The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge

Brigge's notebook is a document describing his search for meaning in the world. Brigge records everything, from his interactions to his memories, in an apparently futile attempt to convey the impossible complexity of life. With each entry, Brigge is less satisfied. The more he documents the world and the more he shares his memories, the more he realizes that he will never truly be able to comprehend the nuances of existence, nor convey these nuances through his words. As such, he goes searching for new avenues of understanding. Toward the end of his book, he looks to history for precedent. The story of Charles VI, for example, is an example of Brigge immersing himself in history in the hope of understanding his present. Just as he did with his memories of his childhood, he hopes the past will provide a better understanding for his contemporary suffering. Given the chronological distance from the life of the king, however, Brigge cannot hope to understand everything about Charles. The hundreds of years that separate Brigge from the diseased king make any attempt to truly know Charles VI doomed from the outset. Yet Brigge's continued attempts to do so show how desperate he has become. In effect, he is Charles VI, struggling to overcome his ill health and assert dominion over his world. Brigge dwells on the story of Charles's pained, tragic life not only because he desperately wants to understand the world but because he can sympathize with the struggles of the king.

Another example of Brigge's increasingly fitful search for meaning in his world is his trip to the Roman amphitheater. The amphitheater is even older than the story of Charles VI, suggesting that Brigge is delving even deeper into the past to try to find something substantive to say about his current predicament. Furthermore, he has physically removed himself from Paris to facilitate his search. Even in this new location, however, Brigge does not find what he is looking for. He casts a suspicious eye on the other people in the room, viewing them with suspicion because they seem to be searching for something very different. To Brigge, they are tourists. They are pursuing novelty and entertainment when he is searching for substance and meaning. Through their existence, they ridicule his search. Through their happiness, they exacerbate his misery. While Brigge can look at the stage of the amphitheater and imagine his position in the history of the world, these tourists make his attempts to do so seem fleeting and meaningless. That Brigge himself fears that his pursuit is fleeting and meaningless only compounds his annoyance. Brigge does not know or talk to the tourists. Rather, he projects his own insecurities on to them. They become the stage on which he examines his own anxieties, a theater within a theater. That Brigge does not like what he sees may be the reason he does not dwell on his memory of the amphitheater and why his entries and his thoughts immediately return to Paris.

The final entries in Brigge's notebook concern the story of the prodigal son. The story is taken from the Bible and Brigge retells and recontextualizes the story, projecting on to it his own views about love, obligation, and God. To Brigge, the prodigal son suffers silently when he is with his family. They love a version of him that he does not quite see as himself. He lives his life as this person so as to make his family happy but doing so has a bad effect on him. Eventually, he cannot take living the false life anymore and he leaves home. After living a life of authentic poverty, the prodigal son decides that he preferred his previous life. Being loved by others was better, even if it meant embracing an inauthentic identity. The son prefers to be loved by his family and to facilitate their love rather than to love himself. The story has a touch of tragedy for Brigge. He is alienated from society, and he no longer has any living members of his immediate family. Even if he wanted to embrace an inauthentic identity and return home, there is no one left to love him. Brigge explores the story and sees within it many reasons to bolster his beliefs but, in doing so, he reveals to himself that he is stuck in an impossible position in which he may never be able to be loved again.