Tractarian Nonsense and Literary Language

1 Introduction

Wittgenstein’s Tractatus is embedded within an aesthetic dimension in several ways,^[1] beginning with its precise form, which unfolds according to the structure of a ladder (cf. Pichler 2023: 10). The seven cardinal propositions serve as the rungs, while the rest of the propositions, organized through a meticulous decimal numbering system, function as remarks (Bemerkungen) on these main statements. 3There is no empty space between the principal propositions, giving the impression that they are linked together like the rings of a chain (Pichler 2023: 11). The result is a sense of deep internal coherence and completeness, conveyed through this careful formal organization. The propositions that compose the Tractatus are themselves meticulously crafted in terms of style, exhibiting an epigrammatic quality and remarkable refinement. They embody what Wittgenstein would later refer to as an aesthetic ideal of “a certain coolness” (VB 1998: 4), characterized by restraint and precision. As Hanne Appelqvist describes it, the Tractatus is “a work aimed at ‘crystalline purity,’ with every remark polished to aesthetic perfection even at the expense of intelligibility, […] a formally unified whole that ‘satisfies itself’ (PI §107; NB: 40)” (Appelqvist 2023: 19). In this way, it aligns itself with the spirit of a modernist building.

However, this deliberate formal elegance is not aimed at presenting novel content or groundbreaking thoughts on logic. Surprisingly, Wittgenstein’s stated aim for the book goes beyond any informative or instructive purpose. As it is expressed in the Preface, the book is intended to evoke pleasure in readers who have already contemplated similar thoughts. In a 1919 letter to Wittgenstein, Gottlob Frege reflected on this approach: “The pleasure of reading your book can therefore no longer arise through the already known content but, rather, only through the form, in which is revealed something of the individuality of the author. Thereby the book becomes an artistic rather than a scientific achievement” (cited in Dreben & Floyd 2011: 41). Frege’s remarks are striking in emphasizing a formal interest that decisively outweighs the content, suggesting an artistic dimension that eclipses the scientific one.

Yet for Wittgenstein, this interest in form holds a proper philosophical value. As Brian McGuinness observes: “One aspect of its [the Tractatus’] literary character is that, like a poem, it is not an indifferent vehicle for something expressible in other ways but shows or conveys something unique by its form of expression.” (McGuinness 1988: 302) This insight resonates with Wittgenstein’s ideal of clarity, as he wrote in the Preface that “What can be said at all can be said clearly” and later in the book that “Everything that can be thought at all can be thought clearly. Everything that can be said can be said clearly.” (TLP 1922: 4.116) This has an evident philosophical significance, as it connects to the declared ambition of rigorously delineating the limits of the expression of thought as well as to the very definition of philosophy which is described as “the logical clarification of thoughts” (TLP 1922: 4.112). Still, all this also has an aesthetic import, apparent in the polished form of the work, characterized by concise and incisive prose. The two aspects, in other words, are deeply interdependent, and appreciating the aesthetic quality can also help to better grasp the philosophical value.4

At the same time, it is widely acknowledged that the employment of the concept of nonsense (Unsinn) is one of the central concerns of the Tractatus which becomes particularly evident in the conclusion where Wittgenstein instructs us to recognize its propositions as nonsensical (cf. TLP 1922: 6.54), thus creating an apparent paradox. Up until that point, Wittgenstein had systematically addressed a wide range of topics inspired by Russellian and Fregean approaches to logic and philosophy of language, including the ontology based on facts and states of affairs (cf. TLP 1922: 1 – 2.063), the idea of propositions and thoughts as pictures of facts (cf. TLP 1922 2.1 – 3.01; 4.01 – 4.0641), the nature of philosophy (TLP 1922: 4.111 – 4.115), up to the providing of the general form of propositions and the general form of a truth-function (cf. TLP 1922: 4.5 – 6). However, as the text progresses, precisely from section 6 onwards the reader is confronted with more unexpected themes such as ethics, aesthetics, and religion. These dimensions, and their expression, are not truth-functional because they stand in opposition to and outside of the expressible world defined as “the totality of facts” “in logical space” (TLP 1922: 1.12, 1.13). These topics, typically outside the realm of logical analysis, introduce a surprising shift in focus, which unsettles the reader’s expectations. Here, the reader’s sensation of dealing more with a book of maxims on life reaches its peak, a literary product of fin de siècle Vienna which bears little resemblance to the treatise on logic that the reader might have anticipated. The sudden turn toward questions of value and ethics attests to a deeper sense of disorientation, culminating in the realization that throughout the entire work the propositions themselves are ultimately nonsensical, of course leading to the famous injunction for silence: “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.” (TLP 1922: 7) This moment where the logical framework seems to collapse into a paradox challenges the reader to reconsider the very nature of the Tractatus—a work that began with such logical precision but ends by confronting “the problem of life” (TLP 1922: 6.521) and what is “inexpressible” (TLP 1922: 6.522). One is thus faced with the question of how to understand the way in which the propositions of the Tractatus are nonsensical. Indeed, the concept of nonsense is central to understanding the Tractatus as a whole work, and there has been considerable debate regarding its exact meaning and implications. First, we must recall that Wittgenstein distinguishes sinnlose (‘senseless’) propositions, like tautologies and contradictions, from the ones which are unsinnig (‘nonsensical’). Tautologies and contradictions, being senseless, lack truth-conditions and do not say anything about the world: rather, they show “that they say nothing” (TLP 1922: 4.461). As Wittgenstein clarifies: “Tautology and contradiction are, however, not nonsensical; they are part of the symbolism, in the same way that ‘0’ is part of the symbolism of Arithmetic.” (TLP 1922: 4.4611) It is precisely this second case, that of the nonsensical (unsinnige) propositions, that is relevant to the problem of understanding the Tractatus.5

According to some traditional interpretations such as those of Norman Malcolm and Peter Hacker, Wittgenstein consciously uses nonsense to communicate insights about language and reality that are, strictly speaking, inexpressible. His nonsensical propositions somehow manage to convey something that can only be shown rather than said directly, according to the saying-showing distinction: “What can be shown cannot be said.” (TLP 1922: 4.1212) Readings like these are based on the so-called substantial conception of nonsense according to which philosophical nonsense mostly arises from an illegitimate combination of the logical categories of words, violating the principles of logical syntax. In particular, Hacker famously distinguished between misleading nonsense and illuminating nonsense, arguing that, in the Tractatus, Wittgenstein uses illuminating nonsense to guide the reader toward grasping what is shown by the genuine propositions of language (cf. Hacker 1986: 18 – 19). On the other hand, the resolute reading of the Tractatus challenges traditional interpretations by rejecting the idea that the book contains ineffable, metaphysical insights.^[2] Instead, resolute readers argue that the text does not present any theory of meaning, and its propositions are plain nonsense. As Stephen Mulhall summarizes: “the author of the Tractatus recognized only one species of nonsense—mere gibberish” (Mulhall 2007: 2). According to the austere conception of nonsense, as developed by Cora Diamond and James Conant, nonsense in the Tractatus is not “illuminating” but simply arises from the lack of meaning in the constituent parts of the propositions in question: “the only way a sentence can be Unsinn is by its failing to symbolize” (Conant 2002: 404). Given the complexity of the debate, there are many positions and varieties of reading at play, but a third alternative to the metaphysical and resolute readings is worth mentioning, that is, the elucidatory reading as proposed by Marie McGinn in particular. This approach suggests that the book should be seen as containing only elucidations, where all of its remarks contribute to revealing the logic of language and representation, not forming a doctrine or theory of meaning (cf. McGinn 2006: 17). Even if nonsensical in a technical sense, the book’s propositions still work as elucidations in a transitional way.

However, what is of particular interest here is the aesthetic significance of nonsense. In this paper, I will explore how the concept of nonsense applies to literary language, emphasizing its different meanings depending on the interpretive framework one adopts when reading the Tractatus. Illuminating nonsense estab6lishes an analogy with the similar attempt in certain types of literature to express what can only be shown through a language that departs from logical precision. Austere nonsense, on the other hand, can become a dialectical tool and find a place in certain literary dynamics. Meanwhile, grammatical nonsense, which can be traced and linked to elucidatory nonsense, creatively exposes how our language relates to experience and life as it is investigated in many novels. It is therefore helpful to outline the main characteristics of the three positions that will be developed in anticipation of the results of the upcoming sections in which the way each approach develops will be presented and analyzed.

First, if we take seriously the statements that appear in the final sections of the Tractatus (as well as those throughout the rest of the book), we end up conceiving of a poetic domain of language that emerges in opposition to the logically correct form of what can be meaningfully said. This opens up the possibility of a decidedly inexact use of language, tasked with expressing what has value, transcending the limits of meaningful and factual communication. What is at stake is a distinction between ordinary linguistic sense and the expression of the extra-factual sense of the world. Thus, the ineffabilist conception sees aesthetic language as having a unique expressive and self-exhibitory value. Here, literary nonsense is thought to show what is ineffable and the ethical itself, suggesting that certain limits of language can be (self‑)‌transcended. This view introduces and deploys the idea of ‘illuminating nonsense’, where breaking the boundaries of what can be said points to a distinction between facts and values.

However, if one adopts the resolute approach, the focus shifts away from what the Tractatus explicitly states and instead towards its broader dialectical workings. This opens the door to a deeper consideration of the intentional and deliberate use of nonsense. Indeed, the resolute approach treats the value of nonsense in a dialectical rather than expressive way, insisting that it only shows its own nonsensical nature. This austere perspective rejects the idea that language can transcend itself and views the separation between facts and values as itself a form of nonsense. The aim is precisely to expose the illusion of such misleading pictures.

Lastly, the grammatical approach focuses on how literary language exposes and exhibits the ‘grammar’ of our concepts, helping to mark the boundaries of sense in relation to everyday language use. In this view, nonsense has a grammatical function—it is the language that is excluded from practical usage, thus playing a role in defining, exploring, and shaping the limits of language and sense themselves. Although the notion of grammar is typical of the later Wittgenstein, a connection can be made with the Tractatus based on the idea that Tractarian elucidatory nonsense is a “precursor‍[] of rules of grammar” (Moyal-Sharrock 2007: 148). In this way, however, the strict division between ordinary working language and the “idling” (PI 2009: 132) language of literature oversimplifies the entire literary 7landscape, preventing a deeper exploration of the implications of a deliberate and subversive use of nonsense.

2 The Modernist Significance of the Tractatus: Towards Ineffabilism

It is useful to begin by outlining a particular way of addressing the aesthetic aspects of the work—one that moves in the direction of the first of the three approaches to be developed, namely the ineffabilist reading. This perspective, which might be termed ‘mystical’, tends to take the content of the so-called ethical sections of the text seriously, using it as a guiding principle for understanding the modernist significance of the Tractatus and, more generally, the extra-factual role of aesthetic discourse. It is instructive to consider this perspective because, in addition to introducing the themes that will be relevant for the connection between nonsense and aesthetic discourse, it shows how the tendency to rely on the principle of the separation between facts and values according to which what is of value must lie outside the contingent and accidental dimension of “all happening and being-so” (TLP 1922: 6.41), leads to the development of an ineffabilist position, where the device of substantial or illuminating nonsense can serve to reveal “what is higher” (TLP 1922: 6.432). As will be seen, by advocating for a reading that denies the presence of the fact-value distinction the resolute program arrives at diametrically opposed conclusions where there is no room for any mystical interpretation of aesthetics and literature. And, in a different way, the grammatical conception also does not place particular emphasis on the distinction between facts and values for its purposes.

Many scholars interested in the literary aspects of the Tractatus take as a starting point the peculiar situation resulting from the coexistence of the enigmatic group of ‘ethical’ propositions with the entire preceding part of the text that is apparently dedicated to constructing a logical-ontological system intended to clarify the essence of the proposition. This is one of the aspects that reveals the ambiguity of the relationship between such heterogeneous aspects of a work that Wittgenstein himself, in a much-quoted letter to Ludwig von Ficker, described as “strictly philosophical and at the same time literary” (C 1971: 14). Marjorie Perloff, for example, precisely records the sharp contrast with which the ‘ethical’ propositions stand out against the rest of the writing and examines the matter in light of her original idea: the Tractatus should be read as a war book (cf. Perloff 1996: 19). From this perspective, the limits of logical-verbal discourse are, in Wittgenstein’s case, given by the existential aspect of wartime experience which necessarily remains unexpressed and thus cannot be stated ‘in strict logical terms’. In this re8gard, Perloff emphasizes the liminal point of view that pervades the final sections, against the backdrop of which we should imagine the context of a war trench, coherently expressed in the (non)‌experience of death: “Death is not an event of life. Death is not lived through.” (TLP 1922: 6.4311)

Ideally, if the Tractatus is a war book, we should not imagine its author as trying to provide an account of what happens in the tragic situation in which he finds himself (death is not a fact). Rather, he is concerned with somehow making perceptible a limit of experience that cannot find reflection in the propositional structure. Perloff writes: “The point cannot be argued; it can merely be felt.” (Perloff 1996: 45) In this sort of existential version of the distinction between saying and showing, feeling reveals itself to be the element that defines the properly poetic quality of the text. As LeMahieu aptly pointed out (cf. LeMahieu 2006: 80), this notion is similar to Kant’s concept of the sublime: what lies beyond the limits of language can nonetheless be felt as an object of feeling. After all, the Tractatus makes explicit reference to the “mystical feeling” (TLP 1922: 6.45). The literary-poetic quality, typically modernist, then lies in a form of sensitivity that transcends the limits of verbal discourse but is still constructed and functions within and through language.

In general, this way of understanding the poetic quality of the text, exemplified by Perloff’s approach, takes seriously what is expressed in the ‘ethical’ sections and applies their insights within the text. Rather than focusing solely on recognizable aesthetic qualities like form or conciseness, it seeks to enact the text’s suggestion about the aesthetic dimension itself. The fact-value distinction is central here, as it isolates the realm of value, revealing aesthetic potential and applying it within the text itself. This points to the cryptic concluding silence which raises the issue of a need for reticent and oblique expression given the structural difficulties in formulating in language anything that does not concern states of affairs or facts. Indeed, Perloff reflects on the content of the ‘ethical’ propositions, which insist on the necessity of remaining silent about what cannot be clearly expressed, to derive indications on how to understand the poetic-formal texture. Even the scholars who emphasize the ambiguity and dual modernist nature (philosophical-artistic) of the work^[3] ultimately accept the distinction between the two spheres as an indispensable axiom for interpreting it. However, what remains uncertain is the meaning that can be attributed to this separation.9

From this perspective, Wittgenstein’s writings are then taken to contain statements typical of modernist sensibility, almost entirely dependent on the fundamental fact-value distinction, all oriented towards discovering a more authentic and profound aspect of human life. From a linguistic point of view, the distinction is between conventional, everyday language used for practical purposes to convey information and the autonomous language of art which resists being confined to truth schemas. According to the Tractatus and the Notebooks (cf. TB 1961: 83), an object becomes a work of art when it is no longer regarded in practical and functional terms but as an object of contemplation from a global perspective which tears it away from its immediate context. Its artistic quality is not defined by an intrinsic property but by a certain kind of perspective that somehow absolutizes it. Wittgenstein defines it as a view “sub specie aeterni” (TLP 1922: 6.45). That is the value perspective that, exceeding the limitation of empirical discourse—where “[a]‌ll propositions are of equal value” (TLP 1922: 6.4)—does not fit into propositional form. This type of vision, in turn, is defined by grasping its object as a bounded totality—a mark that significantly links together ethics, aesthetics, and religion: “The contemplation of the world sub specie aeterni is its contemplation as a limited whole.” (TLP 1922: 6.45) This visual element is implied by the fact that a totality can only be shown in aesthetic form and not stated verbally.

In this regard, the idea is that a certain use of language is necessary to elicit a certain vision of the world: “He [Wittgenstein] recognizes the significance of using the right language for coming to actually see the world aright—whatever that world may amount to.” (Bremer 2021: 529) Indeed, it is here that it becomes crucial to grasp the peculiar literary form of the entire book and its aphoristic nature. It is a stylistic and expressive choice that certainly carries significant meaning, which could be seen as selecting the best form to approach that vision of totality, of the world “as a limited whole” (TLP 1922: 6.45), which Wittgenstein reserves for mystical feeling. For Gottfried Gabriel, for instance, the aphoristic form is the appropriate means of expression to communicate and show an ethical point, and it is in this sense that the literary form of the Tractatus has a profound ethical-philosophical significance (cf. Gabriel 1991: 25).

This approach to the text is based on analyzing the principle of the separation of facts and values, so promising for its modernist resonances, and the corresponding distinction between the descriptive and the poetic use of language. In this sense, the classic essay by Allan Janik and Stephen Toulmin, Wittgenstein’s Vienna, is emblematic, as it seeks to place the Austrian philosopher within the modernist cultural context of the early twentieth century (cf. Janik & Toulmin 1973). A red thread in the reconstruction by these two scholars is certainly the theme of the sharp separation between facts and values, a motif that reflects the sensibility of the era, linked to various figures (Karl Kraus, Adolf Loos, Hugo von Hofmanns10thal). In Wittgenstein’s case this fertile milieu became an occasion for a broader philosophical reflection on the nature of language tout court, always profoundly animated by an interest in the problem of how to express the ethical-aesthetic order of values. In this perspective, it is as if the mystical silence with which the Tractatus ends assumes the role of a higher linguistic mode through which to hint at the ethical meaning of the world. Such a conclusion would be consistent with the peculiar status of all those propositions that make up the rungs of the ladder which the reader must ultimately discard and leave behind (cf. TLP 1922: 6.54). The nonsensical nature of those propositions thereby reveals itself to be an allusive mode capable of going beyond ordinary factual language, in accordance with the modernist idea of uncovering the secret, authentic life of things and their silent language.

The textual strategy indeed consists of attempting to grasp the point of the ‘ethical’ propositions and subsequently, by virtue of the content understood, to make sense of the concluding paradox,^[4] applying the distinction between the factual and the value dimensions as the interpretative basis for the entire book.^[5] In this sense, the engagement with modernism is not merely formal but also takes place, significantly, on the level of the actual content derived from the final sections of the work which correspond to some of the themes of twentieth-century aesthetic modernism. The modernist meaning thus lies in what the text shows—because, strictly speaking, it says nothing—and in how it does so, and therefore also in the expressive correspondence between its form and its content.^[6]11

3 The Ineffabilist Approach

To introduce what will be termed the ineffabilist approach, let us turn now to consider some key remarks in the final sections of the Tractatus where we find Wittgenstein establishing that “[p]‌ropositions cannot express anything higher” (TLP 1922: 6.42), referring to both ethics and aesthetics, which “are one” (TLP 1922: 6.421). The unity of ethics and aesthetics calls for some rough outlines, starting to focus on the literary issue. A central point that helps determine this link between ethics and aesthetics is clarified in the question of the purpose of life (cf. TB 1961: 72 – 73). In his reflections on aesthetics, Wittgenstein always keeps this concern, which also finds expression in the equivalent issue of the meaning of life or the world, in the background. This interest emerges when we are no longer dealing with merely contingent aspects of the world. For this reason, it is reasonable to think that within the field of aesthetics, as Wittgenstein understands it, falls not only the aesthetic judgments but also a certain literary use of language, together with art in general: that is, that particular mode of language use which finds expression in the attempt to bring forth sense from an (artistic) representation of the world. Modern literature, engaging in the project of shaping the search for meaning, shares precisely this ethical-aesthetic interest in the demand for the meaning of the world.

Particularly in the twentieth century, the perception of a series of difficulties related to this issue becomes increasingly acute, to the point where the very problem of representation takes center stage in the literary scene. Finding a source of meaning becomes a matter of great urgency for the writer. The possibility of attributing (ethical and aesthetic) value to experience, through its artistic and literary representation, is a source of concern for many modernist writers (James Joyce, T.S. Eliot, Samuel Beckett, etc.). A fundamental problem comes into focus: literature that does not renounce the demand for meaning cannot stop at the level of the (possible) facts of the world. It is as if a literary application of the distinction between facts and values were being made, where the latter dimension is no longer immanent to the former. In its aesthetic use, in this sense language violates the conditions of factual discourse by drawing attention to its very form, thereby making its own conditions the object of focus.

However, if literary language increasingly turns in on itself, questioning the form of its own representation and the possibility of expressing values, the direc12tion it takes progressively diverges from ordinary, meaningful communication. What one would like to express belongs, in fact, to that formal dimension which reveals itself without being the object of direct enunciation. In attempting to approximate what cannot be said about the value and meaning of the world, literary language—and the language of art in general—tends towards an inexpressible domain which stands outside the logical space of meaningful and empirical propositions. The danger lies precisely in attempting to say within a meaningful form that which goes beyond the semantic possibilities based on the mirroring between language and the world (cf. TLP 1922: 4.121). Nevertheless, interpreters have not usually drawn such radical conclusions about the easy nonsensicality of literary language, which would be a radically positivist move. The prevailing tone of traditional considerations is rather reassuring and takes advantage of the positive recognition that, after all, “[t]‌here is indeed the inexpressible” (TLP 1922: 6.522). The region of the ineffable, which includes the aesthetic sphere, is indeed delimited negatively by refining the principles of meaning that govern ordinary discourse. It is configured as nonsense in relation to the meaningfulness of factual language, and to this extent, its strategic delimitation in a negative way does not prevent the ineffable sphere, once isolated, from being considered in a positive light, just as substantial nonsense ultimately appears positive. The field of literary language thus becomes a ground on which to extend the use of some Wittgensteinian mottos almost transformed into charming slogans: what must be shown cannot be said, the struggle against the limits of language, the ineffable shows itself, etc. These formulations would apply to the aesthetic form of the literary use of language, bringing out its proprium: its paradoxical capacity to express what resists immediate linguistic expression.

More precisely, this kind of indirect communication is related to the notion of poetry. Here again, the position of Janik and Toulmin is emblematic, as it is presented in a rather straightforward manner in Wittgenstein’s Vienna. The two authors describe what lies outside the order of ordinary discourse as an essentially poetic dimension: “[i]‌n this world-view, poetry is the sphere in which the sense of life is expressed, a sphere which therefore cannot be described in factual terms.” (Janik & Toulmin 1973: 195) The higher content that concerns the meaning of life can be expressed indirectly only through this poetic use of language, thanks to its non-directly representational but rather expressive nature. Ironically enough, the aesthetic nonsense turns into the expression of the sense of the world which, lying outside it (cf. TLP 1922: 6.41), also goes beyond language itself. There is thus an immanent drive within the poetic use of language towards its own transcendence in the direction of the ineffable. And what is communicated indirectly remains strictly unspeakable to the extent that it is shown, alluded to, hinted at, but not said. The distinction between saying and showing is indeed crucial to mak13ing an ineffabilist conception work along these lines, and it coincides with the distinction between factual and poetic use of language.

Pierre Hadot also frames his idea in terms of an expressive primacy of poetry:

Far from banishing the notion of the ineffable, language discloses it to me: because I wanted to speak precisely and logically, I am forced to accept using a logically imprecise language, a language that represents nothing, but evokes. I rediscover the enchanting value of language; I glimpse that the fundamental form of language could be poetry, which brings the world into being before me. It is in this poetic language, in this indicative or evocative function of language that I have the right to affirm: “There is indeed the ineffable. This shows itself; it is the mystical.” (6.522) (Hadot 1959: 483 – 484; my transl.)

The idea here is that the poetic use of language puts us in a position to experience the limits of language, arousing in us a sense of the limit or of totality (cf. Hadot 1959: 482): a feeling and an affective experience (Erlebnis) that is strictly inexpressible, but which can be generated and awakened in us by a use of language that is as far removed as possible from the empirical and factual description of the world. Indeed, it is necessary to accept the use of “a logically inexact language, which does not represent anything, but evokes” (Hadot 1959: 484; my transl.). In this mode of language use, which Hadot defines as ‘indicative’ (indicatif),^[7] language shows what cannot be expressed in a senseful way.

Quite clearly, poetry represents only the paradigmatic case of an expressive use of language that can be found in various gradations in any discursive form.^[8] It is equally clear that, according to this ineffabilist approach, the poetico-formal quality of more stylistically elaborate texts is not without content, but communicates something. Indeed, the value of the musical, figurative, and metaphorical component of language is identified in its ability to indirectly communicate the highest spiritual contents among which Wittgenstein indicates the meaning of life and the sense of the world. The idea runs as follows: what cannot be said, due to the proper conditions of sense, must be shown indirectly through literary style, enhancing the expressive dimension of language. Two aspects are intimately connected: the indirect style of this type of communication (formal side) and the 14intuition of something profound (content side). In contrast with the senseful communication of factual aspects of reality, the idea of a perspective that embraces the entire world is specific to the indirect communication at issue, relating to the ethical and religious viewpoint.^[9] This concerns that almost transcendental dimension that pertains to the conditions of the world in its entirety, rather than to the individual and identifiable contents in the world. For this reason, the nonsense of literary style and the poetic use of language reveals itself, from a broader perspective, as a much deeper form of meaningfulness.

In summary, if one accepts the statements that appear in the final sections of the Tractatus (but also those in the rest of the book), one ends up conceiving of a poetic domain of language that emerges in opposition to the logically correct form of what can be sensefully said. The possibility of a rigorously imprecise use of language opens up, one that takes on the task of indirectly expressing what has value, transcending the limits of senseful and factual communication. Moreover, ineffabilist readers can rely on Wittgenstein’s own words to draw an analogy between the idea of the unsayable and the more enigmatic sense of the poetic and literary operation. In a letter to von Ficker, Wittgenstein comments on the poems of Georg Trakl received from his editor-friend: “I do not understand them, but their tone makes me happy” (BW 1980: 65; my transl.). The incapacity or impossibility of effective understanding and at the same time the presence of an ineffable tone that emerges from the poetic composition are precisely two of the aspects that ineffabilists focus on to forge the link between (substantial) nonsense and poetry.^[10] The latter would share with the propositions of the Tractatus the ambition to say what cannot be said, even though this is done in a different, albeit related, way.15

4 The Resolute Program

The resolute program, first advanced by Conant and Diamond (cf. Conant 1989; Conant 2002; Diamond 1991; Diamond 2000; Conant & Diamond 2004), arises primarily in a negative manner, in opposition to what will be labeled by the resolute thinkers as ‘standard’ readings. The point of contention concerns the extent to which the propositions that make up the book should ultimately be recognized as nonsensical (unsinnig). According to the resolute reading, the problem is that one does not truly take seriously what this proposition tells us and commands us to do. If the propositions of the Tractatus are nonsense, it is precisely against the purposes of the book and its logical structure to cling to the supposed content of these propositions rather than to throw them away resolutely: that is, the resolute reading denies that a theory of meaning or theoretical indications about the nature of language, the world, and their limits can be found within the Tractatus (cf. Conant & Diamond 2004: 47). This position typically values the dialectical dynamics at play, where the reader first attempts to grasp the meaning of the various propositions concerning the constitution of the world and the limits of language, only to see it fade away before them, thereby regaining a clearer awareness of themselves and their ordinary linguistic capabilities.^[11] The commitment to the austere conception of nonsense, which is developed primarily by drawing on Frege’s context principle explicitly endorsed by Wittgenstein, is central: “Only the proposition has sense; only in the context of a proposition has a name meaning.” (TLP 1922: 3.3) This would prevent the case of substantial nonsense, because the latter assumes that the meaning of certain words can be identified independently of the propositional connection and then combined illegitimately, which is ruled out by the context principle. In fact, for Diamond, the “Frege-Wittgenstein view” holds that there is no “positive nonsense”, i. e., “no kind of nonsense which is nonsense on account of what the terms composing it mean” (Diamond 1991: 106). From a logical point of view, there is only one kind of nonsense—“nonsense is nonsense; there is no division of nonsense” (Conant 1991: 153)— which stems from the failure of assigning a meaning to one word (or more) in a sentence (cf. Diamond 1991: 102; Conant 2002: 400). The indication on the failure of meaning-determination is taken directly from the Tractatus: “Frege says: Every legitimately constructed position must have a sense; and I say: Every possible proposition is legitimately construct16ed, and if it has no sense this can only be because we have given no meaning to some of its constituent parts. (Even if we believe we have done so.)” (TLP 1922: 5.4733) Furthermore, there is no general and fixed criterion provided by the Tractatus (for example, the principle of bipolarity) that can be applied to determine the sense of a proposition. The Tractarian nonsense, therefore, communicates nothing, being “einfach Unsinn”, as it is stated in the Preface.

At different times, various scholars have explored the aesthetic implications of the Tractatus precisely following this resolute interpretative line, thereby modifying the relationship that comes to define itself with modernism. Among others, Ben Ware relies specifically on the resolute reading to argue that some recognizable modernist ambitions concerning language (and typically identified by the ‘mystical’ readings) fall within the crosshairs of the dialectic of the Tractatus, literally collapsing them into plain nonsense (cf. Ware 2015: 121). Therefore, the ‘ethical’ propositions, despite appearances, are not a good starting point for grasping the ethical sense of the book and its corresponding literary dimension. The literary significance of the Tractatus lies at a deeper level in the strategy that the book as a whole puts into action, which consists of leading the reader to recognize that the propositions traversed are ultimately nonsensical, including the ‘ethical’ ones. For this reason, there is a so-called totalizing aspect of the literary fabric of the book, which primarily concerns the overall sense of its dialectical strategy. Behind the resistance to paraphrasing and isolating single parts or propositions lies the authentic poetic-literary signature of the book: “like a poem, the Tractatus’s point can only be grasped if the book is read and understood as a whole.” (Ware 2015: 65) This does not mean denying that one can derive an ethical meaning from the reading but rather that this cannot be found in any content that seems to be stated in the text. In this sense, the relationship between the two distinctions (philosophical-literary aspects, written-unwritten parts) can be considered overall dialectical rather than expressive. Consequently, the modernist character of the book resides not so much in its supposed contents but in the final effect produced on its readers which is aimed at a subjective and existential transformation. It is clear that if the practical effects of this dialectic are the authentic point of the work in its entirety, this is due to the explosive presence of nonsense (Unsinn), considered according to the austere conception as plain nonsense.^[12] The turning point for understanding the working of the book is therefore, along with the Preface, propo17sition 6.54 which explicitly outlines the role of nonsense and its transformative results:

My propositions are elucidatory (erläutern) in this way: he who understands me finally recognizes them as nonsensical (als unsinnig erkennt), when he has climbed out through them, on them, over them. (He must so to speak throw away the ladder, after he has climbed up on it.)

He must surmount (überwinden) these propositions; then he sees the world rightly. (TLP 1922: 6.54 – 7; modified transl.)

From here, being denied the fact-value distinction itself, a pathway opens up to understand the aesthetic implications of the Tractarian nonsense differently from the ineffabilist strategy. In fact, at the core of this attitude we find—diametrically opposed to the ineffabilist approach—the denial of the dichotomy between facts and values, understood as ontological separation or categorical difference: “There is—if we read the Tractatus right—no fact-value distinction in it.” (Diamond 2000: 164)

According to the resolute reading, much of the Tractatus’s ultimate task consists in clarifying that expressions such as ‘the world as a bounded totality’ as well as ‘the limits of language’ are ultimately simply nonsense which reveals or shows nothing (cf. Diamond 2000: 155). The final point is the reader’s awareness that the very intuition of a possible worldview sub specie aeterni must be completely emptied of meaning. What is unmasked is the hallucination of meaning which leads us to implicitly believe that we can trust an almost magical property of language that allows it to show what lies beyond itself. In particular, a crucial challenge is made to a kind of ‘objectual’ bias which consists of assuming the more or less referential nature of language and its implicit extension to ethical-aesthetic discourse. Just as the propositions of the Tractatus communicate something that resists its direct enunciation, so literary and artistic language reveals a content that could not be grasped otherwise. Aesthetic nonsense, therefore, transmits an ethical content that can only be shown. However, by virtue of the resolute reading the very question of an intelligible object that would lie behind language used in an aesthetic form completely loses its sense.

Moreover, it is noteworthy that the resolute polemic against the objectual bias of the ineffabilist reading perfectly combines with an important trait of a certain literary culture of the early twentieth century well highlighted by the studies of Aldo G. Gargani.^[13] This resides in the tendency of authors like Robert Musil and 18Franz Kafka to conceive of ethical experience in terms of a stance towards the real rather than in terms of possessing any content. This ethical theme directly applies—permeating it—to literary activity as such and to how it is conceived by these authors, making aesthetics and literature profoundly detached from the issue of stable possession of insights or revelations about the meaning of the world. Furthermore, the resolute strategy radically undermines the possibility of isolating ethical and aesthetic discourse from ordinary language, as if they were completely separate domains for which we can discern defining criteria that have been fixed once and for all.

Interestingly, several scholars have already experimented with applying the insights of the resolute program to aesthetic and literary contexts, assessing the potential of simple nonsense as a dialectical tool. Rupert Read, a scholar who has enthusiastically embraced the resolute program, has strengthened the idea of applying Tractarian nonsense to literary and poetic language in a programmatic work titled Applying Wittgenstein (Read 2007). This can be an instructive case despite some flaws in the book. Leaving aside the unpromising case of poetry,^[14] it is worth taking a look at his treatment of literary prose. Read discusses the representation Faulkner provides of the psychology of Benjy, a mentally ill character in the novel The Sound and the Fury. Indeed, Benjy’s schizophrenic gaze upon the world seems to coincide, in our eyes, with a type of experience of reality that exceeds our ordinary logical frameworks. However, according to Read, Benjy’s narrative is precisely constructed to suggest, in an illusory manner, that there is something like a sense in which it is possible to understand this type of experience, when the point is to realize that strictly speaking there is nothing to understand (cf. Read 2007: 60). Faulkner’s prose, which gives voice to the linguistic misadventures of the character, is structured around the device of an illusion of sense which soon collapses into delusion and is guided by the frustrating experience of attempting to signify something. The realization that no content presents itself sensefully constitutes the 19final awareness of someone perceiving Faulkner’s writing for what it is: “a language of paradox, of nonsense masquerading beautifully as sense” (Read 2007: 76).^[15] From this Wittgensteinian perspective, the focus is entirely on language itself and on how it is possible to employ it, sensefully or otherwise, to test its capacities to construct a representation.

Karen Zumhagen-Yekplé has dedicated a study titled A Different Order of Difficulty. Literature after Wittgenstein (Zumhagen-Yekplé 2020) precisely to the experiment of reading Wittgenstein and the modernist literature of the twentieth century in solidarity, revolving around the resolute reading of the Tractatus. Zumhagen-Yekplé essentially identifies three main concerns shared by Wittgenstein’s philosophical method and modernist writing: the sense of difficulty, an oblique or indirect ethical instruction, and a yearning for personal and existential transformation (cf. Zumhagen-Yekplé 2020: 2): that is, the Tractatus presents a series of challenges, initially suggesting that the difficulty lies in the rational understanding of intellectual problems, only to reveal that the true difficulty is of a ‘tactical’ nature and relates to the (ethical) work each reader must do on themselves.

In the landscape of literary modernism, one can search for different instances of adherence to this type of strategy, as Zumhagen-Yekplé does. If the meaning of the book is ethical, it is not about conveying a moral message and its apprehension but rather about a form of attitude that one learns to adopt only through the experience of delusion of sense and the corresponding transformative process of overcoming one’s confusions. Thus, there is a type of ethical teaching at work, but it consists more than in an indirect communication of something in the performative act of eliciting a transformative result in the reader’s ethical attitude. The methodological function of the Tractatus as a model, paradigm, and heuristic tool is the fundamental starting point for Zumhagen-Yekplé. For her purposes, the resolute reading serves to help understand “how the Tractatus functions as a formally innovative aesthetic medium for its author’s communication of his unorthodox brand of ethical teaching” (Zumhagen-Yekplé 2020: 8). From this perspective, the literary texts examined are considered expressive of an ethical meaning derived from the employment of a certain authorial strategy, which in turn relies on the deliberate use of nonsense.20

Nonsense does not only concern the fact that, at the textual level, we merely have the impression of grasping a content that we intuitively feel we can understand. But more broadly, it redefines the very concerns and ambitions that determine literary activity. A new picture of art, literature, and their function is promoted: the acknowledgment of the nonsensicality of expressions like ‘the world as a delimited totality’ is accompanied by a full renunciation of any position that remains dependent, even by contrast, on the validity of the ideas expressed in that manner. Nonsense, informing the entire structure of the Tractatus, produces decisive effects on the possibility of conceptions that, at the end, can only be maintained in bad faith. The main aspiration to be abandoned among these is the dream of an external perspective on the whole world, attained in a sublime way. This is also the absolute point of view, reached immanently through language, which could formally describe the totalizing scope of the Tractatus and its intimate but illusory ambition.

For literary aesthetics, something similar applies if it is true that the problem of totality and meaning jointly defines the interests of philosophy and literary representation, particularly in the crisis atmosphere that characterizes the modern era. Writers and prose authors of the twentieth century find themselves grappling with the question of representing an unattainable totality and the very status of this aesthetic undertaking. In most cases, even where the sense of inevitable delusion prevails, there remains the possibility of identifying and highlighting residues and cores of meaning which assemble almost like fragments pulsating with that life orphaned from totality. Wittgenstein’s Tractatus, whose historical context does not escape the efficacy of the Nietzschean diagnosis of modernity, represents a response from both a philosophical and an aesthetic standpoint. However, the Wittgensteinian position does not lie in asserting the logical or aesthetic impossibility of grasping the world as a totality, which would amount to a matter of fact; more radically, it resides in unmasking the nonsensicality of the question itself, that is, the same nonsensicality that can be displayed by literary language itself, through illusions and delusions of sense in a Tractarian fashion.

5 The Grammatical Approach

Before introducing what is properly the grammatical approach, it is useful to first mention an important interpretive line that has emerged within the debate on Wittgenstein’s work as a sort of ‘third way’ in contrast to both the ineffabilist reading and the resolute or therapeutic one. This is the elucidatory reading, first advanced by Marie McGinn, and it will help to understand how the transition from the Tractarian context to the notion of grammar, characteristic of the later 21Wittgenstein, takes place. It was formulated with the aim of offering an option that acknowledges the virtues of the resolute approach while also valuing the presence of positive philosophical insights in the Tractatus. According to McGinn, there is no forced choice between two extremes, where on one hand, the nonsense of Wittgenstein’s propositions communicates ineffable ideas about reality, while on the other hand, it has no communicative function whatsoever and expresses nothing (cf. McGinn 1999: 498). In the strategy of clarification inherent in language,^[16] the propositions of the Tractatus remain strictly speaking nonsensical, but their role is not to elicit the dialectical recognition that it is simply nonsense. Rather, their value is entirely transitional (cf. McGinn 2009: 253), as they serve to clarify the limits of the senseful use of language. Wittgenstein’s elucidatory propositions thus fulfill the concrete task of offering the reader clarification of what, in the words of the Philosophical Investigations, “lies open to view” (PI 2009: 126), without any violation of the limits of sense. It is McGinn herself who suggests comparing the function of the elucidatory remarks in the Tractatus to the clarificatory function of the grammatical investigation in the later Wittgenstein (cf. McGinn 1999: 499, 512). Of course, differences remain: most notably, in the case of the Tractatus, what is elucidated is the logic of our language insofar as it shows its sense by representing the world, while the later notion of grammar refers more to the flexible network of all the various rules embedded in the everyday practices which make our words meaningful. However, the reference to grammatical propositions is interesting for the purpose of this investigation.

Danièle Moyal-Sharrock independently suggested understanding Tractarian nonsense positively according to an almost formalistic conception that makes her position similar to McGinn’s in certain respects though with a different focus. For Moyal-Sharrock, it is indeed a matter of identifying an alternative to the opposition between the ineffabilist picture of nonsense as a uniform violation of the limits of sense, notably held by Hacker, and its resolute rendering as something simply incomprehensible. Elucidatory propositions are nonsensical not in a ‘derogatory’ sense but rather in a ‘grammatical’ aspect. The function of Wittgenstein’s nonsense then is to delimit, demarcate, and thus elucidate the limits of sense (cf. Moyal-Sharrock 2007: 148). In this respect, the elucidatory propositions of the Tractatus are analogous to the grammatical rules of the later Wittgenstein, 22expressing similarly what will later be termed the ‘grammar’ of language, i. e., the conditions of sense and the use of words.^[17]

In general terms, elucidatory nonsense literally devoid of sense is separated from the possibility of use in ordinary significant language. What lacks sense, like a grammatical rule, is so because it does not have a concrete use within ordinary language. Expressing a condition of sense, it does not fall within the boundary it traces but remains precisely at the edge. Significantly, according to Moyal-Sharrock this separation between the employment and the senseful use of language and those combinations of words that are “withdrawn from circulation” (PI 2009: 500) arises precisely in the context of the Tractatus (cf. Moyal-Sharrock 2007: 156). A defining mark of the elucidatory or grammatical proposition is that the principle of bipolarity does not apply to it. A grammatical remark typically fails the test of bipolarity: its negation does not become a falsehood but remains nonsense, just like its affirmation. Here, this point—obviously contested by the resolute reading—plays an important role in accounting for the clear distinction between empirical propositions which express a sense and can be true or false and a different order of propositions which strictly speaking do not say anything that can be true or false.

From this perspective, a path opens up for a grammatical interpretation of the entire literary language. Moyal-Sharrock herself has tested the application of this type of approach, attempting to define literature as a sort of system for ‘measuring our lives’ (cf. Moyal-Sharrock 2019). In fact, she does not explicitly employ the notion of ‘grammar’, adhering more closely to the Tractarian idea of ‘showing’ which delineates the sphere of aesthetics.^[18] However, she can be quite coherently read as promoting the idea that ‘grammar’ is shown, from an aesthetic perspective, through the literary use of language.

Somewhat similarly to ineffabilism, Moyal-Sharrock ultimately argues for the expressive uniqueness of the artistic and literary medium. In her reading, the creative use of language by literature is capable, according to the Tractarian distinction, of showing the ethical without attempting to say it, as it shows itself only through a particular use of language. Quoting the Tractatus: “That which expresses 23itself in language, we cannot express by language.” (TLP 1922: 4.121) However, what is shown is not a propositional or objective content, because it is not about knowing something new but rather about recognizing what is most familiar to us, through an aesthetic perspective that allows us to see it correctly. Literature provides “perspicuous presentation‍[s]” (Moyal-Sharrock 2019: 275), organizing and structuring the narrative material on display in such a way as to reveal connections and mutual relationships. The use in a non-naturalistic, non-verifiable, and non-empirical sense of language, as it is found in literature, is indeed suited the ethical purpose through a perfect correspondence.^[19] It is clear how Moyal-Sharrock’s true model, also operative in her interpretation of the Tractarian propositions, turns out to be the grammatical propositions of On Certainty and the related context of hinge epistemology. Similarly, literary language expresses “imponderable evidence” (LW I 1998: 922; cf. Moyal-Sharrock 2019: 277) which logically does not admit the possibility of a denial or refutation and evokes a form of intuitive, immediate, and non-propositional understanding.

Systematically, Moyal-Sharrock’s considerations on the ‘exhibitory’ idea of aesthetics derived from the Tractatus and subsequent writings and those on the grammatical function of nonsense can be interwoven. The aesthetic form of the Tractatus itself consists of grammatical remarks that play a clarifying role, attempting to provoke a change and a positive transformation in the reader’s way of seeing. Similarly, literary texts can also be said to advocate a clarifying exposition of what is part of our experience, intervening in the type of vision of things that the reader is called to. Novels, in particular, are structured as a form of perspicuous presentation that gives order and arrangement through the construction of a story to aspects that most touch human sensitivity. Precisely because it is not about knowing anything the elucidation, which is not explanation, primarily effects its impact at the visual level, presenting what we already know as speaking subjects and inhabitants of the world. The strong implication unrecognized by Moyal-Sharrock of her way of understanding the linguistic status of the expression of ‘grammar’ lies in the determination of literary propositions and literary language as technically nonsensical. For her, grammatical rules are nonsensical because they cannot be properly used to do anything. Indeed, literary propositions are strictly speaking 24nonsensical in that they express and exhibit conditions of sense without applying them directly. Thus, a way of understanding aesthetic-literary nonsense that is diametrically opposed to the ineffabilist conception seems to emerge: literary language does not attempt to go beyond the limits of senseful language but rather remains on this side of those limits or at the very point where they are traced and brought into view. Both possibilities, however, are based on theoretical motives to distinguish at a fundamental level between the factual, ordinary, and empirical use of language and a peculiar use in the opposite sense, considered either as a form of transcending the limits of sense or as their demarcation.

In light of the importance given to the notion of ‘grammar’, I would like to call the following approach a grammatical conception of literature, discussed by a number of scholars (cf. Guetti 1993; Schalkwyk 1995; Gibson 2004) and mainly inspired by the insights of the later Wittgenstein (Philosophical Investigations). It is fundamentally based on Wittgenstein’s distinction between the concepts of representation and that of instrument (or standard) of representation (cf. Gibson 2004: 116) used to account for the non-directly representational nature of many uses of language including aesthetic-literary language. If it is not a matter of an actual representation of reality through the literary medium, one then sees the possibility of understanding the relationship between literary fiction and the current world as a connection of a ‘grammatical’ nature. The former presents us with language as a means of representation, illuminating the sense of its possible uses to see our world from new or overlooked aspects. In John Gibson’s analogy (cf. Gibson 2004: 117) literary tradition thus becomes similar to the Paris archive that Wittgenstein speaks of regarding the metre stored in it (cf. PI 2009: 50). What it expresses has the value of a standard against which we can measure the meaning of our experience. Like the Paris metre, literary expression “is not something that is represented, but is a means of representation” (PI 2009: 50). Here one realizes how a fundamental point shared by the various ineffabilist, resolute, and grammatical conceptions of literary language is that language itself is somehow brought to the forefront as a specific object of interest. What underlies the divergences concerns the different ways of understanding and interpreting this Wittgensteinian viewpoint. Thus, for the grammatical version, it is a matter of showing how, in literature, it is language that shows itself in the form of the exhibition of its grammar. The idea is that of grammatical display.

The context of Wittgenstein’s later philosophy serves to ensure a pluralistic quality to the declination of this idea. Compared to the solid and unitary logic of the Tractatus, Wittgenstein’s later works typically emphasize the multiplicity of ways in which ordinary practices are rendered meaningful, illustrating the complex branching articulated in the language games and forms of life in which they are rooted. The grammatical picture that literature returns to us is therefore 25complex and varied precisely because, in Charles Altieri’s words, “what has to be displayed are the various grammatical structures that make our basic social practices coherent and workable.” (Altieri 2015: 23) Moreover, the value of this type of grammatical exhibition directly involves the exercise of our imagination, activated by the effort of recognition of what is shown and disclosed through narration.

In fact, David Schalkwyk was able to identify the object of literary fiction with those relationships and grammatical criteria that define the meaning of our practices and the use of our concepts based on the diffusely fictional aspect of Wittgenstein’s method (cf. Schalkwyk 1995: 287). In this light, the Philosophical Investigations themselves can be read as a form of literature that gathers within it a series of sketches of narratively undeveloped fictional stories. The difference between the method of grammatical investigation and literary fiction proper, on this analogy, is simply one of degree: “literature offers not simply a glimpse but an extended examination of such sense-giving criterial relations, of which both the empirical world and our rootedness in communities are an inescapable part” (Schalkwyk 1995: 292). Clearly, this grammatical dimension explored by literature can take on different forms, responding to multiple functions rather than merely elucidatory ones. It can be exhibited critically, not merely illustratively, or even revisionarily in the intent of re-examining the possible extensions of our concepts. Alternatively, it can probe borderline cases that result from the dilation of certain grammatical rules. However, precisely because literary fiction expresses those grammatical conditions that determine meaning it remains on the side of a strictly meaningful application of language. More precisely, it is likely that the grammatical function of a certain type of language does not imply its immediate senselessness, as it can simply add to other communicative and expressive functions. Michael Rose-Steel, for example, traces this weakness in Read’s analysis of Wallace Stevens’s previously mentioned poems. Read exploits the idea of ‘grammatical effects’, but he overlooks the following fact: “Being on display in a poem, though it may repurpose elements of language from their everyday application, need not stop them from being part of the activity.” (Rose-Steel 2016: 95) More generally, a similar consideration could be adopted, regarding the grammatical conception of literature, but the authors who support it firmly uphold a sharp division between literary language and practical and ordinary language. In this way, the space of literature becomes crystallized, solidifying into the form of an archive—as Gibson would like it—drastically separated from the habitual flow of life and ‘working’ language. This is why the function of grammatical exhibition points towards a ‘grammatical’ nonsense, due to the association with the proposed division between literary language and practical language. In fact, the idea is that if “only in the stream of thought and life do words have meaning” (Z 1967: 173), literary language is grammatically nonsensical to the extent that it is separated 26from this very flow of life. In the work of James Guetti, this separation derives from the distinction between the actual and effective use of language and the way in which language is mentioned or cited, rather than used, in literature and poetry (Guetti 1993: 6). Thus, it is the language that “goes on holiday” according to a famous Wittgensteinian expression (PI 2009: 38), the “idling” language (PI 2009: 132).^[20] The idea is precisely this, that in literary language words are idle wheels, remaining outside the working and meaningful language that is integrated into the fabric of concrete life.

Finally, in the most systematic work on the grammatical conception of literature, namely Guetti’s study Wittgenstein and the Grammar of Literary Experience (Guetti 1993), the distinction between genuinely meaningful language and grammatical propositions coincides with that between use and mention. In literary fiction it is as if language is being cited or mentioned instead of being actively employed: “we speak as if we were ‘citing’ language” (Guetti 1993: 6). Language is cited so that it can be exhibited in its pure form which precedes a concrete use in a more or less representational sense.^[21] The recognition of this self-exhibitory function of language constitutes, according to Guetti, an important and recurring theme throughout Wittgenstein’s philosophy. It first presents itself in relation to the logical form discussed in the Tractatus and then is transposed into a more extended and flexible conception that attributes to the ‘grammatical’ form of language the ability to show its possibilities and meaningful modes. Grammatical expressions fulfill precisely the task of foregrounding these multiple possibilities, exemplifying them in an iconic manner without concretizing them in a directly communicative function. For Guetti, what is exhibited is therefore the very ability of language to produce meaning and its potential for signification (Guetti 1993: 9). Accordingly, again it is as if literary language deals with the conditions of sense, with the possibilities of meaning that lie on the side of being true or false in its propositions. However, Guetti maintains that in so far as it precedes actual processes of signification it is non-significant, but not nonsensical. The impression in Guetti’s account is that the nonsensicality dealt with in the literary context seems to oscillate between Sinnlosigkeit (senselessness) and Unsinn (nonsense). Certainly, this very distinction is likely abandoned by the later Wittgenstein, but based on it one can recognize that Guetti often tends to conceive grammatical expressions 27as senseless (sinnlos) to the specific extent that they do not allow the attribution of a truth value. Thus, the sense of literature, rather than beyond truth, lies below that limit.

6 Towards a Conclusion: The Resolute Model

Outlining these possible directions,^[22] it is quite clear that the resolute program offers a complex of promising insights to develop the austere conception of nonsense and to identify analogies with the operational model of the Tractatus within the literary field. An important point concerns the recognition that the issue is not nonsense in itself—because it is nothing it says or communicates nothing—but rather our relationship with nonsense. This aspect becomes clear in the Lecture on Ethics where Wittgenstein suggests that we first need to recognize something as nonsense in order to distinguish between different types of nonsense and decide how to respond to it.^[23] Here Wittgenstein speaks of the drive to express oneself in ethical and religious discourse as “a document of a tendency in the human mind which I personally cannot help respecting deeply and I would not for my life ridicule it.” (LE 1965: 12) Ethical expressions are certainly nonsensical, not because they are inadequate or inaccurate for their purpose but because nonsensicality is precisely “their very essence” (LE 1965: 11), that is, nonsense does not by itself diminish the value of the authentic expression of our inherent human tendency to transcend the limits of meaningful language. At the same time, however, those nonsensical expressions do not say or show anything; they do not communicate something ineffable, merely serving as a testament to an ethical intention that refuses to be discouraged by the desire to be expressed in words. Therefore, the point concerns first and foremost a complete awareness that one is dealing with nonsense and the consequent decision to find a respectful but clear attitude in the 28face of such nonsense. While it is true that from a logical point of view all nonsense is one and the same, for the resolute thinkers it remains equally true that from a psychological point of view there are various kinds and forms. What is crucial is to cultivate a healthy, conscious relationship with nonsense so as not to be trapped and misled by the illusion of finding meaning where nothing is being communicated.^[24] In a programmatic sense, the classic analyses of Conant and Diamond explicitly outline in more detail the paradigmatic way in which nonsense can be intentionally put to work. When combined, they will enhance the resolute model for an aesthetic and literary significance of Unsinn.

As is well known, Diamond’s reading of Tractarian nonsense emphasizes the practical role of imagination which in the Tractatus involves temporarily treating nonsense as if it were sense: “To want to understand the person who talks nonsense is to want to enter imaginatively the taking of that nonsense for sense.” (Diamond 2000: 157) Since nonsense lacks actual content, imagination is the only means to engage with someone who is not truly communicating meaningfully. Attempting to adopt the illusory viewpoint of the metaphysician highlights that nonsense ultimately leaves nothing real to share or grasp. This imaginative exercise directly involves the reader in uncovering apparent meanings, countering the “false imagination” (Diamond 2000: 159) that produces metaphysical nonsense that is all the more dangerous the longer it remains undetected and masked. Crucially, this imaginative consideration is configured as a form of make-believe in which one takes for granted what is passed off as sense.

Consequently, the keystone consists of a global and conscious strategy, which also closely recalls the method of indirect communication employed by Søren Kierkegaard. It is not by chance that Conant has drawn a formal analogy between Kierkegaard’s Concluding Unscientific Postscript to the Philosophical Fragments and Wittgenstein’s Tractatus (cf. Conant 1993; Kierkegaard 1941). In both cases, the final revocation of the book prevents us from considering the author’s genuine aim to be the direct communication of an objective content. For Kierkegaard, as he himself explains in the key text The Point of View for my Work as an Author (cf. Kierkegaard 1962: 24 – 26), the only possibility of success regarding the problem of becoming authentic Christians lies in the development of a sophisticated indirect strategy that involves assuming the perspective of someone who is a victim of illusion, staging the hallucinatory experience to then collapse it, emptying it of meaning, in the final recognition of failure. Overall, the strategy thus involves 29a momentary but essential form of deception lasting at least as long as the reading itself and necessary to illustrate and unmask, as if from within, the emptiness of the content of the illusion that held us captive. The goal is to provoke a self-transformation in the reader rather than to transmit any sort of illuminating content. Both Wittgenstein and Kierkegaard construct a path that never aims to reach a final truth but rather to show the illusoriness of the path itself which is based on a mirage. The construction of the illusion of a progressive movement that is never truly completed is central to the resolute reading: more than a ladder to be discarded, the Tractatus serves to understand that there is no other place to reach,^[25] no content to grasp and that the importance lies in recognizing that the ambition for an elsewhere or the aspiration to achieve goals such as truth, totality, and transcendence are nonsensical.^[26]

In summary, the resolute program invites us to see the Tractatus as a literary paradigm of an intentional and conscious use of nonsense where seemingly meaningful language is deliberately used to unmask and break down from within the false expectations of the reader who believes they can grasp profound meanings where nothing is being communicated.

Articulating a narrative discourse that appears orderly, composed of what is essentially nonsense but masquerades as meaningful language, means to unfold a series of illusions dependent on the mirage of a sense or truth that transcends ordinary reality and that could be grasped by the language of literature. Literary representation then becomes representation in a theatrical and performative sense: a staging, that is, of a search, a process, or a reflection toward the goal of meaning and sense which, however, leads nowhere and whose very processual character does not acquire any significance, as it is the result of a project distorted at its very foundations. It is the enactment of a deceptive presentation which promotes the reader’s tendency to trust in the power of literature capable of unlocking the sense of our experience through the peculiarity of its artistic form, only to then pull the rug out from under their feet, thereby showing that art and literature have no content to transmit, or communicate indirectly. The point is to realize that the question of sense is posed in absolute terms, as an ideal objective that lives in 30contrast with our ordinary experience. But this picture of a sense that shrouds itself, even by opposition, in ideas of totality, transcendence, and ineffability is symptomatic already in its definition of the fundamental incapacity to recognize the sensefullness of one’s ordinary experience which alone could sideline the ambition for an elsewhere or the aspiration for a redemption of a condition perceived as problematic, rejecting them not as impossible but as nonsensical. A decisive awareness of one’s position, which concerns more the disposition to adopt an ethical attitude toward things than the passive reception of content or informative messages, is therefore the only desirable practical outcome. However, it will be necessary for this purpose to recognize nonsense as such when it presents itself in order to distance oneself from the attractions of unspeakable and ineffable truths or from far more modest calls, but equally devoid of sense.

Let us take the case of two great twentieth-century authors: Franz Kafka and Thomas Bernhard. The former for a kind of spiritual affinity^[27] and the latter for direct influence: both are excellent examples for concretely evaluating the presence of themes and strategies of nonsense that can be methodologically derived from Wittgenstein. Firstly, Kafka and Bernhard exemplify the tendency to dissolve the traditional idea of prose narration that takes place in twentieth-century literature. Kafka deliberately aims to sabotage the logic of narrative sense (cf. Schuman 2015: 139); Bernhard declares himself a “Geschichtenzerstörer” (Bernhard 1989: 83), a destructor of stories. Their respective labyrinthine works can be understood more as a deliberate staging of particular illusions that are developed and pushed to their limits, exercising a disturbing and disorienting effect on the reader. Like a philosophical problem, many of Kafka’s texts take the form of the statement: “I don’t know my way about.” (PI 2009: 123) In this manner, the author intentionally deceives the reader, prompting them to search for some profound meaning where there may be none (consider, for example, The Trial, The Castle, but also many of his parables and short stories in general). In fact, the ineffabilist conception would tend to see in Kafka the picture of a writer who runs up against the limits of language and human understanding. His literary work, then, would become a manifestation of an unreachable and inaccessible truth—one that can only be alluded to through literary and poetic words. But the resolute approach suggests something 31completely different: it invites us to confront Kafka’s work to understand it as the deliberate staging of a misleading search for an absolute sense, a pursuit that is generally nonsensical. According to this perspective, the reader plays an essential role in the literary operation as they are called upon to ultimately recognize the deception of the text and its author.

It follows that the ethical sense of Kafka’s work will be grasped when the parables of nonsense it represents are unmasked, achieving a state of awareness of our impulses to transcend the ordinary world and sense. Moreover, the characters in both Kafka and Bernhard often act under the influence of a “picture” that holds them “captive” (PI 2009: 115): that of an ideal and artificial exactness, “a state of complete exactness” (PI 2009: 91)^[28] that spurs them toward the thought of being able to transcend the limits of a seemingly imperfect language. We discover that “the questions we pose to ourselves kill us slowly” (Bernhard 1963: 234; my transl.),^[29] draining our physical and mental strength, and these problems ultimately prove to be nonsensical.^[30] In fact, Bernhard thematizes at a literary level the picture of the limits of language and thought, intentionally staging a form of nonsensical thought, that monologic madness into which his characters inevitably plunge. Again, the reader is called to recognize the deception to avoid being trapped by the will to assert claims about the world and language, like those expressed by the Bernhardian characters which are ultimately nonsensical.

An essential interest that manifests in the deliberate use of nonsense consists precisely in clarifying our relationship with language, dismantling from within the illusions of those who believe that it is somehow possible to transcend it in the direction of an ineffable sense. In this way, the aesthetic application of the resolute program also invites reflection on the risks run when one succumbs to the temptation of interpreting the poetic-literary quality of writing as an expression of the attempt to approximate the unsayable through the sayable. This is a fairly widespread attitude with which the ideas of the ineffable and the inexpressible are 32handled too carelessly in their application to literature. Wittgenstein’s lesson, if fully appreciated, allows us to navigate through these unconscious nonsenses, conversely enhancing the aesthetic potential of a deliberate use of nonsense which must first be experienced through reading and then recognized for what it is, in its inability to signify and communicate anything.^[31] In the end, perhaps, we will have truly gained a new way of seeing the world by the dissipating of the opacity of all those misleading attitudes that feed on false claims about the world, language, and our relationship with them.