Living Poetically

Kierkegaard's Existential Aesthetics

Sylvia Walsh

• Publisher: Penn State University Press
• Year: 1994
• Print ISBN: 9780271013282
• eBook ISBN: 9780271075853
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Aesthetics in Philosophy

Living Poetically is the first book to focus primarily on Kierkegaard's existential aesthetics as opposed to traditional aesthetic features of his writings such as the use of pseudonyms, literary techniques and figures, and literary criticism. Living Poetically traces the development of the concept of the poetic in Kierkegaard's writings as that concept is worked out in an ethical-religious perspective in contrast to the aesthetics of early German romanticism and Hegelian idealism. Sylvia Walsh seeks to elucidate what it means, in Kierkegaard's view, to be an authentic poet in the form of a poetic writer and to clarify his own role as a Christian poet and writer as he understood it. Walsh shows that, in spite of strong criticisms made of the poetic in some of his writings, Kierkegaard maintained a fundamentally positive understanding of the poetic as an essential ingredient in ethical and religious forms of life. Walsh thus reclaims Kierkegaard as a poetic thinker and writer from those who would interpret him as an ironic practitioner of an aestheticism devoid of and detached from the ethical-religious as well as from those who view him as rejecting the poetic and aesthetic on ethical or religious grounds.

Viewing contemporary postmodern feminism and deconstruction as advocating a romantic mode of living poetically, Walsh concludes with a feminist reading of Kierkegaard that affirms both individuality and relatedness, commonalities and differences between the self and others, men and women, for the fashioning of an authentic mode of living poetically in the present age.

1

---

The Making of a Poetic Writer

What does it take to be a poet, or poetic writer? Is it merely the writing of verse or the creation of some other kind of artistic product? Does it consist in having a special temperament, an eye for beauty, an imaginative mind, a sense of vision? Is there a necessary fund of experience and a particular way of viewing the world that are prerequisite to being an authentic poet? The question of what, if any, aesthetic criteria are to be applied to the creative artist is a vexing one that literary critics and philosophers of aesthetics in every age must ponder. As a student of aesthetics and budding author during his university years, Kierkegaard was also much concerned with the nature and requirements of poetic creativity Aspiring to establish himself in the elite literary circle of J. L. Heiberg, the leading Danish aesthetician of the time, he published in 1838 a literary review of a novel by a contemporary writer, Hans Christian Andersen, whose qualifications as a novelist are severely questioned in the review Issued under the odd title, From the Papers of One Still Living, this was the first piece by Kierkegaard to be published except for some short polemical essays that appeared in periodicals between 1834 and 1836.¹ Although Kierkegaard ironically discounts the significance of this review, suggesting in a postscript to the preface that it would not matter if the reader happened to skip over the review along with the preface, he introduces in this work certain aesthetic criteria for becoming an authentic poetic writer of novels (Romandigter), criteria that are fundamental to the existential aesthetics that emerges in the first phase of his authorship and that continue to be espoused in his writings. It is thus important to begin with a brief consideration of this work and the literary-historical background from which Kierkegaard’s fundamental aesthetic criteria are derived.

Kierkegaard’s assessment of Hans Christian Andersen’s qualifications as a novelist in From the Papers of One Still Living is based primarily on a critique of Andersen’s third novel, Only a Fiddler. Older and more established as a writer than Kierkegaard, Andersen at this point in his career had received far more acclaim as a novelist than as a writer of verse, fairy tales, and plays. His first novel, The Improvisator (1835), was an instant success, although Kierkegaard quips in an early journal entry that he can “find nothing in it” (JP, 5:5211). Like Kierkegaard, Andersen sought membership in the select Heibergian camp, but after an initial measure of acceptance, he met with disfavor apparently because Heiberg and his wife, Johanna Luise Heiberg, the most celebrated Danish actress of the time, did not think much of his ability as a dramatist.² Andersen responded to their rejection of him by satirizing and caricaturing Heiberg and his followers in some of his tales. One of these caricatures, a conceited parrot in “The Galoshes of Fortune,” may have been intended as an unflattering portrait of Kierkegaard. Since Andersen’s story appeared about three and a half months before Kierkegaard’s critical review of Only a Fiddler, Frithiof Brandt has suggested that Kierkegaard attacked Andersen in reaction to this satirical characterization of himself.³ But while Kierkegaard makes some strong charges with respect to Andersen’s personality, he denies having overstepped the limits of aesthetic jurisdiction and competency in doing so, even without appealing to the fact that, as he puts it, “I as good as do not know Andersen personally” (EPW, 83). And in the conclusion he even claims, though perhaps with a touch of irony, that his remarks have been written with “sympathetic ink” (EPW, 102). Two years later, when Andersen once again subjected Kierkegaard to caricature by having a character in one of his plays repeat lines from Kierkegaard’s review, Kierkegaard wrote a response objecting to Andersen’s portrayal of him this time as a “prating Hegelian” (EPW, 218–22; cf. xxvi—xxvii), but he refrained from publishing it and thus prolonging the public dispute between them.

Whether or not a personal vendetta against Andersen is intended in From the Papers of One Still Living, he is viewed there in a wider perspective as the paradigm of a whole cycle of phenomena in the contemporary philosophical, literary, and political spheres of Denmark that are also targets for criticism in this work. The beginning of the nineteenth century had brought the flourishing of the romantic movement in Germany, and with it the rise of the novel, or Roman, from which the movement takes its name.⁴ German romantic philosophy was introduced to Denmark in 1802 by Henrik Steffens, whose lectures inspired the young Danish poet Adam Oehlenschläger and opened the door to the development of the novel and of a new genre—the novella, or short novel—in Danish literature.⁵ With the waning of Danish romanticism around 1820, however, there arose a new generation of writers—including, among others, J. L. Heiberg, Poul Møller, Henrik Hertz, and Madame Gyllembourg (Heiberg’s mother)—who in that decade established themselves as a school of poetic realism emphasizing “local color” and “everyday life.”⁶ Although a number of historical and epistolary novels were produced during the 1820s in Denmark, Henning Fenger maintains that the real breakthrough in the development of Danish prose writing came in the 1830s, most notably with the novels of Hans Christian Andersen.⁷ Andersen’s novels represented a new wave of romanticism in contrast to the poetic realism of the earlier prose literature. Fenger theorizes that Kierkegaard, following the realist tradition, was engaged at this time in the writing of materials in the form of fictional letters for an epistolary novel to be modeled on F. C. Sibbern’s Gabrielis Breve. Although it is true that Kierkegaard was contemplating writing a novel or novella and was looking for ideas to develop in novelistic form at this time, there is little evidence to substantiate Fenger’s theory of fictional letters.⁸ But Kierkegaard’s own novelistic aspirations undoubtedly provided an incentive to competition with Andersen as well as other young novelists of the period. More important, they help to explain his choice of the novel as the literary genre upon which to focus and formulate his aesthetic views in opposition to the second phase of romanticism emerging at that time.

As these literary developments were occurring in Denmark, giving the period the distinction of being called the Golden Age of Danish literature, events in the social-political sector were taking quite a different course.⁹ After suffering economic bankruptcy in 1813, the year of Kierkegaard’s birth, the state continued to experience economic depression under a conservative government by absolute monarchy. Calls for constitutional rule, voting rights, and other social reforms met with opposition and repression from the government. Gradually, however, continuing social pressure and the rise of capitalism in the first half of the nineteenth century brought political and economic change to the land. During his university years, Kierkegaard’s position vis-à-vis most of these changes favored maintenance of the status quo, although he was not as conservative as some have thought.¹⁰

“Forget the Actual”

In From the Papers of One Still Living Kierkegaard counters what he perceives to be the main trend of the time in the philosophical, literary, and political spheres, namely, the adoption of a negative attitude toward actuality The tendency of the “whole newer development,” he claims, is to forget the past—all the “struggles and hardships the world has endured in order to become what it is”—in order to make a fresh start in the present (EPW, 61). In this, the present age seeks to establish itself as the real beginning of world history by making itself a “positive era” in contrast to previous existence, which is looked upon as a regrettably long period of serfdom (EPW, 61). This aspiration appears in its most respectable and relatively true form, Kierkegaard thinks, in Hegel’s great philosophical attempt to “begin with nothing,” that is, without any presuppositions.¹¹ Hegel’s attempt impresses Kierkegaard for the moral strength, intellectual energy, and virtuosity with which it was conceived and carried out in the philosophical system Hegel constructed. But the “entire recent literature” is so preoccupied with writing prefaces and introductions to the new era, Kierkegaard charges, that “it has forgotten that the beginning from nothing of which Hegel speaks was mastered by himself in the system and was by no means a failure to appreciate the great richness actuality has” (EPW, 62).

From this statement it is apparent that it is not so much Hegel himself as followers of his who are the main targets of Kierkegaard’s criticism of recent developments in the philosophical sphere. Indeed, at this stage in his philosophical understanding, Kierkegaard shows considerably more appreciation of Hegel than of those who espouse his views. In a footnote to the text, for example, he satirizes those Hegelians who read the master’s Logic so as to posit the category of “actual secretaries” in thought without there being any corresponding secretaries in actuality (EPW, 62). The principal Hegelians Kierkegaard most likely has in mind are J. L. Heiberg, one of the foremost exponents of Hegelianism in Denmark at that time, who gave an introductory lecture on Hegel’s logic in 1834, and H. L. Martensen, whose popular lectures on Hegel in 1837 created what J. H. Schjørring has described as a “Hegelian delirium” among university students and the cultural bourgeoisie.¹² This phenomenon and its instigator are subjected to satirical attack and caricature in a rough draft of a farce sketched by Kierkegaard in 1838 or 1839 under the projected title “The Battle Between the Old and the New Soap-Cellars” but never finished (EPW, 103–24).¹³

Kierkegaard’s criticism of the current literary attitude toward actuality also echoes one that poetic realists of the period had made against the earlier romantic poets for the alienation from actuality expressed in their attempts to escape the world through poetry.¹⁴ In fact, Kierkegaard’s critique of the attempt to “begin with nothing” may be aimed more at the new wave of romanticism than against Hegelianism. In The Concept of Irony, where romanticism is subjected to severe criticism, he associates the idea that “only now was actuality supposed to begin” specifically with romanticism and again refers to Hegel as the one who “put a stop to all this continual chatter that now world history was going to begin” (CI, 278). Moreover, the practice of writing prefaces, which is criticized in From the Papers of One Still Living, was a technique frequently employed by romantic poets to prepare the reader for responding imaginatively to their writings.¹⁵

As exceptions to the negative tendencies of the more recent prose literature, Kierkegaard cites a cycle of realist novellas by Madame Gyllembourg that reflect a positive orientation toward actuality. In particular, the first of these, A Story of Everyday Life, receives strong appreciation from him for its truly edifying positivity in expressing joy and confidence in the world and in people. Although Kierkegaard admits that her stories can also be said to “begin with nothing” in the sense that they focus on the affairs of immediate, everyday life, in his estimation they reflect what is true in the trend insofar as they present a negative attitude toward the “odious practice” of rejecting the past, a practice that had become established in the genre of prose literature (EPW, 64). Other writings that also receive favorable mention from him are the novellas of Bernhard and Blicher, the latter being described as a “voice in the wilderness” who transforms the novel into “a friendly place of refuge for the imagination exiled in life” (EPW, 69).¹⁶

In the political sphere, Kierkegaard detects an even more deplorable form of the age’s delusion with regard to actuality than is found in philosophy and literature. Here the problem is evident in a misunderstanding of historical evolution centered in the notion that “the world always becomes wiser.” Implied in this notion is the idea that the present is better than the past, but Kierkegaard notes, with parodic consequences: “We on our forefathers’ shoulders stand, We seem so tall—and are so small.” Kierkegaard attributes this attitude of superiority either to a “youthful arrogance too confident of powers untried in life” or to a “lack of patience to adapt oneself to the conditions of life” (EPW, 63). In either case, he contends, the watchword is “forget the actual,” which amounts to an attack upon the given actuality evident in the negative element of distrust with which they seek to begin anew (EPW, 64).

One child of this period who manifests, in Kierkegaard’s estimation, its tendency toward a negative view of actuality is Hans Christian Andersen. One can detect in him, Kierkegaard thinks, “a certain gloom and bitterness against the world” that is not only characteristic of his personal life but also autobiographically projected into his novels (EPW, 73). The same “joyless battle” Andersen wages in life against the forces of fate and evil choking the good in the world is taken up again in his writings (EPW, 75). His novels thus provide a good example whereby Kierkegaard can examine a fundamental issue in aesthetics concerning the relation between the life and literary productivity of the poetic writer. To what extent and in what way should a writer’s own attitudes and experiences shape or be reflected in his or her poetic works? Kierkegaard sees the life and work of a poetic writer as being integrally connected, but not in the way they are conflated in Andersen’s novels. In his aesthetic judgment, Andersen lacks certain fundamental qualifications that are necessary to be a novelist. As a result he stands in a wrong relation both to his artistic productivity and to himself.

There are essentially two aesthetic requirements Kierkegaard thinks Andersen lacks as a Romandigter, or poetic writer of novels: a life-development (Livs-Udvikling) and a life-view (Livs-Anskuelse).¹⁷ Both of these categories were previously employed as artistic criteria by Poul Martin Møller, who emphasized them in a review of Madame Gyllem-bourg’s novel The Extremes (1836) and in his treatise on immortality (1837).¹⁸ The notion of a life-development, however, is rooted in German neoclassicism, which emphasized self-cultivation (Bildung) and the achievement of wholeness of the individual personality as the goal of life and art. This idea was given theoretical formulation in Schiller’s Aesthetic Education of Man (1793) and artistic expression in Bildungsromanef or novels of individual development, most notably those of Goethe, who was considered the model poet by the young Kierkegaard and his older contemporaries—for example, F. C. Sibbern, Kierkegaard’s teacher of aesthetics and psychology, who was a novelist in his own right and shared the neoclassical view of existence as a process of development toward a unified whole.¹⁹

The necessity of having a life-view that informs a work of art was also a primary tenet of the poetic realism school to which Sibbern and Møller belonged. As George Pattison has pointed out, “the terms Weltanschauung and Lebensanschauung had been in common usage in German literature and philosophy for a generation or more,” but the idea of a world-view or life-view came to acquire special significance for Møller, who saw it as providing a “religious comprehension of being within the horizon of a transcendent unity.”²⁰ The notion of a world-view was also prominent in Hegelian thought, but there it signified a philosophical, rather than religious, comprehension of being and was synonymous with “the system,” or a total comprehension and explanation of being through reason. Although Kierkegaard sometimes uses the term “world-view” as a synonym of “life-view,” he generally employs the latter term, which has for him a more personal and less systematic connotation than is found in Hegelian philosophy.

In adopting the notions of life-development and life-view as aesthetic criteria, Kierkegaard fuses them with certain aesthetic ideas drawn from J. L. Heiberg, whose aesthetics his own shows an affinity with yet also differs from in some important respects.²¹ In From the Papers of One Still Living Kierkegaard thus formulates in his own distinctive manner an aesthetic theory of what it takes to be an authentic poet in the form of a Romandigter, or poetic writer of novels. To see how these aesthetic criteria are conceptualized and specifically applied to Andersen as a paradigm of the philosophical, literary, and political developments of the time, let us examine them more closely.

The Life-Development of a Poetic Writer

To be an authentic Romandigter, or poetic novelist, Kierkegaard claims, one must first undergo a strong life-development so as to become a personality. This life-development is further characterized by him in aesthetic terms as an “epic development,” or “epic stage,” in life (EPW, 70–71, 76). As Kierkegaard understands it, the epic involves action and heroic striving toward a single goal in life—something he thinks the present political environment, being a “period of fermentation” (Gjaerings-Periode) rather than a “period of action” (Gjemings-Periode), has not fostered in Andersen, whose personal life and writings are situated in the lyrical stage rather than an epical one (EPW, 71). As a genre and stage of life, the epic, in Kierkegaard’s view, follows upon the lyrical, which is concentrated in the expression of poetic mood. In adopting this understanding of these genres, Kierkegaard follows the schema proposed by J. L. Heiberg, who appropriates much of Hegel’s aesthetics into...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Sigla
• Prologue: A Touch of the Poet
• 1. The Making of a Poetic Writer
• 2. Living Poetically
• 3. Patterns for Living Poetically
• 4. The Highest in Aesthetics
• 5. Dancing Lightly in the Sphere of the Religious
• 6. Away from the Poetic?
• 7. The Art of Existing
• 8. Poet of the Religious
• Epilogue: Living Poetically in the Present Age
• Notes
• Works Consulted
• Index
• Back Cover