Private notebooks 1914-1916

Ludwig Wittgenstein, 1889-1951

Book - 2022

"Written in code under constant threat of battle, Wittgenstein's searing and illuminating diaries finally emerge in this first-ever English translation. During the pandemic, Marjorie Perloff, one of our foremost scholars of global literature, found her mind ineluctably drawn to the profound commentary on life and death in the wartime diaries of eminent philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951). Upon learning that these notebooks, which richly contextualize the early stages of his magnum opus, the Tractatus-Logico-Philosophicus, had never before been published in English, the Viennese-born Perloff determinedly set about translating them. Beginning with the anxious summer of 1914, this historic, en-face edition presents the first-...person recollections of a foot soldier in the Austrian Army, fresh from his days as a philosophy student at Cambridge, who must grapple with the hazing of his fellow soldiers, the stirrings of a forbidden sexuality, and the formation of an explosive analytical philosophy that seemed to draw meaning from his endless brushes with death. Much like Tolstoy's The Gospel in Brief, Private Notebooks takes us on a personal journey to discovery as it augments our knowledge of Wittgenstein himself"--

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2nd Floor 192/Wittgenstein Due Apr 15, 2024
Subjects
Published
New York, NY : Liveright Publishing Corporation, a Division of W. W. Norton & Company, Independent Publishers Since 1923 [2022]
Language
English
German
Main Author
Ludwig Wittgenstein, 1889-1951 (author, -)
Other Authors
Marjorie Perloff (editor)
Edition
First edition
Item Description
Originally published: Notebooks, 1914-1916. New York, Harper, 1961.
Translation of : Geheime Tagebücher.
Physical Description
xiv, 218 pages : illustrations, map ; 24 cm
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN
9781324090809
  • Introduction
  • Notebook 1 : August 9, 2014-October 30, 2014
  • Notebook 2 : October 30, 1914-June 22, 1915
  • Notebook 3 : March 28 (?), 1916-January 1, 1917.
Review by Booklist Review

In this first complete English translation of Wittgenstein's three surviving wartime notebooks, Perloff has done a consummate job of revealing the humanity of this enigmatic figure. This crisp translation acquaints us with a conflicted young man struggling to understand himself and his world. He said of his experience of that time, "The war saved my life. I don't know what I would have done without it." Written partly in a "private" code devised in childhood, Wittgenstein's notebooks document his religious and intellectual searching. His sexuality, at times, had a stifling effect on him, and his references to this are bold yet couched. These notebooks will be an invaluable resource for understanding Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, a slim philosophical volume published in 1921 that reverberates to this day. The ideas and conceptual constructs in that book are in their infancy here, alongside his efforts to survive war. Perloff's introduction and editor's notes are fervent and instructive. Wittgenstein's early attempts at attaining the spiritual balance that greatly shaped his philosophy are evident: "Only he who lives, not in time but in the present, is happy."

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Kirkus Book Review

Wittgenstein's private notebooks provide welcome context to his first masterpiece. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1922), the only book Wittgenstein published during his lifetime, is among the most influential philosophical works of the 20th century. Famously, he wrote much of the book while fighting as a volunteer for the Austro-Hungarian Army against Russia in World War I. Throughout this period of his life, he kept a series of notebooks that contained a draft of the Tractatus on the recto pages and a private journal, written in code, on the verso pages. Incredibly, until now, the verso pages have never been published in English. Poetry scholar and critic Perloff noticed this oversight early in the pandemic when, turning to Wittgenstein for comfort, she reread his journals in German. In bringing this text to the English-reading world, Perloff has done a great service to scholars and students of philosophy. Wittgenstein's philosophical writings give the impression of being unattached to their author. Consequently, to read him in an autobiographical mode--whether longing for his friends, complaining about his comrades, documenting his frequency of masturbation, or praying--as he is composing the Tractatus is to have that work humanized. More than anything, the notebooks describe his frustrations with the amount and quality of his work. Again and again, the crystalline insights he seeks remain on "the tip of my tongue." In the last of three notebooks (the others are lost), Wittgenstein is moved to the front lines of the war. "Perhaps," he writes, "the proximity to death will bring me the light of life!" Over the course of the narrative, his attitude toward life shifts from mystical indifference to the realization, achieved only after being fired at, that "I now have such a strong wish to live!" At the same time, his work broadens, "from the foundations of logic to the nature of the world." An invaluable contribution to the scholarship of Wittgenstein. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.