Kierkegaard the Poet

1 . S ø ren Kierk e g a a rd's Jo u rnals and Pa p e r s, 7 vols, ed. and tr. How a rd V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, assisted by Gregor Malantschuk (Bloomington: Indiana Un i versity Press, vol. 1, 1967; vol. 2, 1970; vols. 3 and 4, 1975; vols. 5-7, 1978), vol. 6, nos. 6511, 6521, 6391. See also S ø ren Kierk e g a a rds Pa p i re r, 2nd enlarged ed., 16 vols, ed. Niels T h u l s t ru p, with index vols. 14-16 by N. J. Cappelørn (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1968-1978), vol. X 2 A 106; X 2 A 157; X 1 A 281. Enrahonar 29, 1998 1 5 31 5 6 Kierkegaard the Poet Sylvia Walsh Stetson University Department of Philosophy K i e rk e g a a rd frequently described himself as a poet and re f e r red to his authorship as a form of «poet-communication.»1Since he clearly was not a poet in the narrow sense of the word, that is, a composer of verse, one must immediately ask in what sense he re g a rded himself as a poet and is considere d to be such by others. If the meaning of the term «poetry» is expanded to encompass all forms of cre a t i ve writing, as it often is in Danish, the poetic character of Kierk e g a a rd's authorship becomes readily apparent. The lyrical style of his writing, the imaginative construction of his works using a variety of l i t e r a ry techniques and genres, and the abundance of artistic figures and metaphors employed to express their ideas and meanings provide ample testimony of that fact. But the poetic temper in Kierk e g a a rd ran deeper than a flair for words and a genius for artistic forms and figures. Underlying the aesthetic features of his writings was a poetic passion for depicting ethico-re l i - gious ideals, with the aim of creating in the reader a «pathos for the existential» or subjective interest in striving to actualize those ideals in existence (Pa p . X 2 A 157/J P 6521). It is primarily in this sense that Kierk e g a a rd understood himself to be a poet and wished to be so re g a rded by others. This concern for an existential presentation and embodiment of human ideals sets Kierk e g a a rd apart not only from other philosophers and re l i g i o u s thinkers but fellow poetic writers as well. In his ve ry first publication, Fro m the Papers of One Still Li v i n g, a literary critique of a novel by a contemporary w r i t e r, Hans Christian Andersen, Kierk e g a a rd set forth two aesthetic criteria for becoming an authentic poetic writer of novels (Ro m a n d i g t e r): a «life-development», which consists in forming a positive relation to actuality thro u g h striving tow a rd a single goal in life, and a «life-view,» or an ove r a rching in- 1 5 4 Enrahonar 29, 1998 Sylvia Walsh 2 . S ø ren Kierk e g a a rds Samlede V æ rk e r, 1st ed., 16 vols, ed. A.B. Drachmann, J. L. He i b e r g and H. O. Lange (Copenhagen: Gyldendalske Boghandel, 1906), vol. XIII, p. 63-64, 68. See also K i e rk e g a a rd's Wr i t i n g s, 26 vols., ed. How a rd V. Hong (Princeton: Pr i n c e t o n Un i versity Press, 1978-1998), vol. I,pp. 70-71, 76. ner confidence in life that enables one to have a firm, positive stance tow a rd the challenges of life without being ove rcome by them2.These criteria (both of which, in Kierk e g a a rd's estimation, Andersen lacked) establish an integral connection between the life of the poet or cre a t i ve writer and his or her poetic productions. They also provide a clue as to how Kierk e g a a rd himself wished to be understood as an author in relation to his own poetic works. In his view, a genuine poetic work does not merely re p roduce the life experiences of the author but transmutes that experience poetically so as not to identify the author with a particular character or perspective in the work . As Kierk e g a a rd continued to explore the relation between the life and art i stic productions of a poetic writer in his early writings, he sought especially to distinguish his views from those of the German romantic poets, whose gre a t aim was to «live poetically» as well as to produce works of art. (S V 1 X I I I , 3 5 1 /KW II, 280) While Kierk e g a a rd agreed with the romantic call for a poetic life, he conceived the nature and conditions of such a life quite differe n t l y f rom the German romantics. Like them, he believed that the poet and others should strive to cultivate and re a l i ze themselves through a relation to the infinite or ideal. But whereas the romantic poets sought to create themselve s by imaginatively playing or experimenting with an infinity of poetic possibilities, Kierk e g a a rd called for the exe rcise of an «artistic earnestness» that rec o g n i zes the existential task to be a process of self-development of one's Go d - g i ven potentialities rather than one of self-creation (S V 1 XIII, 352/K W II, 280) Eve rything was possible for the romantic poets, with the result that, as K i e rk e g a a r d characterized them, they flitted from possibility to possibility, leading an entirely «subjunctive», hypothetical, or abstract existence in re l a t i o n to an «external infinity» or infinite ideal outside or beyond themselves. (S V 1 XIII, 353, 355, 367/KW II, 282, 284, 297) Over against this way of living poetically or relating to the infinite, Kierk e g a a rd proposed a religious or Christian mode of living poetically in which one's given actuality undergoes a «transubstantiation» or inward change that renders it «inwardly infinite» via a relation to the infinite or eternal within. (S V 1 XIII, 367/K W II, 297) In his view, only an inward infinity is truly infinite and truly poetic, since only then does one possess and enjoy oneself in one's eternal validity; as such it constitutes the absolute condition for living poetically. (S V 1 XIII, 360, 368 z /K W II, 289, 298) These two modes of living poetically, first distinguished in The Concept of Iro n y, are given poetic exemplification in Kierk e g a a rd's early masterpiece, Ei t h e r / Or. Composed in the form of an «arabesque novel» or mixture of liter a ry genres, this work presents in Pa rt I a kaleidoscope of poetic possibilities with which the anonymous aesthete presumed to be its author experiments Kierkegaard the Poet Enrahonar 29, 1998 1 5 5 in a romantic fashion. These include a variety of psychological states (melanc h o l y, despair, boredom, suffering, and grief, for example) which are explore d t h rough a collage of re p re s e n t a t i ve figures drawn from classical literature (Do n Ju a n, An t i g o n e, and A h a s ve rus the Wandering Je w, to mention only a few) as well as characters created by the aesthete himself, such as Johannes the Se d u c e r and his female victim, Cordelia Wahl, in «The Seducer's Di a ry». Over against this romantic experimentation with a multiplicity of possible self-identities, Pa rt II sets forth an ethical pattern of living poetically exemplified by a single paradigmatic figure, its «author» Judge William. In two long epistolary essays addressed to the romantic aesthete, the judge tries to show the aesthetic validity of marriage in the first and the importance of choosing (as opposed to creating) oneself in one's eternal validity as a single, unified personality in the second. Emphasizing the poetic character of marriage, the judge argues that marriage acquires its aesthetic beauty or ideality through a historical p rocess of inward striving or daily repetition of those qualities, such as faithfulness, humility, patience, honesty, and tolerance, that constitute the eternal in human relations. (S V 1 II, 88, 121, 126/K W I V, 96, 134, 139) In this way the personal life itself becomes a mode of artistic re p resentation, prov i d i n g not merely a semblance of the aesthetic ideal, as in other forms of artistic re presentation, but a reduplication of it in time and actuality. Running counter to this positive understanding and appropriation of the poetic in Kierk e g a a rd's early writings, howe ve r, is a strongly critical attitude t ow a rd poetry that is especially prominent in works from the middle period (1845-48) of his authorship, e.g. Stages on Life's Wa y, Concluding Un s c i e n t i f i c Po s t s c r i p t, Wo rks of Love, and The Point of View for My Wo rk as an Au t h o r. In these works Kierk e g a a rd and his pseudonyms point out the dangers and limitations of poetry and urge a movement away from a merely imaginary or conceptual relation to existential ideals tow a rd an ethical-religious actualization of them. But they also continue to maintain and develop a positive stance tow a rd the poetic and aesthetic within an ethical-religious framew o rk. In Concluding Unscientific Po s t s c r i p t, for example, the subjective thinker is described as an artist (Ku n s t n e r) whose task is to fashion his or her own existence into conformity with the ideal so as to make it a work of art. (S V 1V I I , 3 0 4 /K W XII, 1:351) Mo re ove r, the stages of existence —previously distinguished as aesthetic, ethical, and religious— are expanded to include the aesthetic categories of irony and humor as existential determinants that serve as b o u n d a ry zones, or stages of transition, between the ethical (irony) and the religious (humor) as well as play an important role within the ethical and the religious as the incognito of hidden inwardness. Closely related to these factors and also figuring importantly in personal development are the aesthetic categories of the comic and the tragic, which give expression to the contradiction between the actual and the ideal, the inner and the outer in existential striving. It is in the later, more specifically religious writings and journals, howe ve r, that Kierk e g a a rd most clearly understands his task as a writer to be that 1 5 6 Enrahonar 29, 1998 Sylvia Walsh of a poet and his authorship as a whole to constitute a poet-communication. Describing himself as a «poet of the religious» and more specifically as a «Christian poet and thinker», Kierk e g a a rd sees a need for a «presentation of the religious in poetic form» in order to get hold of and encounter the existential ideals once again in his time. (Pa p . X 3 A 576, X 2 A 106, X 2 A 157, X 1 A 281/J P, 1792, 6511, 6521, 6391) In these writings, there f o re, he is primarily concerned to depict, like an artist, the ideal portrait of a Christian, which in his view constitutes the highest existential ideality. This ideal is described dialectically on two levels, both in terms of its purely positive definition as consisting of faith, hope, love, joy, forgiveness, consolation, new life, and blessedness, and in terms of the negative factors through which these a re experienced in existence: the consciousness of sin, the possibility of offense, suffering, and self-renunciation. Recognizing that to have Christianity only in imaginative form is not to have it, since being a Christian invo l ve s reduplication of the Christian ideal in actuality, Kierk e g a a rd neve rt h e l e s s v i e ws imagination and possibility as playing a crucial role in the process of becoming a true self or Christian. In The Sickness unto De a t h, imagination is re g a rded as the fundamental capacity by which all other capacities, such as knowing, feeling, and willing, are constituted, and possibility is seen as the condition of faith in God, who is virtually identified with possibility in this text. (S V 1 XI, 144, 151-153/K W XIX, 30-31, 38-40) In Kierk e g a a rd's view, the poet who is commissioned to portray the Christian ideality is re q u i red, no less than others, to strive tow a rd re d u p l icating it in his or her own existence. Painfully aware of his own falling short in this re g a rd, Kierk e g a a rd characterized himself religiously as a penitent and «poet who flies to grace.» (Pa p . X 6 B 215) He neve rtheless distinguished himself as a religious poet from the ord i n a ry poet by the fact that he was personally engaged in striving tow a rd the ideal poetically presented. Without that, he concludes, his poet-communication of the ethical-religious ideal would be u n t rue. (Pa p . X 2 A 184/J P 6 5 2 8 ) Bi b l i o g r a p h y K i e rk e g a a rd's Wr i t i n g s, 26 vols. Edited by How a rd V. Hong. Princeton: Pr i n c e t o n Un i versity Press, 1978-1997 (K W I, II, IV, XII, XIX). S ø ren Kierk e g a a rd's Jo u rnals and Pa p e r s, 7 vols. Edited and translated by How a rd V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, assisted by Gregor Malantschuk. Bloomington: In d i a n a Un i versity Press, vol. 1, 1967; vol. 2, 1970; vols. 3 and 4, 1975; vols. 5-7, 1978 (J P 2 and 6). S ø ren Kierk e g a a rds Pa p i re r, 2d enlarged ed. 16 vols. Edited by Niels T h u l s t ru p, with index vols. 14-16 by N. J. Cappelørn. Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1968-1978 (Pa p . X ) . S ø ren Kierk e g a a rds Samlede V æ rk e r, 1st ed. 14 vols. Edited by A. B. Drachmann, J. L. Heiberg, and H. O. Lange. Copenhagen: Gyldendalske Boghandels Forlag, 19011906 (S V 1 II, VII, XI, XIII).