splendid poverties

I remember lying in a ditch and staring at some pebbles while German bombers were flying over our heads. That was long ago, I don’t remember the face of my mother nor the faces of the people who were with us, but I still see those perfectly ordinary pebbles.
[…]
The pebbles stayed in their otherness, stayed forever in memory. Can language do justice to such moments of heightened consciousness? Speech is always less. When it comes to conveying what it means to be truly conscious, one approximates, one fails miserably.

Wittgenstein puts it this way: “What finds its reflection in language, language cannot represent. What expresses ‘itself’ in language, we cannot express by means of language. This has been my experience many times. Words are impoverishments, splendid poverties.

—Charles Simic, “Reading Philosophy at Night,” The Life of Images: Selected Prose (Ecco/HarperCollins, 2015)

lack of urban planning

In his Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein associated language with "an ancient city: a maze of little streets and squares, of old and new houses, and of houses with additions from various periods; and this surrounded by a multitude of new boroughs with straight regular streets and uniform houses."

markson notes

Afflicted by cerebral palsy, the poet Larry Eigner (1927-96) managed to type a prodigious amount of poetry over his lifetime using only his right index finger.

Ludwig Wittgenstein enjoyed peeling potatoes (kartoffeln) as it helped him clear his mind and to think deeply, a routine he learned while serving in the Austrian army during The Great War.

Sigmund Freud was said to accept a sack of potatoes in trade for a session on his couch during the economic struggles in Vienna after The Great War.

against which

Perhaps what is inexpressible (what I find mysterious and am not able to express) is the background against which whatever I could express has its meaning.

—Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and Value (Oxford: Blackwell, 1980), translated by P. Winch, p 16.

after witt

Every line in the poem needn’t be equally understood; some lines you just have to pass over in silence and without question.

spot in the iris

263. Imagine someone pointing to a spot in the iris in a face by Rembrandt and saying, “the wall in my room should be painted this colour.”

—Ludwig Wittgenstein
Remarks on Colour, edited by G.E.M. Anscombe.
Translated by Linda L. McAlister & Margarete Schättle.
(U. of California Press)

substitution of terms

Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language.

—Ludwig Wittgenstein

Poetry is an opening up to the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language.