KIERKEGAARD ON ART AND COMMUNICATION

Also by George Pattison and from the same publishers

ART, MODERNITY AND FAITH KIERKEGAARD: The Aesthetic and the Religious

Kierkegaard on Art and ComInunication

Edited by

George Pattison Dean olCIUlpel, King's College, Cambridge

M St. Martin's Press

Selection and editorial matter © George Linsley Pattison 1992 Chapter 1 © Sylvia Walsh 1992

Chapter 7 © Robert L. Perkins 1992 © The Macmillan Press Ltd 1992

Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1 st edition 1992

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First published in Great Britain 1992 by THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD

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Companies and representatives throughout the world

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978-1-349-22474-6 ISBN 978-1-349-22472-2 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-22472-2

Reprinted 1994

First published in the United States of America 1992 by Scholarly and Reference Division,

ST. MARTIN'S PRESS, INC., 175 Fifth Avenue,

New York, N.Y. 10010

ISBN 978-0-312-07478-4

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Kierkegaard on art and communication / edited by George Pattison

p. cm. Includes index. ISBN 978-0-312-07478-4 1. Kierkegaard, SeJren, 1813-1855. 2. Aesthetics, Modern-19th

century. 3. Communication-History-19th century. I. Pattison George, 1950-

B4377.K46 1992 111'.85-dc20 91-30318

CIP

Contents

Acknowledgements vii

List of Abbreviations viii

Notes on the Contributors xi

Editor's Introduction xiii

1 Kierkegaard: Poet of the Religious 1 Sylvia Walsh

2 Aesthetics and Religion: Kierkegaard and the Offence of Indirect Communication 23

Bray ton Polka

3 On Being Sidetracked by the Aesthetic: Kierkegaard's Practical Paradox 55

Richard H. Bell

4 Kierkegaard, the Aesthetic and Mozart's Don Giovanni 64 Bemard Zelechow

5 The Role of Folk and Fairy Tales in Kierkegaard's Authorship 78

Grethe Kjcer

6 'Keeping Silent through Speaking' 88 Jan Rogan

7 Abraham's Silence Aesthetically Considered 100 Robert L. Perkins

8 Indirect Communication: Hegelian Aesthetic and Kierkegaard's Literary Art 114

John Heywood Thomas

v

vi Contents

9 The Apostle, the Genius and the Monkey: Reflections on Kierkegaard's 'The Mirror of the Word' 125

Hugh S. Pyper

10 Fighting for Narnia: Seren Kierkegaard and C. S. Lewis 137 Julia Watkin

11 Reflections on the 'Other' in Dinesen, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche 150

Irena Makarushka

12 Confidence as a Work of Love 160 Martin Andic

Index 185

Acknowledgements

I should like to thank, in the first instance, David Jasper for his help in setting up and running the conference 'Kierkegaard: The Chris­tian in Love with Aesthetics'; those who gave papers of a consist­ently high quality at the conference, but which I have been unable to include here; Bob Perkins for the system of abbreviations adopted in this book and also for permission to use his paper printed here as Chapter 7, which is a shortened version of an article previously printed in International Kierkegaard Commentary: 'Fear and Trembling' (Macon, Ga: Macon University Press, 1991); the Royal Danish Embassy, London, who gave substantial financial support for the conference; Angela Brooks for typing; and my family for bearing with the neuroses concomitant upon editorial work, which, if not as obvious as those connected with original creative work, are no less anti-social in their effects.

I should also like to pay tribute to Mr Graham Eyre, who died shortly after completing the copy-editing of this book. His careful and thorough work made a significant impact on the overall read­ability and accuracy of the book, for which I am extremely grateful.

G.P.

vii

AN

C

CA

CD

Cl

COR

CUP

ED

EO

FSE

FT(IR)

GS

JP

JSK

List of Abbreviations

KIERKEGAARD'S WORKS IN ENGLISH

Armed Neutrality and An Open Letter, tr. Howard and Edna Hong (Bloomington and London: Indiana Uni­versity Press, 1968). The Crisis and a Crisis in the Life of an Actress, tr. Stephen Crites (New York: Harper and Row, 1967). The Concept cif Anxiety, tr. R. Thomte (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980). Christian Discourses, tr. WaIter Lowrie (New York and London: Oxford University Press, 1940). The Concept of Irony, tr. Howard and Edna Hong (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989). The Corsair Affair, tr. Howard and Edna Hong (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1982). Concluding Unscientific Postscript, tr. David F. Swenson and WaIter Lowrie (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1941). Edifying Discourses, 4 vols, tr. David F. and Lillian Marvin Swenson (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1943-6). Either/Or, 2 vols, tr. Howard and Edna Hong (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987). For Self-Examination and Judge for Yourselves, tr. Howard and Edna Hong (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990). Fear and Trembling and Repetition, tr. Howard and Edna Hong (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983). The Gospel of Suffering, tr. David F. and Lillian Marvin Swenson (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1948). Seren Kierkegaard's Journals and Papers, 6 vols, tr. Howard and Edna Hong (Bloomington and London: Indiana University Press, 1967-78). The Journals of Seren Kierkegaard, tr. Alexander Dru (Lon­don and New York: Oxford University Press, 1938).

viii

KAUC

LD

LY

OAR

PF

PH

PV

SLW

SUD

TA

TC

TCS

WL

List of Abbreviations ix

Kierkegaard's Attack upon 'Christendom', tr. Waiter Lowrie (Princeton, NI: Princeton University Press, 1944). Letters and Documents, tr. Henrik Rosenmeier (Princeton, NI: Princeton University Press, 1978). The Last Years, tr. Ronald Gregor Smith (New York: Harper and Row, 1965). On Authority and Revelation, The Book on Adler, tr. Waiter Lowrie (Princeton, NI: Princeton University Press, 1955). Philosophical Fragments and Johannes Climacus, tr. Howard and Edna Hong (Princeton, NI: Princeton University Press, 1985). Purity of Heart, tr. Douglas Steere, 2nd edn (New York: Harper, 1948). The Point of View, tr. Waiter Lowrie (London and New York: Oxford University Press, 1939). Stages on Life'S Way, tr. Howard and Edna Hong (Princeton, NI: Princeton University Press, 1988). The Sickness unto Death, tr. Howard and Edna Hong (Princeton, NI: Princeton University Press, 1980). Two Ages, tr. Howard and Edna Hong (Princeton, NI: Princeton University Press, 1978). Training in Christianity, tr. Waiter Lowrie (London and New York: Oxford University Press, 1941; repr. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1944). Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions (Thoughts on Cru­cial Situations in Human Life), tr. and ed. David F. and Lillian Marvin Swenson (Minneapolis: Augsburg Pub­lishing House, 1941). Works of Love, tr. Howard and Edna Hong (New York: Harper and Row, 1962).

These abbreviations refer to those translations generally used through­out this book. On the few occasions when another translation has been used, references will be given in the relevant footnotes. Other­wise all references are given in the text. In the cases of SBren Kierkegaard's Journals and Papers and Letters and Documents references are to entry rather than to page number (the six volumes of the Journals and Papers are numbered consecutively throughout).

x List of Abbreviations

KIERKEGAARD'S WORKS IN DANISH

Pap. Sf/ren Kierkegaards Papirer, ed. P. A. Heiberg, V. Kuhr and E. Torsting, 2nd edn with Niels Thulstrup, 13 vols (Copen­hagen: Gyldendal, 1968-70); index by N. J. Cappel0m, 3 vols (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1975-8).

SV Sf/ren Kierkegaards Samlede Vcrrker, ed. A. B. Drachrnann, J. L. Heiberg and H. O. Lange, 14 vols (Copenhagen, 1901-6).

Any abbreviations for works by any other authors will be given in the notes to the essay in question.

Notes on the Contributors

Martin Andic is Associate Professor of Philosophy, University of Massachusetts, Boston.

Richard H. Bell is Ferris Professor of Philosophy, The College of Wooster, Wooster, Ohio.

Grethe Kjrer is a Kierkegaard researcher and author of Barndommens ulykkelige Elsker: Kierkegaard og Barndommen.

Irena Makarushka teaches in the Department of Religion, Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine.

George Pattison is Dean of Chapel, King's College, Cambridge.

Robert L. Perkins is Professor and Chair of the Department of Philosophy, Stetson University, Florida.

Bray ton Polka is Associate Professor of Humanities and History, York University, Ontario.

Hugh S. Pyper teaches in the Department of Biblical Studies, Uni­versity of Glasgow.

Jan Rogan teaches for the Open University and the Cambridge Board of Extra-Mural Studies.

John Heywood Thomas is Professor and Head of Department in the Department of Theology, University of Nottingham.

Sylvia Walsh is Adjunct Professor of Philosophy at Stetson Univer­sity, Florida.

Julia Watkin is Assistant Director of the Department of S0ren Kierkegaard Research, Copenhagen University, and lecturer in Kierkegaard at Denmark's International Study Program, Copenhagen.

xi

xii Notes on the Contributors

Bemard Zelechow is Associate Professor of Humanities and His­tory, York University, Ontario.

Editor's Introduction

Underlying the quite diverse interpretations of Kierkegaard's writ­ings contained in this collection of papers is a common recognition that the style, the form, the HOW of Kierkegaard's authorship is perhaps the most important aspect in which his work reveals itself to us today. This is not necessarily to deny that that work raises substantive issues, but it is to emphasise the peculiar plausibility of that characteristic slogan of the 1960s - 'The medium is the message' - in relation to the literary remains of this most brilliant, impas­sioned and devious of modem Christian thinkers. The title of the conference at which the papers were originally presented, 'Kierkegaard: The Christian in Love with Aesthetics' (National Con­ference on Literature and Religion, St Chad's College, Durham, April 1990), already suggests something of the complexity and the dilem­mas which will confront any interpreter who determines to ap­proach Kierkegaard in this way. 'The Christian' - but what kind of Christian was this man who attacked the whole edifice of Christian doctrine and Church practice as understood in his time and place? , ... in Love' - but what kind of love was the love of this man who wrote as convincingly of love's solitudes and sufferings as he did of its duties and its joys, for whom love (perhaps tragically) could in no way imply the necessary fulfilment of its own longing? ' ... with Aesthetics' - but what kind of aesthetic values and awareness are in play when the term 'aesthetic' itself can come to connote humanity's alienation from God? With our eyes open, then, we come to read Kierkegaard (and, as importantly, to read Kierkegaard as being also a reader and listener) on the look-out for the constant and complex interaction between medium and message, between author and authority, between text and transcendence, between reading, mis­reading and res, die Sache selbst. Kierkegaard, then, 'on Art and Communication' takes us to the very dividing-asunder of the joints and marrow of his authorship as well as to the cutting edge of his significance for contemporary theology, philosophy, literature and artistic practice.

An editor, however, should not impose too much on the patience and proper interests of his contributors, each of whom brings dis-

xiii

xiv Kierkegaard on Art and Communication

tinctive questions and concerns to the interpretative task. We move then to the papers themselves, devoting the remainder of this intro­duction to a summary overview of their contents.

Sylvia Walsh's confident and compelling paper 'Kierkegaard: Poet of the Religious' (Ch. 1) offers us a view of Kierkegaard as 'a reli­gious thinker who possessed to a considerable degree the touch of a poet'. With particular emphasis on his 'second literature' we are shown how, as a religious poet, Kierkegaard portrayed the Christian ideals poetically and descriptively whilst indicating that the existen­tial realisation of the ideals may involve the Christian in the 'con­trary forms' of suffering and renunciation. A positive appraisal of categories such as 'imagination' and 'possibility' is developed, cat­egories which Kierkegaard had perSistently explored in his earlier writings. Poetry, it is argued, can be set to serve the purpose of displaying Christ as prototype and pattern and may, even in its limitations, teach both poet and readers to 'fly to Grace'.

The key category in Bray ton Polka's 'Aesthetics and Religion: Kierkegaard and the Offence of Indirect Communication' (Ch. 2) is 'undecidability', a category he holds to be biblical, Kierkegaardian and postmodern. For Polka it is not just a question of whether Kierkegaard is aesthetic or religious, since Kierkegaard is aesthetic precisely because he is religious and religious precisely because he is aesthetic. This may seem to ignore the sharp contrast Kierkegaard himself draws between the aesthetic and the religious, but the paper argues that this is fully in accord with indirect communication and· the requirement of religious upbuilding. None of this is merely a matter of Kierkegaard scholarship, since the question can imme­diately be extended to the realms of existence and of Christianity itself: each of these is likewise both aesthetic and religious. What is at stake is nothing less than the mutual interpretation and figuration of the divine and the human with all that that implies.

In 'On Being Sidetracked by the Aesthetic: Kierkegaard's Practical Paradox' (Ch. 3) Richard Bell observes that as users and producers of language most of us most of the time operate aesthetically and value cleverness and genius above commitment. Even religious language is pervaded by aesthetic and ethical categories. Could we even begin to understand ourselves in a language which transcended such cat­egories altogether? This is the 'practical paradox' of the paper's title. In the course of an examination of the interaction between concepts and emotions it emerges that silence may, on occasion, be a more appropriate expression of 'religiously worthy emotion' than any

Editor's Introduction xv

amount of words. Yet such aesthetic notions as 'taking delight in' can be applied to religion. If the heart is rightly directed then the natural aesthetic categories have their proper place, a point made with reference to Augustine as well as to Kierkegaard's own 'knight of faith'.

The next six papers all deal with Kierkegaard's own appropria­tion of literary, philosophical and religious texts: that is, with Kierkegaard as a reader, or, as in Bernard Zelechow's 'Kierkegaard, the Aesthetic and Mozart's Don Giovanni' (Ch. 4), with Kierkegaard as listener. A key issue in Kierkegaard's interpretation of the opera is shown to be the rationale for the exclusion of the sensuous from religious embodiment and the misreadings of Mozart which this generates when Don Giovanni is interpreted as the supreme artistic expression of sensuous desire. Zelechow complains that Kierkegaard focuses too exclusively on the Don himself and therefore fails to observe the complex interactions between the other characters in the opera. Similarly, Kierkegaard is deaf to those developments of musical form which enabled Mozart to communicate moral reflec­tion and development. Zelechow also draws attention to the social changes reflected in Mozart's operas and their implications for the newly emergent concept of personhood. The way in which Kierkegaard overlooks such considerations highlights the religious presuppositions which mould his own view of art. None the less his 'reading' of Mozart remains serious, profound and revealing.

Grethe Kjrer's The Role of Folk and Fairy Tales in Kierkegaard's Authorship' (Ch. 5) investigates Kierkegaard's reading of the folk and fairy tales which constituted over one hundred volumes in his personal library. His interest in such stories reflects a widespread tendency manifested in various aspects of contemporary culture, especially Romanticism, which, in turn, the world of folk literature significantly illuminates. Kierkegaard's preoccupation with such tales had much to do with a 'great project' underlying many of the early notes in his journals and papers, a project (according to Kjrer) deal­ing with the spiritual character of the Middle Ages. This historical stage, however, is also, in Kierkegaard's view, recapitulated in the life of the child, so that the understanding of the fairy tale comes to throw light on key moments of the individual's personal growth. The reverberations of this early and intensive reading are shown to continue through Kierkegaard's entire authorship.

From Mozart and fairy tales we move to Lessing, the Enlighten­ment dramatist, critic and thinker to whom Kierkegaard's pseudo-

xvi Kierkegaard on Art and Communication

nym Johannes Climacus expressed a profound debt of gratitude. The nature of this debt is the theme of Jan Rogan's '''Keeping Silent through Speaking'" (Ch. 6).

Lessing himself distinguished between theologians and Chris­tians, arguing that true Christians were not perturbed by theological disagreement, since the spiritual life is an individual search for truth. But there is a certain ambivalence in his religious attitude, an am­bivalence reflected in the nature of Climacus's 'debt'. This ambiva­lence relates to the character of religious communication: 'no one can support or appeal to another in his God-relationship', says Rogan. Thus, even Lessing's speech is a kind of silence, a silence which belongs to the essence of subjective or religious communication. This leads to a reflection on the manifold interaction between author, work and reader in Kierkegaard's pseudonymous works. In this connection Lessing can be seen to have acted as a model for Kierkegaard, not merely in the sense that he provided Kierkegaard with a certain view of Christianity but in the way he exemplified a certain style of communicating it.

Robert L. Perkins' 'Abraham's Silence Aesthetically Considered' (Ch. 7) addresses the rarely discussed 'Problem Three' in the very much discussed book Fear and Trembling. This problem concerns Abraham's behaviour in keeping silent about his intention of sacri­ficing Isaac and asks whether such silence was ethically justifiable. Two categories are particularly crucial here: 'immediacy' and 'the interesting'. Both have important associations in idealist aesthetics and the discussion leads on to Kierkegaard's intellectual relation to both· Hegelianism and Romanticism, as well as to Socrates and to Kierkegaard's own literary creation Johannes the Seducer. 'The in­teresting' indeed comes to be seen as marking the boundary between the aesthetic and the ethical. The aesthetic side of this boundary is present in Romantic literature and theory, and the ethical side in Socrates. Abraham's faith, however, turns out to be neither imme­diate, nor aesthetically nor ethically interesting, but his silence reveals an appropriate expression of his religious interest.

In John Heywood Thomas's thoughtful paper 'Indirect Commu­nication: Hegelian Aesthetic and Kierkegaard's Literary Art' (Ch. 8) we are again led to ponder the relationship between Kierkegaard and Hegel. Here, however, positive aspects of the relationship are to the fore, since Professor Heywood Thomas is observant of the way in which aspects of Hegelian aesthetics anticipate Kierkegaard's work. Hegel's requirement that the artist become also a theorist points

Editor's Introduction xvii

towards a combination of sensitivity and rigour which Kierkegaard's writing uniquely instantiates - a combination which, we are told, is of inestimable value for all who would practice the philosophy of religion. Kierkegaard could also have learnt from Hegel (as well as from Kant) about the limitations of theory in aesthetics, in addition to being put on his guard against the 'excesses' of Schellingian Romanticism. These lessons from Hegel in turn point towards Kierkegaard's theory and practice of indirect communication.

Hugh Pyper's 'The Apostle, the Genius and the Monkey: Reflec­tions on Kierkegaard's "The Mirror of the Word'" (Ch. 9) takes us back to Kierkegaard's reading of what could arguably be said to be his most important 'source': the Bible. This polished and very amus­ing paper ranges from Ezekiel through to Neil Munro's comic Scot­tish stories, taking in Kierkegaard's interpretation of the dramatic encounter between King David and the prophet Nathan in 2 Samuel 12. It is noticed that Nathan uses an elegant and skilful work of fiction to provoke David into judging himself, and we can thus see in this text the kind of tussle between authority and aesthetic genius which occupied Kierkegaard at so many points. The recognition of authority, however, is seen to occur only in the context of actual repentance. This is related to Kierkegaard's defence of the Letter of James against Luther and, in particular, to James's metaphor of 'the mirror of the word'. Noting Kierkegaard's use of Lichtenberg's aphorism 'Such works are mirrors; when an ape looks in, no apostle can look out', the paper comes to an improbable but perceptive conclusion on a cargo boat on the river Clyde.

In the next two papers, by Julia Watkin and Irena Makarushka, we come to see Kierkegaard and Kierkegaardian themes in the world of twentieth-century literature (and film) - in the very different worlds, that is, of C. S. Lewis and of Isak Dinesen's 'Babette's Feast'. Whilst fully aware of the differences of context and style between Lewis and Kierkegaard, 'Fighting for Narnia: Sfllren Kierkegaard and C. S. Lewis' (Ch. 10) identifies important convergences between the two men. Julia Watkin sees them both as great Christian apolo­gists, as essentially orthodox believers, firmly on the 'fact' side of debates about 'fact' versus 'value' in religion. Both see religion as objectively true but, at least after Lewis abandoned his attempts to construct logically coercive proofs for the existence of God, as being true in a kind of way which does not lend itself to easy appropria­tion. Lewis's science-fiction and Narnia stories provide a striking parallel to Kierkegaard's tactic of indirect communication, equally

xviii Kierkegaard on Art and Communication

resisting the temptation to reduce religious language to 'second­order' theological discourse and aiming instead to confront the reader with an existential choice, for or against Christianity.

'Reflections on the "Other" in Dinesen, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche' (Ch. 11) strikes a very different note - and one that is highly critical of Kierkegaard, especially of his negative appraisal of difference and othemess (in contrast to Nietzsche's more affirmative stance). The issue is explored in the context of Dinesen's story 'Babette's Feast', where the two pietistic sisters (Martine and Philippa) and the French cook (Babette) represent Kierkegaardian and Nietzschean perspectives respectively. From the feminist point of view adopted in the paper, these perspectives also have significant bearing on the women's experience and expression of their own sexuality, with Kierkegaard emerging on the side of patriarchal values. While other readings might give him a quite different role in the complex of issues discussed here, the paper is sharply and intelligently provocative.

For all their differences, Julia Watkin's and Irena Makarushka's readings of Kierkegaard remind us that what is at stake in our appropriation of his work is very much a matter of life, of values and of truths to live by. This same emphasis resounds throughout the final contribution, Martin Andic's 'Confidence as a Work of Love' (Ch. 12). Centring on Kierkegaard's Works of Love - but with a wealth of references to Shakespeare and other literary sources - Martin Andic examines the treatment of love in this work with constant reference to the HOW of its communication. This HOW is seen in love's ability to generate confidence: confidence between God and human beings, confidence among human beings themselves. This confidence enables love to communicate itself with openness yet in secrecy and always trustingly. This may seem paradoxical, but the paradox is that of the 'open secret' of faith itself.

These essays, then, cover a range of views, texts and interpre­tations. In the pages that follow much is said - and yet the word which remains for me, a word treasured by Kierkegaard himself and a word endorsed by several of the contributors here is, simply, 'silence', the silence to which all communication must ultimately be entrusted but which simultaneously places all communication at risk of refusal and misunderstanding.

GEORGE PA TIISON