Search for Meaning

“Maybe this so-dreadfully desired, so elaborate real self was an absence of self, a freely-moving, flickering flame of knowledge and language, which should not be forced, or frozen, into any of the gestures required by the social touches and approaches through which most people discover themselves through others?” (101).

Ibsen’s obsession with his real self is in stark contrast with Nanson’s frequent proclamations of disinterest in himself. In one of his brief reflections on childhood, Nanson states that he was almost put off from his vocation by the urging of teachers who “assured me I would ‘discover myself’ by reading, that I would ‘understand myself’ by ‘identifying’” (117).  Instead, Nanson insists that true literary fanatics are looking for “anything but a mirror—for an escape route, for an expanding horizon” (117). After describing literature’s more fantastical incarnations, he later regards the function of literature in the search for meaning almost as an afterthought. It’s strange that Nanson poses the functions in this order; escape before meaning, “unimaginable monstrosities” before comprehension and order.

Ibsen and Nanson seem to embody two opposing methods in a similar separate search for meaning. While Ibsen’s desire is to be (and by extension, understand?) himself, he seems only to gain understanding and control over the fictional characters he manipulates in plays. In contrast, Nanson claims disinterest in himself and desires escape through literature, yet he finishes his research on DS with a more complete knowledge of his own life. This pattern of attainment of knowledge through distance from what we desire to judge is reminiscent of the quote Sarah discussed: “the human being is in the spiritual sense a long sighted creature” (100).