The Pages (2 page)

2

HOW ANYONE can believe that Sydney could produce in its own backyard a philosopher of world significance or even minor significance shows how little understanding there is of the conditions required for philosophical thought.

Sydney of course is one of the nicest places under the sun. The location, location. A young settlement, brightly lit. It has come late to just about everything, and enjoyed both the advantages and disadvantages of that. The first arrivals were conveniently composed of thieves, forgers and unmarried mothers, accompanied by unshaven soldiers and tragic magistrates, the shopkeepers, brewers and road-builders, the brick-makers, midwives, followed by farmers and farmhands and others (the horse-dealers, publicans, four-eyed tailors, stunted fettlers), all hoping for a fresh start. They could hardly be expected to pursue philosophical interests – most of them couldn't write their own names. For the first fifty years there was only a handful of books in the entire country. Other missing ingredients were slavery, or an imbalance of religion and superstition in daily life, or else a collective stammering of the self, a general mood of darkness and obscurity, and some would include a cold climate, all of which have in earlier times turned people to philosophy for answers. By the time Sydney passed through and built upon its original settlement and began standing on its own two feet, philosophers, if there were any, found hardly any problems left for them to tackle. The important philosophical questions had more or less been settled. The remaining questions were paltry; they could all fit onto a pinhead. People in Sydney still interested in philosophy were reduced to commenting on the work of others, and in their isolation became world authorities on figures at the margins, such as Charles Peirce or the terrifying Joseph de Maistre.

In the late nineteen seventies there used to be a man who lived in a boarding house in Glebe, a thin shortsighted man, with an exceptionally wide mouth. Most days he could be seen in the park at Black Wattle Bay, lolling about and squinting up at the clouds for hours at a stretch. When he wasn't doing that he'd be seated on the park bench, sharpening a blue pencil with a pocketknife, as if he was refining an original idea. He wasn't known to rattle on about anything, let alone thoughts of a philosophical nature. He kept his thoughts to himself. Children were occasionally caught throwing stones at him. He may have been one of those who'd lost their marbles in the war. And yet – or rather because of all this – people said he was a philosopher! What a country. Greengrocers and policemen were fond of giving a tolerant wink in his direction, ‘the philosopher', or ‘our very own philosopher'.

At the very word ‘philosophy' people in Sydney run away in droves, reach for the revolver; they look down at their shoes, they smile indulgently; they go blank.

It is different in other places; Berlin, Copenhagen, Vienna come to mind. There, philosophy is not in the awkward, remote background, but in the foreground of everyday life. These are places where the philosopher has his rightful position, that is, on a pedestal. It is common in those old cities to find a philosopher's image cast in bronze and his most difficult propositions being discussed over breakfast, and certainly every other evening on the radio.

Meanwhile, Sydney never bothered itself with philosophical questions; as a consequence, philosophers are nowhere to be seen.

Such an absence normally would leave a hollow centre, an entire group of people living without the benefit of long sentences – foundation sentences; yet we can now see how the lack of interest in one field encouraged a rushing across into an adjacent field, the way passengers crowd to one side of a ship when a harbour comes into view.

Psychology, and its vine-like offshoot, psychoanalysis.

In Sydney it's hard to bump into anyone who isn't in analysis, or has been, or is about to be.

From being the most unphilosophical city in the world, Sydney has become the most psychological city in the world.

Rows of terrace houses in the inner suburbs, and rooms in small office blocks close to medical centres, have been fitted out with the heavy curtains and the chair and the couch in duplication of the cave-like atmosphere first tried and found to yield interesting results in Vienna, on the other side of the world. In the long summer months on the footpaths, when the windows of these rooms are raised like so many open mouths, a murmuring hum can be heard, blending into one, each and every word and sentence circling around the self, nothing else. In early evening, women doing well in big business, earning heaps, hurry away from it all for the regular appointment. And they enjoy it – the endless sentence. Who knows what sacrifices they have endured and confusions vaguely felt – all for their work? Others – perhaps soldered to their father's hip, or baffled by the broken marriage – drop everything at three or four to make it there. An excavation through words. It can be hard work. And these patients are the articulate ones. Emerging after fifty minutes on the dot they can be seen hurrying along the footpath in a return to ordinary life, the everyday in all its complexities, its apparent breadth, its incompletions, some wearing an exalted expression, while fumbling for the keys to the car.

What is going on here? The skies are blue, forever cloudless – is that it? A great emptiness sending people back to themselves. Now that the city is up and running, no longer a country town, there's been a transference from the landscape and its old hardships to the self ? Various repressions are said to be hidden away, ‘frozen anger' is one of the terms used. They say it is a matter of gradually lifting the layers, to find the original self, where there might be recognition, which then allows a suggestion of hope.

It has become the age of the self; confessions in public all over the place, the spillage of the ‘I', and in private, in a quietly structured manner (the therapist has replaced the priest). And who is doing this talk? Not ill, at least not seriously, the self-obsessed personalities have a concentrated, almost technical interest in the self, as if they were specimens. Interest in others tends to be perfunctory, impatient, showy. It is they who have a natural attraction to analysis, where again they can dwell solely on themselves, the problematical ‘I', and, since this is the very source of their difficulties in the first place, there is a real danger of psychoanalysis not uncovering, but giving shape to, and confirming, a person's self-obsession. Eight, ten years in analysis is not uncommon. In Sydney parents have been sending their own children, not yet in their teens, into psychoanalysis – ironing out the unformed mind before the unevenness of everyday life could give proportion or self-correction.

Years spent murmuring the endless circling sentence, while the analyst remains almost, though not quite, hidden.

A philosopher would not allow this; but when needed there were none.

3

IT HAD BEEN Erica's idea to bring a thermos of tea. Along with the scarf and the coat with deep pockets – it's what you did when you left the city in a car. If she owned a travelling rug she would have thrown it onto the back seat too.

‘As well,' she said without turning her head, ‘I have a slice of ginger cake.'

‘Sometimes I wish I had your practical mind,' Sophie gave a comfortable stretch. ‘It would make my life that much easier. Although, kindly look at me: I shouldn't be having a single calorie of anything.'

It took a while to find a suitable spot, a matter of avoiding ditches and slopes and gates. On the one hand they didn't want an open space, where they'd be the only visible things in it, and yet too many trees close to the road gave them no space at all. Sophie said it was worse than buying clothes. They could have gone on for hours, never quite satisfied, until they both agreed on a single white gum tree and, although obviously not perfect, Erica braked hard, and skidded to stop near it.

At intervals a car passed and enveloped them in a system of metallic rubber rattling, vibrations.

Erica sat with the door open, holding the cup in both hands; she had her feet on the ground. Opposite was an old wooden farmhouse surrounded by dozens of rusting agricultural implements which appeared as gigantic, disabled insects. She had looked up and gazed at them. Under the Brittle Gum, Sophie's Italian ankle boots made a racket on the strips of dry bark littering the ground, for in new surroundings she liked to pace backwards and forwards.

Following Sophie's restlessness, Erica tried to imagine her stillness and patience, hour after hour, in her work. How could she do it? Only a person with a certain psychological necessity could submit.

Sophie had stopped moving. ‘We must be in the country. Here comes a man on a horse, behind you.'

Erica could have reached out and touched it. It was a solid living mass, dark tan and glossy, here and there quivering, as it trod daintily. Jogging ahead was the man's kelpie, tongue hanging out, as if searching for water.

With all the space in the world, out in the wide open country, the man and his brown horse had come between the car and Sophie, two women, who were being crowded out. Peevishly, Erica decided he could have used the other side of the road.

The horse and rider stopped. Affecting a laborious style the man dismounted and came towards them, the women looking up at him.

As soon as the hat came off he looked ordinary. Vertical lines on his forehead and running down from his eyes traced the nation's crows, creekbeds, the salt plain, and tightened his mouth. His green shirt was stained, the pocket where he kept his smokes falling apart.

Indicating with his hat he said, ‘You won't be getting far on that one.'

Sophie slipped into a little girl's voice, without being quite aware of it. If it was meant to make the stranger stronger it made this one crouch further over the tyre. Erica watched. Could they at least hold something or pass a spanner? Not very talkative. Already he had jacked up the back and with fat fingers fiddled with the nuts, hardly a fumble. It was a strain squatting on his haunches, two women looking at him from behind. He cleared his throat. ‘They call the tree you're standing under the widow-maker. A branch is liable to land on the head.'

What's he telling us that for?

‘Then it's curtains,' he said wiping his hands on his trousers.

Sophie was reaching out to the horse. ‘What do you call him? He's not going to bite, is he?' This particular man she was approaching through his horse; it was as if Erica, her friend, wasn't there. Veins were bulging on his neck as he tightened the last of the wheel nuts, which allowed him to get moving and not say another word.

4

ERICA WOULD always wonder why she was chosen. Of the seven in the department others had stronger qualifications, and all but one lived alone, as she did, unmarried. (The solitary life was known to strengthen clarity of thought; Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Spinoza, Simone Weil – and anyway who would live with those sorts of people? – and don't forget Diogenes.)

She knocked and went into L. K.'s office. This was Professor L. K. Thursk of the pullover and bulky shoes, whose long-awaited study of Georges Sorel had become something of a myth – who swivelled side-on, as she entered, his hands pointing under his chin, an Indian prince wondering whether to give salaams. He was another one who had developed a hierarchy of throat-clearings, in his case necessary in the struggle to express even the most modest thoughts, for much of what composed the world was unsayable. He was like a plumber who had lost his tools. Erica though saw it more as a sort of fussy drapery from the bachelor life.

If she didn't want to do this, she didn't have to. From the beginning L. K. made that very clear. However, ‘It doesn't hurt if now and then a university reaches out into ordinary life, and on these occasions it is unusual for Philosophy to be called upon.' Clearing the throat. ‘In fact, I can't think of another instance.'

Along one side of the window an edge of sandstone showed, weathered and worn smooth by the never-ending revision of ideas, and a glimpse too of lawn, watered by a hissing and clicking metallic insect. Cloistered. The transplanted idea of the kind of aura necessary for a seat of learning. Erica wondered whether a fresh, angular philosophical method could ever be realised here. Time slowed at that moment; it became a honeyed substance. The room was slightly humid. The good professor would happily have waited more or less all day for an answer.

The following week she went into the Trustee Company, on Bridge Street.

It was a foyer which displayed at set intervals facsimiles of parrots and black cockatoos by the artist G. J. Broinowski, and a photo in brown frame of the building, c.1906. At some stage the offices had undergone a fortune in wainscotting and woodstain. To carry out the instructions of the deceased demanded an atmosphere of quiet purpose, where even a judicious echo played its part.

The solicitor was Mr Mannix. A large man, he had loose hanging cheeks, and pursed lips from the many years of putting words in parentheses.

People sitting across the desk from Mannix, where Erica sat, had been singled out and their personalities assigned clear, material value. Assumptions were confirmed, or just as often given sharp correction. Mannix watched as favourite sons or nephews or the proverbial step-daughter shook their heads in disbelief and became angry, silently cursing or looking up at the ceiling, some leaning back and laughing their heads off, as if he wasn't there, others abruptly getting to their feet and at a later date (to be determined) returning with their own solicitors decked out in identical broad-striped shirts and the sombre suit to see if the will could be contested. There was happiness too. An unexpected windfall gave pleasure. It could strengthen memories. A confirmation. Mannix enjoyed seeing people appreciated in a useful way. Over the years a habit had formed of resting both hands on the desk, near the box of tissues, allowing his wedding ring and gold cufflinks to show.