Some years ago in the city of H .....1 there lived a young student by the name of Johannes Climacus,2 who had no desire whatsoever to become prominent in the world, inasmuch as, on the contrary, he enjoyed living a quiet, secluded life. Those who knew him somewhat intimately tried to explain his inclosed nature, which shunned all close contacts with people, by supposing that he was either melancholy or in love. In a certain sense, those who supposed the latter were not incorrect, although they erred if they assumed that a girl was the object of his dreams. Such sentiments were totally foreign to his heart, and just as his external appearance was delicate and ethereal, almost transparent, his soul was likewise far too intellectual and spiritual to be captivated by a woman’s beauty. In love he was, ardently in love—with [IV B 1 105] thought, or, more accurately, with thinking. No young lover can be more intensely moved by the incomprehensible transition that comes when erotic love [Elskov] awakens in his breast, by the stroke of lightning with which reciprocated love bursts forth in the beloved’s breast, than he was moved by the comprehensible transition in which one thought connects with another, a transition that for him was the happy moment when, in the stillness of his soul, his presentiments and expectations were fulfilled. Thus, when in thought his head was bowed down like a ripe spike of wheat, it was not because he was listening to his beloved’s voice but because he was listening to the secret whispering of thoughts; when he had a dreamy look, it was not because he had intimations of her picture but because the movement of thought was becoming visible to him. It was his delight to begin with a single thought and then, by way of coherent thinking, to climb step by step to a higher one, because to him coherent thinking was a scala paradisi [ladder of paradise],3 and his blessedness seemed to him even more glorious than the angels’. Therefore, when he arrived at the higher thought, it was an indescribable joy, a passionate pleasure, for him to plunge headfirst down into the same coherent thoughts until he reached the point from which he had proceeded. Yet this did not always turn out according to his desire. If he did not get just as many pushes as there were links in the coherent thinking, he became despondent, for then the movement was imperfect. Then he would begin all over again. If he was successful, he would be thrilled, could not sleep for joy, and for hours would continue making the same movement, for this up-and-down and down-and-up of thought was an unparalleled joy. In those happy times, his step was light, almost floating; at other times, it was troubled and unsteady. As long as he labored to climb up, as long as coherent thinking had as yet not managed to make its way, he was oppressed, because he feared losing all those coherent thoughts he had finished but which as yet were not perfectly clear and necessary. When we see someone carrying a number of fragile and brittle things stacked one upon the other, we are not [IV B 1 106] surprised that he walks unsteadily and continually tries to maintain balance. If we do not see the stack, we smile, just as many smiled at Johannes Climacus, not suspecting that his soul was carrying a stack far taller than is usually enough to cause astonishment, that his soul was anxious lest one single coherent thought slip out, for then the whole thing would collapse. He did not notice that people smiled at him, no more than at other times he would notice an individual turn around in delight and look at him when he hurried down the street as lightly as in a dance. He did not pay any attention to people and did not imagine that they could pay any attention to him; he was and remained a stranger in the world.
If Climacus’s conduct must have seemed somewhat remarkable to someone who did not know him very well, it was by no means unexplainable to someone who knew a little about his earlier life, for now in his twenty-first year he was to a certain extent the same as he had always been. His natural disposition had not been disturbed in childhood but had been developed by favorable circumstances. His home did not offer many diversions, and, since he practically never went out, he very early became accustomed to being occupied with himself and with his own thoughts. His father was a very strict man, seemingly dry and prosaic, but underneath this rough homespun cloak he concealed a glowing imagination that not even his advanced age managed to dim. When at times Johannes asked permission to go out, his request was usually refused; but occasionally his father, by way of compensation, offered to take his hand and go for a walk up and down the floor. At first glance, this was a poor substitute, and yet, like the rough homespun coat, it concealed something altogether different. The offer was accepted, and it was left entirely up to Johannes to decide where they should go for a walk. They walked through the city gate to the country palace4 nearby or to the seashore or about the streets—according to Johannes’s wish, for his father was capable of everything. While they walked up and down the floor, his father would tell about everything they saw. They greeted the passers-by; the carriages rumbled past, drowning out his [IV B 1 107] father’s voice; the pastry woman’s fruits were more tempting than ever. Whatever was familiar to Johannes, his father delineated so exactly, so vividly, so directly and on the spot, down to the most trifling detail, and so minutely and graphically whatever was unfamiliar to him, that after a half-hour’s walk with his father he was as overwhelmed and weary as if he had been out a whole day. Johannes quickly learned his father’s magic art. What formerly took place as epic narrative now became a drama; they carried on a dialogue on their tour. If they walked along familiar paths, they watched each other lest something be overlooked. If the path was unfamiliar to Johannes, he made associations, while his father’s omnipotent imagination was able to fashion everything, to use every childish wish as an ingredient in the drama that was taking place. For Johannes, it was as if the world came into existence during the conversation, as if his father were our Lord and he himself his favored one who had permission to insert his own foolish whims as hilariously as he wished, for he was never rebuffed, his father was never disturbed—everything was included and always to Johannes’s satisfaction.
While life in his paternal home was contributing in this way to the development of his imagination, teaching him to relish ambrosia, the education he received in school was in harmony with this. 5The sublime authority of Latin grammar and the divine dignity of rules developed a new enthusiasm. Greek grammar in particular appealed to him. 6Because of it, he forgot to read Homer aloud to himself as he usually did in order to enjoy the rhythms of the poem. The Greek teacher presented grammar in a more philosophical way.7 When it was explained to Johannes that the accusative case, for example, is an extension in time and space, that the preposition does not govern the case but that the relation does, everything expanded before him. The preposition vanished; the extension in time and space became like an enormous empty picture for intuition. Once again his imagination was engaged, but in a way different from before. 8What had entertained [IV B 1 108] him on the walking tours was the filled space into which he could not fit snugly enough. His imagination was so creative that a little went a long way. Outside the one window in the living room grew approximately ten blades of grass. Here he sometimes discovered a little creature running among the stems. These stems became an enormous forest that still had the compactness and darkness the grass had. Instead of the filled space, he now had empty space; he stared again but saw nothing except the enormous expanse.
While an almost vegetative dozing in imagination—at times more esthetic, at times more intellectual—was being developed, another side of his soul was also being acutely fashioned—namely, his sense for the sudden, the surprising.9 This came about not through the magic means customarily used to keep children spellbound but by means of something far superior. His father combined an irresistible dialectic with an omnipotent imagination. 10Whenever his father on occasion engaged in an argument with someone else, Johannes was all ears, all the more so because everything proceeded with an almost festive formality. His father always let his opponent say everything he had to say and, as a precaution, always asked him if he had anything more to say before he began his response. 11Johannes, having followed the opponent’s case with keen attention, had in his own way a co-interest in the outcome. Then came the pause; his father’s response followed, and—look!—in a twinkling everything was changed. How it happened remained a riddle to Johannes, but his soul delighted in this drama. The opponent spoke again, and Johannes listened even more attentively, lest he lose the thread of thought. The opponent summed up his argument, and Johannes could almost hear his heart beating, so impatiently did he wait to see what would happen. —It did happen. In an instant, everything was turned upside down; the explicable was made inexplicable, the certain doubtful, the opposite was made obvious. When a shark wants to snatch its prey, it has to turn over on its back, since its mouth is on the belly side; its back is dark, its belly silvery white. It is said to be a glorious sight to see this shift in color. It is supposed to [IV B 1 109] gleam so brightly at times that it almost hurts the eyes, and yet they take pleasure in seeing it. Johannes witnessed a similar shift when he listened to his father argue. He forgot what was said by both his father and the opponent, but he never forgot this thrill in his soul. In his life at school, he had similar experiences. He saw how one word could change a whole sentence, how a subjunctive in the middle of an indicative sentence could throw a different light on the whole.12The older he grew, the more his father involved himself with him and the more he became aware of that inexplicable quality. It was as if his father had a secret understanding of what Johannes wanted to say and, therefore, with a single word could confuse everything for him. When his father was not acting just as critic but was himself discoursing on something, Johannes perceived how he went about it, how he step by step arrived at what he wanted. He began to suspect that the reason his father could turn everything upside down with a single word had to be that he, Johannes, must have forgotten something in the step-by-step process of thought.
What other children have in the enchantment of poetry and the surprise of fairy tales, Johannes Climacus had in the repose of intuition and the interchange of dialectic. These delighted the child, became the boy’s play, the young man’s desire. In this way, his life had a rare continuity, not marked by the various transitions that generally denote the separate periods. As Johannes grew older, he had no toys to lay aside, for he had learned to play with what would be his life’s earnest occupation, and yet it did not thereby lose its appeal. A little girl plays so long with her doll that at last it is transformed into her beloved, for woman’s whole life is love. His life had a similar continuity, for his whole life was thinking.
Climacus became a university student, took the qualifying examination, reached the age of twenty, and yet no change took place in him—he was and remained a stranger to the world. He did not, however, avoid people; on the contrary, [IV B 1 110] he tried to find like-minded people. But he did not express his views, never betrayed what was going on inside him—the erotic in him was too deep for that. He felt that he might blush if he talked about it; he was afraid of learning too much or learning too little. He was always attentive, however, when others were speaking. Just as a young girl deeply in love prefers not to speak about her love but with almost painful tension listens when other girls talk about theirs, in order to test in silence whether or not she is just as happy or even happier, to snatch every important clue—just so did Johannes silently pay attention to everything. Then, when he came home, he reflected on what the philosophizers had said, for it was their company, of course, that he sought.
To want to be a philosopher, to want to devote himself exclusively to speculation, had not occurred to him. He was still not profound enough for that. It is true that he did not dart from one thing to another—thinking was and remained his passion—but he still lacked the reflective composure required for grasping a deeper coherence. The least significant and the most significant things tempted him alike as points of departure for his pursuits; for him the result was not important—only the processes interested him. At times, he did become aware of how he would arrive at one and the same result from quite different points, but this did not attract his attention in a deeper sense. His desire at all times was only to press his way through. Wherever he suspected a labyrinth, he had to find the way. Once he began, nothing could influence him to stop. If he ran into difficulty, if he tired of it too early, he usually resorted to a very simple remedy. He would lock himself in his room, make everything as festive as possible, and loudly and clearly say: I will do it. From his father he had learned that one can do what one wills,13 and his father’s life had not disproved the theory. This experience had given Johannes’s soul an indescribable pride. That there might be something one could not do even though one willed it was intolerable to him. But his pride was not a matter of a weak will, because once he had spoken these dynamic words, [IV B 1 111] he was ready for everything; he then had an even higher goal: with his will to press his way through the windings of the difficulty. This again was an adventure that inspired him. In this way his life was always adventurous. He did not require forests and travels for his adventures but merely what he had: a little room with one window.
Although he was led into ideality at an early age, this by no means weakened his belief and trust in actuality [Virkelighed]. The ideality by which he was nourished was so close to him, everything took place so naturally, that this ideality became his actuality, and in turn he was bound to expect to find ideality in the actuality all around him.14 15His father’s depression contributed to this. That his father was an extraordinary man was the last thing Johannes came to know about him. That his father amazed him more than any other person did, he already knew; yet he knew so few people that he had no standard of measurement. That his father, humanly speaking, was rather extraordinary, he did not learn in his paternal home. Once in a while, when an older, trusted friend visited the family and engaged in a more confidential conversation with his father, Johannes frequently heard him say, “I am good for nothing; I cannot do a thing; my one and only wish would be to find a place in a charitable institution.” This was no jest. There was not a trace of irony in his father’s words; on the contrary, there was a gloomy earnestness about them that troubled Johannes. Nor was it a casual comment, for his father could demonstrate that a person of the least importance was a genius compared with him. No counter-demonstration achieved anything, for his irresistible dialectic could make one forget what was most obvious, could compel one to stare fixedly at the observation he made as if there were nothing else in the world. Johannes, whose whole view of life was, so to speak, hidden in his father, since he himself did not get to see very much, became entangled in a contradiction, because it was a long time before it dawned on him that his father contradicted himself—if by nothing else, then by the skill with which he could vanquish any opponent and reduce him to silence. Johannes’s trust in actuality was not weakened; he had not imbibed ideality from books that do not leave those they bring up ignorant of the fact that the glory they describe is nevertheless [IV B 1 112] not found in this world. His formative influence was not a man who knew how to propound his knowledge as valuable but was instead one who knew how to render it as unimportant and valueless as possible.