On Fosse's Nobel lecture: 'A Silent Language'
Jon Fosse is a Norwegian author and dramatist who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. To be honest, I am not deeply immersed in Nordic literature; I have only read some poems by Swedish and Danish authors. Yet, this is not an obstacle to delve into the works and thoughts of this writer. For the better, it turned out that he is a fabulous thinker when it comes to life.
Fosse argues that when he was a kid, he experienced moments of escapism in school. He was afraid of reading in public, so he asked his teachers to excuse him from reading in front of the class. Although fear took language from him, he started writing short stories, poems, and texts, etc. I quote him here: And I discovered that doing so, gave me a sense of safety, gave me the opposite of fear. In a way I found a place inside myself that was just mine, and from that place I could write what was just mine.
I discussed with @Vera Mont and @Bella fekete whether literature or the art of writing is an individualistic or collectivist act. I want to know what you think because, following Fosse's thoughts, it helped him in pure loneliness, giving him a sense of safety. He faced and overcame fear by starting to express himself in an individual language.
He also added: [i]Through the fear of reading aloud I entered the loneliness that is more or less
the life of a writing person and Ive stayed there ever since. And I learnt more, I learnt that, at least for me, there is a big difference between the spoken and the written language, or between the spoken and the literary language. The spoken language is often a monological communication of a message that something should be like this or like that... The literary language is never like that it doesnt inform, it is meaning rather than communication, it has its own existence. One thing is certain, I have never written to express myself, as they say, but rather to get away from myself[/i]
Do you agree that writing is a process of approaching only ourselves?
Fosse, then, states that writing is a solitary act, but sharing this art could depend on companionship. Delving more deeply into the act of loneliness, this author explores the sense of suicide. He states: There are many suicides in my writing. More than I like to think about. I have been afraid that I, in this way, may have contributed to legitimising suicide. So what touched me more than anything were those who candidly wrote that my writing had quite simply saved their lives.
This is indeed beautiful. However, I've discovered a new way to perceive suicide. When I read Mishima back in the day, I interpreted suicide as an artistic act of dying with honor, and this author genuinely romanticized it.
Suicide has always been a key component in art and literature, but a significant difference emerges between Western and Japanese culture. Fosse even felt uneasy about writing extensively on suicide, but he understood that it was a necessary topic to explore.
Do you think this is a better way to confront suicide and fear? I mean, thanks to the act of writing by yourself?
Fosse argues that when he was a kid, he experienced moments of escapism in school. He was afraid of reading in public, so he asked his teachers to excuse him from reading in front of the class. Although fear took language from him, he started writing short stories, poems, and texts, etc. I quote him here: And I discovered that doing so, gave me a sense of safety, gave me the opposite of fear. In a way I found a place inside myself that was just mine, and from that place I could write what was just mine.
I discussed with @Vera Mont and @Bella fekete whether literature or the art of writing is an individualistic or collectivist act. I want to know what you think because, following Fosse's thoughts, it helped him in pure loneliness, giving him a sense of safety. He faced and overcame fear by starting to express himself in an individual language.
He also added: [i]Through the fear of reading aloud I entered the loneliness that is more or less
the life of a writing person and Ive stayed there ever since. And I learnt more, I learnt that, at least for me, there is a big difference between the spoken and the written language, or between the spoken and the literary language. The spoken language is often a monological communication of a message that something should be like this or like that... The literary language is never like that it doesnt inform, it is meaning rather than communication, it has its own existence. One thing is certain, I have never written to express myself, as they say, but rather to get away from myself[/i]
Do you agree that writing is a process of approaching only ourselves?
Fosse, then, states that writing is a solitary act, but sharing this art could depend on companionship. Delving more deeply into the act of loneliness, this author explores the sense of suicide. He states: There are many suicides in my writing. More than I like to think about. I have been afraid that I, in this way, may have contributed to legitimising suicide. So what touched me more than anything were those who candidly wrote that my writing had quite simply saved their lives.
This is indeed beautiful. However, I've discovered a new way to perceive suicide. When I read Mishima back in the day, I interpreted suicide as an artistic act of dying with honor, and this author genuinely romanticized it.
Suicide has always been a key component in art and literature, but a significant difference emerges between Western and Japanese culture. Fosse even felt uneasy about writing extensively on suicide, but he understood that it was a necessary topic to explore.
Do you think this is a better way to confront suicide and fear? I mean, thanks to the act of writing by yourself?
Comments (123)
I'm just reading Fosse's Trilogy (in English translation). We should be clear on the context: Norwegians have mainly written in Bokmål, and Fosse is a pioneer in writing instead in Nynorsk, a largely spoken, and a minority-use, language. So what he has done is to make his version of a vernacular language into a literary language. To me, at least in Trilogy[i],[/i] this has the effect of making the language almost incantatory, and often deliberately repetitive in the way people normally speak, but contrary to the way people normally write.
So he has found a unique way of carving out a form of language that is familiar to others, yet unfamiliar as written-and-literary.
It seems to me that in prose and drama, Fosse is arguing that he tries to escape himself into a way of writing which nevertheless, in a Bakhtinian way, has meaning only in multi-voiced dialogue between the writer and the reader. (He specifically contrasts poetry as a form whose meaning tends to refer only to itself)
His approach is very much about fiction. I'm not convinced that what he says can refer back to the sort of writing we do here, on a forum, about philosophy, where we are attempting dialogue relating to a previously-known set of ideas and writings. But it holds to this extent, that as soon as one writes, an identity sprouts up on the page, me-as-writer, who uses words in ways that sometimes surprise me.
For the same or similar reason many people are drawing, painting, dancing, exercising, playing music, socializing etc. Some need professional help. I suppose Fosse discovered that writing is for him.
Mrs un writes to save her life, and writes from an unknown silent source. I do not try and save my life very much, but am content to spend it, day by day, dialogue by dialogue.
[quote=Fosse]So if I should use a metaphor for the action of writing, it has to be that of listening.[/quote]
This is an ancient tradition. One listens to the Muse, and allows Her to speak through one. "Invocation", it is called and that is everything that he is talking about in that speech, but doubtless not at all what his books and plays are about, but what they exemplify.
I would be careful not to attempt this type of wide ranging generalization. It's bound to be flawed induction. There is clearly many different factors which motivate writing, as there are many different forms of writing. Distinct motivating factors would produce distinct forms of writing, but the distinctions are not made clear. So, the different forms are not as separate and distinct as a critic might like them to be, or even represent them as being. So, as you describe with Foss, fiction crosses into philosophy. Such a crossing of genres is common, and fuels the attempt at wide ranging generalizations, which are very poor inductive conclusions
Plato was very critical of the way that narrative infiltrates philosophy. There appears to be no line of division between fact and fiction within the narrative. In Plato's time the moral lessons were passed down from generation to generation through narrative, without such a line between fact and fiction. The fact/fiction line was unimportant so long as the moral lesson could be taught. However, what Plato disliked was that the lack of such a line allowed for various different types of narratives, providing for degradation of the moral lesson.
In other words, teaching morals through narrative allows for "bad", or faulty morals to be taught through "good" narrative form. This can be seen in the content/form distinction employed by some critics. Good writing form is very pleasing and entertaining, but if the content is flawed, bad moral lessons may be taught through this good form.
Quoting javi2541997
This may be a very good example of such a degradation of the moral lesson. It may actually be morally wrong to glamourize, or romanticize, the suicidal artist. This could motivate the suicidal inclinations of individuals who might feed on the thought of looking to create a big splash, the flash in the pan, going out with a bang, or some misguided idea of being a hero.
I find today's constant trigger warnings about suicide in fiction to be appalling. Made by uneducated people, probably over-protecting parents who knows nothing of mental issues believing suppression of exposure to complex issues would in any way help people and children from handling such things and then ignoring the very reasons why bad things happen. It's anti-intellectual and stupid.
What Fosse is writing there is exactly what happens with fiction in relation to reality. No serious author is promoting suicide, not even Camus did so as he positioned it as the negative relation to his solution for the absurd. People who experience suicidal thoughts need to find good exploration of the concept they experience, it gives perspective and in almost all cases exposure to such ideas in fiction lead to calming such thoughts rather than triggering them. I've seen stuff in fiction that makes fun of suicide to the point of almost being tasteless and it still seem to help suicidal individuals overcome their negative thoughts.
We need more writing like his than we need overprotective uneducated anti-intellectuals stumbling around thinking they are helping other people.
We can each describe only how we see it. Fosse was discussing his own experience - and yet, it sounds to me that he was, in contradiction of his own words, attempting to communicate with other people.
For me, it is always an attempt to communicate - else, why would I learn the intricacies of a shared language?
Painting is somewhat the same way. Artists often say they're just doing it for themselves - and for some of them, like Frida Kahlo, their work is intensely self-reflective, self-involved. And yet they are eager to show the pictures in public. I believe we are all lonely; that we all hope to communicate and be understood.
Firstly, thank you for sharing your experience and thoughts on reading Fosse. I am now very interested in searching and buying a book of his. I am open to the genres he worked with: drama, playwright, or poetry.
On the other hand, he actually quoted Mikhail Bakhtin in his lecture. Basically, Fosse argues with the quoted author that expression has two voices: the voice of the person who speaks and the voice of the person who is spoken about. And he states: These often slide into each other in such a way that it is impossible to tell whose voice it is. I don't know to what extent he is referring to the writer-reader union, but how these play solo in his writings.
I wonder about this because he concluded that writing is a lonely practice, and that's how he felt during his life and how he faced fear or problems.
It is true that not taking suicide seriously is tasteless. But I think that in every expression of culture, suicide pops up, even unintentionally. This is why Fosse said that his works seemed to legitimize suicide when this was not his principal idea for the plot and characters. Although he was brave enough to have suicidal characters in his plays and poems, he feels, somehow, overwhelmed due to this state of mind. Facing death, and more specifically suicide, is not everyone's cup of tea. But, I guess it is important to write about this, not hide its existence, and try to interpret this act in different manners. I think the conclusion of Fosse is that, despite always using escapism, he never thought about suicide that deeply. A different perspective from Mishima who thought about suicide as an act of escaping from the rotting of Japan.
Quoting Christoffer
I agree.
Because it is part of the human experience. Death by sickness, death by old age, being murdered and committing suicide are constant outcomes in our human lives. It is impossible for us to ever rid ourselves of it, regardless of losing all knowledge in the world and starting over. Immortality is the only redeemer to these concepts, but even with that, and maybe even more so, suicide will still exist as a concept in need of exploration for the sake of sanity.
Otherwise it's like constantly telling children up into their adult life that Santa Claus is real because you cannot accept that they will grow past innocence and eventually die. Even if we become immortal beings incapable of dying and a culture forms out of that in which death has no meaning or existence, the end point of the universe, heat death and destruction of reality would surely still end us, thus making death a concept that still exist even in absolute immortality.
And in our modern times all of society is infected by binary structures of thinking and ideologies.
It is quite prevalent - and therefore, I suppose, a subject of discussion - in the northern latitudes. Why? Climate may factor in, culture and a historically fatalistic disposition? It has always figured in the literature, even oral tradition of self-sacrifice and self-destruction.
In North America, the Protestant tradition absolutely forbids it, and that has influenced the legal system and induced a culture of dread and denunciation regarding all forms of suicide, for any reason. Idealistic North Americans, in any case, are far more prone to denial, even of what is staring them directly in the face, than are the more realistic and pragmatic North Europeans.
Then, it is understandable how some authors incorporate suicide or suicidal characters. It is natural and even more realistic than some other fictional environments, plots, dialogues, etc. Stating this doesn't endorse actual suicide but provides another perspective in an artistic way. At least, a portrayal of suicide in a story can be more relatable than a plot where characters go to Mars and come back.
I agree.
Quoting Vera Mont
I remember debating about this a few years ago. Even ChatGPT argues that suicide is universally frowned upon and doesn't distinguish among cultures, something that I fully disagree with.
Quoting Vera Mont
Do you think that idealistic North Americans tend to avoid suicide rather than romanticize about it?
And writing fiction is also about metaphors and allegories, and in this we turn to archetypes and the exploration of the extreme ends of experience and perception of reality of the human condition. So suicidal characters in good writing transcends just being characters in the plot, they aren't just devices or causes for dramatic tensions or tragedy, but a communication of ideas that exist on the fringes of our experiences as people and individuals in and beyond society.
Quoting javi2541997
What suicide is culturally, directly or indirectly, seem to be regarded as an act of rebellion against everyone's existential struggles. When everyone else is suffering through the different major acts in life, suffering through the hard times, then someone taking their own life is considered an act against them, not the one committing the act. This is probably why it is frowned upon. And it also seems that people are utterly terrified that they would start to be seduced by the idea, that they would somehow get infected by the thought and do it to themselves.
It's probably why some religions, primarily the Catholic church view the act as something to be punished by blocking you from getting into heaven. You cannot cheat your way into heaven, you need to be tested in life. It would bypass a key part of the whole package; that your life is judged and the judgement decides where you end up in the afterlife. So if you kill yourself, you would essentially bypass a lot of years that would risk you not getting into heaven. This is a major problem for a church that wants to communicate that the afterlife is true and that their doctrine is valid truth.
But I think the main part is that suicide is primarily a failure of society and the people around the person committing suicide. And people cannot cope with the fact that they were partly responsible for failing to help that person. And they cannot cope with questioning society for pushing people to such thoughts. Instead, we frown upon it, we try to ignore the issue, we create religious doctrine around it and we blame the people doing it.
In my perspective, it's one of the clearest indications of how naive and mentally lazy the majority of society is. Turn away from the subject, ignore it, ban anything related to it, stop talking about it. In many people's eyes it's worse than murder, because there's no perpetrator in the same way as with murder. The murderer and the victim are one and the same and the victim's rationale behind the act can be empathized with and people are really bad at empathy when it comes to violent concepts and conflicts.
It's maybe a reminder of their own fragility, that it hints at a clarity of thought underneath all the noise that keeps them occupied in life. They are terrified of dipping their toes into such existential clarity because "what if" they come to the same conclusions as the one committing suicide?
And that's why things like this NEED to exist in fiction and discussions in society. In order to improve society's ability to find a place of comfort for people who fall into the idea of giving up. That means also questioning everything about life, how we live a good life in general, what meaning we create for ourselves. There's no wonder that suicide rates go up when we live in a neoliberal free market clusterfuck of a Baudrillardian nightmare. As long as people ignore dissecting and deconstructing this modern life, we will keep seeing people take their own lives.
Without question! They romanticize courage, ingenuity, physical prowess, overcoming adversity, survival against all odds, victory in single combat and battle. They're okay with death in any kind of battle from street gangs to war, while banning assisted suicide for sick old people. They romanticize things like the Alamo - glossing over the fact that it was pointless mass suicide. But they smuggled in the coffins of soldiers killed in Iraq and never publicize the suicide rate in their own country and refuse to deal with the causes for it, just as they refuse to deal with the daily public shootings. Americans are so steeped in contradiction, they deny the very existence of objective reality.
Yes, exactly. I tried to explain this as well, and I think that's what Fosse is referring to.
Quoting Christoffer
I fully agree with this. There have even been some political and organizational campaigns on this issue. Japan has usually set the highest standards for avoiding suicide, considering this act as an offense. Although the rates go up and down, they remain at 'high' numbers, with more than 800 suicidal persons per year. Initially, I thought this was a cultural phenomenon, but the government there expresses concern about the numbers. Well, this problem has reached Europe too, with citizens deciding to end their lives. Some see ending life as suitable when it is not worth living, rather than continuing until death 'approaches us' due to age or sickness.
Quoting Christoffer
Is it a failure of society rather than the sloppiness of the state? While citizens who die from terrorism or gender violence are recognized as failures of the state, those who die by suicide are not given the same status. This surely happens because of the significant influence of religion in the state over centuries. A suicidal person tends to be considered as 'sick,' a mad person. Generally, the only backup is to provide pills to people with suicidal thoughts, creating an atmosphere of perpetual disorder with reality, instead of sitting down and listening to what is going on with this person.
Furthermore, I believe that we should consider a new approach to speaking and interpreting death. This is something that we will all experience sooner or later, but we often sweep it under the rug.
If we are not able to speak about death freely, we will continue to reject the existence of suicide.
Making it illegal is fruitless for most people committing suicide. They give up on life, they give up on everything, making it illegal only put more pressure on them. They need guidance, help and better understanding from people around them. One thing to do is to instead stop making villains out of them, stop the sigma around the subject and make it a non-issue to talk openly about suicidal thoughts. having it so that it is shameful to be suicidal makes them hide everything, hide their depression, sorrow, their thoughts and all.
While therapy has done wonders in our modern era, one problem of it is akin to the problem of us not handling the care of our dead ones ourselves. We have outsourced these things. We let a hospital or funeral agency take care of our dead, we do not take care of their bodies and bury them or do rituals anymore than what is necessary... show up to the funeral, eat cake, go home.
So therapy is good as it can be a place away from people around us to deal with issues maybe related to them, but it has also become an outsourcing of all difficult topics that friends, family, loved ones should be part of helping with. The common reply from those who lost someone who took their own life is a cry about how they never opened up to them. But how could they when we treat mental issues as something outsourced to a therapist while shunning any difficult topics in day to day discussions. Even though the reaction might seem harsh, I almost laugh every time someone cries out that their friend who took their life never opened up about their issues, because the irony of it all has went over everyone's head so hard people should have gotten bald.
Quoting javi2541997
Culture is more than the composition of state and people.
Quoting javi2541997
It's important however to differentiate between euthanasia and suicide. If one really do suffer in a way that cannot be fixed or helped without just prolonging the suffering, I see no reason for these people to have to suffer just because people cannot cope with the idea of their death. The campaigns against euthanasia just points out how immature and childish society behaves around the topic of death.
Quoting javi2541997
It's both, society is the general culture of the people and their relation to the suicidal person. It's about how we culturally handle these topics, and how we talk and act around them. State has more to do with the result of culture, what laws will the society demand from the politicians to help mitigate the issue. It needs to start with the people in society growing up on the topic before the state starts to make changes that help people. As mentioned, making it illegal is a naive move against suicide rates. It may make people less prone to it if they know their family will suffer economically, but as mentioned, that only put more pressure on them and is just damaging society further, maybe even creating more people with suicidal thoughts as a result of criminalize the ones who need help the most.
We can call suicidal people sick, but I would call them a symptom of a sickness in society. As long as we tend to hold onto a culture that form depression and suicidal thoughts in some individuals, we are keeping the sickness alive.
I don't know to what extent facing death, not only our own but that of our loved ones, will survive in the next generations. We are currently living in a period of time where people care very little about everything. There are no initiatives to do much, and the sense of comradeship has been lost. Instead of being an individualistic society, it is a selfish one. We can be lonely and individual yet show some affection to others when they are approaching death; it is not that difficult to do. Sadly, most people don't consider mental health and its issues a big deal; they just move on, trying to fill their lives with basic needs: work, watching TV, sleep, etc. But not sitting down and realizing whether we are happy or not, or if we want to live or die, etc.
We are not ready to talk and debate about death, nor suicide. Most of the younger generation misunderstands those concepts and tends to overreact or overuse them. For example, they may feel depressed or overwhelmed because the landlord is raising the leasing fees.
This attitude only leads to not treating depression and suicidal thoughts seriously. I doubt that a person would take their own life just because their income is low, but it is more plausible if they consider this option when they don't see any projects in their lives, etc.
But, do you know what is the worst? We have established a sense that not having a purpose for living is normal because Millennials are screwed, etc.
Quoting javi2541997
There's a lot of nonsense said about writing. I've known a number of successful writers and I think it's not unusual for people to be drawn to writing because it is solitary and some people who write may be compelled to write to work through anxiety or deal with trauma. This is Alain de Botton's view. But in the end there are likely to be as many reasons for writing as there are styles and genres. Most people seem to write for themselves and an audience of readers they hope to acquire.
Reasons for suicide are similarly diverse. Some people are just fed up with living. Some people are unwell. Some are unable to deal with trauma. Some are reacting to situational factors. Suicide is one word for many situations.
Quoting javi2541997
I know quite a few Millennials. While it is pretty easy to complain and find fault in life, the ones I know are busy being active in the world - working or volunteering and they seem far more hopeful and motivated than we were at that age.
Although the reasons for suicide can be diverse, do you agree it is usually based on escapism as a common factor? Notice that I debate about this side because it is what I interpreted from reading Fosse's lecture.
Quoting Tom Storm
I thought about this after reading the attachment. I mean it is true that writing is individualistic, but it is needed to acquire some feedback. I would not say 'audience' because I would sound arrogant. Fosse, himself, admits that he received very poor comments and reviews on his works, but he never changed the idea of keeping writing in what he believed was the best technique: loneliness and self.
I wouldn't use that word. For some suicide is to punish others. For others it is a grand gesture. For others still the goal is to end suffering (however that might look). I think escape is too nebulous a term.
Quoting javi2541997
I would think most write for an audience and to be understood. Sure, some arrogant writers might think that the average person is incapable of understanding their great subversive thoughts and may expect a small audience of cognoscenti. Others write for the money - which means a large audience. If you are not writing to be read by others you are keeping a journal. :wink:
I was trying to be careful not to provoke sensitivities, so most likely I was not actually doing either of those two. I was just trying to find a way to bring some sort of objectivity to bear on a very subjective issue.
The point being that this question you ask, "Do you agree that writing is a process of approaching only ourselves?" is sort of paradoxical in nature. If writing was only about approaching oneself, then each individual's reasons for writing would be just as unique as that person is, the writing being solely a reflection of the person. But then the generalization which produces that statement, that writing is only about approaching oneself, would be false, because some individuals would have reasons other than approaching oneself for writing, and the writing would reflect this.
Writing ought not be portrayed as essentially different from any other art form. And like any art form, the reason why any individual artist partakes in the art that one actually does partake in, is particular to the artist. So your question about whether this specific art form, writing, can be portrayed as a relationship with oneself, could at best, only be partially answered, as it would be more true for some, and less true for others.
It could be somewhat paradoxical. Nevertheless, I think Fosse makes a good distinction: while writing is an individual process, sharing this art depends on companionship. This statement makes me reflect deeply on myself, even right now, as I am answering you.
Lastly, literature has its own language, and it is very different from silence or a shout. I think this is why it is important to highlight how some writers, like Fosse, were able to confront suicide in the process of writing but may not be capable of going to a therapist and talking about it.
This highlights some interesting quirks of human nature in general. The psychologist whose own relationships are out of control. The actor who has social phobia. The genius who can't manage their own life. The writer who can't communicate. I've met several iterations of most of these over the decades. People are contradictions.
I usually considered contradictions as negative behavior, but after debating in this discussion, I think I am embracing a different idea. Being contradictory in some terms can't be that bad, and I sometimes confused this term with hypocrisy, which are not even related.
What is interesting about these quirks is that they arouse our talents in different fields.
I think we all are a bit 'weird' as Fosse considered himself when he was a kid, and then when he started his writer career. Because it is contradictory to have a fear of speaking in public, but at the same time, writing stories or plays.
Yes, I think that's right.
Personally I love contradictions and imperfections - almost a form of wabi-sabi - and delightful for similar reasons to me.
Having a fear or inability in some aspect of your chosen field may be common. I worked with actors some years ago and most were pretty shy and fearful of public speaking. Comedians are often sour and glum. Etc.
When they came to you, what were they asking or specifically seeking? Were they in search of safety as Fosse found in writing?
Although I agree with writing can benefit the introverted, I don't know to what extent it is a social activity. Yes, a writer needs a public, and this is what, among other aspects, he is looking for. But the receptors can disappoint the writer's desires. This actually happened with some other artists such as Kurt Cobain, for instance.
On your advice, I've read the speech, and will provide some suggestions of interpretation for you. To begin with, and in general the speech is loaded with ideas which are not well presented. One could say there's abundant content with poor form. However, you should keep in mind that this piece of writing is meant as a speech, therefore it is principally a spoken act of language, rather than a written act of language, so it demonstrates that difference between the two, where content rather than form is usually more important to spoken language, and form over content is usually more important to written language.
The paradox I referred to is well expressed at the bottom of page two.
"One thing is certain, I have never written to express myself, as they say, but
rather to get away from myself."
The writing act as explained by Fosse can be seen as a retreat into oneself. So he's describing a way of hiding from himself within himself. It's so paradoxical, that we must really question his form of presentation. To "express myself" implies others, whom I express myself to. We cannot truly escape the reality of others, so this reality, "others" must be included into this statement. Therefore, what I suggest is really meant by Fosse with this statement, in order that we avoid the paradox of hiding from oneself within oneself, is 'to get away from others'.
This allows us to make sense of that statement, and also put the division between spoken language and written language which he speaks of into a better context. The spoken language provides a communion with others, while the writing provides a communion with oneself. It cannot be described as "to get away from myself", because despite the fact that it might allow me to relate to myself as if I am another, like I might be communicating with myself as another person, allowing myself to be other than myself, I am not really getting away from myself by hiding within myself, rather I am getting to know myself even better.
This act, of getting to know myself better, I think is essential to any artist. It is how the artist comes to know one's own capacities, skills, inclinations, ambitions, etc.. Notice how he describes moving away from music to focus on writing. There is also another essential feature of artistry which he describes quite well, and this is the process of being recognized by others, which produces what is known as success.
The existence of "others" is paramount to success. The artist turns inward, hiding from others within oneself, as I described above, and this is well explained by Fosse with his innate fear of public speaking, originating as the fear of reading out loud. The fear is centered on reading the words of others, probably because he does not necessarily know those words which originate from others, and would mispronounce them or something like that, causing great embarrassment. So the fear is based in the possibility of misrepresenting what is wanted by others. Therefore Fosse retreats into himself, to find and do what he better knows is wanted, wanted by himself.
Success, however, has the prerequisite of providing for others, what they want. Now there is a fine line of balance for the artist to walk. You can tell me what you want, and I can give that to you, hopefully resulting in my success, or, I can show you want you want, by giving it to you, thereby influencing you to want what I have to offer. Notice that the latter is what provides real success for the artist because it allows the artist to maintain the internal relation with oneself, as knowing what is wanted, without succumbing to the desires of others. But of course, these are idealistic representations, and the artist will always be "corrupted" to some extent by the desires of others.
This process which I call corruption, he describes as turning toward writing drama. It is a paid job, where he must write the form of material which he is paid for. His form is then very much restricted. However, he describes a way of retaliation, what he calls "the silent speech", where the content, imagination, is allowed to overpower the form. This is an example of what I referred to as the artist showing the audience what they want, and giving it to them, rather than having them tell you what they want. That amounts to the success of an idiomatic form.
Notice how he describes using that technique when he goes back to writing novels like "Septology". Also notice how this "corruption" of the artist, when he is paid to write dramas, becomes very evident as a negative feature, when he goes back to writing prose. " And during the writing process of that novel, I experienced some of my happiest moments as a writer...". At this point he has freed himself from the formal restrictions which he had forced upon himself by the need to be financially successful.
However, he also describes how writing dramas had provided him with a very important, positive lesson. That is that he got to observe his own plays, allowing him to, in a way, see himself as others see him. I believe that this is an extremely important aspect of how an artist relates to success. Notice at the beginning he is very adamant that he is not expressing himself. But then he has to realize the reality of the situation is that if he has any degree of success, others inevitably will see him as expressing himself. This is when he must realize that he has to play to the audience, and actually see himself as expressing himself, otherwise he would be forever locked within the paradox, never being able to relate to his own success.
Good luck with that javi. I hope it gives you at least something to chew on. The speech is jammed full of "stuff", as I said abundant content, and the lack of form leaves interpretation wide open. The chronological order appears as the principal logical form, so it is sort of an expression of a life of learning.
Consider the fine line between simply giving the audience what they've said they wanted, and showing the audience what they want, and giving that to them, which I described above. It's a very delicate balance, which destroys the artistry, and perhaps even the artist, if taken too far one way or the other.
To the extent that one can experience social life by writing about it. A writer constructs, discovers, reconstructs and in some sense participates with the characters that he or she writes about. Also when writing about oneself.
:smile:
That urge, succeeds where other means fail in the ascription of a dilettantes paradox,
before daring to even touch it, glance back while breaking the continuation implicit within the spectrum of ambiguous designation.
I am back again. Thank you for reading the lecture.
I think Fosse meant to be contradictory, actually. He expressed how this feeling was a part not only of his writing process but also of growing as a person. Everything started when he was a kid. He was not able to read facing a public, but he started to write some poems or short stories at home. He felt conflicted about this mindset, but I don't know if he ever felt paradoxical. I think the line between paradoxical and contradictory is blurred here.
On the other hand, you explained very well the difference between spoken and written language. It is obvious that the main idea is that Fosse feels more comfortable with the latter, and he even considered it as a completely different way of expressing oneself.
The existence of 'others,' as Fosse stated and you also pointed out, is basic for literature. Fosse argues here that although literature is a lonely act, its sharing depends on others, and he felt here contradictory with himself again but he never gave up on the idea that he is a lonely person, so he is not really aware to what extent 'we' (the readers) are part of his life. He even states: Through the fear of reading aloud I entered the loneliness that is more or less the life of a writing person and Ive stayed there ever since.
It is interesting how you pointed out writing drama as corruption because it is a paid job, and Fosse was not free in this expression of literature. However, he surprisingly entered in a new dimension which he was not very confidence in the beginning. Yes, drama needs dialogues, and it is out from the written language which he always rooted for. Nevertheless, he also found a way to feel comfortable with writing drama- as you also pointed out - and this was with the use of 'pause' in his works. Fosse argues that this is how he approaches to silence in a spoken language art as drama, and it is indeed the most important word in his experiences of theatre plays.
Lastly, I still wonder why he feels worried about writing on suicide. He admitted that his works have many suicidal characters... I think I will discover it when I start to read his books! :smile:
Absolutely. But I think this still is an individual and lonely act; it does not lead us to construct social connections. With my plot and my characters, only I exist, but this self-awareness seems to need some connection with the rest, and this is why Fosse speaks about sharing culture.
I agree, and would like to add that the nature of our languages is such that it connects its users with what the words or its uses refer to. Language is based on shared labor, causal constrains and such, not whether an individual user happens to be alone.
Hmm... are you suggesting that language exists because we interact with each other? And, consequently, it can't exist if we express ourselves in loneliness. On the other hand, it is interesting how you express that language has causality. I would like and appreciate it if you could elaborate on this.
What I called "corruption" is a part of the way that a relation between the artist and the "others" is established, and I think it is a necessary part of all art forms. Generally, there is a system where the art is delivered to the public, and the system varies by art form and society. In the music industry for example, there is the record companies. In Fosse's case there was what he called a publicly funded initiative to support Norwegian drama.
The system takes what is desired by others and impresses it onto the artist. Basically it tells the artists that if they want to be financially successful they need to follow the rules of the system. In Fosse's case the rule was to produce drama. Many artists are fiercely independent and refuse to succumb to the "corruption" of the system. However, many artists, like Fosse, are capable of striking a balance between what is wanted by the others (the rules of the system), and the true freedom and independence of oneself, the individual, to create freely as one desires. Your example of Kurt Cobaine may be a case of imbalance.
This balance is what I see as the context of Fosse's "silent language". Notice that I called it a retaliation, and this is because many artists who feel unduly constrained by the rules of the system will find a loop hole, or a secret way within their own mind of getting around the rules or making fun of them, ridiculing the system, or whatever, within the art itself. That's how I see "the pause" which he used.
The pause allows the others (audience) to use one's own imagination, free from the influence of the rules implied by words, to develop a separate understanding of the meaning or intent of the author. So in this sense it is a communication without words. Notice also, that in drama there is acting as well as speaking, which is already a sort of communication without the requirement of words, so I think Fosse borrowed from this reality of drama to extend this idea of what is said by the author (or more appropriately what is shown, "to express the unsayable"), with out the use of words. It is the meaning conveyed which is not actually said by the words.
In his speech he develops this a bit further, as "the totality of a work". I think of this as what is implied by the work, as separate from what is explicit to the work. In my first reply to the op, this is presented as "the moral" of the story. We commonly use that expression "the moral of the story" to refer to a lesson learned from the writing which is not explicitly written by the author, it is somehow implied by the story. But "implied" here is not used in the sense of any formal logic, so interpretations of "the moral" may vary greatly. There is no explicit words to get at what the author intended as "the moral", but the writing is arranged in such a way as to indicate that the author intends some sort of secret or "silent" message, so we must conclude that the author intends some sort of hidden message.
In different forms of writing, the silent message varies from being extremely obvious, such that the audience cam easily agree on the meaning of "the moral", to being very veiled and obscure. Fosse gives an example of "Septology" in the relation of one Asle to the other Asle, and the hidden message one could conclude concerning the "now" of time. (I'm not familiar with the writing.)
It is in this context that I approach what he says at the end of the speech, concerning suicide. He says that there are many suicides in his books. But we must take these representations as part of what is explicit. However, he seems to have some fear of the possibility that some people could interpret the implicit part, the hidden or silent part, as legitimizing suicide. Notice though, that he does not express guilt, so this was never his intention, never the hidden message he desired to convey, so such interpretations of the silent part would be faulty. Furthermore, he states that numerous people have expressed to him the opposite, that his writings have saved there lives, so I think that what he says through the silent part, the not saying, is meant to guide people away from suicide rather than toward it.
Are you sure that he does not feel guilt? He expressed in his lecture that he actually received correspondence from readers or 'fans' who thanked him for preventing suicide. He felt guilty because he accepted suicide in his writings. Thus, he feels comfortable or safe speaking about this taboo through his writings. As much as he faced the fear of speaking in public thanks to writing, he faced suicide as well. Maybe he thought that due to his acceptance of suicide or suicidal characters, many readers would question whether he actually legitimizes this or not. To be honest, I think he does, but he doesn't want to go further because Fosse is not confident enough about whether people understand him or not.
I mean that is his real concern.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I agree.
But I wonder if Fosse wanted to make fun of the system or perhaps find a way of feeling safe with himself. Remember that his lecture started by admitting that since he was a kid, he always had to face different challenges, with fear included in all of them. Fosse felt a bit intimidated by writing drama - despite it being necessary for earning an income - because he had to switch from written language to spoken language. He didn't feel confident, but this was one of his main successes as a writer paradoxically. This is why he said that he found a way to use silent language in drama, the pause. When Fosse learned that this could be included in the plays, he started to see drama in a different way. He was back to written language and silent expressions.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I bought the first book of the septology. I will be in touch with you, and I promise I will share relevant fragments of the work in this thread.
---------------------------
I agree with the rest of the paragraphs of your post.
In the case of Fosse's speech one might want to say something about the nature of metaphors as he describes (metaphorically) his experience of writing as if sitting in a place inside himself. He refers to the poet Hauge who (metaphorically) compares being a writer to being a child building leaf huts in the forest where the writer sits feeling safe. Talk of places and meanings inside the mind is fairly common in the arts, especially in the romantic and modern traditions.
The metaphorical meaning of a word is causally constrained by some property that its literal meaning has. For example, the inside of a literal hut is detached from its outside, and that's a property it shares with the metaphorical hut in the mind of a writer. Arguably there is no hut inside Fosse's head, yet it is a useful way for him to describe how he experiences writing.
Writers withdraw from busy social activities in order to think, observe, and write, and one's use of language might then, perhaps, acquire a "silent" or "listening" quality. To find out whether there is such a quality, or whether the description is meaningful is not obvious to me, but it seems to be a meaningful description for Fosse as he titled his speech 'A Silent Language'.
Yes, well explained. I like this example.
Quoting jkop
I don't believe it was obvious for Fosse either. It wasn't easy for him to incorporate silence and pauses into his writings. I think this became a semantic or reference that he gradually experienced over the years, reinforcing what he believed from the beginning, back when he was a child: that written language is safer than spoken language because he can convey silences. This technique was developed through his dramatic experiences, particularly through the use of pauses.
If he feels comfortable in it, then he does not feel guilt. Feeling guilt is a matter of knowing oneself to have done wrong and it is an uneasy feeling. When he says that fans thanked him, this is confirmation that he does not feel that he has done wrong. Therefore he is expressing that he does not feel guilt.
Whether he is being truthful in this expression is another question. The silent, hidden message, is most often not explained by the author, even when questioned in retrospect. Perhaps at some point in his life he actual wrote with the intent of conveying a silent meaning which legitimized suicide, and that could be an intended hidden message somewhere in his work, which he afterwards felt guilty about. Then he might be inclined to turn to the "thanks" from his fans, to overcome that feeling of guilt, justifying that portrayal of suicide as not a wrongful act, through some sort of rationalization. But I do not presently think there is a need for such speculation.
Quoting javi2541997
I don't think it's a matter of whether people understand him or not, the silent language does not work this way. The silent language provides the conditions for the reader to understand oneself. So the hidden message is intentionally vague, and perhaps I ought not even call it a "message". It is often an intentional ambiguity so that there is nothing specific intended by the author, other than to give the reader a chance to think about possibilities. Notice the use of the "pause", and how the silence brings one to "God's voice", God's voice coming from somewhere other than the spoken words of the play.
So the silent language, rather than confining the reader to the restrictions of conventional meaning of words, allows the reader freedom of interpretation. In a way it transfers the artistic license of the author to the reader. I think this is what is commonly known as reading between the lines. Careful attention to how you read between the lines helps to reveal much about your own mind. So for example, if we gave the same piece of prose, with significant silent language, to a number of different people, and a psychologist asked each one of them what they got from it, the psychologist would be able to say a fair bit about the different people, by comparing the different interpretations.
That's why I say it's not a matter of whether people understand him or not. When it comes to the silent language it's a matter of understanding "silent language" in general. When you understand that it works with possible meaning rather than actual meaning, you can start to see how powerful it is in its capacity to persuade people. The meaning comes from somewhere other than the words of the author. God? Maybe. Consider for example, Donald Trump as an artist of the silent language. He didn't actually tell those people to storm the palace, yet the silent language told them that it had to be done.
But now we approach speech, and spoken language, and that's where the silent language inheres. and is derived from. The unspoken, implied meaning is an essential part of spoken language. The spoken language evolved for efficiency in the moment, so the majority of what is said is not actually said, to make things quick and easy. The written language is formal and true unequivocal relations between symbol and meaning is essential to it. So it is this process, whereby the thinker who is naturally inclined to use true symbolic unequivocal relations, so as not to mislead oneself, turns to the outside world, "the others", where the silent aspect of language rules the use of language, that inspires the writer to incorporate the tricks of the silent language into the writing, slipping away from the true unequivocal meanings.
Quoting javi2541997
I would suggest, and this is pure speculation, that when he was asked to write plays, he was immediately confronted with what was until that point, a personal problem, the issue of the difference between spoken and written language. He knew of this difference, from childhood, and retreated into himself, and the world of written language rather than confront the problems he had with spoken language. (As an aside, Dick Feynman in his book "Surely You're joking, Mr. Feynman!" describes how at a young age he was uninterested in school, but very interested in electronics, electromagnetism, mathematics, etc.. He came up with his own symbols for things, and when he went to university, he had to learn conventional symbols for things he had already symbolized in his own language.)
I propose that when Fosse was asked to write drama he saw the need to confront the difference head on, in order that he could proceed into the public sphere. This is when he discovered the silent aspect of language, which he was not familiar with, because he was immersed in writing only. Then he found the means for incorporating it into the writing. And this is an essential aspect of all drama, because if it is simply written material, it's very dry and boring. So the author needs to know what it is about spoken language, which separates it from written language, and bring this into the writing of the drama in order to make it entertaining. All sorts of different tools may be employed, actions, body language, even the pause.
Quoting jkop
The "metaphorical" meaning is one type of implied, hidden, or silent meaning, meaning not spoken by the words. But metaphor is only the tip of the iceberg here. Since the silent language is essentially possibilities, as I explain above, there is no limit to the types of silent meaning which an author might employ. So the silent language opens up a huge realm of possibilities to the author, by allowing the author an entrance into the minds of the readers by finding a way to employ those minds for the development of meaning, rather than relying solely on one's own mind.
I think I expressed myself incorrectly. I attempted to explain that Fossethis is speculation because I haven't read anything from himdidn't feel comfortable with having suicidal characters. This is why he admitted that he used this issue so much that it seems he legitimized suicide. He was afraid of how the readers would perceive him or his writings. Just as Fosse had a fear of speaking in public, maybe he also had a fear of addressing suicide. We have to keep in mind that he writes to run away from himself... I guess this is why he addressed suicide in his writings, to confront this problem.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Although I agree with you on the point that silence is not about whether the readers understand or not, I think he actually cared about it. He states on page number six: 'My first books were quite poorly reviewed, but I decided not to listen to the critics. I should just trust myself, yes, stick to my writing.'
If Fosse considered the reviews as 'poor,' then he cared about whether people were following his writing path or not. He trusted himself and decided to keep writing in the style he was comfortable with. Yet, the contradiction came later in his life when he was offered to write drama. He also says:'I wrote novels and poetry and had no desire to write for theatre, but in time I did it because as part of a publicly funded initiative to write more new Norwegian drama I was offered what was, to me, a good sum of money to write the opening scene of a play, and ended up writing a whole play, my first and still most performed play, Someone Is Going to Come.'
I wonder what Fosse considered a 'poor' or 'poorly reviewed' writer.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Really? I personally think it is quite the opposite. Fosse knew how to use silence in written language, and he was comfortable using it in his novels despite receiving criticism. When he was asked to write plays, he hesitated at first because this is an art of spoken language, and he was not sure how to introduce silence there. Later on, he discovered the power and importance of 'pauses' during the plays. Since then, he started to see theatre in different ways and understood that silent language could have a place in plays as well.
It is a false distinction. Assuming one can exist with the complete absence of the other is clearly just that, an assumption. One that has little to no ground to hold it up once you analysis what is actually being suggested.
Either it is not a 'false' distinction, nor can one exist without the other. Writing is an individualistic (or lonely, as Fosse states) act because it is a written language where the writer expresses their fears and concerns, and it is even a refuge for exposing oneself publicly. But, paradoxically, once the writing is done, it needs reception. Here is where Fosse states that when his writings end up being read by the public, it is sharing the culture, but not the act of writing itself...
You can agree or not with him, absolutely. But you can't say it is a 'false' distinction, because it's not.
Wow, I think Fosse's lecture goes beyond just semantics...
We cannot act outside of human social interactions. On a superficial level we can state that we do not write something for anyone but by stating so we do actually appreciate that we usually do and therefore cannot escape that expressing anything is a reaching-out into the world not some isolated incident.
See what I mean?
Yes, I see what you mean now.
Quoting I like sushi
I agree, and I like that.
Quoting I like sushi
This is the main cause we are debating. It is not clear to me to what extent we are dependent on social interactions. Fosse stated that, thanks to writing, he faced social problems such as speaking publicly.
Although he always (and still) considered the act of writing and being a novelist as solitary behavior, he admitted that his works had to be shared somehow. Yet, on this point, he states two different views:
1. The act of writing is solitary because it is based on the loneliness of the writer; 2. But the act of sharing this culture is common.
Well, yes, he felt uncomfortable, but notice that this is referred to in the past tense. "I have been afraid that I, in this way, may have contributed to legitimising suicide." Then he goes on to say that he has been very touched by those who have said that he saved their lives. Therefore I think he had possibly felt some guilt, at some time, but has now vindicated himself.
Keep in mind also, that the silent message is not an unambiguous message. It is intended that the meaning come from somewhere other than the explicit meaning of the author's words, and this must be the reader's own mind. So if a reader thinks that suicide is being promoted through the use of the silent language, this is not necessarily the author's intention. And if the author's intent is to leave the subject ambiguous, thus allowing that one reader might see reason to move toward suicide, while another might be moved away from it, the author could feel as Fosse described.
Quoting javi2541997
Actually, I think he is saying exactly the opposite of what you conclude. He looked at some reviews by the critics, judged them as poor reviews, perhaps as complete misunderstanding, then he decided to continue writing regardless of the critics. Therefore we can conclude that he did not care "whether people were following his writing path or not". He decided to continue writing in the style that he had been, with complete disregard for what other people may derive from the writing.
Again, I think i's important to notice the past tense of these reflections on his life, making chronological order important. At that early point in his writing career he decided not to care about what other people said about his writing, thus allowing him to continue on, in his unique style. To be concerned about what others think, allowing this to influence one's work, is what I described as the corruption of the artistry. So he strongly resisted this in his early stages, which allowed him to produce a unique and original style, before he allowed corruption in the form being influenced by money to write drama.
Also consider that at some point in reflection he got concerned that he might have sent the wrong message concerning suicide. This is a clear indication that he became concerned about what others thought about his writing. But again, it's post hoc, he developed this concern much later, looking back in reflection, at the works he wrote earlier. This post hoc reflection is a big part of the "companionship" he described. He learned to look at his work, as a part of the audience, see it from that perspective, giving him an escape from the escape (the original escape being the supposed loneliness of writing), providing him a place in the community, and "a great sense of happiness and security". However, he has clearly produced a separation between the post hoc reflections which would "corrupt" his writings, and his act of writing which must remain prior to, and motivated by, what is prior to this.
Quoting javi2541997
Using silence, and using the silent language are two different things. I don't know Fosse's writing so I really cannot comment on his use of silence in his early work, but I think we need to distinguish between the use of silence in general, and the use of the silent language. One can use the image of silence within a piece of work, to convey a particular idea, and this would be a very intentionally directed, and meaningful image being produced. The silent language is somewhat different because it employs ambiguity to work with possibility, allowing the audience freedom to think and imagine these possibilities. So the silence is essentially ambiguous.
Fosse, describes his earlier writings as completely self-centered, therefore we cannot consider that he would think about how others would interpret himself. Thinking about how others see me is the corruption to the artistry. The artistic escape from that goes all the way back to his fear of reading aloud which was the original motivator of the art, to do something free from the influence of what others might think about me. So we ought not consider any use of silence here as being directed at a potential audience, or else we are making his early writings into speaking, and criticizing him on the basis that his work was corrupt from the outset. And that is exactly what he is saying that we need to avoid in order to truly understand his writing style.
Of course no author is going to admit to one's own original sin, so i would conclude that you are most likely correct here, and his use of silence as a form of what I earlier called "retaliation" toward any potential reader, goes right back to his most original writings.
We are pattern seeking creatures, and normally strive to make the most charitable interpretations of what there is to interpret, also when there is nothing to interpret but silence. But when less is said, our interpretations become more susceptible to whatever the context suggests. In this sense the meanings are not developed by the readers' minds but a context such as a romantic or modern tradition in which meanings are assumed to be hidden all over and in our minds.
Every single extent. Humans need humans as much as they need food or water. Just because we can learn to survive longer and longer without human interactions does not displace the fact that imagination/psychosis will substitute the sensations of social interactions. Writing is clearly one method of replacing social interactions.
This is the main point I wanted to discuss when I read his lecture for the first time. I nonetheless changed the name of the title of this thread because it seemed to be ambiguous. I think Fosse is a brave author for including suicidal characters in his works. Sadly, I don't know how they play their roles yet. Suicide and ambiguity have always been existentially linked. The first time I ever read characters purposefully intending to kill themselves was in Yukio Mishima's works, but I thought that this was just a 'cultural' or 'only Japanese' thing then. Mishima even stated that the concept of death differs from the Japanese view to the Western view. I always think and wonder about this, but after reading Fosse, it is more clear to me. Every author expresses suicide depending on how they interpret death. Maybe, according to Fosse, suicide is a silent language, while following Mishima, suicide is an honorable act that comes from the Samurai era. Both points are valid and interesting to me, and I am excited to read more about Fosse during this Christmas.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Interesting what you brought up here. I even correlated it with what I wrote back to this post, unintentionally. You state that silence allows the audience the freedom to think and imagine. But, bringing in suicide again, I think this concept is only ambiguous if we dive into the mental state of the readers. Would you consider suicide as ambiguous? Sometimes I feel suicidal, others don't. I usually consider suicide as a legitimate and honorable act; at other times, I consider it as pure escapism, etc. This is how I have felt since I was 20 years old. The idea of committing suicide comes and goes. I thought Mishima was the only writer to write about this, but now I have discovered Fosse, and maybe he will help me understand suicide from a Western perspective.
Interesting.
Would you consider loneliness as a social disorder then? What about people who are scared of exposing themselves to others (like Fosse and myself, included)? Do we have to live in continuous contradiction because, although we can express ourselves in writing, we suffer when it comes to doing so publicly?
For me I think there are two different kinds of facts mushed together here, at least potentially. It think writing is a lonlier and more solitary form of art and communication than other arts and also then spoken communication is. That is the experience. Now when I go in myself I will find stuff that I stole absorbed took in accepted from other people, including the whole language itself. Writing is communal in the sources sense but individual in the experiential sense. I create in a few art forms and one of the reasons I write much less than I used to is precisely because I want something more social...in the experiencing. Any writer who thinks they came up with everything on their own is confused. But the experience, is very alone.
When you say that you write less because you want something more social in experiencing, are you referring to acceptance or interaction? Because Fosse, as well as I humbly understand and interpret him, explains that writing is a lonely act because the meaning of language is different. The written language doesn't require interactions like the spoken language. Nevertheless, it is true that a written creation needs to be read... Right? This is why Fosse states that, rather than socializing, we are just sharing culture.
Quoting Bylaw
I agree. Good point.
Interaction.
And yes, one is writing to be read, at least in part, and not just by oneself. I think it is a kind of social communication. I do think of myself as communicating with others when I write. I think sharing culture, say, still has a social element, but mainly it is in isolation. I see no body language, here no voices, see no faces reacting. Nor does the reverse happen.
Even here, in a much more direct form of writing communication than in writing a novel, say, where I may get a response in an hour and we can say all sorts of things to each other, even this at the social level is a shadow of a face to face meeting. And it's a lot more direct than a novel.
There's also a way, for me, that writing literature leads to a kind of ongoing self-relation that interferes with social interaction. I am all the time noting language, dialogue and possible phrases pop up and I want to notice them as a writer.
It's a bit like being at a wedding as a guest and being at a wedding as a guest who has been asked to take both formal and informal photos for the couple. I am now experiencing the wedding through the lens, even if the darn thing isn't in front of my eyes the whole time. I am scanning for good images of people, not connecting with people as much as I would have.
And there, as the wedding photographer, I am still in the room. I can be social, but there is interference. People are aesthetic phenomena in a way they are not if I don't have that task. Writing a novel, the task is always there, at least for me, and there is a kind of distancing and obsession, which I think pulls one into oneself.
I do improv (improvisational theater) now, and that's very social. Of course there are aspects of the interactions that are distances, like the wedding photographer/friend. But before and after and in between it is much more social. Further when I'm not in the room doing improv, there is no interference when being social with others.
Music I find is somewhere in between. There are more social aspect and these can be very intimate, but I also find the secondary obsession is in the back of my mind all the time. But this could be just me. And I did much of my music on my own. I didn't have the full band experience.
I do not think that one can correctly separate interpretation of meaning by pattern, and meaning by context. The two are too deeply intertwined, and used together, that such a separation, even for the purpose of analysis is impossible. I believe the more intelligible separation is form/content. But from this perspective, "content" as what is derived directly from the author's intent becomes somewhat unintelligible, the separation being analogous to Aristotle's form/matter separation. Since "form" is what is intelligible to us, the content is left as fundamentally unintelligible, as the "subject matter" may elude us.
Patterns are formal, so if we represent the content as "context" like you propose, then the context is the author's mind itself. The desire to understand the context of a piece of writing, might incline an interpreter to attempt to put oneself in the position of the author. But this would fail, because like Fosse explains, the writer removes oneself from all accessible or outwardly available contextual influences (one's environment), and creates an imaginary context.
This is the manifest difference between speaking and writing. The speaker assumes that the hearer shares the same context (environment), so the speaker relies heavily on the surroundings for meaning (eg."bring me that hammer please"). What the surroundings, or context adds to the intended meaning, instead of the words forming this meaning, is the foundation of the silent language. In the example, the speaker does not have to explain what the hammer looks like, or its location, etc., this is all silent, and simply implied by "that hammer".
In the case of writing, the author creates an imaginary environment, or context, and this imaginary context supports the silent language. There are many factors which the author must respect in creating the boundaries of the context. The form of writing, drama, prose, non-fiction, poetry, etc., provides the foundational limitations which the author starts with. Then the context, as further boundaries in meaning, is created by the author. Fosse's use of silence breaks all the boundaries he creates with words, leaving only the foundational boundaries of the activities of the drama, and in a sense bridges the gap between writing and speaking, because the activities then produce the context rather than the words. But the impression that the gap is closed is just a sort of deception, because these activities are only a created context anyway, and so the entire environment or context is still created. The audience members are allowed freedom to explore their own imaginations not being constrained by the words of language, but the freedom is kind of illusionary as it only occurs within the boundaries already created by the activities which, which are a product of the author's mind in the first place.
Quoting javi2541997
As a meaningful act without words, suicide is clearly a part of the silent language. However, in itself it is extremely hurtful, if not the most intrinsically hurtful act possible. This is very ironic, because it is a physical assault on oneself rather than on another. You would think that any sort of physical assault on another would be inherently more hurtful than any type of physical assault on oneself, but suicide obviously demonstrates this to be false.
Secondary, to the intrinsically hurtful act, there is usually a further communicative act associated, with the suicide act. This may be a suicide note, which may serve to either increase or decrease the hurt, often very intentionally, or the suicide act may be accompanied by a physical assault on others. When the others are designated as enemies, this may elevate the hurtful act to the level of honourable. In this way of looking at suicide, whether it is considered good or bad, depends on how the hurt of the secondary level of meaning, the more explicit meaning, is directed. Notice that when the suicide is honourable, the secondary level of hurt negates the first, by making the act honourable. This is taken even further in the act of self-sacrifice, Jesus, and hunger-strike for example. But all these levels of meaning piled on top, cannot truly negate the fundamental fact that the act is intrinsically hurtful.
Quoting javi2541997
No, suicide is not at all ambiguous, for the reasons described above. It is intrinsically hurtful. It is meaningful as a part of the silent language, but remember that the silent language is a part of of our communion with others. So, when one retreats, or escapes the others, into oneself, as Fosse describes in the act of writing, a person seeks to remove all influence of environment, surroundings, including others, to write a purely original and creative piece, suicide may appear to lose its essential nature, as hurtful, and this would allow the writer to create an imaginary description of it without that essential nature. But this is only an imaginary image, as the true act would remain an act within the context of the existence of others. So the silent language ensures that suicide maintains that very specific unequivocal meaning of hurt, regardless of the levels of meaning added on top, which appear to produce ambiguity.
Do you think our exchange through TPF would be different if we used pictures with our real identity rather than logos?
Quoting Bylaw
I am interested in learning more about your experience in theater. According to Fosse, this art was a big challenge for his career because he switched written language to spoken language. Now, he has started to experience an expression of art where socialisation and interaction are needed. Between the actors or performers, and the public itself. Nonetheless, Fosse highlighted something very important: He started to feel more confident and comfortable writing drama thanks to the use of 'pauses', because he interpreted this as a silent language. Do you agree? How do you improvise pauses in your room or wherever you do this?
Although I think I followed your points, I guess I am a bit lost here, particularly regarding the suicide note and whether this act is hurtful for the suicidal. Firstly, a suicide note may serve as a farewell. Culturally speaking, suicide notes were common in the Samurai era in Japan. Before committing seppuku, some Samurai wrote their last words or just a haiku poem. A suicide note can also help the person to underline why he or she is going to commit suicide. A good example of this is Kurt Cobain's death and his famous note found next to his body. If we read his note profoundly, we can understand why he is justifying his decision to end his life.
On the other hand, to what extent do you think suicide is hurtful? I can understand that it could be devastating for the family and friends who are close to the suicidal. But if this person ends up deciding to end their life, it is because suicide would not be more painful than living itself. Most suicidal individuals do this because they find a solution to what bothers them, finally. Are you trying to argue that suicide is also hurtful for the suicidal?
If I may also reply to this...I think Fosse is also referring to the musicality of spoken language. In music every pause, and its length, are carefully considered. In 'drama' in the widest sense, pauses provide and transform meaning. In comedy, for instance, timing is everything. The saddest exchanges can be made funny to an audience with the right pauses.
I've written quite a lot of drama and feel the craft side of Fosse's remarks are on the mark. I began writing believing that eloquence was in the vanguard of my aims; but with experience I realised that the eloquence of prose sometimes/often is ineffective in drama, and the pause, alongside the rhythm of speech and interchange, matter keenly.
I'm not disputing that Fosse also means something more portentous in talking about silence, but I think the baseline is a craft-based one.
I think I became more real to them.Quoting javi2541997
Pauses are interpersonal. I mean, they are part of the lived experience of another person. We pause to find the right words. We pause when we are not sure. Online we present this well or at least better organized flow of words. That's not as much us as when we talk.
Pauses in improv. Well, it's a sign of strong improvisers that they can pauses. In the beginning there's this feeling like you have to go fast, to show you're not thinking. And then the panic. Because most people go through some panic in improvisation. But you can see the better improvisers interersperse pauses: because they are more relaxed, because they are more connected to their characters, and people pause. There are exercises that can train this.
So, yes, pauses are part of the complete person communicating.
And you can put pauses in literature, but it's not the same thing and it's not more social than the rest of the writing process, which isn't very social.
In other less moderated forums, I encounter a wide range of jerk-like behavior. And I often think they'd never manage to pull this off in-person, because in person you would notice paused, nervous ticks, the eyes flicking to the side nervously, unexpressed emotions, tone of voice. Online you can always pretend to be calm, confident, unmoved by the others argument or comments. That facade is much harder to hold together live.
First of all, you can answer this and comment on the rest of the thread. I fully appreciate your contribution and opinions. Honestly, I haven't thought about the musicality of spoken language, and being more precise, I think I haven't paid attention to it because I was mainly focused on how Fosse went from written language to spoken language. As you explained, there are techniques regarding these methods which are important to write drama. Although I agree that pauses and length are very considered in plays, I start to wonder if written language has musicality or not, or if it is just monotonous...
Quoting mcdoodle
Did you switch from written language (novels, for instance) to drama like him?
Notice that what Fosse actually used in the writing process was silence and not pauses. I know that these concepts have more in common than differences, but if silence were a part of drama, he wouldn't have had problems finding something related while writing the plays. Until he didn't discover the use of pauses, he felt anxious about writing drama because he was used to using this expression in written language, but not in spoken language. Nevertheless, you raised an important point here. To what extent is silence (or pauses) dependent upon social interaction? Is silence an individualistic act? Fosse's lecture is making me ask all of these tricky questions... I guess Fosse believed that silence was an individually constructed act, but one of the surprises of his life was discovering this use while writing drama, because people would experience silence in spoken language as well.
Quoting Bylaw
I have always been afraid of authorities such as teachers. I believe some folks were just pretending they were embarrassed or afraid, but for those who are genuinely afraid of authorities, going to school was a nightmare. I suffered the same fear when Fosse was a kid and he ran away from class because he was afraid of standing in class, with the teacher and the mates looking at him.
I mean, my background is nearly entirely progressive education. As in, the students bear all the responsibility. But here I am dealing with immigrants coming from cultures where their teachers were like Lords and they were peasants. If I could get every teacher to go the progressive route, I'd back off and just let these students fail until finally the rumor got around that you just had to be your own boss and fast. My style is a compromise between giving them the opportunity to learn and the smell of an authority. They are adults and I have no real power over them except the grade at the end (pass or fail). And unfortunately conveying expectations in a nebulous context does actually help them. The most successful teachers, with better statistics than me are much tougher. Which then gets these people into universities or jobs faster. So, I've learned to go against my habit, philosophy and even values.
Written language certainly has style. For me it has a musicality, but that may be my bias: when I developed my creative writing, I did prose and drama-writing more or less at the same time. I think that has resulted in the spoken word influencing how I write. I find a lot of academic writing pointlessly stuffy and long-winded, but a danger of writing more directly is that academics can think you're just stupid :)
One difficulty in learning from Fosse, as regards philosophical writing, is that silences and pauses are subtle and illuminating in fiction or memoir, but unwise in writing about thought.
The writing I most enjoy has a poetry and musicality and playfulness that transcends or transforms the material - I am thinking of Nabokov, Edith Wharton, Gore Vidal, George Elliot, Anthony Burgess. It's this melodious playfulness, the unexpected; the 'war against cliché' as Martin Amis described it, that keeps me interested. Plots don't often interest me. I am much more interested in how things are told. The writerly magic is often in the execution, not the narrative for me. Language is also like jewelry or a shiny toy when used with some creativity and vitality.
Quoting javi2541997
A lot of people are drawn to a rich fantasy life because of their social phobia. Many writers seem to be drawn to the written word because it is a way of being social without needing to be directly with people. I was a writer for some years (newspaper and magazine feature articles, reviews, op eds) and it can be very seductive to drop 'bombs' via prose and not be there for when they go off. In writing, you can say what you need to say safely and carefully, with time for preparation, in a way that many could never do in person, in conversation.
This is why I said it is hurtful, because it is a "communicative act". It conveys something to others, and that is hurt. And I said that it is inherently hurtful because this is the first level of meaning derived from the act, and the hurt cannot be removed through the secondary levels of meaning conveyed at the time. The suicide note can mitigate or decrease the hurt to others but it cannot negate it. The suicide note can also be used to increase the hurt. Further, certain suicide techniques can be used to increase the hurt to others, and suicide can be carried out for the purpose of hurting others. I do not see how it is possible to remove the hurtfulness from it.
Quoting javi2541997
No, not at all. The point was that as a "communicative act" of the silent language, that is an act of communicating without words, it is hurtful. That's why it is often argued that suicide is extremely selfish. By carrying through with the act, the suicidal person places one's own well-being as more important than that of others.
I get that the author's activities and pauses can evoke a kind of freedom for us to imagine unwritten meanings. But what do you mean when you say that words constrain imaginations? I think that a true description of an imagination is constrained by what one imagines.
Words increase mutual understanding whereas in the case of silence, unspoken expectations or suggestions the relation is not so mutual, as in manipulation.
Well, the method of music was important to Fosse, so I'm sure it entered his dramas.
Quoting Tom Storm
Writing allows one to talk to people without giving them the capacity to reply. However, the reader has the capacity of choice to freely decide whether or not to listen to, (read), the writer. So the writer must take this into account when deciding what to write, unless the writing is purely for self gratification.
Quoting jkop
When you read a novel, the author creates an imaginary scene. If the author is proficient, the words employed by the author, and read by the reader, constrain the imagination of the reader in a way intended by the author.
Quoting jkop
I don't think that this is the case. Even the author, who creates the imaginary world, or scene, is doing this through the use of words. words provide freedom for the writers imagination, to go much further than where simple images would take one. So the writer can use words to create images which were not already imagined, but produced from the use of words. I believe that the imaginary scene created by the writer, is principally created with words rather than with images which words are put to, to describe, because words allow the writer's mind much greater freedom to go places where the simple use of images would not otherwise take it. In other words, words open up the imagination to all sorts of new territories, even within the act of writing.
Good point and has been the case. But often the letters and on line comments, emails, tweets and phone calls are overwhelming, also invitations to defend your thesis in debate on radio or TV, can soon mean contending with a multiplicity of replies, more than the average person would ever encounter.
You are right. Academic criticism of the works of authors is pointless most of the time. I think in most cases they attack directly against the freedom of creativity. Honestly, this is one of the main fears I have of writing short stories or even a novel. If it ends up being read by 'professionals or literature critics' and would receive a lot of negative feedback. I tried to publish some works for a small championship and I didn't like the experience. The only place where I received constructive criticism was here at TPF on the short story activity.
Quoting mcdoodle
Because if those thoughts are not written or spoken, and remain in silence, they do not exist. Right?
:up:
Quoting Tom Storm
I fully agree with this. I think I already discussed it with @Bylaw, but while it would be nearly impossible to express myself with you in real life, I can share my thoughts and feelings here on TPF freely. I even share wonders which I am not confident enough to share with my family. Furthermore, English is not my native language, so I imagine myself suffering from anxiety trying to find the exact words if I needed to communicate myself in spoken language and not in written language. This is why I relate to Fosse that much. Writing is a safe activity and helps people to express themselves.
Although I agree that the hurtfulness of suicide cannot be removed, I still don't see why this act (plus the suicide note) can increase the hurt. Whose hurt are we referring to? I can only imagine suicide as a revenge act, but in most cases, this rarely happens. A person with suicidal thoughts starts giving up on life, and this makes him or her not feel motivated by anything, not even revenge.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Suicide is only considered selfish if the suicidal person was loved or esteemed by others. Many people die in the pure state of loneliness, and nobody ever remembers them...
It depends on what is in the notes. For example, if there is blame
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32343168/
And from another study, with my emphasis:
No one should assume that suicide is an act of anger or intending to hurt someone. Clearly some people are just trying to end pain they find unedurable and see not other way to do this.
But as social creatures it can also be - again, not necessarily - an act that is in part revenge. Or showing others what they have done. Or showing others that they no longer have the person - 'feel that loss of me'. If any of these are put in a note, and these all can be implied also, then this can certainly add to the hurt of survivors.Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
And this, I think is an oversimiplification in the other direction. People who commit suicide may be in what they consider unendurable pain with no way out. Could be physical, more often emotional. I wouldn't want someone to cling to a nightmare for my sake. And that's not how I would try to talk them out of it. I think adding guilt on top of someone's suicidal ideation isn't really helpful, much less somehow correct.
Wow, that data is impressive, because I always thought that a suicide note was written to just explain the cause and say goodbye to the world.
Quoting Bylaw
But this only happens if there is such a controversial relationship between the suicidal and the rest. Yet, it can be the scenario where a suicidal decides to commit suicide because he is bored of life or he feels depressed for some reasons which are not necessarily caused by others. I attempt to explain with these examples that suicide is an individual act that sometimes can affect others...
:fire:
Or a mixture of the two. Or there is physical pain and long term illness involved. Or there are economic issues involved. And so on.
I can relate to that frustration. I can't even remember how many times I highlighted this issue while discussing in other threads. One of the main problems of my generation is that most of us (not all, but an important number) don't bother to read something. Social media and cell phones have destroyed the habit of reading a book by ourselves and then forming a personal opinion. I can only say: Sorry for my generation, folks, and thanks for not giving up on writing prose. I think you can feel fulfilled after doing so.
We're talking about the hurt to others which suicide causes. For example, people who know the person who carries out the act often feel a sense of blame and even guilt for not being closer to the individual in what is apprehended as a time of need. The suicide note can add to this feeling, which hurts. I think this is what points to with that article.
Quoting javi2541997
It's all part of the silent language, which appears to be a sort of communication through feelings. The meaning apprehended by the receiver of the language is not necessarily the meaning intended by the transmitter of the language. This is due to the unreliability of the medium of transmission. Take what is known as "body language" for example, and there is also what is known as "inflection" in speech, a term derived from musical practise I believe. These forms of silent language may contribute significantly to the meaning of the spoken word, but the significance will vary considerable from one person to the other. The variance is so significant, that a person who is inclined to read the silent language will see very much meaning which another will not, and even much meaning which is not intended by the person who transmits it. Seeing the silent meaning which is not intended by the author is how we determine when a person is lying, by looking into one's eyes, or whatever.
Therefore, as much as the suicidal person is not motivated for "revenge", people close to that person may apprehend this type of meaning through the silent language. The silent language communicates through people's feelings, which is a sort of instinctual reaction, so that the receiver's conscious mind responds according to one's feelings. And as much as the conscious mind of the receiver may tell the person that the meaning which has manifested by way of feeling, was not really intended by the transmitter, this is often insufficient to suppress the feeling along with the associated meaning.
Quoting javi2541997
I think the referred to "pure state of loneliness" is fictitious. I also believe that this is the overall lesson taught by Fosse's speech, the meaning of the whole, or "moral of the story". The supposed complete isolation of a "pure state of loneliness" is actually impossible and therefore fictitious. As he described, his approach to writing was the approach of loneliness, a feeling created due to his innate problems of association, and which he later built upon, due to his problem with public speaking: "Through the fear of reading aloud I entered the loneliness that is more or less the life of a writing person and Ive stayed there ever since."
This act of separating himself from others to produce loneliness was what fueled his creative talent. However, the loneliness was incomplete, not really pure, because he could not dispel the idea that someone, at some time in the future, would actually read the notes he was writing, and this idea penetrated through the writing. Therefore within his writing there was always that seed of content, subject matter, which was intended as communication with others, making his notes more than just notes to oneself. This feature, that the loneliness he created could not be completed or finished, then probably became a central feature of some of his writing.
Slowly, he came to accept the fact that the loneliness he had desired in the first place, to escape the others, find security within himself in order to produce masterful art, was a false ideal, because it could not be completed in perfection. That was impossible. So he turned himself around, finding security instead in companionship rather than within himself: "And what gripped me the first time I saw something I had written performed on a stage, yes, that was exactly the opposite of loneliness, it was
companionship, yes, to create art through sharing art that gave me a great
sense of happiness and security."
In the end, the entire speech can be seen as an attempt by Fosse to share his loneliness, which in many ways is the deepest gesture of companionship. From the loneliness which he created for himself, are derived his deepest, most significant and formative feelings, which shaped his creative talent. He shares this with us, with what I believe is the intent of inspiring others to share in his talent.
Here's what I believe are a few key points to consider chronologically. His loneliness was initially not created intentionally, it was the result of his innate personality along with the way that he received the silent language (feelings) of others in his formative youth. He first coped with the loneliness by playing music. In adolescence he turned to writing, and then sought to increase the loneliness because it was highly inspirational, and contributive to his writing. Then he slowly came to realize the incompleteness of the loneliness and how it was the desire for companionship that really inspired the writing. So he found a way to separate the desire for companionship, from the loneliness, which allowed him to write well, without the need for loneliness. That is the difference between being alone, and being lonely. This is how writing saved his life, and he sincerely hopes that he can share this message to help save the lives of others.
Quoting Bylaw
This is not the way to escape the accusation of selfishness. No matter how intense and unendurable the pain may be, to put one's own interests, (to end the pain), as having priority over the interests of others, is the very definition of "selfish". So this point just does not address that accusation.
Javi offered a much more comprehensive approach, which was "pure loneliness". This would respect the fact that the selfishness cannot be removed from the act, but it renders the selfishness as irrelevant to anyone else. So it becomes a matter of I can do what I want, so long as it hurts no one else. The problem, as I explained above, is that pure loneliness is a defective concept, so I really do not believe that the hurtfulness which inheres within the act can be removed in this way.
Quoting javi2541997
I believe this issue is best understood through reference to the silent language which is a communication through feelings. The problem of "blame", or feeling guilt, is not exclusive to those who are close to the suicidal person. The act, suicide, is generally apprehended by us as so final, so extreme, that anyone who is even an acquaintance of the person, and sometimes not even acquainted, is affected with feelings for the person, which can amount to a feeling of blame and guilt within oneself. This is "the problem" with the silent language, it may, and very often does, communicate meaning which is completely unintended by the author. This is because it works through the feelings of the recipient of the information.
But the judgment there seems to just sidestep the issue: is it a good decision for that person. If it isn't then to me that's the focus. I certainly don't think the argument that 'you should continue to suffer in a life you hate for my sake and other people' is a compassionate attitude.
Yes, I would likely get angry if someone I loved killed themselves. But I'd assume they hated life and wanted it to stop and it was the best solution. My frustration that lasted would likely be over the it not being the best solution, not the pain it caused me.
I don't want people staying in agony for my sake. If there is a solution, however, that they are missing, that can alleviate their pain, THAT's my focus. Not telling them to live for my sake, however it feels, which is selfish. And I understand that the people saying this here are saying it in a general, non-specific way, but this meme goes out and adds a layer of guilt.
If we really believe they had a better choice, well let's tell them that. If we don't know, and they are in agony, out there, throwing guilt on top of their agony might work for a short time. MIght have the opposite effect. While they'll feel guilty for the successful act, now they can feel bad about considering it.
Understood, why am I to disagree with those good points? Nevertheless, I still think that the receiver is not a key element of suicide. You are treating the receiver as a person who necessarily represents the cause of suicide, and this is not necessarily the main point. We both agreed that there are different causes of suicide. Keep in mind that there are people who commit suicide because they feel lonely. In this case specifically, there is no receiver for communicating the silent language of suicide. Then, this act happens unnoticed. I do not know if you were ever aware of the 'Ministry of Loneliness' in Japan. The University of Tsukuba pointed out important data regarding the main cause of suicide among the Japanese people, and the study states: Researchers from the University of Tsukuba analyzed the degree of influence of social isolation, loneliness, and depression on suicidal ideation during the COVID-19 pandemic using data from a large-scale national questionnaire survey. The results revealed that loneliness had a direct and stronger impact on suicidal ideation than economic hardship and social isolation. It also indirectly affects suicidal ideation through depression. https://www.tsukuba.ac.jp/en/research-news/20230517140000.html
According to this data, lonely individuals tend to be more suicidal than social ones. We can conclude that those suicidal individuals have no receivers for their acts because loneliness is the main cause of this thought.
Note: It is true that the main cause of suicide depends on each country. But Japan has a serious and extensive experience regarding this topic, and I think we can consider their data as reliable.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Very interesting what you wrote in this paragraph, and I liked it. But would you consider it a desire rather than just the average transformation we all experience in our lives? I don't know to what extent Fosse desired companionship, but he started to learn more about his life and communicative skills. He began to have a fear of speaking in public, and he ended up reading a lecture in a Nobel ceremony. He just faced his fears.
I don't see your point Bylaw. Acting for one's own interests with disregard for the hurt it will cause to others is what selfishness is, whether or not that is a good thing or a bad thing. However, if this to you, means that "selfish" is pejorative, then it is you yourself who is saying that such a thing is a bad thing.
I think this is a very good example of how the silent language works. I describe an act as "selfish", you hear the word as pejorative, and this stirs negative feelings in you. So you proceed to look for examples where selfishness wouldn't necessarily be negative, in an attempt to dispel the negative feeling which your own interpretation of the word, as pejorative, has aroused within you.
Quoting javi2541997
The point is that there almost always is receivers, so the receiver becomes a sort of necessary accidental. Whoever the receiver (the living person who is affected by the suicide) is, is not necessarily a specific individual, so is in that sense accidental, but there almost certainly will be such an individual, or individuals.
In this way, it is sort of like the act of writing itself. The writing is not directed at any particular individual, but it is still necessary within the writer's mind, that there will be a reader. The writer, in as much as one might intend to write solely for oneself, knows that ultimately the writing must be composed in such a way as to ultimately be read by someone else. Likewise, as much as the suicidal may be wrapped up in loneliness, carrying out the act solely for one's own sake, the individual still knows that ultimately the act will be in some way interpreted by someone else.
Quoting javi2541997
Perhaps, in principle, this is possible. The extremely lonely person goes off somewhere, and no one ever notices the difference. In my analogy above, of the writer, this would be like a person writing, knowing the writing would never be read, and even hiding it to ensure that it wouldn't ever be read. This would be a sort of odd behaviour, actively writing to no one, and even intentionally hiding the material to ensure that it was never read. Would this be indicative of mental illness, or can we say that a person who keeps a personal diary, and ensures that no one will ever read it, is acting in a sane way? How can this be reasonable?
Quoting javi2541997
I think that there is usually receivers, because people do not live in total isolation, and sometimes the suicidal do not adequately plan to dispose of their own bodies. We have to consider that anyone in proximity will be affected by the suicide, in some, usually negative way.
Quoting javi2541997
We all grow up differently despite categorization like introvert/extrovert. The issue here I believe is the question of how we each learn to cope with our own peculiarities. Different introverts develop different coping mechanisms. I think that Fosse did very well. And, I think that he's trying to help and teach others.
It is not reasonable, I agree. But we have to remember that a suicidal person loses all kinds of reasonable ways. Maybe they decide to hide or burn their diary or stuff because they don't want to be remembered. What kind of things are inside the brain of a person who wants to end their life? Who knows...
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
But who would be this affected 'anyone'? It could be my parents, but imagine that they are already dead. Could it be my friends? I don't have any. What about the colleagues at work? I don't have a strong relationship of confidence with them, so if I disappear or die, they would not notice it. Hmm, my neighbors? The building porter? Who exactly would miss me if I am extremely isolated? Again, if my suicide would negatively affect someone, the latter had to respect or care about me previously. Not all suicides resonate in the lives of others. A person dies in the silence of a room or jumping from a cliff. This discussion reminds me of the debate on the tree that falls down, but nobody heard or noticed it...
It's really not a matter of having someone who would "miss you". For most people, if someone they are acquainted with dies, it has an affect on them. Further, suicide seems to have a special type of affect because it is always perceived as an avoidable death. So it's kind of like they feel that they have played a role in the death, just by knowing the person, and not acting to give the person "help". I think that's the silent language. I haven't read any of Fosse's material, but it would be interesting to see how he portrays suicide.
Quoting javi2541997
I could disagree with this, but it would not be correct to disagree, because what really is the issue here is what it means to "care" about another. There is a bond which human beings have between themselves, supporting what is known as empathy, so most of us have an innate or instinctual tendency to "care" about others, no matter who the other is. Because of this, it's really redundant and meaningless to say "the latter had to respect or care about me previously", as this is already given, that people naturally care about each other no matter who the other is
Quoting javi2541997
There is a sort of irony here, and it is related to how I described Fosse as turning toward loneliness, maximizing loneliness, in his early ambition of writing. The most pure, original, creative artwork comes from the artist's communion with oneself, the "other" must be completely removed so that the writing is not directed toward, or intended to impress any particular or specific type of "other". However, it is impossible to completely remove the "other" because there must be some sort of "other" or else the writing would be completely uninspired as the intention would be that no one would ever read it, so there would be no need to write anything with meaning. Therefore the person's self becomes the other, as the author writes for oneself to read, effectively isolating the individual.
The irony is in the role that the self plays as "the other". You, in your writing refer to "the tree that falls down". So there is implied in this statement that you have some knowledge about this situation, you know that a tree fell down. But then you proceed to say that nobody "noticed" it. So your second statement contradicts what is implied by the first. The first implies that you know a tree fell, while the second implies that no one could know this. So it doesn't explicitly contradict, but there is an implicit contradiction, and that's where the irony come in.
The silent language works with what is implied, not explicit, like the example above, when Bylaw said "selfish" is pejorative. But the thing is that some implications are overt, conventional, practically a definable aspect of the meaning, like "selfish is bad", whereas other implications like what is implied by "the tree that falls down", are very well hidden, and only grasped by particular individuals in specific ways. So in reality there is a huge grey area, a lack of demarcation, between what is implicit and what is explicit.
To get back to the point now, when the writer increases the aloneness to the point of desiring the loneliness of self-isolation, for the sake of inspired writing, the self becomes more and more important, as not only the transmitter of the message, but also the intended receiver. This excludes the possibility of irony and any sort of doubt as to interpretation, to the point that such tools can only be produced by self-deception. And that's the case with your example, "the tree that falls down". You have fooled yourself, tricked yourself into thinking that you can talk about this fallen tree without anyone knowing that this fallen tree exists, when clearly you must know about it to talk about it.
Our philosophical language is full of such expressions, where people trick themselves like that in order to create the appearance of a philosophical problem. What is really the case, is that these writers, philosophers, are actually not considering the full implications of the words they use, being completely immersed in themselves, and the effort to creatively produce a philosophical problem which they might share with others. So they end up not completely considering the implications of the words, thereby fooling themselves, presenting the so-called problems to others and actually making a fool of themselves. In other words they engage in self-deception for the sake of creating something which appears philosophically creative to others, when in reality the creativeness is just self-deception.
But there is another world, my daily life. The latter is a big difference in terms of socializing and exchanging concerns with the rest, as I do here. Then, my supposed suicide in the real world outside the internet would not have a special impact.
Is it a contradiction or a paradox? I don't know which one to pick up. This is why I used the example of the falling tree. The main point is as it follows: If I were absent for many months here, I think that some of you would wonder and ask what is going on with Javi. If, in this case, you noticed my death, you would care, even if you haven't even seen my face yet. But, paradoxically, it will not have the same impact on the people who see me every day.
My suicide would be like the tree which fell down unnoticed in the physical (non-virtual) world.
I hope I explained myself a bit better this time...
And, as you highlighted, I also want to know with more detail the thoughts of Fosse regarding suicide after reading some of his novels.
Quoting javi2541997
I think this conversation has pretty much run its course. Thank you very much, I enjoyed it.
Quoting javi2541997
I think it is a mistake to exclude the internet world from the real world. Let's say you have a dual identity, you inhabit two distinct social worlds. The issue being that one, the one you call the real world is not a social world at all, it is a world of social exclusion, within which you are alone. However, you have also the internet world within which you are socially active.
Quoting javi2541997
Are you saying that people who see you every day would not even notice if suddenly you were not there? Is this to say that they see you without noticing you? That's not quite the same as the tree falling in the forest example. It's more like the inverse of "can't see the forest for the trees". The person who can't see the forest is too intend on looking at particular trees, and does not see the whole, the forest because of this. But what you describe is people who see the whole, crowds of people every day, but do not notice any individuals, like yourself. So. in seeing the forest everyday, and you being a tree in the forest, if you were suddenly gone they would still see the forest, and not even notice that an individual tree went missing. This is a matter of inattentive seers, who do not notice what they are seeing.
Quoting javi2541997
I don't know if I will ever read any of Fosse's novels, but let me know if you do.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I think not, and my thoughts are not unjustified. This will be embarrassing to share, but it is a good example of why I state that if I disappeared, people (in my daily life) would not care. Last week we had a Christmas meeting and lunch. We are like 35 people overall. With this small number, you would consider that it is easy to get along with people or at least be noticed, right? Well, it is clearly the opposite. Most of my colleagues already had a strong relationship between them, and it is difficult for me to integrate with them. Honestly, I am very shy, so it is true I never made a big effort to integrate myself, and I don't even feel comfortable doing so.
Well, back to the main point, when I left nobody noticed my absence. I feel I am that kind of person who is unnoticeable to most people. The one who nobody reminds of. The mates of my school and university? No... they probably don't remember (or care) about my existence.
With these premises or 'background', I personally believe that if I committed suicide, people would not care at all. Maybe you are right that they would feel a bit 'shocked' because suicide is something that impresses people... but it will not go beyond just that...
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Yes, exactly. I feel more comfortable here than in the 'non-virtual' world. It will be impossible to talk about these topics for me in the latter...
I would care a lot, Javi. And I'm sure others here would too. You are a valued member here, my friend. :smile:
Thank you so much for your kindness, my friend Tom. :smile:
I am aware that I am respected and cared for here at TPF. Yet, what I attempted to explain to Metaphysician is that I have to deal with another 'reality,' which is very different from my presence in the 'virtual 'world. I promise I am unnoticed in the 'physical' world.
Nynorsk is not a spoken language. It is purely a written language; and I don't mean that practically; there is no standard, official way to pronounce Nynorsk words (the same is true for Bokmål). I am not too familiar with Fosse's work, but I don't think he writes with a vernacular language, and if he does, then he does not write Nynorsk.
That said, the creation of Nynorsk was meant to capture different Norwegian dialects, so as to create a truly Norwegian language, as opposed to the Danish-influenced Bokmål. So in that sense, what you write is kind of true. However, Ivar Aasen, in his quest to create a quintessentially Norwegian language, ignored the northern dialects due to their Sami influence. Given that the Sami people have been in Norway just as long as their Germanic counterparts, the Sami people, and northern Norwegians, are most definitely Norwegian. Therefore, Nynorsk is not really the written form of a true amalgamation of Norwegian speech, instead, it is just the vision of some racist cunt that made every Norwegian kid's schooling doubly shitty. But, it sure does look pretty!
I think that you are Norwegian and that's why you have such an important background and knowledge of both written and spoken Norwegian.
Otherwise, just ignore my comment and merry Christmas!
An expression of strong feelings says much in the silent language. Do I detect a hint of social rejection, detachment?
I am indeed Norwegian, but I don't quite understand your question. I think I'm lacking the context surrounding the meaning behind the silent language. I haven't heard Fosse's speech, but I am contemplating watching it.
I reject Nynorsk because of its failure to do what it was supposed to do, and I am detached from the goal simply because I do not believe it achievable. Norwegian dialects are so diverse that any language that tries to capture it will just be pulled apart by opposing forces, winding up as a language of no-one.
I wonder if the dialects of Norway are more diverse than the dialects of the average country. Norway is a large country, and with a geography that tends to isolate communities. Therefore, I think there's a greater diversity of dialects in Norway than in most countries. In any case, the degree of dialectical diversity is why a programme like Nynorsk is doomed from the get-go.
I thought so too but then compare Norway with UK, for instance. There are no mountains or fjords that separate groups of people, yet there are many diverse dialects. Possibly because groups of people are kept spart by social barriers.
Even though I have not read half of the thread, I will chime in. If you subvocalise a text that has assonance, rhymes, alliteration, and strategical uses of punctuation [, ; ! ], you can surely say it has musicality.
It has passed twenty days since I answered you in this thread. I was starting to read Fosse's trilogien. This book was translated by a Norwegian-Spanish girl (Cristina Gómez Baggethum), so I guess it suits what Fosse wants to express in his writings. I was thinking of starting a new thread related to him and his sense of melancholia and suicide, but since you posted the answer here, I think I will keep posting in this thread my concerns about Fosse. I will try to explain myself the best I can. Sorry if you don't understand me because I am a non-native speaker and my grammar is somehow limp.
After reading the first novel of Fosse I ended with these thoughts:
Silence is key in his literature. But this noun or verb only appears in delicate moments. For example: a suicide or death. Fosse does not state: X character dies because of hara-kiri. He beautifully writes: she hears the waves crashing and she feels the rain against her hair, against her face, and then she goes into the waves and everything cold and hot, the whole sea is Asle and she goes deeper and then Asle surrounds her completely, just like the night they first talked, and everything is Asle and Alida and then the waves cover Alida and goes into the waves, keeps going, goes deeper and deeper into the waves and then a wave covers her gray hair.
The last paragraph describes a silent suicide. It made me cry, because it is perfectly written, and I think I somehow understand Fosse. Since you are Norwegian like him, I wonder how suicide is treated and seen in Norwegian society. Maybe I am wrong, but it seems to be pretty different from the Japanese. Your conception seems to be romantic, legitimized and aesthetic. Maybe this is just the author's literature and suicide is a very serious issue in Norway.
Here in Spain, it is a taboo topic and nobody speaks about it. Which is not the same as Fosse, who speaks about the topic but with silent and pauses.
Fosse uses pauses with the aim of replicating them in Norwegian theater. I don't have a big background on this matter because I haven't read his plays yet. I will gain more knowledge in the future because he is an excellent writer, and I will keep reading him. He also states: 'For me, writing is a kind of listening. I don't know what I'm listening for, but I'm listening'
As for your question about how Norwegians look at suicide; I have some trouble answering, since it is a relative matter. I don't know how taboo it is in Norway compared to the rest of the world, but it definitely isn't so taboo that people won't casually mention that a person that happens to be discussed killed themselves. Coincidentally, this happened a few hours actually. The conversation happened to include a random person my grandparents knew, and they mentioned that he killed himself. Now, when I say casually, I don't mean that people talk about it flippantly in cases regarding actual suicides. When actual suicides are mentioned, they are mentioned in either a serious or neutral tone.
But suicide in general is topic often joked about with younger people in Norway (millenials & Gen Z), but I reckon this more flippant attitude to the topic is generally more prevalent with younger people around the world, not just in Norway.
As for romanticizing or legitimizing suicide, I would wager that Norway does it more than e.g. the U.S. First of all, Norway is quite secular, so that's a factor demonizing/stimgatizing suicide almost entirely removed. Beyond that however, I base this observation on my personal experience versus what I've seen in American media. I have for example mentioned to my family that if certain illnesses were to befall me, I would just kill myself or get euthanasia if possible (which is not legal in Norway currently I believe). My family and friends have never reacted with shock to this, and if anything seem to respect it, though perhaps not to think it a superior choice.
Lastly, I'd like to mention that there seems to be a general empathy/understanding of people who have comitted suicide among Norwegians. Maybe I am just projecting, but when the topic comes up, it seems like people have a face of "too bad they couldn't resist", or something like that. Personally, I have some suicidal ideations (though no suicidal thoughts), and as a result, I don't find cases of suicide (regardless of how well the person seemed to be) shocking. I know how fundamentally disappointing reality can be, regardless of how good things are on paper; this attitude is something I feel is shared amongst Norwegians to some degree, but I have no idea if I am just projecting or not.
Thank you for this information. It is something that helps me to understand Fosse a bit more. I think I am getting closer to Norwegian culture. Fosse uses a neutral tone when a character decides to kill himself. He doesn't use an overreacted nor gimmicky message. He only expresses and accepts suicide because he understands it is a legitimized way of ending life. What you explained reminds me of Fosse, and it makes me jealous of a culture (or sociology) which is neutral towards this topic.
For example: Occasionally, my family has also mentioned a person who killed himself in the past, but my grandparents expressed themselves in a quiet voice, saying: Yes, Mister X, after ending up in bankruptcy, he hung himself... What a pity, and why does this happen at all?
They express this topic with a lot of affliction. They are not neutral, they just feel a lot of sorrow for a suicidal deceased. It makes me sad, because I think they have a fear of death due to the experience of a Catholic education.
Quoting Ø implies everything
Yes, being a secular is so damn important. Being raised and born in a country which suffered from having an abusive religious educational system, can get me into a false statement where my death needs the approval of the rest or God. It is very hard to find someone here who accepts suicide. I commented that I wasn't fearful of this matter one day, and my parents went crazy. They said I needed a therapist urgently.
Well, although suicide has been spontaneously increased in Spain, the victims are still invisible, and it makes me mad. Even when someone is a young person, this topic gets more twisted into explanation, because most people think: Why are you thinking this? Are you OK? Come on, you are young, and you have a lot of time and experience to live... Etc. It makes me sick, they don't understand life (nor death).
Quoting Ø implies everything
I agree.
Quoting Ø implies everything
Exactly, they [the people] think we were not able to resist. But exactly to what? And they consider our action as a loss... But what do we lose at all?
Quoting Ø implies everything
Me too, and I usually felt alone because I never found a person of my age (I am of the millennial generation) thinking in a way like I do... And, people tended to isolate me obviously, because we are young and there is no time to think about this! Since I read Mishima, I have seen suicide as an idealised-beautiful ending. Furthermore, Fosse helps me to see it even clearer.
It's a shame you don't have people you can talk to about this IRL.
I think no activity is above scrutiny, including that of being alive. How can we scrutinize it without considering the alternative, to the degree we can? I find that thinking about death makes life better, it makes me live it more fully. I take healthy but scary risks most wouldn't simply because I don't take it for granted that life is inherently worth living. Maybe it is, but I am not so sure. So, I make sure to make life worth living, even if that means risking it. This is of course not promoting reckless actions, because we don't have a right to risk other's lives, nor are there that many things worth risking one's life for.
Judging by your reaction, I think I see part of the reason for the degree of dialectical diversity in Norway. When individual people are fiercely independent in their attitude, as you seem to be, then this will be reflected in their language. imagine if every individual insisted "I will only use my language" and each time two people met there was a lot of resistance toward compromise. This would produce extremely localized dialects. So the degree of dialectical diversity is not only dependent on geographical features, but also on the disposition of the people. A person with a different kind of attitude might accept Nynorsk as a welcomed change, inclined to give up the old with a view toward improvement..
That is indeed a factor in Norway; dialectical pride, that is. We are often told to hang onto our dialect when we move. Personally, I have not done too good of a job with that, especially when I have moved to places with an easier dialect (if the brain can reduce computational complexity, it often will).
So, I do not think your description fits me too well, nor most people of my generation. I do have some dialectical pride, as I think my dialect is beautiful, but I am not so proud that I'll actively resist myself going over to another dialect.
The attitudes towards Nynorsk and Bokmål are quite separate from this, however. Nynorsk/bokmål are not competing with the dialects; the Norwegian dialects have no standardizes written form, and Nynorsk and Bokmål have no standardized spoken form. Nynorsk is the language that fits my dialect the best, so if dialectical pride played a part, I would prefer Nynorsk. Yet, I prefer Bokmål, because at least its construction was not as stupid as that of Nynorsk.
The main reason you gave for dislike of Nynorsk was the way that the author treated certain dialects. So I still believe there is an issue of "dialectical pride" here, though complex and perhaps disguised. If there was no dialectical pride involved you would not concern yourself with the way the author preferred some dialects over others.
Are you referring to Fosse when you say author, or Ivar Aasen? If the former, then you need to re-read the conversation. If the latter, then your argument falls apart given the fact that I do not speak one of the dialects excluded by Ivar Aasen. In fact, the dialect is speak is one of the dialects best represented by Nynorsk, an epitomic example being ikkje, meaning not; which is written in Nynorsk exactly as how my dialect pronounces it.
I meant the latter, the author of that language.
It doesn't matter that your dialect is not one of the excluded ones. Your attitude towards the exclusion indicates an underlying instance of what you have termed "dialectical pride". Otherwise the exclusion would not have significance to you. In other words the exclusion only becomes significant in relation to an attitude of dialectical pride, and, the exclusion is significant to you.
I see your point, but it is not the mechanism behind my dislike for Nynorsk. The exclusion of the Northern dialects is significant because it is an instance of ethnolinguistic discrimination. It is significant because it is a message; "you people are not my people, you people do not belong here, you people are not worthy of representation, etc."
It's not about the dialects, it's about the people that speak them.
I stand corrected then. Dialectical pride is like the tip of the iceberg. The real issue is not the dialectic exclusion which is evident as the symptom, but rather an underlying ethnic discrimination.
I find praise of Nynorsk to be naïve and ignorant.
Hello again! I am currently reading Melancholia by Fosse. I have only read 132 pages, but I feel I need to express my emotions and thoughts with you guys. This great writer always have me in tears.
Context: This novel is about the tumultuous life of the Norwegian artist Lars Hertervig. Sadly, this painter suffered from schizophrenia and died in a mental care center in Norway. Basically, Fosse tries to write a story about the daily life of Lars when he was a student at Düsseldorf Arts Academy. I remember talking with you about Fosse's use of silence. In this story, this method is more important and emotional. For example (the following is translated by myself, sorry if the emotion is lost):
I personally believe this is a nostalgic, familiar memory, very beautifully written by Fosse. I imagine Lars missing his dad and the old days living in Norway. Everything is in silence. Non verbal communication here.
This sense of melancholia continues:
Does Fosse refer to suicide here again? I think it was a traumatic experience lived by Lars and Fosse captured it very well. There is a lot of emotion in that quote.
What do you folks think?
By the way, if you are interested on seeing paints by Lars Hertervig, here is a nice link. His paints are dreamlike and hazy. Lars Hertervig.
@mcdoodle Did you read Melancholia by Fosse?
@Ø implies everything How much is Lars Hertervig appreciated in Norway nowadays?
I'll express an opinion on this, even though it's difficult to say anything confidently without knowing the greater context. Also, I'm really not familiar with any of the author's material, so I really do not know his style at all. Furthermore, i do not know your translation technique, nor the accuracy of your translation.
What exactly is the context of the father walking toward the pier? Is it possible that this is imaginary, a sort of daydream of the narrator? Notice that the father asks "if I'm not doing well", and this is completely different from asking "how are you doing" or something like that, because it implies that the speaker is already aware that the person is not doing well. So the father is already 'into the mind' of the son, as if a product of the son's imagination. That is a very strong indication that the son is doing very poorly, wants to go home, and is imagining, and hoping, that his father is coming to take him home. Instead, the imaginary father walks right into the water, dashing all hopes of taking him home, showing him a completely different direction, suicide.
Remember the use of silence, and the power of the imagination which we discussed earlier in the thread. Silence is the cue to use your own imagination, fill in all the blanks, where the author led you toward something, but did not explicitly say it. The silence says it better. So if the narrator is on the pier daydreaming, using his imagination, then it's better that you the reader, use your imagination to better understand the situation described.
Of course, I do not know the context of the expressed passage, so further explanation would better reveal whether my interpretation is what is intended by the author, or not.
I will try to be more specific regarding the context.
The plot of the story is about the life of Lars Hertervig. A Norwegian painter of the 19th century. He suffered from schizophrenia, but apart from this mental disorder, he suffered a cruel prank played by his fellow students. It is shown that the classmates laughed at him in the book for being a Quaker and poor. This fatal experience in Germany led him to end up in an Asylum in Norway. Dying at the age of 72.
Fosse was inspired by the tumultuous life of this painter, and decided to write Melancholia, trying to put the reader in the painter's shoes. Following Fosse's writing technique, Lars Hertervig communicates himself in two different ways: with the characters around (dialogue) and speaking alone (soliloquy). When he speaks alone in the street or at home, he suffers from melancholia. He seems not to be really happy in Germany and misses the old days in Norway.
The reason why the father of Hertervig walked towards the pier is unknown. What I can tell you is that the pier itself always comes in the 'hallucinations' of him. Sometimes his father appears, another his sister, for example. In my own opinion, I think it is not a dreamlike scene. He experienced it in real life when he was young and lived in Norway.
For example: there is a scene in the book where his classmates are laughing at him because one of them says his family is Quakers. Instead of getting angry with them, he experiences a sense of melancholia (the pier appears again. His sister and mother are there, in silence. Smiling) and then suffers a mental breakdown in front of his classmates: he starts to shout 'mother' and 'sister' without control.
(The mother and sister remain in silence at the pier in this breakdown of the painter).
And the bullies start to saying to him: why are you talking alone? Who is Elizabeth? (Elizabeth is the sister of Hertervig). Here I feel that the noise of the bullying crash with the silently melancholia of Hertervig.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I agree. But what makes me wonder about how Fosse wrote the book is whether the silence is a reference to death (his parents and sister passed away and he feels alone) or the inability to say to them that he wants to go back to Norway. In this novel, the silence is a key factor and, most of the time, is confusing because even the protagonist feels scared of why his family remain in silence at the pier.
I wouldn't see "silence" as "death" from what I've read. Silence is the language of the imagination, and imagination is very much alive. In the case of schizophrenia the boundary between what is imaginary and what is real is blurred. That means that the silent language (imagination) becomes a very real language, with actual communicative power. We all share this to some extent, and it's an essential aspect of artistry, our imaginations can communicate something very real to us, and we transform this into artistic expression.
I believe the fundamental issue here is the way that you relate to "silence". There's two sides to this silence, the silence of the described scene (Fosse's silence), and the silence of the reader. Remember, silence is used by Fosse as a tool, to provoke the imagination of the reader. I believe Fosse would have intentionally left a blank (silence) concerning key aspects of Lars' family relations. From what I understand family relations can play a key role in the development of schizophrenia, and Fosse was probably not in a position to adequately understand those relations, so he would leave that to the imagination of the reader.
I would say that the family remaining in silence at the pier would be an implication of Lars' inability to communicate directly with them, expressing that much of his communication with them was through his imagination. This would indicate that them being dead is sort of irrelevant because he always communicated with them through his imagination anyway. Perhaps its a demonstration that they never provided for him the words that he needed from them. And this is what allows him to continue to communicate with them at the pier, regardless of them being dead.
It is very difficult to put in work my imagination in this novel by Fosse. The first book I read about him, silence was also an important factor in the plot, and the characters were more direct in the few dialogues they had. But in this story, Lars Hertervig is a person with schizophrenia. There are two classes of Lars: the one who communicates with the rest of the cast, and the other who speaks alone in his mind. The reader can find out both, but when the second version of Lars appears, most of the characters consider them as crazy.
I wanted to wait one more day. I am now on the 188th page. Hertervig is in Norway again. This is time is inmate in an asylum, and he suffers from sexual delirium.
Although it seems that he has been in Norway for two years, his family haven't shown up yet in the new chapter.
I will keep waiting. The final end of the first chapter ends walking in silence alone in the street of Düsseldorf, but having a tumultuous mental breakdown and shouting at his inner self. Where is Elizabeth? The name of his sister...
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Probably. What would disappoint me and would make me feel very sad is if everything was imagined by Lars. Remember he has mental disorders, and I can't really trust every silence of him and his family. I don't even know if they are alive yet... let's see in the following pages.
Ales is sitting in the lounge. He feels cold and tired. Ales thinks it is a good idea to go to the kitchen and drink alcohol. After that, he will start to turn off all the lights in the house slowly. Then he will sort the house if it is necessary. After all of this, Ales will go to the sea, and he will join the waves and walk until he reaches the profundity. But why does Ales think in all of this? Why does Ales want to join the sea and the waves? He was just sitting in the lounge, and he thought it was a good idea to drink alcohol to stay warm and sort the house. But it is impossible to get rid of the idea of going to the sea and joining the waves.
Note: Maybe Ales is actually a woman. @Ø implies everything could say us whether Ales is a male name or not.
I don't know if you remember it guys, but we talked about how Fosse used silence and pause regarding death. I don't know to what extent Ales committed suicide, because everything appears to be a blurry idea in his mind. Perhaps Fosse is showing how Ales wants to kill himself, but this could not be a spontaneous idea, and this is why he feels overwhelmed by these ideas. Nonetheless, it is interesting why Ales wants to turn off all the lights and sort the house. Is this a reference to silence? Pause maybe?