§10.

Hello! Just a couple of stray thoughts and an aberration before we proceed:

A step in the towards what generally is called "World irony" Flaubert took late in life with his Herodias, (in Trois Contes), which is a crisply written story, full of correct and incorrect facts from the time of Jesus' life, and which looks upon the world from a bantering bird's eye view, supremely accomplished by playing with the "religious sentiment", the innate fear, which the "only God" evoked in the hearts and minds of the Christian reader of Flaubert's contemporaries in this era. His play with different spheres: 1) worldly power, 2) sexual drives 4.) the joys of eating and 4.) the surreal Meta level, all this is just eminently affective, and to this day, 150 years later. The spontaneity of this story will sometimes quite close to that, contained in his many letter, where impatience, anger, invectives ( it is almost a pathological swearing in those letters ) and senselessness will flower freely side by side with social criticism.
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Parenthetically - quite parenthetically can be cited a style variant and an irony with which Flaubert probably not (what I know) came in contact with, namely Jane Austen. ( Perhaps another person with Asperger traits.... Although of course not to the extent that we see those in Virginia Woolf or Emily Dickinson, to prejudically chose just two women of the pen of utmost importance ...). Her early novel Northanger Abbey (1818) - written at the coffee table, which is all she wrote, in the pauses between household chores - begins with the following "hard to beat" elegant sentence:

"No one who had ever seen Catherine Morland on her infancy would have supposed her to be an heroine. Her situation in life, the character of her father and mother, her own person and disposition, were all equally against her. Her father was a clergyman, without being neglected or poor, and a very respectable man, though his name was Richard, and he had even been handsome. He had a considerable independence, besides two real good livings, and he was not in the least addicted to locking up his daughters. Her mother was a woman of Useful plain sense, with a good temper, and, what is more remarkable, with a good constitution. She had three sons before Catherine was born; and, instead of dying in Bringing the latters into the world, as anybody might expect, she still lived on - lived to have six children more - to see them growing up around her, and to enjoy excellent health herself. A family of ten children will always be called a fine family, where there are heads, and arms, and legs enough for the number; But the Morlands had little other right to the word, for They were in general very plain, and Catherine, for many years of her life, as plain as any." ( Jane Austen, NA, p.1).
The book is Austen's first novel. Already in 1803 the script was sold to a publisher for 10 pounds, but was bought back by the author in 1816 for the same amount when the book was announced, but not issued. It is a satire on the Gothic ( id est: Romantic) novel, on Elisabeth Gatskell, Walpole and others. Austen here uses "le style indirect libre" which was so appropriate also for Flaubert in the use for satirical purposes.
The small piece referred above contains such a vast number of implications, winks, etc. even to a person only half awake - or nearly unconscious - reader, that already at this initial suspect that one of world literature's great is born ... right here!!! One of history's greatest ironies. So neglected because of modern totally stupid movies based on the plots of her novels. The peculiar thing – or one of them - with Austen's writing, not more than a handful of novels, is that these take place within a limited sphere. In almost all these novels dealt with (supposedly, allegedly) a single major subject: for a woman to get married. In the satire's character, a ...

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§9.

Let us (me) talk about Gustave Flaubert. This is not only important, but it is a very enjoyable thing too. And remember: history is not an exact science! I am trying to find out "the nature of the bubble". It may be so, that I am handling “historical facts” carelessly. But I do my best. Reading is no exact science, and writing about authors have never been a science at all.
Anyway, bluntly said, the young Gustave was a physically clumsy child. He was neglected by his mother, but observed by a maid. He had fits of epilepsy. But he in fact in his twenties moved to Paris (leaving Rouen) to study law. He had friends and he began to write short stories and novels at an early age. Mesmerized by words as he was he in turn was mesmerizing the woman in the parisian saloons. Everybody was awaiting the upcoming of a new Balzac. Flaubert, who had a round big head, was very interested in women (for sex) and had in his early years been attracted to older women, but in Paris he met the young Louise, with whom he ( twice) developed a strange relationship. Gustave never married, and Louise learnt, that Gustave had a terrible temper.
Very soon Gustave left the study of law for literature. And he was to be known to his friends; - he had such – as one who took endless time to finish his works. He wrote a whole lot of letters, and in these letters he is mostly in a rage at other people and at the difficulty of writing good books. The art of compromise was not his. He had from early years chosen his own way, and it seems, as we will see, that he had a VISION of what good literature was. This vision included some very odd features. Flaubert thought that art was enormously important, and - apparently - that it should be regarded as a universe of its own. He was inclined to the perception of synesthesic fantasies. Once he remarked that he with a giant book ( the book on Le tentation de Saint Antoine, a pre-surrealistic orgy ) had ( simply) wanted to give to his reader the impression of … yellow. ( In an essay Charles Bernheimer asserts that Flaubert never seemed to have understood that language is a means of communication. B. claims that we in fact are facing – both in Kafka and Flaubert – a psychopathology of language. Which might in fact be almost true.)
Flaubert was well oriented in the subjects he liked. He knew history, biblical history and he was familiar with the history of North Africa, where he also travelled, together with his sister. ( And he was extremely careful with facts, using the young Maupassant as a detective, hiring him as a secretary.)
Not only is it remarkable how much he was focused on his words, and how he was using women for sex only, how his temper was a problem to each and everyone, but the most trifling experience one may have, when reading the books he actually finished ( only ten or so …; Léducation sentimentale, Madame Bovary, Salammbô (1862) La tentation de Sainte Antoine (1874) November.(1842) and the unfinished Bouvard et Pécuchet, (1880, the year he died.) is the fascination he had for the intense use of ... irony. ( Flaubert is known to have created a motto:” Le style, c´est la vie.”. – The style is life. - This is a very complicated assertation. To understand this sentence in its entirety it takes a lot. Le poésie pure. ( Mallarmé) .But is Flaubert serious? Or isn´t this utter irony. ). A person who uses irony must have SOME relation to his fellow man. And if you read Madame Bovary you get a whole lot of irony, which is making poor Emma Bovary and poor Charles ( the country doctor ) look like helpless puppets on the stage set by a cruel fate. Flaubert seems to have very little, or no empathy at all regarding these two people. ( In Mad. Bov. of Emma: ”Elle aurait voulu que ce nom de Bovary, qui et le sien, fût illustre, le voir étalé chez les libraires, répété dans les journaux, connu par toute la France. ») . And what was even more troublesome to the public opinion: Flaubert had abs...

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§8.
It is of course a strange thing to let literature affect oneself so very much. If I am reading a short story by Bradbury and am allowing it to make a decision upon whether I should live or die, I have clearly passed way beyond sane living. I might have the feeling the “the rain has come”, but I should be able to hold this experience at a certain distance. And I think I can. But, I must admit this, the feeling of happiness certainly stayed with me. I could not at all refrain from enjoying the story by referring to sound thinking. And this leads, in conjunction with a thought raising from a glance upon my reasoning as a whole in this blog, to a question which is almost equally big, and which certainly requires great strength to take on. Namely this: “Would you ( I am referring to myself ) be able to reason about a bubble-person the way you do without having to think of all the books you have read?” or :”What does literature has to do with it? The bubble is a problem even to completely illiterate humans!?”
OK, I am a bit shocked by this attack, I must say. It seems to me as if someone ( someone inside of me ) is trying to say: “ Alas! Away with literature! There must be a solution to the Problem of the bubble, no matter if we are talking about analogies or crap like that. There is a substance behind words.”.
This objection is fair. More than fair. It points at something quite necessary to deal with. But it has come far too early in my discourse. First we must try to sort out what kind of bubble millions of people are living in.
We could only do so by introspection ( as we have concluded ) and since this is the case we ought to take whatever help is offered. And here literature is of great help. I am referring to great authors who themselves almost certainly were suffering (?) from Asperger’s, like Flaubert, Wittgenstein and Kafka. Let us take a closer look on these to try to investigate the nature of the Bubble. I will start out with Flaubert.

§ 7.

Now we – you and me – all of a sudden find ourselves in the midst of a huge, complicated discourse. Of allegory, of analogy, of art, of the limits of our knowledge, of psycic states and of conviction and entertainment, puzzle and deception, of ethics and moral ( which are two intertwined but still very different subjects ) and of of deepest interest in the “subject matter” of living. I will illustrate my thought here and raising your interest in it ( and what it may look like ) by telling you of an incident of my early life:

I was sitting in a park in one of those sun chairs where you sit “backwards” and your bottom is almost touching the ground. I was reading a book by Ray Bradbury. After having finished the short story “The Day it Rained Forever” I laid down the small paperback book onto the grass, gazed at the brilliant sun and thought:” Now I feel I could easily die. I am completely happy.”. My calm in the moment after having finished reading this small masterpiece ( it had to be a such ) in fact lasted the entire day. I noticed this strange condition. I have never lived a day of my adult life without worrying, except for this day. And I always have this moment – along with some other important moments – to guide myself through difficulties. But: what was it that had happened?

Might the answer shed light on the implicit question “Living in a bubble and its consequenses”?
I will try to tell you the next time we see each other. ( Of course I would not object at all if you read the “alleged” short story. But it does not matter much to the core questions of mine. But reading Bradbury might be a nice thing to do. Sort of. )

Have the nicest of days!

Panic Room

§6.

So now it is time to define the concepts of ”image”, ”analogy” and ”allegory”. But before I indulge in this undertaking, I will comment upon the protocol that I am writing within. This very blog ( which is – in a way – equal to the data protocol ) is in its construction made so to mimic life in certain respects; for instance: it is not possible to delete posts. Or edit them. ( Into zero.). It is quite like in daily life. What is said is ultimately said. And if you think of writing a story here, i.e.: if your blog is a story, or a Monologue, it is written pretty much like the feuilletons once upon a time written by Dostoyevsky ( just to take a famous example ), who – as we perhaps are familiar with – wrote The Idiot in small daily parts for a newspaper in Old Russia, a long time from now, and thus had to adjust to everything he had written before in his manuscript, and he could not change any details about Mysjkin, the hero and small saint in the story. Just like that. What is writ is writ. In this way the writing in this blog-protocol is analogous to life. What is done is done, and one cannot delete the smallest thing. No, it will be there “until the seas gang dry and the rocks melt wi´ the sun”, to speak with Robert Burns.- yes, even the spelling errors, and the smallest dot of punctuation stands for eternity ( if the owner of the domain takes the backups properly . These words, which I am writing here, are more secure to be preserved into the future than if they were carved into the nose of the sphinx at Gize. So to say.). Writing is doing. ( Oh, how joyous for us, who write.). And the nature of the blog reminds me also of what Keats wanted to say about himself, and which he put on his own (!) grave stone:” Here lies a man whose name was writ in water.”. This wasn´t exactly true, because his name rests in many books, alongside his Ode to a Grecian Urn, and lest one is not looking upon books as a stream of water, which is a rather strange image, or analogy, it can be said of Keats that he suffered in his last breath of false modesty.

This, in turn, leads us back to the subject of images, analogies and allegories. I will propose that an “image” is a picture chosen to use in order to clarify one´s thought of a thing or a concept. An image can also be an analogy, like in the sentence above, the sentence we are dealing with at length here:
“ I am living in a bubble.”
It seems clear to everyone, that this is figurative speech. I am “kind of” living in a bubble; the use of the word “bubble” is the use of an image, which is used as an analogy for my feeling in connection to my living this life. It is NOT a plastic bubble, made in a factory.
And when I am discussing if it is “true” that I am living in a bubble, what it means, and if I, living in a bubble, am very different from others and or happier than others, or more miserable, if it is possible for people in bubbles to care for others, be it that they live in bubbles or not live in bubbles, it is all the time figurative speech. And – as you all know – I cannot prove that there is anything even LIKE such bubbles. Not even if I had the whole DNA-strings of every human being I could be certain of whether there were things like bubbles in the respect I have referred to hitherto. It is just an image, a picture, chosen to describe the feeling I feel. But, and this is the essential: this feeling might be investigated, alongside with its analogy, through and through, and this feeling might, provided it will be “properly doubted”, give raise to a whole series of important questions, which it in fact already has done.
As for “allegory” we might return to the story of “The Sneezer”. ( Cf. another §.). Like I said this is not an allegory. Why? It is a nice (?) little story about a man who sneezes hi s way out of a bubble. Of course it is an allegory (!) talking about Man´s situation in life, a little bit odd but anyway? No. An allegory would be like this:
“ A small mousee was ...

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