Tag Archives

Bertrand Russell

NUMBER 6

For Arthur Kemelman

 

‘To find the right road out of this despair [the pain of those who walk through the night blindly] civilized man must enlarge his heart as he has enlarged his mind. He must learn to transcend self, and in so doing to acquire the freedom of the Universe’. THE CONQUEST OF HAPPINESS, Bertrand Russell, 1930

 

The village post office in Penrhyndeudraeth,

Merioneth, was very busy

during the Cuban Missile Crisis

with telegrams to Kennedy and Kruschev

from Bertrand, 3rd Earl Russell – philosopher,

logician; mathematician, author;

moralist, socialist, pacifist.

 

He lived nearby, down a lane, in a late

seventeenth, early eighteenth century house

with a veranda that commanded views

of the Glaslyn estuary, Porthmadog,

Traeth Mawr, and, south east – if the earth were not

almost round – beyond the tip of Ireland

the Americas. There he had been

labelled – “a believer in free love…

a free thinker…a commie”. ‘Americans,’

he believed, ‘are terrified of thought’.

 

Below, on the promontory, hidden

by deciduous woods is Portmeirion,

the fantasy village, where Russell once stayed –

an invited guest with Noel Coward,

H.G. Wells and King Zog of Albania –

and laid the foundation stone of the Dome,

a modest homage to Brunelleschi.

 

Perhaps one bright afternoon in ’66 –

on the veranda in his cane chair,

observing the sun over the Atlantic,

smoking a pipe of his favourite

Friborg & Treyer’s Golden Mixture –

he thought he heard, vivid as in a dream,

someone declare, ‘I am not a number…’

 

 

THE CONSOLATION OF PHILOSOPHY

‘Senator Boethius is the last of the Romans whom Cato or Tully could have acknowledged as their countryman.’

Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire, Edward Gibbon

 

Dante and Beatrice saw Boethius –

the sixth century consul, chamberlain,

intellectual and family man –

in Paradise: one of the twelve shining lights

in the sun’s heavenly firmament,

along with Solomon and Aquinas.

 

Imprisoned in a tower for alleged treason

and under sentence of execution,

he wrote De Consolatione

Philosophiae, a dialogue

between himself and Lady Philosophy,

reflecting – he in prose, she in poetry –

on wealth’s and fame’s transitory nature,

on virtue transcending fortune: almost

glib, smug if it had been written in freedom.

His paragon, Plato, would have inspired him,

and Socrates busy in prison.

Did he act it out in his loneliness?

 

His assassins – who killed him, according to

conflicting accounts, with axe, sword, club, garrotte –

did not record his last words. He was murdered

on orders of Theodoric, his erstwhile

friend, king of the Goths and Italy.

He was venerated as a catholic

martyr, allegedly walking headless

in death, and a catholic theologian,

his revered writing influencing

Augustine, for instance, as well as Dante,

masters and servants of allegory.

He was without any superstitions

or Christian beliefs, and zealous

for the public good so might have found such

hagiolatry amusing – or merely

a sign of their dark times.

 

 

 

THE POKER

An upper room, somewhere

in Cambridge, England, 1943.

 

Outside, a rainy night, the Kardomah closed,

long queues at the Alhambra

for Max Miller, the Cheeky Chappie.

 

 

 max-miller-3

 

 

Inside, a roaring fire and a pride of philosophers.

 

Wittgenstein:           The world is everything.

 

ludwig-wiittgenstein

 

 

Russell:                     Man is not a solitary animal.

 

 bertrand-russell

 

Popper:                    History has no meaning.

 

karl-popper-1

 

Zeleznik:                  The world is a fiction of memories.

 

 

untitled                                

 

 

Did Wittgenstein pick up the poker

to emphasise a point?

Or silence Popper?

Did Popper mention the poker

to point a moral paradox?

Or mock Wittgenstein?

Did Russell call one an ‘upstart’,

the other ‘erudite’?

Or admonish them both?

Did Zeleznik arrive with Wittgenstein,

agree with Popper,

and leave with Russell?

Or was he at The Alhambra?

 

Next morning, the skivvy, who had

certainly been at the music hall, removed

the ashes and re-set the fire. The poker

she moved from wherever it was to

wherever she judged it should be –

and chuckled.

 

Woman:                   Is this Cockfosters?

Max:                         No, madam, Miller’s the name!