In the natural harbour of Neverland were anchored two big sailing ships, the Jolly Roger and the Lord of the Seven Seas, and a little ways from them, a small sailboat, Undine.
Aboard the Jolly Roger, after the men have discoursed thoroughly on theology and the Reformation, now they turn to philosophy and epistemology.
Janosch A. Prufrock has joined them, though his mind was on Clara Schumann, so music and yearning.
Both the gimballed stove in the galley and the cast-iron caboose on deck have been fired-up and busy, and before the sailing men were sausages, potato pancakes, marmelades of sorts (especially sea buckthorn in generous embossed glass jars), cacahuatl steaming in big Bunzlau pitchers, teas of all colours (green, black, yellow, white, red, loose-leafed and caked in Pu’er blocks). There was also beer for all, and bread loaves of spelt, emmer, and einkorn.
Well provisioned, the sailing men enjoyed the repast and let loose their tongues, minds, and egos.
Someone was singing a sea shanty, and another was accompanying on the accordion. A third had a harmonica, and a fourth even had a plundered guqin whose seven strings he was trying to figure out.
“When that fellow Ludwig Wittgenstein says the limits of his language are the limits of his world,” continued the bo’sun Mr. Smee sagely, “he doesn’t mean he needs to learn more languages, though he knew plenty.”
“I myself know some Maninka, as does the Captain,” boasted Mr. Smee in an aside. “A moody fellow he, that Ludwig Wittgenstein. I heard it from Chao Yuen Ren (who wrote that blastedly clever Lion-eating Poem), who heard it from Bertrand Russell (who cowrote that blastedly incomprehensible Principia Mathematica), that every morning Wittgenstein begins his work with hope, and every evening he ends in despair. If that’s not moody, I don’t know what is. Knew some good piano players, too, the Vienna Wittgensteins: Johannes Brahms, Gustav Mahler, Clara Schumann.”
Janosch A. Prufrock looked up.
“What Wittgenstein means by the limits of his language being the limits of his world is that words are just sounds, not the actual world they limitedly describe. It’s so simple but so difficult at the same time. I myself only get it in flashes now and then, and most times it makes no sense to me. I can’t explain it at all, and he could only barely explain it himself. What do you think of it?” finished Mr. Smee with a question to the pirates.