See 105–12:
To the Dedication [VII1 A 176 112]
“That Single Individual”
in the occasional discourse1 the following piece should really have been added.
Dear Reader,
Please accept this dedication. It is offered, as it were, blindly, but therefore in all honesty, untroubled by any other consideration. I do not know who you are; I do not know where you are; I do not know your name—I do not even know if you exist or if you perhaps did exist and are no more, or whether your time is still coming. Yet you are my hope, my joy, my pride, in the uncertainty my honor—because if I knew you personally with a worldly certainty, this would be my shame, my guilt—and my honor would be lost.
It comforts me, dear reader, that you have this opportunity, the opportunity for which I know I have honestly worked. If it were feasible, that reading what I write came to be common practice, or at least pretending to have read it in hopes of getting ahead in the world, this would not be the opportune time for my reader, because then the misunderstanding would have triumphed—yes, it would have beguiled me to dishonesty if with all my powers I had not prevented anything like that from happening—on the contrary, by doing everything to prevent it I [VII1 A 176 113] have acted honestly. No, if reading what I write becomes a dubious good (—and if with all the powers granted me I contribute to that, I am acting honestly), or still better, if it becomes foolish and ludicrous to read my writings, or even better, if it becomes a contemptible matter so that no one dares to acknowledge it, that is the opportune time for my reader; then he seeks stillness, then he does not read for my sake or for the world’s sake—but for his own sake, then he reads in such a way that he does not seek my acquaintance but avoids it—and then he is my reader.
I have often imagined myself in a pastor’s place. If the crowds storm to hear him, if the great arch of the church cannot contain the great throngs and people even stand outside listening to him—well, honor and praise to one so gifted that his feelings are gripped, that he can talk as one inspired, inspired by the sight of the crowds, because where the crowd is there must be truth, inspired by the thought that there has to be a little for some, because there are a lot of people, and a lot of people with a little truth is surely truth—to me this would be impossible! But suppose it was a Sunday afternoon, the weather was gloomy and miserable, the winter storm emptied the streets, everyone who had a warm apartment let God wait in the church until better weather—if there were sitting in the empty church a couple of poor women who had no heat in the apartment and could just as well freeze in the church, indeed, I could talk both them and myself warm!
I have often imagined myself beside a grave. If all the people of honor and distinction were assembled there, if solemnity pervaded the whole great throng—well, honor and praise to one so gifted that he could add to the solemnity by being prompted to be the interpreter of the throng, to be the expression for the truth of sorrow—I could not do it! But if it was a poor hearse and it was accompanied by no one but a poor old woman, the widow of the dead man, who had never before experienced having her husband go away without taking her along—if she were to ask me, [VII1 A 176 114] on my honor I would give a funeral oration as well as anyone.
I have often imagined myself in the decision of death. If there was alarm in the camp, much running in to inquire about me—I believe I could not die, my old irascible disposition would once more awaken and I would have to go out once again and contend with people. But if I lie secluded and alone, I hope to God I may die peacefully and blessedly.
There is a view of life that holds that truth is where the crowd is, that truth itself needs to have the crowd on its side. There is another view of life that holds that wherever the crowd is, untruth is, so that even if all individuals who, separately, secretly possessed truth were to come together in a crowd (in such a way, however, that the crowd acquired any deciding, voting, noisy, loud significance), untruth would promptly be present there. But the person who recognizes this latter view as his own (which is rarely enunciated because it more frequently happens that a person believes the crowd lives in untruth, but if it only accepts his opinion everything is all right) confesses that he himself is the weak and powerless one; moreover, how could one individual be able to stand against the crowd, which has the power! And he would not possibly wish to have the crowd on his side—that would be ridiculing himself. But if this latter view is an admission of weakness and powerlessness and thus perhaps seems somewhat uninviting, it at least has the good point of being equable—it insults no one, not one single person; it makes no distinction, not of one single person.
To be sure, the crowd is formed by individuals, but each one must retain the power to remain what he is—an individual. No one, no one, not one is excluded from being an individual except the person who excludes himself—by becoming many. On the contrary, to become part of the crowd, to gather the crowd around oneself, is what makes for distinctions in life. Even the most well-intentioned person talking about this can easily insult an individual. But then once again the crowd has power, influence, status, and domination—this is also a distinction in life that, dominating, disregards the individual as weak and powerless.
—JP V 5948 (Pap. VII1 A 176) n.d., 1846
The most thankless existence is and continues to be that of an author who writes for authors. Authors can be divided into two types: those who write for readers and, the genuine authors, those who write for authors. The reading public cannot understand the latter type but regard such writers as crazy and almost scorn them—meanwhile the second-class authors plunder their writings and create a great sensation with what they have stolen and distorted. These second-class authors generally become the worst enemies of the others—it is, of course, important to them that no one finds out about the true relationship.—JPI 160 (Pap. VIII1 A 53) n.d., 1847
[VIII1 A 482 213] “The Single Individual [Den Enkelte]” A Hint
The single individual is the category through which, in a religious sense, the age, history, the human race must go. And the one who stood and fell at Thermopylae was not as secure as I am who stand at this narrow pass, the single individual. His particular task was to keep the hordes from pressing through that narrow pass; if they pressed through, he had lost. My task is easier, at least at first sight, and exposes me far less to the danger of being trampled down, since it is, as a lowly servant, to help, if possible, the hordes press through this narrow pass, the single individual, through which, please note, no one in all eternity presses except by becoming the single individual. And yet, yes, if I were to request an inscription on my grave, I request none other than that single individual—even if it is not understood now, it surely will be. With the category the single individual, I took a polemical aim at the system in the day when everything here at home was system and system—now the system is never mentioned anymore. My possible historical significance is linked to this category. Perhaps my writings will be quickly forgotten, as many another writer’s. But if this was the right category, if all was in order with this category, if I perceived correctly here, understood correctly that this was my task, even though by no means pleasant, comfortable, or appreciated, if this was granted to me, although involving inner sufferings such as probably you seldom [VIII1 A 482 214] experienced, although involving external sacrifices such as a person is not every day willing to make—then I stand and my writings with me.
The single individual—with this category the cause of Christianity stands or falls, now that the world-development has gone as far as it has in reflection. Without this category, pantheism would be unconditionally victorious. No doubt there will be those who know how to tighten this category dialectically in a completely different way (without having had the labor of bringing it forth), but the category the single individual is and continues to be the anchor that can hold against pantheistic confusion, is and continues to be the medicine that can make people sober, is and continues to be the weight that can be put on, except that those who are to work with this category (at the lever or in applying the weights) must be more and more dialectical accordingly as the confusion becomes greater and greater. I promise to make a Christian of every individual I can get in under this category, or, since one human being certainly cannot do this for another, I assure him that he will become that. As the single individual he is alone, alone in the whole world, alone—face-to-face before God—then he will no doubt manage to obey. All doubt has its ultimate haunt in temporality’s illusion that there are quite a few of us, or all humanity as such, which as such can finally intimidate God (as “the people” intimidate the king and “the public,” the councilman) and even be Christ. Pantheism is an optical illusion, a vaporous image formed out of the fog of temporality or a mirage formed by its reflexion, which claims to be the eternal. But the fact is that this category cannot be taught directly; to use it is an art, an ethical task and an art, an art of which the practice is always dangerous and at times may claim the lives of its practitioners. The self-willed race and the confused crowds regard the highest, divinely understood, as high treason against “the human race,” “the crowd,” “the public,” etc.
The single individual—this category has been used only once before (its first time) in a decisively dialectical way, by Socrates in order to disintegrate paganism. In Christendom it will be used [VIII1 A 482 215] a second time in the very opposite way, to make people (the Christians) Christians. It is not the missionary’s category with regard to the pagans to whom he proclaims Christianity, but it is the missionary’s category within Christendom itself, for the inward deepening of being and becoming a Christian. When he, the missionary, comes, he will use this category. If the age is waiting for a hero, it waits in vain; instead there will more likely come one who in divine weakness will teach people obedience—by means of their slaying him in impious rebellion, him, the one obedient to God.—JP II 2004 (Pap. VIII1 A 482) n.d., 1847
From draft of “A Defense”:
The difficulty for me in writing a defense [Apologie]—for it is as Socrates says in the Apology:2 my accusers are invisible—gossip, rumors.
The difficulty lies also in the circumstances themselves, that in Copenhagen there are two stages, and one must act on both. Copenhagen is not large enough to have two stages that are kept separate. These two stages are not like two churches in which one pastor preaches. No, they are related inversely—what pleases one completely displeases the other. Under such conditions, of which I had been aware earlier, the only right thing is to steer by the stars.
I have now lived this way as an author for five to six years—and have been silent, but chatter about me has never been silent. —Copenhagen [Kjøbenhavn] a market town [Kjøbstad]—one’s clothes are attacked—if a foreigner saw it he would be amazed, and even more when he perceived that Copenhagen is actually in the process of becoming a market town out of zeal for imitating a big city.—Pap. VIII2 B 179:1 n.d., 1847
In margin of Pap. VIII2 B 179:1:
Off and on I have said to myself half ironically and half with pathos: Basically your life is wasted; you have actually become somebody or are regarded as that in Denmark, and in Denmark one lives happily only when one is nobody.
This is to be used preferably at the end.
—Pap. VIII2 B 179:2 n.d., 1847
Until now I have been silent, but gradually the invisible attacks have actually attacked also the idea that I serve, and in this regard I must now present a defense that I request be read with the good will customarily shown by everyone who has respect for his own judgment.—Pap. VIII2 B 179:3 n.d., 1847
In margin of Pap. VIII2 B 179:3:
What is done with me is not suited for eliciting a defense, but now when the attacks on me will distort the idea that I, humble before God, am proud to have the honor to serve—then I must not be too proud to explain the correct nature of the matter.
—Pap. VIII2 B 179:4 n.d., 1847
From draft of “A Defense”:
With regard to stage A (the public, the common man, etc.):
in what sense I have spoken of that single individual, not in the sense of haughtiness but of humbleness.
—Pap. VIII2 B 179:5 n.d., 1847
From draft of “A Defense”:
With regard to stage B (the aristocrats)
a defense of my public life in contrast to their coterie.
My walking the streets so much is explained here as vanity, propensity for display. The falsity of this.
—Pap. VIII2 B 179:6 n.d., 1847
From draft of “A Defense”:
It has always been my intention to end my strenuous work as an author with a quiet, forgotten remoteness in a rural parsonage in order to sorrow over my sins and over whatever offenses I may have committed personally. That is why I have so completely isolated myself in literature. —Now I assume that it is my calling to remain in the place assigned to me and to use the powers granted me to fill the place assigned to me instead of for penance.
—Pap. VIII2 B 179:10 n.d., 1847
From draft of “A Defense”:
[VIII2 B 180 282] Preface
It is my request that everyone will read this little defense [Apologie] with the readiness to listen that is so desirable, with the slowness to judge that is so amiable, with the good will and good nature that dwell inwardly within every human being, even in a person who in a spell knows only the passions of indignation but does not know himself. This is my request, and I make this request for my own sake, but it pertains also to the one whom I address, because to judge hastily, frivolously, badly in judging [VIII2 B 180 283] another is worst for him himself, and although appeals for circumspection are ordinarily made to people in very many ways when one warns them against deceivers and seducers and the world and people, let us not forget how important it is to say to the single individual—watch out for yourself.—Pap. VIII2 B 180 n.d., 1847
Addition to Pap. VIII2 B 180:
Preface
This defense [Apologie] is written in such a way that everyone can understand it. I do not therefore require that everyone shall read it, but since I write it for the sake of peace and in order to ameliorate, there also seems to be a certain fairness in my request that—inasmuch as so many who have had neither the time nor desire to read my books have had the time and desire to hear and read all possible misunderstandings, slander, and attacks with regard to me—they will show such respect for themselves that for once they would listen to the much-talked-about one speak. In relation to the particular individuals who in the service of literary contemptibility seek to make everything deranged, just as I will never know how to make peace and to be pleased to be ridiculed by them, so on the other hand, in relation to the many people with whom it has never occurred to me to have conflict, I will do everything my cause needs to maintain a good and well-disposed understanding.—Pap. VIII2 B 181 n.d., 1847
Invitation [VIII2 B 186 292]
The undersigned plans to give a little series of lectures on the organizing theme throughout my entire work as an author3 and its relation to the modern period illuminated by references to the past.
As auditors I have in mind particularly theological graduates or even more advanced students. I assume that the auditors will be well acquainted with the works beforehand, and others are requested not to consider this invitation. I would also say in advance that these lectures will in no sense be an enjoyment but rather hard work, and therefore I do not entice anyone. This work will have times when, in the understanding of the moment and of impatience, it is plainly boring, which in my opinion is inseparable from all deeper understanding, and therefore I warn everyone against participating. If I succeed in being understood, the auditor will have the benefit that his life will have been made [VIII2 B 186 293] considerably more difficult than ever, and for this reason I urge no one to accept this invitation.
As soon as ten have signed up, I will begin; the limit is twenty, inasmuch as I wish to have such a relation to the auditors that the lectures might be, if necessary, made colloquies.
The fee is five rix-dollars, registration with the undersigned.
—JP V 6094 (Pap. VIII2 B 186) n.d., 1847–48
Invitation [VIII2 B 188 295]
Gratified to learn that my upbuilding writings, addressed to the single individual, are still read by many individuals, I have considered obliging these my readers, and perhaps gaining more individuals as readers, by publishing such works in the future in smaller sections on a subscription basis.4 The possible advantages are, first, that the books will be read better if they are read in smaller sections; second, that a certain calmness of understanding may enter into the relation between author and reader, so that a beginning need not be made each time; and finally, that the publication can properly take place quietly and unnoticed, avoiding all irrelevant attention.
From July 1 of this year I plan, then, to publish under the more general title
Upbuilding Reading
a section of six, at most eight sheets [Ark] every three months.
…
[VIII2 B 188 296] S. Kierkegaard
January 1848.
at the end of the year, the common title page, the table of contents, a list of the subscribers.
—JP V 6095 (Pap. VIII2 B 188) January 1848
A word on my work as an author
with regard to “that single individual.”
and
an accompanying word to my
issued invitation to subscription.
When someone who, like me, has continually and so decisively written only for “the single individual” issues a subscription plan, this might seem a contradiction to some who have misunderstood my earlier work. I will therefore do my part and try to remove at least a part of the misunderstanding—to want totally to prevent all misunderstanding when one intends to undertake something could certainly occur only to a youth.—Pap. VIII2 B 196 n.d., 1848
Originally I had thought to end my work as an author with Concluding Unscientific Postscript, to withdraw to the country, and in quiet unobtrusiveness to sorrow over my sins. The fear and trembling in my soul about being a Christian, my penitence, seemed to me to be sufficient suffering. I had almost forgotten that being a Christian is and should be a thing of scorn in the world, as he was, my Lord and Master, who was spat upon: then Governance came to my assistance again. I became aware of that and now stay in my place. God in heaven, who has reason to be disgusted with me because I am a sinner, has nevertheless not rejected what I, humanly speaking, honestly intended. Yet before God even my best deed is still miserable.—JP VI 6157 (Pap. IX A 54) n.d., 1848
..... Thus in a certain sense I began my activity as an author [IX A 171 82] with a falsum [deception] or with a piafraus [pious fraud]. The situation is that in so-called established Christendom people are so fixed in the fancy that they are Christians that if they are to be made aware at all many an art will have to be employed. If someone who otherwise does not have a reputation of being an author begins right off as a Christian author, he will not get a hearing from his contemporaries. They are immediately on their guard, saying, “That’s not for us” etc.
I began as an estheticist—and then, although approaching the religious with perhaps uncustomary alacrity, I denied being a Christian etc.
This is the way I present myself as an author to my contemporaries—and in any case this is the way I belong to history. My [IX A 171 83] thought is that here I am permitted and am able to speak of myself only as an author. I do not believe that my personality, my personal life, and what I consider my shortcomings are of any concern to the public. I am an author, and who I am and what my endowments are I know well enough. I have submitted to everything that could serve my cause.
I ask the more competent ones in particular to be slow to judge the capabilities and a use of capabilities that is not seen every day—I ask this especially of the more competent, for there is no use in requesting this of fools. But as a rule every more competent person has respect for himself and for his judgment—and for just this reason I request him to judge carefully.
It is Christianity that I have presented and still want to present; to this every hour of my day has been and is directed.—JP VI 6205 (Pap. IX A 171) n.d., 1848
In margin of Pap. IX A 171:
It was important for me to learn to know the age. Perhaps the age found it quite easy to form a picture of this author: that intellectually he was an exceptionally gifted person, dedicated to pleasure and wallowing in a life of luxury. Ah, it was mistaken. It never dreamed that the author of Either/Or had said good-bye to the world long before, that he spent much of the day in fear and trembling reading devotional books, in prayer and supplication. Least of all did it think that he was and is conscious of himself as a penitent from the very first line he wrote.—JP VI 6206 (Pap. IX A 172) 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 [IX A 213 111] over my sins. I could not suppress 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
[*]In margin: but not as one who enthusiastically proclaims Christianity but as a dialectician is able to do it, by Socratically starving the life out of all the illusions in which Christendom has run aground. It is not that Christianity is not proclaimed, but it is Christendom that has become sheer expertise in transforming it into illusion and thus evading it.—JP VI 6228 (Pap. IX A 214) n.d., 1848
The world has become all too sagacious. The person who intends [IX A 215 111] to work for the religious must work undercover—otherwise he is not of much use. If someone passes himself off as religious, the world has a thousand evasions and illusions with which [IX A 215 112] they protect themselves against him and get rid of him. The struggle now is no longer as in the old days against wild passions, against which direct action is appropriate. No, Christendom has run aground in sagacity. In order to get rid of it, there must be a person who is more than a match for them in sagacity.
Even if it pleases God to select a person as his instrument, that person’s whole strategy must be entirely different from that in former times. The person who is to be used in this way must possess what the age prides itself on, but to its own misfortune. But he must not misuse his sagacity to be of assistance into a new sagacity; with the aid of sagacity, he must effect a return to simplicity.
This is how I understand myself, except that I do not dare to call myself an instrument of God in a special sense, because, just as everything in me is dialectical, so also my relation to God. On the other hand, it is my blessed conviction that every human being is essentially equally near to God.
But simply because everything in my existence is combined in this way, I can actually not be effective until after my death.
—Pap. IX A 215 n.d., 1848
[IX A 216 112] 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.5
Now there is a moment, a point of rest; by this step I have learned to know myself and very concretely.
So the publication must proceed (that is, of course I have more, I have finished what is to be used: (1) A Cycle of [IX A 216 113] Ethical-Religious Essays, (2) The Sickness unto Death, (3) Come Here, All You.....), if I do not happen to die beforehand. My health is very poor, and the thought of dying has gotten the upper hand with me as I use this half year to sorrow for my sins and work further in the presentation of Christianity. Perhaps it is a despondent thought, perhaps also because I have become disinclined to make the finite decisions involved in publication—in any case I have now been prodded by it.
The next publication will be very decisive for my outer life. I always have held on to the remote possibility of seeking a pastoral call if worst comes to worst financially. When I publish the last books, this may well be denied me even if I were to seek it; so the problem will not be as before, if I do dare to undertake it, but rather that it will not even be given to me.…—JP VI 6229 (Pap. IX A 216) n.d., 1848
It was a good thing that I published that little article6 and came [IX A 218 115] under tension. If I had not published it, I would have gone on living in a certain ambiguity about the future use of indirect communication.
Now it is clear to me that henceforth it will be indefensible to use it.
The awakening effect is rooted in God’s having given me power to live as a riddle—but not any longer, lest the awakening effect end in being confusing.
The thing to do now is to take over unambiguously the maieutic structure of the past, to step forth definitely and directly in character, as one who has wanted and wants to serve the cause of Christianity.
If I had not published that little article, indirect communication would have continued to hover vaguely before me as a possibility and I would not have had the idea that I dare not use it.
I would not dare to say of myself that I have had a clear panorama [IX A 218 116] of the whole plan of production from the outset; I must rather say, as I have continually acknowledged, that I myself have been brought up and developed in the process of my work, that personally I have become committed more and more to Christianity than I was. Nevertheless this remains fixed, that I began with the deepest religious impression, alas, yes, I who when I began bore the tremendous responsibility for the life of another human being and understood it as God’s punishment upon me.—JP VI 6231 (Pap. IX A 218) n.d., 1848
Now add the thought of death to the publication of that little article!7 If I were dead without that: indeed, anyone could publish my posthumous papers, and in any case R. Nielsen8 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,9 and then a little esthetic treatise.—Pap. IX A 228 n.d., 1848
N.B. N.B. [IX A 234 131]
Yes, so it stands: therefore a direct explanation of my authorship and what I want in toto.
In relation to the decisively Christian, one cannot bear the responsibility in the middle term of one’s human reflection.
And just as what I on the whole have tended toward is the restitution of the simple, this is such an essential component that the one who brings it to this cannot himself in turn use the maieutic arts; in one sense this is even a contradiction.
The point about what one in toto wants is that it stands direct and clear; it is another matter (something not to be avoided by the person who after all has superiority of reflection) that one can use it in the particular, but within the direct attesting to what one in toto wants. In relation to the essentially Christian, it is also dangerous to hold it in suspension if one does not oneself positively feel bound to Christianity; however much one served the cause of Christianity, this is an unchristian way to go about it, even if for a time usable and relatively justified precisely because Christendom has become paganism.
To remain ambiguous about what one wants in toto oneself is [IX A 234 132] the real maieutic.10 But it is also the daimonic, because it makes a human being the middle term between God and other human beings.
Direct communication, a witness once and for all, is decisive for preventing the maieutic. The maieutic is not to be cryptic in this or that particular but is to be cryptic concerning the whole—for example, to be cryptic about whether one is a Christian oneself.
Then the difficulty arises again, so that it does not appear as if one had an immediate relation to God. In that case a relationship of reflection is something far more humble.
Yet all this in which I have really become involved, I owe to the publication of that little article.11 Without it I would neither have realized so clearly the change that must be made, nor would I have been able to set it forth so decisively. If I had taken such a step earlier, it would have been too much in continuity with the earlier works and would have been neither the one nor the other.—Pap. IX A 234 n.d., 1848
In margin of Pap. IX A 234:
The maieutic actually hides the fact that God is the one who moves the whole thing. But on the other hand, in contrast, since this witnessing has become a triviality just as everything else in Christendom has become that, the maieutic could have its significance —Pap. IX A 235 n.d., 1848
N.B. N.B. [IX A 248 139]
It has generally been thought that reflection is the natural enemy of Christianity and would destroy it. With God’s help I hope to show that God-fearing reflection can retie knots that a shallow, superficial reflection has diddled with so long. The divine authority of the Bible and everything related to it has been abolished; it looks as if one final unit of reflection is expected to finish the whole thing. But look, reflection is on the way to do a counterservice, to reset the coil springs in the essentially Christian so that it can stand its ground—against reflection. Of course Christianity remains the same, altered in no way; not an iota is changed. But the battle becomes a different one; up until now it has been between reflection and the immediate, simple Christianity—now it becomes a battle between reflection and simplicity armed with reflection.
There is sense in this, I believe. The task is not to comprehend Christianity but to comprehend that one cannot comprehend it. This is the holy cause of faith, and reflection is therefore sanctified by being used in this way.
Oh, the more I think of what has been granted to me, the [IX A 248 140] more I need an eternity in which to thank God.12—JP III 3704 (Pap. IX A 248) n.d., 1848
Now I see my way to writing a short and as earnest as possible explanation of my previous authorship, which is necessary before [IX A 265 151] a transition to the next. And why do I see my way to doing it now? Simply because I am now clear about the relation between direct communication and decisive Christianity. For this very reason I now am able to illuminate and interpret indirect communication. Earlier I had been continually unclear. One must always be over and beyond what one wants to interpret. Previously I had been uncertain about the whole thing, because I was not myself clear and basically maintained the connection with indirect communication. This relation would have altogether ruined the entire presentation.—JP VI 6248 (Pap. IX A 265) n.d., 1848
Inscription on a Grave
The daily press is the state’s disaster, “the crowd” the world’s evil.
“That Single Individual”
—JP II 2154 (Pap. IX A 282) n.d., 1848
On this point I am brought to a halt. If I open myself to others, then, ipso facto, my life is less strenuous. Humanly speaking (that is, in the sense of human self-love), people have a right to demand this of me, but in relation to God do I have the right? I can see with half an eye that, far out as I myself am, I gain no one; my opening myself will mean that I get dragged down. On the other hand, my progress is certain destruction. But is there, then, not an absolute? Here it is again. The moment I lay my life out in relativities, I am understood, and in a deeper sense my cause is lost—humanly speaking, it is then won.
The only true way of expressing that there is an absolute is to become its martyr or a martyr to it. It is this way even in relation to absolute erotic love.
The human race is so far from the ideal that in a few generations there is occasionally one who more or less expresses that there is an absolute, and he is then trampled upon by the generation.—JP VI 6253 (Pap. IX A 285) n.d., 1848
[IX A 288 161] This is how I actually am treated in Copenhagen. I am regarded as a kind of Englishman, a half-mad eccentric, with whom we jolly well all, society people and street urchins, think to have their fun. My literary activity, that enormous productivity, so intense that it seems to me that it must move stones, [IX A 288 162] single portions of which not one of my contemporaries is able to compete with, to say nothing of its totality, that literary activity is regarded as a kind of hobby ad modum [in the manner of] fishing and such. Those who are able to produce something themselves envy me and are silent—the others understand nothing. I do not receive the support of one single word in the form of reviews and the like. Minor prophets plunder me in silly lectures at meetings and the like but do not mention my name. No, that is unnecessary.
Consequently that hobby is regarded as a lark. The game is really to see if they can drive me crazy—that would be great sport—or get me to decamp, that would be great sport.
Behind all this is a tremendous impression of what I am, of the extraordinariness granted to me, but the envy of a market town fosters the desire that my having such advantages be, if possible, a greater torment than being the most wretched of all; and everything is left up to the capriciousness of the market town.
In a somewhat more lenient version, the situation is this. I am supposed to be a genius, but such an introverted genius that I can see and hear nothing. All this sport is something the market town is supposed to share in common (society people in common with the commoners and they with the street urchins), something that consequently is nothing.
Well, so be it! When I was a child, I was taught that they spat upon Christ.13 Now, I am a poor insignificant man and a sinner and no doubt will get off more leniently. This, you see, is the Christian syllogism, not the preacher-nonsense that says: Be a good, loving, and altruistic person and people will love you—for Christ, who was love, was loved by people.
Generally speaking, there no doubt will be no one in eternity who will be judged as severely as those professional pastors. From the point of view of eternity, they are what public prostitutes are in temporality.—JP VI 6254 (Pap. IX A 288) n.d., 1848
I am still very exhausted, but I have also almost reached the goal. The work The Point of View for My Work as an Author is now as good as finished. Relying upon what I have done in existential action in the past to justify my productivity, in the recent period I have been only a writer. My mind and spirit are strong enough, but regrettably all too strong for my body. In one sense it is my mind and spirit that help me to endure such poor health; in another sense it is my mind and spirit that overwhelm my body.
—JP VI 6258 (Pap. IX A 293) n.d., 1848
See 124:9:
[IX A 298 167] From a supplement (4) to “The Point of View for My Work as an Author” that was not used.14
[IX A 298 168] My heart has expanded, not as if it ever had been constricted in my breast, but the inner intensity that has been my life and that I believed would be my death has gotten a breathing spell, the dialectical bond has been broken, I dare to speak directly.
I love my native land—it is true that I have not gone to war—but I believe I have served it in another way, and I believe I am right in thinking that Denmark must seek its strength in the spirit and the mind. I am proud of my mother tongue, whose secrets I know, the mother tongue that I treat more lovingly than a flutist his instrument.
I honestly know that I have loved every person; no matter how many have been my enemies, I have had no enemy. As I remarked in the book,15 I have never known thoughts and ideas not to present themselves. But I have known something else. If, on my way home after a walk, during which I would meditate and gather ideas, overwhelmed with ideas ready to be written down and in a sense so weak that I could scarcely walk (one who has had anything to do with ideas knows what this means)—then if a poor man on the way spoke to me and in my enthusiasm over the ideas I had no time to speak with him—when I got home all the ideas would be gone, and I would sink into the most dreadful spiritual trial at the thought that God could do to me what I had done to that man. But if I took time to talk with the poor man and listened to him, things never went that way. When I arrived at home everything was there and ready. All assurances are disdained these days—and yet the best assurance that an individual loves people is and will be that God is as close as life to him, which is the case with me and almost every moment.—JP VI 6259 (Pap. IX A 298) n.d., 1848
When I sold the house,16 I considered putting an end to writing, [IX A 375 217] traveling for two years abroad, and then coming home and becoming a pastor. I had, in fact, made about 2,200 rix-dollars on the place.
But then it dawned on me: But why do you want to travel abroad? To interrupt your work and get some recreation. But you know from experience that you are never so productive as when you are abroad in the extreme isolation in which you live there, so when you return from your travels in two years you will have a staggering amount of manuscripts.
So I rented rooms,17 an apartment that had tempted me in a very curious way for a long time and that I frequently had told myself was the only one I could like.
This plan to travel for two years was no doubt just a whim. The fact is that I had a complete book18 ready to publish, and, [IX A 375 218] as I said, by going abroad I would open the sluice gates of my productivity.
But it was the thought of traveling for two years that prompted me to take the cash I got from the sale of the house, which in general I had decided to leave alone, and to buy government bonds—the most stupid thing I ever did and which I probably should regard as a lesson, because I have now lost about 700 rix-dollars on them. [In margin: For the rest of the cash I later bought shares, on which I perhaps have not lost anything.]
So I rented that apartment, printed Christian Discourses, and sat in the middle of the proofreading when the whole confusion started—Anders19 was taken from me: and it was fortunate that I had the apartment.
I moved in. In one sense I suffered greatly because the apartment proved to be unsuitable. But on the other hand here, too, Governance came to my assistance and turned my mistake into a good. If anything helps me to be less productive and diminish my momentum and in general limit me, it is finite anxieties and inconveniences.
In that residence, however, I have written some of the best things I have written;20 but in this connection I have had constant occasion to practice pianissimo the idea of halting my productivity or in any case to pay more attention to my livelihood. It would never have happened abroad, where, far from all distractions, suffering slightly from a little depression, I would have plunged into the most enormous productivity.
Last summer I drew R. Nielsen21 a little closer to me; that means that I reduce my writing and yet do little to limit my endeavor.
If I could travel without becoming productive, travel and travel for some time, it perhaps would be a good thing. But a prolonged sojourn in one place makes me more productive than ever. I have been much better off learning a little by not having Anders and other such conveniences that perhaps encourage the writing too much.
[IX A 375 219] I wanted to travel for two years, because among other things I was also sick and tired of this whole mess22 in Copenhagen. But it does not help. I am well suited to seeing things like this through, if only I stay patiently where I am.
But the economic situation in these confused times has been a drain on me in various ways. It is no doubt good that I became thoroughly aware of it in time. It also helps burn out whatever selfishness there is in me and my work—for my position as author is in fact becoming serious enough.—JP VI 6268 (Pap. IX A 375) n.d., 1848
N. B.
Perhaps it would be best to publish all the last four books (“The Sickness unto Death,” “Come Here,” “Blessed Is He Who Is Not Offended,” “Armed Neutrality”) in one volume under the title
Collected Works of Completion [Fuldendelse] [*]
with “The Sickness unto Death” as Part I. The second part would be called “An Attempt to Introduce Christianity into Christendom” and below: Poetic—Without Authority. “Come Here” and “Blessed Is He Who Is Not Offended” would be entered as subdivisions. Perhaps there could also be a third part,23 which I am now writing,** but in that case Discourse No. I would be a kind of introduction that is not counted.
And then it should be concluded.
[*]In margin: Perhaps rather: “Collected Works of Consummation [Fuldbringelse]” and the volume should be quarto.
**“From on High He Will Draw All to Himself.” The three: “Come Here,” “Blessed Is He Who Is Not Offended,” and “From on High,” would then have a separate title page: An Attempt to Introduce Christianity into Christendom, but at the bottom of the page: A Poetic Attempt—Without Authority.
—JP VI 6271 (Pap. IX A 390) n.d., 1848
Through my writings I hope to achieve the following: to leave behind me so accurate a characterization of Christianity and its relationships in the world that an enthusiastic, noble-minded [IX A 448 258] young person will be able to find in it a map of relationships as accurate as any topographical map from the most famous institutes. I have not had the help of such an author. The old Church Fathers lacked one aspect: they did not know the world.—JP VI 6283 (Pap. IX A 448) n.d., 1848
I will hardly be able to carry out the whole project. It is too [X1 A 39 25] much for one man. Precisely because it centered upon reflecting Christianity out of an enormous sophistication, culture, out of scholarly-scientific confusion, etc., I myself would have to be in possession of all that culture, be sensitive in one sense as a poet, pure intellect as a thinker. But for the next part there must be physical strength and another kind of rigorous upbringing: to be able to live on little, not to need many creature comforts, to be able to apply some of one’s mind to this self-discipline.
Take a strong, healthy child and train him in this kind of self-mastery. In a few well-spent years, he will have mastered my whole movement of thought; he will not need a tenth of my mental concentration and effort, nor the kind of talents I have had and which were particularly necessary for the first attack. But he will be the man who is needed: tough, rigorous, and yet adequately armed dialectically.
But I do indeed dare say that the work I have done was Herculean. For this I have had the decisive qualifications, wonderfully [X1 A 39 26] good fortune, and blessing, but I do not have the qualifications for the next part. I would have to become a child again and above all, not a child of old age,24 for such children often are physically weak; I would have to have better physical health and much less imagination and dialectic.—JP VI 6308 (Pap. X1 A 39) n.d., 1849
[X1 A 74 58] ... I have another concern regarding The Point of View for My Work as an Author: that in some way I would have said too much about myself, or whether in some way God would want me to be silent about something. On the first point I have emphasized as decisively as possible in “A Cycle of Ethical-Religious Essays”25 [X1 A 74 59] that I am without authority; furthermore it is stated in the book that I am a penitent, that my entire work as an author is my own upbringing, that I am like a spy in a higher service. Finally, in “Armed Neutrality,” every misunderstanding, as if I were an apostle, has been forestalled as decisively as possible.… —JP VI 6325 (Pap. X1 A 74) n.d., 1849
[X1 A 78 62]
“The Point of View for My Work as an Author” must not be published, no, no!
(1) And this is the deciding factor (never mind all those ideas I had about endangering my future and my bread and butter): I cannot tell the full truth about myself. Even in the very first manuscript (which I wrote without any thought at all of publishing), I was unable to stress the primary factor: that I am a penitent, and that this explains me at the deepest level. But when I took the manuscript out with the thought of publishing it, I was obliged to make a few small changes, because in spite of everything [X1 A 78 63] the accent was too strong for it to be published. But I can and will speak about the extraordinary gifts entrusted to me only if it can sound just as strong (as it does in my inner being when I consider the matter myself) about sin and guilt. Not to do so would be taking the extraordinary in vain.
(2) I cannot quite say that my work as an author is a sacrifice. It is true I have been unspeakably unhappy ever since I was a child, but I nevertheless acknowledge that the solution God found of letting me become an author has been a rich, rich pleasure to me. I may be sacrificed, but my work as an author is not a sacrifice; it is, in fact, what I unconditionally prefer to continue to be.
Thus I cannot tell the full truth here, either, since I cannot speak this way in print about my torment and wretchedness—then the pleasure becomes really predominant.
But perhaps I have had my head somewhat in the clouds and possibly could have deceived myself about the extent to which, if it came to that, I would really prefer being slain to being obliged to seek a quieter, more tranquil activity.
(3) Once I have articulated the extraordinary about myself, even with all the guardedness I have used, then I will be stuck with it, and it will be a torment and a fearful responsibility to go on living if I am solemnly looked upon with pathos as someone extraordinary.
(4) The fact that I cannot give the full truth in portraying myself signifies that essentially I am a poet—and here I shall remain.
__________
But the situation is this: the past year (when I wrote that piece) [X1 A 78 64] was a hard one for me; I have suffered greatly. The mistreatment by rabble-barbarism has interfered somewhat with my incognito and tended to force me to be direct instead of dialectical as I have always been, to force me out beyond myself. My incognito was to be a sort of nobody, eccentric, odd-looking, with thin legs, an idler, and all that. All this was of my own free will. Now the rabble have been trained to stare at me inhumanly and mimic me, day after day, with the result that I have become tired of my incognito. So I was in danger of making a complete turnabout.
This must not happen, and I thank God that it was precluded and that I did not go ahead and publish “The Point of View for My Work as an Author” (indeed, there always was something in me that opposed it).
The book itself is true and in my opinion masterly. But a book like that can be published only after my death. If my sin and guilt, my intrinsic misery, the fact that I am a penitent are stressed a bit more strongly, then it will be a true picture. But I must be careful about the idea of dying, lest I go and do something with the thought of dying in half a year and then live to be eighty-two. No, one finishes a book like that, puts it away in a drawer, sealed and marked: To be opened after my death.
__________
And now suppose, speaking quite humanly, that I ventured too little, that I could have ventured a bit further. In that case the [X1 A 78 65] good Lord, God in heaven who is love, my Father in heaven, who forgives me my sins for the sake of Christ, he surely will forgive me this as well. After all, he is not a cruel master, not a jealous lover, but the loving Father. To him I dare to say: I do not presume to venture more, I have a fear of becoming false, of being brash toward you. I would rather stick with my incognito and let everyone think what he pleases about me than solemnly become somebody, an extraordinary. There is no one to whom I can make myself completely understood, because that which is crucial in my possible extraordinariness is that I cannot, after all, speak of my sin and guilt.
So God surely will turn it all into good for me.
__________
Moreover, what I have written can very well be used—if I do indeed continue to be an author—but then I must assign it to a poet, a pseudonym.
For example—
by
the poet Johannes de Silentio
edited
by
S. Kierkegaard.
But this is the best evidence that “The Point of View for My Work as an Author” cannot be published. It must be made into something by a third party: A Possible Explanation of Magister Kierkegaard’s Authorship, that is, so it is no longer the same book at all. For the point of it was my personal story.
__________
And then I must go abroad in the spring.
__________
But it was due to God’s solicitude that I was flushed out of this [X1 A 78 66] indolent productivity, producing and producing (and in one sense superbly), but I never took the trouble to think about publishing, partly because I was hoping for death.—JP VI 6327 (Pap. X1 A 78) n.d., 1849
[X1 A 79 66]
It was indeed an act of Governance that I did not publish “The Point of View for My Work as an Author” at this time. And what melancholy impatience! It was written historically after a whole intermediate series of writings, which must be published first if there is to be any question at all of publishing it while I am alive.
On the whole, it is becoming more and more clear to me that when existence itself undertakes to preach for awakening as it is doing now, I do not dare to jack it up even more in that direction; something extraordinary like that has not been entrusted to me and scarcely can be entrusted to any human being. In a soft, refined, overcultured time, I was and ought to be for awakening. At present I ought to come closer to the established order.
[In margin: It is true that the religious, the essentially Christian, shows itself at its very firmest in such disturbed times; instead of remaining mild, it jacks up the price still more. That is the case with Christ, as I have shown elsewhere. But I neither dare nor have the strength to venture that far; it would be presumptuous, personally destructive, and would add to the confusion.]
From the very beginning I have had in mind the idea of ceasing to be an author; I have frequently said that the place was still [X1 A 79 67] vacant: an author who knew when to stop. Indeed, I actually thought of quitting as early as with the publication of Either/Or. But I have never been closer to stopping than with the publication of Christian Discourses. I had sold the house and received two thousand for it. I was very tempted to use it for traveling. But I am no good at traveling and in all likelihood would just become productive, as I usually am most of all when traveling. So I stayed home, had the full torment of the confused times, lost money on the bonds I bought, etc.26 During all this I continued to be productive (and have written what I would not have achieved without these afflictions and a certain melancholy) but became more and more accustomed to being delayed.
Now the second edition of Either/Or is coming out, but “A Cycle of Ethical-Religious Essays” will correspond precisely to that, and the publication will correspond to the direction I must take. What I have ready will stay there. It is gold but must be used with great circumspection.—Pap. X1 A 79 n.d., 1849
[In margin: N.B.]
Incidentally, the “supplements”27 to “The Point of View” could very well be published, and separately. They will then be read considerably. In fact, I now will and should get more involved in the times.—JP VI 6329 (Pap. X1 A 84) n.d., 1849
And then perhaps, as stated frequently, all the writings that lie finished (the most valuable I have produced28) can also be used, but, for God’s sake, in such a way as to guarantee that they are kept poetic, as poetic awakening.—JP VI 6337 (Pap. X1 A 95) n.d., 1849
From preface to no. 5 (on Adler) of the proposed “Cycle of Ethical-Religious Essays”:
[X6 B 40 48] What lay at the root of the crisis will then become apparent, that it is the opposite of the Reformation—then everything appeared to be a religious movement and proved to be political—now everything appears to be politics but will turn out to be a religious movement. And when this becomes apparent, then (whether or not this is considered necessary in time) it will also become apparent that what is needed is pastors. There is where the battle will be; if there is to be a genuine victory, it must come about through pastors. Neither soldiers nor police nor diplomats nor the political planners are capable of it. Pastors are what will be needed: pastors who, possessing the desirable scientific-scholarly education, yet in contrast to the scientific game of counting, are practiced in what could be called spiritual guerrilla skirmishing, in doing battle not so much with scientific-scholarly attacks and problems as with the human passions; pastors who are able to split up “the crowd” and turn it into individuals; pastors who would not set up too great study-requirements and would want anything but to dominate; pastors who, if possible, are powerfully eloquent but are no less powerful in keeping silent and enduring without complaining; pastors who, if possible, know the human heart but are no less learned in refraining from judging and denouncing; pastors who know how to use authority [X6 B 40 49] through the art of making sacrifices; pastors who are brought up and educated and prepared to obey and to suffer, so they would be able to mitigate, admonish, build up, move, but also to constrain—not with force, anything but—no, constrain by their own obedience, and above all patiently to suffer all the rudeness of the sick without being disturbed, no more than the physician is disturbed by the patient’s abusive language and kicks during the operation. For the generation is sick, spiritually, sick unto death. But just as a patient, when he himself is supposed to point to the area where he suffers, frequently points to an utterly wrong place, so also with the generation. It believes—yes, it is both laughable and lamentable—it believes, as is said, that a new administration will help. But as a matter of fact it is the eternal that is needed. Some stronger evidence is needed than socialism’s belief* that God is the evil, and so it indeed says itself, since the daimonic always contains the truth in reverse. It is eternity that is needed, and the physician must—even if in another sense yet as once was the custom in the past—prescribe: the pastor.
This is my view or conception of the age, the view of an insignificant man who has something of the poet in him but otherwise is a philosopher, but—yes, how often I have repeated what to me is so important and crucial, my first declaration about myself—“without authority.”
In margin: *that frightful sigh (from hell) uttered by socialism: God is the evil; just get rid of him and we will get relief. Thus it says what it needs itself—JP VI 6256 (Pap. X6 B 40) n.d., 1849
From draft of the proposed “Cycle of Ethical-Religious Essays”:
[X6 B 41 49] “Christian” pastors are what will be needed, also with regard to one of the greatest of all dangers, which is far closer than one possibly can believe—namely, that when the crisis spreads and turns into a religious movement (and the strength in communism [X6 B 41 50] obviously is the same ingredient daimonically potential in religiousness, even Christian religiousness), then, like mushrooms after a rain, daimonically tainted characters will appear who soon will presumptuously make themselves apostles on a par with “the apostles,” a few also assuming the task of perfecting Christianity, soon even becoming religious founders themselves, inventors of a new religion that will gratify the times and the world in a completely different way from Christianity’s “asceticism.” The age for scientific-scholarly attacks on Christianity was already over before 1848; we were already far into the age of attacks of passion, attacks by the offended. But these are not the most dangerous; the most dangerous comes when the daimonics themselves become apostles—something like thieves passing themselves off as policemen—even founders of religion, who will get a dreadful foothold in an age that is critical in such a way that from the standpoint of the eternal it is eternally true to say of it: What is needed is religiousness—that is, true religiousness; whereas from the standpoint of the daimonic, the same age says about itself: It is religiousness we need—namely daimonic religiousness.
This is my view or conception of the age, the view of an insignificant man who has something of the poet in him but otherwise is a kind of philosopher, but—yes, how often I have repeated and emphasized what is so important and crucial, my first declaration about myself—“without authority.”
S. K.
—JP VI 6257 (Pap. X6 B 41) n.d., 1849
Most of my concern that the completed works might put me in a false light as an extraordinary and the like is sheer hypochondria. As far as “A Cycle of Ethical-Religious Essays”29 is concerned, on looking through it again, I find it entirely in order. From the outset I have marked the other works: poetic attempt—without authority. In addition, “Armed Neutrality” contains this as scrupulously as possible.
The question, therefore, is on the other side: to what extent, after all, do I have the right to hold these works back?
In one sense I would prefer to be free, I would prefer to be free from sending it out into the world, just as if I suddenly had no responsibility to desist from sending it all out.—Pap. X1 A 97 n.d., 1849
[X1 A 116 86]
“A Cycle of Ethical-Religious Essays,”30 if that which deals with Adler is omitted (and it definitely must be omitted, because 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 to itself now and thereby to me. Although originally an independent work, the same applies to no. 3, a more recent work. [X1 A 116 87]
But if no. 2 and no. 331 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.32 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”33 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 literary production (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, since 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 somewhat 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 (especially through the assistance of Governance), and that there certainly is something else to be said about it than this meager comment that in a way 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 is quite simply to take an appointment.
[X1 A 116 88] 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;34 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/Or 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.—JP VI 6346 (Pap. X1 A 116) February 19, 1849
[X1 A 117 88]
To venture looks different to me this time from the way it did before. Previously I have always been keen on publishing what [X1 A 117 89] I had written; now it is a matter of holding back.
As for “A Cycle of Ethical-Religious Essays,” it dates from an earlier period. Its composition is also unusual, because it is the original larger work [“The Book on Adler”] that is chopped into pieces, and the stimulus for the whole work (Adler) is omitted, and a separate essay, No. 3,35 added. I cannot get myself into it in such a way that I really have a desire to publish it. Moreover, it has been laid aside or put away more than once.
As far as “The Point of View” is concerned, the point there is that it was written entirely in a frame of mind in which I did not expect to live to publish it myself. It is like the confession of a dying man. It is certainly a great benefit for me to have succeeded in writing it, and if I had gone abroad last spring as first planned I very likely would never have lived to get something like that written. For that there had to be altogether different sufferings, and I had to sink into myself more deeply than ever before. In that regard the past summer has been extremely important to me. In that way it was again good that I did not travel. I have achieved a productivity that I otherwise would not have achieved. But as far as “The Point of View” is concerned, this does not mean that it must be published.
The second edition of Either/Or and the 3 Notes:36 this appeals to me. It is totally in character for me to hide the best in inwardness. In the past I have endured being looked upon as a villain, although I certainly was not exactly a villain: so let me as an author also endure seeming to be an oddity, although I am not exactly that. But at that time the circumstances did not torment [X1 A 117 90] me so much; so I was tempted to show that I was not a villain but was perhaps just the opposite. With regard to my work as an author, the circumstances have tormented me more, and moreover this is also in another sense a public relationship.
But I must remember that I now have an additional danger, one that is totally foreign to me: a little bit of security for my future. I am assuming now that the limit of risking is this: trusting in God, one ventures into the danger about which one nevertheless has the idea that one has the possibility of being able to endure it. Thus I have been and am willing (on the old conditions) to venture into battle with people, their power, their ridicule etc., because I understood myself in the possibility of being able to be victorious by God’s help. But I cannot have the other danger at the same time. I am not that strong; here I consider that my venturing is for me a rash act.
My original thought has always been to break off my work as an author and then to seek a minor appointment. Even though as an author I put out money and reaped no profit, I had hoped that I nevertheless would leave it with a kind of honor. It is this, if anything, that has embittered me somewhat, that I have to leave it as one mistreated. It has pained me that my stopping as an author should be interpreted as weakness. This bitterness has possibly influenced me to want to rise a stage higher than I myself had ever imagined. True enough, one must also remember that a person receives his orders only successively and to that extent there could be some truth in the idea that I went further than I had originally thought of doing. But yet it is also a matter of being true to myself.—Pap. X1 A 117 n.d., 1849
My task was to pose this riddle of awakening: a balanced esthetic and religious productivity, simultaneously.
This has been done. There is a balance even in quantity. Concluding Postscript is the midpoint.
The “Three Notes” swing it into the purely religious.
What comes next cannot be added impatiently as a conclusion. For dialectically it is precisely right that this be the end. What comes next would be the beginning of something new.
—JP VI 6347 (Pap. X1 A 118) n.d., 1849
N.B.
An understanding of the totality of my work as an author, its maieutic purpose etc., requires also an understanding of my personal existing [Existeren] as an author, what I qua author have done with my personal existing to support it, illuminate it, conceal it, give it direction, etc., something that is more complicated than and just as interesting as the whole work as an author. Ideally the whole thing goes back to “the single individual [den Enkelte],” who is not I in an empirical sense but is the author.
That Socrates belonged together with what he taught, that his teaching ended in him, that he himself was his teaching, in the setting of actuality was himself artistically37 a product of that which he taught—we have learned to rattle this off by rote because we have scarcely understood it. Even the systematicians talk this way about Socrates. But nowadays everything is supposed to be objective. And if someone were to use his own person maieutically, one would think it was “à la Andersen.”38
All this is part of an illumination of my position in the development. Objectivity is believed to be superior to subjectivity, but it is just the opposite. That is to say, an objectivity that is within a corresponding subjectivity is the finale. The system was an inhuman something to which no human being could correspond as author and executor.—JP VI 6360 (Pap. X1 A 146) n.d., 1849
[X1 A 147 109]
It will never do to let the second edition of Either/Or be published without something accompanying it. Somehow the accent [X1 A 147 110] must be that I have made up my mind about being a religious author.
To be sure, my seeking an ecclesiastical post 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 Here,” “Blessed Is He Who is Not Offended”39) are extremely valuable. 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 [X1 A 147 111] in fact regard it originally and wrote “The Point of View” to 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 VI 6361 (Pap. X1 A 147) n.d., 1849
See 116:11–118:10:
[X1 A 152 112] [In margin:—N.B. An observation concerning two passages in note no. 2 of the Three Friendly Notes.]
[X1 A 152 113] 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 VI 6363 (Pap. X1 A 152) n.d., 1849
The Three Friendly Notes40 are not to be published either. Forget them; they are still about me. For a moment I thought it was necessary, but it is not needed.—Pap. X1 A 157 n.d., 1849
In margin:
Witnessing is still the form of communication that strikes the truest mean between direct and indirect communication. Witnessing is direct communication, but nevertheless it does not make one’s contemporaries the authority. While the witness’s communication addresses itself to the contemporaries, the witness himself addresses God and makes him the authority.—JP I 670 (Pap. X1 A 235) n.d., 1849
N.B. [X1 A 250 164]
The “Three Notes” must not be published either. Nothing is to be declared directly about me; if anything is to be said, much more should be said, “The Point of View” should be published. But all such writing shall lie there finished, just as it is, until after my death.
About my personal life, and directly, nothing is to be said: (1) because after all I am essentially a poet; but there is always something enigmatical in a poet’s personality and therefore he must not be presented as, and above all he must not confuse himself with, an authentically ethical character in the most rigorous sense. (2) Insofar as I am a little more than a poet, I am essentially a penitent, but I cannot speak directly of that and therefore also cannot discuss any possible extraordinariness granted me. (3) I cannot make sure for myself and for my communication [X1 A 250 165] that the emphasis will fall strongly enough upon God. (4) It is an inconsistency in connection with self-denial.
Therefore, to want to do it would be on my part:
(1) a piece of recklessness, wanting to speak about myself at this time, as if either I were about to die tomorrow or it had been decided that I would stop being an author, since neither is the case. (2) It would be arbitrariness and impatience (the result of my having been the one who suffered) for me to want to decide my own fate in advance or to contribute to my being forced further into the character of a martyr, even if I secretly am that but without demanding the satisfaction of being regarded as one.
It was a godsend that I did not do it, that I did not publish the “Notes” or that God did not permit it to happen. It would have disturbed my life in every way, whether I continue to be an author at present or am set to something else. Therefore I actually have to repent the time I spent bumbling around tinkering with the “Notes,” one word here and a word there. I have suffered a great deal, but God is helping me also to learn something.
How much God is the one directing the whole thing I see best in the manner in which the discourses about the lily and the bird41 came into being at the time—just what I needed! God be praised! Without being contentious with people and without talking about myself, I get much said of what has to be said, but in a moving, gentle, uplifting way.
And now to travel; I must get away from here both for a moment’s recreation and for a longer period, for it is all involved with my still being essentially a poet.
If I am to make any direct communication about myself personally, I must be forced to it from the outside, although with difficulty, since my creativity is actually not my own but a higher power’s.—JP VI 6383 (Pap. X1 A 250) n.d., 1849
[X1 A 266 175] N.B.
I have made one final attempt to say a word about myself and my whole authorship. I have written “An Appendix” that should be called “The Accounting” and should follow the “Discourses.”42 I think it is a masterpiece, but that is of no importance—it cannot be done.
The point is that I perceive with extraordinary clarity the infinitely ingenious thought present in the totality of the authorship. Humanly speaking, now would be just the right time, now when [X1 A 266 176] the second edition of Either/Or appears. It would be splendid. But there is something false in it.
For I am a genius of such a kind that I cannot just directly and personally assume the whole thing without encroaching on Governance. Every genius is preponderantly immanence and immediacy, has no “why”; but again it is my genius that lets me see clearly, afterward, the infinite “why” in the whole, but this is Governance’s doing. On the other hand, I am not a religious person of such a kind that I can directly assign everything to God.
Therefore not a word. If anything is to be said, then just that. Or if the world wants to extort a statement and explanation from me, then this.
I suffer indescribably every time I have begun to want to publish something about myself and the authorship. My soul becomes restless, my mind is not content to be producing as it is generally; I regard every word with dreadful suffering, think of it constantly, even outside of my time for work; my praying becomes sickly and distracted, because every trifle becomes excessively important to me as soon as it gets tied in with this. As soon as I leave it alone, either produce it but with the idea of not publishing it, or produce something else, then I am calm immediately, my mind is at rest, as it is now in having written and in intending to publish the “Three Devotional Discourses.”43
Suddenly to want to assume this enormous productivity as one thought is too much—although I see very well that it is that. Yet I do not believe that I was motivated by vanity. It is originally a religious thought—I thought I owed it to God. But this is why [X1 A 266 177] everything is now ready—until after my death.
I cannot assume it personally in this way. 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 sake44 in order to clear her out of the relationship. 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.”45 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),46 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 VI 6388 (Pap. X1 A 266) n.d., 1849
[X1 A 272 179] A Poetical View of Myself
[In margin: Used as an “appendix” to “The Accounting.”47]
..... If, however, someone were to say to me: You who for a long time now have lived and go on living every day surrounded by the drivel, derision, bestiality, etc. of these thousands of people—it seems to me that there is something artificial in the silence you steadily maintain about all this, or in the tranquillity [X1 A 272 180] with which you speak about yourself, as if you were untouched by the wretchedness of life [changed to: all these matters], I would answer him like this.
In the first place, when I speak, there is a very exalted person listening—moreover, this is the case with every human being, but the majority do not bear it in mind—there is a very exalted person listening: God in heaven; he is in heaven and hears what every person says. I bear this in mind. No wonder then that what I say has a certain solemnity. Furthermore, I am not speaking with those thousands, but with the single individual before God—thus it is rather to be wondered at that what I say is not infinitely more solemn.
Second, already as a small child I was told—and as solemnly as possible—that “the crowd” spat upon Christ, who indeed was the truth. [In margin: that they spat on Christ, that the crowd (“those who passed by”) spat on him and said: Fie on you.48] This I have hid deep in my heart [penciled in margin: even though there have been moments, yes, times, when I seemed to have forgotten it, it has always come back to me as my first thought]. In order better to conceal the fact that I hid this thought deep in my soul, I have even concealed it under the most opposite exterior, for I was afraid that I would forget it too soon, that it would be tricked out of me and be like a blank cartridge. This thought—with the aid of which I also promptly and readily understood, as the lesser difficulty, what occupied me so much in my youth: that simple wise man,49 that martyr of intellectuality whom “numbers,” “the crowd” persecuted and condemned to death—this thought is my life. [In margin: although the task so far has been intellectual but fought religiously.]
I know with the greatest possible certitude that I am on the right road from this, that the context and the marks are the drivel, derision, and bestiality of “the crowd.” No wonder, then, that [X1 A 272 181] what I say is not without a certain solemnity and has, as I do, a tranquillity, for the road I am taking is the right one, I am on the right road, even though far behind. Assuming that those who after voluntarily suffering for a long time the cruelty, mistreatment, and vilification of their contemporaries (consequently after being, as it were, salted,50 for “every sacrifice ought to be salted”), then after having been mocked, spat upon (consequently after having accepted the last ordination beforehand)— assuming that they end up being crucified or beheaded or burned or broken on the wheel—assuming, then, that in the Christian order of precedence these are in first rank, which certainly is indisputable—assuming this, I believe that without saying too much about myself I am just about lowest in the lowest rank, the eighth rank. No doubt I will rise no higher. But a teacher’s comment on one of his pupils is appropriate to my life—the only thing lacking is that it was written about me—“He is going backward, yet not without great diligence.” Certainly this was not felicitously expressed by the teacher. Only in a very special situation such as my own can such a judgment be said to be felicitously expressed. Yet “not without great diligence” is perhaps saying too little, for I am applying myself very diligently, am extremely busy and hardworking, and I am going backward for sure, and it is also certain that the more diligent I am, the more I go backward—thus I am in truth going backward with great diligence.
In this way I hope to enter into eternity, and from a philosophical point of view how would it be possible to enter into eternity except by going backward; from an essentially Christian point of view, how would it be possible to enter into eternity except by having things go backward for one more and more? After all, Christ, who was the truth, was spat upon—and if I forgot everything, I will never forget, just as up to now I have not forgotten for a moment, what was said to me as a child and the impression it made on the child. It sometimes happens that a child while still in the cradle is pledged [forloves] to the one who someday will be his wife or her husband—religiously understood, I was pre-pledged [for-lovet] early in childhood. Ah, I have [X1 A 272 182] paid dearly for misinterpreting my life at one time and forgetting—that I was pledged. On the other hand, I once experienced in my life the most beautiful, blessed, and to me indescribably fulfilling satisfaction because in the step I took at that time, in the danger I voluntarily exposed myself to at that time, I completely understood myself and realized that I was pre-pledged. Pledged, pledged to the love that, despite all my errors and sins, has surrounded me from the beginning and until this moment, surrounded me, of whom it can be said with complete truth that he sinned much, but of whom it perhaps may not be completely false to say: he loved much51—surrounded by a love that infinitely exceeds my understanding, by a fatherly love “compared with which the most loving father is but a stepfather.”52
Just one thing more, something upon which I, if possible, with a dying man’s last will, put the strongest emphasis of earnestness. I no doubt have a grave and sad advantage (when I consider myself in relation to those glorious ones, to whom I stand in only the most distant possible relation, down below as the very lowest in the lowest rank, in eighth rank), yet in one sense an advantage over them with regard to having to endure. For it seems to me that if one is oneself pure, perfect, and holy, the opposition of the world to the truth would make a person so sad that he quickly would die of sadness. But I am not a saintly person; I am a penitent, for whom it can be indescribably suitable to suffer something and for whom personally, precisely as a penitent, there is a satisfaction in suffering. Yes, if I were a contemporary of a more pure person, I would be happy to turn all the scorn and mistreatment of the crowd from him to myself. I look upon it as an advantage that I, who have the honor of serving the truth by personally being a penitent (for what I may have done wrong earlier and for what offense I personally have committed) in this way (but only in this way), find mistreatment by people to be in the right place when it is turned against me. [In margin: for whom the deception has certainly been extraordinarily successful, the deception that [X1 A 272 183] to a certain degree was possibly the invention of depression, the deception of being regarded as the most light-minded of all.]
—JP VI 6389 (Pap. X1 A 272) n.d., 1849
The Total Production with the Addition of the Two Essays by H. H.53 [X1 A 351 228]
The authorship conceived as a whole (as found in “A Note [X1 A 351 229] Concerning My Work as an Author,”54 “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.”55
The same applies to the whole structure. “Three Devotional Discourses”56 comes later and is supposed to accompany the second edition of Either/Or and mark the distinction between what is offered with the left hand and what is offered with the right.
“Two Ethical-Religious Essays” does not belong to the authorship in the same way; it is not an element in it but a point of view. If there is to be a halt, it will be like a point one projects in advance in order to have a stopping place. It also contains an apparent and an actual eminence: a martyr, yes, an apostle—and a genius. If any information about me is to be sought in the essays, then it is this: that I am a genius—not an apostle, not a martyr. The apparent eminence is included in order to determine all the more accurately the actual one. For most people the category “genius” is so indiscriminate that it can mean anything; for that very reason it was important to define this concept, as the two essays do by means of defining that which is infinitely qualitatively higher.
Thus the two essays appropriately have the character of a signal. But it is dialectical. It could signify: here is the stopping place; and then could signify: here is the beginning—but always in such a way that above all I take precautions not to occasion any conceptual confusion but remain true to myself in being no more or no less than a genius, or in being a poet and thinker with a quantitative “more” not customary in a poet and thinker with regard to being what one writes and thinks about. A quantitative “more,” not a qualitative “more,” for the qualitative “more” [X1 A 351 230] is: the truth-witness, the martyr—which I am not. And even qualitatively higher is the apostle, which I have not fancied myself to be any more than that I am a bird. I shall guard myself against blasphemy and against profanely confusing the religious sphere, which I devoutly am doing my utmost to uphold and secure against prostitution by confused and presumptuous thinking.—JP VI 6407 (Pap. X1 A 351) n.d., 1849
[X1 A 422 268] Just as the Guadalquibir [sic] River at some place plunges underground and then comes out again, so I must now plunge into pseudonymity, but I also understand now how I will emerge again under my own name. The important thing left is to do something about seeking an appointment and then to travel.
(1) The three ethical-religious essays57 will be anonymous; this was the earlier stipulation. (2) “The Sickness unto Death” will be pseudonymous and is to be gone through so that my name and the like are not in it. (3) The three works, “Come Here, All You,” “Blessed Is He Who Is Not Offended,” and “From on High He Will Draw All to Himself” will be pseudonymous. Either all three in one volume under the common title, “Practice in Christianity, Attempt by ———,” or each one separately. They are to be checked so that my name and anything about me etc. are excluded, which is the case with number three. (4) Everything under the titles “The Point of View for My Work as an Author,” “A Note,” “Three Notes,” and “Armed Neutrality”* [X1 A 422 269] cannot conceivably be published.
These writings properly remain pseudonymous. Here there is the dialectical tension and tightening with respect to the doctrine of sin and redemption, and then I begin with my own name in a simple upbuilding discourse. But it is one thing for a work of such a dialectical nature to appear pseudonymously and something quite different if it appears over my name, in character, as the finale of the whole effort.
After all, there is no hurry about publishing. But if it is to be in character and as a finale, it must be done as soon as possible, something that has pained me frightfully and that has now become almost an impossibility, because today, June 4, I spoke with Reitzel,58 who said he dared not take on anything new for publication. On the whole the man has plagued me unbearably with his miseries, which perhaps are exaggerated anyway.
A battle of ideas has taken place here. In actuality the whole matter of publishing with or without my name perhaps would be a bagatelle. But to me in my ideality it is a very taxing problem, that above all I do not falsely hold myself back or falsely go too far but truly understand myself and continue to be myself.
I have struggled and suffered fearfully. Yet one who fights for the “You shall” as I do must also suffer at this point. But yet at times I probably have not been far from pressing this “You shall” in an almost melancholy-frantic way. But now I understand myself. You shall—this is eternally true—but it is not less true and it is also a “You shall” that with God you shall understand your limits and beyond them you shall not go or you shall abandon such desires.
But, gracious God, how I have suffered and how I have struggled. Yet it is my consolation that the God of love will let this be [X1 A 422 270] to my good, and in a certain sense it consoles me that I have endured this suffering, because in this very suffering I have become convinced of the way I am to turn.
My misfortune always has been that it is so difficult for me to take an appointment. My depression, which is almost a quiet derangement, has been a hindrance to me all along, my consciousness of sin, too. This has aided me continually in venturing, for it has assured me that I was at least not being guided by vanity and the like. But now in God’s name I must turn in this direction.
Strangely enough, incidentally, I have written so much in journal NB10 [Pap. X1 A 82–294] and in this journal [NB11, Pap. X1 A 295–541], but there is on a loose sheet [Pap. X1 A 424 (pp. 196–97)] something I have not wished to enter in the journal and that I still really regard as the most decisive and also one of the earliest—I now end with precisely this.—JP VI 6416 (Pap. X1 A 422) June 4, 1849
[X1 A 424 271] This is the loose sheet mentioned on page 129 of this journal [Pap. X1 A 422 (p. 196)]. To be written transversely in the journal.
If I had the means, I would venture further out—of course, not with the intention of being put to death (for that, after all, is sinful), but nevertheless, with that possibility in mind, believing that eventually my life might take a still higher turn.
Now I cannot, and I cannot defend venturing in the way that would give my life such a turn that I really would not recognize myself, whereas I fully recognize myself in the kind of persecution, if it may be called that, which I have suffered. Yes, from earliest childhood I have had the presentiment in my soul that things would turn out this way for me, that in a certain sense I would be regarded even with a certain solemnity as somewhat extraordinary and yet be laughed at and regarded as a bit mad.
Now I cannot. Now all my original plans go against me: to be a writer for only a few years and then to seek an appointment, to practice the art of being able to stop—all the more so since it was my intention, never as definite as last year when I sold the house and made a little on it, to stop in earnest (I did not even rent rooms; this I did only much later) and to travel; and the Friday discourses59 have always seemed to me to be a suitable terminating point. Perhaps I should have done that. I suffered much in 1848, but I also learned much and in that case I would scarcely have learned to know myself in this way.
Now I cannot. Suddenly to be forced to sustain a very perceptible financial loss,60 perhaps at a time when I am about to take the most decisive step—and then perhaps not be put to death [X1 A 424 272] anyway and thus to have bungled the whole and myself—no, that I cannot do. To my mind it would be tempting God if I, spoiled by having had financial means, were now, with this new danger, to venture to a degree previously untried.
In addition, I now have a misgiving about myself that I would not have if I had financial means: is there possibly a connection between this almost martyr-impatience of mine and another kind of impatience, that I rather shrink from the humiliating task of actively seeking an appointment and from the humiliation implicit in all such things and in the whole mode of life? Moreover, I do have perhaps a trace of life-weariness.61 Perhaps it is also an exaggeration in the direction of expressing that I have suffered injustice and therefore could wish that they would put me to death.
Finally, there is a big question whether I, with my differential mental capacities,62 am not intended to live, because the more there is of scientific scholarly nature and the like, the less pertinence there is to work in that way.
Finally, it is part of being human not to become the very highest that one has envisioned—patience and humility in this respect. But one will be wounded by this highest, and that I have been, through having been so close to it in thought.
Consequently I do not take the least little step in that direction.—JP VI 6418 (Pap. X1 A 424) n.d., 1849
In God’s name, then! What worries me most is “The Point of View for My Work as an Author.” It can still easily be kept back; indeed, it will be a good while until I arrive at printing it; but at that time I will no doubt find the strength to let it be included.
This time I am learning what it means that I would pray that I might be spared making this step—ah, and this is why I for a period hoped that death would release me. And I am learning what it is to sigh: Would that this fire be kindled.63
However, no reflections! Now they will only exhaust and confuse me. As taciturnly as possible I will cling to this: In God’s name.—Pap. X1 A 501 n.d., 1849
No, it cannot be done!
I cannot do it, it is too high for me! “The Point of View” cannot be published—and therefore when the other discourses already finished are published is unimportant or less important.
There is really something that continually troubles me—that there is something untrue about hurling myself into such decisions at the same time as I have an entirely different concern.
—Pap. X1 A 508 n.d., 1849
[X1 A 510 327] The other alternative64 is perhaps more rash, perhaps bolder, perhaps a more daring venture, but this does not make it more true for me—and to be true is of first importance.
[X1 A 510 328] If I consider my own personal life, am I then a Christian or is my personal life purely a poet-existence, even with an addition of something demonic. In that case the idea would be to take such an enormous risk that I thereby make myself so unhappy that I would get into the situation for really becoming a Christian. But does this give me the right to do it dramatically so that the Christendom of a whole country gets involved. Is there not something desperate in the whole thing, something like the treachery of starting a fire in order to throw oneself into the arms of God—perhaps, for perhaps it would nevertheless turn out that I would not become a Christian.
All this about my person as author cannot be used at all, for it is clear that it only will involve me more in the interesting instead of getting me out of it, and this is also the effect it will have on my contemporaries. The simple transition is very simple: to be silent and then to see about getting an appointment.
There is no question but that I will stop being an author now, but I would still like to dispense with the interesting: put down the period myself and officially in character. The simple way to do it is to cross over to the new in complete silence; this solemn determination to put down a period is an extremely dangerous thing; the elemental point is that there in fact comes to be a period.
I regret—and I blame myself for it—that in several previous entries in this journal there are attempts to overstrain myself, for which God will forgive me.
Until now I have been a poet, absolutely nothing else, and it is a desperate struggle to will to go out beyond my limits.
The work “Practice in Christianity” has great personal significance [X1 A 510 329] for me—does it follow that I should publish it right away? Perhaps I am one of the few who need such strong remedies—and I, I should then, instead of benefiting from it and myself beginning in real earnestness to become a Christian, I should first publish it. Fantasy!
The work and other works are ready;65 perhaps the time may come when it is suitable and I have the strength to do it and when it is truth in me.
In many ways it is true that the entire authorship is my upbringing—well, does that mean that instead of being in earnest about becoming a true Christian I am to become a phenomenon in the world?
Consequently The Sickness unto Death appears at this time, but pseudonymously and with me as editor. It is said to be “for upbuilding.” This is more than my category, the poet-category: upbuilding.66
Just as the Guadalquibir [sic] River (this occurred to me earlier and is somewhere in the journal [Pap. X1 A 422 (p. 194)]) at some place plunges underground, so is there also a stretch, the upbuilding, that carries my name. There is something (the esthetic) that is lower and is pseudonymous, and something that is higher and is also pseudonymous, because as a person I do not correspond to it.
The pseudonym is Johannes Anticlimacus [sic] in contrast to Climacus, who said he was not a Christian. Anticlimacus is the opposite extreme: a Christian on an extraordinary level—if only I myself manage to be just a simple Christian.
“Practice in Christianity” can be published in the same way, but there is no hurry.
But nothing about my personality as a writer; it is false to want to anticipate during one’s lifetime—this merely converts a person into the interesting.
[X1 A 510 330] On the whole, I must now venture in quite different directions. I must dare to believe that through Christ I can be saved from the power of depression in which I have lived; and I must dare to try to be more economical.—JP VI 6431 (Pap. X1 A 510) n.d., 1849
[X1 A 541 344] De se ipso [About oneself]
Actually, something else will happen than what I originally had in mind.
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, [X1 A 541 345] perhaps upset ever so many happy, loving lives that may very well be truly Christian. It was as alien as it could possibly be to my nature to want to terrify others, and therefore 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.
Then I was horrified to see what was understood by a Christian state (this I saw especially in 1848); I saw how the ones who were supposed to rule, both in Church and state, hid themselves like cowards while barbarism boldly and brazenly raged; and I experienced how a truly unselfish and God-fearing endeavor (and my endeavor as an author was that) is rewarded in the Christian state.
That seals my fate. Now it is up to my contemporaries how they will list the cost of being a Christian, how terrifying they will make it. I surely will be given the strength for it—I almost said “unfortunately.” I really do not say this in pride. I both have been and am willing to pray to God to exempt me from this terrible business; furthermore, I am human myself and love, humanly speaking, to live happily here on earth. But if what one sees all over Europe is Christendom, a Christian state, then I propose to start here in Denmark to list the price for being Christian in such a way that the whole concept—state church, official appointments, livelihood—bursts open.
I dare not do otherwise, for I am a penitent from whom God can demand everything. I also write under a pseudonym because I am a penitent. Nevertheless, I will be persecuted, but I am [X1 A 541 346] secure against any honor and esteem that from another side could fall to me.
For some years now I have been so inured to bearing the treachery and ingratitude of a little country, the envy of the elite and the insults of the rabble that I perhaps—for want of anything better—am qualified to proclaim Christianity. Bishop Mynster can keep his velvet robe and Grand Cross.—JP VI 6444 (Pap. X1 A 541) n.d., 1849
Thank God I did not publish the book about my work as an [X1 A 546 348] author or in any way try to push myself to be more than I am.
The Sickness unto Death is now printed,67 and pseudonymously, by Anti-Climacus.
“Practice in Christianity” will also be pseudonymous. I now understand myself completely.
The point in the whole thing is this: there is a zenith of Christianity in ethical rigorousness and this must at least be heard. But no more. It must be left to everyone’s conscience to decide whether he is capable of building the tower so high.
But it must be heard. But the trouble is simply that practically all Christendom and all the clergy, too, live not only in secular prudence at best but also in such a way that they brazenly boast about it and as a consequence must interpret the life of Christ to be fanaticism.
This is why the other must be heard, heard if possible as a [X1 A 546 349] voice in the clouds, heard as the flight of wild birds over the heads of the tame ones.
But no more. That is why it must be pseudonymous and I merely the editor.
Ah, but what I suffered before arriving at this, something that was essentially clear to me earlier but I had to understand for the second time.
God will certainly look after the rest for me.
If I now continue to be an author, the subject must be “sin” and “reconciliation” in such a way that in upbuilding discourse I would now make use of the fact that the pseudonym has appropriately jacked up the price.
For this, pseudonyms will be used continually. I entertained this idea once before, particularly regarding that to which Anti-Climacus is assigned, and it is somewhere in the journals, no doubt in NB10 [Pap. X1 A 422 (pp. 194–96)].
The fearful stress and strain I have experienced lately are due to my wanting to overexert myself and wanting too much, and then I myself perceived that it was too much, and therefore I did not carry it out, but then again I was unable to let the possibility go and to my own torment held myself on the spearhead of possibility—something, incidentally, that without any merit on my part has been an extremely beneficial exercise for me.
Now there has been action, and now I can breathe.
It was a sound idea: to stop my productivity by once again using a pseudonym. Like the river Guadalquibir [sic]—this simile appeals to me very much.
So not a word about myself with regard to the total authorship; such a word will change everything and misrepresent me.—JP VI 6445 (Pap. X1 A 546) n.d., 1849
It is absolutely right—a pseudonym had to be used.
When the demands of ideality are to be presented at their maximum, then one must take extreme care not to be confused with them himself, as if he himself were the ideal.
Protestations could be used to avoid this. But the only sure way is this redoubling.
The difference from the earlier pseudonyms is simply but essentially this, that I do not retract the whole thing humorously but identify myself as one who is striving.—JP VI 6446 (Pap. X1 A 548) n.d., 1849
So I turned off the tap; that means the pseudonym Anti-Climacus, a halt.
An awakening68 is the final goal, but that is too high for me personally—I am too much of a poet.—JP VI 6450 (Pap. X1 A 557) n.d., 1849
In margin:
Now The Sickness unto Death is published and pseudonymously.69 So an end has been put to the confounded torment of undertaking too great a task: wishing to publish everything at one time, including what I wrote about the authorship, and, so to speak, taking the desperate step of setting fire to established Christendom.
Now the question of when the three other books70 come out is of less importance (and the one about my authorship will not appear at all), because now there is no question of the force of one single blow.
Now I will rest and be more calm.
—JP VI 6451 (Pap. X1 A 567) n.d., 1849
If it could be done and if I had not virtually ceased being an author, it would give me much joy to dedicate one of my books to the memory of Councilor Olsen.71 In fact, for that purpose the book “From on High He Will Draw All to Himself” could provide the opportunity.—JP VI 6455 (Pap. X1 A 571) n.d., 1849
What an accomplishment the Concluding Postscript is; there is more than enough for three professors. But of course the author was a someone who did not have a career position and did not seem to want to have one; there was nothing worthy of becoming a paragraph in the system—well, then, it is nothing at all.
The book came out in Denmark. It was not mentioned anywhere at all. Perhaps fifty copies were sold; thus the publishing costs for me, including the proofreader’s fee (one hundred rix-dollars), came to about four or five hundred rix-dollars, plus my time and work. And in the meantime, I was caricatured by a scandal sheet that in the same little country had three thousand subscribers, and another paper (also with wide circulation, Flyve-posten) continued the discussion about my trousers.72—JP VI 6458 (Pap. X1 A 584) n.d., 1849
The two works by Anti-Climacus73 (“Practice in Christianity”) can be published immediately.
With this the writing stops; essentially it has already stopped (that which is wholly mine) with “The Friday Discourses.”74 The pseudonymous writer75 at the end is a higher level, which I can only suggest. The second-round pseudonymity is precisely the expression for the halt. Qua author I am like the river Guadalquibir [sic], which at some place plunges underground; there is a stretch that is mine: the upbuilding;76 behind and ahead lie the lower and the higher pseudonymities: the upbuilding is mine, not the esthetic, nor that for upbuilding,77 and even less that for awakening.78—JP VI 6461 (Pap. X1 A 593) n.d., 1849
“Practice in Christianity” will be the last to be published. There I shall end for now.
[X1 A 615 383] Consequently the year 1848 will be included, since the things by Anti-Climacus79 are all from 1848. The remainder is from 1849. According to decision, writing concerning the authorship will be shelved.
If “Practice in Christianity” is published, what has been intimated many places elsewhere will be carried out—namely, to set forth the possibility of offense. This is also related essentially to my task, which is continually to jack up the price80 by bringing a dialectic to bear. But for this reason, too, a pseudonym had to be used. That which represents the dialectical element has always been by a pseudonym. To want to make it my own would be both untrue and an all too frightful and violent means of awakening.—JP VI 6464 (Pap. X1 A 615) n.d., 1849
My Writings Considered as a “Corrective” to the Established Order
The designation “corrective” is a category of reflection just as: here/there, right/left.
The person who is to provide the “corrective” must study the weak sides of the established order scrupulously and penetratingly and then one-sidedly present the opposite—with expert one-sidedness. Precisely in this consists the corrective, and in this also the resignation in the one who is going to do it. In a certain sense the corrective is expended on the established order.
If this is done properly, then a presumably sharp head can come along and object that “the corrective” is one-sided and get the public to believe there is something in it. Ye gods! Nothing is easier for the one providing the corrective than to add the other side; but then it ceases to be precisely the corrective and itself becomes an established order.
Therefore an objection of this nature comes from a person utterly lacking the resignation required to provide “the corrective” and without even the patience to comprehend this.—JP VI 6467 (Pap. X1 A 640) n.d., 1849
As soon as the category “the single individual” goes out, Christianity is abolished. Then the individual will relate himself to God through the human race, through an abstraction, through [X1 A 646 401] a third party—and then Christianity is eo ipso abolished. If this happens, then the God-man is a phantom instead of an actual prototype.
Alas, when I look at my own life! How rare the man who is so endowed for the life of the spirit and above all so rigorously schooled with the help of spiritual suffering—in the eyes of all my contemporaries I am fighting almost like a Don Quixote—it never occurs to them that it is Christianity; indeed, they are convinced of just the opposite.
Christendom as it is now makes Christ into a complete phantom as far as existence is concerned—although they do profess that Christ was a particular human being. They have no courage to believe existentially in the ideal.
Yes, it is true, the human race has grown away from Christianity! Alas, yes, in quite the same sense as a person grows away from ideals. For the young person the ideal is the ideal, but he relates himself to it with pathos. For the older person, who has grown away from the ideal, the ideal has become something quixotic and visionary, something that does not belong in the world of actuality.
In the hour of my death I shall repeat again and again, if possible, what every word in my writings testifies to: Never, never, with a single word have I given occasion for the mistaken notion that I personally mistook myself for the ideal—but I have been convinced that my striving has served to illuminate what Christianity is.
The understanding, reflection, has taken the ideal away from people, from Christendom, and has made it into something quixotic and visionary—consequently, being a Christian must be set a whole reflection further back, being a Christian now comes to mean loving to be a Christian, striving to be one: so enormous has the ideal now become.
In reference to this, see the essay, “Armed Neutrality,” where I have paralleled this with the transition from being called σοφοί [wise men] to being called φιλóσοφοι [lovers of wisdom].81
—JP II 1781 (Pap. X1 A 646) n.d., 1849
In margin:
“Practice in Christianity” certainly should be pseudonymous.82 It is the dialectical element and would be much too strong if I brought it out personally.
So “The Sickness unto Death,” “Practice in Christianity,” “The Point of View for My Work as an Author,” and “Three Notes” belong to the year 1848.
To 1849 “From on High He Will Draw All to Himself,”83 “Armed Neutrality,” and other small things, including the one about Phister.84
Even if I wanted to publish “From on High” under my name, it is nevertheless definite that the conception of my writings finally gathers itself together in the “Discourses at the Communion on Fridays,”85 since “The Point of View,” after all, is from 1848.
N.B. And in order that “From on High,” which is somewhat polemical, not be the last work, some additional discourses for the Communion on Fridays could be written, a second series of them. One, and as good as two, are already finished, and some suggestions for a few more are in one of the new folders bookbinder Møller86 has made.
—JP VI 6487 (Pap. X1 A 678) n.d., 1849
On the Year 1848 [X2 A 66 51]
In one sense 1848 has raised me to another level. In another sense it has shattered me, that is, it has shattered me religiously, or to say it in my own language: God has run me ragged. He has let me take on a task that even trusting in him I cannot raise to its highest form; I must take it in a lower form. For this reason the matter actually has contributed inversely to my religious or further religious development. In one sense I want so much to venture; my imagination beckons and goads me, but I will simply have to agree to venture in a lower form. Without a doubt it is the most perfect and the truest thing I have written;87 but it must not be interpreted as if I am supposed to be the one who almost censoriously bursts in upon everybody else—no, I must first be brought up myself by the same thing; there perhaps is no one who is permitted to humble himself as deeply under it as I do before I am permitted to publish it. I, the author, who myself am nothing (the highest) must not be permitted to publish it under my own name,88 because the work is itself a judgment. In one way or another I first must have arranged myself in life and have admitted that I am weak like everyone else—then I can publish it. But that which tempts my imagination is to get permission to do it before I, humanly speaking, can pay the price. Quite true, the blow would then be all the more powerful, but I would also [X2 A 66 52] gain a false high position. It is poetry—and therefore my life, to my humiliation, must demonstrably express the opposite, the inferior. Or perhaps I should even be an ascetic who can live on water and bread. —And yet this mortification I would willingly submit to, if only I will be able to undertake an appointment. In a still deeper sense this is my difficulty. And there may be still greater humiliation here before it becomes possible, if it becomes possible.
Economic concerns came suddenly and all too close. I cannot bear two such disparate burdens, the hostility of the world and concern for the future, at the same time. My idea when I rented the apartment on Tornebuskegaden was to live there a half year, quietly reflecting on my life, and then seek an appointment.
Then suddenly everything was thrown into confusion. In a matter of months I was in the situation where tomorrow, perhaps, I would not own a thing but be literally in financial straits. It was a severe drain on me. My spirit reacted all the more strongly. I wrote more than ever, but more than ever like a dying man. Without question, in the context of Christian truth it certainly is the highest that has been granted to me. But in another sense it is too high for me to appropriate it right off in life and to walk in character.
This is the deeper significance of the new pseudonym, which is higher than I am myself.
Oh, I know I have not spared myself; even to the point of overstrain I have wanted to force myself to venture something rash, but I cannot do it, I cannot justify it.
[X2 A 66 53] This is how Governance continually keeps his hand on me—and governs. I had never considered getting a new pseudonym. And yet the new pseudonym—but note well that it is higher than my personal existence—precisely that is the truth of my nature, it is the expression for the limits of my nature. Otherwise I would finally become veritably more than human.—JP VI 6501 (Pap. X2 A 66) n.d., 1849
The Basic Error
in Christendom is actually that people have wanted to make all religious education Christian with the aid of the ridiculous presupposition that all people are Christians because they are baptized as children.
Just as Christianity historically entered the world after having a whole prehistoric religious development in the background, so a person, if one is going to have a decisive impression of Christianity, must first of all go through a whole religious school. Christianity is truly too spiritual for a person to begin with it right off. What discipline is presupposed in order to understand in such a way that it is truth in oneself: that sin is the only tragedy, and that Christ is a Savior only in relation to that.
In Christendom it would be most proper to build a number of chapels for the teaching of Jewish piety without ever naming the name of Christ; for many this in itself would be considerable.
This is my unswerving position: the little bit of piety in Christendom is Jewish piety (a clinging to this life, a hope and faith that God will bless them in this life, etc., so the evidence that a person is God’s friend is that things go well with him in this world), and yet they always put Christ’s name to this.—JP IV 4456 (Pap. X2 A 80) n.d., 1849
About the Completed Unpublished Writings89 and Myself [X2 A 89 69]
The difficulty in publishing anything about the authorship is and remains that, without my knowing it or knowing it positively, I really have been used, and now for the first time I understand and comprehend the whole—but then I cannot, after all, say: I. At most I can say (that is, given my scrupulous demand for the truth): This is how I now understand the writings of the past.* The flaw, again, is that if I do not do it myself, there is no one who can present it, because no one knows it the way I do. No one can explain the structure of the whole as I can.
But this is my limitation—I am a pseudonym. Fervently, incitingly, I present the ideal, and when the listener or reader is moved to tears, then I still have one job left: to say, “I am not that, my life is not like that.”90
Quite true: I think the effect would be stronger if at this moment one person stepped forward and spoke in his own name and gesticulated with his life: but perhaps Governance does not think this way—I must in truth learn that there is something higher that I perhaps am able to think but do not dare to venture.
“From on High He Will Draw All to Himself’91 must be done pseudonymously.
[X2 A 89 70] *Note. The truest statement, however, is that there is an “also,” because I have understood a part from the beginning and always understood in advance before I did it.—JP VI 6505 (Pap. X2 A 89) n.d., 1849
On “That Single Individual,” My Work as an Author, My Existing
The movement the entire authorship describes is: from the public to the single individual. It appears for the first time in the preface to Two Upbuilding Discourses—and the second time, or raised to the second power, at the most crucial moment, in the dedication to Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits. (Concerning this, see the little article, which is finished and ready, “The Accounting,” to be found with “On My Work as an Author.”)
As an esthetic author I went out of my way, as it were, to catch hold of the public—and my personal existing, including living on the streets and byways, expresses the same thing—this describes the movement: from the public to the single individual, and it ends quite consistently with my living, myself the single individual, in rural solitude in a country parish.
Well, enough of that. Even if I were not compelled for external reasons to do it, it would still be the most appropriate thing to do. Oh, but Governance always helps me—this I continually see—by looking back.—Pap. X2 A 96 n.d., 1849
With Regard to the Idea of My Life as an Author [X2 A 98 73]
This was also my idea, all in the course of time. The truth must never become an object of pity; serve it as long as you can, to the best of your ability with unconditioned recklessness; squander everything in its service—and then you can quit. Indeed, a person accomplishes much more, if so it be, by serving the truth with genuine recklessness for just one year than by botching it up and compromising it with: “out of concern for myself and the truth”—and putting a whole life into this mixture. No, it must be clear where I am serving the truth and where I am serving myself.
Of course, I have nothing against a person’s working for a living and the like—I aim to do it myself, and I by no means pass myself off as pure spirit—but it must be clear that it is not in order to serve the truth. The truth does not stand in need at all of my becoming a man of distinction and the like; it is totally indifferent to whether I live on dry bread—thus it cannot be for the sake of truth. That it should be, as the saying goes, “in order to be more [X2 A 98 74] effective by virtue of my office and position,” well, that makes a mockery of Christ and all truth-witnesses, who alone have shown how to be most effective for the truth. If despite this I still want the high office—well, then one admission, it is for my own sake.—Pap. X2 A 98 n.d., 1849
Concerning the Writings on My Work as an Author [X2 A 104 79]
They contain something that makes their publication dubious. Yet it is a view, a later view; I cannot say that I thought of it that way before. There is a poetic aspect to it. I have also put myself into carrying through my work as an author. It is certainly true that I repeat and emphasize this again and again in the books, but I still continually fear that by publishing them I may infringe upon God, whereas at times it really seems to me that I would infringe upon God by not publishing them.
Basically it is like this. My nature has been the possibility of being a writer. It is Governance who always has arranged the situations for me in such a way that they seemed to press the writing out of me, and yet almost all my situations are such that I, freely acting, brought myself into them. But the point is that I was a long way from understanding their implications until I perceived them later.
It is true that I have been willing to venture, to make a sacrifice, to expose myself to dangers; it is true that the thought of my personal guilt and the hope of possibly doing something good in return have been with me—but I must also confess that my whole life has been an indescribable joy or satisfaction, which is [X2 A 104 80] also why in praying to God I always thank him for the indescribable good he has done to me, far more than I had expected.
Fundamentally, to be an author has been my only possibility. The thought of becoming a rural pastor has always been in my mind, but the trouble is that in one sense, in an unhappy sense, I am not a human being and therefore find it very difficult to take on something like that. But even if I could have done it, I still would not have been able to do it at first, since my need to write was too great and writing satisfied me too much.
That is why I am refraining from publishing these writings; it is preferable to say too little about myself by being silent than by speaking to say too much. But it is certain and true that: I did not become an author in order to be a success in the world—oh, I hated myself when I began writing Either/Or, I can say that I wished that everybody would rise up against me. But I have so much knowledge of the religious that I cannot straightforwardly call this pure religiousness—it was a kind of intoxicated religiousness.—Pap. X2 A 104 n.d., 1849
[X2 A 106 81] About Myself as Author
Once again I have reached the point where I was last summer,92 the most intensive, the richest time I have experienced, [X2 A 106 82] where I understood myself to be what I must call a poet of the religious, not however that my personal life should express the opposite—no, I strive continually, but that I am a “poet” expresses that I do not confuse myself with the ideality.
My task was to cast Christianity into reflection, not poetically to idealize (for the essentially Christian, after all, is itself the ideal) but with poetic fervor to present the total ideality at its most ideal—always ending with: I am not that, but I strive. If the latter does not prove correct and is not true about me, then everything is cast in intellectual form and falls short.
Given the momentum of my writing a year ago I also managed to comprehend the total authorship and myself. I realized that I was a poetic reflector of Christianity with the capacity to set forth the Christian qualifications in all their ideality; I understood how in wonderful ways I had been led to this early in my life. I understood, God be praised, what I understand so unaltered that I can never thank God sufficiently for the good he has done for me, indescribably much more than I had expected. All this I understood, and the total structure of the authorship, and I put it all down in the book on my work as an author.
Then for a time I misunderstood myself, although not for long. I wanted to publish this book. The understanding of my life as an author and of myself was, if I may say so, a gift of Governance to me, which should also be a supporting point of view in going ahead in becoming more truly a Christian—and the misunderstanding was that I wanted to publish it, forgetting that this [X2 A 106 83] would be an overstepping of my limits. If I state that I am this poetic reflector and striver, then I am making myself out to be more than I say I am: in one way or another I myself come to be the ideal and claim to be that. The whole thing would then be in the realm of the interesting, and my contemporaries would then be made accomplices in my intrigue—but I have no right at all to call it that, since it is also my own development.
In the most curious ways I have been prevented from publishing. And now the turn has been made, the new pseudonym93 established. I deserve no credit whatever, because once again it seems that a Governance has helped me do the right thing.
Many times I was all set to publish the writings about myself, but—no. I was able to write them with the same calmness I customarily have in my work, but the minute I took them out with the thought of publishing them, I felt an uneasiness, a tension that I had never sensed before.
That was my boundary. To publish them would have produced a great confusion. Despite all the disclaimers in the writings, it would not have been possible to prevent my being regarded as an extraordinary Christian, instead of being only a genius; eventually I perhaps would have made the error of regarding myself as an extraordinary Christian. The truth of the matter, however, which I have learned precisely with the help of the writing, is that I am far, far from being an extraordinary Christian, that there is still an element of the poetic in me that from a Christian point of view is a minus. Publishing them would have been a bewildering poet-confusion. In one sense the understanding I arrived at elevated me to a perception of what extraordinary [X2 A 106 84] endowments had been granted to me, and how an infinitely loving Governance had been leading me from the very beginning, but the same understanding humbled me in another way by giving me to understand how far I still was from being a Christian in a stricter sense. But this very understanding was gained through the suffering of wanting to publish but not being able to do it. If I had not been prevented, if I had been permitted to storm ahead with the publishing, a confused darkness undoubtedly would have entered my soul.
If things were to take such a turn that the age would demand an explanation from me, I certainly could give it, but not until I had first asked permission to speak quite unguardedly. It is a different matter if I, so requested, explain what in this case is implicit in the matter itself, how I now understand myself, rather than what would still have become the end of it despite all my objections: to press on with my own life development transformed into my purpose.—JP VI 6511 (Pap. X2 A 106) n.d., 1849
[X2 A 124 94] Lines about Myself
If someone were to say that I as a religious author am very severe with my contemporaries, I would (yet without altogether admitting it to be so) answer: But why are you so severe with me? Consider my life as an author, my diligence, my exertions—and then the judgment is supposed to be that I am a kind of eccentric, an exaggerator—while those who carry on the most contemptible literary trade live in abundance and have power, while everyone with a finite goal is rewarded with this and in addition is regarded as earnest.
Is this not being severe with me? Well, my life is in rapport [X2 A 124 95] with ideas, and I personally feel myself to be religiously committed. Halfheartedness and blather I cannot endure; my life is either/or everywhere. If I am supposed to be an ornament for my country, well, then express it. But if everything against me is supposed to be permitted, well, then I also must express that I live in my native country as a piece of folly—and I must have the idea with me; I cannot do without the essentially Christian: ergo, I must raise the price of being a Christian.94 If wantonness and rudeness and envy are permitted to treat a literary endeavor, respectable in every regard, the way I have been treated, well, then people will have to put up with my suspicions about the right such a country has to call itself totally Christian, will have to put up with my jacking up what it is to be Christian.
I may very well suffer for it, but I will not relinquish the idea. If the pressure on me is increased, well, then I will suffer more, but I cannot relinquish the idea, and so the counter pressure that I provide will be even stronger. I find no pleasure in this situation, but with regard to the idea I cannot do otherwise, and I feel myself to be religiously committed.
Or has it become a crime for me to be an author? To take just one example. Three years ago, Concluding Postscript was published. It is the capstone to an earlier splendid literary endeavor; it is itself the fruit of one or one-and-a-half years of diligence, and diligence that I call diligence; it cost me between five and six hundred rix-dollars to publish. Sixty copies of the book were sold. It was not mentioned in one single place. On the other hand, to the delight of the rabble, I was caricatured and insulted in the Corsair, in Kjøbenhavnsposten, P. L. Møller poured insults on it and me; in Flyve-Posten, in order to incite the rabble’s ridicule, they wrote about my trousers, that they had now become too long.95
And then they want to complain that I am too severe—but the severity that is shown to me, no mention must be made of that.
—Pap. X2 A 124 n.d., 1849
The heterogeneity must definitely be maintained, that here is an author, that objectively it is not a cause but that it is a cause for which an individual has stood alone, suffered, etc. But just as it has not been understood why Concluding Postscript has a comic design—and just as the matter is thought to be improved by taking particular theses and translating them into the didactic—so it will probably end with treating me, unto new confusion, as a cause and translating everything into the objective, making it into something new, that here is a new doctrine, rather than that the new is that here is personality.…—Pap. X2 A 130 n.d., 1849
[X2 A 147 110] The Turn in the Authorship, How the New Pseudonym (Anti-Climacus) Was Introduced
My intention was to publish all the completed manuscripts in one volume,96 all under my name—and then to make a clean break.
This was a drastic idea, but I suffered indescribably in persistently wanting to cling to it; I penciled notes here and there (especially in the books about the authorship), and at the same time I continually overtaxed myself on the whole project, especially on the added point that I should existentially alter my course and yet in a way conceal that there was something false about my stepping forth in character on such a scale—by withdrawing entirely.
[X2 A 147 111] Finally it became clear to me that I definitely had to consider my future and that it was beyond my ability to manage both at once—to arrange such a production of writing and also to have financial difficulties. So I decided to lay aside the entire production that lay finished and ready until a more propitious time—and then not to write anymore and to make a move with regard to appointment.
Then the idea came to me again that it might be unjustifiable for me to let these writings just lie there, and I also became somewhat impatient when I thought of how difficult it is for me to become an officeholder, even if willing to do everything, and so I make futile visits to both Madvig and Mynster.97 Then I tackled the matter again—sent the first part of the manuscript to the printer under my name, so it would now be possible to arrange the whole project. My idea was to let actuality put the pressure on me and to get a close perspective of the matter, and I committed myself to God, that he would help me.
Meanwhile Councilor Olsen98 died, and this raised a host of difficulties—I realized also that it was rash and excessive to instigate a coup of that nature—with the result that The Sickness unto Death was made pseudonymous.
This led me to understand myself and my limitations; I gained an ingeniousness with respect to the structure of the authorship, which again is not my original idea; I realized that it was practically desperation on my part to want to venture that far out toward being a kind of apostle, and in so curious a manner that I simultaneously would break off and with the same step possibly wipe out my future.
If this had not happened, if I had let all that I had written lie [X2 A 147 112] there, I no doubt would have come back every week to the thought of carrying out that reckless idea, and I probably would have unhinged myself, for it still would not have been carried out.
Now the writing has begun to move, the pseudonym is established, I can breathe again and am released from the ghost of tension.—JP VI 6517 (Pap. X2 A 147) n.d., 1849
On My Authorship as a Totality
In a certain sense there is a problem of choice for my contemporaries: They must choose either to make the esthetic the total idea and interpret everything in that way or choose the religious. Precisely in this there is some awakening.—JP VI 6520 (Pap. X2 A 150) n.d., 1849
A New View of the Relation Pastor—Poet in the Sphere of Religion [X2 A 157 121]
Christianity has of course known very well what it wanted. It wants to be proclaimed by witnesses—that is, by persons who proclaim the teaching and also existentially express it.
The modern notion of a pastor as it is now is a complete misunderstanding. Since pastors also presumably should express the essentially Christian, they have quite rightly discovered how to relax the requirement, abolish the ideal.
What is to be done now? Yes, now we must prepare for another tactical advance.
First a detachment of poets; almost sinking under the demands of the ideal, with the glow of a certain unhappy love they set forth the ideal. Present-day pastors may now take second rank.
These religious poets must have the particular ability to do the kind of writing that helps people out into the current.
When this has happened, when a generation has grown up that from childhood on has received the pathos-filled impression of an existential expression of the ideal, the monastery and genuine witnesses of the truth will both come again.
This is how far behind the cause of Christianity is in our time.
The first and foremost task is to create pathos, with the superiority [X2 A 157 122] of intelligence, imagination, penetration, and wit to guarantee pathos for the existential, which “the understanding” has reduced to the ludicrous.
Here is my task. A young person, an utterly simple person can be used for the highest level of the existential—for that the ethical alone is the sole requirement. But when “the understanding” and the power of the understanding have triumphed in the world and made the genuinely existential almost ludicrous, then neither a young person nor a simple person is able to cut through at once. Then there must first be a maieutic, an old person in a certain sense, eminently possessing all the gifts of mind and spirit—and these he applies to create pathos for the pathos-filled life.
Any young girl can truly fall in love. But imagine an age that has sunk to such depths of commonsensicality that all the brilliant minds etc. applied their talents to making love ludicrous—then no young girl is able to cut through at once. There must only be an older person who can crush this commonsensicality and create pathos—and then, hail to thee, O youth, whoever you are—then there is a place for youth’s in a sense far inferior powers. And yet in one sense the relation is such, as it always is in the pseudonymous works, that the young person stands higher than the older one.99
Alas, my own life demonstrates this. Only now do I see where the turn must be made—now after almost overstraining myself for seven years, now when I must begin to carry a new kind of burden, concern for making ends meet. Oh, why was there no older person who related to me as I do to the youth.
Yet in a certain degree I myself still belong to the old, but I guarantee pathos.
Mynster’s100 error was not the sagacity etc. he has used. No, the error was that, beguiled by the workings of his sagacity in the world of temporality, beguiled by his power and influence, he actually let the ideal vanish. Were there in Mynster’s preaching but one thing—a constant and deep sorrow over not having been spiritual enough himself to become a martyr, I would have approved of him; I would then have said of him what I say of [X2 A 157 123] myself: He did not become a martyr, but he is able to bring forth martyrs.
No one can take what has not been given to him—and neither can I. I also am marked by having been born in Christendom, spoiled in my upbringing, etc. If I had not been brought up in Christianity, if I had stood outside Christianity, it might perhaps have the power to swing me a stage higher, if, note well, Christianity itself were represented as in its earliest times, when there was pathos in abundance.
But no one can take what has not been given to him.
How true it is to me now that all my recent productivity has actually been my personal upbringing, my humiliation. Youthfully I have dared—then it was granted to me to set forth the requirement of ideality in an eminent sense—and quite rightly I am the one who feels humbled under it and learns in a still deeper sense to resort to grace. Moreover, this which I now again have experienced even more personally has already been called to mind in the works themselves, for Anti-Climacus says in the moral to “Come Here, All You Who Labor and Are Burdened”:101 The prototype must be presented so ideally that you are humbled by it and learn to flee to the prototype, but in an entirely different sense—namely, as to the merciful one.
But all must relate themselves to the ideal; and no matter how far below and how far away I am, there must still be in my glance and in my sighing a direction that indicates that I also am related to the ideal—only in that way am I one who strives.
And then, as Anti-Climacus says: then no overrash impetuosity.
Yet how different to begin as a youth can begin, and then in the best years of his life still to have belonged to the old.
One thing, however, remains—we are still all saved by grace.
—JP VI 6521 (Pap. X2 A 157) n.d., 1849
[X2 A 163 129] The Position of Christianity at the Present Moment
... What Christianity needs for certain is traitors. Christendom has insidiously betrayed Christianity by wanting not to be truly Christian but to have the appearance of being so. Now traitors are needed.
But this concept, traitors, is dialectical. The devil also, so to speak, has his traitors, his spies, who do not attack Christianity but attack the Christians—with the express purpose of getting more and more to fall away. God, too, has his traitors: Godfearing traitors, who in unconditional obedience to him simply and sincerely present Christianity in order that for once people may get to know what Christianity is. I am sure that established Christendom regards them as traitors, since Christendom has taken illegal possession of Christianity by a colossal forgery.
Strangely enough, I always understand best afterwards. Dialectically Johannes Climacus102 is in fact so radical a defense of Christianity that to many it may seem like an attack. This book makes one feel that it is Christendom that has betrayed Christianity.
This book has an extraordinary future.
And I, the author, am in a way held up to ridicule as always. I manage to do things the entire significance of which I do not understand until later. This I have seen again and again. For that very reason I cannot become serious in the trivial sense in which serious people are serious, for I realize that I am nothing. There is an infinite power that, as it were, helps me; when I turn to it, [X2 A 163 130] I pray—this certainly is earnestness; but when I turn to myself, I almost have to laugh at the thought that I, a wretched nobody etc., seem to be so important. I cannot quite make myself intelligible to others, for whatever I write they promptly categorize as pertaining to me. In my own consciousness, where I understand the way things really hang together, at every alternate moment jest can scarcely be avoided. But it is a pious jest, for precisely in smiling at myself in my nothingness there is again an expression of devotion. To use a metaphor and example, it is as if a little miss were loved by someone whom she feels to be very superior to her intellectually. In the ordinary sense of the word this relationship does not become serious. The like-for-like that provides finite security and earnestness is lacking. She cannot help smiling at herself when she thinks of being loved by—him, and yet she feels blissful during every moment of his visit. Nor does she dare tell herself “in earnest”: He loves me, for she will say: My relationship to him is actually nothing; he would do no wrong whatsoever in leaving me this moment, for there is no relationship between us, but the relationship is blissful as long as it lasts.
But my relationship has the peculiar quality of being reflective, so that I do not see it until later—see, there I have been helped again. I take my pen, commend myself to God, work hard, etc., in short, do the best I can with the meager human means. The pen moves briskly across the paper. I feel that what I am writing is all my own. And then, long afterwards, I profoundly understand what I wrote and see that I received help.
It is easy to see that dialectically Johannes Climacus’s defense of Christianity is as radical as it can be, for dialectically the defense and the attack are within a single hair of being one.
“Johannes Climacus” was actually a contemplative piece, for when I wrote it I was contemplating the possibility of not letting myself be taken over by Christianity, even if it was my most honest intention to devote my whole life and daily diligence to [X2 A 163 131] the cause of Christianity, to do everything, to do nothing else but to expound and interpret it, even though I were to become like, be like the legendary Wandering Jew—myself not a Christian in the final and most decisive sense of the word and yet leading others to Christianity.—JP VI 6523 (Pap. X2 A 163) n.d., 1849
A line by Thomas à Kempis that perhaps could be used as a motto sometime. He says of Paul: Therefore he turned everything over to God, who knows all, and defended himself solely by means of patience and humility..... He did defend himself now and then so that the weak would not be offended by his silence.
Book III, chapter 36, para. 2, or in my little edition, p. 131.103
—JP VI 6524 (Pap. X2 A 167) n.d., 1849
[X2 A 171 136] If the writings on my work as an author are published by a pseudonymous author, it could be done this way.
see p. 41 [Pap. X2 A 192 (p. 229)].
Magister Kierkegaard’s Work as an Author
Viewed by the Author
A Poetical Attempt by A-O
Preface
Just as in a mathematical equation one factor is given and a second is to be found, so also with this poetical venture. The given is: (1) all the writings on my work as an author, which I have scrutinized very carefully; (2) Magister K.’s personal existing, which [X2 A 171 137] has been the focus of my attention for some time and which I daresay I know as fully as is possible for any third person. What is to be found is: an author-personality, an indwelling unity corresponding to the given work as an author.
I realize that work as an author such as the one given, which in all respects points to personality, requires for definitive completion that the author himself be brought in at the end. It seems to me, however, that dialectically it is really impossible for Magister K. himself to do it, since by doing it himself he dialectically breaks the dialectical structure of the entire work as an author.
Thus I now risk making this poetical venture. The author himself speaks formally in the first person, but remember that this author is not Mag. K. but my poetical creation.