Part 3

There could be no thought now of retiring to a peaceful charge in the country. That would have been fleeing from persecution. Besides, unbeknown perhaps to himself, his pugnacity was aroused. While under the influence of the "Corsair Feud" (as it is known in Danish literature) he completes the booklet "A Literary Review." This was originally intended as a purely æsthetic evaluation and appreciation of the (then anonymous) author[7] of the _Hverdagshistorier_ "Commonplace Stories" that are praised by him for their thoughtful bodying forth of a consistent view of life which--however different from his own--yet commanded his respect. He now appended a series of bitter reflections on the Present Times, paying his respects to the Press, which he calls incomparably the worst offender in furnishing people with cheap irony, in forcibly levelling out and reducing to mediocrity all those who strive to rise above it intellectually--words applicable, alas! no less to our own times. To him, however, who in a religious sense has become the captain of his soul, the becoming a butt of the Press is but a true test. Looking up, Kierkegaard sees in his own fate the usual reward accorded by mankind to the courageous souls who dare to fight for the truth, for the ideal--for Christianity, against the "masses." In a modern way, through ridicule, he was undergoing the martyrdom which the blood witnesses of old had undergone for the sake of their faith. Their task it had been to preach the Gospel among the heathen. His, he reasoned, was in nowise easier: to make clear to uncomprehending millions of so-called Christians that they were not Christians at all, that they did not even know what Christianity is: suffering and persecution, as he now recognizes, being inseparable from the truly Christian life.

First, then, the road had to be cleared, emphatically, for the truth that Christianity and "the public" are opposite terms. The collection of "Edifying Discourses in Diverse Spirits" is thus a religious parallel to the polemic in his "Review." The first part of these meditations has for its text: "The purity of the heart consists in willing one thing"--and this one thing is necessarily the good, the ideal; but only he who lives his life as the individual can possibly will the good--else it is lived in duplicity, for the world will share his aspirations, he will bid for the rewards which the bowing before the crowd can give him. In the second part, entitled "What we may learn from the Lilies of the Field and the Birds of the Air"--one of Kierkegaard's favorite texts--the greatest danger to the ethic-religious life is shown to be the uneasiness about our material welfare which insidiously haunts our thought-life, and, notwithstanding our best endeavors, renders us essentially slaves to "the crowd"; whereas it is given to man, created in the image of God, to be as self-contained, unafraid, hopeful as are (symbolically) the lily and the bird. The startlingly new development attained through his recent experiences is most evident in the third part, "The Gospel of Sufferings," in which absolute stress is laid on the imitation of Christ in the strictest sense. Only the "individual" can compass this: the narrow way to salvation must be traveled alone; and will lead to salvation only if the world is, literally, overcome in persecution and tribulation. And, on the other hand, to be happy in this world is equivalent to forfeiting salvation. Thus briefly outlined, the contents of this book would seem to be sheer monkish asceticism; but no synopsis, however full, can hope to give an idea of its lyrical pathos, its wealth of tender reflections, the great love tempering the stern severity of its teaching.

With wonderful beauty "The Deeds of Love" (_Kjerlighedens Gjerninger_) (1847) are exalted as the Christian's help and salvation against the tribulations of the world--love, not indeed of the human kind, but of man through God. "You are not concerned at all with what others do to you, but only with what you do to others; and also, with how you react to what others do to you--you are concerned, essentially, only with yourself, before God."

In rapid succession there follow "Christian Discourses"; "The Lily of the Field and the Bird of the Air"; "Sickness Unto Death" (with the sub-title "A Christian Psychological Exposition"); "Two Religious Treatises"; "The High Priest, the Publican, the Sinner"; "Three Discourses on the Occasion of Communion on Friday."

In the course of these reflections it had become increasingly clear to Kierkegaard that the self-constituted representative of Christ--the Church or, to mention only the organization he was intimately acquainted with, the Danish State Church--had succeeded in becoming a purely worldly organization whose representatives, far from striving to follow Christ, had made life quite comfortable for themselves; retort to which was presently made that by thus stressing "contemporaneousness" with its aspects of suffering and persecution, Kierkegaard had both exceeded the accepted teaching of the Church and staked the attainment of Christianity so high as to drive all existing forms of it _ad absurdum._

In his _lndövelse i Christendom_ "Preparation for a Christian Life" and the somber _Til Selvprövelse_ "For a Self-Examination" Kierkegaard returns to the attack with a powerful re-examination of the whole question as to how far modern Christianity corresponds to that of the Founder. Simply, but with grandiose power, he works out in concrete instances the conception of "contemporaneousness" gained in the "Final Postscript"; at the same time demonstrating to all who have eyes to see, the axiomatic connection between the doctrine of Propitiation and Christ's life in debasement; that Christianity consists in absolutely dying to the world; and that the Christianity which does not live up to this is but a travesty on Christianity. We may think what we please about this counsel of perfection, and judge what we may about the rather arbitrary choice of Scripture passages on which Kierkegaard builds: no serious reader, no sincere Christian can escape the searching of heart sure to follow this tremendous arraignment of humanity false to its divine leader. There is nothing more impressive in all modern literature than the gallery of "opinions" voiced by those arrayed against Christ when on earth--and now--as to what constitutes the "offense."

Kierkegaard had hesitated a long time before publishing the "Preparation for a Christian Life." Authority-loving as he was, he shrank from antagonizing the Church, as it was bound to do; and more especially, from giving offense to its primate, the venerable Bishop Mynster who had been his father's friend and spiritual adviser, to whom he had himself always looked up with admiring reverence, and whose sermons he had been in the habit of reading at all times. Also, to be sure, he was restrained by the thought, that by publishing his book he would render Christianity well-night unattainable to the weak and the simple and the afflicted who certainly were in need of the consolations of Christianity without any additional sufferings interposed--and surely no reader of his devotional works can be in doubt that he was the most tender-hearted of men. In earlier, stronger times, he imagines, he would have been made a martyr for his opinions; but was he entitled to become a blood-witness--he who realized more keenly than any one that he himself was not a Christian in the strictest sense? In his "Two Religious Treatises" he debates the question: "Is it permissible for a man to let himself be killed for the truth?"; which is answered in the negative in "About the Difference between a Genius and an Apostle"--which consists in the Apostle's speaking with authority. However, should not the truth be the most important consideration? His journal during that time offers abundant proof of the absolute earnestness with which he struggled over the question.

When Kierkegaard finally published "The Preparation for a Christian Life," the bishop was, indeed, incensed; but he did nothing. Nor did any one else venture forth. Still worse affront! Kierkegaard had said his last word, had stated his ultimatum--and it was received with indifference, it seemed. Nevertheless he decided to wait and see what effect his books would have for he hesitated to draw the last conclusions and mortally wound the old man tottering on the brink of his grave by thus attacking the Church. There followed a three years' period of silence on the part of Kierkegaard--again certainly a proof of his utter sincerity. It must be remembered, in this connection, that the very last thing Kierkegaard desired was an external reorganization, a "reform," of the Church--indeed, he firmly refused to be identified with any movement of secession, differing in this respect vitally from his contemporaries Vinet and Grundtvig who otherwise had so much in common with him. His only wish was to infuse life and inwardness into the existing forms. And far from being inferior to them in this he was here at one with the Founder and the Early Church in that he states the aim of the Christian Life to be, not to transform the existing social order, but to transcend it. For the very same reason, coupled to be sure with a pronounced aristocratic individualism, he is utterly and unreasonably indifferent, and even antagonistic, to the great social movements of his time, to the political upheavals of 1848, to the revolutionary advances of science.

As Kierkegaard now considered his career virtually concluded, he wrote (1851) a brief account "About my Activity as an Author" in which he furnishes his readers a key to its unfolding--from an æsthetic view to the religious view--which he considers his own education by Providence; and indicates it to be his special task to call attention, without authority, to the religious, the Christian life. His "Viewpoint for my Activity as an Author," published by his brother only long after his death, likewise defines the purpose of the whole "authorship," besides containing important biographical material.

At length (January, 1854) Mynster died. Even then Kierkegaard, though still on his guard, might not have felt called upon to have recourse to stronger measures if it had not been for an unfortunate sentence in the funeral sermon preached by the now famous Martensen--generally pointed out as the successor to the primacy--with whom Kierkegaard had already broken a lance or two. Martensen had declared Mynster to have been "one of the holy chain of witnesses for the truth (_sandhedsvidner_) which extends through the centuries down from the time of the Apostles." This is the provocation for which Kierkegaard had waited. "Bishop Mynster a witness for the truth"! he bursts out, "You who read this, you know well what in a Christian sense is a witness for the truth. Still, let me remind you that to be one, it is absolutely essential to suffer for the teaching of Christianity"; whereas "the truth is that Mynster was wordily-wise to a degree--was weak, pleasure-loving, and great only as a declaimer." But once more--striking proof of his circumspection and single-mindedness--he kept this harsh letter in his desk for nine months, lest its publication should interfere in the least with Martensen's appointment, or seem the outcome of personal resentment.

Martensen's reply, which forcefully enough brings out all that could be said for a milder interpretation of the Christian categories and for his predecessor, was not as respectful to the sensitive author as it ought to have been. In a number of newspaper letters of increasing violence and acerbity Kierkegaard now tried to force his obstinately silent opponent to his knees; but in vain. Filled with holy wrath at what he conceived to be a conspiracy by silence, and evasions to bring to naught the whole infinitely important matter for which he had striven, Kierkegaard finally turned agitator. He addressed himself directly to the people with the celebrated pamphlet series Öieblikket "The Present Moment" in which he opens an absolutely withering fire of invective on anything and everything connected with "the existing order" in Christendom--an agitation the like of which for revolutionary vehemence has rarely, if ever, been seen. All rites of the Church--marriage, baptism, confirmation, communion, burial--and most of all the clergy, high and low, draw the fiery bolts of his wrath and a perfect hail of fierce, cruel invective. The dominant note, though varied infinitely, is ever the same: "Whoever you may be, and whatever the life you live, my friend: by omitting to attend the public divine service--if indeed it be your habit to attend it--by omitting, to attend public divine service as now constituted (claiming as it does to represent the Christianity of the New Testament) you will escape at least one, and a great, sin in not attempting to fool God by calling that the Christianity of the New Testament which is not the Christianity of the New Testament." And he does not hesitate to use strong, even coarse, language; he even courts the reproach of blasphemy in order to render ridiculous in "Official Christianity" what to most may seem inherently, though mistakenly, a matter of highest reverence.

The swiftness and mercilessness of his attack seem to have left his contemporaries without a weapon: all they could do was to shrug their shoulders about the "fanatic," or to duck and wait dumbly until the storm had passed.

Nor did it last long. On the second of October, 1855, Kierkegaard fell unconscious in the street. He was brought to the hospital where he died on the eleventh of November, aged 42. The immense exertions of the last months had shattered his frail body. And strange: the last of his money had been used up. He had said what he thought Providence had to communicate through him. His strength was gone. His death at this moment would put the crown on his work. As he said on his death-bed: "The bomb explodes, and the conflagration will follow."

In appraising Kierkegaard's life and works it will be found true, as Hotfding says, that he can mean much even to those who do not subscribe to the beliefs so unquestioningly entertained by him. And however much they may regret that he poured his noble wine into the old bottles, they cannot fail to recognize the yeoman's service he did, both for sincere Christians in compelling them to rehearse inwardly what ever tends to become a matter of form: what it means to be a Christian; and for others, in deepening their sense of individual responsibility. In fact, every one who has once come under his influence and has wrestled with this mighty spirit will bear away some blessing. In a time when, as in our own, the crowd, society, the millions, the nation, had depressed the individual to an insignificant atom--and what is worse, in the individual's own estimation; when shallow altruistic, socializing effort thought naively that the millenium was at hand, he drove the truth home that, on the contrary, the individual is the measure of all things; that we do not live en masse; that both the terrible responsibility and the great satisfactions of life inhere in the individual. Again, more forcibly than any one else in modern times, certainly more cogently than Pascal, he demonstrated that the possibility of proof in religion is an illusion; that doubt cannot be combatted by reason, that it ever will be _credo quia impossibile._ In religion, he showed the utter incompatibility of the æsthetic and the religious life; and in Christianity, he re-stated and re-pointed the principle of ideal perfection by his unremitting insistence on contemporaneousness with Christ. It is another matter whether by so doing Kierkegaard was about to pull the pillars from underneath the great edifice of Christianity which housed both him and his enemies: seeing that he himself finally doubted whether it had ever existed apart from the Founder and, possibly, the Apostles.

Kierkegaard is not easy reading. One's first impression of crabbedness, whimsicality, abstruseness will, however, soon give way to admiration of the marvelous instrument of precision language has become in his hands. To be sure, he did not write for people who are in a hurry, nor for dullards. His closely reasoned paragraphs and, at times huge, though rhetorically faultless, periods require concentrated attention, his involutions and repetitions, handled with such incomparable virtuosity, demand an everlasting readiness of comprehension on the part of the reader. On the other hand his philosophic work is delightfully "Socratic," unconventional, and altogether "un-textbook-like." Kierkegaard himself wished that his devotional works should be read aloud. And, from a purely æsthetic point of view, it ought to be a delight for any orator to practice on the wonderful periods of e. g., "The Preparation," or of, say, the parable of the coach-horses in "Acts of the Apostles." They alone would be sufficient to place Kierkegaard in the front rank of prose writers of the nineteenth century where, both by the power of his utterance and the originality of his thought, he rightfully belongs.

In laying before an English speaking public selections from Kierkegaard's works, the translator has endeavored to give an adequate idea of the various aspects of his highly disparate works. For this purpose he has chosen a few large pieces, rather than given tidbits. He hopes to be pardoned for not having a slavish regard for Kierkegaard's very inconsequential paragraphing[8] and for breaking, with no detriment, he believes, to the thought, some excessively long paragraphs into smaller units; which will prove more restful to the eye and more encouraging to the reader. As to occasional omissions--always indicated by dots--the possessor of the complete works will readily identify them. In consonance with Kierkegaard's views on "contemporaneousness," no capitals are used in "The Preparation" when referring to Christ by pronouns.

When Kierkegaard died, his influence, like that of Socrates, was just beginning to make itself felt. The complete translation into German of all his works[9] and of many into other languages; the magnificent new edition of his works[10] and of his extraordinarily voluminous diaries,[11] now nearing completion; and the steadily increasing number of books, pamphlets, and articles from the most diverse quarters testify to his reaching a growing number of _individuals._ Below is given a list of the more important books and articles on Kierkegaard. It does not aim at completeness.

Bärthold, A. S. K., _Eine Verfassetexistenz eigner Art._ Halberstadt, 1873.

Same: _Noten zu S. K.'s Lebensgeschichte._ Halle, 1876.

Same: _Die Bedeutung der aesthetischen Schriften S. K.'s._ Halle, 1879.

Barfod, H. P. (Introduction to the first edition of the Diary.) Copenhagen, 1869.

Bohlin, Th. _S. K.'s Etiska Åskadning._ Uppsala, 1918.

Brandes, G. _S. K., En kritisk Fremstilling i Grundrids._ Copenhagen, 1877.

Same: German ed. Leipzig, 1879.

Deleuran, V. _Esquisse d'une étude sur S. K._ Thèse, University of Paris, 1897.

Höffding, H. _S. K._ Copenhagen, 1892.

Same: German edition (2nd). Stuttgart, 1902.

Hoffmann, R. _K. und die religiöse Gewissheit._ Göttingen, 1910.

Jensen, Ch. _S. K.'s religiöse Udvikling._ Aarhus, 1898.

Monrad, O. P. _S. K. Sein Leben und seine Werke._ Jena, 1909.

Münch, Ph. _Haupt und Grundgedanken der Philosophie S. K.'s._ Leipzig, 1902.

Rosenberg, P. A. _S. K., hans Liv, hans Personlighed og hans Forfatterskab._ Copenhagen, 1898.

Rudin, W. S. _K.'s Person och Författerskap. Förste Afdelningen._ Stockholm, 1880.

Schrempf, Ch. _S. K.'s Stellung zu Bibel und Dogma._ Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche, 1891, p. 179.

Same: _S. K. Ein unfreier Pionier der Freiheit._ (With a foreword by Höffding) Frankfurt, 1909.

Swenson, D. _The Anti-Intellectualism of K._ Philosophic Review, 1916, p. 567.

To my friends and colleagues, Percy M. Dawson and Howard M. Jones, I wish also in this place to express my thanks for help and criticism "in divers spirits."

[Footnote 1: Pronounced _Kerkegor._]

[Footnote 2: An interesting parallel is the story of Peter Williams, as told by George Borrow, _Lavengro_, chap. 75 ff.]

[Footnote 3: Corresponding, approximately, to our doctoral thesis.]

[Footnote 4: Not "Discourses for Edification," _cf._ the Foreword to _Atten Opbyggelige Taler_, S. V. vol. IV.]

[Footnote 5: _De Carne Christi_, chap. V, as my friend, Professor A. E. Haydon, kindly points out.]

[Footnote 6: _Cf._ Brandes, S. K. p. 157.]

[Footnote 7: Mrs. Thomasine Gyllembourg-Ehrensvärd.]

[Footnote 8: With signal exception of "The Present Moment."]

[Footnote 9: In process of publication. Jena.]

[Footnote 10: Samlede Værker. Copenhagen, 1901-1906 (14 vols). In the notes abbreviated S. V. Still another edition is preparing.]

[Footnote 11: Copenhagen, 1909 ff.]

DIAPSALMATA[1]

What is a poet? An unhappy man who conceals profound anguish in his heart, but whose lips are so fashioned that when sighs and groans pass over them they sound like beautiful music. His fate resembles that of the unhappy men who were slowly roasted by a gentle fire in the tyrant Phalaris' bull--their shrieks could not reach his ear to terrify him, to him they sounded like sweet music. And people flock about the poet and say to him: do sing again; which means, would that new sufferings tormented your soul, and: would that your lips stayed fashioned as before, for your cries would only terrify us, but your music is delightful. And the critics join them, saying: well done, thus must it be according to the laws of æsthetics. Why, to be sure, a critic resembles a poet as one pea another, the only difference being that he has no anguish in his heart and no music on his lips. Behold, therefore would I rather be a swineherd on Amager,[2] and be understood by the swine than a poet, and misunderstood by men.

In addition to my numerous other acquaintances I have still one more intimate friend--my melancholy. In the midst of pleasure, in the midst of work, he beckons to me, calls me aside, even though I remain present bodily. My melancholy is the most faithful sweetheart I have had--no wonder that I return the love!

Of all ridiculous things the most ridiculous seems to me, to be busy--to be a man who is brisk about his food and his work. Therefore, whenever I see a fly settling, in the decisive moment, on the nose of such a person of affairs; or if he is spattered with mud from a carriage which drives past him in still greater haste; or the drawbridge opens up before him; or a tile falls down and knocks him dead, then I laugh heartily. And who, indeed, could help laughing? What, I wonder, do these busy folks get done? Are they not to be classed with the woman who in her confusion about the house being on fire carried out the fire-tongs? What things of greater account, do you suppose, will they rescue from life's great conflagration?

Let others complain that the times are wicked. I complain that they are paltry; for they are without passion. The thoughts of men are thin and frail like lace, and they themselves are feeble like girl lace-makers. The thoughts of their hearts are too puny to be sinful. For a worm it might conceivably be regarded a sin to harbor thoughts such as theirs, not for a man who is formed in the image of God. Their lusts are staid and sluggish, their passions sleepy; they do their duty, these sordid minds, but permit themselves, as did the Jews, to trim the coins just the least little bit, thinking that if our Lord keep tab of them ever so carefully one might yet safely venture to fool him a bit. Fye upon them! It is therefore my soul ever returns to the Old Testament and to Shakespeare. There at least one feels that one is dealing with men and women; there one hates and loves, there one murders one's enemy and curses his issue through all generations--there one sins.