ABSTRACT
Hardly anything was of greater importance to Wittgenstein than reading poetry, plays and novels except, perhaps, for listening to and thinking about music and doing philosophy. The fact that among the six or seven mottos he took into consideration for his later work three were lines taken from poets (Goethe, Matthias Claudius, and Longfellow) is testimony of the great significance poetry had for him.1 He had fairly clear preferences for certain authors,2 but it is unlikely that he believed his personal taste ought to form the basis of a general canon. Although he evidently thought a great deal about aesthetic questions, he surely did not develop anything like an aesthetic theory or a general view of literature or a systematic discussion of problems arising from philosophical reflections on poetry. Nevertheless, certain insights articulated in the context of his later philosophy can, in my opinion, assist us in our attempts to understand what it means to come to grips with or master the content of a poem. I think it is useful to see these insights into what it means to read a poem against the background of Wittgenstein’s remarks on the “life” of signs. And I am furthermore convinced that whatever can be learned from these considerations may help us get a better grasp of Wittgenstein’s own way of writing as well as certain basic ideas that informed his thinking.
