joel d. s. rasmussen --- between irony and witness: kierkegaard's poetics of faith

BETWEEN

IRONY AND WITNESS

Joel D.S. Rasmussen

KIERKEGAARD'S POETICS OF FAITH, HOPE, AND LOVE

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N E W Y O R K • L O N D O N

Copyright © 2005 by Joel David Stormo Rasmussen

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Rasmussen, Joel D. S. Between irony and witness: Kierkegaard's poetics of faith, hope, and love /Joel D.S. Rasmussen.

p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and ISBN 0-567-02841-0 (hardcover) 1. Kierkegaard, Soren, 1813-1855. 1.1

BX4827.K5R37 2005 198'.9-dc22 2005011075

Printed in the United States of America

05 06 07 08 09 10 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2

C O N T E N T S

Acknowledgments vii Introduction 1

1. The Imaginative Anticipation of the Eternal 15 The Concept of Irony 16 The Aesthetics of Irony 26 The Aesthetics of Earnestness 31 The Anticipation of the Eternal 43

2. God's Poem 55 The Romantic Ideal of "Living Poetically" and the Traditionalist Criterion of "True Art" 56 Philosophical Fragments 59

Two Teaching Models 61 A Poetical Venture 66

"My Thought Is That God Is Like a Poet" 74 Christ and Reconciliation 80

3. Kierkegaard's Figuration of Christ 85 A Hidden Allusion: The Absurd 87 The Optical Illusion: The Incognito 98 The God-Man and Human Understanding 101

4. The Imitation of Christ 107 From Classical Mimesis to Medieval Imitatio 110 Romantic Irony and the Mimetic Tradition 122 The Imitation of Christ in Practice in Christianity 131 Mimetic Refiguration and the "Decisive Place of Rest" 142

5. Between Irony and Witness 149 Witnessing Poetically 150 The Romantic Poet and the Religious Poet 156 The Religious Poet and the Divine Poet 161 The Identity of Poetry and Testimony in Christ 170 The Confession of a Strong Religious Poet 174

Select Bibliography Index

179 189

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My first encounter with Kierkegaard's thinking came to naught. I recall toiling to the end of the book and laying it aside with little appreciation, and even less inclination to begin afresh; it was perhaps not best to begin with The Sickness unto Death. I had the good fortune in my first year of doctoral work, however, to be reintroduced to Kierkegaard in the classroom of David Lamberth, and it is a testament to his gifts for teaching that his seminar on Kant and Kierkegaard precipitated an entire reorganization of my postgraduate course of study. As my academic advisor at Harvard University, his encouragement and critical engagement made my doctoral studies enjoyable "from soup to nuts," as he might say. I offer him my heartfelt thanks.

In addition to Professor Lamberth, thanks are due to a number of others who have been instrumental in bringing this project to completion. In Cambridge and Boston, Sarah Coakley, Francis Schiissler Fiorenza, Gordon Kaufman, Bob Neville, Dick Niebuhr, and Ron Thiemann have all offered helpful insights iilong the way, as have Niels Jorgen Cappelorn, Joakim Garff, and Jon Stewart in Copenhagen. Thanks are also due to the Institute of International Education, which through a comprehensive Fulbright grant made possible my research at the Soren Kierkegaard Research Centre at Copenhagen University during the 2001-2002 academic year.

During his semester as a visiting professor at Harvard in the spring of 2001, Merold Westphal offered a course on Kierkegaard that was enormously beneficial in the early stages of my thinking on this project, as was the summer seminar that C. Stephen Evans ran at Calvin College in 2000.

David and Lauren Murphy have been particularly gracious friends whose support has made a tremendous difference, and the intellectual camaraderie and friendship of Ted Bannister, Matthew Myer Boulton, Heinrich Christensen, Mark Davies, Andrew Irvine, Paul Jones, Hugo Jensen, Grace Kao, Jens Knudsen, Maury Schulte, Chad Quick, and Malcolm Young has eased many an academic ordeal. Special gratitude goes to my parents, Kathie and David Rasmussen, for a childhood filled with music and musicians; bemused as they are by my intellectual path, they can rest assured knowing that Kierkegaard's writings—no less than the works of Mozart—demand an appreciation for counterpoint. To my wife, Tanya, I give

vn

V l l l ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

thanks for the faith, hope, and love she expresses for me and for all of her neighbors; her patience has been tried by my preoccupations, but she has been true. And to our three sons—Krister Alan, William Phineas, and Eli Emil—I say, "Mange tak" for the many ways their exuberance for life enriches mine. Finally, thanks go to my grandfather, Emil Rasmussen. Long before even my first encounter with Kierkegaard's writings, he posed to me the question of fear and trembling, and as a 1 /Utheran lay preacher he also knew a few things about the genre of the edifying discourse. To his memory this book is dedicated.

I N T R O D U C T I O N

The poetizing philosopher, the philosophizing poet, is a prophet. A didactic poem should be and tends to become prophetic.

—Friedrich Schlegel, Athenaeum Fragments

The term "poetics" is vague. For Aristotle, whose fragmentary fourth-century BCE lecture script on literature has influenced almost all subsequent reflection on the nature and purpose of poetry, the tide Poetics simply denoted the set of talks on literature he delivered to the graduate students of his Lyceum.1 In connection with that usage, the term denotes any philosophical treatise on the art of poetry or critical discussion of literary theory and aesthetics. My use of "poetics" in this study is more elastic, owing largely to the influence of the early German Romantic Friedrich Schlegel (1772-1829), who famously complained, "One of two things is usually lacking in the so-called Philosophy of Art: either philosophy or art."2 Poetics in a more capacious post-Romantic sense, then, might be both literary theory and literary practice, both poetical philosophy and philosophical poetry. In this respect, the term "poetics" indicates not simply a theory of poetry but a conception of poetry that both conceives poetry in the generative, productive sense of bringing it into existence (the Greek word poiesis means "production") and also conceives of poetry theoretically (that is, it articulates a concept of poetry).

This fuller conception of poetics is particularly appropriate to the works of the self-styled "Christian poet and thinker" S0ren Kierkegaard (1813-1855).3

Kierkegaard took up the Romantic gauntlet to combine criticism and art early

1. See Gerald F. Else, introduction to Aristotle's Poetics, trans. Gerald F. Else (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1970).

2. Friedrich Schlegel, Scblegel's Lucinde and the Fragments, trans. Peter Firchow (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1971), 144; Critical Fragments, no. 12.

3. Soren Kierkegaard, Soren Kierkegaard's Journals and Papers, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978), 6.6391; Seren KierkegaardsPapirer,Xl A 281 (April 25, 1849). Citations from Journals and Papers are hereafter cited after the following model: Journals and Papers 6.6391. Citations from Papirer give volume number, entry number, and, when available, the date. Thus: PapirerXl A 281 (April 25,1849). Whenever possible I cite the new Seren Kierkegaards Skrifter instead of the older editions of Papirer and Samlede Vaerker. Because a number of volumes from this new critical edition have not yet been published, however, it is frequently necessary to refer to the older editions.

1

2 BETWEEN IRONY AND WITNESS

in his intellectual career with, among other writings, a mannered dissertation on Socratic and Romantic irony. In his final years, he affirmed that throughout his life he had been "only a poet" who, through the dialectical interplay of his aesthetic and religious writings, had advocated for a more authentic Christian witness on the part of his ostensibly Christian readers in his nominally Christian country of Denmark.4 Through the years in which Kierkegaard was active as a writer, he published an impressive succession of veronymous and pseudonymous works that, taken together, issue in what I am calling a poetics of faith, hope, and love.5

I take this name for Kierkegaard's conception of poetry (again, invoking the double meaning of "conception") from a passage in Works of Love where Kierkegaard distinguishes "the secular poet" of Romanticism from "the religious poet" he clearly understands himself to be. Whereas Romantic poets celebrate erotic love and preferential friendship, he says, the works of the religious poet "are to the Glory of God, about faith, hope, and love."6 In this study, I show how Kierkegaard's religious poetics takes shape in conversation with many of the major themes of early German Romanticism: irony, imaginative creativity, paradox, the relativization of imitation (mimesis), and erotic love. In contrast to what he regards as the "irreligious"7 character of early German Romanticism, however, Kierkegaard modifies the themes of Romanticism in order to cast his poetics "Christomorphi-cally." By this I mean to signal that Kierkegaard's Christian view of the incarnation of Cod in Christ contours his poetics in a fundamental way. That is to say, Kierkegaard's conception of his authorship and his incarnational view of God in Christ should be understood together, for just as he never articulated a "Christol-ogy" in the sense that term has for systematic theology, neither did he offer a generic "theory of poetry" in the sense that phrase has for literary criticism. Kierkegaard's poetics is a Christomorphic poetics, a tertium quid that resists conventional distinctions between theology and literature.

The temptation to upset this rare equilibrium has vexed even some of Kierkegaard's best interpreters. For example, the literary critic Louis Mackey insists, "Kierkegaard is not, in the usual acceptation of these words, a philosopher

4. Kierkegaardjoarna/s and Papers, 6.6727; Papirer, X4 A 33 (n.d., 1851). 5. Kierkegaard's remarkable literary output includes some of the most familiar titles in Western philo

sophical and theological literature, including Either/Or (1843), Fear and Trembling (1843), The Concept of Anxiety (1844), Philosophical Fragments (1844), Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments (1846), Works of Love (1847), The Sickness unto Death (1849), and Practice in Christianity (1850). In speaking of Kierkegaard's "veronymous" writings I follow Michael Strawser, who uses the term to indicate Kierkegaard's "signed writings" in distinction from those published under the name of a pseudonym. See Strawser, Both/And: Reading Kierkegaard from Irony to Edification (New York: Fordham University Press, 1997), passim.

6. Kierkegaard, Works of Love, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995), 46; Srren Kierkegaards Shifter, ed. Niels Jorgen et al., vol. 9 (Copenhagen: Gads Forlag, 2002), 53. Citations from S0ren Kierkegaard's Skrifter are hereafter cited on the following model: SKS, 9:53. Kierkegaard's triad of "faith, hope, and love" comes from the Apostle Paul's first letter to the Corinthians (1 Cor 13:13).

7. Kierkegaard, The Concept of Irony, with Continual Reference to Socrates, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989), 297; SKS, 1:330.

INTRODUCTION 3

or a theologian, but a poet."8 In explicit response to Mackey, the theologian Arnold Come responds that "Kierkegaard is primarily a theologian," and the fact that he is "also a poet . . . is precisely in the service of his being a theologian."9 In the present study, I make an end run around this quarrel because, frankly, it is unclear to me why Kierkegaard should be considered primarily a theologian rather than a poet, or vice versa. Indeed, to prioritize one over the other is to misrepresent the constitutive and teleological relationship between Kierkegaard's poetics and his incarnational view of God in Christ. What makes this relationship constitutive is the fact that this Christomorphic poetics shapes his entire authorship.10 And what makes it teleological is the fact that the ultimate goal of this Christomorphic poetics is to foster the reader's decision to become what Kierkegaard calls a "witness to the truth," that is, one who not only professes the paradoxical message about God's incarnation in Christ but who also personally strives to imitate the life of Christ as the ethical-religious "criterion and goal" for his or her own daily existence.11

To anticipate the obvious question regarding what warrants such robust claims for the Christomorphic poetics of an author who neither penned a treatise on poetics nor formalized his view of Christ into a Christology, I should here state baldly what I take to be an underlying assumption for all of Kierkegaard's work as a writer. God, Kierkegaard says, is "like a poet."12 More specifically, in Kierkegaard's incarnational view God is like a poet who, "by introducing himself into his work," fulfills creation.13 And, while Kierkegaard is explicit on this matter only in his later years (and even then demurs, saying it is "unethical" to concern oneself with such speculative matters'4), this study makes clear the ways in which

8. Louis Mackey, Kierkegaard: A Kind of Poet (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1971), ix. 9. Arnold B. Come, Kierkegaard as Theologian: Recovering My Self (Montreal; McGiU-Queen's Univer

sity Press, 1997), 3. 10. This is not always obvious when one reads certain titles (e.g., Either/Or, Fear and Trembling, Repe

tition, or Stages on Life's Way) in isolation from the rest of Kierkegaard's authorship. The relationship of such texts to the larger authorship, however, is "dialectical," such that the different embodiments of Kierkegaard's famous "stages" of life (the aesthetic, the ethical, and the religious) represented in these texts invite the reader to reflect upon his or her own existence in the light of its alternatives. On this matter, I agree fundamentally with Amy Laura Hall, who remarks that each of the seemingly non-Christian texts of Kierkegaard's authorship represents "a different false start along a wrong route" when viewed in light of the Christian ideal for human existence that animates his entire authorship (Amy Laura Hall, Kierkegaard and the Treachery of Love [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002], 3). Kierkegaard's own way of speaking about this is to say that the entire authorship is "taken into custody by the religious" (Kierkegaard, The Point of View for My Work as an Author, in The Point of View, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong [Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998], 85; Samlede Varker, ed. A. B. Drachman, J. L. Heiberg, and H. O. Lange [Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1901], 12:569. Citations from the first edition of Samlede Vterker are hereafter cited on the following model: SV1,12:569.).

11. See Kierkegaard, The Sickness unto Death, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980), 114; SV1,11:224.

12. Kierkegaard./owrrcaA and Papers, 2.1445; Papirer, XI2 A 98 (n.d., 1854). 13. Kierkegaard, Journals and Papers, 2.1391; Papirer, XI A 605 (n.d., 1849): "Generally the poet, the

artist, etc. is criticized for introducing himself into his work. But this is precisely what God does; this he does in Christ. And precisely this is Christianity. Creation is really fulfilled only when God has included himself in it. Before Christ God was included, of course, in the creation but as an invisible mark, something like the water-mark in paper. But in the Incarnation creation is fulfilled by God's including himself in it."

14. Kierkegaard, Journals and Papers, 2.1445; Papirer, XI2 A 98 (n.d., 1854).


earlier writings involve this incarnational view as well. Thus, in my reading, God's initiative in Christ is paradigmatic for Kierkegaard's many explorations of the possibility or impossibility of human fulfillment through artistic creativity. It is this Christo-poetical heart of the authorship that, through a close interpretation of a number of Kierkegaard's major works, I wish to explicate and thematize in terms of a poetics of faith, hope, and love. Since Kierkegaard never formalized the theoretical dimensions of this poetics as such, this project is unabashedly constructive. Yet because my interpretation remains close to Kierkegaard's own writings throughout, it is a constructive explication that I trust readers will agree arises from a conscientious elucidation of the texts.

Among interpreters of Kierkegaard, few have sought to elucidate the significance of his views on the nature of poetry fully, and none has focused a consideration of his poetics in terms of its Christomorphic contours. My thesis is thus at variance with others who have pursued an analysis of Kierkegaard's poetics, where the tendency has been to cast the issue rather generically in terms of aesthetics, and to treat the Christie theme as one topic among others. I have already mentioned the work of Louis Mackey, who in Kierkegaard: A Kind of Poet brings the tools of literary criticism fruitfully to bear on Kierkegaard's texts. Rather arbitrarily, however, Mackey opts to focus on the pseudonymous works and edifying discourses, thus "neglecting for the most part," as he admits, "the journals and the late writings published over his own name."ls The problem with Mackey s decision is that Kierkegaard's journals and later writings are just as much a part of Kierkegaard s literary corpus as the pseudonymous works and edifying discourses are, and the inclusion of them into one's reading of Kierkegaard makes for a much richer appreciation ot his poetics and its Christomorphic concentration. My own study of Kierkegaard is somewhat more in line with Sylvia Walsh's Living Poetically: Kierkegaard's Existential Aesthetics. Walsh's interpretation of Kierkegaard as a religious poet steers a path between opposing interpretations that view Kierkegaard as rejecting poetics on ethical-religious grounds on the one hand, and that depict him as an ironic practitioner of Romantic aestheticism on the other.1" Living Poetically thus goes a long way toward making my case for Kierkegaard's Christomorphic poetics. Walsh's work, however, mentions only in passing Kierkegaard's fundamental assumption that "God is like a poet,"17 and not at all his incarnational

15. Mackey, Kierkegaard: A Kind of Poet, xi. 16. Sylvia Walsh, Living Poetically: Kierkegaard's Existential Aesthetics (University Park: Pennsylvania

State University Press, 1994), 4. Notable among works that underscore the negative implications of Kierkegaard's critique of poetry are George Pattison, Kierkegaard: The Aesthetic and the Religious (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1992), and Murray A. Rae, Kierkegaard's Vision of the Incarnation (Oxford: Clarendon, 1997). For readings that represent Kierkegaard as a kind of Romantic ironist, see, for example, Sylviane Agacinski, Aparte: Conceptions and Deaths ofSoren Kierkegaard, trans. Kevin Newmark (Tallahassee: Florida State University Press, 1988), and the more recent work of Louis Mackey, Points of View: Readings of Kierkegaard (Tallahassee: Florida State University Press, 1986).

17. Kierkegaard, Journals and Papers, 2.1445; Papirer, XI2 A 98 (n.d., 1854). See Walsh, Living Poetically, 235: "We cannot explore here the implications of this passage for Christian theology, but it provides a suggestive metaphor for the development of a theopoetks in which creation, like the poetic productions of the poet, may be understood in aesthetic terms as a work of art by God, in and through whom everything is possible."

INTRODUCTION 5

conviction that the divine poet "fulfills" creation "by introducing himself into his work."18 By contrast, in this study I identify and explicate these assumptions as the animating commitment of Kierkegaard's poetics, and maintain that any interpretation of his writings profits from taking into account this Christo-poetical heart of the authorship.

It is not possible in this introduction to review and assess the prodigious mass of literature on Kierkegaard. For those who seek an orientation in the history of scholarly reception of Kierkegaard's writings, one place to begin is with Roger Poole's contribution to The Cambridge Companion to Kierkegaard. In "The Unknown Kierkegaard: Twentieth-Century Receptions," Poole arranges interpretations from the last hundred years into four groups, of which he characterizes two in terms of geographical region, and two in terms of the way interpreters handle Kierkegaard's pseudonymous authorship: (1) "The Danish, French, and German Reception"-, (2) "The British and American Reception"; (3) "Blunt Reading"; and (4) "The Deconstructive Turn." The story line for the first group relates how the positivist philosopher Georg Brandes torpedoed Kierkegaard's reputation at home before Martin Heidegger phenomenologized him and Jean-Paul Sartre existen-tialized him abroad. The commentary on the second group appreciatively recounts the labors of those who first made English translations of Kierkegaard's writings available, most notably Alexander Dru, Walter Lowrie, and David Swenson. Appreciation of Lowrie and company is promptly counterbalanced with a hefty load of condescension, however; when it comes to the finer points of what Kierkegaard called his method of "indirect communication," Poole says, "most of this subtlety was lost on the plain, honest mind of Walter Lowrie."19 Poole holds Lowrie's influential translations largely responsible for the impoverished awareness of Kierkegaard as a literary stylist, and represents him as the inaugurator of the "blunt reading" he describes in group three.20 "Blunt reading," Poole says,

is that kind of reading that refuses, as a matter of principle, to accord a literary status to the text; that refuses the implications of the pseudonymous technique; that misses the irony; that is ignorant of the reigning Romantic ironic conditions obtaining when Kierkegaard wrote; and that will not acknowledge, on religious grounds, that an "indirect communication" is at least partly bound in with the pathos of the lived life.21

The implication that each of the scholars lumped into this group actually reproduces all of these caricatured features is dubious. But Poole's inventory here does flag the sort of hermeneutical insensitivities I seek to avoid in this book. Nuance is not proprietary, however, and there are ways of offering subtle interpretations of

18. Kierkegaard Journals and Papers, 2.1391; Papirer,Xl A 605 (n.d., 1849). 19. Roger Poole, "The Unknown Kierkegaard: Twentieth-Century Receptions," in The Cambridge

Companion to Kierkegaard, ed. Alastair Hannay and Gordon D. Marino (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 59-60.

20. Poole, "Unknown Kierkegaard," 63. 21. Poole, "Unknown Kierkegaard," 60.


Kierkegaard that would be misfits in Poole's final grouping of interpreters who have taken "the deconstructive turn." The expressly "literary" approach of the interpreters from this fourth group (among whom Poole counts himself) emerged in reaction to the determinedly "theological" readings of those in the third,22

Poole's own major monograph, Kierkegaard: The Indirect Communication, is a remarkable piece of literary criticism in which he too, as he remarks of Louis Mackey's pioneering deconstructive readings of Kierkegaard, has imbibed "the full draught of the Derridean wisdom."23 Poole's desire to take seriously the nature of "the indirect communication" is praiseworthy, and his eighth chapter, "Theory of the Sign," relating Bertel Thorvaldsen's sculptures of Christ and the apostles in the cathedral church of Copenhagen to Kierkegaard's Discourses at the Communion on Fridays and Anti-Climacus's Practice in Christianity, is especially good reading. Since my work defends a reading of Kierkegaard's poetics that Poole's expressly antitheological reading rejects, however, it makes sense to mention here some of the ways Poole and I disagree.

The main problem appears in Poole's reading of "A First and Last Explanation," which Kierkegaard appends to Concluding Unscientific Postscript. "In the pseudonymous books," Kierkegaard here relates,

there is not a single word by me. I have no opinion about them except as a third party, no knowledge of their meaning except as a reader, not the remotest private relation to them, since it is impossible to have that to a doubly reflected communication.24

And:

Therefore, if it should occur to anyone to want to quote a particular passage from the books, it is my wish, my prayer, that he will do me the kindness of citing the respective pseudonymous author's name, not mine. . . . From the beginning, I have been well aware and am aware that my personal actuality is a constraint that the pseudonymous authors in pathos-filled willfulness might wish removed, the sooner the better, or made as insignificant as possible, and yet in turn, ironically attentive, might wish to have present as the repelling opposition.25

According to Poole, this explanation implies that "absolutely nothing said by the pseudonyms should be taken to be his [viz., Kierkegaard's] own view."26 But this is

22. For a recent example of readings of Kierkegaard "exclusively in the deconstructive mode," see Elsebet Jegstrup, ed., The New Kierkegaard (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004).

23. Poole, "Unknown Kierkegaard," 67. 24. Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments, trans. Howard V. Hong

and Edna H. Hong (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992), 626; SKS, 7:570. 25. Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, 627; SKS, 7:571. 26. Roger Poole, Kierkegaard: The Indirect Communication (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia,

1993), 162.

INTRODUCTION 7

misleading. What Kierkegaard actually says in this request for proper citation of the pseudonyms is that "in the pseudonymous books there is not a single word by me." This does not mean that "as a third party," that is, "as a reader," Kierkegaard's own views do not sometimes and in certain respects agree with those of the pseudonymous authors, just as they also often disagree. Poole's view, on the other hand, obscures the fact that many of the positions the different pseudonymous authors hold are positions that Kierkegaard at some time or another also held, and some of them are positions he continued to hold. Moreover, Poole's study runs into problems at the level of consistency. For instance, when he addresses the two works ascribed to Anti-Climacus, The Sickness unto Death and Practice in Christianity, he writes, "They are both subscribed 'edited by Soren Kierkegaard,' and that already deprives them, strictly speaking, of pseudonymous status."27 But if these two works are deprived of pseudonymous status because of Kierkegaard's subscription, then should not Kierkegaard's subscription as editor in the earlier Concluding Unscientific Postscript by Johannes Climacus deprive that work of pseudonymous status as well, strictly speaking? Poole does not acknowledge the inconsistency but, since he remarks explicitly on the fact that Postscript was also "edited by S. Kierkegaard," he should be aware of the problem. "Immediately on the title page" of Concluding Unscientific Postscript, Poole writes, "we find, for the first time ever in the 'pseudonymous' stream of texts, a mention of Kierkegaard's own name. . . . Thus already we have a puzzle. Previous pseudonymous works were not'udgiven af' (edited by) Soren Kierkegaard himself. They appeared naked in the world."28 But the real puzzle is how Poole can compound his inconsistency regarding the pseudonymous status of individual works with this erroneous assertion that this is "the first time ever in the 'pseudonymous' stream of texts" that Kierkegaard's own name is mentioned. The fact of the matter is that two years earlier, in 1844, the title page of Philosophical Fragments read:

A f , ••.. ' ' . . ? : • < •

• JOHANNES CLIMACUS *" . Udgivet ;

af : * S.KIERKEGAARD29

Thus, the publication of Postscript was not the first instance of a pseudonymous work that Kierkegaard himself edited. Moreover, this means that by Poole's own strict standard of what should count as a pseudonymous work, we would need to deprive not just The Sickness unto Death and Practice in Christianity of pseudonymous status, but Philosophical Fragments and Concluding Unscientific Postscript as

27. Poole, Kierkegaard: The Indirect Communication, 19. 28. Poole, Kierkegaard: The Indirect Communication, 140-41. "Udgiven" is a variant on "udgivet." See

SKS, 7:7. 29. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton, NJ:

Princeton University Press, 1985), 178; SKS, 4:213.


well. But that is an awfully substantial portion of Kierkegaard's pseudonymous authorship, and cannot be what Poole means by doing "Soren Kierkegaard the courtesy of reading his pseudonyms in the way he desiderated of us."30

Poole's often dazzling literary method drives his interpretation with the crop ever at the ready, lest "the theological tradition of reading, the search for 'Kierkegaard's view of X,'"31 somehow threaten to slow "the play of the supplement that is the meaning."32 There is much truth in his Heideggerian notion that "what you derive from a text will be very much what you put into it in the first place."33

But the hermeneutical circle is not a vicious one, so with some care and self-criticism a good reading can discern in a text something of what the author "put into it" as well. When the texts are Kierkegaard's, the writings themselves call for a theological dimension to one's interpretation; this is not simply something a reader brings in tow. Poole's lament over the Christomorphic character of Anti-Climacus's semiotics (see "The God-Man is a Sign" in Practice in Christianity) makes this very point:

It is in many ways unfortunate that Kierkegaard took this opportunity to develop his theory of signs, because he is working for the greater part with a sign of which there is only one asserted instance in human history: Godhead incarnated in a Galilean carpenter. If we, as modern skeptics, are to derive any benefit at all from the doctrine of the sign, we have to train ourselves in a technique of negative reading, in which it is what Kierkegaard very precisely and literally intends to mean that we have to "bracket" phe-nomenologically and consider last as a kind of special case.34

It is perhaps unnecessary to strain and say with Poole that Kierkegaard "precisely and literally intends to mean" something theological in his writings, but Poole's proposal for a "negative reading" effectively supplements the interpretation of Kierkegaard as a religious poet with a definitive focus on the figure of Christ.

The constructive reading of Kierkegaard's poetics that I propose owes more to the hermeneutics of Paul Ricoeur than to the deconstructive theory employed by Mackey and Poole. With Ricoeur, I acknowledge the deconstructive point that texts are open to an undefined range of interpretation. The writings of Kierkegaard—having been published, ignored for a time, then phenomenologized, existentialized, anthologized, and deconstructed—are distant from their original audience, from their initial situation (their Sitz im Leben), and from Kierkegaard's authorial intention. This triple "distanciation," as Ricoeur calls it, is what occasions the broad diversity of interpretations of an author like Kierkegaard, but it is also the very condition for the possibility of interpretation. The concept of distanciation

30. Poole, Kierkegaard; The Indirect Communication, 163. 31. Poole, Kierkegaard; The Indirect Communication, 12. 32. Poole, Kierkegaard: The Indirect Communication, 5. 33. Poole, "Unknown Kierkegaard," 62. 34. Poole, Kierkegaard: The Indirect Communication, 253.

INTRODUCTION 9

is thus an impediment to any one definitive reading of Kierkegaard, yet at the same time it is a means for understanding a text in terms of the social and historical context of its origin, the vicissitudes of its interpretive history, and its arguments, implications, and rhetorical organization. Since "hermeneutics is always an attempt to overcome a distance," as Ricoeur writes, "it has to use distanciation as both the obstacle and the instrument in order to reenact the initial event of discourse in a new event of discourse that will claim to be faithful and creative."35 For the interpreter sensitive to the constraints of distanciation, the anticipated yield of an interpretation both creative and faithful is not transparent insight into an author's psychological intentions, but neither is it the contrary denial of meaning.36

Rather, the goal of interpretation is an explication and understanding of the perspectives and potentials that unfold in what Ricoeur calls "the world of the text." By this phrase he means to indicate the imaginative universe proposed by a literary work that opens up "new possibilities of being-in-the-world" for the actual lives of its readers.37 The explication and understanding of these possibilities with respect to the extraordinarily rich textual world of Kierkegaard's authorship requires a complementary hermeneutical assumption to interpret the polyphony of authorial voices. Teeming with upwards of ten distinctive pseudonymous authors, in addition to his veronymous works and journals, the textual world of Kierkegaard's writings needs to be read in terms of the process of "intertextuality."38 Intertextuality in this case is the interplay between the different writings of Kierkegaard's authorship (whether by explicit reference, allusion, apposition, opposition, the redefinition of key terms, or conceptual sublimation) by which one text receives from another a dialectical extension in meaning. What Ricoeur maintains with respect to the parables of Jesus should be affirmed with respect to the narratives of Kierkegaard as well: "Together they constitute a universe of meaning in which the symbolic potentialities of one contribute, by means of their common context, to making the potentialities of another explicit."39 The operations of intertextuality are clearly discernible in Kierkegaard's writings (e.g., through "A Glance at Danish Literature" in Johannes Climacus's Postscript, through the inclusion of a communion discourse by "Magister Kierkegaard" in Anti-Climacus's Practice in Christianity, through Kierkegaard's frequent commentary on various pseudonymous authors and on his work taken together, etc.), and they create a dialectical universe of meaning that is best reconstructed in terms of a Christomorphic poetics.

35. Paul Ricoeur, Figuring the Sacred: Religion, Narrative, and Imagination, trans. David Pellauer, ed. Mark I. Wallace (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995), 38.

36. With respect to Kierkegaard, variations on the denial of meaning have been made by both Mackey ("Kierkegaard the poet of inwardness did not 'really mean anything" [Mackey, Kierkegaard: A Kind of Poet, 290]) and Poole ("The meanings that are available exist at the level of the displacements, the deferrals, and the supplements.... A new reading of Kierkegaard should discover that the aesthetic texts do not mean but are" [Poole, Kierkegaard: The Indirect Communication, 5]).

37. Ricoeur, Figuring the Sacred, 43. 38. Ricoeur, Figuring the Sacred, 148ff. Ricoeur borrows the term "intertextuality" from the French

structural school of semiotics but without enclosing himself within what he calls "structuralism's abstract combinatory devices."

39. Ricoeur, Figuring the Sacred, 157.


I begin this reconstruction by reanimating the germinal influence of early German Romanticism upon Kierkegaard's own development as a religious poet. In the first chapter, I focus on the relationship between Kierkegaard and early German Romanticism through a consideration of his dissertation for the degree of Magis-ter, entitled The Concept of Irony, and of his first major pseudonymous work, entitled Either/Or. The former work establishes Kierkegaard as an important theorist in the conversation initiated by the Romantic writer Friedrich Schlegel regarding the role of irony in literature and in life, while the latter shows Kierkegaard to be an able literary practitioner of the Romantic form of irony as well. The main point of this chapter is to show how, despite the harsh criticism of Romantic irony that Kierkegaard appropriates from his mentor Poul Martin Moller, Kierkegaard's writings manifest features that indicate his exchange with Romantic irony significantly contoured his literary imagination. My thesis here is that Kierkegaard begins to develop his distinctive religious poetics from a creative correction and recombination of both Schlegel's Romantic literary theory and Moller's traditionalist alternative to Romantic theory. What I demonstrate is that Kierkegaard's development as a religious poet begins in his theological reinterpretation of what he calls "irony's great requirement," namely, the Romantic ideal of "living poetically,"40 and then doubles back on Moller's Christian alternative to Romanticism in order to criticize the limitations of traditional theological aesthetics as well. In both Romantic poetics and the traditionalist alternative, the desired "reconciliation" between an imaginative ideal and the actual world that poetry purportedly achieves is, according to Kierkegaard, a deficient reconciliation of the imagination alone, and not a reconciliation fulfilled in concrete actuality.

In chapter 2 I extend this analysis to show how both Johannes Climacus's Philosophical Fragments and Kierkegaard's own late speculative considerations propose a Christomorphic solution to the theoretical snags that render the Romantic and the traditionalist views untenable to Kierkegaard. Here I elucidate Kierkegaard's notion of God as a divine poet, and make explicit the integral connection between his view of Christ and his conception of poetry. By envisioning God as one who is "like a poet"41 with respect to creation, and also as one who fulfills creation by "introducing himself into his work" through incarnation,42

Kierkegaard reinterprets the notion of "living poetically" from a Romantic prescription for how to live as an aesthete, to a theological paradigm for interpreting God's creativity and incarnation. In a corresponding manner, by insisting that in order to be considered "true" in the fullest sense poetry must achieve an "actual reconciliation" of the ideal and the actual (and not simply an "imaginative reconciliation"), Kierkegaard reinterprets a traditionalist notion of "true art" from a theory about what religious art "anticipates," to a vision of the divine poet's creation and redemption of the world. The theological heart of Kierkegaard's reinterpretation and harmonization of the Romantic ideal of "living poetically" and the traditionalist

40. Kierkegaard, Concept of Irony, 280; SKS, 1:316. 41. Kierkegaard,/o«ra«/.s and Papers, 2.1445; Papirer, XI2 A 98 (n.d., 1854). 42. Kierkegaard,.Journals and Papers, 2.1391; Papirer, XI A 605 (n.d., 1849).

INTRODUCTION 11

understanding of "true art," therefore, is that the reconciliation of the actual to the ideal to which poetry purportedly attests finds its fulfillment not in any human art, but in God's poem.

My third chapter illustrates how this Christomorphic poetics contours the imaginative expression of Kierkegaard's authorship through a close reading of the primary poetic guises under which two of the pseudonymous authors depict the figure of Christ: "the absurd" and "the incognito."43 While "the absurd" recurs in the writings of more than one pseudonym, Kierkegaard develops "the absurd" as a figure for the incarnation primarily in his Johannes Climacus works.44 Employed in the more usual sense of the word, meaning something irrational or foolish, "the absurd" is at the same time a cloaked metaphor that can suggest "deafness" or "silence" and can lead to what Climacus calls "the acoustical illusion" emblematic of a confused relationship to Christ. Complementary to this auditory allusion, "the incognito" is a visual trope for the divine (non)appearance in flesh developed by the pseudonymous Anti-Climacus and related to the context of an "optical illusion."45

Situated within the context of "illusion," Kierkegaard's pseudonymous authors use these figures of (not) hearing and (not) seeing—both of which frequently serve as metaphors for (mis)understanding—in order to invert the idealist relationship between human rationality and Christian faith. Johannes Climacus and Anti-Climacus seek to thwart any merely intellectualistic relationship to Christ by means of casting the doctrine of incarnation poetically in terms of the "absolute paradox." Deafened and blinded to God by sin, the argument runs, human understanding can neither properly "hear" God's Word, nor clearly "see" the logic of God's incarnation in Christ. What will become clear in this chapter is how in his attempt to reverse the rationalistic relationship between thought and faith, Kierkegaard poetizes Christian faith as something against or beyond cognition, and not reached by reflection.

Chapter 4 relates the possibility of "offense at the paradox" to an elucidation of Kierkegaard's dialectical view of the relationship between imaginative creativity and self-development according to a criterion for full selfhood. In Kierkegaardian language, self-development is most frequently expressed in the ontological language of "coming into existence" as a "subject," rather than passing one's life in the merely imaginative categories of "the aesthetic." Anti-Climacus calls imagination "the first condition for what becomes of a person"46 because imagination is the

43. Since neither of these tropes is used exclusively for Christ, an important task will be to distinguish the various ways in which they are used and to show, moreover, that they are used in a preeminent sense with reference to Christ. For example, Kierkegaard writes, "Not every absurdity is the absurd or the paradox" (Journals and Papers, 1.7; Papirer, X2 A 354 [n.d., 1850]); so too, not every incognito is constitutive-ly incognito, but in the case of Christ "it was impossible for him to be otherwise, for the God-man, this synthesis, is possible only in an incognito" {Journals and Papers, 6.6783; Papirer, X4 A 395 [n.d., 1851]). It will also be important to distinguish diversities in perspective between the different pseudonyms and Kierkegaard's journalistic perspective.

44. See Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments and Concluding Unscientific Postscript, SKS, vols. 4 and 7. 45. Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton, NJ:

Princeton University Press, 1991), 82,184; SV1,12:79,171. 46. Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, 186; SV1,12:173.


power for projecting one's life possibilities. Yet to become an existing individual one must dialectically intensify his or her existence by relating the power of imagination to the power of the will. "Will is the second and in the ultimate sense the decisive condition,"47 he says, because it is willing that brings selfhood from possibility to actual existence. Here the Christomorphic emphasis is clear in the insistence that the fullest intensification of selfhood comes from willing to imitate certain possibilities depicted in the life of Christ, rather than one's own egoistic projections.48 The preeminence of the self in Romantic poetics is thus undercut by a turn to the divine other. In this way, Kierkegaard's poetics seeks to foster a transition in the reader from cognitive "admiration" of Christ to existential "imitation." The argument of my fourth chapter thus illustrates how this emphasis on the "imitation of Christ" signals a reversal of the Romantic celebration of the ironic imagination. Whereas Romanticism heralded a new era of poetry that was to supplant the classical theory of the "mimetic" imagination with a truly innovative ironic imagination, Kierkegaard's alternative advocates an idiosyncratic synthesis of the classical (and neoclassical) theory of mimesis with the Christian ideal of imitatio Christi. In effect, what Kierkegaard accomplishes in his Christomorphic poetics is a retrieval and coordination of the mimetic tradition that folds the neglected imitatio Christi devotional practice into the unfashionable literary theory in a way that reinvigorates both for his late Romantic context. By relating poetic mimesis and existential imitatio in this fashion, chapter 4 makes evident how for Kierkegaard the value of his "poetic productions" is their imaginative "intensification" of the context of life-decisions.

In the fifth and concluding chapter, I begin with a consideration of Kierkegaard's accounts of his total authorship in On My Work as an Author and in The Point of View for My Work as an Author. I then focus attention on Kierkegaard's Works of Love, which, despite the titles of the two aforementioned works, is significantly more helpful for understanding his work as an author and his self-conception as a religious poet. Nonetheless, here as elsewhere, Kierkegaard frequently speaks disparagingly of "the poet" in a way that can be confusing given his self-description and other positive remarks about poetry. One of the contributions of this chapter, therefore, will be to disentangle Kierkegaard's seemingly contradictory statements about poetry and "the poet." Specifically, chapter 5 demonstrates that confusion dissipates upon the recognition that, in any given instance where Kierkegaard or his pseudonyms use the term "poet," any one of three distinct referents or kinds of poet might be intended: the secular Romantic poet, the religious poet, or the divine poet. Thus, by constructing a threefold typology, and by showing how these three senses of the term "poet" function within Kierkegaard's larger poetics, this

46. Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, 186; SV1,12:173. 47. Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, 186; SV1,12:173. 48. See Kierkegaard, Sickness unto Death, 113-14; SV1, 11:223-24: "the greater the conception of

Christ, the more self. Qualitatively a self is what its criterion is. That Christ is the criterion is the expression, attested by God, for the staggering reality that a self has, for only in Christ is it true that God is man's goal and criterion, or the criterion and goal."

INTRODUCTION 13

chapter makes clear the manner in which Kierkegaard as a "religious poet" distinguishes himself from the "secular poet" of Romantic irony by fostering what he considers authentic Christian "witness" in the world according to the "Word" of the divine poet embodied in Christ.

C H A P T E R O N E

TJje Imaginative Anticipation of the Eternal

What is man, that celebrated demigod! Does he not lack powers just where he needs them most? And when he soars with joy, or sinks into suffering, is he not in both cases held back and restored to dull, cold consciousness at the very moment when he longs to lose himself in the fullness of the Infinite?

—Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther

The tragedy of romanticism is that what it seizes upon is not actuality. —Kierkegaard, The Coticept of Irony

This chapter focuses on the relationship between Kierkegaard and early German Romanticism primarily through a consideration of his university dissertation, enti-ded The Concept of Irony, and of his first major pseudonymous work, entitled Either/Or. Like his mentor Poul Martin Moller before him, as well as Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Kierkegaard criticizes Romantic irony and its practitioners stridently. Unlike Moller and Hegel, however, Kierkegaard's writings manifest features that suggest his exchange with Schlegel's brand of irony significantly contoured his literary formation.1 In examining this critical interaction, I want to defend the following thesis: In The Concept of Irony and Either/Or Kierkegaard begins to develop his distinctive religious poetics from a "creative correction" and recombination of both Schlegel's Romantic literary theory and

1. In making this assertion, I do not at all mean to suggest that Kierkegaard's criticisms of Romantic irony bear exclusively upon Schlegel. In addition to the discussion of Schlegel's novel Lucinde, roughly a score of pages in The Concept of Irony are given over to consideration of the writings of Ludvig Tieck and Karl Wilhelm Ferdinand Solger. Kierkegaard's remarks regarding Schlegel in particular, however, can be seen as exemplary of his reception of Romantic irony, as evidenced by comments such as "the whole trend associated with Lucinde' (The Concept of Irony, with Continual Reference to Socrates, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong [Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press," 1989], 301; SKS, 1:334).

15


Mellers traditionalist alternative to Romantic theory.2 What I hope to show thereby is how—prior to the explicitly theological writings of Johannes Silentio, Johannes Climacus, and Anti-Climacus—Kierkegaard's development as a "poet of the religious" grows out of a constructive reading of Romanticism conceptually refined by speculative criticism and imaginatively modulated back into a more orthodox Christian life-view.

The Concept of Irony

Passing familiarity with Kierkegaard's relationship to the speculative Idealism of Hegel is so familiar among students of modern European intellectual history that the term "anti-Hegelianism" is often heard in connection with Kierkegaard's name. Despite the facile use to which that term potentially lends itself, it nevertheless indicates some level of awareness of the important lines of connection between the two thinkers.3 Less familiar but at least as important to the development of Kierkegaard's poetics is his relationship to early German Romanticism and, principally, to Friedrich Schlegel.4 Together with his brother, August Wilhelm Schlegel, Friedrich Schlegel edited and largely composed the Athenaeum, the journal in which the German answer to the question of what was ideally modern was powerfully, if unsystematically, publicized. Beginning with the appearance of the first issue of the Athenaeum in May 1798, early German Romanticism swept outward from its home in Jena like a wildfire, quickly moving through most of Germany and beyond. The established neoclassicism of eighteenth-century literary

2. The lerm "creative correction" is Harold Bloom's. See The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 6.

3. There are a number of studies of the intellectual relationships between Kierkegaard and Hegel. The positions articulated in these works span the spectrum from Niels Thulstrup's claim that "Hegel and Kierkegaard have in the main nothing in common as thinkers" (Thulstrup, Kierkegaard's Relation to Hegel, trans. George L. Stengren [Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980], 12), to Stephen Dunning's analysis of the triadic structures that give shape to many of Kierkegaard's works and on the basis of which he says, "It is possible to conclude that Kierkegaard continued to think in the Hegelian, mediating terms that he so frequently condemned" (Dunning, Kierkegaard's Dialectic of Inwardness: A Structural Analysis of the Theory of Stages [Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985], 250). Jon Stewart offers a balanced appraisal of Kierkegaard's reception of Hegel and the Danish Hegelians in Kierkegaard's Relations to Hegel Reconsidered. Stewart argues that Kierkegaard's intellectual development with respect to Hegel should be understood in terms of three distinct phases. In the first stage, beginning in 1838 and extending to 1843, Kierkegaard was "strongly and positively influenced by Hegel and Hegelian philosophy." The second stage, dating from 1843 through 1846, is characterized by "overt and aggressive criticism" of Hegelian philosophy, although most of this criticism is "directed primarily at other sources and not Hegel himself." In the final period, Kierkegaard "dropped his polemic and for one reason or another made his peace with Hegelianism" (Stewart, Kierkegaard's Relations to Hegel Reconsidered [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003], 33-34).

4. A valuable study of this interaction is Ernst Behler's essay, "Kierkegaard's The Concept of Irony with Constant Reference to Romanticism," in Kierkegaard Revisited: Proceedings from the Conference "Kierkegaardand the Meaning of Meaning It,"Copenhagen, May 5—9,1996, ed. Niels Jergen Cappelorn and Jon Stewart (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1997). Also helpful is George Pattison's "Friedrich Schlegel's Lucindc. A Case Study in the Relation of Religion to Romanticism," Scottish Journal of Theology 38 (1986): 545-64. A revised version of this essay appears in chapter 6 of Pattison's Kierkegaard, Religion, and the Nineteenth-Century Crisis of Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).

THE IMAGINATIVE ANTICIPATION OF THE ETERNAL 17

theory was largely swept aside by this dynamic movement, numbering among its nucleus Novalis (Friedrich von Hardenberg), Friedrich Schleiermacher, and Lud-vigTieck, in addition to the Schlegels. Seeking to articulate a new vision for modern literature, these figures came to emphasize, among other important themes, the modern genre of the novel. The term "Romanticism," in fact, derives from the German and French word for novel, Roman, from which Schlegel constructed the adjectival form romantisch.s Just as with Kierkegaard's writings, it is sometimes a matter of confusion to speak of some of the works of the Jena authors—most famously, Schlegel's novel Lucinde—in terms of poetry rather than prose. But in terms of Schlegelian Romanticism it is entirely appropriate to speak of poetry in novel form, and not exclusively, or even preeminently, in verse form. This is because in the wake of the transcendental turn to the subject inaugurated by Immanuel Kant and carried forward by Johann Gottlieb Fichte, poetic creativity gets cast in the expansive terms of the imaginative production of reality. Poetry, in this view, is creative invention, and the poet is "the constituting entity."6 By analogy to Fichte's transcendental philosophy, Schlegel calls Romantic poetry "a kind of poetry whose essence lies in the relation between ideal and real, and which therefore, by analogy to philosophical jargon, should be called transcendental poetry."7

In this evocative view, the human imagination, through its constituting power, produces "the producer along with the product."8 That is to say, the poet invents himself or herself along with his or her poetry.

According to Schlegel's most concise, if also notoriously ambiguous, statement of the Romantic creed:

Romantic poetry is a progressive, universal poetry. Its aim isn't merely to reunite all the separate species of poetry and put poetry in touch with philosophy and rhetoric. It tries to and should mix and fuse poetry and prose, inspiration and criticism, the poetry of art and the poetry of nature; and make poetry lively and sociable, and life and society poetical. . . . It alone is infinite, just as it alone is free; and it recognizes as its first commandment that the will of the poet can tolerate no law above itself. The romantic kind

5. See Peter Firchow, "Translator's Introduction," in Schlegel, Friedrich Schlegel's Lucinde and the Fragments, trans. Peter Firchow (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1971), 19.

6. Kierkegaard, Concept of Irony, 273; SKS, 1:310. For helpful studies on poetic imagination and the transcendental turn to the subject, see Ernst Behler, German Romantic Literary Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), Frederick C. Beiser, The Romantic Imperative: The Concept of Early German Romanticism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003), James Engell, The Creative Imagination: Enlightenment to Romanticism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981), and Richard Kearney, The Wake of Imagination: Toward a Postmodern Culture (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1988).

7. Schlegel, Schlegel's Lucinde and the Fragments, 195; Athenaeum Fragments, no. 238. 8. Schlegel, Schlegel's Lucinde and the Fragments, 195; Athenaeum Fragments, no. 238. While the

Romantic figure of the poet is almost always masculine, in this study I use inclusive terms wherever the text allows it. Schlegel, in fact, sets a precedent for this when he describes his heroine in Lucinde as a woman who has "a decided bent for the romantic," and belongs "to that part of mankind that doesn't inhabit the ordinary world but rather a world that it conceives and creates for itself" (Schlegel's Lucinde and the Fragments, 98).


of poetry is the only one that is more than a kind, that is, as it were, poetry itself: for in a certain sense all poetry is or should be romantic.9

This expansive new ideal for poetry, in which art and literature are infused with the reflective discourses of philosophy and rhetoric, in which the contrast between life and poetry is effaced in a new vision of living poetically, and in which the will of the poet recognizes no other law before it, represents "the consciousness of literary modernism," as Ernst Behler has called it.10 As such, Schlegel envisions Romantic poetry not simply in terms of individual literary works but as an unending synthetic activity combining creative invention and critical, reflective discourse in a process that is "simultaneously poetry and the poetry of poetry."11 The capstone of this "poetry of poetry"—indeed, the pinnacle from which the poet's omnipotent will expresses itself—is the Romantic concept of irony.

Irony, at its simplest level, is the rhetorical mode of speaking by which one conveys the opposite of what is actually said. One sees irony at this grade, for example, when a parent responds to a tattletale child by saying, "and surely you would never do something like that." Already at this simplest level we see, as Kierkegaard will point out in his dissertation, "a quality that permeates all irony—namely, that the phenomenon is not the essence but the opposite of the essence."12 However, in Schlegel's treatment, the concept of irony manifests itself in a new mode. "If we consider the history of irony in the European tradition as a rhetorical figure and a literary device," Behler writes, "the early Romantic period marks a turning point, and, like the theory of literature in general, shows the beginning of a modern trend that is still our own. This theory of irony, however, is almost exclusively Friedrich Schlegel's work.""

In Fragment 42 of his Critical Fragments Schlegel takes this established form of speech, which had previously had its home in oratory, and repatriates it in philosophy. "Philosophy," he says, "is the real homeland of irony, which one would like to define as logical beauty."14 The reason irony's real homeland is in philosophy, according to Schlegel, is because the original practitioner of irony was Socrates, and it was Plato who developed it in its literary form. The "logical beauty" of irony is its dialectic, the progressive alternation through thought and counterthought by which Romantic irony "surveys everything and rises infinitely above all limitations, even above its own art, virtue, or genius."15 This ironic alternation between affirmation and negation, and between enthusiasm and skepticism, is "simply another

9. Schlegel, Schlegel's Lucinde and the Fragments, \75-76;Athenaeum Fragments, no. 116. 10. Behler, German Romantic Literary Theory, 5. 11. Schlegel, Schlegel's Lucinde and the Fragments, 195; Athenaeum Fragments, no. 238. 12. Kierkegaard, Concept of Irony, 247; SKS, 1:286. 13. Behler, German Romantic Literary Theory, 141. Frederick Burwick echoes Behler's appraisal of

Schlegel's influence when he asserts, "Schlegel's various pronouncements . . . have tended to dominate critical discussion on romantic irony" (Burwick, Mimesis and Its Romantic Reflections [University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001], 162).

14. Schlegel, Schlegel's Lucinde and the Fragments, 148; Critical Fragments, no. 42. 15. Schlegel, Schlegel's Lucinde and the Fragments, 148; Critical Fragments, no. 42.


formulation for what had previously been presented as poetic reflection, as transcendental poetry, and it shows that Schlegel's notion of poetry and literature actually coincides with this dual movement in the creative mind."16 The rhythm of this dialectic, when developed in the expansive sense of "universal poetry" seen above in Schlegel's Fragment 116, can come to mean for the poet a "constant alternation of self-creation and self-annihilation."17 This thoroughgoing dialectic of irony becomes the central and identifying feature of Schlegelian Romanticism to such an extent that in the second part of The Concept of Irony Kierkegaard says the terms are interchangeable. "Throughout this whole discussion I use the terms 'irony' and 'ironist,'" Kierkegaard remarks. "I could just as well say'romanticism' and'romanticist.' Both terms say essentially the same thing."18

Schlegel's own literary exemplification of Romantic irony is found in his novel Lucinde, first published in 1799. Lucinde is a love story, but not simply a love story. In the words of one commentator, Lucinde proposes a "religion of love" in which friendship (the love of a man for another man) and passionate love (the love of a man for a woman) are the two central themes.19 Of these two forms of love, however, passionate love is unquestionably the centerpiece. The ideal presented in this "catechism of love" (as Kierkegaard sardonically calls it20) is the now familiar romantic notion that human fulfillment is to be sought in the passionate love of a member of the opposite sex. This, says George Pattison, is Schlegel's answer to the Kantian dilemma posed by the division of reality into the distinct spheres of sense and spirit, phenomena and noumena:

According to Schlegel, man and woman respectively embody the polarities of being analyzed by Kant. In true love these polarities are fused together and the one complete being which both have now become can revel in the immediate consciousness of the coinherence of the one, unchanging, infinite Being with the forms of this transitory, finite life.21

It is this reconciliation of polarities that Julius, after a series of empty love affairs, ostensibly finds in Lucinde. To Julius, Lucinde is "the most delicate lover, the most wonderful companion, and the most perfect friend."22 Admittedly, when expressed in this way it sounds today like a somewhat conventional ideal for a romantic relationship. In the early 1800s, however, this evocation of a form of love encompassing everything "from the most passionate sensuality to the most spiritual spirituality"23 undermined both the established conceptions of morality and traditional sensibilities about gender roles and the relationship between the sexes. This

16. Behler, German Romantic Literary Theory, 149. 17. Schlegel, Schlegel'sLucinde and the Fragments, 146-47; Athenaeum Fragments, no. 116. 18. Kierkegaard, Concept of Irony, 275; SKS, 1:312. !

19. Firchow, "Translator's Introduction," 24. 20. Kierkegaard, Concept of Irony, 291; SKS, 1:325. 21. Pattison, "Friedrich Schlegel's Lucinde," 546-47. 22. Schlegel, Schlegel's Lucinde and the Fragments, 71. 23. Schlegel, Schlegel's Lucinde and the Fragments, 47.


was precisely Schlegel's aim. Lucinde herself has "a decided bent for the romantic," Schlegel writes, and she belongs "to that part of mankind that doesn't inhabit the ordinary world but rather a world that it conceives and creates for itself."24

As progressive as that sounds, however, Lucinde's primary role in the novel is to enable Julius's own romantic fulfillment. Reflection upon her name makes this point. Lucinde, whose name is derived from lux, the Latin term for light, is "like Diana . . . a priestess of the night," Peter Firchow explains, and "like Diana's symbol, the moon, her illumination is indirect and by reflection, as the moon reflects the light of the sun. The moon and the woman are mirrors, are passive, and the man who loves a woman truly sees his own light and his own image reflected in her; he loves himself, Narcissus-like, in her."25 While it may often be the case that "the love of a woman leads . . . to a higher awareness of the self,"26 the perhaps unintended irony that permeates this relationship is that the phenomenon of love, that is, the ostensibly reciprocal love between Lucinde and Julius is, to use Kierkegaard's phrase, "not the essence but the opposite of the essence,"27 which turns out to be Julius's narcissism. For this reason, among others, the question of the morality of this romantic form of subjectivity becomes a central concern for Kierkegaard as he begins to formulate his university dissertation on the concept of irony.

Kierkegaard makes passing reference to Schlegel's Lucinde as early as 1835.2S

Phis is the same year in which Karl Gutzkow, a leader of the "Young Germany" movement—what Kierkegaard would later call the "crowded nursery" of Sihlcgclian Romanticism29—published the second edition of Lucinde.30

Kierkegaard's deeper exchange with Schlegelian Romanticism, however, likely began in 1837, precipitated by what he calls "a most interesting conversation" with his teacher Poul Martin Moller.31 Moller, who was regarded as "one of Denmark's greatest poets in the 19th century,"32 and who Kierkegaard considered his "first and only true mentor in the university,"33 was Professor Extraordinary at the University of Copenhagen from 1831 until his death. His philosophical reputation, it is said, stemmed from the "Socratic bent" that characterized his efforts toward popularizing education, and from his close personal engagement with students,

24. Schlegel, Schlegel's Lucinde and the Fragments, 98. 25. Firchow, "Translator's Introduction," 24. 26. Firchow, "Translator's Introduction," 24. 27. Kierkegaard, Concept of Irony, 247; SKS, 1:286. . , ' 28. Kierkegaard, SKS, 19:99. 29. Kierkegaard, Concept of Irony, 275; SKS, 1:311. 30. Interestingly, when Schlegel came to edit and publish his collected works in 1823, he did not

include Lucinde. Presumably, following his marriage, conversion to Catholicism, and a swerve toward conservatism, he no longer wished to be remembered as the author of this work. Following his death in 1829, this wish was to be frustrated by the Gutzkow edition of Lucinde. The "Young Germany" movement was A loose confederation of politically active left-wing writers including Heinrich Heine, Heinrich Laube, andTheodor Mundt.

31. "En hoist interessant Samtale." Kierkegaard, SKS, 17:225. 32. H. P. Rohde, "Poul Moller," in Bibliotecha Kierkegaardiana, vol. 10, Kierkegaard's Teachers, ed. Niels

Thulstrup and Marie Mikulova Thulstrup (Copenhagen: C. A. Reitzels Forlag, 1982), 89. 33. Alastair Hannay, Kierkegaard: A Biography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 48.


including and most notably Kierkegaard, both in and beyond the lecture hall.34

Kierkegaard's "most interesting conversation" with IVfcller, which Kierkegaard records as having to do with the concepts of irony and humor, may well have been an occasion for Moller to mention or even show Kierkegaard a draft of his short essay "Om Begrebet Ironie" ("On the Concept of Irony"). Given this essay's content, it is more than likely that it figured decisively in Kierkegaard's choice of a title for his own dissertation, On the Concept of Irony, with Continual Reference to Socrates (Om Begrebet Ironi, med stadigt hensyn til Socrates). In a vein and tone that will sound familiar to readers of Kierkegaard's dissertation, Moller writes, "According to his system, the ironist can, if he so desires, abandon himself to the crudest enjoyment of sensuality without being hampered by any moral constraints—a consequence which is recognized in Lucinde.'"35 Moller's complaint here is explicitly against Romantic irony, and most especially against Schlegel, whose Lucinde, he says, is "just as shameless as it is brilliant."36 "In particular," Moller continues, Schlegel's "irony is a consequence of the fruitless efforts to bring about a self-contained moral system simply from the standpoint of the individual. This way of proceeding is necessarily bound to end up with a loss of all content, with a moral nihilism."37 Thus, while granting Schlegel's literary brilliance, Moller contends that the problem with Romantic irony is that it entirely undermines the validity of ethical norms.38 Here is where the influence of Moller's critique of Schlegel upon Kierkegaard is most clear, for when we turn to Kierkegaard's dissertation, Miller's accusation of "shamelessness" echoes in Kierkegaard's words. "Lucinde is a very obscene book, as is well known," he writes.39 Then, recapitulating Moller's allegation of moral nihilism, Kierkegaard writes, "Lucinde is an attempt to suspend all ethics."40 He further alleges that what Lucinde advocates is the naked sensuousness in which spirit is a negated element; what it resists is the spirituality in which sensuality is an assimilated element.41

34. Peter Thielst, "Poul Martin Moller (1794-1838): Scattered Thoughts, Analysis of Affectation, Combat with Nihilism," Danish Yearbook of Philosophy 13 (1976)'. 67.

35. Poul Martin Moller, "Om Begrebet Ironie," in Efterladte Shifter, vol. 3, 2nd ed. (Copenhagen: C. A. Reitzel, 1848), 158; my translation. This essay, which is found among other Strotanker ("Scattered Thoughts") in volume 3, was not included in the first edition of Efterladte Skrifter (published from 1839 to 1843), and thus was not actually published until many years after Moller's death.

36. Moller, "Om Begrebet Ironie," 155; my translation. 37. Moller, "Om Begrebet Ironie," 156; my translation. It may seem strange to some readers that

Moller speaks of Romantic poetics in terms of a "system." Schlegel certainly never articulates a theory of irony in systematic form, but in Mailer's dissertation on immortality he argues that the systematic implications of Romantic irony can only eventuate in what he calls a "crude pantheism." See Tanker over Mue-ligheden af Beviser for Nlenneskets Udodelighed, med hensyn til den nyeste derhen harende Literatur, in Efterladte Skrifter, vol. 2 (Copenhagen: C. A.. Reitzel, 1842). This was first published in Maanedskrift for Litteratur 17 (1837): 1-72 and 422-53.

38. Moller, "Om Begrebet Ironie," 155. Moller here endorses Hegel's charge that irony is an abandonment of all endeavors in the objective world. See G. W. F. Hegel, Aesthetics; Lectures on Fine Art, trans. T. M. Knox (Oxford: Clarendon, 1975), 1:64-69.

39. Kierkegaard, Concept of Irony, 286; SKS, 1:381. 40. Kierkegaard, Concept of Irony, 289; SKS, 1:384. 41. Kierkegaard, Concept of Irony, 291. The influence of Moller on Kierkegaard has long been appreci

ated in Danish scholarship. See, for example, Gregor Malantschuk, "Soren Kierkegaard og Poul Martin


Kierkegaard's summary review of Lucinde in his dissertation The Concept of Irony is the best place to begin a consideration of his own critique of Romantic irony. In Lucinde's male protagonist, Julius, Kierkegaard sees "a personality trapped in reflection"42 where "fantasy alone" prevails.43 Citing from the novel, he relates that Julius is a young man whose manner of playing card games can be seen as characteristic of his entire life: "Playing cards with the appearance of being passionately involved and yet detached and inattentive; in one moment of feverish excitement wagering everything, and having lost that, turning away indifferendy: this was only one of the bad habits in which Julius spent his wild and stormy youth."44 According to this characterization, everything is a dalliance for Julius; he undertakes nothing in earnest. When he turns from playing cards to amorous intrigue, Julius finds an able instructor in Lisette, who, Kierkegaard relates, is "a teacher who has long been initiated into the nocturnal mysteries of love, whose public instruction Julius tries in vain to limit to private instruction for himself alone."45 Despite his acknowledgment that "the portrait of Lisette is perhaps the best executed in the whole novel," Kierkegaard nevertheless contends that its depiction of the life of sensuous indolence "lets consciousness itself evaporate into a loathsome gloaming."46 When, after skimming through a number of other romantic affairs, Julius finally meets Lucinde, the substance of the relationship shows litde difference from the others, according to Kierkegaard:

I nasmuch as this erotic liaison has no deeper foundation than a mental sen-suousness, since it has no element of resignation—in other words, since it is no marriage, since it maintains the view that passivity and vegetating are perfection—here once again ethics [S&de/ighed] is negated. Therefore, this love affair can acquire no content, in the deeper sense can have no history... . Thus it is a love without any real content, and the eternity so frequently talked about is nothing but what could be called the eternal moment of enjoyment, an infinity that is no infinity and as such is unpoetic.47

Nothing prepares the reader for this last comment. Of all the criticisms one might expect to be leveled against the highly imaginative and lyrical Lucinde, the claim that it is "unpoetic" is a rather confusing surprise. This is especially true because, as

Mailer," in Kierkegaardiana 3 (1959), 7-20, Jorgen K. Bukdahl, "Poul Martin Mellers opgar med 'nihilisme,'" in Dansk Vdsyn 45 (1965): 266-90, and Joakim Garff, SAK. Soren Aabye Kierkegaard, En biografi (Copenhagen: Gads Forlag, 2000), 78-91. In English, see Hannay, Kierkegaard: A Biography, passim, and Bruce Kirmmse, "Socrates in the Fast Lane: Kierkegaard's The Concept of Irony on the University's Ve/ocifere," in International Kierkegaard Commentary to The Concept of Irony, ed. Robert L. Perkins (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2001).

42. Kierkegaard, Concept of Irony, 293; SKS, 1:327. 43. Kierkegaard, Concept of Irony, 292n*; SKS, l:326nl. 44. Kierkegaard, Concept of Irony, 293; SKS, 1:327. See also Schlegel, Schlegel's Lucinde and the

Fragments, 77. 45. Kierkegaard, Concept of Irony, 294; SKS, 1:328. 46. Kierkegaard, Concept of Irony, 29'4; SKS, 1:328. 47. Kierkegaard, Concept of Irony, 300; SKS, 1:333.


Kierkegaard himself remarks, "irony's great requirement was to live poetically."48 In claiming that Romantic irony is unpoetic in its principal exemplification, despite the fact that it is executed "often with great talent, often very enchantingly,"49

Kierkegaard is mounting a full-scale assault on Romantic poetics. He regards the "esthetic stupefaction" that permeates "the whole ofLucinde" as indicative of what it means for the Romantic ironist to "live poetically."50 And because Kierkegaard views Lucinde as exemplary for "the whole trend associated with it,"51 when he casts the epithets of "obscene,"52 "immoral,"53 and "irreligious"54 at Lucinde, he casts them at the entire early German Romantic movement.

According to Kierkegaard, the Romantic abuse of poetry is perpetrated through a deficient understanding of the appropriate use of irony. Instead of the freewheeling form of irony espoused by Schlegel, Kierkegaard thinks irony and the corresponding concept of "living poetically" need to be recontextualized in terms of a religious life-view. In such a recontextualization, irony is "mastered" by being applied in service of a higher ethical earnestness, rather than providing merely idle diversions for the poet's fancy. Socratic irony was of a different order than Romantic irony: "Socrates arrived at the idea of the good, the beautiful, the true only as the boundary," Kierkegaard says, and from this position he was able to direct his irony at specific Athenian practices that were contradictory to the idea of the good, the beautiful, and the true as he apprehended it.55 In Romantic irony, on the other hand, there is no recognition of anything good, true, or beautiful transcending the ironic "will of the poet."56 Romantic irony is not aimed at specific institutions for specific reasons, according to Kierkegaard, but is indiscriminate and seeks to negate the intrinsic meaningfulness of any historical actuality, with no purpose in view other than the "poetic enjoyment" of the ironist. As such, Romantic ironists "seek to free themselves from the historical," as Sylvia Walsh says, "and to set in its place a self-created actuality springing from the imagination."57

Whereas Socrates achieved a hard-won position of "subjectivity" over against the established order, Romantic ironists raised subjectivity to "the second power."58 In

48. Kierkegaard, Concept of Irony, 280; SKS, 1:316. Regarding Kierkegaard's assertion about irony's "great requirement," he may have in mind some such passage as we have already seen in the Athenaeum Fragments where Schlegel writes that Romantic poetry should "make poetry lively and sociable, and life and society poetical" (Schlegel, Schlegel's Lucinde and the Fragments, 175; Athenaeum Fragments, no. 116).

49. Kierkegaard, Concept of Irony, 299; SKS, 1:332. 50. Kierkegaard, Concept of Irony, 295-96; SKS, 1:329. Except when quoting directly from the Hong

and Hong translations of Kierkegaard's works where the term "esthetic" is used, I follow the more common spelling of the term, "aesthetic." It is not possible simply to standardize the spelling by following the Hongs, since most other secondary commentators on Kierkegaard spell the term "aesthetic." It is inevitable, therefore, that both spellings will crop up regardless of my own spelling preference.

51. Kierkegaard, Concept of Irony, 301; SKS, 1:334. 52. Kierkegaard, Concept of Irony, 286; SKS, 1:321. 53. Kierkegaard, Concept of Irony, 297; SKS, 1:330. 54. Kierkegaard, Concept of Irony, 297; SKS, 1:330. •'•' ,' 55. Kierkegaard, Concept of Irony, 197; SKS, 1:243. ' . " ' • " 56. Schlegel, Schlegel's Lucinde and the Fragments, VIS; Athenaeum Fragments, no. 116. 57. Sylvia Walsh, Living Poetically: Kierkegaard's Existential Aesthetics (University Parle Pennsylvania

State University Press, 1994), 51. 58. Kierkegaard, Concept of Irony, 275; SKS, 1:311.


the wake of the transcendental shift to the subject marked by Kant, Schelling, and Fichte, Kierkegaard explains, the subjective "I" no longer struggles to distinguish itself from its objective environment but, in fact, now claims to be "the constituting entity."59 Ostensibly legitimated by the transcendental shift to the subject, the Romantic ironist "poetically composes not only himself but he poetically composes his environment also," Kierkegaard tells us.60 And with no little sarcasm he adds, "The ironist is the eternal / for which no actuality is adequate."61 This form of subjectivity is an "exaggerated" form, however, and Kierkegaard concludes that the demand of Romantic irony for a self-created actuality is "totally unjustified."62

But outright repudiation of the ideal of "living poetically" is not Kierkegaard's alternative to Romantic irony. Rather, he says, it is "precisely on poetry's behalf" that he must "register his protest" against Schlegel's view.03 Consequently, while the outlines of his alternative mode of living poetically remain vague within The Concept of Irony, it is clear that in terms of Kierkegaard's self-understanding at least, he is mounting a defense of poetry against what he takes to be its abuse by Romantic practitioners, and in the short concluding section of The Concept of Irony, he begins to sketch his own alternative to Romantic irony. In this alternative, the truth of irony is recognized not by a Romantic flight from actuality but, on the contrary, by emphasizing actuality in the appropriate degree and manner. Kierkegaard wishes neither to "deify actuality," nor to deny the importance of the Romantic longing for something higher and more perfect than historical existence."'1 Rather, he advocates a role for a controlled form of irony within a fuller religious view of life, where irony is employed to relativize life's actual, historical features us "a genuine and meaningful element in the higher actuality whose fullness the soul craves."65 Thus, irony as a controlled element within a religious life-view

59. Kierkegaard, Concept of Irony, 273; SKS, 1:310. 60. Kierkegaard, Concept of Irony, 283; SKS, 1:318. 61. Kierkegaard, Concept of Irony, 283; SKS, 1:319. 62. Kierkegaard, Concept of Irony, 275; SKS, 1:311. In connection with this assertion that Romantic

irony is "totally unjustified" in its conception of subjectivity, Kierkegaard avers that "Hegel's hostile behavior toward it is entirely in order" (Concept of Irony, 275; SKS, 1:311). Hegel's enmity toward Schlegel was at least as harsh as Moller's and Kierkegaard's, as evidenced by such comments as, "This irony was invented by Friedrich von Schlegel, and many others have babbled about it or are now babbling about it again" (Hegel, Aesthetics, 1:66). It is, in tact, sometimes argued that the basic form and content of Kierkegaard's critique of Romantic irony closely follows Hegel's critique in Aesthetics. Indeed, Kierkegaard's set definition of irony in terms of "infinite, absolute negativity" is an expression lifted from and duly attributed to Hegel (Concept of Irony, 26; SKS, 1:87 and passim; see also Hegel, Aesthetics, 1:68). Nonetheless, it would be inaccurate to say Kierkegaard's views on irony simply derive from Hegel's position (or from Moller's for that matter), and this is clear from the important role that Kierkegaard reserves for irony as a controlled element within a religious life-view. With respect to Hegel's antagonism toward Romanticism, Kierkegaard maintains that in Hegel's "one-sided attack on the post-Fichtean irony he has overlooked the truth of irony, and by his identifying all irony with this, he has done irony an injustice" (Concept of Irony, 265; SKS, 1:303). Thus, just as Kierkegaard's critique is more a correction of the Romantic interpretation of irony than a repudiation of irony, it can also be said that Kierkegaard's critique is an attempt to preserve a place for irony within a religious life-view in the face of Hegels "one-sided" repudiation (Concept of Irony,265;SKS,l:322).

63. Kierkegaard, Concept of Irony, 286-87; SKS, 1:322. 64. Kierkegaard, Concept of Irony, 328; SKS, 1:356. 65. Kierkegaard, Concept of Irony, 328; SKS, 1:357.


"disciplines" and "prunes"66 personal life, tossing out the adiaphora of historical existence while at the same time emphasizing the importance of personal integration in one's social and cultural context. Kierkegaard concedes that there is a sort of freedom in Romantic irony, but it is a negative freedom, a freedom from actuality. This is the sort of freedom with which the ironist poetically "stands above his whole environment" and even "above himself," creating imaginative worlds that, as far as Kierkegaard is concerned, amount to nothing, "because what is not true for God is true for man—out of nothing comes nothing."67 In stark contrast to the Romantic ironist's negative freedom, Kierkegaard says, an individual truly "lives poetically only when he himself is oriented and thus integrated in the age in which he lives, is positively free in the actuality to which he belongs."68 Instead of pursuing the negative freedom of unbridled imagination, controlled irony is supposed to help one achieve a positive freedom within actuality by contextualizing one's finite historical existence within the infinite. It is clear that this contextualization has a religious motive for Kierkegaard, for in its baldest formulation the reason that works composed in the vein of Schlegelian irony are called "unpoetic" is because "they are irreligious."69

Is there then a clear religious mode of living poetically that Kierkegaard enunciates as the alternative to Romantic irony? Not exactly. He does, however, make it clear that he assumes the reality of a religious mode of living poetically when he writes:

By "living poetically" irony understood something other and something more than what any sensible person who has any respect for a human being's worth, and sense for the originality in a human being, understands by this phrase. It did not take this to mean the artistic earnestness that comes to the aid of the divine in man. . . . It did not understand it to be what the pious Christian thinks of when he becomes aware that life is an upbringing, an education, which, please note, is not supposed to make him into someone completely different. . . but is specifically supposed to develop the seeds God himself has placed in man, since the Christian knows himself as that which has reality for God.70

Thus, in The Concept of Irony Kierkegaard defends a "sensible" and "Christian" view of living poetically wherein, instead of seeking Romantically to compose both oneself and one's environment, "the Christian comes to the aid of God, becomes, so to speak, his co-worker in completing the good work God himself has begun."71

Here already in the dissertation, then, Kierkegaard suggests a contrast in life-

66. Kierkegaard, Concept of Irony, 328; SKS, 1:356. 67. Kierkegaard, Concept of Irony, 281; SKS, 1:317. 68. Kierkegaard, Concept of Irony, 326; SKS, 1:354. 69. Kierkegaard, Concept of Irony, 297; SKS, 1:330. 70. Kierkegaard, Concept of Irony, 280; SKS, 1:316. 71. Kierkegaard, Concept of Irony, 280; SKS, 1:316.


philosophies that he later explores in his popularly celebrated Either/Or. In another formulation of these alternatives, Kierkegaard writes, "It is indeed one thing to compose oneself poetically; it is something else to be composed poetically."72

Viewed under the aspect of poetics, these two alternatives are the positions articulated respectively by the aesthete in the first volume of Either/Or, and by his avuncular correspondent William in the second.

The Aesthetics of Irony

Kierkegaard has little difficulty prescinding from the actual exemplifications of Romantic literature to his own characterization of the "whole trend" of Romantic irony associated with Schlegel's Lucinde. In some passages in his dissertation, one suspects the depiction is more Kierkegaard's imaginative caricature of irony than a careful characterization of the work of the ironists themselves. Ernst Behler argues for this position: "Without exaggeration Kierkegaard's depiction of the romantic ironist can be characterized as a literary fantasizing and imagining of the ironic form of the conduct of life. Irony is personified as if it were an active and planning person, and images are interwoven that find no reference in romanticism."73 At its extreme, Behler concludes, "Kierkegaard is no longer interested in a historically correct portrait of romantic irony, but has begun to sketch out the aesthetic mode of life for the first part of Either/Or."74 Given that The Concept of Irony is an academic dissertation, and as such is expected to be more concerned with accurately explicating the historical theory and instantiations of Romantic irony than with "literary fantasizing," Behler is right to criticize Kierkegaard on these grounds. But he is not the first to do so, for in 1841 a number of the faculty readers of Kierkegaard's dissertation also criticized his "free and easy carelessness of composition" (J. N. Madvig), his "various excesses of the sarcastic or mocking sort" (F. C. Petersen), and his seeming "inability to resist the internal temptation to leap over the boundary that separates both genuine irony and reasonable satire from the unrefreshing territory of vulgar exaggeration" (P. O. Brondsted).75 However, as Behler states elsewhere, many of the early German Romantics themselves "showed little interest in historical frameworks of philosophy, the content of philosophical knowledge, the results of philosophizing, or systems of thought," and they arrived at their own literary medium of reflection "independent of historical relationships."76 There is a sense, therefore, in which Kierkegaard's productive reading of Romantic irony in The Concept of Irony is true to the spirit of Romanticism, even if inappropriate in an academic dissertation. But if the academic parameters of the dissertation are something of a mismatch for Kierkegaard's imaginative rendering

72. Kierkegaard, Concept of Irony, 280; SKS, 1:316. 73. Behler, "Kierkegaard's Concept of Irony" 27. 74. Behler, "Kierkegaard's Concept of Irony," 27. 75. See Bruce H. Kirmmse, Encounters with Kierkegaard: A Life as Seen by His Contemporaries (Prince

ton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996), 31-32. 76. Behler, German Romantic Literary Theory, 4.


of stereotypical Romantic irony, then the genre of the novel in which he wrote Either/Or casts the critique of irony in Romanticism's native form.

Whereas in The Concept of Irony Kierkegaard had attacked Romantic irony and Schlegel's Lucinde directly, in Either/Or he launches an indirect attack. Either/Or is published by its pseudonymous editor, Victor Eremita, who tells us that he has found the contents of the work in a secret compartment of a writing desk he purchased from a secondhand dealer. Eremita organizes these papers into two volumes, the first of which contains the reflections and essays of an unnamed aesthete, designated simply by "A," and the second of which contains "two long studies... in the form of letters" to "A" written by a individual designated by "B."77

While the letters of B (also known to be a judge named William) "order themselves easily and naturally,"78 the organizational disarray of As papers call to mind Kierkegaard's earlier description of Lucinde: "The confusion and disorder that Lucinde wishes to bring about in all that is established is illustrated in the novel itself by the most complete confusion in construction."79 Clearly, in its apparently arbitrary jumble of the genres of aphorism, essay, diary, and letter, as well as many of the ideas expressed through these genres, the first volume of Either/Or mimics Lucinde, even while it arguably surpasses Lucinde in literary virtuosity.

What I want to show in this section is that the aesthetics of the first volume of Either/Or represents an ironic revision of Romantic irony by which Kierkegaard seeks to run Romanticism aground on what he takes to be its own ethical nihilism. In the aesthete's cautionary counsel against marriage, friendship, and vocation, for example,80 it is easy to recognize an extrapolation of the ironic detachment and cultivated arbitrariness Schlegel commends when he writes, "Even a friendly conversation which cannot be broken off at any moment, completely arbitrarily, has something intolerant about it."81 The ironic key to being able to avoid social entanglements, Schlegel says, is the ability to "attune" oneself "quite arbitrarily, just as one tunes an instrument, at any time and to any degree."82 But whereas Schlegel advocates the ability to tune oneself, in Kierkegaard's reinterpretation we find a new application of this technique in the "tuning" of another. In order to make this point, I want to begin not at the beginning of the volume, but at its culmination in "The Seducer's Diary." I trust that, given the aesthete's advocacy of "arbitrariness" in seeing only "the middle of a play," or reading first "the third section of a book," my beginning with the end of volume 1 is not unfaithful to the spirit of the work.83

"The Seducer's Diary" is an eroticist's journal of which A claims to be merely the editor. This diary recounts the cynical scheming of one Johannes, whose life, A

77. Kierkegaard, Either/Or, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987), 1:7; SKS, 2:15.

78. Kierkegaard, Either/Or, 1:10; SKS, 2:18. 79. Kierkegaard, Concept of Irony, 292; SKS, 1:326. 80. See Kierkegaard, "The Rotation of Crops: A Venture in a Theory of Social Prudence," in

Kierkegaard, Either/Or 1:295-98; SKS, 2:271-89. 81. Schlegel, Schlegel's Lucinde and the Fragments, 147; Critical Fragments, no. 37. 82. Schlegel, Schlegel's Lucinde and the Fragments, 149; Critical Fragments, no. 55. 83. Kierkegaard, Either/Or, 1:299; SKS, 2:288.


tells us, "has been an attempt to accomplish the task of living poetically."84 Whereas Kierkegaard alleged in The Concept of Irony that Romantic irony recognized no moral limitations in attuning oneself, in "The Seducer's Diary" he imaginatively elaborates the implications of that charge by having Johannes "tune" Cordelia, his teenaged instrument of aesthetic enjoyment. To his diary Johannes remarks:

He who does not know how to encircle a girl so that she loses sight of everything he does not want her to see, he who does not know how to poetize himself into a girl so that it is from her that everything proceeds as he wants it—he is and remains a bungler. . . . I am an esthete, an eroticist, who has grasped the nature and the point of love, who believes in love and knows it from the ground up, and I reserve for myself only the private opinion that no love affair should last more than half a year at most and that any relationship is over as soon as one has enjoyed the ultimate.85

With that ultimate enjoyment in view, Johannes plays Cordelia like a violin, contriving first to win for himself her trust, then her affection, and eventually her acceptance of engagement. Once engaged, however, Johannes proceeds to cultivate in Cordelia the view that marriage, when considered aesthetically, is too socially conventional for lovers of their sophistication. Applying his personal theory that "to poetize oneself into a girl is an art; to poetize oneself out of her is a masterstroke,"8'' the manipulative Johannes sweetens his billets-doux with phrases such as, "When you enfold me in your embrace, then we shall need no ring to remind us that we belong to each other."87 Seduced into this Romantic view, Cordelia herself breaks the engagement "in order to soar into a higher sphere," as Johannes writes, with the clear implication that she is "soaring" from the sphere of the merely conventional into that of the aesthetic.88 But to his private journal

84. Kierkegaard, Either/Or, 1:304; SKS, 2:294. Within volume 1 of Either/Or, Johannes occupies the "reflective" pole of the contrast between the "reflective seducer" and the "immediate erotic," represented by the figure of Don Juan. As Eremita writes in his preface, "The idea of the seducer is suggested in the piece on the immediate erotic [i.e., "The Immediate Erotic Stages or The Musical-Erotic," 45-135] as well as in "Silhouettes" [165-215]—namely, that the counterpart to Don Giovanni must be a reflective seducer in the category of the interesting, where the issue therefore is not how many he seduces but how" (Either/Or, 1:9; SKS, 2:17). One passage in particular from The Concept of Irony makes it clear that Kierkegaard found at least part of the inspiration for this contrast between the immediate erotic and the reflective erotic in Schlegel's LucinJe. Regarding the male protagonist of Lucinde, Kierkegaard writes, "Julius is no Don Juan (who by means of his sensate genius as a necromancer casts a spell on everything; who acts with an immediate authority; who shows that he is lord and master, an authority that words cannot describe but that can be suggested by a few absolutely imperative bow strokes by Mozart; who does not seduce but by whom all would like to be seduced, and if their innocence were restored to them would want to be seduced again; a daimon who has no past, no history of development, but like Minerva immediately steps forward fully armed) but a personality trapped in reflection who develops only in a successive process" {Concept of Irony, 293; SKS, 1:327). This idea of the reflective counterpart to Don Juan, for whom the issue "is not how many he seduces but how," Kierkegaard gets from his reading of Schlegel.

85. Kierkegaard, Either/Or, 1:368; SKS, 2:356-57. 86. Kierkegaard, Either/Or, 1:368; SKS, 2:357. 87. Kierkegaard, Either/Or, 1:440: SKS, 2:427. 88. Kierkegaard, Either/Or, 1:438; SKS, 2:425.

THE IMAGINATIVE ANTICIPATION OF THE ETERNAL * 29

Johannes acknowledges that, for his part, "I do not care at all to possess the girl in the external sense but wish to enjoy her artistically."89

After Cordelia breaks the engagement, and with that society's approval and blessing of their relationship, Johannes arranges a rendezvous in order to complete his seduction of Cordelia. As he awaits the carriage that will convey him to the appointed country manor, he comments to his diary, "Everything is a metaphor; I myself am a myth about myself, for is it not as a myth that I hasten to this tryst? Who I am is irrelevant; everything finite and temporal is forgotten; only the eternal remains, the power of erotic love, its longing, its bliss."90 Johannes concentrates so much into "the ultimate"91 he is anticipating that, indeed, for him "the moment is everything, and in the moment woman is everything; the consequences I do not understand."92 Yet in a sense, even before the carriage arrives Johannes is beyond the moment, for in his anticipatory reverie he blinks past the moment and begins to write in the perfect tense, "She was beautiful by nature. I thank you, marvelous nature! Like a mother, you have watched over her. Thank you for your solicitude. Unspoiled she was."93 But if the moment is everything, how can it be that Johannes runs past it so quickly in anticipation? One gets the distinct feeling that the "aesthetic moment" evoked here matches the "erotic liaison" criticized in The Concept of Irony: "It is a love without any real content, and the eternity so frequently talked about is nothing but what could be called the eternal moment of enjoyment, an infinity that is no infinity and as such is unpoetic."94 Indeed, Johannes's subsequent and final diary entry from the morning after makes one hope that if there is such a thing as "living poetically," then Johannes really does not understand it at all. "Now it is finished, and I never want to see her again," he writes. "I do not want to be reminded of my relationship with her; she has lost her fragrance."95

Nothing in Schlegel's celebration of the erotic, of "the loveliest situation in the world,"96 comes close to the sardonic extreme of "The Seducer's Diary." Yet Kierkegaard's point is that because the Romantic "will of the poet" recognizes no moral constraint above itself, nothing prevents such an extreme either. Kierkegaard's depiction of the reflective seducer's idea of living poetically serves to repel the reader and expose what he takes to be the Romantic "religion of love" as a nihilistic narcissism. This representation of what "living poetically" means within the aesthetic sphere is completely dehumanizing, and one of the first of the Diapsalmata in Either/Or is telling on this point. "There are, as is known," A writes, "insects that die in the moment of fertilization. So it is with all joy: life's highest, most splendid moment of enjoyment is accompanied by death."97 For all

89. Kierkegaard, Either/Or, 1:372; SKS, 2:360. 90. Kierkegaard, Either/Or, 1:444; SKS, 2:431. 91. Kierkegaard, Either/Or, 1:368; SKS, 2:357. 92. Kierkegaard, Either/Or, 1:433; SKS, 2:420. 93. Kierkegaard, Either/Or, 1:444-45; SKS, 2:431. 94. Kierkegaard, Concept of Irony, 300; SKS, 2:333. 95. Kierkegaard, Either/Or, 1:445; SKS, 2:432. 96. Schlegel, Schlegel's Lucinde and the Fragments, 46. 97. Kierkegaard, Either/Or, 1:20; SKS, 2:28. The Diapsalmata are die collection of aphorisms that com

prise the first section of A's papers.


its enchanting wit and literary pyrotechnics, the view expounded in the first volume of Either/Or is nihilistic, a philosophy of spiritual death that likens its judgment regarding the highest in the sphere of the human spirit unto the reproductive life cycle of insects. In his diary, however, Johannes does not even seem to recognize his spiritual emptiness. He scribbles on idly, reflecting upon what would make for an "interesting" epilogue to a seduction.98 But how is it that someone who has devoted so much time and energy to the pursuit of a fleeting nothing does not despair in any obvious way?

In his dissertation, Kierkegaard maintains that even though one's entire world may become essentially meaningless, "the ironic subject does not become vain in his own eyes but rescues his own vanity."99 The manner by which the ironist does this is rather simple. It is accomplished by playing with one's world in the way Johannes plays with Cordelia's affections. When all the substantial categories of family, neighbor, state, and the like fall by the wayside for the ironist, all that remains is an "ironic nothing," says Kierkegaard, a "dead silence in which irony walks again and haunts (the latter word taken altogether ambiguously)."100 In English, Kierkegaard's parenthetical comment here regarding the ambiguity of the term "haunts" makes little sense, but the Danish term that it translates is a conjugation of the infinitive at spege, meaning both "to haunt" and "to jest." Among A's papers in Either/Or are three essays for which this description of the consequences of Romanticism as a spiritually dead "ironic nothing" that both "haunts" and "jests" is especially apt. "The Tragic in Ancient Drama Reflected in the Tragic in Modern I )rama," "Silhouettes," and "The Unhappiest One" are all lectures prepared to be delivered before the Symparanekromenoi, a name translated as "Fellowship of the 1 )ead," or perhaps as "Society of Buried Lives."101

Of these three essays, "The Unhappiest One" reveals most graphically what Kierkegaard means when he speaks of the phantomlike play of the ironist. It begins with the following passage:

As is well known, there is said to be a grave somewhere in England that is distinguished not by a magnificent monument or a mournful setting but by a short inscription—"The Unhappiest One." It is said that the grave was opened, but no trace of a corpse was found.... The grave was empty! Has he perhaps risen from the dead; does he perhaps want to mock the poet's words: "—in the grave there is peace / Its silent occupant does not know

98. Kierkegaard, Either/Or, 1:445; SKS, 2:432. Kierkegaard's inspiration to have the seducer operate "in the category of the interesting" (Either/Or, 1:9; SKS, 2:17) is very likely inspired by Schlegel's poetics as well. In his extended essay On the Study of Greek Poetry Schlegel asserts, "Of the modern poets, only a few exceptions can be evaluated according to the degree to which they approximate the objective and beautiful. On the whole, however, the interesting remains the actual modern standard of aesthetic worth" (Friedrich Schlegel, On the Study of Greek Poetry, trans. Stuart Barnett [Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001], 83).

99. Kierkegaard, Concept of Irony, 258; SKS, 1:296. 100. Kierkegaard, Concept of Irony, 258; SKS, 1:296; "det ironiske Intet endelig er den Dodstilhed, i

hvilken Ironien gaaer igjen og spoger (det sidste Ord taget aldeles tvetydigt)." 101. Kierkegaard, Either/Or, 1:137; SKS, 2:137.


sorrow." Did he find no rest, not even in the grave; is he perhaps still fitfully wandering over the earth; has he left hi s house, his home, leaving behind only his address! Or has he still not b e e n found If he has not been found, then let us like crusaders, dear Symparanekromenoi, commence a pilgrimage—not to that sacred sepulcher i n th e happy East, but to that mournful grave in the unhappy West. At that empty grave, we shall seek him, the unhappiest one, certain of finding him, for just as the longing of the believers yearns for the sacred sepulcher, so the unhappy ones are drawn toward the West to that empty grave, and each one is absorbed in the thought that it is destined for him.102

Here, in this passage equally jesting and haunting, Kierkegaard's charge that Romantic irony is "irreligious" finds its fullest development. The imagery of anti-Christ is conspicuous: "See, the stone is rolled away; the shade of the grave awaits you with its delicious coolness."103 The empty grave of the unhappiest one is an empty grave that suggests not the Christian belief in resurrection but, rather, a belief in a living hell everlasting. Thus, within Either/Or the dialectic of aesthetic irony swings madly from anticipation of the "eternal moment" of the erotic to a longing for death that will put an end to life's V3Ln-lty_ The anticipated moments of enjoyment grow loathsome even before they arrive, and the literary quicksilver of aesthetic play devolves into a kind of madness. "Farewell," the aesthete bids the imagined "unhappiest one," and then, almost as an afterthought, continues to himself:

But what am I saying—"the unhappiest"? I o u g h t to say "the happiest," for this is indeed precisely a gift of fortune that no one can give himself. See, language breaks down, and thought is confused, for who indeed is the happiest but the unhappiest and who the Unhappiest but the happiest, and what is life but madness, and faith but foolishness, and hope but a staving off of the evil day, and love but vinegar in the wound.104

Without a doubt, it is with just such a passage in mind that Judge William mockingly calls A's aestheticism a kind of mediation of the contradictions in a "higher lunacy."105 It is from this ironic "lunacy" that William sets about to rescue his young friend.

The Aesthetics of Earnestness

In the second volume of Either/Or we come to the two letters of William, the "B" who corresponds with the "A" of the first volume. William is a judge, a married

102. Kierkegaard, Either/Or, 1:219-20; SKS, 2:213-14. 103. Kierkegaard, Either/Or, 1:230; SKS, 2:222. ,. ; 104. Kierkegaard, Either/Or, 1:230; SKS, 2:223. 105. Kierkegaard, Either/Or, 2:170; SKS, 3:166.


man, a Christian, and a longiloquent letter writer. While there is a distance of only seven years between the ages of William and A,106 William clearly views himself as eternally wiser than A, even if he is not nearly so droll. Acknowledging A's own self-description, William writes, "As you put it with such self-satisfied pretentiousness, you are never so ungallant as to show up without bringing with you a small, fragrant, freshly plucked bouquet of wit."107 Indeed, he admits freely, "I actually at times with a certain reluctance feel that you dazzle me, that I let myself be carried away into the same esthetic-intellectual intoxication in which you live."108 But on the other hand he asserts, and this is the crucial point for William, "What you lack, altogether lack, is faith."109 While A may believe he can "play shuttlecock with all of existence," if he lacks the "God-relationship" his creation and recreation of himself and his environment will only ever be superficial and volatile, as William will attempt to show.110 Chastising A with an avuncular concern for this superficiality, William comments pointedly, "A smile from a pretty girl in an interesting situation, a stolen glance, that is what you are hunting for, that is a motif for your aimless fantasy."111

In the first of his two letters, to which Eremita gives the title "The Esthetic Validity of Marriage," William undertakes to persuade A that the fleeting "moment" of aesthetic enjoyment can only be stabilized by seeking it within the context of historical commitments and obligations. In a response that directly contradicts A's and Johannes's view of marriage as an unpoetic wet blanket, William fires back:

It is not true that marriage is an exceedingly respectable but tiresomely moral role and that erotic love [E/skov] is poetry; no, marriage is really the poetic. And if the world has witnessed with pain that a first love cannot be sustained, I shall grieve along with the world but shall also bring to mind that the defect was not so much in what happened later as in its not beginning rightly. What the first love lacks, then, is the second esthetic ideal, the historical.112

106. Kierkegaard, Either/Or, 2:87; SKS, 3:90. , 107. Kierkegaard, Either/Or, 2:199; SKS, 3:192. 108. Kierkegaard, Either/Or, 2:16; SKS, 3:25. ' . ' : ' > 109. Kierkegaard, Either/Or, 2:14; SKS, 3:23. • ? - ' ' ' •' 110. Kierkegaard, Either/Or, 1:294; SKS, 3:283. 111. Kierkegaard, Either/Or, 2:7; SKS, 3:17. The allusion to Julius's favorite diversion in Lucinde is

unmistakable in William's criticism of A. "Often," Julius writes, "I know of no better way to use my solitude than to think about how this or that interesting woman would behave in this or that interesting situation" (Schlegel, Schlegel's Lucinde and the Fragments, 63). Kierkegaard refers explicitly to this passage from Lucinde in his dissertation (see Concept of Irony, 300; SKS, 1:333).

112. Kierkegaard, Either/Or, 2:96; SKS, 3:99. There is some confusion regarding how best to render the final word of this quotation. As the Hongs note, in the original 1843 publication of Either/Or the. text has "det Romantiske," although the draft has "det Historiske, det Romantiske." According to the editors of Kierkegaard's Samlede Vxrker, this compound meant "det Historiske," and the second and third editions of Samlede Vierker substituted "det Historiske" for "det Romantiske."The Hongs follow the second and third editions with "the historical," whereas the editors of Seren Kierkegaards Skrifter reproduce "det romantiske" without comment on this history of redaction. The Hongs assert that "the historical" seems most


The difficulty in showing this to be the case, William says, is not due to any aesthetic deficiency in Christian marriage, but to the fact that poetic representation is inadequate to the task. William's analysis entails a rather painstaking distinction between the aesthetic ideal that is "really the poetic,"133 on the one hand, and, on the other, the art of "poetry," by which he means the poet s representation of a thing or idea in an artistic product.114 The art of poetry is marvelously suited to the evocation of a moment in time rounded off in an imaginative eternity, and thus often finds fitting themes in the first blush of romantic love and in the consummate moment of erotic love. But marriage is lived in the day-to-day, and while romance and the erotic have a special place within marriage, maintaining these within the context of actual life's ethical obligations and historical continuity, William says, is "really the poetic" that no poet can depict. He grants that the art of poetry is not limited in time the way painting is, since as a rule paintings are viewed all at once, while poetry is read in a temporal progression; and neither is poetry limited as music is, since music disappears "without a trace," leaving no conceptual surplus.115 For this reason William affirms, "Ultimately, poetry is the highest of all the arts and therefore also the art that best knows how to affirm the meaning of time."11'' Nevertheless, since it remains an imaginative abstraction from the continuity of actual life, representational poetry is compelled "to concentrate in the moment."117 This is why it is better suited to depicting the "ultimate moment" of erotic love than it is to depicting the aesthetic ideal of temporal continuity in marital love. As problem, according to William, is that he confuses the aesthetic itself for that which can be aesthetically portrayed in poetic representation. But it is the art of poetry, rather than marriage itself, that is aesthetically deficient on this score. What William wants A to understand is that the art of poetic representation can never depict what is "really the poetic"118 because it cannot "portray that of which the truth is precisely the temporal sequence."119 But marriage nevertheless has "esthetic validity" and, William insists, "can be portrayed esthetically, but not in poetic reproduction, but only in living it, by realizing it in the life of actuality."120

Insightful and persuasive as William is on this point, there is reason to wonder whether his understanding of A's poetic ideal is as clear as it could be. He is certainly right that A is wholly enamored with his pen and ink, and with his imaginative ability to evoke "the moment." But at the same time, A also holds as his aesthetic ideal the notion of living in a certain way (namely, "poetically"), just as the

appropriate in context; given the fact that William is here arguing for the aesthetic validity of enduring marital love. However, perhaps the compound expression from the draft ("det Historiske, det Roman-tiske"), although vague, best indicates William's meaning.

113. Kierkegaard, Either/Or, 2:96; SKS, 3:99. 114. Kierkegaard, Either/Or, 2:136-37; SKS, 3:135-36. • • " • ' : 115. Kierkegaard, Either/Or, 2:136; SKS, 3:135. 116. Kierkegaard, Either/Or, 2:136; SKS, 3:135. 117. Kierkegaard, Either/Or, 2:136; SKS, 3:135. 118. Kierkegaard, Either/Or, 2:96; SKS, 3:99. " 119. Kierkegaard, Either/Or, 2:136; SKS, 3:135. 120. Kierkegaard, Either/Or, 2:137; SKS, 3:136. ,


Schlegelian irony that Either/Or is supposed to satirize does. See, for example, A's prefatory comments to "The Seducer's Diary," where he says of Johannes that "his life has been an attempt to accomplish the task of living poetically."121 A's poetic ideal is not classicist but Romantic; it prizes the imaginative refiguration of one's own life and circumstance much more than the perfect correspondence of form and content in an autonomous work of art.122 Perhaps, then, since A and William could both agree that life should be lived in such a way that it is "really the poetic,"123 the crucial difference between them is not in their views of the relation of poetry to life but in their views of what it means to live well. With respect to this question, one of the most interesting passages in the whole of the second volume of Either/Or comes in a comment by William that almost certainly refers to the character of Julius in Lucinde. "In one of the most brilliant stories from the romantic school," he writes, "there is a character who, unlike the others with whom he is living, has no desire to write poetry, because it is a waste of time and deprives him of genuine pleasure; he, on the contrary, wants to live. Now, if he had had a more valid idea of what it is to live, he would have been my man."124 Thus, while William disagrees with Julius's idea (and A's) of what it means to live well, he nonetheless affirms his mode of seeking "genuine pleasure" in life. But if William's grievance is really more with the Romantic idea of what it means to live than with the Romantic mode of seeking pleasure in life, then what does he propose as "a more valid idea of what it means to live"?125 He gives his full answer in the second of his two letters.

In his second letter, William explains that one needs to cultivate an idea of life 11 iiit affirms commitment in order to achieve what he earlier called "the summit of (lie aesthetic."12'' To do this, one must choose to live as oneself in one's given social-historical context. The Romantic ironist's propensity to "live" in worlds of his or her own creation, according to William, is not substantial enough to provide the existential foundation one needs in order to make the marriage vow and nurture the kind of love that is "really the poetic." A vow is not a matter of aesthetic interest or enjoyment; it is a matter of ethical decision. Living poetically is accomplished, in William's view, by bringing the ethical to bear on the aesthetic (this is why Eremita saw fit to give this second letter the title "The Balance between the Esthetic and the Ethical in the Development of Personality"). Thus, "the ethical" is the sphere from which one derives one's "idea" of what it is to live, and this idea governs one's "mode" of living.

William makes it clear, however, that thinking ethically is not the same thing as becoming a good person. "I only want to bring you to the point where this

121. Kierkegaard, Either/Or, 1:304; SKS, 2:294 122. For A's theory on the imaginative refiguration of life experiences, see "Rotation of Crops"

(Either/Or, 1:279-300; SKS, 2:271-89). 123. Kierkegaard, Either/Or, 2:96; SKS, 3:99. 124. Kierkegaard, Either/Or, 2:139; SKS, 3:137. 125. Kierkegaard, Either/Or, 2:139; SKS, 3:137. 126. Kierkegaard, Either/Or, 2:137; SKS, 3:136.


choice [between good and evil] truly has meaning for you," he says.127 "Rather than designating the choice between good and evil my Either/Or designates the choice by which one chooses good and evil or rules them out. Here the question is under what qualifications one will view all existence and personally live."128

William has a number of ways of describing this choice wherein the question of good and evil does or does not become an issue for an individual, as Merold West-phal points out:

Often he describes it as an absolute choice of the self in its eternal validity. When he speaks this way it is easy to construe the ethical in Platonic, Thomistic, or Kantian contexts, as if one were choosing to make some eternal truth the criterion for one's life, whether this be the Form of the Good, the Natural law, or the Categorical Imperative.

But most of the time Judge William talks about marriage as if the ethical did not so much consist in becoming pure reason so as to apprehend some unchanging reality or principle, as in learning to participate in a specific social practice. As with Aristotle, socialization rather than science . . . is the basis of the ethical life. I choose myself in my eternal validity when I sincerely say, "I do.. . . With this ring I thee wed."

But this means that whether he knows it or not, Judge William is an Hegelian. For Hegel is an Aristotelian who repudiates the Platonic, Thomistic, and Kantian models in favor of an ethics in which the self has no immediate relation to the Good but only one mediated through the laws and customs of one's people. Sittlichkeit (ethical life) signifies the social institutions that mediate the Good to the individual. Not only does Hegel identify these as Family, Civil Society (the economic sector of a capitalist society), and State, but he focuses his analysis of family life on marriage. Nothing could be more Hegelian than the move by which Judge William makes the meaning of marriage the key to the ethical sphere.129

Westphal's analysis is helpful on this point, in that he pinpoints the respects in which William's emphasis on "self-choice" entails appropriating the actual social institutions within which one lives, and doing this most concretely by taking upon oneself the mantle of "married individual." However, while Hegel's influence upon William's view of ethical life is clear, there is a danger that by identifying William as a Hegelian we run the risk of missing what is distinctive in his position. Again, as in The Concept of Irony, the more proximate influence on the development of character sketched in the second volume of Either/Or is not Hegel but Kierkegaard's mentor Poul Martin Moller. Moller's distinctive influence is clear in

127. Kierkegaard, Either/Or, 2:168; SKS, 3:164. 128. Kierkegaard, Either/Or, 2:169; SKS, 3:164. 129. Merold Westphal, "Kierkegaard and Hegel," in 1%e Cambridge Companion to f&triegaatd, ed.

Alastair Hannay and Gordon D. Marino (Cambridge: Cambridge Unhtarsity Press, 1998), 106.


a number of places and, as I shall demonstrate, has important implications for the development of Kierkegaard's poetics.

In the first place, while he himself was familiar with and influenced by Hegel's rejection of Romanticism, Mailer's critique of Romantic irony seeks a balance between the ethical and the aesthetic that entails, like William's view and unlike the Hegelian view, a belief in the immortality of the soul. Mailer argues this position in a treatise that "notoriously occupied Saren Kierkegaard a great deal,"130

namely, his Thoughts on the Possibility of Evidence for Human Immortality, with Reference to the Most Recent Relevant Literature."1 The concept of immortality "comes about not in order to open the door to unbounded fantasies and to forget the existing conditions of actual life," Mailer maintains, but "in order that the individual's present life can get its lost significance back and become an actual life, which it is not, except when the person remembers its connection with eternity."132 Judge William, as if taking a leaf from Moller's study on immortality, writes, "I cannot become ethically conscious without becoming conscious of my eternal being. This is the true demonstration of the immortality of the soul."133

Clearly, both Moller and William ground their ethics in a belief in the substantiality of the individual soul, whereas on most readings of Hegel's ethical thought this is not the case. In this very connection, in fact, Mailer distances himself from Hegel: "It is easy for anyone who accurately understands how to read between the lines in Hegel's writings to come to complete certainty regarding the fact that this philosopher considers the concept of personal immortality to be without any reality."134

This fundamental agreement between Mailer and William on the concept of personal immortality, and disagreement with Hegel on the matter, is not the only important reason for dissatisfaction with calling William a Hegelian, however. In addition to grounding ethical life in a belief in personal immortality, William also mounts a rather powerful critique of speculative philosophy, which I shall discuss in a moment, and here too he follows Mailer. In his treatise on immortality, Mailer had criticized both Schlegel's Romantic irony and Hegel's speculative philosophy as being forms of pantheism, a "vulgar" form and a "logical" form, respectively. And while Mailer recognizes important differences between these two schools, when it comes to articulating an ethics of individual action, Mailer says, they share a common deficiency, for "what holds regarding logical pantheism, which has been expressed in a complete system with unusual energy and art, is even more valid regarding vulgar pantheism, which has taken shape in a great many superficially sketched systems, and now at last shapes the literary idiom of the salons."135

130. Rohde, "Poul Mailer," 90. 131. Mailer, Tanker over Mueligbeden of Beviser for Menneskets Udodelighed, med hensyn til den nyeste

derhen herende Literatur. All following citations of this work will use the standard short reference Om Udedeligheden.

132. Moller, Om Udodeligheden, 236^37; my translation. 133. Kierkegaard, Either/Or, 2:270; SKS, 3:257. 134. Moller, Om Udodeligheden, 185; my translation. 135. Mailer, Om Udedeligbeden, 199; my translation.


Echoing this identification of the similarity between speculative philosophy and Romantic irony, William writes to A:

The polemical conclusion, from which all your paeans over existence resonate, has a strange similarity to modern philosophy's pet theory that the principle of contradiction is cancelled. I am well aware that the position you take is anathema to philosophy, and yet it seems to me that it is itself guilty of the same error; indeed, the reason this is not immediately detected is that it is not even as properly situated as you are. You are situated in the area of action, philosophy in the area of contemplation. As soon as it is to be moved into the area of practice, it must arrive at the same conclusion as you do, even though it does not express it in the same way. You mediate the contradictions in a higher lunacy, philosophy in a higher unity. You turn toward the future, for action is essentially future tense; you say: I can do this or that, but whatever I do is equally absurd—ergo, I do nothing at all. Philosophy turns toward the past, toward the totality of experienced world history; it shows how the discursive elements come together in a higher unity; it mediates and mediates. It seems to me, however, that it does not answer the question I am asking, for I am asking about the future.136

According to both Meller and William, then, neither the positive dialectic of speculative philosophy nor the negative dialectic or Romantic irony can give orientation when one asks a question regarding individual ethical action, the question of how one should conduct oneself in personal life. In this view, Romantic irony may well be future oriented, but if it cannot articulate good reasons for any particular action then it is ethically lame. Speculative philosophy, on the other hand, while taking great pains to demonstrate how the world's cultures have developed their ethical forms of life in the past, is unhelpful when asking the concrete question of how one should live today and in the future. The former dialectic is oriented toward the future, and the latter dialectic is oriented toward the past of entire cultures, but neither Romantic irony nor speculative philosophy orients an individual toward a personal future of individual ethical action. Whether it be the negative dialectic of A's "ecstatic discourse" ("Laugh at the stupidities of the world, and you will regret it; weep over them, and you will also regret it. Laugh at the stupidities of the world or weep over them, you will regret it either way"137) or the dialectic of speculative philosophy, William says that "if one admits mediation, then there is no absolute choice, and if there is no such thing, then there is no absolute Either/Or."138

The key term for understanding William's view of how one becomes an ethical self, therefore, is "choice," the personal freedom and responsibility to decide

136. Kierkegaard, Either/Or, 2:170; SKS, 3:166. On the speculative cancellation of the principle of contradiction see, for example, Hegel's Science of Logic, trans. A. V. Miller (New York: Humanities Press, 1969), 431-43, esp. 433.

137. Kierkegaard, Either/Or, 1:38; SKS, 2:47. 138. Kierkegaard, Either/Or, 2:173; SKS, 3:169.


between competing alternatives for how to live. The precise reason William thinks speculative philosophy is just as ethically impotent as Romantic irony has to do with its confusion of the sphere of freedom with that of thought. "For thought, the contradiction does not exist," he says; "it passes over into the other and thereupon together with the other into a higher unity. For freedom, the contradiction does exist, because it excludes it."139 That is to say, while speculative thought seeks to mediate contradictions by resolving various alternatives into a disinterested comprehension of how they operate together in a historical and logical process, the freedom exhibited in an ethical choice cuts into the thought process with a definite decision and a personal interest in the outcome. Apart from the personal interest manifested in ethical choices, William maintains, an individual, no matter whether he or she is a judge, a poet, or a philosopher, fails fully to become a human self. Selfhood, in William's model, is a "double existence" of both the "inner deed" of choice and the "external deed" of an action's historical effects.140 Speculative philosophy, he says, views the external history of effects "under the category of necessity" and ignores the inner deed that must be viewed "under the category of freedom."141 In contrast to speculative philosophy, it is the importance of the world of the inner deed that William wants to underscore, for "in this world there rules an absolute Either/Or, but philosophy has nothing to do with this world."142 Perhaps William does not mean that an individual philosopher could not also attend to the interior sphere of ethical freedom, but he clearly means that in one's capacity of philosopher qua philosopher—and with this term he means "speculative philosopher"—the world is viewed exclusively in terms of necessity, and this has lamentable existential consequences. William adapts a familiar biblical aphorism to express his point: "If the philosopher is only a philosopher, absorbed in philosophy and without knowing the blessed life of freedom, then he misses a very important point, he wins the whole world and loses himself—this can never happen to the person who lives for freedom, even though he lost ever so much."143 Thus it is clear that for William, as for Moller, speculative philosophy as much as Romantic irony tends toward a kind of nihilism wherein the individual fails to become what he or she is meant to become. In words that William might easily have appropriated, Meller characterizes his view of the "fundamental hypothesis" of speculative philosophy aphoristically: "Each finite rational being is but a vanishing wave in the ocean of thought, whose undulation is decided by an invariable necessity."144 It is perhaps in this light that we can better understand Kierkegaard's otherwise puzzling statement in The Concept of Irony where he writes, "The fact that Hegel became irritated with the form of irony closest to him naturally impaired his interpretation of the concept. Explanation is often lacking—but Schlegel is

139. Kierkegaard, Either/Or, 2:173; SKS, 3:169. 140. Kierkegaard, Either/Or, 2:174-75; SKS, 3:170-71. 141. Kierkegaard, Either/Or, 2:175; SKS, 3:170. 142. Kierkegaard, Either/Or, 2:175; SKS, 3:171. 143. Kierkegaard, Either/Or, 2:176; SKS, 3:171. 144. Meller, Om Udodeligheden, 196; my translation.


always reprimanded."145 Here it has become clear that what William, Moller, and Kierkegaard all see as similar between the dialectic of Romantic irony and the dialectic of speculative philosophy is that, in their views, neither dialectic helps an individual become an earnest self. Thus, while similar in many practical respects, the ethical theory William defends is not so much Hegel's view of Sittlichkeit as it is Moller's view of Sadelighed.

But why, according to William, should one desire to become a self with a rich history of inner freedom? His answer is straightforward. It is because one's "eternal dignity" lies precisely in the continuity of ethical selfhood. While speculation might seek the eternal in the absolute comprehension of world history, and Romantic irony might seek it in "the loveliest situation in the world,"146 William maintains that neither the speculative comprehension of history nor the Romantic escape from history achieves this eternal dignity:

A human being's eternal dignity lies precisely in this, that he can gain a history. The divine in him lies in this, that he himself, if he so chooses, can give this history continuity, because it gains that, not when it is a summary of what has taken place or has happened to me, but only when it is my personal deed in such a way that even that which has happened to me is transformed and transferred from necessity to freedom. What is enviable about human life is that one can assist God, can understand him, and in turn the only worthy way for a human being to understand God is to appropriate in freedom everything that comes to him, both the happy and the sad.147

Thus, whereas the Romantic ironist seeks the freedom to be his own creator (for, as Schlegel says, "to become God, to be human, to cultivate oneself are all expressions that mean the same thing"148), on William's account, the ethical task is instead to be God's cocreator. Granted, in William's view Romanticism is more "properly situated"149 than speculative philosophy is, and this is because of the Romantic orientation toward future "action" instead of the "contemplation" of history.150 But an ironist's desire to be her own creator precludes "assisting" God, since this is a tacit acknowledgment that her will is not the highest "law."151 This Romantic view is criticized in The Concept of Irony, where Kierkegaard alleges that the ironist's view of creativity severs human creativity from the creativity of God. "For the ironist, everything is possible," he puts it mordantly. "Our God is in heaven and does whatever he pleases; the ironist is on earth and does whatever he desires."152 A, for his part, puts it morbidly: "So I am not the one who is lord of my life; I am one of

145. Kierkegaard, Concept of Irony, 265; SKS, 1:303. 146. Schlegel, Schkgel's Lucinde and the Fragments, 46. 147. Kierkegaard, Either/Or, 2:250; SKS, 3:250; italics added. 148. Schlegel, Scblegel's Lucinde and the Fragments, 200; Athenaeum Fragments, no. 262. 149. Kierkegaard, Either/Or, 2:170; SKS, 3:166. 150. Kierkegaard, Either/Or, 2:170; SKS, 3:166. 151. Schlegel, Schkgel's Lucinde and the Fragments, 175-76; Athenaeum Fragments, no. 116. 152. Kierkegaard, Concept of Irony, 282; SKS, 1:318.


the threads to be spun into the calico of life! Well, then, even though I cannot spin, I can still cut the thread."153 William seeks to repair this scission by affirming both that "every human being develops in freedom" and that "a person does not create himself out of nothing, [but] has himself in its concretion as his task."154 Having oneself in one's concretion means, for William, that an individual's total context should be viewed in terms of divine creativity, and that one's culture, one's state, and its institutions therefore matter. One becomes a self in a concrete context, or not at all. When in the first volume of Either/Or Kierkegaard sets about to depict what in his dissertation he had called "irony's special endeavor," namely, the attempt "to cancel all actuality and substitute for it an actuality that is no actuality,"155 this eventuates in a spiritual homelessness that refuses to appropriate "its concretion." Such spiritual homelessness is clearly what the nihilistic essay "The Unhappiest One" indirectly means to show ("Did he find no rest, not even in the grave; is he perhaps still fitfully wandering over the earth; has he left his house, his home, leaving behind only his address!"156). It is "lunacy," according to William, to celebrate this spiritual homelessness as the mark of aesthetic sophistication. "Here, too," he harangues A, "you come with your pretension, the gist of which is neither more nor less than that you are the unhappiest one. And yet it is undeniable that this thought is the proudest and most defiant that can arise in the mind of a human being."157

Why is this undeniable? Why is the belief that one is "the unhappiest" the "proudest" and "most defiant" thought one can have? In William's view, A's pretentious unhapp'mess is proud and defiant because in claiming to be unhappy with life—indeed, the unhappiest—he sneers at his God-given actuality. William believes that A rejects the gifts of God, indeed, that he refuses to see actuality in Christian terms as a gift. Whereas for his part, William says, "when we read in the Bible about the many gifts of grace, I would actually count this among them—the cheerful boldness, the trust, the belief in actuality and in the eternal necessity whereby the beautiful triumphs, and in the blessedness implicit in the freedom with which the individual offers God assistance."158 A, on the other hand, turns his back on his God-given actuality and seeks imaginative consolation in the opposite direction. In his blase attitude toward his own existence, A's aesthetic pilgrimage leads "not to that sacred sepulcher in the happy East, but to that mournful grave in the unhappy West."159 Thus, the reason William charges A with the highest degree of pride and defiance is because A distances himself from God by not

153. Kierkegaard, Either/Or, 1:31; SKS, 2:40. 154. Kierkegaard, Either/Or, 2:332; SKS, 3:313. 155. Kierkegaard, Concept of Irony, 290; SKS, 1:325. 156. Kierkegaard, Either/Or, 1:219; SKS, 2:213. 157. Kierkegaard, Either/Or, 2:236; SKS, 3:226. If William is right that A considers himself "the

unhappiest one," he did not learn this from the essay of the same name, for A never claims the title for himself there. Most likely we are to imagine that William's knowledge of A's "pretension" comes from personal conversation rather than from reading the essay.

158. Kierkegaard, Either/Or, 2:123; SKS, 3:123. 159. Kierkegaard, Either/Or, 1:220; SKS, 2:213-14.


willing to appropriate himself in his created "concretion." In William's diagnosis, A's euphoric unhappiness/happiness ("who indeed is the happiest but the unhap-piest"160) is a "hysteria of the spirit,"161 a manic form of depression which views life as madness, faith as foolishness, and love as vinegar in the wound.162 Such "depression is sin," William asserts, "is actually a sin instar omnium [that stands for all], for it is the sin of not willing deeply and inwardly, and this is the mother of all sins."163

While the judge politely expresses reluctance in crediting himself "with enough significance to represent ethics with full power of attorney," it is easy to get the sense that this humility is more etiquette than conviction.164 All of William's force and intellect as a letter writer are mustered in his attempt to get A to adopt his life view. William wants to lead A out of his "sinful" ironic volatility and toward a substantive position from which he, like William himself, might "assist God."165

He even deems his testimony so consistent with cultural-religious orthodoxy that he suggests A consider what he has written "as notes to Balle's catechism," that is, as a commentary to the book of religious instruction used in Danish schools in the first half of the nineteenth century.166 Indeed, William commends his view to A with the guarantee that his own life "has one quality that your life, I regret, does not have—faithfulness; you can safely build upon it."167 Yet, despite this assurance, Either/Or ends on a note that, whether William knows it or not, undermines his guarantee of a sure foundation.

As a sort of final word, William includes with his letters to A a sermon he has recently received and read. Given the heading "Ultimatum" by Eremita, the sermon was written and sent to William by an old friend from his student days, now

160. Kierkegaard, Eitber/Or, 1:230; SKS, 2:22.3. 161. Kierkegaard, Either/Or, 2:188; SKS, 3:183. 162. Kierkegaard, Eitber/Or, 1:230; SKS, 2:223. 163. Kierkegaard, Eitber/Or, 2:189; SKS, 3:183. William adds here, "It is under this same sin that all of

young Germany and France are now groaning." A comment in Mailer's On Immortality is remarkable for its similarity: "On the whole, it holds valid for Young Germany and Young France that all their enthusiasm about The Gospel of the Flesh, as I leine calls it, and all their feigned joyfulness, turns into painful moans against their will" (Om Udedeligbeden, 220-21;"Detgaaer overbovedet det unge Tydsklandogdet unge Frankrig saadeles, at al deres Jubel over Kjedets Evangclium, mm Heine kalder det, og al deres paatagne Lystigbed mod deres Villie bliver til smertelige K/ager"). Like Moller, William lumps ironic aestheticism together with the movement Kierkegaard in his dissertation had called the "crowded nursery" of Schlegelian irony (Concept of Irony, 275; SKS, 1:311). William's critique of A is thus a Trojan horse for Kierkegaard's critique of the Young Germany movement that, to his mind, is composed entirely of the followers of Schlegel."In fact," Kierkegaard says in The Concept ofIrony,"'m the general development of this position, considerable attention is directed to this Young Germany" (Concept of Irony, 275n*; SKS, 1:311 n. 1). Neither A, nor Schlegel, nor the members of Young Germany achieve the balance of the aesthetic with the ethical that William seeks. For all of them, we are told, the ideal of "living poetically" becomes volatilized in imagination, and their joy turns to misery.

164. Kierkegaard, Eitber/Or, 2:323; SKS, 3:305. 165. Kierkegaard, Eitber/Or, 2:250; SKS, 3:239. 166. Kierkegaard, Eitber/Or, 2:323; SKS, 3:305. The full title to Nikolai Edinger Balle's catechism is

Earebog i den Evangelisk-cbristelige Religion indrettet til Brug i de danske Skoler (Copenhagen, 1824); listed as book number 183 in the auction catalog of Kierkegaard's library (Auktiomprotokol over Soren Kierkegaards Bogsamling, ed. H. P. Rohde [Copenhagen: Det Kongelige Bibliotek, 1967]; works included in this catalog are hereafter cited on the following model: ASKB, 183).

167. Kierkegaard, Either/Or, 2:324; SKS, 3:306.


a country pastor assigned to a parish on the Jutland heath. William says of this friend that in his "sermon he has grasped what I have said and what I would like to have said to you."168 Yet it seems that perhaps William has not fully understood the sermon, for he and the Jutland pastor actually say vastly different things. Whereas William's view of Christianity expressly legitimates certain forms of nineteenth-century ethical practice, the "Ultimatum" precludes drawing upon Christian faith in order to legitimate the traditional ethical views of one's established culture. Already in its title, "The Upbuilding That Lies in the Thought That in Relation to God We Are Always in the Wrong," the sermon sounds a radically different note from that of William's bourgeois Christianity of culture. The biblical pericope for the sermon is drawn from Luke 19:41-48, and tells of Jesus' driving the merchants from the Jerusalem temple, in response to which "the chief priests, the scribes, and the leaders of the people kept looking for a way to kill him." The opposition between Jesus and the cultural-religious establishment could not be more clearly expressed, and one wonders whether an analogous, if more subtle, opposition does not obtain between William's brand of religiously legitimated ethics {Stedelighed) and the country pastor's sermon. William says expressly that he has faith and that A lacks it. Does he also imply that he is righteous while A is unrighteous? Perhaps not, but he clearly believes As life view is wrong, whereas his is correct. According to the claim of the sermon, however, if William is right, he is only more or less right, and not right in any absolute sense. But if William's view is not right in the absolute sense, then it is compromised, since what he wants to claim is the "absolute validity" of his ethical categories.169 William's self-confident approach assumes the truth of Christianity, and then derives an ethical life view from his understanding of one particular historically conditioned and culturally accommodating form of Christianity. He perhaps thinks that because God is always in the right, then anything he extrapolates from this truth will also be right. But according to the sermon, "there is nothing upbuilding in acknowledging that God is always in the right, and consequently there is nothing upbuilding in any thought that necessarily follows from it."170 Why is this positive approach to ethical deliberation unedifying? It is because doubt always plagues the particulars (e.g., "Am I now in conformity to God's truth, or not? If yes, to what degree, and if no, how far from it am I?"), and one inevitably gets bogged down in finite ethical reflection. The sermon from the heath emphasizes the negative side instead: "In relation to God we are always in the wrong;—this thought puts an end to doubt and calms the cares; it animates and inspires to action,"171 and with that one "soars over the finite" and into the infinite.172 In fewer than fifteen pages, this sermon from the heath completely recontextualizes the whole of William's contribution to

168. Kierkegaard, Either/Or, 2:338; SKS, 3:318. 169. Kierkegaard, Either/Or, 2:224; SKS, 3:215. 170. Kierkegaard, Either/Or, 2:350; SKS, 3:329. 171. Kierkegaard, Either/Or, 2:353; SKS, 3:332. 172. Kierkegaard, Either/Or, 2:352; SKS, 3:331.


religious ethics, and reorients the reader toward a religious life view articulated by neither A nor William.

The Anticipation of the Eternal

In The Anxiety of Influence, Harold Bloom argues that poetic influence has been viewed as "more of a blight than a blessing" by post-Enlightenment authors.173

Simply put, Bloom's insight is that creative minds, feeling their indebtedness to a precursor as a challenge to their own imaginative potency, often employ a variety of strategies, from caricature to correction, in an attempt to obscure the evidence of that influence upon their own creativity. Whether Kierkegaard experienced his precursors as a challenge to his own powers of imagination or not, I do not know. But I do find that the strategies Bloom discusses in his theory of poetry (which, incidentally, he punctuates with passages from Kierkegaard's Either/Or and Repetition) are helpful for interpreting the influence of Schlegel and M0ller, respectively, on Kierkegaard's composition of A the ironist and William the traditionalist.1" If we now reflect once again on the first volume of Either/Or, we understand that Kierkegaard's means of overcoming his indebtedness to Schlegel was to caricature Romantic poetics in the basest form imaginable ("The Seducer's Diary"), thus leaving him free to appropriate and develop the idea of "living poetically" without obligation to Schlegel's Romantic brand of irony. Yet, Kierkegaard will say, "even though one must warn against irony as against a seducer, so must one commend it as a guide."175 Thus, if we allow Kierkegaard's notion of controlled irony to guide our reading, it becomes clear that neither of the two main alternatives of Either/Or is the life view to which Kierkegaard seeks to lead the reader. Despite Kierkegaard's own judgment that, in relation to A, "the Judge was unconditionally the winner,"176 in relation to the Christian life view Kierkegaard begins to develop during these early years of his authorship, William's view represents a problematic co-optation of the Christian message by the cultural establishment.177 Granted,

173. Bloom, Anxiety of Influence, 50. The central principle of Bloom's argument reads as follows:

Poetic Influence—when it involves two strong, authentic poets,—always proceeds by a misreading of the prior poet, an act of creative correction that is actually and necessarily a misinterpretation. The history of fruitful poetic influence, which is to say the main tradition of Western poetry since the Renaissance, is a history of anxiety and self-saving caricature, of distortion, of perverse, willful revisionism without which modern poetry as such could not exist. {Anxiety of Influence, 30)

174. In identifying Moller (like William) as a traditionalist, I have in mind particularly his personal belief in the God of Christian theism instead of speculative philosophy's Absolute Spirit. Moller maintains that Hegel's speculative Absolute "cannot be substituted for the personal God, the idea of whom the religious tradition maintains unyieldingly" (Mailer, Om Udedeligheden, IIS; my translation).

175. Kierkegaard, Concept of Irony, 327; SKS, 1:355. 176. Kierkegaard, Seren Kierkegaard's Journals and Papers, ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H.

Hong, 7 vols. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1967-1978), 5.5804; SKS, 18:243. 177. While not the focus here, I will nevertheless mention again what was shown above, namely, that

included within William's letters is a substantive critique of Hegelian philosophy that stands as Kierkegaard's first run in a series of increasingly antispeculative writings. While not typically cast in Bloom's terms as an attempt to overcome intellectual influence, many writers have commented on


Kierkegaard's method of "denying obligation"178 in the second volume is much gentler than in the first. This is understandable, since the precursor in this case is Kierkegaard's beloved mentor Poul Martin rVfcller. This does not change the fact, however, that William's view receives a substantial correction. Kierkegaard, plaiting his view of mastered irony into the form of the text, has William himself commend the sermon that subtly undermines his own assurances that cultural Christianity provides a solid foundation upon which to build one's life view. As a corrective to William's view, the Jutland pastor depicts human individuals as sinners rather than as God's assistants, as creators of vice rather than vice-creators.179

Kierkegaard, in fact, gestures toward this more radical view already in his dissertation when he writes, "There is a Christian view that places everything under sin, knows no exception, spares nothing."180 This is simply another way of expressing the contention of the sermon from the heath that "in relation to God we are always in the wrong." There is a further connection between this sermon and The Concept of Irony, for while the sermon's content itself is thoroughly earnest, its inclusion within the pages of Either/Or is most appropriately read in terms of the mastered form of irony Kierkegaard advocates in his dissertation. Just as Socrates employed irony in order to relativize the "given actuality" of Athenian ethical life, through the inclusion of this sermon Kierkegaard undermines the normative claims of the kind of cultural Christianity Moller and William both represent.

But there is a more particular reason, apart from the more general historicist one, for ascertaining the influence of both Schlegel and Moller upon Kierkegaard, and for understanding his ironic revision of these intellectual precursors. In particular, I want to clarify the manner in which the influence of these precursors ramifies Kierkegaard's developing view of his own poetic mission. In the remainder of this chapter I will demonstrate how Kierkegaard brings Schlegel's theme of living poetically ("make poetry lively and sociable, and life and society poetical"181) together with Moller's belief that true art is an anticipation of eternal salvation in order to begin to synthesize the unique theoretical contours of what I am calling his "Christomorphic poetics."

Kierkegaard's complex relationship to I legel and Wis attempt to overcome intellectual obligation to him (see, for example, Thulstrup's Kierkegaard's Relation to Hegel, and Stewart's Kierkegaard's Relations to Hegel Reconsidered). An attempt to overcome I tegel's influence is detectable already in Kierkegaard's dissertation where, despite the fact that Kierkegaard agrees with Hegel's criticism of the Romantic ironists in certain respects, one manifest concern is to disagree with I legel and side with the Romantic ironists in attributing irony to Socrates. Another significant difference between Hegel's view and Kierkegaard's position in the dissertation is the latter's vigorous defense of a controlled form of irony. Robert Perkins notes this feature when he comments, "Kierkegaard appears to have had the more inclusive sense of the dialectic; paradoxically, the philosopher of Either/Or preserved irony as a mastered moment. Hegel appears, instead, to have had the more exclusive sense of the dialectic; paradoxically, the philosopher of both/and mastered irony only by excluding it" (Robert L. Perkins, "Hegel and Kierkegaard: Two Critics of Romantic Irony," Review of National Literatures 1 [1970]: 252).

178. Bloom, Anxiety of Influence, 6. 179. Recall that in William's view, "what is enviable about human life is that one can assist God"

{Either/Or, 2:250; SKS, 3:239), and feel oneself "present in a drama the deity is writing," feel oneself both "creating and created" (Either/Or, 2:137; SKS, 3:136).

180. Kierkegaard, Concept of Irony, 288; SKS, 1:323. 181. Schlegel, Schlegel's Lucinde and the Fragments, 175; Athenaeum Fragments, no. 116.


In his treatise on immortality IVfeller seeks to show that both ironic Romanticism and speculative philosophy are kinds of "pantheism"—a "vulgar" kind and a "logical" kind, respectively—and that both these kinds of pantheism in fact tend toward nihilism as regards the individual subject. Whether or not one might be able to muster an argument to the contrary, in Moller's reading both the Schlegelians and the Hegelians consider "the concept of personal immortality to be without any reality."182 Such skepticism regarding personal immortality, he says, has consequences not simply for traditional Christian dogma, but for the more general endeavor of spiritual cultivation through the arts as well. As Moller puts it in his sketch of a theory of art, "No art can co-exist with the dogmatic negation of immortality."183 The reason Moller believes this to be the case, he continues, is because

in order that the individual be able to swing himself energetically into the higher regions of imagination, he must either think of life itself as an eternity—a kind of unreflective immortality without any clear idea of the shortness of life—or he must have a conviction about the reality of the concept of immortality. I propose here, without hesitation, the assertion that doubt regarding the immortality of individuals is the cancer of art, and conviction regarding their mortality is art's grave. This assertion can only be justified through a theory regarding the nature of art which, although it cannot be fulfilled here, can be suggested with a couple of comments. The view I want to set forth here will, for many a reader, sound most paradoxical, and will perhaps be regarded by some as an audacious expression that should not be understood word for word. Indeed, it could be that many a reader has himself articulated the same dictum, and yet only considered it a cavalier rhetorical figure; but what is said here is meant literally. "True art is an anticipation of eternal salvation" [Den sande Kunst er en Anticipation af det salige Liv]. The complete harmony between the universal and the particular that finds its place in the consciousness of the artist when he produces an authentic work of art, or in the one who with authentic receptivity repeats the production, is an image of the completely transfigured happiness in which, without resistance, the individual life is fulfilled by the will of the eternal.184

Moller's claim here requires interpretation. He is not making a descriptive claim about any old thing that might ordinarily be called "art," but is making a strong normative claim about the consciousness that attends "true art." When Moller speaks of "true art" he has poetry in mind principally, but he includes the other artistic forms as well. The artistic "consciousness" he is talking about can be that of either the one who produces "authentic art," or the one who apprehends

182. MeiUer, Om Udedeligheden, 185; my translation. 183. Moller, Om Udedeligheden, 216; my translation. 184. Moller, Om Udedeligheden, 216-17; my translation.


such art with "authentic receptivity." Such consciousness is an awareness of the "harmony" achieved in true art between the "particular" artistic production and the "universal" truth it expresses. To this extent, Moller's view is standard Hegelian fare. Where his view becomes distinctive is in the claim that a belief in individual immortality is necessary for one to achieve the "higher regions of imagination." While it is not obvious why this would be the case, Moller's larger argument makes it clear that the reason the concept of immortality is crucial lies in the claim that the "harmony between the universal and particular" is achieved in the "consciousness" of the one apprehending it, rather than in the artistic production or event itself. Thus, Moller's logic runs, in order for the artistic production to be true in an eternal sense, the individual consciousness apprehending the harmonious reconciliation between the particular and the universal must also be eternal. If this were not the case, then the individual consciousness would simply disappear with the individual like "a vanishing wave in the ocean of thought," and neither the consciousness nor the art would have any eternal validity.185 The "higher regions of the imagination," accordingly, correspond to what is eternal in the individual consciousness, and the artistic fruits of the imagination prefigure the consummation of individual consciousness within the "transfigured blessedness" of eternal salvation "literally" conceived.186 In conceiving "true art" as an anticipatory "image" of salvation, Moller casts his theory of art in terms of traditional Christian soteriolo-gy; the poetic or aesthetic consciousness of a "complete harmony between the universal and the particular" is contextualized within a religious ethics positing a reconciliation of the individual's actuality with the ideal "will of the eternal." The poetic harmonization of the particular and the universal is thus underwritten and transfigured by Christian faith in God's gracious reconciliation of the actual created world with the divine ideal.

On the face of it, it may appear that this discussion is far afield from Kierkegaard's own view of poetry since, apart from Judge William's affirmation of personal immortality,187 Kierkegaard has had little to say regarding the relationship between the eternal and the art of poetry. Within the year of having published Either/Or, however, Kierkegaard set to work on The Concept of Anxiety, which he published in 1844 under the pseudonym Vigilius Haufniensis, and dedicated "to the late Professor Poul Martin Moller."188 Here, within the context of offering a critique of speculative philosophy because it "has not succeeded in having immortality included in the system," Kierkegaard has Haufniensis write, "What Poul Miller said is true, that immortality must be present everywhere."18''' Moller's

185. IVMer, Om Udodeligheden, 196. 186. Matter, OmUdode/igheden, 216. 187. Kierkegaard, Either/Or, 2:270; SKS, 3:257. ;

188. In a draft of this dedication, Kierkegaard's great esteem is clear in comments naming Metier as "the confidant of my beginnings; my lost friend; my sadly missed reader," and "the mighty trumpet of my awakening" (Kierkegaard, The Concept of Anxiety: A Simple Psychologically Orienting Deliberation on the Dogmatic Issue of Hereditary Sin, trans. Reidar Thomte [Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980], 178; see Seren Kierkegaard's Shifter, Kommentarbind 4 [SKS, vol. K4], 344-45).

189. Kierkegaard, Concept of Anxiety, 153; SKS, 4:452.


influence therefore clearly exemplifies at least one of the most important intellectual commitments of the work—namely, the belief in the importance of the doctrine of immortality—and the dedication of The Concept of Anxiety to Moller is not based solely on Kierkegaard's fondness for an avuncular role model.

Kierkegaard's intellectual relationship to Moller is far from simple, however. Intellectual loyalty on the speculative front notwithstanding, when it comes to Meller's theory of art, Haufniensis does not follow along so dutifully. On the contrary, Haufniensis classes Moller's view of art among those for whom eternity is "purely and simply for the imagination." The imaginative conception of eternity, he says, making clear reference to Moller's theory, "has found definite expression in the statement: Art is an anticipation of eternal life."190 At first, this assertion that Moller's theory of art makes eternity into a matter purely for the imagination seems somewhat puzzling, given Moller's assurance that he "literally" means that true art is an anticipation of eternal salvation. Haufniensis, however, does not deny that Moller's view may well entail a literal belief in individual immortality; what he says is that the "reconciliation" claimed in the theory is an imaginative one merely, and not an actual one. "Poetry and art are the reconciliation only of the imagination," he continues, "and they may well have the Sinnigkeit [thoughtfulness] of intuition but by no means the Innigkeit [inwardness] of earnestness."191 That is to say, poetry can achieve an imaginative insight into the reconciliation of the actual with the ideal but, because it is imaginatively divorced from ethical striving, it lacks the earnestness required to reconcile actual life with, in Moller's word, "the blessed life" {det salige Liv).

Here, if we first grant that Haufniensis is right in his assertion that an imaginative reconciliation of actuality and ideality is no true reconciliation (since the "actuality" reconciled is not an actual actuality but only an imaginative actuality such as, for example, the resolution of misunderstandings in Shakespeare's All's Well That Ends Welt), we should for the sake of fairness point out that he has already given Moller's view short shrift. Perhaps inadvertently, or perhaps through "creative misunderstanding,"192 Kierkegaard goes beyond his mentor by assuming an oversimplified version of Moller's theory of art. It may well be true that poetry only achieves an imaginative reconciliation of the actual and the ideal, but then Moller never claims that poetry actually reconciles ideality and actuality. Indeed, he makes it abundantly clear that not even "true art" can fully reconcile the actual and the ideal under the constraints of earthly existence. "Art is only an image of the blessed life," Moller says, "because it moves in a world that, in truth, is considered to be shallow and pretentious both from a standpoint which lies above and a standpoint which lies below. . . . The discord between the prosaic world and the poetic world will be reconciled in the fullness of time."193 Thus, according to Moller, from

190. Kierkegaard, Concept of Anxiety, 153; SKS, 4:452. Haufniensis has modified Mailer's "det salige Liv" to "det Evige Liv," but the source of the statement in Om Udedeligheden is clear nonetheless.

191. Kierkegaard, Concept of Anxiety, 153; SKS, 4:452. 192. Bloom, Anxiety of Influence, 93. 193. Moller, Om Udedeligheden, 217-18. ,.


both of these other perspectives, that is, from the "prosaic world" of current actuality as well as from the perspective of "the fullness of time," the poetic world can appear affected and hollow because of its fantastic character, because it reconciles "the individual life" with "the will of the eternal" only imaginatively, and not actually.

Having given Moller's theory a fuller and more sympathetic explication than even his protege gave it, if we now return to Kierkegaard's own early sketch of a general theory of poetry in his dissertation, we see clearly that what he has done there is recast Meller's theological aesthetics in his own terms:

If we ask what poetry is, we may say in general that it is victory over the world; it is through a negation of the imperfect actuality that poetry opens up a higher actuality, expands and transfigures the imperfect into the perfect and thereby assuages the deep pain that wants to make everything dark. To that extent, poetry is a kind of reconciliation, but it is not the true reconciliation, for it does not reconcile me with the actuality in which I am living; no transubstantiation of the given actuality takes place by virtue of this reconciliation, but it reconciles me with the given actuality by giving . me another, a higher and more perfect reconciliation, so that when all is said and done there is often no reconciliation but rather an enmity. Therefore, only the religious is able to bring about the true reconciliation, because it infmitizes actuality for me.194

The theory of poetry sketched here by Kierkegaard (and earlier by Moller) defines poetry in relation to both ethics and religion such that the relative truth of poetic reconciliation of the imperfect actuality with the ideal can only be judged by its conformity to the "true reconciliation" claimed for "the religious."1" It is this theoretical coordination of poetry, ethics, and religious belief that serves as Kierkegaard's basis both for his general critique of Romantic irony as well as for his specific claim against "books like Lucinde" that they "are not only immoral but also unpoetic, for they are irreligious."196 Despite this severe appraisal, however, we must not lose sight of the fact that Kierkegaard is in fact highly interested in preserving the Romantic ideal, what he calls "irony's great requirement," of living poetically.1"7 Regarding the protagonist Julius in Schlegel's Lucinde, Kierkegaard surely could affirm with Judge William when he writes, "If he had had a more valid idea of what it is to live, he would have been my man."1''8 The reason for this is clear. If poetry reconciles an imperfect actuality to its perfect ideal in a merely imaginative fashion, then a reconciliation between an individual's imperfect actuality and the divine ideal for that individual should be achievable not through writing poetry but by living poetically. In Kierkegaard's undersigned words:

194. Kierkegaard, Concept of Irony, 297; SKS, 1:330-31. 195. Kierkegaard, Concept of Irony, 297; SKS, 1:331. 196. Kierkegaard, Concept of Irony, 296-97; SKS, 1:330. 197. Kierkegaard, Concept of Irony, 280; SKS, 1:316. 198. Kierkegaard, Either/Or, 2:139; SKS, 3:137.


The poet does not live poetically by creating a poetic work, for if it does not stand in any conscious and inward relation to him, his life does not have the inner infinity that is an absolute condition for living poetically . . . , but he lives poetically only when he himself is oriented and thus integrated in the age in which he lives, is positively free in the actuality to which he belongs.199

In this view, then, existence is an art. Readers familiar with Kierkegaard's Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philo

sophical Fragments (1846) will not be at all surprised by the claim that "to exist is an art."200 It may be surprising, however, to learn that the theory of "actual and ethical subjectivity" articulated there is cast in the terms of Moller's theory of art. Johannes Climacus, Kierkegaard's pseudonymous author of Concluding Unscientific Postscript, expands and transfigures Moller's view into a conceptually saturated theory of living poetically when he writes, "All idealizing passion," by which Climacus means the earnest passion that focuses ideals and gives the impetus to act upon them, "is an anticipation of the eternal'in existence in order for an existing person to exist."201 Clearly, Kierkegaard has appropriated Moller's view that it is through "the anticipation of the eternal" that human endeavors acquire their substantive earnestness, even though he has modified the view somewhat. While I want to reserve fuller consideration of the Johannes Climacus titles for subsequent chapters, we should nevertheless observe the "swerve"202 that Climacus makes right here. On the one hand, he adopts Moller's phrase and his theological commitment to the importance of a religious life view in order to refine the Romantic notion of living poetically. On the other hand, he obscures his debt to Moller by overwriting Moller's "true art" with the term "idealizing passion," and then commenting upon Moller's phrase in a footnote:

Poetry and art have been called an anticipation of the eternal. If one wants to call them that, one must nevertheless be aware that poetry and art are not essentially related to an existing person, since the contemplation of poetry and art, "joy over the beautiful," is disinterested, and the observer is contemplatively outside himself qua existing person.203

Here Climacus's offhanded "if one wants to call them that" is nigh unto a dismissal of Moller's theory of art, even while he appropriates Moller's view with only slight modification for his own theory of existence. In a certain respect, however,

199. Kierkegaard, Concept of Irony, 326; SKS, 1:354. 200. Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments, trans. Howard V.

Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992), 351; SKS, 7:321. 201. Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, 312-13; SKS, 7:285; italics added. 202. Along with its synonyms "c/inamen" and "misprision," "swerve" is one of Bloom's terms for the

poetic misreading or creative correction that characterizes poetic hermeneutics (see Anxiety of Influence, 14).

203. Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, 313n*; SKS, 7:285n2.


Climacus's recontextualization of "the anticipation of the eternal" from "true art" to "idealizing passion" is parallel to Schlegel's shift of emphasis from writing poetry to living poetically. Kierkegaard, like the Romantic ironists, transfigures a theory of art by recasting it in the sphere of existence.

As I have already shown in my review of the second part of The Concept of Irony, it is unnecessary to read ahead in Kierkegaard's authorship to see this appropriation of Moller's view. What is new in the comments from both Concluding Unscientific Postscript and The Concept of Anxiety, however, is a reinterpretation of Moller's view in order that Kierkegaard himself can create some intellectual distance from his mentor. In Concluding Unscientific Postscript, this is apparent in the pseudonymous author's decision to represent Mailer's theory as z/'Moller spoke of a "disinterested" sort of "contemplation of poetry and art."204 But this is no fairer to what Moller actually writes than it would be to say that Judge William's ethical aesthetics is "disinterested" and lacks earnestness. What Moller writes immediately following his assertion that "true art is an anticipation of eternal salvation" clarifies that he does not at all mean to defend a disinterested aesthetic objectivity. On the contrary, like Judge William, IVfoller contextualizes his theory of art within a larger vision of ethical responsibility, as is plain to see when he speaks of a harmonization of "the law of duty" and "personal aspirations" within activity that he calls truly artistic. "As matters presently stand," he writes, "it is only in individual moments that the personalwill elevates itself to the hallowed standpoint wherefrom the law of duty is not at all felt as a strictly dictatorial constraint.... In truly artistic production personal aspirations can become so coextensive with the higher assistance, that the feeling of effort can absolutely disappear."205 Clearly, Mailer's view with its emphasis on the "personal will" should not be accused of lacking "the inwardness of earnestness," and neither can it be read to advocate an objective "disinterestedness," since it explicitly incorporates "personal aspirations." Climacus inappropriately ascribes features to Mailer's view of art that more properly belong to the aesthetic theory of Immanuel Kant, for Kant does say that aesthetic judgments should be disinterested.206

If, in fact, Kierkegaard's relationship to Moller is appropriately read in terms of creative misinterpretation, or poetic "swerve," then it is even more interesting that Kierkegaard's writings swerve from one side of Mailer to the other on this point of living poetically. That is to say, in the period in which Kierkegaard is at work on his

204. Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, 313n*; SKS, 7:285n2. In The Concept of Anxiety, such contemplation is regarded not simply as disinterested but as "demonic." This is because in The Concept of Anxiety (tellingly subtitled a simple psychologically orienting deliberation on the dogmatic issue of hereditary sin) the discussion of art as "an anticipation of eternal life" is ranked among a host of demonic, as opposed to earnest, responses to the concept of the eternal. It is ostensibly demonic, rather than inward and earnest, because in conceiving the eternal merely imaginatively one holds the eternal at a distance from one's concrete existence.

205. Moller, Om Udodeligheden, 217; italics added. 206. See Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment, trans. James Creed Meredith (Oxford: Oxford Univer

sity Press, 1964), 50'. "Taste is the faculty of estimating an object or a mode of representation by means of a delight or aversion apart from any interest. The object of such a delight is called beautiful" Kierkegaard owned the 1793 Berlin edition of Kritik der Urtheilskraft {ASKB, 594).


dissertation he speaks rather more optimistically than Mailer regarding the possibility of living poetically in a way that harmonizes the ideal and the actual. Whereas Mailer shows restraint in claiming that the poet's or artist's consciousness of harmony or reconciliation is "only an image" of what is achieved "in the fullness of time,"207 Kierkegaard boldly declares, "Let it above all be said that anyone can live poetically who truly wants to do so."208 Granted, Mailer speaks of personal aspirations becoming "coextensive with the higher assistance,"209 but Kierkegaard goes further still. When Kierkegaard contrasts the Romantic notion of "composing oneself poetically" with what he calls the Christian notion of "letting oneself be poetically composed," he claims that on the latter understanding, "the Christian comes to the aid of God, becomes, so to speak, his co-worker in completing the good work God himself has begun."210 While Mailer speaks of receiving "the higher assistance" from God, Kierkegaard speaks of "coming to the aid of God." It is not too much to say that Kierkegaard's language expresses a considerably more sanguine view of human capabilities than Mailer's language does. I lowever, if Kierkegaard's anthropological views are more optimistic than Mailer's in his student years, this cannot be said of Kierkegaard's postdissertation writings. It would seem that beginning with Either/Or (and the concluding "Ultimatum" of Either/Or evidences this), Kierkegaard's writing comes increasingly to find a center of gravity in what he calls "sin consciousness," and this marks Kierkegaard's "swerve" around Mailer to a more grave anthropology. The Concept of Anxiety is a psychological study of the issue of heredity sin and, as I will discuss in subsequent chapters, each of the works published under the pseudonyms Johannes Climacus and Anti-Climacus deal substantively with the inexorable fact of human sinfulness.

It is clear, then, that both Vigilius Haufniensis and Johannes Climacus misrepresent Mailer's view that "art is an anticipation of eternal salvation." Indeed, Judge William is a much better interpreter of Mailer than either Haufniensis or Climacus. Moreover, Haufniensis and Climacus are not even consistent with each other in the way they misrepresent Mailer's view. Haufniensis, who neglects to comment both on the ethical dimension of Mailer's view and the anticipatory symbolic role it plays, criticizes the view because poetry is a reconciliation only of the imagination.211 Climacus, on the other hand, imports into Mailer's view the Kantian criterion that contemplation of poetry must be "disinterested" (a criterion Mailer does not underwrite), and thereby appears to be free to transfigure Mailer's theory that "art is an anticipation of eternal salvation" into his theory that "idealizing passion is an anticipation of the eternal in existence" without intellectual debt to Mailer for the now famous Kierkegaardian emphasis upon "subjective interest." But both of these "swerves" mask the genuine issue. It is not the case that Moller's theory

207. Mailer, Om Udodeligheden, 217-18. 208. Kierkegaard, Concept of Irony, 297; SKS, 1:330. 209. Mailer, Om Udodeligheden, 217. 210. Kierkegaard, Concept of Irony, 280; SKS, 1:316. 211. It is more than a little odd that in a book dedicated to the memory of Mailer, who was himself a

strong critic of Schlegel, Mailer's own view of poetry is criticized for being in no way substantively different from that of Schlegel!


claims an actual reconciliation for an imaginative one, as Haufniensis says, nor is it true that M0ller's theory advocates disinterested contemplation of poetry and art, as Johannes Climacus says. Rather, the heart of the matter is that Moller neglects to underscore the issue of human sinfulness to the degree Kierkegaard increasingly deems necessary. In this respect, the Christian sermon that concludes Either/Or is Kierkegaard's most penetrating criticism not only of A's life view, but of William's and of Moller's as well. 212

Viewed in Christian terms, the distance between ideality and actuality is marked by human sin. That is to say, sin is the distance between how one should live and how one does live, between how things should be and how things are. Because of sin, humans cannot compose themselves poetically in such a way that reconciles these "wounds immedicable" (Milton). Any poetic reconciliation is only ever imaginative, and any actual reconciliation is only ever partial. But if this radical view of sin—a "view that places everything under sin, knows no exceptions, spares nothing"213—underscores all of Kierkegaard's thinking about poetic creativity, is it not the end rather than the beginning of a poetics? Is not such a bleak view of human creativity barren ground for theorizing and implementing a theory of poetry? One certainly might think so. However, while the possibility of Romantically poetizing oneself and one's environment might be an existential dead end, Kierkegaard hints that "living poetically" might mean something other than poetizing oneself. "It is indeed one thing to compose oneself poetically," he says in his dissertation, but "it is something else to be composed poetically. The Christian lets himself be poetically composed, and in this respect a simple Christian lives far more poetically than many a brilliant intellectual."214 One aspect of Kierkegaard's sense of "living poetically" then, contrary to Schlegel's ironic view, is the ideal of allowing oneself to be formed by and conformed to the will of God. As I have shown, Moller also intimated as much. But something Moller does not say is also entailed in Kierkegaard's statement. Moller considers the work of the poet to be an anticipatory semblance or indication of the reconciliation God achieves in human salvation; the poet's act approximates God's act, but this does not mean that God's act is a poetic act. Kierkegaard's view is different—his conviction that a Christian lets himself or herself be "poetically composed" entails a conception of one's Creator as poetically composing. Thus, what begins to emerge here is a theological poetics, or a "theopoetics," which embraces the Romantic emphasis on poetic creativity

212. It is true that the "Ultimatum" of Either/Or does not express the "paradoxical Christianity" of Kierkegaard's later thinking. Nevertheless, that it is intended to be read as a Christian sermon within the text world of Either/Or is clear not simply from the fact that the pastor who has written it is ordained in a Christian communion serving a Christian congregation, but also in the fact that the pericope for the sermon is from the Gospel according to Luke 19:41-48. For these reasons, the fact that the sermon does not share in Kierkegaard's later emphasis on the paradox of God's incarnation in Christ is no reason to reject the claim that it is a Christian sermon. So too, as Alastair Hannay has said of Kierkegaard's early writings, "we don't have to suppose that Kierkegaard actually inhabited a religious life-view to suppose that he wanted his readers to see that such a life-view was the one his writings were trying to drive them towards" (Hannay, Kierkegaard: A Biography, 175).

213. Kierkegaard, Concept of Irony, 288; SKS, 1:323. 214. Kierkegaard, Concept of Irony, 280-81; SKS, 1:316.


but locates the true home of that creativity not in the individual ironist but in the divine author.

Perhaps then the prospect for a poetics underscored by the Christian consciousness of sin is not such an unlikely thing. Indeed, sometime in 1842 or 1843, perhaps while writing Either/Or, Kierkegaard sketched in his journal a rough outline for a three-part series of lectures on poetry.215 He never composed the lectures, but the outline itself evidences the possibility that Kierkegaard plotted his writing within a theoretical overview of his work and, consequently, that his growing recognition of the pervasiveness of sin was not incompatible with a theological poetics. In the absence of his envisioned lectures, we can imagine that the three key positions in Either/Or represent an early and provisional dialectical articulation of Kierkegaard's poetics: In the first volume, both the young aesthete and Johannes the Seducer develop Kierkegaard's interpretation of the dangers of "living poetically" in the Schlegelian sense. In the second volume, Judge William redirects the ideal of "living poetically" in terms of Moller's ethically grounded theory of art. The concluding "Ultimatum" ironizes both of the two preceding life views in a controlled fashion and contextualizes them within the consciousness of the pervasiveness of human sin.

What I have attempted to show in this chapter is that the emergent poetics of Kierkegaard's early authorship becomes visible through an ironic revision of Romantic irony, conceptually refined by philosophical criticism and imaginatively modulated back toward a more orthodox Christian life view. Kierkegaard begins to develop his distinctive religious poetics from a creative correction and recombination of both Schlegel's Romantic literary theory (with its emphasis on irony and its "great requirement" of "living poetically") and Moller's traditionalist alternative to Romantic theory (wherein "true art" is viewed as an anticipation of the reconciliation of the ideal and the actual achieved in eternal salvation). The structure of Either/Or itself follows this development, and the final irony that Judge William commends to A a sermon that relativizes both A's life view and his own exemplifies Kierkegaard's notion of "irony as a controlled element" within the whole work. As such, mastered irony is akin to Romantic irony but is transfigured in the service of something higher than itself. Mastered irony points up a certain vanity in all human poetizing—the vanity that neither the aesthetic nor the ethical mode truly actualizes the ideal reconciliation of "living poetically"—and yet it entails the ideal of authentic earnestness in a religious life. The sermon does not deny, however, that an actual reconciliation of ideality and actuality is possible. On the contrary, as a Christian sermon, it is predicated on the belief that God in Christ has achieved just such a gracious reconciliation. And it is quite possible that when in his later years Kierkegaard speaks of God as "like a poet,"216 he does so because he believes that God in Christ lives poetically as no merely human poet can.

215. Kierkegaard Journals and Papers, 5.5608; Papirer, IV C 127 (n.d., 1842-1843); SKS, 19:379. 216. Kierkegaard, Journals and Papers, 2.1445; Papirer, XI2 A 98 (n.d., 1854).

CHAPTER T W O

God's Poem

The god poetized hirjiself in the likeness of a human being. —Kierkegaard's Johannes Climacus, Philosophical Fragments

The early German Romantic poetics of the generation prior to Kierkegaard conferred upon the human imagination something of a quasi-divine status based on the poet's ability to bring whole new "worlds" into being through "irony." In this connection, Friedrich Schlegel writes, "To become God, to be human, to cultivate oneself are all expressions that mean the same thing."1 Kierkegaard envisions God as the poet par excellence, in comparison to whom even the most "cultivated" of human poets appears woefully effete, and just as needy of divine reconciliation through Christ as the mass of humanity. Kierkegaard's poetics is, for that reason, what I am calling a theological poetics with a specifically Christomorphic character. Let me unpack this assertion in two parts. First, Kierkegaard's poetics is a "theological poetics" because, while he acknowledges that many a human poet can work charming, provocative, comic, or tragic variations upon the actual world, he nonetheless affirms that these are so many imaginative variations in miniature on God's universal creativity. Second, Kierkegaard's theological poetics has a specifically "Christomorphic" character because he believes it is God's incarnation in Christ, a self-introduction of the poet into the poem, that warrants the claim that God "fulfills" in actuality what every other poet only achieves in imagination, namely, a "reconciliation" between the actual world and the divine ideal. Hence, in this Christomorphic poetics, Kierkegaard finds his own constructive theological alternative to both the Romantic poetics of irony and to the traditionalist aesthetics that he evaluated and criticized in his dissertation, in Either/Or, and in The Concept of Anxiety.

1. Friedrich Schlegel, Friedrich Schlegel's Lucinde and the Fragments, trans. Peter Firchow (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1971), 200; Athenaeum Fragments, no. 262.

55


My analysis in this chapter begins with a reading of the first two chapters of Philosophical Fragments, a work published in 1844 under the pseudonym Johannes Climacus. I then relate the yield of my reading of this pseudonymous work to later veronymous reflections from Kierkegaard's Journals and Papers regarding his personal view of God as "like a poet." Finally, I interpret the depiction of God the poet found in Kierkegaard's writings in terms of both the Romantic poetics and the traditionalist aesthetics to which Kierkegaard was responding. By envisioning God the creator as one who "poetically . . . permits everything possible to come forth,"2 and by envisioning God in Christ as one who by "introducing himself into his work"3 lives poetically within creation, Kierkegaard converts what he calls the Romantic ideal of "living poetically" from an aesthetic ideal to a theological paradigm. Through this incarnational self-introduction into historical actuality, Kierkegaard says, God "fulfills" creation. In terms of the traditionalist aesthetics with which Kierkegaard was most familiar, this "fulfillment" is the reconciliation of the actual to the ideal to which "true art" is supposed to attest. Kierkegaard's way of thinking grows out of his critique of early German Romanticism, of which he considered Friedrich Schlegel the chief representative, and of his critique of the traditionalist Christian alternative proposed by his mentor, Poul Martin Moller.

The Romantic Ideal of "Living Poetically" and the Traditionalist Criterion of "True Art"

In the previous chapter I distinguished the ways in which Kierkegaard began to develop a distinctive literary point of view from his constructive reading of Friedrich Schlegel's ironic brand of early German Romanticism, conceptually refined by philosophical criticism, and imaginatively modulated back toward the more traditional Christian life view of Poul Martin Moller. With respect to the ideas of both Schlegel and Meller, Kierkegaard found a creative correction necessary in order to preserve and incorporate the valued features of their theories into his own thinking. Thus, in the case of Schlegel, whose ideal of self-composition through Romantic irony Kierkegaard considered "unpoetic" because it was "irreligious,"4 Kierkegaard modified the notion such that "living poetically" could mean something other than poetizing oneself. "It is indeed one thing to compose oneself poetically," he writes in his dissertation, but "it is something else to be composed poetically. The Christian lets himself be poetically composed, and in this respect a simple Christian lives far more poetically than many a brilliant intellectual."5

Kierkegaard's clear implication here is that, contrary to Schlegel's ironic stance, a truer form of "living poetically" is achieved through allowing oneself to be formed

2. Kierkegaard, Soren Kierkegaard's Journals and Papers, ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, 7 vols. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1967-1978), 2.1445; Papirer, XI2 A 98 (n.d., 1854).

3. Kierkegaard, Journals and Papers, 2.1391; Papirer, XI A 605 (n.d., 1849). 4. Kierkegaard, The Concept of Irony, with Continual Reference to Socrates, trans. Howard V. Hong and

Edna H. Hong (Princeton, NJ; Princeton University Press, 1989), 297; SKS, 1:330. 5. Kierkegaard, Concept of Irony, 280-81; SKS, 1:316.

GOD'S POEM 57

by and conformed to the will of God who, metaphorically at least, can be understood in terms of one who "poetically composes."

With respect to Moller's theory, Kierkegaard's revisionist process of appropriation is somewhat different. Moller considered "true art" (with poetry being art's highest expression) an anticipatory semblance or indication of the reconciliation God achieves in human salvation. "True art," Miller says in his treatise on eternal life, is that in which the "complete harmony" between the "particular" historical production and the eternal or "universal" truth it expresses "finds its place in the consciousness" either of the artist or the receptive auditor or observer. Moreover, this eternal "consciousness" is an "image of the completely transfigured happiness in which, without resistance, the individual life is fulfilled by the will of the eternal."6 Thus, Moller proposes an explicitly soteriological aesthetics contextualized by a theological ethics. "True art" expresses a "complete harmony between the universal and the particular" that is interpreted in terms of a reconciliation of the individual's historical actuality with the ideal "will of the eternal." Kierkegaard was sympathetic to this traditionalist Christian alternative to Romantic theory, but His critique confronted Moller's optimistic view with a radical doctrine of sin, such that human beings are rendered incapable of creating art that could express this "complete harmony" and thus be considered "true" in any ultimate sense.

At a basic level, however, despite the fact that Schlegel and Moller held conflicting aesthetic views, Kierkegaard's rationale for his criticism of both is fundamentally the same, and it has to do with the imaginative relation of poetry to "actuality." With respect to Schlegel's view, Kierkegaard thinks the "the tragedy of romanticism is that what it seizes upon is not actuality."7 So too with respect to Moller's view, while he acknowledges that "poetry is a kind of reconciliation," Kierkegaard nonetheless insists, "It is not the true reconciliation, for it does not reconcile me with the actuality in which I am living."8 Kierkegaard's pseudonym Vigilius Haufniensis later glosses this criticism when he characterizes Moller's thesis that "art is an anticipation of eternal life" as "purely and simply for the imagination" because "poetry and art are the reconciliation only of the imagination."9 In Kierkegaard's writings, therefore, "true reconciliation" and "poetic reconciliation" would seem to be two completely different forms of reconciliation. Haufniensis is the pseudonymous author of a work entitled The Concept of Anxiety: A Simple

6. Poul Martin Mailer, 216-17; my translation. All following citations of this work will use the standard short reference Om Udedeligheden. Tanker over Mueligheden af'Bevisor for Menneskets Udede/ighed, med hensyn El den nyes/e derhen horende Literatur, in Efterladte Skrifter, vol. 2 (Copenhagen: C. A. Reitzel, 1842). The complete passage in Danish is as follows: "'Den sande Kunst er en Anticipation af det Salige Liv.' Den fuldkomne harmonie mellem Universalitet og Individuality, som finder Sted i Kunstnerens Bevids-thed, naar han producerer et segte Kunstvaerk, eller hos den, der med regte Receptivitet gjentager den samme Production, er et Billed af de fuldkommen Forldaredes Salighed, hvori det individuelle Liv uden Modstand bliver udfyldt af den Eviges Villie."

7. Kierkegaard, Concept of Irony, 304; SKS, 1:337. 8. Kierkegaard, Concept of Irony, 297; SKS, 1:330-31. As I mentioned in chapter 2, however,

Kierkegaard mischaracterizes Moller's theory, perhaps in order to get around some of its more challenging subtleties. Meller never says poetry is the true reconciliation; he says true poetry is an anticipatory image of the true reconciliation.

9. Kierkegaard, The Concept of Anxiety: A Simple Psychologically Orienting Deliberation on the Dogmatic Issue of Hereditary Sin, trans. ReidarThomte (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980), 152-53; SKS, 4:452.


Psychologically Orienting Deliberation on the Dogmatic Issue of Hereditary Sin, and for him, the fundamental reason for concluding that "poetic reconciliation" never achieves a "true reconciliation" of the actual and the ideal is that the poet, whoever she may be, always takes her point of departure from a historical actuality marked by sin. There is good reason to suspect that Kierkegaard shares Haufniensis's view that all actuality, historicity, temporality, call it what you will, is saturated by sin. Kierkegaard moved steadily away from a Romantic view of life and toward a more traditional Christian view with its dogmatic emphasis on the doctrine of sin.10

Given this view of life, sin is what marks the distance between ideality and actuality, between how things should be and how things are in fact, between how one should live and how one does live, and, with specific respect to Kierkegaard's poetics, between "poetic reconciliation" and "true reconciliation." No human poet is able to bring about the "true reconciliation," Kierkegaard says, because "only the religious is able to bring about the true reconciliation."11 That no human poet can bring about the true reconciliation, however, is not equivalent to saying no poet whatsoever can bring about this reconciliation. In fact, complementary to his critique and creative appropriation of the Romantic notion of "living poetically," Kierkegaard transforms Mtaller's thesis on "true art" by reimagining true art as the divine production that makes reconciliation possible. What makes Kierkegaard's poetics a theological poetics is the understanding that God poetically composes the world, but what gives his theological poetics its specifically Christomorphic character is the view that God achieves the "true reconciliation" by "introducing himself into his work" in the person of Christ.12 Given this conception, Kierkegaard is able to contrast an ideal, divine form of "poetic production" with actual, human forms of poetizing. By virtue of this contrast, Kierkegaard exercises a theological position wherein divine creativity subsists as the standard for creativity in the fullest, ideal sense. Human creativity, on the other hand, being both derivative and corrupted by sin, as Kierkegaard believes, is unable adequately to resemble the divine ideal in any way that could warrant Moller's term "true art."

As I turn to Kierkegaard's most well-known work on the theological theme of incarnation, I want to focus my reading in terms of the interplay between Moller's thesis and Kierkegaard's response." When Kierkegaard reflected upon Moller's

10. While it is not clear whether or not Kierkegaard would affirm a radical doctrine of sin at the time he was completing his dissertation, he does write approvingly there of the "earnestness" of "a Christian view that places everything under sin, knows no exceptions, spares nothing, neither the child in the womb nor the most beautiful of women" (Concept of Irony, 288; SKS, 1:323). Given this totalizing view of sin, Kierkegaard seems here to suggest that sin does not merely corrupt one's will but misdirects and obscures one's imagination and understanding as well (a highly debatable matter, and one I take up in chapter 3). In consequence, given the increasing insistence in his writings on the importance for Christianity of what he calls "the consciousness of sin," it is not difficult to understand why Kierkegaard would think Moller's theory of "true art" proposes a task that is impossible for any human art to fulfill.

11. Kierkegaard, Concept of Irony, 297; SKS, 1:331. 12. KierkegaardJoKmaA and Papers, 2.1391; Papirer, XI A 605 (n.d., 1849). 13. It is clear that Kierkegaard thought long and hard on Moller's theory of art, since an obvious refer

ence to it is found in his writings as late as 1846 (Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong [Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992], 313n*; SKS, 7:285n2: "Poetry and art have been called an anticipation of the eternal").

GOD'S POEM 59

claim that in the historical production or apprehension of "true art," one's eternal "consciousness" (Bevidsthed) "literally" becomes an "image" of "completely transfigured happiness [Salighed],"14 Kierkegaard wondered to himself about the range of this audacious claim for the potency of art: "Can a historical point of departure be given for an eternal consciousness [Bevidsthed]; how can such a point of departure be of more than historical interest; can an eternal happiness [Salighed] be built on historical knowledge?"15 When he set about to respond to these queries, he did it not through the pseudonymous Haufniensis, Moller's appreciative critic, but through a pseudonym named Johannes Climacus—"a poet"—who arrived on the Danish literary scene within the same week of Vigilius Haufniensis.16

Philosophical Fragments

On the title page to Philosophical Fragments, Climacus poses the following three related questions: "Can a historical departure be given for an eternal consciousness; how can such a point of departure be of more than historical interest; can an eternal happiness be built on historical knowledge?"17 While the introduction of the "historical" issue here foreshadows Climacus's later "expression of gratitude" to Gotthold Lessing,13 his concern regarding "eternal consciousness" and "eternal happiness" resonates as strongly with the issues Mailer addresses in On Immortality as his earlier writings do. Indeed, since it was written during the same period

14. Mailer, Om Udedeligheden, 216-17; my translation. 15. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton, NJ:

Princeton University Press, 1985), 1; SKS, 4:21,3. 16. For Climacus's claim to be "only a poet," see Philosophical Fragments, 26; SKS, 4:233. Interestingly,

while on the face of it one might suspect that Climacus ("a loafer" whose book is "only a pamphlet" [Philosophical Fragments, 5; SKS, 4:215]) and Haufniensis (whose work is dressed up as a scientific treatise) represent the two contrasting personae of "indolent poet" and "assiduous scientist," respectively, what I Iaufniensis says authorizes him to write such a treatise is not his ability to cite "proof texts" of psychological cases, but a "poetic originality" that gives him a "true psychological-poetic authority" (Concept of Anxiety, 54-55; SKS, 4:359).

Although it is impossible to give a precise date for when Kierkegaard commenced writing The Concept of Anxiety, he had probably begun by December 184.3 (see SKS, K4:331). Nevertheless, by March 1844, a mere three months later, he also began work on Philosophical Fragments, or A Fragment of Philosophy. He worked on these two books simultaneously through the spring of 1844 until June, when he published Philosophical Fragments just four days prior to publishing The Concept of Anxiety.

Kierkegaard did not initially intend to assign either of these works pseudonymous authors. Both the draft and the final copy prepared for the publisher listed "S. Kierkegaard" as the author of both The Concept of Anxiety and Philosophical Fragments. In fact, Philosophical Fragments was to be the first in a projected series of pamphlets by Kierkegaard, and for this reason the title page of the final copy designates it as "No 1. et dogmatisk-philosophisk problem" {SKS, K4:173). Jette Knudsen and Johnny Kondrup relate that it was only in the final moment ("i sidste aieblik") before delivering the manuscript to his publisher that Kierkegaard attributed the piece to Johannes Climacus (SKS, K4:192). Kierkegaard's reason for making these late changes is unclear. One would expect that had he intended all along to publish the works pseudonymously, he would have prepared them for the publisher in that way, just as he had with earlier works. Nonetheless, upon publication, The Concept of Anxiety came out under the name Vigilius Haufniensis, and Philosophical Fragments bore the name Johannes Climacus for its author, while listing Kierkegaard as its editor.

17. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 1; SKS, 4:213. 18. See Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, 63-125; SKS, 7:65-120.


Haufniensis articulated his critique of Moller's theory of true poetic consciousness as a prolepsis of eternal happiness, Climacus's reiteration of the key terms "consciousness" (Bevidsthed) and "happiness" (Salighed) in his epigram warrants an interrogation of the relationship. By bringing the problems associated with "historical knowledge" into explicit connection with the issues of "eternal consciousness" and "eternal happiness," Climacus addresses the previously discussed relation between "actuality" and "ideality" in a new connection, and brings some of Less-ing's insights to bear in order to accomplish this. Thus, while neither Lessing nor Moller is anywhere mentioned in Philosophical Fragments, already on the title page it is clear that they have provided some of the key critical terms for Climacus's deliberations.19

It would be a mistake, however, to assume that Kierkegaard first introduces the critical vocabulary of "the historical" into his authorship through Johannes Climacus. Kierkegaard's and Haufniensis's concern with "actuality" was not simply a

19. In a sketch for Philosophical Fragments, Kierkegaard writes that the problem of a historical point of departure for an eternal consciousness "is and remains the main problem with respect to the relation between Christianity and philosophy. Lessing is the only one who has dealt with it. But Lessing knew considerably more what the issue is about than the common herd [Creti and P/eli] of modern philosophers" (Kierkegaard,/»«r«a/j and Papers, 3.2370; Papirer, V B 1:2 [n.d., 1844]).

Gotthold Lessing (1729-1781) is best remembered in theological circles for alerting readers to the "ugly, broad ditch" that separates "the narrative of the evangelists" and "accidental historical truths" on the one side, from metaphysical and moral truths on the other (see Lessing, "On the Proof of the Spirit and of Power," in Lessing's Theological Writings, trans. Henry Chadwick [Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1956], 53-55). Lessing's central insight here is that "historical truth cannot be demonstrated." That is to say, a historical report about something someone has witnessed cannot be cast syllogistically in terms of a necessary truth of reason that would allegedly remain true in an extrahistorical sense. The problem, I .cssing says, "is that reports of fulfilled prophecies are not fulfilled prophecies; that reports of miracles are not miracles," and that the claim about God's incarnation in Christ, therefore, is not the sort of thing that admits of either verification or falsification through "reports" ("On the Proof of the Spirit and of Power," 52). Kierkegaard owned Lessing's collected writings (Gotthold Ephraim Lessing's sammtliche Schriften, vols. 1-32 [Berlin: Stettin, 1S2S-1S2S]; ASKB, 1747-62). Despite the fact that Lessing's remarks were something of a boon to Kierkegaard, Gordon E. Michalson Jr. argues persuasively that Kierkegaard "drastically transforms Lessing's problem into an entirely fresh set of issues." In the same spirit of intellectual freedom with which he critically appropriates the ideas of Schlegel and Moller, therefore, Kierkegaard also modifies Lessing's thoughts on the relationship between contingent and necessary truths to his own purposes. "Unlike Lessing, who attends to this issue because of his religious stake in necessity," Michalson says, "Kierkegaard turns to it because of his religious stake in the contingencies of history: his position on the positivity issue dovetails with his need to elicit trom history the free and unnecessitated act of God in the incarnation" (Michalson, Lessing's "Ugly Ditch": A Study of Theology and History [University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1985], 12).

Regarding Climacus's own view of "the relation between Christianity and philosophy" (by which he means "speculative" or "Hegelian" philosophy), a second epigram on the page following the title page of Philosophical Fragments is telling: "Better well hanged than ill wed." This is a gloss on a Danish translation of a German translation of the fool's comment to Maria in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, or What You Will: "Many a good hanging prevents a bad marriage." The implication is that Climacus thinks it better for a thinker to be hanged than to attempt to bridge the "ugly, broad ditch" by speculative mediation, and thus be "married" into a system of Hegelian philosophy. This lesson may well have been one he learned from his mentor. Early in his intellectual career Moller "married" into Hegelian philosophy, and he spent his later years trying to extricate himself from it. As Peter Thielst has commented, "Meller never succeeded in his Hegel-assimilation because the differences in their thinking became increasingly pronounced" (Thielst, "Poul Martin Meller (1794-1838): Scattered Thoughts, Analysis of Affectation, Combat with Nihilism," Danish Yearbook of Philosophy 13 [1976], 78).

GOD'S POEM 61

concern about the abstract "metaphysical" actuality of consciousness or of imagination. Rather, Kierkegaard is explicit that "the word 'actuality'... must here primarily be understood as historical actuality," and moreover, that those who absent themselves from actuality by losing themselves in imagination have "to a certain degree become unactual."20 So, too, Climacus's concern with a "historical point of departure" is not simply an abstract concern with historicity, but with an actual historical individual who has come into existence, who has therefore made the "transition from possibility to actuality,"21 and who might in fact be the key to one's "eternal happiness." Consequently, Climacus emphasizes historical actuality to the degree that he does on grounds thoroughly consistent with those of Kierkegaard and Haufniensis. Namely, in order for the reconciliation that Christians profess to be a "true reconciliation" and not merely a "reconciliation of the imagination," the incarnation must be conceived as the true story of the eternal God becoming historically actual in an existing individual who can serve as a "historical point of departure" for Christian faith.

But there is also an apparent inconsistency between the thought of Climacus, on the one hand, and Haufniensis and Kierkegaard, on the other. For Kierkegaard and Haufniensis, true reconciliation and poetic reconciliation are different, and poetic reconciliation is "purely and simply for the imagination."22

Climacus the poet is not so dogmatic, however, and for him the question regarding Moller's theory of "true art" as an "anticipation of eternal life" apparently remains a live one. Yet what the reader soon discovers is that everything turns on the identity of the poet, or the "reconciler."23 The question of just who it is that creates "true art" and enables one's eternal consciousness, and eternal happiness, proves to figure decisively.

Two Teaching Models

Climacus opens the first chapter, entitled "Thought-Project," with the Socratic question, "Can the truth can be learned?"24 Despite his breezy manner, his mock self-effacement, and his reference to Philosophical Fragments as "only a pamphlet," reading it is a heady experience all the same.25 Given the topic, Climacus's lyrical style is unconventional but not unrelated. Its function is to help habit-bound readers consider anew the familiar question of whether the truth can be learned. Time and again Climacus repeats the phrase, "We shall not be in a hurry."2" Why not? Here Climacus seems in full agreement with the aesthete in Either/Or who criticizes those in "the habit of observing the phenomena of life as one observes rarities

20. Kierkegaard, Concept of Irony, 259; SKS, 1:297. 21. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 74; SKS, 4:274. 22. Kierkegaard, Concept of Anxiety, 152-53; SKS, 4:452. See also Concept of Irony, 297; SKS, 1:330-31. 23. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 17; SKS, 4:226. 24. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 9; SKS, 4:218. 25. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 5; SKS, 4:215. 26. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 20,25, and 47; SKS, 4:228,232, and 252.


in a curio cabinet; the shorter the better, the more one can manage to see."27 Climacus surely agrees with the aesthete that one cannot presume to understand the story of Tantalus if she merely recalls that he was thirsty, or the story of Sisyphus if she remembers only that he rolls a stone up a mountain. Woody Allen's ironic one-liner about reading Tolstoy's War and Peace after taking a course in speed-reading makes the point perfectly: "It's about Russia." Perhaps nowhere does the phenomenon of habitual hastiness stand in such high relief as in the cases of the two familiar stories Johannes Climacus chooses for his thought project, namely, the story of the sage of Athens and the story of the messiah from Nazareth. It is with respect to these two stories in particular that Climacus asks, "Can the truth be learned?"28

The first alternative, hypothesis A, is the Socratic one. Climacus dates the origin of the question about learning the truth to Socrates' famous debate in which Meno asks, "Can you tell me, Socrates—is virtue something that can be taught?"29

Climacus justifies his transposition of this question into the question of whether "the truth" can be learned (or taught; the Danish lares can mean both) by reason of the fact that in Plato's dialogues Protagoras, Gorgias, Meno, and Euthydemus, Socrates eventually defines "virtue" as "insight." Meno's question appears simple initially, but it is complicated by the "pugnacious proposition" that one cannot seek what one knows, because she already knows it, and neither can she seek what she does not know, since in that case she does not even know what it is she should seek. For Socrates, however, this proposition is a dilemma in appearance only; by his thinking, learning by virtue of anamnesis, or recollection, offers a third alternative. According to the Socratic principle of anamnesis, the human soul

is immortal and has been born many times, and has seen all things both here and in the other world, has learned everything that is . . . so that when a man has recalled a single piece of knowledge—learned it, in ordinary language—there is no reason why he should not find out the res t . . . for seeking and learning are in fact nothing but recollection.30

Socrates demonstrates his theory by calling upon one of Meno's uneducated young slaves and, through a set of questions and geometrical figures drawn in the sand ("I simply ask him questions without teaching him anything"31) leading him to an understanding of the Pythagorean theorem. According to the Socratic hypothesis, "The ignorant person merely needs to be reminded in order, by himself, to call to mind what he knows. The truth is not introduced into him but was in him."32

Thus, in keeping with Socrates' own self-description, Climacus likens the Socratic

27. Kierkegaard, Either/Or, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987), 1:177; SKS, 2:174.

28. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 9; SKS, 4:218. 29. Plato, Meno, 70a, trans. W. K. C. Guthrie, in The Collected Dialogues, ed. Edith Hamilton and

Huntington Cairns (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1963), 354. 30. Plato, Meno, 81c-d, in Collected Dialogues, 364. 31. Plato, Meno, 84d, in Collected Dialogues, 368. 32. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 9; SKS, 4:218.

GOD'S POEM 63

teacher unto a midwife, for such a teacher assists the learner in giving birth to the truth he carries in his soul.33 Just as a midwife bears no essential relationship to the physiological process of giving birth, the relationship of the Socratic teacher to the learner is merely the occasion for the recollection and bears no essential relationship to the discovery of the truth. Moreover, this condition holds not just for the learner's relationship to the teacher, but holds for the learner's relationship to any historical occasion whatsoever. For if each individual's knowledge of the truth is eternal, then any historical point of departure for the recollection of the truth is essentially irrelevant. "Viewed Socratically," Climacus writes, "any point of departure in time is eo ipso something accidental, a vanishing point, an occasion."34

Thus, answering from the perspective of the A-hypothesis, one would have to respond to Climacus's epigrammatic questions by answering that no historical point of departure can be given for an eternal consciousness, and one's eternal happiness cannot be built on historical knowledge. As Climacus puts it, if the Socratic hypothesis is correct with respect to learning the truth, "then the fact that I have learned from Socrates or from Prodicus or from a maidservant can concern me only historically or—to the extent that I am a Plato in my enthusiasm— poetically."35

In the Socratic view, therefore, to respond to the three epigrammatic questions, no historical point of departure can be given for an eternal consciousness and, since such a point of departure is always of mere historical interest, historically contingent events cannot serve as the basis for an eternal happiness. This is the case, according to Climacus, even in cases where the experience of learning or representing the truth might be a candidate for what IVMler calls "true art," as the example of Plato's "poetic" relation to Socrates illustrates. Even though Socrates served as something of a poetic muse for Plato, the art of his dialogues can only ever be an occasion, never the basis, for one's "anticipation of the eternal."

But is this the only possibility? "If the situation is to be different," Climacus says in introducing his B-hypothesis, "then the moment in time must have such decisive significance that for no moment will I be able to forget it, neither in time nor in eternity, because the eternal, previously nonexistent, came into existence \blev til\ in that moment."36 In contrast to the Socratic model of the A-hypothesis,

33. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 10; SKS, 4:219. In Theaetetus Socrates explains, "My art of midwifery is in general like [women midwives]; the only difference is that my patients are men, not women, and my concern is not with the body but with the soul that is in travail of birth" {Theaetetus 150b, in Collected Dialogues, 855).

34. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 11; SKS, 4:220. Despite the fact that the illustration given in Plato's Meno is a mathematical one, the word "truth," as C. S. Evans rightly explains, means something very significant for Climacus. "He is not talking about 2 + 2 = 4, but the truth which it is essential for human beings to have, the truth whose possession would make human life ultimately worthwhile. We might as well signify the specialness of the concept by speaking of 'the Truth' in cases where this special kind of truth is in mind, as the original English translation of Fragments did, rather than just truth" (Evans, Passionate Reason: Making Sense of Kierkegaard's Philosophical Fragments [Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992], 13).

35. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 12; SKS, 4:221. 36. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 13; SKS, 4:222.


now the learner has to be defined as being "outside the truth," because "if the moment is to acquire decisive significance, then the seeker up until that moment must not have possessed the truth, not even in the form of ignorance."37 In the A-hypothesis, the teacher serves a maieutic role only (which, Climacus grants, is the highest relation that can obtain between two human beings38) and does not concern the learner "with regard to [one's] eternal happiness"39 any more than this or that inconsequential historical occasion of recollection does. According to the B-hypothesis, on the other hand, the teacher is the "occasion" not for the recollection of the truth, but for the learner's discovery that he or she "is untruth."40 Having discovered one's exclusion from the truth, the position of the teacher now acquires a patent significance for the learner. "If the learner is to obtain the truth," Climacus writes, "the teacher must bring it to him, but not only that. Along with it, he must provide him with the condition for understanding it."41 At this point Climacus asserts that, insofar as human beings are "created," initially "God must have given [the learner] the condition for understanding the truth (for otherwise he previously would have been merely animal, and that teacher who gave him the condition along with the truth would make him a human being for the first time)."42 Since the B-hypothesis maintains that each individual learner is positively excluded from the truth, however, Climacus explains that the learner must have "lost" the condition for understanding the truth somehow. Furthermore, since the condition for understanding the truth is lost "through one's own fault," he suggests that we call this forfeiture of the condition "sin."43 Then, articulating the heart of the B-hypothesis, Climacus proposes the solution to this forfeiture of the condition: "The teacher, then, is the god, who gives the condition and gives the truth."44

Here Climacus has articulated a rather strange pedagogical dialectic. On the one hand, according to the A-hypothesis, "the teacher" cannot actually teach the learner anything, but merely serves as the occasion to remind the learner of what he or she already knows in his or her "eternal consciousness." On the other hand, according to the B-hypothesis, "the teacher" goes so "far beyond the definition of a teacher"45 that he is "actually not a teacher,"46 and consequently a number of

37. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 13; SKS, 4:222. 38. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 10; SKS, 4:219. 39. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 12; SKS, 4:221. 40. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 14; SKS, 4:222. 41. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 14; SKS, 4:223. 42. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 15; SKS, 4:223. 43. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 15; SKS, 4:224. "Sin" is also called "incurred guilt" (Philosoph

ical Fragments, 17; SKS, 4:226) and can thus be related back to the discussion of "guilt" in the "Ultimatum" of Either/Or.

44. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 15; SKS, 4:224. As the translators point out, Climacus uses the unusual term Guden ("the god") throughout Philosophical Fragments (excepting a few instances of "God") to emphasize the Socratic-Platonic context of the project. Kierkegaard owned Friedrich Schleier-macher's translation of Plato's dialogues into German. Schleiermacher, faithful to Plato's usage in Theaete-tus, renders "the god" with the definite article (Platons Werke, I-III, trans. Friedrich Ernst Daniel Schleiermacher [Berlin, 1S17-1S28; ASKB, 1158-63], III, p. 202).


GOD'S POEM 65

additional terms become necessary to characterize this teacher who is more than a teacher. First, with respect to the "unfreedom" of ignorance into which the learner casts himself or herself through the forfeiture of the truth, Climacus writes, "Let us call him [i.e., the teacher] a savior, for he does indeed save the learner from unfreedom, saves him from himself. Let us call him a deliverer, for he does indeed deliver the person who had imprisoned himself."47 Then, the additional names "reconciler' and "judge" are deemed necessary, for this teacher "takes away the wrath that lay over the incurred guilt" of sin, and passes judgment on the relationship of the learner to the truth.48 If, along with the imagined interlocutor whom Climacus introduces at the end of chapter 1, a reader begins to suspect from these familiar terms that Climacus is not "the one who came up with the scheme,"49 this is corroborated when Climacus goes on to describe the now decisive moment as "the fullness of time" and speaks of the "conversion of the learner into a "follower" who through his or her "repentance" becomes "immersed in the truth," and experiences the transition of "rebirth" into "a new person."50

Having compounded all these terms into the role and figure of the B-hypoth-esis teacher, Climacus asks, with no little irony, "But is what has been elaborated here thinkable?"51 C. Stephen Evans has remarked that upon reading this, one is tempted to retort, "Of course, you just thought it."52 However, as Evans further points out, Climacus anticipates just such a rushed answer, and again cautions us against being in too great a hurry. Why? Climacus's answer is that a hasty response neglects to weigh the matter of whether one is in a position to answer the question at all. At issue is the question of "who ought to answer the question."53 According to Climacus, only one who has already been "reborn" in terms of the B-hypothesis can truly answer the question, since it would be "ludicrous if this were to occur to one who is not reborn."54 The clear implication here is that the one for whom the B-hypothesis is supposed to be "thinkable" is one already reborn into this new way of thinking. Additionally, it is in "the moment" of rebirth—a historical point of departure, to use the term from the questions of the title page—that the teacher enables the learner's new consciousness of the truth. This decisive moment is that which Climacus has already referred to as "the fullness of time" a "short and temporal" instant that is nonetheless "filled with the eternal."55

47. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 17; SKS, 4:226. The italics in the quotations in this paragraph are in the original.

48. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 17-18; SKS, 4:226. 49. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 21; SKS, 4:229. 50. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 18-20; SKS, 4:226-27. The Danish term translated here with

the English "follower" is Discipel, which has all the biblical overtones of the other words and phrases listed here. Also, with his reference to "the fullness of time" Climacus certainly expects his biblically literate readers to hear in the background the Apostle Paul's words to the Galatians'. "But when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law" (Gal 4:4).

51. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 20; SKS, 4:228. 52. Evans, Passionate Reason, 39-40. 53. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 20; SKS, 4:228. 54. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 20; SKS, 4:228. 55. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 18; SKS, 4:226.


At this point, Climacus concludes the first chapter's thought project rather abruptly to entertain a possible objection from the aforementioned imaginary interlocutor. The charge is that Climacus's scheme is "ludicrous" because he purports to "invent" an idea that is already familiar to whole populations. Climacus gladly concedes that he has not authored the B-hypothesis, but he then wonders whether it would really be accurate to attribute the idea to any human being at all. "Is it not curious," he asks, "that something like this exists, about which everyone who knows it also knows that he has not invented it, and that this 'Go to the next house' does not halt and cannot be halted, even though one were to go to everybody?"56 Despite his feigned puzzlement over this curiosity, however, Climacus is not at a loss as to how to handle this difficulty. In truth, the fact that the B-hypothesis cannot be attributed to any ordinary human being elegantly scripts the transition to the second chapter, where Climacus explicitly attributes a divine origin to his idea of a historical basis for eternal happiness.

A Poetical Venture

Perhaps only rarely is Philosophical Fragments read as a love story, but its second chapter at least warrants such a characterization. Climacus here embarks upon what he calls "a poetical venture" in order to illustrate what is entailed in the contrast between the two hypotheses of the first chapter, that is, between Socrates as teacher on the one hand, and "the god as teacher and savior" on the other.57 In Socratic pedagogy, Climacus maintains, one finds reciprocity in the relationship between teacher and learner, and the teacher is motivated to teach by his or her need to learn. "Between one human being and another," Climacus says, "this is the highest: the pupil is the occasion for the teacher to understand himself; the teacher is the occasion for the pupil to understand himself; in death the teacher leaves no claim upon the pupil's soul, no more than the pupil can claim that the teacher owes him something."58 With the god, however, things are different. Unlike the Socratic situation wherein the dictum "Know thyself" pertains equally to both teacher and pupil, this reciprocity between teacher and pupil does not obtain in the relationship between the god and the learner. In the latter case, the relationship with the learner does not affect the god's understanding at all. With a gesture toward Aristotle's definition of God—"Unmoved, he moves all"—Climacus maintains that the god's understanding remains unmoved by the relationship with the learner, for "the god needs no pupil in order to understand himself."59 What then, one might ask, motivates the god to make an appearance in "the fullness of time"? Climacus answers that since the god cannot be moved by anything or any need from without, it is solely love that motivates the god, "for love does not have the

56. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 22; SKS, 4:230. 57. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 23; SKS, 4:230. 58. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 24; SKS, 4:231. 59. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 24; SKS, 4:232.

GOD'S POEM 67

satisfaction of need outside itself but within."60 Beginning with this, Climacus begins to interweave the notion of the god as lover into the earlier discussion of the god as teacher, savior, deliverer, and the rest.

The god's love, Climacus writes, "must be for the learner, and the goal must be to win [the learner], for only in love is the different made equal, and only in equality or in unity is there understanding."61 The god's goal, then—to "win" the learner through love—is meant also to "teach" the learner something, to enable an "understanding" between the god and the individual. However, the fact that the god and the individual are "very unequal"62 means that the relationship risks misunderstanding, and that it might consequently result in a kind of "unhappy love," which would be a "result not of the lovers' being unable to have each other but of their being unable to understand each other."63 In order to depict just what he means here, Climacus suggests an analogy that he develops from stock resources, even while he insists that any analogy from the human sphere will prove ultimately invalid for representing the relationship between the god and the individual.

This analogy "begins like a fairy tale" with the words, "Suppose there was a king who loved a maiden of lowly station in life."64 Here already Climacuss story calls to mind Judge William's penchant in Either/Or. "It would indeed be beautiful if the Christian dared to call his God the God of love in such a way he thereby also thought of the inexpressibly blissful feeling, that never-ending force in the world: earthly love."65 Upon the announcement of the royal wedding, Climacus (who is, as he says again here, "only a poet") writes, "Let the harp be tuned; let the poets' songs begin; let all be festive while erotic love [Elskov] celebrates its triumph, for erotic love is jubilant when it unites equal and equal and is triumphant when it makes equal in erotic love that which was unequal."66 Despite the Cinderella-like conventions of the fairy tale, in Climacuss hands the analogy quickly takes a reflective turn when an unsettling concern awakens in the king's soul. The king begins to wonder whether his beloved could truly be made happy through marriage with him, when her nagging suspicions and whispering courtiers would be forever insinuating that the king was "doing the girl a favor" in marrying her.67

How could this bring the maiden anything but sorrow, the very thought of which grieves the king as well? Then, to swell this "rich overabundance of sorrow," Climacus intensifies the situation, adding, "And what if [the maiden] could not even understand [the king]—for if we are going to speak loosely about the human, we may well assume an intellectual difference that makes understanding impossible."68 Thus, the fact that the maiden's station is unequal to the king's station and

60. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 24; SKS, 4:232. 61. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 25; SKS, 4:232. 62. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 25; SKS, 4:232. 63. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 25; SKS, 4:233. 64. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 26; SKS, 4:233. 65. Kierkegaard, Either/Or, 2:30; SKS, 3:38. 66. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 26-27; SKS, 4:234. 67. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 27; SKS, 4:234. 68. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 27; SKS, 4:234.


the fact that the king's intellectual aptitude far surpasses that of the maiden both threaten to eventuate in a scenario of unhappy love.

Here, in order to make clear the respects in which this serves as an analogy to the B-hypothesis of the first chapter, Climacus reminds the reader that "the learner is in untruth, indeed, is there though his own fault—and yet he is the object of the god's love \Kjtzrlighed\. The god wants to be his teacher, and the god's concern is to bring about equality. If this cannot be brought about, the love becomes unhappy and the instruction meaningless, for they are unable to understand each other."69 It is only at this point that Climacus sets (ostensibly for himself) what he calls "the poet's task," namely, "to find a solution, a point of unity where there is in truth love's understanding, where the god's concern has overcome its pain," in short, to achieve a reconciliation.70 The first alternative that Climacus explores suggests a reconciliation in which the god and the learner are united by an ascent. In this alternative the god could "draw the learner up toward himself, exalt him, divert him with joy lasting a thousand years (for to him a thousand years are as one day), let the learner forget the misunderstanding in his tumult of joy."71 Yet this is really only a new costume for the fairy story Climacus already began to tell us. Just as "the king could have appeared before the lowly maiden in all his splendor, could have let the sun of his glory rise over her hut, shine on the spot where he appeared to her, and let her forget herself in adoring admiration," so too in the case of the god and the learner, "the unity could be brought about by the god's appearing to the learner, accepting his adoration, and thereby making him forget himself."72 But this conventional alternative turns out to be a "deception" on par with the Romantic but specious reconciliations criticized in The Concept of Irony and illustrated in Either/Or.7* "In taking this path," Climacus writes, "love does not become happy—well, perhaps the learner's and the maiden's love would seem to be happy, but not the teacher's and the king's, whom no delusion can satisfy."74 For this reason, the poet needs to suggest a second alternative, one that seeks to reconcile and unite the god and the learner not through the learner's imaginative ascent, but through the god's actual descent.

Beginning with the caveat that "the learner" can mean "any learner" and therefore must include even the lowliest of individuals, Climacus fleshes out this alternative of divine descent in this way:

In order for unity to be effected, the god must become like this one. He will appear therefore, as the equal of the lowliest of persons. But the lowliest of all is the one who must serve others—consequently, the god will appear in the form of a servant. But this form of a servant is not something put on

69. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 28; SKS, 4:235. 70. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 28; SKS, 4:235. 71. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 29; SKS, 4:235. See Ps 90:4; 2 Pet 3:8. 72. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 29; SKS, 4:236. 73. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 29; SKS, 4:236. 74. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 29; SKS, 4:236.

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like the king's plebian cloak, which just by flapping open would betray the king; it is not something put on like the light Socratic summer cloak, which although woven from nothing, yet is concealing and revealing—but it is his true form. For this is the boundlessness of love, that in earnestness and truth and not in jest it wills to be the equal of the beloved, and it is the omnipotence of resolving love to be capable of that of which neither the king nor Socrates was capable, which is why their assumed characters were still a kind of deceit.75

Climacus's attempt "to poeticize"76 the god's appearance in the form of a servant, no less than the prologue to the Gospel according to John, is a piece of incarna-tional theology, complete with caveats safeguarding against Docetism.77 In order for this alternative of reconciliation through descent to be a possibility, Climacus stipulates, the descent of the god must be a true embodiment of "the boundlessness of love," and the embodiment of love in servanthood must be the god's "true form."78 The point here is that, were this not the case, any would-be reconciliation between the god and the learner would be a sham, since the love between the two would be premised upon a deceit. This is the reason the first alternative of reconciliation through ascent was terminated. The union enabled through the glorification of the learner to the ideality of the god simply varnishes the learner's veneer; it does not alter the fact that the learner actually exists day in and day out under the humble conditions of "untruth." Only servanthood manifests boundless love truly, Climacus says, and so "for the god's love, any other revelation would be a deception."79

Toward the end of the second chapter, Climacus's biblical imagination becomes so transparent—including an allusion to Jesus' crucifixion (accomplished by juxtaposing the phrase "He must expire in death and in turn leave the earth" with a reference to the "bitter cup" that "the immortal one" must taste80)—that the imaginary interlocutor again protests: "What you are composing is the shabbiest plagiarism ever to appear."81 Again Climacus concedes the point, but this time he also tests the interlocutor: "Who then is the poet?"82 In this challenge to identify

75. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, .31-32; SKS, 4:238. 76. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 34; SKS, 4:240. 77. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 32; SKS, 4:239. Between pages 31 and 33, Climacus stipulates

no less than four times that the god's appearance in the form of a servant is "not something put on." On Climacus's rejection of Docetism (the compromise of Christ's humanity in order to affirm that Christ is God) see Murray A. Rae, Kierkegaard's Vision of the Incarnation (Oxford: Clarendon, 1997), 30-31.

78. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 32; SKS, 4:238. Climacus's imagery is clearly biblical here, and alludes to a passage in Paul's letter to the Philippians where he quotes an early hymn affirming that Jesus Christ, "though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness" (Phil 2:6-7).

79. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 33; SKS, A:2i9. 80. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 34; SKS, 4:240. In the Gospel according to Matthew, Jesus

prays just before his betrayal and arrest, "My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; yet not what I want but what you want" (Matt 26:39; see also Mark 14:36 and Luke 22:42).



the true author of the poem, Climacus presents a real difficulty. Given the early results of the then-revolutionary historical-critical research that was just beginning to make its impact, Climacus knows the unfeasibility of attributing his poem to any particular individual.83 Yet he insists there must be a poet, for "if there is no poet when there nevertheless is a poem—this would be curious, indeed, as curious as hearing flute playing although there is no flute player."84 But then, his certainty on the matter seeming to falter, Climacus muses:

Or is this poem perhaps like a proverb, of which no author is known because it seems as if all humanity had composed it. And was this perhaps why you called my plagiarism the shabbiest ever, because I did not steal from any one person but robbed the human race and, although I am just a single human being;—indeed, even a shabby thief—arrogantly pretended to be the whole human race? If that is the case, then if I went around to every single human being and everyone certainly knew about it but everyone also knew that he had not composed it, am I to draw the conclusion that consequently the human race composed it? Would this not be odd? For if the whole human race had composed it, this might very well be expressed by saying that each and every person was equally close to having composed it.85

Climacus does not attempt to refute this Feuerbachian possibility directly.86

1 nstead, he spins the anthropological notion of the poem as a product of "the human race" into the absurdity that this should mean each and every individual has an equal claim to its composition. Then, in a sudden change of tack certain to exasperate any Feuerbachian, Climacus misconstrues the charge of plagiarism to make explicit what he only implied at the end of the first chapter. Feigning finally to understand his critic, he restates the criticism by saying, "And I do understand you. You called my behavior the shabbiest plagiarism, not because I stole from a single person, not because I robbed the human race, but because I robbed the

83. In 1835, David Friedrich Strauss launched what has come to be known as "the quest for the historical Jesus" with his work Das Lebenjesu, kritisch bearbeitet (Tubingen: C. F. Osiander, 1835).

84. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 35; SKS, 4:241. 85. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 35; SKS, 4:241. 86. The interlocutor Climacus imagines for himself in this satirical passage would seem to be familiar

with Ludwig Feuerbach's The Essence of Christianity. Murray A. Rae identifies Feuerbach as the "first, and probably foremost, target" in this satire {Kierkegaard's Vision of the Incarnation, 41). Feuerbach's thesis that "the true sense of theology is anthropology" might well be glossed in Climacus's language as "The human race composed the poem of the god in time." It was Feuerbach's contention that "the history of Christianity has had for its grand result the unveiling of this mystery—the realization and recognition of theology as anthropology" {The Essence of Christianity, trans. George Eliot [New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1957], 336). Kierkegaard owned the second edition of Das Wesen des Christentums (Leipzig, 1843; ASKB, 488) and read it while at work on Philosophical Fragments (see Niels Thulstrup, "Commentary," in Philosophical Fragments, trans. David Swenson [Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1967], 204). In his journal Kierkegaard acknowledges that "Feuerbach is consistent" but, in a pun on Feuerbach's name, he remains adamant that "this does not mean . . . that one has to go through that Fire Brook" {Papirer, V B 1:10 [n.d., 1844]; see Philosophical Fragments, 218).

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deity."87 This "poetical venture" is not his own at all, Climacus confesses; he has pirated the god's story, altered its "historical costume"88 and presented it as his own.

At long last conceding this bit of plagiarism, Climacus also acknowledges that the accuser's anger over his lack of academic integrity is justified. He makes no show of contrition, however, but gushes that his "soul is gripped with new amazement" and even with "adoration" before "the wonder [VidunderetJ of the god's poem.89 Indeed, he admits, it would have been strange had this been his own poem, for "presumably it could occur to a human being to poetize himself in the likeness of the god or the god in the likeness of himself, but not to poetize that the god poetized himself in the likeness of a human being, for if the god gave no indication, how could it occur to a man that the blessed god could need him?"90 That is to say, Climacus recognizes the human longing for the divine, and knows well that humans are therefore wont to imagine themselves as divine in some sense, or to imagine the divine becoming human. But it is another matter entirely when this is turned around in the way Climacus relates it. It is not the human poet that poetizes the god's becoming human, he says, but rather the divine poet who scripts the story that way. As a consequence, the solution to the task Climacus earlier had set for himself, namely, to find a solution to the story of love that could reconcile the offensive disparity between the god's perfect ideality and the person's sinful actuality, is not poetized anew but found in the god's own story of divine incarnation.

The distinction Climacus makes here has great significance for how we understand Kierkegaard's creative correction of Poul Martin Moller's aesthetics. Climacus wants to make it clear that the poem is not a human story about the god, but rather something plagiarized from the god, for "the god poetized himself."91 If'this is true, and we do well to emphasize the "if,"92 then not only has Climacus delineated the difference between the Socratic teacher and the god as teacher and savior, but he has also hit upon a poem that actually achieves what Moller proclaims for "true art." The difference between Moller's version and Climacus's revision, obviously, is the crucial distinction that now the poem is not merely a poem, not merely an imaginative story, but also a life, a "historical point of departure," the god incarnate in "the fullness of time."93

87. Kierkegaard, SKS, 4:241; my translation. The Danish reads, "og, jeg forsraaer Dig, derfor var det Du kaldte min Adfaerd det lumpneste Plagiat, fordi jeg ikke stjal fra en enkelt Mand, ikke bestjal Slsegten, men bestjal Guddommen." I I award and Edna Hong's rendering follows the Danish word order faithfully, but obscures the irony that Climacus here attributes his own view to the interlocutor: "And 1 do understand you. You called my conduct the shabbiest plagiarism, because I did not steal from any single person, did not rob the human race, but robbed the deity" (Philosophical Fragments, 35-36).

88. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 109; SKS, 4:305. 89. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 36; SKS, 4:241-42. 90. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 36; SKS, 4:241-42. 91. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 36; SKS, 4:242. 92. The hypothetical mood in which Climacus begins Philosophical Fragments continues throughout

and to the very end. When finally he shares "the moral" of the story he asserts, "This project indisputably goes beyond the Socratic, as is apparent at every point. Whether it is therefore more true than the Socratic is an altogether different question, one that cannot be decided in the same breath" (PhilosophicalFragments, \U; SKS, 4:306).

93. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 18; SKS, 4:226. Tellingly, this Pauline phrase ("the fullness of


In order to demonstrate the sturdiness of this bridge between Philosophical Fragments and Moller's treatise on immortality, let me here recapitulate IvMler's thesis and Kierkegaard's criticism. Recall Meller's thesis that poetry, when it qualifies as "true art," produces an awareness of the "complete harmony between the universal and the particular" that reconciles an individual's historical actuality with the ideal "will of the eternal." As such, true poetry enables an "anticipation of eternal life."94 Kierkegaard affirms Moller's claim that "poetry is a kind of reconciliation," but he denies that it accomplishes "the true reconciliation," in his words, for "it does not reconcile me with the actuality in which I am living."95 Vigilius Haufniensis piles on more criticism when he describes Moller's thesis that "art is an anticipation of eternal life" as "purely and simply for the imagination," since "poetry and art are the reconciliation only of the imagination."96 The reason that ordinary poetry never achieves a true reconciliation between "the actuality in which I am living" and the ideality of the poem is that the poet's life, like any human life, is marked by sin. As the Apostle Paul says of himself, human poets do not embody their ideals but instead live lives of contradiction.97

Would the situation not be different, however, if instead of sin, the poet's actual life exemplified perfection? This is precisely the import of Climacus's assertion that "the poem" is not a human poem about the god but rather the god's own poem brought to life. Said another way, if "the god poetized himself in the likeness of a human being," as Climacus writes, then in that individual there is no discontinuity between the poetic ideal and the actual poem, for the life the god leads as a human being is itself the poem.98 Human poetry abstracts from actual life, so that the poet becomes increasingly "unactual"99 to the degree that he imaginatively whiles his life away. The god's poem moves in the opposite direction, beginning as the eternal "Word" and becoming historically actual in a life that embodies the divine ideal for human existence. The difference between human poetry and divine poetry is therefore significant and, in Kierkegaard's authorship, humanly insuperable. If we view this difference between human poetry and divine poetry in terms of roller's criterion for "true art," we recognize that in the god's poem the "complete harmony between the universal and the particular," which Kierkegaard found lacking in human poems, is here achieved through the conformation of an individual's

time") is precisely the one Moller employs in his theory of art as well. In an anticipation of a critique such as Kierkegaard's, Moller shows restraint in speaking of the reconciliation art can accomplish when he writes that "art is only an image of the blessed life" and ultimately affirms that "the discord between the prosaic world and the poetic world will be reconciled in the fullness of time" (Mailer, Om Udodeligheden, 217-18; my translation). I showed in the previous chapter that Kierkegaard fails to appreciate this aspect of Mailer's "anticipation of the eternal" thesis, perhaps in his determination to obscure the influence of Mailer's thinking on his own.

94. Mailer, Om Vdedeligheden, 216-17; my translation. 95. Kierkegaard, Concept of Irony, 297; SKS, 1:330-31. 96. Kierkegaard, Concept of Anxiety, 152-53; SKS, 4:452. 97. See Rom 7:15, where Paul writes, "1 do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I

want, but I do the very thing I hate." 98. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 36; SKS, 4:242. 99. Kierkegaard, Concept of Irony, 259; SKS, 1:297.

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historical actuality to the ideal "will of the eternal."100 Kierkegaard's earlier declaration that "only the religious is able to bring about the true reconciliation"101 can be interpreted in terms of Climacus's view that it is the god's poem alone that can become an actual historical point of departure for an anticipation of eternal life.

In the god's poem of Philosophical Fragments, therefore, Climacus transfigures Moller's aesthetics in a way that relocates "true art" from that which the human individual poetizes in anticipation of reconciliation with the divine, to that which the divine poet actualizes in order to make that reconciliation possible. Moller's treatise on eternal life conscripted poetry in order to help demonstrate human immortality, but, according to Kierkegaard, Moller was no more sensitive than the Romantics were to the fact that what human poetry "seizes upon is not actuality."102

By contrast, he thinks, those who can believe that "the god poetized himself in the likeness of a human being" have a historical warrant for their anticipation of eternal happiness, and can affirm Climacus's epigrammatic questions wholeheartedly. For, as Climacus himself spells out in the final paragraph of his book, "Christianity is the only historical phenomenon that despite the historical—indeed, precisely by menus of the historical—has wanted to be the single individual's point of departure for his eternal consciousness, has wanted to interest him otherwise than merely historically, has wanted to base his happiness on his relation to something historical."1'"

At this point, however, it might be argued that there is a snag in this account of Kierkegaard's refinement of Moller's theory. Specifically, Climacus's ultimate admission that the poem is "perhaps . . . not a poem at all, or in any case is not ascribable to any human being or to the human race, either," might seem to remove the discussion from the sphere of poetics.104 Indeed, in closing the chapter Climacus mockingly pleads, "Forgive me my curious mistaken notion of having composed it myself," and then concludes, "The poem was so different from every human poem that it was no poem at all but the wonder."105 This statement, "The poem was so different from every human poem that it was no poem at all," is problematic because it appears to revoke itself. However, in light of the fact that Climacus later writes, "We shall now return to our poem and to our assumption that the god has been,"106 he clearly deems it appropriate to continue speaking about "the wonder" of the god's appearance as a servant in terms of living poetry. For this reason, Climacus would have expressed his meaning more felicitously had he written, "The poem was so different from every human poem that it was no human poem at all, but the god's poem, the wonder." With this construction, the relationship between a human poem and the god's poem (parallel to the relationship between "imaginative reconciliation" and "true reconciliation") can be interpreted in terms of analogy rather than simple mystification.

100. Mailer, Om Udodeligheden, 216-17. 101. Kierkegaard, Concept of Irony, 297; SKS, 1:331. 102. Kierkegaard, Concept of Irony, 304; SKS, 1:337. 103. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 109; SKS, 4:305. 104. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 35; SKS, 4:241. 105. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 36; SKS, 4:242. 106. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 86-87; SKS, 4:285.


Beginning early in his "poetical venture," Climacus employs the logic of analogy between human poetry and the god's poem.107 The logic of analogy operates by virtue of a dialectical relationship between terms of comparison. Drawing an analogy entails stating or recognizing that one thing is like another in important respects. However, drawing an analogy also involves the correlative acknowledgment (often tacit but logically presupposed) of the respects in which those same things differ from one another. Thus, analogy involves both an attribution of similarity and a denial of identity. It is this dialectical movement between positive attribution and negative disclaimer that contours the second chapter of Philosophical Fragments. Climacus begins with a poetical venture in which he poetizes the god's appearance in the form of a servant, then attributes this poem to the god who "poetized himself in the likeness of a human being," and finally revokes the poems status as a human poem.108 Both human poetry and the god's poetry produce "a kind of reconciliation"109 between the actual and the ideal, that is to say, between "the untruth" of human sin and "the truth" of divine ideality. Both seek to create anew, to open up new vistas on reality and to remake the individual as "a new person and a new vessel!"110 It is this similarity of creative reconciliatory power that legitimates Climacus's analogy. In this view, however, only the god's poem attests to an actual reconciliation that incarnates the ideal in a life, whereas the reconciliation of human poetry is an imaginative consolation alongside the given actuality. "The wonder' reconciles the actual and the ideal by bringing the eternal ideal of boundless love into historical existence as a servant, the god's "true form," something "of which neither the king nor Socrates was capable."'n

"My Thought Is That God Is Like a Poet"

Kierkegaard did not invent the analogy between the human poet and God, of course. The critic George Steiner has observed:

The poet, the master craftsman as "another god" is a Renaissance commonplace. It runs like a bright thread, at once hubristic and pious, through Cellini's memoirs and informs, uncannily, his great carving of Christ on the Cross now in the Escorial. This motif of alternate divinity may well be the decisive clue toward the mania of invention and design in Leonardo, towards the unmistakable paradigm of the likeness of God the Father in Leonardo's self-portraiture.112

107. Climacus introduces his analogy of the king and the lowly maiden with the apophatic statement, "No human situation can provide a valid analogy, even though we shall suggest one here in order to awaken the mind to an understanding of the divine" (Philosophical Fragments, 26; SKS, 4:233).

108. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 36; SKS, 4:242. 109. Kierkegaard, Concept of Irony, 297; SKS, 1:330. 110. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 34; SKS, 4:240. 111. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 32; SKS, 4:238. 112. George Steiner, Real Presences (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), 208.

GOD'S POEM 75

As Steiner is the first to affirm, this "bright thread" stretches well beyond the Renaissance as well. Kierkegaard too identified this motif in the writings of the Romantics, and alleged that Schlegel and other ironists arrogated to themselves the status of divinity. M. H. Abrams corroborates this view: "What Schlegel did, in effect, was to give new application to the Renaissance metaphor of the poet as creator, with its implicit analogy between God's creation of the world and the artist's making of a poem."113 Thus, when Schlegel asserts that "the will of the poet can tolerate no law above itself," he is celebrating the Romantic poet's quasi-divine ability to bring entire universes of meaning into being through the word.114

Kierkegaard, too, has a place in this tradition. For him, however, the human poet is neither an "alternate divinity," nor should he or she wish "to become God."115 Rather, for Kierkegaard a human poet is a created creator who has just as much need for the true reconciling Word as the rest of fallen humanity. With respect to his own creation of the various pseudonyms, Kierkegaard writes that he "may be called the author of the authors," but immediately hedges that statement with the qualification that he does not mean he is the authors' author "in the eminent sense as the outstanding one."116 The implication that God is the author of authors "in the eminent sense" is unambiguous. This conception of God as the paradigmatic poet is pervasive in Kierkegaard's works, not simply in the specific christological form that it takes in Philosophical Fragments but also in the universal sense of God's general creativity. For example, in Concluding Unscientific Postscript, the 1846 sequel to Philosophical Fragments in which he clothes Christianity in its "historical costume," Climacus speaks of "that royal spectator and poet" who uses each individual "in that royal drama, Drama Dramatum [The Drama of Dramas]."117 In Either/Or, Judge William speaks of the ethical person feeling himself "present as a character in a drama the deity is writing."118 And, as we have seen already, in his dissertation Kierkegaard writes, "It is indeed one thing to compose oneself poetically; it is something else to be composed poetically. The Christian lets himself be poetically composed, and in this respect a simple Christian lives far more poetically than many a brilliant intellectual."119 Clearly, the image of God as a divine poet is a fundamental and enduring theme in Kierkegaard's authorship. It is therefore rather astonishing that, given the many volumes he authored over the course of his extraordinarily prolific career, Kierkegaard postponed any explicit comment on this fundamental conviction and its theological implications until the year before his death. In 1854, however, citing ethical grounds for not having expounded upon his poetics in a theoretical form earlier in his writing career,

113. M. H. Abrams, The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1953), 239.

114. Schlegel, Schkge/'s Luande and the Fragments, 175-76; Athenaeum Fragments, no. 116. 115. Schlegel, Schlegel's Lucinde and the Fragments, 200; Athenaeum Fragments, no. 262. 116.This is from a marginal addition to a draft of "A First and Last Explanation" appended to Conclud

ing Unscientific Postscript (Papirer, VIII B 76; cited in Philosophical Fragments, xvi). 117. Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, 157-58; SKS, 7:146. 118. Kierkegaard, Either/Or, 2:137; SKS, 3:136. 119. Kierkegaard, Concept of Irony, 280-81; SKS, 1:316.


Kierkegaard finally got around to explicating the following hermeneutical key to his authorship. The journal entry is headed, "A Point of View for the History of the Human Race," and warrants quotation in full:

If I were to express myself on this—although generally I am not concerned with such things and assume that it is unethical to be occupied with the history of the race instead of with my own existence—I should state this point of view.

God has only one passion: to love and to be loved. It has pleased him, therefore, to go through existentially with men the various ways of being loved and of loving. He himself, of course, takes roles and disposes everything in relation to them. At one time he wants to be loved as a father by his child, then as friend by friend, then loved as one who gives only good gifts, then as one who tempts and tests the beloved. The idea in Christianity, if I dare say so, is to want to be loved as a bridegroom by his bride in such a way that it becomes sheer testing. Now he changes almost into equality with man, accommodatingly, in order to be loved in this fashion; then again the idea is to be loved as spirit by a human being—the most strenuous task. And so on.

My thought is that God is like a poet. This is why he puts up with evil and all the nonsense and wretchedness and mediocrity of triviality, etc. The poet is related in the same way to his poetic productions (also called his creations). But just as it is a mistake to think that what a particular character in a poem says or does represents the poet's personal opinion, so it is a mistake to assume that God consents to all that happens and how. O, no. He has his own view of things. But poetically he permits everything possible to come forth; he himself is present everywhere, observing, still a poet, in a sense poetically impersonal, equally attentive to everything, and in another sense personal, establishing the most terrible distinctions—such as between good and evil, between willing according to his will and not willing according to his will, and so on.

The Hegelian rubbish that the actual is the true is just like the confusion of thrusting the words and actions of the dramatic characters upon the poet as his own words and actions. But it must be kept clear, if I may put it this way, that God's wanting to work as a poet in this fashion is not a diversion, as the pagans thought—no, no, the earnestness lies in God's passion to love and to be loved, yes, almost as if he were himself found in this passion, O, infinite love, so that in the power of this passion he cannot stop loving, almost as if it were a weakness, although it is rather his strength, his omnipotent love. This is the measure of his unswerving love.120

120. Kierkegaard, Journals and Papers, 2.1445; Papirer,Y12 A 98 (n.d., 1854).

GOD'S POEM 77

Echoes of both Judge William's desire to speak of God such that one thereby also thinks of "that never-ending force in the world: earthly love,"121 and of Johannes Climacus's notion of a "Drama Dramatum,"122 reverberate through this theodicy of the divine love poet whose one passion is to love and to be loved. What makes this analogy appropriate, according to Kierkegaard, is not simply that both God and human poets are taken to be creative, but also that the relationship between a human poet and her poetry is taken to be similar to the relationship between God and God's "poetic productions." In particular, what Kierkegaard wants to forestall is the "mistake" of considering the views and actions of the created characters as a direct expression of the views and actions of their creator. A reader rarely makes such a mistake in the case of The Tragedy of Hamlet, for example, where it is clear that one should not suppose Hamlet's soliloquies or decisions to express in any direct way the opinions of Shakespeare. But this is sometimes less clear with respect to the relationship between God and God's "poetic productions." In this latter case, Kierkegaard implies, the temptation more frequently arises to attribute divine will to events in human history. Kierkegaard here refuses to give in to this temptation because he wants to be able to identify God's will with eternal truth, on the one hand, and "evil," "nonsense," "wretchedness," and "mediocrity" with human history, on the other. He thus casts his theological poetics as a form of theodicy as well, and in doing so, he distinguishes his own view from what he calls the "Hegelian rubbish that the actual is the true."123 That is to say, in Kierkegaard's lights, the Hegelian view mistakenly identifies God's poetic production of the actual world as the true expression of God's own character. The reason this conflicts with Kierkegaard's view of God the poet is that, if in fact the actual is the true, then the actuality of human history must be understood as a direct expression of divine will, unfolding in accordance with rational necessity. However, this conception, according to Kierkegaard, conflates the divine with human history by attributing absolute necessity to historical contingencies and "is just like the confusion of thrusting the words and actions of the dramatic characters upon the poet as his own words and actions."124

121. Kierkegaard, Either/Or, 2:30; SKS, 3:38. 122. Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, 158; SKS, 7:146. 123. Kierkegaard, Journals and Papers, 2.1445; Papirer, XI2 A 98 (n.d., 1854). Unless the Danish

Hegelians Johan Ludvig Heiberg or Hans Lassen Martensen used this formulation ("the actual is the true"), Kierkegaard's reference here is a gloss on Hegel's assertion in the pretace to his Philosophy of Right: "What is rational is actual, and what is actual is rational" (Hegel's Philosophy of Right [trans, of Grundlinien der Philosophic des Rechts, 1821], trans. T. M. Knox [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978], 10; Kierkegaard had the 1833 second edition, vol. 8 in Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's Werke, Vollstandige Aus-gahe, 28 vols., ed. Philipp Marheineke et al. [Berlin, 1832-45; ASKB, 549-65]). Hegel repeats this dictum word for word in the sixth paragraph of his Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences, only here Hegel calls the statement "simple." As Emil Fackenheim has observed, bowever, "Few interpreters . . . have found it so. Even friendly critics are baffled; hostile ones dismiss it as either scandalous or senseless" (Fackenheim, "On the Actuality of the Rational and the Rationality of the Actual," in The Hegel Myths and Legends, ed. Jon Stewart [Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1996], 42). Kierkegaard here is clearly among the hostile interpreters.

124. Kierkegaard, Journals and Papers, 2.1445; Papirer, XI2 A 98 (n.d., 1854).


One might wonder whether Kierkegaard's distinction between "permit" and "consent" is a distinction that makes a difference. That is to say, if God "permits everything possible to come forth," is this not at least tacit "consent" for all the "evil and all the nonsense and wretchedness and mediocrity of triviality, etc." that God "puts up with"? Yet what Kierkegaard clearly assumes here is the reality of human freedom, however vaguely understood that reality might be. God creates this context of qualified freedom, one can say, a world with the various constraints that obtain under the conditions of worldliness, and enables human creatures to supplement this context with the texture of human history. So imagined, there is no difficulty interpreting Kierkegaard's distinction between "permitting" and "consenting." By creating freedom God relinquishes the coercive power to script human lives in any authoritarian way. This is why I characterized Kierkegaard's theological poetics as a form of theodicy; paradoxically, the creation of freedom necessitates that God "permit" and "put up with" evil, even though God "consents" only to good. Within this context of divinely created freedom, the distinction between good and evil becomes the distinction "between willing according to [God's] will and not willing according to [God's] will," and therefore serves to deflect incriminations for the evils of human history back onto humans themselves in a way that the Hegelian view does not.125 In A Literary Review, Kierkegaard speaks in formal literary terms of this power to conceive and depict the most varied contrasts. There is, he says, a "law manifest in poetic production," wherein "anyone who experiences anything primitively also experiences in ideality the possibilities of the same thing and its opposites. These possibilities are his legitimate literary property."126 Developing this "law" theologically enables Kierkegaard to say that God creates by allowing "everything possible to come forth." Just as a poet imaginatively develops contrasts and characters that may well offend the poet's own personal sensibilities (recall "The Seducer's Diary" of Either/Or), God too permits characters and actions that conflict with divine ideality. Far better than the "Hegelian" confusion, he argues, is a theological poetics in which God is related to human history as a human poet is related to her poetic productions.

More could be said about Kierkegaard's distinction between Hegel's view and his own on these matters, of course, but my primary interest here is to explore what his understanding of God entails with respect to the differences between the divine poet and human poets. As was the case before in Philosophical Fragments, here too Kierkegaard's consideration of God in terms of a poet is not a simple naming of God, but rather an analogy that involves both similarities and differences between God the poet and human poets. In view of Kierkegaard's 1854 journal entry envisioning God as "like a poet," these differences now stand in even higher relief. Creativity is the fundamental theme that underwrites this analogy. Poets are creative authors. Some poets, like Kierkegaard, are "authors of authors."

125. KierkegaardJoarnaA and Papers, 2.1445; Papirer, XI2 A 98 (n.d., 1854). 126. Kierkegaard, Two Ages: The Age of Revolution and the Present Age, A Literary Review, trans. Howard

V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1978), 98; SKS, 8:93.

GOD'S POEM 79

God, however, in Kierkegaard's theological view, is the author even of poetic authors of authors. This is why he alludes to God as the authors' author "in the eminent sense as the outstanding one."127 The first important difference he sees between God the poet and human poets, then, arises from the Johannine affirmation that God's "Word" is original, whereas the words of human poets are wholly derivative in a theological sense. This is why Kierkegaard had earlier written, with respect to the Christian doctrine of creation ex nihilo, "What is not true for God is true for man—out of nothing comes nothing."128

A second important difference follows from the first. Because God is not ontologically constrained to rework preexisting materials in the same way a human poet is, God has a poetic range that far exceeds all human poets. "Take a poet, even the very best," Kierkegaard penned in 1851, "and see how almost all his characters resemble each other—at most he creates a few original or primitive characters. And then think of God, who creates all these millions and millions—and not a single one is like another."129 What Kierkegaard means here is that the overwhelming profusion of variety in God's poetic production—and I take him to mean not simply the characters of human history but the universal mise en scene of the "Drama Dramatum" as well130—exceeds that of all human poets taken together.

Yet a third important difference between God and the human poet concerns the ontological status of the productions each can create. The aspiration to give life to art is an ancient theme. To offer an example from antiquity, in classical myth Pygmalion, a sculptor and king of Cyprus, falls in love with an ivory statue of a maiden that he has carved. Nonetheless, however lifelike or true-to-life the statue must have been to enflame Pygmalion's desire, it could still neither spurn nor reciprocate his affections, for he was unable to give self-conscious life to his creation. Happily, as Pygmalion's fate would have it, the goddess Aphrodite responds to his plight and brings the statue to life as Galatea. This intervention is exceptional, however, and, more to the point, the resolution is accomplished not by the human Pygmalion but by a divine figure. Just as Pygmalion could not give self-conscious life to his own creation, neither can any other human creator. By contrast, Kierkegaard says, God not only poetizes the world but also "withdraws" from it in such a way that gives created individuals self-conscious freedom vis-a-vis their creator. As he wrote in 1846:

The greatest good, after all, which can be done for a being, greater than anything else that one can do for it, is to make it free. In order to do just

127. Kierkegaard, Papirer, VIII B 76; cited in Philosophical Fragments, xvi. 128. Kierkegaard, Concept of Irony, 281; SKS, 1:317. 129. Kierkegaard, Journals and Papers, 2.2035; Papirer, X3 A 778 (n.d., 1851). 130. Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, 158; SKS, 7:146. The phrase mise en scene ("placing

on stage") is sometimes used synonymously in English with the term "setting," but here the hroader French signification of a director's overall conception, staging, and directing of a production is more to the point (see M. H. Abrams,^ Glossary of Literary Terms, 7th ed. [Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace, 1999], 285).


that, omnipotence is required. This seems strange, since it is precisely omnipotence that supposedly would make [a being] dependent. But if one will reflect on omnipotence, one will see that it also must contain the unique qualification of being able to withdraw itself in a manifestation of omnipotence in such a way that precisely for this reason that which has been originated through omnipotence can be independent. This is why one human being cannot make another person wholly free... . Only omnipotence can withdraw itself at the same time it gives itself away, and this relationship is the very independence of the receiver.131

Kierkegaard's consideration of God in terms of a poet, then, entails a creative potency that enables the self-conscious freedom of human beings vis-a-vis their creator. As Kierkegaard points out, no human poet—even those who may believe that "to become God, to be human, to cultivate oneself are all expressions that mean the same thing"132—has been able to achieve this feat.

For the three reasons of God's originality, range, and creative potency, therefore, Kierkegaard considers God a poet in the "eminent" sense, a paradigm in comparison to which every human poet appropriately experiences some anxiety. But neither originality, nor range, nor even creative omnipotence per se go to the crux of Kierkegaard's theological poetics, because these qualities do not explicitly entail God's incarnation within the "poetic production" of creation. What is most distinctive about Kierkegaard's theological poetics is its Christomorphic character.

Christ and Reconciliation

Understanding the Christomorphic character of Kierkegaard's poetics requires a three-part interpretation of his view of God's incarnation in Christ that (1) maintains that Kierkegaard's view of God the poet stands in continuity with his dissertation on the concept of irony, such that God's creativity can be interpreted in relation to "the truth of irony"; (2) connects this discussion to the Romantic notion of "living poetically"; and (3) relates the foregoing back to Moller's thesis that "true art" reconciles the ideal and the actual in an anticipation of eternal bliss.

First, recall Kierkegaard's comment contrasting the profusion of variety in God's poetic productions with that of even the most talented of human poets. Whereas the best of human poets creates but a few original characters, he says, God creates "all these millions and millions—and not a single one is like another."133 God's capacity for generating "contrast," as Kierkegaard calls it, is infinitely greater than any human poet in this respect. But engendering these contrasts— whether they be in "the miniature world of the poem," or in the poetic production of the actual world—requires irony, for "the greater the contrasts in the movement,

131. Kierkegaard Jo«r«ai and Papers, 2.1251; Papirer, VIII A 181 (n.d., 1846); SKS, 20-.57-58. 132. Schlegel, Schlegel's Lucinde and the Fragments, 200; Athenaeum Fragments, no. 262. 133. KierkegaardJoarnaA and Papers, 2.2035; Pafirer, X3 A 778 (n.d., 1851).

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the more is irony required to direct and control the spirits that willfully want to charge forward. The more irony is present, the more freely and poetically the poet floats above his artistic work."134 Irony here is the reflective distance between the creator and the creation, and it generates a kind of disjunction in which the creation takes on a life of its own. This phenomenon is familiar to many an artist, and Schlegels Lucinde is exemplary, since it took on a life of its own to such an extent that Schlegel in his later years no longer desired to have his name identified with it.135 Of no human ironist can it be said, however, that a creation takes on a life of its own in the sense that God's creatures do. And, although Kierkegaard did not do so explicitly, one can surely interpret his aforementioned reflections on the relationship of God's omnipotence to the poetic production of creation with his phrase, "Irony simultaneously makes the poem and the poet free."136 Complementary to Kierkegaard's view of God as "like a poet," therefore, is the view of God as like an ironist. Kierkegaard gestures toward this parallel when he self-indulgently scorns the Schlegelian ironist: "Our God is in heaven and does whatever he pleases; the ironist is on earth and does whatever he desires."137 The difference, plainly, is that only of the former may it be said sincerely, "The ironist is the eternal / for which no actuality is adequate."138

God's relation to God's poetic production is not univocal but dialectical, however. God is "in a sense poetically impersonal, equally attentive to everything, and in another sense personal, establishing the most terrible distinctions."139 The sense in which God is "poetically impersonal" is the sense in which God is like an ironist, distant from creation and letting all manner of possibilities issue forth. But in what sense is God "personal" in this view? The example Kierkegaard gives in this particular journal entry is that God establishes the distinction "between good and evil, between willing according to his will and not willing according to his will, and so on."140 But this rather bare answer can be supplemented—in fact, Kierkegaard's "and so on" invites supplementation—by another journal entry in which he envisions God as a poet, and in which the personal dimension is more easily recognized:

Here one rightly sees the subjectivity in Christianity. Generally the poet, the artist, etc. is criticized for introducing himself into his work. But this is precisely what God does; this he does in Christ. And precisely this is Christianity. Creation is really fulfilled only when God has included himself in it. Before Christ God was included, of course, in the creation but as an invisible mark, something like the water-mark in paper. But in the Incarnation creation is fulfilled by God's including himself in it.141

134. Kierkegaard, Concept of Irony, 324; SKS, 1:353. 135. Schlegel omitted Lucinde when he published his collected works in 1823. 136. Kierkegaard, Concept of Irony, 324; SKS, 1:353. 137. Kierkegaard, Concept of Irony, 282; SKS, 1:318. 138. Kierkegaard, Concept of Irony, 283; SKS, 1:319. 139. Kierkegaard,>«r«aA and Papers, 2.1445; Papirer, XI2 A 98 (n.d., 1854). 140. Kierkegaard journals and Papers, 2.1445; Papirer, XI2 A 98 (n.d., 1854). 141. Kierkegaard Journals and Papers, 2.1391; Papirer, XI A 605 (n.d., 1849).


In Christ, God "fulfills" the poetic production of creation by becoming a part of it in the sense that human poets cannot. Kierkegaard had Climacus say the same thing when he penned, "The god poetized himself in the likeness of a human being."142 It is this qualification that elucidates why Kierkegaard views God not simply like the "impersonal" ironist who hovers above, behind, or beyond creation, but, paradoxically, as the "personal" God of the Christian story as well, living as an actor within God's own poem.143 Again, what Kierkegaard writes concerning the ironist in The Concept of Irony pertains analogically also to God: "The poet does not live poetically by creating a poetic work. . . but he lives poetically only when he himself is oriented and thus integrated in the age in which he lives, is positively free in the actuality to which he belongs."144 In poetizing contrasts, and in freely creating free creatures, God too is like a Romantic ironist, but God does not thereby live poetically, since God is thus far absent from actuality in the same way that Kierkegaard charges the Romantic ironists of being. In Christ, however, God conforms human will and divine will in such a "positively free" manner as to live poetically in the fullest sense, indeed, in such a way as to "fulfill" creation by including the creator within the creation.

Significantly, this modulation of the Romantic "living poetically" theme responds not just to the deficiencies Kierkegaard finds in Romantic irony but to the inadequacy he sees in M0ller's traditionalist alternative to Romanticism as well. Moller proclaims "true art" to be "literally" an "anticipation of eternal life." With respect to this thesis, however, Kierkegaard and his pseudonyms agree that "poetry and art are the reconciliation only of the imagination."145 Thus, in Kierkegaard's veronymous authorship and pseudonymous authorship alike, the problem is how a complete reconciliation, rather than the partial reconciliation of the imagination alone, can be achieved. Kierkegaard's theopoetic solution is a Christomorphic one: Only God in Christ can accomplish the true reconciliation, and this Christ does by fulfilling the divine ideal for human life in an actual life.

As in Philosophical Fragments, important entries in Kierkegaard's journals reflect the profound and abiding influence of his creative recombination of both Romantic poetics and a traditionalist alternative to Romantic theory. Kierkegaard, like Climacus, embraces the Romantic emphasis on poetic creativity, but locates the true home of that creativity not in the individual ironist but in the divine poet. What is more, God in Christ embodies mutatis mutandis what Kierkegaard in his

142. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 36; SKS, 4:242. 143. John Macquarrie has commented that Kierkegaard's view of divine incarnation "may be compared

with paradox in John's gospel. . . . [For example] the two sentences from the beginning of the prologue'. 'The Word was with God' and 'The Word was God.' On the face of it, they seem to contradict one another, since the first tells us that God and the Word are two entities, while the second seems to identify them. Yet . . . we are being directed to a way of thinking about the relation as one that hovers between identity and difference and which John expressed by putting down his two sentences side by side" (Jesus Christ in Modern Thought [London: SCM Press, 1990], 239).

144. Kierkegaard, Concept of Irony, 326; SKS, 1:354. 145. Kierkegaard, Concept of Anxiety, 152-53; SKS, 4:452. See also Concept of Irony, 297; SKS,

1:330-31, and Concluding Unscientific Postscript, 313n"; SKS, 7:285n2.

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dissertation called the "great requirement"146 of Romanticism; in Christ, God "lives poetically" in a paradigmatic sense by "introducing himself into his work."147

In this way, by envisioning God the creator as one who "poetically. . . permits everything possible to come forth,"148 and also as one who by "introducing himself into his work" fulfills creation, Kierkegaard reinterprets the notion of "living poetically" from a Romantic prescription for how to live as an aesthete, to a theological paradigm for interpreting God's creativity and incarnation. In a corresponding manner, by insisting that in order to be considered "true" in the fullest sense poetry must achieve an "actual reconciliation" of the ideal and the actual (and not simply an "imaginative reconciliation"), Kierkegaard reinterprets a traditionalist notion of "true art" from a theory about what religious art "anticipates," to a vision of the divine poet's creation and redemption of the world. The theological heart of Kierkegaard's reinterpretation and harmonization of "living poetically" and "taie art," therefore, is that the reconciliation of the actual to the ideal to which "true art" is supposed to attest finds its fulfillment not in any human art but in the "poem [that] was so different from every human poem that it was no [human] poem at all but the wonder"149

In chapters 4 and 5 I will take up the issue of how Kierkegaard's Christomor-phic poetics becomes paradigmatic for his developing self-understanding as a "poet of the religious." In chapter 3, however, I want to "return to our poem and to our assumption that the god has been,"1™ to use Climacus's words, in order to address the fundamental issue of believability. The moral with which Philosophical Fragments concludes insists, "This project indisputably goes beyond the Socratic, as is apparent at every point." However, the question of whether "the wonder" is "more true than the Socratic is an altogether different question, one that cannot be decided in the same breath, inasmuch as a new organ has been assumed here: faith; and a new presupposition: the consciousness of sin; and a new decision: the moment; and a new teacher: the god in time."151 The question of truth cannot be held in abeyance indefinitely, however, for if the reconciliation of the ideal and the actual ostensibly accomplished by "the wonder1 is to be judged not simply another imaginative reconciliation, it must refer to an event within the actual world. Yet it is easy to imagine a reader saying, "This stuff is fine as poetry, but don't ask me to believe it!" Here one sees the implications of adopting Theodor Adorno's view that "the interpretation of philosophy as poetry [tears] philosophy from the standard of the

146. Kierkegaard, Concept of Irony, 280; SKS, 1:316. 147. Kierkegaard, Journals 'andPapers, 2.1391; Papirer,Xl A 605 (n.d., 1849). 148. Kierkegaard, Journals and Papers, 2.1445; Papirer, XI2 A 98 (n.d., 1854). 149. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 36; SKS, 4:242. 150. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 86-87; SKS, 4:285. 151. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 111; SKS, 4:306.


real."152 For if Kierkegaard does not affirm the referential function of his poetic productions, then he is vulnerable to his own critique that poetry offers only an imaginative reconciliation of the actual world to the Christian ideal.

Toward the end of the first chapter of Philosophical Fragments Climacus asks rhetorically, "Is what has been elaborated here thinkable?"153 But what does it mean to think something? It cannot be denied that "to imagine" something poetically is just as much a matter of thinking as "to believe" something about a factual event is, even though the latter cognitive act is constrained by plausibility conditions in the actual world in a way that the former is not. The question to be explored in the following chapter is the more pointed one: Is what has been elaborated here intelligible if the claim is that it is true? If the poet reveals that the ideal has become actual, "is a paradox such as this conceivable"?154

152. Theodor Adorno, Kierkegaard: Construction of the Aesthetic, trane. Robert Hullot-Kentor (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989), 3.


C H A P T E R T H R E E

Kierkegaard's Figuration of Christ

It takes close listening to the poem, to the dramatic dialogue or descriptive passage in the novel to glean from the single word or phrase the harvest of preceding history, of transmutations within connotations and even root meanings. Gradually the finesse of our reception increases. We come to identify the germ of novelty, of personal appropriation and of re-routing which a word or a phrase may be given by the usage ot the particular writer, by the purposive dynamics of the particular text.

—George Steiner, Real Presences

God can be present only invisibly and inaudibly; therefore, that the world does not see him does not prove very much.

—Kierkegaard, Works of Love

In the works attributed to Kierkegaard's pseudonyms Johannes Climacus and Anti-Climacus, the figure of Christ appears in two poetic guises. For Johannes Climacus, the pseudonymous author of both Philosophical Fragments (1844) and Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments (1846),' the paradoxical God-man is called "the absurd," while Anti-Climacus, the pseudonymous author of both The Sickness unto Death (1849) and Practice in Christianity (1850), speaks of Christ's unrecognizability in terms of "the incognito."2 Building upon

1. Johannes Climacus is also the pseudonymous author of a work Kierkegaard never published entitled Johannes Climacus.

2. Neither "the absurd" nor "the incognito" is used exclusively to speak of Christ in Kierkegaard's authorship but, as will become apparent, each is used in its preeminent sense with reference to Christ. For example, Kierkegaard writes, "Not every absurdity is the absurd or the paradox" {Seven Kierkegaard's Journals and Papers, ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, 7 vols. (Bloomington: Indiana

85


the argument in preceding chapters, here I want to elucidate the tropes of "the absurd" and "the incognito" as the two critical cases wherein Kierkegaard's logic of the incamational paradox becomes clear. While "the absurd" recurs in the writings of more than one pseudonym, Kierkegaard develops "the absurd" (det Absurde) as a figure for the incarnation primarily in his Johannes Climacus works. In Danish as in English, the term "absurd" has become synonymous with words such as "irrational" or "foolish," but the context and manner in which Climacus employs the term in Philosophical Fragments suggests that the older Latin root of the word— meaning "from silence"—is intended as well. Thus, while retaining the modern connotation of the phrase, we shall see that Climacus's use of the phrase "the absurd" also functions rhetorically as a cloaked metaphor suggesting "deafness" or "silence," and can lead to what Climacus calls "the acoustical illusion" emblematic of a confused relationship to Christ. Complementary to this wordplay in the auditory sphere, "the incognito" {Incognito'ei) is a visual trope for the divine (non)appearance in flesh developed by the pseudonymous Anti-Climacus and related to the context of an "optical illusion."3 Situated within the context of "illusion," Kierkegaard uses these figures of (not) hearing and (not) seeing, both of which frequently serve as metaphors for (mis)understanding, in order to controvert the idealist relationship between human rationality and Christian faith. Deafened and blinded to God by sin, human understanding can neither "hear" God's Word properly, nor clearly "see" the logic of God's incarnation in Christ. Consequently, depicted as the "absolute paradox" instead of as a domesticated myth, it is "human nature" for the understanding to be offended by the incarnation, and to say "No, thanks, then I would still rather go on being deaf and blind etc. than be helped in this way."4 My goal here is to elucidate the way Kierkegaard deploys the aural and visual metaphors strategically in order to express his view that the paradox of Christian faith is potentially "against the understanding"5 and not expressible within the bounds of reason.

In Philosophical Fragments and Practice in Christianity, respectively, "the absurd" and "the incognito" both playfully disguise and indirectly indicate the absolute paradox of "the God-man." While Philosophical Fragments does not develop this paradox in its "historical costume," both it and Practice in Christianity are explicit that "the God-man" in question is that of Christian proclamation: the incarnation of God in the person of Jesus of Nazareth.6 The figures of "the absurd" and "the

University Press, 1967-1978), 1.7; Papirer, X2 A 354 [n.d., 1850]); so too, not every incognito is constitu-tively incognito, but in the case of Christ "it was impossible for him to be otherwise, for the God-man, this synthesis, is possible only in an incognito" (Journals and Papers, 6.6783; Papirer, X4 A 395 [n.d., 1851]).

3. Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991), 82,184; SV1,12:79,171.

4. Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, 38; SV1,12:36. 5. Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments, trans. Howard V. Hong

and Edna H. Hong (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992), 225n; SKS, 7:205nl. 6. In the final pages of Philosophical Fragments, Johannes Climacus acknowledges that he has been

speaking about the Christian doctrine all along. See Philosophical Fragments, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985), 109; SKS, 4:305.

KIERKEGAARD'S FIGURATION OF CHRIST 87

incognito," therefore, both refer to the paradox of the incarnation metaphorically, but to what end? What is the point of such odd predications? Neither of the pseudonymous authors answers this question directly, but an explanation is implicit both in Climacus's remark that it has become all too easy "to rattle off the Christian truth without having the least impression of it,"7 and in Anti-Climacus's agreement that, in the main, Christ is thought of in an "apathetic habitual way."8 That is to say, in Danish Christendom—and perhaps anywhere Christianity becomes firmly established in the cultural heritage—adherents and nonbelievers alike fail to recognize how odd it is to speak of Jesus of Nazareth as God incarnate, or as the Word made flesh. For this reason, then, Kierkegaard's pseudonyms take "old-fashioned orthodoxy in its rightful severity"9 as a basis upon which to depict the figure of Christ anew in a manner that bids the reader to "approach it as if it were the first time you heard the story of his abasement."10 The purpose the odd metaphors should serve, we can now expect, is to reenliven the story of Christ's "abasement" in such a way that modern readers might experience "the possibility of offense" in the Christian story in some respects similar to the way early hearers of the proclamation experienced it.

Thus, if it is true that "the whole Christian terminology has been confiscated by speculative thought,"11 then the figures of "the paradox," "the absurd," and "the incognito" make predications that defy any speculative synopsis. And if it is the case that it has become "all too easy to use the holy names without meaning anything thereby,"12 then it is this state of affairs that these odd predications seek to rectify.

A Hidden Allusion: The Absurd

As early as 1837 Kierkegaard viewed as fundamental to Christianity the "principle which declares that the truth is hidden in the mystery," as he journals, "which teaches not only that the truth is found in a mystery . . . but that it is in fact hidden in the mystery. This is a view of life which regards worldly wisdom humorously to the wth degree; otherwise the truth is usually revealed in the mystery."13 Clearly, Kierkegaard found this theme of concealment captivating, for it is surely no accident that so many of his pseudonyms—Victor Eremita in Either/Or (1843) and again in Stages on Life's Way (1845), Johannes de Silentio in Fear and Trembling (1843), FraterTaciturnus in Stages on Life's Way (1845)—"bear names indicative of concealment and reticence," as Louis Mackey has pointed out.14

7. Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, 283; SKS, 7:258. 8. Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, 174; SV1,12:162. 9. Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, 275n.; SKS, 7:250nl. 10. Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, 174; SV1,12:162. 11. Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, 363; SKS, 7:330-31. 12. Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, 283; SKS, 7:258. 13. Kierkegaard, Journals and Papers, 2.1682; Papirer, I IA 78 (June 3,1837); SKS, 17:216. 14. Louis Mackey, Kierkegaard; A Kind of Poet (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania PKw, 1971), 320.


In 1844, conscious that at some point he would likely need to supplement his inheritance from his father and would therefore need to seek a pastoral appointment, Kierkegaard delivered a qualifying sermon in Copenhagen's Trinitatis Church.15 The text for the sermon was from Paul's first letter to the Corinthians (2:6-10), and is a pericope that gives voice to the idea of a Christian principle that hides the truth in a mystery:

Yet among the mature we do speak wisdom, though it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are doomed to perish. But we speak God's wisdom, secret and hidden, which God decreed before the ages for our glory. None of the rulers of this age understood this; for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. But, as it is written,

"What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the human heart conceived,

what God has prepared for those who love him"— ; these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit.

Kierkegaard delivered his sermon, or "discourse" as he preferred to call it, on February 24, and in March of that year he began working on Philosophical Fragments. In this work, Johannes Climacus develops this theme of the hidden mystery through his well-known discussion of "the paradox." To find his most potently charged expressions of "the paradox," the place to turn is the third chapter. Entitled "The Absolute Paradox (A Metaphysical Caprice)," this is, as one prominent interpreter of Kierkegaard calls it, "probably the richest and most suggestive chapter of the book from a philosophical standpoint, yet it also is the most puzzling and enigmatic."16 Paradox, as Johannes Climacus here depicts it, manifests in three expressions: the ultimate paradox of thought, the absolute paradox, and the paradox of faith.

Climacus defines what he calls "the ultimate paradox of thought" as the desire "to discover something that thought itself cannot think."17 This is the ontological issue of longing to understand the ultimate, which, because it is infinite, is beyond human understanding. Although thought craves comprehension, the closest one can come to understanding what is ultimate is to discover that it is incomprehensible. Cognition can discover that it is bounded, and that regardless of how far in its journey of discovery it pushes into the "frontier" of the unknown, the reality of the ultimate remains a mystery on the far side. The understanding, however, is ineluctably drawn in "paradoxical passion" to this frontier nonetheless, an "unknown, which certainly does exist but is also unknown and to that extent does

15. See Akstair Hannay, Kierkegaard: A Biography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 206. 16. C. Stephen Evans, Passionate Reason: Making Sense of Kierkegaard's Philosophical Fragments

(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992), 58. 17. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 37; SKS, 4:243.


not exist."18 But, according to Climacus, one cannot just say that the unknown does not exist, because one thereby establishes a relation with this unknown on the frontier of the unknown. This paradox of thought is a fervent "incentive" because the understanding is drawn to what is unknown, and it is a frustrating "torment" because the understanding's discoveries always fall short of the ultimate to which it is drawn.19

18. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 44; SKS, 4:249. Johannes Climacus appears unconcerned with articulating a full definition of human rationality and its appropriate operations, but the manner in which he discusses it here suggests significant influence by Kant. Kant too, for example, identifies this oddity wherein thought is drawn to what it cannot think when he writes, "Human reason has this peculiar fate that in one species of its knowledge it is burdened by questions which, as prescribed by the very nature of reason itself, it is not able to ignore, but which, as transcending all its powers, it is also not able to answer" (Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Norman Kemp Smith [New York: St. Martin's Press, 1965], 7 [§A vii]; Kierkegaard owned the 1794 Riga edition of Kritik der Reinen Vernunft [/1SKB, 595]). See also Kant's Prolegomena: "We cannot indeed, beyond all possible experience, form a definite notion of what things in themselves may be. Yet we are not at liberty to abstain entirely from inquiring into them; for experience never satisfies reason fully but, in answering questions, refers us further and further back and leaves us dissatisfied with regard to their complete solution" (Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, trans. Paul Carus and rev. James W. Ellington [Indianapolis: Hackett, 1977], 92 [§351]). The suggestion that Kierkegaard drew upon Kant in developing his view of human understanding is not novel; many have argued that Kierkegaard's dialectic of the paradox only makes sense against the interpretive structure of Kant's transcendental philosophy. Ricoeur, for example, thinks that Climacus's view is "clearly an echo of Kant's celebrated adage about the necessity 'to deny knowledge, in order to make room for faith.'" And, Ricoeur continues, "the similarities go further than that, for the philosophical function of 'paradox' in Kierkegaard is closely parallel to that of 'limits' in Kant. One might even go so far as to say that Kierkegaard's fragmented dialectic resembles the Kantian dialectic, understood as a critique of illusion. In each case, there is an essential truth that can be stated only fragmentarily. Thus there is something in Kierkegaard that cannot be understood except against a Kantian background" (Paul Ricoeur, "Philosophy after Kierkegaard," in Kierkegaard: A Critical Reader, ed. Jonathan Ree and Jane Chamberlain [Oxford: Blackwell, 1998], 16). Indeed, it is Kant, not Hegel, whom Climacus identifies as "standing on the pinnacle of scientific scholarship" (Concluding Unscientific Postscript, 552; SKS, 7:502).

19. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 44; SKS, 4:249. Throughout Philosophical Fragments and Concluding Unscientific Postscript, Johannes Climacus generally uses the term Forstanden (the understanding). It comes as something of a surprise that one finds the term Fornuft (reason) only infrequently in the whole of Kierkegaard's authorship, given that many thinkers of the age sought to distinguish the capacities of understanding and reason precisely.

Both Kant and Hegel maintained a division of labor between Vernunft (reason) and Verstand (understanding), although they drew different consequences from the distinction. Kant, for example, broke with the earlier rationalist tradition in holding that "there are two stems of human knowledge, namely sensibility and understanding, which perhaps spring from a common, but to us unknown, root. Through the former, objects are given to us; through the latter, they are thought" (Critique of Pure Reason, 61-62). This might tempt a reader to interpret Kant as saying that given objects register within thought simply as they are given. This is not the case, however, for no perceptual judgment is possible without a priori concepts under which to subsume sense intuitions. "Thoughts without content are empty," Kant says, and "intuitions without concepts are blind. It is, therefore, just as necessary to make our concepts sensible, that is, to add the object to them in intuition, as to make our intuitions intelligible, that is, to bring them under concepts. These two powers or capacities cannot exchange their functions. The understanding can intuit nothing, the sense can think nothing. Only through their union can knowledge arise" (Critique of Pure Reason, 93). Nonetheless, the understanding cannot give knowledge about something for which it has no sense intuition, such as the more ultimate matters of God, freedom, and immortality. On the other hand, says Kant, the faculty of reason can think these more ultimate ideas but can yield no knowledge of them, since knowledge is a product of subsuming sensible intuitions under a concept.

Hegel, on the other hand, granted Kant his point that the faculty of understanding cannot arrive at knowledge of ultimate truth, but endeavored to show how reason can. He reckons absolute truth to be the reconciliation of Spirit with Nature or, better put, the reconciliation of infinite Spirit with finite Spirit. And "this reconciliation is the peace of God, which does not 'surpass all reason,' but is rather the peace


If this first expression of paradox is a torment to the understanding, however, then the second, that is, the "absolute" expression of the paradox, is said to abuse cognition still more thoroughly. "The heart of the matter," Johannes Climacus says, is "the historical fact that the god has been in human form."20 To think "the eternalizing of the historical and the historicizing of the eternal,"21 however, ostensibly consititutes an infraction of the understanding's conception of what is possible. "The understanding certainly cannot think it, cannot hit upon it on its own," he writes, "and if it is proclaimed, the understanding cannot understand it and merely detects that it will likely be its downfall."22

In the appendix to the chapter of Philosophical Fragments I have been considering, Climacus offers an imaginative experiment entitled "Offense at the Paradox: An Acoustical Illusion." This experiment is cast as a dialogue between the dramatis personae of "the understanding" and "the paradox" in its absolute expression. When confronted by the absolute paradox the understanding cannot simply ignore it because, as we have seen, the understanding is drawn to what it cannot think. However, because in its absolute expression the paradox of the incarnation is a blatant contradiction—it "specifically unites the contradictories"—the understanding is offended that it should be asked to believe such a thing, and calls the paradox "foolishness." In its "eternalizing of the historical and the historicizing of the eternal" the paradox is not merely beyond the limits of apprehension for the understanding but, to think with Kant, is an outrageous contradiction of the rules of the understanding.23 In order to think, one must employ the understanding. The attempt to think a concept that is self-contradictory is a violation of one of

that through reason is first known and thought and is recognized as what is true" (Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion: (Me Volume Edition of the Lectures of 1827, trans. Peter C. I Iodgson [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988], 489).

The fact that Kierkegaard feels no necessity to articulate a distinction between reason and the understanding is good grounds for restraint in claiming too much for the influence of Kant on Kierkegaard's epistemology. This holds regarding the influence of Hegel as well. Stephen Evans has noted that some readers of Philosophical Fragments might wonder whether Climacus follows Hegel on this issue, that it is only the finite understanding that is limited in its apprehension of ultimate truth. His response is undoubtedly right, however, when he answers that the "inference as a whole leaves no doubt that Climacus thinks that human beings are completely unable to comprehend the paradox of the incarnation" (Passionate Reason, 188). It is for this reason that, in his discussions of Kierkegaard, Evans takes the liberty of using terms such as "human rationality," "reason," and "understanding" interchangeably. I follow Evans in this regard. No matter how one parses the organ of human cognition, Kierkegaard will always respond that the paradox of the incarnation is incomprehensible.

20. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 103; SKS, 4:300. 21. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 61; SKS, 4:263. 22. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 47; SKS, 4:252. 23. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 61; SKS, 4:263. Ronald Green writes that the incarnation of

God in "Christ is the absurd, the 'paradox,' because he [Christ] links what Kant has told us we cannot ordinarily think as belonging together: God and time, the eternal and the temporal, necessity and existence. Kierkegaard's very understanding of why Christ is the absurd' presupposes Kant's epistemology" (Green, Kierkegaard and Kant: The Hidden Debt [Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992], 136). While I agree with Green in ascribing at least a rough-and-ready Kantian epistemology to Kierkegaard or, more precisely here, to Climacus, it is again important to recognize that the careful distinctions between understanding, reason, imagination, and sensibility that one finds in Kant's work are not a preoccupation in Kierkegaard's writings.


understanding's fundamental rules. Nonetheless, while the dualism of Kant's transcendental idealism is indeed presupposed as one of the encompassing interpretive structures of Philosophical Fragments, the figure upon which the whole book turns—the figure of the absolute paradox—defies Kant's fundamental distinction. Consequently, it is impossible to incorporate the absolute paradox within "rational faith" as envisioned by Kant.

If we pause here to note how, on the one hand, this is standard epistemological fare for theologians and philosophers of religion, then, on the other hand, we cannot help but find it fanciful to be eavesdropping on an imagined dialogue between the second person of the Trinity and human understanding in a hypostatized persona. Perhaps even in this poetic mode it is not odd to hear the understanding call the absolute paradox foolish. The Apostle Paul's words "foolishness to Gentiles" (1 Cor 1:23) cannot help but ring in our ears here. But if this is not strange, Cli-macus takes the dialogue in a direction that is surely new and peculiar. When the understanding bursts out that the paradox is foolishness, the paradox counters that it has said it first, and that the claims of the understanding are merely "echoes" of what the paradox itself has already said. That is to say, when the understanding expresses its offense by calling the paradox "foolishness" this is, confusingly enough, "the paradox's claim that the understanding is the absurd but which now resounds as an echo from the offense."24 The understanding believes it charges only the paradox with foolish absurdity, not itself as well. But in its countercharge (which, in fact, is said to be the initial charge that we only hear echoing in the understanding's charge) the paradox seems to recognize both the understanding and itself as absurd. What Climacus calls an "acoustical illusion" has to do with the asymmetry of the charge and countercharge, and with the understanding's misunderstanding of the whole situation; the way it sounds to the understanding is in fact an "illusion" from the perspective of the paradox. On the one side, the understanding calls the paradox absurd. This is intelligible enough, given the very constitution of the understanding. The absolute paradox "is absurd precisely because it contains the contradiction that something that can become historical only in direct opposition to all human understanding has become historical,"25 Climacus explains in Concluding Unscientific Postscript. The difficulty is that the countercharge is completely different from what one would expect. The paradox agrees with the understanding's charge, remarking, "It is just as you say, and the amazing thing is that you think it is an objection."26 But while the paradox grants that "the paradox is indeed the paradox, quia absurdum [because it is absurd],"27 it at the same time insists that, by the way, the understanding is also absurd, for "the expression of [the understanding's] offense is that. . . the paradox is foolishness—which is the paradox's claim that the understanding is the absurd but which now

24. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 52; SKS, 4:255. 25. Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, 211; SKS, 7:194. 26. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 52; SKS, 4:256. 27. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 52; SKS, 4:256.


resounds as an echo from the offense."28 Moreover, Climacus maintains, "the paradox has made the understanding the absurd,"29 which suggests a relationship between the disputants of which the understanding is completely unaware.

The understanding's charge is straightforward enough, given the epistemolog-ical assumptions that have been sketched. But what can we make of the paradox's claim that the understanding is echoing the paradox? And how can the paradox assert that the understanding is "the absurd" if the understanding is the faculty or organ of cognition that produces the rules by which the intelligibility of something can be judged? Discerning what is meant by "acoustical illusion" should move us toward a fuller interpretation of the argument. Climacus relates that in its "offense" at being asked to believe in the paradox "the understanding does not understand itself but is understood by the paradox."30 This is because, despite the fact that the offense "sounds from somewhere else—indeed, from the opposite corner—nevertheless it is the paradox that resounds in it, and this is indeed an acoustical illusion."" That which is "acoustical" pertains to hearing generally. However, as we blow, "hearing" can be used in different ways, as in the difference conveyed in the statement, "I heard them talking in the other room, but 1 couldn't hear what they were saying." In the first instance, "hear" (or "heard") has to do with registering the sound of voices on the other side of a door, and in the second instance it has do with understanding (or not understanding) what was said. That Climacus is willing to pun on this verbal ambiguity is not at all far-fetched; Johannes de Silentio (Kierkegaard's pseudonymous author of Fear and Trembling) had already written of Abraham's secret conviction that God had commanded the sacrifice of Isaac that, if he could not "say it in such a way that the other understands it—then he is not speaking."32 Given the proviso that someone else truly has something to communicate, the same might be said regarding hearing: If one does not listen in such a way that she understands the other—then she is not hearing.

The term "acoustical," then, in the phrase "acoustical illusion," capitalizes on the possibility of using the word "hearing" both in its more basic sense to talk about "hearing sound," as well as in its more metaphorical sense to talk about understanding, as when someone says, "Do you hear what I'm saying?" We begin to sense that Climacus is exploiting this double usage to develop an even more elaborate equivoque when we pick out some of the other phrases that allude to hearing: The "truth in the mouth of a hypocrite,"33 he has said, "sounds from somewhere else,"34 but then "resounds as an echo"35 when the understanding

28. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 52; SKS, 4:255. 29. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 52; SKS, 4:256. 30. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 50; SKS, 4:254. 31. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 51; SKS, 4:254. 32. Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton, NJ:

Princeton University Press, 1983), 113; SKS, 4:201. 33. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 52; SKS, 4:256. 34. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 51; SKS, 4:254. 35. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 52; SKS, 4:255.


unwittingly "parrots the paradox."36 These and other such expressions pertaining to hearing all serve to situate the one acoustical term that (what with Kierkegaard's penchant for the surreptitious) secretly animates the entire encounter between the paradox and the understanding, namely, the charge of each that the other is "the absurd." While the term is widely used in Danish as in English to denote something ridiculously incongruous, foolish, or irrational, etymologically speaking the word "absurd" can also pertain to hearing or, more precisely, to not hearing. The Latin absurdus—which Kierkegaard, as an instructor of Latin for a time while at university would have known37—is composed of ab meaning "of" or "from," and surdus, meaning "deaf," "unheeding," or "silent." Thus, while the more colloquial meaning of "absurd" as "foolish" and "ridiculous" is explicit as regards the perspective of the understanding ("the paradox is foolishness"38), the language of the larger interchange suggests that Climacus has orchestrated the entire exchange in such a way as to pun on "the absurd" as the understanding's unheeding deafness to the paradox. The offended understanding, Climacus would have us believe, does not "hear" (in the deeper sense, does not understand) the absolute paradox. And in not hearing the paradox rightly, the offended understanding "does not understand itself."39 Here readers are given another clue to deciphering this dizzying section; in Climacus's footnote to the statement just quoted he says, almost in passing, "In this way the Socratic principle that all sin is ignorance is correct; sin does not understand itself in the truth."40 If one can be blinded to the truth by sin, then Climacus would have us believe that one can be deafened to the truth by sin as well.

The "illusion" part of the phrase "acoustical illusion," therefore, certainly has to do with the fact that the understanding's conception of the entire situation is, in Climacus's account, a misconception. The understanding's reaction of "offense," he says, "is in its essence a misunderstanding."41 A reader might be tempted to conclude that a simple misunderstanding is the whole of the illusion here, as if the entire matter could be cleared up by a more adequate explanation. Climacus's language, however, suggests that the problem is not so much that the offended understanding needs to hear a better explanation of the paradox, but rather that the understanding does not truly listen to what is offered. The offended understanding cannot hear the paradox properly because, deafened by sin, it will not hear it properly and, at its extreme, it even "gloatingly celebrates the triumph of spiritless-ness."42 To believe a misunderstanding to be a true understanding, and to celebrate it as such surely qualifies as an illusion because, basically, an illusion is when one is deceived by a false perception or belief.

36. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 52; SKS, 4:256. 37. See Walter Lowrie, A Short Life of Kierkegaard (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,

1970), 111. 38. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 52; SKS, 4:255. 39. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 50; SKS, 4:254. ' 40. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 50n**; SKS, 4:254n2. 41. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 51; SKS, 4:255. 42. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 50; SKS, 4:253.


But there is another dynamic operative in the text that makes the illusion somewhat more thoroughgoing, and this is signaled by the fact that, according to Climacus, the offended understanding does not even recognize that it is "parroting" the paradox. The understanding's charge that the paradox is the absurd is said to be merely the misunderstood echo of the paradox's original announcement. Everything the confused understanding "says about the paradox it has learned from the paradox," we are told, "even though, making use of an acoustical illusion, it insists that it itself has originated the paradox."43 Apparendy unbeknownst to the understanding, its own claim that the paradox is the absurd is actually "the paradox's claim that the understanding is the absurd but which now resounds as an echo from the offense."44 That is, the understanding has deluded itself in thinking that it originates the charge that the paradox is the absurd. Ostensibly, given the roughly Kantian epistemology Climacus assumes, the understanding is the organ of cognition by which the intelligibility of something can be discerned, but here, in its offense at the paradox, the understanding merely gives voice to the charge that the paradox itself initiates. "When the understanding flaunts its magnificence in comparison with the paradox, which is most lowly and despised," Climacus explains, "the understanding has not originated it, but the paradox itself is the originator who hands over all the splendor to the understanding, even the glittering vices."45 Such descriptors as "magnificence" and "splendor" here corroborate the suggestion made by C. Stephen Evans that the conception of rationality implicit in Philosophical Fragments could be called an "imperialistic" one. "The response of reason to the paradoxical," Evans says, "and indeed to the unknown generally, reveals a desire for mastery."46 But if cognitive mastery is an impossibility in this case, as Climacus maintains, then the response of the understanding to the paradox is analogous to the fox's response to the out-of-reach grapes in Aesop's fable. Just as Aesop's moral shows how easy it is to deride that which eludes one's grasp, Climacus wants to show that the offended understanding considers the paradox "lowly and despised"47 without having grasped it. The obvious point in each case is that such a response is of questionable merit, perhaps even foolish or absurd. But in Climacus's text the implications are more far-reaching. If, according to Climacus, the offended understanding "does not understand itself but is understood by the paradox,"48 then this undermines any claim by the understanding to cognitive mastery. And if, again according to Climacus, "the paradox is itself the originator who hands over all the splendor to the understanding, even the glittering vices,"49

then this suggests that even in the sphere in which the understanding has a great degree of cognitive command, its powers do not originate from itself but are contingent in some important respect. The dialectic Climacus is playing upon here is

43. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 53; SKS, 4:256. 44. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 52; SKS, 4:255. 45. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 52-53; SKS, 4:256. 46. Evans, Passionate Reason, 61. 47. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 53; SKS, 4:256. 48. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 50; SKS, 4:254. 49. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 53; SKS, 4:256.


the one between the originator and the originated, as is clear when we recall what he initially wrote of the absolute paradox: "This human being is also the god."50

Perhaps this, then, makes clearer the claim that the "the paradox has made the understanding the absurd."51 If the offended understanding is the absurd, this is because it turns a deaf ear to God's paradoxical Word—to make explicit the underlying figure from the prologue to the Gospel according to John—and thus, to the willfully deaf understanding, the original Word is inaudible. In Climacus's stylized metaphor, the offended understanding cannot "hear" (that is to say, "understand") its originator, and thus from its perspective the understanding has its obscure origin from (ab) silence (surd).

To gather the preceding discussion together, it is clear that the understanding's charge that the paradox is "the absurd" is based primarily on the fact that the paradox makes a seemingly ridiculous and unintelligible claim to be the god in historical form. In this case, the term "absurd" is used in the colloquial sense to mean "ridiculous," "irrational," or "foolish." In the case of the paradox's countercharge that the understanding is "the absurd," however, the term clearly takes on the more metaphorical sense, punning in the acoustical register to the effect that the understanding is deaf to the claim of the paradox. Nonetheless, it would be a mistake to think that, in his innovative exploitation of the metaphorical sense here, Climacus does not also intend the more common sense of "absurd." In calling the offended understanding "a clod and a dunce,"52 the paradox obviously means it is foolish for the understanding to become offended by the paradox. But if the charge and countercharge by each is clear enough, what do we make of the apparent admission by the paradox that it is, indeed, absurd?

One of the most interesting features of this exchange between the offended understanding and the absolute paradox is the fact that this is no simple charge-countercharge: "The understanding declares that the paradox is the absurd," Climacus writes, "but this is only a caricaturing, for the paradox is indeed the paradox, quia absurdum."53 This phrase, Climacus admits, is not his own but comes from Tertullian (ca. 160-230), whose polemic against the denial by Gnostics of the real human nature of Jesus is the context from which the theological maxim "credo quia absurdum derives. Following Tertullian, the phrase was taken up in a more general way to characterize the relation of Christian faith to its object and is sometimes referred to as "Tertullian's dictum." In an 1839 journal entry, Kierkegaard remarks that this dictum expresses "disdain for every moment of cognition, to the extent

50. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 45; SKS, 4:250. 51. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 52; SKS, 4:256. 52. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 53; SKS, 4:256. 53. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 52; SKS, 4:256. The Latin quia absurdum is rendered here in

English as "because it is absurd" by Howard and Edna Hong. Climacus indicates that he has lifted the phrase from Tertullian, but this is not completely accurate. As the Hongs explain in their editorial notes to Philosophical Fragments (294 n.ll), "absurd" is a common version of the term "ineptum," which Tertullian himself uses in De Came Christi, 5: "Mortuus est deifilius; credihile est, quia ineptum est" ("On the Flesh of Christ," In The Ante-Nicene Fathers, vols. 1-9, ed. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson [Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1885-1897], 3:525).


that such are purely human."54 However, as Jorgen Pedersen points out, "for Ter-tullian himself, who was a pioneer in conceptual theological thinking, the antithesis of faith was not simply thought or rational argument, but, rather, the diabolical forces represented by heathendom (including its philosophy) and also by a spiritless and morally lenient Christianity."55 In the present context, Johannes Climacus appropriates this maxim to indicate the independence of Christ's incarnation from cognitive grasping. The absolute paradox is the absurd, acknowledging to the understanding that "it is just as you say, and the amazing thing is that you think that it is an objection."56 But why wouldn't the understanding consider it an objection to call the paradox absurd? Is not the word commonly used to object to something? Climacus never says plainly what he means here, but again an answer may lie in the difference between the colloquial and the latent senses of the word. The offended understanding reasons from the fact that the paradox is absurd to the assertion that, therefore, "the paradox is foolishness."57

From the beginning, however, Climacus has prepared the reader to watch for instances of the truth masquerading as foolishness. The epigram in Philosophical Fragments, "Better well hanged than ill wed" ("Bedre godt haengt end slet gift"), is a gloss on a Danish translation of a German translation of the fool's comment to Maria in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night: "Many a good hanging prevents a bad marriage." Ostensibly, Climacus invokes the line to imply that it is better for a thinker of his kind to be hanged than to be "married" into a system of speculative philosophy. This is indeed how he interprets it in the preface to Concluding Unscientific Postscript. There he comments on the lackluster critical reception of Philosophical Fragments by saying, "Better well hanged than by a hapless marriage to be brought into systematic in-law relationship with the whole world."58 But in Philosophical Fragments could not the epigram just as easily apply to the absolute paradox? That Climacus cites the fool's wisdom in order to suggest that it is better for the paradox to be hanged than to be mediated into the system is seen in the final lines preceding "the moral." There we read Climacus paraphrasing Johann Georg Hamann to the effect that "Christianity and philosophy" both owe "a good deal of gratitude" to "that great thinker and sage Pontius Pilate, executorNovi Testamenti"™ Capitalizing on Shakespeare's propensity to speak the truth through the mouth of the fool, Climacus surreptitiously bookends Philosophical Fragments with the implication that Pilate, "even if he did not invent mediation,"60 did service to both philosophy and Christianity by acting on the maxim "Better well-hanged than ill wed."

Given this, it is clear that Climacus believes the "foolishness" of something depends upon one's point of view. As we have seen, he clearly thinks that "the

54. Kierkegaard Journals and Papers, 4.4095; Kierkegaard, Papirer, I IA 467 (July 3,1839); SKS, 18:39. 55. Jergen Pedersen, "Credo Quia Absurdum," in Bibliotheca Kierkegaardiana, vol. 5, ed. Niels Thul-

strup and M. Mikulova Thulstrup (Copenhagen: C. A. Reitzels Boghandel, 1980), 117. 56. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 52; SKS, 4:256. 57. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 52; SKS, 4:255. 58. Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, 5; SKS, 7:9. 59. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 110; SKS, 4:305. 60. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 110; SKS, 4:305.


absurd" is not in every case synonymous with "foolishness" in any ordinary sense of the word. In the dialectic of the "acoustical illusion," the paradox allows that it is "absurd," but it never concedes that it is "foolishness" in the "worldly" sense; it only grants that it appears as such to human wisdom. That Climacus here plays a variation on the theme articulated by the Aposde Paul is clear: "God's foolishness is wiser than human wisdom" (1 Cor 1:25). The absolute paradox knows that it cannot be heard aright in the realm of the offended understanding. The point covertly scored by means of this unobtrusive metaphor is that it is all too human to be deaf to the deeper resonances of "the absurd."

In Practice in Christianity, Anti-Climacus also comments pointedly on this "blasphemous" tendency for human rationality, or worldly wisdom, to seek to enthrone itself through intellectual mastery, even to "deify" itself in the form of "the established order."61 Echoing Johannes Climacus, Anti-Climacus calls this "falsehood" of regarding the established order as divine an "acoustical illusion" that stems from "ignoring its own origin."62 By abstracting the particularities out of the biblical story, Anti-Climacus thinks, speculative thought has considered itself able to "comprehend" Christ by interpreting the story itself as a figural representation, the implicit content of which is the union of God's infinite spirit and God's spirit finitized in the human race and in nature.63 But this is simply not the Christian witness, according to Anti-Climacus. "That the human race is or is supposed to be in kinship with God is ancient paganism," he says, "but that an individual human being is God is Christianity, and this particular human being is the God-man. Humanly speaking, there is no possibility of a crazier composite than this either in heaven or on earth or in the abyss or in the most fantastic aberrations of thought."64

Such substantive continuity between the two pseudonyms on this issue is propitious, for it invites a sort of intertextual reading of the two as complementary

61. The target here is expressly Hegel, whom Anti-Climacus accuses of having "deified the established order" (Practice in Christianity., 87; SV1,12:83).

62. Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, 88; SV1,12:84. 63. Hegel maintains that "philosophy does nothing but transform our representations into concepts.

The content remains always the same" (Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, 145). It is not that "Absolute knowledge" has something new to say that can be added to everything that has gone before. Rather, it is supposed to be the meaningful content of the entire development. This is why Paul Ricoeur can say, "The Hegelian system is a system written from the end toward the beginning, from the standpoint of the totality toward the partial achievements of the system" (Ricoeur, Figuring the Sacred: Religion, Narrative, and Imagination, trans. David Pellauer, ed. Mark I. Wallace [Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995], 208). The task of philosophy then, according to Hegel, "is to separate out from a content what pertains only to representation" (Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, 145). The difficulty in this is somehow to think the "content" of religious representation in the full clarity of a concept (Begriff), rather than in the figurative representations (Vorstellungen), operative in the traditional story of an individual God-man. Charles Taylor maintains, "Hegel's reading of Christian religion and theology can therefore only be understood in the light of this final stage of the community which is the self-conscious vehicle of Geist, the community which is the true man-God" (Taylor, Hegel [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975], 211). The belief that the unity of God and humanity in a divine community is the conceptual truth represented in the figure of Christ is the view Kierkegaard sees implicit in the dominant Christendom of his day.

64. Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, 82; SV1,12:79.


to each another.65 In turning now to Practice in Christianity, I would like to suppose that Anti-Climacus could assent to the main lines of my interpretation thus far.

The Optical Illusion: The Incognito

The auditory metaphor of Johannes Climacus is supplemented by Anti-Climacus's visual one: "The God-man is not the union of God and man [by which Anti-Climacus means the union of God and humanity]—such terminology is a profound optical illusion. The God-man is the unity of God and an individual human being."66 Despite this substitution of the optical metaphor for the acoustical one, the source of the illusion is the same. In the writings of both pseudonyms, the illusion stems from the tendency of human rationality to deify itself and to forget its origin. In the final year of his life, 1855, Kierkegaard wrote to the readers of the journal Fcedrelandet that what Practice in Christianity "poetically contains" is "the charge against the whole official Christianity that it is an optical illusion."67 As the mediator of Christian doctrine and speculative rationality, the imperious understanding envisions itself enthroned in a panopticon. That the two encompassing narratives of the biblical story and the speculative story continue as the relevant interpretive structures for Anti-Climacus is plain in his complaint that, in his age, "all the expressions are formed according to the view that truth is cognition \Erkjendelse\ knowledge [Viden] (now one speaks continually about comprehending, speculating, observing, etc.), whereas in original Christianity all the expressions were formed according to the view that truth is a being [Varen\."hS Within these encompassing narratives, each with its rival vision of how to depict truth, Anti-Climacus embeds a new metaphor for Christ's appearance in the world: "the incognito."

Anti-Climacus develops this theme in a section of Practice in Christianity entitled "The Form of a Servant Is Unrecognizability (The Incognito)."69 This figure is incipient already in the thought of Johannes Climacus, of course, since he too remarks, "The form of a servant is the incognito."70 Nonetheless, it is Anti-Climacus

65. In an 1849 journal entry Kierkegaard writes, "Johannes Climacus and Anti-Climacus have several things in common; but the difference is that whereas Johannes Climacus places himself so low that he even says that he himself is not a Christian, one seems to be able to detect in Anti-Climacus that he considers himself to be a Christian on an extraordinarily high level. . . . I would place myself higher than Johannes Climacus, lower than Anti-Climacus" (Journals and Papers, 6.6433; Papirer, XI A 517 [n.d., 1849]).

66. Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, 82; SV1,12:79. Four years earlier Johannes Climacus had written, "God can very well coalesce with humankind in the imagination, but to coalesce in actuality with the individual human being is precisely the paradox" [Concluding Unscientific Postscript, 581; SKS, 7:528).

67. Kierkegaard, The Moment and Late Writings, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998), 69-70; SV1,14:81.

68. Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, 206; SV1,12:190: "nu alle Udtryk ere dannede i Retning af, at Sandheden er Erkjendelse, Viden (man taler nu bestandigt om at begribe, speculere, betragte o. s. v.), hvo-rimod i den oprindelige Christendom alle Udtryk ere dannede i Retning af, at Sandheden er en Vaeren."

69. Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, 127; SV1,12:119. 70. Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, 599; SKS, 7:544: "Tjenerens Skikkelse er da

Incognitoet."


who develops the metaphor in its fuller form. He is the one who tells the reader, "It was Christ's free resolve from eternity to want to be incognito."71 Here again, we see another pseudonym refracting Kierkegaard's view that the Christian revelation is not a full and direct disclosure, but is "hidden in the mystery,"72 indirectly disclosed through a contradiction. One can look truth in the face and not recognize it as such, inasmuch as "there was 'nothing for the eye in him, no splendor so that we should be able to look at him, and no esteem so that we could desire him' (Isaiah 53:2). Directly there was nothing to be seen except a lowly human being who by signs and wonders and claiming to be God continually constituted the possibility of offense."73 Thus, the celebrated indirection for which Kierkegaard the author has become infamous is attributed by Anti-Climacus to Christ. In which direction does the mimesis run? While some interpreters justifiably trace the theme of incognito to Kierkegaard's own biography,74 the theme of Christ's incognito "perhaps had its roots in the teaching of some early Lutheran theologians that there was a krypsis or hiddenness of the divine attributes of Christ."75 Martin Luther's own distinction between "the Word of God" and "God hidden"7'' may in turn draw upon the Apostle Paul's teaching that the "rulers of the age"—Kierkegaard's "established order," in other words—failed to recognize "God's wisdom, secret and hidden . . . for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory" (1 Cor 2:7-8).

Developing upon this Pauline notion of divine wisdom, then, the "hiddenness" that Anti-Climacus hopes to evoke by the image of the incognito is not merely of the sort illustrated by a plainclothes policeman, to use his example. In that case, the officer can always make her identity known by producing her badge, and at any rate the other officers down at the precinct station will vouch for her identity. For this reason, such unrecognizability is not absolute, and any misunderstandings can be cleared up rather simply. But, says Anti-Climacus, this is not possible "when one is God" as well as being "an individual human being" at the same time.77 The reason this is not possible is because existence as "an individual human being" is, in his words, "the greatest possible distance, the infinitely qualitative distance, from being God, and therefore it is the most profound incognito."78 Indeed, who can imagine that a human individual with whom one could sit and talk, person-

71. Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, 128-29; SV1,12:120. 72. Kierkegaard./cwraaA and Papers, 2.1682; Papirer, I IA 78 (June 3,1837). 73. Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, 65-66; SV1,12:62; italics added in the English translation. 74. For example, Richard Kearney writes that "it is most probable that Kierkegaard is here comparing

Christ's maieutic assumption of an 'indirect incognito' vis-a-vis his disciples with his own similar attitude to Regina, his fiancee" (Kearney, "Kierkegaard's Concept of the God-Man," Kierkegaardiana, 13 [1984]: 116). While it is surely the case that Kierkegaard found this theme important in large part for autobiographical reasons, it is nonetheless possible to read the text profitably without risking the psychological reductionism of rooting themes causally in Kierkegaard's own idiosyncrasies.

75. John Macquarrie,/«w Christ in Modern Thought (London: SCM Press, 1990), 241. 76. Martin Luther, The Bondage of the Will, trans. J. I. Packer and O. R. Johnston (Grand Rapids:

Fleming H. Revell, 1957), 170. 77. Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, 127; SV1,12:119. 78. Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, 127-28; SV1,12:119.


to-person, over a nice fish dinner perhaps—who could think that such a companion is God? It is precisely to this crisis of understanding that Anti-Climacus seeks to push his avowedly Christian readers, and then to say of Christ, "With the Father he knows from eternity that no human being can comprehend him, that the gnat that flies into the candlelight is not more certain of destruction than the person who wants to comprehend him or what is united in him: God and man."79

This allusion to the frustration of thought is carried all the way through even at the level of Anti-Climacus's word-forms that play on the cognitive process of "knowing": The unrecognizability (Ukjendelighed) of Christ in Jesus is precisely his incognito [Incognito) that is unavailable to cognition [Erkjendelse]. Wholly opposed to what he claims is a speculative equivocation between thought and being, the figure of Christ as "the incognito" metaphorically pits Anti-Climacus's belief that "truth is a being" against the ostensibly idealist position that "truth is cognition."80 This is because Anti-Climacus holds the view that being "a being" is irreducible to cognition, or perhaps expressed better, that cognition is merely one dimension of being "a being."

Just as the acoustical illusion and the trope of the absurd depicts the inability of human understanding to hear God's Word, so too the optical illusion of Christ's servant form depicts the inability of cognition to recognize that Word incarnate in the incognito. For Anti-Climacus, as for Johannes Climacus, "the God-man is the paradox, absolutely the paradox. Therefore, it is altogether certain that the understanding must come to a standstill on it."81 As a consequence, when depicted as God's absurd incognito rather than cognition's domesticated myth, it is "human nature" for the understanding to be offended by the incarnation and to say, "No, thanks, then I would still rather go on being deaf and blind etc. than be helped in this way."82 Why does the "blind, narrow-minded, sinful human being"83 not let himself or herself be helped in this manner, according to Anti-Climacus? Why does the "eye see only to its own interest," as he laments?84 His answer echoes that of Johannes Climacus: To do otherwise means that the understanding must step aside and put itself in the intellectually embarrassing situation of deferring to a claim it finds incomprehensibly ludicrous. But Christ the paradox does not ask to be comprehended, Anti-Climacus assures us, for Christian faith is not the same as comprehension, and "the content of the fact," as Johannes Climacus maintains, "is a content that still is only for faith, in quite the same sense as colors are only for sight and sound for hearing."85 The absurd incognito is to cognition [erkjendelse]

79. Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, 77; SV1,12:75. Again, that this is embedded in a biblical subtext is clear when we remember what the Apostle Paul, himself conscripting an older interpretive tradition, tells the Corinthians: "For it is written, 'I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart'" (1 Cor 1:19; cf. Isa 29:14).

80. Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, 206; SV1,12:190. 81. Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, 82; SV1,12:80. 82. Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, 38; SV1,12:38. 83. Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, 78; SV1,12:76. 84. Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, 15; SV1,12:9. See Matt 20:13-15. The Greek of Matt 20:15

translates literally as "is your eye evil because I am good?" 85. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 102; SKS, 4:299.


unrecognizable \ukjendelig\: "It is altogether certain that the understanding must come to a standstill on it."86

The God-Man and Human Understanding

Paul Ricoeur has suggested that "a subtle form of the will to power" can be "concealed by the most sincere form of the humility of what we call the will to truth."87

A desire for mastery can be disguised by seemingly disinterested efforts to understand, and Kierkegaard forces an awareness of the urge for the kind of cognitive satisfaction attendant with "grasping" something, with "mastering" it through a concept judged to be adequate to its object. At its extreme, such a desire for mastery could hope to "include God in our enterprise of intellectual domination,"88 as Ricoeur says, thus making our understanding truly comprehensive. Kierkegaard anticipated Ricoeur's perspective on this issue and suspected the Hegelian philosophies of his day of being the chief example of such a will to power. I lis prime suspect would have to have been Hans Lassen Martensen, who was Kierkegaard's theological professor, later the bishop of Zealand, and who was often regarded as the period's chief exponent of Hegelianism in Denmark. In 1837, Martensen completed a dissertation on "The Autonomy of Human Self-Consciousness," which received considerable attention in both Denmark and Germany even prior to its translation from Latin into Danish in 1841. At the time, the Danish translator prefaced the work by saying that "it was the first writing that came out in Denmark in the modern speculative direction and heralded the era in theology from which people have now already begun to mark time."89 Seeking to defend what he calls a "theonomic standpoint in contrast to Hegel's autonomic,"90 Martensen comments in his dissertation that

if one comprehends the eternal process, God experiences (through God's alteration from the sphere of the phenomena, from God's being outside Godself, to the return to Godself) the same stages we have already seen in subjective theology, namely: the natural and immediate standpoint, the standpoint of reflection which involves the sin of finite spirit, and finally the spiritual standpoint. These moments are historically presented in paganism, Judaism, and Christianity. But the difference lies in this, that the history of religions is not so much the history of the human as that of God, the self-mediation of the Absolute Spirit, more God's way

86. Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, 82; SV1,12:80. 87. Ricoeur, Figuring the Sacred, 285-86. 88. Ricoeur, Figuring the Sacred, 286. 89. See Hans Lassen Martensen, The Autonomy of Human Self-Consciousness in Modern Dogmatic The

ology, in Between Hegel and Kierkegaard, trans. Curtis L.Thompson and David J. Kangas (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1997), 74. Kierkegaard owned both the Latin dissertation (ASKB, 648) and the Danish translation (ASKB, 651).

90. Martensen, Autonomy of Human Self-Consciousness, 74.


than the human's way. Religion is conceived as God's own consciousness ofGodself.91

It is perhaps with just such a passage in mind that Climacus remarks, "In the capacity of a positive thinker, one knows all about world history and our Lord's most private thoughts."92 According to Climacus, such intellectual ambition is not morally neutral, but is rooted in sin. Both the acoustical illusion and the optical illusion stem from willful ignorance of human rationality regarding its origin, or perhaps afall into ignorance is a better way of expressing it. When Climacus writes that the offended understanding "does not understand itself but is understood by the paradox," he observes at the bottom of the page, "In this way the Socratic principle that all sin is ignorance is correct; sin does not understand itself in the truth."93 While somewhat obscure, this is an important point. Climacus here affirms that sin is ignorance and that this ignorance prevents one from understanding oneself in the truth or, what is the same thing for him, this ignorance prevents understanding oneself properly in relationship to "the god."

We should not expect either Climacus or Anti-Climacus to propose or even admit of any intellectual solution to this sin of ignorance, however. For them, in contrast to the Romantic idea of Bildung (Martensen's Dannelse), the way to full human existence does not lie on any path of intellectual development. If Johannes Climacus obscures the possibility of alternative forms of rationality through poetizing "the understanding" as the univocal persona of human rationality, Anti-Climacus admits the possibility of different modes of rationality by his various examples of "worldly wisdom." All the diverse ways of thinking that he mentions—that of "the sagacious statesman," "the solid citizen," "the scoffer," "the clergyman," and "the philosopher"94—share the general feature of limitation with respect to the absolute paradox. For this reason the term "the understanding" can be read as "any understanding," because the point he wishes to make is that "the only possible understanding of the absolute paradox is that it cannot be understood."95 Yet Climacus's view of the cultural landscape of the age was that it had become all too easy "to rattle off the Christian truth without having the least impression of it."96 Anti-Climacus agrees that, in the main, Christ is thought of in an "apathetic habitual way."97 The implication in each statement is that "the understanding" or, rather, the various understandings that speak of Christ in a habitual apathetic way do not have the proper orientation or relationship to "the Christian truth." The impression the pseudonyms seem to want to give is that, in such a cultural context, Christianity has become so ordinary—such a part of everyday reality—that Christ has become completely domesticated. Yet the pseudonyms speak

91. Martensen, Autonomy ofHuman Self-Consciousness, 145. 92. Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, 85; SKS, 7:85. 93. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 50n**; SKS, 4:254n2. 94. Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, 42-52; SV1,12:40-49. 95. Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, 218; SKS, 7:199. 96. Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, 283; SKS, 7:258. 97. Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, 174; SV1,12:162.


of this extraordinary reality that poses such a great possibility of offense. The reason for this is that, in an age he diagnoses as suffering from spiritual apathy, Kierkegaard seeks to cultivate passion in his reader, and to push him or her to a crisis or moment of decision. In Concluding Unscientific Postscript Climacus writes:

In our day, Christianity has become so naturalized and domesticated in such a way that no one dreams of offense. Well, it is quite in order, because one is not offended by a triviality, and that is what Christianity is on the point of becoming. Otherwise it [i.e., Christianity] is surely the only power that truly can cause offense, and the narrow gate to the hard way of faith is offense, and the terrible resistance against the beginning of faith is offense; and if becoming a Christian proceeds properly, offense is bound to take its share in every generation as it did in the first.. . . For the believer, offense comes at the beginning, and the possibility of it is the continual fear and trembling in his existence.98

Given such a diagnosis of an age in which the name "Christ" can be uttered "without having the least impression of it,"99 Kierkegaard's pseudonyms substitute the metaphors of "the absurd," of "the incognito," and of "the paradox," each of which is somewhat distant from conventional assumptions about Christian faith. It is here that Paul Ricoeur's discussions of "limit-expressions" and "limit-experiences" are helpful in reading the dynamics at work in Kierkegaard's texts. Ricoeur suggests that through the act of interpreting a "limit-expression" that explodes the bounds of the structured set of symbols from which it emerges, an interpreter's horizon can be opened and "intensified" in the direction of a "limit-experience." Such a limit-experience is not one more poetic redescription among others. Instead, as an experience of decision, of distress, or of culmination, it is inestimable and "intends the extreme."100 Such wordplay transgresses and escapes the bounds of everyday reality, Ricoeur would say. Read along these interpretive lines, then, Kierkegaard's poetic strategy seeks to fracture the pretense of comprehending intellect and to halt any interpretation of the incarnation that would seek to "assist it to an explanation"101 by isolating its meaning within the bounds of reason, even if this is spoken of as a "higher reason."102 In the writings of Kierkegaard, the figure of "the God-man" is supposed to be capable of maintaining a secretiveness

98. Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, 585; SKS, 7:532. 99. Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, 283; SKS, 7:258. 100. Ricoeur, Figuring the Sacred, 61. 101. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 53; SKS, 4:256. 102. According to a review by Theophilus Nicolaus (a pseudonym of Kierkegaard's contemporary,

Magnus Eiriksson), Climacus's "absurd" should be understood as a "higher rationality." But in an unpublished response to Nicolaus, Kierkegaard writes, "Pay attention to the definition; if the absurd is not the negative sign and predicate which dialectically makes sure that the scope of'the purely human' is qualitatively terminated, then you actually have no sign of your higher reason; you are taking the chance that your 'higher reason' does not lie on that side of'the human,' in the heavenly regions of the divine, of revelation, but on this side, and somewhat farther down, in the underground territory of misunderstanding" (Kierkegaard, Journals and Papers, 6.6598; Papirer,X6 B 68 [n.d., 1850]).


regarding what the understanding would most like to arrest in the reassuring form of a noncontradictory concept. Kierkegaard's extraordinary predications reread the New Testament and the philosophical tradition in an incongruous way, for the purpose of intensifying the Word again. As Johannes Climacus himself says of Philosophical Fragments:

The book is written for people in the know, whose trouble is that they know too much. Because everyone knows the Christian truth, it has gradually become such a triviality that a primitive impression of it is acquired only with difficulty. When this is the case, the art of being able to communicate eventually becomes the art of being able to take away or to trick something away from someone. This seems very strange and very ironic, and yet I believe I have succeeded in expressing exacdy what I mean.103

Through a poetic "turning" of familiar narrative resources, he hopes to challenge readers with a renewed way of listening and seeing.

Kierkegaard's figuration of Christ intends a limit-experience of cognitive pathos, an intellectual "passion" that is both "torment" and "incentive," in Climacus s words.104 It is an experience of "incentive" because the limit-expressions ineluctably draw one's reflections to the incomprehensible, and it is an experience of "torment" because the incomprehensible effectively frustrates every attempted explanation. But even though "the understanding cannot get the paradox into its head,""" in the "passion of faith," as Climacus comes to call it, it is possible for the mystery of the God-man to inform one's entire understanding of his or her existence. This is because Kierkegaard's view locates the Christ paradox not as one element alongside others within a total life-view but, instead, as the captivating mystery that takes hold and informs one's perspective on the rest of reality. Johannes Climacus maintains, however, that this "depends on the passion in dialectically holding fast the distinction of incomprehensibility."106 This passion is "the passion of the understanding,"107 its "crucifixion" even, turning the term "passion" toward its christological meaning.108 It involves thought's complete service as a reminder of the manner in which Christ's passion involved him completely. As such, if one believes God's incarnational poem at all, one believes it not because of any epistemic warrant, but because of a transformational experience that recontex-tualizes one's entire life view. The limit-experience these writings mean to evoke is not intended to be an encounter that gives the ability to grasp the truth, but an experience of being grasped'by the living reality that is the truth. In faith, a Christian utters, "not that I have grasped it—but that I am grasped."109

103. Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, 275n*; SKS, 7:250-51nl. 104. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 44; SKS, 4:249. 105. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 53; SKS, 4:256. 106. Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, 561; SKS, 7:511. 107. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 47; SKS, 4:252. 108. Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, 559; SKS, 7:508. 109. Kierkegaard, Journals and Papers, 4.3956; Papirer, X3 A 777 (n.d., 1851).


Through his figuration of Christ in terms of "the incognito" and "the absurd," Kierkegaard seeks to depict anew that Christianity is what "no eye has seen, nor ear heard" (1 Cor 2:9). A critical reading establishes that Kierkegaard plays throughout on the linguistic usage—common to Danish and English—of "hearing" and "seeing" as metaphors for "understanding." In the end, however, it is clear that "hearing" and "seeing" the absolute paradox in accordance with his view of Christianity is not a matter for the faculty or organ of "the understanding," but is a matter for "belief." As Climacus writes in the concluding "moral" to Philosophical Fragments, "a new organ has been assumed here: faith."110 In the qualifying sermon that I mentioned at the outset of this chapter, the one Kierkegaard delivered the month before he began work on Philosophical Fragments, he expresses it this way:

The glory of which we speak was not pleasant to the earthly eye, since it was an offense to the Jews and foolishness to the Greeks. Consequently the eye that saw it was not the earthly eye but the eye of faith, which looked trustingly through the terror in order to see what the earthly eye did not discover.

And:

It was not the earthly ear which heard but the ear of faith which, amid the temptations to offense and mockery, listened to hear the word of faith.111

Kierkegaard's poetic figure of "the absurd" serves to express that sinful understanding—"the earthly ear"—is deaf to God's Word, and the figure of "the incognito" indicates that "the earthly eye" is blind to God's ideal for human existence, which, as will be discussed in what follows, is the life of Christ, a life expressing Anti-Climacus's assertion that truth is not found in cognition or in knowledge, but in a being.112

110. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 111; SKS, 4:306. 111. Kierkegaard, Journals and Papers, 4.3916; Papirer, IV C 1 (n.d.( 1844). 112. Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, 206; SV1,12:190.

C H A P T E R FOUR

The Imitation of Christ

How true what Thomas a Kempis says (in The Imitation of Christ, bk. 1, ch. 2): "Therefore be not lifted up on account of any skill or knowledge, but rather fear on account of the knowledge that is given you. For the more you know and the better you understand it, the more rigorously you will be judged if you have not lived more holily."

—Kierkegaard, Journals and Papers

The previous chapter illuminated the figures of "the absurd" and "the incognito" as two critical places where Kierkegaard employs "limit-expressions" to provoke the reader out of his or her "habitual apathy" respecting Christian claims for the divinity of Jesus the Christ. Kierkegaard's poetic figure of "the absurd" serves to express the idea that sinful understanding, "the earthly ear," is deaf to God's Word, and the figure of "the incognito" indicates that "the earthly eye" is blind to God's ideal for human existence, which, as will be discussed in what follows, is the life of Christ, a life expressing Anti-Climacus's assertion that truth is not found in cognition or in knowledge, but in "a being."1 This chapter will assess Kierkegaard's fullest articulation of what he believes Christian life should look like when one responds to the God-man not with "the earthly ear" and "the earthly eye," but with the "ear of faith" and the "eye of faith."2 The true expression of Christian existence, according to Kierkegaard's most exemplary Christian pseudonym, Anti-Climacus, entails the "imitation of Christ." As William Schweiker has written, "If the Incarnation is the unique condition for the advance on Socratic thought, then the imitatio is the corresponding way of edification or practice beyond the flights of idealistic recollection

1. Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991), 206; SV1,12:190.

2. Kierkegaard, Soren Kierkegaard's Journals and Papers, ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, 7 vols. (Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1967-1978), 4.3916; Papirer, IV C (n.d., 1844).

107


or dialectics."3 A number of scholars have detailed the respects in which this emphasis upon personal imitation precipitates a significant break with the ascendant form of Christianity that Kierkegaard derides as "the Establishment" or as "Christendom" and is meant to force the reader into "a passionate relation to the world."4 What I want to address here is how, in addition, the emphasis on "imitation" marks the culmination of Kierkegaard's intentional discontinuity with early German Romanticism and speculative idealism,5 and how his understanding of "the imitation of Christ" actually completes his poetics by emphasizing the transition from imagining the ideal to practicing it. This chapter thus has a number of objectives: (1) to situate Kierkegaard's late emphasis on the imitation of Christ in terms of the literary tradition of mimesis; (2) to show how by this emphasis on the imitation of Christ Kierkegaard seeks to retrieve a feature of Christianity that he believes has been lost within the Christendom of his era; (3) to demonstrate how by this emphasis on the imitation of Christ Kierkegaard seeks to overcome the irony of early German Romanticism; and (4) to illustrate how this emphasis on the imitation of Christ marks a culmination of Kierkegaard's poetics by specifying the manner in which he thinks a Christian ought to move from reflective interpretation of the Christian story to actual application of that story in one's life.

The second part of Kierkegaard's own dissertation treated the Romantic attempt to create a revolutionary poetics of ironic dissimulation. While the definition of the term irony as "dissimulation" is a classical definition, what is nonetheless new with Romanticism is the celebration of ironic dissimulation as a poetic ideal.'' Whereas classical and neoclassical poetics conceived of art in terms of its simulation or, more precisely, in terms of its mimesis of action and of nature, early German Romantic poetics by contrast celebrated ironic dissimulation, creative originality, and the evocation of the inimitable. Indeed, the "prime target" of the Romantic assault on traditional aesthetics "was not classicism as such," in Ernst Behler's words, "but the aesthetic system of the ars poetica and neoclassicism—in

3. William Schweiker, Mimetic Reflections (New York: Fordham University Press, 1990), 158. 4. "Et lidelsesfuldt torhold til verden." Joakim Garff, SAK. SerenAahye Kierkegaard, En biograji (Copen

hagen: Gads Forlag, 2000), 570. See also Louis Dupre, Kierkegaard as Theologian: The Dialectic of Christian Existence (New York: Sheed 8c Ward, 1963); Vernard Eller, Kierkegaard and Radical Discipleship: A New Perspective (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1968); David J. Gouwens, Kierkegaard as Religious Thinker (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); Sylvia Walsh, Living Poetically: Kierkegaard's Existential Aesthetics (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994).

5. TIegel "incorporated" post-Kantian expressivist aesthetic theories "and builds his view on them," Charles Taylor explains {Hegel [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975], 468).

6. This is why the word "irony," as Kierkegaard notes, "is customarily translated as 'dissimulation'" (Kierkegaard, The Concept of Irony, with Continual Reference to Socrates, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong [Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989], 255; SKS, 1:294). Here Kierkegaard cites Theophrastus's definition of irony as "false and fraudulent dissimulation and concealment." Kierkegaard, in contrast to Theophrastus, goes on to distinguish irony as more thoroughgoing than objective dissimulation: "Dissimulation denotes more the objective act that carries out the discrepancy between essence and phenomenon; irony also denotes the subjective pleasure as the subject frees himself by means of irony from the restraint in which the continuity of life's conditions holds him—thus the ironist can literally be said to kick over the traces" (Concept of Irony, 255-56; SKS, 1:294-95).

THE IMITATION OF CHRIST 109

general, the view of literature as representation of reality, as imitation, as mimesis"7

As August Wilhelm Schlegel wrote in a contribution to the 1798 Athenaeum Fragments, the burgeoning Romantic literature manifested "a mania for originality."8

In the writings of several of its major representatives, therefore, Romantic poetics heralded a new era of poetry that sought to supplant the classical theory of the "mimetic" imagination with a truly innovative ironic imagination. However, of the major representatives of early German Romanticism, it has been Friedrich Schlegel's aphorisms in the 1797 Lyceum Fragments and the 1798 Athenaeum Fragments that "have tended to dominate critical discussion on romantic irony."9 The space given over to criticizing Schlegel's concept of irony in Kierkegaard's dissertation suggests that this dominance has long been the case. What I want to show in this chapter is that Kierkegaard's alternative, by contrast, promotes an idiosyncratic synthesis of the classical (and neoclassical) theory of mimesis with the Christian ideal of imitatio Christi and shows that mimesis is not inimical to pathos and the experience of the inimitable, but can actually foster the limit-experience that Johannes Climacus called "the passion of the understanding" and that Anti-Climacus simply calls "faith." What this chapter demonstrates, therefore, is that Kierkegaard's resuscitation of the "imitation of Christ" tradition can be read as a critical alternative to the early German Romantic prejudice against theories of mimesis.

Kierkegaard transfigures the Romantic ideal of living poetically ("Make poetry lively and sociable, and life and society poetical"10) into his own doctrine of existential striving within a "poetic production" that God creates. Ultimately, the culmination of Kierkegaard's decade-long conversation with his Romantic precursors undermines the autonomy of the Romantic ideal of dissimulation through a resuscitation of the ideal of imitation. Thus, Kierkegaard's final misprision of "irony's great requirement"11 occurs when he retrofits the Romantic ideal of "living poetically" to conform to the pattern of another, more ultimate precursor, namely, God in Christ. My argument here is that Kierkegaard's late idealization of "imitation" signals a retrieval and revision of poetic mimesis which, when integrated with the poetics of reconciliation that I elaborated in chapter 2 (i.e., God the poet fulfills

7. Ernst Behler, German Romantic Literary Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 3. 8. A. W. Schlegel, in Friedrich Schlegel's Lucinde and the Fragments, by Friedrich Schlegel, trans. Peter

Firchow (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1971), 188; Athenaeum Fragments, no. 197. 9. Frederick Burwick, Mimesis and Its Romantic Reflections (University Park: Pennsylvania State Uni

versity Press, 2001), 162. While the writings of Samuel Taylor Coleridge brought English Romanticism under the direct influence of this early German movement, the particular concept of irony does not seem to have animated English imaginations with the same intensity it exerted in Germany and in Denmark. For a discussion of the British reception of German idealism and Romanticism, see James Engell, The Creative Imagination: Enlightenment to Romanticism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981). See also David Jasper, Coleridge as Poet and Religious Thinker (Allison Park, PA: Pickwick Publications, 1985). Jasper explains that the insight that the extent and nature of Coleridge's dependence upon German thinkers "is continually muddied by his own insistence of his priority, or at least independence of them" (82).

10. Schlegel, Schlegel's Lucinde and the Fragments, 175. 11. "As is well known," to recapitulate Kierkegaard's claim, "irony's great requirement was to live poet

ically" {Concept of Irony, 280; SKS, 1:316).


the divine ideal for human life by actually "living poetically" in Christ) culminates in the transposition of "living poetically" into a novel conception of Christian dis-cipleship. On this matter, the line from Kierkegaard's dissertation is prescient where he writes, "The Christian lets himself be poetically composed, and in this respect a simple Christian lives far more poetically than many a brilliant intellectual."12 In thus relating poetic mimesis and lived imitatio, this chapter will make evident how for Kierkegaard the value of his "poetic productions" is not ultimately that they make "life and society poetical"13 but that they imaginatively intensify one's responsibilities within the context of one's avowed commitments.

Before I launch into a discussion of Practice in Christianity and Anti-Climacus's notion of Christ as "criterion" and "prototype" for both ethical and liturgical imitation, however, I want first to sketch an outline of the relationship between irony and imitation within literary history and theory. A comprehensive study of the historical interaction between the concepts of irony and imitation is beyond the compass of this study.14 Nonetheless, what follows should afford ample context for a discussion of Kierkegaard's resuscitation of imitation in the wake of Romantic irony.

From Classical Mimesis to Medieval Imitatio

In the secondary literature on Romanticism of the last fifty years, M. H. Abrams's The Mirror and the Lamp (1953) has arguably set the terms of discussion regarding "imitation" and "originality." The trajectory Abrams details in that work—an artistic development away from the poetic ideal of imitation and toward that of a poetic ideal variously understood in terms of originality, expression, or creativity—has been widely acknowledged. One of the unfortunate consequences of this influential work, however, has been a tendency to provoke in its readers the presumption that, in the words of Frederick Burwick, "once the lamp began to glow the mirror was shattered."15 Abrams did not mean to imply an either/or relation between imitation and creativity, of course, but what Burwick sees is an inclination to think that once the Romantic primacy of mind and emotion became established in literature, imitative dimensions of great literature did not persist or should not have persisted. Judgments by contemporary thinkers such as Arne Melberg—who speaks of "romantic epistemology" in terms of "a break with all traditional mimesis'1''—confirm Burwick's claim regarding this propensity to obscure elements of continuity between classicism and Romanticism.

12. Kierkegaard, Concept of Irony, 281; SKS, 1:316. 13. Schlegel, Sch/ege/'s Lucinde and tie Fragments, 175-76. 14. To my knowledge, no such survey has yet been written. Walter Ong makes a helpful start, howev

er, in his essay "From Mimesis to Irony: Writing and Print as Integuments of Voice," in Interfaces of the Word: Studies in the Evolution of Consciousness and Culture (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1977). In the following outline, I apply the criterion of whether Kierkegaard was expressly familiar with a figure as my principle of selection.

15. Burwick, Mimesis and Its Romantic Reflections, 45-46. 16. Arne Melberg, Theories of Mimesis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 81.


This tendency initially appeared not with Abrams and later intellectual historians commenting upon Romanticism, however, but in some of the earliest theoretical reflections on the new movement. I cited earlier A. W. Schlegel's comment regarding the "mania for originality" in Romantic literature. He could well have been speaking of his brother Friedrich, the one-time classicist, whose postcritical take on the concept of Socratic irony, along with his "discovery" of the literary genre of aphorism in N. S. R. Chamfort's 1796 Pensees, maximes, anecdotes, dialogues, led him to reject the "completed" formalism of classicism in favor of the dynamic and "progressive" nature of what he termed "Romantic poetry."17 Thus, in his writings of the late 1790s {Critical Fragments in 1797', Athenaeum Fragments in 1798, and Ideas in 180018) Schlegel's contrast between the ancient and the modern poetic ideal becomes a decisive break: "All the classical poetical genres have now become ridiculous in their rigid purity,"19 he declares, whereas in the Romantic fragment and novel, on the other hand, "irony is the clear consciousness of eternal agility, of an infinitely teeming chaos."20 Given Schlegel's own reversal here, therefore, one can appreciate the rife temptation to present irony as the means by which early German Romantic poetics jettisons the classical tradition altogether. Yet as both Frederick Burwick and Marike Finlay have shown, early German Romanticism achieved its "ironic relativization of mimesis" not so much through a decisive break with the classical tradition as through creative modifications of well-known concepts and literary forms, and by the manipulation of stylistic devices "such as fluctuation of perspective (mode), punctuation slips, a single word, an accent or a tone of voice, a movement from subjective to objective points of view."21 Consequently, if sources as distant in time as Schlegel's Fragments and Abrams's The Mirror and the Lamp lead us to think of Romanticism in terms of an outright break with the classical ideal of mimesis, then Burwick's Mimesis and Its Romantic Reflections and other contemporary works of criticism remind us to look more carefully for the ways in which the classical ideal is refracted in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

17. For a discussion of Schlegel's choice of the terms "classical" and "romantic" to replace the purely chronological antonyms "ancient" and "modern," see Hans Eichner, Friedrich Schlegel (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1970), 48-54. Eichner also comments on Schlegel's "adoption" of Chamfort's aphoristic method on page 46. It can be noted that even in his classicist period, Friedrich Schlegel maintained that "precisely those modern poems that contrast most decisively with the Greek manner are still alive, animate and thriving with the vigor of youth; they are full of originality—despite all their eccentric errors" (Schlegel, On the Study of Greek Poetry, trans. Stuart Barnett [Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001], 77).

18. With its publication date of 1797, Schlegel's essay On the Study of Greek Poetry might also seem to belong to the writings of the late 1790s. The obvious classicist perspective of the work is explained by the fact that the book was actually completed in 1795, prior to Schlegel's Romantic conversion, but then languished at the publishing house for two years before becoming available to the public. See Stuart Barnett, "A Note on the Translation," in Schlegel, On the Study of Greek Poetry, ix.

19. Schlegel, Schlegel's Lucinde and the Fragments, 150; Critical Fragments, no. 60. 20. Schlegel, Schlegel's Lucinde and the Fragments, 247; Ideas, no. 69. 21. Marike Finlay, The Romantic Irony of Semiotics: Friedrich Schlegel and the Crisis of Representation

(Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 1988), 113.


It is no simple matter to articulate this relationship of continuity and discontinuity between Romanticism and classical aesthetics. The relationship is "tangled," to use Stephen Halliwell's image, because "even the language of'imitation,' with associated elements of the mimeticist tradition (including the mirror metaphor for art), was often adaptively reappropriated rather than simply rejected in this period."22 Kierkegaard's ironist in Either/Or sees this difficulty clearly:

That there is still a continual return to Aristotelian esthetics, not simply because of dutiful deference or old habit, will surely be admitted by anyone who has any acquaintance with modern esthetics and by this is convinced of the scrupulous attachment to the salient points that were advanced by Aristotle and that are still continually in force in modern esthetics. But as soon as one examines them a little more closely, the difficulty appears at once. The definitions are of a very general kind, and one can very well agree with Aristotle in a way and yet in another sense disagree with him.23

What the aesthete here recognizes is the fact that when irony dissembles something, its product nevertheless resembles its precursors more or less. "Expression" always externalizes a variant of ideas previously internalized; "originality" always owes something to its antecedents; and "creativity" is always in some sense derivative. Early in his career, therefore, Kierkegaard recognized the persistence of ancient criteria within modern aesthetics, and therefore it is necessary first to understand classical aesthetics somewhat better in order to appreciate both what is and what is not novel in Romantic aesthetics, and in Kierkegaard's response to the movement.

Halliwell maintains that the concept of mimesis "lies at the core of the entire history of Western attempts to make sense of representational art and its values."24

In truth, the notion of art as in some sense imitative or "mimetic" of the natural world may well be "the most primitive aesthetic theory."25 However, as Gunter Gebauer and Christoph Wulf make clear, even though historians can identify what they call "mimetic behavior" in the earliest of cultures, the term mimesis (derived from the root word mimos, meaning "mime") was "unknown to Homer and Hes-iod."26 Moreover, "it is not possible to identify any clear aesthetic usage of members of this word group prior to Xenophon and Plato."27 Thus, according to Gebauer and Wulf, the first theoretical articulations of the concept of mimesis as a

22. Stephen Halliwell, The Aesthetics of Mimesis: Ancient Texts and Modern Problems (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002), 33.

23. Kierkegaard, Either/Or, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987), 1:140; SKS, 2:140. Kierkegaard owned Aristotle's Poetics in German translation: Aristoteles, Dichtkunst, trans. Michael C. Curtius (Hannover, 1753); ̂ SATB, 1094.

24. Halliwell, Aesthetics of Mimesis, vii. 25. M. H. Abrams, The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition (Oxford:

Oxford University Press, 1953), 8. 26. Gunter Gebauer and Christoph Wult, Mimesis: Culture, Art, Society, trans. Don Reneau (Berkeley:

University of California Press, 1992), 27. 27. Gebauer and Wulf, Mimesis, 29.


term of art appeared in the fourth century BCE at the earliest. It was probably Xenophon (who in Memorabilia speaks of the sculptor's art in terms of the imitation of a "mental image") who initially used the term to theorize about the processes of artistic creativity.28 But it was Xenophon's more famous contemporary Plato who expanded upon this usage in his own dialogues by having Socrates depict all the arts (poetry, painting, music, dancing, and sculpture) as forms of imitation.29

In the Platonic view, most easily recognized in Plato's dialogue Republic, the mimetic relation of correspondence or representation between a signifier and that which it signifies is conceived not simply in the two categories of the imitable and the imitation, but rather in three categories. The highest Platonic category is that of the eternal ideas, the ultimately real forms of the beautiful and of the good. The second category reflects the first in the phenomenal world of physical things, and includes everything natural and artificial that can be perceived through sensation. The third category—"three removes from reality"30—includes art and such tilings as shadows and reflections in mirrors and off water. For Plato, therefore, members of "the poetic tribe,"31 as he calls them, are all imitators, and as imitator a poet "knows nothing worth mentioning of the things he imitates."32 The consequence of Plato's view that art imitates the world of phenomena rather than the eternal realm of ideas is that poets rank low in his Republic and, indeed, Plato is infamous for having the figure of Socrates threaten to banish poets from his ideal city.33 In the early dialogue Ion and in the second and third books of the Republic, however, Plato contextualizes his critique of imitation in a critique of poetic inspiration and of the educational hegemony of the Homeric epics. Thomas Gould, in The Ancient Quarrel between Poetry and Philosophy, gives an insightful interpretation which capitalizes on a connection that is often missed.34 Plato, Gould says, proposes as the main principle for deciding whether to accept or reject a poem an explicitly theological formulation of what Gould calls "Socratism."That is, one should reject the common mistake made by most people {hoipolloi) that divinity is responsible for everything that happens. On the contrary, Socrates holds, "for the good we

28. Gebauer and Wulf, Mimesis, 30. 29. Plato, Republic, 10.596-99; Laws 2.667-68; 7.814-16. These passages can be found in The Collect

ed Dialogues, ed. Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1963), 820-24,1263-65, and 1384-86, respectively.

30. Plato, Republic, 10.599, in Collected Dialogues, 824. 31. Plato, Republic, 10.600, in Collected Dialogues, 825. 32. Plato, Republic, 10.602, in Collected Dialogues, 827. See also Ernst Behler: "Perhaps no classical or

classicist author has ever so directly and one-sidedly declared literature to be nothing but [mimesis]. Not even Plato could be reduced to this doctrine. He, of course, reproached the poet for being an imitator, and a poor one at that, but was mostly concerned about the poet's ability to arouse the emotions of his audience, and this has little to do with imitation [mainly in the Republic III and X]. He also thought that the poet produced his works not in a state of sobriety and equanimity, but in ecstasy, even in madness, a theory more of inspiration than imitation [see the early dialogue Ion for this view]" (Behler, German Romantic Literary Theory, 301).

33. Plato, Republic, 10.607, in Collected Dialogues, 832. 34. Thomas Gould, The Ancient Quarrel between Poetry and Philosophy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Uni

versity Press, 1990). Gould's title nicely evokes the line in the Repub/icwhere Socrates says, "There is from of old a quarrel between philosophy and poetry" (Republic, 10.607, in Collected Dialogues, 832).


must assume no other cause than God, but the cause of evil we must look for in other things and not in God."35 Thus, Plato's assault on poetry is in fact a complaint that epic and tragic poetry rest on the very ingredient in popular paideia to which Socrates most emphatically objects, namely, a belief in the possibility of divine injustice. This popular Homeric view was, to use Kierkegaard's image, "the atmospheric air [Socrates' contemporaries] were accustomed to breathing," and, he continues, it was this air that Socrates "pumped away" with his "dialectical vacuum pump" of questioning irony.36 To those poets who compose "only hymns to the gods and the praises of good men," on the other hand, Socrates happily grants admission to his ideal city.37 In this light, Plato's critique of poetry is not so much a critique of imitation as such, but rather a form of theodicy criticizing the inappropriate attribution of tragic inevitability to divinity through the imitative performances of Homeric poetry.

Plato's student Aristotle retains the definition of poetry as imitation, but in his treatise Poetics (the work to which Kierkegaard's aesthete refers in the passage quoted earlier) Aristotle appraises poetry much more positively than Plato does. Just as in Plato's dialogues, in Aristotle's Poetics the term mimesis signifies that in some respect or another a work of art imitates something else in the world of nature or culture. Aristode, however, does not share Plato's theory regarding a separate realm of eternal forms as the ultimate criterion of value since, as he writes, "it would seem impossible that the substance and that of which it is the substance should exist apart."38 For Aristotle, a thing's form is its essence or structure, as contrasted with its substance or matter.39 Given this more positive view of the natural world, therefore, in the Aristotelian view poems and poets receive a de facto promotion within the order of the universe. In addition, by making mimesis a term of art specific to the arts, Aristotle distinguishes the arts from other human endeavors in a way that Plato does not. In fact, Aristotle not only distinguishes the arts from other human activities, but by the second paragraph of Poetics he even begins to distinguish the imitative processes of the arts by virtue of their having "(1) different means, (2) different objects, and (3) different methods of imitation."40 In contrast to Plato's dialogues, therefore, Aristotle's Poetics articulates a theory of art (independent of ontology, theology, and morality) that differentiates poetry from other artistic media and even distinguishes kinds of poems by the criteria appropriate to the genres of epic, drama, comedy, and tragedy. "

35. Plato, Republic, 2.379, in Collected Dialogues, 626. 36. Kierkegaard, Concept of Irony, 178; SKS, 1:225. 37. Plato, Republic, 10.607, in Collected Dialogues, 832. 38. Aristotle, Metaphysics, vol. 4 of The Student's Oxford Aristotle, trans. W. D. Ross (London: Oxford

University Press, 1942), §991b. 39. Aristotle illustrates by reference to "the smoothness of the sea" when he writes, "The material sub

stratum is the sea, and the actuality or shape is smoothness. It is obvious then, from what has been said, what sensible substance is and how it exists—one kind of it as matter, another as form or actuality, while the third kind is that which is composed of these two" (Aristotle, Metaphysics, §1043a).

40. Aristotle, Poetics, trans. Gerald F. Else (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1970), 15 (§ 1447a).


The conception of art as imitation did not recede following Aristotle but, on the contrary, spread beyond the neat bounds that Aristotle had delineated. Aristotle's vindication and rehabilitation of mimesis in the wake of the Platonic critique ensured the enduring viability of the traditional paideutic model of education, even though this was not the pedagogy he advocated in his Lyceum. Eric Havelock speaks of this traditional model of education by which virtue and worldview are taught through enculturation into the common narrative of a group:

You did not learn your ethics and politics, skills and directives, by having them presented to you as a corpus for silent study, reflection and absorption. You were not asked to grasp their principles through rational analysis. You were not invited so much as to think of them. Instead you submitted to the paideutic spell.41

In this sense, popular Greek education took place through the internalization of the social narrative offered in the Homeric epics and the imitation of the virtues presented by them. Thus, whether one's relation to mimesis was that of a "paideutic spell," or of philosophical reflection on the place and function of poetry and art in society, mimesis was part and parcel of Greek culture and all that came under the influence of Hellenism.

When the Apostle Paul incorporates the language of mimesis into his message (for example, "Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ" [1 Cor 11:1]; "You became imitators of us and of the Lord" [1 Thess 1:6]), Walter Ong insists that "there can be little doubt that his use of the term mimesis (imitation) had some connection with the dominance of this term specifically in Greek education."42 Ong's assertion here is bolstered by Joachim Classen's biblical criticism showing that in addition to Paul's Jewish Pharisaical education, his letters also evidence some degree of schooling in the Greek tradition.43 This early conjunction of Greek philosophy and pedagogy with the emerging Christian sect has had far-reaching consequences for the historical development of the Western world. For a period that encompasses late antiquity, all of the Middle Ages, and reaches well into the Renaissance, there is scarcely a sphere of life, as Gebauer and Wulf maintain, "in which its effects are not felt and which cannot be characterized as mimetic. Reference back to antiquity is frequently made at this time; things are taken up, modified, and introduced into a new context.. . . The words remain the same, but in the context of Christian thought, a new meaning emerges."44 This new meaning is clear

41. Eric A. Havelock, Preface to Plato (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1963), 159. 42. Walter J. Ong, SJ, "Mimesis and the Following of Christ," Religion and Literature 26, no. 2 (Sum

mer 1994): 75. 43. See C.Joachim Classen, "St. Paul's Epistles and Ancient Greek and Roman Rhetoric," Rhetorica: A

Journal of the History of Rhetoric 10 (1992): 319-44. 44. Gebauer and Wulf, Mimesis, 64. See also Richard Kearney, The Wake of Imagination: Toward a Post-

modem Culture (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1988), 130: "True to its dual 'onto-theological' nature, the medieval understanding of imagination conforms to the fundamentally 'mimetic' model of both its Greek and biblical origins." Walter Ong supports his claim that this "mimetic model" continued


already in the Pauline view, but as Christian devotional practices became increasingly formalized, "the creativity of imitation was understood less in the sense of producing a product than as an intellectual endeavor expressed in deeds, in particular, in the imitatio Christi."4S

In his book The Power of Images: Studies in the History and Theory of Response, David Freedberg discusses the theoretical backdrop for the development of this devotional tradition in medieval European Christianity. Freedberg locates the best example of the practice of using lively, highly vivid, and particularized scenes in order to engage the empathetic emotions of the visualizer in the thirteenth-century Meditations on the Life of Christ. In this work (initially attributed to Bonaventure but now believed by scholars to be the work of a Franciscan monk from Tuscany) one finds

the ingredients of all future meditative practices: vivid and graphic description of events and places, in terms of real or easily imaginable acquaintance and experience; careful construction of the scene by stages, and a deliberate intensification, also by stages, of the emotional experience on which successful concentration and meditation depend; empathetic intimacy; encouragement of the free flow of pictorializing imagination; intimation of the divine; and the drawing of appropriate moral and theological lessons.46

It is no exaggeration to say that Kierkegaard's Practice in Christianity fits neatly within this genre. The more proximate influence on Kierkegaard's own writing in this devotional tradition, however, is the much more famous work known as The Imitation of Christ by Thomas a Kempis (1379/80-1471).

A book of instruction in the "modern devotion" (devotio modernd) of the monastic order to which Thomas a Kempis belonged (the Brethren of the Common Life), this vastly popular work gave the phrase "the imitation of Christ" its greatest circulation.47 Kierkegaard himself owned two translations of it, a 1702 edition in French, and a Danish one published in 1848, just a short while before Kierkegaard began his own deliberations on imitation in his journals and in

to rule theories of education and poetry well into the Renaissance with the fact that "through the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries of the Christian era and even later, two millennia after Plato, schoolboys such as William Shakespeare and John Milton were still programmatically drilled in imitating the Latin classics" (Ong, "From Mimesis to Irony," 286).

45. Gebauer and Wulf, Mimesis, 61. 46. David Freedberg, The Power of Images: Studies in the History and Theory of Response (Chicago: Uni

versity of Chicago Press, 1989), 168-69. For a discussion ofMeditations on the Life of Christ as it relates to a larger "imitation of Christ" tradition, see Bernard McGinn, The Flowering of Mysticism: Men and Women in the New Mysticism (1200-1350), vol. 3, The Presence of God: A History of Western Mysticism (New York: Crossroad Herder, 1991), 58ff.

47. De Imitatione Christi (Paris, 1702; ASKB, 272) was first printed in type in 1472 (although more than 700 earlier manuscript copies are known to exist), and by 1779 no fewer than 1,800 editions and translations could be counted. See Harold C. Gardiner, SJ, introduction to The Imitation of Christ, by Thomas a Kempis, trans. Richard Whitford, ed. Harold C. Gardiner, SJ (New York: Doubleday, 1955), 10.


Practice in Christianity (1850).48 A compilation of four separate treatises, The Imitation of Christ opens with the assertion that "if we desire to have a true understanding of His [i.e., Christ's] Gospels, we must study to conform our life as nearly as we can to His,"49 and continues the first book with chapters on the theme of contempt for worldly vanities and a host of medieval virtues. The second book advocates an inner devotional life "of a pure mind and a simple intention," the third depicts prayer as "the inward speaking of Christ to a faithful soul," and the fourth is devoted in its entirety to the sacrament of the Eucharist. On the whole, The Imitation of Christ displays, in Anthony Levi's words, "virtually no theology, no interest in the interplay or clash between nature and grace, or of self-determination and the gratuity of the supernatural."50 The author of The Imitation of Christ essentially turned his back on all Scholastic debate and, albeit unwittingly, substituted a pedagogical model much more akin to the mimetic paideia of Homeric Greece, in which the learner is encouraged to live into the life of an exemplary model through imaginative identification with a story's protagonist. Despite that fact, or perhaps in great part because of it, the devotio moderna contributed significantly "to the renewal of the Christian spiritual life in the fifteenth century."51

Besides its contribution to Christian spiritual renewal generally, however, The Imitation of Christ made its mark on one individual of the subsequent generation whose intellectual career is important in its own right. Desiderius Erasmus (1466?-1536), a figure instrumental in the Reformation and in Renaissance humanism (not to mention a more tenuous relationship to Romanticism52) stepped into the paideutic current of The Imitation of Christ around the age of eleven when he first entered a monastery dedicated to the devotio moderna. According to Levi, it became "the enduring foundation of Erasmus's piety."53 The monastery to which Erasmus belonged, however, differed from that of Thomas a Kempis in that it possessed a larger collection of antique literature.54 Clearly, this was a felicitous locale for Erasmus's early education, for on the one hand he could cultivate his appreciation for the classics apart from what he perceived to be the sterile Scholasticism of the universities, and on the other hand it fostered an appreciation of "serious scholarship" that was, on the whole, uncharacteristic of the larger

48. De imitatione Christi; Om Christi Efterfolgelse, trans. Jens Albrecht Leonhard Holm (Copenhagen, 1848; ASKB, 273).

49. Thomas a Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, trans. Richard Whitford, ed. Harold C. Gardiner, SJ (New York: Doubleday, 1955), 31.

50. Anthony Levi, Renaissance and Reformation: The Intellectual Genesis (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002), 145.

51. Levi, Renaissance and Reformation, 146. 52. Charles Taylor asserts in passing that "Romanticism grew out of the extreme Erasmian wing of

Christianity" (Taylor, Sources of the Self The Making of the Modern Identity [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989], 440). Taylor may have in mind not only the anti-scholasticism that the Romantics have in common with Erasmus, but also a common affinity for neoclassicism and a shared tendency toward Pelagianism (see Bernard Lohse, A Short History of Christian Doctrine: From the First Century to the Present, rev. American ed., trans. F. Ernest Stoeffler [Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985], 131).

53. Levi, Renaissance and Reformation, 135. 54. Levi, Renaissance and Reformation, 176. Levi notes that Erasmus may have inherited his love of

antiquity from his father, who was a scribe and student of Greek and Latin.


devotio moderna communities.55 As Erasmus grew into adulthood, he began to devote his considerable philological expertise in Greek, Latin, and Hebrew to preparing critical editions and reliable translations of Scripture and of the early church fathers. Motivated by a "deep-seated aversion for the Scholastic bent of mind," Erasmus, according to Louis Dupre, sought to "return Christian thinking to its scriptural, evangelical roots."56

In 1503, Erasmus published his own devotional manual, Enchiridion militis christian?1, the central tenets of which make manifest the formative confluence of the devotional emphasis on Christian imitation and the Renaissance appreciation of classical literature. This "first sustained expression" of Erasmus's "Christian humanism"58 concludes with an exhortation to the reader to "meditate on Paul," and at the same time it seeks to justify "good literature" and "classical learning" as a means to rectify "what the 'barbarous illiterates' have done to disgrace the house of God, 'so that by means of these treasures fine intellects could be kindled into a love for Holy Scripture.'"59 What Erasmus wished to achieve through this manual was a restoration of "the original proclamation to its pristine clarity and simplicity,"60

and in its simple piety it is consonant with Thomas a Kempis's earlier manual. Levy maintains, "Most of Erasmus's twenty-two rules in the Enchiridion could be chapter titles from the Imitation of Christ, and the Enchiridion is indeed reminiscent of that work, and of the spirituality of the Brethren of the Common Life."61

Just as the educational model of the Brethren of the Common Life was akin to the mimetic paideia of Homeric Greece, so too Erasmus encourages his reader to allow the Christian story to shape one's life such that one imitates Christ in his poverty, humility, love, and self-denial.62 For Erasmus, Dupre says, the gospel "consists of a dramatic story—the fabula Christi—and theology has no other purpose but to retell that story."63 When the story is retold in its clarity, the logic runs, one should be enabled to project one's own life into the life of Christ through imaginative identification.

Understanding the story in its clarity, however, does not mean for Erasmus understanding it literally. It would be a mistake to assume that simply because Erasmus—"the father of biblical criticism"64—was a pioneer in restoring access to the original meaning of Scripture that he therefore desired a literal interpretation of the text. Like interpreters such as Origen, Ambrose, Jerome, and Augustine

55. Levi, Renaissance and Reformation, 192. 56. Louis Dupre, Passage to Modernity: An Essay in the Hermeneutics of Nature and Culture (New Haven,

CT: Yale University Press, 1993), 195. 57. Desiderius Erasmus, "The I landbook of Militant Christianity," in The Essential Erasmus, ed. John

P. Dolan (New York: Meridian, 1964). 58. Dupre, Passage to Modernity, 195. , 59. Quoted in Levi, Renaissance and Reformation, 191. 60. Dupre, Passage to Modernity, 195. 61. Levi, Renaissance and Reformation, 192. 62. See Cornells Augustijn, Erasmus: His Life, Works, and Influence, trans. J. C. Graywm (Toronto: Uni

versity of Toronto Press, 1991). 63. Dupre, Passage to Modernity, 195. 64. Dupre, Passage to Modernity, 195.


before him, Erasmus advocates a "spiritual reading" of Scripture and criticizes those who are unwilling to see beyond the letter to the true meaning of the text.65

Nonetheless, Erasmus believed that in order to perceive the true spiritual meaning of Scripture, one needed to read it in its original so as to achieve an "undistorted contact" with the message of the Gospel.66

Kierkegaard viewed Erasmus as an important transitional figure. In a note on the relationship of imagination to philology in biblical interpretation, he argues that prior to Erasmus "the Bible was reflected imaginatively in imagination" and that this gave us "the whole range of allegorical interpretation."67 The danger with that, according to Kierkegaard, is that when allegorical readings guide the "primary interpretation" of Scripture, interpreters tend to lose sight of the fact that "Christ was a particular human being," and that "the apostle [was also] a particular human being who amid prodigious activity tossed a few words on a scrap of paper for a congregation."68 Erasmus and the Reformation instigated "a sounder philological interpretation,"69 and this helped to return interpretation to an understanding of Scripture as historical testimony by individual human beings about (Joel's role in their actual lives. Taken this way the gospel story is a story in terms of which an individual can mimetically emplot his or her own life: "Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ" (1 Cor 11:1).

According to Kierkegaard, however, in the Enlightenment the pendulum swung too far in the opposite direction, so much so that in his day he complained, "Now we are veritably drowning . . . in scientific philology," and "it is readily forgotten that the Bible is Holy Scripture."70 That is to say, philology through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries introduced a preoccupation with propositions that might either be verified or falsified, and tended to read the books of the Bible as "doctrinal treatises."71 The outcome of this, he complains, was that the testimonies of Scripture were "evaporated into teachings, doctrine," and biblical interpretation was objectified away from the imaginative process of reflecting oneself into the text: "Preoccupied with the piece of paper Paul sent out, we completely forget Paul, and we treat it now in a most un-Pauline way."72

65. Dupre, Passage to Modernity, 195. 66. Levi, Renaissance and Reformation, 288. 67. Kierkegaard,.Journals and Papers, 4.4781; Papirer, X2 A 548 (n.d., 1850). 68. Kierkegaard, Journals and Papers, 4.4781; Papirer, X2 A 548 (n.d., 1850). Despite Kierkegaard's

view of medieval biblical hermeneutics, however, it is important to note that Thomas Aquinas apparently gave primacy to a literal interpretation of Scripture in his defense of metaphor in the Bible. "Truth so far remains," he writes, "that it does not allow the minds of those to whom the revelation has been made, to rest in the metaphors" (Summa Theologica [1st complete ed.; trans. Father of the English Dominican Province; New York: Benziger Bros., 1947], 1.1.9).

69. Kierkegaard, Journals and Papers, 4.4781; Papirer, X2 A 548 (n.d., 1850). 70. Kierkegaard, Journals and Papers, 4.4781; Papirer, X2 A 548 (n.d., 1850); cf. Concluding Unscientific

Postscript to Philosophical Fragments, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992), 24-34; SKS, 7:30-40.

71. Kierkegaard, Journals and Papers, 4.4781; Papirer, X2 A 548 (n.d., 1850). It was "the Seventeenth Century," Kierkegaard asserts, "which in a strict sense began to conceive of Holy Scriptures as doctrine" (Journals and Papers, 4.463; Papirer, X2 A 549).

72. Kierkegaard./owmaA and Papers, 4.4781; Papirer, X2 A 548 (n.d., 1850).


Interestingly, Gotthold Lessing (1729-1781), the Enlightenment thinker to whom Kierkegaard was most obviously intellectually indebted, was clearly committed to just such a propositional hermeneutic.73 Lessing—who in his day might have been "the only one," according to Kierkegaard, to have "freely and openly posed the problem of doubt in relation to Christianity"74—is remembered in part for alerting readers to the "ugly, broad ditch" that separates "the narrative of the evangelists" and "accidental historical truths" on the one side, from metaphysical and moral truths on the other.75

Lessing easily admits, if perhaps ironically, that he has "no objection to the statement that . . . Christ himself rose from the dead."76 This is no proof of the man's divinity, however, and so Lessing wonders, "Why must I therefore accept it as true that this risen Christ was the Son of God?"77 Lessing's central insight here is that "historical truth cannot be demonstrated." That is to say, a historical report about something someone has witnessed cannot be cast syllogistically in terms of a necessary truth of reason that would allegedly remain true in an extrahistorical sense. "The problem is that reports of fulfilled prophecies are not fulfilled prophecies; that reports of miracles are not miracles," Lessing says, and the claim about God's incarnation in Christ is not the sort of thing that admits of either verification or falsification through "reports."78

Thus, with the Enlightenment, philological sophistication did not yield the "undistorted contact" with the spiritual meaning of Scripture for which Erasmus hoped. On the contrary, increased critical awareness of the biblical text as a historical document led to a situation wherein, as Kierkegaard complains, "it is readily forgotten that the Bible is Holy Scripture."79 Perhaps it would be more accurate had Kierkegaard instead said that the Bible's status as Holy Scripture was "readily questioned." Either way, however, the Enlightenment partition between "truths of reason" and "historical truths" seriously destabilized the referential plausibility of the biblical Weltanschauung, and it gravely undermined much of its moral authority to contour human lives. Lessing, for example, bristled at the expectation that

73. While Lessing's importance for Kierkegaard's authorship (especially Concluding Unscientific Postscript) is undeniahle, Kierkegaard developed a more critical attitude toward Lessing in his later years. In 1849, for example, Kierkegaard wrote that Lessing ridiculed Christianity without being "sufficiently developed dialectically to know what he was doing" (Journals and Papers, 3.2377; Papirer,XI A 465 [n.d., 1849]). See also Richard Campbell, "Lessing's Problems and Kierkegaard's Answer," in Scottish Journal of Theology 19 (1966), 35-54.

74. Kierkegaard, Journals and Papers, 2.1637; Papirer, V B 64 (n.d., 1844). 75. Gotthold Lessing, "On the Proof of the Spirit and of Power," in Lessing's Theological Writings, trans.

Henry Chadwick (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1956), 53-55. For an analysis of the contextual circumstances that precipitated the Enlightenment partition between "truths of reason" and "historical truths," see Stephen Toulmin, Cosmopolis: The Hidden Agenda of Modernity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990). Toulmin argues that the emergence of factionalism in Western Christianity triggered the desire in many Enlightenment intellectuals to attempt to decontextualize rationality from the contingencies of history.

76. Lessing, "On the Proof of the Spirit and of Power," 54. 77. Lessing, "On the Proof of the Spirit and of Power," 54. 78. Lessing, "On the Proof of the Spirit and of Power," 52. 79. Kierkegaard,/o«rna/s and Papers, 4.4781; Papirer, X2 A 548 (n.d., 1850).


one should form all "metaphysical and moral ideas" according to "something against which my reason rebels."80 In Lessing's Enlightenment view, therefore, neither the metaphysical concept of mimetic signification of the eternal through the historical, nor the ethical importance of the imitation of Christ fared well.

Not surprisingly, critical analysis ramifies Lessing's aesthetics as much as his theological writings. "If Newton reduced the physical, objective universe, and Kant the metaphysical, subjective universe to the categories of space and time," W. J. T. Mitchell writes, "Lessing performed the same service for the intermediate world of signs and artistic media."81 In Either/Or, Kierkegaard's ironist lauds Lessing for this "service":

Since the time when Lessing defined the boundaries between poetry and art in his celebrated treatise Laokoon, it no doubt may be regarded as a conclusion unanimously recognized by all estheticians that the distinction between them is that art is in the category of space, poetry in the category of time, that art depicts repose, poetry motion.82

While Lessing's basic distinction between "spatial form" and "temporal form" appears in some respects incontrovertible and innocuous, critics have suggested that these seemingly generic boundaries are not simply the result of objective analysis but also serve an ideological function. While Gebauer and Wulf are right that in a certain respect Lessing retains "ties to the mimetic tradition of antiquity,"83 Mitchell shows that Lessing's distinction between the spatial form of painting and the temporal form of poetry actually enables a set of oppositions that becomes paradigmatic in Romanticism. Regulating the whole of Lessing's discourse, Mitchell maintains, is the view that

paintings, like women, are ideally silent, beautiful creatures, designed for the gratification of the eye, in contrast to the sublime eloquence proper to the manly art of poetry. Paintings are confined to the narrow sphere of external display of their bodies and of the space which they ornament, while poems are free to range over an infinite realm of potential action and expression, the domain of time, discourse, and history.84

Femininity and masculinity, body and mind, silence and eloquence, beauty and sublimity, and (most pertinent to the present discussion) imitation and expression— these are the model oppositions that attend Lessing's seemingly noncontroversial

80. Lessing, "On the Proof of the Spirit and of Power," 54. 81. W. J. T. Mitchell, "Space and Time: Lessing's Laocoon and the Politics of Genre," in Iconology:

Image, Text, Ideology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), 96. 82. Kierkegaard, Either/Or, 1:169; SKS, 2:167. See Gotthold Lessing, Laocoon: An Essay upon the Lim

its of Poetry and Painting, with Remarks Illustrative of Various Points in the History of Ancient Art (1766), trans. Ellen Frothingham (Boston: Little, Brown &Co., 1910).

83. Gebauer and Wulf, Mimesis, 186. 84. Mitchell, "Space and Time," 110.


distinction between spatial art and temporal poetry. Thus, Lessing not only distinguishes the supposedly fundamental boundaries of artistic genres, but in addition he seeks to extricate poetry from its entanglement within the narrow objective sphere of mimetic art and to set it free to "express" the infinite range of subjectivity.

If one of Lessing's ambitions was "to affect the practice of contemporary artists,"85 there can be little doubt that he was successful. Reading Schlegel's Lucinde with an eye for these oppositions turns them up in spades. Schlegel even refers affectionately to "our Lessing when, in a moment of patriotic exuberance, he affirms that "in Germany and only in Germany have aesthetics and the study of the Greeks attained a level that must necessarily result in the total transformation of the poetic arts and taste."86 And in the efflorescence of his writings, one perceives Schlegel's own attempt to mould modern aesthetic sensibilities. In On the Study of Greek Poetry, for example, Schlegel urges German poets beyond their ''obsession to imitate"97 and in his Critical Fragments and Athenaeum Fragments he deploys "irony" as the tool of transformation.

In chapter 1 I discussed Romantic irony as set forth by Friedrich Schlegel, whom Kierkegaard, among others, identified as the chief theorist of Romantic irony.88 Schlegel's reputation as the chief exemplar of Romantic irony, as Frederick Burwick has made plain, stems from the fact that his "various pronouncements . . . have tended to dominate critical discussion on romantic irony."89 Here I will only call to mind my earlier discussion in order to relate it to the present consideration of the dialectic between mimesis and irony.

Romantic Irony and the Mimetic Tradition

"In literary history and theory," Walter Ong has asserted, "mimesis and irony stand in complementary relationship. As mimesis loses ground in poetic and other aesthetic theory and performance, irony gains ground."90 This dynamic is perhaps nowhere seen so clearly as in the writings of Schlegel. The imaginative distance from nature and history that Schlegelian irony enabled increasingly encouraged artists to cast artistic activity in terms of "expression" and "creation" rather than "imitation." As Schlegel himself wrote, "Even the term 'imitation' is insulting and is denounced by all those who imagine themselves to be born geniuses."91 The reason this is so for Schlegel is because he believed Romantic poetry should present

85. Engell, Creative Imagination, 114. 86. Schlegel, On the Study of Greek Poetry, 93. 87. Schlegel, On the Study of Greek Poetry, 39. In an editorial note, Stuart Barnett remarks that this

"obsession to imitate" against which Schlegel reacts was in fact advocated by such important works as Johann Christoph Gottsched's Attempt at a Critical Poetics for the Germans (1729). Gottsched praised Aristotle and Horace as better models for the German poet than more recent (English) writers such as Shakespeare and Milton. See Schlegel, On the Study of Greek Poetry, 117n56.

88. Kierkegaard, Concept of Irony, 276; SKS, 1:312. 89. Burwick, Mimesis and Its Romantic Reflections, 162. 90. Ong, "From Mimesis to Irony," 283. 91. Schlegel, On the Study of Greek Poetry, 47.


its world "in the state of becoming"92 and should not bother to represent an antecedent world. "Irony," he says, "is the clear consciousness of eternal agility, of an infinitely teeming chaos," and that by which the Romantic poet divines the world in the making.93 The title of Abrams's The Mirror and the Lamp deftly evokes this dialectic, for the Romantic ideal for literature was not to reflect nature but instead to illumine the world with one's own creative light. This new understanding depicted the literary process less and less as relating to some previously given reality, and more and more as emerging from the imaginative genius of the human mind creating both itself and its world. As Claire Colebrook has written:

German Romantic irony explored a potential in Socratic irony that had, by and large, been neglected: irony as a style of existence rather than a rhetorical figure. Irony for the Romantics was the only true mode of life. To live as if one were a fixed self who then used language to represent a world would be to deny the flux and dynamism of life. It would also be a mode of subjectivism: positing some ground—the subject—that could act as the basis for judgments and predications. Irony transforms subjectivism: the subject is no longer a ground that precedes and underlies judgments. The subject "is" nothing other than an ongoing process of creation.94

Thus, through irony, the Romantic poet participates in the divine processes of creativity, and this is why, in Schlegel's view, "every good human being is always progressively becoming God. To become God, to be human, to cultivate oneself are all expressions that mean the same thing."95

Kierkegaard's issue with Romantic irony is twofold. His first complaint is that this Promethean theme devalues the created world in which one actually finds oneself, and arrogates to the poet the rightful place of God alone. With an utterly sardonic pen he writes, "The ironist is the eternal / for which no actuality is adequate."96 Kierkegaard's second complaint follows from the first. Since the Romantic ironist can always "poetically compose" a new destiny for herself (indeed "a multitude of destinies"97), Kierkegaard thinks Romantic irony empties one's given actuality of its ethical importance. The ironist, he says, "lives far too abstractly, far

92. Schlegel, Schlegel's Lucinde and the Fragments, 175; Athenaeum Fragments, no. 116. 93. Schlegel, Schlegel's Lucinde and the Fragments, 247; Ideas, no. 69. 94. Claire Colebrook, Irony (London: Routledge, 2004), 52. A passage from Coleridge's "On Poesy or

Art" nicely illustrates the fashion in which Romantic authors appropriated Baruch Spinoza's distinction between nature in its given form (natura naturata) and nature in the process of becoming (natura natu-rans) in order to evoke the dynamism of Romantic poetry; "If the artist copies the mere nature, the natura naturata, what idle rivalry! If he proceeds only from a given form, which is supposed to answer to the notion of beauty, what an emptiness, what an unreality there always is in his productions, as in Cipriani's pictures! Believe me, you must master the essence, the natura naturans, which presupposes a bond between nature in the higher sense and the soul of man" (Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Biographia Literaria, ed. J. Shawcross [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973], 2:257).

95. Schlegel, Schlegel's Lucinde and the Fragments, 200; Athenaeum Fragments, no. 262. 96. Kierkegaard, Concept of Irony, 283; SKS, 1:319. 97. Kierkegaard, Concept of Irony, 282; SKS, 1:317.


too metaphysically and esthetically to reach the concretion of the moral and the ethical."98 That is to say, when an ironist esteems his or her own imaginative world or worlds as somehow superior to the actual world created by God, he or she thereby regards aesthetic fantasizing as more important than ethical-religious striving.

Kierkegaard purports to derive this understanding of Romantic irony from Schlegel's Lucinde, and cites as evidence a passage that reads, "The acme of intelligence is choosing to keep silent, restoring the soul to the imagination \Phan-tasie]."99 Although embedded in the novel, Kierkegaard finds the theoretical implication of this passage easy quarry. "This clearly means," he glosses, "that when the understanding has reached its apex, its order should give way to fantasy [Phantasie], which now alone is to prevail and not be an interlude in the task of life."100 Here Kierkegaard grants that it would be "inhuman . . . not to be able to enjoy the free play of fantasy [Phantasiens lette Spi/]," but he insists that "when fantasy alone gain the upper hand in this way [i.e., as it does in Lucinde], it exhausts and anesthetizes the soul, robs it of all moral tension, makes life a dream."101

Despite Kierkegaard's severe critique of Romantic irony, however, it would be a mistake to conclude that he therefore considers imagination anathema. On the contrary, even with respect to Lucinde Kierkegaard admits it would be "inhuman" not to be able to enjoy the free play of the imagination, so long as one does not abandon oneself to fantasy.102 Eight years later in The Sickness unto Death Anti-Climacus, Kierkegaard's ideal Christian, specifies this appreciation of imagination more precisely:

98. Kierkegaard, Concept of Irony, 283; SKS, 1:319. 99. Schlegel, Schlegel's Lucinde and the Fragments, 128. Cited in Kierkegaard, Concept of Irony, 292n*;

SKS, l:326nl. 100. Kierkegaard, Concept of Irony, 292n*; SKS, l:326nl 101. Kierkegaard, Concept of Irony, 292n*; SKS, l:326nl. While Kierkegaard's appraisal of Schlegel is

polemical and uncharitable, he is nonetheless correct that Schlegel (along with Schleiermacher, Schelling, Novalis, et al.) gave imagination pride of place in his estimation of human capacities. In the words of James F.ngell, Schlegel believed "the imagination was of supreme worth" (Creative Imagination, 218). Schlegel's high estimation of the imagination is illustrated by an approving reference to Schleiermacher: "The mind, says the author of. the Talks on Religion, can understand only the universe. Let the imagination take over and you will have a God. Quite right: for the imagination is man's faculty for perceiving divinity" (Schlegel, Schlegel's Lucinde and the Fragments, 242; Ideas, no. 8). The reference is to Schleiermacher's Reden uher die Religion:

Now if your imagination clings to the consciousness of our freedom in such fashion that it cannot come to terms with what it construes as originally active other than in the form of a free being, then imagination will probably personify the spirit of the universe and you will have a God. If your imagination clings to understanding in such fashion that you always clearly see that freedom only has meaning in the particular and for the particular instance, then you will have a world and no God.

You will not consider it blasphemy, I hope, that belief in God depends on the direction of the imagination. You will know that imagination is the highest and most original element in us, and that everything besides it is merely reflection upon it; you will know that it is our imagination that creates the world for you, and that you can have no God without the world. (Friedrich Schleiermacher, On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers, trans. Richard Crouter [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988], 53)

102. Kierkegaard, Concept of Irony, 292n*; SKS, l:326nl.


The fantastic, of course, is most closely related to the imagination [Phantasien], but the imagination in turn is related to feeling, knowing, and willing. As a rule, imagination is the medium for the process of infmitizing; it is not a capacity, as are the others—if one wishes to speak in those terms, it is the capacity instar omnium [for all capacities]. When all is said and done, whatever of feeling, knowing, and willing a person has depends upon what imagination he has, upon how that person reflects himself—that is, upon imagination.103

Clearly, the view Anti-Climacus expresses here owes much to the Romantic celebration of imagination. The imagination, we can say, is the human capacity to abstract, whereas feeling, knowing, and willing are capacities that relate imagination back to concrete actuality. Concern arises, however, when one abandons oneself to the imagination (as Kierkegaard earlier criticized the protagonist ol17.mimic for doing104) and neglects to integrate this process with feeling, knowing, and, most decisively for Anti-Climacus, willing. When this happens, he says, the capacities of feeling, knowing, and willing themselves become fantastic, and the self becomes "volatilized" in abstraction.

In Practice in Christianity, Anti-Climacus qualifies the relative importance of imagination even more precisely: "The power of the imagination . . . is the first condition for what becomes of a person."105 Nevertheless, imagination is only the "first condition," and not of supreme worth in itself, he continues, "for will is the

103. Kierkegaard, The Sickness unto Death, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. I long (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980), 30-31; SV1,11:144. For a study of Kierkegaard's philosophical understanding of imagination as it relates to the historical period and to Kierkegaard's existence spheres, see David J. Gouwens, Kierkegaard's Dialectic of the Imagination (New York: Peter Lang, 1989). Readers familiar with Coleridge's distinction between "primary Imagination" in ordinary consciousness, "secondary Imagination" in artistic consciousness, and "Fancy" as "a mode of memory" (Biographia Literaria, 1:202) will wonder whether any such distinction obtains between the German Einhildungskraft and Phantasie, or between Kierkegaard's Indhildningskraft and Phantasie. Gouwens relates that some of the German Romantics did in fact employ the distinction, but were so inconsistent with each other in their application that the meaning was completely reversed:

Novalis uses the Einhildungskraft for the power of the poet. Other Romantics follow Schelling in speaking of this power as Phantasie rather than Einhildungskraft. A. W. Schlegel, for example, distinguishes between primary and secondary imagination, that is, mere Einhildungskraft (fancy), in contrast to artistic Phantasie (imagination). Solger too follows the distinction, in which Einhildungskraft is a function of ordinary cognition and human consciousness, whereas Phantasie is the creative imagination in the proper sense. (Kierkegaard's Dialectic of the Imagination, 42n27)

It does not appear that this distinction ever meant much, if anything, to Kierkegaard. Just as Johannes Climacus was rather indifferent about discriminating between the roles of "Reason" and "the Understanding" in cognition (see chapter 3), so too Kierkegaard leaves any distinction between fantasy and imagination vague at best. In fact, in the criticism of Schlegel's Lucinde just under discussion, Kierkegaard even says that it is by virtue of "the power of the imagination" {Indbildningskraften) that the protagonist of Lucinde "abandons all understanding and lets fantasy [Phantasien] alone prevail" (Concept of Irony, 292; SKS, 1:326-27: "Herved vil han nu opnaae det sande Poetiske, og idet han giver Afkald paa al Forstand og lader Phantasien ene raade, kan det vel lykkes ham og Laeseren ogsaa, hvis han vil gjore ligesaa, for Indbildningskraften at fastholde dette Mellemhverandre i et eneste evigt sig bevajgende Billede").

104. Kierkegaard, Concept of Irony, 292; SKS, 1:326. 105. Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, 186; SV1,12:173.


second and in the ultimate sense the decisive condition."106 It is precisely this emphasis on will that the Romantic ironist lacks, according to Kierkegaard's critique a decade earlier, and this is why the Romantic self is a volatilized self, one "who leads a fantasized existence in abstract infinitizing or in abstract isolation, continually lacking its self, from which it only moves further and further away."107

This volatilization is a form of despair, according to Anti-Climacus's analysis in The Sickness unto Death. Specifically, this form of despair is defined by its lack of "finitude," its ironic distance from, and therefore its lack of actual engagement with, the concrete affairs of daily life. At its extreme, therefore, the ironist's attempt to transcend both "literary mimesis" and "social mimesis"108 by creating and recreating himself in a wholly original way is said to result in an individual without a "self." The only cure for the Romantic despair resulting from an imbalance of imagination ("a power that is the first condition for what becomes of a person"109), therefore, is a coordinate dose of earnestness to live in one's world, for earnestness is a function of will ("the second and in the ultimate sense the decisive condition"110). As Anti-Climacus insists, "The earnestness of life is to will to be, to will to express the perfection (ideality) in the dailyness of actuality, to will it, so that one does not to one's own ruin once and for all busily abandon it or conceitedly take it in vain as a dream."111

The irony of all this—and I use the term advisedly—is that, first of all, the ironist imagines his ideal variations on the real, and then second, he neglects to re-integrate his poetized ideal with his actual life in such a way that it could be a personal norm for living. To put it in terms of Kierkegaard's dissertation, "As the ironist

106. Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, 186; SV1,12:173. 107. Kierkegaard, Sickness unto Death, 32; SV1,11:145. 108. Gebauer and Wulf, Mimesis, 218. 109. Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, 186; SV1,12:173. 110. Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, 186; SV1,12:173. 111. Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, 190; SVt, 12:176; italics added in the English translation.

The dramatic emphasis on "will" in this passage makes it tempting to imagine some influence on Kierkegaard by Schlegel's acquaintance Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860). The central postulate of Schopenhauer's The World as Will and Representation (Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, 2nd ed. [Leipzig, 1844]; ASKB, 773-773a) is that the fundamental reality is will. Inasmuch as Kierkegaard's mentor Poul Martin Moller speaks of Schopenhauer's The World as Will and Representation as the book that most clearly expresses the "nihilistic aspect of modern pantheism" (Om Vdedeligheden, 226; "Denne nihilistiske Side ved den moderne Pantheisme"), Kierkegaard must have been familiar with features of Schopenhauer's thought from his university days forward. However, although Kierkegaard did own most of Schopenhauer's writings, he never mentions him in print prior to 1854, at which point he relates that Schopenhauer "has interested me very much . . . in spite of a total disagreement" regarding his ethics [Journals and Papers, 4.3877; Papirer, XII A 144 [n.d., 1854]).

It is Kant whom Kierkegaard most nearly approximates regarding the importance of moral will. Whatever specific differences obtain between the thought of Kierkegaard and Kant, both agree that imaginative thought is what Anti-Climacus calls the "first condition" of what becomes of a person, whereas "will" is the "decisive condition." A. C. Ewing reports that Kant subscribed to the view "that the chief good was the moral will, something which we could have without cleverness or education, and that thought and knowledge were of value only as a means" (Ew'mg, A Short Commentary on Kant's Critique of Pure Reason [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970], 10). On the relationship of Kierkegaard's ethics to Kant's see Philip L. Quinn, "Kierkegaard's Christian Ethics," in The Cambridge Companion to Kierkegaard, ed. Alastair Hannay and Gordon D. Marino (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 349-75.


poetically composes himself and his environment with the greatest possible poetic license, as he lives in this totally hypothetical and subjunctive way, his life loses all continuity."112 The reason Kierkegaard thinks the life of such an ironist loses continuity is that instead of employing his imagination to frame possible responses to practical exigencies within the continuity of his actual day-to-day existence, this type of person "escapes" actuality by imagining himself in different life situations. Like the protagonist in James Thurber's The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, the ironist fantasizes that he is alternately a military hero, a riverboat gambler, or a swashbuckler, but never, when he can help it, his own actual self.113 Anti-Climacus extends Kierkegaard's earlier critique of ironic discontinuity between imagination and actuality in the direction of despair:

The self in despair is always building only castles in the air, is only shadow-boxing. All these imaginatively constructed virtues make it look splendid; like oriental poetry, they fascinate for a moment; such self-command, such imperturbability, such ataraxia, etc. practically border on the fabulous. Yes, they really do, and the basis of the whole thing is nothing. In despair the self wants to enjoy the total satisfaction of making itself into itself, of developing itself, of being itself; it wants to have the honor of this poetic, masterly construction, the way it has understood itself. And yet, in the final analysis, what it understands by itself is a riddle; in the very moment when it seems that the self is closest to having the building completed, it can arbitrarily dissolve the whole thing into nothing.114

It is clear that Anti-Climacus speaks here of the same form of subjectivity that Kierkegaard in his dissertation called "irony" or "romanticism.""5 Anti-Climacus elaborates on the earlier critique by arguing that not only is such a "poet-existence" unethical escapism but, in addition, it is a form of despair (whether conscious or not) in which one lacks "finitude." And, he says, "Christianly understood, every poet-existence (esthetics notwithstanding) is sin, the sin of poetizing instead of

112. Kierkegaard, Concept of Irony, 284; SKS, 1:319. 113. Unlike Thurber, whose critique of this personality type is subtly indirect, Kierkegaard on this

point attacks in a remarkably direct fashion, "What takes the ironist's time," Kierkegaard writes, "is the solicitude he employs in dressing himself in the costume proper to the poetic character he has poetically composed for himself. Here the ironist is very well informed and consequently has a considerable selection of masquerade costumes for himself. At times he walks around with the proud air of a Roman patrician wrapped in a bordered toga, or he sits in the sella curulis with imposing Roman earnestness; at times he conceals himself in the humble costume of a penitent pilgrim; then again he sits with his legs crossed like a Turkish pasha in his harem; at times he flutters about as light and free as a bird in the role of an amorous zither player. This is what the ironist means when he says that one should live poetically; this is what he achieves by poetically composing himself" {Concept of Irony, 282-83; SKS, 1:318; ct. Schlegel, Schlegel's Lucinde and the Fragments, 177; Athenaeum Fragments, no. 121).

114. Kierkegaard, Sickness unto Death, 69-70; SV1,11:181. 115. See Kierkegaard, Concept of Irony, 275n**; SKS, l:312nl: "Throughout this whole discussion I use

the terms 'irony' and 'ironist'; I could just as well say 'romanticism' and 'romanticist.'"


being, of relating to the good and the true through the imagination instead of being that—that is, existentially striving to be that."116

The opposite of being in despair is to have faith, Anti-Climacus says.117 In faith an individual emphasizes both "infinitude" (or "ideality") and "finitude" (or "actuality") to their appropriate degree. Faith is imaginative, as Anti-Climacus depicts it, because it takes imagination to abstract from one's historical actuality (one's "finitude" and "necessity") and to recognize in oneself something eternal (one's "infinitude" and "possibility"). Admittedly, the concept of irony does not figure as prominently in the Anti-Climacus writings as it does in the Climacus works, but since this imaginative process of abstraction is precisely the function of irony as Kierkegaard explicated it earlier, Anti-Climacus could surely agree with Kierkegaard regarding the importance for faith of using irony as a "controlled" element in a "baptism of purification that rescues the soul from having its life in finitude, even though it is living energetically and robustly in it."118 Through imagination, therefore, one learns to envision "infinitude," "possibility," "ideality." In short, it is only by virtue of imagination that one gains what Anti-Climacus calls "the theological self, the self directly before God."1" By becoming conscious of existing before God in this way, an individual imaginatively infinitizes his or her concrete actuality, and thus evaluates his or her life not merely in terms of finite human criteria but in terms of a new and absolute criterion. "And what infinite reality [Realitet] the self gains by being conscious of existing before God," Anti-Climacus rhapsodizes, "by becoming a human self whose criterion is God!"120

Such a theological self as Anti-Climacus outlines it is no generically theistic self, however. On the contrary, in the course of his development Anti-Climacus specifies his claim regarding existence coram Deo in a definitively particularistic

116. Kierkegaard, Sickness unto Death, 77; SV1,11:189. Given the Christomorphic poetics I have elucidated in previous chapters, Anti-Climacus could have chosen a better name for this form of subjectivity. "Poet-existence" could equally apply to Kierkegaard's ideal poet (i.e., God the poet) who creates the world and then actualizes the divine ideal tor humanity by existing as a concrete individual in Christ. Had Anti-Climacus expressed it this way, he could then say that Christ models an ideal human existence and in so doing have avoided both the form of human subjectivity wherein one has too much "infinitude," as well as the opposite extreme wherein one suffers from too much "finitude." This polar opposite to the despair of too much "infinitude" is a form of despair deriving from a lack of "infinitude." Anti-Climacus calls this form of subjectivity "the secular mentality" (Sickness unto Death, 33; SV1,11:146). This is not the despair of one who seeks to "live poetically," but rather the despair of those who lack any great degree of imagination; they lack "infinitude," have no sense of irony, and merely imitate the crowd. "Surrounded by hordes of men, absorbed in all sorts of secular matters, more and more shrewd about the ways of the world," Anti-Climacus says, "such a person forgets himself, forgets his name divinely understood, does not dare to believe in himself, finds it too hazardous to be himself and far easier and safer to be like the others, to become a copy, a number, a mass man. . . . [T]his form of despair goes practically unnoticed in the world" (Sickness unto Death, 33-34; SV1,11:147). In "business and social life," this latter form of despair frequently goes by the name of practicality, of willing to meet each day with "the rules of prudence" and earnestly going through the paces of the established order (Sickness unto Death, 34; SV1,11:147). Clearly, this "secular mentality" was the sort of social mimesis the Romantics themselves sought to avoid.

117. Kierkegaard, Sickness unto Death, 49; SV1,11:161. 118. Kierkegaard, Concept of Irony, 326; SKS, 1:355. 119. Kierkegaard, Sickness unto Death, 79; SV1,11:191. 120. Kierkegaard, Sickness unto Death, 79; SV1,11:191.


manner. "Only in Christ," he says, "is it true that God is man's goal and criterion, or the criterion and goal."'21 Put another way, Anti-Climacus's "theological self" has a Christomorphic emphasis. The rationale for this particularistic assertion is not merely dogmatic here, as if Anti-Climacus's desire were simply to exclude some generic theism, or to make the appropriation of his psychology by speculative philosophers difficult. Rather, his claim follows from the belief that Christ's life reveals and expresses the "criterion" (or "the ideal for human existence" as I have called it in previous chapters) for human life and, as such, the "goal" of a human life should be to strive to resemble that ideal. In other words, the "theological self" should be an "imitator" of Christ, and this is exactly what Anti-Climacus writes in Practice in Christianity: "[Christ's] life and works on earth are what he left for imitation."122

Practice in Christianity's emphasis upon the imitation of Christ marks the culmination of Kierkegaard's decade-long agon with Romantic irony, and it signals a reversal of the trend in his era to replace mimesis as a poetic ideal with irony. Instead of a movement "from mimesis to irony," as Walter Ong has termed it, Kierkegaard retrieves the mimetic ideal and progresses from mimesis through irony to imitation.123 When imaginatively employed as a "controlled element," Kierkegaard allows, "irony as the negative is the way; it is not the truth but the way."124 Through controlled irony, one imaginatively abstracts from his or her concrete actuality and envisions possibility, infinitude, and God. This "negative" moment helps to save an individual from what Anti-Climacus calls the despairing and sinful "secular-mentality" of the merely imitative man who finds it "easier and safer to be like the others, to become a copy."125 As such, irony as a controlled, negative moment is a kind of "ironic relativization" not simply of literary mimesis but of the more comprehensive social mimesis of the conventional views and forms of life into which one is born as well.126 But if one imaginatively flies out into infinitude never (or rarely) to return, then his life becomes a despairing and sinful "poet-existence" lacking meaningful projects in the actual, intersubjective contexts of family, friends, work, and the larger society. Thus, while controlled irony may initially be "the way," Kierkegaard believes it is nevertheless important to relativize one's ironic attitude toward existence as well. For this reason, a second and "decisive" moment in Kierkegaard's dialectic becomes necessary, and this moment is an affirmative, mimetic relativization of irony that occurs when an individual actualizes his or her will in accordance with the Christian ideal. This does not indicate a simple return to the first-order imitation of "the others," but an advance to a

121. Kierkegaard, Sickness unto Death, 114; SV1,11:224. 122. Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, 259; SV1,12:236-37. 123. See Ong, "From Mimesis to Irony." 124. Kierkegaard, Concept of Irony, 327; SKS, 1:356. 125. Kierkegaard, Sickness unto Death, 33-34; SV1,11:147. 126.1 am indebted to Marike Finlay for the phrase "the ironic relativization of mimesis" {Romantic

Irony of Semiotics, 113). This phrase is helpful for thinking about the relationship between irony and mimesis in Romanticism because it indicates a more complex dynamic than does the language of Romanticism's "break" with mimesis (see, for example, Melberg, Theories of Mimesis, 81).


reflective attempt to imitate in daily living the "criterion" and "goal" of human life as expressed by God in Christ.

Clearly, therefore, Anti-Climacus's schematization of the relation between the human capacities of imagination and will supplements Kierkegaard's earlier critique of how Romantics and idealists conceive the relation of ideality to actuality. Imagination, in this view, operates in the sphere of ideality, and will is the capacity to activate one's imaginative ideals in actuality. In chapter 1 I explicated Kierkegaard's critique of both Schlegel's Romantic poetics and Moller's traditionalist poetics wherein the "reconciliation" between the ideal and the actual that poetry purportedly achieves is, according to Kierkegaard, a reconciliation of the imagination alone and not a reconciliation fulfilled in concrete actuality. In chapter 2 I extended this analysis to show how both Johannes Climacus's Philosophical Fragments and Kierkegaard's own late speculative considerations offer a christolog-ical solution to the theoretical snags that render the Romantic and the traditionalist views untenable to Kierkegaard. I demonstrated there that by thinking of God as one who is "like a poet" with respect to creativity, and also as one who by "introducing himself into his work" fulfills creation, Kierkegaard promotes the Schlegelian ideal of "living poetically" from an aesthetic ideal to an ethical-religious concept in the model of Miller's theory of "true art." In chapter 3 I demonstrated that by casting the doctrine of incarnation poetically in terms of "paradox," Climacus, Anti-Climacus, and Kierkegaard all seek to thwart any merely intellectualistic relationship to Christ. What I want to show in the following section is how, by retrieving the ideal of imitation in the wake of Romantic irony, Kierkegaard fleshes out his theological poetics with a Christian ethics in a manner that conforms rather neatly to the way Anti-Climacus characterizes the relation between imagination and will. That is to say, if imagination is the first condition, and will the second and decisive condition for what becomes of someone, then imagining God as the omnipotent creator who "lives poetically" in Christ is the first qualification, and willing to conform one's life to that criterion is the second and decisive condition for Kierkegaard's theological poetics. Without this second qualification, Kierkegaard's poetics would be merely intellectualistic, but, as he intimates in his dissertation, when an individual wills to conform his or her life as closely as possible to the life of Christ, she lets herself "be poetically composed, and in this respect a simple Christian lives far more poetically than many a brilliant intellectual."127

Thus, while for Kierkegaard imaginative "irony as the negative is the way; it is not the truth but the way,"128 it is nonetheless only through the affirmative moment, namely, willing to imitate the life of Christ, that one approaches what Anti-Climacus confesses to be the way, the truth, and the life. "When the truth is the way," he writes, "being the truth is a life—and this is indeed how Christ speaks of himself: I am the Truth and the Way and the Life."129

127. Kierkegaard, Concept of Irony, 280; SKS, 1:316. 128. Kierkegaard, Concept of Irony, 327; SKS, 1:356. 129. Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, 207; SV1,12:190; cf. John 14:6.


The Imitation of Christ in Practice in Christianity

Kierkegaard published Practice in Christianity in 1850 under the pseudonym Anti-Climacus, listing himself as editor just as he had for the Climacus writings. Of this work he reflects in his journal, "Without a doubt it is the most perfect and truest thing I have written."130 Indeed, Kierkegaard's own high estimation of the two separate works that he eventually published under the Anti-Climacus pseudonym, namely, The Sickness unto Death and Practice in Christianity, is glimpsed in the provisional title under which he initially considered publishing them as one volume: "Collected Works of Consummation [Fu/dfrringe/se]."131 Given the lofty tone of this proposed title, it is clear that Kierkegaard viewed the Anti-Climacus writings as the culmination of his authorship. Despite this fact, however, Kierkegaard did not rush the works to press. By and large, these writings had been completed in 1848, but because of a compunction regarding the disparity between his personal character and the ideal form of Christianity advocated in the writings, Kierkegaard came to think it would be rather hypocritical to bring the works out under his own name. "I am not permitted to communicate more than what I, the speaker, am," he writes in his journal, "that is, in my own factual first person, no more than what my life existentially but fairly well conforms to."132 Kierkegaard's eventual solution to this snag is to ascribe the works to his new pseudonym, Anti-Climacus, who represents "a Christian on an extraordinary level."133 Thus, even in his choice of the pseudonym, Kierkegaard affirms the Anti-Climacus works as a kind of consummation of his authorship, since "anti" in this context does not mean "against" but rather "before" [from the Latin ante, as in "anticipate"], as Howard and Edna Hong say, "a relation of rank, the higher, as

130. Kierkegaard, Journals and Papers, 6.6501; Papirer, X2 A 66 (n.d., 1849). Despite the fact that Kierkegaard comhined three previously written pieces to create Practice in Christianity, he nonetheless achieved a remarkable coherence in the relation of its three parts. Gregor Malantschuk supports this judgment in his remark that Practice in Christianity has a "dialectical, cohesive structure" (Kierkegaard's Thought, ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong [Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1971], 339. William Schweiker nicely explicates the work's dialectical coherence this way:

Part I is an invitation to discipleship as the grounds for the possibility of the Christian life and salvation. This invitation demands a decision on the part of the individual. The decision is either confession or rejection of Christ as Lord. Part II is the negation of the invitation because the nature of the Truth, the God-man, is the occasion for an offense, and the corresponding demand for faith itself raises the possibility of scandal. Part III is the negation of the negation in that the Truth is understood graciously to draw the individual to himself. We should note that the way one is drawn to the Truth is the path of self-denial. Part III does not represent an Hegelian mediation of Parts I and II. Rather, the demand and travail of Christian existence is intensified. Yet in Part III we do learn that grace has been operative through the negations of the dialectic and the corresponding demand for decision. (Mimetic Reflections, 159-60).

131. Kierkegaard,/o«rna& and Papers, 6.6271; Papirer, IX A 390 (n.d., 1848); SKS, 21:151. Kierkegaard also considered the title "Collected Works of Completion [Fu/dende/se]," and deliberated over including Armed Neutrality; Or, My Position as a Christian Author in Christendom in this volume (see Kierkegaard, Point of View, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong [Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998],'127-41; Papirer,X5 B 107,288-301).

132. Kierkegaard, Journals and Papers, 6.6528; Papirer, X2 A 184 (n.d., 1849). 133. Kxtkegaatdjourna/s and Papers, 6.6431; Papirer,Xl A 510 (n.d., 1849).


in 'before me' in the First Commandment."134 With respect to the Christian ideal, therefore, Anti-Climacus represents a position higher than Johannes Climacus and all the other pseudonyms. In Kierkegaard's words:

Johannes Climacus and Anti-Climacus have several things in common; but the difference is that whereas Johannes Climacus places himself so low that he even says that he himself is not a Christian, one seems to be able to detect in Anti-Climacus that he considers himself to be a Christian on an extraordinarily high level. . . . I would place myself higher than Johannes Climacus, lower than Anti-Climacus.135

A reader is given to expect, therefore, that the "portrayal of ideality" in Practice in Christianity will be "absolutely sound," at least insofar as Kierkegaard is himself able to ascertain and depict just what the Christian ideal for human existence is.136

Kierkegaard calls his decision to cast Practice in Christianity in pseudonymity the "qualitative expression" that the work is a "poet-communication."137 It is not pseudonymity alone that makes the work poetic, however, as if it became a "poet-communication" simply by accrediting Anti-Climacus with its authorship. Rather, it is the poetic nature of Practice in Christianity as Kierkegaard understands it that necessitates its publication under the pseudonym. "Since all the writing under the title 'Practice in Christianity' was poetic," Kierkegaard journals, "it was understood from the very first that I had to take pains not to be confused with an analogy to an apostle."138 Consistent with how he has used the term beginning with his earliest writings, "poetic" here means fundamentally the imaginative depiction of an ideal. For example, Either/Or was poetic not solely because it listed Victor Eremita as its editor, but because it imaginatively depicted the aesthete and William as ideal types representing, respectively, an "aesthetic" and an "ethical" life view [livsan-skuelse]. Practice in Christianity is equally poetic in this sense because it imaginatively depicts the ideal for Christian existence in what Kierkegaard takes to be its most rigorous form. As Sylvia Walsh has rightly observed, "In line with his general understanding of poetry as a medium for expressing ideality Kierkegaard understands his task as a poet in the later writings to be that of bringing the religious ideals once again into view for his time."139 By adverting to this fact on the title page with the words "A Poetic Attempt—Without Authority—For Inward Deepening in Christianity," Kierkegaard initially thought he might publish the book under his own name, and at the same time hedge against any mistaken attribution or appropriation of some sort of apostolic authority for his view.140 Again, however, because of reticence concerning the disparity between his own life and the

134. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, "Historical Introduction," in Practice in Christianity, xiii. 135. Kierkegaard Journals and Papers, 6.6433; Papirer, XI A 517 (n.d., 1849). 136. Kierkegaard,Journals and Papers, 6.6433; Papirer,Xl A 517 (n.d., 1849). 137. Kierkegaard Journals and Papers, 6.6528; Papirer, X2 A 184 (n.d., 1849). 138. Kierkegaard, Journals and Papers, 6.6526; Papirer, X2 A 177 (n.d., 1849). 139. Walsh, Living Poetically, 225. 140. Kierkegaard, Journals and Papers, 6.6526; Papirer,X2A 177 (n.d., 1849).


Christian ideal, he eventually decided that "there must be an even stronger declaration that it was poetic—and that it was best to have a new pseudonym."141 Thus, the pseudonym alone is not what makes Practice in Christianity poetic; rather, it serves to indicate unambiguously that it is poetic. What makes this "poetic attempt" poetic in the more fundamental sense (i.e., the sense that has nothing to do with whether it is published veronymously or pseudonymously) is that it imaginatively depicts "the requirement of ideality in an eminent sense."142

In its simplest formulation, the "requirement of ideality" that Practice in Christianity depicts is the life of Christ as the "prototype" and "criterion" for personal imitation. In the meditation with which Anti-Climacus opens one chapter, he prays:

Lord Jesus Christ, you did not come to the world to be served and thus not to be admired either, or in that sense worshipped. You yourself were the Way and the Life—and you have asked only for imitators [Efterfelgere]. If we have dozed off into this infatuation, wake us up, rescue us from this error of wanting to admire or adoringly admire you instead of wanting to follow you and be like [ligne]you.143

This imitation of Christ theme—notably absent from Kierkegaard's earlier works, despite the fact that Anti-Climacus here says imitation was the one thing Christ requested of individuals—became increasingly prominent in Kierkegaard's writings beginning in 1848. The fact that this is the same year in which a new Danish translation of Thomas a Kempis's The Imitation ofChrist became available suggests that this work may have been influential in Kierkegaard's decision to emphasize this theme. Although no mention is made of Thomas a Kempis in Practice in Christianity or any other of Kierkegaard s published works, Kierkegaard does comment upon him approvingly in several journal entries, and always in reference to the 1848 Danish translation.144

141. KterkegxMJourna/s and Papers, 6.6526; Papirer, X2 A 177 (n.d., 1849). 142. Kierkegaard, Journals and Papers, 6.6521; Papirer, X2 A 157 (n.d., 1849). 143. Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, 233; SV1,12:213; italics added. 144. Kierkegaard had two editions of Thomas a Kempis's De imitatione Christi in his library. The first

of these editions was in French (Paris, 1702; ASKB, 272), and the other was Jens Albrecht Leonhard Holm's Danish translation, Om Christi Efterfelgelse (Copenhagen, 1848; ASKB, 273).The Danish atefter-felge (literally, "to follow after") means both "to follow" and "to imitate." The fact that the Hongs consistently render Kierkegaard's and Anti-Climacus's use of the term efterfolge as "imitate" rather than "follow" has to do with its close connection, in Kierkegaard's usage, to Thomas a Kempis's work.

Walter Ong, in his reflections on the relationship between the classical theme of mimesis and Christian discipleship, has expressed frustration over the frequent confusion of the terms "follow" and "imitate." "Despite all the talk over many centuries concerning the 'imitation of Christ,'" Ong writes, "the fact is that in the Gospel accounts Jesus never says to anyone that they should 'imitate' him. He does say, over and over again, 'Follow me.'The imitation theme is made explicit in the text of Paul's letters, but not as the words of Jesus" (Ong, "Mimesis and the Following of Christ," 73). Reading the Hong translation ofPractice in Christianity with Ong's comments in mind, consequently, a reader might be chagrined to find Anti-Climacus saying, "Now, it is of course well-known that Christ continually uses the expression 'imitators [Efterfelgere].' He never says that he asks for admirers, adoring admirers, adherents; and when he uses the expression 'follower [disciple]' he always explains it in such a way that one perceives that 'imitators


Within the established Lutheranism of nineteenth-century Copenhagen, the detached "observational religion" of the culturally ascendant bourgeoisie had all but eclipsed the more earnest tradition in which an individual seeks to "imitate" that which she or he "admires."145 What the retrieval of the imitation of Christ tradition affords Kierkegaard's authorship is an orthodox but neglected way to contex-tualize his critical understanding of the relationship between imagination and actuality in an individual's life, within a Christian commitment to the belief that Christ's life expresses truth in the eminent sense. Christ is the prototype and criterion for imitation, according to Anti-Climacus, because Christ "is the truth in the sense that to be the truth is the only true explanation of what truth is."146 Invoking a distinction between "truth" and "truths," where the former indicates truth as an authentic "way" of being human and the latter indicates objective "results" that can be passed along as knowledge, Anti-Climacus stipulates:

Christianly understood, truth is obviously not to know the truth but to be the truth. Despite all modern philosophy, there is an infinite difference here, best seen in Christ's relation to Pilate, for Christ could not, could only untruthfully, reply to the question "What is truth?" precisely because he was not the one who knew what truth is but was the truth. Not as if he did not know what truth is, but when one is the truth and when the requirement is to be the truth, to know the truth is an untruth. For knowing the truth is something that entirely of itself accompanies being the truth, not the other way around. And that is why it becomes untruth when knowing the truth is separated from being the truth or when knowing the truth is made identical with being it, since it is related the other way. Being the truth is identical with knowing the truth, and Christ would never have known the truth if he had not been it, and nobody knows more of the truth than what he is of the truth. Indeed, one cannot really know the truth, for if one knows the truth one must, of course, know that the truth is to be the truth, and then in one's knowledge of the truth one would know that to know truth is an untruth. . . . In other words: knowledge is related to the truth, but in the meantime I am untruthfully outside myself. The truth is within me, that is, when I am truly within myself (not untruthfully outside myself), the truth, if it is there, is a being, a life.

[Efterfilgere]' is meant by it, that it is not adherents of a teaching but imitators [Efterji/gere] of a life" {Practice in Christianity, 237; SV1, 12:217). Because the Danish of 1850 had no cognate for the Latin-rooted word "imitation," however, both Jesus' invitation to "follow" him and Thomas a Kempis's meditation on what it means to "imitate" Christ were translated into Danish with the one term efterfelge.

It is interesting to note that the 1845 edition of Gyldendals's Danish-English dictionary includes a special appendix citing "Vocabulary of Such Foreign and Technical Words as Are in Most Frequent Use with Danish Authors." Here the verb at imitere ("to imitate") appears, but the noun does not. Contemporary Danes seem to use both terms comfortably, however, and Gyldendals's 1995 edition indicates that "imitation" has passed fully into the language.

145. Bruce Kirmmse, Kierkegaard in Golden Age Denmark (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990), 396. See Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, 233-34; SV1,12:213-14.

146. Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, 205; SV1,12:189; italics added in the English translation.


Therefore it says, "This is eternal life, to know the only ttue God and the one whom he sent," the truth. That is, only then do I M truth know the truth, when it becomes a life in me.147

What Anti-CIimacus seeks to do in this convoluted passage is to relate the appropriation of truth "in the eminent sense" to the embodiment of Christ's life in one's own. That is to say, he insists that to learn the truth is most appropriately interpreted in terms of living in true accordance with the divine expression of truth, rather than coming to a cognitive grasp of that truth. Although he does not exactly categorize different "models of truth," Anti-CIimacus acknowledges that this view of lived truth is discontinuous with standard epistemic conceptions of what truth is. An important caveat here is that Anti-CIimacus acknowledges that epistemic conceptions are appropriate to knowing "truths" about matters of observation (in contradistinction from "truth" in the eminent sense, the kind of truth about which English speakers sometimes say "Truth with a capital'T'"). In the case of "truths," he says, the goal is to understand the "results" of particular investigations, and for such investigations Anti-CIimacus gives such examples as research in gunpowder, in philology, and in elucidating an obscure historical period. The problem, according to Anti-CIimacus, is that the conception of truth on the model of comprehension has become so dominant that "now all the expressions are formed according to the view that truth is cognition, knowledge (now one speaks continually about comprehending, speculating, observing), whereas in original Christianity all the expressions were formed according to the view that truth is a being."148 With respect to the "truth" who is a being, Anti-CIimacus considers it a "monstrous mistake" to prioritize comprehension over imitation.149 Christ is "humankind's teacher," Anti-CIimacus says, not because he taught information to be "observed," or "results" to be noted, but because his life models how to live an actual life in accordance with the divine ideal for human life. All of Anti-Climacus's resistance here to "didacticizing"150 Christianity is based on his fundamental belief that "Christianity is no doctrine,"151 but, rather, a "communication concerning existing."152 Christianity, in this view, is a revelation that instructs on how to live truly,

147. Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, 205-6; SV1,12:189-90; italics added in the English translation. The biblical citation is from John 17:3. Albeit with more specific reference to Jesus Christ, Anti-Climacus's view here resonates strongly with Johannes Climacus's thesis that "truth is subjectivity." See Concluding Unscientific Postscript, 189ff.; SKS, 7:173ff. For a helpful analysis of this thesis, see chapter 8 of Merold Westphal, Becoming a Self: A Reading of Kierkegaard's Concluding Unscientific Postscript (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 1996).

148. Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, 206; SV1,12:190. 149. Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, 206; SV1,12:190. 150. Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, 206; SV1, U:\9Q. • 151. Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, 106; SV1,12:101. 152. Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, 134; SV1, 12:125. Anti-CIimacus is wholly consistent with

Johannes Climacus on the notion of Christianity as a "communication concerning existence." For Johannes Climacus's explication of Christianity as an "existence communication," see Concluding Unscientific Postscript, 561ff; SKS, 7:51 Iff.


not a revelation that enables comprehension of its truth.153 Consequently, for Anti-Climacus, to live truly is to live as a Christian, and "truly to be a Christian," in his words, "means to be [Christ's] imitator . . .; [it] means that your life has as much similarity to his as is possible for a human life to have."154 If this is the case, then the personal detachment with which individuals deliver and listen to "sermons, lectures, and speeches"155 on Christian living is, at base, equally distant from the ideal of imitation as is the Romantic detachment of the ironist.

Viewed in this light, Kierkegaard's entire authorship can easily be read in terms of the development from irony to imitation. William Schweiker writes, "Kierkegaard's mimetic strategy is the interrelation of the movement of the authorship with the movement of the self."156 What he hopes to achieve through the developmental course of this authorship is a coordinate development in his readers and in himself. Kierkegaard's desire to draw his readers deeply enough into the movement of his authorship from irony to imitation that they might transfer this development from the text into their actual lives is something I discuss further in the concluding chapter. The most important point to recognize here is that Kierkegaard's poetics employs a "mimetic strategy" that has "existential mimesis" as its telos.157 This point is often obscured in secondary literature on Kierkegaard. Terry Eagleton, for example, has commented that for Kierkegaard, "the reality of another for me is never a given fact, only a 'possibility,' which I can never mimeti-cally appropriate as my own. That imaginative, empathetic imitation which for earlier thinkers was the very foundation of human sociality is here abruptly dismissed."158 Yet while Eagleton's interpretation is accurate with respect to Kierkegaard's generally pessimistic view of "human sociality," it nonetheless neglects the importance of "imitation" for Kierkegaard as regards the animating concern of his authorship, namely, becoming a Christian. And while it may be true of the "God-man" that his existence is not a "given fact" (in the sense that it could be demonstrated) but rather "the paradox that history can never digest,"159

Kierkegaard nonetheless deems "existential imitation" essential. Imitation is the capstone of Kierkegaard's understanding of what it means to become a Christian. Indeed, in a critique of Johannes Climacus as much as of anyone else, Anti-Climacus writes that people have wanted to "abolish" imitation "by wanting to shift the Christian life into hidden inwardness."160 This, however, should not obscure the

153. See chapter 2 for an interpretation of the way the figures of "the absurd," "the incognito," and "the absolute paradox" serve to hinder any merely intellectualistic relationship to the claim about God's incarnation in Christ.

154. Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, 106; SV1,12:101. 155. Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, 233; SV1,12:213. 156. Schweiker, Mimetic Reflections, 168. 157. Schweiker, Mimetic Reflections, 138. To my knowledge, Schweiker is the only other commentator

on Kierkegaard who is explicit about the relationship between Kierkegaard's thinking about the imitation of Christ and the larger educational tradition of mimesis that I outline above.

158. Terry Eagleton, The Ideology of the Aesthetic (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990), 186. 159. Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, 30; SV1,12:28. 160. Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, 253; SV1, 12:231. For Johannes Climacus's discussion of

"hidden inwardness" see Concluding Unscientific Postscript, 498ff; SKS, 7:45 Iff.


fact that Anti-Climacus as much as Johannes Climacus regards the Christ event as a paradox. "At the root of the antithesis [between sin and faith]," he says, "lies the crucial Christian qualification: before God, a qualification that in turn has Christianity's crucial criterion: the absurd, the paradox, the possibility of offense.""'1

Building on his meditation regarding Christ's life as the truth in the eminent sense—the sense in which Christ's subjective actuality expresses the divine ideal for humanity—Anti-Climacus asserts that "observational Christianity" has substituted "admiration" for "imitation." According to him, "to admire Christ is the untrue invention of a later age, aided by 'loftiness.'"162 It is always the tendency to envision Christ's life as a "lofty" one and to forget that "no human being has ever lived so abased,"163 Anti-Climacus says, because one can only "visualize [Christ's] suffering with the aid of his imagination. But imagination, which is the capacity for perfecting (idealizing) is essentially related to loftiness, to perfection, and is related only imperfectly to imperfection."164 Anti-Climacus does not mean to say that Christ is imperfect, or that this is why the imaginative "capacity for perfecting" cannot accurately represent him. Rather, the reason human imagination is inadequate to this task is that its sphere of operation is constrained within ideality, whereas Christ expresses his "true perfection" within the imperfect sphere of actu-ality.lft5 Consistent with Johannes Climacus's characterization of the God-man as the "absolute paradox," Anti-Climacus recognizes a "frightful contradiction" in the fact that

the image produced by the imagination is not that of true perfection; it lacks something;—the suffering belonging to actuality or the actuality of suffering. True perfection is that it is this perfection—but the suffering is actual, that it is this perfection that day after day, year after year, exists in the suffering belonging to actuality—this frightful contradiction, not that perfection exists in something more perfect but that perfection exists in something infinitely less perfect.166

161. Kierkegaard, Sickness unto Death, 83; SV1,11:195; italics added in the English translation. 162. Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, 240; SV1,12:220. 163. Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, 240; SV1,12:220. Anti-Climacus notes that "for God it is

always an abasement to be a human being" (Practice in Christianity, 40; SV1,12:38), but also insists that even in terms of the relative abasement within the human order, Christ lived as "a lowly human being" (Practice in Christianity, 65; SV1,12:63). In the Johannes Climacus writings, it makes no essential difference whether Christ became incarnate as a human prince or pauper, since the concern there is primarily with the God-man as intellectual paradox rather than with Christ as prototype for authentic human living. For Anti-Climacus, however, the relative abasement in which Christ lives as the lowliest is also important, since it is his earthly life that one who would become a Christian should imitate. "What [Christ] has said and taught, every word he has spoken," Anti-Climacus writes, "becomes eo ipso [precisely thereby] untrue if we make it appear as if it is Christ in glory who says it. No, he is silent; the abased one is speaking" (Practice in Christianity, 24; SV1,12:23).

164. Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, 192; SV1,12:178. 165. Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, 188; SV1,12:175. 166. Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, 188; SV1,12:175.


What Anti-Climacus means here is that Christ's life is not simply an image of perfection, or the idea of perfection, but that Christ's life expresses the ideal of perfection within the imperfect medium of actuality. Ironically, therefore, the image of Christ produced by human imagination—"the capacity for perfecting (idealizing)"—is an imperfect one, because it cannot depict the imperfections of "actuality, the only place where true perfection can truly be."267

In this view, one who merely "admires" Christ has a merely imaginative, "romanticized" relationship to him, for no matter how strenuously one attempts to make an "imagined image" actual, it cannot be done. Because the human imagination depicts the actuality of the passion of Christ in the sphere of ideas and images instead of the sphere of existence, it makes his life of self-sacrifice "seem easy," or at least makes it seem easier than it actually is, because it lacks the dimension of daily life. "What is tragic," Anti-Climacus laments, is that "in actuality, the only place where true perfection can truly be, it [i.e., true perfection] is so rare, because there it is so hard and exhausting to be that, so hard, yes, so hard that to be that is for that very reason true perfection."168

What is not so difficult, however, is to recognize in Anti-Climacus's lament still another reappearance of Kierkegaard's early critique of Romantic poetics. "The tragedy of romanticism," Kierkegaard wrote in his dissertation, "is that what it seizes upon is not actuality."169 Said another way, Kierkegaard acknowledges the imaginative reconciliations in poetry as "a kind of reconciliation," but the human imagination cannot establish "the true reconciliation, for it does not reconcile me with the actuality in which I am living."170 Anti-Climacus clearly echoes this position in his conviction that Christ alone reconciles the sinful imperfections of human actuality with the ideality of divine perfection by expressing the ideal in an actual life. This is something no human poet can depict, he says, because even if he "succeeded in the depiction of the image of perfection as no poet had ever succeeded, also in getting the sufferings depicted—essentially it cannot be done, because, to repeat.. . however accurately the suffering is depicted, it already is made to seem easy simply because it is within or in the imagination."17'

Kierkegaard's Christomorphic poetics, including the Johannine conception of God as the divine poet whose Word becomes flesh, is clearly operative in Practice in Christianity. Because no human poet can perfectly depict truth, Anti-Climacus says, Christ "himself had to express the truth with his own life, himself had to portray what it is to be truth,"172 and in this sense Christ "stands by his word or he himself is his word; he is what he says—in this sense, too, he is the Word."173

What Christ asks of human beings by way of response to his portrayal of ideal actuality, according to Anti-Climacus, is not that they simply "admire" him from

167. Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, 188; SV1,12:175. 168. Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, 188-89, SV1,12:175. 169. Kierkegaard, Concept of Irony, 304; SKS, 1:337. 170. Kierkegaard, Concept of Irony, 297; SKS, 1:330-31. 171. Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, 188; SV1,12:174. 172. Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, 181; SV1,12:169. 173. Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, 14; SV1,12:8.


an imaginative distance, but that they become like him. Christ "never says that he asks for admirers, adoring admirers, adherents; and when he uses the expression 'follower' he always explains it in such a way that one perceives that 'imitators' is meant by it, that it is not adherents of a teaching but imitators of a life."174 Anti-Climacus does acknowledge that Christ must often first be "the object of admiration"175 in order to capture the imagination, and that, moreover, in "a verbal dispute"176 there is often no obvious difference between an admirer and an imitator. But the problem with mere admiration, according to Anti-Climacus, is that one who simply admires "keeps himself personally detached, consciously or unconsciously does not discover that what is admired involves a claim upon him, to be or at least to strive to be what is admired," whereas an imitator, "w or strives to be what he admires."177 The fundamental point of this distinction is that admirers of Christ relate to him "only through the imagination,"17* whereas an imitator responds to Christ by engaging the will in an attempt to make his or her life more closely resemble the life of "the prototype."

While it is clear from this that Kierkegaard is seeking to retrieve elements from the older imitatio Christi tradition, he nonetheless indicates certain respects in which that tradition "misunderstands" its relation to the God-man. For example, in the veronymous 1851 work Judge for Yourself, Kierkegaard calls it "strange" that medieval Christians "could think that in itself fasting was Christianity, that entering the monastery, giving everything to the poor, not to mention what we can scarcely mention without smiling;—scourging oneself, crawling on one's knees, standing on one leg, etc.—that this was supposed to be imitation. This was an error," Kierkegaard says, because it led to "the idea of meritoriousness," the notion that one could earn credit before God through "good works."179 Nevertheless, this earlier understanding of imitation had a decisive advantage over the conception of Christianity in his own age, he maintains, because it cast Christianity "along the lines of action, life, existence-transformation."180 For Kierkegaard, the real merit of the conception of active Christianity is that when active imitation is set in dynamic relationship with the Christian doctrine of grace, the tension between the attempt to imitate Christ and one's inability to imitate Christ preserves the doctrine of grace from being cheapened. Kierkegaard's idea here is that when the recognition of the need for grace derives from striving to imitate Christ and falling short of the ideal, then one is all the more appreciative of God's forgiveness; whereas "as soon as imitation is completely omitted, grace is taken in vain."181

174. Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, 237; SV1,12:217. 175. Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, 245; SV1,12:224. 176. Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, 249; SV1,12:228. 177. Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, 241; SV1,12:220; italics added in the English translation. 178. Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, 244; SV1,12:223. 179. Kierkegaard, Judge for Yourself, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton, NJ:

Princeton University Press, 1990), 192; SV1,12:460. See also Journals and Papers, 1.693; Papirer, XIA132 (n.d., 1849).

180. Kierkegaard, Judge for Yourself, 192; SV1,12:460. 181. Kkrkegaard, Journals and Papers, 2.1878; Papirer, X3 A 411 (n.d., 1850).


Thus, for Kierkegaard, as much as for Anti-Climacus, imitation is dialectically related to grace, and the criterion of imitation teaches one "to practice resorting to grace in such a way that you do not take it in vain."182

The relationship between ethical rigorousness and saving grace in this view is a dialectical process oscillating between the demand for imitation and the forgiveness of sins. Christ, Anti-Climacus says, "demands that you shall give up everything, let everything go."183 For this reason he maintains that to become a Christian in the strictest sense means to suffer a life of abasement and mockery equivalent to Christ's abasement, since Christ's "life on earth is the very judgment by which we all shall be judged."184 If, however, one humbles oneself "under the requirements of ideality,"185 and acknowledges how far short one's own life falls of the paradoxical truth of Christ's life, then he or she "learns to enter Christianity by the narrow way, through the consciousness of sin,"186 and in that spirit of humility "might worthily accept the grace that is offered to every imperfect person—that is, to everyone."187 The rigorous demand that one be like Christ in his willingness to be the "lowliest" in service to all others impels one to the recognition of oneself as a sinner, but when one humbly confesses one's sins, Anti-Climacus writes, "at that very same moment the essentially Christian transforms itself into and is sheer leniency, grace, love, mercy."188 Kierkegaard puts the matter elegantly when he writes in his journal, "It alternates; when we are striving, then [Christ] is the prototype, and when we stumble, lose courage, etc., then he is the love which helps us up, and then he is the prototype again."189 The cultivation of Christian faith is thus an ever deepening appreciation of how discontinuous with the divine expression of truth one's own life really is, and how desperately one needs God's grace because of that fact. Viewed in this light, this process is quite the opposite of Schlegel's Romantic idea of cultivation in which "every good human being is always progressively becoming God."190 Progress toward becoming a Christian is not for Kierkegaard a process of "going on to perfection," as good Wesleyans put it, but rather one of deepening recognition of one's distance from the ideal. "Every step forward toward the ideal is a backward step," according to Kierkegaard, "for the progress consists precisely in my discovering increasingly the perfection of the ideal—and consequently my greater distance from it."191 Consequently, so long as one actually is striving, as Sylvia Walsh has rightly pointed out, "the emphasis falls not so much on actually fulfilling the ideal as on getting an impression of

182. Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, 65; SV1,12:62. 183. Kierkegaard. Practice in Christianity, 52; SV1,12:50. 184. Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, 181; SV1,12:168. 185. Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, 67; SV1,12:64. 186. Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, 68; SV1,12:65. 187. Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, 67; SV1,12:64. 188. Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, 67; SV1,12:64-64. 189. Kierkegaard,/™™/.! and Papers, 1.334; Papirer, XI A 279 (n.d., 1849); SKS, 21:363. 190. Schlegel, Schlegel's Lucinde and the Fragments, 200; Athenaeum Fragments, no. 262. 191. Kierkegaard, Journals and Papers, 2.1789; Papirer, X3 A 509 (n.d., 1850).


the requirement in all its infinitude, so that we are humbled by it and learn to rely on grace."192

Anti-Climacus agrees fully with Kierkegaard on this point. Since "no human being, with the exception of Christ, is the truth," one should never expect to imitate Christ perfectly.193 What matters most is an earnest attempt to live within the dialectic of imitation and grace. Anti-Climacus illustrates this by asking his reader to "imagine a youth" who "perceives some image of perfection (ideal)."194 Although this image of perfection may once have been actualized and then handed down through history, for the youth it exists only in his imagination and therefore has what Anti-Climacus calls "the imagination's infinite distance from actuality."195

That is to say, in the youth's imagination this image has been abstracted out of actuality and is therefore an "image of complete perfection" rather than "the image of struggling and suffering perfection."196 Despite the fact that his imagination has given him a "foreshortened" image of the ideal, this youth wants to become like his ideal. "In a certain sense the youth's imagination has deceived him," Anti-Climacus acknowledges, completely consistent with Kierkegaard's critique of the ironic imagination, "but indeed, if he himself wills, it has not deceived him to his detriment, it has deceived him into the truth; by means of a deception, it has, as it were, played him into God's hands. If the youth wills—God in heaven waits for him, willing to help as one can be helped in an examination that must have the earnestness of the highest examination."197

In this illustration, Anti-Climacus's conception of the relationship between what he calls the "first condition" (imagination) and the "decisive condition" (will) for what becomes of a person is clear. It is possible to imagine the ideal without striving to imitate it, but it is not possible to imitate the ideal without first having an imaginative relation to it. Said another way, despite the assertion that imagination taken alone has a misrelation to actuality, Anti-Climacus nevertheless believes that when one decides to "replicate" the image one has of Christ by willing to become like him ("he is indeed a requirement upon me to him back in replica"198), he or she comes to exist authentically. To quote an aphorism from Paul Ricoeur with which Anti-Climacus (and Kierkegaard) would have to agree, "Without imagination, there is no action."199 Nonetheless, what is ultimately "decisive" for

192. Walsh, Living Poetically, 239. 193. Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, 204; SV1,12:188. 194. Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, 186; SV1,12:173. The fact that this youth initially has "some

image of perfection," rather than the specific Christian image of perfection, interestingly parallels the "poetical venture" in Philosophical Fragments where Climacus ostensibly poetizes some new model of learning/teaching truth, which then turns out to be the Christian model. Similarly, Anti-Climacus's assertion that God ultimately had to portray the ideal, and that "no poet can invent it better" {Practice in Christianity, 55; SV1,12:52), parallels Climacus's confession of plagiarism of the divine poet.

195. Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, 187; SV1,12:173. 196. Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, 187; SV1,12:173. 197. Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, 190; SV1,12:176; italics added in the English translation. 198. Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, 243; SV1,12:222. 199. Paul Ricoeur, "Imagination in Discourse and in Action," in From Text to Action: Essays in

Hermeneutics, II, trans. Kathleen Blarney and John B. Thompson (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1991), 177.


how one exists in relationship to divine truth is action, for existence is a matter not simply of imagination but also of enacting the imaginative ideal. As Schweiker writes, "For Kierkegaard imitatio is an enactment of existence."200

Mimetic Refiguration and the "Decisive Place of Rest"

Earlier in this chapter I sought to show how the mimetic tradition in literature contoured the development of an emphasis on the "imitation of Christ" in Christian devotional practices. From there I demonstrated how, through Kierkegaard's retrieval of this feature in the Christian tradition, this self-styled "poet of the religious" and "master of irony" finds a traditional way to overcome what he takes to be the irony-run-amok of early German Romanticism. Finally, I illustrated how this emphasis on the imitation of Christ marks a culmination of Kierkegaard's poetics by specifying the manner in which he thinks a Christian ought to move from reflective interpretation of the Christian story to actual application of that story in one's own life. I want now to reflect upon the respects in which a Christian, or a would-be Christian, translates the poetically distant story about the moral prototype into his or her daily life in such a way that Christ is not simply the "criterion" for imitation by which he or she is judged, but is also the graceful redeemer by whom he or she is saved. For Kierkegaard, says Schweiker, the interpretation of human existence

came to focus in sin, where the human is separated from the power that establishes it, and from a relation to Christ, the redeemer in time. "Sin" was his answer to the final impediment to the realization and transformation of the human, and, for him, Christ was the definitive answer to it. Existential mimesis, more generally, was a response to the problem of being a self relative to the power that establishes it.201

The way to appropriate the grace offered in Christ along the lines of this particular hermeneutic is through participation in the story about him. Anti-Climacus insists that the "very beginning" of becoming a Christian means willing to be "alone before God, alone with Holy Scripture as a guide, alone with the prototype before one's eyes."202 Full participation in the narrative, however, cannot simply mean reading and reflecting on the biblical texts in "a quiet hour"; it must, on Kierkegaard's terms, mean allowing the biblical story to refigure one's own daily practices. This is why Schweiker interprets mimesis to mean "not iconic copying but the praxis of figuration."203 Just as Erasmus, Thomas a Kempis, and the thirteenth-century author of Meditations on the Life of Christ, among others, Kierkegaard's Anti-Climacus interprets and poetically recasts the Bible's figuration

200. Schweiker, Mimetic Reflections, 169. 201. Schweiker, Mimetic Reflections, 213. 202. Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, 225; SV1,12:206. 203. Schweiker, Mimetic Reflections, 12.


of Christ by emphasizing Christ's actuality, his abasement, and his passionate endurance.

The point of this figuration of Christ is a refiguration of the lives of his readers, who are encouraged to let the biblical narrative structure their daily lives. Ricoeur's analysis of the triadic structure of mimesis in terms of "a prefigured time that becomes a refigured time through the mediation of a configured time" nicely expresses the relationship between the biblical narrative, Kierkegaard's poetic configuration of that narrative, and an ideal reader's actual appropriation and response.204 Conceived this way, then, poetic creativity coordinates narrative and actuality in such a way as to "make poetry lively," to use Schlegel's phrase.205

Nonetheless, such creativity answers to a prefigured model and does not, as Kierkegaard accused Romantic ironists of attempting, seek to produce imaginative worlds ex nihilo.20*' Kierkegaard does not conceive of his role as a "poet of the religious" on the Romantic model of God's eternal creativity, but rather on the model of a poet who sings the hero's praises (as Homer does for Odysseus, for example, and even more fittingly, as the Apostle Paul and the gospel writers do for Christ).207 He crafts his "poetic productions," therefore, "out of the context of attentiveness to the incarnate actuality of God," as Murray Rae has written, "and, in consequence, the creativity of [his] poetic speech is tempered by responsibility to that which is given."208 In confessing Christ as the eternal Word and the incarnate truth, Kierkegaard accepts that God in Christ has scripted the ideal for human life more authentically than any merely human individual could. Again, the now familiar passage from Kierkegaard's dissertation expresses it nicely: "It is indeed one thing to compose oneself poetically; it is something else to be composed poetically. The Christian lets himself be poetically composed, and in this respect a simple Christian lives far more poetically than many a brilliant intellectual."209 That is to say, the Christian believes that her or his ideal is not ultimately

204. Paul Ricoeur, Time and Narrative, vol. 1, trans. Kathleen McLaughlin and David Pellauer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), 54. Ricoeur's three stages of mimesis are "mimesis]" (practical experience or generative event), "mimesis2" (the mediating role of emplotment), and "mimesis3" (the transposition of the reader's practical field through interpretation). "We have to preserve in the meaning of the term mimesis," Ricoeur maintains, "a reference to the first side of poetic composition. I call this reference mimesisi to distinguish it from mimesis2—the mimesis of creation—which remains the pivot point... . This is not all. Mimesis... as an activity, the mimetic activity, does not reach its intended term through the dynamism of the poetic text alone. It also requires a spectator or reader. So there is another side of poetic composition as well, which I call mimesis/ {Time and Narrative, 1:46). So long as the dimension of mimesis3 finds expression in ethical practice and not simply in imagination, Kierkegaard would find Ricoeur's analysis amenable.

205. Schlegel, Schlegel's Lucinde and the Fragments, 175; Athenaeum Fragments, no. 116. 206. See Kierkegaard, Concept of Irony, 281; SKS, 1:317: "The ironist frequently becomes nothing,

because what is not true for God is true for man—out of nothing comes nothing." 207. Johannes de Silentio suggests this model: "Just as God created man and woman, so he created the

hero and the poet or orator. The poet or orator can do nothing that the hero does; he can only admire, love, and delight in him" (Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong [Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983], 15; SKS, 4:112). Anti-Climacus, of course, insists that the one who would become a Christian must not simply admire the hero, but strive to imitate the one he or she admires.

208. Rae, Kierkegaard's Vision of the Incarnation, 48. 209. Kierkegaard, Concept of Irony, 280-81; SKS, 1:316.


an imaginative ideal merely, but rather an ideal that derives from God and has become actual in Christ and that should be mimetically actualized in the lives of Christ's followers.

As I shall discuss at greater length in the concluding chapter, Kierkegaard came to understand his vocational challenge as a "religious poet" to be one of configuring the Christian ideal in the imaginative medium, so that readers would strive to apply it in the actual medium of their own lives. In his words, such a religious poet should "do the kind of writing that helps people out into the current."210 Ricoeur has argued that what a reader encounters in this kind of writing is "a proposed world, a world that I might inhabit and wherein I might project my ownmost possibilities."211 In fact, this view was already incipient in Aristotle's view of poetry as the presentation of the possible, as Ricoeur acknowledges. Aristotle writes in his Poetics that "the difference between the poet and the historian is not in their utterances being in verse or prose . . . ; the difference lies in the fact that the historian speaks of what has happened, the poet of the kind of thing that can happen."212

Anti-Climacus holds this exact view of the relation; without attribution, he paraphrases Aristotle when he writes, "The difference between poetry and history is surely this, that history is what actually happened, whereas poetry is the possible, the imagined, the poetized."213 Even so, as Aristotle maintains, "if it happens that [a poet] puts something that has actually taken place into poetry, he is none the less a poet; for there is nothing to prevent some of the things that have happened from being the kind of things that can happen, and that is the sense in which he is their maker."214 In this respect, Anti-Climacus conforms to the Aristotelian paradigm of a poet, for he depicts in his work an ethical-religious ideal (i.e., an actual life that conforms perfecdy to lived "truth") that he affirms has happened and insists should be imitated. His depiction of this incarnation of truth is poetic rather than historical because, even if it in fact happened, it is nonetheless a paradoxical event that is not historically demonstrable.215 Moreover, his prescription of the imitation of Christ is poetic rather than historical as well, since a poet has license to project ideals for the future, whereas a historian's role qua historian is to describe social interactions of the past. In the Anti-Climacus works and in Kierkegaard's later veronymous writings, the mimetic relation between the Christ event and the world of Kierkegaard's texts is not purely descriptive but increasingly prescriptive. To speak in terms of what Ricoeur calls a "poetics of action," Kierkegaard's mimetic reconfiguration of the imitation of Christ tradition does not merely have a "descriptive value," since it also has a "projective function that is part of the very

210. Kierkegaard, Journals and Papers 6.6S21; Papirer, X2 A 157 (n.d., 1849). 211. Ricoeur, Figuring the Sacred, 43. 212. Aristotle, Poetics, 32-33 (§1451b). 213. Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, 63-64; SV1,12:60; italics added in the English translation. 214. Aristotle, Poetics, 34 (§1451b). 215. This is because, as I explicated in the previous chapter, Christ's divinity presents nothing for the

historian qua historian to recognize; "as the paradox," Christ is what Anti-Climacus calls "an extremely unhistorical person" (Practice in Christianity, 63; SV1,12:60).


dynamism of acting."216 In the case of Kierkegaard's explicitly Christian writings, the proposed world of the texts describes not just what could happen but projects that which he believes should happen, namely, that one should move from text to action by incorporating the ideal of Christian imitation into daily practice.

In effect, therefore, if not also by intention, what Kierkegaard accomplishes in his Christomorphic poetics is a retrieval and coordination of the mimetic tradition that folds the neglected imitatio Christi devotional practice into the unfashionable literary theory in a way that reinvigorates both for his late Romantic context. In his view, early German Romantic irony depreciated literary imitation with its "mania for originality,"217 and the bourgeois "observational religion" of the nineteenth century substituted the devotional attempt to "imitate" Christ with the easier and more comfortable relation of "admiration."218 Given a sympathetic reading, the Romantic ironist's concern for the "eternal agility... of an infinitely teeming chaos"219 safeguards the inimitability of "the Absolute" by evoking the infinitude and freedom that will not be contained in external forms. In a similar way, the "observational" piety of Christ's "admirers" {Beundrere) might be viewed as an appropriate response to what Johannes Climacus calls "the wonder" (Vidunderet) of the incarnation.220 Interpreted this way, both of these positions reject imitation as a literary and devotional ideal, respectively, as a way of acknowledging that the divine is ultimately inimitable. Ironically enough, however, in Kierkegaard's hands this conviction is dialectically affirmed and intensified by his retrieval and endorsement of imitation. Contrary to what Romantic irony and bourgeois admiration imply, the attempt to imitate God in Christ is not inimical to the experience of the inimitable. Rather, according to Kierkegaard, it is through an earnest attempt to imitate Christ that one recognizes all the more tangibly how far short of that ideal one falls. In a journal entry describing what he wants to accomplish with Practice in Christianity, Kierkegaard writes:

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....

One thing, however, remains—we are still all saved by grace.221

216. Ricoeur, "Imagination in Discourse and in Action," 177. 217. A. W. Schlegel, in F. Schlegel, Schlegel's Lucinde and the Fragments, 188; Athenaeum Fragments, no.

197. 218. Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, 236-37; SV1,12:216-17. 219. Schlegel, Schlegel's Lucinde and the Fragments, 247; Ideas, no. 69. 220. In Danish, beundre and vidunderet are related etymologically in a way that the English terms

"admire" and "the wonder" are not. 221. KvfcktgAArA, Journals and Papers 6.6521; Papirer,X2 A 157 (n.d., 1849).


Although the Christian prototype is ultimately inimitable, what Kierkegaard presents through literary mimesis, and what he challenges readers to appropriate in ethical-religious imitation, is the insight that "as soon as imitation is completely omitted, grace is taken in vain."222

Besides literary mimesis and ethical mimesis, however, there is one final mimetic dimension in Kierkegaard's authorship. And despite Kierkegaard's claim that his entire authorship leads right to it, this form of mimesis is perhaps the least obvious of the three. "An authorship that began with Either/Or and advanced step by step seeks here its decisive place of rest," Kierkegaard writes, "at the foot of the altar."223 While Kierkegaard is not widely recognized for his liturgical imagination, the implication of this statement is clear; he conceives his writing as a narrative path to the Christian rite of Eucharist, the primary liturgical symbol of the offer and appropriation of God's grace in Christ. Notably, in the first section of Practice in Christianity, no. Ill—in one of those instances within Kierkegaard's authorship that makes the relation of his pseudonyms to himself impossible to sort out definitively—Anti-Climacus includes an actual Communion discourse given by "Mag-ister Kierkegaard" at Vor Frue Kirke on Friday, September 1, 1848. "Since it actually gave me the idea for the tide," Anti-Climacus graciously acknowledges, "I have, with his consent [i.e., Kierkegaard's], printed it."224 A number of the other sections of Practice in Christianitywere also prepared in the genre of a Communion discourse for the Friday Eucharist at Kierkegaard's church, as were his Three Discourses at the Communion on Fridays (1849) and his Two Discourses at the Communion on Fridays (1851). These discourses, Kierkegaard wrote, were "parallel to Anti-Climacus, and the position of'Discourses at the Communion on Fridays' is once and for all designated as the place of rest of the authorship?22'' By the statement that these works are "parallel" to Anti-Climacus, I take Kierkegaard to mean that he believes they depict ideal Christianity on the same order as The Sickness unto Death and Practice in Christianity. That he assigns to these works the "the place of rest of the authorship" means that with these works—discourses written to prepare listeners' hearts and minds to receive the eucharistic meal—he laid his own life's work down at the place to which he hoped it would lead his readers.

This stated parallel between the Communion discourses and the Anti-Climacus works finds deeper expression, however, in the dialectical parallel Anti-Climacus draws between the ethical attempt to imitate Christ, and the liturgical symbol of Christ's Last Supper and sacrificial offering. As I explicated earlier, ethical imitation for Anti-Climacus (and Kierkegaard) corresponds to Christ's role as the "prototype" and "criterion." Eucharist, on the other hand, corresponds to Christ's role as the graceful redeemer of imperfect human beings through his death and resurrection, and it is through receiving the Eucharist that one symbolically

222. Kierkegaard, Journals and Papers 2.1878; Papirer, X3 A 411 (n.d., 1850). 223. Kierkegaard, Without Authority, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton, NJ:

Princeton University Press, 1997), 165; SV1,12:267. 224. Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, 151n; SV1,12:141n*. 225. Kierkegaard, Journals and Papers, 6.6519; Papirer, X2 A 148 (n.d., 1849); italics added.


participates in this holy story. As a reenactment of Christ's Last Supper, as an isomorphism of the manna in the wilderness, as a symbol of the sacrificial lamb, and as an emblem of the Word's incarnation in the body and blood of Christ, and so forth, the Eucharist refers mimetically to the life of Christ just as the ethical imitation of him does, although in different respects.226 Yet at some points in Practice in Christianity Anti-Climacus folds the ethical requirement and sacrificial grace together by interpreting the imitation of Christ through the images of the eucharistic meal. When he says, "an imitator is or strives to be what he admires,"227

for example, he elaborates the point by saying that through imitation Christ "is assimilated into me or as I take him as one takes medicine, swallow him—but please note, because he is indeed a requirement upon me to give him back in replica."228 When he emphasizes that a would-be Christian does not seek to imitate a personally constructed Romantic ideal but, rather, divine truth as expressed in the life of Christ, he insists, "Only then do I in truth know the truth, when it becomes a life in me. Therefore Christ compares truth to food and appropriating it to eating, for just as, physically, food by being appropriated (assimilated) becomes the life sustenance, so also, spiritually, truth is both the giver of life and the sustenance of life, is life."229 Truth is life, he affirms, and "Christ is the truth."230 An individual whose task is "becoming a Christian" seeks to "appropriate," "incorporate," "assimilate," and "replicate" the truth of Christ's prototypical life through mimetic identification with Christ's suffering of abasement and mockery. When through actual striving that person increasingly realizes how discontinuous with divine truth his or her life actually is, he or she can more "worthily accept the grace"231 symbolized in the mimetic act of Holy Communion. When "the sacred act is primary," Anti-Climacus quotes Kierkegaard as saying, "[Christ] is present at the altar where you are seeking him; he is present there—but only in order once again from on high to draw you to himself."232 On both sides of the oscillating dialectic between the subjective ethical "imitation" of Christ and the symbolic liturgical "assimilation" of Christ, therefore, mimesis is fundamental to the conception of Christian faith promoted in Kierkegaard's writings. Yet, in the end, what is at stake is not imitation per se, but rather a personal transformation through which one learns that practice in Christianity means, in the words of Anti-Climacus, "to practice resorting to grace in such a way that you do not take it in vain."233

226. For an analysis of the Eucharist on a number of its many levels see Robert Cummings Neville, The Truth of Broken Symbols (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996), 77-86.

227. Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, 241; SV1,12:220; italics added in the English translation. 228. Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, 242-43; SV1,12:222. 229. Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, 206; SV1,12:190. The reference is to John 6:48-51: "I am

the bread of life. Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh."

230. Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, 204; SV1,12:188. 231. Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, 67; SV1,12:64. 232. Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, 155-56; SV1,12:145. 233. Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, 65; SV1,12:62.

C H A P T E R F I V E

Between Irony and Witness

Many a poet should say with an old German poet: O starker Gott! O gerechter Richter Erbarm dich iiber mich armen Dichter (O mighty God! O just judge Have mercy upon me a poor poet).

—Kierkegaard,/o«raa/.s and Papers (quoting from the anonymous poem "Vorrede in die klegliche Zukunft")

In the final pages of Practice in Christianity, Anti-Climacus laments the spiritual lassitude of bourgeois society:

Soon it will have gone so far that people must make use of art in the most various ways to help get Christendom to show at least some sympathy with Christianity. But if art is going to help, be it the art of the sculptor, the art of the orator, the art of the poet, we will have at most admirers who, besides admiring the artist, are led by his presentations to admire what is Christian. But strictly speaking, the admirer is indeed no true Christian; only the imitator is that.1

This critique of art, which is surely also a self-critique of Kierkegaard's art, echoes Kierkegaard's earliest critical comments regarding the relation of poetry to actuality. The individual who stands back and "admires" relates to the object of admiration in a merely imaginative way, Kierkegaard thinks, rather than seeking to make what he or she admires actual in his or her own life through imitation of what he or she admires. It is clear, however, that Kierkegaard does not entirely believe

1. Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991), 256-57; SV1,12:234.

149


Anti-Climacus's statement that artists and poets can only foster admiration, for his own conception of his entire authorship, and of his own role as a poet, makes clear that he thinks a certain kind of poetic production can serve a definite purpose in the larger mission of promoting Christian imitation. One of the tasks of this chapter, therefore, is to clarify the reasons for this seeming double-mindedness on this matter. This confusion can be resolved by recognizing that, in any given instance, when Kierkegaard or his pseudonyms use the term "poet," any one of three distinct referents or kinds of poet might be intended: the secular Romantic poet, the religious poet, or the divine poet. Unfortunately, Kierkegaard never offers a complete typology of his operative senses of the term "poet," and in some contexts he fails adequately to distinguish which sense of the term he means. This sometimes leads to frustration, since a reader frequently comes across remarkably negative portrayals of "the poet," and then later finds Kierkegaard arguing that in order to make a "tactical advance" within Christendom, Christianity requires "a detachment of poets" who "set forth the ideal."2 A typology that distinguishes Kierkegaard's assumptions about different kinds of poets disentangles these seemingly contradictory sentiments by allowing a reader to analyze the context and recognize the particular kind of poet under discussion. Thus, by constructing a typology and by showing how the three senses of the term "poet" function within Kierkegaard's larger poetics, this chapter makes clear the manner in which Kierkegaard as a "religious poet" distinguishes himself from the "secular poet" of Romantic irony by fostering what he considers authentic Christian "witness" in the world according to the "Word" of the divine poet embodied in Christ.

Witnessing Poetically

Kierkegaard does not claim to have embarked upon his life's work with a definite design for what he hoped to accomplish. He had no antecedent program for his authorship, if by that one means a plan that details in advance what is to come and why. Rather, he interprets his writing in terms of the unfolding of God's providential plan for him: "It is Governance that has brought me up, and the upbringing is reflected in the writing process."3 So, if it is true that "life can be interpreted only after it has been experienced,"4 as Kierkegaard is often quoted as saying, then it seems to be the case that Kierkegaard interpreted his life in terms of his experience as a writer. Kierkegaard's explicit reflections on what it means to be a religious poet were written in the later years of his productivity, from 1847 onward. It was in these years that he came to understand that the dialectic that finds expression in so many different ways within his poetic productions—namely, the

2. Kierkegaard, Seren Kierkegaard's Journals and Papers, ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, 7 vols. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1967-1978), 6.6521; Papirer, X2 A 157 (n.d., 1849).

3. Kierkegaard, The Point of View for My Work as an Author, in The Point of View, trans. Howard V. I long and Edna H. Hong (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998), 77; SV1,13:562.

4. Kierkegaard, Journals and Papers, 1.1025; Papirer, II A 725 (April 15, 1838); SKS, 18:99. See also Journals and Papers, 1.1030; Papirer, IV A 164 (n.d., 1843); SKS, 18:194.

BETWEEN IRONY AND WITNESS 151

productive dialectic he articulates between the sphere of reflection (the domain of imagination) and the sphere of lived actuality (the domain of will)—is also the dialectic that defines his personal relationship to his work. Analogous to his conception of God the poet who creatively lets the world's myriad possibilities burgeon yet also actualizes the true human ideal in the incarnation, Kierkegaard proliferates life views though his various pseudonyms but attests that he also personally strives in relation to his depiction of the Christian prototype.

In The Point of View for My Work as an Author; A Direct Communication, Report to History Kierkegaard attempts to organize his total production into a symmetrical "duplexity" comprised by "the aesthetic" writings on the one hand, and "the religious" writings on the other, with Concluding Unscientific Postscript as the "turning point" between the two.5 In its details, The Point of View is highly problematic as the "report to history" it purports to be. As Joakim Garff has argued, the inconsistencies in Kierkegaard's classifications and reclassifications of various works render his account of the "symmetry" between the aesthetic works and the religious works "heavily dependent on the good will of the reader."6 Garff details four different accounts of the authorship as a whole within Kierkegaard's writings: (1) Johannes Climacus's "A Glance at a Contemporary Effort in Danish Literature" in Concluding Unscientific Postscript, (2) Kierkegaard's "A First and Last Explanation," appended to Concluding Unscientific Postscript, (3) Kierkegaard's On My Work as an Author, composed in 1849 but not published until 1851; and (4) The Point of View for My Work as an Author, composed in 1848 but not published until after Kierkegaard's death. Kierkegaard's many revisions of his "point of view" corroborate Garff s claim that The Point of View is not an affidavit of intention but "a Active documentation, a documenta(fic)tion."7 Garff is surely right to maintain that Kierkegaard's "constant revision" of his point of view undermines the claim of any one interpretation to document the authorial intention behind the totality of the authorship.8 For my part, I think Kierkegaard's account of his authorship would be better had he simply acknowledged asymmetry in the relationship between "aesthetic" and "religious" works (since it is hard to imagine how the aesthetic concern for symmetry can vouchsafe a religious intent anyway) and instead satisfied himself with his shorter formula: The "movement from 'the poet' to religious existing is basically the movement in the entire work as an author regarded in its totality."9

The Christomorphic poetics embedded in Kierkegaard's various writings and explicated in this study certainly supports the primacy of this claim.

5. Kierkegaard, Point of View for My Work as an Author, 31; SV1,13:523. 6. Joakim Garff, "The Eyes of Argus: The Point of View and Points of View on Kierkegaard's Work as

an Author," trans. Jane Chamberlain and Belinda Ioni Rasmussen, in Kierkegaard: A Critical Reader, ed. Jonathan Ree and Jane Chamberlain (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998), 81.

7. Garff, "Eyes of Argus," 86. To give just one obvious example of Kierkegaard's problematic revisions, in The Point of View for My Work as an Author Kierkegaard classifies his Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses (1843-1845) as a part of the "aesthetic" production, whereas in On My Work as an Author he classifies these same discourses in the "religious" group of writings.

8. Garff, "Eyes of Argus," 93. 9. Kierkegaard, Point of View for My Work as an Author, 120n+; SV1,13:606, n. ***.


Kierkegaard gives a better account of his authorial program—better primarily because he avoids the unstable claims about symmetry and keeps to his shorter formula—in a terse piece entitled Armed Neutrality; or My Position as a Christian Author in Christendom}0 In Christendom, he reiterates here, the established order has illegitimately modified the task of becoming a Christian into that of thinking about Christianity. "The medium for being a Christian," he says, "has been shifted from existence and the ethical to the intellectual, the metaphysical, the imagina-tional."11 In this context, Kierkegaard understands his role as a religious poet to be that of presenting "in every way—dialectical, pathos-filled (in the various forms of pathos), psychological, modernized by continual reference to modern Christendom and to the fallacies of a science and scholarship—the ideal picture [Bi/kde] of being a Christian: this was and is the task."12 Echoing Anti-Climacus, Kierkegaard here affirms Jesus Christ as the prototype (Forbillede) and the object of faith, and insists therefore that the ideal picture (Bi/kde) must be related to Christ as "a kind of human interpretation" of what it means to be a Christian in modernity.13 In an extended passage that warrants quotation in full, Kierkegaard explains the role of the poet in forwarding this interpretation, and distinguishes this poetic task from the "ordinary conception" of what a poet does:

It certainly is of the utmost importance that the ideal picture of a Christian be held up in every generation, elucidated particularly in relation to the errors of the times, but the one who presents this picture must above all not make the mistake of identifying himself with it in order to pick up some adherents, must not let himself be idolized and then with earthly and worldly passion pass judgment upon Christendom. No, the relation must be kept purely ideal. The one who presents this picture must himself first and foremost humble himself under it, confess that he, even though he himself is struggling within himself to approach this picture, is very far from being that. He must confess that he actually relates himself only poetically or qua poet to the presentation of this picture, while he (which is his difference from the ordinary conception of a poet) in his own person relates himself Christianly to the presented picture, and that only as a poet is he ahead in presenting the picture.14

Here the difference between "the ordinary conception of a poet" and Kierkegaard's conception of himself as a poet turns on the qualification of whether the poet struggles to actualize his or her "ideal picture." In other words, according to

10. This essay was also published posthumously (1880), but Kierkegaard had considered appending it to Practice in Christianity under the pseudonym Anti-Climacus (see Papirer, X5 B 105 [n.d., 1849]). He later redrafted it as an appendix to The Point of View {Papirer, X5 B 108 [n.d., 1849]).

11. Kierkegaard, Armed Neutrality, in Point of View, 130; Papirer, X5 B 107: 289. 12. Kierkegaard, Armed Neutrality, 131; Papirer, X5 B 107:290. 13. Kierkegaard, Armed Neutrality, 132; Papirer,X5 B 107:292. 14. Kierkegaard, Armed Neutrality, 133; Papirer, X5 B 107:292-93.


Kierkegaard, poets do not ordinarily relate themselves to their idealized images by striving to resemble them, whereas this is precisely what Kierkegaard thinks the religious poet should do with respect to the "ideal picture of a Christian."15

This insistence on the importance of attempting to express one's imaginative ideal by willing it in actuality contours every feature of Kierkegaard's poetics. As Kierkegaard reflects upon his authorship in his later years, therefore, he employs this same productive dialectic between imagination and will to define his self-understanding as a religious poet. The "religious poet," he says, is one who both imaginatively depicts the Christian ideal in his poetic production, and who also "is striving in relation to it."16

It is this normative feature of Kierkegaard's poetics, both in his theory of how a religious poet relates to his productions and in the imagination-actuality dialectic within the productions themselves, that distinguishes Kierkegaard "from the typical poet."17 As a religious poet, Kierkegaard claims to strive relative to his Christian ideal, whereas it allegedly "never occurs" to the typical poet "to strive personally in relation to the ideality he presents."18 As poets go, therefore, Kierkegaard considers himself fairly advanced:

I am the last stage of the development of a poet in the direction of a small-scale reformer. I have much more imagination than a reformer as such would have, but then again less of a certain personal force required for acting as a reformer. Aided by my imagination . . . I can grasp all the Christian qualifications in the most faithful and vital way. The times obviously require this. There are certain things which must be kept in mind constantly or the standard is lost.19

But if Kierkegaard considers himself more advanced than a typical poet with respect to Christianity, this does not mean he also considers himself an advanced Christian. He claims to depict the ideal, but he confesses and even bemoans the fact that he does not embody it. "I am only a poet," he writes, "alas, only a poet. Do not look at my life—and yet, do look at my life only to see what a mediocre Christian I am. Something you will see best when you listen to what I say about the ideal."20 Thus, while Kierkegaard characterizes his daily existence as a Christian in terms of mediocrity, he nevertheless maintains that his testimony to the Christian ideal has a definite and important purpose, because "it may influence another to strive more," and also because it "is meaningful both for keeping me awake and keeping me striving."21 As a religious poet, therefore, he not only "depicts" and

15. Kierkegaard, Armed Neutrality, 133; Papirer,X5 B 107:292. 16. Kierkegaard,/rar«fl/t and Papers 6.6528; Papirer, X2 A 184 (n.d., 1849). 17. Kierkegaard Journals and Papers 6.6528; Papirer, X2 A184 (n.d., 1849). 18. Kierkegaard,/™™/; and Papers 6.6528; Papirer, X2 A 184 (n.d., 1849). 19. Kierkegaard, Journals and Papers, 6.6061; Papirer, Villi A 347 (n.d., 1847); SKS, 20:227. 20. Kierkegaard, Journals and Papers, 6.6727; Papirer, X4 A33 (n.d., 1851). 21. Kierkegaard,/o«?TOA and Papers, 6.6528; Papirer, X2 A 184 (n.d., 1849).


"strives," but he also exhorts other would-be Christians to become more authentic Christian witnesses.

A category that became increasingly important for Kierkegaard in his later years was that of the Sandhedsvidne, or "witness to the truth."22 While potentially misleading, it is no exaggeration to say that fostering the growth of readers and of himself into a witness to the truth is the ideal telos or objective of Kierkegaard's work as he comes to understand his authorship. What makes this claim potentially misleading is (1) the close connection between the terms "witness" (vidne) and "testimony" {vidnesbyrd)—a witness attests, testifies, gives testimony, or witnesses—and (2) the fact that both terms can be further qualified with respect to statement or action. There are different kinds of "testimony" or "witness"; "testimony as narrative" is different from "testimony as act," just as what Kierkegaard says about the ideal is different from witnessing to that ideal in actual practice.23 Whereas a religious poet attests to the Christian ideal with his or her narrative but may fall short in attempting to resemble that ideal, the testimony of a witness is both narrative and act, according to Kierkegaard, because a truth witness is "someone who proclaims the teaching and also existentially expresses it."24 As such, "witness to the truth" is Kierkegaard's term for the ideal Christian that the religious poet exhorts his listeners to become. In a biting criticism of the pastoral wardens of Christendom who, Kierkegaard alleges, scarcely testify to the Christian ideal in their proclamation, much less in their actual lives, Kierkegaard writes:

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. . . .

22. From sandhed [truth] + vidne [witness]. It is important to note that there is a significant loss of meaning in the literal translation of this term into English. The Danish term is a translation of the Greek word martyr, meaning "witness"; in English, the term "martyr" seems largely to have lost the capacity to function synonymously with "witness."

23. Paul Ricoeur makes this clear in his essay treating Heidegger, Nabert, and Levinas, entitled "Emmanuel Levinas: Thinker of Testimony," in Figuring the Sacred: Religion, Narrative, and Imagination, trans. David Pellauer, ed. Mark I. Wallace (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995), 108-26.

24. Kierkegaard, Journals and Papers, 6.6521; Papirer, X2 A 157 (n.d., 1849).


The first and foremost task is to create pathos, with the superiority of intelligence, imagination, penetration, and wit to guarantee pathos for the existential, which "the understanding" has reduced to the ludicrous.25

Kierkegaard's idea here is that the religious poet, or a whole "detachment" of such poets if Kierkegaard can muster them, steps forward to fill a perceived need. Because he considers his contemporaries among the clergy ineffective at "creating pathos" and thereby helping people "out into the current" of Christian life, he assumes the responsibility himself. "Here is my task," he concludes, as simply as it can be put.26 He gives narrative testimony to the Christian ideal in his poetic productions in order to help others (and himself) better embody that testimony in an earnest and passionate life, a life characterized by "pathos." As Johannes Climacus puts it, what finally matters is that one's "pathos lies not in testifying to an eternal happiness but in transforming one's own existence into a testimony to it."27

Nonetheless, as Kierkegaard's introduction of the category of the religious poet makes clear, "poetic pathos" can play an important role in motivating the "existential pathos" of a would-be witness to the truth. This is the "dialogic structure of testimony"28 that obtains between testimony as narrative and testimony as act; the "poetic pathos" of the religious poet's narrative testimony catalyzes the "existential pathos" of the lived testimony of the witness to the truth.29 This is the movement from the sphere of poetic imagination "into the current" of actuality in which the witness to the truth seeks to embody the Word.

What is important to emphasize here is that the movement, from the sphere of poetic imagination is not a movement out of'the sphere of poetic imagination but rather a movement initiated from and involving the imagination. Whether inadvertently or not, Kierkegaard oftentimes encourages misunderstanding on this point both in his recurrent critique of "the typical poet" and also in his problematic version of his personal development as a process in which "a poetic and philosophical nature is set aside in order to become a Christian."30 But Kierkegaard never "set aside" his poetic and philosophical nature, since he continued to speak of himself as "predominantly a poet and thinker."31 More importantly, neither can his conception of the complementary relationship between imagination and actuality be reconciled with the notion of "setting aside" the poetic ability to imagine ideals. In the first place, Kierkegaard's writings repeatedly illustrate the process of becoming a Christian in terms of a productive and ongoing dialectical coordination of the imagination ("the first condition for what becomes of a person") and the will ("the

25. KierkegaardJoumaA and Papers, 6.6521; Papirer, X2 A 157 (n.d., 1849). 26. Kierkegaard, Journals and Papers, 6.6521; Papirer, X2 A 157 (n.d., 1849). 27 Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments, trans. Howard V. Hong

and Edna H. Hong (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992), 394; SKS, 7:359. 28. Ricoeur, Figuring the Sacred, 117. 29. The distinction between "poetic pathos" and "existential pathos" is one Johannes Climacus makes in

Concluding Unscientific Postscript, 394; SKS, 7:359. 30. Kierkegaard, Point of View for My Work as an Author, 77; SV1,8:562; italics added. 31. Kierkegaard, Journals and Papers, 6.6391; Papirer, XI A 281 (April 25,1849); SKS, 21:367.


second and in the ultimate sense the decisive condition"32). In the second place, even the writings that Kierkegaard labels "religious" in contradistinction from "aesthetic" manifest an enduring "poetic and philosophical nature" that shares much with early German Romanticism. In particular, as I will show in the following section, in Works of Love Kierkegaard depicts Christian "faith, hope, and love" in a way that sublimates the model of romantic love in order to portray the ideal relationship between a Christian and God.

The Romantic Poet and the Religious Poet

On the face of it, Works of Love (1847) is another text that seems to suggest that Kierkegaard's authorship directs human development away from the poetic and toward the religious, instead of moving into a deeper theopoetic conception of what it would mean to express imagination in existence. This is because in Works of Love Kierkegaard "conducts a running diatribe," as Sylvia Walsh has called it, "against the poet and the poetic interpretation of love."33 At the same time as he is conducting this diatribe, however, Kierkegaard also offers another key to understanding his self-conception as a "religious poet" in contradistinction from the "typical" or "ordinary" poet. It is the similarities and differences between these two kinds of poets that I want to discuss in this section.

Works of Love is one of the texts in which Kierkegaard too easily allows the general expression "the poet" to stand for only one specific kind of poet, namely, what he elsewhere calls the "ordinary" or "typical" kind of poet, and what he here also calls the "secular" kind of poet. Kierkegaard's justification for this generalization is that "it is the secular poet we think of when we ordinarily speak of the poet."34 But this generalization is also misleading, because the "diatribe" against "the poet" that Walsh speaks of is not a denunciation of every poet. Rather, what becomes clear in the course of the book is that it is a diatribe against the "secular poet" conducted by a "religious poet." As was the case when he wrote The Concept of Irony, Kierkegaard's conception of the secular poet in Works of Love is thoroughly contoured by his understanding of Schlegelian Romanticism and its heralding of "erotic love and friendship."35 Unlike in The Concept of Irony, however, this detail frequently goes unnoticed in Works of Love because Kierkegaard does not identify individual poets in the latter to illustrate his case. In Works of Love "the question is not about this or that particular poet," Kierkegaard writes, "but only about the poet, that is, insofar as he is true to himself and his task as a poet."36 Nevertheless, since Kierkegaard defines the poet's "task" as the celebration of erotic love between a man and a woman preeminently, and of friendship between a man and another

32. Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, 186; SV1, 7:173. See chapter 4 for a fuller discussion of the relationship between imagination and will.

33. Sylvia Walsh, Living Poetically; Kierdegaard's Existential Aesthetics (University Park'. Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994), 179.

34. Kierkegaard, Works of Love, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995), 46; SKS, 9:53.

35. Kierkegaard, Works of Love, 49; SKS, 9:56. 36. Kierkegaard, Works of Love, 49; SKS, 9:56.


man secondarily, this task conforms precisely to Schlegel's "catechism of love," as Kierkegaard earlier called it.37 Consequently, although Schlegel is not again the explicit target of an attack, it remains "Lucinde and the whole trend associated with it" that for Kierkegaard typifies poetry in the secular sense of the word.38

Recognizing Romantic irony as the backdrop for Kierkegaard's critique of "the poet" in Works of Love allows for a better understanding of some of the claims he makes about the differences between Christianity and "the poet" with respect to what love is and what it means to love. The kind of love that romantic poetry celebrates, Kierkegaard writes, "has its highest, its unconditional, its only poetically unconditioned expression in this—there is but one and only one beloved in the whole world, and this one and only one time of erotic love is love, is everything."39

Here everything focuses not on the "works of love" Kierkegaard promotes, but on "making love," to use the familiar euphemism. In Schlegel's Lucinde, for example, erotic lovemaking is celebrated as "the highest of all plastic arts,"40 as Lucinde's lover assures her, because in so channeling "the pure flame of the noblest life force,"41 the partners participate in "the omnipresence of the anonymous unknown Godhead"42 and return "human nature . . . to its original state of divinity."43 In recent years, George Steiner has echoed this Romantic motif in his confidence that the relationship between erotic love and the creative word, "the relations of Eros to Logos" plays "the cardinal function" in the creation and reception of the various forms of art.44 Kierkegaard insists, however, that this coalition of poetic potency and erotic love is not so much a participation in the divine as it is "idolatry" and "self-deification,"45 and that what the romantic celebrates as devotion to one's "only beloved" is secretly a form of self-love. Thus, "what pleases the poet indescribably," as Kierkegaard writes, "that the lover says, 'I cannot love anyone else, I cannot stop loving, I cannot give up this love, it would be the death of me, I am dying of love,' "46 disguises a deeper narcissism.

37. Kierkegaard, The Concept of Irony, with Continual Reference to Socrates, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton, NJ:Princeton University Press, 1989), 291; SKS, 1:325. In Works of Love, Kierkegaard repeatedly makes the claim that what "the poet" celebrates is first and foremost erotic love, and then preferential friendship (see Works of Love, 19, 21, 31,49, 50, 52, 57, and passim; SKS, 9:27,29, 38,56,57,59, 64, and passim). Peter Firchow explains that the "religion of love" that Schlegel preaches in Lucinde has "two main dogmas" that, in turn, "form the two main themes of the novel: the love of man for man, or friendship; and the love of man for woman, or passionate love" (Firchow, "Editor's Introduction," in Friedrich Schlegel, Friedrich Schlegel's Lucinde and the Fragments, trans. Peter Firchow [Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1971], 23). Of these two forms of love, Firchow corroborates, the love of a man for a woman is clearly the more important in Romanticism.

38. Kierkegaard, Concept of Irony, 301; SKS, 1:334. 39. Kierkegaard, Works of Love, 49; SKS, 9:56. 40. Schlegel, Schlegel's Lucinde and the Fragments, 119. i 41. Schlegel, Schlegel's Lucinde and the Fragments, 113. 42. Schlegel, Schlegel's Lucinde and the Fragments, 120. \ . ••••:. 43. Schlegel, Schlegel's Lucinde andthe Fragments, 113. 44. George Steiner, Real Presences (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), 193. 45. Kierkegaard, Works of Love, 57; SKS, 9:64. 46. Kierkegaard, Works of Love, 55; SKS, 9:62.


A. W. Schlegel was prescient on this feature of self-love in romantic poetry, for among the aphorisms he submitted to his brother for inclusion in the Athenaeum Fragments is one that declares, "Every poet is really Narcissus."47 In fact, even within Friedrich Schlegel's Lucinde one detects a potentially critical response to romantic narcissism in Lucinde's recognition that her lover's perception of her is idealized. As Lucinde says to Julius, "You see reflected in me—in me who am forever yours—the marvelous flower of your imagination."48 Despite Julius's protestation to Lucinde that "it's not simply a product of my imagination[;] . . . my yearning for you is boundless and always unsatisfied,"49 Lucinde nonetheless makes the stronger case, at least by Kierkegaard's thinking. Romantic love as Kierkegaard represents it is primarily a function of the imaginative projection of an individual's personal preferences onto an object of desire arbitrarily chosen to satisfy one's supposed "boundless yearning." For this reason, Kierkegaard insists, "preferential love in passion or passionate preference is actually another form of self-love."50 Amy Laura Hall nicely illustrates Kierkegaard's identification of romantic love with self-love: "Even when I proclaim that I love another dearly, what I am likely cherishing is some aspect of the other that relates to my own self-centered hopes and dreams."51 In romantic love a self, an "7," projects its hopes and dreams onto another self, and in so doing does not love the other for itself, as an "otheryou," but as "the other self, the other I."S2 The "I" becomes "intoxicated in the other IP3

By contrast, says Kierkegaard, "Christian love teaches us to love all people, unconditionally all."54 Kierkegaard explicitly grounds this testimony in the answer Christ gives to a question regarding which of the commandments in the law is the greatest: '"You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.' This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets."55 Works of Love in its entirety can be read as Kierkegaard's sustained meditation on this instruction from Christ. In a certain respect, Kierkegaard wants the reader to recognize that Christ's teaching "intensifies" love in precisely the opposite direction from romantic love. Romantic love is "preferential" and focuses on "the other I" whereas "Christian love," in its commandment to love the neighbor as oneself, extends to every other as an authentic other, "the other youP^ To the romantic poet, Kierkegaard acknowledges,

47. A. W. Schlegel, in F. Schlegel, Schlegel's Lucinde and the Fragments, 178; Athenaeum Fragments, no. 132.

48. Schlegel, Schlegel's Lucinde and the Fragments, 126. 49. Schlegel, Schlegel's Lucinde and the Fragments, 127. 50. Kierkegaard, Works of Love, 53; SKS, 9:59. 51. Amy Laura Hall, Kierkegaard and the Treachery of Love (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

2002), 44. 52. Kierkegaard, Works of Love, 53; SKS, 9:60; italics added in the English translation. 53. Kierkegaard, Works of Love, 56; SKS, 9:62; italics added in the English translation. 54. Kierkegaard, Works of Love, 49; SKS, 9:56. 55. Matt 22:37-40; cf. Mark 12:28-31; Luke 10:25-28; Deut 6:5; Lev 19:18. 56. Kierkegaard, Works of Love, p. 53; SKS, 9:60; italics added in the English translation.


the commandment "You shall love the neighbor" is "the greatest fatuousness and the most preposterous talk."57 Such a reaction on the part of the romantic poet (as Kierkegaard defines that) is understandable because the romantic poet—the "priest"58 of preferential love who dictates the oath that unites the lovers—"has only erotic love in mind."59 Since preferences indeed cannot be commanded, it is "preposterous" to consider it a "duty" to desire another romantically. As a result, for Kierkegaard,

the issue between the poet and Christianity can be defined very precisely as follows: Erotic love [Ekkov] and friendship [Venskab] are preferential love [Forkjerlighed] and the passion of preferential love, Christian love [Kjerlighed] is self-denial's love. . . . To deprive these passions of their strength is the confusion. But preferential love's most passionate boundlessness in excluding means to love only one single person; self-denial's boundlessness in giving itself means not to exclude a single one.60

Kierkegaard thus defines the love that "the poet" celebrates as the opposite ol the form of love Christ commands, despite the fact that both preferential love and Christian love root themselves in "passion." Because "the poet" is primarily interested in romantic passion and then secondarily in friendship, he takes no interest in "the apparently very unpoetic neighbor as the object of love," for, according to Kierkegaard, "love for the neighbor has certainly not been celebrated by any poet."61

But is Kierkegaard accurate in his highly normative insistence that no poet has sung the praises of Christian love? Without wishing to challenge this statement by enumerating poets and hymnodists throughout the centuries that would contest

57. Kierkegaard, Works of Love, 50; SKS, 9:57. 58. Kierkegaard, Works of Love, 29; SKS, 9:37. 59. Kierkegaard, Works 'ofLove, 50; SKS, 9:57. 60. Kierkegaard, Works of Love, 52; SKS, 9:59. It is important to note that Danish has two major words

for love: elskov and kxrlighed (spelled Kjerlighed in Kierkegaard's era). This feature of the language permits Kierkegaard to use different terms to distinguish between "erotic love" (Elskov) and "Christian love" (Kjerlighed), whereas in each case the English term "love" requires a modifier. As Kierkegaard normative-ly employs these terms in Works of Love (the Danish title is Kjerlighedens Gjerninger), the distinction between Kjerlighed and Elskov closely parallels the distinction between agape and ens that Anders Nygren made prominent in his classic study (see Nygren, Agape and Eros: A Study of the Christian Idea ofl^ove, trans. A. G. Hebert [London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1932]). As C. Edward Deyton makes clear, however, this distinction is not inherent to the Danish language (see Deyton, Speaking of Love: Kierkegaard's Plan for Faith [Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1986], 8-9). Thus, while the family of words related to kterlighed is never used to connote overtly erotic love, it is frequently used in connection with objects having to do with preference (e.g., country, friends, poetry), and when intensified by the Danish prefix "for-" to become forkterlighed, the term comes to mean "partiality" or "preferential love," of which "erotic love" is a kind. Moreover, since the word family related to kterlighed lacks a verb form, Kierkegaard easily uses the verb related to the noun elskov in a religious connection (e.g., "to love [e/ske] God is to love [elske] oneself truly" (Works of Love, 107; SKS, 9:111). As Deyton points out, therefore, "We are cautioned to explore the context in which the two roots are used, rather than drawing any automatic distinctions between Kierkegaard's use of them" (Speaking of Love, 9).

61. Kierkegaard, Works of Love, 18-19; SKS, 9:27.


Kierkegaard's assertion, a single quotation from his own pen illustrates both that when Kierkegaard says "the poet" here, he really means "romantic poet," and also that the poetry of the romantic poet is distinguishable from the poetry of a religious poet that does in fact celebrate Christian love. The prayer with which Kierkegaard opens Works of Love, for example, is nothing if not a poem, and, more specifically, a Trinitarian ode to love:

How could one speak properly about love if you were forgotten, you God of love, source of all love in heaven and on earth; you who spared nothing but in love gave everything; you who are love, so that one who loves is what he is only by being in you! How could one speak properly about love if you were forgotten, you who revealed what love is, you our Savior and Redeemer, who gave yourself in order to save all. How could one speak properly of love if you were forgotten, you Spirit of love, who take nothing of your own but remind us of that love-sacrifice, remind the believer to love as he is loved and his neighbor as himself! O Eternal Love, you who are everywhere present and never without witness where you are called upon, be not without witness in what will be said here about love or about works of love. There are indeed only some works that human language specifically and narrowly calls works of love, but in heaven no work can be pleasing unless it is a work of love: sincere in self-renunciation, a need in love itself, and for that very reason without any claim of meritoriousness!62

This encomiastic prayer of invocation sings of the love of God, love of the neighbor, and celebrates God as "Eternal Love." Only the most artificially restrictive of criteria could deny its poetic character. But such an ode does not fit within the "secular" genre of early German Romanticism and, according to Kierkegaard, "it is the secular poet we think of when we ordinarily speak of the poet."63 Kierkegaard's earlier assertion that "love for the neighbor has certainly not been celebrated by any poet" is therefore misleading, because it is an instance in which he says "the poet" even though he means more specifically "the secular romantic poet."

Kierkegaard does not always use the term "poet" in the same way. In Works of Love, after having simply given the term "the poet" away to the romantic poet, he subsequently indicates "a special case."64 A "distinction must be made," he says, "for there certainly are religious poets."65 Although he mentions none of these religious poets by name, Kierkegaard surely has himself principally in mind. Religious poets "do not sing about erotic love [Ehkov] and friendship; their songs are to the glory of God, about faith, hope, and love \Kjerlighed\"bb Understood this way, the songs

62. Kierkegaard, Works of Love, 3-4; SKS, 9:12. 63. Kierkegaard, Works of Love, 46; SKS, 9:53. 64. Kierkegaard, Works of Love, 46; SKS, 9:53. 65. Kierkegaard, Works of Love, 46; SKS, 9:53. 66. Kierkegaard, Works of Love, 46; SKS, 9:53. The triad of "faith, hope, and love1' comes from Paul's

first letter to the Corinthians (13:13).


of a religious poet sound like the Trinitarian prayer of invocation to Works of Love, and, in the more capacious sense that the term "poetry" has in the nineteenth century, such "songs" could even include much or the whole of Kierkegaard's authorship when understood in terms of the theopoetic contours I have outlined throughout this study. What I want to make clear in the next section is that Works of Love too, despite the fact that it initially reads as a denunciation of all poets, manifests the specifically Christomorphic poetics of Kierkegaard's religious poet.

The Religious Poet and the Divine Poet

Kierkegaard insists that, in a certain respect, Christianity's greatest commandment "intensifies" love in precisely the opposite direction from romantic love. But there is another less obvious respect in which Christianity's "intensification" of love parallels the preferential love of Romanticism, albeit at a higher level from the Christian perspective. Recall the analysis in chapter 2 of the "Poetical Venture" in Philosophical Fragments. There I wanted to make explicit how Johannes Climacus draws an analogy between the romantic love of "a king who loved a maiden ot lowly station in life,"67 on the one hand, and the love of "the god" who became incarnate out of love for the humble sinner, on the other. What I want to make clear here is the fact that this analogy between romantic passion and divine passion is not exclusive to the life view represented in the Johannes Climacus titles, but in fact animates Kierkegaard's entire authorship. A fundamental element of Kierkegaard's depiction of Christian "faith, hope, and love," is his sublimation of the model of romantic love in order to portray the ideal relationship between a Christian and God.

In the now familiar passage where Kierkegaard announces his conception of God as "like a poet," for example, Kierkegaard also declares, "God has only one passion: to love and to be loved."68 By this way of thinking, God's purpose in poetizing creation is to be in loving relationship with the individuals brought to life therein:

God's wanting to work as a poet in this fashion is not a diversion, as the pagans thought—no, no, the earnestness lies in God's passion to love and to be loved, yes, almost as if he were himself found in this passion, O, infinite love, so that in the power of this passion he cannot stop loving, almost as if it were a weakness, although it is rather his strength, his omnipotent love. This is the measure of his unswerving love.69

Kierkegaard complements these assertions about God's passion to love and to be loved with the more fundamental assertions that "God is love"70 and that human

67. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985), 26; SKS, 4:233.

68. Kierkegaard Journals and Papers, 2.1445; Papirer, XI2 A 98 (n.d., 1854). 69. Kierkegaard, Journals and Papers, 2.1445; Papirer, XI2 A 98 (n.d., 1854). 70. Kierkegaard, Works of Love, 62; SKS, 9:69; see 1 John 4:8.


love has its "source" in divine love: "Just as the quiet lake originates darkly in the deep spring, so a human being's love originates mysteriously in God's love."71

Kierkegaard will acknowledge that the romantic secular poet often invokes a divine source in erotic love as well, but he regards this as empty lip-service intended to make erotic love more extraordinary that it is. "The merely human view of love," he says, "can never go beyond mutuality: the lover is the beloved, and the beloved is the lover."72 But this form of love does not relate authentically to its divine source, according to Kierkegaard, for "Christianity teaches that such a love has not yet found its true object—God."73 In any authentic love-relationship between two human individuals, by contrast, God is the "middle term" of a triadic relationship.74 In a passage of Works of Love reminiscent of Augustine's De Trini-tate, Kierkegaard explains that "the love-relationship requires threeness: the lover, the beloved, the love—but the love is God."75 When two human lovers in a "merely human" romantic relationship omit the God-relationship, Kierkegaard says, their relationship is not authentic love, "but a mutually enchanting defraudation of love."76 When the two relate to each other with God as the "middle term" of their relationship, on the other hand, "God in this way not only becomes the third party in every relationship of love but really becomes the sole object of love, so that it is not the husband who is the wife's beloved, but it is God, and it is the wife who is helped by the husband to love God, and conversely, and so on."77 No matter what the particular human relationship may be, accordingly, the form of love that the religious poet praises is not the preferential passion between the two human individuals, but the preferential love of God who fundamentally engenders every particular human relationship, and who becomes the "sole true object of love"78 in any authentic relationship. Because by loving the neighbor one loves God, an authentic relationship of love as Kierkegaard conceives it is not only triadic but theocentric: "Truly to love another person i s . . . to help the other person to love God or in loving God."79

Kierkegaard here does not so much "set aside" the poetic80 as he draws upon the poetic in order to transfigure the language of romantic preferential love of one

71. Kierkegaard, Works of Love, 10; SKS, 9:17. . ... 72. Kierkegaard, Works of Lime, 120-21; SKS, 9:124. , . . . . • , • 73. Kierkegaard, Works of Love, 120-21; SKS, 9:124. 74. Kierkegaard, Works of Love, 107; SKS, 9:111. ' . , - -75. Kierkegaard, Works 'of Love, 121; SKS, 9:124; cf. Augustine, The Trinity, trans. Edmund Hill, OP

(Brooklyn: New City Press, 1991): "Now love means someone loving and something being loved with love. There you are with three, the lover, what is being loved, and love. And what is love but a kind of coupling or trying to couple together two things, namely lover and what is being loved? This is true even of the most external and fleshly kinds of love. But in order to quaff something purer and more limpid, let us trample on the flesh and rise to the spirit. What does spirit love in a friend but spirit? So here again there are three, lover and what is being loved, and love" (25S [§8.14]). The precise nature of Kierkegaard's indebtedness to Augustine for this formulation is unclear.

76. Kierkegaard, Works of Love, 107; SKS, 9:111. 77. Kierkegaard, Works of Love, 121; SKS, 9:124. 78. Kierkegaard, Works of Love, 130; SKS, 9:133. 79. Kierkegaard, Works of Love, 114; SKS, 9:118. 80. Kierkegaard, Point of View for My Work as an Author, 77; SV1,13:562.


human being for another into the ideal of preferential love for God, just as Johannes Climacus does in his "Poetical Venture" of Philosophical Fragments. Anti-Climacus unevenly parallels these two kinds of relationship as well. As he puts it, "A believer . . . is a lover; as a matter of fact, when it comes to enthusiasm, the most rapturous lover of all lovers is but a stripling compared with a believer."81 Consequently, while it is admittedly the case that the religious poet does not sing the praises of erotic love as Kierkegaard defines it, it is nevertheless the case that he depicts the love-relationship between a Christian believer and God through the analogy to romantic love.

This analogy between romantic love and Christian love influences Kierkegaard's biblical hermeneutic as well. According to Kierkegaard, the individual who truly wants to hear God's word should

above all, read the N.T. without a commentary. Would it ever occur to a lover to read a letter from his beloved with a commentary!

In connection with everything which qualitatively makes a claim of having a purely personal significance to me, a commentary is a most hazardous meddler.

If the letter from the beloved were in a language I do not understand— well, then I learn the language—but I do not read the letter with the aid of commentaries by others.82

And again:

Think of two lovers. The lover has written a letter to the beloved. Would it ever occur to the recipient to be concerned about how others will interpret this letter, or will he not read it all alone?

Suppose now that this letter from the lover has the distinctiveness that every human being is the beloved—what then? Is the intention now that they should sit and confer with one another, not to speak of dragging along the scholarly apparatus of countless generations?

No, the intention is that each individual shall read this letter before God solely as an individual, as the single individual who has received this letter by God or from God!83

For the religious poet, therefore, who also envisions God as "like a poet," the Bible is not fundamentally a historical document, or even a collection of writings in various genres, but a correspondence, a kind of love letter from God to the beloved

81. Kierkegaard, The Sickness unto Death, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton, Nf: Princeton University Press, 1980), 103; SV1,11:213.

82. Kierkegaard, Journals and Papers, 1.210; Papirer, X2 A 555 (n.d., 1850). 83. Kierkegaard./oHrno/j and Papers, 1.213; Papirer,X3 A 348 (n.d., 1850). See also Journals and Papers,

1.211; Papirer, X2 A 556 (n.d., 1850), and For Self Examination, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990), 25ff.; SV1,12:315ff.


individual that every individual is. Given this short inventory of illustrations obviating Kierkegaard's use of the imagery of romantic love to evoke the love of God, therefore, there should be no question about Kierkegaard's claim that in the process of his authorship he "set aside" the poetic in order to advance to the religious.84 He does not at all set aside the poetic, but rather advances to the religious by employing the language of romantic love metaphorically in a new mode and with a new referent.

If the analogy to romantic love holds with respect to Kierkegaard's depiction of the love between a Christian and God, however, then it certainly breaks down regarding his understanding of the Christian ideal for love between one human being and another. When Kierkegaard attests that "only by loving God above all else can one love the neighbor in the other human being,"85 he is almost certainly right in his assertion that a secular poet would appraise this statement as "the greatest fatuousness."86 One reason the secular romantic poet would consider this view "fatuous" is that Christian love for the neighbor is "commanded love"; the greatest commandment is that "You Shall Love."87 The romantic poet, however, identifies true love not with an eternal commandment but with spontaneity, the storied "look from across a crowded room," and "love at first sight." Such "spontaneous love has, in the sense of the beautiful imagination, the eternal in itself," Kierkegaard concedes to Schlegel and company, "but it is not consciously grounded upon the eternal and thus it can be changed."88 Recent statistics on dating and marriage are unnecessary to recognize a truth in Kierkegaard's statement that romantic partners tend to love "at first too ardently and then too coolly."89 So, for example, while in Lucinde Julius speaks to his beloved of "the timeless union and conjunction of our spirits,"90 Victor Eremita in Kierkegaard's Stages on Life's Way illustrates a more sobering phenomenon:

If the girl's name is Juliane, then her life is as follows: "Formerly empress in the vast outskirts [Overdrev] of erotic love and titular queen of all exaggerations [Overdrivelser] of giddiness, now Mrs. Petersen on the corner of Badstustrasde [Bathhouse street]... .Juliane is in seventh heaven, and Mrs. Petersen is reconciled to her fate."91

In order to avoid this fickleness of "the merely human view of love," Kierkegaard says, an individual must contextualize love for others in terms of his or her love

84. Kierkegaard, Point of View for My Work as an Author, 77; SV1,13:562. 85. Kierkegaard, Works'of Love, 58; SKS, 9:64. 86. Kierkegaard, Works of Love, 50; SKS, 9:57. 87. Kierkegaard, Works of Love, 17-43, passim; SKS, 9:25-50, passim. 88. Kierkegaard, WorhofLove, 31; SKS, 9:143. . 89. Kierkegaard, Works of Love, 141; SKS, 9:143. 90. Schlegel, Schlegel's Lucinde and the Fragments, 48. 91. Kierkegaard, Stages on Life's Way: Studies by Various Persons, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H.

Hong (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988), 57-58; SKS, 6:59.


for God.92 "Only the eternal, and therefore that which has undergone the change of eternity by becoming duty, is the unchanging."93 When one's "sole true object of love" is God, then the neighbor is the beneficiary of true love's constancy. The duty to love means helping the neighbor to love God as the "sole true object" of his or her love as well, and doing that through works of love for his or her neighbor. Kierkegaard makes this point in another triadic formulation: "To love God is to love oneself truly; to help another person to love God is to love another person; to be helped by another person to love God is to be loved."94

A second related reason that the secular romantic poet considers "commanded love" to be "the greatest fatuousness" is that it does not allow for an exception. Every other human being is one's neighbor, Kierkegaard says, and if one makes an exception to this definition, then the concept of neighbor becomes confused.95 Both the stranger and the enemy must be regarded as the neighbor (as Christ illustrates with his parable of the Good Samaritan), and in this case many with a romanticized view of love will acknowledge their need for "God's help to love the- neighbor, the less loveworthy object."96 However, one must regard those for whom one feels strong affection first and foremost as the neighbor as well. This detail makes those with a romanticized view of love brisde, Kierkegaard thinks, because they feel that "when it comes to erotic love and friendship they get along best by themselves—alas, as if God's intervention here would be disturbing and inconvenient."97 In Kierkegaard's conception of Christian love, however, the Christian first regards and loves every other human being as the neighbor, and only then does he or she give thought to the more specific nature of the various relationships in which he or she is involved. For example, he writes, "Your wife must first and foremost be to you the neighbor; that she is your wife is then a more precise specification of your particular relationship to each other."98 In such cases especially, Kierkegaard says, is it important that one "not confuse love with possessing the beloved," because one's neighbor is first and foremost God's beloved, and not one's own.99 As Kierkegaard penned with regard to reading the Bible as a love letter, one should "suppose . . . that this letter from the lover has the distinctiveness that every human being is the beloved."100 But if the other is God's beloved, then to desire to "possess" that other romantically is a transgression. According to the Christian ideal of love as Kierkegaard promotes it, therefore, one must not base his or her love for others on the passionate feelings he or she has for that other, but instead must base that love on the commandment from the divine beloved that he or she

92. Kierkegaard. Works of Love, 121; SKS, 9:124. 93. Kierkegaard, Works of Love, 37; SKS, 9:44-45. 94. Kierkegaard, Works of Love, 107; SKS, 9:111. . 95. Kierkegaard, Works of Love, 21; SKS, 9:29, passim. 96. Kierkegaard, Works of Love, 112; SKS, 9-.116. 97. Kierkegaard, Works of Love, 112; SKS, 9:116. 98. Kierkegaard, Works of Love, 141; SKS, 9:143. 99. Kierkegaard, Works of Love, 38; SKS, 9:45. 100. Kierkegaard, Journals and Papers, 1.213; Papirer, X3 A 348 (n.d., 1850). See also Journals and

Papers, 1.211; Papirer, X2 A 556 (n.d., 1850), and For Self Examination, 25f£; SV1,12:315f£


love the other "as oneself." The Christian must never love another human being "in such a way that she is an exception to being the neighbor that every human being is."101

Despite the fact that Kierkegaard singles them out for special ridicule, however, secular romantic poets are not the only ones who find his view of Christian love "fatuous." In more recent years, strong objection has been made to Kierkegaard's ideal of God as the "the sole true object of love" by Knud Ejler Logstrup, who alleges that Kierkegaard's conception of love hinders direct love for the neighbor, and empties neighbor-love of content.102 While it is not difficult to see how Logstrup could reach this conclusion, M. Jamie Ferreira ably shows why Logstrup's interpretation is wide of the mark. "The directness and content of Kierkegaard's ethic," Ferreira argues, "is revealed in his appeals to Scripture, the most obvious being the appeal to the good Samaritan."103 In addition, regarding the "directness" of love for the neighbor when the "sole object" of love is God, Ferreira points out that Kierkegaard's conception of love is transitive. "The point of the story of the final judgment, in which people are told that they fed and clothed God when they fed and clothed 'the least' of their neighbors (Matthew 25:34-45)," she says, "is made explicitly by Kierkegaard, who repeats the words 'what you do for them, you do for me.'"104 And, regarding the "content" of neighbor-love, Ferreira points out that Kierkegaard's emphasis on the imitation of Christ is "full of concrete content."105 To illustrate, Ferreira cites a journal entry from 1849 in which Kierkegaard chides pastors who spiritualize the example Christ sets for his followers, forgetting that "Christ also relieved earthly suffering, healed the sick, the lepers, the deranged; he fed people, changed water into wine, calmed the sea, etc."106 Read in this light, the charge that Kierkegaard's conception of love for the neighbor is indirect and vacuous is mistaken. Christ models the content of love for the neighbor, and his life expresses that one should direct one's love for God toward the neighbor. "If you want to show that your life is intended to serve God," Kierkegaard writes,

then let it serve people, yet continually with the thought of God. God does not have a share in existence in such a way that he asks for his share for himself; he asks for everything, but as you bring it to him you immediately receive, if I may put it this way, a notice designating where it should be

101. Kierkegaard, Works of Love, 141-42; SKS, 9:143. 102. See Knud Ejler Logstrup, "Settling Accounts with Kierkegaard's Works of Love" in The Ethical

Demand, ed. Hans Fink and Alasdair Maclntyre (South Bend, IN: Notre Dame University Press, 1997), 218-64.

103. M. Jamie Ferreira, Love's Grateful Striving: A Commentary on Kierkegaard's Works of Love (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 79. For Kierkegaard's references to the parable of the Good Samaritan, see Works of Love, 22, 317,323; SKS, 9:30, 314, 320.

104. Ferreira, Love's Grateful Striving, 80. For Kierkegaard's reference to Matt 25:34-45, see Works of Low, 160; SAS, 9:161.

105. Ferreira, Love's Grateful Striving, 82. 106. Kierkegaard, Journals and Papers, 1.347; Papirer,X2 A 86 (n.d., 1849).


delivered further, because God does not ask for anything for himself, although he asks for everything from you.107

As Kierkegaard sees it, therefore, it is love for God, and not love for the neighbor, that is indirect. "God is too exalted," he says, "to be able to receive a person's love directly."108

A closely related question is whether the relationship to the neighbor should really be considered a "love relationship" at all, if God is actually "the sole true object of love."109 Does the Christian "witness to the truth" really love the neighbor, or is the neighbor simply a means for loving God? Clearly, Kierkegaard thinks that loving God with all one's "heart, soul, and mind," as Christ says, means that God should be the sole "love object" for each individual. Nonetheless, it is equally clear that Kierkegaard thinks one should love the neighbor too, since he repeatedly says as much, and because Works of Love is comprised of deliberations on this very theme. What precipitates the confusion here is Kierkegaard's seemingly precise use of the term "object" {Gjenstand). Unfortunately, it is no help attempting to seek out a precise definition of the term "object" in this instance, because Kierkegaard uses the term in so many different ways to mean so many different things. In this context, however, having already shown that Kierkegaard modulates the romantic model of preferential love to depict the ideal relationship between a Christian and God, Kierkegaard now uses the phrase "the one true object of love" as a term appropriate to "preferential love" rather than to "neighbor love." God alone should be the "object" of the heart's desire. The neighbor, by contrast, you "shall" love as yourself, not because of one's desire or "inclination" to love the other, and not because there is something attractive about him or her, but simply because one reads in Scripture that one "shall" do so. To refer once more to Kierkegaard's comparison of the Bible to a love letter, the Christian reads Scripture to discover the wishes of the beloved. "I read it," Kierkegaard says of a love letter, "and since the thought of my beloved is vividly present and my purpose in everything is to will according to her will and wishes, I understand the letter all right. It is the same with the Scriptures."110 Since it is the Christian lover's purpose in everything to will according to God's will and wishes, he or she loves the neighbor because that is what the divine beloved has instructed him or her to do.

For those who can get beyond what may or may not seem to them an obtuse viewpoint (and, for Kierkegaard's part, "blessed is he who is not offended at it"111), the contextualization of love for the neighbor in terms of the preferential love for God yields a surprising result. The love of God as "the one true object of love" in this view is not exclusive (as the preferential love for another human

107. Kierkegaard, Works of Love, 161; SKS, 9:161. 108. Kierkegaard, Works of Love, 160; SKS, 9:161. 109. Kierkegaard, Works of Love, 130; SKS, 9:133. 110. Kierkegaard, Journals and Papers, 1.210; Pafirer, X2 A 555 (n.d., 1850). 111. Kierkegaard, Works of Love, 59; SKS, 9:65; cf. Luke 7:23.


being is), but is, instead, fully inclusive. As Kierkegaard explains it, the reason for this is as follows:

If someone goes out into the world to try to find the beloved or friend, he can go a long way—and go in vain, can wander the world around—and in vain. But Christianity is never responsible for having a person go even a single step in vain, because when you open the door that you shut in order to pray to God and go out the very first person you meet is the neighbor, whom you shalllove. Wonderful!112

By loving God above all, the authentic Christian loves the neighbor in each and every other human being.113 From all of this, it should now be clear why I characterized Works of Love as a sustained meditation on Christ's teaching of the greatest commandment: '"You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.'This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets" (Matt 22:37-40).

It might be tempting to read Kierkegaard's exuberant interjection of "Wonderful!" in the passage quoted above as a display of satisfaction with his own cleverness in so perfectly orchestrating love. But Kierkegaard understands his task as a religious poet not in terms of creative originality but in terms of mimetic testimony to the true ideal of love that God manifested in Christ. Works of Love is Kierkegaard's narrative testimony to the truth of this teaching. More than that, however—in terms of the distinction I noted above between "testimony as narrative" and "testimony as act"—Works of Love is also Kierkegaard's confession of faith that Christ himself not only gives narrative testimony to the "divine explanation of what love is"114 but enacts his testimony as well by fully living what he explains:

Yes, he was Love, and his love was the fulfilling of the Law. "No one could convict him of any sin,"115 not even the Law, which together with the conscience knows everything; "no guile was found on his lips;"116 but everything

112. Kierkegaard, Works of Love, 51; SKS, 9:58. 113. Kierkegaard makes clear that he does not think the inclusivity of neighbor love means loving

everyone in exactly the same way. Even though a spouse and a colleague must both first be regarded as neighbors, "to be sure, the wife and the friend are not loved in the same way," Kierkegaard says (Works of Love, 141; SKS, 9:143). The essential feature here is not a standardized way of relating to the neighbor. The essential feature is instead a normative basis for loving the other because of one's passion for God, and not primarily because of one's affections for the neighbor. As a result, the duty to love the stranger as one's neighbor fosters care rather than indifference; the duty to love one's spouse first as the neighbor preserves love for the spouse through the difficulties of marriage together; the duty to love the friend first as a neighbor preserves love for the friend through and after a heated disagreement; the duty to love the child first as a neighbor preserves love for the child whose decisions in life run counter to the parent's hopes and expectations, and so on.

114. Kierkegaard, Works of Love, 110; SKS, 9:114 115. The reference is to John 8:46: "Which of you convicts me of sin? If I tell the truth, why do you not

believe me?" 116. The reference is to 1 Pet 2:22: "He committed no sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth."


in him was truth. There was in his love not the distance of a moment, of a feeling, of an intention from the Law's requirement to its fulfillment. He did not say no, as the one brother did, nor yes, as the other brother did,117

because his food was to do his father's will.118 In this way he was one with the Father,119 one with every single requirement of the Law; therefore perfectly fulfilling it was the need in him, his one and only life necessity. In him love was sheer action; there was no moment, not a single one in his life, when love in him was merely the inactivity of a feeling that hunts for words while it lets time slip by, or a mood that is its own gratification, dwells on itself while there is no task—no, his love was sheer action.120

Drawing together in one biblically saturated passage many of the themes that I have identified as most significant for understanding Kierkegaard's Christomor-phic poetics, Kierkegaard here identifies the apotheosis of the imaginative ideal of "truth" in its coordinate action of "love"; because Christ was "Love," Kierkegaard explains, "everything in him was truth."121 Unlike the religious poet, however, who "explains" this fulfillment of the ideal of true love through his narrative alone, the divine poet "transfigures" the explanation by actualizing it. According to Kierkegaard, this is the real explanation of truth and love, for "only when the explanation is what it explains, when the explainer is what is explained, when the explanation [Forklaring] is the transfiguration [Fork/are/se], only then is the relation the right one."122 Thus, whereas Kierkegaard defines a religious poet as one who gives narrative testimony to "faith, hope, and love," the divine poet witnesses not with his words alone, but by being what he says. As one of Kierkegaard's more notably Johannine journal entries reads, "In order for one to rely upon a person, one requires that he give his word on it; God likewise has given his word, his word on it—Christ is the Word."123 The love to which the poet of the religious testifies with his narrative is, according to Kierkegaard, the love to which "the Word" testifies by becoming flesh. In Works of Love, Christ's "explanation through transfiguration" conforms perfectly to Kierkegaard's conception of the divine poet's embodiment of truth that I have explicated throughout this study. Thus, even though Works of Love defines only two kinds of poet explicitly, Kierkegaard's conception of God as a third kind of poet is operative here as well, for at the deeper level of the "secret source," the text intimates a love poet who "is in the innermost

117. The reference is to Matt 21:28-30: "What do you think? A man had two sons; he went to the first and said, 'Son, go and work in the vineyard today.' He answered, 'I will not'; but later he changed his mind and went. The father went to the second and said the same; and he answered, 'I go, sir'; but he did not go."

118. The reference is to John 4:34: "Jesus said to them, 'My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to complete his work.'"

119. The reference is to John 10:30: "The Father and I are one." 120. Kierkegaard, Works of Love, 99-100; SKS, 9:104. 121. Kierkegaard, Works of Love, 99; SKS, 9:104. 122. Kierkegaard, Works of Love, 101; SKS, 9:106. 123. Kierkegmrdjouma/s and Papers, 1.215; Papirer, X4 A 437 (n.d., 1851).


being, unfathomable, and then in turn is in an unfathomable connectedness with all existence."124

The Identity of Poetry and Testimony in Christ

In Either/Or, Kierkegaard's Romantic aesthete opens the first of his Diapsalmata with the question, "What is a poet?" Over the course of his authorship, Kierkegaard and his pseudonyms respond to this question in a number of different ways. The aesthete's answer to the question is that a poet is "an unhappy person who conceals profound anguish in his heart but whose lips are so formed that as sighs and cries pass over them they sound like beautiful music."125 Romantic dissatisfaction with the actual world surely lies behind this view of the poet, whose beautiful sighs offer fleeting consolation through "the power of the imagination."126 But Kierkegaard offered other views of what it means to be a poet as well, as this study has made evident, and it is possible to summarize these views and set them side by side to sketch a typology of what I take to be the three operative senses of the term "poet" in Kierkegaard's writings.

"It is the secular poet we think of when we ordinarily speak of the poet," according to Kierkegaard.127 Whether of the more sanguine variety (e.g., Schlegel), or the more pathological variety (e.g., the seducer of Either/Or), Romantic ironists are representative of this secular kind of poet. Accordingly, the first operative sense of the term "poet" in Kierkegaard's writings is that of the secular Romantic poet who imaginatively "creates" alternatives to the given actuality. Kierkegaard almost always casts the Romantic type of poet in a negative light, even though his own emphasis on the importance of "passion" bears the deep impress of early German Romanticism, and even though his every depiction of "existence" and "the given actuality" relies heavily upon "the beautiful imagination."128 The reason for Kierkegaard's negative portrayal of the secular Romantic poet is that, as he says, "it never occurs [to such a poet] to strive personally in relation to the ideality he presents."129 Although it is hard to conceive how Kierkegaard could pronounce with such certainty what does and does not "occur" to another poet (especially given the importance of the theme of "hidden inwardness" in his authorship), it is safe to say that, by and large, when Kierkegaard or his pseudonyms speak negatively about "the poet," it is this first sense of the term they have in mind.

The second operative sense of the term "poet" in Kierkegaard's writings is his conception of the "religious poet," or the "Christian poet and thinker," as he also

124. Kierkegaard, Works of Love, 9; SKS, 9:17. 125. Kierkegaard, Either/Or, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton, NJ: Princeton

University Press, 1987), 1:19; SKS, 2:27. 126. Kierkegaard, Concept of Irony, 292; SKS, 1:327. 127. Kierkegaard, Works of Love, 46; SKS, 9:53. 128. Kierkegaard, Works of Love, 31; SKS, 9:38. 129. Kierkegaard,/o«maA and Papers 6.6528; Papirer, X2 A 184 (n.d., 1849).


puts it.130 Kierkegaard's conception of himself as a poet conforms to this sense of the term. The ideal of such a poet is not to "create" imaginative alternatives to actuality, but instead to depict how to actualize human existence in faithfulness to the Christian ideal revealed in Christ's life. The work of the religious poet is therefore mimetic in a double respect—that is, the writings are imitative of the ideal revealed in Christ's life, and they also seek to foster imitation of the ideal in the lives of readers. In order to accomplish the task of presenting "the ideal picture [Billede] of being a Christian," Kierkegaard says, the religious poet's productions should be "dialectical," "pathos-filled," "psychological" and "modernized."131 In Kierkegaard's case, the characterization of the work as "dialectical" applies not simply to the nature of his argumentation but also to his animation of viable alternatives to the Christian life view through various pseudonyms (e.g., Victor Eremita, the aesthete, Judge William, et al.). That a religious poet's work is "pathos-filled" means that it evokes strong feelings (of offense, pity, compassion, identification, and so on) as a means of facilitating the transition from text to action; that the writing is "psychological" denotes reflection on the complex relationships between aesthetic judgment, intellectual understanding, ethical commitment, and religious devotion; and that it is "modernized" signifies that the depiction of ideal Christianity is set into conversation with the current science, scholarship, literary sensibilities, and religious practices of the age. While Kierkegaard certainly understands this kind of poet as an improvement upon the secular Romantic poet in important respects, he nevertheless expresses ambivalence about the religious poet as well. On the one hand, the productions of the religious poet do more than offer imaginative consolation for an imperfect actuality, Kierkegaard says, for their true function is to "awaken" readers to the Christian life view and to motivate readers (along with the religious poet himself or herself) to continue "striving" to actualize the ideal the work presents.132 Yet even though a religious poet strives vis-a-vis the ideal, he or she may well need to confess that it is only with respect to the imaginative depiction of the Christian ideal that he or she is "ahead."133 Although the striving is part and parcel of how Kierkegaard defines a religious poet, with respect to the actualization of the ideal he or she may in fact be no closer to it than anyone else. As Kierkegaard admits, "My life does not express it either."134

130. Kierkegaard, Journals and Papers, 6.6391; Papirer, XI A 281 (April 25, 1849); SKS, 21:368. This direct identification between the "religious poet" and the "Christian poet" might prompt the question of whether one could draw a meaningful distinction between the two. In particular, Johannes Climacus's discussion in Postscript of the similarities and differences between the more generic form of religiousness ("Religiousness A") and the paradoxical religiousness of Christianity ("Religiousness B") suggests that a parallel distinction could be made between the religious poet and the Christian poet. Moreover, it is not so hard to imagine that a generic model of the religious poet could even be adapted and specified in terms of the particular ethical ideals of religious traditions other than Christianity. Kierkegaard, however, always discusses his own conception of the "religious poet" as one who fosters a passion for existence in terms of the model of Christ's life.

131. Kierkegaard, Armed Neutrality, 131; Papirer, X5 B 107: 290. 132. Kierkegaard, Journals and Papers, 6.6528; Papirer, X2 A 184 (n.d., 1849). 133. Kierkegaard, Armed Neutrality, 133; Papirer,X5 B 107: 293. 134. KierkegaardJw/rraA and Papers, 6.6528; Papirer, X2 A 184 (n.d., 1849).


The third operative sense of the term "poet" in Kierkegaard's writings is his conception of God as a divine poet whose life does express the ideal. God is the divine author who "poetically . . . permits everything possible to come forth"135

and who by "introducing himself into his work" also "fulfills" creation by "including himself in it."136 Kierkegaard's writings are rife with intimations of this conception of God as a divine poet, but he only explicitly theorized this view of God in 1854, after completing all of his writings save the articles of late 1854 and 1855 that make up his infamous attack on Christendom.137 As I demonstrated in chapter 2, by conceiving God in this way Kierkegaard in effect transfigures the Romantic notion of "living poetically" from a prescription for how to live as an aesthete, to a theological paradigm for interpreting God's creativity and incarnation. In a corresponding manner, by insisting that in order to be considered "true" in the fullest sense poetry must achieve an "actual reconciliation" of the ideal and the actual (and not simply an "imaginative reconciliation"), Kierkegaard reinterprets a traditionalist notion of "true art" from a theory about what religious art "anticipates," to a vision of the divine poet's actual creation and redemption of the world. This, therefore, is the theological heart of Kierkegaard's Christomorphic poetics: The reconciliation of the actual to the ideal to which "true art" attests finds its fulfillment not in any merely human art, nor in the sublime experience of romantic love about which so many poets sing, but in the divine poet's embodiment of "true love." Just as Climacus affirms that "the poem"—meaning the incarnational poem—"was so different from every human poem that it was no [human] poem at all but the wonder,"138 so too Kierkegaard affirms, "Even if it is not or was not like this in any human being . . . it was, however, like this in him who was love, in our Lord Jesus Christ."139

These three, then, are the principal operative senses of the term "poet" in Kierkegaard's authorship: the secular Romantic poet, the religious poet, and the divine poet.140 The relationships between the different senses of the one term have significant implications for interpreting Kierkegaard's work as an author with respect to his express aim or telos: to foster in the reader (and himself) the willingness to strive to reenact the narrated ideal in a manner appropriate to his or her historical and social context. Earlier, in explicating Kierkegaard's term "witness to the truth," I invoked a distinction between "testimony as narrative" and "testimony as act." Testimony as narrative in this case indicates what Kierkegaard says about

135. Kierkegaard, Journals and Papers, 2.1445; Papirer, XI2 A 98 (n.d., 1854). 136. Kierkegaard, Journals and Papers, 2.1391; Papirer, XI A 605 (n.d., 1849). 137. In Kierkegaard, The Moment and Late Writings, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hoog

(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998); SV1, vol. 14. 138. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 36; SKS, 4:242. 139. Kierkegaard, Works of Love, 99; SKS, 9:103. 140. It would be possible to include a fourth "classical" conception of the term "poet" in this typology,

for such a conception does at times come up (e.g., in "The Tragic in Ancient Drama Reflected in the Tragic in Modern Drama" in Either/Or). But the classical sense of the term "poet" is not "operative" for

Kierkegaard in the sense I am using it here. When I speak of the three "operative" senses of the term "poet," I mean the senses of the term Kierkegaard invokes to speak either ot his contemporaries, himself,


the ideal, while testimony as act indicates witnessing to that ideal in actual practice. In light of my typology of Kierkegaard's senses of the term "poet," a parallel distinction between "poetry as narrative" and "poetry as act" can be drawn. Merely narrative poetry is poetry in the more conventional sense, indicating an artistic production that is imaginatively distant from the actual world, whereas poetry as act, "living poetically," not only provides narrative but also testifies to an imaginative ideal by putting it to work in real life. Because the configuration of both these two sets of terms turns on the distinction between "mere word" and "word fulfilled in deed," they are structurally parallel. Beyond this structural parallel, however, a substantive relationship between Kierkegaard's conception of witnessing and his conception of poetry obtains as well. Consider the relationship between poetizing and testifying relative to the differences between the three kinds of poet represented in Kierkegaard's writings: the secular Romantic poet, the religious poet, and the divine poet. The difference between the secular Romantic poet and the witness to the truth is that, according to Kierkegaard, it never even occurs to the secular Romantic poet "to strive personally in relation to the ideality he presents,"1'" whereas the witness to the truth is someone who will "proclaim the teaching and also existentially express it."142 In contrast to the secular Romantic poet, the religious poet comes closer to the witness to the truth because, even though the religious poet might not actually "existentially express" the ideality he presents, he is one who nevertheless is at least "striving in relation to it."143 Finally, however, in Kierkegaard's conception of the divine poet there is a perfect identity between poetry as act and testimony as act, or, to use Kierkegaard's phrases, between "living poetically" and "witnessing to the truth." Thus, in Kierkegaard's Christomorphic poetics the divine poet proclaims true love and also manifests it existentially, such that Word and flesh, imagination and will, ideality and actuality, all accord perfectly with one another in a reconciliation that, for Christian faith, unites truth and art in "true art."

The full response to the question of what it means to be a poet, therefore, requires this threefold typology of secular Romantic poet, religious poet, and divine poet. And because Kierkegaard's conception of "the poet" divides into three distinct types, so does his conception of poetry. At one extreme, the poetry of the Romantic ironist being paradigmatic, poetry is a merely imaginative reconciliation of the actual world with a preferred ideal, more an escape into fantasy than a fulfillment of the ideal in actuality. At the other extreme, as Kierkegaard conceives it, the poetry of the divine poet actually reconciles actuality to the true ideal, first by "poetically. . . permitting] everything possible to come forth,"144 and then by

or the prototypical ideal revealed in Christ. Kierkegaard did not consider the classical sense of the term "poet" viable in modernity, even though classicism might be "reflected" in modernity, either thematically or theoretically.

141. Kierkegaard, Journals and Papers, 6.6528; Papirer, X2A184 (n.d., 1849). 142. Kierkegaard, Journals and Papers, 6.6521; Papirer, X2 A 157 (n.d., 1849). 143. Kierkegaard, Journals and Papers, 6.6528; Papirer, X2 A 184 (n.d., 1849). 144. Kierkegaard, Journals and Papers, 2.1445; Papirer, XI2 A 98 (n.d., 1854).


enacting the true ideal "by introducing himself into his work."145 The commanded response to Christ's incarnational fulfillment is that his followers witness to this truth not just with their words but with their loving actions as well. In the middle—between irony and witness—Kierkegaard conceives his own work as an author. Through the employment of irony, Kierkegaard's authorship poetically permits all manner of life views to come forth. Yet through a productive and teleo-logical dialectic, the authorship gives narrative witness to Christian "faith, hope, and love," attesting to the Christian kerygma of God's reconciling love in Christ, exhorting to the imitation of Christ through works of love, and memorializing God's grace for those who, in earnest striving to witness to the truth, repent of their inability to conform their lives fully to God's ideal.

The Confession of a Strong Religious Poet

This interpretation of the ultimate identification of "living poetically" and "witnessing to the truth" in the person of the divine "prototype" reinforces my earlier argument that Kierkegaard's claim to move away from "the poetic" is more complicated than it initially appears. Since Kierkegaard remains to the end a religious poet who envisions God as a kind of poet, his assertion that "a poetic and philosophic nature is set aside in order to become a Christian" is highly problematic.146

Perhaps what Kierkegaard meant to say, or what he should have said, is that it is important to "set aside" the fantasies of a romanticized view of life (what it means to be a poet in the first typological sense of the term) in order to work on becoming a Christian. For if God in Christ is paradigmatic for the third and deeper typological sense of the term "poet," and if the Christian should strive to imitate Christ as the ideal prototype, and if what it means to be a witness to the truth is to become a "derivative prototype,"147 then it makes no sense to say that one should "set aside" a "poetic nature" in this deeper sense. Becoming a Christian in this sense must mean instead that one more closely approximates the ideal of "living poetically" by believing that the divine poet scripts the ideal for one's own existence through the Word. "The Christian lets himself be poetically composed," to repeat that germinal claim in Kierkegaard's dissertation one last time, "and in this respect a simple Christian lives far more poetically than many a brilliant intellectual."148

But it the Christian expectation is that one set aside a "poetic nature" in the Romantic-ironic sense of the term "poet" in order to let oneself be "poetically

145. Kierkegaard,/o!;r«aA and Papers, 2.1391; Papirer, XI A 605 (n.d., 1849): "Generally the poet, the artist, etc. is criticized for introducing himself into his work. But this is precisely what God does; this he does in Christ. And precisely this is Christianity. Creation is really fulfilled only when God has included himself in it. Before Christ God was included, of course, in the creation but as an invisible mark, something like the water-mark in paper. But in the Incarnation creation is fulfilled by God's including himself in it."

146. Kierkegaard, Point of View for My Work as an Author, 77; SV1,13:562. 147. Kierkegaard, The Moment and Late Writings, 291; SV1,14:301: "Tank Dig et Sandhedsvidne, alt-

saa et af de afledede Forbilleder." 148. Kierkegaard, Concept of Irony, 280-81; SKS, 1:316.


composed" through faithful imitation of the divine poet's manifestation of the true love, then where does that leave Kierkegaard and his envisioned "detachment" of religious poets? They find themselves in something of a difficult position between Romantic irony and fully Christian witness. On the one hand, religious poets "do not sing about erotic love [E/skov] and friendship; their songs are to the glory of God, about faith, hope, and love [Kjerlighed].149 But on the other hand, Christian faith, hope, and love "does not want to be sung about—it wants to be accomplished."150 Consequently, while Kierkegaard affirms that a religious poet is "ahead in presenting the picture"151 of the ideal, when he recasts the aesthete's opening question in his own voice six years after the publication of Either/Or, his answer pertains equally to the secular Romantic poet and to the religious poet, for both are only human, despite any other distinctions that might be made:

What is it to be a poet? It is to have one's own personal life, one's actuality, in categories completely different from those of one's poetical production, to be related to the ideal only in imagination, so that one's personal life is more or less a satire on the poetry and on oneself. . . . Relating oneself to the ideal in one's personal life is never seen. Such a life is the life of the witness to the truth. This rubric disappeared long ago, and preachers, philosophy professors, and poets have taken over the place of servants of the truth, whereby they no doubt are served very well—but they do not serve the truth.152

Whether secular or religious, poets, professors, and preachers are all in the same boat insofar as they do not truly practice the ideals they sing, teach, or preach. And, as far as Kierkegaard can tell, none of them actually does. But when he says that the rubric of the witness to the truth disappeared long ago, this may in fact be just as much a statement of faith as it is a matter of observation, for it is fundamental to his Christomorphic poetics that only God in Christ both "proclaims" the teaching of divine love and fully manifests it in his existence. "Let us never forget," he writes, "that there is an essential difference between Christ and every Christian."153

In other words, Christ does not merely strive to approximate the ideal as Christians do, but actually lives the ideal. Consequently, God's incarnational poem differs not just from the poems of Romantic ironists, but with respect to complete actualization is "different from every human poem."154 In the final analysis, therefore, to be a religious poet means setting forth the ideal, striving with a contrite heart, and repenting of the sin of living and loving in ways that effectually oppose the ideal. "Insofar as I am little more than a poet," Kierkegaard acknowledges, "I

149. Kierkegaard, Works of Love, 46; SKS, 9:53. 150. Kierkegaard, Works of Love, 46; SKS, 9:53. 151. Kierkegaard, Armed Neutrality, 133; Papirer,X5 B 107:293. 152. Kierkegaardjoarna/s and Papers, 6.6300; Papirer, XI A 11 (n.d., 1849); SKS, 21:204-5. 153. Kierkegaard, Works of Love, 101; SKS, 9:105. 154. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 36; SKS, 4:242; italics added.


am essentially a penitent."155 For this reason, the religious poet has as much need as the "typical" kind of poet to pray with the anonymous old German poet, "O starker Gott! O gerechter Richter / Erbarm dich iiber mich armen Dichter."156

Given Kierkegaard's melancholy confession, it is not so difficult to affirm Harold Bloom's assessment that "Kierkegaard became one of the strongest modern poets at a very high price."157 Bloom's notion of just what the high price is, however, misses the mark; he thinks the price Kierkegaard pays for becoming a strong poet is his "sacrifice of the present moment" by "placing all love in the past."158 But contrary to Bloom's understanding, "presupposing love"159 does not mean love is forever bygone, for I can presuppose that another does love and will love just as much as I can presuppose that he or she has loved. Besides, the love Kierkegaard most fundamentally presupposes is neither past nor future but eternal. Recall the encomium that opens Works of Love: "O Eternal Love, you who are everywhere present."160 No, the price Kierkegaard paid for becoming one of the strongest modern poets was not to place all love in the past, but to avow a criterion for true love so high as to guarantee his personal failure in actual life. Under the heading "About Myself," Kierkegaard's journal reads:

This poet loves the ideal; he differs from the usual poet to the extent that he is ethically aware that the task is not to poetize the ideal but to be like it. But it is just this that he despairs over; also the pain he must bring upon men when the ideal is to be brought into actuality. But no one is more scrupulous than he with respect to all the illusions he discovers and dispatches on an incredible scale; in fact, it is like an unhappy love affair (and, indeed, his life is an unhappy love affair with the ideal).161

Here again, Kierkegaard casts the relationship with God in romantic terms, for God in Christ is the ideal, and being a religious poet means for him being in "an unhappy love affair with God."162 So, whereas Johannes Climacus poetizes faith as a "happy passion,"163 for Kierkegaard personally (and for his envisioned "detachment" of religious poets with their "glow of a certain unhappy love" as well164), the

155. Kierkegaard, Journals and Papers, 6.6383; Papirer, XI A 250 (n.d., 1849); SKS, 21:340. 156. "O mighty God! Ojustjudge/Have mercy upon me a poor poet." Quoted in Journals and Papers,

5.5210; Papirer II A 40 (n.d., 1837); SKS, 17:46. These lines are from the poem "Vbrrede in die klegliche Zukunft," found in Altdeutsche Volks- und Meisterlieder aus den Handschriften der Heidelberger Bibliothek, ed. J. Gorres (Frankfurt am Main, 1817), \5%ASKB, 1486.

157. Harold Bloom, introduction to Seren Kierkegaard: Modern Critical Views, ed. Harold Bloom (New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1989), 4.

158. Bloom, introduction to Saren Kierkegaard, 4. 159. Bloom, introduction to Seren Kierkegaard, 4. Bloom's reference is to Works of'Love, 223; SKS,

9:225: "Love is to presuppose [atjbruds/ette] love; to have love is to presuppose love in others; to be loving is to presuppose that others are loving."

160. Kierkegaard, Works of Love, 4; SKS, 9:12. 161. Kierkegaard, Journals and Papers, 6.6632; Papirer, X3 A 152 (n.d., 1850). 162. Kierkegaard,/0«™A and Papers, 1.151; Papirer, VI A 43 (n.d., 1845); SKS, 18:244. 163. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 54; SKS, 4:257. 164. Yatxht^arA, Journals and Papers, 6.6521; Papirer,X2 A 157 (n.d., 1849).


price of becoming a religious poet is the "humiliation qua author" that he takes "from God's hand" for not actually living the life he poetizes; it is humbling to acknowledge that he does not and cannot express the love for God that God has expressed for him.165 In another respect, however, and perhaps paradoxically, Kierkegaard's audacity in setting the criterion so high as to guarantee his personal failure also assured his kerygmatic faithfulness. For if the extraordinarily rigorous ideal teaches readers "not only to resort to grace but to resort to it in the relation to the use of grace"166 then the high cost of becoming a strong poet is the worthy alternative to poetizing cheap grace.

165. Kierkegaard Journals and Papers, 6.6391; Papirer, XI A 281 (April 25,1849); SKS, 21:367. 166. Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, 7; SV1,12:xv.

S E L E C T B I B L I O G R A P H Y

Kierkegaard's Writings

Samlede Varker. Edited by A. B. Drachman, J. L. Heiberg, and H. O. Lange. 14 vols. Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1901-1906.

Seren Kierkegaards Papirer. Edited by P. A Heiberg, V. Kuhr, and E. Torsting. 16 vols. Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1968-1978; 2nd ed. supplemented by Niels Thulstrup. Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1968-1978.

Seren Kierkegaards Skrifter. Edited by Niels Jargen Cappelem, Joakim Garff, Jette Knudsen, Johnny Kondrup, Alastair McKinnon, and Finn Hauberg Mortensen. 28 text vols, and 28 commentary vols. Copenhagen: Gads Forlag, 1997-.

English Translations

Kierkegaard, Soren. Seren Kierkegaards Journals and Papers. Edited and translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, assisted by Gregor Malantschuk. 7 vols. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1967-1978.

• . Kierkegaard's Writings. Edited and translated by Howard V. Hong et al. 26 vols. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1978-2000. Volume 1: Early Polemical Writings: From the Papers of One Still Living; Articles

from Student Days; The Battle between the Old and the New Soap-Cellars. Edited and translated by Julia Watkin (1990)

Volume 2: The Concept of Irony; Schelling Lecture Notes (1989) Volume 3: Either/Or 7(1987) Volume 4: Either/Or II (1987) Volume 5: Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses (1900) Volume 6: Fear and Trembling; Repetition (1983) Volume 7: Philosophical Fragments; Johannes Climacus (1985) Volume 8: The Concept of Anxiety. Edited and translated by Radar Thomte in

collaboration with Albert E. Anderson (1980) Volume 9: Prefaces (1990)

179


Volume 10: Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions (1993) Volume 11: Stages on Life's Way (1988) Volume 12: Concluding Unscientific Postscript (2 parts; 1992) Volume 13: The Corsair Affair (1982) Volume 14: Two Ages (1978) Volume 15: Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits (1993) Volume 16: Works of Love (1995) Volume 17: Christian Discourses; Crisis [and a Crisis] in the Life of an Actress

(1997) Volume 18: Without Authority; The Lily in the Field and the Bird of the Air; Two

Ethical-Religious Essays; Three Discourses at the Communion on Fridays; An Upbuilding Discourse; Two Discourses at the Communion on Fridays (1997)

Volume 19: The Sickness unto Death (1980) Volume 20: Practice in Christianity (1991) Volume 21: For Self Examination; Judge for Yourself'(1990) Volume 22: The Point of View: On My Work as an Author; The Point of View for

My Work as an Author; Armed Neutrality; (1998) Volume 23: The Moment and Late Writings (1998) Volume 24: The Book on Adler (1998) Volume 25: Kierkegaard: Letters and Documents (1978) Volume 26: Cumulative Index to Kierkegaard's Writings (2000) s

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INDEX

"About Myself" (Kierkegaard), 176 Abrams,M.H.,75,110 absolute paradox, 88, 90-97,102,105 "The Absolute Paradox (A Metaphys

ical Caprice)" (Kierkegaard), 88 Absolute Spirit, 43n. 174 "the absurd"

defined, 86, 93 paradox of, 91-92 poetic figures of, 107 in pseudonymous texts, 85-86

acoustical illusion, 11, 86, 91, 92, 97 actual/ideal, reconciliation of, 47,130 "actuality"

historical, 60-61 poetry and, 57

Adorno,Theodor, 83-84 aesthetic moment, 29 aestheticism, Romantic, 4 Allen, Woody, 62 All's Well That End's Well (Shake

speare), 47 analogy, drawing, 74 anamnesis, Socratic principle of,

62-63 The Ancient Quarrel between Poetry and

Philosophy (Gould), 113 anti-Christ, imagery of, 31 Anti-Climacus. See also Kierkegaard,

Soren

Christ in works of, 85-86 Christianity and, 135-36 imagination and, 124-26 "the incognito" and, 86-87 theological self of, 128-29 visual metaphors by, 98 writings of, 6, 7-9,131-32

anti-Hegelianism, 16 The Anxiety of Influence (Bloom), 43,

43n. 173 Aristotle

God defined by, 66 poetic conceptions of, 1,114-15

Armed Neutrality; or My Position as a Christian Author in Christendom (Kierkegaard), 152

art. See also "true art" classical poetics and, 108 existence as, 49 •.•••.: Moller's theory of, 45-52,57, 71n.

93,72,82 philosophy of, 1 poetry as, 33

artist, creativity of, 4 Athenaeum Fragments (Schlegel), 1,16,

109,111,158 Athenian ethical life, 44 authors

creativity of, 78 Jena, 16-17

189


post-Enlightenment, 43 pseudonymous, 6-8,46,59,

131-33 authors' author, 78-79 "The Autonomy of Human Self-Con

sciousness" (Martensen), 101—2

Behler, Ernst, 18,26,108-9 believability, 83 Bible

as historical text, 120 as love letter, 163-64,167 reading of, 118-19

Bloom, Harold, 43,43n. 173,176 bourgeois society, spiritual lassitude

of, 149 Brandes, Georg, 5 Brandsted, P. O., 26 Burwick, Frederick, 110, 111

Chamfort,N. S.R., 111 Christ. See also imitation of Christ

admirers of, 138-39 crucifixion of, 69 depictions of, 11,11 n. 43 as divine poet, 13 God's incarnation in, 2, 3-5, 80,

82-83, 86, 87 human life of, 137-38,137n. 163 imagined image of, 138 incognito of, 99 mimetic refiguration of, 142-46 paradox of, 104 reconciliation and, 80-83 "the understanding," 102

Christianity Anti-Climacus's views on, 135-36 in Denmark, 2 domestication of, 102-3 in Either/Or, 52-53, 52n. 212 faith in, 100 human rationality and, 86 human relationships within,

164-68

living poetically within, 24-26 marriage within, 33 messages of, 43-44 observational, 137 as optical illusion, 98 renewal of, 117 Romantic notions v., 51 subjectivity of, 81 true art and, 46 "Ultimatum" and, 42 will and, 129-30

Christians God's relationship with, 161-64 love of, 158-60,159n. 60 poetic life of, 52-53

Christomorphic poetics, 11 Kierkegaard's authorship shaped by,

2-4, 3n. 10 i theological alternative to, 55 witnessing aspect of, 169

Classen, Joachim, 115 classical poetics

art and, 108 Romanticism's relationship to, 112

Climacus, Johannes. See also Kierkegaard, S0ren "the absurd" and, 86-87 auditory metaphors by, 98 Christ in works of, 85 Moller's art theory and, 51-52 as pseudonymous author, 59,132 style of, 61 writings of, 6, 7-9,56

Colebrook, Claire, 123,123n. 94 The Concept of Anxiety: A Simple Psy

chologically Orienting Deliberation on the Dogmatic Issue of Hereditary Sin (Kierkegaard), 46, 51,57-58

The Concept of Irony (Kierkegaard), 10, 15,44,156

Concluding Unscientific Postscript (Kierkegaard), 6, 7-8,91,96,151

consciousness artistic, 45-46

INDEX 191

eternal, 63 sin, 51

1 Corinthians 1:23 1:25 2:6-10 2:7-8 2:9

91 97 88 99

105 11:1 115,119

creativity of artists, 4 of authors, 78 divine, 40 poetic, 17

Critical Fragments (Friedrich Schlegel), 18, 111, 122

De Trinitate (Augustine), 162, 75

Denmark Christianity in, 2 Hegelianism in, 101

Discourses at the Communion on (Kierkegaard), 6

distanciation, 8-9 divine creativity, 40 divine poet

God as, 71, 73, 74-80 human poets v., 78-79 Kierkegaard's use of, 12-13 operative sense of, 172-74 religious poets and, 161-70

Docetism, 69, 69n. 77

162n.

Fridays

construction of, 27, 53 excerpts from, 112 first volume of, 27-31 life views in, 132 nihilistic philosophy in, 29-30 as pseudonymous work, 10 second volume of, 31-43 speculative philosophy in, 37-38

Enlightenment, 119-21 Erasmus, Desiderius, 117-19 Eremita, Victor, 27, 87,132,164. See

also Kierkegaard, Seren erotic love, 159n.60

depictions of, 33 in Lucinde, 156-57 in "The Seducer's Diary," 29

"The Esthetic Validity of Marriage" (Kierkegaard), 32

"eternal consciousness," 59-60, 60n. 19 points of departure for, 63

eternal dignity, 39 "eternal happiness," 59-60, 61 eternity, conceptions of, 47 ethics

choices regarding, 34-35, 37-38 individual, 37-38 -••;'• norms of, 21 •'<'?• poetry theory and, 48

Eucharist, 146-47 Evans, C. Stephen, 65, 94 evil/good, choices between, 34-35 existence, as art, 49

"Drama Dramatum" (The Drama of Dramas), 75, 77, 79

Dm, Alexander, 5

Eagleton, Terry, 136 earnestness

aesthetics of, 31-42 will and, 126

Either/Or (Kierkegaard) aesthete in, 61-62 Christianity in, 52-53, 52n. 212

faith absolute paradox and, 105 , in Christianity, 100 imagination and, 128

Fear and Trembling (Kierkegaard), 87 Fellowship of the Dead, 30-31 Ferreira, M. Jamie, 166 Feurbach, Ludwig, 70,70n. 86 Fichte, Johann Gottlieb, 17 Finlay, Marike, 111

192

Firchow, Peter, 20 "A First and Last Explanation"

(Kierkegaard), 151 forgiveness, of sins, 140 "The Form of a Servant is Unrecog-

nizability (The Incognito)," 98 Freedberg, David, 116 freedom, reality of, 78

Garff, Joakim, 151 Gebauer, Gunter, 112-13,115,121 German Romantic poetics

classical aesthetics in relation to, 112

ironic dissimulation in, 108 stylistic devices of, 111

German Romanticism imagination and, 55 Kierkegaard's relationship to, 10 spread of, 16-17 themes of, 2

God Aristotle's definition of, 66 Christian's ideal relationship with,

161-64 creative potency of, 80 as divine poet, 71, 73, 74-80 incarnation of, 2, 3-5, 80, 82-83,

86,87 as ironist, 80-81, 82 ironists as co-creators with, 39-40 learner's relationship to, 66-67,

68-69 living poetically and, 56-57 as lover, 67 passions of, 76 poem of, 71, 72-73 visions of, 55 "Word" of, 79,100

God-man Christianity and, 97 paradox of, 86,100

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 15 Gould, Thomas, 113

BETWEEN IRONY AND WITNESS

Greece, culture of, 115 Gutzkow, Karl, 20

Hall, Amy Laura, 158 Halliwell, Stephen, 112 Hamann, Johann Georg, 96 The Handbook of Militant Christianity

(Desiderius Erasmus), 118 Haufniensis, Vigilius. See also

Kierkegaard, Seren critiques by, 59-60 Moller's art theory and, 51-52 as pseudonymous author, 46,

59n. 16 Havelock, Eric, 115 heathendom, 96 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich

absolute truth and, 89n. 19 idealism of, 16 immortality and, 36 Kierkegaard's connection to, 16,

16n. 3 philosophy and, 97n. 63 Romanticism and, 24n. 62

Hegelian Philosophy, 43n. 173,101 Heidegger, Martin, 5 Hellenism, 115 hermeneutics, 9 "historical actuality," 60-61 Holy Communion. See Eucharist , Homer, 113-14 Hong, Edna, 131-32 Hong, Howard, 131-32 human fulfillment, 4 human nature, 100

ideal/actual, reconciliation of, 47,130 "idealizing passion," 49-50 Ideas (Friedrich Schlegel), 111 ignorance, sin of, 102 imagination

Anti-Climacus's views on, 124-26 faith and, 128 free play of, 124-25,124n. 101

INDEX 193

imbalance of, 126 power of, 11-12 reconciliation of, 138 Romantic poetics and, 55 will's relation to, 130,141

imitatio Christi, 12,139,145 imitation

idealization of, 109-10 originality and, 110

imitation of Christ Christian existence and, 107-8 in Practice in Christianity, 129,

131-42 The Imitation of Christ (Thomas a

Kempis), 116-17,118,133,133n. 144

immortality concepts of, 36,46-47 Philosophical Fragments and, 72 skepticism surrounding, 45 of soul, 36

incarnational theology, 69 "the incognito"

as optical illusion, 98-101 poetic figures of, 107 in pseudonymous texts, 85, 86

"indirect communication," 5, 6 individuals, ethical actions of, 37-38 interpretations

distanciation and, 8-9 goals of, 9 by Poole, 5-6 by Ricoeur, 8-9

intertextuality, 9, 9n. 38 ironic nothing, defined, 30 ironist(s). See also Romantic ironist(s)

God as, 80-81, 82 life continuity of, 127 mimesis and, 126 Romantic, 23-24,26, 34, 39-40,51 vanity and, 30

irony. See also Romantic irony aesthetics of, 26-31 appropriate uses of, 23

definition of, 108,108n. 6 as guide, 43 in literature/life, 10 mimesis and, 122-30 philosophy and, 18-19 Romantic concepts of, 18 Socratic, 23 types of, 1-2

Isaiah 53:2 99

Jena authors, 16-17 Jesus. See Christ Journals and Papers (Kierkegaard), 56,

107,149 Judge for Yourself {VHerkeganid), 139

Kant, Immanuel aesthetic theory of, 50 poetic creativity and, 17 transcendental philosophies of,

89n. 18, 90-91 Kempis, Thomas a, 116-17,118 Kierkegaard: A Kind of Poet (Mackey),

4 Kierkegaard, Soren (pseudonyms:

Anti-Climacus, Johannes Clima-cus, Victor Eremita, Vigilius Haufniensis, Johannes de Silentio, Frater Taciturnus) authorship of, 150-53 Christian views of, 2, 3-5, 43-44,

55, 58, 58n. 10,153 Hegel's connection to, 16,16n. 3 influences on, 10 irony to imitation, in works by,

136-37 Kant's influence on, 89n. 18 literature by, 2n. 5 literature on, 5-6 Meller's influence on, 16,16n. 3,

47-51 poetic conceptions of, 1-2, 48 poetic mission of, 44,103-4


pseudonymous authorship by, 7-8 religious poetics of, 53,153-54,

171-74,171n. 130,174-77 Romantic irony and, 123-24

Kierkegaard: The Indirect Communication (Poole), 6

"Know thyself," 66

Laokoon (Lessing), 121 Last Supper, 146-47 law of duty, 50 learner

God's relationship to, 66-67,68-69 teacher's relationship to, 64-65, 66

Lessing, Gotthold, 59, 60, 60n. 19, 120-22

Levi, Anthony, 117 life, social-historical context of, 34 "limit-experiences," 103 "limit-expressions," 103 literature

irony in, 10 neoclassical, 16-17

living poetically aesthetic ideals of, 33-34 alternative modes of, 24 God's will and, 56-57 ideals of, 10-11, 34 individual reconciliation through,

48-49 in real life, 173 reconciliation of, 50-51 recontextualization of, 23 religious modes of, 24-26,109-10 theological paradigm for, 83

Living Poetically: Kierkegaard's Existential Aesthetics (Walsh), 4-5

love Christian, 158-60,159n. 60 erotic, 29, 33,156-57,159n. 60 God's, 67 romantic, 158

Lowrie, Walter, 5 Lucinde (Friedrich Schlegel)

'•'- critiques of, 122 erotic love in, 156-57 morality in, 21-23 Romantic irony in, 19-20 Romanticism and, 17

Luke 19:41-48 42

Luther, Martin, 99 Lutheranism, 134 Lyceum Fragments, 109 Logstrup, Knud Ejler, 166

Mackey, Louis, 2-3,4, 87 Madvig,J.N.,26 marriage, Christian, 33 Martensen, Hans Lassen, 101 Matthew

22:37-40 168 25:34-45 166

Melberg, Arne, 110 midwife, 62-63, 63n. 33 mimesis

concept of, 112 forms of, 146 Greek culture and, 115 ironist's transcendence of, 126 irony and, 122-30 theories of, 12,109 triadic structure of, 143

Mimesis and Its Romantic Reflections (Burwick), 111

"mimetic strategy," 136 The Mirror and the Lamp (Abrams),

110,111,123 Mitchell, W. J. T., 121 morality

in Lucinde, 21-23 in "The Seducer's Diary," 28-29,

28n. 84 Mailer, Poul Martin

aesthetics of, 71 art theory of, 45-52, 57, 71n. 93,

72, 82 background of, 20-21

INDEX 195

immortality and, 36 influences by, 43,44 as mentor, 10,15, 47-51 Romantic irony and, 21, 21n. 37,

35-36

narcissism nihilistic, 29-30 romantic, 158

narrative poetry, 173 neoclassical poetics, 108-9 neoclassicism, 16-17 nihilism, 45 nihilistic narcissism, 29-30 Novalis, 16-17 novel, modern genre of, 17

"Offense at the Paradox: An Acoustical Illusion" (Kierkegaard), 90

"On the Concept of Irony" (Moller), 21 On The Concept of Irony, with Contin

ual Reference to Socrates (Kierkegaard), 21

On My Work as an Author (Kierkegaard), 12,151

On the Study of Greek Poetry (Friedrich Schlegel), 122

Ong, Walter, 115,122 ontological status, of poetry, 79 optical illusion, 11 originality, imitation and, 110

paganism, 97 pantheism, 36, 45 "the paradox"

absolute, 88, 90-97,102,105 of the absurd, 91-92 of Christ, 104 of faith, 88 of thought, 88-89

Pattison, George, 19 Pedersen, Jorgen, 96 Pense'es, maximes, anecdotes, dialogues

(Chamfort), 111

personal will, 50. See also will Petersen, F. C , 26 philology, 119 Philosophical Fragments (Kierkegaard)

Christomorphic solutions in, 10 excerpts from, 55 immortality and, 72 as love story, 66-68 pseudonymous status of, 7-8 rationality in, 94 readers challenged by, 104 teaching models in, 61-66

philosophy Hegel's task in, 97n. 63 irony and, 18-19 speculative, 37-39

Philosophy of Art, 1 plagiarism, 70-71 Plato, 18,62,112,113-14 play, free, 124-25,124n. 101 poet(s). See also Romantic poet(s)

Aristotelian paradigms of, 144 creations of, 76 divine, 12-13, 71, 73, 78-79, ;

161-70,172-74 human, 75, 78-79 religious, 2 in Renaissance, 74-75 Romantic, 2 " secular, 2,156,170-74 types of, 12-13,150

"poetic pathos," 155 poetic range, of God, 78-79 poetic reconciliation, 57-58, 61 "poetical venture," 66, 74,161 poetics. See also religious poetics

Christomorphic, 2-4, 3n. 10,11, 55,169

classical, 108 conceptions of, 1-2 neoclassical, 108-9 theological, 55, 58

Poetics (Aristotle), 114,144 poetry. See also Romantic poetry


actuality and, 57 art of, 33 erotic love in, 33 God's, 71, 72-73 Homeric views of, 113—14 human, 72-73 identity of, 33,170 Kierkegaard's theory of, 48 Moller's theory of, 46-48 narrative, 173 ontological status of, 79 Romantic abuse of, 23 Romantic views of, 17-18, 55 transcendental, 17,18-19

"A Point of View for the History of the Human Race" (Kierkegaard), 76

The Point of View for My Work as an Author (Kierkegaard), 12,151

Pontius Pilate, 96 Poole, Roger

interpretations by, 5-6 pseudonymous authors and, 6-8

post-Enlightenment, authors of, 43 The Power of Images: Studies in the His

tory and Theory of Response (Freed-berg), 116

Practice in Christianity (Kierkegaard) human rationality in, 97 imagination and, 125-26 imitation of Christ in, 129,131-42,

145 pseudonymous authorship of, 6,

7-8,131-33 publishing of, 131,131n. 130

Rae, Murray, 143 rationality, 94 human, 86, 97,102 Real Presences (Steiner), 85 rebirth, moment of, 65 religion

poetry theories and, 48 poets celebrating, 2

religious poetics development of, 10 of Kierkegaard, 53,153-54,

171-74,171n. 130,174-77 religious poets

divine poet and, 161-70 Kierkegaard's portrayal of, 12-13,

150 lives of, 153-54

Romantic poets and, 156-61 Renaissance, poets in, 74-75 Republic (Plato), 113 Ricoeur, Paul, 101,103,141^2

aphorisms by, 141-42 interpretations by, 8-9 interpreter's understanding intensi

fied by, 103 mimesis analyzed by, 143,

143n. 204 power of will and, 101

Romantic aestheticism, 4 Romantic ironist(s). See also irooift(«)

Christianity and, 51 depictions of, 26 God as co-creator with, 39—40

; life of, 34 subjectivity of, 23-24

Romantic irony. See also irony , ethical norms and, 21 ironic revision of, 53 Kierkegaard's views on, 24-25,

24n. 62,123-24 speculative philosophy and, 36-39 unpoetic aspects of, 23

romantic narcissism, 158 Romantic poet(s). See also poet(s)

Kierkegaard's portrayal of, 12-13, 150

religious poets and, 156-61 Romantic poetry

abuse of, 23 essence of, 17-18 imagination and, 55

Romanticism

INDEX i'>y

German, 2,10,16-17,55 Schlegelian, 17,19 " i!

Sandhedsvidne (witness to the truth), 154,154n. 22

Sartre, Jean-Paul, 5 Schlegel, August Wilhelm, 16,109,

111,158 Schlegel, Friedrich

eroticism and, 29 influences by, 43, 44 irony theory and, 18 Kierkegaard's relationship with, 10,

16-17 literary works of, 19-20, 55,

122-23 poetic conceptions of, 1 Romantic poetry and, 111

Schlegelian Romanticism identifying features of, 19 novel forms and, 17 secular poets and, 156

Schleiermacher, Friedrich, 16-17 Schweiker, William, 107-8,136,142 The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

(Thurber), 127 secular poet, 2,12,150,156,170-74 "The Seducer's Diary" (Kierkegaard)

morality in, 28-29,28n. 84 premise of, 27-28

self-choice, 35 self-development, 11-12 selfhood "'••''• •''•'"'

continuity of ethical, 39 in Either/Or, 38

servanthood, 68-69 Shakespeare, William, 96 The Sickness unto Death (Kierkegaard),

7-8,124-26,131 Silentio, Johannes de, 87, 92. See also

Kierkegaard, Soren "Silhouettes" (Kierkegaard), 30 sin

actuality and, 58

Christian consciousness of, 53 defined, 52 in Either/Or, AA forgiveness of, 140 of ignorance, 102

sin consciousness, 51 sittlichkeit (ethical life), 35 social life, entanglements in, 27 Socrates

anamnesis theory of, 62 63 debates by, 62 irony and, 18 teachings of, 66

Socratic irony, 1-2,23 The Sorrows ofYoung Wcrthtr

(Goethe), 15 soul, immortality of, 36 speculative philosophy, 36

fundamental hypothesis <>l, 38-39 Romantic irony and, 37 39

spiritual homelessness, 40 Stages on Life's Way (Kierkegaard), 87,

164 Steiner, George, 74-75, 85, 157 "subjective interest," 51 Swenson, David, 5 Symparanekromenoi (Fellowship of

the Dead), 30, 31

Taciturnus, Frater, 87. Sec also Kierkegaard, Soren

teacher, learner's relationship (o, 64-65,66

Tertullian, 95 "Tertullian's dictum," 95-96 testimony, 155,173-74 texts, pseudonymous, 6-7 theodicy, theological poetics as lonn

of, 78 theopoetics

Christomorphic character of, 55, 58 emergence of, 52-53

1 Thessalonians 1:6 115


Thorvaldsen, Bertel, 6 "Thought-Project" (Kierkegaard), 61 Thoughts on the Possibility of Evidence

for Human Immortality, with Reference to the Most Recent Relevant Literature (Moller), 36

Thurber, James, 127 Tieck, Ludvig, 16-17 traditionalists, 43n. 174 The Tragedy of Hamlet (Shakespeare),

77 "The Tragic in Ancient Drama

Reflected in the Tragic in Modern Drama" (Kierkegaard), 30

transcendental philosophies, 89n. 18, 90-91

transcendental poetry, 17,18-19 triple distanciation, 8-9 true art

Christian faith and, 46 consciousness and, 45-46 Kierkegaard's reinterpretatiw 0$

10-11,83 true reconciliation, 61 truth

absolute, 89n.l9 appropriation of, 134-35 witness to, 154,154n. 22

Twelfth Night (Shakespeare), 96 Two Ages: The Age of Revolution and the

Present Age, A Literary Review (Kierkegaard), 78

"ultimate paradox of thought," 88—89 "Ultimatum" (Kierkegaard), 41

"The Unhappiest One" (Kierkegaard) irony in, 30-31 spiritual homelessness in, 40

The Unknown Keirkegaard: Twentieth-century Receptions (Poole), 5

University of Copenhagen, 20 "The Upbuilding That Lies in the

Thought That in Relation to God We Are Always in the Wrong" (Kierkegaard), 42

vanity, ironists and, 30 virtue, defined, 62

Walsh, Sylvia, 4-5,23,132,140-41 War and Peace (Tolstoy), 62 Westphal, Merold, 35 will

capacities of, 130 Christian ideal and, 129-30 earnestness and, 126 imagination and, 130,141 personal, 50 power of, 12,101

"witness to the truth," 154,154n. 22 "Word"

of God, 79,100 of incognito, 100

Works of Love (Kierkegaard), 2,12, 85, 156-61,167-69

Wulf, Christoph, 112-13,115,121

Xenophon, 112,113

"Young Germany" movement, 20