Tractarian Nonsense and Literary Language

Abstract In recent years, Wittgenstein scholarship has renewed its focus on the relationship between Wittgenstein, modernism, and the arts, with particular emphasis on the aesthetic and modernist value of his early work, the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Specifically, the paper aims to explore the aesthetic significance of Wittgenstein’s notion of nonsense ( Unsinn ) and how it can be applied to understanding literary language. The central thesis is that the interpretation of the relationship between nonsense and literary language, as well as its broader implications, shifts depending on the interpretive approach one adopts when reading the Tractatus. Three primary readings have emerged: the ineffability approach, where nonsense is a necessary byproduct of the attempt to speak about what lies beyond the limits of language; the resolute program, which translates the insights of the resolute reading into the aesthetic domain; and the grammatical approach, which considers ‘grammatical’ nonsense as having a fundamentally positive function—insofar as it creatively displays the criteria governing the grammar of our language. Each of these interpretations allows us to understand in different ways how the concept of nonsense can be transformed from a logical limit into an aesthetic resource, significantly affecting our understanding of literary practice. In particular, it will be the insights of the resolute program that will be favored to point to its possible developments in the literary field.