Kierkegaard's Writing, III, Part I

Either/Or

Søren Kierkegaard, Howard V. Hong, Edna H. Hong

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781400846931
• Topic: Philosophie
• Subtopic: Religionsphilosophie

Søren Kierkegaard, the nineteenth-century Danish philosopher rediscovered in the twentieth century, is a major influence in contemporary philosophy, religion, and literature. He regarded Either/Or as the beginning of his authorship, although he had published two earlier works on Hans Christian Andersen and irony. The pseudonymous volumes of Either/Or are the writings of a young man (I) and of Judge William (II). The ironical young man's papers include a collection of sardonic aphorisms; essays on Mozart, modern drama, and boredom; and "The Seducer's Diary." The seeming miscellany is a reflective presentation of aspects of the "either, " the esthetic view of life. Part II is an older friend's "or, " the ethical life of integrated, authentic personhood, elaborated in discussions of personal becoming and of marriage. The resolution of the "either/or" is left to the reader, for there is no Part III until the appearance of Stages on Life's Way. The poetic-reflective creations of a master stylist and imaginative impersonator, the two men write in distinctive ways appropriate to their respective positions.

EITHER/OR

A FRAGMENT OF LIFE

edited by
Victor Eremita

PART I
CONTAINING A’S PAPERS

Is reason then alone baptized,
are the passions pagans?

YOUNG

PREFACE¹ [I V]

It may at times have occurred to you, dear reader, to doubt somewhat the accuracy of that familiar philosophical thesis that the outer is the inner and the inner is the outer.² Perhaps you yourself have concealed a secret that in its joy or in its pain you felt was too intimate to share with others. Perhaps your life has put you in touch with people about whom you suspected that something of this nature was the case, although neither by force nor by inveiglement were you able to bring out into the open that which was hidden. Perhaps neither case applies to you and your life, and yet you are not unacquainted with that doubt; like a fleeting shape, it has drifted through your mind now and then. A doubt such as this comes and goes, and no one knows whence it comes or whither it goes.³ I myself have always been rather heretically minded on this philosophical point and therefore early in my life developed the habit of making observations and investigations as well as possible. For guidance, I have consulted the authors whose view I shared in this respect—in brief, I have done all I could to make up for what has been left undone in the philosophical writings. Gradually, then, hearing became my most cherished sense, for just as the voice is the disclosure of inwardness incommensurable with the exterior, so the ear is the instrument that apprehends this inwardness, hearing the sense by which it is appropriated. Consequently, every time I found a contradiction between what I saw and what I heard, my doubt was confirmed [1 VI] and my zeal for observation increased. A priest who hears confessions is separated by a grillwork from the person making confession; he does not see him, he only hears. As he listens, he gradually forms a picture of the other’s outward appearance corresponding to what he hears; thus he finds no contradiction. It is different, however, when one sees and hears simultaneously but sees a grillwork between oneself and the speaker. My efforts to make observations along this line have been quite varied as far as results are concerned. At times I have had luck, at times not, and to obtain any returns along these paths, one needs luck. But I have never lost the desire to continue my investigations. If at times I have been about to regret my persistence, so also at times my efforts have been crowned with unexpected good fortune. It was just such unexpected good fortune that in a most curious manner put me in possession of the papers I hereby have the honor to present to the reading public. In these papers, I had an opportunity to take a look at the lives of two men, which confirmed my suspicion that the outer is not the inner. This was especially true of one of them. His exterior has been a complete contradiction of his interior. To a certain extent, it is also true of the other, inasmuch as he has hidden a more significant interior under a rather insignificant exterior.

For the sake of order, it is probably best to tell first how I happened to come into possession of these papers. It is now about seven years since I spotted in a secondhand shop here in the city a writing desk that immediately attracted my attention. It was not a modern piece of work, had been used considerably, and yet it captivated me. It is impossible for me to explain the basis of this impression, but most people presumably have had a similar experience during their lives. My daily route took me past this secondhand dealer and his writing desk, and I never let a day go by without fixing my eyes on it in passing. Gradually that desk assumed a history for me; to see it became a necessity to me, and when on a rare occasion it was necessary to make a detour for its sake, I did not hesitate. With time, as I looked at it, the desire awakened in me to own it. To be sure, I felt that it was a strange desire, since I had no use for this piece of furniture, and it would be a prodigality for me to purchase it. But desire, as is known, is very sophistical. [I VII] I found a pretext for going into the secondhand shop, inquired about other things, and as I was about to leave I casually made a very low offer for the writing desk. I thought the dealer would possibly accept it. In that case, it would be a coincidence that played into my hands. It certainly was not for the sake of the money that I acted this way, but for the sake of my conscience. It misfired; the dealer was exceptionally rigid. For a time, I again walked by every day and gazed at the desk with enamored eyes. You must make up your mind, I thought. Suppose it is sold; then it is too late, and even if you managed to get hold of it again, you still would never have the same impression of it. My heart pounded when I went into the shop. I bought it and paid for it. This is the last time you are going to be so prodigal, I thought. In fact, it is really lucky that you did buy it, for every time you look at it you will be reminded of how prodigal you were; with this desk commences a new period in your life. Ah, desire is very eloquent, and good intentions are always on hand.

The writing desk was set up in my apartment, and just as in the first phase of my infatuation I had my pleasure in gazing at it from the street, so now I walked by it here at home. Gradually I learned to know its numerous features, its many drawers and compartments, and in every respect I was happy with my desk. But it was not to remain that way. In the summer of 1836, my duties allowed me to make a little journey to the country for a week. Arrangements were made with the coachman for five o’clock in the morning. The clothes I needed to take along had been packed the previous evening; everything was in order. I was already awake at four o’clock, but the picture of the beautiful countryside I was going to visit had such an intoxicating effect on me that I fell asleep again or into a dream. Presumably my servant wanted me to have all the sleep I could get, for he did not call me until six-thirty. The coachman was already blowing his horn, and although ordinarily I am disinclined to obey the orders of others, I have always made an exception of a coachman and his poetic motifs. I dressed quickly and was already at the door when the thought crossed my mind: Do you have enough money in your pocketbook? There was not much. I opened the desk to pull out the money drawer and take what happened to be at hand. But the drawer would not budge. Every expedient was futile. It was a most calamitous situation. To run into such difficulties at the very moment when the coachman’s enticing tones were still ringing in my ears! The blood rushed to my [I VIII] head; I was furious. Just as Xerxes had the sea whipped,⁴ so I decided to take dreadful revenge. A hatchet was fetched. I gave the desk a terrible blow with it. Whether in my rage I aimed wrong or the drawer was just as stubborn as I, the result was not what was intended. The drawer was shut, and the drawer stayed shut. But something else happened. Whether my blow struck precisely this spot or the vibration through the entire structure of the desk was the occasion, I do not know, but this I do know—a secret door that I had never noticed before sprung open. This door closed off a compartment that I obviously had not discovered. Here, to my great amazement, I found a mass of papers, the papers that constitute the contents of the present publication. My decision remained unchanged. At the first post house, I would borrow some money. In the greatest haste, a mahogany box that usually contained a pair of pistols was emptied and the papers deposited into it. Joy was victorious and had gained an unexpected augmentation. In my heart, I begged the desk’s forgiveness for the rough treatment, while my thought found its suspicion strengthened—that the outer is certainly not the inner—and my experiential thesis was confirmed: it takes a stroke of luck to make such discoveries.

In the middle of the forenoon, I reached Hillerød,⁵ straightened out my finances, and gained an overall impression of the glorious region. Right away the next morning, I began my excursions, which now took on quite another character than I originally had intended. My servant accompanied me with the mahogany box. I looked for a romantic spot in the forest where I would be as safe as possible from any surprise and there took out the documents. The innkeeper, noticing these frequent rambles in the company of a mahogany box, volunteered that perhaps I was practicing shooting with my pistols. I was much obliged to him for this remark and let him continue under that impression.

A quick look at the discovered papers readily showed me that they formed two groups, with a marked external difference as well. The one was written on a kind of letter-vellum, in quarto, with a rather wide margin. The handwriting was legible, sometimes even a bit meticulous, in one place slovenly. The other was written on full sheets of beehive paper⁶ with ruled columns such as legal documents and the like are written on. The handwriting was distinct, somewhat drawn out, uniform and even; it seemed to be that of a businessman. [I IX] The contents immediately appeared to be different also: the one contained a number of esthetic essays of varying lengths; the other consisted of two long studies and a shorter one, all with ethical content, it seemed, and in the form of letters. On closer inspection, this difference was entirely confirmed. The latter group does indeed consist of letters written to the author of the first group.

But it is necessary to find a more concise expression to characterize the two authors. With that in mind, I have gone through the papers very carefully but have found nothing or practically nothing. As far as the first author, the esthete, is concerned, there is no information at all about him. As far as the other, the letter writer, is concerned, we learn that his name is William and that he has been a judge, but the court is not stipulated. If I were to hold scrupulously to the historical and call him William, I would lack a corresponding designation for the first author; I would be obliged to give him an arbitrary name. For this reason, I have preferred to call the first author A, the second B.

Besides the longer pieces, a number of scraps of paper were found on which were written aphorisms, lyrical utterances and reflections. The handwriting itself indicated that they belonged to A, and the contents confirmed this.

Then I tried to organize the papers in the best manner. With B’s papers it was rather easy to do. One letter presupposes the other. In the second letter, we find a quotation from the first; the third letter presupposes the two preceding ones.

Organizing A’s papers was not so easy. Therefore I have let chance fix the order—that is, I have let them remain in the order in which I found them, without, of course, being able to decide whether this order has chronological value or ideal significance. The scraps of paper lay loose in the compartment, and I therefore had to assign them a place. I have placed them first, because it seemed to me that they could best be regarded as preliminary glimpses into what the longer pieces develop more coherently. I have called them Διαψάλματα⁷ and added [I X] as a kind of motto: ad se ipsum [to himself].⁸ In a way, this title and the motto are by me and yet not by me. They are by me insofar as they are applied to the whole collection, but they belong to A himself, for the word Διαψάλματα was written on one of the scraps of paper, and on two of them appear the words ad se ipsum. In keeping with what A himself has often done, I have also had printed on the inside of the title page a short French poem found above one of these aphorisms. Inasmuch as the majority of these aphorisms have a lyrical form, I thought it appropriate to use the word Διαψάλματα as the general title. If the reader considers this an unfortunate choice, I owe it to the truth to admit that it is my own idea and that the word certainly was used with discrimination by A himself for the aphorism over which it was found. ⁹The ordering of the individual aphorisms I have left to chance. That the particular expressions often contradict one another, I found entirely appropriate, for this indeed belongs essentially to the mood; I decided it was not worth the trouble to arrange them so the contradictions were less obvious. I followed chance, and it is also chance that called my attention to the fact that the first and last aphorisms are somewhat complementary in that the one piercingly feels, as it were, the pain of being a poet, and the other relishes the satisfaction in always having the laughter on one’s side.

As far as A’s esthetic treatises are concerned, there is nothing about them that I would stress. They were all ready for printing, and if they contain any difficulties, I must let them speak for themselves. For my part, may I point out that to the Greek quotations found here and there I have added a translation taken from one of the better German translations.

¹⁰The last of A’s papers is a narrative titled “The Seducer’s Diary.” Here we meet new difficulties, inasmuch as A does not declare himself the author but only the editor. This is an old literary device to which I would not have much to object if it did not further complicate my own position, since one author becomes enclosed within the other like the boxes in a Chinese puzzle. This is not the place to explain in greater detail what confirms me in my view; I shall only point out that the [I XI] prevailing mood in A’s preface somehow manifests the poet.

It really seems as if A himself had become afraid of his fiction, ¹¹which, like a troubled dream, continued to make him feel uneasy, also in the telling. If it was an actual event of which he had secret knowledge, then I find it strange that the preface carries no trace of A’s joy over seeing the realization of the idea he had often vaguely entertained. The idea of the seducer is suggested in the piece on the immediate erotic as well as in “Silhouettes”—namely, that the counterpart to Don Giovanni must be a reflective seducer in the category of the interesting,¹² where the issue therefore is not how many he seduces but how. I find no trace of such joy in the preface but indeed, as noted previously, a trepidation, a certain horror, that presumably has its basis in his poetic relation to this idea. And A’s reaction does not surprise me, for I, too, who have nothing at all to do with this narrative—indeed, am twice removed from the original author—I, too, sometimes have felt quite strangely uneasy when I have been occupied with these papers in the stillness of the night. It seemed to me as if the seducer himself paced my floor like a shadow, as if he glanced at the papers, as if he fixed his demonic eyes on me, and said, “Well, well, so you want to publish my papers! You know that is irresponsible of you; you will indeed arouse anxiety in the darling girls. But, of course, in recompense you will make me and my kind innocuous. There you are mistaken, for I merely change the method, and so my situation is all the more advantageous. What a flock of young girls will run straight into a man’s arms when they hear the seductive name: a seducer! Give me half a year, and I will produce a story that will be ever so much more interesting than everything I have so far experienced. I picture to myself a young, energetic girl of genius having the extraordinary idea of wanting to avenge her sex on me. She thinks she will be able to coerce me, to make me taste the pains of unhappy love. That, you see, is a girl for me. If she herself does not think of it profoundly enough, I shall come to her assistance. I shall writhe like the Molbos’ eel.¹³ And when I have brought her to the point where I want her, then she is mine.”

But perhaps I have already misused my position as editor to burden the readers with my observations. The situation must [I XII] be my excuse; the dubiousness of my position, owing to A’s calling himself the editor and not the author of this narrative, allowed me to be carried away.

Anything else I have to add about this narrative I can do only in my role as editor. That is, I believe that in this narrative there is a specification of time. Here and there in the diary a date is given, but the year is lacking. Thus, I seem unable to go further, but I believe that by scrutinizing the dates more closely I have found a lead. Admittedly, every year has an April 7, a July 3, an Augus...