Selections from the Writings of Kierkegaard
Martensen's reply, which forcefully enough brings out all that could
be said for a milder interpretation of the Christian categories and for
his predecessor, was not as respectful to the sensitive author as it
ought to have been. In a number of newspaper letters of increasing
violence and acerbity Kierkegaard now tried to force his obstinately
silent opponent to his knees; but in vain. Filled with holy wrath at
what he conceived to be a conspiracy by silence, and evasions to bring
to naught the whole infinitely important matter for which he had
striven, Kierkegaard finally turned agitator. He addressed himself
directly to the people with the celebrated pamphlet series Öieblikket
"The Present Moment" in which he opens an absolutely withering
fire of invective on anything and everything connected with "the
existing order" in Christendom--an agitation the like of which for
revolutionary vehemence has rarely, if ever, been seen. All rites of the
Church--marriage, baptism, confirmation, communion, burial--and
most of all the clergy, high and low, draw the fiery bolts of his wrath
and a perfect hail of fierce, cruel invective. The dominant note, though
varied infinitely, is ever the same: "Whoever you may be, and whatever
the life you live, my friend: by omitting to attend the public
divine service--if indeed it be your habit to attend it--by
omitting, to attend public divine service as now constituted
(claiming as it does to represent the Christianity of the New Testament)
you will escape at least one, and a great, sin in not attempting to fool
God by calling that the Christianity of the New Testament which is not
the Christianity of the New Testament." And he does not hesitate
to use strong, even coarse, language; he even courts the reproach
of blasphemy in order to render ridiculous in "Official Christianity"
what to most may seem inherently, though mistakenly, a matter of
highest reverence.
The swiftness and mercilessness of his attack seem to have left
his contemporaries without a weapon: all they could do was to shrug
their shoulders about the "fanatic," or to duck and wait dumbly until
the storm had passed.
Nor did it last long. On the second of October, 1855, Kierkegaard
fell unconscious in the street. He was brought to the hospital where he
died on the eleventh of November, aged 42. The immense exertions of
the last months had shattered his frail body. And strange: the last of
his money had been used up. He had said what he thought Providence
had to communicate through him. His strength was gone. His death at
this moment would put the crown on his work. As he said on his
death-bed: "The bomb explodes, and the conflagration will follow."
In appraising Kierkegaard's life and works it will be found true,
as Hotfding says, that he can mean much even to those who do not
subscribe to the beliefs so unquestioningly entertained by him. And
however much they may regret that he poured his noble wine into the
old bottles, they cannot fail to recognize the yeoman's service he did,
both for sincere Christians in compelling them to rehearse inwardly
what ever tends to become a matter of form: what it means to be a
Christian; and for others, in deepening their sense of individual
responsibility. In fact, every one who has once come under his
influence and has wrestled with this mighty spirit will bear away
some blessing. In a time when, as in our own, the crowd, society,
the millions, the nation, had depressed the individual to an
insignificant atom--and what is worse, in the individual's own
estimation; when shallow altruistic, socializing effort thought
naively that the millenium was at hand, he drove the truth home
that, on the contrary, the individual is the measure of all things;
that we do not live en masse; that both the terrible responsibility
and the great satisfactions of life inhere in the individual.
Again, more forcibly than any one else in modern times, certainly
more cogently than Pascal, he demonstrated that the possibility
of proof in religion is an illusion; that doubt cannot be combatted
by reason, that it ever will be _credo quia impossibile._ In
religion, he showed the utter incompatibility of the æsthetic and
the religious life; and in Christianity, he re-stated and re-pointed
the principle of ideal perfection by his unremitting insistence
on contemporaneousness with Christ. It is another matter whether
by so doing Kierkegaard was about to pull the pillars from underneath
the great edifice of Christianity which housed both him and his
enemies: seeing that he himself finally doubted whether it had
ever existed apart from the Founder and, possibly, the Apostles.
Kierkegaard is not easy reading. One's first impression of crabbedness,
whimsicality, abstruseness will, however, soon give way to admiration
of the marvelous instrument of precision language has become in his
hands. To be sure, he did not write for people who are in a hurry,
nor for dullards. His closely reasoned paragraphs and, at times
huge, though rhetorically faultless, periods require concentrated
attention, his involutions and repetitions, handled with such
incomparable virtuosity, demand an everlasting readiness of
comprehension on the part of the reader. On the other hand his
philosophic work is delightfully "Socratic," unconventional, and
altogether "un-textbook-like." Kierkegaard himself wished that his
devotional works should be read aloud. And, from a purely æsthetic
point of view, it ought to be a delight for any orator to practice
on the wonderful periods of e. g., "The Preparation," or of,
say, the parable of the coach-horses in "Acts of the Apostles."
They alone would be sufficient to place Kierkegaard in the front rank
of prose writers of the nineteenth century where, both by the power of
his utterance and the originality of his thought, he rightfully
belongs.
In laying before an English speaking public selections from
Kierkegaard's works, the translator has endeavored to give an
adequate idea of the various aspects of his highly disparate works.
For this purpose he has chosen a few large pieces, rather than given
tidbits. He hopes to be pardoned for not having a slavish regard for
Kierkegaard's very inconsequential paragraphing[8] and for breaking,
with no detriment, he believes, to the thought, some excessively
long paragraphs into smaller units; which will prove more restful
to the eye and more encouraging to the reader. As to occasional
omissions--always indicated by dots--the possessor of the complete
works will readily identify them. In consonance with Kierkegaard's
views on "contemporaneousness," no capitals are used in "The
Preparation" when referring to Christ by pronouns.
When Kierkegaard died, his influence, like that of Socrates, was
just beginning to make itself felt. The complete translation into
German of all his works[9] and of many into other languages; the
magnificent new edition of his works[10] and of his extraordinarily
voluminous diaries,[11] now nearing completion; and the steadily
increasing number of books, pamphlets, and articles from the most
diverse quarters testify to his reaching a growing number of
_individuals._ Below is given a list of the more important books
and articles on Kierkegaard. It does not aim at completeness.
Bärthold, A. S. K., _Eine Verfassetexistenz eigner Art._ Halberstadt,
1873.
Same: _Noten zu S. K.'s Lebensgeschichte._ Halle, 1876.
Same: _Die Bedeutung der aesthetischen Schriften S. K.'s._ Halle,
1879.
Barfod, H. P. (Introduction to the first edition of the Diary.)
Copenhagen, 1869.
Bohlin, Th. _S. K.'s Etiska Åskadning._ Uppsala, 1918.
Brandes, G. _S. K., En kritisk Fremstilling i Grundrids._ Copenhagen,
1877.
Same: German ed. Leipzig, 1879.
Deleuran, V. _Esquisse d'une étude sur S. K._ Thèse, University
of Paris, 1897.
Höffding, H. _S. K._ Copenhagen, 1892.
Same: German edition (2nd). Stuttgart, 1902.
Hoffmann, R. _K. und die religiöse Gewissheit._ Göttingen, 1910.
Jensen, Ch. _S. K.'s religiöse Udvikling._ Aarhus, 1898.
Monrad, O. P. _S. K. Sein Leben und seine Werke._ Jena, 1909.
Münch, Ph. _Haupt und Grundgedanken der Philosophie S. K.'s._
Leipzig, 1902.
Rosenberg, P. A. _S. K., hans Liv, hans Personlighed og hans
Forfatterskab._ Copenhagen, 1898.
Rudin, W. S. _K.'s Person och Författerskap. Förste Afdelningen._
Stockholm, 1880.
Schrempf, Ch. _S. K.'s Stellung zu Bibel und Dogma._ Zeitschrift
für Theologie und Kirche, 1891, p. 179.
Same: _S. K. Ein unfreier Pionier der Freiheit._ (With a foreword
by Höffding) Frankfurt, 1909.
Swenson, D. _The Anti-Intellectualism of K._ Philosophic Review,
1916, p. 567.
To my friends and colleagues, Percy M. Dawson and Howard M. Jones,
I wish also in this place to express my thanks for help and criticism
"in divers spirits."
[Footnote 1: Pronounced _Kerkegor._]
[Footnote 2: An interesting parallel is the story of Peter Williams, as
told by George Borrow, _Lavengro_, chap. 75 ff.]
[Footnote 3: Corresponding, approximately, to our doctoral thesis.]
[Footnote 4: Not "Discourses for Edification," _cf._ the Foreword to
_Atten Opbyggelige Taler_, S. V. vol. IV.]
[Footnote 5: _De Carne Christi_, chap. V, as my friend, Professor A. E.
Haydon, kindly points out.]
[Footnote 6: _Cf._ Brandes, S. K. p. 157.]
[Footnote 7: Mrs. Thomasine Gyllembourg-Ehrensvärd.]
[Footnote 8: With signal exception of "The Present Moment."]
[Footnote 9: In process of publication. Jena.]
[Footnote 10: Samlede Værker. Copenhagen, 1901-1906 (14 vols). In the
notes abbreviated S. V. Still another edition is preparing.]
[Footnote 11: Copenhagen, 1909 ff.]
DIAPSALMATA[1]
What is a poet? An unhappy man who conceals profound anguish in his
heart, but whose lips are so fashioned that when sighs and groans pass
over them they sound like beautiful music. His fate resembles that of
the unhappy men who were slowly roasted by a gentle fire in the tyrant
Phalaris' bull--their shrieks could not reach his ear to terrify
him, to him they sounded like sweet music. And people flock about the
poet and say to him: do sing again; which means, would that new
sufferings tormented your soul, and: would that your lips stayed
fashioned as before, for your cries would only terrify us, but your
music is delightful. And the critics join them, saying: well done, thus
must it be according to the laws of æsthetics. Why, to be sure, a critic
resembles a poet as one pea another, the only difference being that he
has no anguish in his heart and no music on his lips. Behold, therefore
would I rather be a swineherd on Amager,[2] and be understood by the
swine than a poet, and misunderstood by men.
In addition to my numerous other acquaintances I have still one more
intimate friend--my melancholy. In the midst of pleasure, in the
midst of work, he beckons to me, calls me aside, even though I remain
present bodily. My melancholy is the most faithful sweetheart I have
had--no wonder that I return the love!
Of all ridiculous things the most ridiculous seems to me, to be
busy--to be a man who is brisk about his food and his work.
Therefore, whenever I see a fly settling, in the decisive moment, on
the nose of such a person of affairs; or if he is spattered with mud
from a carriage which drives past him in still greater haste; or the
drawbridge opens up before him; or a tile falls down and knocks him
dead, then I laugh heartily. And who, indeed, could help laughing?
What, I wonder, do these busy folks get done? Are they not to be
classed with the woman who in her confusion about the house being
on fire carried out the fire-tongs? What things of greater account, do
you suppose, will they rescue from life's great conflagration?