends, W. says. We’re
the last friends of thought
 …

In his imagination, W. says, our offices in our cities at the edges of this country are like the Dark Age monasteries on the edge of Europe, keeping the old knowledge alive. In his imagination, our teaching is samizdat, outlawed because it is dangerous, the secret police infiltrating our lectures and preparing to take us away. In W.’s imagination, the enemies of thought are tracking us even here, even in Oxford.
Especially
in Oxford. They’re watching. They invited us here to keep us close. To press us close to the bosom of Oxford. To suffocate us. To suck the life out of us …

But in reality, W. knows no one is watching. No one cares anymore, that’s the truth of it, W. says. No one’s on the look out. There was no guard on the door of St Hilda’s College. There’s no one who could regard us as interlopers.

It’s like Rome after it was sacked by the Barbarians, says W. They’ve come and gone, the Barbarians, the wreckers of civilisation. And now there’s no guard; there’s nothing to protect. We’re inside—yes; but that is only a sign that there is no longer a distinction between inside and outside.

We’ve got away with nothing; our stupidity is in plain view. It doesn’t matter; it’s irrelevant to everyone. No one’s worried about our credentials, because there are no credentials. There’s only luck. And opportunism. Were we lucky?, I
ask him.—‘Undoubtedly’. And were we opportunists?—‘We were too stupid to be opportunists’.

He sees it, W. says, like an enormous fact. A great fact, like the wide sky, that says:
it doesn’t matter
. Over the Bodelian Library, it says:
it’s all over
. Over the college quadrangles, it says:
it’s finished. You’re too late
. Over the gowned academics, it says:
Gibt sie auf! Gibt sie auf! Gibt sie auf!

The gate stands open. It’s nearly falling from its hinges. And beyond it, other doors, or gaps in walls where there were once doors, or rubble where there were once walls, or mounds of dust where there was once rubble. And beyond that: empty space without stars. Nothing at all.

Rolling thunder. Lightning flashing in the summer sky. There’s trouble at his college, W. says.

The rumour is they’re going to close down all the humanities, every course. The college is going to specialise in sport instead. They’ve brought in a team of consultants to manage the redundancies, W. says.

Oh, some staff will be kept on, they’ve said that. The college needs some academic respectability. They’ll probably make him a
professor of badminton ethics
, W. says. He’ll probably be teaching
shot put metaphysics …

But everyone will have to reapply for their jobs, that’s the rumour. They’re going to cut the workforce in half. It’s Hobbesian, W. says. There’s going to be a war of all against all.

How peaceful it was, his college, when he first arrived! Colleagues greeted each other warmly. They sat out in the quadrangle, taking tea and discussing their scholarship. No one taught for more than a couple of hours a week.

Then the decline began. Teaching hours went up.
Colleagues became busier; there was less time to talk. Scholars worked alone, with their office doors closed. But still they waved at one another across the quadrangle. Still, when they had time, they visited each other’s offices for tea.

But things fell further. Colleagues did nothing but teach, W. says. No one spoke. No one took tea. Scholars—what scholars were left—worked alone, talking to no one, keeping their insights to themselves. The quadrangle was silent.

And now? Colleagues have forgotten what scholarship is. They’ve forgotten anything but teaching, endless, remorseless teaching. Former scholars snarl at each other in the college corridors. And there are rumours that the library will be torched, and that they’ll set up a gallows in the quadrangle. It’s like something out of Dante, W. says.

The war is beginning, W. says. The armies are assembling. It’s as though the awful Hindu stories I tell are coming true. He feels like Arjuna in the great battle of the
Mahabharata
, W. says. He feels like the leader of the Pandavan armies on the Kurukshetra plains, facing his friends and relatives on the opposing side.

Uncle was set against nephew, that’s what I told him, isn’t it?, W. says, pupil against teacher, friend against friend: the battle had torn families apart, old friendships asunder … Arjuna threw aside his bow and sank to his knees, I told W. Why should he fight?, he cried to his friend, Krishna. Why should he go on? And that’s what W. wails when he’s with me: why should
he
fight? Why should
he
go on?

W. is going to commence hostilities with scholar-brothers from the old days, when his college was a place of reputation, when the department of theology and philosophy was the jewel in its crown. He’s heading into battle with scholar-sisters from the times when the college was a place of sanctuary for academics from overseas: when they took in scholar-refugees, scholar-survivors from war-torn countries, giving them an office in which to work, and a pass for the library.

W.’s about to skirmish with fellow scholars of ancient civilisations, fellow men and women of the archive, who have spent their lives travelling from place of learning to place of learning. He’s pitted against scholars mesmerised by Old Europe, as he is. Mesmerised by Kafka, mesmerised by Spinoza. Mesmerised by the French and the German and the ancient Greeks …

Krishna comforted Arjuna by granting him a divine vision, W. recalls. Arjuna was allowed to witness Krishna’s celestial form: to see the entire cosmos turning in his body. Arjuna saw the light of God, the Lord of Yoga, as a fire that burns to consume all things. He saw a million divine figures in the fire, and the manifold contours of the universe united as one …

‘What does your celestial form look like?’, says W. ‘Go on, show me’. Actually, he thinks he’s already seen it, W. says, or parts of it. My vast, white belly. My flabby arms. The trousers that billow round my ankles …

And my dancing, my terrible dancing. It’s the
end
of the
cosmos that W. sees in my dancing. He sees the
destruction
of the divine figures, and of the manifold contours of the universe. He sees
primordial chaos
, he says. He sees the putting out of the stars. He sees the extinguishing of the sun, and the night swallowing the day. He sees the opposite of the act of creation, the opposite of cosmogony …

‘
The floodgates of the sky broke open
’, he says, quoting
Genesis
. He sees ‘
the waters of the great Deep
’, and ‘
the Dragon of the Sea
’, he says, quoting
Isaiah
.

How does the
Mahabharata
end?, W. asks.
And darkness fell over India
, I remind him.—‘You Hindus have a great sense of decline.
And darkness fell over India …
’, he sighs. ‘That’s the way to end an epic’.

Our inaugural Dogma presentation was on Kafka—the room was packed, and W. spoke very movingly of his encounter with
The Castle
in a Wolverhampton library. I spoke (very ineptly, W. said afterwards) about my encounter with
The Castle
in a Winnersh Triangle warehouse.—‘What were you on about?’ But Dogmatists stick together; a question for one is a question for the other. You have to stand back to back and fight to the last. Did we win? We lost, says W., but we did so gloriously.

Our
second
Dogma presentation concerned friendship as a condition of thought. W. stole half his argument from Paolo Virno, and the other half from Mario Tronti. Virno and Tronti write of their ideas as though they were categories in Aristotle, W. says. He admires that. W. reminds me of the sixth Dogma rule: always claim the ideas of others as your own.

Forming an ultra-Dogmatist splinter group, I spoke not of friendship in general, but of
my
friendships (my friendships with nutters and weirdos, W. says.)

W. is prompted to add another rule to Dogma: Dogma is
personal
. Always give examples from your own experience. No: the presentation
in its entirety
should begin and end with
an account of your own experience. Of turning points! Trials! Of great struggles and humiliations! My life lends itself particularly well to such a rule, W. says.—‘The horror of your life’.