My Struggle: Book 6

by Karl Ove Knausgård

The lawyers had to describe whatever the case might be, in other words what had happened, and in court this was of course often the crux of the conflict: what had actually happened? And once this was established, with what motives? And to what effect? It was not unlike a novelist’s work. The difference was that the lawyers not only had to understand the acts in themselves but also how they applied to the law, which furthermore was in writing, formulated on the basis of expectation regarding future events, thus as a kind of prognosis – based on thousands of years’ experience of mankind, which indicated that theft, embezzlement, and murder would continue to occur while some of the more culture-specific laws died as the culture that had necessitated them also died. Actions were language-less, while the law and its interpretation were language-based. A law without language was as inconceivable as a poem without language. Law and poetry were connected; they were two sides of the same coin.