Free Shyness And Dignity by Dag Solstad Page A

missing out on something, could even so go back to his room to review a certain Kant interpretation, because then he knew at least what he was missing, what possibilities were lying in wait for this night, as befitted someone who, in other words, was extremely curious and was known for his great flair for gossip among his associates in the student milieu at Blindern and Sogn – this (still) young man, who would have an attack of panic because he was afraid to miss, due to other business, an important home match of Skeid (which was his team, not Vålerenga) or, for that matter, an absurd play presented by the Television Theatre, and who, on learning that Molde was organizing an annual jazz festival, with a line-up of international big guns in the bright light of summer, planned to go there, which he did (with a tent and all, but without Elias Rukla for his travelling companion, unlike their three big drunken binges for the sheer adventure of it in Copenhagen, going by the Danish line, where they slept on deck), this young man had as the basis of his life, the fixed point of his existence, the eighteenth-century thinker Immanuel Kant from the East-Prussian city of Königsberg on the Baltic. Elias Rukla never ceased to wonder about it. Behind that forehead of his he lives a quiet, contemplative life, he thought, something I simply cannot comprehend. And so he quizzed and quizzed Johan Corneliussen about his contemplative life with Immanuel Kant. Johan disliked being quizzed in this way and would get annoyed at times, but Elias Rukla did not give a tinker’s damn about that. He asked and asked, but Johan Corneliussen preferred to talk about something else, something that was going to happen, perhaps even the same evening. But now and then Johan Corneliussen did speak about what his life was based upon. Then Elias would prick up his ears, although he had to admit he did not grasp very much. After all, his knowledge of Immanuel Kant did not go beyond what an elementary student of philosophy had to know, and to grasp even that had cost him hard work. But he pricked up his ears. In any case, he understood that Johan Corneliussen was bound up with Time and Space, these two categories which are there, by necessity, in every thought we think. Here everything bumps up against its limit. Time. Space. That which was given in advance, and which Johan Corneliussen’s brain was pulling and tearing at, Elias Rukla presumed. Would not someone who could relate to this without cracking up possess an inward composure, display an air of being transfigured? Elias Rukla looked expectantly at Johan Corneliussen, his cheerful and generous friend. But Johan Corneliussen gave no answer to this. He kept his eventual meditations, as well as his eventual transfiguration, his priceless and possibly hard-earned inward composure, to himself. But he said that it was not Kant per se that interested him. Kant was the basis, but that was not what he was after in his PhD dissertation, which was still several years in the future. He was occupied by all the others, all those thousands of philosophers who had taken up a position towards Kant. It was the Kant literature, the literature about Kant. It was modern man’s dossier. By studying that, one was truly studying the possibilities of human thought. There was no need to study anything else. The literature about Kant contained everything that a curious and intelligent twentieth-century individual could imagine himself asking questions about. By means of Marx’s relation to Kant, you learned everything. That way alone you would be able to understand Marxism. The same with Wittgenstein. Studying how Wittgenstein works with Kant, how, with all due respect, he tries to evade him, you are immediately on the track of Wittgenstein’s secret. He himself was trying to join that numerous celebrated company – well, the end he had in view was that his PhD dissertation would in the fullness of time join this series of