Since everything happens by chance, it is empty, as Tomas observes. “But is not an event in fact more significant and noteworthy the greater the number of fortuities necessary to bring it about?” (48). The beauty of chance encounters transforms them into motifs for a person’s life, which is composed like music.
The older one gets, the harder it is to understand other’s motifs. When one is young, motifs can be moulded together with others to create shared meaning. As life goes on, it takes more effort to understand another person’s world.
For example, Sabina’s bowler hat carries a semantic river. It’s a recurring motif that picks up a new meaning in different situations, yet still carries the echoes of all former meanings. But this means nothing to Franz.
This reminded me of Individuals and States in The Anxiety of Influence - Clinamen or Poetic Misprision, which leads me to wonder, does an individual accumulate traces of the states it passes through?