Gilleleie, August 1, 1835 [I A 75 53]
As I have tried to show in the preceding pages,1 this is how things actually looked to me. But when I try to get clear about my life, everything looks different. Just as it takes a long time for a child to learn to distinguish itself from objects and thus for a long time disengages itself so little from its surroundings that it stresses the objective side and says, for example, “me hit the horse,” so the same phenomenon is repeated in a higher spiritual sphere. I therefore believed that I would possibly achieve more tranquillity by taking another line of study, by directing my energies toward another goal. I might have succeeded for a time in banishing a certain restlessness, but it probably would have come back more intense, like a fever after drinking cold water.
What I really need is to get clear about what I am to do,* not what I must know, except insofar as knowledge must precede every act. What matters is to find my purpose, to see what it really is that God wills that I shall do; the crucial thing is to find a truth that is truth for me,**2 to find the idea for which I am willing to live and die. Of what use would it be to me to discover a so-called objective truth, to work through the philosophical systems so that I could, if asked, make critical judgments about them, could point out the fallacies in each system; of
* How often, when a person believes that he has the best grip on himself, it turns out that he has embraced a cloud instead of Juno.
** Only then does one have an inner experience, but how many there are who experience life’s different impressions the way the sea sketches figures in the sand and then promptly erases them without a trace.
what use would it be to me to be able to develop a theory of [I A 75 54] the state, getting details from various sources and combining them into a whole, and constructing a world I did not live in but merely held up for others to see; of what use would it be to me to be able to formulate the meaning of Christianity, to be able to explain many specific points—if it had no deeper meaning for me and for my life? And the better I was at it, the more I saw others appropriate the creations of my mind, the more tragic my situation would be, not unlike that of parents who in their poverty are forced to send their children out into the world and turn them over to the care of others. Of what use would it be to me for truth to stand before me, cold and naked, not caring whether or not I acknowledged it, making me uneasy rather than trustingly receptive. I certainly do not deny that I still accept an imperative of knowledge and that through it men may be influenced, but then it must come alive in me, and this is what I now recognize as the most important of all. This is what my soul thirsts for as the African deserts thirst for water. This is what is lacking, and this is why I am like a man who has collected furniture, rented an apartment, but as yet has not found the beloved to share life’s ups and downs with him. But in order to find that idea—or, to put it more correctly—to find myself, it does no good to plunge still farther into the world. That was just what I did before. The reason I thought it would be good to throw myself into law was that I believed I could develop my keenness of mind in the many muddles and messes of life. Here, too, was offered a whole mass of details in which I could lose myself; here, perhaps, with the given facts, I could construct a totality, an organic view of criminal life, pursue it in all its dark aspects (here, too, a certain fraternity of spirit is very evident). I also wanted to become an acteur (actor) so that by putting myself in another’s role I could, so to speak, find a substitute for my own life and by means of this external change find some diversion. [I A 75 55] This was what I needed to lead a completely human life and not merely one of knowledge,3 so that I could base the development of my thought not on—yes, not on something called objective—something which in any case is not my own, but upon something that is bound up with the deepest roots* of my existence [Existents], through which I am, so to speak, grafted into the divine, to which I cling fast even though the whole world may collapse. This is what I need, and this is what I strive for. I find joy and refreshment in contemplating the great men who have found that precious stone for which they sell all, even their lives,** whether I see them becoming vigorously engaged in life, confidently proceeding on their chosen course without vacillating, or discover them off the beaten path, absorbed in themselves and in working toward their high goal. I even honor and respect the by-path which lies so close by. It is this inward action of man, this God-side of man, that is decisive, not a mass of data, for the latter will no doubt follow and will not then appear as accidental aggregates or as a succession of details, one after the other, without a system, without a [I A 75 56] focal point where all the radii come together. I, too, have certainly looked for this focal point. I have vainly sought an anchor in the boundless sea of pleasure as well as in the depths of knowledge. I have felt the almost irresistible power with which one pleasure reaches a hand to the next; I have felt the counterfeit enthusiasm it is capable of producing. I have also felt the boredom, the shattering, which follows on its heels. I have tasted the fruits of the tree of knowledge and time and again have delighted in their savoriness. But this joy was only in the moment of cognition and did not leave a deeper mark on me. It seems to me that I have not drunk from the cup of wisdom but have fallen into it. I have sought to find the principle for my life through resignation [Resignation], by supposing that since everything proceeds according to inscrutable
* How close does man, despite all his knowledge, usually live to madness? What is truth but to live for an idea? When all is said and done, everything is based on a postulate; but not until it no longer stands outside him, not until he lives in it, does it cease to be a postulate for him. (Dialectic—Dispute)
** Thus it will be easy for us once we receive that ball of yarn from Ariadne (love) and then go through all the mazes of the labyrinth (life) and kill the monster. But how many are there who plunge into life (the labyrinth) without taking that precaution (the young girls and the little boys who are sacrificed every year to Minotaurus)—?
laws it could not be otherwise, by blunting my ambitions and the antennae of my vanity. Because I could not get everything to suit me, I abdicated with a consciousness of my own competence, somewhat the way decrepit clergymen resign with pension. What did I find? Not my self [Jeg], which is what I did seek to find in that way (I imagined my soul, if I may say so, as shut up in a box with a spring lock, which external surroundings would release by pressing the spring). —Consequently the seeking and finding of the Kingdom of Heaven was the first thing to be resolved. But it is just as useless for a man to want first of all to decide the externals and after that the fundamentals as it is for a cosmic body, thinking to form itself, first of all to decide the nature of its surface, to what bodies it should turn its light, to which its dark side, without first letting the harmony of centrifugal and centripetal forces realize [realisere] its existence [Existents] and letting the rest come of itself. One must first learn to know oneself before knowing anything else (γνω̃θι σεαυτόν). Not until a man has inwardly understood himself and then sees the course he is to take does his life gain peace and meaning; only then is he free of that irksome, [I A 75 57] sinister traveling companion—that irony of life*4 that manifests itself in the sphere of knowledge and invites true knowing to begin with a not-knowing (Socrates7),** just as God created the world from nothing. But in the waters of morality it is especially at home to those who still have not entered the tradewinds of virtue. Here it tumbles a person about in a horrible way, for a time lets him feel happy and content in his resolve to go ahead along the right path, then hurls him into the abyss of despair. Often it lulls a man to sleep with the
* It may very well in a certain sense remain, but he is able to bear the squalls of this life, for the more a man lives for an idea, the more easily he comes to sit on the “wonder stool”5 before the whole world. —Frequently, when a person is most convinced that he has understood himself, he is assaulted by the uneasy feeling that he has really only learned someone else’s life by rote.6
** There is also a proverb that says: “One hears the truth from children and the insane.” Here it is certainly not a question of having truth according to premises and conclusions, but how often have not the words of a child or an insane person thundered at the man with whom penetrating discernment could accomplish nothing—?
thought, “After all, things cannot be otherwise,” only to awaken him suddenly to a rigorous interrogation. Frequently it seems to let a veil of forgetfulness fall over the past, only to make every single trifle appear in a strong light again. When he struggles along the right path, rejoicing in having overcome temptation’s power, there may come at almost the same time, right on the heels of perfect victory, an apparently insignificant external circumstance8 that pushes him down, like Sisyphus, from the height of the crag. Often when a person has concentrated on something, a minor external circumstance arises that destroys everything. (As in the case of a man who, weary of life, is about to throw himself into the Thames and [I A 75 58] at the crucial moment is halted by the sting of a mosquito.) Frequently a person feels his very best9 when the illness is the worst, as in tuberculosis. In vain he tries to resist it but he has not sufficient strength, and it is no help to him that he has gone through the same thing many times; the kind of practice acquired in this way does not apply here. Just as no one who has been taught a great deal about swimming is able to keep afloat in a storm, but only the man who is intensely convinced and has experienced that he is actually lighter than water, so a person who lacks this inward point of poise is unable to keep afloat in life’s storms. —Only when a man has understood himself in this way is he able to maintain an independent existence and thus avoid surrendering his own I. How often we see (in a period when we extol that Greek historian because he knows how to appropriate an unfamiliar style so delusively like the original author’s, instead of censuring him, since the first praise always goes to an author for having his own style—that is, a mode of expression and presentation qualified by his own individuality)—how often we see people who either out of mental-spiritual laziness live on the crumbs that fall from another’s table or for more egotistical reasons seek to identify themselves with others, until eventually they believe it all, just like the liar through frequent repetition of his stories. Although I am still far from this kind of interior understanding of myself, with profound respect for its significance I have sought to preserve my individuality—worshiped the unknown God. With a premature anxiety I have tried to avoid coming in close contact with the phenomena whose force of attraction might be too powerful for me. I have sought to appropriate much from them, studied their distinctive characteristics and meaning in human life, but at the same time guarded against coming, like the moth, too close to the flame. I have had little to win or to lose in association with the ordinary run of men, partly because what they do—so-called practical [I A 75 59] life*—does not interest me much, partly because their coldness and indifference to the spiritual and deeper currents in man alienate me even more from them. With few exceptions my companions have had no special influence upon me. A life that has not arrived at clarity about itself must necessarily exhibit an uneven side-surface; confronted by certain facts [facta] and their apparent disharmony, they simply halted there, for they did not have sufficient interest in me to seek a resolution in a higher harmony or to recognize the necessity of it. Their opinion of me was always one-sided, and I have vacillated between putting too much or too little weight on what they said. I have now withdrawn from their influence and the potential variations of my life’s compass resulting from it. Thus I am again standing at the point where I must begin again in another way. I shall now calmly attempt to look at myself and begin to initiate inner action; for only thus will I be able, like a child calling itself “I” in its first consciously undertaken act, be able to call myself “I” in a profounder sense.
But that takes stamina, and it is not possible to harvest immediately what one has sown. I will remember that philosopher’s method of having his disciples keep silent for three years;10 then I dare say it will come. Just as one does not begin a feast at sunrise but at sundown, just so in the spiritual world one must first work forward for some time before the sun really shines for us and rises in all its glory; for although it is true as it says that God lets his sun shine upon the good and the evil and lets the rain fall on the just and the unjust,11 it is not so [I A 75 60] in the spiritual world. So let the die be cast—I am crossing the Rubicon! No doubt this road takes me into battle, but I will not renounce it. I will not lament the past—why lament? I will work energetically and not waste time in regrets, like the person stuck in a bog and first calculating how far he has sunk without recognizing that during the time he spends on that he is sinking still deeper. I will hurry along the path I have found and shout to everyone I meet: Do not look back as Lot’s wife did, but remember that we are struggling up a hill.—JP V 5100 (Pap. I A 75) August 1, 1835
* This life, which is fairly prevalent in the whole era, is manifest also in big things; whereas the past ages built works before which the observer must stand in silence, now they build a tunnel under the Thames (utility and advantage). Yes, almost before a child gets time to admire the beauty of a plant or some animal, it asks: Of what use is it?
*This explains a not uncommon phenomenon, a certain avarice* concerning ideas. Precisely because life is not healthy but knowledge is too dominant, ideas are not regarded as the natural flowers on the tree of life, are not adhered to as such and as having significance only if they are that—but are regarded as separate flashes of illumination, as if life became richer because of a crowd, so to speak, of such external ideas (if I may use this expression [sit venia verbo]—aphoristically). They forget that the same thing happens to ideas as to Thor’s hammer—it returns to the point from which it was thrown, although in a modified form.—JP V 5100 (Pap. I A 76) n.d.
*A similar phenomenon is the erroneous view of knowledge and its results in regarding the objective results and forgetting that the genuine philosopher is to the highest degree sub-objective. I need only mention Fichte.12 Wit is treated the same way; it is not regarded as Minerva, necessarily springing from the author’s whole individuality and environment, therefore in a sense something lyrical,* but as flowers one can pick and keep for one’s own use. (The forget-me-not has its place in the field, hidden and humble, but looks drab in a park.)—JP V 5102 (Pap. I A 77) n.d.
*And this also accounts for the blushing that usually accompanies a certain type of witticism, suggesting that it came forth naturally, newborn.—JP V 5103 (Pap. I A 78) September 20, 1836
*A curious kind of irony is also to be found in an Arabian tale “Morad the Hunchback” (in Moden Zeitung, “Bilder Magazin,” no. 40, 1835). A man comes into possession of a ring that provides everything he wishes but always with a “but” attached—for example, when he wishes for security he finds himself in prison etc. (this story is found in Riises Bibliothek for Ungdommen, II, 6, 1836, p. 453). I have also heard or read someplace about a man who, standing outside a theater, heard a soprano voice so beautiful and enchanting that he promptly fell in love with the voice; he hurries into the theater and meets a thick, fat man who, upon being asked who it was who sang so beautifully, answered: “It was I”—he was a castrato.—JP V 5104 (Pap. I A 79) n.d.
“Es ist, wie mit den anmuthigen Morgentraümen, aus deren einschläferndem Wirbel man nur mit Gewalt sich herausziehen kann, wenn man nicht in immer drückender Müdigkeit gerathen, und so in krankhafter Erschöpfung nachher den ganzen Tag hinschleppen will [It is, as with pleasant morning dreams, from whose drowsy confusion one can extricate oneself only by force, if one does not wish to go about in increasingly oppressive weariness and later drag through the day in sickly exhaustion].” Novalis, Schriften. Berlin: 1826. I, p. 107.13—JP V 5105 (Pap. I A 80) n.d., 1835
[1.] Do you recollect when you at once scoffed at a remark, [III B 181 1 216] surely a well-intentioned and by no means unfelicitous remark oratorically, by a clergyman that when one really was in need and stretched his beseeching arms toward heaven, then the clouds would part and not only God’s finger would become visible in the governance of our fate, but his arm would stretch out to grasp the beseeching one’s hand,14 and you made the comment that you had never noticed a hand or arm like that in the cloud, except once where you were contentedly riding alone, not wishing for any assistance, and then noticed a dark shape in the cloud that looked just like an arm and was a waterspout [Vandhose] that in a highly precarious manner reached out of the cloud and lifted you off the horse, a mode of treatment you found neither gentle nor seemly toward rational beings. You went on to say that for that reason you found it absolutely right for you to be such a great disdainer of nature, since it was an empty fancy about all the dominion and rule [III B 181.1 217] mankind was legitimately supposed to have over nature, inasmuch as it considered rational creatures to be nothing at all, which it demonstrated on many occasions.
[2.] Like all demonic natures, you often betray in a singularly unfree manner your innermost condition. For example, you once said of yourself that you were like a team of horses you had on a long ride into the country. The hackney driver did not have others at home and did not want to let you have them because they were so bad. For example, they could not stand still, but they turned out to be the very best runners, and you claimed that never in your life had you ridden so fast; you added that it is indeed unimportant whether a team of horses can stand still or not if only they can run. As usual, your remark evoked laughter and yet it hid more than those present noticed, even more perhaps than you yourself were thinking, although that seldom happens with you. It is said that man’s walking is a continuous falling.15 This is even more the case with his running; he is continually prevented from falling by a new fall. So it is with you; you lack the firm posture of a point of view, and therefore you cannot stand but you certainly can run.
[3.]—If there was a young girl who had become unhappy in love, you would talk with her and tell her the contents of her life in the form of fairy tales.
[4.] Love does not merely make one blind; it also makes one sighted, and I have often wondered at the not merely poetically true but in the deepest sense poetically true secret that in the Marriage of Figaro Susanne and Figaro immediately recognize each other in the fourth act,16 whereas the count continually remains deceived. Thus innocent love is always sighted.—
[5.] To be a complete human being does indeed remain the highest.17 You are ofthat opinion as well, even if at times you [III B 181 5 218] can be shameless enough to sneer at it, just as you once insisted that to be a complete human being also involved having corns.
[6.] You with your exaggerated ideals, you who behave so oddly in life, you totally lack a criterion, just like a tower watchman when he leaves his lofty guard station and wanders around the streets like a stranger!
[7.] Wanting continually to experiment can lead to nothing.18 You know how Rübezahl was fooled by the young girl who sent him to count turnips;19 he never finished, you see—but he is the very picture of you, who like him in a certain sense are very smart, in another extremely obtuse. —You become fooled out of life.
[8.] There is a religiousness that seems very devoted to God and yet is a kind of despair. For example, when someone in defending the reality [Realitet]20 of prayer points out that one does not need to pray about the immediate fulfillment of the prayer but pray that God will give one strength to bear it if it is not fulfilled. This may conceal a pride and a mistrust of God. One makes God into two beings, so to speak; the one wants evil for us, as it were, and the other wants to help us bear it. Why not instead directly pray to God about fulfilling our desire? If it is not fulfilled, then there can always be time enough to pray for strength to bear the loss.
[9.] Generally it is regarded as the true wisdom of life to live as if one were about to die. I knew a man who became very unhappy precisely because he continually believed that he would die—this robbed him of all patience to live.
[10.] It is fine that you cannot allow yourself to be satisfied with such a life, that your ravenous hunger for pleasure is not satisfied by it—but is it more satisfied by the satiety that comes [III B 181 10 219] almost in the very moment of pleasure, the satiety you experience in the same instant you experience the pleasure?
[11.] You speak so much about the ludicrous perspective of the finite categories in which you involuntarily come to view every human being, and you find it incomprehensible that people are able to endure it; but is it any better, then, the perspective in which you see every joy vanish? When you see a young girl, you immediately become very anxious because it seems to you as if this were her happy moment that will never come again.—Pap. III B 181:1-11 n.d., 1841-42
When asked why he did not wish to be a father, Thales is supposed to have answered: Out of love for children. When his mother pressured him to get married, he said: By Zeus, it is not the time for that yet. After he came of age and she again kept on with this, he said: Now it is no longer the time for that.
See Diogenes Laertius, I, para. 26.
Kleobulos gave the maxim: Daughters should be married
when they are maidens in age and women in
understanding.
See Diogenes L., I, para. 91.21
—JP III 2592 (Pap. IV A 237) n.d., 1843
Either/Or
In the preface it might, of course, be recalled that I had also found this piece [“The Esthetic Validity of Marriage”] among other documents from B to A. All sorts of conclusions might be drawn from it with respect to A’s possible situation—about having been engaged, married etc. etc. But here again the peculiar characteristic of A’s life is recalled—that one did not know whether it was experience or mood. Goethe truthfully, yet with deep meaning, called his life Dichtung und Wahrheit [Poetry and Truth], for if a man has really experienced something, it will be impossible for him to abstain totally from reproduction.—Pap. III B 182 n.d., 1841-42
An Attempt to Save Marriage Esthetically
—Pap. III B 41:1 n.d., 1841
. . . . . and as you once very wittily observed, when the idea of society really ascends, communication will become so intense that even to the experienced eye the human race will become an ocean where it will be impossible to distinguish the hordes of infusoria who previously formed isolated existences.—JP IV 4101 (Pap. III B 41:2) n.d., 1841
. . . . . like the Page in Figaro, but an adult.
—Pap. III B 41:3 n.d., 1841
. . . . . to say at this moment with Brause22 that I would not be fate for ten rix-dollars.23
—Pap. III B 41:4 n.d., 1841
. . . . . , as the Duke of Richelieu says,24
—Pap. III B 41:5 n.d., 1841
. . . . . or, to use a favorite expression of Magister Kierkegaard’s, that marriage is a Chladni figure.
—Pap. Ill B 41:6 n.d., 1841
You very likely know the story about the sorcerer Vergilius,25 who wanted to rejuvenate himself; bear the story in mind. (N.B. In order to mystify the reader, this story must not be developed further. On the whole, no more must be done in this respect.)—Pap. III B 41:7 n.d., 1841
. . . . . that could almost become dangerous for the leading people concerned . . . . .
In margin: halb Kinderspiel, halb Gott im Herzen [half child’s play, half God at heart].26
—Pap. III B 41:8 n.d., 1841
See Rosenkrantz, pp. 308-309.27
—Pap. III B 41:9 n.d., 1841
. . . . . it is a tone deeper; it is a bass tone that cuts in under the lighter. . . . .
—Pap. III B 41:10 n.d., 1841
. . . . . to come with live coals, but please note, charcoal, in his chafing dish, . . . . .
—Pap. III B 41:12 n.d., 1841
Underlined: Or a person marries—to have children
In lower margin: Zeno says: The wise man marries and makes having children the purpose of marriage. See Tennemann, Ges. d. Ph., IV, p. 145.28—Pap. IV A 240 n.d., 1843
. . . . . I received from Pastor Olufsen, who, just between us, does not seem very familiar with the N.T., for he promptly had to go to a concordance, the most important passages . . . .
—Pap. III B 41:13 n.d., 1841
. . . . .this passage is, I believe, in Ephesians or in I Timothy.
—Pap. III B 41:14 n.d., 1841
If I were to use an adequate expression for the comic impression you make on me, I would say that you are like a spider, one of those with long thin fine legs, shrewd eyes, and that is how you run over existence. —From another side I would say that you are like an ethereal figure, like an elf man—handsome but hollow, seductive but corrupting.—Pap. III B 41:16 n.d., 1841
Imagine a king who ruled over a happy nation, a kingdom where peace and prosperity really seemed to have taken up residence, imagine him saying to himself in one of his solitary moments: I have the allegiance of my people, they praise and bless my regime, and yet what have I done and what am I doing. If, then—in order to do something—he did not resort to something that destroyed his people but calmly told himself: I have the responsibility, my crown does not weigh heavily upon me, but yet the responsibility does rest upon me—if he said and felt this, then he would also be justified in enjoying all the approval a grateful people could shower upon him.—JP IV 4102 (Pap. III B 41:18) n.d., 1841
But just as this has something uplifting in it, there is something depressing in the thought that sin is supposed to be the basis for it. To that I must reply: In the wedding ceremony the Church proclaims sin only as the universally human lot; thus it actually is only for reflection that the contradiction asserts itself, but first love does not have reflection, and consequently I cannot reflect upon this.—Pap. III B 41:19 n.d., 1841
This is clear in Holy Scripture, and therefore it was much more important to emphasize the latter; but there is also a presentation of the woman as the one who forms the home29 precisely through her passive sustaining character. The man shall forsake father and mother (this is his first home) and keep to his wife (this is the second home that she forms). This is also beautifully expressed in the word “wife” [Hustru], i.e., faithfulness in the house, a house where faithfulness dwells, or a faithfulness in which love finds its home. Such an expression, so simple and plain and yet so rich in blessing, romantic love does not have.—JP II 1157 (Pap. III B 41:20) n.d., 1841
Christianity does not want to annihilate the flesh; it does not want mortification of the flesh or the extreme thereof, debaucheries; it wants humility, and this can exist very well with love.—Pap. III B 41:21 n.d., 1841
The latter is presumably what the coryphaei of philosophy have really wanted to praise, and I can remember that you once read to me a passage from Hegel30 that in my opinion clearly showed that he recommended only scientific reflection upon systematic truth and the intellectual reflection contained therein.—Pap. III B 41:22 n.d., 1841
. . . . . or calling to doubt (for there is a certain doubt on the part of genius that has its authorization in itself; where that is not a case, as a rule the doubt is simply egotistical and selfish, in quite ordinary terms, mutiny against God) . . . . .—Pap. III B 41:23 n.d., 1841
. . . . . before “the whole world,” an expression that cannot possibly disturb even the most polemical nature, since it asserts a publicity, but so unlimited that its alarming boundary is not perceived, and asserts it with a boldness, with a lyrical excessiveness, as if it wanted to make nature itself witness to this festival.—Pap. III B 41:24 n.d., 1841
When God gave Adam company by giving him Eve, this by no means entails extensive marital sociability, for Eve did not bring along a swarm of women friends. —JP II 2589 (Pap. III B 41:25) n.d., 1841
But marriage is impossible without confidence.—JP II 2588 (Pap. III B 39) n.d., 1841
But this is by no means the case, and such a person will easily [III B 41.26 132] be tempted, even if not to marry, yet to tempt the opposite sex by his contacts. He will also easily be able to make an [III B 41.26 133] impression. If someone were to ask me who is the more dangerous seducer, a Don Juan or a Faust, I would answer Faust. In Faust, a world has been destroyed, but for this reason he has at his disposal the most seductive tones, the double tones that quiver in two worlds at once, compared with which Don Juan’s most baneful tenderness and sweetness are childish babbling.* If someone were to ask me which victim is more to be lamented, a girl who is seduced by a Don Juan or by a Faust, [I would answer that] there is no comparison—the one who is seduced by a Faust is utterly lost. Thus it is very profound that the legend puts 1,003 on Don Juan’s list; Faust has only one, but she is also crushed on an entirely different scale. A girl who is seduced by a Don Juan has the world of spirit before her; a girl who is seduced by a Faust, for her even that is poisoned.
In margin: *In Faust, a world is destroyed, but the inconstant light that falls upon this ruin alarms and tempts.—Pap. III B 41:26 n.d., 1841
. . . . . klip klap, and then everything was supposed to be [III B 41 27 133] finished, and if one wanted to be perfect, one could present one’s wife with some book containing a collection of substantial aphorisms about marriage. I know that you have a talent for being amused by human foolishness, and I shall now give you an occasion to do so, which may also confirm the correctness of the old saying: Is there anything a German will not do for money? It is a book I chanced upon. Its title is: Orakel der Liebe, Ehe und Freundschaft, eine alphabetisch geordnete Samlung gehaltreicher Gedanken über das Wesen, die Erfordernisse und den Zweck der Liebe, Ehe und Freundschaft. Magdeburg: 1841, by Gustav Friedrich Koch.
The preface reads as follows: “Der Zusammenstellung dieses Werkchens hat die Absicht zum Grunde gelegen: Erklärungen, Regeln und Anhaltepunkte zum Nachdenken über das Wesen, die Erfordernisse und den Zweck der Liebe, Ehe und Freundschaft, sowie überhaupt einen Umgangs- und Lebensleitfaden für Liebende, Eheleute und Freunde in Hinsicht [III B 41 27 134] ihres Verkehrs mit einander und mit dritten Personen darzureichen. Um das Ganze zum Gebrauche geeigneter zu machen, Diesem oder Jenem einen entsprechende Gedanken, ein Motto, einen Stammbuchvers u. dergl. schnell an die Hand zu geben, und zugleich dem bisher fühlbar gewordenen Mangel an einem Wörterbuche der Liebe zum Theil abzuhelfen, habe ich die einzelnen Stellen unter bestimten Rubriken gebracht und solche alphabetisch geordnet [The underlying aim for writing this small book is to provide some explanatory comments, rules, and clues for reflecting upon the nature, requirements, and purpose of love, marriage, and friendship and generally to offer lovers, spouses, and friends a guide for socializing and living in commerce with each other and with a third person. In order to make this whole enterprise more accessible for use—quickly making available a suitable thought, motto, album verse, or the like for this or that person—and also partly in order to remedy the continued lack of a dictionary on love, so sorely felt until now, I have placed particular passages under definite rubrics and organized them alphabetically].” For the future, then, we must be prepared for a new kind of love, the encyclopedic, the degree and intensity of which one will be able to determine by the letter of the alphabet to which it has arrived.— —Pap. III B 41:27 n.d., 1841
. . . . . thus it reverts to epic again, has the scope of the epic but not the lyrical impatience of drama, but it is not the immediate externality that is at one with the external, and therefore it is a higher kind of epic. Here everyone becomes his own troubador and can await the explanation, the transfiguration an eternity will give. This is not understood in a fantastic way, as was the case, I recall, with a religious fanatic who thought that judgment day would last several thousand years in order to have time to see to everything properly.—Pap. III B 41:28 n.d., 1841
Erzählungen und Märchen, herausgegeben v. Friedrich Heinrich v. der Hagen. 1ster Band. Prenzlau: 1825.
In volume II of this collection (Prenzlau: 1826), pp. 325ff, there is a Serbian tale with the title “Bärensohn.” . . . . . There is a very striking similarity between this story and what is told here in the north about Thor and his adventures. . . . . . Now he comes to a farmer and once again he wants to enter an eating match, but the farmer recommends that before touching the food he should cross himself and say “In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit”; when he had done that, he was surfeited before he had eaten half the food placed before him. . . . .
A very singular, naive, childish tone runs through the whole story,* which is characterized by numerous contradictions in the determination of the size of the persons appearing in the poem. In other respects, as mentioned, there is a striking similarity to the Scandinavian, which can be reserved perhaps for a convenient time.
In margin: *See Mag. Hammerich on Ragnarok, p. 93 note.—JP V 5127 (Pap. I C 82) n.d., 1836
Your sincerely devoted
B.
—Pap. III B 41:29 n.d., 1841
Ariston of Chios says that one should not allow oneself to be disturbed by the diversity of external circumstances: the wise person ought to be a good actor who can play an Agamemnon or a Thersites31 equally well32 (see Tennemann, Ges. d. Phil., IV, p. 218, note 23).—Pap. IV A 245 n.d., 1845
“To choose oneself” is no eudaimonism, as one will readily perceive. It is quite remarkable that even Chrysippus sought to elevate eudaimonia as the highest aim by showing that the basic drive in everything is to preserve and maintain itself in the original condition, and pleasure and happiness appear insofar as it succeeds.33
See Tennemann, Ges. d. Ph., IV, pp. 318-19.
—JP V 5636 (Pap. IV A 246) n.d., 1843
Either/Or
so reit’ ich hin in alle Ferne
Über meiner Mütze nur die Sterne34
a fragment.
“As I have said to you again and again, so I also write to you—either/or—and one aut [or] is not enough, for the one view does not allow itself to be attached to the other as a coordinate, but it is the excluding aut/aut [either/or]. Therefore, whether you now become angry and break with me as you have broken with so many others—or whether you take it in a friendly way—in any case, I continue: Either/Or—”— —Pap. III B 31 n.d., 1841
Therefore even if a person chose the wrong (by this I do indeed ask you to bear in mind that it is not a question of the contrast between good and evil, for in this choice the actual will most likely choose the right most of the time) . . . . . — Pap. III B 42:1 n.d., 1841
. . . . mediate Christianity and philosophy . . . . .
—Pap. III B 42:2 n.d., 1841
What in a certain sense is called “spleen” and what the mystics know by the designation “the arid moments,” the Middle Ages knew as acedia (αχηδια, aridity). Gregory, Moralia in Job, XIII, p. 435: Virum solitarium ubique comitatur acedia . . . . est animi remisso, mentis enervatio, neglectus religiosae exercitationis, odium professionis, laudatrix rerum secularium [Wherever aridity encompasses a solitary man . . . . there is a lowering of the spirit, a weakening of the mind, a neglect of religious practice, a hatred of professing, a praise of secular things].*
That Gregory should emphasize virum solitarium points to experience, since it is a sickness to which the isolated person [is exposed] at his highest pinnacle (the humorous), and the sickness is most accurately described and rightly emphasized as odium professionis, and if we consider this symptom in a somewhat ordinary sense (not in the sense of churchly confession of sins, by which we would have to include the indifferent church member as solitarius) of a self-expression, experience will not leave us in the lurch if examples are required.
July 20, 1839
The ancient moralists show a deep insight into human nature in regarding tristitia [sloth, dejection, moroseness] among the septem vitia principalia [seven deadly sins]. Thus Isidoras Hisp. See de Wette, translated by Scharling, p. 139, note q, top; see Gregor and Maximus Confessor in the same note.35— JP I 739 (Pap. II A 484) July 20, 1839
*This is what my father called: a quiet despair.36
—JP I 740 (Pap. II A 485) n.d., 1839
Caligula’s idea of wanting all heads on one neck is nothing else than premeditated, cowardly suicide. It is the counterpart of suicide. Both are equally desperate world views.—JP I 738 (Pap. II A 409) May 4, 1839
Underlined: I believe that there is indeed meaning in the world if only I could find it.
In margin: Carneades expressed his skepticism by saying that there is something true but it cannot be known.
See Tennemann, Ges. d. Ph., IV, p. 342.
—Pap. IV A 249 n.d., 1843
Must be used in the introduction to the whole work, for here the married man has let himself be carried away, because according to this calculation no one at all is lost.—Pap. III B 42:3 n.d., 1841
The main point is still that one should not be diverted by the external. When, in order to subvert the position that there is an absolute in morality, an appeal is made to variations in custom and use and such shocking examples as savages putting their parents to death, attention is centered merely upon the external. That is to say, if it could be proved that savages maintain that a person ought to hate his parents, it would be quite another matter; but this is not their thought; they believe that one should love them, and the error is only in the way of expressing it. But it is indeed clear that the savages do not intend to harm their parents but to do good to them.—JP I 889 (Pap. III A 202) n.d., 1842
Underlined: It is not my intention to lead you into a consideration of the multiplicity of duty.
In bottom margin: Ariston of Chios was also of the opinion that one ought not to teach any specific doctrine of duty (see Tennemann, Ges. d. Ph., IV, p. 21237).—Pap. IV A 252 n.d., 1843
Autopathetic and sympathetic doubt are identical.
—JP V 5635 (Pap. IV A 236) n.d., 1843
. . . . . and if the bitter cup of suffering is handed to me, I shall ask that, if possible, it be taken away, and if it is not possible, I shall take it cheerfully, and I shall not fix my gaze upon the cup but upon the one who hands it to me, and I shall not turn my eyes toward the bottom of the cup to see if it is soon empty, but I shall look at him who hands it to me, and while I trustingly raise the goblet I shall not say to any other man: Here’s to your health, as I myself am savoring it, but I shall say: Here’s to my health, and empty its bitterness, to my health, for I know and am convinced that it is to my health that I empty it, to my health, as I leave not one drop behind.—JP V 5562 (Pap. III A 228) n.d., 1842
. . . . . and everyone who bases his life upon something accidental leads a robber-existence [Røverexistents], be it upon beauty, wealth, background, science, art—in short, upon anything that cannot be every man’s fate. And even if you are successful in carrying this out—and if then a young person turns to you with all the confidence and prerogative of youth, and you cannot deny youth the prerogative of asking you how you have grounded your life—would you not be ashamed, for you would not be able to divulge to him all your cunning and craft, would you?—JP I 885 (Pap. III A 135) n.d., 1841
[IV A 234 91] P. 336 [SV II 289], “every human being ought to become open” actually says the opposite of what the whole first part says, as the lines just quoted do in fact say. The esthetic is always hidden: if it expresses itself at all, it is coquettish. Therefore it would have been wrong to have A express his interior nature directly or, indeed, even in B’s papers. In A’s papers there are intimations of his interior being; in B’s papers we see the exterior with which he is accustomed to deceive people—that is why A can come up with the statement about what would be the ultimate mockery of existence (p. 334 [S V II 287]).
The aim of the sermon is not to lull, not to win a metaphysical position, but to motivate to action. That I can in fact do at every moment.
[IV A 234 92] Healing and reconciliation take place essentially by means of compassion. It is a blessing for a man that there is something that he cannot, despite his freedom, will. He cannot will to destroy all existence.38 Arid morality would merely teach man that he is incapable, would mock his impotence; the upbuilding lies in seeing that one cannot will it.
The second part begins with marriage, because it is the most profound form of the revelation of life. It is ingenious to have Jupiter and Juno called adultus and adulta, τέλειος, τελεία in connection with tracing marriage back to them.—JP V 5634 (Pap. IV A 234) n.d., 1843
N.B. Preface
—Pap. III B 42:4 n.d., 1841
The words that are found someplace in the second part of Either/Or could be a good theme for a sermon.
It is not dreadful that I have to suffer punishment when I have acted badly; it would be dreadful if I could act badly—and there were no punishment.—JP III 3638 (Pap. X2 A 115) n.d., 1849
Your friend.
—Pap. III B 191:15 n.d., 1841
Asterisk added: the same and yet not the same*
In bottom margin: *It is as Heraclitus says: One cannot walk through the same river twice.39 (See Tennemann, Gesch. d. Phil, I, p. 220.)—Pap. IV A 255 n.d., 1843
. . . . . a stocky little man with a head bigger than an ox’s. Jovial from his youth, he had only received a bare pass in his theological examination. His oratory would have appalled the capital city—now he had become a pastor out on the heath in Jylland. Yet this satisfied him—the heath was a playground— as to a swamp bittern—he had given this talk on the occasion of a crop failure, maintains that every peasant can understand it; he writes that he has given it word for word in pure Jylland dialect. —“Every man is by nature a philosopher,” every peasant lad learns, and also the words, “What does it profit a man etc. and not damage his own soul”—he who has understood this has essentially understood all philosophy.
At a pastoral conference in one of the provinces.—JP III 3287 (Pap. III B 183) n.d., 1842
The Upbuilding That Lies in the Thought That in Relation to God We Are Always in the Wrong
Otherwise we might be tempted to despair of providence.
For if there were one man, one single man, no matter if he were the most powerful who ever lived in the world or the most humble, a man who on judgment day could justifiably say: I was not provided for, in the great household I was forgotten, or even if he put much of the blame at his own door yet could justifiably say: I acknowledge that I went astray in the world, I departed from the way of truth, but I did repent of my sin, I honestly intended and strove to the uttermost for the good, I lifted up my voice and shouted to heaven for help, but no one answered, there was no constructive solution, not even the remotest relief . . . . if there were such a man, then everything would be foolishness, where then would the limit be.
—Anyone who has ever yielded to temptation must confess, however, that there was a possibility that in the next moment help was already at hand, and this is an observation, not a sophism, as it might seem to a despairing mind inclined to say: One can always say that.—JP V 5486 (Pap. III C5) n.d., 1840-41
All infinite knowledge is negative (“always to be in the wrong” is also an infinite relation), and yet the negative is higher than the positive.* Thus Pythagoras also taught that the even number is imperfect, the uneven number perfect.40
*The Pythagoreans also regarded the finite as higher and more perfect than the infinite.
See Tennemann, I, p. 115.
In margin: As a rule the Pythagoreans did not regard as perfect that from which something arises, but that which arises from something.
See Tennemann, I, p. 119.—JP V 5616 (Pap. IV A 56) n.d., 1843
Sura twelve in the Koran deals with Joseph. He comes forward, his innocence with respect to Potiphar’s wife is completely proved, and yet he says: Doch will ich mein Herz nicht ganz frei sprechen von Schuld [Yet I will not say that my heart is entirely free of guilt].
See Ulmann’s translation of the Koran, p. 194.41
If a person is completely in the right, in relation to God he always ought to have a higher expression: That he is in the wrong, for no person can absolutely penetrate his consciousness.—Pap. IV A 256 n.d., 1843
When I had Either/Or end with the clause: “Only the truth that builds up is truth for you,” only a few, I regret, perceived the outlook involved. There was considerable argument among Greek philosophers about the criterion of truth42 (see, for example, Tennemann, Geschichte d. Philos., V, p. 301); it would be very interesting to pursue this matter further. I doubt very much, however, that a more concrete expression will be found. Probably people think that these words stand there in Either/Or as a phrase, that another expression could also be used. Indeed, the words are not even italicized. Good Lord, then they probably are not very significant.—JP IV 4847 (Pap. IV A 42) n.d., 1843
Wonderful! The category “for you” (subjectivity, inwardness) with which Either/Or concludes (only the truth that builds up [opbygge] is truth for you) is Luther’s own. I have never really read anything by Luther. But now I open up his sermons43 —and right there in the Gospel for the First Sunday in Advent he says “for you,” on this everything depends (see second leaf, first column, and first leaf, fourth column).—JP II 2463 (Pap. VIII1 A 465) n.d., 1847
[IV B 19 185] Summons
That a police adjutant must be on the spot whenever the watchman whistles, that the fire chief must get up whenever the alarm goes off, that the censor has no quiet day or night as soon as it pleases an author to set him in motion by his mental activity—I, too, find to be quite in order that these men receive therefore an appropriate wage, enjoy glory and honor in society, are loved and respected by the entire community. But that I, an unemployed man, who in my life unite what is rarely seen united, have neither business affairs nor wages, that I without any compensation whatever, must be disturbed in my quiet inactivity every time it pleases a joker to attribute to me the authorship of things of which no one wants to be the author—this I do not find to be in order, no more than if someone for a joke were to hang on my door the sign of the police or of the fire chief or to persuade people to think that I am the censor in order to create for me the inconvenience of opening the door at every moment in the day in order to explain that I am neither the one nor the other.
What the majority of readers probably never knew and the others have long since forgotten, what I myself would have forgotten in a short time if the aftereffects did not still pain me, is at this moment still all too much alive in my memory: that [IV B 19 186] six months ago, driven to extremities by the informing voices that announced me as the author of various articles, I disclaimed in a solemn declaration44 all association with these pieces, that in order to secure for myself a carefree and undisturbed future, I “begged every reader never to regard me as author of anything that does not bear my name,”*45 that as a result of this step I have for a long time now met with caustic glances, derisive looks, mocking faces, which to me were inexplicable until spoken and written expressions made it clear beyond all doubt that people had seen through me, had seen that it was vanity that had led me to bring myself to attention in an unseemly way, that there was actually only one person who regarded me as capable of being the author of those remarkable articles. The mistake was unpleasant for me; the mortification that followed, I have sought to overcome, and I perhaps would have succeeded if the same story had not started all over again. During the past fortnight I have heard that an article in Ny Portefeuille46 has been fathered upon me, two letters in the Berlingske Tidende47 (or just one), a letter in Fædrelandet,48 and the big work Either-Or.49 My situation is just as painful as formerly, is even more painful, since it is a repetition. It is just as difficult as before, is even more difficult since by experience I have learned the distressing consequences that warn me against every step, although a step nevertheless seems necessary, a step that would be just as dangerous for me as it would be for the man Jean Paul tells about, if he, as he stood on one leg and read a sign saying, “A fox-trap is set here,”50 put his other foot on the ground. If I declare that I have [IV B 19 187] no part either in those articles or in that work, I run the risk of seeing later that people only wanted to get the best of me, that they will again mock me because I am so vain as to believe that anybody could seriously suppose that I, in one way or another, was capable of writing those articles, a book of exactly 864 pages, or of writing half of it, if one assumes that there are two authors. If I remain silent, then the daily scene repeats itself, then in some way I must do the honors of an author, receive courtesies and lying-in visits appropriate to an author, endure an ironic smile that gives me a presentiment of what I can expect if I am so imprudent as to disclaim the authorship. In order to avoid, if possible, this difficult situation, I have decided to do what I hereby do: to call upon Victor Eremita to abandon his pseudonymity so that I can live in peace and at ease, to call upon him to do this as soon as possible, so that it will not be said later that I have pretended to be an author, although I myself know that in this respect I am as innocent as a child born yesterday.
* See Fædrelandet.
As far as the newspaper articles are concerned, I would wish that the writers would do the same, but since the matter seems almost forgotten because of Either/Or, I will not ask them to do what I, if they did it, would always regard as a proof of the noble rectitude that has sympathy for the calamities of others.
Copenhagen, February 22, 1843
S. KIERKEGAARD
Magister Artium
Postscript. I have placed my summons in this paper so that Victor Eremita, if he does not live here in the city, will receive it as quickly as possible, and in conclusion I request that he not delay longer than is absolutely necessary.—Pap. IV B 19 February 22, 1843
[IV B 20 188] A Letter to Herr Magister Kierkegaard
Dear Sir:
If I had fallen down from the clouds,51 I could not hasten more speedily to your aid in your distress. As you will please note from the Preface,52 before I published Either/Or I had already taken care of the irregularity that authors unknown to me would come forward. It never occurred to me that what has now happened could happen. My honest admission presumably does not help you, but on the other hand it may nevertheless comfort you to know that if I had thought of it I would not have known what I should do to prevent it.
That your position must be unpleasant and regrettable, I am well aware, but if you, Herr Magister, will allow me to say so, it seems to me that your vehemence makes the whole matter worse. Your request is written in such a passionate tone that one does not know whether to laugh or to cry about it. With all due respect to your words, I cannot quite believe that you have earlier met “caustic glances” on every side. Are you perfectly sure that you have not been deceived by your state of mind, a kind of hypochondria frequently found among scholars? The more emotionally someone reacts, the more fun people have in teasing him. For someone, in the event that things become outrageous, abruptly to wish everything interrupted and destroyed is in turn vehemence. It is wrong for someone, simply to pursue his private battle, to go so far that he forgets what can be in another’s interest.
You request that I give up my pseudonymity. You give no other reason than that you are involved in a disagreement with those around you. I cannot conceal that it has almost insulted me that you so uncontrollably think that everyone should be at your beck and call. In an equally unjustified manner, you lump Either/Or together with some newspaper articles merely because they have in common that you have been construed to be the author. Even if you had added several reasons, even if [IV B 20 189] you had spoken in the name of several people, even if you had tried to tempt me in some other way—it would still be ludicrous if I, provided I otherwise had sufficient reason to be pseudonymous, for that reason would give it up; it would be foolish of me, provided I otherwise had reason to give up my pseudonymity, if I gave the impression that it was your request that motivated me.
You perhaps have already yourself perceived the rashness of your step. In that case, you can always be assured that I shall do what you in fairness can request of me. In my heart, I shall have sympathy for your sufferings; every time I think of you, I shall soberly think of the quiet resignation that is not rewarded in this world but has its own intrinsic reward. Even if, like you, Herr Magister!, one is so fortunate as to have no duties, the practical jokes of fate are also adversities, and he who bears them also bears his cross. No one considers such a person to be great; as far as you are concerned, I take pride in daring to admire you—on my own behalf, I beg you to be assured of that.
In conclusion, I shall allow myself to suggest to you that your position has been very much on my mind also in another way. What amazed me in your request was that it is diametrically opposed to the old rule that a Magister Artium dares least of all to be ignorant of or to ignore in his conduct: Quod fieri potest per pauca, non debet fieri per plura [That which can be effected by means of a few things ought not to be effected by means of many]. Instead of asking me to give up my pseudonymity, it would, after all, be far simpler to request of me the explanation that you are not the author. It has been incomprehensible to me that this did not occur to you, but I also thank the gods that in this respect they have struck you with blindness. However reasonable your asking would have been, it still would have been an impossibility for me to fulfill it. Since I myself do not know who the honored authors are, I cannot positively know that you are not one of them, although, to be [IV B 20 190] honest, I do not find it probable, since your passion as manifested does not exactly tempt one to credit you with the necessary patience. If I can in this respect be of service to you with any declaration, it will always be a pleasure for me to show in deed “as swiftly as possible” what I in any case continue to be in my heart,
Herr Magister’s obedient servant,
VICTOR EREMITA
—Pap. IV B 20 n.d., 1843
Underlined in “The Episode of ‘The Seducer’s Diary’ ” in a copy of Den Frisindede, 23, February 23, 1843:
One could be tempted to call upon the moral supervisors of the Society for the Freedom of the Press to excommunicate the author and ask the police morals squad to confiscate the work and burn the unknown author in effigy; but at the next moment one will admit that in any case those who read this book can scarcely be harmed by it.—Pap. IV B 21 n.d., 1843
Draft of letter for possible publication:
[IV B 22 190] A Warning to Den Frisindede
Den Frisindede has, as far as I know, led a quiet and innocent life for a long time. Politically speaking, it now seems to have served its time and now is amusing itself by writing riddles, charades, anagrams, mathematical puzzles, and puns that Den Frisindede itself or some other seedy character solves in the next number. It is rather well known that on occasion, when it sees its chance, it tries to jump on the bandwagon every time a phenomenon in literature makes it possible, and thus the editor of Either/Or must be prepared to have that newspaper intrude upon this work also and if possible hold fast to it for a moment. This has already happened on Thursday, February 23, in its issue no. 23.
On the strength of Den Frisindede’s words “that one must admit that those who read this book (Either/Or) can scarcely be harmed by it”—in view of the fact that on the other hand those [IV B 22 191] who do not read it cannot possibly be deemed to be harmed by it, except the negative harm that they do not read it, which in turn can be remedied by their reading it, since in that case, of course, they are sure of not being harmed by it—on the strength thereof and in view thereof, every lover of mankind can be assured, which was the publisher’s conviction also, that this book will do no harm.
That Den Frisindede can reason so circumspectly at a time when all the rest of what it does manifests inexplicable haste is remarkable—if only it will not “at a time more leisurely for it” reason all the more uncircumspectly. Therefore, we want to warn Den Frisindede against publishing extracts or making copies, because in that case it would undoubtedly be possible that harm would be done.* We especially wish to warn it** against surrendering to the quiet lunacy† “of fearlessly and uncompromisingly expressing, at a time more leisurely for it, its honest opinion of this amazing work.”
*indeed, we wish that Den Frisindede, which, when it has not had time to read the work, nevertheless has found time to review it, may never find time to read it, in order to remove the only conceivable possibility that anyone at all would be harmed by reading it.
**if Den Frisindede fears that harm may be done
†that it would be called to the task
—Pap. IVB 22 n.d., 1843
So rarely does Den Frisindede make a good and in the profounder sense true observation that we urgently request the publisher to reread what he himself says: One must admit that those who read this book etc.—Pap. IV B 23 n.d., 1843
Addition to Pap. IV B 22:
[IV B 24 192] —A work consisting of several parts can be so constituted that the reader has the option of reading it consecutively or each part separately; it can be so constituted that not to read it consecutively betrays tactlessness; it can be so constituted that it makes it an obligation and necessity for the reader to read it consecutively and to read all of it if he wants to read it at all. In this respect, I consider it to be an impossibility to come up with a more cogent title than Either/Or. If a man begins his discourse with Either—and in addition does not leave the listener unaware that the preliminary part will be very long—then one owes it to him either to request him not to begin or to hear his Or along with it. One cannot call for silence in this way with a printed work titled Either/Or, but the issue remains the same: one must either read it in its entirety or not read it at all.
If in a printed work titled Either/Or there is an article called “The Seducer’s Diary,” a person does not read it first, does not read it exclusively, and if he does read it exclusively he does not allow himself to have any opinion about the work, or if he does have a quasi-opinion he does not express it, or if he finally must express it he does it quite privately in his room or, if he has to confide his opinion to others, he does it orally—but above all he does not write a review of it, does not print any of it, because he prostitutes himself both by admitting that this is the only part he has read and by wanting to justify a judgment of the whole work after having read a single article—in short, one makes a fool of oneself and, N.B., by a rush job that without a doubt is completely unwarranted.
Admittedly, it must be assumed to be in order that in a story titled “The Seducer’s Diary” there are seductive and salacious things, unless it is assumed that a conflict between the esthetic and the ethical would compel an author to be [like the man] who by way of precaution advertised his lost umbrella as a cotton umbrella lest someone keep it if he found out that it was a silk umbrella. That such a story must be read cautiously is [IV B 24 193] clear enough; that one can require of the editor that he do all that he can to prevent harmful effects is clear enough. That this is the case is, I believe, quite obvious; that no one can blamelessly be misled is, I believe, evident. If anyone wants to make a test, he can easily convince himself of this. Take a light-minded, even a very corrupt, person (and to the editor a person like that is certainly the most disadvantageous exception), hand him a bound copy of Either/Or and say to him: Here is a book in which among other things there is a story called “The Seducer’s Diary.” The title will perhaps tempt him, but if he still has any respect for the productions of others he will say: Why is it not published separately? Why does it stand here as an episode? Why is the book called Either/Or? He will take the book and go home with the good intention of reading it in its entirety. If inclination prevails over intention, so that he reads the diary first and only this, he will be ashamed of himself, but he will keep quiet about this shame and least of all will he shove any guilt onto the editor.
But what such a person would not do, even if he wanted to express himself, we learn from Den Frisindede. He would not write a review with the title: “The Episode of ‘The Seducer’s Diary’” and in a note give one to understand that the diary is an episode in Either/Or; he would title his article Either/Or. He would not rip an episode out of it and thus in a double sense rip it out of its coherence with the whole. Whether he would write a note that contradicts itself in every other line, I shall not decide—I regard that of minor importance. In view of the fact, however, that his paper is read by the simple class, he would not choose an episode that might especially disturb them. Finally, he would not with hypocritical zeal do what the editor of Either/Or has never done: he would not contribute to publicizing what he regards as corrupting and precisely by this publicizing make it what it was not previously. He would not quite [IV B 24 194] en passant declare in a note that alongside the hilarity in this work “the most profound earnestness immediately intervenes”—without even citing an example of it.
When someone does as Den Frisindede has done, the person who is the natural guardian of that work owes it to himself, to the unknown authors, and to the reading public not to let it go unchallenged; he owes it to the work to reprimand Den Frisindede. Since, however, this paper sees itself able to appeal to sound common sense only by seeming to fear that “Hegel, Greek, and Latin would take exception to its conduct,” there is nothing else to do in this respect than to let it continue in the voluntary exile it has itself necessarily chosen. All I want to do is warn against Den Frisindede’s sound common sense, warn every reader against reading Either/Or in the pirated version of Den Frisindede.
I have imagined what even a very corrupt person would do; I have explained what Den Frisindede has done; in order once again to throw light upon its conduct, I shall show what it could have done. First and foremost, it could have given itself time, for there surely is no one who is particularly desirous of its opinion—if it believes this, then it could have been quick about reading the whole book. Then if it wanted to tell its readers something about this work, it would say, in view of the fact that its readers belong to the simple class, “A work has been published that the average reader of this paper will no doubt scarcely understand. But in the second part of the book there is a profound earnestness, a sincerely sympathetic love for and interest in every human being. An attempt is made here to show how all the many differences in life nevertheless vanish before this good fortune: to be a human being; it is shown that this is the only thing of which one dares to be proud; the circumstances of those to whom abundance has not been given are described with unaffected emotion; every honorable endeavor in life is praised.” This Den Frisindede would do out of love for its readers; if it believed itself able to do it better than that author, it would have added a few friendly and admonishing words. Then it would have done a good deed, [IV B 24 195] Then it would have earned the gratitude of the author of that work; then it would have laid claim to the gratitude of its readers. Then no one would be more willing to appreciate its endeavor than the natural guardian of that work. No one would be more willing to thank it, provided it was able to do it better than that guardian has done it, who surely would say, if one could request of him his explanation, that it gave him as much pleasure as if he had done it himself.
Victor Eremita
—Pap. IV B 24 n.d., 1843
My Opinion of Either/Or
There was a young man as favorably endowed as an Alcibiades. He lost his way in the world. In his need he looked about for a Socrates but found none among his contemporaries. Then he requested the gods to change him into one. But now—he who had been so proud of being an Alcibiades was so humiliated and humbled by the gods’ favor that, just when he received what he could be proud of, he felt inferior to all.
—JP V 5613 (Pap. IV A 43) n.d., 1843
Even if I proved nothing else by writing Either/Or, I proved that in Danish literature one can write a book, that one can work, without needing the warm jacket of sympathy,53 without needing the incentives of anticipation, that one can work even though the stream is against one, that one can work hard without seeming to, that one can privately concentrate while practically every bungling student dares look upon one as a loafer.54 Even if the book itself were devoid of meaning, the making of it would still be the pithiest epigram I have written over the maundering philosophic age in which I live.—JP V 5614 (Pap. IV A 45) n.d., 1843
In Intelligensblade,55 I see that Professor Heiberg thinks that it is indelicate of me to publish such a story. That he is in a way right about that I have no doubt, for otherwise how else could he say it? What a pity that prior to the publication it did not occur to me to think about what Herr Professor Heiberg would say—what a pity!—Pap. IV B 27 n.d., 1843
[IV B 28 195] Professor Heiberg thinks that it is necessary to be rude toward me. Alas, alas, alas, that I have come to that—for if Professor [IV B 28 196] Heiberg says it, I have no doubt that it actually is so. Yet it comforts me to know that Professor Heiberg wants to be rude, because he is concerned for my temporal and eternal welfare. Oh, that Prof. H. might succeed in being sufficiently rude! Yet I do not doubt it, since it is Prof. H. I doubt it even less, since it is the year 1843. Over the years, a wonderful change has taken place in H.*; he has become less jocular, more earnest, less facetious, more severe, less witty, more rude.[**] What was difficult for him thirteen years ago, what was impossible for him fifteen years ago, will no doubt, with the aid of all good jinn, succeed for him now.
In margin: *another person
[**]In margin: less entertaining, more boring.
—Pap. IV B 28 n.d., 1843
Wholesaler Nathanson is of the same opinion.56 If there was a proud thought in my soul that dared at any moment to rise in protest against Professor Heiberg’s authority—it is now squelched, for Wholesaler Nathanson is of the same opinion. In vain do I look for an escape; if rudeness cannot do it, then wittiness can; if Heiberg cannot do it, then N. can.—Pap. IV B 29 n.d., 1843
Prof. Heiberg believes that I am allowing myself to make fun of him. —That would be an appalling thought. I would rather have expected the professor to have gone along with the judge’s train of thought in The Marriage of Figaro:57 Would anyone dare to make fun of me—I make fun of my benefactor!—Pap. IV B 30 n.d., 1843
From D. I understand that some students declare that no one laughs at what I write. This does not surprise me, since it has never been my intention that anyone should laugh at it. My soul is somewhat doubtful; if it had been my intention to arouse laughter, I presumably would have taken the precaution of adding “laugh” at particular points just as plaudite [applaud] was inserted in the old comedies; for it is not granted to everyone to be as certain of laughter as my most honored comilitones [comrades-in-arms] could be.—Pap. IV B 31 n.d., 1843
Prof. Heiberg must not think that I say this because I envy him the dignity of being the authority.58 Indeed, I find it highly desirable that there is an authority, provided only that I myself may be exempted from it, for it always makes for complications. If Professor Heiberg will make up his mind to take upon himself this honorable calling, I do not need to come out with my proposal to the Assembly that an authority must be established,59 a post that will rotate among all the authors of twenty-four printing sheets for the term of one year, as with the consulship in Rome, and of such a nature that what the ruling authority says during the year when he is the authority is and shall be regarded as the truth by the king of all the Danish lands and provinces, and those who do not share this view must wait until they themselves or one of their friends become the authority.—Pap. IV B 32 n.d., 1843
That there are a few printer’s errors, I do not deny; that it [IV B 33 197] would be better if they were not there is readily admitted— that Professor Heiberg dwells on them does not surprise me. The concept of classical prose he has seen fit to establish seems to be a suitable model in a school—soon things will go with the professor so that we shall sing about the professor what the professor himself has taught us to sing:
He pays attention to every noise
to every basement doorway
to every weather vane,
and in plain sight scrupulously scrutinizes the [IV B 33 198]
prescribed bell pull60
that is: the requisite question and exclamation marks.
I have a little nephew who goes to grammar school. I have had him go through the book, and he has pointed out exactly the same thing as the professor. Two such authorities are enough.—Pap. IV B 33 n.d., 1843
I am being asked to declare that the work is not by me. What does this mean? This is indeed something totally unheard of in Denmark! I have always been a great enemy of lawsuits and depositions and thus have been a good friend of the police and the criminal court judge—but this is indeed a terror-tribunal. —Although I could very easily answer and thereby put an end to the matter, I perceive both that it will not amount to much and that the whole thing ought to be regarded as a matter of principle. Yet perhaps my poor insignificant life will acquire significance for the whole thing. In the name of all authors, I protest against such conduct.
But do stop vexing my peaceful life in this way (just as when one person looks like another); it is a matter of principle.
—Pap. IVB 34n.d., 1843
[IV B 35 198] A Painful Situation (Distress Signal).61
It is now about four months since I, in the newspaper Fædrelandet, with all respect permitted myself to divert any suspicion from me in connection with the authorship of several things—yet readers may have forgotten this, and I also, but not the consequences of it. For several days, I encountered on all sides caustic glances, the meaning of which I did not at first understand, but I soon learned to interpret them. A letter from a friend explained everything. That is, the friend had seen through me, had perceived that it was vanity, as if I [IV B 35 199] wanted to make people believe that anyone had talked about such things. Now everything became clear to me; various covert statements became more clear to me, those glances easily explained. They felt sorry for me and my vanity, that it could occur to me that it could occur to anyone that I was the author; they pitied me for wanting to join in. —And yet I dare to maintain that it was on account of certain charges that I decided on that step, decided to beg my contemporaries not to regard me as author of anything that did not bear my name. —Now I am right where I started—an article in Ny Portefeuille, a letter in the Berlingske (opinions differ; some think that the letter including the point is by me, others that it is the letter in which it was omitted62), a similar letter in Fædrelandet, and finally the big work Either/Or. If I had not been so unfortunate as to have made an admission once, I would do it now; but since it failed once, what are my prospects now—will I not expose myself once again to letters and caustic glances; will anyone believe my declaration? In civic life we encounter people who are promptly willing when it is a matter of being a guarantor, but no innkeeper wants them; so also with my explanation—no one will believe it—Pap. IV B 35 n.d., 1843
Prof. Heiberg is an ingenious man.
Fa-la-la-da-da
[Vitte-vit-vit-bom-bom].
—Pap. IV B 36 n.d., 1843
You, Herr Professor Heiberg, are a man of letters, and I am [IV B 37 199] anything but. Please allow me for a moment to draw my words from the world of horses. A horse trainer can train even a less spirited horse to be a parade horse, and it is quite enjoyable to see its measured step. When one has no other place to ride than on the embankment, where accidents can so easily happen, or even in a very restricted area, it can be quite all right, and the ladies out for a stroll and concerned about their finery enjoy both paraders—the horse and the rider—and parents [IV B 37 200] have nothing against letting their children, even the small, walk up and watch them. —A young wild horse, however, does not have such beautiful and measured movements; at times its fiery mettle is almost ridiculous, its friskiness a bit uncouth, but beneath all this it nevertheless has one thing no horse trainer can give, and that is the snort in its nostrils, its fiery breathing. Anyone who knows anything about this will also have the courage to watch it, to delight in it.
You simply have not plumbed the human heart, its passions, etc.; whether you nevertheless are completely finished with your life-view I do not know; the passions developed in Either/Or are already too high for you, and if I had the honor of speaking with you I would whisper in your ear something whereby you would see that more is needed in order to explain life.—Pap. IV B 37 n.d., 1843
An author who prefers to be a supplementary clerk63 in literature, as one sees from the preface, and by no means craves any appointment in Professor Heiberg’s office.—Pap. IV B 38 n.d., 1843
Professor Heiberg is very welcome to go further; he is welcome to throw both volumes at the head of the unknown authors—he has my word for that, and he needs it, because otherwise he might perhaps have scruples about it, he in particular, since he seems so unusually disturbed by the thought of the size of the book.64 The effect will be dreadful if he hits them.—Pap. IV B 39 n.d., 1843
I do not wish to be an authority; it must be embarrassing. For instance, if I could receive an honorable and lucrative appointment as a model of virtue, I would decline it, since it must be a burden to be a model of virtue day in and day out.
—Pap. IV B 40 n.d., 1843
Prof. Heiberg is also in the habit of “holding judgment day in literature.” Have you forgotten what happened to Xerxes? He had even taken scribes along to describe his victory over little Greece.65—Pap. IV B 41 n.d., 1843
He is not alone, has muses and graces—and for safety’s sake he has acquired a new co-worker: “one”,66 an energetic co-worker who demands no fee and accepts any treatment.—Pap. IV B 42 n.d., 1843
It says in the hymnbook that all the princes of the world are unable to create a straw—while any miserable prattler can create a “one”.67— Pap. IV B 43 n.d., 1843
On the birthday of Intelligensblade,68 congratulations to Professor Heiberg from my wife and myself and several friends who read the copy of the paper to which I subscribe.
Respectfully,
MADSEN
retired mailman
—Pap. IV B 44 n.d., 1843
We have now given an account of how “one”,69 according to our knowledge, has treated this work. —Prof. Heiberg is too important a figure to be classified in any way under the rubric “one”. Let us now see how he has treated it. It has (1) surprised Prof. Heiberg that the book is so big70 —indeed, so big that one could be paid for exhibiting it (one would almost believe that the professor was describing what he himself had done); (2) provokes . . . . —Pap. IV B 45 n.d., 1843
How Does “One” Treat Either/Or? [IV B 46 202]
Everyone will find it quite in order that it frequently occurs to the one who is the natural guardian of this work to ponder its future fate. Even before he published it, he had thought about this, of which one will readily be convinced by merely reading the preface, without sniffing through Either and paging through Or. I have briefly pronounced judgment there on both parts since A. says: Read it or do not read it, you will regret it either way, whereas B. wishes the book to pass by the critic unnoticed and rather to visit a single individual so that the book might encounter a reader in a kindly disposed hour. I, of course, did not dare expect it to turn out quite this way, for how often does one have one’s wish fulfilled in this manner? After the work appeared, I again occasionally paid heed to the verdict of the public. This at times can be difficult enough, and for that reason I am really pleased that Professor Heiberg with unusual courtesy has had the kindness to enlighten, in a prophetic vision, the book-reading public and thereby me, too, with regard to how “one” treats and will treat Either/Or. As far as I know, Prof. H. certainly has not so far tried his hand at prophecy, but one does grow older, and Prof. H. is very perfectible.[*] It will soon be two years since Herr Professor [IV B 46 203] changed from being the witty, jesting, hilarious vaudeville playwright who yet at times seemed* somewhat astray in the faith, the victorious polemicist, the measured esthetician, and became Denmark’s Dante,71 the musing genius who in his apocalyptic poem peered into the secrets of eternal life, became the Church’s dutiful son from whom the esteemed clergy of the diocese expected everything for the good of the “parish.”72 If it had not happened, who would believe that it could happen, but after it has happened, who then is not bound to believe Prof. H. capable of everything?
But to the matter at hand. In no. 24 of Intelligensblade there is a little article by Prof. Heiberg titled “Litterær Vintersæd.”73 In this little article the professor has managed to discuss incredibly much. The first part is brilliant; the second is complimentary to various Danish authors; the third is prophetic; the fourth doubtful; the fifth is a single reader’s opinion of Or; the sixth opens the prospect that someday[**] there may come a reader who will read both parts, both Either and Or.74
The first part, the brilliant part, does not concern me, and therefore I shall not discuss it further, however pained I am not to be able to dwell on the beautiful, moving thought advanced by the professor, the edifying thought that Intelligensblade is now beginning a new annual series, for the thought could actually make a stone cry, so moving it is. It is comforting and encouraging for all of us, like the immortality of Kildevalle the poet.75
[*]Penciled in margin: new directions
In margin: *to nourish straying views of faith
[**]In margin: in the fullness of time.
The complimentary part does not concern me either, and the only thing that almost pains me is that the reader will forget it when he comes to the next part, which deals with how “one” treats Either/Or.76
This part, then, does concern me, and the readers of this paper [IV B 46 204] will then forgive the absence in this number of that which they usually look for or of that which can engage them, and it is my wish that the single solitary reader who actually reads Either/Or may come upon these lines and have enough patience to read them also.—Pap. IV B 46 n.d., 1843
That H. P. Hoist77 does not know what style is, to say nothing [IV B 48 204] of the meaning of the old thesis stil c’est l’homme [the style is the man], can be taken quite for granted, without therefore denying his qualification as a useful teacher of poetic fine writing. He confuses style and fine writing.78 —We would have nothing against his continuing a means of making a living. —He actually does not prattle, that is saying too much—he rattles on. —We do not doubt that now; in consequence of this short reply, he will once again spin out the thin and finical and brittle thread of his chatter, which he moistens with esthetic dishwater, and he especially wants it to become a whole fabric if he should manage to give the appearance that he in any way ventures to attach himself to Heiberg and that his web could in any way be regarded as a fringe on Heiberg’s Intelligensblade, for it really does not seem that the muses and graces inspire him as does the good fortune of being included in a footnote in Heiberg.79 When it is a matter of placing the period in the right place etc. etc., he is right there, but when it is a matter of ideas, thoughts, of untamed passions, of the fervent emotions of the [IV B 48 205] heart, where one hears the squealing of laughter and the deep sighing of the heart, there Hoist is always outside even though he gives the appearance of being at home.80 I do not intend to answer him, unless, contrary to expectation, the devil should slip into him and make him malevolent, because then the fun begins. But I do not believe him capable even of this; his whole existence is a languishing aftertaste of a poetic taste; his esthetic competence is an unlovely voluptuousness.—Pap. IV B 48 n.d., 1843
. . . . . the esthetic writing teacher—the literary telegraph operator—a tax collector who counts votes81—and although he tries in every way to save the Intelligensblade from becoming half-hour reading by having it come out in double issues, it does not help—if three issues came out at once, it would still be only half-hour reading.—Pap. IV B 51 n.d., 1843
For several years now Prof. Heiberg has been sitting at the window of literature all prinked up and waving to the passersby, especially if it was a smart looking man and he heard a little applause from the adjoining street.—Pap. IV B 49 n.d., 1843
Underlined in copy of Intelligensblade, 26-27, April 15, 1843 ASKB U 56), p. 50:
Consequently, it is a mistake if one believes that genuine romanticism is confined to Catholicism, if one believes, as does the author of Either/Or, that in our day it should be annulled—first in the esthetic, then in the ethical . . . . —JP III 3823 (Pap. IV B 50:4) n.d., 1843
Heiberg, who previously was a denominator in literature—indeed almost a common denominator—has now become a numerator [Tæller]—a teller [Tæller] in the literary bank.
—Pap. IV B 52 n.d., 1843
. . . . . it is a pleasure to see how Herr Professor Heiberg’s recent astronomical, astrological, chiromantic, necromantic, chronologic, topographic, statistical, horoscopic, metascopic studies82 are beneficial not only to his most gracious majesty the king83 but also to the neighbor.—Pap. IV B 53 n.d., 1843
Heiberg ought to know that for some time now he has become an uncle. Indeed, it is beautiful when an uncle knows how to make himself loved by his young relatives, but he must not be grumpy,84 for then it is a disastrous position. —Perhaps Uncle Heiberg is striving for this.—Pap. IV B 54 n.d., 1843
Prof. Heiberg has “the measure in his mouth,” just like the sergeant who demanded an aquavit from a barmaid. Then in the very same moment there was a bugle call to arms, and in the rush she could not find the measure, but the sergeant snatched the bottle, saying: I have the measure in my mouth—which was no help at all to the poor barmaid, who probably was a poor woman and herself had her aquavit measured out by the distiller. —Thus, I am not helped either; I am a poor man.—Pap. IV B 55 n.d., 1843
God bless your incoming, Herr Prof. Heiberg! As for your outgoing, I shall take care of that adequately.—Pap. IV B 56 n.d., 1843
Everyone has his hobbyhorse, and if one leads it out to him well saddled, he mounts, and then it is: “Gee up” at a gallop.
—Pap. IV B 57 n.d., 1843
Heiberg remarked in his outcry over Either/Or that it was really hard to tell whether some of the observations in it were profound or not.85 Professor Heiberg and his consorts have the great advantage that what they say is known in advance to be profound. This is partly due to the fact that not a single primitive thought is to be found in them, or at least rarely. What they know they borrow from Hegel, and Hegel is indeed profound—ergo, what Professor Heiberg says is also profound. In this way every theological student who limits his sermon to nothing but quotations from the Bible becomes the most profound of all, for the Bible certainly is the most profound book of all.—JP V 5697 (Pap. IV A 162) n.d., 1843
When I am not reus voti [one bound by a vow], nothing happens for me. Because of it I got my theological certificate; because of it I wrote my dissertation,86 because of it I was all through with Either/Or in eleven months.87 If anyone were to find out the actual incentive . . . . . Good Lord, they no doubt are thinking, such a big book as that must certainly have a very profound incentive . . . . . and yet it is exclusively concerned with my private life—and the purpose—well, if this were discovered, I would be declared stark raving mad. I perhaps would be excused for personally regarding it as an interesting piece of work, but for me to look upon it as a good deed, that for me this is the most appealing aspect of the whole thing . . . . —JP V 5626 (Pap. IV A 70) n.d., 1843
Theodorus Atheos said: He gave his teaching with the right hand, but his listeners received it with the left.88
See Tennemann, Ges. d. Phil., II, p. 124, note 39.—Pap. IV A75 n.d., 1843
I must get at my Antigone89 again. The task will be a psychological development and motivation of the presentiment of guilt. —With that in mind I have been thinking of Solomon and David,90 of the relation of Solomon’s youth to David, for no doubt both Solomon’s intellect (dominant in the relationship) and his sensuousness are the results of David’s greatness. He had earlier intimations of David’s deep agitation without realizing what guilt might rest upon him, and yet he had seen this profoundly God-fearing man give such an ethical expression to his repentance, for it would have been a quite different matter if David had been a mystic. These ideas, these presentiments, smother energies (except in the form of imagination), arouse the intellect, and this combination of imagination and intellect, where the factor of the will is lacking, is sensuousness proper.—JP V 5669 (Pap. IV A 114) n.d., 1843
I have half a mind to write a counter-piece to “The Seducer’s Diary.” It would be a feminine figure: “The Courtesan’s Diary.” It would be worth the trouble to depict such a character.—JP V 5676 (Pap. IV A 128) n.d., 1843
The sequel to “The Seducer’s Diary” must be in a piquant vein, his relation to a young married woman.—JP V 5677 (Pap. IV A 129) n.d., 1843
The Seducer’s Diary [IV A 181 66]
No. 2
A Venture in the Demonic
by
Johannes Mephistopheles
N.B. It is what the age wants, to become dizzy over the [IV A 181 67] abominable and then fancy itself to be superior. They will not get that from me.
Foreword
I am indebted for the idea to what Victor Eremita has published, and I can only lament that this author has not pursued the excellent ideas at his disposal but instead has become an upbuilding writer.
The scene is in the house of Cordelia, who is married to Edward—in her house there is a young girl who is the object; the fact that it is in Cordelia’s house is a subtle refinement.
He heightens his pleasure by constantly clinging to the thought that this will be his last adventure and by parceling it out, as it were, into enjoyment. Moreover, he heightens the enjoyment by reproducing, from everything erotic in the particular situation, a compendious memory of the girl who then goes to ruin on this side of the idea of femininity; he heightens the enjoyment by reproducing all of his own life, and in this way the psychological presuppositions of his soul come to light.
He gets to know a courtesan and establishes a psychological union with her to explore the relation between the seduction that originates with a man and that which originates with a woman—eventually he decides to ruin her, too.
He collides with a Don Juan over the same girl. This throws light on the method, but he knows how to put Don Juan to good use as a serviceable element in his plan.—JP V 5705 (Pap. IV A 181) n.d., 1844
On front fly-leaf of copy o/Either/Or, I:
The first part contains depression (egotistic-sympathetic) and despair (in understanding and passion). The second part therefore teaches despair and choosing oneself. Even the essay on Don Juan has depression, an enthusiasm that robs him of understanding, a dreaming, almost deranged, reveling in fantasy. The first part is therefore essentially paradoxical—that is, it does not contain this or that paradoxical thought, but it is sheer passion, and this is always paradoxical and must not be destroyed; for paradox is the passion of thought. The motto also suggests that it is sheer passion in its arbitrariness.
The first part is continually stranded on time. This is why the second part strongly affirms it, since it is shown in the first discussion that the esthetic is broken upon time, and in the second discussion it is shown that the meaning of finitude and temporality is to be able to become history, to gain a history.
Fantasy like this always creates depression; therefore the first part is depressed.—JP I 907 (Pap. IV A 213) n.d., 1843
On front fly-leaf of copy of’Either/Or, I:
Probably no one suspects that Either/Or has a plan from the first word to the last, since the preface makes a joke of it91 and does not say a word about the speculative.—JP V 5627 (Pap. IV A 214) n.d., 1843
On front fly-leaf of copy of Either/Or, I:
Some think that Either/Or is a collection of loose papers I had lying in my desk. Bravo! —As a matter of fact, it was the reverse. The only thing this work lacks is a narrative, which I did begin but omitted, just as Aladdin left a window incomplete. It was to be called “Unhappy Love.” It was to form a contrast to the Seducer. The hero in the story acted in exactly the same way as the Seducer, but behind it was depression. He was not unhappy because he could not get the girl he loved. Such heroes are beneath me. He had capacities comparable to the Seducer’s; he was certain of capturing her. He won her. As long as the struggle went on, he detected nothing; then she surrendered, he was loved with all the enthusiasm a young girl has—then he became unhappy, went into a depression, pulled back; he could struggle with the whole world but not with himself. His love made him indescribably happy at the moment; as soon as he thought of time, he despaired.—JP V 5628 (Pap. IV A 215) n.d., 1843
The first Διάψαλμα is really the task of the entire work, which is not resolved until the last words of the sermon.92 An enormous dissonance is assumed, and then it says: Explain it. A total break with actuality is assumed, which does not have its base in vanity but in depression and its predominance over actuality.
The last διάψ. tells us how a life such as this has found its satisfactory expression in laughter. He pays his debt to actuality by means of laughter, and now everything takes place within this contradiction. His enthusiasm is too intense, his sympathy too deep, his love too burning, his heart too warm to be able to express himself in any other way than by contradiction. Thus A himself would never have come to a decision to publish his papers.—JP V 5629 (Pap. IV A 216) n.d., 1843
If I had not decided when publishing Either/Or not to use any old material,93 I would have found in going through my papers some aphorisms that could have been used very well. Today I found a little scrap of paper with the following written on it: “I am so tired that I feel that I need an eternity to rest, so troubled that I feel that I need an eternity to forget my sorrow; I wish that I could sleep so long that I would wake up an old man and could then lie down again to sleep the eternal sleep.”—JPV 5631 (Pap. IV A 221) March 15, 1843
I reject all reviews, for to me a reviewer is just as loathsome as a street barber’s assistant who comes running with his shaving water, which is used for all customers, and fumbles about my face with his clammy fingers.94—JP V 5698 (Pap. IV A 167) n.d., 1843-44
[IV B 58 208] A Deplorable, an Amusing, an Innocent Madness.
Whoever finds someone
raving or mad must tie him up.
Danish law, 1,19,7.
On account of an article in Prof. Heiberg’s Intelligensblade (“Ecclesiastical Polemics”95 by Kts96), a man has gone mad in Kjøbenhavnsposten.97 This is deplorable. The amusing thing about it, however, is that his madness and fixed idea consist of deluding himself and others that he is a pastor. This is the best interpretation of the article’s signature: A Pastor. In any other case, one would inevitably hazard the just as insulting as difficult and highly unlikely explanation that a pastor could so forget himself and his senses that after having written an article like that he did not at least abstain from signing it: A Pastor.
The article’s very reverend author* must be from this city, for it is chiefly something Kts said about the considerable church attendance in the capital that has become the object of his attack, and certainly one cannot assume that a rural pastor could find time to travel so frequently to Copenhagen, especially on Sunday. He thinks that Kts untruthfully represents (he is so pure that he is unwilling to use the word “lie”) the attendance in the capital’s churches as high. To that end, he appeals to his own experience, which indeed also ought to be worthy of credence, for presumably he ordinarily** goes to only a few churches; but occasionally, when he happens to be [IV B 58 209] passing by, he also goes into other churches for a moment in order to see how many people there are. It is incredible how much this self-appointed pastor on his own responsibility manages to accomplish every Sunday. Ordinarily he attends a few churches (it is difficult to manage more if one is going to remain through the whole service, except for several festival days, when there is also divine service at noon); occasionally he visits several other churches in order to count. What time does this good parson save for preaching? A real pastor would hardly have written as thoughtlessly as this.
* Note. Everyone knows how gratifying it is to a man who has a fixed idea for someone to enter into it and speak to him on the basis of it.
** Note. “Ordinarily”—this word must not be misinterpreted as if he went properly to church in the few churches to which he ordinarily goes. His meaning is perceived from the contrast that he occasionally goes in for a moment in order to count the number of those in attendance. That is, taking a census such as that, if it is to be of any use, is not a matter of a moment, and therefore he does it properly in the few churches he ordinarily visits. In other words, if he remained properly for the whole service in the few churches he ordinarily visits, it stands to reason that he would have to come to the churches he occasionally visits at a time when they were empty—in order to count how many there are.
In another respect also, to the credit of the author, I believe that he ought to be assumed to be mad. That is, if he is not mad and as such is an absolutely isolated case, even if he represents a new tendency in the sphere of church attendance, then Kts’s church attendance record under discussion gains a new increase. It surely has not occurred to Kts to suggest this type of churchgoer, churchgoers who come in order to count those in attendance. But regardless of what brings a person to church, if there is only the question of frequency entirely in abstracto, then everyone counts, even someone who comes only in order to count.
Now if only one dares hope that the mad pastor in Kjøbenhavnsposten will limit himself to counting, even if he does not give up his fixed idea that he is a pastor, his madness will be completely innocent, and his endeavor may even be of benefit to him in the future.* He certainly cannot be assumed to have [IV B 58 210] qualified his competence by this article in Kbhp., but if in the course of the next few well-spent years he appears in public and publishes a tabulated and statistical survey of church attendance in this city, a work he rightfully may dare call the fruit of his church attendance, he certainly will be suitably placed. Without a doubt, the municipality, when the time comes to appoint a new tax collector, will give him preference,** or a bank director will consider him in the selection of a teller.
A Grocer
*without his daring therefore to count absolutely on becoming a real pastor.
**over any other theological candidate
—Pap. IV B 58 n.d., 1844
[IV B 59 210] Post-Scriptum
to
Either/Or
by
Victor Eremita[*]
Everything has an end; “even Jesper Morten’s sermon at the recent vespers came to an end.”98 This is a rather bleak view, especially for Jesper Morten, to whom it is no benefit, even though for everyone else it is cheering. [Deleted: Neither does he dare count it to his credit if the congregation were to become so independent that it did not listen to his closing prayer, but itself, motivated by his Reverence, sent up its own fervent prayer of thanksgiving to heaven for its visible assistance by which the sermon came to an end.] But one must not lightly make fun of Jesper Morten or egotistically reassure oneself that one does not belong to those who begin something. For one thing, that would be a poor eulogy on oneself, and for another, it is still always true that every human being begins something, and then for the whole human race that statement becomes a dismal truth. That of which the philosophers in so [IV B 59 211] many ways in word and deed show the difficulty—namely, to begin—appears to my more simple and popular view, which sees everything from the opposite end or, to say it more briefly, from the end, to be bound up with enormous difficulties. That is, if what one begins has an end, how then should one decide to begin it? And if what one begins does not have an end, who would have any desire to begin something? This deliberation, if it cannot be stopped, will end in the quandary that ordinary language rightly describes in saying that one knows neither how one shall begin nor end; the person who actually knows how he shall begin knows eo ipso [precisely thereby] how he shall end, and the person who knows how to end knows in that knowledge also how he shall begin. Therefore, it has often amazed me that in our time one so one-sidedly perfects oneself in the art of beginning while practically no word is ever heard about the art of ending. Would it not be timely to commence this art that has the most beautiful promises, for if the end is good, then everything is good. But the beginning is difficult, and yet one cannot begin properly before one knows how to end.
[*]In margin: to the typesetter: to be printed like the title page
Inasmuch as the bleak view that everything has an end and the equally bleak view that it never has an end could discourage one from beginning, the point is to overcome the doubt that arises, especially when one follows the old advice: respice finem [attend to the end]. The point is that freedom gives existence elasticity and that the corruptible is changed into the incorruptible. The thesis “Everything of humankind has an end” signifies the human suffering in existence. Freedom expresses it by saying: Everything must have an end—by which it signifies that the free individual comes to the aid of existence, or steals a march on existence, and by magnanimously putting an end to the affair itself saves itself from the dying-in-bed of finitude or its parodying metamorphoses. The thesis “Nothing has an end” is the expression for the toughness of finitude and for the individual’s negative absorption in existence. Here freedom once again comes to the aid of existence by heroically giving the affair an end. The twin expressions of [IV B 59 212] doubt and suffering—that everything has an end and that nothing has an end—are transfigured in freedom by giving everything an end. How many a happy moment has not been destroyed because the end came upon it like a thief in the night and so terribly that with retroactive power it embittered even the past? How many a vigorous, sonorous, profoundly modulated mood ended in toothless twaddle because one was unwilling to understand that everything must have an end? How many a fortunate constellation that by a momentary interplay of the most varied powers enchanted everyone ended in mutual disgust because one did not know how to end? How many a sweet, blissful morning dream that promised the moon and stars ended in a state of fatigue because one did not know how to break off? How many an erotic thrill that rightly used would have been invigorating for a long time ended in a paralytic yawn because one was unwilling to understand that everything must have an end?
In order, then, to carry out, if possible, what is set forth here, I, by retiring, take the liberty of putting an end to what I once began and, if you will, make so bold as to dismiss the reader, something I already had contemplated in the beginning.
For five years I kept the manuscript that in Either/Or I ventured to submit to the reading public; one year has now passed since its publication, and the moment seems appropriate for me to break off. Someone may say that five years was too short a time to wait, one year too long a time. Perhaps so, perhaps the work appeared too early, and my Postscriptum perhaps comes post festum [after the festivity, too late]. If so, I console myself with in magnis voluisse [in important things the will is already enough],99 although I would still like to point out that the end can also come prematurely like a rash caprice, and that in the external circumstances there can sometimes be a situation that requires attention and that bears the immediate blame for one’s postponing the time. This is very much the case here, because this Postscriptum would already have come out seven months ago if a courteous regard for a careless prophecy,100 which, if it had been fulfilled, perhaps would have made additional [IV B 59 213] and more detailed communications necessary, had not drawn out the time from month to month.
There is a queer master in life that no one can make out, an ex-potentate who because of eccentricity is often subject to very different judgments: namely, fate. When great human enterprises are undertaken with all conceivable energy and accompanied by the greatest expectations, when a man-of-war puts out to sea, fate does not feel like blowing, seems to have blown away and is nowhere to be found. Meanwhile it may find its pleasure in delighting a child who puts his little boat in a puddle of water. For him it ripples the water; for him it indulges every wish, takes his boat with a favorable wind to the other side, shifts the wind and takes the boat back again to him; for his sake it has the waves pile up, subjects the boat’s crew to distress at sea and rescues them again—in short, the child can have his own way with it. One would think that no windmill could go when there was a dead calm, and yet we learn from the fairy tale that there was one windmill that did go. The hero in the tale cannot explain this phenomenon, but then many miles from the mill in question he meets a corpulent man who quite phlegmatically places his finger on one nostril and blows through the other but blows only upon that one windmill101—it was fate, which is not without a sense of humor or without a certain kindness either.
Several have no doubt been surprised, as I have been, that a book like Either/Or created a certain more general, sympathetic sensation, that it was read—indeed, that it was purchased. I confess that it amazed me, and I for my part attribute it all to fate, without therefore being so ungrateful as to repay with this remark the thanks I owe to the kindness of the reading public, for not even fate was capable of bringing about the reading of the book but rather the purchasing of it. I attribute it all to fate and for that reason am circumspect enough not to draw any conclusions from that, because fate is a very touchy character and one must be extremely cautious in association with it. I have, therefore, always tried to place myself on a firm [IV B 59 214] footing in relation to it. If it meets me on my way, if it takes care of me, well, then I thank it, even though I would rather thank a human being. But I do not go a step out of my way in order to meet it on the next street; I do not cling to it when it leaves me. If I had known that not one single person would care about that work, not one single person would read it, not one single person would buy it—it would still have been published. I had another hope for it: that perhaps after a time there would be a single young person who would really delight me by reading the book for its own sake. Yes, even if I had thought I ought to give up this hope, the book would still have been published.
That the book was read, I thank fate only insofar as its clever head has hit upon various ways of occasioning this. For the reading itself, I would much rather thank the reader, since I am convinced that this was the unknown authors’ wish. Therefore, I have no doubt that the reader has become aware of an irregularity in the book: namely, that a movement is undertaken that cannot be made or at least not made in this way. The judge has unquestionably perceived this himself, I cannot believe otherwise. Since his task was only to circumscribe an ethical view, an irregularity of that sort was unavoidable, and I rather believe that on behalf of his view he has tried to hide it. Yet I need not say this to the reader, who knows how to check upon an author insofar as he imitates his movements, a method by which one immediately discovers whether a middle term has been left out. That such an irregularity should escape the armed eyes of reviewers is inconceivable; therefore, I explain their complete silence with regard to this point as leniency, for which I am obliged to thank them on behalf of those concerned. The reviewers I am thinking of are the anonymous reviewer in Forposten;102 Mr. Hagen, M.A., in [IV B 59 215] Fædrelandet;103 and the esteemed unknown reviewer in the Fyenske Tidsskrift.104 And I thank them collectively and individually for their kindness. To have even one well-disposed reviewer is a rarity, but such a trinity among reviewers, at least well-disposed toward the whole if not in judgment of the parts, is a rarity that surely will please the book’s unknown authors. I dare not call Professor Heiberg a reviewer; 105his advertisement or, more accurately, his mixed notice in Intelligensblade, was probably intended only “to orient,”106 and I can only thank him for the courtesy and service shown.*
Deleted marginal note: *His outcry did not make reading the book exactly superfluous but rather necessary in order to understand the advertisement; he did more for the book than all the reviewers, for would there not be many who enthusiastically undertook the labor of reading through two thick volumes simply in order to understand a few pages in Intelligensblade? No wonder, then, that I hastened at the time to vent my feelings in a discriminating expression of gratitude?107 Half constrained [Das half gewaltig], since the book would have to be read—for the sake of the advertisement. [Two lines crossed out and completely illegible.]
When at the time I had made a copy of the manuscript, had given the book a title, and by doing so had been so bold as to influence the interpretation, since I had written the preface—in short, when I had finished all my domestic tasks, there was still one thing left to be done: to think a little about my attire and harmonize it with the bill of fare. A name in literature is what clothes are in life. Just as on festive occasions in families the domestic servant also receives a new suit of clothes so that everything harmonizes, so I thought that I, too, had to consider [IV B 59 216] a suitable name. Yes, it is both good and bad that fate plays a manuscript like that into one’s hands! What complications simply in having to give oneself a name! How fortunate that one is baptized as an infant, that one’s parents see to it that one as early as possible acquires a name to go about with!* How wise and paternal of the government that in later years one cannot change one’s name! Even if one has been given an unfortunate name, even if through the ignorance of the parish clerk one has been given a meaningless name, it is still always better to keep it than to become depressed, as one unconditionally becomes by having to choose one’s own name. Someone may sink so deeply into depression that something may happen to him that as a rule never happens to any human being—that he would die without leaving a name because he never finished choosing one.
Lines added and crossed out: *From the point of view of the public good and the friend of the masses, are not the efforts of the Anabaptists [Gjendøber, rebaptizers] just as corrupt as from the point of view of dogmatics—!108
In the choice of a literary name, one is more limited—that is, if one has what I had, a specific work in relation to which it is to be chosen, for if someone who does not have one line finished were to devote himself entirely to deliberating upon what name he should use as author, he very likely would never finish. An editor has less trouble, because an author might be tempted to change his work simply for the sake of the name, and then again change his name for the sake of the work, until both come to nothing. This cannot possibly happen to an editor. For him the work is a completed entity that dare not be altered during all the name changes, which do not easily become numerous either, since an editor, in view of his subordinate position, is especially obliged to apply himself to modesty. What he must do is to immerse himself in the work itself and by this descent allow the work to baptize itself, so to speak.
I called the work Either/Or and in the preface attempted to explain what I meant by this title. After having familiarized [IV B 59 217] myself with all the details, I had let the whole thing come together before me in one moment of contemplation; my recommendation was that the reader do the same. For him, too, the whole thing would become like one sentence disjunctively separated. The reader would hereby enter into a self-active relation to the book, which was my aim and which I had tried to foster by totally refraining from any comment on the plan of the work, since in addition I could not, after all, know more definitely than any other reader if there was such a thing. The plan was a task of self-activity and to want to force my conception on the reader seemed to me to be an insulting and impertinent intrusion. Everyone experiences an “either/or” in his life (as does Charles in The First Love when he says: Either one has an uncle or one does not have an uncle109). This is the essential thing; the accidental is the length of the sentences and the multiplicity of the clauses, but the individual will understand the plan differently according to his own development. The book had no author, because the esteemed unknowns are and were to me and presumably likewise to the reader—unknown; then it should have no title either. Its title, therefore, does not look outward but inward into the book itself. The person who says “The book is called Either/Or” actually says nothing, but the person who says “The work is an either/or” creates the title himself. Every individual reader can, of course, do this just as well as the editor. This is also the reason the preface has left it up to the reader to give the work this title, something it would hardly ever occur to an editor to suggest.
The editor should now have a name. It goes without saying that this name must be chosen in consequence of and in harmony with the rest. I decided to choose one that would not so much designate the editor as a factual individual but would instead describe an abstract relation to the work as a whole. This relation could then become an actual relation and the name an actual name, since the single individual would lend his name in the Danish sense by nomen huic operi dare [giving a name to this work] [IV B 59 218] in the Latin sense. Thus, the editor’s name would again look inward [indadskue] into the work itself. The book had no author and no title; it should have no editor either but should round itself off in its own soaring and as a book not stand in any finite relation to an individual. Thus the editor saw his position as quite ordinary, even if there were only one person beside himself who would assume it; he regarded himself as the book’s first reader—no more and no less. He called himself “Victor Eremita,” a name that in his opinion would not be a proprium [proper name] for the editor but an apellativum [descriptive name] for the reader, even if he were the only one. If the reader in his self-activity came up with the title Either/Or, there would come a moment when he perhaps would prefer to designate himself as Eremita [eremite, hermit], because more earnest contemplation always creates solitude. Perhaps there would come a next moment when he would call himself Victor, no matter how he would more explicitly understand this victory.
An editor’s relation to a book can be such that his actual name is of extreme importance. If a well-known author publishes a work by someone else, then that famous name is the absolute. If a work contains communications and information that fall under the rubric of factual truth, a nomen proprium is very important. Neither of these applies to me or to my situation. My name is not at all well known; nor have the unknown authors exactly persuaded me to publish these papers, which in turn are rather indifferent with respect to the category of factual documents. In view of the work’s special character, an editor may wish to be pseudonymous, but then again in his pseudonymity he may prefer to designate and preserve his special relation as editor so that he can continue his pseudonymity in the publication of other books. This was not my wish, nor did my situation, as far as I could perceive, bear any visible sign of being pregnant with a continuation. The coincidence that placed this manuscript in my hands was so strange that any conjecture about a repetition would have to be regarded as foolish, whether I myself were to put everything [IV B 59 219] into buying old writing desks from secondhand dealers or form a corporation in order to speculate in antique furniture on an even greater scale. The manuscript itself was so tricky, the editor’s relation so questionable, that he was obliged to contemplate vanishing as soon as possible and making way for the book that had no author, no title, no editor, but did have an altogether solitary reader who himself published the book under the name “Victor Eremita.”
What is set forth here I have sufficiently pondered beforehand. I intended sooner or later, if necessary, to make such an explanation, although to a certain degree I regarded it as superfluous, since the individual reader upon whom I had placed my hope would read it precisely in this way.
The actuality, however, turned out to be quite different. The book did not go its way unnoticed; on the contrary, it created a certain sensation; the firm “Victor Eremita” climbed several points a few mail-days in succession. What temptations to a poor vain heart! What bright prospects for someone so fortunate as to bear that name! He could confirm the public’s misunderstanding—for which he certainly was not to blame—that he is the author; he could let the beautiful sunshine, the mild weather, the hospitable reception, and the obliging curiosity divest him of his cloak of pseudonymity and reveal himself to the gaze of his contemporaries as shy as a reclusive secret. We have seen something like this before. There has been many a traveler who honestly walked the narrow path of anonymity and renounced the world’s favor—as long as it was dubious. Then he allowed himself to be discovered, and der verschämte [the abashed] author blushed as deeply as an Anadyomene110 who seeks a hiding place in vain. —He could continue in his incognito but quickly see to scribbling a little book that could be by “Victor Eremita, editor of Either/Or.” He could have a friend announce in the newspaper, “At New Year we may anticipate a new work by V. E., the editor of Either/Or.” In the old days, the announcement came to the one giving birth; in our day this is less common, but it is all the more usual for it to come to the sponsors. Or he could . . . . . if he himself could not hit upon something, he could appeal to. . . . .
Honesty, however, is the best policy, and therefore I did not [IV B 59 220] succumb to the temptation but on the contrary am attempting with these lines to bid farewell as Victor Eremita forever. By this I hope to do what I owe both to myself and to the reading public, which even in relation to the author, to say nothing of the editor, certainly would be best served if every author were pseudonymous and if with every work began from the beginning in everything pertaining to the external person. To my mind, the surprise of occasionally encountering a good book where one had expected nothing is in all ways preferable to being freshly reminded of a talented piece of work by seeing the same talent in degenerated form. Even if one has not been pseudonymous before, as soon as one notices retrogression, one either ought to stop writing, which is the more praiseworthy, or one ought to hasten to be pseudonymous. And this nudge to stop, this termination point, an author ought to discover a little before it becomes obvious to the reader.
How desirable it would be if an author actually loved the erotic contacts with the reading public, had the power to keep the idea of it living, the faith in it burning, the responsibility to it chastening in his soul, unmoved by actuality’s dreary protests! Then he would not totally regard his existence as a livelihood, or desire a seniority system to be instituted, or entertain himself like a Don Ranudo by rattling off the list of his works every time he added a new one,111 but be matured and ennobled in the pain and joy of existing in uncertainty in this way, without having any past to appeal to, without having any future to anticipate, without demanding a pension or advance payment. How desirable it would be if every author had in himself his severest critic whom he loved and feared more than a woman fears her mirror! He would then have a witness who would testify with him that he was faithful to the idea as long as it loved and visited him; he would then have a friend who would not lack the courage to knock him down if at any [IV B 59 221] moment he, disabled and decrepit, should pretend that the idea still visited him, if he himself should permit the obscenity that the young muse lived in an erotic intimacy with the decrepit one. Then he would experience a beautiful old age. Yes, even if the muse, who loved him because he had been faithful to her, wanted to tempt him to try his hand once again, he would speak admonishingly to her: My dear child! Could you have joy out of humiliating me or being humiliated by me, do you love me as of old? Then jest with me a little the way a child cheers up the oldster. This the muse would indeed do for him and love him even more and say: A human being is still the wonder of creation. When he was young and strong, he bowed in admiration and adoration to me; now that he is weak, he is unwilling to accept my favor—his freedom humbles me.
Yet this comment pertains mostly to the authors, and to that extent it may be unfair that a reader makes it since he cannot possibly know the difficulty of self-denial, how hard it is to give up the sure prospects while youth still offers the human probability, how hard it is to have ceased to govern. If the temptation is greater than the person who has not been tested and tried in it can visualize, then it is still certain that in any case freedom will make the victory easier and the joy more indescribable. But it is even more certain than this that such conduct will be a great joy and blessing to the reader. Then he will not be kept in any misplaced expectancy, even less be cast into despondency over the loss of the superior, the downfall of the great, but undisturbed will bring forth the particular works, without pity will reject what cannot satisfy, since he would not know whose work it is that he rejects. Without any enclitic prejudice he will with originality devote himself in the hour of surprise to the particular work, which did not wish to influence by anything except itself.
This the reader can perceive, and an editor who is neither more nor less than the first reader can also understand it and easily act in accordance with what he actually has understood. Even if I were author of that work, I would nevertheless hasten to dissolve the firm “Victor Eremita,” because through [IV B 59 222] fate, many accidental circumstances, and the kindness of the reading public, it has become something different from what it originally could be for the author himself, and in this change it would contain a standard for the author and with respect to a subsequent performance develop in the reader a demand that could be of no service to either party. If in the course of time it should occur to a reader to say, “I wonder if we will not soon be hearing something from Victor Eremita,” such an expectancy would be a source of anxiety even for an author. If this comment pertained to an editor, for him it would undoubtedly take on the proportions of profound derision. He would perhaps think, “Good lord, what should anyone hear from me! It is no wonder at all that no one hears anything, since I have never had anything to say. An editor does not have much to do; at most he can sit at home all day like a girl and wait to see if fate will not propose to him with a new manuscript. And even this method is very exhausting and also uncertain.”
In view of this, I deem it best to dissolve a firm that has never actually existed. In the meantime, I nevertheless trust that with this explanation I will do what I owe to that work and to my position, do what I can to keep the reader from any misunderstanding with respect to his own expectation and my person by asking him to be assured that if he should ever encounter the name “Victor Eremita” in any other connection or relation than it has as Either/Or’s natural guardian,112 then the person who writes it is not the one who here in all likelihood is signing his name this way for the last time, the person who here in the moment of farewell does not place his trust in his own power but trusts only in the consistency with which a “kindly disposed reader” will sometimes kindly recollect a discharged editor.
That I as editor have left no stone unturned in trying on my own to find the unknown authors, that in precisely this respect I have been happy to see the book arouse a certain attention, [IV B 59 223] since it is good, after all, to fish in troubled waters, I certainly need not say; it was, however, in vain. Yet for a period I believed, with the help of Mr. Hagen, M.A., that I had come upon a clue. In Fædrelandet (col. 9854 fn.), he reproaches me for having said of A.113 that there was nothing to be found in the work to enlighten us about his personal existence in society. (I have not, however, actually said this. I have only said that A. did not have any name in the way, as was well known, that the judge was called William, and that because of this lack of analogy I had preferred to call the esteemed authors A. and B. instead of inventing a name for A. myself.) Mr. Hagen is of the opinion that I have made a mistake here and emphasizes one aspect in particular—namely, that A. is supposed to have lived alongside a pharmacist114 here in the city. When I read this I was at first humbled to think that I who for five years had intimately lived together with the manuscript had not discovered what a critic’s clever pate had speedily discovered; next, I was amazed that Mr. Hagen dropped the comment so casually. It seemed to me that this clue could lead to something. With this piece of information one could perhaps jog the secondhand furniture dealer’s memory. Perhaps one could pick up some evidence from the pharmacists and especially from their neighbors etc. Before taking any step in this direction, I decided to examine A.’s papers very carefully. The passage alluded to is unquestionably found in one of the diapsalmata, where A., according to his own words, from his gloomy apartment hears the minuet from Don Giovanni being played in the neighboring courtyard, which must be the courtyard of a pharmacist, since the pharmacist accompanies the beckoning tones by pounding in his mortar. I stake my honor in omnem lapidem movisse [turning every stone] in order to find the unknown authors; so please forgive me if I am somewhat prolix. I honestly confess that Mr. Hagen’s whole review has not occupied me as much as this little passage, for the rest of it has to do with the authors, but this touches me in the most tender spot. According to what Mr. Hagen himself points out, A. has been an adjunct and later was engaged by a traveling theater group; he has, as I myself recollect, also traveled abroad (see [IV B 59 224] the article about The First Love115). The diapsalma referred to has no date and no other stipulation of place than the one cited. Since the matter is of extreme importance to me, I would be reluctant to come with unfounded assertions. I have gone to all imaginable trouble to find an authority who could in the most satisfactory way vouch for what I am now going to say. I have not succeeded; geography books as well as other statistical works leave me in the lurch. I trust myself, however, to vouch for the truth and ask Mr. Hagen to take my word for it. “There are pharmacies in most Danish towns; in the great cities of foreign countries there are numerous pharmacies; pharmacies do not lie in remote spots, and in all likelihood next to every pharmacy there is a neighboring courtyard. Pharmacists in Danish towns, no less than foreign pharmacists, pound in their mortars just as much as those in the capital.” If one believes this on the strength of my honesty or on other more persuasive grounds, one perceives how this clue vanishes without a trace, since the only established fact that remains is that once a man well-traveled in Denmark and in foreign lands lived alongside a pharmacist at precisely the moment when it so curiously happened that the pharmacist was pounding in his mortar. Then Mr. Hagen’s clue was a mistake and all my trouble wasted. Yet I readily forgive him, for on this point I am so sensitive that I do not hesitate to submit to everything. But what I cannot forgive Mr. Hagen is that he, without exactly wanting to encourage people in an injustice of this sort, nevertheless indirectly, by mentioning it and thereby publicizing it and thus perhaps making it tempting, although this was contrary to his intention, has contributed to disparaging the properties lying alongside a pharmacy. In other words, he says that “men have shed tears of joy on behalf of their wives and daughters for not having lived in the neighborhood of any [IV B 59 225] pharmacist.”116 One would think that if anyone had occasion to shed tears of joy it ought to be those who had lived in the vicinity of a pharmacist without having their wives and daughters harmed by it. But to go so far as to have even those who have not lived in the vicinity of a pharmacist shed tears of joy shows what enormous hostility and what insuperable idiosyncrasies many people must have about living near a pharmacist. To publicize this and thereby contribute to spreading this attitude harms all who have property in the vicinity of a pharmacist; it is the ruination of those whose property is situated alongside a pharmacy. —This I am unable to forgive Mr. Hagen; in my opinion, this is frivolous and injudicious of him.
This, like so much else, can be a matter of complete indifference to me, for if these noble men and fathers, whose tears of joy Mr. Hagen makes public to all, should wish to know who I am, then there is nothing on my side to prevent it:
Ich bin die lebendige Definition eines pragmatischen Geschichtschreibers, habe kein Vaterland, keinen Freund, weder Weib noch Kind, ziehe keinen Sold, erkenne keinen Herrn, binde mich an kein Gesetz und bekenne mich zu keiner Kirche; die Welt ist für mich eine Insel Juan Fernandez [I am the living definition of a history writer, have no fatherland, no friends, neither wife nor child, draw no pay, acknowledge no master, bind myself to no law and belong to no church; for me the world is a Juan Fernandez island].117
My moral principle, to be of service; my highest ethical maxim is to regard all existence as an old novel or chronicle, where in the progress of the story it is inestimably amusing and utterly amazing to be reading continually about oneself.
VICTOR EREMITA
March 1844
—Pap. IV B 59 March 1844
Note on Post-Scriptum to Either/Or:
For p. 217 [SV VII 246].[VII1 B 83 276]
A note that was not printed because it was prepared later, although it was rough-drafted, and for certain reasons I did not want to change or add the least thing in the manuscript as it was delivered lock, stock, and barrel to Luno118 the last days of December, 1845.
Note. This imaginary construction [Experiment] (“ ‘Guilty?’ /‘Not Guilty?’ ”)119 is the first attempt in all the pseudonymous writings at an existential dialectic in double-reflection. It is not the communication that is in the form of double-reflection (for all pseudonyms are that), but the existing person himself exists in this. Thus he does not give up immediacy, but he keeps it and yet gives it up, keeps erotic love’s desire and yet gives it up. Viewed categorically, the imaginary construction relates to “The Seducer’s Diary” in such a way that [VII1 B 83 277] it begins right there where the seducer ends, with the task he himself suggests: “to poetize himself out of a girl.” (See Either/ Or, I, p. 470 [SV I 412].) The seducer is egotism; in Repetition feeling and irony are kept separate, each in its representative: the Young Man and Constantin. These two elements are put together in the one person, Quidam of the imaginary construction, and he is sympathy. To seduce a girl expresses masculine superiority; to poetize oneself out of a girl is also a superiority but must become a suffering superiority if one considers the relationship between masculinity and femininity and not a particular silly girl. Masculinity’s victory is supposed to reside in succeeding; but the reality [Realitet] of femininity is supposed to reside in its becoming a story of suffering for the man. Just as it is morally impossible for Quidam of the imaginary construction to seduce a girl, so it is metaphysically-esthetically impossible for a seducer to poetize himself out of a girl when it is a matter of the relationship between masculinity and femininity, each in its strength, and not of a particular girl. The seducer’s egotism culminates in the lines to himself: “She is mine, I do not confide this to the stars . . . . . . not even to Cordelia, but say it very softly to myself.” (See Either/Or, I, p. 446 [SV I 409].) Quidam culminates passionately in the outburst: “The whole thing looks like a tale of seduction.”120 What is a triumph to one is an ethical horror to the other.—JP V 5865 (Pap. VII1 B 83) n.d., 1846
Addition to Pap. VII1 B 83:
The imaginary construction, however, is precisely what is lacking in Either/Or (see note in my own copy);121 but before it could be categorically correct, an enormous detour had to be made.
The imaginary construction is the only thing for which there existed considerable preliminary work122 before it was written. Even while I was writing Either/Or I had it in mind and frequently dashed off a lyrical suggestion. When I was ready to work it out, I took the precaution of not looking at what I had jotted down in order not to be disturbed. But not a word escaped me, although it came again in a superior rendering. I have now gone through what I had jotted down, and nothing was missing, but if I had read it first, I could not have written it. The imaginary construction is the most exuberant of all I have written, but it is difficult to understand because natural egotism is against adhering so strongly to sympathy.—JP V 5866 (Pap. VII1 B 84) n.d., 1846
It could be a very funny plot for a vaudeville play to have a Swedish family, having read in the papers123 about the matchless Danish hospitality (that barbers give shaves gratis, that prostitutes operate gratis [see Either/Or124] etc.), take off for Copenhagen—a fortnight later in the firm conviction that this is the way it always is in Copenhagen—and then develop it in situations. To compensate for the misunderstanding, the play could end with a happy love affair, germinating from sympathy with the situation of misunderstanding.—JP V 5830 (Pap. VI A 87) n.d., 1845
The Relation between Either/Or and the Stages125[VI A 41 16]
In Either/Or the esthetic component was something present battling with the ethical, and the ethical was the choice by which one emerged from it. For this reason there were only two components, and the Judge was unconditionally the winner, even though the book ended with a sermon and with the observation that only the truth that builds up is the truth for me (inwardness—the point of departure for my upbuilding discourses).
In the Stages there are three components and the situation is different.
1. The esthetic-sensuous is thrust into the background as something past126 (therefore “a recollection”), for after all it cannot become utterly nothing).
The Young Man (thought-depression); Constantin Constantius (hardening through the understanding). Victor Eremita, who can no longer be the editor (sympathetic irony); the Fashion Designer (demonic despair); Johannes the Seducer (damnation, a “marked” individual).127 He concludes by saying that woman is merely a moment. At the very point the [VI A 41 17] Judge begins: Woman’s beauty increases with the years; her reality [Realitet] is precisely in time.128
2. The ethical component is polemical: the Judge is not giving a friendly lecture but is grappling in existence, because he cannot end here, even though with pathos he can triumph again over every esthetic stage but not measure up to the esthetes in wittiness.129
3. The religious comes into existence in a demonic approximation (Quidam of the imaginary construction) with humor as its presupposition and its incognito (Frater Taciturnus).130
—JP V 5804 (Pap. VIA 41) n.d., 1845
From sketch of Postscript:
A story of suffering; suffering is precisely the religious category.
In Stages the esthete is no longer a clever fellow frequenting B’s living room—a hopeful man, etc., because he still is only a possibility; no, he is existing [existere].
“It is exactly the same as Either/Or.”
Constantin Constantius and the Young Man placed together in Quidam of the imaginary construction (advanced humor) as a point of departure for the beginning of the religious.—just as the tragic hero was used to bring out faith. Three Stages and yet an Either/Or.
—JP V 5805 (Pap. VI B 41:10) n.d., 1845 [VI B 192 1845]
Sing sang resches Tubalcain—which translated means: Cruel and bloodthirsty Corsair, high and mighty Sultan, you who hold the lives of men like a plaything in your right hand and as a whim in the fury of your invective, let me move you to compassion, curtail these sufferings—slay me, but do not make me immortal! High and mighty Sultan, in your quick wisdom consider what it would not take long for the paltriest of all those you have slain to see, consider what it means to become immortal, and particularly to become that through the testimonial of The Corsair. What cruel grace and mercy to be forever pointed to as an inhuman monster because The Corsair inhumanly had spared him! But above all not this—that I shall never die! Uh, such a death penalty is unheard of.* I get weary of life just to read it. What a cruel honor and distinction to have no one be moved by my womanly wailing: This will kill me, this will be the death of me—but everybody laughs and says: He cannot die. Let me move you to compassion; stop your lofty, cruel mercy; slay me like all the others.
Victor Eremita
(Here perhaps could be added the words at the end of the postscript to Either/Or,132 which is in the tall cupboard closest to the window.)
In margin: *Slay me so I may live with all the others you have slain, but do not slay me by making me immortal.—JP V 5853 (Pap. VI B 192) n.d., 1845
My contemporaries cannot grasp the design of my writing. Either/Or divided into four parts or six parts and published separately over six years would have been all right. But that each essay in Either/Or is only part of a whole, and then the whole of Either/Or a part of a whole: that, after all, think my bourgeois contemporaries, is enough to drive one daft.—JPV 5905 (Pap. VII1 A 118) n.d., 1846
No doubt part of what contributed to making Either/Or a success has been that it was a first book and therefore one could take it to be the work of many years—and thus conclude that the style was good and well developed. It was written lock, stock, and barrel in eleven months. At most there was only a page (of “Diapsalmata”) prior to that time. As far as that goes, I have spent more time on all the later works. Most of Either/ Or was written only twice (besides, of course, what I thought through while walking, but that is always the case); nowadays I usually write three times.133—JP V 5931 (Pap. VII1 A 92) n.d., 1846
People do not really understand the dialectical, least of all [VIII1 A 84 40] the dialectic of inversion. People have the same experience with this kind of dialectic as dogs have with learning to walk on two legs: they succeed for a moment but then promptly go back to walking on all fours.134 They understand the dialectic of inversion at the time it is being presented to them, but as [VIII1 A 84 41] soon as the presentation is over they understand it again in terms of the dialectic of immediacy.— For example, to have but one reader or very few is easily understood in terms of the dialectic of immediacy: that it is too bad for the author etc., but that it is very nice of him to make the best of it etc. —But in the dialectic of inversion the author himself voluntarily works to bring this about, desires only one or a few readers—this, you see, will never be popular. —Yesterday Molbech135 wrote to me (in a note dated April 29, 1847) that the sell-out of Either/ Or is “a phenomenon in the literary history of our day that may need to be studied.” And why? The Councilor of State does not know that it has been sold out for a long time; he does not know that a year ago Johannes Climacus in Concluding Unscientific Postscript expressed his opinion in the matter,136 that already two years ago Reitzel137 talked about the new edition, that I am the obstacle; he has no idea of how I work against myself in the service of the dialectic of inversion and, if possible, in a somewhat cleansing service of truth. Whether right now at this time it would be possible to sell out a book of mine, I do not know, but before I began to set teeth on edge somewhat I really did manage to do it. A few flattering words to this one and that, no more than a half or a tenth of what an author usually does to get his books sold—and they would have been sold out. And even now, when I have set people’s teeth on edge so much, even now it would all begin again if I simply let up a bit, become less productive (for what actually antagonizes them the most is the extent of my productivity), write a little book or a smaller book and only one (Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits)—then it would all begin again. That I was playing a cunning game, that I had a very large book138 finished and ready, that in order to have a witness to refer to, I showed it to Giødwad139 the same day we began [VIII1 A 84 42] proofreading the Discourses, that I had counted on trapping P. L. Moller140 or some other bandit to write a eulogy on the Upbuilding Discourses and say, “It is obvious that Magister Kierkegaard, if he is willing to take the time, can produce something great etc.; much greater pains than usual have been taken with this book and for that reason it has taken him longer etc.” A pack of lies, which, however, would be believed and would be regarded as very sensible, also that I did a botchy job with the large books. Oh, what a fate to be something out of the ordinary in a market town! Then I would have rushed ahead with the large book, with Giødwad’s testimony that it was finished at the same time, etc. And then what? Then the provincials with whom I live would have become angry once again, and why? Because they cannot bear the scale. They cannot understand working on that scale and doing it as assiduously as I do: ergo, the author is doing a botchy job.
No wonder I am nauseated time and again by the rabble one must live with, no wonder that I can keep on working only by shutting my eyes. For when I shut my eyes I am before God, and then everything is all right, then I personally am not of any importance, which, humanly and comparatively speaking, I am, insofar as it is my lot to live in a small town and with nonentities.—JP V 5997 (Pap. VIII1 A 84) n.d., 1847
. . . my thought was to become a pastor. When I began writing Either/Or, then through an unhappy relationship to another person my life’s deep-rooted hurt and torment were again ripped up and intensified, and as a consequence I understood that my existence, humanly speaking, was grounded for my lifetime. This is how I became an author.—Pap. VIII1 A 422 n.d., 1847
If one aims to elevate a whole period, one must really know it. That is why the proclaimers of Christianity who begin right off with orthodoxy actually do not have much influence and only on a few. For Christendom is very far behind. One has to begin with paganism. So I begin with Either/Or. In that way I have managed to get the age to go along with me without ever dreaming where it is going or where we now are. But men have become aware of the issues. They cannot get rid of me just because they went along with Either/Or so happily. Now they may want to abandon me; they could put me to death, but it is of no use—they have me for good. If one begins immediately with Christianity, they say: This is nothing for us—and put themselves immediately on guard.
But as it says in my last discourses, my whole huge literary work has just one idea, and that is: to wound from behind.141
Praise be to God in heaven—I say no more; anything else a man adds is rubbish.—JP V 6107 (Pap. VIII1 A 548) n.d., 1848
I concede that I began my work as an author with an advantage: being regarded as something of a villain but extremely brilliant—that is, a salon hero, a real favorite of the times. There was a bit of untruth in it—but otherwise I would not have gotten people along with me. As they gradually became aware that this was not quite the case, they fell away and continue to fall away. If it gets to be known that I am working out my salvation in fear and trembling,142 then it is goodbye to the world’s favors.
But here lurked the secret agent. —And they did not look out for that. For someone to be first of all a dissipated sensualist, a party-lion, and then many years later, as they say, to become a saint, this does not capture men. But they are not at all accustomed to having a penitent, a preacher of repentance, begin in the costume of a party-lion as a kind of cautionary measure.
This has also served to provide me with an almost prodigious knowledge of men.—JP VI 6198 (Pap. IX A 155) n.d., 1848
[IX A 166 79] As early as the article “Public Confession”143 there was a signal shot (I was at the time finished with the manuscript of [IX A 166 80] Either/Or, and immediately after that Either/Or followed; the article was also a mystification: after having disavowed the authorship of the many newspaper articles, which, to be sure, no one had attributed to me, I ended by asking people never to regard anything as mine that was not signed by me, and that was just the time I planned to begin using a pseudonym) suggesting that Professor Heiberg was the literary figure I wanted to protect; he and Mynster both were mentioned there and as unmistakably as possible. But then Heiberg himself came along with his impertinent and foppish review of Either/Or, also with a careless promise that he never kept. Then the opposition of his clique, his attempt at the silent treatment, fakery in such a small literature—all this gave the occasion for rabble barbarism to emerge so strongly. I was the one who could and should strike but could not because I constantly had to keep the way clear for a possible polemic against Heiberg. Finally I struck at the barbarism—and Heiberg left me in the lurch. Prior to that time it had often been whispered about that I approved or indulged that revolt. Now one got an insight into the affair—but Heiberg thought: Now if Kierkegaard could get shafted, it would be a good thing. Pfui!—JP VI 6201 (Pap. IX A 166) n.d., 1848
I have been thinking these days of having the little article [IX A 175 84] “The Crisis in the Life of an Actress”144 printed in Fædrelandet. The reasons for doing it are the following. There are some minor reasons, but they have persuasive power, and therefore I must first subject them to a critique. I believe I owe it to Mrs. Heiberg,145 partly also because of the piece about Mrs. Nielsen146 at one time. I would like to poke Heiberg a little again. This way certain things can be said that I otherwise could not say so lightly and conversationally. It would make me happy to humor Giødwad,147 who has asked for it. And then the main reason that argues for it: I have been occupied now for such a long time exclusively with the religious, and yet people will perhaps try to make out that I have changed, have become earnest (which I was not previously), that the literary attack has made me sanctimonious; in short, they will make my religiousness out to be the sort of thing people turn to in old age. This is a heresy I consider extremely essential to counteract. The nerve in all my work as an author actually is here, that I was essentially religious when I wrote Either/Or. Therefore, I have thought that it could be useful in order once [IX A 175 85] again to show the possibility. I regard this as precisely my task, always to be capable of what the vanity and secular-mindedness of the world hanker after as supreme, and from which point of view they patronizingly look down on the religious as something for run-down subjects—always to be capable but not essentially to will it. The world, after all, is so insipid that when it believes that one who proclaims the religious is someone who cannot produce the esthetic it pays no attention to the religious. . . . —JP VI 6209 (Pap. IX A 175) n.d., 1848
[IX A 213 110] I cannot repeat often enough what I so frequently have said: I am a poet, but a very special kind, for I am by nature dialectical, and as a rule dialectic is precisely what is alien to the poet. Assigned from childhood to a life of torment that perhaps few can even conceive of, plunged into the deepest despondency, and from this despondency again into despair, I came to understand myself by writing. It was the ethical that inspired me—alas, me, who was painfully prevented from realizing it fully because I was unhappily set outside the universally human. If I had been able to achieve it, I no doubt would have become terribly proud. Thus in turn I related to Christianity. It was my plan as soon as Either/Or was published to seek a call to a rural parish and sorrow over my sins. I could not suppress [IX A 213 111] my creativity, I followed it—naturally it moved into the religious. Then I understood that my task was to do penance by serving the truth in such a way that it virtually became burdensome, humanly speaking, a thankless labor of sacrificing everything. That is how I serve Christianity—in all my wretchedness happy in the thought of the indescribable good God has done for me, far beyond my expectations.
The situation calls for Christianity to be presented once again without scaling down and accommodation, and since the situation is in Christendom: indirectly. I must be kept out of it: the awakening will be all the greater. Men love direct communication because it makes for comfortableness, and communicators love it because it makes life less strenuous, since they always get a few to join them and thus escape the strain of solitariness.
Thus do I live, convinced that God will place the stamp of Governance on my efforts—as soon as I am dead, not before—this is all connected with penitence and the magnitude of the plan. I live in this faith and hope to God to die in it. If he wants it otherwise, he will surely take care of that himself; I do not dare do otherwise.—JP VI 6227 (Pap. IX A 213) n.d., 1848
Yes, it had to be this way. I have not become a religious author; I was that: simultaneously with Either/Or appeared two upbuilding discourses—now after two years of writing only religious books there appears a little article about an actress.148
Now there is a moment, a point of rest; by this step I have learned to know myself and very concretely. . . . —JP VI 6229 (Pap. IX A 216) n.d., 1848
N.B. N.B. [IX A 227 124]
Yes, it was a good thing to publish that little article. I began with Either/Or and two upbuilding discourses; now it ends, after the whole upbuilding series—with a little esthetic essay.149 It expresses: that it was the upbuilding—the religious —that should advance, and that now the esthetic has been traversed; they are inversely related, or it is something of an inverse confrontation, to show that the writer was not an esthetic author who in the course of time grew older and for that reason became religious.
But it is not really to my credit; it is Governance who has held me in rein with the help of an extreme depression and a troubled conscience.
But there still would have been something lacking if the little article had not come out; the illusion would have been established that it was I who essentially had changed over the years, and then a very important point in the whole productivity would have been lost.
It is true I have been educated by this writing, have developed more and more religiously—but in a decisive way I had experienced the pressures that turned me away from the world before I began writing Either/Or. Even then my only wish was to do, as decisively as possible, something good to compensate, if possible in another way, for what I personally had committed. That I have developed more and more religiously is [IX A 227 125] seen in my now saying goodbye to the esthetic, because I do not know where I would find the time that I could, would, would dare fill up with work on esthetic writings. . . . —JP VI 6238 (Pap. IX A 227) n.d., 1848
Now add the thought of death to the publication of that little article!150 If I were dead without that: indeed, anyone could publish my posthumous papers, and in any case R. Nielsen151 would be there. But that illusion that I did not become religious until I was older and perhaps by reason of accidental circumstances would still have been possible. But now the dialectical breaks are so clear: Either/Or and Two Upbuilding Discourses, Concluding Postscript, the upbuilding writings of two years, and then a little esthetic treatise.—Pap. IX A 228 n.d., 1848
The relationship to R. Nielsen152 in this matter has made me very uneasy in fear and trembling. I had given R. N. a more direct communication. But on the other hand, to what extent R. N. had really understood me, to what extent he was capable of venturing something for the truth, is not at all clear to me. Here was the opportunity to make a test, and I felt that I owed it to the cause, to him, and to myself. Fortunately he was staying in the country. He has maintained constantly that he had understood the esthetic to have been used as an enticement and an incognito. He has also maintained that he understood that it always depends entirely upon involvement. But whether that is entirely true, he never did really put to the test. He scarcely understood the significance of Either/Or and of the two upbuilding discourses. . . . —JP VI6239 (Pap. IX A 229) n.d., 1848
[IX A 241 135] N.B. N.B.
Strange, strange about that little article153—that I had so nearly gone and forgotten myself. When one is overstrained as I was, it is easy to forget momentarily the dialectical outline of a colossal structure such as my authorship. That is why Governance helps me.
Right now the totality is so dialectically right. Either/Or and the two upbuilding discourses*—Concluding Postscript—for two years only upbuilding discourses and then a little article about an actress. The illusion that I happened to get older and for that reason became a decisively religious author has been made impossible. If I had died beforehand, then the writing I did those two years would have been made ambiguous and the totality unsteady.
In a certain sense, of course, my concern is superfluous when I consider the world of actuality in which I live—for as a matter of fact I have not found many dialecticians.
In margin: *Note. And these two discourses quite properly did not appear at the same time as Either/Or but a few months [IX A 241 136] later—just as this little article now.—JP VI 6242 (Pap. IX A 241) n.d., 1848
From final draft of “Appendix,” Point of View:
. . . That it was an age of disintegration, an esthetic, enervating [IX B 63 7 362] disintegration, and therefore, before there could be any question of even introducing the religious, the ethically strengthening, Either/Or had to precede, so that maieutically a beginning might be made with esthetic writings (the pseudonyms) in order if possible to get hold of men, which after all comes first before there can be any thought of moving them [IX B 63 7 363] over into the religious, and in this way it was also assured that in the sense of reflection the religious would be employed with dialectical care. . . . —JP VI 6255 (Pap. IX B 63:7) n.d., 1848
From final draft of “Appendix,” Point of View:
. . . The first form of rulers in the world was “the tyrants”; [IX B 63 13 373] the last will be “the martyrs.” In the development of the world this is the movement [in margin: toward a growing secular mentality, for secularism is greatest, must have achieved a frightful upper hand, when only the martyrs are able to be rulers. When one person is the tyrant, the mass is not completely secularized, but when “the mass” wants to be tyrant, then the secular mentality is completely universal, and then only the martyr can be the ruler]. No doubt there is an infinite difference between a tyrant and a martyr; yet they have one thing in common: the power to constrain. The tyrant, with a craving for power, constrains by force; the martyr, personally unconditionally obedient to God, constrains by his own sufferings. Then the tyrant dies, and his rule is over; the martyr dies, and his rule begins. The tyrant was the egotistic individual who inhumanly ruled over the masses, made the others into a mass and ruled over the mass. The martyr is the suffering single individual who in his love of mankind educates others in Christianity, converting the mass into single individuals—and there is joy in heaven for every single individual he thus rescues from the mass, from what the apostle himself calls the “animal-category.” —Whole volumes could be written about this alone, even by me, a kind of poet and philosopher, to say nothing of the one who is coming, the philosopher-poet or the poet-philosopher, who, in addition, will have seen close at [IX B 63 13 374] hand the object of my presentiments at a distance, will have seen accomplished what I only dimly imagine will be carried out sometime in a distant future.
There are really only two sides to choose between—Either/ Or. Well, of course, there are many parties in the practical world [in margin: Not really but only figuratively is there any question of “choosing,” since what is chosen makes no difference—one is just as wrong as the other. In the practical world there are many parties]—there are the liberals and the conservatives etc.—and all the strangest combinations, such as the rational liberals and rational conservatives. Once there were four parties in England, a large country; this was supposedly also the case in smaller Odense. But in the profoundest sense there really are only two parties to choose between—and here lies the category “the single individual”: either in obedience to God, fearing and loving him, to take the side of God against men so that one loves men in God—or to take the side of men against God, so that by distortion one humanizes God and does not “sense what is God’s and what is man’s” (Matthew 16:23). There is a struggle going on between man and God, a struggle unto life and death—was not the God-Man put to death! —About these things alone: about what constitutes earnestness and about “the single individual,” about what constitutes the demonic, whether the demonic is the evil or the good, about silence as a factor contributing to evil and silence as a factor contributing to good, about “deceiving into the truth,” about indirect communication, to what extent this is treason against what it is to be human, an impertinence toward God, about what one learns concerning the demonic by considering the God-Man—about these things alone whole volumes could be written, even by me, a kind of philosopher, to say nothing of him who is coming, “the philosopher” who will have seen “the missionary to Christendom” and at first hand will know about all this of which I have only gradually learned to understand at least a little.—JP III 2649 (Pap. IX B 63:13) n.d., 1848
. . . [In margin: The King then showed the Queen the copy [X1A 42 33] of the new book, which led me to say: Your Majesty embarrasses me for not having brought along a copy for the Queen. He answered: Ah, but we two can be satisfied with one.]
The Queen said that she recognized me, for she once had seen me on the embankment (where I ran off and left Tryde high and dry), that she had read a part of “your Either and Or [X1 A 42 34] but could not understand it.” I replied: Your Majesty realizes that it is too bad for me. But there was something more unusual in the situation. Christian VIII promptly heard the mistake, Either and Or, and I certainly did hear it, too. It amazed me to hear the Queen say precisely what seamstresses etc. say. The King looked at me; I avoided his glance. . . . —JP VI6310 (Pap. X1 A 42) n.d., 1849
“The Seducer’s Diary” had to come first in order to shed light on the “Imaginary Psychological Construction.”154 The latter lies in the confinium between the interesting and the religious. If “The Seducer’s Diary” had not come out first, the result would have been that the reading world would have found it interesting. “The Seducer’s Diary” was a help, and now it was found to be boring—quite rightly so, for it is the religious. Frater Taciturnus himself also explains this.—JP VI 6330 (Pap. X1 A 88) n.d., 1849
If I wanted to tell about it, a whole book could be written on how ingeniously I have fooled people about my pattern of life.
During the time I was reading proofs of Either/Or and writing the upbuilding discourses I had almost no time to walk the streets. I then used another method. Every evening when I left home exhausted and had eaten at Mini’s, I stopped at the theater for ten minutes—not one minute more. Familiar as I was, I counted on there being several gossips at the theater who would now say: Every single night he goes to the theater; he does not do another thing. O you darling gossips, thank you—without you I could never have achieved what I wanted.
I did it also for the sake of my former betrothed. It was my melancholy wish to be scorned if possible, merely to serve her, merely to help her offer me proper resistance. Thus there was within me unanimous agreement from all sides with respect to wanting to impair my public image.—JP VI 6332 (Pap. X5 A 153) n.d., 1849
N.B. N.B.
N.B.
[X1 A 116 86] “A Cycle of Minor Ethical-Religious Essays,”155 if that which deals with Adler156 is omitted (and it definitely must be omitted, for to come in contact with him is completely senseless, and furthermore it perhaps is also unfair to treat a contemporary merely psychologically this way), has the defect that what as parts in a total study does not draw attention to itself (and originally this was the case) will draw far too much attention [X1 A 116 87] to itself now and thereby to me. Although originally an independent work, the same applies to no. 3, a more recent work.
But if no. 2 and no. 3,157 which are about Adler, are also to be omitted, then “A Cycle” cannot be published at all.
Besides, there should be some stress on a second edition of Either/Or. Therefore either—as I previously thought—a quarto with all the most recent writing or only a small fragment of it, but, please note, a proper contrast to Either/Or. The “Three Notes”158 on my work as an author are as if intended for that, and this has a strong appeal to me.
If I do nothing at all directly to assure a full understanding of my whole authorship (by publishing “The Point of View for My Work as an Author”) or do not even give an indirect telegraphic sign (by publishing “A Cycle” etc.)—then what? Then there will be no judgment at all on my authorship in its totality, for no one has sufficient faith in it or time or competence to look for a comprehensive plan [Total-Anlæg] in the entire production. Consequently the verdict will be that I have changed somehow over the years.
So it will be. This distresses me. I am deeply convinced that there is another integral coherence, that there is a comprehensiveness in the whole production (with the special assistance of Governance), and that there certainly is something else to be said about it than this meager comment that the author has changed.
I keep this hidden deep within, where there is also something in contrast: the sense in which I was more guilty than other men.
These proportions strongly appeal to me. I am averse to being regarded with any kind of sympathy or to representing myself as the extraordinary.
This suits me completely. So the best incognito I can choose [X1 A 116 88] is quite simply to take an appointment.
The enticing aspect of the total productivity (that it is esthetic—but also religious) will be very faintly intimated by the “Three Notes.” For that matter, if something is to function enticingly, it is wrong to explain it. A fisherman would not tell the fish about his bait, saying “This is bait.” And finally, if everything else pointed to the appropriateness of communicating something about the integral comprehensiveness, I cannot emphasize enough that Governance actually is the directing power and that in so many ways I do not understand until afterward.
This is written on Shrove-Monday. A year ago today, I decided to publish Christian Discourses;159 this year I am inclined to the very opposite.
For a moment I would like to bring a bit of mildness and friendliness into the whole thing. This can best be achieved by a second edition of Either/Or160 and then the “Three Notes.” In fact, it would be odd right now when I am thinking of stopping writing to commence a polemic in which I do not wish to engage by replying (a polemic that is unavoidable because of no. 1 and no. 2 in “A Cycle”).
Let there be moderation on my part: if someone wants a fight, then behind this I certainly am well armed.161—JP VI 6346 (Pap. X1 A 116) February 19, 1849
. . . At first I planned to stop immediately after Either/Or. That was actually the original idea. But productivity took hold of me. Then I planned to stop with the Concluding Postscript. But what happens, I get involved in all that rabble persecution, and that was the very thing that made me remain on the spot. Now, I said to myself, now it can no longer be a matter of abandoning splendid conditions; no, now it is a situation for a penitent. Then I was going to end with Christian Discourses and travel, but I did not get to travel—and 1848 was the year of my richest productivity.162 Thus Governance himself has kept me in the harness. . . . —JP VI6356 (Pap. X1 A 138) n.d., 1849
N.B. N.B.
N.B.
[X1 A 147 109] It will never do to let the second edition of Either/Or be published [X1 A 147 110] without something accompanying it.163 Somehow the accent must be that I have made up my mind about being a religious author.
To be sure, my seeking an ecclesiastical post164 also stresses this, but it can be interpreted as something that came later.
Therefore, do I have the right (partly out of concern lest I say too much about myself, partly because of a disinclination to expose myself to possible annoyances) to allow what I have written to be vague, lie in abeyance as something indefinite and thus as being much less than it is, although it no doubt will embitter various people to have to realize that there is such ingeniousness in the whole [authorship]. It is, in fact, comfortable to regard me as a kind of half-mad genius—it is a strain to have to become aware of the more extraordinary.
And all this concern about an appointment and livelihood is both melancholy and exaggerated. And a second question arises: Will I be able to endure living if I must confess to myself that I have acted prudently and avoided the danger that the truth could require me to confront?
Furthermore, the other books (“The Sickness unto Death,” “Come to Me,” “Blessed Is He Who Is not Offended”)165 are extremely valuable.166 In one of them in particular it was granted to me to illuminate Christianity on a scale greater than I had ever dreamed possible; crucial categories are directly disclosed there. Consequently it must be published. But if I publish nothing at present, I will again have the last card.
“The Point of View” cannot be published.
I must travel.
But the second edition of Either/Or is a critical point (as I did in fact regard it originally and wrote “The Point of View” to [X1 A 147 111] be published simultaneously with it and otherwise would scarcely have been in earnest about publishing the second edition)—it will never come again. If this opportunity is not utilized, everything I have written, viewed as a totality, will be dragged down mainly into the esthetic—JP 6361 (Pap. X1 A 147) n.d., 1849
. . . Although “the pseudonyms expected to get only a few readers,” it can still be quite all right that the esthetic productivity “was used maieutically to get hold of men.” For one thing, the human crowd is inquisitive about esthetic productions; another matter is the concept of “readers” that the pseudonyms must advance. How many readers Either/Or has had—and yet how few readers it has truly had, or how little it has come to be “read”!—JP 6363 (Pap. X1 A 152) n.d., 1849
What if I wrote at the back of the second edition of Either/ Or:167
Postscript
I hereby retract this book. It was a necessary deception in order, if possible, to deceive men into the religious, which has continually been my task all along. Maieutically it certainly has had its influence. Yet I do not need to retract it, for I have never claimed to be its author.—JP VI6374 (Pap. X1 192) n.d., 1849
[X1 A 266 177] . . . It is true, for example, that when I began as an author I was “religiously resolved,” but this must be understood in another way. Either/Or, especially “The Seducer’s Diary,” was written for her sake, in order to clear her out of the relationship.168 On the whole, the very mark of my genius is that Governance broadens and radicalizes whatever concerns me personally. I remember what a pseudonymous writer said about Socrates: “His whole life was personal preoccupation with himself, and then Governance comes and adds world-historical significance to it.”169 To take another example—I am polemical by nature, and I understood the concept of “that single individual” [hiin Enkelte] early. However, when I wrote it for the first time (in Two Upbuilding Discourses),170 I was thinking particularly of my reader, for this book contained a little hint to her, and until later it was for me very true personally that I sought only one single reader. Gradually this thought was taken over. But here again Governance’s part is so infinite.
The rest of the things written can very well be published. But not one word about myself.
So I must take a journey.—JP VI6388 (Pap. X1 A 266) n.d., 1849
[X5 B 191 376] From draft of “Supplement,” On My Work as an Author:
. . . When I began writing Either/Or, I was just as profoundly moved by the religious as I am now at the end, except that the work has been for me a second upbringing and I have become more mature. . . . The directly religious was present [X5 B 191 377] from the beginning; for Two Upbuilding Discourses of 1843 are, after all, concurrent with Either/Or.—Pap. X5 B 191, May [changed to: April; changed to: March] 5, 1849
. . . Humanly speaking, there really is no pleasure or joy in [X1 A 309 205] having to be the extraordinary in such cramped quarters as Denmark; it gets to be a martyrdom. But now, now, after God has inundated me with kindness, granted me so indescribably much more than I expected, now when he (both by means of the abundance he has showered on me during the year past—and its sufferings) has led me to understand my destiny (true [X1 A 309 205] enough, it is different from what I originally supposed, but things had already worked out earlier in such a way that all my religious writings, yes, everything I wrote after Either/Or, are not as I originally planned and presumably I could not have understood everything right away), should I now fail, I would shrewdly take it all back because of apprehensions about making ends meet and become a poet—that is, religiously understood, a deceiver. No, no, from the very beginning I had no such ideas: either an author in character—or a country pastor, and then not a word more from me ever, but not a poet, not an author on the side.
The future looks dark, and yet I am so at peace.
This day, my birthday, will be an unforgettable day for me!—JP VI6394 (Pap. X1 A 309) n.d. [May 5], 1849
From draft of On My Work as an Author: [X5 B 201 382]
. . . The whole authorship, regarded in its entirety, is planned with this wish in mind [to become a rural pastor]. The movement it describes is: from “the poet”—from the esthetic, from the philosopher—from the speculative to the intimation of the most inward interpretation of the essentially Christian: from the pseudonymous Either/Or, which, nevertheless, was immediately accompanied by Two Upbuilding Discourses with my name as author, through Concluding Postscript, with my name as editor, to Discourses at the Communion on Fridays [here a double dagger in red crayon, in margin a double dagger and: see the enclosed], the last work I have written, and “of which two have been delivered in Frue Kirke.” . . . —Pap. X5 B 201 n.d., 1849
[X1 A 351 228]The Total Production with the Addition of the Two Essays by H. H.
[X1 A 351 229] The authorship conceived as a whole (as found in “One Note Concerning My Work as an Author,” “Three Notes Concerning My Work as an Author,” and “The Point of View for My Work as an Author”) points definitively to “Discourses at the Communion on Fridays.”
The same applies to the whole structure. “Three Godly Discourses” comes later and is supposed to accompany the second edition of Either/Or and mark the distinction between what is offered with the left and what is offered with the right. . . .
—JP VI 6407 (Pap. X1 A 351) n.d., 1849
Each of the writers here at home received a copy of Either/ Or. I felt it was my duty, and I could do it at this time, for now there can be no apparent notion of trying in this way to create a coterie for the book—for the book, after all, is old, its peak is passed. Of course, they received the copy from Victor Eremita. As far as Oehlenschläger and Winther are concerned, it pleased me very much to send them a copy, for I admire them. I was happy to send one to Hertz171 as well, for he has significance and there is something charming about the man.—JP VI 6413 (Pap. X1 A 402) n.d., 1849
In margin: the significance of the pseudonyms.]
The Significance of the Pseudonyms
All communication of truth has become abstract; the public has become the authority; the newspapers call themselves the editorial staff; the professor calls himself speculation; the pastor is meditation—no man, none, dares to say I.
But since without qualification the first prerequisite for the communication of truth is personality, since “truth” cannot possibly be served by ventriloquism, personality had to come to the fore again.
But in these circumstances, since the world was so corrupted by never hearing an I, it was impossible to begin at once with one’s own I. So it became my task to create author-personalities and let them enter into the actuality of life in order to get men a bit more accustomed to hearing discourse in the first person.
Thus my task is no doubt only that of a forerunner until he comes who in the strictest sense says: I.
But to make a turn away from this inhuman abstraction to personality—that is my task.—JP VI 6440 (Pap. X1 A 531) n.d., 1849 [X1 A 541 344]
. . . When I began as the author of Either/Or, I no doubt had a far more profound impression of the terror of Christianity than any clergyman in the country. I had a fear and trembling such as perhaps no one else had. Not that I therefore wanted to relinquish Christianity. No, I had another interpretation of it. For one thing I had in fact learned very early that there are men who seem to be selected for suffering, and, for another thing, I was conscious of having sinned much and therefore supposed that Christianity had to appear to me in the form of this terror. But how cruel and false of you, I thought, if you use it to terrify others, perhaps upset ever so many happy, loving lives [X1 A 451 345] that may very well be truly Christian. It was as alien as it could possibly be to my nature to want to terrify others that I both sadly and perhaps also a bit proudly found my joy in comforting others and in being gentleness itself to them—hiding the terror in my own interior being.
So my idea was to give my contemporaries (whether or not they themselves would want to understand) a hint in humorous form (in order to achieve a lighter tone) that a much greater pressure was needed—but then no more; I aimed to keep my heavy burden to myself, as my cross. I have often taken exception to anyone who was a sinner in the strictest sense and then promptly got busy terrifying others. Here is where Concluding Postscript comes in. . . . —JP VI 6444 (Pap. X1 A 541) n.d., 1849
[X2 A 560 402] Reduplication
Every striving that does not apply one-fourth, one-third, two-thirds, etc. of its power working against itself systematically is essentially secular striving, in any case unconditionally not a reforming effort.
Reduplication means to work also against oneself while working; it is like the pressure on the plow-handles, which determines the depth of the furrow—whereas a striving that while working does not work also against itself is merely a superficial smoothing over.
What does it mean to work against oneself? It is quite simple. If the established, the traditional, etc., in the context of which a beginning is to be made, is sound, thoroughly sound—well, then apply directly what is to be applied; in any case there can be no talk or thought of reforming, for if the established is sound, then there is nothing, after all, to reform.
To the same degree, however, that the established, consequently there where one’s striving begins, is corrupt, to the same degree the dialectical begins: to work against oneself becomes more and more necessary, so that the new, by being applied [X2 A 560 403] directly, is not itself corrupted, does not at once succeed etc., and thus is not maintained in its heterogeneity.
Again the difference is between the direct and the inverted, which is the dialectical. Working or striving directly is to work and strive. The inverted method is this: while working also to work against oneself.
But who dreams that such a standard exists, and that I use it on such a large scale! Understood I will never be. People think I am involved in a direct striving—and now they believe that I have achieved a kind of breakthrough! Oh, such ignorance! The publication of Either/Or was a huge success; I had it in my power to continue. After all, what is the origin of all the problems in my striving; I wonder if it is not in myself? It is public knowledge that not one single person has really dared to oppose me. But I have done that myself. What a wrong turn on my part, if my striving was to be direct, to publish Two Upbuilding Discourses after Either/Or, which could only have a disturbing effect, instead of letting Either/Or stand with its glittering success, continuing in the direction that the age demanded, only in slightly reduced portions. What a counter effort against myself that I, the public’s darling, introduce the single individual, and finally that I plunge myself into all the dangers of insults!
But such things can be understood only by someone who himself has risked something essentially similar. Someone else cannot conceive it or believe it.
R. Nielsen172 is actually confused about this, for he interprets my striving in direct striving.—JP VI 6593 (Pap. X2 A 560) n.d., 1850
From final draft of For Self-Examination:
Preface [X6 B 4 3 14]
What I have understood as the task of the authorship has been done.
It is one idea, this continuity from Either/Or to Anti-Climacus, [X6 B 4 3 15] the idea of religiousness in reflection.
The task has occupied me totally, for it has occupied me religiously; I have understood the completion of this authorship as my duty, as a responsibility resting upon me. Whether anyone has wanted to buy or to read has concerned me very little.
At times I have considered laying down my pen and, if anything should be done, to use my voice.
However, I came by way of further reflection to the realization that it perhaps is more appropriate for me to make at least an attempt once again to use my pen but in a different way, as I would use my voice, consequently in direct address to my contemporaries, winning men, if possible.
The first condition for winning men is that the communication reaches them. Therefore I must naturally want this little book to come to the knowledge of as many as possible.
If anyone out of interest for the cause—I repeat, out of interest for the cause—wants to work for its dissemination, this is fine with me. It would be still better if he would contribute to its well-comprehended dissemination.*
A request, an urgent request to the reader: I beg you to read aloud, if possible; I will thank everyone who does so; and I will thank again and again everyone who in addition to doing it himself influences others to do it.
Just one thing more. *I hardly need say that by wanting to win men it is not my intention to form a party, to create secular, sensate togetherness; no, my wish is only to win men, if possible all men (each individual), for Christianity.
June 1851 S. K.
—JP VI 6770 (Pap. X6 B 4:3)
[X6 B 145 202]... As is well known, my authorship has two parts: one pseudonymous and the other signed. The pseudonymous writers are poetized personalities, poetically maintained so that everything they say is in character with their poetized individualities; sometimes I have carefully explained in a signed preface my own interpretation of what the pseudonym said. Anyone with just a fragment of common sense will perceive that it would be ludicrously confusing to attribute to me everything the poetized characters say. Nevertheless, to be on the safe side, I have expressly urged once and for all that anyone who quotes something from the pseudonyms will not attribute the quotation to me (see my postscript to Concluding Postscript). It is easy to see that anyone wanting to have a literary lark merely needs to take some quotations higgledy-piggledy from “The Seducer,” then from Johannes Climacus, then from me, etc., print them together as if they were all my [X6 B 145 203] words, show how they contradict each other, and create a very chaotic impression, as if the author were a kind of lunatic. Hurrah! That can be done. In my opinion anyone who exploits the poetic in me by quoting the writings in a confusing way is more or less a charlatan or a literary toper. . . . —JP VI 6786 (Pap. X6B 145) n.d., 1851
Either/Or
Every cause that is not served as an Either/Or (but as a both-and, also, etc.) is eo ipso not God’s cause; yet it does not therefore follow that every cause served as an either/or is therefore God’s cause.
Either/Or, that is, that the cause is served as an Either/Or, is an endorsement similar to “in the royal service.”
The symbol for the merely human, for mediocrity, the secular mentality, dearth of spirit, is: both-and, also.
And this is the way Mynster173 actually has proclaimed Christianity, that is, if consideration is given to his own personal life.—JP VI6841 (Pap. X5 A 119) n.d., 1853
. . . When I left “her”174 I begged God for one thing, that I [X5 A 146 151] might succeed in writing and finishing Either/Or (this was also for her sake, because The Seducer’s Diary was, in fact, intended to repel, or as it says in Fear and Trembling, “When the child is to be weaned, the mother blackens her breast.”)175 —and then out to a rural parish—to me that would be a way of expressing renunciation of the world.
I succeeded with Either/Or. But things did not go as I expected and intended—that I would be hated, loathed, etc.— Oh, no, I scored a big success.
So my wish, my desire, to finish Either/Or was fulfilled. . . . —JP VI 6843 (Pap. X5 A 146) n.d., 1853
The Honesty of Ideality
or [XI1 A 476 369]
Either/Or
An orientation toward quality, always an eye to quality, is required for the honesty of ideality (which is purity of spirit or is spirit)—and then Either/Or.
Mediocrity, on the other hand, sordidness, niggardliness, shabbiness, etc. are immersed in: “also,” that is, wanting to be along quantitatively, approximately, etc., instead of honestly manifesting quality and giving it its due.
Example. If there is someone who really handles an instrument with some competence and if he has the honesty of ideality referred to, then confronted by a virtuoso he will immediately manifest that quality: He is a virtuoso, and I, no, I am not a virtuoso. He will abhor misusing the competence he has by claiming to be a virtuoso also, or by claiming fellowship [XI1 A 476 370] with the virtuoso, or by diminishing him in any way. On the contrary, he will use his comparatively greater insight based on his competence in order to make others aware of the virtuoso and of his virtuosity. This is the honesty of ideality; yet the common thing—niggardliness, sordidness, shabbiness—is to say “also,” if not quite as good, still “also”—”we lords.”
If this honesty of ideality were more common in the world, how different everything would appear! Excellence needs a middle instance with enough insight to point out excellence. The tragedy in the world is precisely that the middle instance is generally dishonesty, which, instead of decently letting either/or, that master of ceremonies of ideality, show it to its place and gladly accepting it, wants to pretend to be excellence also, if not quite as excellent, nevertheless “also.”
So it goes in all relationships. Take the most important one—the relationship to Christianity. If pastors had this kind of honesty of ideality, things would be entirely different with Christianity. But they do not have this kind of honesty at all. It is disgusting how they have spoiled everything just because they “also” claim to have experienced, to have suffered—well, not quite as God’s great instruments have, but nevertheless “also.” They themselves have suffered the ordinary sufferings just as everyone may have, and now they take the apostle’s life and talk as if they had suffered not quite as the apostle had, perhaps, but nevertheless “also.”
I am most deeply opposed to this kind of behavior. No, even though compared with men generally I can be said to have suffered unusually, I am far from making the most of this in order to fraternize with the apostle or weaken his [XI1 A 476 371] impression with my wretched “also.” On the contrary, I have immediately pointed out the quality and actually used my acquaintance with suffering to point him out—“for I am only a poet.”
With the aid of mediocrity’s cheap dishonesty, Christendom has managed to lose the prototypes [Forbilleder] completely. We need to reintroduce the prototypes, make them recognizable, something that can be done only by: Either/Or. Either you have quality in common, or you are on another qualitative level—but not this “also—well, not quite, but nevertheless—also.’’
But with respect to what is a qualitative level different from oneself, even though one is, if you please, the closest approximation, the essential thing is that one has the honesty of ideality not to accept approximations but to uphold only qualities, so one finds one’s sole joy in pointing out what is a quality higher.
This is the theme in Fear and Trembling in the presentation of the relation between the poet and the hero.176 —JP II 1812 (Pap. XI1 A 476) n.d., 1854
My Program.
Either/Or.177
By
S. Kierkegaard.
—JP VI 6944 (Pap. XI3 B 54) n.d., 1854
Addition to Pap. XI3 B 54:
It is laughter that must be used—therefore the line in the last diapsalm in Either/Or.
But laughter must first of all be divinely consecrated and devoutly dedicated. This was done on the greatest possible scale.
An example. From a Christian point of view, Mynster178 was comical—like someone about to run a race who then puts on three coats—intending to proclaim him who was mocked and spit upon, to proclaim renunciation and self-denial, and then pompously appearing in silk and velvet and in possession of all earthly advantages and goods. But on the other hand, the comic of this sort is Christianly something to weep over, for it is something to weep over that this has been regarded as Christian earnestness and wisdom.
And this is how the comic must be used. The laughter must not prevail; it must not end with laughter either—no, it is merely a power that is to throw some light on the trumpery and the illusions so that I might succeed, if possible, “to influence by means of the ideals.”—JP VI6945 (Pap. XI3 B 55) n.d., 1854
Addition to Pap. XI3 B 54:
Either/Or! We must examine the implications of the Christian requirement, that whole side of Christianity which is suppressed these days.
We must examine this, and then we must—Either/Or—either our lives must express the requirement and we are then justified in calling ourselves Christian, or, if our lives express something quite different, we must give up being called Christian, we must be satisfied with being an approximation of what it is to be a Christian, etc.
The latter is my aim (at least for the time being). But there must be truth in this whole affair—this shirking and suppressing and concealing and blurring must go—divine worship must not be: making a fool of God. —JP VI 6946 (Pap. XI3 B 56) n.d., 1854
[XI3 B 57 105] . . . I am without authority, only a poet—but oddly enough around here, even on the street, I go by the name “Either/Or.”
[XI3 B 57 106] The illuminating light is “Either/Or.” Under this illuminating light there must be an examination of the doctrine of the imitation of Christ, the doctrine of grace (whether it can give indulgence for the future, scale down the requirement for the future, or only forgive the past), the doctrine of the Church, whether a relaxed Christianity, established Christianity, is not Judaism.
[In penciled parentheses: O Luther, you had ninety-five theses; in our present situation there is only one thesis: Christianity does not exist at all.] . . . —JP VI 6947 (Pap. XI3 B 57) n.d., 1854