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Lot 198

WITTGENSTEIN (LUDWIG)

22 November 2011, 10:30 GMT
London, New Bond Street

Sold for £3,750 inc. premium

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WITTGENSTEIN (LUDWIG)

Autograph letter signed ("Ludwig Wittgenstein"), to Dorothy Moore, wife of his friend and fellow philosopher G. E. Moore, thanking them for a scarf: "It was awfully nice of you & Moore to give it to me. I've been rather busy these days, that's why I haven't written to you before; but I thought of doing so every day, & that's something too"; to which he adds as a heading by way of possible rider: "This letter was written on Wednesday", one page, on ruled paper, a little browned, but in very good condition, small 4to, "Friday" (but really "Wednesday")

Footnotes

'AWFULLY NICE OF YOU & MOORE': Wittgenstein writes a thank-you letter – in which he tussles with the writing of thank-you letters – to G.E. Moore and his wife for a scarf. G.E. Moore, author of the groundbreaking Principia Ethica (1903) had of course been one of the first to welcome the young Wittgenstein on his arrival at Cambridge in 1911. Although they met regularly after Wittgenstein's return to Cambridge in 1929 and Wittgenstein acknowledged the importance to him of Moore's views (indeed the title of the great Tractatus logico-philosophicus itself had been suggested by Moore), he could still allow himself the observation: 'Moore? – he shows you how far a man can go who has absolutely no intelligence whatever' (F.R. Leavis, Memories of Wittgenstein, 1982, p. 130). Incidentally, snapshots of Wittgenstein seem invariably to show him open-necked, without a scarf.

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