The Kierkegaardian Author: Authorship and Performance in Kierkegaard's Literary and Dramatic Criticism 9783110200973, 9783110193022

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Kierkegaard Studies Monograph Series 15

Kierkegaard Studies Edited on behalf of the Søren K i e r k e g a a r d Research Centre by Niels Jørgen Cappelørn and Hermann Deuser

Monograph Series

15 Edited by Niels Jørgen Cappelørn

Walter de G r u y t e r · B e r l i n · N e w Y o r k

Joseph Westfall

The Kierkegaardian Author Authorship and Performance in Kierkegaard’s Literary and Dramatic Criticism

Walter de Gruyter · Berlin · New York

Kierkegaard Studies Edited on behalf of the Søren Kierkegaard Research Centre by Niels Jørgen Cappelørn and Hermann Deuser Monograph Series Volume 15 Edited by Niels Jørgen Cappelørn

The Foundation for the Søren Kierkegaard Research Centre at Copenhagen University is funded by The Danish National Research Foundation.

® Printed on acid-free paper which falls within the guidelines of the A N S I to ensure permanence and durability.

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published by the Deutsche

Nationalbibliothek

The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de.

I S B N 978-3-11-019302-7 ISSN 1434-2952 © Copyright 2007 by Walter de Gruyter G m b H & Co. K G , D-10785 Berlin A l l rights reserved, including those of translation into foreign languages. N o part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Printed in Germany Disk conversion: OLD-Satz digital, Neckarsteinach Cover design: Christopher Schneider, Berlin

For M., who waited

Si tacuisset, philosophus mansisset.

Table of Contents Acknowledgements

xi Introduction

The Kierkegaardian Author Authorship and Performance Kierkegaard's Literary and Dramatic Criticism

4 11 18

Chapter One Writing H. C. Andersen: From the Papers of One Still Living . Livs-Anskuelser: Andersen as a Novelist Problema I: The Papers of One Still Living Problema II: S. Kjerkegaard Problema III: Published Against His Will Livs-Anskuelser: From the Papers of One Still Living and Either/Or

31 35 46 53 60 64

Chapter Two Veronymity and Criticism: "To Mr. Orla Lehmann," "Public Confession," "A Little Explanation," and "An Explanation and a Little More" Anonymity and Veronymity: "To Mr. Orla Lehmann" The Present Age: "Public Confession" Taking Responsibility: "A Little Explanation" and 'An Explanation and a Little More" The Problematic Proximity of Veronymity

75 80 91 101 108

Chapter Three Opera and Explanation: "A First and Last Explanation" and "A Cursory Observation Concerning a Detail in Don Giovanni"

119

X

Table of Contents

Being Explaned "Edited by S. Kierkegaard" Authorship, Interpretation, Performance Performance, May 1845: Zerlina and Giovanni Performance, February 1846: S. Kierkegaard

122 130 139 147 165

Chapter Four Repetition and Reperformance: A Literary Review Two Ages A Novel by the Author of A Story of Everyday Life Reviewed by S. Kierkegaard

173 177 189 207

C h a p t e r Five Writing S. Kierkegaard: On My Work as an Author and "The Crisis and a Crisis in the Life of an Actress" Without Authority With the Help of God The Crisis A Crisis in the Life of an Actress The Kierkegaardian Author: Writing S. Kierkegaard

223 229 240 248 260 270

Abbreviations

279

Bibliography

281

Index of Persons

287

Acknowledgements Whatever the status of acknowledgements, authorially speaking, I think it fitting and important that I thank here the many others without whom my work on Kierkegaard would be and would have been impossible or in vain. From the very beginning, I would like to thank Niels J0rgen Cappel0rn, Bjarne Laurberg Olsen, and S0ren Kierkegaard Forskningscenteret in Copenhagen for their hospitality and the generosity of their assistance and advice in helping me to bring this project to completion. In a similar vein, and with no less gratitude, I would like to thank Gordon Marino, Cynthia Lund, Howard and Edna Hong, and the Hong Kierkegaard Library at St. Olaf College for having become my home-away-from-home for many summers - and one long winter. Colleagues, teachers, students, and friends at two institutions have seen me through various stages of this project, and so it is humbly and with much gratitude that I offer my thanks to Patrick Byrne, Rose Marie DeLeo, Peggy Bakalo, Bonnie Waldron, and the Philosophy Department at Boston College for their technical, philosophical, and personal support during the initial working and reworking of this book that began as a doctoral dissertation. And, for an environment in which to bring the manuscript into its final form and the opportunity to do so, I thank Kathleen Haney, Adolfo Santos, Surekha Shah, Carolyn Waddles, and the Department of Social Sciences at the University of Houston-Downtown. Many persons at both institutions have been among my most inspiring colleagues and dearest friends, and I am hopeful that they already know as much for themselves. For financial support throughout the writing, let me thank the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences of Boston College and the Ernest J. Fortin Memorial Foundation; Ellen McKey and the American-Scandinavian Foundation; and the Hong Kierkegaard Library. Critical to securing funds for the publication of this work were Niels J0rgen Cappeforn and S0ren Kierkegaard Forskningscenteret, and Adolfo Santos and the University of Houston-Downtown. Sincere

XU

Acknowledgements

editorial thanks are also due Niels J0rgen, without whom in many ways the present work would never have come to fruition. For instructing me in the Danish language, Claus Mechlenborg of the Boston Language Institute and Anette Harsl0f of Studieskolen in Copenhagen deserve many kind thanks. Numerous individuals have assisted me in numerous ways over the course of this project, and I can only thank a small portion of them by name. Nevertheless, thanks to Stephen Crites, Hermann Deuser, Sean Ferrier, Joakim Garff, Jonathan Harmon, Rebecca Jiggens, Richard Kearney, Bruce Kirmmse, Markus Kleinert, Ulrich Knappe, Erik Lindland, Bill McDonald, Dalia Nassar, John O'Connor, David Possen, David Rasmussen, Nathan Smith, Desislava Stoyanova, Joseph Tadie, Brian Treanor, and Sophie Wennerscheid for advice and suggestions, conversations on topics central to my work, having read portions of the work in progress, or some combination of the three. Most especial thanks, however, as well as a full share of friendly devotion, are due Vanessa Rumble of the Philosophy Department of Boston College. From advisor, to supervisor, to mentor, to friend, Vanessa has done more than see this project through - she has seen me through this project. Every word of this work has been improved by her careful and critical readings (and rereadings), as I have been improved by both her care and her criticism. One could not hope for a better guide through and co-worker in the tangled web that is the Kierkegaardian authorship. Once more, with feeling, allow me to thank all those named above and all those unnamed, who despite their anonymity here are always close to my mind and dear to my heart. They have only improved me and my work; responsibility for any faults that remain is, quite naturally, my own. J. W. May 2006 Houston, Texas

Introduction There is a widespread belief that, just as behind or above or below every dancing puppet there is to be found a puppeteer, so, behind every work in the Kierkegaardian authorship there lurks S0ren Kierkegaard. This belief is neither naive nor unfounded, seeing as it is more or less universally held, not only by readers of the Kierkegaardian authorship, but by readers of any philosopher's authorship or any philosophical authorship. The unifying principle underlying the works produced by a philosopher or a philosophical author is widely understood - and, by "widely understood," I mean "assumed" - to be the philosopher or philosophical author him- or herself. This assumption plays itself out in different ways, according to the different philosophers in question, as well as the differences in style and substance that hold between the different philosophical authors and the authorships ascribed to them. Nevertheless, just as readers (often themselves philosophers or philosophical) presume that there is a unity in the Platonic dialogues, and that the name of that unity is "Plato," so do readers also assume that there is a unity in the Kierkegaardian authorship the principle of which, at least, is named "Kierkegaard." We should admit that this belief is not undermined by the observation that, as in the case of the Platonic authorship, there is widespread belief that there is a development in the perspective put forth over the course of the authorship - that is, as in the case of Plato, that the later dialogues disagree in sometimes minor and sometimes substantial ways with the earlier, so-called Socratic, dialogues. The belief in such a development is a modification upon the unity view, but it does not break with it; rather than a philosophical or theoretical unity (a continuity in a metaphysics or an ethics, for example), the unity in question is personal. Plato's dialogues constitute a unified authorship because they are all ultimately ascribable to one person, Plato. And, as with Plato, the reasoning goes, so with Kierkegaard. While readers of the dialogues may find themselves with an authorship the constitutive works of which are, in fact, all ascribed to Plato, however, readers of the Kierkegaardian authorship do not. Kierke-

2

Introduction

gaard's writings are ascribed to any number of persons other than Kierkegaard in addition to Kierkegaard - to the many pseudonyms, of course, but also to a small party of anonyms who are less widely discussed - and, ever since the works in the authorship first began to appear in Copenhagen, as articles in the various newspapers and feuilletons of the day, or as books available for purchase at C. A. Reitzel's bookshop, the pseudonymity or polyonymity of the authorship has been an interesting and difficult phenomenon with which readers have often felt themselves compelled to deal. Although it is not entirely true - Poul Martin M0ller once mistook an anonymous article penned by Kierkegaard for a work by the cultural and literary giant of the Golden Age, J. L. Heiberg,1 and Kierkegaard's brother, Peter Christian Kierkegaard, joined a large portion of the Copenhagen reading public in his ignorance of the origin of H. H.'s Two Ethical-Religious Essays2 - by and large, the historical origin of the works constituting the Kierkegaardian authorship has always been known. That Kierkegaard was the mastermind behind the whole literary affair is given; what he might have been up to in masterminding the whole literary affair is more difficult to ascertain. The difficulty, of course, has not stopped readers of the Kierkegaardian authorship from making the attempt. Readings of Kierkegaard are numerous, and the differences in approach are perhaps more numerous than the similarities. The Kierkegaardian authorship does not admit easily of philosophical or theological interpretation, but it prompts and seduces philosophers and theologians to interpret time and again. While some readers have trouble keeping the pseudonyms apart, and are willing to ascribe almost any view propounded within the authorship to Kierkegaard, most admit that the pseudonymity3 poses a problem for any straightforward reading. That Fear and Trembling is ascribed to Johannes de silentio, and not to Kierkegaard, forces the reader to pause before ascribing the views set forth in that work to Kierkegaard. That Either/ 1

2 3

See Joakim Garff S0ren Kierkegaard: A Biography, trans. Bruce H. Kirmmse, Princeton: Princeton University Press 2005, pp. 64-65. See Garff S0ren Kierkegaard, pp. 638, 629-630. The Kierkegaardian anonymity goes largely unnoticed or, when it is noticed, it is left undifferentiated from the pseudonymity. One critic who does make a distinction, however, is Lars Bejerholm. See Bejerholm "Anonymity and Pseudonymity" in Kierkegaard: Literary Miscellany (Biblioteca Kierkegaardiana vol. 9), ed. Niels Thulstrup and Marie Mikulovâ Thulstrup, Copenhagen: C A . Reitzels Boghandel 1981, pp. 18-23.

Introduction

3

Or and Stages on Life's Way are pseudonymously edited conglomerations of pseudonymous works, in both of which it remains possible that some of the pseudonymous voices are the work of other of the pseudonyms (by way of some sort of pseudonymous ventriloquism or author authorship), forces the reader to pause perhaps even longer than he or she did when reading Fear and Trembling. Ultimately, in the present work, I will put forward an argument for the claim that, perhaps even more than Either/Or or Stages on Life's Way, the works ascribed to the veronym4 - S. Kierkegaard - ought to give the reader like pause.5 The task of the present work is straightforward and simple: to address one of the most fundamental problems with which readers of the Kierkegaardian authorship are confronted, namely, the problem of authorship.6 In order to understand authorship in Kierkegaard, we must understand the Kierkegaardian authors - and this means delving deeply into at least some of the particular works ascribed to them. This particularity undermines in some ways the tools of traditional philosophical analysis, and would seem to make necessary interpretation of every work in the authorship to justify any general claims as to the nature and structure of authorship in Kierkegaard. This is an impossible task for any single work of criticism or scholarship. Thus, given the scope and nature of the Kierkegaardian authorship, I have had to limit myself to one segment - one genre, if you will - within the authorship: the literary and dramatic criticism. Aside from merely quantitative concerns, however, my decision to address the problem of authorship in Kierkegaard by way of an examination of the Kier4

5

6

The term " veronymous" - literally, "true-named" - is coined by Michael Strawser in his work on the indirectness of Kierkegaard's signed (or veronymous) authorship. I will employ the term throughout the present work, for the very same reason as does Strawser, who notes that the neologism "will be useful in distinguishing between the writings Kierkegaard signed with his own name and those he did not, without giving the impression that the former are works of 'direct communication'." Strawser Both/And: Reading Kierkegaard from Irony to Edification, New York: Fordham University Press 1997, p. 192, n. 2. The term has come to only relatively limited use among readers of Kierkegaard. I am not alone in attributing an important and essential indirectness to Kierkegaard as a veronymous author, although far more readers of the authorship presume that the veronymous works are in some important sense direct communications. For approaches comparable to mine in this (and often, only this) regard, see the works of Sylviane Agacinski, Joakim Garff, Louis Mackey, and Michael Strawser. The only problem perhaps more fundamental would be that of language and writing (following Nietzsche and Derrida), or that of the psychological preconditions necessary for readership (following Freud and Lacan).

4

Introduction

kegaardian criticism has been rooted in the demonstrable fact that, from one work to the next, Kierkegaard and the Kierkegaardian authors instantiate contradictions between what they say of authors and authorship and the manner in which they engage in the practice of authorship. These "performative contradictions" are at the center of my understanding of the Kierkegaardian author. They are most overt (and most easily demonstrated) in those places where Kierkegaard and the Kierkegaardian authors discuss the merits and qualifications of authors explicitly. Thus, the present work is not only an examination of the nature and practice of authorship in the Kierkegaardian authorship, but is also (and no less importantly) a reading of the least read portion of that authorship, Kierkegaard's criticism. My hope is that, at least in part, the present work will contribute something to a general understanding of the significance of the so-called "minor works" in the Kierkegaardian authorship, without lessening the importance of the major works with which Kierkegaard's readers are so rightly familiar.

The Kierkegaardian Author Kierkegaard makes a distinction in his veronymous postscript to Concluding Unscientific Postscript, "A First and Last Explanation," between what he calls there "poetical actuality" [digterisk Virkelighed] and "factual actuality" [faktisk Virkelighed]. Factual actuality is reality proper, the world in which human beings live, act, and (most importantly for Kierkegaard and for the argument of the present work) take responsibility for their actions. Poetical actuality, on the other hand, is the reality proper to fiction and fictional characters. This distinction is fundamental to the Kierkegaardian practice of authorship, emphasizing the ontological difference without the presumption of a relative hierarchy in terms of significance or value, and so I have maintained in my use Kierkegaard's somewhat cumbersome terms - although I will occasionally refer to factual actuality as history and poetical actuality as poetry, invoking the spirit of Aristotle. The distinction is not a difficult one to accept, although it does become somewhat more difficult in application. Traditionally, and perhaps most commonsensically, the distinction has been used in literary criticism in one form or another to describe the difference between an author and his or her work. Thus, while Juliet is merely a fictional character - poetically actual - Shakespeare, her author, is factually actual. This presumes

The Kierkegaardian Author

5

that Shakespeare inhabits or inhabited the same reality as do readers (or hearers) of Romeo and Juliet, and that Juliet, as a character in that play, does not inhabit the same reality or, to say the same thing, inhabits a different reality, a poetical one. The task of the (factually actual) critic is thus to offer an analysis of the qualities of Romeo and Juliet (a factually actual play that, in a reading or a performance, opens up its own poetically actual, fictional universe), such that the merits or failings of the play can be seen to reflect on its factually actual author, Shakespeare. The factually actual Shakespeare can be said to have been a good or a bad playwright on the basis of such criticism. To return to the example of Plato, we could say that, while Plato was the factually actual author of the dialogues, Socrates was but a poetically actual character authored therein. This is not to dispute that there was, in fact, an historical Socrates, nor that the Socrates of the Platonic dialogues might more fully resemble the historical Socrates than does the Socrates of the Xenophonic dialogues, or the Socrates of Aristophanes' The Clouds. What it is to say, however, is that it is quite reasonable to believe that there might be poetically actual counterparts to factually actual persons. As in the cases of both the Platonic and Aristophanic productions, for some readers some of the time, the difference between the fiction and the fact will be difficult, if not impossible, to adjudge. Nevertheless, it remains true that they are different, and that the utterances and teachings of the one cannot be ascribed to the other. The historical Socrates is not responsible for the utterances - or the factually actual consequences of the utterances - of the Aristophanic one. Of course, as the Platonic Socrates argues in his Apology, one interpretation of the trial and execution of the historical Socrates is that there existed a widespread confusion on the part of the Athenians as to the difference between poetical actuality and factual actuality. Aristophanes is named as one of Socrates' "first accusers," and the thought that the jurors might be holding Socrates accountable for words and deeds only properly ascribable to a fictional character in The Clouds pervades Plato's dialogue.7 Aristophanes does not say that Socrates is a sophist; Socrates admits to being one - onstage, in a performance of The Clouds. Naturally, the Socrates who makes the admission is not the Socrates standing trial, but with the proliferation of Socrateses in Athens, it is not difficult to sympathize somewhat with the Athenians in their confusion. Students and readers of Plato continue to debate 7

Cf. Plato Apology, 18a ff.

6

Introduction

the relative accuracy of the depictions of Socrates in the dialogues, but the fact remains that we have no knowledge of Socrates that we did not gain from some literary depiction or poetic description of Socrates, no word of Socratic wisdom that is communicated from some non- or extra-literary source, and so we are truly without a standard by which to judge. Some prefer the Xenophonic picture to the Platonic, some the Aristophanic. The matter is ultimately undecidable - or, at least, undecidable in any but literary critical terms. S0ren Kierkegaard was an historical person. He was a resident of Copenhagen, and a participant in the cultural and literary life of that city for approximately twenty years. In this sense, with reference to S0ren Kierkegaard, we can affirm his factual actuality. S0ren Kierkegaard is the subject of studies of Danish literary history, or the Danish Golden Age; he is also quite rightly at the center of the Kierkegaard biographies. Historically or biographically speaking, S0ren Kierkegaard, in all his factual actuality, is the origin and source of the Kierkegaardian authorship. On the basis of those histories and biographies noted above, we can say with some degree of certainty that it was S0ren Kierkegaard who wrote all of the books and newspaper articles (including those ascribed to anonyms or pseudonyms), that it was S0ren Kierkegaard who negotiated the printing and publication of those books and articles, and that it was S0ren Kierkegaard who ultimately decided upon the order in which the works were to appear in print, the matters with which those works were to be concerned, and the words and phrases that would ultimately constitute each of the works in its finished form. S0ren Kierkegaard lived a writer's life; he had no other occupation, and earned income on the basis of no other activity in which he engaged. He was, we might be tempted to say, an author. We might be tempted to say, in fact, that he was the author - of the Kierkegaardian authorship. This temptation is to be resisted. On the one hand, ascribing authorship to the factually actual S0ren Kierkegaard takes no account of the pseudonymity of the pseudonymous works. While there is no difficulty in maintaining that a factually actual human being actually authored The Concept of Anxiety, for example, and that "Vigilius Haufniensis" is a pseudonym in the literal sense of that word, this is only pseudonymity in what we might call "the ordinary sense." Pseudonymity in the ordinary sense is a simple masking, a hiding behind a name other than one's own, so as not to be revealed publicly as the author. A pseudonym in the ordinary sense does not differ substantially from the factually actual author with whom the pseudonymous work

The Kierkegaardian Author

7

originates in history.8 Reading The Concept of Anxiety in the context of the other pseudonymous, anonymous, and veronymous works, however, reveals the inadequacy of any understanding of Vigilius Haufniensis as an ordinary pseudonym. Pseudonymity in the ordinary sense cannot make distinctions between multiple pseudonyms of the same author, each of whom maintains his or her own philosophical or theological position situated in a perspective sometimes radically different from that of the others. Put another way: Vigilius Haufniensis is not Nicolaus Notabene, and so both Haufniensis and Notabene cannot be S0ren Kierkegaard. In the absence of some sort of standard by which to determine who is "more Kierkegaardian," we cannot say that either pseudonym is really Kierkegaard. The situation is neither a both/and nor an either/or. Pseudonymity in the ordinary sense is incapable of grasping the nature of the pseudonyms in the Kierkegaardian authorship. Kierkegaard says as much, veronymously, in "A First and Last Explanation" and On My Work as an Author. Given this fact - and at this point, we still have only the pseudonymous authors in mind - our approach to reading the pseudonymous authorship must be different than the approach with which, as philosophers and theologians, we may be most familiar. There is no difficulty in reading The Concept of Anxiety and Prefaces as independent of one another, different books by different authors who have different things to say. Moreover, there is no difficulty in offering a comparative reading of the two works, so long as the distinction between the authors is rigorously maintained. Much as one could offer a comparison of works by Plato and Aristotle, one could offer a comparison of The Concept of Anxiety and Prefaces. Had Kierkegaard and the Kierkegaardian authors remained silent on the question of the nature or purpose of the pseudonymous authors as pseudonyms, this relatively straightforward approach to the pseudonymous works - an approach that makes no reference to S0ren Kierkegaard - would have been completely satisfactory. In fact, it would have been the only justified method for reading the Kierkegaardian authorship from a philosophical, theological, or literary critical perspective, regardless of the historical or biographical fact of the relation of those works to S0ren Kierkegaard. 8

Classic examples of pseudonymity in the ordinary sense are George Eliot, Mark Twain, Isak Dinesen, and George Orwell. In no sense are those names typically used to distinguish the authors named from Mary Ann Evans, Samuel Clemens, Karen Blixen, and Eric Arthur Blair, respectively.

8

Introduction

Kierkegaard does not remain silent, however; nor do the pseudonyms, one of whom, Johannes Climacus, engages in a lengthy discourse on the Kierkegaardian authorship. In his discussion ("A Glance at a Contemporary Effort in Danish Literature," in Concluding Unscientific Postscript), Climacus makes direct reference to Kierkegaard as the author of the upbuilding discourses, and indirect reference to the possibility of an underlying unity in the identities of the pseudonyms. This reference further complicates the already extraordinarily complicated web of authors and authorial responsibility woven throughout the authorship and its constitutive works. Like Kierkegaard's veronymous explanations of the authorship, Climacus' "A Glance" enters into the public, readerly realm the suggestion that the disparate Kierkegaardian works be brought together and understood by readers as a single, authorially unified authorship. This does not mean that either Climacus or Kierkegaard suggests that we disregard the pseudonymity of the pseudonyms. Rather, the suggestion - articulated first by Kierkegaard in "A First and Last Explanation" - is that we posit another author external to the works authored by the pseudonymous authors, the author of the author. In "A First and Last Explanation," Kierkegaard claims to be the author of the pseudonymous authors; in Chapter Three of the present work, I dispute Kierkegaard's authority to make that claim. Nevertheless, with the introduction of the possibility of author authorship into a work in the Kierkegaardian authorship itself, the problematic authorial issues inherent to the authorship are immediately reduplicated for readers. Now, in addition to sorting out what a Kierkegaardian text means with reference only to itself, we must also engage with both the author of that text (Vigilius Haufniensis, Johannes Climacus, or Johannes de silentio, for example), and with the posited author of that author. In the case of the veronymous works, however, the situation seems somewhat different, and this has everything to do with the most problematic and confusing name in the Kierkegaardian authorship: S. Kierkegaard. If the veronym is identical with the factually actual S0ren Kierkegaard, as is widely presumed by Kierkegaard's readers, then the author of "A First and Last Explanation," Works of Love, the upbuilding discourses and the rest is the real author of the pseudonymous authors. That said, however, as will become apparent over the course of the first three chapters of the present work, the argument set forth for Kierkegaard's author authorship in "A First and Last Explanation" does not hold. Kierkegaard lacks the authority as an author to infringe upon the authorships of other, independent authors - even if

The Kierkegaardian Author

9

those authors are pseudonyms, and not veronymous authors in their own right. The Kierkegaardian authorial perspective can thus be seen to be rather significantly incoherent when it comes to the nature and limitations of an author. If there is but one Kierkegaard, veronymous author, author of the pseudonymous authors, and factually actual human being, then the Kierkegaardian authorship can be shown to collapse irremediably into the contradictions between the Kierkegaardian authors and the works they author.9 Without the unifying power of a coherent and consistent author underlying the various authorial perspectives within the authorship, the authorial fragmentation characteristic of the Kierkegaardian works results in a loss of philosophical coherence in the authorship. The authorship as such disappears, and we are left at best with a few disparate and unconnected books and articles ascribable only to a disparate and unconnected set of authors. If the authorship is to be saved from ruin, there must be more than one Kierkegaard. Here we encounter one of the most basic ironies of the Kierkegaardian authorship, that answering the question, Who is Johannes de silentio? is a far less difficult task than answering the corresponding question, Who is S. Kierkegaard? Each of the pseudonymous authors is presented - or, more accurately, presents himself - in the pseudonymous works as he is. If the pseudonyms as they are reveal their own philosophical, psychological, or moral inconsistencies in their works, these inconsistencies still do not hinder our ability to read those works, judging them inconsistent if that is, in fact, the case. This is to say that, however problematic they might be, the pseudonyms do not problematize readings of the authorship. Pseudonymity of this sort - not pseudonymity in the ordinary sense - forces a break in the reader's mind between the poetical actuality of the authors (and their works), and the factual actuality of the reader (and the author of those poetically actual authors). Kierkegaard, on the other hand, by way of the problematic bivalence of the name, "S. Kierkegaard," does not force the break. That "S. Kierkegaard" seems to be the name of a factually actual person does not prompt readers to question the nature of Kierkegaard's actuality as an author. We can try to read the veronymous works as authored by the factually actual S0ren Kierkegaard - here9

This seems to be the basis for much of Vanessa Rumble's work on Kierkegaard. See, for example, Rumble "Love and Difference: The Christian Ideal in Kierkegaard's Works of Love" in The New Kierkegaard, ed. Elsebet Jegstrup, Bloomington: Indiana University Press 2004, pp. 161-178.

10

Introduction

tofore, in fact, very few readers have tried anything else10 - but this leaves us as readers with a Kierkegaard whose position on authorship and the authorship is philosophically untenable, and with this Kierkegaard alone. An inconsistent factually actual authorial perspective is an obvious sign of philosophical failure; an inconsistent poetically actual authorial perspective, on the other hand, might be failure - or it might be a literary or stylistic ploy, put to a philosophical end. In contrast to this understanding of the factually actual Kierkegaard, I wish to suggest that we read Kierkegaard, not as another pseudonym, but as a veronymous author, including in our reading acknowledgement of the fact that all authors, including the veronyms, are for readers only poetically actual implications of the works ascribed to them. Kierkegaard is thus no longer the historical person, Danish and troubled, with a very particular personal history and psychology that might have some bearing on our interpretations of his production. Kierkegaard is only what is implied by the veronymous books and articles. With this in mind, then, when a work such as "A First and Last Explanation" makes an untenable argument, and puts Kierkegaard forward as philosophically inconsistent thereby, our inquiry into the meaning of the work is not complete (as it would be, were we to understand the author of "A First and Last Explanation" as the factually actual S0ren Kierkegaard). Rather, having found yet one more inconsistent, self-contradictory or self-undermining author in the Kierkegaardian authorship, we must then turn our attention to the next level of the authorship, wherein resides the author of Kierkegaard as an author. This author, the author of the author, is for all the same reasons not identifiable with S0ren Kierkegaard, although the factual actuality of the author of the author(s) is presumed. This author grounds the Kierkegaardian authorship, and is ultimately responsible 10

Among these are Johannes Sl0k (who suggests that we read "Kierkegaard" as yet another pseudonym), Steven Emmanuel (who suggests that Kierkegaard - the factually actual Kierkegaard - writes and reads the authorship as the product of an implied author), and, perhaps most interestingly, Peter Christian Kierkegaard, S0ren's older brother, who writes, "And next, I ended the entire lecture with a statement to the effect that, of course, in large measure, what S0ren had given us and had argued for so ably in his writings was in the form of statements by various different, quite distinct, and characteristic persons or points of view - and that one could indeed almost come to imagine the possibility that even that which appeared with the signature 'S0ren Kierkegaard', might not unconditionally be his last word (but a point of view)." P. C. Kierkegaard in Encounters with Kierkegaard: A Life as Seen by His Contemporaries, ed. Bruce H. Kirmmse, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1996, pp. 148-149.

Authorship and Performance

for having authored Kierkegaard and the Kierkegaardian authors, but is and could never be named. In large part, the present work is concerned with introducing this author - what I call "the Kierkegaardian author" - into readings and discussions of the Kierkegaardian authorship, and so the argument for reading the authorship in this way cannot easily be summarized here. For now, I think, it is enough to note that, at the outermost level of the Kierkegaardian authorship, there is an author who is not S0ren Kierkegaard, who is not and cannot be named, and about whom we can know nothing.

Authorship and Performance Recognizing a clear and rigorous distinction between the factually actual human being at the origin of a written work in history and the author implied in the reading of a written work (and to whom authorial responsibility for the work is ascribed) is neither new nor controversial in literary theoretical terms. The twentieth century saw the rise of both post-structuralism or deconstruction (in France) and the New Criticism or American formalism (in the United States), neither of which accepts the fundamental premise of intentionalist biographical or historical criticism, that what the real author of a work meant for the work to mean has some (if not total) bearing on the meaning of the work.11 Although different arguments have been made for an at least loose identification of Kierkegaard with either of these literary theoretical perspectives,12 Kierkegaard is neither a New Critic nor a deconstructionist. That said, it is important to note that the Kierkegaardian authorship shares with deconstruction an awareness of and willingness to engage in the practice of authorial play, toying with the strict boundary delineating the difference between poetical actuality 11

12

In literary theoretical terms, this is what is called "the intentional fallacy." Antiintentionalist literary theories and criticisms have been somewhat popular among students of literature since at least the early nineteenth century, but the term is coined only in the twentieth century, by William K. Wimsatt, Jr., and Monroe C. Beardsley. See Wimsatt and Beardsley "The Intentional Fallacy" in The Verbal Icon: Studies in the Meaning of Poetry, Lexington: University of Kentucky Press 1954, pp. 3-20. Mark C. Taylor, Louis Mackey, and John Caputo have all argued for Kierkegaard as forerunner of Derrida and deconstruction; in an article aimed at least in part at undermining Taylor, Mackey, and Caputo, Steven Emmanuel has made the case for Kierkegaard as proto-New Critic. See Emmanuel "Reading Kierkegaard" in Philosophy Today 36:3,1992, pp. 240-255.

12

Introduction

and factual actuality.13 And the authorship shares with the New Criticism an acknowledgement of the fact that, from the reader's perspective, the author is experienced as nothing more than an implication of the text, the unifying principle of the work being read (an approach that is now called "implied author theory"14). What the Kierkegaardian authorship brings to the literary theoretical discussion that is uniquely Kierkegaardian, I think, is the notion and practice of the fictionality - the poetical actuality - of the author. The authorship is a diverse complex of alternatively playful and earnest authors whose works consistently (in fact, nearly universally) undermine themselves in the conflict between the authorial structures of the works and the philosophical force of the arguments made in those works, unified under a merely implied author whose intention is irrelevant with regard to the meaning of the authorship by which that author is implied. While deconstruction proposes the fundamental disunity of the text, and the New Criticism its fundamental unity, the Kierkegaardian authorship simultaneously resists and instantiates both - risking fragmentation in the disunity of the different authorial perspectives, but promising unity in the figure of the author of the authors. That the authorship risks structural fragmentation is not a new observation.15 If we are to try to affirm its unity, however, then the tenuousness of that unity forces us either to condemn the authorship as poorly constructed - to dismiss Kierkegaard as a literary failure on the basis of his philosophical inconsistencies - or to acknowledge that Kierkegaard, the author, is distinct from S0ren Kierkegaard, the historical person. This second interpretive move is rarely performed 13

14

15

These facets of the Kierkegaardian practice of authorship do not originate in Denmark with Kierkegaard, however, but seem to be key aspects of early German Romanticism that come to expression in the Kierkegaardian authorship, albeit in a transfigured form. One might look to any number of sources, including (perhaps most importantly) Friedrich Schlegel's Lucinde, although traces of the authorships of Novalis and Schleiermacher can no doubt also be found throughout the Kierkegaardian corpus. For general accounts of the literary practices of the Romantics, see Ernst Behler German Romantic Literary Theory, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1993. And Roger F. Cook The Demise of the Author: Autonomy and the German Writer, 1770-1848, New York: Peter Lang 1993. Thanks to Vanessa Rumble and Dalia Nassar for bringing these connections to my attention. On the basis of the work of rhetorician Wayne Booth. See Booth's seminal work, The Rhetoric of Fiction, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press 1961. For one of the clearest examples of the observation of this phenomenon in Kierkegaard, see Louis Mackey "Points of View for His Work as an Author: A Report to History" in Points of View: Readings of Kierkegaard, Tallahassee: Florida State University Press 1986, pp. 160-192.

Authorship and Performance

in the critical scholarship. Rather than consign Kierkegaard to posterity as a failed philosophical author, however, scholars of Kierkegaard tend to fall into either one of two loosely organized camps: those who read Kierkegaard as a philosopher whose fully coherent philosophical position is easily misinterpreted due to the nature of his literary style; and those who read Kierkegaard as a writer whose search after beauty or religious truth ultimately forces him into nonsense. Both camps identify the veronymous author with the historical S0ren Kierkegaard, and are forced to elide some aspect of the Kierkegaardian authorship thereby. From the perspective of history and the historian, of course, S0ren Kierkegaard is not a merely poetical implication of the authorship, and it is his life and development as a person that unifies his literary production.16 From the perspective of poetry and the reader, however, S. Kierkegaard is but the name of the author of the veronymous authorship. To ignore this difference is to blur the bounds between philosophy and intellectual history, between textual interpretation and textually informed biography. Like all authors, Kierkegaard is an implication of the works he authors, implied over the course of a reading, and is as such poetically, not factually, actual. On this basis, and not the facts of biography and history, we must try to understand the force of his veronymous claim to be the author of the pseudonymous authors, and the organizing force behind the authorship taken as a totality. The five chapters of the present work make an effort in this direction, with regard at least to the literary and dramatic critical portion of the authorship. "Kierkegaard" can thus be understood to designate at least two different personalities, depending upon the nature of the designator's interest. In considerations of the philosophical sense and literary structure of the veronymous authorship, however, the only Kierkegaard to whom a reader will have any recourse is the implied Kierkegaard, veronymous but purely poetical author. This evades, I think, the force of the criticisms of the notion of authorship put forward specifically by Roland Barthes and, later but in the same vein, Michel Foucault. Barthes' famous declaration of "the death of the author" calls for a complete divorce of the written work from its author, on the grounds that the notion of the author unnec16

This is Kierkegaard's view in the unpublished The Point of View for My Work as an Author, as well as Niels J0rgen Cappel0rn's "retrospective understanding." See Cappel0rn "The Retrospective Understanding of S0ren Kierkegaard's Total Production" in Kierkegaard: Resources and Results, ed. Alastair McKinnon, Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press 1982, pp. 8-38.

14

Introduction

essarily fixes the possibilities for the meaning of a text, and that the nature of language is such that it does not require an author authoring (or a speaker speaking) in order to continue to have meaning or sense. In his essay, "The Death of the Author," Barthes writes: The Author, when believed in, is always conceived of as the past of his own book: book and author stand automatically on a single line divided into a before and an after. The Author is thought to nourish the book, which is to say that he exists before it, thinks, suffers, lives for it, is in the same relation of antecedence to his work as a father to his child. In complete contrast, the modern scriptor is born simultaneously with the text, is in no way equipped with a being preceding or exceeding the writing, is not the subject of the book as predicate; there is no other time than that of the enunciation and every text is eternally written here and now.11

For Barthes, on the basis of his understanding of the power of language to "speak" without a subject - that is, for language to operate through a human being without essential reference to personality or intention - authorship is an unnecessary and dangerously misguided concept through which to interpret written works. Barthes continues: Thus is revealed the total existence of writing: a text is made of multiple writings, drawn from many cultures and entering into mutual relations of dialogue, parody, contestation, but there is one place where this multiplicity is focused and that place is the reader, not, as was hitherto said, the author. The reader is the space on which all the quotations that make up a writing are inscribed without any of them being lost; a text's unity lies not in its origin but in its destination.18

"The birth of the reader," Barthes concludes, "must be at the cost of the death of the Author."19 For Barthes, the transfer of interpretive power to the reader requires the removal of the author from the picture. Barthes' conception of the author, however, presumes - as do deconstruction and the New Criticism, as well as the many forms of intentionalist criticism - that the author is and can only be identical with the factually actual human being at the historical origin of the work. Barthes murderously announces the author's demise, so as to free the reader from authorial personality, psychology, and intention. The Kierkegaardian authorship recognizes the value of the Barthesian goal, and the factual actuality of S0ren Kierkegaard should not be understood as a constraint on readings of the works ascribed to Kierkegaard. Nevertheless, despite S0ren Kier17

18 19

Roland Barthes "The Death of the Author," trans. Stephen Heath, in Authorship: From Plato to the Postmodern, ed. Seân Burke, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press 1995, p. 127. Barthes "The Death of the Author," p. 129. Barthes "The Death of the Author," p. 130.

Authorship and Performance

kegaard's absence from the veronymous works, those works continue to have an author with the name, "Kierkegaard." Barthes proposes the scriptor as a "substitute" for the author, but the Barthesian scriptor fails to explain away the Kierkegaardian authors precisely for this reason: there is no substituting for the work of the authorial personality in a work. Barthes' scriptor is free of all that which makes an author like Johannes de silentio central to a work like Fear and Trembling. To state, then, the contribution made by a critical examination of the practice of authorship in the Kierkegaardian corpus in light of Barthes, I think it is appropriate to say that a Kierkegaardian author is not dead in the Barthesian sense, but that the author nevertheless does not force the limitations of which Barthes is wary on readings or the reader. As a poetically actual implication of the written work, a Kierkegaardian author is not the factually actual origin of the text, but an implication thereof - implied, not in the authoring of the work, but in its reading. A Kierkegaardian author is a poetically actual persona,20 and is very much at work (à la Barthes, alive) in the written work. Contrary to Barthes, when a Kierkegaardian author - pseudonymous, anonymous or veronymous - says "I," he does not do so merely as one more articulation of language itself.21 He does so as an authorially independent subjectivity, a poetically actual authorial persona. Although he gestures in its direction via the notion of the scriptor, Barthes lacks any real conception of the authorial persona in this Kierkegaardian sense. Without it, however, the polyvocality of the Kierkegaardian authorship is nonsense. With Barthes and the death of the author in mind, then, we can begin to see the two extremes between which the Kierkegaardian authorship attempts to navigate. One of these extremes is the long tradition of more or less biographical criticism, against which Barthes rebels, and in which the author is understood as central to interpretations of a written work, and only ever as factually actual. The other of these extremes is that of Barthes and Foucault, in which the author is again understood as a factually actual person, and is for that reason (and for the sake of the reader) forcibly excluded from the written work. One might argue that, while there is a continuity from the Barthesian death 20

21

See Louis Mackey Kierkegaard: A Kind of Poet, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press 1971. I follow Mackey in his understanding of the Kierkegaardian persona ("an imaginary person created by the author for artistic purposes," p. 247), but do not limit my understanding of personae to the pseudonyms alone. In the end, I argue, all authors are personae in Mackey's sense. Cf. Barthes "The Death of the Author," p. 127.

16

Introduction

of the author to deconstruction (in which, at least in its Derridean version, the author is subordinated absolutely to writing itself),22 there is a similar continuity from the medieval and early modern notion of the factually actual creator reigning supreme over his creations to American formalism (in which the author retains his or her presence in the work as its uncreated creator). These four approaches to authorship - Barthesian, deconstructive, New Critical, and that characteristic of the European tradition from, say, St. Augustine to Kant23 - share a belief in and instantiate a practice of the factual actuality of the author. The Kierkegaardian authorship, on the other hand, does not. This claim - and, indeed, my entire argument in the present work - rests upon an analysis of the authorial structures and strategies at work in the Kierkegaardian authorship itself. Kierkegaard and the anonymous Kierkegaardian literary critics24 do have something to say about authorship, its nature and uses, and they do generally treat authors as if they are factually actual persons residing in history and Copenhagen. Thus, I must dispute the claims made in the Kierkegaardian works of literary criticism to make my point, arguing against Kierkegaard on the basis of the practice or performance of the Kierkegaardian authors. To that end, and following from the contradiction between the authors' claims about authorship and their performance as authors, I have looked to the analyses of performance in the Kierkegaardian dramatic criticism for some guidance. In each of those works - only two of which are ever published - the author focuses his attention on a woman's performance in a theatrical work, specifically, the performance of the role of Zerlina in Mozart's Don Giovanni, and the performance of the role of Juliet in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. 22

23

24

See Sean Burke The Death and Return of the Author: Criticism and Subjectivity in Barthes, Foucault and Derrida, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press 1992. Burke's book is one of the few truly magisterial works on the philosophy of authorship available to readers today. See Burt Kimmelman The Poetics of Authorship in the Later Middle Ages: The Emergence of the Modern Literary Persona, New York: Peter Lang 1996. Kimmelman situates the beginnings of the poeticization of the author - the effacement of the factually actual author by a poetically actual authorial persona - in the twelfth century poetry of Marcabru. Nevertheless, in Marcabru as in the New Criticism, the poetically actual author is him- or herself understood as the creation of a named, factually actual author (in this case, Marcabru), and yet as totally divorced from the realm of factually actual moral and legal accountability. The Kierkegaardian literary criticism is exclusively veronymous and anonymous; the dramatic criticism is exclusively anonymous and pseudonymous.

Authorship and Performance

The performer described in the Kierkegaardian dramatic criticism, unlike the author described in the Kierkegaardian literary criticism, is concealed entirely in his or her performance. This concealment is total when the performance is successful, and it results in the temporary overcoming of the factual actuality of the performer by the poetical actuality of the character being performed. Performance, then, unlike authorship, is a brand of masking - but a masking that somehow does not reveal, but only implies, the performer masked. Like a Barthesian author, the performer is entirely absent from the performance - dead - and thus, as with the author according to Barthes, the identity of the performer plays no role for the spectator in interpretation. The performer is radically distinct from the author, both as authorship is theorized in the Kierkegaardian literary criticism and as it is practiced by the Kierkegaardian authors. The Kierkegaardian authors do not perform as authors, in the Kierkegaardian sense of performance. Many readers of the Kierkegaardian authorship have made the analogy to performance or theater when articulating the nature of the pseudonymity. On some such analogies, Kierkegaard is understood as analogous to a playwright, the pseudonyms to characters in Kierkegaard's play. On other, similar analogies, Kierkegaard is cast as the performer of pseudonymous characters, whose "lines" are the pseudonymous books and articles. Kierkegaard himself characterizes his role as that of a souffleur, neither writing nor acting but prompting the pseudonyms to act.25 Each of these versions presumes the factual actuality of Kierkegaard as an author, however, and so uses the theatrical analogy to demonstrate that Kierkegaard is the true author at work behind the false authorships of the pseudonymous authors.26 Utilizing the theater as an analogy for the authorship here, as well, I maintain that Kierkegaard is not the playwright, or the performer, or a theatrical souffleur, but is another one of the roles. The perform25

26

For an interesting consideration of Kierkegaard as author - and, particularly, as theatrical souffleur - see Bertel Pedersen "Fictionality and Authority: A Point of View for Kierkegaard's Work as an Author" in S0ren Kierkegaard, ed. Harold Bloom, New York: Chelsea House Publishers 1989, pp. 99-115. A comparable analysis of works of literature as performance, although in an entirely different philosophical context and thus with radically different conclusions (informed very much by certain versions of reader response theory) can be found in Stephen Railton Authorship and Audience: Literary Performance in the American Renaissance, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1991. Railton's practice of veronymity, however, forces fundamental and irreconcilable differences between the Kierkegaardian project and what Railton takes to be the authorial projects of Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Poe, and Melville.

18

Introduction

ance is of the sort described in the Kierkegaardian dramatic criticism - a perfect performance - and, as such, the performer is only ever implied in the performance, never witnessed or heard. This performer - the author of the Kierkegaardian authors - remains unnamed and unnamable, and must be so. To reveal him- or herself at any point in the Kierkegaardian authorship - that is, at any point in the performance - would be to destroy the very concealment that makes the performance possible. As noted above, then, this essentially anonymous author can never be known; his or her essential anonymity is coupled with an essential unknowability that leaves the reader almost totally incapable of saying anything about him or her, short of acknowledging the fact that nothing can be said of this author. Readings of the Kierkegaardian authorship, I argue, are thus not only to be divorced from the factually actual person of S0ren Kierkegaard, but also from the posited factual actuality of the author of the authors implied by the possibility of an encounter with the poetical actuality of the authors of the individual works in the authorship. The author of the authors is the only point in the Kierkegaardian authorship at which contact between poetical actuality and factual actuality must be posited. That point grounds the possibility of readings of the authorship by readers in factual actuality, but like Aristotle's god or Kant's thing-in-itself, a ground is all it is. The presence of the Kierkegaardian author never adds to a reading, however much his or her absence would subtract.

K i e r k e g a a r d ' s L i t e r a r y a n d D r a m a t i c Criticism Although there are more than a few critical and scholarly works in the Danish and the English languages on the role authorship plays in Kierkegaard's writings, there is to this point very little published treatment of the literary and dramatic criticism as a corpus or subgenre of the Kierkegaardian authorship. Merete J0rgensen's Kierkegaard som kritiker [Kierkegaard as Critic] is the only published monograph on the subject.27 In her book, J0rgensen argues for a dichotomy in the Kierkegaardian criticism, between those works that present an aesthetic 27

Merete J0rgensen Kierkegaard som kritiker, Copenhagen: Gyldendal 1978. The only book-length works on Kierkegaard's criticism in English are Ph. D. dissertations. See David A. Cain "Reckoning with Kierkegaard: Christian Faith and Dramatic Literature," Princeton University 1976. And George L. Pattison "Kierkegaard's Theory and Critique of Art: Its Theological Significance," University of Durham 1983.

Kierkegaard's Literary and Dramatic Criticism

19

perspective, and those that offer their criticism in ethical terms. The distinction falls along the line dividing the literary criticism from the dramatic criticism. As a dramatic critic, J0rgensen argues, Kierkegaard (and in this, she effectively identifies Kierkegaard with the pseudonyms) is critical on merely aesthetic grounds. As a literary critic, on the other hand, Kierkegaard's criticism is ethical in nature.28 The philosophical purpose of the work seems primarily to establish this distinction firmly in our readings of the critical corpus, and then to argue for the superiority of the ethical "mode" of criticism on the Kierkegaardian view. Insofar as there are no other books on Kierkegaard's criticism, and given that the most prominent exegete of the critical corpus since J0rgensen - George Pattison29 - follows J0rgensen explicitly, it is important to consider her work here. It is, if nothing else, indisputably influential on (the admittedly few) scholars working on the critical authorship, and therefore merits some attention. As noted, J0rgensen divides the Kierkegaardian critical authorship neatly into two groups, the aesthetic and the ethical. In the aesthetic criticism, J0rgensen includes: the essays on Don Giovanni, Antigone, and The First Love in Either/Or, Constantin Constantius' treatment of farce in Repetition, "A Cursory Observation Concerning a Detail in Don Giovanni" "The Crisis and a Crisis in the Life of an Actress," and "Hr. Phister as Captain Scipio," an unpublished article by the pseudonym, Procul.

In the ethical criticism: From the Papers of One Still Living, the second part of The Concept of Irony, 28

29

This is not to contradict a further distinction made by J0rgensen, that, for Kierkegaard, the novel is an essentially ethical form, while poetry is essentially aesthetic. This distinction lends itself naturally to the further conclusion that, while the anonymous Stories of Everyday Life could be in some sense upbuilding, the poetry of Danish greats Adam Oehlenschläger and Steen Steensen Blicher (the latter singled out for praise in From the Papers of One Still Living) could not. Pattison earns this designation by way of portions of his monograph, Kierkegaard: The Aesthetic and the Religious: From the Magic Theatre to the Crucifixion of the Image, New York: St. Martin's Press 1992 (with particular reference to its penultimate chapter, "Nihilism and the Novel"). And his article, "S0ren Kierkegaard: A Theater Critic of the Heiberg School" in Kierkegaard and His Contemporaries: The Culture of Golden Age Denmark (Kierkegaard Studies. Monograph Series, vol. 10), ed. Jon Stewart, Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter 2003. Pattison's most recent work, on the relationship between the works of Kierkegaard and Russian literary critic Mikhail Bakhtin, will undoubtedly contribute much in this regard, as well. Pattison "Bakhtin's Category of Carnival in the Interpretation of the Writings of S0ren Kierkegaard" in Kierkegaard Studies. Yearbook 2006.

20

Introduction

the essay on Madame Nielsen in Stages on Life's Way, A Literary Review, "Something on 'S0strene paa Kinnekullen'," and "Clara Raphael."30

Thus, J0rgensen includes among the critical works of both types (aesthetic and ethical) works or drafts of works drawn from the journals and papers of S0ren Kierkegaard, unpublished during his lifetime and made available only on the authority of the editors of S0ren Kierkegaards EfterladtePapirer-not S0ren Kierkegaard. This is a very important, and very common, methodological choice on J0rgensen's part. As we have seen and will see, the Kierkegaardian authorship demands that readers respect the difference between S. Kierkegaard, poetically actual veronymous author, and S0ren Kierkegaard, factually actual human being. Central to the independence of the Kierkegaardian authors as authors is the responsibility those authors bear for authorship of the works ascribed to them. As Kierkegaard will note (rightly, I think) in "A First and Last Explanation," this responsibility must extend even so far as to grant to the pseudonyms responsibility not only for their views, but also for their own names.31 Somewhere within the wide scope of authorial responsibility lies responsibility for the decision to publish; evidence for this claim will be offered in the discussion of From the Papers of One Still Living in the first chapter of the present work, but we need not involve ourselves in that argument now to see that responsibility for publication is granted to both pseudonyms and the veronym alike in various works of the authorship. While S. Kierkegaard is named as Udgiver - publisher, or editor (the Danish signifies both) - of Philosophical Fragments, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, The Sickness unto Death, and Practice in Christianity, S. Kjerkegaard is so named in the case of From the Papers of One Still Living, Victor Eremita in the case of Either/Or, and Hilarius Bogbinder in the case of Stages on Life's Way. Publication is not a factor external to the works constituting the Kierkegaardian authorship. On the contrary, publication of the work - here understood as the act of making public - is an essential component of the work's status as a work, and it is only by way of passing through publication that a work comes to be included in the authorship. While Procul could have authorized the publication of his article, "Hr. Phister as Captain Scipio," Procul did not - and only Procul would have had the 30 31

See J0rgensen Kierkegaard som kritiker, p. 11. See CUPI, 625-626 / SKS1, 569-570.

Kierkegaard's Literary and Dramatic Criticism

21

authority to do so. That "Hr. Phister as Captain Scipio" makes its way into print is a breach of Procul's authority and independence as an author - and if not Procul's, then S0ren Kierkegaard's.32 Of course, much of value is to be learned in the reading of S0ren Kierkegaard's posthumous papers, and I do not wish to preclude the possibility of serious scholarship on the journals, papers, notebooks, or unpublished drafts of articles and books.33 Nevertheless, the means by which such works have come to be available to us as readers require that we treat them differently than we treat the published authorship. If our interest is in biography and S0ren Kierkegaard, then there are good grounds for including readings and interpretations of the unpublished papers alongside and interwoven with readings and interpretations of the published works. If, however, our interest is in reading the Kierkegaardian authorship, and in uncovering something of the nature and structure of that authorship in addition to its meaning, then we must exclude the unpublished works from our reading. For this reason, then, I do not follow J0rgensen in her inclusion of the unpublished works of criticism in the Kierkegaardian critical authorship. For a similar reason, the present work also breaks with J0rgensen in her treatment of the literary and dramatic critical portions of works otherwise not classifiable as works of literary or dramatic criticism. To extract A's essay on the immediate erotic in Mozart's Don Giovanni from Either/Or is, ultimately, to pretend that a chapter of a book constitutes an independent work of its own. In an authorship as structurally convoluted, ironical, and complex as the Kierkegaardian, there are not good grounds for attempting to interpret the relevant chapters of Either/Or outside of their context within Either/Or; nor is there sufficient space in the present work to offer a reading of Either/Or (or Stages on Life's Way, or Repetition) in its totality as a work. Whatever the chapter on Don Giovanni means, it means it only in relation to the rest of Either/Or, and is representative neither of Kierkegaard's nor of A's views on opera or the opera when taken outside of that context. Of the thirteen works with which J0rgensen deals, these exclusions leave four: From the Papers of One Still Living, "A Cursory Observa32

33

Insofar as Kierkegaard is understood as the author of the unpublished journals and papers. The validity of such ascription is not obvious, but it is customary, and I will not challenge it here. Recent philological work has made such research possible for the first time, and one should turn one's attention to the volumes devoted to the Papirer in the new Danish edition of S0ren Kierkegaards Skrifter. An English translation of this material is underway, published by Princeton University Press.

22

Introduction

tion Concerning a Detail in Don Giovanni," A Literary Review, and "The Crisis and a Crisis in the Life of an Actress." Two of these works - the dramatic critical newspaper articles - fall into J0rgensen's category of aesthetic criticism; two - the short, literary critical books - into her category of ethical criticism. To these four neatly divided works, however, the present work adds six others, all veronymous: four early newspaper articles on the nature of the Kierkegaardian authorship and criticism thereof ("To Mr. Orla Lehmann," "Public Confession," "A Little Explanation," and "An Explanation and a Little More"); the fifth of the six published explanations of the authorship ("A First and Last Explanation"); and the sixth of those explanations, article length but published in book form (On My Work as an Author). I include these works because they are, quite simply put, clearly works of literary criticism. That they are published veronymously by the author who claims (some sort of) responsibility for the authorship of which they constitute criticism seems to me interesting, but methodologically irrelevant. Including the veronymous self-criticism brings the total number of Kierkegaardian works treated in the present work to ten, but it does more than that, at least with regard to the validity of the distinction between the ethical and the aesthetic critical works. As Pattison summarizes the J0rgensenian distinction: It is quite striking that Kierkegaard's work as a critic of the arts falls neatly into two categories. This has been carefully analysed by Merete J0rgensen in her monograph Kierkegaard as Critic. Here she describes these two categories of criticism as 'aesthetic' and 'ethical', according to whether Kierkegaard confines himself to solely aesthetic criteria (for example, the congruence of form and content) or whether he brings ethical criteria into play. But such a twofold division of his critical writings coincides exactly with a division in the nature of the works he discusses. The aesthetic criticism is concerned exclusively with dramatic art, examples of which we have already examined (Don Giovanni, The First Love, Mme Heiberg as Juliet and Hr Phister as Captain Scipio). Here the only thing that counts is the internal relation within the work itself (or the performance of the work) between content and form. What Ms J0rgensen refers to as the ethical reviews, however, are just as exclusively concerned with works of novelistic literature.34

The Kierkegaardian self-criticism is in nature literary criticism; this is, again, the reason for my inclusion of it in the present study. Nevertheless, the focus of this literary self-criticism is precisely and exclusively on matters of the relation between form and content - or, more specifically, on articulating the precise nature of the form, so as to help exPattison Kierkegaard: The Aesthetic and the Religious, pp. 125-126.

Kierkegaard's Literary and Dramatic Criticism

23

plain the content. As literary criticism, I think Kierkegaard's self-criticism fails. Its failure is not grounds for its exclusion from the critical authorship, however, and including it throws into question J0rgensen's easy distinction. The self-criticism is literary criticism that behaves in a manner J0rgensen and Pattison think Kierkegaard uses only with regard to dramatic performance. Not to reject the force of J0rgensen's observation entirely, it is as if, in his veronymous, critical works on the subject of the Kierkegaardian authorship, Kierkegaard reads the Kierkegaardian authorial project as a dramatic, not a literary, one. Thus, in the present work, I treat the ten works of Kierkegaardian criticism named above without reference to the aesthetic-ethical distinction employed by J0rgensen and Pattison in their works. I treat them in order of their original publication, making only two exceptions: in both Chapters Three and Five, I reserve consideration of works of dramatic criticism until after consideration of works of selfcriticism which they do, in fact, predate. I leave the order of publication otherwise intact. Moreover, although the present work attempts to address the general problem of authorship in Kierkegaard by way of a specific examination of the Kierkegaardian literary and dramatic criticism, with the exceptions made on methodological grounds and noted above, the present work does treat the critical authorship in its entirety. No published work of literary or dramatic criticism goes unread. It is thus possible not only to speak of the present work as treating ten works within the Kierkegaardian authorship, but also as treating an unified authorship within the authorship. In this regard, one might justifiably conclude of the present work that it is a study of the nature of authorship in a single - albeit manifold, self-contradictory, and oft confused - Kierkegaardian work. In this, the work with which the present work does deal is very much akin to the greater Kierkegaardian authorship. What follows is divided into five chapters, each of which is focused on one or more of the ten works constituting the Kierkegaardian critical corpus. In the first of these chapters, "Writing H. C. Andersen," I examine the criticism of Hans Christian Andersen's third novel, Only a Fiddler, in the first book of the Kierkegaardian authorship, From the Papers of One Still Living. In Chapter One, I examine the role of anonymity in authorship, with specific reference not only to the anonymity of the review portion of From the Papers of One Still Living (entitled, appropriately enough, Andersen as a Novelist), but also in the authorship of the only author to receive sustained praise in the book, the anonymous author of A Story of Everyday Life. Anonym-

24

Introduction

ity comes to be identified in this early work with a kind of authorial integrity, the personal commitment of the author to refrain from unduly influencing the reader's appropriation of the work by way of the infringement of the factually actual personality of the author. This integrity, when combined with something like the ethical undertones of the works ascribed to the author of A Story of Everyday Life, constitutes what the author of Andersen as a Novelist calls a "life-view," the term that comes to signify what J0rgensen correctly identifies as an ethical tendency in some of the Kierkegaardian literary criticism - and not only that criticism, as the life-view is also a central concept in B's discussions of marriage and the ethical-religious in Either/Or. In both Andersen as a Novelist and Either/Or, the primary function of a life-view is to unite the personality against the personal fragmentation characteristic of the aesthetic perspective and despair. The author of Andersen as a Novelist is very critical of Only a Fiddler on these grounds, and is thus very critical of Andersen, not only as a novelist, but also as a person. Andersen's novel fails, on this reading, because Andersen's life is not ordered properly, his personality overtly fragmented. On the basis of a reading of Only a Fiddler, the author of Andersen as a Novelist concludes, Andersen, the factually actual human being, lacks a life-view. In addition to Andersen as a Novelist, however, From the Papers of One Still Living includes a Preface ascribed to "S. Kjerkegaard," the Udgiver of the work. The Preface is devoted substantially to differentiating the anonymous author of Andersen as a Novelist from Kjerkegaard, all the while with a playfully ironic regard for the purely poetical nature of the difference. Playful or not, however, the difference that is established between the two authors of From the Papers of One Still Living has two very serious consequences: first, Kjerkegaard's difference from the anonymous reviewer forever prevents From the Papers of One Still Living from possessing a life-view in the sense advocated in Andersen as a Novelist; second, the two authors imply a third, anonymous author - their own author - by way of their duplicity. In Chapter Two, "Veronymity and Criticism," I turn from the anonymous From the Papers of One Still Living to some of the first veronymous works in the Kierkegaardian authorship. The four newspaper articles - "To Mr. Orla Lehmann," "Public Confession," "A Little Explanation," and "An Explanation and a Little More" - all attempt, to varying degrees, explanations of portions of the Kierkegaardian authorship. Additionally, they make their attempts typically by way of the criticism of other newspaper articles, regardless of whether, as

Kierkegaard's Literary and Dramatic Criticism

25

in the case of "To Mr. Orla Lehmann," those other articles are concerned with matters mostly external to the authorship, or, as in the cases of the other three explanatory articles, those articles attempt to link the pseudonymous works thus far published to S0ren Kierkegaard. Central to these first four explanations is the notion that, when engaging in public criticism or reform (as in the case of the political reformer, Orla Lehmann), an author must be veronymous. Citing the examples of Moses, Martin Luther and Daniel O'Connell, Kierkegaard argues that, especially in religious or political matters, reformative authors must offer their readers some factually actual individual with whom moral and legal responsibility for the incitement to reform can be situated. Anything less resigns the "reform movement" to the realm of poetical actuality, where no genuine political, religious, or ethical action can take place. The focus on veronymous responsibility in the first four explanations is out of accord with the praise of anonymity in From the Papers of One Still Living, however, and so the question of veronymity remains open in spite of Kierkegaard's veronymous attempts to close it once and for all. In order to resolve this apparent dispute, and on the basis of From the Papers of One Still Living and the first four explanations, I argue that there is no meaningful distinction between the nature of the actualities proper to anonymous and veronymous authors: both are poetically actual. Kierkegaard's concern, that moral responsibility cannot be ascribed to poetically actual authors, is mediated by way of a careful analysis of the nature of veronymity in the final section of Chapter Two. The veronymous author is purely poetical, and is as such responsible for his own name; that the name of the veronym corresponds exactly to the name of the factually actual individual at the origin of the work in history is not a coincidence, but it is not necessary, either. The author of the first four explanations is thus shown to have chosen freely to name himself with S0ren Kierkegaard's name, and to do so in a manner that establishes a special relationship between S0ren Kierkegaard and the Kierkegaardian veronym to which S0ren Kierkegaard can but does not object.35 While S0ren Kierkegaard is not necessarily responsible for the veronymous authorship, then, he 35

Outside of Kierkegaard, the best example of this literary phenomenon - as of so many literary phenomena - is to be found in the work of Jorge Luis Borges. See "Borges and I," a short work in which Borges distinguishes between "himself" and "the one called Borges," the author of the Borgesian works. The piece concludes with the sentence, "I do not know which of us has written this page." Borges "Borges and I" in Authorship, ed. Seân Burke, p. 339.

26

Introduction

is free to take responsibility for that authorship upon himself, and the veronymity of the works constituting the authorship precludes the possibility that such a taking encroaches upon the veronym's authority as an author. This authority does not extend to the anonymity or pseudonymity, however, regardless of what factually actual relation S0ren Kierkegaard might have to certain anonymous or veronymous works. It is the veronym's name that grants S0ren Kierkegaard the freedom to take responsibility for the veronymous authorship in factual actuality. The anonyms and the pseudonyms do not share that name, and as such, never engage S0ren Kierkegaard in the nominally proximate relationship initiated by the veronym's veronymous self-naming. Precisely this problem is addressed in Chapter Three, "Opera and Explanation," in which I treat two works of criticism: Kierkegaard's veronymous "A First and Last Explanation," and "A Cursory Observation Concerning a Detail in Don Giovanni," ascribed to the anonym, A. In "A First and Last Explanation," Kierkegaard makes his famous (and famously peculiar) claim to limited authorial responsibility for the pseudonymous authorship from Either/Or through Concluding Unscientific Postscript (to which "A First and Last Explanation" is appended, albeit unpaginated and in a different typeface). Characterizing himself as "the author of the pseudonymous authors," Kierkegaard attempts to explain his role in the Kierkegaardian authorship. In light of the nature of Kierkegaardian veronymity, however, as exposed in Chapter Two, I dispute Kierkegaard's authority to make this claim. As an author, Kierkegaard is only ever poetically actual, and as such could not be the factually actual origin of the authorship. Moreover, as one poetically actual author among many, Kierkegaard does not have the authority to infringe upon and undermine the authorships of the pseudonymous authors. The authorial impossibility of the structure Kierkegaard suggests is brought most clearly to expression in a consideration of the nature and consequences of the appearance of Kierkegaard's name as Udgiver on the title pages of Philosophical Fragments and Concluding Unscientific Postscript, and the treatment of "A First and Last Explanation" concludes with an examination of this textual phenomenon, and Kierkegaard's note explaining the phenomenon after the fact in "A First and Last Explanation." In the second half of Chapter Three, I examine "A Cursory Observation Concerning a Detail in Don Giovanni," the first published work of dramatic criticism in the Kierkegaardian authorship. The anonymous article analyzes the performance of the role of Zerlina in Mozart's opera, with a special regard for the manner in which a single line

Kierkegaard's Literary and Dramatic Criticism

27

- "No, I will not" - is sung. A.'s critical analysis concentrates on the relation between reflection and voice in the performance of opera, and specifically, the manner in which the actress must be a reflective artist in order to perform Zerlina, but must use reflection in her performance to conceal absolutely the fact that she is reflective. Here, then, in an anonymous article authorial responsibility for which Kierkegaard never claims, there seems to be a hint in the direction of a better approach to understanding the Kierkegaardian practice of authorship than is offered veronymously by Kierkegaard in "A First and Last Explanation." The chapter closes with some consideration of how reading the authorship in terms of the notion of authorial performance - understood in the stricter sense of the operatic or dramatic, rather than as activity more generally understood (performance, or performativity, à la J. L. Austin) - offers us a richer, more complex reading, more fully appreciative of the nuances and difficulties of the Kierkegaardian authorship than is Kierkegaard's veronymous reading. Chapter Four, "Repetition and Reperformance," turns to the veronymous A Literary Review, and returns to many of the same issues dealt with in Chapter One. In A Literary Review, Kierkegaard performs an explicit repetition of From the Papers of One Still Living, engaging in a critical reading of a novel, Two Ages, by the anonymous author of A Story of Everyday Life. A Literary Review is a repetition of Two Ages as well as of From the Papers of One Still Living, however, and in this Kierkegaard begins to reveal something of the essence of criticism and the work of the literary critic. The work instantiates separately the three modes of literary criticism: summary, interpretation, and appropriation - movement from the work itself into a broader discussion of those ideas the critic finds to be central to the work, on the critic's authority alone. Each of these modes is itself a repetition of the novel under review, however, an attempt at re-presenting that original work in light of whatever we take to be the critic's genius. Thus, in the fourth chapter I offer a reading of A Literary Review as critical repetition of Two Ages. This reading engages Kierkegaard both in his interpretation of the novel, and in his own (more widely read and discussed) treatment of the two ages of the title of the novel: the age of revolution and the present age. A Literary Review is more than a repetition of Two Ages, however, and to the end of uncovering this something more, I examine the nature of a claim Kierkegaard makes in the work's Preface. There, in a few brief claims in the text and a short footnote, Kierkegaard takes veronymous authorial responsibility for From the Papers of

28

Introduction

One Still Living. This claim extends both to the work of the Udgiver, S. Kjerkegaard (and here, we see the identification of "Kjerkegaard" with "Kierkegaard"), and to the work of the anonymous author of Andersen as a Novelist. In so doing, Kierkegaard instantiates in himself as veronym the duplicity natural to the authorship of that first book. As is discussed in Chapter One, the integrity of the authors of From the Papers of One Still Living rests entirely upon their remaining in the tension of authorial difference. Thus, in taking responsibility for the authorships of both of that work's authors, Kierkegaard throws A Literary Review and From the Papers of One Still Living into a greater tension: either From the Papers of One Still Living has two different authors (in which case the authorship of A Literary Review is unnaturally bifurcated, fragmented within the otherwise single personality of the veronym), or Kierkegaard mediates the difference between Kjerkegaard and the anonymous reviewer successfully, forcing From the Papers of One Still Living into a thoroughgoing structural selfcontradiction thereby. The result of this tension is much the same as it was when confined within the bounds and binding of From the Papers of One Still Living, however: the fragmented (or nearly fragmented) nature of the authors of the works not only implies an author of those authors (a figure whom any named author will imply), but also serves as an occasion for the reader's recollection of that author. In A Literary Review and Chapter Four, then, we see the formal introduction of the reader into the authorial structure of the Kierkegaardian authorship. The chapter closes with some consideration of the authorial power of a reading, and of the reader as a co-author whose reading is a repetition, or reperformance, of the author of the author's authorial activity in the work being read. In the fifth and final chapter, "Writing S. Kierkegaard," I consider together (as in Chapter Three) a literary self-critical work and a dramatic critical one. Chapter Five begins with a reading of Kierkegaard's On My Work as an Author, the last published veronymous explanation of the Kierkegaardian authorship. In this work, Kierkegaard offers a variation upon his interpretation of the authorship in "A First and Last Explanation," wherein he presents himself as the author of the pseudonymous authors, although not of the works authored by those authors. What On My Work as an Author possesses that "A First and Last Explanation" lacks, however, is the further claim as to the overall nature and purpose of the Kierkegaardian authorship: in On My Work as an Author, Kierkegaard maintains that, from the "very beginning" (a somewhat ambiguous term, as we will see), he was

Kierkegaard's Literary and Dramatic Criticism

29

a religious author, and the authorship a religious authorship. More to the point, Kierkegaard admits (for the first time in the critical authorship, although the claim had been made with regard to the upbuilding discourses before) that, as an author, he is "without authority" - and he makes this claim with specific reference to his work as a Christian author, or an author in the service of Christianity. The chapter articulates some of the consequences of Kierkegaard's lack of authority as a veronymous author, keeping in mind the newfound religiousness of the Kierkegaardian veronymous critical perspective. On My Work as an Author stops just short of claiming that God assisted Kierkegaard in the production of the authorship, although Kierkegaard does maintain that the authorship was only possible with the help of God. Nevertheless, On My Work as an Author is a work, like "A First and Last Explanation," in which Kierkegaard ostensibly overruns the limits of his authority as an author - a situation made more ironic by virtue of the centrality of the claim to Kierkegaard's lack of authority in the work. In overstepping his bounds, Kierkegaard condemns his final authorial explanation to the same fate as those that preceded it, namely, as a fascinating but untenable interpretation of the Kierkegaardian authorship. After the treatment of On My Work as an Author, Chapter Five turns to the only pseudonymous work of Kierkegaardian criticism, the four-part serial newspaper article, "The Crisis and a Crisis in the Life of an Actress." Following from the claim in Chapter Three - that the dramatic criticism, and particularly, the analyses of performance, can be of some use to us in coming to understand the Kierkegaardian authorship - 1 offer a reading of Inter et Inter's treatment of an hypothetical reperformance of Juliet (in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet) as both important for and analogous to the work of the author of the Kierkegaardian authors. On Inter et Inter's hypothesis, the actress made her debut as a young girl playing the role of Juliet; she has since returned to the role, after fourteen years, and is now a mature woman. In his analysis, the actress is only an essential genius who can better perform the youth, Juliet, when she is not herself young - that is, the essential actress performs by way of relating herself ideally to the idea of Juliet (in this case, according to Inter et Inter, the idea of feminine youthfulness), not by way of being (or looking like) a sixteen-year old girl. As with the actress singing Zerlina on A.'s analysis in "A Cursory Observation Concerning a Detail in Don Giovanni," the actress playing Juliet is totally concealed in her performance. The actress (who, in the actuality of Inter et Inter's hypothesis, has no name) only truly

30

Introduction

reveals herself - she is essentially an actress - when she is most concealed. Thus, in addition to the accidental anonymity the actress attains in Inter et Inter's article, the actress is essentially anonymous, insofar as she is an actress. This is the role that I think is ultimately assigned to the Kierkegaardian author (the author of the authors) in the authorship, and it is with some consideration of the Kierkegaardian authorship as the work, ultimately, of an anonymous authorial performer in Inter et Inter's sense, that the present work comes to a close. In contrast to a full interpretation of the Kierkegaardian authorship taken as a totality, or of the individual Kierkegaardian authors, my work serves only a preliminary or prefatory function to such interpretations.361 seek only to resituate the author in our readings of the authorship, and to do so in a way that avoids both the oversimplistic dismissal of the multiple authorial voices, and the oversimplistic dissolution of what unity exists among the disparate works constituting the authorship. The principle of that unity is an implied author, much as it is in each work, but with one fundamental difference, namely, that while the anonymous, pseudonymous, and veronymous authors at work in the authorship author written works, the essentially anonymous author of the authors authors authors.

36

One might, in this sense, conceive of the present work as an attempt at fulfilling the possibility Merold Westphal proposes when he writes, with regard to strategies for reading Kierkegaard in light of his polyonymity, "We might start from the theory of fiction in general, beginning with Aristotle's claim that poetry is more philosophical than history because more universal (Poetics, 1451b5ff.), and then see what is involved in extending the fiction function from characters created by authors to the authors themselves." Westphal "Kierkegaard and the Anxiety of Authorship" in International Philosophical Quarterly 34:1, 1994, pp. 5-22. In his essay, however, Westphal adopts "a different strategy."

Chapter One Writing H. C. Andersen: From the Papers of One Still Living Oddly enough, Kierkegaard's first book is the only of his published books without an author clearly named on the title page. As it appeared in print in 1838, the text of that page reads: Af en endnu Levendes Papirer. Udgivet mod hans Villie af S. Kjerkegaard.1

While there is reasonable confusion among readers and interpreters of From the Papers of One Still Living as to the identity of the publisher of the work ("Kjerkegaard" is either a pseudonym or an antiquated spelling of the veronym2), the work preserves the anonymity 1

2

In English translation: From the Papers of One Still Living. Published Against His Will by S. Kjerkegaard. Artifacts that suggest that the historical Kierkegaard (as opposed to the author) spelled his own name, on occasion, with a j instead of an i can be found in a copper plate for the printing of calling cards ("S. Kjerkegaard / Mag. Art.") and a scrap of paper from 1834 (where, among other things, appear elaborately fashioned renderings of the names "Lund" and "S. Kjerkegaard" in Kierkegaard's hand). See Niels J0rgen Cappel0rn, Joakim Garff, and Johnny Kondrup Written Images: S0ren Kierkegaard's Journals, Notebooks, Booklets, Sheets, Scraps, and Slips of Paper, trans. Bruce H. Kirmmse, Princeton: Princeton University Press 2003, pp. 40 and 50 (figs. 24 and 32), respectively. While historical artifacts are, strictly speaking, irrel-

32

Writing H. C. Andersen

of its author. The only named figure responsible for the production of the book is the Udgiver, the editor or publisher, S. Kjerkegaard.3 The name "Kjerkegaard" on the title page does not signal an attribution of authorial responsibility. The name "Kierkegaard" is never written in or on From the Papers of One Still Living. Despite even the possibility that "Kjerkegaard" differs only orthographically from "Kierkegaard," calling Kjerkegaard the author of From the Papers of One Still Living is incautious; calling Kierkegaard the author is doubly so.4 From the Papers of One Still Living is divided into two sections: a Preface, ascribed to the editor, S. Kjerkegaard; and Andersen as a Novelist, an anonymous review of H. C. Andersen's novel, Only a Fiddler. To ascribe the views of the author of Andersen as a Novelist to Kierkegaard is thus as dangerously imprecise as to do so with regard to the views of B or Johannes de silentio. Ascribing those views to a pseudonymous Kjerkegaard, however, is no less dangerous or imprecise. To do so is to mediate the difference between the Preface and the review, a difference that Kjerkegaard strenuously maintains in his Preface. The conflict of authorial wills internal to From the Papers of One Still Living is essential to the nature of the work as a literary work, and that conflict is only possible in the inscription of the two different authorial voices within the work. To read that difference away in the mediating power of a conciliatory interpretation is to read From the Papers of One Still Living away from itself.

3

4

evant to considerations of authorship in the present study, they are of some interest to students of Kierkegaard. For this reason, I make tangential note of them here. The word "udgivet" on the title page can be translated into English as either "edited" or "published." The verb's noun form, "Udgiver," is likewise translatable as "editor" and "publisher." I will thus refer alternatively to Kjerkegaard as the editor and publisher of the work. Various readers have alternatively ascribed pseudonymity or veronymity to the work. Bruce Kirmmse is one prominent American pseudonymite. (See Kierkegaard in Golden Age Denmark, Bloomington: Indiana University Press 1990, pp. 265-266.) Michael Strawser criticizes Kirmmse and the pseudonymous reading of From the Papers of One Still Living in his fervently veronymite Both/And: Reading Kierkegaard from Irony to Edification, New York: Fordham University Press 1997, p. 9ff.. Peter Fenves is exceptional (perhaps even unique) in reading Andersen as a Novelist in its anonymity, but he goes further than I am able in his suggestion that Kjerkegaard is the actual author of the review left anonymous. I think Fenves unduly solidifies the ambiguous unity of Kjerkegaard and the author of Andersen as a Novelist thereby. Fenves thus ultimately seems to argue against the, anonymity of the work, locating as he does a name for "the real author." See Fenves "Chatter": Language and History in Kierkegaard, Stanford: Stanford University Press 1993, pp. 60-61.

Writing H. C. Andersen

Anonymity affords the author of Andersen as a Novelist a distance from his literary critical production highly vaunted in novelists in the review. The author of Andersen as a Novelist is not some living Dane with a particular life history. A particular person such as this would naturally require a particular name. The author of Andersen as a Novelist, on the other hand, exists exclusively in terms of his work as an author. In this, the author of Andersen as a Novelist begins his life as an author far from S0ren Kierkegaard's beginnings as a child in Copenhagen. This chapter will illustrate some of the specifics of the anonymous reviewer's criticisms of H. C. Andersen, but the general force of those criticisms will always be directed to Andersen's seeming inability successfully to separate his factually actual self from the works of literature published under his name. Andersen's name is itself a part of the problem, signifying as it does either of two very different Andersens: the purely poetical authorial implication of Only a Fiddler, and the factually actual man resident in Copenhagen. In fact, of the other contemporary Danish authors of whom the author of Andersen as a Novelist has something to say, only the unnamed author of A Story of Everyday Life receives unmixed praise. Of all the books published in the Kierkegaardian authorship, only two are wholly literary reviews. Both works direct their praise to the author of A Story of Everyday Life. Both credit the author's literary success, at least in part, to the preservation of a distance between the author's life and literary product. In the case of the author of A Story of Everyday Life, the distance is occasioned precisely in the maintenance of "his" anonymity.5 The proximity of the factually actual H. C. Andersen to the veronymous novels results in the intrusion of Andersen's personal will into the events and characters of the novels. Andersen's proximity is the precise opposite of the distance effected by the author of A Story of Everyday Life. The primary and most beneficial poetic result of that distance is that A Story of Everyday Life is freed of its author's will. From within this freedom, A Story of Everyday Life (and successful works of literature like A Story of Everyday Life) makes evi5

The Stories of Everyday Life were written by Thomasine Gyllembourg, mother of the noted Danish writer, Johan Ludvig Heiberg. Gyllembourg remained anonymous in her capacity as an author throughout her life. There is some speculation as to the possibility that Kierkegaard knew the author so highly praised in From the Papers of One Still Living and A Literary Review (1846; signed "S. Kierkegaard") was in fact a woman, but references in those works are consistent in both their respect of the anonymity of the author and their use of the male pronoun when referring to "him."

34

Writing H. C. Andersen

dent to its readers a "Livs-Anskuelse," a "life-view," the possession of which is shared by the literary work and its altogether literary author. Andersen, as a consequence of his ineptitude, shows his readers that he and his novel both lack life-views. The notion of a life-view can be seen in this light as central to the literary theory put forward by the author of Andersen as a Novelist; it pervades much of the rest of the Kierkegaardian authorship, however, and in particular his first major literary project, Either/Or. My treatment of From the Papers of One Still Living will thus begin with a reading of Andersen as a Novelist in terms of the notion of a life-view. Here, we find that the anonymous author of Andersen as a Novelist is most critical of H. C. Andersen's failure to observe the distinction between the poetical actuality of his novel and his own factual actuality. The anonymous reviewer is unjustified in his criticism, however, in the very terms he sets forth in the review. If, as the reviewer maintains, H. C. Andersen is but the poetical implication of Only a Fiddler, then the reviewer has no access to or knowledge of the factually actual H. C. Andersen on the basis of a reading of the novel alone. Over the course of his review, the reviewer poeticizes Andersen, providing his readers with precisely that which he claims Only a Fiddler lacks: H. C. Andersen as purely poetical, wholly distinct from factual actuality (and the factually actual H. C. Andersen). The reviewer does this at his own expense, however, thrusting himself as an author and Andersen as a Novelist into confusion for the reader. From a reading of Andersen as a Novelist, it is no longer clear whether the reviewer takes H. C. Andersen to be a factually actual individual, or the poetically actual author of Only a Fiddler, and his "poem" - the poetically actual H. C. Andersen, complete with life story and psychological profile - is never clear in its position on the nature of H. C. Andersen's actuality as the author of Only a Fiddler. Nevertheless, on the basis of his reading of Andersen, the reviewer articulates a theory of authorship that rests entirely upon the rigorous maintenance of the distinction between poetical and factual actualities. He criticizes Andersen for failing to have attained the "dead and transfigured" personality proper to an author - a personality which, according to Joakim Garff, is best understood as purely poetical. Thus, Andersen is accused of having failed to die or, more precisely, of having failed to die away from his literary production, such that his readers encounter no confusion between the author of Only a Fiddler and the historical person, H. C. Andersen. The nature of the criticism the anonymous reviewer levels requires, however, that there be a

Livs-Anskuelser: Andersen as a Novelist

35

factually actual author named "H. C. Andersen" at the origin of Only a Fiddler, the "living" figure who must die away. Andersen as a Novelist thus forces the reviewer into the same confusion of which it accuses Andersen, and the reviewer's fate as an author is sealed thereby: where goes Andersen, there goes the anonymous reviewer. Despite the condemnation of the sort of criticism practiced by the anonymous reviewer (and his attendant failure as an author), From the Papers of One Still Living offers an alternative model of authorship. This model is never articulated, but is instantiated in the work by way of the duplicity of authorial voices in its authorship. While Andersen as a Novelist is a failure as literary criticism, From the Papers of One Still Living can be understood as a success. Andersen as a Novelist fails by giving readers an impossible conclusion in the blurring of the line between fiction and fact; From the Papers of One Still Living succeeds by giving readers no conclusion at all. In this, From the Papers of One Still Living anticipates Either/Or, and the present chapter concludes with a consideration of Either/Or in light both of the anonymous reviewer's literary criticism and the nature of the purely poetical poly vocality of the authorship of From the Papers of One Still Living. In Either/Or, as in From the Papers of One Still Living, we find that the presence of multiple authors in the work implies the existence - if not the presence - of yet another author, the unnamed author of the authors.

Livs-Anskuelser: Andersen as a Novelist From the Papers of One Still Living is divided into two distinct sections of rather different lengths, as noted above: the Preface and Andersen as a Novelist, with Continual Reference to His Latest Work: Only a Fiddler.6 In the second, and by far longest of these sections (the Preface is but a few pages long), the criticisms of Andersen and his novel revolve around the paired notions of a life-development and 6

The word translated as "novelist" in English is Romandigter, or "novel-poet." This word carries with it all of the possible meanings of the Danish Digtning, "poetry," such that it can apply to non-literary, creatively written works. In this sense, Kierkegaard is considered, and often considers himself, a poet. Had the anonymous reviewer wanted to avoid these connotations, he could have chosen another Danish word, Rom anfor fatter, or "novel-author." References to novels, novelists, poetry, poems, and poets in the present work ought to be understood with the linguistic relationship in the review work in mind.

36

Writing H. C. Andersen

a life-view.7 In form, the criticism is fairly simple: there are certain stages of development through which an individual personality must go in order to be qualified for novel [Roman] and short novel [Novelle] writing; Andersen lacks a proper life-development; as such, Andersen lacks a life-view: he is unqualified and presumably unable to write novels properly.8 "A life-view is really providence in the novel; it is its deeper unity, which makes the novel have the center of gravity in itself. A life-view frees it from being arbitrary or purposeless, since the purpose is immanently present everywhere in the work of art."9 The life-view thus provides readers with a clear purpose for the writing of the novel, an authorial plan or, in theological language, providence guiding the novel's events and developments.10 This literary providence forms the center of the novel, around and by which the written work is unified as a novel. "But when such a life-view is lacking, the novel either seeks to insinuate some theory (dogmatic, doctrinaire short novels) at the expense of poetry or it makes a finite and incidental contact with the author's flesh and blood."11 A novel that lacks a life-view fails to attain the unity of purpose inherent in the idea of a novel as such. One such failed novel is Andersen's Only a Fiddler. The pretense of Only a Fiddler is that genius is naturally fragile. Christian, the hero of Only a Fiddler, is a musical genius who never receives the support and acknowledgement requisite for bringing his 7

8

9 10

11

In opposition to most scholars, Sylvia Walsh makes much of the role of the lifedevelopment in Kierkegaard's review, in addition to the more commonly discussed life-view in readings of From the Papers of One Still Living. I think Walsh is right to call attention to both of these elements, although I am not as certain as she that her scholarly predecessors neglect the concept of a life-development as much as they incorporate it into the concept of a life-view. See Sylvia Walsh Living Poetically: Kierkegaard's Existential Aesthetics, University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press 1994, p. 37. This simple argument is also somewhat unoriginal: the author's understanding of the stages of the life-development are only a slight elaboration upon J.L. Heiberg's revision of the Hegelian development from epic, through lyric, to drama (Heiberg and the author of the review reverse the order of epic and lyric in Hegel); and the notion of a life-view, in a sense not altogether unlike the author's, is found in the thought of Kierkegaard's teacher and friend, P. M. M0ller. See Walsh Living Poetically, p. 33. And W. Glyn Jones "S0ren Kierkegaard and Poul Martin M0ller" in Modern Language Review 60,1965, pp. 73-82. EPW, 81 / SKS 1, 36. According to Vanessa Rumble, the quest for "providence in the novel" is evidence of a desire for the "coincidence of human consciousness and an all-embracing Governance." Rumble "Eternity Lies Beneath: Autonomy and Finitude in Kierkegaard's Early Writings" in Journal of the History of Philosophy 35:1,1997, p. 89. EPW, 81 / SKS 1, 36-37.

Livs-Anskuelser: Andersen as a Novelist

37

genius to fruition. The genius succumbs to circumstance, becoming nothing more than a poor fiddler. He dies a musical failure, in obscurity and alone. The author of Andersen as a Novelist does not find the fact that Christian fails unliterary. Rather, "We by no means think that it is wrong that an individual succumbs in the novel, but then it must be a poetic truth [enpoetisk Sandhed], not, as in some poets, apiafraus of upbringing or, as in Andersen, his final will."12 This failure to achieve poetic truth is the locus of the author's critical view of Andersen's novel. While it is possible to write a novel in which the protagonist, in strife and adversity, dies a miserable failure, and to do so in such a way that the novel possesses a life-view, doing so requires a consistency and integrity in the novel that corresponds to the providential truth of actuality. Just as everything that happens in the world of actuality can be understood in terms of providence, and, in terms of providence, nothing happens without a purpose (from the perspective of the providential religious), so the life-view in the novel unites all that happens in the novel in the service of a purpose: the expression of the life-view. Yet this life-view must remain distinct from the will of the author of the novel. A novel, by way of its life-view, must stand on its own. Andersen fails to write a novel in possession of a life-view insofar as the outcome of that novel, the fall of its hero, is only explicable as Andersen's "final will." The only "providence" in Only a Fiddler is the will of Andersen - on the anonymous reviewer's reading, a living individual in the world of factual actuality. A living individual is not a life-view, however, and is not enough. Andersen has Christian succumb to his troubles. The truth in his succumbing is never adequately demonstrated: "On the contrary, Andersen skips over the actual development, sets an appropriate interval of time between, first shows as well as he can the great forces and natural capacities, and then shows their loss." And in a note from that sentence in the review: "One could almost be tempted to encourage him to demonstrate the identity of the character."13 The novel does not maintain a coherent actuality of its own, especially within the various presentations of its hero at different stages in his life. Such an actuality, if it existed in Only a Fiddler, would be capable of bringing the end of Christian's life into some kind of accord with its beginning. Importantly, it would inhere in the novel itself, not be imposed upon the novel from outside. The only explanation for Christian's failure rests in Andersen. An12 13

EPW, 83 / SKS 1, 38. EPW, 80 and n. / SKS 1, 36 and n. 1.

38

Writing H. C. Andersen

dersen wants Christian to fail, and so Christian fails. Poetically, this makes no sense. In this way, the author of Andersen as a Novelist introduces the factual actuality of H. C. Andersen into his understanding of the production of the novel. The reviewer establishes a contrast between what one might take to be Andersen's will as an author, and the providence that ought to inhere in the novel itself, its life-view. Andersen is criticized for failing to produce a novel capable of struggling with and defeating Andersen in this battle for possession of the "center of gravity" of the work. According to the author of Andersen as a Novelist, a reader must in the absence of a life-view take considerations of Andersen himself into account for the failure of Christian to make any sense, and by this "himself," the reviewer means to indicate the factually actual Andersen. The genius fails in life because Andersen, the man resident in Copenhagen, has some reason for wanting him to fail. Otherwise, one must conclude as the author of Andersen as a Novelist concludes, that Christian is no genius whatsoever: "He was bound to become a 'poor wretch' because he was one."14 The narrator of the veronymous novel - with whom the reviewer identifies the real H. C. Andersen - claims that Christian is a genius. The narrator's decision to call Christian a genius does not demonstrate Christian's genius, however, and Andersen thus poetizes a fiddler who fails to display his musical genius to his peers or Andersen's readers. Poetically actually - that is, in terms of the world of the novel - the only explanation is that Christian is not a genius, that he is merely vain.15 Andersen, as the narrator of the novel, disagrees with such a low estimation of his hero: in the narration of Only a Fiddler, Christian is not only called a genius, but the failure of his genius is lamented. Poetically actually, there is a split between the events of the novel and the narration of those events. Andersen writes that Christian is a genius, but Christian never lives as one. Christian thus "contradicts" Andersen, insofar as he never evinces the genius ascribed to him by Andersen. A reader of Only a Fiddler must interpret Christian as a non-genius, a "poor wretch," as it were, in spite of Andersen's repeated claims as narrator to the contrary. Andersen as a novelist, however, is simultaneously responsible for his narration and the events and actions constituting Christian's life. By way of the contradiction inscribed in Only a Fiddler, Andersen as a novelist divides himself from himself. He seems to write from two different authorial 14 15

EPW, 99 / SKS 1, 54. EPW, 99 / SKS 1, 54.

Livs-Anskuelser: Andersen as a Novelist

39

perspectives, neither of which succeeds in orienting the novel in light of the other. The novel lacks a life-view as there is no single purpose to ground a life-view, only conflicting purposes. In essence, it is as if Only a Fiddler were written by two authors, an at least seeming contradiction given the single author implied by the placement of "H. C. Andersen" alone on the title page. The praise the author of Andersen as a Novelist accords the author of A Story of Everyday Life has everything to do with the correspondence between the simplicity of the author and the singularity of purpose evident in the work as its life-view. The unnamed author of A Story of Everyday Life is thus somewhat ironically a more integral personality than the H. C. Andersen of Only a Fiddler. Andersen lacks integrity as an author - that is, his authorial perspective does not resist fragmentation into multiple perspectives - and "H. C. Andersen" is thus not clearly meaningful. No reader of Only a Fiddler can be sure who the author of Only a Fiddler is, or what "H. C. Andersen" means. Such duplicity within the factually actual personality of a living human being is, barring the extremity of psychological disorder, factually actually impossible - and the fragmenting author(s) of Only a Fiddler fictionalize(s) himself/themselves as a result. The line separating poetical and factual actuality has been blurred. Blame for the blur is justly directed toward the one claiming full authorial responsibility on the title page of the work: H. C. Andersen. The problems that the author of Andersen as a Novelist finds in Andersen's novelistic production can be simplified to the puzzling ambiguity of Andersen's claim to authorship. The only reasonable resolution of the disparity of perspective within Andersen as responsible for both the claim to Christian's genius and the poetic demonstration of Christian's lack of genius is that Andersen wanted to tell a story he ultimately could not tell, either for lack of ability, or because it simply was not true. According to the reviewer, then, Andersen's own voice penetrates Andersen's poetry for this reason, in the attempt to insure that his readers do not conclude that Christian was in fact never the genius Andersen wanted him to be. With these individuals, who thus in every moment cease to be merely poetic characters, Andersen now makes contact as he does with other beings on this, our earth. That is, on the one hand he conceives an entirely worldly love for some individual, who of course in most cases is his hero but whom he now treats more as a client he is interested in and at every opportunity seeks to push forward in the world.16 i6 EPW, 90 / SKS1, 46.

40

Writing H. C. Andersen

What Andersen cannot make so by poetic talent, it seems, he attempts to make so by fiat. Andersen's declarations of Christian's genius themselves deprive Christian and his story of poetic truth, and as such are, according to the anonymous reviewer, evidence of Andersen's own lack of genius. Poetically speaking, Only a Fiddler and its author are total failures. Precisely therefore is it possible that readers are put into the most singular mood, very different from the one intended by Andersen, inasmuch as his fiction weighs one down like actuality because the whole collection of details, narrated as actuality, can surely have their interest, since one must presuppose the fundamental thought in the narrating individual's own consciousness going through all these, explaining everything, but the fundamental thought is first and foremost what the poet must make come alive. And his own actuality, his own person, volatizes itself into fiction, so that sometimes one is actually tempted to believe that Andersen is a character who has run away from an as yet unfinished group composed by a poet. And certainly it is undeniable that Andersen could become a very poetic person in a poem, in which case all his poetry would be understood in its fragmentary truth.17

Upon resolution of the blur between factual and poetical actuality in Andersen's poetry in the direction of fictionalizing Andersen as a novelist himself, Only a Fiddler and his earlier literary works attain what the author of Andersen as a Novelist calls "fragmentary truth." That is, in the context of another poem by an author other than Andersen in which Andersen is a character, a poetically actual failed poet, Andersen's poetry could be understood as a partial expression of a life-view. Although it lacks a life-view itself (it is a collection of poetically incoherent fragments), Only a Fiddler nevertheless serves to express the life-view of the poet poetizing Andersen (as itself a fragment of a poetically true poem). Such an approach to Andersen and his works entirely disregards their factual actuality. From the perspective of the reader of Only a Fiddler, the author of the novel is a construction backward from the traces left of the author in the novel itself. These traces may be left intentionally or not; from the perspective of the reader, authorial intention cannot be discerned. Readers are thus always limited in their knowledge of authors to the poetically actual. The author of Andersen as a Novelist seems at first to respect this limitation in his review. To this end, shortly after his introduction of Andersen by name in From the Papers of One Still Living, the author tells his readers that, "in his lyric poetry," Andersen is characterized 17

EPW, 75-76 / SKS1, 31.

Livs-Anskuelser: Andersen as a Novelist

41

as a possibility of a personality, wrapped up in such a web of arbitrary moods and moving through an elegiac duodecimo-scale of almost echoless, dying tones just as easily roused as subdued, who, in order to become a personality, needs a strong lifedevelopment.18

The author's claims about Andersen are conditioned by the fact that he seeks only to discuss Andersen as present in Andersen's poetic production: Andersen as a novelist. In keeping his comments within the bounds of Andersen's lyric poetry, one might argue, the author of Andersen as a Novelist does not give us a psychological profile of Mr. H. C. Andersen, as these remarks were understood by Andersen19 (and continue to be understood today),20 but instead a literary interpretation of how the poet is characterized in his poetry. is EPW, 70 / SKS 1, 25-26. 19 "At that time this is what I got out of [From the Papers of One Still Living]: that I was no writer, but a fictitious character who had slipped out of my category, and that it would be the task of some future writer to put me back into it or to use me as a character in a work in which he would create a supplement to me!" Andersen in Encounters with Kierkegaard: A Life as Seen by His Contemporaries, ed. Bruce H. Kirmmse, p. 28. 20 One thinks at this point of Walsh Living Poetically, p. 25, where she writes, "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 in Denmark that are also targets for criticism in this work." Here, Walsh sets the review and its author squarely within the realm of factual actuality, making of the review a political (and, ultimately, ethical and religious) statement. Walsh further clarifies her understanding of the relation of the review to Andersen on p. 33, where she refers to Andersen, as understood by the author of Andersen as a Novelist, as one "whose personal life and writings are situated in the lyrical stage rather than an epical one." In both passages, as well as the rest of her (uncommonly thorough) reading of From the Papers of One Still Living, Walsh makes it clear that she takes Kierkegaard to be writing of the factually actual Andersen, and his claims in the review to be significant factually actually, for the poet's life. Additionally, one could turn to Richard Summers' essay, "Aesthetics, Ethics, and Reality: A Study of From the Papers of One Still Living" in International Kierkegaard Commentary: Early Polemical Writings, vol. 1, ed. Robert L. Perkins, Macon, GA: Mercer University Press 1999, pp. 45-68. There, echoing Walsh and the general trend, Summers immediately conflates the factual and poetical realms of actuality, overlooking what seems to me to be a crucial (and philosophically necessary, if the review is to remain viable) distinction in the review. Thus, Summers writes, "In this situation, what Andersen needs both as a writer and as a human being, in Kierkegaard's opinion, is a life-view," p. 48. As a final example, there is George Pattison's book, Kierkegaard: The Aesthetic and the Religious: From the Magic Theatre to the Crucifixion of the Image, London: SCM Press 1999. For Pattison, the apparent praise of the novels of the author of A Story of Everyday Life in From the Papers of One Still Living, coupled with the apparent criticism of Andersen, results in an expression

42

Writing H. C. Andersen

When the author of Andersen as a Novelist goes on to discuss Andersen's production of Only a Fiddler, a few lines further down in the review, he does not shift the nature of the discussion out into the world of factual actuality. "As we now turn our attention to this story of Andersen's, we find as good as no intimation whatever of the stage he must normally run through after the lyric - the epic."21 But, on the basis of a lack of any epic works written by Andersen, the author concludes "that Andersen has skipped over his epic."22 This conclusion cannot be made with regard to anyone but the factually actual man, H. C. Andersen: One could draw this conclusion, I say, not that I therefore have drawn it or will draw it, but I shall merely point out to Andersen that if he should feel himself personally affected in any way (as a man resident in Copenhagen), the cause does not lie with me but with Andersen, whose novels stand in so physical a relation to him that their genesis is to be regarded more as an amputation than as a production from himself.23

The personal nature of the criticism of Andersen is, according to the author of Andersen as a Novelist, unintentional. Nevertheless, the reviewer argues, given Andersen's failure to distance himself sufficiently from his literary production, responsibility for the reviewer's own literary boundary-crossing (into factual actuality) is Andersen's, not the reviewer's own. If Andersen takes offense, it is not the author's fault for having made the critical remarks, but Andersen's, for having allied himself so closely with his written works that he made the distinction between himself and the author of the work unclear. The anonymous reviewer's argument at this point becomes untenable. Regardless of Andersen's failings, the maintenance of the distinction between literature and reality remains well within any reader's capacity as a reader. The author of Only a Fiddler is H. C. Andersen, and he is only ever poetically actual. That there is another, factually actual H. C. Andersen is, ultimately, irrelevant in a reading. Thus, the line the reviewer crosses in criticizing the structure of the personality of the factually actual Andersen is only ever illegitimately crossed - and, in the crossing, the reviewer has made negligible any difference in quality between Only a Fiddler and his own production. This is not to deny, of course, that there might be some things to be said about a

21 22 23

of what Pattison, following Merete J0rgensen, takes generally to be Kierkegaard's preference of the ethical over the aesthetic. On Pattison's reading, Only a Fiddler fails as a novel because Andersen has an ethical failing. EPW, 70 / SKS 1, 26. EPW, 70 / SKS 1, 26. EPW, 84 / SKS 1, 39-40.

Livs-Anskuelser: Andersen as a Novelist

43

writer on the sole basis of his or her writings, and thus some ways in which a novelist, for example, could be understood by a reader of his or her novels to have had certain experiences. But this could not possibly extend to considerations of a writer's life-view or life-development, as is seen in the anonymous reviewer's maintenance of the privacy of the epic development. Of that development, he writes that it is a deep and earnest embracing of a given actuality, no matter how one loses oneself in it, as a life-strengthening rest in it, and admiration of it, without the necessity of its ever coming to expression as such, but which can never have anything but the highest importance for the individual, even though it all went so unnoticed that the mood itself seemed born in secrecy and buried in silence.24

The life-development, then, can remain undisclosed to all, and yet remain a life-development. One might live a life lacking any indication of the epic, and yet secretly have undergone an epic development. This lack of disclosure must extend to an individual's literary production, as well as to his or her unwritten life. As such, the factually actual Andersen presumably could have written a novel that fails to disclose a life-view, and thus a proper life-development, and yet the possibility would remain that he did not skip over his epic and that he does in fact have a life-view. On the basis of Andersen's literary production, one could never know. The inwardness of individuality prevents it. In this spirit, the author of Andersen as a Novelist makes the distinction between Andersen's first and second powers, that is, between Andersen's life (his first power), and Andersen's poetry (his second power). He writes: Having thus referred several times here to Andersen's person and personality, I shall - in answer to an objection, although one possible only through misunderstanding and misinterpretation, as if by mentioning Andersen as a person I here overstepped the limit of my esthetic jurisdiction and the competence admitted within this - 1 shall, without appealing to the circumstance that I as good as do not know Andersen personally, merely state that the poetic production proper, especially in the domain of the short novel and novel, is nothing but a copious second power, shaping itself in a freer world and moving about in it, reproducing from what has already in various ways been poetically experienced to the first power.25

This is not an altogether unfamiliar understanding of the life of the writer of novels. Living with an awareness of the poetic ("poetically experiencing"), the novelist filters his or her subjective experiences through his or her imagination and his or her stylistic and technical skill, by way of producing a work of fiction that nevertheless, in an important 24 25

EPW, 71 / SKS 1, 26-27. EPW, 83 / SKS 1, 38.

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Writing H. C. Andersen

sense, has its basis in factual actuality. Nonetheless, the author's claim here changes nothing. References to Andersen's "first power" cannot be references to the life of the factually actual H. C. Andersen. While we can learn much about an author in readings of his or her works, we can learn nothing about factually actual individuals in that manner. The reader's eye is blind to all but poetically actual authors. The author of Andersen as a Novelist claims that, on the basis of an understanding of the deficiencies of Only a Fiddler, "one could therefore justly draw the conclusion that Andersen himself has not lived to the first power with poetic clarity."26 In a footnote to that claim he writes: This note, for which I must here request some reader or other's attention, is a genuine pleasure for me to compose because it contains the answer to a question that only fairly attentive readers could ask. It could seem that when I do not here use stronger expressions in mentioning Andersen's first power I am thus disagreeing with my earlier statement that Andersen himself could become a very poetic person if he were included in a poem. But to this I must reply that the reason I did not and could not possibly express myself in more detail concerning Andersen's first power was that I came to it from his second.27

The author repeatedly reminds his readers that he is unfamiliar with Andersen as a person, that he only comes to Andersen by way of Andersen's literary production. A novel in possession of a life-view can only be produced by a novelist likewise in possession of a life-view. It does not follow, however, that because Only a Fiddler lacks a lifeview, the author of Andersen as a Novelist can "therefore justly draw the conclusion" that Andersen himself lacks a life-view. Yet he does so: "Andersen totally lacks a life-view."28 The anonymous reviewer need not be read to refer to the historical H. C. Andersen in this passage, but in claiming that Andersen totally lacks a life-view, he imbues the character of the author of Andersen's lyric poetry and two prior novels with a psychological significance it may not possess. It is not entirely inconceivable, after all, that an author might deliberately construct an authorial persona in one work significantly different from the authorial personae of other of his or her works.29 26 ßpw, 83-84 / SKS 1, 39. 27 EPW, 83-84n. / SKS 1, 39 n. 1. 28 ßpw, 76 / SKS 1, 32. 29 Garff notes this seeming lack of insight into Andersen as an author on Kierkegaard's part, when he writes, "It can be debated which of the two - the 'raging fire' or the 'little candle' - understood the other less, but in any case Kierkegaard did not have the sense for the double entendre, the concealed irony, the sarcasm, the satire of his times, nor the ingeniously crafted naïveté one finds in Andersen's fairy

Livs-Anskuelser: Andersen as a Novelist

45

The author contradicts himself throughout the review, moving back and forth between statements that read like arguments ad hominem and disclaimers that "nevertheless remind readers that we are dealing with Andersen only as a novelist."30 The occasion for this self-contradiction is what seems an irresponsibly consistent use of veronymity on the part of Andersen in his authorship as a whole as well as the bifurcated authorship of Only a Fiddler. Nevertheless, it is the author of Andersen as a Novelist who contradicts himself. The review blurs the lines between author and work in the same ways as Andersen's novel does, ways of which the review is quite critical. Andersen is portrayed by the author of Andersen as a Novelist as a man basically dissatisfied with the world.31 This dissatisfaction is one expression of what the author of Andersen as a Novelist takes to be a "lyrical self-absorption," one that, from childhood on, shaped Andersen's personality in a way that accounts for his production of fragmentary novels lacking life-views.32 If Andersen, therefore, early in life was wrapped up in himself, he also early in life felt thrown back on himself like a superfluous cornflower amid the useful grain. And because he was thus continually thrust down in the funnel of his own personality, inasmuch as his original elegiac mood modified itself through such reflection to a certain gloom and bitterness against the world, his poetic powers, productive in their self-consuming activity, must manifest themselves as a low flame that again and again flares up rather than, as would be the case with a more significant personality, as an underground fire that by its eruptions terrifies the world.33

Andersen's awareness of his own uselessness, combined with the resultant reflective gloominess of his nature, becomes, in his later life and literary production, the ruin of any possibility for his own proper poetic development. A host of admittedly poetic wishes, longings, etc., after having been repressed for a long time in Andersen's own interior by the prosaic world, seek namely to emigrate to that little world, accessible only to the poetic temperament, where the true poet [den sande Digter] amid life's adversities celebrates his Sabbath. But scarcely are these shipped to that world and incorporated there in new individuals before the nisse already loudly proclaims his arrival there, in other words, before the whole mob of depressing reflections about life - either in the form of a blind fate or in the form tales, these world-class artistic miniatures." Of particular interest is the "ingeniously crafted naïveté," the sense in Andersen that the perspective set forth in his works (in this case, at least, in his fairy tales) is itself a part of the poetic production, and not the voice of the poet. Joakim Garff S0ren Kierkegaard, p. 146. so ßp\Y, 77 / SKS 1, 33. 31 EPW, 89 / SKS 1, 45. 32 EPW, 71 / SKS 1, 26. 33 EPW, 73 / SKS 1, 28-29.

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Writing H. C. Andersen

of the evil in the world (i. e. the actual world) that chokes the good - grow up, with a luxuriance like the thistles in the Gospel, while Andersen sleeps.34

Simultaneously with his warnings not to take his claims about Andersen personally, the author establishes a personal life and a personality for Andersen. There is no qualitative difference between this duplicity and that in Andersen's characterization of Christian as a genius in Only a Fiddler. Nevertheless, in light of the development the author describes Andersen having gone through, it seems natural that Only a Fiddler lacks a life-view, and that its author, H. C. Andersen, is a failed novelist. Readers of From the Papers of One Still Living have read it consistently in this way, trusting the anonymous reviewer (and frequently calling him "Kierkegaard"). The author of Andersen as a Novelist, despite his failings and self-contradictions, does provide for Andersen what Andersen does not provide for Christian, an unpraising account of Andersen's failure to actualize his genius. The author of Andersen as a Novelist poeticizes Andersen in his fragmentary truth - a very poetic person in a poem.

P r o b l e m a I: T h e P a p e r s of O n e Still Living The author of Andersen as a Novelist uses the term "life-view" in two significantly different ways. On the one hand, a life-view is something to be possessed by a work of poetry, something missing in Andersen's writings, providence in the novel. A life-view understood in this sense gives a work of literature what Only a Fiddler most importantly lacks: a purpose, a sense, and an orientation other than the mere will of its author. A novel with a life-view presents a coherent, yet poetical, actuality to its readers. Andersen's novels lack life-views; they thus lack this coherence in poetical actuality; and they are thus fragmentary - little bits of poetry that do not really form a whole. In this regard, we are reminded of the discrepancy the author of the review finds between Christian's life as depicted in the first two parts of Only a Fiddler, and his death at the end of the third and final part. On the other hand, however, the author of Andersen as a Novelist also describes a life-view as a quality of an individual human being's character. In something like the way the literary life-view provides a purpose and center to the work of literature, the life-view in this second sense orients and organizes an individual's life in factual ac34

EPW, 74-75 / SKS1, 30.

Problema I: The Papers of One Still Living

47

tuality. As such, it is not simply one's "philosophy," understood as the system of propositions to which one is willing to assent, nor is it merely the chronicle of one's experiences in life. Both remain disunified groups of essentially differing fragments. For a life-view is more than a quintessence or a sum of propositions maintained in its abstract neutrality; it is more than experience, which as such is always fragmentary. It is, namely, the transubstantiation of experience; it is an unshakable certainty in oneself won from all experience, whether this has oriented itself only in all worldly relationships (a purely human standpoint, Stoicism, for example), by which means it keeps itself from contact with a deeper experience - or whether in its heavenward direction (the religious) it has found therein the center as much for its heavenly as its earthly existence, has won the true Christian conviction .. .35

The personality possessing a life-view has a certainty in life that one lacking a life-view, such as the author of Andersen as a Novelist believes Andersen to be, does not. This certainty is won, echoing the earlier combat between the will of the author and the life-view of the novel, in determining the purpose and meaning of the written work. And this sense of a contest, a struggle against life to transubstantiate one's inherently fragmentary experience into an unshakable certainty that imbues that experience - one's life - with meaning is of the utmost importance in the writing of a novel. From the perspective of an author, this is the essential relation of the writer to what is written. I by no means think that the novel in a certain prosaic sense should abstract from the personality or that one could from another standpoint justly exact as much from the novel as from rigorous speculation. Instead, the poet himself must first and foremost win a competent personality, and it is only this dead and transfigured personality that ought to and is able to produce, not the many-angled, worldly, palpable one.36

The task of the poet, then, is to struggle for a life-view and, out of this struggle, to win a personality 37 The personality won, however, is not the personality that greets fellow Copenhageners out for a walk on the many-angled, worldly, palpable streets of factual actuality. The poet wins a "dead and transfigured" personality, poetically actual, the only personality with the ability and the right to write. This personality belongs only to the poet as a poet, and as such cannot be

35

EPW, 76 / SKS 1, 32. 36 ßp\Y, 82 / SKS 1, 37. 37 This is not to disagree with Alastair Ffannay's understanding, in accord with the reviewer, I think, that the life-view is not something one seeks expressly and hopes to "put on" for the sake of self-improvement. Alastair Ffannay, Kierkegaard: A Biography, p. 109.

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Writing H. C. Andersen

encountered outside of the poet's poetry.38 The author of Andersen as a Novelist comes closest to naming the redemptive distance between author and work he praises in the author of A Story of Everyday Life in this introduction of the death and transfiguration of the author into the production of a literary work. The title of the book is From the Papers of One Still Living, and it does not seem likely that the contrast between the "one still living" and the "dead and transfigured personality" necessary for poetic production is accidental. The question of precisely how the "living" and the "dead" are related, however, is one that has haunted generations of the book's readers to no real avail. Many have tried to resolve the issue biographically, with reference to the deaths of P. M. M0ller and M.R Kierkegaard, as well as the ominous belief in the Kierkegaard household that the father would outlive all of his children.39 Some note the popularity of H. L. H. PUckler-Muskau's travel writings, with titles like Briefe eines Verstorbenen, or Tutti Frutti - Aus den Papieren des Verstorbenen.40 Finn Hauberg Mortensen notes the prevalence of the ghost in Danish literature popular in literary circles of the time, particularly the poetry of Jens Baggesen in the Heiberg circle of which 38

39

40

There is an echo of this notion in Kierkegaard's M. A. thesis, The Concept of Irony. There, Kierkegaard writes of Plato's relation to Socrates in the dialogues, that for Plato, "Socrates had to rise transfigured from his grave" (CI, 30 / SKS 1, 92). For Plato, according to Kierkegaard, this is motivated by Plato's psychological need to have Socrates concur with his own beliefs. But the result in the Platonic authorship is strikingly similar to that in the Kierkegaardian: by way of complex yet playful authorial devices, both Plato and Kierkegaard distance themselves radically from the views expressed in and by the works they write. In a sense, just as the Kierkegaardian author is not an author of works, but an author of authors, so too is Plato less the author of the dialogues than he is the author of the master ironist at work in the dialogues, Socrates. Understood in this light, the relation between Plato and Socrates is like that between the author of Andersen as a Novelist and Andersen, or Kjerkegaard and the author of Andersen as a Novelist, as will be developed further in the present chapter. See Georg Brandes "Angreb paa H. C. Andersen" in S0ren Kierkegaard: En Kritisk Fremstilling i Grundrids, Copenhagen: Gyldendals Ugleb0ger 1967, pp. 35-40. And Frithiof Brandt "Af en endnu Levendes Papirer" in Syv Kierkegaard Studier, Copenhagen: Munskgaard 1962, pp. 58-66. Also, Finn Hauberg Mortensen offers an extensive bibliography of biographical readings of the title of Kierkegaard's first book in '"View of Life' - On S0ren Kierkegaard and Hans Christian Andersen," trans. Kim Andersen. Unpublished essay. A very brief summary of Mortensen's findings with regard to alternative interpretations of the title of the review is found at SKS Kl, 77. See H. P. Rohde "Den endnu Levende" in Gaadefulde Stadier paa Kierkegaards Vej, Copenhagen: Rosenkilde og Bagger 1974, pp. 39-51.

Problema I: The Papers of One Still Living

49

the young Kierkegaard was conditionally a part.41 The most sophisticated of the interpretations suggests that the title sympathetically identifies Kierkegaard (as the author of Andersen as a Novelist) with Andersen. Andersen fails as a writer because he fails to die away from his writings but, in calling himself "still living," Kierkegaard admits he suffers the same failure as a writer. As Joakim Garff writes, To die is, in fact, to die away, to die away from this world, from one's immediacy, in order to be resurrected, in the world of spirit, to a second immediacy. From this perspective, the title can be read as Kierkegaard's indirect declaration that he, too, was unable to say that he has died away; that he, too, was one still living, who like Andersen did not possess the desired life-view.42

From this perspective, Andersen and the author of From the Papers of One Still Living are two still living - as neither has won for himself the "dead and transfigured personality" the author ascribes to the true poet in his review.43 Garff is right to emphasize that death in this context is a dying away, and to introduce the notion of resurrection into the discussion of authorship and the death of the author. In this regard, Garff's reading seems very much in accord with the author of Andersen as a Novelist. Nevertheless, Garff identifies the anonymous reviewer with Kierkegaard - and not in some sort of superficial way, but such that the factual actuality of the reviewer is essential to Garff's reading. We can certainly read the reviewer, with Garff, as expressing indirectly a sense of his own identity with Andersen in Andersen's failure as an author. But we cannot go with Garff further, to the point of making this admission Kierkegaard's, and then situating Kierkegaard's admission in the context of S0ren Kierkegaard's factually actual life. Garff's insight is keen, but his use of the insight as an element of biography is detrimental to the literary structure of Andersen as a Novelist and From the Papers of One Still Living both. Despite his failings as a 41

42

43

See Mortensen "View of Life." The comments noted here are in a section entitled, "The Danish context: Ghosts." Garff S0ren Kierkegaard, p. 144. Garff renders a less complete version of this reading of the title in Joakim Garff Den S0vnl0se: Kierkegaard lœst œstetisk/biografisk, Copenhagen: C. A. Reitzels Forlag 1995, p. 25. Such a reading appears in its nascent forms in Aage Henriksen Methods and Results of Kierkegaard Studies in Scandinavia: A Historical and Critical Survey, trans. Annie I. Fausb0ll, Copenhagen: Ejnar Munskgaard 1951, p. 105. And in Brita K. Stendahl S0ren Kierkegaard, Boston: Twayne Publishers 1976, p. 35. The view also appears in J0rgen Bonde Jensen "Af en endnu Levendes Papirer: Titien pä S0ren Kierkegaards papir om H. C. Andersen" in Jeg er kun en Digter: Om S0ren Kierkegaard som Skribent, Copenhagen: Babette 1996, pp. 56-89.

50

Writing H. C. Andersen

critic of Andersen, the anonymous author of Andersen as a Novelist instantiates his distance from his own literary production in his anonymity. Just as the author of A Story of Everyday Life, the author of Andersen as a Novelist avoids Andersen's specific problems as a novelist by avoiding the veronymity of Andersen. If any author discussed in From the Papers of One Still Living is in fact the dead and transfigured author put forward as the true poet by the author of Andersen as a Novelist, it is the author of A Story of Everyday Life. In a lengthy passage of poetic praise for that unnamed author, the anonymous reviewer writes: Even though some of the younger ones dejectedly think that here, too, proof is given that it is only the Joshua of our life who enters the Promised Land and not its Moses, and even though some youthful glance directs itself mournfully toward that mighty, long-since vanished past, and many a young person's ear listens for this Thundering under horses' hoofs When the Danish knights ride in combat, as if it could once again be experienced, as if, at the powerful urging of all youthful poetry's legitimate demands, it could not but rise up in its grave, like the fathers in its stories, in order to hand its sons the sword with which it itself fought nisses and trolls - nevertheless this part of the younger generation will also join in when the author of these short novels rises up, like Palmer, transfigured, and proposes a toast worth drinking: To genius, beauty, art, and the whole glorious world! To what we love and what we have loved! May it live a transfigured life here or hereafter as it lives in our recollection.44

The author of A Story of Everyday Life is not only transfigured, but "rises up" transfigured, as if from the grave. The author of A Story of Everyday Life is resurrected, and as resurrected is transfigured. While the author of Andersen as a Novelist argues that, "In a novel there must be an immortal spirit that survives the whole," in Andersen "there is absolutely no grip on things: when the hero dies, Andersen dies, too, and at most forces from the reader a sigh over them both as the final impression."45 Andersen is and remains dead. Transfigured in "his" resurrection, in striking contrast to Andersen, the author of A Story of Everyday Life has died but is still living. The significance of the title of From the Papers of One Still Living seems to lie not in the death of the author but, following Garff, in the resumption of a life after death in resurrection.46 44 45 46

EPW, 66-67 / SKS 1, 22. EPW, 83 / SKS 1, 38. That is, in a repetition.

Problema I: The Papers of One Still Living

51

The writer capable of writing a work of poetry independent of himor herself writes a work that implies to its readers an individual authorial personality that bears no necessary relation to any particular historical situation or incarnation. Such an author imbues his or her work with a kind of immortality lacking in works bound intimately to their authors' factually actual selves. This is most readily accomplished in the abandonment of veronymity. Andersen's works, necessarily reliant upon Andersen's name and will for coherent interpretations, ultimately address only Andersen and readers' interest in Andersen. On the reviewer's view, Andersen's name implies the factual actuality of H. C. Andersen, and imports it irrevocably into Andersen's veronymous works. Works freed from a connection to a factually actual individual allow their readers to enter into them and appropriate them so that the works themselves are centralized, and not the person responsible for writing them. As characterized by the author in the review, this immortality - absolute freedom from the life and death of the factually actual author - corresponds to a dead and transfigured authorial personality. The author's death distances the work from factual actuality; that the author is transfigured is a resurrection after death, the immortality of the author. Transfiguration in the author's sense in the review comes with or after death, and thus so must true poetry (or, poetry bearing the mark of poetic truth) and the writing of true poetry. The true poet, then, is engaged in a posthumous production.47 The notion of the "one still living," however, is made ambiguous thereby. On Garff's reading, to be still living is not yet to have died; in another sense, one might speak of an author still living after death - of living as an author despite death and the author's exile from factual actuality. In either case, however, the dead and transfigured personality is the only one who ought 47

There are other occurrences of the writing of posthumous papers in Kierkegaard's works. One late example is the first of H. H.'s Two Ethical-Religious Essays, entitled "Does a Human Being Have the Right to Let Himself Be Put to Death for the Truth?", subtitled, "A Posthumous Work of a Solitary Human Being: A Poetical Venture." For an account of how the essay is posthumous, and thus, how H.H. is dead, see Jacob B0ggild "H.H. - Poet or Martyr?" in Anthropology and Authority: Essays on S0ren Kierkegaard, ed. Poul Houe, Gordon D. Marino, and Sven Hakon Rössel, Amsterdam: Rodopi 2000, pp. 171-178. Much earlier, and thus closer to From the Papers of One Still Living, however, is A's injunction to the symparanekromenoi, that they ought to be engaged in the production of posthumous papers, in Either/Or {EOI, 152 / SKS 2, 151). In this regard, one might also refer to another essay of B0ggild's. See "The Fine Art of Writing Posthumous Papers: On the Dubious Role of the Romantic Fragment in the First Part of Either/Or" in Kierkegaardiana 19,1999, pp. 95-112.

52

Writing H. C. Andersen

or is able to produce novels or short novels that possess life-views. For the author of Andersen as a Novelist, a poet can be seen by his or her readers to have a life-view only after death. The poet is an authorial personality implied by the poem as its origin, the existence of whom in the work distances the work from its writer, its beginning in history. The true poet is not an historical figure. He or she is unconditioned by time. He or she possesses what the reviewer calls an "eternal youth." Eternal youth - understood, not as a foolish anxiety about development has imagined it, as the age of youth bounded by childhood, manhood, and old age, and fixed as such, but as that vigorous certainty in oneself that is above all ages, thus also above youth as such - would be the most desirable with regard to the intensity in writing the short novel and novel. Likewise the standpoint corresponding to this - and momentarily clear in truly great individualities, as the rich present tense of childhood, youth, and manhood - is the only one qualified to produce the writing in which a whole development takes place.48

The possession of an eternal youth is described here in much the same terms as is the possession of a life-view: the "vigorous certainty in oneself that is above all ages" is not far removed from the "unshakable certainty in oneself won from all experience."49 In the writing of a novel or short novel, it seems that it is a life-view and a life-view alone that signifies the immortal spirit or eternal youth of which the author of Andersen as a Novelist writes. This is the only entrance into immortality about which the author of Andersen as a Novelist is concerned to write. He is only willing to ascribe such immortality to A Story of Everyday Life and its anonymous author. True poetry is imbued with an immortal spirit that survives it and its reading. It is written out of an eternal youth, a timelessness that frees it from an otherwise fatal association with its author as a factually actual human being. While Only a Fiddler is Andersen's third novel, a work of true poetry somehow transcends a sense of sequence. An extraction from such a work stands on its own, unbound by history and the constraining relation to a physical, temporal human being. Reading backward from true poetry to its author, the reader cannot find a person in time. The author, the true poet, cannot be bound by the historical and the physical in ways that his or her poetry is not. Such an author is born with his or her production in its immortality, immortally implied by an immortal work. The author of such a production must be eternally young, a dead and transfigured personality won by a factually actual human being from factually actual experi48 ßpw, 85 / SKS1, 41. 49 EPW, 76 / SKS 1, 32.

Problema II: S. Kjerkegaard

enee, but not identical with the human being by whom he or she is won. True poetry is the killing birth of a production that essentially evades death, poetical actuality's unrecoverable origin in the factual.

Problema II: S. Kjerkegaard The Preface to From the Papers of One Still Living is authored by the publisher, S. Kjerkegaard. Kjerkegaard publishes (or edits) the review of Andersen against the will of "the One Still Living," and famously differentiates himself from that one in his Preface, albeit in an ironically self-identifying way. Kjerkegaard is thus not a publisher alone, but is also authorially responsible for a portion of the work published as From the Papers of One Still Living. Like Victor Eremita, S. Kjerkegaard is both the author of a part of the work and responsible for the publication of the whole. Kjerkegaard is not the author of From the Papers of One Still Living, but he is an author of that work. Gregor Malantschuk identifies three authorial figures in the review of Andersen, and Malantschuk seems to have identified them correctly, if differently than I do here, when I call them (1) S0ren Kierkegaard, (2) the author of Andersen as a Novelist, and (3) Kjerkegaard.501 do not dispute the existence of these three personae in a reading of From the Papers of One Still Living. On the basis of what the anonymous reviewer does in the review, however, it seems that Malantschuk's authorial triumvirate misses the mark by precisely one author: the "author of the authors." This is neither S0ren Kierkegaard, nor the author of Andersen as a Novelist, nor Kjerkegaard. The author of the authors is the author implied in the pairing of the author of Andersen as a Novelist and Kjerkegaard in the authorship of From the Papers of One Still Living. If we accept that the author of Andersen as a Novelist must be a poetically actual author, then we must also accept that there is another author, distinct from the anonymous reviewer, who is the poetically actual author of both the anonymous reviewer and Kjerkegaard. The author of the authors, for whom Malantschuk does not account, is posited by the reader of From the Papers of One Still Living in a reading.51 This is the person philosophers likely mean when 50

51

Cf. Gregor Malantschuk Kierkegaard's Thought, trans, and ed. Howard V. and Edna H. Hong, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1971, pp. 187-188. Malantschuk can be read so as to incorporate this implied, authorial Kierkegaard, but only inasmuch as Malantschuk is read to confuse the historically actual S0ren Kierkegaard with the author of From the Papers of One Still Living.

54

Writing H. C. Andersen

they wish to discuss the work and thought of "Kierkegaard," but the author of the authors is not an historical human being. This author is responsible for the author of Andersen as a Novelist and Kjerkegaard, collaborators in the production and publication of From the Papers of One Still Living. From the Papers of One Still Living must be understood as preserving this subtle authorial element throughout, and its readers must be no less diligent. Otherwise, the review descends into self-contradiction and is but a failed literary attempt on the part of a precocious but insufficiently talented, twenty-five year old S0ren Kierkegaard.52 Kjerkegaard's account of his close friendship with "the actual author of this essay" is riddled with puns and plays on the fact that, from the perspective of factual actuality, Kjerkegaard and the author of Andersen as a Novelist are authored by one and the same author. Nevertheless, the two seem always to disagree. This characterizes the relationship Kjerkegaard describes by an ever present tension. For example, Kjerkegaard writes with regard to the author of Andersen as a Novelist that, "our opinions nearly always differ and we are perpetually in conflict with each other, although under it all we are united by the deepest, most sacred, indissoluble ties."53 Reconfirming both the unity and difference that relate Kjerkegaard and the author of Andersen as a Novelist, he writes, again, "Yes, although after diverging in magnetic repulsion, we are still, in the strongest sense of the word, inseparable."54 The strongest sense of the word "inseparable" is, of course, identity: Kjerkegaard cannot be separated from the author of the review because in one sense they are self-identical, authored by the same author. The most explicit expression this unity-through-identity receives in Kjerkegaard's Preface is the poetic cohabitation by Kjerkegaard and the author of Andersen as a Novelist of a single body: We are, therefore, so far from being able to rejoice as friends in the unity for which poets and orators in their repeated immortalizations have only a single expression - that it was as if one soul resided in two bodies - that with respect to us it must rather seem as if two souls resided in one body.55

This is not unlike Johannes Climacus' ironic and immodest praise for the imaginary interlocutor in Philosophical Fragments: "Very 52 53 54 55

Garff EPW, EPW, EPW,

seems to read From the Papers of One Still Living in precisely this way. 55 / SKS1, 9. 55 / SKS 1, 9. 55 / SKS 1, 9.

Problema II: S. Kjerkegaard

eloquently spoken, I would say, if modesty did not forbid me, for you speak as I myself would speak."56 In the Fragments, it is almost immediately clear that Climacus has self-consciously poetized a disputative conversant for himself. In From the Papers of One Still Living, however, the disputant is the one to whom Kjerkegaard ascribes authorship of the review. A resolution as simple as the one in Fragments does not seem possible between Kjerkegaard and the author of Andersen as a Novelist. While Climacus seems merely to have imagined his interlocutor as a literary device, Kjerkegaard relates to the author of Andersen as a Novelist more like Victor Eremita relates to A or B. There is much to be said about this relation. For now, it is enough to say that, although Kjerkegaard plays a great deal with his relationship to the author of Andersen as a Novelist, that relationship does not dissolve simply into literary play. However identical he makes the two of them seem, Kjerkegaard guards his difference from "the actual author" of Andersen as a Novelist. He makes a firm distinction between himself and "the author of this essay," with whom he has had a quarrel "for quite a long time."57 Describing his relationship with the author, Kjerkegaard writes: "Although I love him 'with tongue and mouth and from the bottom of my heart' and truly regard him as my sincere friend, my alter ego, I am still far from being able to describe our relationship by substituting another expression that might perhaps seem identical: alter idem."58 Although the author of Andersen as a Novelist may be another self to Kjerkegaard - a sincere friend, indeed - he is quite definitely not another of the same kind. And this makes the two authors, at least insofar as they are authors, essentially different. Malantschuk does not seem to capture the force with which Kjerkegaard makes this distinction. In his references to the author of the review as the editor's "other /," Malantschuk fails to convey that, for Kjerkegaard, the author of the review is as much a "not I" as he is an "other I."59 The primary difference Kjerkegaard notes, one that leaves the author of Andersen as a Novelist essentially distinct from Kjerkegaard, is the author's basic dissatisfaction with the world. The fact is that my friend suffers to a rather high degree from a sense of unfulfillment in the world, and this has often made me very worried about him and often made 56

PF, 105 / SKS 4, 302. EPW, 55 / SKS 1, 9. 58 ßp\Y, 55 / SKS 1, 9. 59 Malantschuk Kierkegaard's Thought, p. 187. 57

56

Writing H. C. Andersen

me fear that, if my good humor could not remedy things and dispel Saul's evil mood, things would look bad for my friend, for me, and for our friendship.60

This is, of course, the primary personality flaw the author of Andersen as a Novelist ascribes to Andersen in his review. While Andersen's world-dissatisfaction seems to have consequences only for Andersen and his novels, the anonymous reviewer's sense of world-unfulfillment threatens not only himself, but also Kjerkegaard and the relation that holds between the anonymous reviewer and Kjerkegaard. If it were not for Kjerkegaard's sake, Kjerkegaard asserts in his Preface, the author of Andersen as a Novelist would be in a bad way. Kjerkegaard makes himself - and thus, the split between Kjerkegaard and the author of Andersen as a Novelist - necessary for the good of the author of Andersen as a Novelist. Without the split, which occurs textually only in the Preface, the author of Andersen as a Novelist would succumb to his sense of unfulfillment and would become, presumably, an author comparable only to Andersen in his dissatisfaction with the world. The author's dissatisfaction is countered by Kjerkegaard's bold "good humor." The embattled friendship that Kjerkegaard and the author of Andersen as a Novelist share is characterized, according to Kjerkegaard, by this going back and forth between the author's dissatisfied nature and Kjerkegaard's repeated attempts to uplift his downcast friend. But Kjerkegaard admits that he, too, has something to lose if the author of the review should finally win the quarrel. Should Kjerkegaard's good humor fail to "dispel Saul's evil mood," the only tie remaining between Kjerkegaard and the author of Andersen as a Novelist would be the indissoluble one of identity. The author's worlddissatisfaction would engulf them both, and of the two make but one author, an author who writes and in his writing reminds us of Andersen. Kjerkegaard's distinct identity rests upon his opposition to the author of the review, and the limbo between success and failure each inhabits in the long-standing quarrel they share. Should either allow himself or the other to win, a single poetical personality would be the prize. Kjerkegaard fights the author of Andersen as a Novelist to prevent his personality from overtaking Kjerkegaard himself, as that personality is guilty of all that he accuses Andersen in the review (published, against the author's will, by Kjerkegaard). Also like Andersen, the authorial personality threatening Kjerkegaard's independence lacks a life-view and is incapable of true poetry. Presumably, were the author of Andersen as a Novelist to end the quarrel, and assent to his so ßp\Y, 55-56 / SKS 1,10.

Problema II: S. Kjerkegaard

friend's good humored life-view, the result would be somewhat less grievous, at least for Kjerkegaard: Kjerkegaard and the author would merge into a single author, named "Kjerkegaard." Nevertheless, that other Kjerkegaard would then be no less responsible for his Andersenian failure as an author than was the anonymous reviewer. The latter possibility of authorial unification does threaten the clear distinction between Kjerkegaard and the author of Andersen as a Novelist, on occasion, if we are to take Kjerkegaard's understanding for the truth. Using an astrological metaphor to describe the motions of the author's writerly soul, Kjerkegaard writes: Now, when the soul enters the sign of hope and longing, according to my understanding there awaken in him, during the attraction of the different constellations, vague presentiments that, as in antiphonal chanting, answer and are met by the distant tones that sound to us from our well-known, but also frequently forgotten, true home. In such moments, he closes himself up, silent and secretive in his aduton, so that he seems to avoid even me, in whom he otherwise usually completely confides, from whom he otherwise usually has no secrets, and it is only in a vanishing reflection, as it were, of what is moving in his soul that I, in a strangely sympathetic way (explicable only by an incomprehensible communicatio idiomatum), feel what is stirring inside him.61

Kjerkegaard tells a story about the author of the review. In this story, when the author comes upon the idea out of which he will produce a written work, his soul enters "hope and longing," and the otherwise usual dissatisfaction with the world that distances him from Kjerkegaard (and thus allows their friendship to be) disappears. As his soul becomes more hopeful, the author becomes more hidden, quiet, secretive - according to Kjerkegaard. On Kjerkegaard's poetic account, the author of Andersen as a Novelist vanishes into Kjerkegaard and their quarrel is silenced in a strangely sympathetic, "incomprehensible communicatio idiomatum," a communication of two natures - Christianly speaking, as between God and man in Christ. The silent and secret merging of Kjerkegaard and his friend only takes place occasionally, when the author of Andersen as a Novelist is engaged in his task as an author. Once the poetic production is finished, and the review is done, the author of Andersen as a Novelist returns in his characteristically dissatisfied way and Kjerkegaard can, it seems, argue with his friend once more. In the case of Andersen as a Novelist, the argument turns to its possible publication. The author of the review wholly rejects Kjerkegaard's plans to publish. Offering his readers a taste of what it is like to argue with the author of Andersen as a Novelist, Kjerkegaard prints a fragment of a dispute within the 61

EPW, 56 / SKS1,10.

58

Writing H. C. Andersen

context of his Preface. There, Kjerkegaard has suggested publication and the author of Andersen as a Novelist tries to persuade him otherwise, by way of his dissatisfaction with the world and its inhabitants (that is to say, with us, his readers): You know very well [...] that I consider writing books to be the most ridiculous thing a person can do. One surrenders entirely to the power of fate and circumstance, and how can one escape all the prejudices people bring with them to the reading of a book, which work no less disturbingly than the preconceived ideas most bring with them when they make someone's acquaintance, with the result that very few people really know what others look like? What hope can one entertain that one will fall into the hands of readers wholly ex improvisol Besides, I feel tied by the fixed form the essay has finally acquired and, in order to feel free again, will take it back into the womb once more, let it once again sink into the twilight from which it came, where the idea Shows itself and smiles and disappears Like the point of a desired headland in fog - maybe then it can emerge in a regenerated shape. Furthermore, I know very well what it is that blinds you. Author's vanity, my dear! "Poor thing, can't you give up the vain hope of being an author of four sheets?"62

Worth noting here is the author's willingness to ascribe authorship of Andersen as a Novelist to Kjerkegaard, or at least to claim that Kjerkegaard feels some personal, authorial stake in the publication of the review. But more important are the differing attitudes Kjerkegaard and the anonymous reviewer take toward publication or, as Kjerkegaard's poetization of the author of Andersen as a Novelist calls it in the Preface, "writing books." The author of Andersen as a Novelist doubts that any reader will come to his little essay with the openness requisite for really encountering his little essay, and not some poetical construction of their own that, with their readerly prejudices, they cannot avoid. In short, what the author of Andersen as a Novelist says in the Preface - or what Kjerkegaard has him say - is that writing books is a waste of time given that one's readers will never really allow themselves to encounter what one has written, but instead will make up for themselves something of their own poetic devising in the place of the book they claim merely to be reading. And this, of course, is precisely what the author of Andersen as a Novelist does to Andersen and Only a Fiddler in his review. Thus, perhaps, the author of Andersen as a Novelist has good cause to be wary of readers, if he believes they are inclined to read him as 62

EPW, 57 / SKS 1,11-12.

Problema II: S. Kjerkegaard

he has read Andersen. So Kjerkegaard would have us believe, at least, as the Preface is Kjerkegaard's, after all, and the author's words in the Preface are thus not directly his own. Kjerkegaard confronts us in From the Papers of One Still Living as a publisher who portrays the author whose work he publishes as disenchanted with the world in general, and with the world of readers in particular. Kjerkegaard allows his readers a sense of the author of Andersen as a Novelist as somewhat hypocritical, lamenting the readership that distorts what is read, and yet doing so with reference to his own written demonstration of that very sort of readership. Whether this is an accurate portrait of the author of Andersen as a Novelist, or merely one of Kjerkegaard's devising, cannot be determined on the basis of a reading of From the Papers of One Still Living. The most readers of From the Papers of One Still Living can say is that the author of Andersen as a Novelist poetizes an Andersen on the basis of Only a Fiddler, that he allows this poetized poet to determine his reading of Only a Fiddler, and that Kjerkegaard provides readers of the Preface with everything necessary for catching the anonymous reviewer in a written act of (true or false, willed or unwilled) self-contradiction. This is an irresolvable problem for the author of Andersen as a Novelist, if not for Kjerkegaard or the author of these authors. The ongoing and irresolvable antagonistic friendship between Kjerkegaard and the author leaves From the Papers of One Still Living in a literary situation undescribed within Andersen as a Novelist. The book is authored by two competing authors, and thus offers its readers (at least) two irreconcilable perspectives by which to orient interpretations of the work. From the Papers of One Still Living lacks a life-view for the same reason as does Only a Fiddler, there is no integral authorial perspective able to produce the singularity of purpose requisite for a life-view. From the Papers of One Still Living is not in the same situation as Only a Fiddler, however, as there is no "final will" to decide From the Papers of One Still Living'?, form, either. The book does not possess the proximity to its author(s) that is attendant upon ascription of authorial responsibility to the veronym. The work is neither the fragmented authorial multiplicity of Only a Fiddler, nor is it an integrated text setting forth a life-view like A Story of Everyday Life. From the Papers of One Still Living retains a multiplicity of authorial perspectives that perpetually resists integration, but those perspectives seem not to disintegrate From the Papers of One Still Living in the manner of Only a Fiddler. The dueling authors of From the Papers of One Still Living, alongside the author of those authors,

60

Writing H. C. Andersen

are held together always in conflict. Andersen imposes his will on his work in an attempt to resolve the authorial conflict in Only a Fiddler. The result is the total failure of Andersen as a novelist and his novel, whether we read Andersen as factually actual or not. From the Papers of One Still Living avoids the totality of such failure in its elevation of the conflict of authorial perspectives to the level of literal authorial differentiation - Kjerkegaard and the author of Andersen as a Novelist are not the same - and the resistance to resolution of that conflict in both authorial perspectives, as well as the unvoiced perspective of the author of those perspectives.

Problema III: Published Against His Will S. Kjerkegaard takes charge of both the author and the review: "The essay is now in my power," he writes, "I have the command. So, straight ahead, march. The order of the day is: What I have written, I have written."63 In so writing, Kjerkegaard rejects the author's desire to take Andersen as a Novelist "back into the womb once more," in the hope that it might "emerge in a regenerated shape."64 At least according to Kjerkegaard, the author of Andersen as a Novelist feels "tied by the fixed form the essay has finally acquired," and demands that it not be published, "in order to feel free again."65 The author of the review does not want to publish because publishing fixes the form of his production from himself. In so doing, as we learn from his review of Andersen, the author of Andersen as a Novelist would fix his own authorial identity as well, such that readers, manipulative devils that they are, would find before themselves an authorial personality incapable of regenerating himself in a new shape by reproducing his work. Once published, the review is as it is, and it says what it says. There can be no changes, no hesitations or reiterations. The author of the review fears the immobility of death, and desires the regenerative properties of a return to the womb for his work. He fears the stasis publication would bring to his review of Andersen, and to himself as the author of that review. Kjerkegaard's successful command to publish in spite of the anonymous reviewer's will to the contrary seems to contradict my earlier claim, that the conflict between Kjerke63 64 65

EPW, 58 / SKS 1,12. EPW, 57 / SKS 1,11. EPW, 57 / SKS 1,11.

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gaard and the author of Andersen as a Novelist remains unresolved. The struggle between Kjerkegaard and the author of Andersen as a Novelist is in one sense concluded when Kjerkegaard, at the end of the Preface, so forcefully commands that the work be published that publication is undertaken, and Andersen as a Novelist is in print. In this sense alone, it is true that Kjerkegaard has won. Nevertheless, insofar as Kjerkegaard exists only in the Preface to the author's review and, additionally, in that Kjerkegaard maintains his quarrel with the author in that preface, Kjerkegaard and the author of Andersen as a Novelist are ever coexistent. Andersen as a Novelist published without a Preface would be a total success for Kjerkegaard in his fight with the author of Andersen as a Novelist, but it would signal the dissolution of the authorial difference between Kjerkegaard and the author of Andersen as a Novelist into a totally failed author like Andersen. From the Papers of One Still Living, divided into Andersen as a Novelist and Kjerkegaard's Preface, preserves the difference between the authors and their conflict. As it appeared in 1838, the published text preserves them both. In his Preface to From the Papers of One Still Living, Kjerkegaard plays something of the poet to the author of Andersen as a Novelist as poem. This is like the author's poetizing relation to Andersen in the review. But Kjerkegaard has a privileged relation to the author of Andersen as a Novelist, one that the author admits he lacks with regard to Andersen: Kjerkegaard is an exceptionally close friend to the author of the review, and has access to the author's inner world by way of an incomprehensible communicatio idiomatum. When the author of Andersen as a Novelist depicts an Andersen whose early difficulties contribute to his later development as an author, this is the product of the author's poetic imagination, who as good as does not know Andersen personally. But when Kjerkegaard depicts the anonymous reviewer as plagued with a sense of unfulfillment in the world, it is possible that this depiction rests, not in the imagination of Kjerkegaard, but in the proximity of Kjerkegaard to the author of Andersen as a Novelist. Kjerkegaard does not demonstrate the existence of the communicatio idiomatum, however, and, even if he had done so, it would remain incomprehensible. For the reader of Kjerkegaard's Preface, Kjerkegaard can offer nothing to substantiate the legitimacy of his claims about the author's thoughts and motivations. For this reason, as in our reading of the Andersen of Andersen as a Novelist, we must read the anonymous reviewer depicted in the Preface as poetry on the part of Kjerkegaard. Kjerkegaard's inner relation to the

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author of Andersen as a Novelist is something essentially hidden from readers' eyes, something about which he can only keep silent. But Kjerkegaard writes. Although he is not as prolific as, say, Kierkegaard, he is able to convey a personality distinct from that of the author of Andersen as a Novelist to the reader. The distinct personality Kjerkegaard conveys is simultaneous with the review of Andersen by way of publicly prefacing that review. From the Papers of One Still Living is thus ever split between Kjerkegaard and the author of Andersen as a Novelist. Their struggle is one not resolved by publication (although it must be this in the limited sense noted above), but immortalized in it. While the struggle might die upon publication, it is also resurrected and transfigured into immortality thereby. The contrast between Kjerkegaard and the anonymous reviewer remains. The remainder is immortalized on the title page of the book: From the Papers of One Still Living, Published Against His Will, by S. Kjerkegaard. This immortality, however, must not be confused with the immortal spirit the author of Andersen as a Novelist argues is essential to any novel in possession of a life-view. That immortality is characterized by unity rather than fragmentation, univocality rather than multivocal struggle, and, above all, factual actuality rather than poetical actuality. The immortal spirit of From the Papers of One Still Living is the spirit of an opposition, a contest, between two competing authorial personalities. It is neither struggle as such, nor the authors themselves as implied by their writings, but the relation that holds between the authors. As Victor Eremita notes of the contrast between A and B in Either/Or, this contest is never won, and the reader is left only with the different personalities as they are presented within the written work. The only author to whom responsibility for that contest can be ascribed is the as yet unnamed author of the authors. The author of the authors, however, is not and cannot provide a resolution to the authorial conflict within From the Papers of One Still Living (or Either/Or, for that matter). The One Still Living - a reference to the author of Andersen as a Novelist, whether or not he is in fact one still living - is not responsible for the publication of the book. Rather, against that one's will, Kjerkegaard publishes. In contrast once again to the case of Andersen, whose work can be understood only in terms of his "final will," the case of From the Papers of One Still Living requires an understanding of the involuntariness of its publication. For Kjerkegaard (for whom the matter of publication is a personality constituting matter), publication is not merely something that happens to a book, or does not

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happen, after the book is written. Publication is an essential element of bookwriting, essential insofar as books imply not only authors but also readers, and readers can only be attained through publication.66 Perhaps there are posthumously published books by various dead authors. But these books are not rightly understood as books by those who authored them, not until the author or some other contemporary with the author opens up the possibility for reading through publication. From the Papers of One Still Living is a book in the Kjerkegaardian sense, but against its author's will. By way of the relation between Kjerkegaard and the author of Andersen as a Novelist, and the resultant dispute of wills, From the Papers of One Still Living divides the writing of a work essentially and significantly from its publication. The emphasis on publication in From the Papers of One Still Living lends to From the Papers of One Still Living an inherently public quality. From the Papers of One Still Living is only itself when read. The work exists as a written work between its readers and the author of its authors, the only one accountable for the tension that characterizes the work. The author of the authors of From the Papers of One Still Living comes to the fore as the only one to whom authorship of From the Papers of One Still Living itself can be legitimately ascribed - and yet, as the author of its authors, the author of the authors of From the Papers of One Still Living simultaneously resists authorial responsibility for the work. At the center of From the Papers of One Still Living, then, stand Kjerkegaard and the author of Andersen as a Novelist - not the works authored by those authors. While Andersen as a Novelist and its Preface are works worthy of careful and serious consideration, From the Papers of One Still Living is perhaps better read as composed, not of a work or works, but of two different authorial perspectives and the tense relation between those perspectives, authored anonymously by the author of the authors.

66

The manner in which the word "publication" is used here slightly broadens the conventional sense, to include any public distribution of the written work. Whether that distribution takes place through the more typical means of a publishing house, or in an atypical manner (anything from handing copies out to passersby on the street, to electronic publication via the World Wide Web) is irrelevant to my use of the term in this context.

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Livs-Anskuelser: From the Papers of One Still Living and Either/Or 1. From the Papers of A and the Papers ofB, Letters to A Either/Or is a book - if one is permitted to use the term - in a state of inharmonious authorial polyphony.67 As with the clashing of the wills of Kjerkegaard and the author of Andersen as a Novelist, in Either/Or multiple pseudonymous authors articulate distinct personalities, the two most commonly noted being A (the anonymous aesthete) and B (né Wilhelm). In an additional structural correspondence to From the Papers of One Still Living, Either/Or contains a review of the personality of an unnamed writer (Either/Or II), and a prefacing and publishing, pseudonymous Udgiver (Victor Eremita). Either/Or I, consisting mostly of the papers of A, concludes with a lengthy narrative entitled, "The Seducer's Diary," purportedly by a young man named Johannes. In his Preface, Victor Eremita casts doubt upon the differing identities of A and Johannes; the diary, according to Eremita, is just as likely a work of fiction composed by A himself. Either/Or II, primarily the letters of B to A, likewise concludes with a work by yet another distinct author, this time a sermon written by an anonymous Jutland pastor. When referring to Either/Or within Either/Or, Eremita treats the work more often than not as the production of only two authors, A and B, thereby moving toward a collapse of the five-member authorial cast to three. Additionally, in his Preface, Eremita entertains the possibility that A and B are, in fact, the same person; that is, that the papers of A and the papers of B, letters to A, are composed by one man. Eremita therefore gives the book the title he does: Either/Or, a title he claims indicates that there is a choice to be made between two differing perspectives on life, as presented and represented by the two 67

The book is not always understood in this way. Ronald Hall argues from the premise that, although Either/Or is rife with pseudonyms, the voice and views of Kierkegaard can be disentangled from the text in such a way that one can offer an interpretation of Kierkegaard's philosophical positions on the basis of a reading of Either/Or. I disagree entirely, for reasons best expressed by Kierkegaard himself, in "A First and Last Explanation." See Ronald L. Hall Word and Spirit: A Kierkegaardian Critique of the Modern Age, Bloomington: Indiana University Press 1993. One can find Hall's methodological principles in reading the pseudonymous text he does (A's "The Immediate Erotic Stages or The Musical Erotic") on pp. 4-5 of Word and Spirit.

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authors, A and B. On this reading of the significance of the title of Either/Or, the personalities of A and B take on more importance in readings of Either/Or than do the works written by A and B. In contrast to Andersen as a Novelist, Either/Or provides us with the writings of the author under review - although the fact that B does not make a review of As writings, but of A himself, must be kept in mind. As As personality and life-view come under review and criticism by B in Either/Or II, the relation between the two authors of Either/Or can be understood quite neatly in terms of the structure of Andersen as a Novelist: B takes the place of the author of Andersen as a Novelist; and A takes the place of Andersen. Of course, there is no many-angled, worldly, palpable A to be confused with the poetically actual A in readings of the review. Nevertheless, within the poetical actuality of Either/Or, if A is to be understood as a personality distinct from B, then B's claims regarding A are unjustified. Again, we must keep in mind that B does not seek to offer a literary review of the papers of A, as the author of Andersen as a Novelist writes a review of Only a Fiddler. The similarity is restricted to the manner in which the author of Andersen as a Novelist poetizes a personality for Andersen and offers a critique of this personality; for the same reasons, one can understand the papers of B as poetizing a personality for his young friend (designated, by Victor Eremita, with the letter "A"), and then offering a review of that personality. B's review of A, like the review of Andersen, is in terms of the notion of a life-view. B writes, "Every human being, no matter how slightly gifted he is, however subordinate his position in life may be, has a natural need to formulate a life-view, a conception of the meaning of life and of its purpose."68 As the anonymous reviewer set it forth in Andersen as a Novelist, the life-view as proposed by B in his papers is that which gives an individual human being's life meaning and purpose. For B, the two competing possibilities for grounding the meaning of the life of any particular person are the aesthetic and the ethical. This is not to deny the possibility of myriad versions of these possible perspectives, so that not every subscriber to the aesthetic, for example, maintains the same beliefs or lives the same life. But all perspectives are ultimately, for B, expressions either of the aesthetic or the ethical. B combines the ethical and religious into a single lifeview, a life-view which he furthermore claims to possess.

68

E02,179 / SKS 3,175.

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Writing H. C. Andersen

The hallmark of the ethical life-view, as presented by B, is - as it was for the author of Andersen as a Novelist - certainty in oneself, a bold confidence in one's life and actions. The life-view is compared to what in Andersen was merely a "fixed idea," a conceptual device that seems to unify the personality but nevertheless fails to be a lifeview insofar as it does not instill this confidence in the individual who possesses it or give meaning to his or her life. Certainty in oneself becomes, for B as it was for the author of Andersen as a Novelist, the mark in the individual of the integrity of the personality, an integrity that is significant of the absence of despair. This "mark" may be invisible to others - nevertheless, in his or her own certainty this one can see the mark in him- or herself. The person in despair lacks the certainty in him- or herself resultant from personal integrity. The personality of the despairer fragments, and the despairer falls apart. Or can you think of anything more appalling than having it all end with the disintegration of your essence into a multiplicity, so that you actually became several, just as that unhappy demoniac became a legion, and thus you would have lost what is the most inward and holy in a human being, the binding power of the personality?69

This binding power is precisely what B claims A lacks. Only the ethical life-view inspires an integral self. As such, all aesthetic perspectives are revealed as instances of despair.70 Lacking the certainty in himself grounded in the integrity of the personality that is possible only on an ethical life-view, A cannot act decisively. That is to say, according to B, A cannot choose. "That is why I cling so firmly to the defining characteristic 'to choose'; it is my watchword, the nerve in my life-view, and that I do have, even if I can in no way presume to have a system."71 Without an ethical life-view, one cannot choose - and yet, that my life-view is chosen by me is what makes it my lifeview. Only from within the ethical life-view can a human being make the choice that overcomes despair; only by choosing the ethical can one actualize the possibility of choice at all. Only the ethical life-view is a life-view. Thus As problem is compounded, on B's reading, because B does not allow for the possibility of any life-view that is not the consequence of a choice, and choice is only possible on the ethical life-view. A does not inhabit the ethical life-view and thus A, situated within the aesthetic, has no life-view at all. "All the same, you have no life-view. You 69 70 71

E02,160 / SKS 3,158. E02,192 / SKS 3,186. E02, 211 / SKS 3, 203.

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have something that resembles a view, and this gives your life a kind of composure that must not, however, be confused with a secure and revitalizing confidence in life."72 Thus B can write to A, "You continually hover over yourself, and no matter how crucial each step, you always keep for yourself a possibility of interpretation that with one word can change everything."73 A is in despair. He cannot choose; he cannot take decisive or meaningful action. His life is absolutely "insecure and suspended," unrooted, unstable, unchosen even by himself.74 In his simplest articulation of As lack of a life-view, B writes, "You are like one dying, you die daily."75 Andersen's dissatisfaction with the world - a dissatisfaction that springs from his lack of a life-view that would enable him to act meaningfully - is, in B's terms, the despair of the aesthetic. While B acknowledges that in his everyday life A certainly takes action, B denies the possibility that such action has meaning in the absence of a life-view in A. B thus describes As life as "nothing but tentative efforts at living."76 That is, properly speaking, As life is not a life; it is at best a pre-life. The condition necessary for the transformation of this pre-life into a life as such is choice, possible only within the ethical life-view. The notion of life in B's letters to A is the notion of a meaningful life, a life out of which one can act meaningfully. Should that one be a writer, it follows from B's position that meaningful acts of writing are likewise only possible for one inhabiting the ethical lifeview. The product of such written acts - the written works themselves - would thus be evidence of the life-view at their origin in the ethical author. The life-view present in the work is far more important in a reading of the work than is the personality of the author as such (although that personality must be the origin of the life-view in the work), so much so that readers must understand the life-view, and not the author, as the source of the work's meaning. This is the theory of the novel in Andersen as a Novelist, as well as the philosophical basis for the anonymous reviewer's criticisms of Andersen and Only a Fiddler. B and the author of Andersen as a Novelist agree as to what is to be said about A and Andersen. 72 73 74 75

76

E02, 202 / SKS 3,195. E02,11 /SKS3, 21. E02,13 / SKS 3, 22. E02, 196 / SKS 3, 189. This is a slight modification of the Hong translation. The Danish original is, "Du er som en D0ende, du d0er daglig." The Hongs render this sentence, "You are like a dying person, you die daily." E02, 7 / SKS 3,17.

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Nevertheless, as has been pointed out with regard to Either/Or as well as demonstrated in the case of Andersen as a Novelist, a criticism of a personality of the sort leveled by B is an impossible sort of criticism to undertake with any degree of success. B is doomed to fail if B's goal is to understand and criticize A as a person. He must fail because A's personality is potentially secret, always possibly at least partially invisible to other persons. No one can determine whether the A who appears to them is an accurate reflection of As personality, perspective or life-view. This is not to defend As authorship, however, as the papers of A taken alone are only superficially superior to the novels of Andersen, which the author of Andersen as a Novelist seems justified in criticizing insofar as they are not imbued with an immortal spirit that survives them. B recommends that A become an author of the sort praised in Andersen as a Novelist, an ethical author. A never overtly responds to the criticisms of B, whether through lack of will, ability or opportunity. As it was in From the Papers of One Still Living, the conflict of authorial voices in Either/Or is preserved in perpetuity by the simultaneous publication of both voices as distinct voices in a single work. In From the Papers of One Still Living, responsibility for publication is ascribed to S. Kjerkegaard; in Either/Or, the publisher is named "Victor Eremita."

2. Victor Eremita The papers of A are a strange collection of literary bits and pieces: full works of literary criticism, scattered notes on loose slips of paper, a lengthy narrative in diary form. They are conveniently brought together by the editor, Victor Eremita, who publishes them along with the letters of B to A without their authors' consent. In fact, A gets even his alphabetic designation from Eremita (who claims to have no inkling of As proper name), so that when we talk of "the papers of A," it is not clear that we are addressing anything of the author of the bits constituting those papers at all. They are anonymous literary works of varying lengths, brought together in the sequence and manner in which we have access to them at the whim of Eremita. Either/Or I is only a book from the perspectives of its editor and its readers; for A, there is no Either/Or. Whatever As understanding of himself, the understanding of A gathered from a reading of the papers of A is thus only possibly related to A. As papers found in the secret compartment of a secondhand writ-

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ing desk, their collection and collation are accidental to their origin as the writings of some particular Danish author. Either/Or as a book is not the work of A, who merely serves as the origin of the words that compose the first half of the book. Either/Or is only legitimately considered the work of its editor, Victor Eremita. This is not to make the impossible claim that A meant for his writings to go unread. That A was hoping to find readers is always a possibility, and one most prominent in the note about the plan for publication of the review of Scribe's The First Love,11 as well as the essays apparently addressing the symparanekromenoi. There is as little reason to believe that the individual pieces within the papers of A are intended only for a secret compartment in a writing desk as there is to believe that they were prepared for immediate publication by A. The final word, however, is that A did not publish them and did not consent to their publication. The centrality of publication in From the Papers of One Still Living is thus also at least subtly present in Either/Or. There is no middle ground between the published and the unpublished: either the author makes the writings public, or the author does not. We must understand the papers of A as private writings, published "against his will" by Victor Eremita. Again, this is not to say that A did not want his writings published; it is only to say that his will played no role in their actual publication. Insofar as we read Either/Or I, then, and on the basis of this work form our understanding of A, our understanding is necessarily always mediated by Victor Eremita. Eremita creates a single book out of the bits or fragments left in the writing desk, and in the creation of that book Eremita creates the basis for an understanding of its "author," A. This is more than the poeticizing readership evident in Andersen as a Novelist or in Kjerkegaard's Preface to that review, both of which begin with the reading of a book that has been given. Eremita creates the text in a reading of which A is implied. A comes to be, then, only by the editorial hand of Victor Eremita. The letters of B, insofar as they are letters, are papers presented for a reading. That they are actually letters, however, can be no more established than can the reality of As readership (or listenership) in the symparanekromenoi. As readers of Either/Or, we never encounter As addresses as addresses; nor do we ever encounter B's letters as letters. Both end up as chapters in a book called "Either/Or." Although sending a letter is a lim77

A writes, "This article was planned for publication in a journal Frederick Unsmann had planned to issue at specific times. Ah, what are all human plans!" {EOI, 232 / SKS2, 226).

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ited form of publication (in the sense I use here, of "making public"), nothing indicates that B's letters to A were ever sent, or, in fact, if they are meant as actual letters at all. Hence Eremita's suspicion that the papers he found in that secret compartment are all by a single individual.78 Eremita compounds the ambiguity of the authorship of Either/Or even further, however, in his comments on "The Seducer's Diary" appended to the papers of A. Although the title page of Either/Or I proclaims: "Containing As Papers," the volume ends with "The Seducer's Diary," authorship of which A ascribes to the otherwise unmentioned Johannes, ascribing only editorship to himself.79 This poses problems not only for Johannes as an author, but for A and Victor Eremita, as well. Eremita writes: The 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.80

With regard to "The Seducer's Diary," Eremita notes the same problem that confronts readers of Either/Or. there is reason to question the veracity of the ascription of editorship of the work, and questioning this ascription throws into darkness the authorship of the work. In Eremita's particular case, this darkness threatens to obscure his editorial identity as well. But perhaps I have already misused my position as editor to burden readers with my observations. The situation must 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.81

Set precariously as both an interpreter of A's authorial puzzle and as the one to whom editorship of Either/Or is ascribed, Victor Eremita becomes more than the editor or publisher of Either/Or. Eremita is set (or sets himself) precipitously on the verge of assuming authorial responsibility for the authorial perspectives he letters "A" and "B." Victor Eremita may be the author of the authors of the papers of A and the papers of B, although his own preservation of their difference from himself in his Preface requires readers of Either/Or to preserve at least his preservation of that difference. Authorship of Either/Or 78 79 80 81

EOI, EOI, EOI, EOI,

13-14 / SKS 2, 20-21. 1 / SKS 2, 9. 8-9 / SKS 2,16. 10/ SKS 2,17.

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itself, however, cannot be ascribed to Eremita. He is the author of the Preface, a portion of the book Either/Or, and as such is himself one of the authors of Either/Or, whether or not he is also the author of the work's other authors. The author of the authors of Either/Or is thus the author of Victor Eremita (although not of his Preface), and the relation between Eremita and the other authorial perspectives at work in Either/Or is likewise not Eremita's responsibility but that of his author. As with From the Papers of One Still Living, so with Either/Or. at the center of the work is the conflict between authorial perspectives, not the works authored from those perspectives. Victor Eremita cannot be responsible for that conflict, and as such, despite the possibility that he is the author of the authors A and B, readings of Either/Or must preserve the difference of each of the authorial perspectives from the others inscribed in Either/Or. Nevertheless, it is Eremita and his Preface that simultaneously bring the papers of A and the papers of B into existence as a single text, and present the authorial perspectives of those works, as well as the Preface, as essentially different. Victor Eremita is the first voice we hear in Either/Or; Victor Eremita is the first to offer us the distinct categories of the aesthetic and the ethical as a means to understanding the relation between A and B; Victor Eremita is the one who incredibly discovers the writings that become Either/Or within a secret compartment within a secondhand writing desk to which he was drawn with an almost supernatural attraction. He is not merely the pseudonymous conveyor of A and B to readers of Either/Or, but he is the giver from whom we receive those other authors. Eremita is another box in the Chinese puzzle and, excepting only his own author, the outermost of those boxes. The puzzle that he identifies as the puzzle of the authorship of "The Seducer's Diary," a puzzle that clearly extends to the entirety of Either/Or, is the puzzle of Victor Eremita. For Victor Eremita, the importance of Either/Or is in the everlasting, irresolvable tension between the authorial voices. Thus, he gives it a title that is situated at the moment immediately preceding choice, the moment of the either/or. The reader cannot lose much because of this title, for during his reading he may very well forget the title. Then, when he has read the book, he can perhaps think of the title. This will release him from every final question - whether A actually was persuaded and repented, whether B was victorious, or whether perhaps B finally came around to A's thinking. In this respect, these papers come to no conclusion [ingen Ende].87 82

EOI, 13-14 / SKS 2, 21.

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He goes on to argue that, although some readers may consider the lack of a conclusion in the work to be unfortunate, he himself considers it quite good fortune. He expresses the nature of this good fortune by way of a comparison to poorly written novels. We sometimes come upon novels in which specific characters represent contrasting views of life [Livs-Anskuelser]. They usually end with one persuading the other. The point of view [Anskuelsen] ought to speak for itself, but instead the reader is furnished with the historical result that the other was persuaded. I consider it fortunate that these papers provide no enlightenment in this respect [...] Thus, when the book is read, A and B are forgotten; only the points of view [Anskuelserne] confront each other and expect no final decision in the particular personalities.83

For Victor Eremita, the conflict between A and B becomes a struggle of two life-views. On his reading, however, Either/Or admits no victory in this struggle. Thus are we hard-pressed to claim that Either/ Or itself possesses a life-view. This conclusion runs counter to Victor Eremita's belief that there is an immortal spirit that survives a reading of Either/Or, however, a tension that is not resolved at the end of the book. And the problem we face here with Victor Eremita is a problem we face in From the Papers of One Still Living, as well. The work admits of an immortality, but not the immortality advocated explicitly within the work. The immortal spirit that survives a reading of Either/Or is not the undying life-view implanted in the text by an ethical author. Such a life-view is missing from Either/Or, as it is missing from From the Papers of One Still Living. Reading Either/Or, one is left with the unresolved struggle between A and B. This struggle differs essentially from the disputes often carried out in written form by proponents of opposing beliefs or life-views.84 Such struggles admit of the possibility of resolution by way of the persuasion of one or the other of the disputants, and presuppose the willingness of both to be persuaded (at least ideally). Victor Eremita suggests that readers are left in the dark as to how things ultimately stand between A and B, whether the aesthetic or the ethical wins the day. But Eremita also, and in a more considered manner, toys with the possibility of an author of the authors A and B. The possibility so affects Eremita that it is on the possibility of this possibility that he rests the title he gives to the book. 83 84

EOI, 14 / SKS 2, 21. Such as the reading of A and B suggested by Hannay. See Alastair Hannay "Introduction" in Either/Or: A Fragment of Life, abridged and trans. Alastair Hannay, London: Penguin Books 1992.

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In my continual preoccupation with these papers, it dawned on me that they might take on a new aspect if they were regarded as belonging to one person. I know very well all the objections that could be made against this view - that it is unhistorical, and that it is improbable inasmuch as it is unreasonable that one person could be the author of both parts, although the reader could easily be tempted by the pun that when one has said A, one must also say B. Nevertheless I have been unable to abandon the idea.85

While Eremita claims to be in no position to decide whether A and B are two or one, he does construct the book so that it has a single purpose - the portrayal of opposed life-views - and he does give it a title suited to this purpose. Of course, Eremita may believe that A and B are distinct, or indistinct, or undecidable as to distinctness, but this is not the primary issue. Of importance is that Either/Or is a work designed - that is, authored - so as to hold A and B together forever in their opposition. The author of the authors of Either/Or lurks silently behind the authorship of Either/Or, never speaking up to take authorial responsibility, never even so much as suggesting how one ought to read the authors. The author of the authors of Either/Or inscribes the authors in the works they author, and does so by holding the pen with which the works are written. The temptation is to name the author of the authors of Either/Or with a familiar name - Kierkegaard - but nothing in or around Either/Or justifies this naming. The author of the authors of Either/Or, like the author of the authors of From the Papers of One Still Living, remains anonymous. While the author of A Story of Everyday Life is named as anonymous - the author of A Story of Everyday Life refers to "himself" on the title page as "the author of A Story of Everyday Life" - the authorship of Andersen as a Novelist and the authorship of the authors of From the Papers of One Still Living and Either/Or go unascribed.86 There is no reference to the authorship of Andersen as a Novelist on the title page of From the Papers of One Still Living. In the cases of the authorship of the authors of From the Papers of One Still Living and Either/Or, there is no title page on which to make ascriptions. The "works" authored are not works but authors, and authors are not paginal. The anonymous authors of the authors of From the Papers of One Still Living and Either/Or, like the anonymous author of Andersen as a Novelist, must be preserved in their anonymity by readers of the works in which those authors are inscribed. Anything less is to raze 85 86

EOI, 13 / SKS 2, 20. As, in fact, does authorship of the author of A Story of Everyday Life.

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the intricate if ambiguous authorial structures of those works. Forced ascription of the authorship of the authors runs counter to the notion of author authorship, which is essentially silent, an authorship that says nothing in what it writes because its silence is the ground necessary for the possibility of saying anything in writing.

Chapter Two Veronymity and Criticism: "To Mr. Orla Lehmann," "Public Confession," "A Little Explanation," and "An Explanation and a Little More" Between 1834 and 1846 (from the publication of the first newspaper article, anonymous, to the publication of Kierkegaard's "A First and Last Explanation"), in addition to the pseudonymous books and the upbuilding discourses, S0ren Kierkegaard had twelve articles published in various Copenhagen newspapers. On the basis of their authorial ascriptions, these works can be divided into three groups: three pseudonymous articles; four veronymous articles; and five anonymous articles. Although it is easy to forget and forgo consideration of the Kierkegaardian journalistic production, over one-third of the works from this period are newspaper articles - in fact, there are more newspaper articles than either pseudonymous books or veronymous discourses.1 Journalistic works extend into all three modes of authorial ascription employed by Kierkegaard and the Kierkegaardian authors, and bear no consistent relation to the dates of publication of the other Kierkegaardian works. As George Pattison notes of Kierkegaard, "The simple facts bespeak an association with the world of journalism that is more extensive than at first appears, that persists throughout his career and that relates to the most diverse aspects of his own authorship."2 Entering the journalistic authorship into some kind of systematic relation to the rest is difficult for this reason. The newspa1

2

Veronymous books (as distinct from the veronymous upbuilding and occasional discourses) also form a part of the Kierkegaardian authorship. Only one, The Concept of Irony, is published in the period under consideration in the present chapter, the years leading up to the publication of Concluding Unscientific Postscript. George Pattison Kierkegaard, Religion, and the Nineteenth- Century Crisis of Culture, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2002, p. 34.

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per articles form a unique element within the Kierkegaardian authorship, evading as they do identification with or subsumption under the more traditional categories that have been used by Kierkegaard and his readers to classify and understand the authorship. Of the twelve newspaper articles, the four veronymous articles have a peculiar significance in the authorship. These articles are among the first works published under Kierkegaard's own name - "To Mr. Orla Lehmann" is, in fact, Kierkegaard's first veronymous work. Moreover, the four veronymous articles share a common theme: all four attempt, in albeit differing manners, to explain Kierkegaard's authorship or works in Kierkegaard's authorship with particular reference to the role played by Kierkegaard in their authorship. This is a theme that reaches its first full treatment in "A First and Last Explanation," and as such these four prior newspaper articles - the first four explanations, such as they are - can be understood to be of a piece with "A First and Last Explanation." The five articles ("A First and Last Explanation" included) all enter Kierkegaard into considerations of his own work as an author. These are works of self-criticism. While they are typically read (and present themselves) as merely revelatory, their appearance as published works in Kierkegaard's authorship problematizes such readings. Self-revelatory works, explaining the "truth" about the "real author," would necessarily assert themselves as external to the authorship something of which, or of the author of which, they reveal. They attempt to articulate an understanding of a work or an authorship from a perspective other than and regulative of that from which the authorship itself is written. As published works ascribed to Kierkegaard, however, the first four explanations (like "A First and Last Explanation") are works within and in part constituting the authorship of Kierkegaard - an authorship they can only pretend to approach from the outside. Thus, as Kierkegaard will suggest is the case in "A First and Last Explanation," the Kierkegaard who authors the first four explanations must be understood to be able to come to the other works (anonymous and pseudonymous) only as a reader - although a reader, perhaps, with a somewhat privileged relation to the author. As self-criticism, then, these works are not to be understood as revelatory, but as interpretive. Kierkegaard interprets his authorship for its readers and readers of the Danish newspapers. In so doing, Kierkegaard makes of the four articles works of literary criticism. This captures something of the sense of the distinction, in Kierkegaard's usage, between the Danish "Erklœring" and "Forklaring." Both words are often translated (by the Hongs and others) by way of

Veronymity and Criticism

the single English word, "explanation." Erklcering has the sense in Kierkegaard's Danish of a declaration or confession, such that one explains by way of revealing the truth about something. Forklaring, on the other hand, is in Kierkegaard's use explanation in the sense of interpretation.3 Erklceringer seek to clarify the meaning without changing anything about the work being clarified; a Forklaring, in contrast, is itself a transformation through a reconstruction of the work being explained on the part of the one doing the explaining. Only if the first four explanations were Erklceringer could they claim to possess the privileged perspective of self-revelation - that their word was the incontrovertible last word on Kierkegaard's authorship. Of course, Erklceringer are not necessarily correct - and, one could argue, Kierkegaard may not understand his own works satisfactorily. "An Explanation and a Little More," after all, the last of the first four explanations, is "En Erklcering og Lidt til." Nevertheless, as noted above, an understanding of these works as Erklceringer distinguishes the authorial perspective from which they are written in a way that cannot be justified by a reading of those works alone. The first four explanations do not stand outside of the Kierkegaardian authorship, but are component pieces of that authorship. As we will see in both this chapter and the next, S. Kierkegaard does not have the authority to fix the meaning or nature of the authors of any of the anonymous or pseudonymous works in the Kierkegaardian authorship. His explanatory powers are thus "limited" to the realm of Forklaringer. The first four explanations were published in two Copenhagen newspapers: Kj0benhavns flyvende Post [Copenhagen's Flying Post], and Fcedrelandet [The Fatherland]. Both newspapers are what Pattison dubs "a more intellectual variant of the genre" of the feuille3

This is admittedly not the only possible understanding of the meanings of the words; Hannay reads Forklaring to "also have the senses of 'deposition', a binding testimony, and an 'accounting' as of oneself." Hannay Kierkegaard: A Biography, pp. 313314. I rely in my understanding most heavily on Molbech's Danish dictionary. See C. Molbech Dansk Ordbog, 2nd ed., Copenhagen: Den Gyldendalske Boghandling 1859. The entries for erklcere I Erklcering, and forklare I Forklaring are on pp. 448449 and 574, respectively. On Erklcering, Molbech writes, "offentlig Tilkiendegivelse, Bekiendtgi0relse eller Tilstaaelse af en Ting" ["public declaration, announcement or confession of a thing"]. On Forklaring, Molbech offers, "Udtydning, Fortolkning, Oplysning." Udtydning and Fortolkning are both well translated as either "interpretation" or "construction"; Oplysning can be rendered as "illumination," "elucidation," or "enlightenment." Given no evidence to suggest that Kierkegaard differs from Molbech's and the popular Danish understandings of the meanings of these words, I believe the present chapter offers some reason to dispute Hannay's synonyms.

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ton.4 Pattison situates Kj0benhavns fly vende Post and Fœdrelandet at opposite ends of the political spectrum, but maintains that, in both, "mixed in with the airing of opinions about culture and the arts, one might also find discussions of political, critical and philosophical principles."5 Danish "intellectual feuilletons" such as these were understood by their editors, contributors and regular readers to be a more intelligent and thereby preferable alternative to the more ordinary feuilletons (both at the genre's origin, in Paris, as well as in less intellectual Danish versions, such as the widely read Figaro and Corsaren [The Corsair]), helping to create in Copenhagen something of an intellectual elite. Chief among this elite were the members of the Heiberg circle, as well as the Heibergs themselves: Johan Ludvig Heiberg, the chief figure in Danish literature at the time, as well as the editor of (among other things) Kj0benhavns flyvende Post; Heiberg's wife and popular Danish actress, Johanne Luise Heiberg; and Heiberg's mother, Thomasine Gyllembourg, known anonymously as "the author of A Story of Everyday Life." The Kierkegaardian literary and dramatic criticism, at least in one sense, circles ever around Heiberg and his circle.6 Heiberg was perhaps the most prominent man of culture and cultural critic in the Copenhagen of Kierkegaard's day, and he was a devoted Hegelian and contributor to "the system." In the first of the first four explanations, "To Mr. Orla Lehmann," S. Kierkegaard uses Heiberg's newspaper as the medium of his first authorial explanation - that he, S. Kierkegaard, is the author of two anonymous articles published in Kj0benhavns flyvende Post, written against articles published in Fœdrelandet and Kj0benhavnsposten [The Copenhagen Post]. In the second of the first four explanations, "Public Confession," however, published six years later, after the publication of From the Papers of One Still Living, The Concept of Irony, and Either/Or, the medium shifts from Heiberg's Kj0benhavns flyvende Post to the more liberal Fœdrelandet. Kierkegaard remains with Fœdrelandet for the final two of the first four explanations, "A Little Explanation" and "An Ex4 5 6

Pattison Kierkegaard, Religion, and the Nineteenth- Century Crisis of Culture, p. 29. Pattison Kierkegaard, Religion, and the Nineteenth- Century Crisis of Culture, p. 30. We have seen the references to Heiberg's anonymous mother in From the Papers of One Still Living; Kierkegaard will return to her in A Literary Review. Fru Heiberg is, on one reading, at the center of Inter et Inter's "The Crisis and A Crisis in the Life of an Actress." And Heiberg himself makes appearances, not only in the first four explanations, but also in the aesthetic standards and terms with which the Kierkegaardian authors work at their literary criticism.

Veronymity and Criticism

planation and a Little More," in which we find the most direct (and titular) préfigurations of "A First and Last Explanation." "A First and Last Explanation" is published, interestingly, not in any of the Copenhagen feuilletons - unique among the five explanatory essays in this regard - but as an appendage to Concluding Unscientific Postscript. As such, the appearance of the first four explanations in the pages of the newspapers is, likewise, of some interest to readers of the explanatory works of S. Kierkegaard.7 Central to Kierkegaard's understanding of literary and journalistic-literary criticism, as set forth in the first four explanations, is the necessity of veronymity in critical authorship. Anonymity is harshly criticized from the outset, in "To Mr. Orla Lehmann," and that criticism continues through each of the articles. Veronymity will come to be seen as the necessary precondition of all critical writing - such that anonymous or pseudonymous criticism cannot be understood as criticism, properly speaking. Kierkegaard's understanding of criticism, and especially criticism published in journalistic form, will be treated in the first three sections of the present chapter. Each section deals with one 7

Nerina Jansen finds the tension between Kierkegaard's critique of the newspapers and the incorporation of newspaper articles and journalistic writing into the Kierkegaardian authorship to be of some interest to considerations of Kierkegaard as an author. Jansen writes, "Estimates of the daily press seemed to have become a serious concern for Kierkegaard from about 1843 onward and, as his ideas on the matter developed, his criticism of the daily press became increasingly more severe. On the other hand, Kierkegaard himself occasionally published articles in newspapers [...] How can this seemingly contradictory state of affairs be explained? The answer should be sought in three recurrent themes of Kierkegaard's authorship, namely his crucial category of 'the single individual' (den Enkelte); his description of the quality of human existence in his day, including his investigation into the existential significance of the daily press; and his understanding of his own task as a writer," pp. 1-2. The promise of Jansen's article reaches fruition, however, in a lengthy consideration of the relation between communication and existence in light of Kierkegaard's unpublished (and undelivered) lectures on communication. This treatment seems to rob the newspaper articles themselves of inherent worth in considerations of Kierkegaard's authorship and Kierkegaard as an author - something Robert L. Perkins' likeminded treatment of Kierkegaard's views on the press also seems to do, making Kierkegaard's newspaper articles valuable only relative to late twentieth-century considerations of the role and responsibility of the mass media, on the one hand, and Kierkegaard's later works, on the other. See Nerina Jansen "The Individual versus the Public: A Key to Kierkegaard's Views of the Daily Press" in International Kierkegaard Commentary: The Corsair Affair, vol. 13, ed. Robert L. Perkins, 1990, pp. 1-21. And Perkins "Power, Politics, and Media Critique: Kierkegaard's First Brush with the Press" in International Kierkegaard Commentary: Early Polemical Writings, vol. 1, pp. 43-44.

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or two of the first four explanations. In the final section, we will see the ramifications of Kierkegaard's veronymity for Kierkegaard's authorship and our understanding of Kierkegaard as an author and a critic. "A First and Last Explanation" appears to its first Danish readers as Kierkegaard's fifth published attempt to explain himself as an author. The work is not as independent of Kierkegaard's earlier authorship as the absence of page numbers - or its inclusion in a work authored not by Kierkegaard - might suggest. Only on the basis of an understanding of the first four explanations, then, can a complete examination of "A First and Last Explanation" take place. In this regard, this chapter serves in part as necessary preparation and prologue to the treatment of "A First and Last Explanation" in Chapter Three.

A n o n y m i t y a n d Veronymity: " T o Mr. O r l a L e h m a n n " Between January 15 and February 12,1836, Kj0benhavnsposten published the five installments of "Press Freedom Affair," an article on the freedom of the press in Denmark by an anonymous author.8 The Kierkegaardian anonym "B." responded to the fifth part of the article ("Press Freedom Affair V") in Kj0benhavns flyvende Post, in the article, "The Morning Observations in Kj0benhavnsposten No. 43" (February 1836). Fcedrelandet responded to this response with an anonymous article, "On the Polemic of the Flyvende Post," to which B. responded again, again in Kj0benhavns flyvende Post, with "On the Polemic of Fcedrelandet" (March 1836). In response to B.'s response to Fcedrelandet, Orla Lehmann published an article under his own name in Kj0benhavnsposten, "Reply to Mr. B. of the Flyvende Post." Kierkegaard ended the dispute, also under his own name, with "To Mr. Orla Lehmann," once again in Kj0benhavns flyvende Post.9 By April 1836, when "To Mr. Orla Lehmann" was published, the dispute had, according to one historian, "attracted considerable attention."10 8

9

0

On issues of press freedom during the reign of Frederik VI, Danish monarch during the 1830s, see Julia Watkin's historical introduction to EPW, pp. viii-xii. Also Alastair Hannay Kierkegaard: A Biography, pp. 1-29. And Bruce H. Kirmmse Kierkegaard in Golden Age Denmark, p. 48. Cf. Alastair Hannay Kierkegaard: A Biography, pp. 21-29. And Julia Watkin "Lehmann, Peter Martin Orla (1810-1870)" in Historical Dictionary of Kierkegaard's Philosophy, Lanham, MD: The Scarecrow Press 2001, pp. 143-146. Also Kirmmse Kierkegaard in Golden Age Denmark, pp. 50, 242-244. Hannay Kierkegaard: A Biography, p. 28.

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In addition to the more ordinary literary and dramatic critical articles published in the feuilletons, newspapers such as Kj0benhavns flyvende Post, Fcedrelandet, and Kj0benhavnsposten often engaged in the publication of relatively long-running intellectual disputes, usually between authors represented by and published in competing newspapers. Thus, we can understand Kierkegaard's "To Mr. Orla Lehmann," when it begins: A change is as good as a rest, one usually says, but the kind of change that has fallen to my lot in my clash with Kj0benhavnsposten is not at all pleasant. When I write against Kj0benhavnsposten, Fcedrelandet replies, and when I write against Fcedrelandet, Kj0benhavnsposten replies, and God knows how long this antiphonal chanting will continue. To this must be added that I have to do with no fewer than four or more different persons: the author of the five articles about the press-freedom affair in Kj0benhavnsposten, the author in Fcedrelandet (I have just learned that it is Mr. Hage), the roundelay in no. 90 of Kj0benhavnsposten, and Mr. Orla Lehmann. This latest addition in a way makes the matter even more difficult, because I thus have to do with both named and unnamed authors.11

Such disputes in the world of the Danish feuilletons were not infrequent,12 and not infrequently anonymous, the authors "signing" their articles alphabetically (when the articles were not simply left unsigned), either with the most common, "n." or "n. n.", or by way of letters more common to readers of the Kierkegaardian authorship - "A," for example, or "B." 13 In this case, all of the articles Kierkegaard mentions are anonymous, excepting the final one - signed "Orla Lehmann" - and "To Mr. Orla Lehmann" itself, signed "S. Kierkegaard." In simultaneously signing the article with the veronym and addressing it, in its title, to the named author of the article to which "To Mr. Orla Lehmann" responds, Kierkegaard centralizes the role of the name of the author in the termination of the otherwise anonymous literary dispute. By the time of the publication of "To Mr. Orla Lehmann," that Orla Lehmann was the anonymous author of the Kj0benhavnsposten ar11 12

13

EPW, 24 / SVI XIII, 28. See Pattison Kierkegaard, Religion and the Nineteenth-Century Crisis of Culture, p. 27 ff. See Joakim Garff S0ren Kierkegaard, p. 63. There, Garff writes, "Flyveposten, like The Corsair in later years, was one of those journals which everyone wanted to be able to talk about. It was spicy and interesting; eloquent authors played peekaboo with one another and loved to mystify curious readers by signing their contributions with pseudonyms or cryptic symbols. Heiberg himself published under the symbol '_', but the merriment took on such proportions that writers who wished to remain incognito eventually used up all the uppercase and lowercase letters in both the Latin and Greek alphabets, and people finally had to resort to using numbers."

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tides on the freedom of the press, the responses to which began the entire affair, was something of an open secret in Copenhagen intellectual and journalistic circles. Nevertheless, Kierkegaard maintains the anonymity of the press freedom articles in "To Mr. Orla Lehmann." In "Reply to Mr. B. of the Flyvende Post," however, Lehmann reveals that the author of the anonymous reply to B. in Fcedrelandet is Johannes Hage, editor and co-founder of Fcedrelandet. Throughout "To Mr. Orla Lehmann," Kierkegaard refers to Hage by name, as the author of "On the Polemic of the Flyvende Post," treating Lehmann's revelation of Hage's authorship of the article as fact. In his biography of Kierkegaard, Alastair Hannay notes, Anonymity and pseudonymity were seldom effective disguises, but there was a convention that one didn't acknowledge another author's real identity until the author in question owned up to his work. Although Kierkegaard had probably known that Hage was the author, he only acknowledged this after Lehmann in a later article, and in an infringement of the practice which indicates something of Lehmann's position, had revealed the fact on Hage's behalf.14

In accord with this journalistic-literary convention (and out of accord with Lehmann's treatment of his nominal ally, Hage), Kierkegaard never refers to Lehmann as the author of the five anonymous articles in Kj0benhavnsposten - in fact, his respect of the articles' anonymity is complete enough to suggest the irony of exaggeration. We shall not repeat what we have said before in the Flyvende Post, chiefly out of fear that a new opponent will appear (for example, the author of the five articles about the press freedom affair) saying the same thing again that first Mr. Hage and then Mr. Lehmann have already said and thereby forcing us to repeat what we have expressed clearly enough, for such a catechizing of every single staff member or friend of Kj0benhavnsposten is not our affair.15

Immediately prior to this passage in the article, Kierkegaard refers to Orla Lehmann "(and with him the author of the five articles in Kj0benhavnsposten),"16 and then, almost immediately following the passage, Kierkegaard includes in a footnote: "Incidentally, I do not know whether Mr. Lehmann has any warrant from the author of the five articles to make him contradict himself in this fashion."17 These three instances occur within the space of two paragraphs, and their proximity to one another undermines the insistence of each that Orla Lehmann and the author of the five Kj0benhavnsposten articles are in 14

Hannay Kierkegaard: A Biography, p. 23. EPW, 29 / SVI XIII, 33-34. i6 EPW, 29 / SVI XIII, 33. 17 EPW, 29n. / SVI XIII, 34n. 15

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fact distinct persons. Lehmann does not take authorial responsibility for the anonymous article in "Reply to Mr. B. of the Flyvende Post" - rather, he claims of the article not that he is its author, but that "I agree with the views expressed in it."18 On Lehmann's account, with regard to the press freedom article in Kj0benhavnsposten, he is but a sympathetic reader. Kierkegaard, however, does take responsibility for the articles previously ascribed to the anonym, B., "The Morning Observations in Kj0benhavnsposten No. 43" and "On the Polemic of Fœdrelandet." This acceptance of authorial responsibility differs dramatically from that in "A First and Last Explanation," where S. Kierkegaard distinguishes himself from the pseudonyms, and advocates for a radical distinction in the minds of readers between those authors and himself, as the author of those authors. In "To Mr. Orla Lehmann," S. Kierkegaard identifies himself with B. of Kj0benhavns flyvende Post - he writes, "We shall not repeat what we have said before in the Flyvende Post,"19 and calls "On the Polemic of Fœdrelandet," B.'s reply to Hage, "my article."20 Kierkegaard does not claim to be the author of the anonym, B. In "To Mr. Orla Lehmann," Kierkegaard claims to be B., and to be the author of the articles ascribed to B. Until Lehmann's "Reply to Mr. B. of the Flyvende Post," the articles in the dispute ascribed the positions taken to the newspapers in which those positions appeared, and not to individual authors (anonymous or otherwise) - thus, B. refers to Fœdrelandet and Kj0benhavnsposten, and the anonymous articles written by Hage and Lehmann refer to Kj0benhavns flyvende Post, as the sources of the positions taken in the articles. Individual authors and authorial personalities are almost entirely erased from the articles thereby, and their anonymity in part signifies this erasure. Lehmann notes this phenomenon in his reply to B., when he writes, in a footnote, "I would like to have maintained the fiction that the Flyvende Post, as the organ for a certain view, a certain party, was itself the source of the articles, without any disturbing consideration as to which person in each particular instance is incidentally the spokesman for this party."21 Instead, however, Lehmann

is EPW, 153. Kierkegaards polemiske debut: Artikler 1834-36 i historisk sammenhceng, ed. Teddy Petersen, Odense: Odense Universitetsforlag 1977, p. 89. 19 EPW, 29 / SVI XIII, 33. 20 EPW, 25n. / SVI XIII, 30n. 21 EPW, 153n. Kierkegaards polemiske debut, p. 89n.

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makes exception for "Mr. B.," treating the perspective of the anonym as distinct from that of Kj0benhavns flyvende Post.22 Kierkegaard's response to Orla Lehmann, like B.'s reply to the anonymous press freedom article in Kj0benhavnsposten and B.'s reply to the anonymous criticism in Fcedrelandet of that earlier reply, addresses itself not to the matter at hand in the articles under criticism - the freedom of the press in Denmark, particularly with regard to further limitations on press freedom - but to the form and style of the articles. B. criticizes the anonymous articles of Lehmann and Hage, not for espousing a certain political view with which he (or Kj0benhavns flyvende Post) disagrees, but for espousing that view poorly in writing. The criticism is primarily rhetorical. Likewise, the force of Lehmann's "Reply to Mr. B. of the Flyvende Post" is not to disagree with B. on the appropriateness or degree of freedom of the press, but to lambaste him as a superficial critic. And, ultimately, "To Mr. Orla Lehmann" does not serve as a statement of Kierkegaard's position on the political or literary debates of 1830s Copenhagen, but as a witty polemic on the form and style of Lehmann's veronymous article. What begins in the newspapers as a treatment of the issue of the freedom of the Danish press ends in an argument (chronicled in and propagated by three newspapers) as to the relative adequacy of the authors as critics. Hage and Lehmann share a criticism of B.: for Hage, still treating B. as the voice of his editor, his newspaper, and his party, For the most part, [Kj0benhavns flyvende Post's] polemic consists of emphasizing particular phrases or words, with which it then amuses itself by putting them in a ridiculous light. The editor of the Flyvende Post strives to bring down his opponent with mockery and witticisms, and certainly this is easier than laboriously collecting data in order to embark on discussions about reality.23

and, for Lehmann, B. and Kj0benhavns flyvende Post fail, critically, given the system of taking particular articles, sometimes even particular phrases, from an article, in order to point out particular actual or supposed contradictions without ever coming forward with a policy of its own, new facts, or better information. It can easily be seen that a conflict that could lead to little more than whether a particular article is well written or not is without real interest to the public, and that if such bickering, such a conflict for the sake of conflict, were to be perpetuated, the press would waste away without advancing a single step.24 22 23 24

See EPW, 153n. EPW, 143. Kierkegaards polemiske debut, p. 73. EPW, 153. Kierkegaards polemiske debut, pp. 88-89

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Both Hage and Lehmann refer in their articles to B.'s refusal to enter into genuine political discourse in his newspaper articles, and find fault with the rhetorical nature of the criticism B. levels in "The Morning Observations in Kj0benhavnsposten No. 43" and "On the Polemic of Fcedrelandet." Both accuse B. and Kj0benhavns flyvende Post of something like sophistry, and maintain that, while (the liberal) Kj0benhavnsposten and Fcedrelandet open up a space wherein exists the possibility of public, political discourse, (the conservative) Kj0benhavns flyvende Post closes off this possibility in its recourse to wit and rhetoric. The reason for B.'s lack of seriousness, however, has much to do with the anonymity of so-called reformers like Lehmann and Hage. The reform movement, led chiefly by newspapers like Kj0benhavnsposten and Fcedrelandet, is articulated almost exclusively in the anonymous articles of unnamed reformers like Orla Lehmann. Lehmann never takes authorial responsibility for the articles he publishes in Kj0benhavnsposten; as such, the reformative views put forward in those articles can never be ascribed to a person able to be held morally or legally responsible for the call to reform. For B., then, the liberal reform movement in Denmark becomes itself anonymous - an anonymous reform movement, as it were. Where, then, is that energetic, that serious, reforming spirit? Is it identical with those anonymous reformers (I can hardly say these words in one breath) who have their prototype in that anonymous or rather pseudonymous reformer, the snake of Eden? And shall I class with them all the world's reformers straight from Moses, who, although he used Aaron's mouth, nevertheless did not stay in the background in order to let him fall victim to Pharaoh's wrath but faithfully met all dangers and difficulties - through Luther to an O'Connell - those anonymous reformers who work under the auspices of Liunge?25

The anonymous reformers of Kj0benhavnsposten shirk personal responsibility for any movement toward reform by refraining from naming themselves.26 They leave moral responsibility for the reform 25 26

EPW, 10 / SVI XIII, 14. Robert L. Perkins notes this authorial phenonomen in his account of Kierkegaard's early lecture to the Student Assocation. In Kierkegaard's dispute with Lehmann, Perkins notes what he takes to be a consistent position in Kierkegaard's authorship on anonymity and the press, writing, "In this first encounter with the press, Kierkegaard develops a critique of a practice that will remain an important category throughout his life: the use of anonymity. He argues that anonymity is 'a secret court', and fairness requires that one be able to face his accuser. If the accused proves himself innocent, then the anonymous accuser deserves to be branded a liar, a result made impossible by the anonymity itself, thus compounding the un-

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movement to the only person named with relation to their anonymous articles, editor and co-founder A. P. Liunge. And it is Liunge, the editor responsible under press law, who is fattened up and well fed like a sacrificial lamb, in order one day to fall under censorship's razor, this Liunge who, however, in a certain respect is too good to be editor of Kj0benhavnsposten, since its staff might prefer to have a perfect nothing instead. Neither do I doubt, therefore, that one day in the future, just as in England one sells one's corpse to the dissecting room, in the same way here one will sell one's body to be used as editor of Kj0benhavnsposten.21

And, responding in "On the Polemic of Fcedrelandet" to Hage's defense of Liunge in his anonymous article, B. continues, "we have pointed out that he is in a certain respect too good to be editor for 'anonymous reformers' who merely need someone they can hang out in their stead."28 For B., the anonymity of the reformers writing in the feuilletons undermines their reformative position. Insofar as the reformers refuse to name themselves, they shift responsibility for what they write to the named editors of the newspapers in which they write, and as such never must consider the practical and moral ramifications of their positions on political reform. If Liunge falls to the censor, another named editor (whose task is, in the service of the anonymous reformers, but to remain named and thus nominally responsible) can be found. Anonymous reformers like Lehmann and Hage espouse an ethico-political position but fail to do so in the ethical realm, that is, as responsible persons subject to the judgments of moral and civil law. Anonymous reform is but a parody of true reform, the reform of a fairness," p. 33. Perkins pushes this critique to the point of journalistic irresponsibility on the parts of Lehmann and Hage, however. "Kierkegaard understood, even if Lehmann did not, that every piece of misinformation is a deep betrayal of the public trust the press demands as well as a betrayal of the high-mindedness, fairness, and objectivity the press presumes and claims on its own behalf," p. 35. Perkins seems here to misunderstand the nature and role of Fcedrelandet, Kj0benhavnsposten and Kj0benhavns flyvende Post as nineteenth-century feuilletons, taking the press within which Lehmann operates to be something more akin to the newspapers in "late capitalist societies" (p. 36). The feuilletons did not possess the "high-mindedness, fairness, and objectivity" sought by the most widely circulated newspapers of today, and their readers did not presume that the items related in the feuilletons were high-mindedly, fairly, or objectively related (see Pattison Kierkegaard, Religion and the Nineteenth-Century Crisis of Culture, Ch. 2). Perkins' "Kierkegaardian" criticism of Lehmann thus seems somewhat anachronistic. See Perkins "Power, Politics, and Media Critique" in International Kierkegaard Commentary: Early Polemical Writings, vol. 1, pp. 43-44. 27

EPW, 10-11 / SVI XIII, 14. 28 EPW, 20 / SVI XIII, 24.

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Martin Luther or a Daniel O'Connell, in which individual (named) persons seek ethical, political or religious reform while themselves bearing full responsibility for their words and actions. As such, B. cannot (and does not) take anonymous reformers seriously. In "Reply to Mr. B. of the Fly vende Post," Lehmann has an opportunity to come forward and take responsibility - authorial and moral - for his anonymous reform articles, and in particular, "Press Freedom Affair." He is the named author of "Reply to Mr. B. of the Flyvende Post," and his name alone - coupled with some indication that he, Orla Lehmann, was the author of "Press Freedom Affair" - would be enough to differentiate him from the editorial staff of Kj0benhavnsposten, offering him up for whatever consequences might follow from the reformative stance of his contributions to that newspaper. But the confession never comes. Instead, Lehmann explains his decision to sign the article with the veronym as a matter of courtesy: "When I put my name to these lines, I hope Mr. B. will regard it as a little courtesy toward him, since I see that it pleases him to know with whom he has to do, but I must also ask him not to let it prevent him from preserving his own anonymity, since it is totally immaterial to me what my opponent is called."29 An author's name, however, is not immaterial. As we can see in B.'s criticism of the anonymous reformers of Kj0benhavnsposten, an anonym is, as anonym, never a named person. As such, an anonym is at best an authorial persona. Personae are neither citizens nor moral agents. That the author of "Press Freedom Affair" is not named prevents any single, factually actual person from being held responsible for the authorship of "Press Freedom Affair" except, perhaps, Liunge. Here, then, we find the distinguishing significance of veronymous authorship: unlike an anonym or a pseudonym, a veronym is a purely poetical author who can nevertheless direct readers to morally or legally responsible, factually actual individuals. While, as was made evident in Chapter One, an author is but a poetically actual textual implication with no necessary correspondence to any factually actual person, living or dead, nevertheless, naming that textual implication with the veronym opens up the possibility of responsibility in factual actuality. Regardless of what sort of author is implied by the text, the factually actual human being whose name coincides with the veronym can make him- or herself accountable, in factual actuality, for the ethico-political ramifications of the publication of the text. The taking 29

EPW, 59. Kierkegaards polemiske debut, p. 93.

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of such responsibility is not (as it is typically understood) the mere recognition of an historical fact - that this person, named as author, is the author. The unbridgeable gap between reality and fiction makes that understanding untenable. Rather, coming to the veronymous work as a reader, the factually actual individual who shares a name with the veronym freely chooses to take upon him- or herself what factually actual consequences might come. When one's written work engages in the project of reformation, serious consequences abound. Failure to provide a name - the name of a factually actual, political, ethical being - undermines the position of moral responsibility writing in the reformative vein implies. Nevertheless, we must refrain from going farther, and identifying the veronymous author (or the anonymous author of the veronymous author) with the factually actual individual whose name the veronym shares. Nothing can make the factually actual Orla Lehmann the author of "Press Freedom Affair" - not even veronymity. He is for that reason in no way obligated to take responsibility for works ascribed to the veronymous author who shares his name. But without the free gift of his accountability in factual actuality, "Press Freedom Affair" forever evades the political realm it seems to wish to reform. Lehmann's failure to take responsibility, however, is in some sense a failing only on the part of the anonymous author - who chooses not to name himself with Lehmann's name. Unless the published work is itself veronymous, there is no justifiable means by which Orla Lehmann can take factually actual responsibility for the articles in the freedom occasioned by his nominal correspondence to the veronym. Kierkegaard, at the end of "To Mr. Orla Lehmann," comments on Lehmann's veronymous courtesy. Mr. Lehmann says that he has signed his name in order to show me a little courtesy. - I sign mine for the sake of consistency. And because Mr. Lehmann has apparently written a great deal before, since he says that he will sign his name under these lines, I cannot sufficiently rejoice at the change to what I, at least, regard as being for the better. I cannot sufficiently rejoice, I say, at this change, just as I cannot sufficiently congratulate Kj0benhavnsposten on the butterfly developed out of its cocoon.30

Kierkegaard, in signing "To Mr. Orla Lehmann" and taking responsibility for the two anonymous articles in Kj0benhavns flyvende Post, offers S0ren Kierkegaard - not himself - as accountable for B.'s authorship as well as his own (which, to this point, includes only "To Mr. Orla Lehmann"). As "The Morning Observations of Kj0benhavns30 ßp\Y, 34 / SVI XIII, 38-39.

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posteri No. 43," "On the Polemic of Fœdrelandet," and "To Mr. Orla Lehmann" all more or less amount to journalistic-literary criticism, S0ren Kierkegaard is free of the kind of responsibility Orla Lehmann would invite as a reformer. S0ren Kierkegaard can take for himself moral and legal - but not authorial - responsibility. The author is never S0ren Kierkegaard; the author is S. Kierkegaard, purely poetical persona. Nevertheless, the responsibility that falls to the cooperative factually actual S0ren Kierkegaard falls as if he were the author. Kierkegaard never calls for the abolition of the reform movement in Denmark. While he has his apparent disagreements with the message set forth by the anonymous reformers of Kj0benhavnsposten, Kierkegaard's most telling criticism is not of the movement to reform, but of the anonymity of the reformers. Genuinely ethical action is impossible if there are no factually actual actors to be held responsible for the action. While authors are never factually actual persons, some authors (veronymous authors) bear the names of factually actual persons who, in turn, can assume the responsibility for actions (publications) to which they can never be legitimately understood to have a necessary relation. Kierkegaard suggests that, were Lehmann to take such free responsibility for the press freedom articles in Kj0benhavnsposten, Kierkegaard himself could "sufficiently rejoice at the change" to a veronymous reform movement in the feuilletons, which he considers "as being for the better." Lehmann does not effect this change in his "Reply to Mr. B. of the Fly vende Post," and as such sets himself before Kierkegaard and the readers of Kj0benhavnsposten as yet another author, in addition to the anonymous author of "Press Freedom Affair," making "the matter even more difficult" for Kierkegaard, as he thus has "to do with both named and unnamed authors." Kierkegaard cannot treat Lehmann as the author of "Press Freedom Affair," as the free gift of accountability is not Kierkegaard's to give.31 A tension begins to appear, however, between Kierkegaard's selfidentification as the anonymous author of the two articles in Kj0benhavns flyvende Post, and his inability to name Lehmann as the author of the anonymous articles in Kj0benhavnsposten. That Kierkegaard is unjustified in naming Lehmann (or anyone else, for that matter) as the author of various anonymous newspaper articles is clear. Only 31

In 1842, he will begin "Public Confession," the second of the first four explanations, in protest of just such presumption on the part of other newspaper authors - ascribing to Kierkegaard "a number of substantial, informative, and witty articles in various newspapers" (COR, 3 / SVI XIII, 397), for which, in the article, Kierkegaard refuses to take responsibility.

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the author writing anonymously would be authorized to take authorial responsibility in this way, as anyone else denies the independence - the reality - of the anonymous author by transforming the author's authorship against the author's will. For the author him- or herself to confess his or her identity with a published anonym of his or her own creation, however, still is to deprive the anonym of its actuality as an author. Upon an authorial confession of this sort, the anonym becomes but a stand-in for the name of the author, that author's name remaining hidden for only as long as the author desires it so. This is, perhaps, one of the most common understandings of authorial anonymity, but one must note the reliance upon the personality of the named author that such a confession necessitates for readers of both the anonymous works and the veronymous confession. The anonym ceases to be anything but a literary ploy on the part of the veronymous author, and that ploy is comprehensible to readers of the published anonymous works only in terms of the beliefs or desires - not the authorship - of the author now writing veronymously. One need not understand the veronymous author as a factually actual person; in any case, the reliance upon the personality of that author made necessary for readers by the author's revocation of anonymity amounts to the kind of literary failure of which the anonymous reviewer accuses H. C. Andersen in Andersen as a Novelist. In "To Mr. Orla Lehmann," Kierkegaard wants to claim responsibility for the authorship of two anonymous articles. From the perspective of the historical individuality, S0ren Kierkegaard, perhaps, to claim such responsibility is thoroughly understandable. Historically speaking, S0ren Kierkegaard did write those articles - he simply had them published under an authorial anonym. Authorially speaking, however, B. is ever the anonym, his identity as an unnamed author fixed forever upon the publication of those two issues of Kj0benhavns flyvende Post in 1836. So long as the anonymous author is to be considered an authorial persona, Kierkegaard must refrain from the dissolution of the anonym into Kierkegaardian veronymity. The anonymity of those articles poses a problem for Kierkegaard in "To Mr. Orla Lehmann," however, if his desire is to become responsible for their authorship and publication. An anonymous author is confined in the scope of his or her actions to poetical actuality. Should an author really wish to engage in ethico-political action by way of the publication of a work, that work must be significantly veronymous (in conjunction with non-literary speech and action toward the same end on the part of the factually actual person whose name corresponds

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to that of the veronym). For this reason, perhaps, Kierkegaard confesses himself the author of the anonymous articles in Kj0benhavns flyvende Post. In that confession, however, Kierkegaard deprives B.'s articles of their independence from their author in interpretation. In coming to an interpretation of "To Mr. Orla Lehmann," the interpreter or critic must rely upon Kierkegaard's personality as an author. B. thereby fails as an author in the manner in which Andersen was seen to fail in Andersen as a Novelist, whatever literary success Kierkegaard may acquire.

The Present Age: "Public Confession" "Public Confession"(June 1842) begins by offering readers something of the Kierkegaardian understanding of praise - in particular, of the serious consequences of undeserved praise as opposed to the lesser consequences of undeserved criticism: To be disparaged and belittled undeservedly certainly can make one outraged for a time, but the proud mind quickly bounces back again and regains its composure simply because the charge was not true. To be praised undeservedly, to be attributed a worth that a person does not feel he himself has, to be extolled for something he has not done, something he may not even be capable of doing or is too lazy to do - has a far more profound, painful, and humiliating effect; by and large it is a dangerous test for the weak human heart.32

Both criticism and eulogy are instances of the written word taking on extraverbal significance in the public realm; while the significance of undue criticism seems rather personal, for Kierkegaard, undue praise has a thorough and in large part public significance, if only for the one eulogized. Such a one is not merely disparaged, but humiliated. This significance is the result of a lack of correspondence between the force of the undue praise and its external, written form. Even though it was not his fault that he got what does not belong to him, he not only feels undeserving of the honor but also feels an indirect reproach that is all the more emphatic because it does not come in a hostile, infuriating form but as a kind and friendly approval that makes him feel his unworthiness ever more deeply.33

The receipt of unwarranted praise is a reminder precisely of what one has not done. To be sincerely praised for something one has failed to do, especially in such a way as to make what one has not done 32 33

COR, 3 / SVI XIII, 397. COR, 3 / SVI XIII, 397.

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appear to be something one ought to do, appears to oneself and to those aware of the absence of warrant as embarrassment and public reproach. The one praised has not done something he or she ought to have done, and this has been made public knowledge by way of the publicity of the praise. If the praise is insincere, on the other hand, it shows itself even more clearly as public reproach. In the case of "Public Confession," the occasion for Kierkegaard's paragraphic treatise on undeserved eulogy is the repeated ascription of various anonymous works to Kierkegaard in the public press. All this is said primarily for my own sake and to provide the text on which I wish to speak to myself. Many times during the last four months, I have enjoyed the undeserved honor of being regarded and considered to be the author of a number of substantial, informative, and witty articles in various newspapers, of several fliers that were fliers only outwardly, since their contents were solid, weighty, and unpadded, assuring them much more than an ephemeral significance. For a time, I tried to conceal from myself how much indirect reproach there was in this, but the more frequently it was repeated, the more difficult it became for me.34

Interestingly, Kierkegaard responds to the "indirect reproach" of the undue (and untrue) authorial ascriptions by way of what is, ultimately, an indirect written form: soliloquy. The first paragraph of "Public Confession," on the harmful consequences of undue praise, confesses that the reader for whom Kierkegaard writes "Public Confession" is Kierkegaard himself. "Speaking" to himself, then, Kierkegaard writes, - if you had written any part of it, what a splendid activity you would then have to look back upon. Not only would you have benefited by your work, but your example, as the pastor is wont to say, would have been an encouragement to others. Then your life would not have been consigned to well-deserved oblivion, for your work would have made it unforgettable. And not only that, it perhaps would be analyzed, set up as an example, perhaps in Folkebladet or in Naturen, Mennesket og Borgeren.35 It would be said of you: So young and yet such a hard worker. They would point at you and say: Look, there he goes, indefatigable at work.36

Kierkegaard reveals in this passage something of his general attitude toward the articles the authorship of which is under question. No factual author's immortality rests on the publication of a relatively small number of anonymous newspaper articles. The immortality of which Kierkegaard writes here is a kind of public immortality, the herald34 35

36

COR, 3 / SVI XIII, 397-398. Folkebladet [The People's Paper] was a publication of the Society for the Proper Use of Freedom of the Press, chief members of which included Ffeiberg and Lehmann. Naturen, Mennesket og Borgeren [Nature, the Person and the Citizen] was a Danish Schoolbook. COR, 4 / SVI XIII, 398.

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ing of a particular human being by future generations as, perhaps, a hero of his or her age. But the anonymity of the articles precludes the possibility of such immortality. While the thoroughly poetical immortality of From the Papers of One Still Living might remain an open possibility for the anonymous articles themselves, no factually actual individual is "an encouragement to others," or "set up as an example," on that basis. Again, as we saw in Chapter One, there is no factually actual individual to serve as encouragement or example in any written work, only an implied author who may share his or her name with some historical person; in anonymous works, there is not even the illusory correspondence between the poetically actual author and a factually actual individual. Were the articles veronymous, perhaps some would bestow upon the factually actual bearers of the veronym undeserved praise, but the articles are not veronymous. This is the depth of Kierkegaard's irony in "Public Confession." The reader of the confession in "Public Confession" who is not Kierkegaard, then, must keep him- or herself open to the possibility that Kierkegaard's irony continues beyond his mockery of the anonyms and their articles, and into his confession itself. His words may not mean exactly what they seem to mean. Of course, Kierkegaard does not lie about his role in the authorship of the anonymous articles in question - he is not their author, he did not write them. As such, he confesses, or charges himself to confess: You must openly confess your weakness, your idleness, or there is no hope of improvement for you. So here I stand, face to face with the reading public in this momentous moment: I acknowledge my frailty, I have not written anything, not one line; I confess my weakness, I have no part in the whole thing or any part of it - no part at all, not even the slightest. Be strong, my soul, I confess to not even having read some of it.37

The confession is funny (if not humorous) in its elevation of Kierkegaard's disabuse of "the reading public" of Copenhagen of the false attributions of certain articles to Kierkegaard to a nearly religious level, but the funny confession is not an explanation. The explanation in "Public Confession," rather, is not of Kierkegaard's anonymous journalistic-literary authorship, but of the pseudonymous authorship (very limited and before the fact, however, as Either/Or will not be published for another eight months). But having borne my punishment, I beg my contemporaries on the basis of the moral courage I have demonstrated not to surrender hope for me completely. Someday I may live up to some of the expectations they once had for me. I do not doubt that my 37

COR, 4 / SVI XIII, 398.

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contemporaries will be good-natured enough to do this. Far from doubting their good nature, I rather fear it, fear that they will again regard me as an author, attribute to me an enormous capacity for work and collaboration in the service of the age. But this I cannot allow, for the sake of my own moral improvement I cannot tolerate it, and therefore I beg the good people who show an interest in me never to regard me as the author of anything that does not bear my name.38

Although preemptive, Kierkegaard's explanation is not a preface to Either/Or and the other pseudonymous books. Rather, it is perhaps best understood as a "prefatory afterword," by way of which Kierkegaard instructs his future readers how to understand the authorship of those works once they have been published. In addition to confessing that the "praise" of the last four months is, in fact, "undeserved," Kierkegaard offers a distancing explanation of his role in the authorship of future anonymous and pseudonymous works to appear in the newspapers and bookstores of Copenhagen. This joint confessionand-explanation follows hard upon his suggestion that, although he is not yet the author of a considerable authorship, he may yet become so. In rapid sequence, then, we are told that: (a) Kierkegaard is not the author of the anonymous articles ascribed to him; (b) he may yet become the author of an authorship worthy of praise; and, (c) regardless of what is published in Copenhagen or how it is received, Kierkegaard does not wish to be considered the author of any work that is not signed, "S. Kierkegaard." The request serves to create (or preserve) an authorial distance and distinction between Kierkegaard and the anonymous and pseudonymous works. As also made evident in "To Mr. Orla Lehmann," for Kierkegaard, it is the author of a work and only the author who is entitled to ascribe that work to the veronym. All other authors - anonymous, pseudonymous or veronymous - lack the authority for such naming. (Kierkegaard will return to this theme again, in "An Explanation and a Little More," and then, in "A First and Last Explanation.") Lehmann attempts to preserve the space between himself and the anonymous "Press Freedom Affair," but at the same time names the anonymous author of "On the Polemic of the Flyvende Post" with the veronym, Johannes Hage. Kierkegaard is critical of Lehmann as an author, and his criticism is in large part directed toward Lehmann's failure to respect the bounds distinguishing factual and poetical actualities. Having attempted to counter Lehmann's obstinate anonymity with his own veronymity, however, Kierkegaard blurs the same dis38

COR, 5 / SVI XIII, 399.

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tinction in the subsumption of B.'s anonymous articles under his own authorial responsibility. While "To Mr. Orla Lehmann" attempted to dissolve authorial differences, "Public Confession" seeks to delineate and preserve them. Kierkegaard - ever the ironist - suggests that his confession is made necessary by the age in which he lives. Authors strive no longer to serve only themselves or their readers, but "the system," producing written works, even works of literature or drama, the purposes of which are to promulgate and promote the Danish Hegelianism.39 Although Heiberg does not come under Kierekgaard's criticism in "Public Confession," Heiberg is one such literary Danish Hegelian. Yes, the age is truly remarkable. It is worth the trouble to heed the earnest, profound, significant signs, to heed the great forces stirring in literature everywhere in so many ways, to watch for the hints that everywhere point to the fullness of time. It is the system toward which the age is directing its efforts.40

In Kierkegaard's ironic diagnosis, the age gathers its "remarkability" from the promise of an age to come - an age in which the system has been given. The present age is no such age, for the present age lacks the system. Hegel and the Danish Hegelians can but furnish the Danes with "significant signs" and "hints." Prof. R. Nielsen41 already has published twenty-one logical I I that constitute the first part of a logic that in turn constitutes the first part of an all-encompassing encyclopedia ... He has already written twenty-one I I and several years ago published a subscription prospectus for a systematic ethics that will amount to at least twenty-four printed sheets when it is finished. At least that was the word at one time, but since it is still not completed, it may turn out to be forty-eight sheets - when it is finished.42

The system is so far incomplete. Systematicity implies completeness, however, and as such the system does not yet exist; service to the system is in fact preparation for the system, should it ever be finished. Nevertheless, there appears to be hope among the Danish intellectual 39

40 41

42

Henning Fenger refers at one point to, "the great cascade of words against the Danish Hegelians - 'Public Confession'." Fenger Kierkegaard: The Myths and their Origins, trans. George C. Schoolfield, New Haven: Yale University Press 1980, p. 8. COR, 5 / SVI XIII, 399. Rasmus Nielsen took the chair in moral philosophy occupied by Kierkegaard's friend and mentor, P. M. M0ller, after M0ller's death. Nielsen was at the time of the publication of "Public Confession" a devout Hegelian. According to Julia Watkin, in part due to Kierkegaard's influence, Nielsen attempted to abandon and criticize Hegelianism - only to fail in his own work to escape Hegelian dialectic. See Watkin Historical Dictionary of Kierkegaard's Philosophy, pp. 179-181. COR, 5-6 / SVI XIII, 399-400.

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elite for the imminent presentation of the completed system. "Everything," Kierkegaard remarks, "indicates that the decisive moment is approaching."43 This "everything" is in part literary - the general trend in Danish literature, according to Kierkegaard, is in the service of the system - and in part political. The two become indistinguishable insofar as, for authors and citizens alike, service to the system implies allegiance to one particular conception of the system. All do not agree upon that particular conception, however, and so, "There is a vigorous party spirit astir everywhere."44 The intellectual and political life of Denmark is fragmenting into an ever-increasing multitude of parties. In addition to the perhaps more ordinary political parties - "Liberals, Ultra-Liberals, Conservatives, Ultra-Conservatives, juste-milieu"45 - the party spirit of the present age extends into the literary and philosophical realms. We have Kantians, Schleiermacherians, and Hegelians; these in turn are divided into two large parties: the one party comprises those who have not worked their way into Hegel but nevertheless are Hegelians; the other comprises those who have gone beyond Hegel but nevertheless are Hegelians. The third party, the genuine Hegelians, is very small.46

The authors of whom Kierkegaard is most critical in "Public Confession" ally themselves with some party - be it political, philosophical, or politico-philosophical - and then write only as representatives or spokespersons for that party, never as individuals. Like the anonymous reformers, these "party men" attempt the impossible: to act within the ethical realm from an authorial perspective the nature of which evades ethical responsibility. In the absence of the possibility of accountability, the conditions necessary for the possibility of the ethical as such are not met. Party men write anonymously or pseudonymously, insofar as, even when they write veronymously, they do not write in their own names.47

43 44 45 46 47

COR, 6 / SVI XIII, 401. COR, 6 / SVI XIII, 401. COR, 6 / SVI XIII, 401. COR, 6 / SVI XIII, 401. This may explain, in part, the shift from Kj0benhavns fly vende Post to Fcedrelandet in Kierkegaard's choice of medium for his journalistic-literary criticism. That articles ascribed to S. Kierkegaard appear in both the conservative, Heibergian paper, as well as the liberal paper against which a young(er) Kierkegaard railed so forcefully, reemphasizes that, when Kierkegaard writes, he writes from an individual authorial perspective, and not that of a school or party.

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In what may be a tacit reference to "the Right Reverend" Bishop J. P. Mynster, Kierkegaard contrasts the anonymous or pseudonymous party man with the "great man." The general trend in Danish literature is toward the system; service to the system is best performed by parties, not by individuals. As Orla Lehmann made light of his own veronymity, as well as the anonymity of his opponent - to him, "it is totally immaterial" what his opponent is called - so do both the Danish party spirit and the Danish systematism make light of the individualities of authors. The system will be brought to completion, not by great individuals, but in the development and examination of ideologies through history, ideologies fostered by and represented in the oppositions between partyaffiliated newspapers, Kj0benhavnsposten and Fœdrelandet on the one side, Kj0benhavns flyvende Post on the other. "No wonder, then," Kierkegaard writes in a parenthetical, "that no one pays any attention to an experienced, earnest, stirring Right Reverend voice when it speaks - if not daily, at least once a month - for it is only a great man who speaks, not a party; it is only a solitary voice, not a party voice."48 Kierkegaard binds the party spirit and the drive for the system together in his depiction of the present age, opposing both modes of thinking and writing to that which he here characterizes in terms of solitariness and individuality. The Right Reverend voice does not become great by virtue of its being a lone voice, alone, but by virtue of its not subsuming itself under a party or the system. A solitary voice is responsible for what it says, ethically and authorially; the party voice is not. To speak on one's own behalf, in one's own name, is the mark of the "great man" as Kierkegaard has it in "Public Confession." The thought that the anonymous authors on behalf of the party and the system will achieve the immortality of heroes is laughable in its absurdity, given that heroes are heroic not only in what they gain for a people, but in what they risk for that gain. Anonymous authors risk nothing, and gain nothing thereby. Kierkegaard exploits this laughability in the repetition of his ironic confession. But why recall these tiresome impressions. Let us rather dwell on the cheerful prospect ahead of us, when the system will have been discovered and the future will commemorate every ever so minor hero in our age of heroes. But that is why each and every one must make his contribution, so that this honor does not fall upon the unworthy. I have contributed my bit by confessing that I have no part in the whole thing, not the slightest.49

48 49

COR, 7 / SVI XIII, 401-402. COR, 9 / SVI XIII, 403.

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Named philosophical authors - like Nielsen, and Martensen, and Beck - will make their systematic advances in works ascribed to the veronym. But such ascriptions signify little when "Nielsen," "Martensen," and "Beck" are little more than ciphers for the system. These authors bear little responsibility for what they write, as what they write they write on behalf of the party and the system - and to disagree with Nielsen is to attack the system or the party, not an individual person or authorial persona. Kierkegaard disassociates himself from the anonymous party men and systematists, especially those whose works have been falsely ascribed to him, and in so doing stands before the readers of Fcedrelandet as a solitary voice, not a representative of Fcedrelandet or a party man. In a Postscript to "Public Confession," Kierkegaard addresses A.F. Beck's criticism of The Concept of Irony, published also in Fcedrelandet. Kierkegaard's criticism of his critic is, as were B.'s criticisms of the anonymous reform articles, a criticism of Beck's critical ability rather than the matter of Beck's criticism. After a summary of the dissertation, from which Kierkegaard claims to have "actually learned nothing new," [Beck] finally concludes that I deserve to be criticized because there are several allusions he does not understand. Well, admittedly he did not say it exactly that way; he said, in fact, that the majority does not understand them. But since I cannot possibly assume that Dr. Beck had the opportunity to poll the opinion of the majority, Dr. Beck no doubt is using this expression as a party man.50

The difference between Kierkegaard's reading of Beck and Beck's reading of The Concept of Irony is not minor. The force of Beck's claim is to suggest that the failure to understand Kierkegaard's allusions is the fault of Kierkegaard and the allusions; Kierkegaard's reiteration transforms Beck's claim into a simple statement of subjective confusion. As an individual author, this is all Beck is allowed. Truthfully making any claim as to the majority understanding of the allusions in Kierkegaard's dissertation is impossible. In pointing out to the readers of his article in Fcedrelandet - who would have encountered Beck's review in a previous issue of the same newspaper - that Beck has overstepped his critical bounds, Kierkegaard devitalizes Beck's entire criticism. Beck, Kierkegaard seems to say, is an incompetent critic who, in and because of his incompetence, relies upon spurious 50

COR, 9 / SVI XIII, 404. The grammar of the Hongs' translation in this passage has been modified very slightly, so as to be in accord with the grammatical integrity of Kierkegaard's Danish.

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99

party claims made in the name of the majority. A party man, Beck writes veronymously but not in his own name; or, he writes as the party but in the name of the veronym. As Beck did not poll the majority, he lacks the authority to ascribe claims to the majority51 - just as Lehmann lacked the authority to ascribe the anonymous "On the Polemic of the Flyvende Post" to Hage. As Beck has not the authority to write as a party man on behalf of the majority, Kierkegaard treats Beck's review throughout as a work for which Beck alone stands authorially responsible. Thus, Beck's criticism - understood as Kierkegaard interprets it in the Postscript to "Public Confession" - fails for lack of philosophical rigor. Beck jumps to conclusions. There are several allusions Dr. Beck has not understood. From that Dr. Beck concludes that I deserve criticism. What if someone drew the conclusion that Dr. Beck deserves criticism? This conclusion is much closer to the point, because, after all, my treatise was not intended for Dr. Beck alone, whereas Dr. B. proprio motu has set himself up as my critic and thus may justifiably be asked to take the trouble to understand.52

In addition to holding his critic responsible for understanding the work he criticizes, however, Kierkegaard further holds Beck responsible for making his criticisms clearly, unenigmatically. Kierkegaard reports, however, that, "At the end, my esteemed critic adds that there are various things that have amused him - but not to my credit. This passage is very ambiguous and obscure."53 Taking upon himself the mantle of critic, Kierkegaard avoids Beck's critical failings by claiming to have sought an understanding of Beck's review. "Since I am not a party-liner, I am unable to say, as my esteemed critic is able to say, that several, or maybe even the majority, have found it to be just as much an enigma. Since I am unable to impress him with a majority, I have done my utmost to find an explanation [Forklaringsgrund], the only one I can find."54 Beck absolves himself of responsibility as 51

52 53 54

In A Literary Review, Kierkegaard expands upon his criticism of Beck's "majority" in terms of what he calls there "the public." Nerina Jansen summarizes Kierkegaard's critique in A Literary Review when she writes, "An abstraction cannot have an opinion; so-called public opinion is constructed by those who speak and write anonymously on behalf of 'the public', but predominantly on behalf of themselves and on behalf of the vested interests of their institution. These people are, first and foremost, the journalists who write in the daily press." Jansen "The Individual versus the Public: A Key to Kierkegaard's Views of the Daily Press" in International Kierkegaard Commentary: The Corsair Affair, vol. 13, pp. 7-8. COR, 10 / SVI XIII, 404. COR, 11 / SVI XIII, 405. COR, 11 / SVI XIII, 406.

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a critic for understanding the work he criticizes. Kierkegaard makes comic note of Beck's critical self-absolution in his own explanation of the confusing comment in Beck's review. The critic perhaps has bought a copy of my dissertation, has not been satisfied with it, and now has returned it to the publisher and demanded his money back. I do not know if it is customary for the publisher to return the money - if so, then the critic has caused me the additional loss of 9 marks. I do not deny that it is a loss, but yet it is not quite 9 marks. If the publisher is humane enough to share the loss, perhaps a secondhand book dealer will buy the used copy, perhaps he will pay 3 marks, 8 shillings for it, and in all human probability the loss will then be approximately 3 marks. If that is the way it turns out, then the critic is right - he has caused me a loss, and it really has not been to my advantage that he has been amused.55

The explanation Kierkegaard offers is, although absurd, a poetical construction the function of which is to give some at least hypothetical unity to Beck's otherwise enigmatic text. Kierkegaard transposes Beck and his criticism into the poetical actuality of hypothesis by way of explanation. The Forklaring is deeply insincere, but is a Forklaring nonetheless. This, Kierkegaard recommends over Beck's party reliance upon the majority. Perhaps the most immediate significance of Kierkegaard's Postscript on Beck's review is to distance the subjective reactions of individual persons to texts - lack of understanding, or amusement - from the authorial function of the critic in offering literary review or criticism. A critic is not bound to refrain from the claim that certain texts or passages in a text are confusing or amusing, but the critic must offer a demonstration of that claim, or admit that it is nothing but a purely subjective judgment, and not rely on a thoroughly poetically constructed "majority" to decide the matter. Beck's review does not offer a demonstration or an admission and, as such, the review only makes sense in light of some consideration of Beck's extraliterary personality. The review becomes less a production of Beck than an amputation, its correspondence to his inner world of confusion and amusement altogether too proximate. Beck as an author relies upon his readers' confusion of factual and poetical actualities, a reliance that itself implies a similar confusion on the part of the author. Kierkegaard avoids such confusion by offering an explanation of Beck's review. The explanation, however, is a comically and exaggeratedly poetical production. By way of "explanation," Kierkegaard becomes the author of his own hypothetical, poetical Beck, distinguished from the anonymous reviewer in Andersen as a Novelist only (but impor55

COR, 11-12 / SVI XIII, 406.

Taking Responsibility

tantly) in the nature of his production as hypothesis. While the anonymous reviewer asserts his fiction as fact, Kierkegaard merely suggests one possible way of understanding Beck and Beck's review. Nevertheless, in providing an explanation instead of responding to or writing as the party, Kierkegaard seems to avoid the systematism characteristic of much of the Danish literature of his age. "Kierkegaard," unlike "Beck," is not just another name for the system.

T a k i n g Responsibility: "A Little E x p l a n a t i o n " a n d " A n E x p l a n a t i o n a n d a Little M o r e " In the last two of the first four explanations, Kierkegaard repeatedly returns to the exclusive authority of the author to name him- or herself as the author. This is in fact the substance of the very brief "A Little Explanation" (May 1843), wherein he responds to a rumor ascribing to him authorship of the sermon at the end of Either/Or. According to Kierkegaard, the rumor rests entirely upon the coincidence that he had once delivered a sermon at the pastoral seminary, and Either/Or concludes with its "Ultimatum," an anonymous sermon. Kierkegaard posits that, "among those present" at the seminary, "there must have been the wide-awake, attentive listener who after fifteen months was able to recognize my sermon instantly in the sermon that concludes a recently published book."56 The two sermons, however, were not the same, and Kierkegaard takes this fact to undermine the rumor of his authorship of Either/Or. Kierkegaard claims that the rumor puzzles him, given the lack of any correspondence between the two sermons in question. According to Kierkegaard, "the two sermons do not have even the most fleeting resemblance."57 Despite the extremity of this difference, the rumor maintains that the sermon in Either/Or is, in fact, a copy of Kierkegaard's seminary sermon, and the rumor becomes absurd thereby. If that is so, then it certainly is a risky matter to try to explain [forklare] his statement. But I will take the risk. The inventor of that rumor has neither heard my sermon nor read it in print but knows that I once gave a sermon at the seminary. He probably thought something like this: "In that book (in 868 closely printed pages) there is a sermon (about 14 pages). Candidate Kierkegaard has given a sermon at the seminary

56 57

COR, 22 / SVI XIII, 416. COR, 22 / SVI XIII, 416.

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- ergo the book is by K., ergo the sermon is by K., ergo it is the same sermon he gave at the seminary."58

Kierkegaard does not deny in "A Little Explanation" that he is the author of Either/Or or its authors. Again, as in the earlier explanations, he has shifted the focus of his article away from the apparent matter at hand - in this case, whether he is or is not the author of Either/Or. Instead of denying the authorship of the sermon in Either/Or, Kierkegaard hypothesizes one possible (although rather ludicrous) argument for the rumor that Kierkegaard is the author of the sermon, and then shows that this argument is absurd. Perhaps more openly than in his earlier explanatory articles, Kierkegaard demonstrates in "A Little Explanation" his understanding and use of Forklaring as a kind of reconstruction or poetic production. By way of a little explanation, Kierkegaard was able in those earlier articles to bring the disparate or fragmented elements of a lesser critic into some kind of coherent unity - as he did with regard to Lehmann in "To Mr. Orla Lehmann" and Beck in "Public Confession." There is no "lesser critic" in "A Little Explanation," however. In this, the third explanation is unlike the first two. "A Little Explanation" responds to no other newspaper article, no review of Either/Or in which authorship is ascribed to Kierkegaard. Rather, it takes as the object of its criticism "a fairly widespread and persistent rumor" and "the inventor of that rumor," and ascribes an argument to this unnamed inventor itself wholly invented by Kierkegaard.59 Kierkegaard simply posits the inventor at the rumor's origin. Thus, from the existence of a widespread rumor - that is, a rumor believed, or at least perpetuated, by many different persons - Kierkegaard constructs a single, unified persona, for whose intelligence, moreover, he appears to have a thoroughgoing disdain. Poetically positing and then criticizing "the inventor of that rumor," however, affords Kierkegaard the opportunity to reassert the need for a rigorous maintenance of distinctions between authors in considerations of the authorship of different works. In a perhaps witty conclusion to his article, Kierkegaard suggests the possibility that "the inventor of that rumor" would come to know of the publication of Kierkegaard's Two Upbuilding Discourses.

58

59

COR, 22 / SVI XIII, 417. Punctuation in this passage has been changed from the Hong edition so as to be more in accord with the Danish original. COR, 22 / SVI XIII, 417.

Taking Responsibility He just might be indefatigable enough to foster a new misunderstanding by presuming to assert, without inspection (this word is used to indicate properly how positive he is about this), that these two discourses are the same single sermon I gave at the seminary. Perhaps, tenaxpropositi, he would be consistent enough during all these rotations to remain the same, one who always says the same thing, not Somatically about the same thing but about things that are different - that they are the same.60

Two Upbuilding Discourses was published on May 16,1843, the same day as "A Little Explanation." The book begins, as do all of Kierkegaard's upbuilding discourses, with a clarification regarding the genre of the works contained therein. Kierkegaard writes that it "is called 'discourses', not sermons, because its author does not have authority to preach."61 If he lacks the authority to preach, then nothing published of which he is the author can be considered a sermon - and yet, the "Ultimatum" at the end of Either/Or is a sermon.62 Kierkegaard offers his poetically produced inventor of rumors the distinctions the inventor lacks: (a) Kierkegaard delivered one sermon while studying briefly as a seminarian; (b) that sermon has no relation to the anonymous sermon published at the end of Either/Or, nor does the existence of either sermon demonstrate the identity of Kierkegaard with that anonymous author; and (c) neither of those sermons bears any relation to the Two Upbuilding Discourses, for which Kierkegaard assumes full authorial responsibility. In light of these distinctions, "A Little Explanation" becomes a call to readers of Fcedrelandet, Either/Or, and Two Upbuilding Discourses alike, not to confuse authorial personae or their genres. The anonymous author of the "Ultimatum" apparently has the authority to author sermons. Kierkegaard does not. 'An Explanation and a Little More" (May 1845) appears in Fcedrelandet nearly two years after "A Little Explanation," but it returns again to the rumor that Kierkegaard is the author of Either/ Or. In this instance, however, Kierkegaard responds to a review of Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions and Stages on Life's Way, published anonymously in Berlingske Politiske og Avertissements Tidende. That reviewer writes: 60 61 62

COR, 22-23 / SVI XIII, 417. EUD, 5 / SKS 5,13. The work is called a sermon by B, the Judge, in a short preface to it in Either/Or II. While one might dispute B's choice of words on the basis of a reading of the "Ultimatum" itself, one cannot argue that B does not call the work a sermon. We are thus safe in the assertion that at least one Kierkegaardian author believes himself to have the authority to include sermons within the scope of his own authorial responsibility, whether that one author is B or Victor Eremita.

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One would think that Mag. Kierkegaard possessed a kind of magic wand by which he instantaneously conjures up his books, so incredible has his literary activity been in recent years, if we dare believe the rumor that presumably is correct in claiming him to be the author of Either/Or and the series of books that apparently comes from the same hand.63

Here, Kierkegaard has found an anonymous author to take up where Kierkegaard's invention, the (poetically produced) inventor of the rumor, left off. While the anonymous reviewer in Berlingske Tidende writes nothing of sermons, the review offers itself in the name of the same rumor personified by Kierkegaard's poetic creation in "A Little Explanation." Both the anonymous "inventor of the rumor," and the anonymous reviewer propagating the rumor in Berlingske Tidende, are indistinguishable from the rumor, as mere anonymous instantiations of articulations of the rumor. Like Beck and the party men in "Public Confession," or Lehmann, Hage, and the anonymous reformers of Fcedrelandet and Kj0benhavnsposten in "To Mr. Orla Lehmann," the anonymous rumormongers of "A Little Explanation" and 'An Explanation and a Little More" are incapable of entering into the public, ethical realm of factual actuality - where they mean to find S0ren Kierkegaard as the author of Either/Or. The rumor circulating through Copenhagen does not mean to deprive Victor Eremita or the other anonymous or pseudonymous authors of the poetical actuality of their distinct authorial personae; rather, the rumor means only to identify Kierkegaard as the "real" author of the works ascribed to the pseudonyms. Such an attempt oversteps the bounds of literary or poetical actuality, however, and in such manner tries to broach the factually actual. Entering into factual actuality and the ethical is only possible given the possibility of accountability within the factually actual realm. Thus, ethical agents are only legitimately considered ethical agents when their actions can be ascribed to some person in factual actuality. Such ascription demands a name, the mark of responsibility. That the anonymous reviewer in Berlingske Tidende does not leave his name forecloses the possibility of his review to touch upon the factually actual. While the anonymous reviewer can (and does) claim that Kierkegaard is the author of Either/Or, this claim is a parody of a genuine truth claim. The anonymous reviewer remains but the fictional creation of some other, anonymous author - and, when fictional characters attempt to assert themselves in factual actuality, the situa63

COR, 274-275n.

Taking Responsibility

tion is comic, at best. The truth of the claim rests at least in part on the nature of the actuality of the one responsible for the claim. Moreover, Kierkegaard argues, I assume that what is said here is sufficient. Anyone who thinks at all will easily understand the following. If I am not the author of these books, then the rumor is a falsehood. However, if I am the author, then I am the only one authorized to say that I am that. Any other attempt is, according to the last assumption, unauthorized and as rumor is again a falsehood. In the one case the rumor is false, and in the other case the falsity is that it cannot be anything but a rumor.64

Kierkegaard relies here on two different sorts of falsity. The first is the more ordinary sense, by which we might say that a statement is false insofar as it fails to correspond accurately to the world. The second sense of falsity in the passage, however, has to do not with the statement itself, but with the authority of the statement's author. Presumably, even if a statement is true in the first sense, if made by one lacking the proper authority, the statement can be considered false in the second sense.65 Thus, although the ascription of authorship of Either/Or to Kierkegaard is, in an at least limited regard, true in the first sense, that the anonymous reviewer is not himself Kierkegaard makes false any claim he makes as to Kierkegaard's authorship of anonymous or pseudonymous works, regardless of Kierkegaard's role in the authorship of those works. This holds true for all authors bearing names other than "S. Kierkegaard," including the Kierkegaardian anonyms and pseudonyms, in accord with (but not resultant from) Kierkegaard's request in "Public Confession." The explanation in "An Explanation [Erklœring] and a Little More" concludes with a statement as to the indifference of readers of the pseudonymous works to the identity of their author(s). With the short sentence, "So far my explanation [Erklœring],'"66 Kierkegaard demarcates the transition from "an explanation" to "a little more" in the article. For its part, the explanation amounts to an argument against the anonymous reviewer on grounds of authority. The "little more" takes up the reviewer's rather copious praise for Kierkegaard and his works, entering into a journalistic-literary criticism of the anonymous reviewer's review (as he has done in each of the explanations examined so far). Kierkegaard turns to the literary phenomenon of praise 64 65

66

COR, 24 / SVI XIII, 418-419. The later anonym, H.H., will make much of a similar distinction in "The Difference Between a Genius and an Apostle," one of his Two Ethical-Religious Essays. COR, 25 / SVI XIII, 419.

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here in the same vein as earlier, in "Public Confession," where he delineates something of the dangers of unwarranted - that is, unauthorized - praise. In the review, the reviewer notes of the pseudonymous works he has, in accord with rumor, ascribed to Kierkegaard, that each "is remarkable for a depth of thought that pursues its object to its most minute thread and in addition unfolds a rare beauty and elegance of language, and particularly a fluency that surpasses that of any contemporary Danish writer."67 In a lengthy passage from "An Explanation and a Little More," however, Kierkegaard clarifies his stance on such praise, originating as it does in an anonymous literary review. The honored pseudonymous authors (one could almost say the Messrs. pseudonymous authors, for the reviewer does not make it very clear how many he means) are handed the flattering recognition that falls to their lot in that one column by Mr. - n. They probably do not agree how to share the booty. At least my thought runs along such lines. Yet what I think makes no difference in the case at hand. And yet perhaps the pseudonymous authors think the same, and perhaps I may even do them a service by relieving them of the trouble of saying something themselves. If so, I would also wish that what I now write may be somewhat more entertaining and may redeem what I may have wasted for the readers by the tiresome explanation and a tiresome mention of my name, a tiresome result of a blunderer's attempt. So my thought runs along these lines. To be called before the front line of the reading public to be commended - ah, yes! But then it must be the general who does it. If the summoner, for example, is the driver of an ammunition wagon, then both become ridiculous. - To be assigned to a particular category, even the distinguished post of honor in literature, over and above all one's contemporaries - ah, yes! But then it must be done by a person who himself is not on the outside.68

The reviewer ascribes to Kierkegaard not only the pseudonymous books, but also the chief rank among Denmark's writers. Yet, according to Kierkegaard, ascription of such praise can only be made by "an authorized person,"69 presumably only "the chief figure in literature" himself, "the legitimate leader in Danish literature, Prof. Heiberg."70 Kierkegaard avoids questioning the truth of the reviewer's praise, insofar as truth is a matter of correspondence. He does, however, undermine the reviewer and the unabashed praise for Kierkegaard as an author that more or less constitutes the review in demonstrating that the reviewer lacks the authority to praise in this way. Kierkegaard as such argues that the praise is false, albeit (only) because the one bestowing

68 69 70

COR, 25 / SVI XIII, 419-420. COR, 25 / SVI XIII, 420. COR, 26 / SVI XIII, 421.

Taking Responsibility

the praise lacks the authority to do so. In this, the closing section of "An Explanation and a Little More," the different arguments Kierkegaard has made in each of the first four explanations begin to coalesce. The reviewer's lack of authority is in part due to the fact that the reviewer is not a great, much less the chief, figure in Danish literature. Nevertheless, that lack of authority is compounded by the fact that the reviewer "is anonymous and thus divested of the trustworthiness of authority" 71 Here, for Kierkegaard, anonymity is tantamount to a lack of authority - and, thus, to the inability legitimately to praise or criticize other works. While the highest praise and severest criticism are only authorized in the cases of the great figures of contemporary Danish literature (Kierkegaard's preferences: Heiberg, Madvig, Kts),72 anyone publishing a literary review must begin (or end) by signing his or her name. Ascribability to the veronym is a necessary component of a public and published literary review. Anonymous literary reviewers and critics are in this way shown to relate to genuine literary criticism in the same way that anonymous reformers were shown in "To Mr. Orla Lehmann" to relate to genuine reform. The reviewer lacks the authority to ascribe the pseudonymous works to Kierkegaard (as the reviewer is neither the pseudonymous authors taken together, nor is he Kierkegaard), as well as to offer praise or criticism of those works (as the reviewer is anonymous). The anonymous review of Stages on Life's Way and Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions, to which Kierkegaard responds in "An Explanation and a Little More," is but a parody of true review. So far Kierkegaard's Erklcering. Kierkegaard begins the "little more" by denying the relevance of what he thinks with regard to the pseudonymous authors, and yet posits the possibility that "perhaps the pseudonymous authors think the same"73 - a possibility he reiterates in the closing lines of the article. "At least I do not feel older," he concludes, "and perhaps the pseudonymous authors feel just as I do, that it is by keeping up the price of recognition that a person protects himself from becoming ridiculous and honestly does his bit so that the lawful credit due to the older author is not changed into nonsense."74 Kierkegaard justifies his own criticism of the Berlingske Tidende review by making reference to the possible correspondence between his views and those of the pseudonyms, without taking for himself the authority to argue on their be71 72 73 74

COR, 26 / SVI XIII, 420. See COR, 26 / SVI XIII, 421. COR, 25 / SVI XIII, 419. COR, 26-27 / SVI XIII, 421.

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half. While he maintains the strictest separation of his own authorial identity from those of the pseudonymous authors, Kierkegaard continues to play with the widespread rumor that it is his pen with which the pseudonyms write. Playing as "if [he] were the author," Kierkegaard writes as if he could be the pseudonyms - all of them together, despite their multiplicity and differences - and in this play, he almost writes pseudonymously (or polyonymously). He stops short of ascribing his claims to the pseudonyms, the converse of the anonymous reviewer's unauthorized ascription of the pseudonymous books to Kierkegaard, and in so stopping enacts the limit of his authority as an author. In "An Explanation and a Little More," then, Kierkegaard demonstrates something of the bounds placed on all literary criticism and interpretation. Those bounds are established in terms of the scope of the authority possessed by a critic as an author in his or her own right. In contrast to Kierkegaard's successful critical relation to the pseudonymous books in "An Explanation and a Little More," B. and the anonymous author of Andersen as a Novelist fail as critics, precisely because they lack the authority to offer the criticism they pretend to offer. Their lack of authority has, for Kierkegaard, everything to do with their anonymity as authors. In order to become legitimate criticism, these works need to be brought within the scope of Kierkegaard's veronymity. Changing the names of the authors of the works is, however, textually impossible. Kierkegaard will therefore undermine the authorial independence of B. and the anonymous reviewer of Andersen's Only a Fiddler, denying their poetical actuality as authors distinct from Kierkegaard. B. was made but a sign to hide the veronym in "To Mr. Orla Lehmann"; the anonymous reviewer will be likewise transformed in the Introduction to Kierkegaard's A Literary Review. B.'s relation to Kierkegaard will be discussed further in the next section; A Literary Review will be the text of inquiry in Chapter Four.

T h e P r o b l e m a t i c P r o x i m i t y of V e r o n y m i t y In Chapter One, we observed the manner in which the anonymous author of Andersen as a Novelist presents veronymity in an almost entirely negative light. The primary fault for which Andersen's Only a Fiddler can be held accountable is the undue proximity it has to the personality of the historical H. C. Andersen. Because Andersen cannot distance his own personality from that of his literary production, the reviewer maintains that Andersen fails as a novelist, and Only a

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Fiddler fails as a poetic work. The anonymous reviewer praises the author of A Story of Everyday Life for the maintenance of precisely this distance, and the author of A Story of Everyday Life maintains this distance, unlike Andersen, by virtue of "his" anonymity as an author. That the author of Only a Fiddler is named with H. C. Andersen's name makes distinguishing between the factually actual person and his poetically actual, authorial persona difficult for author and readers alike. Thus, the review of Only a Fiddler is itself anonymous, as is From the Papers of One Still Living, in which the review is published. As I wrote at one point in Chapter One, veronymous authorship results in what one might call the "problematic proximity" of the author to the work he or she authors. We see the problem of this proximity again, for example, in Kierkegaard's critic, Beck, as presented by Kierkegaard in "Public Confession." We also found in Chapter One, however, that the anonymous reviewer utilizes a mode of poetic criticism in his review. Andersen as a Novelist constructs a life story for H. C. Andersen, author and narrator of Only a Fiddler, such that the poetic failures of the novel make poetic sense in light of the personality of the novelist. In essence, the anonymous reviewer writes a poem the protagonist of which is H. C. Andersen. The poetry of the critic was necessitated by the incompleteness of Only a Fiddler when considered in independence of its author. As such, we came to understand Andersen as a Novelist (and later, but for the same reasons, From the Papers of One Still Living) as simultaneously a work of literary criticism and a work of literature. Andersen as a Novelist was thus bound by the very same standards to which it held Only a Fiddler. In the present chapter, we have seen this simultaneity of natures to be true of Kierkegaard's veronymous literary criticism and self-criticism in the first four explanations. We must therefore hold Kierkegaard to the very same standards to which he holds the anonymous author of "Press Freedom Affair," Orla Lehmann, A. F. Beck, and the rest. This entails, among other things, remaining cautious of the possibility of an unduly close correspondence between Kierkegaard's personality and the works he authors. The veronymity of the first four explanations rests in part upon the existence of a factually actual human being, S0ren Kierkegaard, resident and writing in Copenhagen between 1836 and 1845. Veronymity is only itself in the name of some such person. Poetry, however, is the literary province of poetically actual authors alone, and Kierkegaard's journalistic-literary criticism in the first four explanations is criticism as poetic reconstruction,

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explanation as Forklaring. Because Kierkegaard's four veronymous newspaper articles create poetic worlds and persons of their own, they imply poetically actual authors in a way more direct forms of writing - diary entries, for example, or personal letters - do not. The first four explanations are not merely works of criticism, they are works of poetry, as well. As poetry, they are freed from a necessary correspondence between the authorial perspective from which they are written and the personality of some factually actual, ethically responsible human being. We must grant works of literature and poetry this freedom, else, as Kierkegaard will note later, poetry becomes "impossible or meaningless and intolerable."75 The first four explanations establish, however, the ethical necessity of veronymous ascription in published works of literary criticism (as well as eulogy, and political or religious reform). As we saw earlier in this chapter, true criticism or review depends upon the very same authorial proximity deemed problematic in works of poetry in Chapter One. Without a factually actual ethical agent at hand, voluntarily responsible for whatever praise- or blameworthy literary acts the work performs, the critical work never touches upon the factual actuality of the work it criticizes. Although not exclusively so, this is especially the case when the works under criticism are themselves veronymous. In such cases, among which we must classify Andersen as a Novelist, what the critic writes takes upon itself at least the appearance of a commentary on factually actual persons. The anonymous reviewer of From the Papers of One Still Living seems to comment upon the character of H. C. Andersen, man resident in Copenhagen. What he makes public in his review of Andersen's novel and Andersen as a novelist will have an effect on the factually actual life of factually actual Andersen. Thus, the otherwise literary criticism must be understood as an act with moral, legal and literary consequences, at least insofar as we accept the terms set forth in the first four explanations. Authors ought to be held responsible for those consequences of publication that make direct attempts on the factually actual state of affairs. B.'s articles enter into the debate over freedom of the Danish press, as well as literary criticism of other newspaper articles on that topic. Given the stance he takes in the first four explanations, Kierkegaard must draw B. up into his veronymity, eradicating whatever authorial independence readers might have found for B. in B.'s literary output. He

75

CUPI, 627 / SKS 7, 571.

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must do the same with the anonymous author of Andersen as a Novelist, and will eventually do so. The vision of literary criticism in the first four explanations dismisses the significance of the possibility that works of critical review might themselves be poetic works. As the first four explanations are themselves both poetry and review, Kierkegaard's work as an author seems here to contradict the theory of authorship he puts forward in those works. Kierkegaard, according to the standards set forth in his veronymous newspaper articles, writes bad poetry. This was the same contradiction that the anonymous author of Andersen as a Novelist instantiated in his work as a poetic critic, and thus that Kierkegaard will later subsume that anonym into his own veronymity is not altogether inappropriate. The anonymous reviewer fails in the very same way Kierkegaard fails, that is, as a poet. The failure cannot be explained away in terms of the differences between journalism and bookwriting, given that Andersen as a Novelist and the first four explanations fail in the same way Nor can we eradicate the failure through reliance upon the distinct nature of Kierkegaard's literary criticism as simultaneously poetry and review, given that the theory of authorship presented in the first four explanations is used to criticize other authors - Lehmann, Beck, and the anonymous reviewer for Berlingske Tidende - whose works are expressly literary critical. The first four explanations are no less literary criticism than the works and critics they criticize, and Kierkegaard is thus no less responsible for adhering to the standards he establishes for literary criticism. The only possible explanation has to do with the distance inherent between authors and their works, and it requires us to rely (once again) upon a notion of authorship that distinguishes poetically actual authors from factually actual persons. To this point, the explanation does not differ from that provided for From the Papers of One Still Living in Chapter One; nor does it differ much from what Kierkegaard will have to say with regard to his pseudonymous authorship in "A First and Last Explanation," to be discussed at length in Chapter Three. Nevertheless, before we can read "A First and Last Explanation," we need an explanation of the first four explanations. In contrast to Chapters One and Three, however, the explanation in this chapter, demanded by the authorial incongruities of the first four explanations, can rest only on the ground of a more thorough understanding of Kierkegaardian veronymity. To this point, authorship has been understood primarily as the authorship of individual works. While we have discussed the authorships

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of various authors - that of B., for example, or that of Kierkegaard - those authorships have been treated primarily as collections of disparate works, joined only by their common ascription to a single author. The first four explanations force us to reconsider this approach, however, given that, despite the differences in their particular goals or arguments, the four works taken together have a cumulative effect on interpretations of any one of them taken individually. Just as we cannot read "A First and Last Explanation" except in light of the first four explanations, so we cannot read any one of the first four explanations without at least some reference to its relation to the other three. The four works form, in another sense, a single work. And that single work, like all works of poetry or literature, implies a single author.76 Our notion of authorship is thus not changed as much as the terms in which it occurs are broadened to include the production of bodies of work, corpora, in addition to the more regularly noted production of works that sit comfortably within a single binding or under a single title with a single byline. Authors are those who produce either works or corpora, then, and considering a work independent of its corpus can be understood as an undermining of the authorial structures of both the work and the corpus. The author imbues the component elements of his or her corpus with an immortal spirit attributable to the corpus as a whole. This is rather difficult to recognize in any particular given instance of a group of written works, each member of the group ascribed to the same author. The author of each of the components is the intangible spirit, implied by the published work. The works of a corpus imply the same author, but they do not necessarily do so singly. Each of the works in the corpus is authored by the author of the corpus, however, and as such each work ought to imply the author of the corpus with or without reference to the entire corpus. This is the heart of the difficulty. Taken individually, each of the first four explanations might imply an author at least in part different from the author implied by the four of them taken as a single work. That the first four explana76

Compare Sean Burke The Death and Return of the Author: Criticism and Subjectivity in Barthes, Foucault and Derrida, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press 1992. In a discussion of Roland Barthes, Burke introduces the notion of the "oeuvre," roughly equivalent in Burke's use to my use of the term "corpus." Burke writes, "Of course, faith in the oeuvre is nothing less than faith in the author, or in his signature at least, and the constants and correspondences thereby contracted. In absolutely minimalist terms, the author is that principle which unites the objects - whether collusive or discrete - that gather under his proper name," p. 35.

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tions form a corpus, and are not to be considered individually, is not obvious. Quite the contrary: reading the first four explanations together as "the first four explanations" is an act of interpretation or explanation on the part of the reader. Nothing about any of the works taken individually necessitates taking the four of them together. The novels of H. C. Andersen do not form a corpus, although they are all ascribed to H. C. Andersen. They do not imply a single author, as they are written from different authorial perspectives. If this is only arguably true of Andersen, it certainly remains true of other authors, such as E. T. A. Hoffmann or F. W. Schlegel - and, if it is true of Hoffmann or of Schlegel, then the difficulty remains. A reader only occasionally finds a corpus given to him or her for ready appropriation. Rather, more often than not, when a reader reads a corpus, he or she has chosen to read the many works as a single work, obviating the multiplicity of authors with a single author. That choice is an interpretive choice, and it makes all the difference. Kierkegaard gives us a corpus in "To Mr. Orla Lehmann," where he binds the two anonymous newspaper articles to his own as the unified products of a single author. To arrange this corpus, however, Kierkegaard had to deprive another author - the anonym, B. - of his authority and independence. B. ceases to be a real author when Kierkegaard takes him for his own, becoming but an authorial ploy on the part of an author who desires secrecy, nothing more. The second, third and fourth explanations, taken together with the first explanation and its two anonymous predecessors, form a distinct body of work within the wide field of Kierkegaardian works - they are all articles, they are all ascribable to the veronym, they are all self-critical literary reviews. The similarities do not inhere in any of the works taken individually, but are found only in the relation of those works to one another, and of those works to the rest of the works ascribable in some way to Kierkegaard. Here we find the distinguishing mark of Kierkegaardian veronymity, what makes Kierkegaard's use of the veronym distinct from its uses in, say, Andersen, Hoffmann and Schlegel. While any reading of Kierkegaard is in some sense freely interpretive, to read the first four explanations as a Kierkegaardian corpus is to reenact what Kierkegaard performs by way of the veronym. One reads the corpus freely, but Kierkegaard encourages one to read it so.77 77

One can find the basis of an understanding of the role played in the Kierkegaardian authorship by those most famous of the veronymous works, the upbuilding discourses, in this notion of the corpus. The six volumes of upbuilding discourses published prior to 1845 form what seems to be a rather clear corpus within the larger

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The pseudonymous authorship in the period in question, 1836 to 1845, demonstrates rather clearly a penchant for naming different authorial perspectives with different names. When both Concluding Unscientific Postscript and Philosophical Fragments are ascribed to Johannes Climacus, readers are encouraged to read them as distinct works by a single author. When Stages on Life's Way is edited by Hilarius Bogbinder, and Either/Or by Victor Eremita, we are conversely but in the same way discouraged from bringing the two very similar works into too close an authorial relation. Stages and Either/Or are two distinct works; Postscript and Fragments are the components of a single author's corpus. That there are pseudonymous corpora is evident only insofar as multiple works are ascribed to the same pseudonym. The names of authors are used to encourage readers in their readings of the pseudonymous corpora and works. In producing multiple works under the single authorial name, "S. Kierkegaard," Kierkegaard behaves no differently. The multiple pseudonymous works and corpora are brought together by Kierkegaard into another kind of corpus in "A First and Last Explanation." Kierkegaard's veronymous works - in this case, the first four explanations - do not require a first and last explanation to organize a corpus. Like the works of Johannes Climacus, Kierkegaard's works help readers to engage in that endeavor by way of the repeated appearance of Kierkegaard's name. Kierkegaardian veronymity is distinct from other possible veronymities precisely in this, that, for Kierkegaard, veronymity functions as pseudonymity functions. The pseudonyms and the veronym alike name particular authorial perspectives implied by but distinct from the works they author. As such, the Kierkegaard who authors Kierkegaardian authorship (including the other veronymous works, as well as the anonymous and pseudonymous ones). Kierkegaard makes the corpus clear - gives us the corpus - in 1845 when, as the author of the eighteen upbuilding discourses, he republishes them as a single work, Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses. Thus, we can understand the differences between these discourses and other of the veronymous works, such as the explanatory works (the first four explanations, "A First and Last Explanation," and On My Work as an Author), in terms of distinct corpora. Kierkegaard has at least two veronymous corpora, then, one upbuilding and the other explanatory. How these corpora relate to one another, and together, how they inform our understanding of the veronym as author, are questions of great import to Kierkegaard studies. This does not give a full account of the veronymous authorship, of course, but I think that herein lies the ground of such an account, the completion of which lies beyond the scope of the present work. Some of this work has been recently begun, however, by George Pattison in his Kierkegaard's Upbuilding Discourses: Philosophy, Theology, Literature, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2002.

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"To Mr. Orla Lehmann" can be understood as the same Kierkegaard who authors "Public Confession," "A Little Explanation," and "An Explanation and a Little More." Kierkegaard's veronymity unifies the works ascribed to Kierkegaard under a single authorial perspective in a fashion impossible with regard to the works ascribed to Andersen - who writes veronymously sometimes as a merely poetical narrator, veronymously sometimes as himself.78 Andersenian veronymity is the structural instantiation of Andersen's confusion as an author as to the difference between poetical actuality and factual actuality. Kierkegaardian veronymity, on the other hand, is a preventative against such confusion on the structural level. Veronymity is thus like anonymity and pseudonymity, for Kierkegaard, in that the veronymous author is a poetically actual implication of the works or corpora he or she authors, at least on the occasion of the production of poetry and poetic criticism. Like anonyms and pseudonyms, the veronymous author of the first four explanations implies his own author. This follows necessarily from Kierkegaard's nature as poetically actual. Poetry does not produce itself; some author is always the source of a work of poetry. Insofar as he is the literary critic who authors the first four explanations, Kierkegaard is himself a work of poetry, a poetically actual authorial persona written as the perspective from which the first four explanations are written, but inherent (rather than external) to those works. In this, Kierkegaard as author differs neither from an anonymous nor from a pseudonymous author. Nevertheless, as has already been noted, veronymity is veronymity only insofar as the name of the veronymous author is simultaneously the name of some factually actual person - and not just any person, but the person responsible as the occasion in history for the poetical production of the author as an author. The Kierkegaardian veronym is not simply one more of the Kierkegaardian pseudonyms (contra SI0k), but is distinguished in the rather large fraternity of Kierkegaardian 78

One must but compare the uses of the first-person pronoun in Only a Fiddler and The Fairy Tale of My Life to find textual justification for this claim in H. C. Andersen's works themselves. Of particular note is that, in the first case, Andersen pretends to belief in the factual actuality of his hero, Christian; in the second, Christian is but a fictional character produced by Andersen, lacking factual actuality. See Andersen Kun en Spillemand, Copenhagen: Gyldendalske Boghandels Forlag 1901. And Andersen Mit Livs Eventyr, Copenhagen: C A . Reitzels Bo og Arvinger 1855. These are incommensurable positions without recourse to an understanding of Andersen, at least in the first case, as either pathologically incapable of making the distinction between fact and fiction, or, perhaps more justifiably, as himself a poetically actual authorial personality (within the bounds of the novel).

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authors by virtue of the special relation his name bears to the name of the historical individuality at the historical origin of all of the authors, S0ren Kierkegaard. Kierkegaard, the poetically actual, veronymous author of the first four explanations, is and must be kept absolutely distinct from this other, historical S0ren Kierkegaard. Blurring this most fundamental authorial distinction is not an interpretive option. It is a denial of the basic reality of Kierkegaard as an author, the attempt to portray a fictional character as an historical person. Kierkegaard qua authorial persona remains related to Kierkegaard qua historical person, however, by virtue of the veronymity of the former's use of the latter's name. That veronymity does not entail an agreement between the Kierkegaardian persona and the Kierkegaardian person. As demonstrated in and by way of the first four explanations, however, veronymity does open up the possibility of the person's factually actual responsibility for the works and corpora authored by the persona in the person's name. The relation between the two Kierkegaardian personalities (person and persona) is complicated by the nature of the boundary between poetical actuality and factual actuality. Kierkegaard cannot acknowledge as persona the distinct existence of S0ren Kierkegaard as person without undermining his own authority as an author. As authorial independence implies the possibility of an independent self-understanding on the part of the author, should the author understand him- or herself as dependent upon another for his or her identity, the author's authorial independence is lost. Without authorial independence, however, there is no legitimate authorial ascription, and thus no author to speak of. If Kierkegaard is to remain an author, he cannot appear in his works to understand himself as a poetical product, named veronymously after some historical person. For this reason, Kierkegaard as author cannot understand himself in the way in which we, as readers, understand him, namely, as named after another Kierkegaard. Nor can anyone - neither Kierkegaard nor his readers - understand the veronymous author to have been named by anyone other than himself. This includes any conception of the author of the author. Kierkegaard exists as author in a poetically self-sufficient poetical actuality. Interference in the structure of that actuality from within any other actuality - such as the factual actuality in which Kierkegaard's readers presumably reside alongside S0ren Kierkegaard, historical person, or another poetical actuality in which some author exists as Kierkegaard's author - necessitates the total collapse of Kierkegaard as an author. This was precisely what occured when Kierkegaard, in "To

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Mr. Orla Lehmann," undermined the authorial independence of his anonym, B. Were we to understand Kierkegaard as anything other than selfnamed, Kierkegaard would lose his authorial independence and the integrity and self-sufficiency of his poetical actuality, which would in turn undermine the possibility of the first four explanations as works of both poetry and review. Without that simultaneity of natures, however, the first four explanations can only be understood as commentaries within factual actuality on factual actuality, and as such they become little more than thoroughly unjustified, at least partly irrational attempts to reconstruct reality on the sole basis of Kierkegaard's imagination. There is no Forklaring without poetical actuality. Thus the stakes are set, and set rather high: either Kierkegaard qua author somehow names himself after Kierkegaard qua historical person in the impossibility of admitting the possibility of the existence of that other Kierkegaard, or Kierkegaard's first four explanations (and "A First and Last Explanation," and On My Work as an Author) are the workings of a thoroughly incompetent philosopher or the ravings of a perhaps quite talented madman.79 Kierkegaard, then, is but one voice in the Kierkegaardian cacaphony, his first four explanations four texts helping to further illustrate the contours of the veronymous voice, but without the authorial privilege one might expect in the Kierkegaardian authorship from an author called "Kierkegaard." This author, Kierkegaard, is written as an ironic poet too sly for his own good, outwitting even himself in the end. The contradiction performed in the publication of the first four explanations, if understood as a contradiction, prevents us from accepting Kierkegaard's word on journalism, literature, and literary or journalistic-literary criticism as the ultimate or most substantial word in the Kierkegaardian authorship. Kierkegaard is authored by another author in the Kierkegaardian authorship and, as that author is neither mentioned nor named within the authorship, that author must be considered anonymous. Given the nature of veronymity, and the practical significance of writing veronymously, the question of Kierkegaard's author is of paramount importance in readings of the Kierkegaardian authorship and its component (anonymous, pseudonymous, and veronymous) works. We cannot name Kierkegaard's author with Kierkegaard's name. As such, it seems we must come to accept the 79

That is, either the religious (impossible possibility) or the aesthetic (philosopher or madman).

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consequences and questions that arise from the fact that the outermost author in the Kierkegaardian authorship is anonymous and is not Kierkegaard. Of especial interest to readings of the veronymous works are whether this author of the author is ultimately identical with the author of the pseudonymous and anonymous authors, and what Kierkegaard's anonymous author might mean to say in writing Kierkegaard as he (or she) does.

Chapter Three Opera and Explanation: "A First and Last Explanation" and "A Cursory Observation Concerning a Detail in Don Giovanni" While the first four explanations are certainly explanatory, Kierkegaardian Forklaring (as discussed in Chapter Two) only receives its first full and fully significant expression in "A First and Last Explanation" {'En f0rste og sidste Forklaring"], published as an appendix to Johannes Climacus' Concluding Unscientific Postscript. Therein, Kierkegaard offers in his own name the first Forklaring by way of which the pseudonymous works are explained in their relation to Kierkegaard as the author of their pseudonymous authors. Perhaps especially given the difference in Kierkegaard's usage between Erklcering and Forklaring (but certainly not for this reason alone), "A First and Last Explanation" ought not be understood as Kierkegaard's attempt to demonstrate to his reader(s) the real nature of the pseudonymous authorship. Rather, in this brief work Kierkegaard offers one interpretation of his relation to and responsibility for a portion of the Kierkegaardian authorship. Kierkegaard, he claims, is the author of the extraordinary number of pseudonymous books and newspaper articles published up to and including Postscript in 1846 - but, he is quick to add, only in a very limited way, only to a very limited extent. As we saw in Chapter Two, however, Kierkegaard is one author among many Kierkegaardian authors, and he is not the most selfaware or least poetically constructed of his literary confrères. Like the pseudonymous and anonymous authors, S. Kierkegaard has himself an author, anonymous and responsible for occasioning in poetical actuality the possibility of an author named "Kierkegaard." The author of Kierkegaard as an author is ever invisible, ever inaudible, ever just beyond the bounds of Kierkegaard understood as an authorial

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personality (person or persona of the author of the author) at work in the production of the veronymous authorship. That Kierkegaard takes upon himself (with or without authority) authorial responsibility for the authors of the pseudonymous works does not of itself put an end to the succession of authors implied by and at work in the authorship of those works. Setting aside for the moment the possibility that Kierkegaard may not possess the authority to deprive the pseudonymous authors of their authorial independence from Kierkegaard, no one work produced by an author has the authority necessary to unambiguously ground a reader's understanding of the nature of the total authorship of that author. Kierkegaard can do nothing more in "A First and Last Explanation" than reinterpret himself as the author of the pseudonymous authors, reinterpreting the pseudonymous authors as products of his own authorial production. The pseudonymous works do not necessarily function in the manner Kierkegaard suggests, and that the suggestion is Kierkegaard's is not itself grounds for us to accept the truth of the suggestion. "A First and Last Explanation" is an interpretation of the pseudonymous authorship. That it is an interpretation implies the possibility of other, divergent interpretations. Such is the nature of interpretation or Forklaring, and such is the nature of Kierkegaard's "A First and Last Explanation." The situation of "A First and Last Explanation" is further complicated by its context within Concluding Unscientific Postscript. Kierkegaard tries to explain his relationship to Johannes Climacus in "A First and Last Explanation," but that explanation is problematized by its location between the covers of Climacus' book.1 As we will see, authorial responsibility for both "A First and Last Explanation" and Postscript is put into question thereby. The nature of the relationship between Kierkegaard and Climacus is thus confused by the first work in which Kierkegaard makes explicit the attempt to remedy confusion over that relationship. That relationship remains at least largely ambiguous, even after the publication of the purported explanation. "A First and Last Explanation" is no less bound up in problematic matters of author1

Moreover, although I do not make the argument here, one could point out that "A First and Last Explanation" relies upon the content of Climacus' Postscript for much of its own explanatory power. Especially with regard to such technical terms as "dialectal reduplication," "indirect communication," and "double reflection," Kierkegaard explains the pseudonymity of Johannes Climacus in terms themselves only explained by Johannes Climacus. This reliance serves to bind "A First and Last Explanation" more obviously to Concluding Unscientific Postscript, such that the former begs its reader to read it in terms of the latter.

Opera and Explanation

ship than the works "A First and Last Explanation" tries to explain. Whether or not it is the key to reading the pseudonymous authorship (as it is sometimes believed to be), "A First and Last Explanation" does not provide an unambiguous or readily appropriable framework for such reading, and must itself be read with the same care and caution characteristic of our readings of other Kierkegaardian works. The present chapter, then, begins with a consideration of Kierkegaard's "A First and Last Explanation," and the theory of pseudonymous authorship as practiced by Kierkegaard put forward therein (§ 1). No consideration of Kierkegaard's explanation of his pseudonymity is complete, however, without reference to Kierkegaard's own role as the veronymous author of that explanation. As such, a part of my explanation of Kierkegaard's explanation will be an attempt to uncover Kierkegaard as the authorial personality at work in the explanation. As an author, we will see, Kierkegaard functions and is structured very much like the other authors at work in the authorship. Of primary significance in this regard is the tendency toward fragmentation in Kierkegaard's authorial perspective, and the resultant ambiguity for his text. When Kierkegaard is difficult (or impossible) to decipher, the decipherment of Kierkegaard's works becomes likewise difficult (or impossible). The ambiguity of Kierkegaard's "A First and Last Explanation" extends beyond mere obscurity, however, and that ambiguity, I argue, leads the explanation into a textual fragmentation not unlike that characteristic of Andersen's Only a Fiddler, at least as it is depicted by the anonymous reviewer in Andersen as a Novelist. Kierkegaard's fragmentation springs from the very same source as Andersen's: the confusion between poetical and factual actualities, between poetry and history, between fiction and fact. This confusion can be seen most clearly in Kierkegaard's account in "A First and Last Explanation" of the appearance of the veronym as editor/publisher of Philosophical Fragments and Concluding Unscientific Postscript (§ 2). A thorough consideration of Kierkegaard and "A First and Last Explanation" cannot rest with the fragmentation of the text (or its author), however, and for this reason I seek in the present chapter an explanation of "A First and Last Explanation" in the possibility that the fragmentation of the work is of the essence of the work as a work.2 Following from this possibility, I turn the inquiry into Kierkegaard as author 2

The reader will understand my hesitance to use the more familiar language of authorial intention - that is, to read the work as if the fragmentation of the work and its author(s) was intentional.

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of "A First and Last Explanation" away from the explanation, and back toward the identity and function of S. Kierkegaard as author. If Kierkegaard is authored by another, anonymous author, then that other author, the author of the author, can be held responsible for authoring an author who authors a failed, fragmented explanatory work (in which he fails to account adequately for himself as the author of other, pseudonymous authors). A consideration of Kierkegaard as authored, rather than as author, draws our readerly attention away from Kierkegaard's works (be they authors or texts) and toward Kierkegaard's authorial activity, that is, his performance as an author. After a brief consideration of the relation between authorship, interpretation, and performance (§ 3), then, I turn to the first work in the Kierkegaardian authorship (if it can, in fact, be situated within that authorship as one of its constitutive elements) to inquire centrally into performance itself, in which an operatic performance is evaluated according to a theory of performance (§ 4). The work is a newspaper article ascribed to the anonym, A., "A Cursory Observation Concerning a Detail in Don Giovanni." It appears in print almost one year prior to Postscript and "A First and Last Explanation," and it is never subsumed by Kierkegaard into the Kierkegaardian authorship as a product of his function as author of the pseudonymous and anonymous authors. (This is, of course, a problem for readings of the article as significantly Kierkegaardian.) The present chapter closes with a return to Kierkegaard and "A First and Last Explanation," explained a second time (§ 5), and in the second explanation of which I suggest that "A Cursory Observation Concerning a Detail in Don Giovanni" offers a better, if more indirect and certainly authorially problematic, perspective from which to approach the Kierkegaardian authors, including Kierkegaard as an author, and the anonymous but necessarily ever present author of Kierkegaard and the other Kierkegaardian authors.

Being Explained Kierkegaard begins "A First and Last Explanation" with the acknowledgement of the truth of a widespread rumor that, at the publication of Concluding Unscientific Postscript, had been circulating in Copenhagen for some time: For the sake of form and order, I hereby acknowledge, something that really can scarcely be of interest to anyone to know, that I am, as is said, the author of Either/Or (Victor Eremita), Copenhagen, February 1843; Fear and Trembling (Johannes de si-

Being Explained lentio), 1843; Repetition (Constantin Constantius), 1843; The Concept of Anxiety (Vigilius Haufniensis), 1844; Prefaces (Nicolaus Notabene), 1844; Philosophical Fragments (Johannes Climacus), 1844; Stages on Life's Way (Hilarius Bogbinder - William Afham, the Judge, Frater Taciturnus), 1845; Concluding Postscript to Philosophical Fragments (Johannes Climacus), 1846; an article in Fcedrelandet, no. 1168,1843 (Victor Eremita); two articles in Fcedrelandet, January 1846 (Frater Taciturnus).3

The acknowledgement confirms the public and published suspicion that Kierkegaard had in fact written the books and newspaper articles he names - an apparent acquiescence to history, the ethical, and factual actuality on the part of Kierkegaard - and yet, in throwing the legitimacy of interest in Kierkegaard's role in the authorship of the works into question, the acquiescence is not only a confirmation, but also an offense and a disavowal. While the first sentence of "A First and Last Explanation" names Kierkegaard as the author - a claim soon to be qualified - it simultaneously stresses the indifference with which readers of the nominally Kierkegaardian authorship ought to approach the question of Kierkegaard's role in the authorship of the authorship, "something that really can scarcely be of interest to anyone to know." Kierkegaard thus both affirms and denies the rumor and the truth of the rumor (the falsity of which lies in that it cannot be anything but a rumor). For the sake of form and order, he claims, Kierkegaard attempts to allow ascription of the named pseudonymous works to himself as the veronym. The nature of the pseudonymity he describes in "A First and Last Explanation," however, prevents him from taking full authorial responsibility for the works ascribed to the pseudonyms. "My pseudonymity or polyonymity has not had an accidental basis in my person," he writes, "but an essential basis in the production itself."4 That is, the works with regard to which Kierkegaard hereby acknowledges responsibility in the name of the veronym are themselves essentially pseudonymous works. The pseudonymity of the works thus cannot be eradicated by Kierkegaard post-publication, as was the anonymity of the Kj0benhavns flyvende Post articles originally ascribed to B. According to Kierkegaard, at least, the pseudonymous works required an indiscriminateness with regard to good and evil, brokenheartedness and gaiety, despair and overconfidence, suffering and elation, etc., which is ideally limited only by psychological consistency, which no factually actual person dares to allow himself or can want to allow himself in the moral limitations of actuality.5 3 4 5

CUPI, 625 / SKS 7, 569. CUPI, 625 / SKS 7, 569. CUPI, 625 / SKS 7, 569.

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Far from being the author responsible for the authorship of the pseudonymous books, then, Kierkegaard maintains that no factually actual human being could or would be or become their author. The authors of the works in question - all pseudonyms - must be understood to remain secure within the ideality of poetical actuality. Transposing the authorship of any of the works into factual actuality, ascribing any one of them to Kierkegaard or any other existing subjectivity, forces that factually actual authorial personality into one of two unacceptable and undesirable positions: either he transgresses "the moral limitations of actuality," or he foregoes "psychological consistency": he is either evil, or he is insane. Nevertheless, Kierkegaard maintains that he is, "as is said, the author." This problematic - that Kierkegaard is and is not the author of Either/Or, Fear and Trembling, Repetition and the rest - demands an explanation of Kierkegaard, at least insofar as he, as authorial personality, engages the authorship in his own name. "What has been written, then, is mine," he writes, but only insofar as I, by means of audible lines, have placed the life-view [Livs-Anskuelse] of the creating, poetically actual individuality in his mouth, for my relation is even more remote than that of a poet, who poetizes characters and yet in the preface is himself the author. That is, I am impersonally or personally in the third person a souffleur who has poetically produced the authors, whose prefaces in turn are their productions, as their names are also. Thus in the pseudonymous books there is not a single word by me.6

The pseudonymous works are thus the products each of an author or authors - whichever pseudonym or pseudonyms are named as author within the text or on the title page - and those authors are themselves, in every case, poetically actual authorial personalities. Poetically actual authors imply their own authors, however, as we have seen in the cases of the anonymous and veronymous authors of From the Papers of One Still Living and the Kj0benhavns fly vende Post and Fcedrelandet articles. Such is also - and perhaps, anachronistically speaking, paradigmatically - the case with regard to the pseudonymous authors of Kierkegaard's acknowledgement in "A First and Last Explanation." Kierkegaard is not the author of those works in this sense; Kierkegaard is not Johannes de silentio. Johannes de silentio is himself a work of poetry - as are all authors in poetical actuality - and, in "A First and Last Explanation," Kierkegaard names himself as Johannes de silentio's author. In this second sense, Kierkegaard bears authorial 6

CUPI, 625-626 / SKS 7, 569-570.

Being Explained

responsibility for the pseudonymous works. He is, as is said, the author - but only by virtue of naming himself as the author of the pseudonymous authors. This is little different from the manner in which Shakespeare is and is not responsible for Desdemona's murder - or Iago's betrayal. The author of the authors is not and can never be held authorially responsible for what is written in the texts ascribed to the authored authors. "Therefore," Kierkegaard writes, "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."7 As anonymity did for the author of A Story of Everyday Life, author authorship enacts a significant distance between Kierkegaard (as author of the authors) and the pseudonymous works (as authored by the pseudonymous authors). "Thus I am the indifferent, that is, what and how I am are matters of indifference, precisely because in turn the question, whether in my innermost being it is also a matter of indifference to me what and how I am, is absolutely irrelevant to this production."8 Considerations of Kierkegaard's personality, including even his own understanding of his relation to the pseudonymous authorship, are made irrelevant to readings of the pseudonymous works precisely insofar as he is regarded not as their author, but only as the author of their authors. The claim itself, if true, is technically unnecessary - unless readers confuse the factual actuality of S0ren Kierkegaard with the poetical actuality of the pseudonyms, and begin to believe that the works acknowledged in the first line of "A First and Last Explanation" are, in fact, by Kierkegaard. Such a mistake, however, would be tantamount to letting the superficial, external factors of Kierkegaard's factually actual life, "like the question of whether I wear a hat or a cap,"9 inform one's reading of the pseudonymous - or, for that matter, veronymous or anonymous - texts. Thus, Kierkegaard resolves the problematic question of his own authorial proximity to the pseudonymous works by way of positing or revealing himself as authorially responsible only for the authors of those works. He distances himself from the works themselves by ascribing them in their totalities as written works to the pseudonymous authors. Only by relinquishing any part in the authorship of the works can 7 8 9

CUPI, 627 / SKS 7, 571. CUPI, 626 / SKS 7, 570. CUPI, 626 / SKS 7, 570.

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Kierkegaard preserve the works in their pseudonymity (of which itself, as he acknowledges, he is the author). Otherwise, as was the case with Andersen's veronymous novel, the unacknowledged duplicity of the works would force a contradiction, and thus a duplicity, within the authorial personality. In his praise of Christian, the character of his poetic production, Andersen forces a split within Only a Fiddler that neither he nor any reader can repair, a split that results in a second split within Andersen as author of the novel, whereby Andersen is brought into a poetic self-contradiction: he is both Christian's defender (as narrator of Only a Fiddler), and the principle of Christian's destruction (as Christian's author). On the basis of the self-contradiction and failure of Only a Fiddler, Andersen is divided irremediably against himself. The consequences of a similar split within any of the pseudonymous works Kierkegaard mentions would have no lesser consequence, and would be no less grave. The distance Kierkegaard attempts to effect between himself and the pseudonyms, if effective, would save him from the dangers of textual and authorial fragmentation made evident so disastrously, at least on one reading, in the authorship of H. C. Andersen. While Kierkegaard maintains that, "In a legal and in a literary sense, the responsibility is mine,"10 he rests the integrity of the entire pseudonymous authorship on the condition that, within the authorial structures pervading and surrounding any passage within his pseudonymous works, he and the pseudonyms are separated "in such a way that the passage femininely belongs to the pseudonymous author, the responsibility civilly to me."11 That is, the pseudonymous authors are responsible for having written whatever is written within the poetical bounds of their poetical productions; Kierkegaard, as the veronymous author of the pseudonymous authors, takes responsibility for whatever factually actual consequences the very same works might come to have. Like estranged parents, Kierkegaard and the pseudonymous authors take simultaneous but separate responsibility for the existence of their books and articles in the world. This relationship differs radically from that between Kierkegaard and his anonym, B., in the Kj0benhavns flyvende Post articles, in the course of which Kierkegaard eliminates B.'s independence as an author - and thus, B.'s very existence - by claiming both "feminine" and "civil" responsibility for

10 11

CUPI, 627 / SKS 7, 570. CUPI, 627 / SKS 7, 571.

Being Explained

those works. Kierkegaard and B. resolve into a single author, named "Kierkegaard;" Kierkegaard and the pseudonyms do not. And yet, the pseudonyms do not remain untouched by Kierkegaard's explanation, however independently they continue in their poetical existences as the authors of particular works. After having read "A First and Last Explanation," it is impossible for a reader to return to the pseudonyms explained therein as if for the first time. A careful and a cautious reader will, prior to the explanation and regardless of rumor, read Victor Eremita in his significance as the Udgiver of Either/Or. Johannes de silentio is significant to readers of Fear and Trembling insofar as he is its author; likewise for Constantin Constantius, Johannes Climacus, and the others. While this significance is not diminished by Kierkegaard in "A First and Last Explanation" - far from it, if Kierkegaard does in fact distance himself adequately from the pseudonymous authorship - it is augmented by the reader's newfound justification in ascribing those works, at least in part, to Kierkegaard. The pseudonymous authors no longer exist only in relation to their works, as implications thereof. Rather, or in addition, the pseudonyms are now explained both in terms of their authorial responsibilities and in terms of their ambiguous and ambiguously preserved distance from Kierkegaard as their author. As Kierkegaard notes, 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.12

The pseudonyms are, perhaps ironically, suspended between their roles as authors of the pseudonymous authorship and authored creations of Kierkegaard. Each is both poet and poem. After "A First and Last Explanation," if not before, the Kierkegaardian pseudonym must not be understood outside of this suspension. The effect Kierkegaard's explanation must have on readings of the pseudonymous authors is profound, despite the fact (still asserted) that Kierkegaard's relation to the pseudonymous works is one of indifference.13 Kierkegaard, writing as the author of the authors, closes off the possibility of veronymity for the pseudonymous works, there12 13

CUPI, 627 / SKS 7, 571. The effect that the explanation has actually had, historically, is no less profound. One might note, for example, that every major edition of any of the pseudonymous works is ascribed to "S0ren Kierkegaard" - not the pseudonymous author - and that every edition of the collected works, in any language, includes the pseudonymous books and articles among Kierkegaard's Writings or S0ren Kierkegaards Skrifter.

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by enclosing the pseudonyms entirely within the poetical actuality of their works. They are, as he notes, essentially pseudonymous. As Kierkegaard is the author of the pseudonymous authors, and the works of those authors are insulated from ascription to Kierkegaard, Kierkegaard fully defines the authorships of each of the pseudonymous authors. By way of "A First and Last Explanation," the pseudonyms are circumscribed within the bounds of Kierkegaard's poetical production - and yet, in such a way so as not to distort or to destroy that which they have built up, as authors independent of Kierkegaard, on their own authority. But this is yet another articulation of the suspension of identity brought about in the pseudonyms by the explanation in "A First and Last Explanation." The pseudonymous authors are enclosed "entirely within the poetical actuality of their works," but they are simultaneously "circumscribed within the bounds of Kierkegaard's poetical production." Written by Kierkegaard as implications of texts authorial responsibility for which can only be ascribed to them themselves, the pseudonyms exist as thoroughly poetical poets whose works, perhaps somewhat ironically, are offered up to factual actuality for a reading. Whomever the pseudonyms write to or for, Kierkegaard writes them writing. Again, while the anonym, "B.," might just as well have been stricken from the byline of the articles ascribable to Kierkegaard, the pseudonyms suffer no such fate. The difference is essential. B. is lost in Kierkegaard's explanation in "To Mr. Orla Lehmann"; after the explanation, there is no B. After the explanation of the pseudonyms in "A First and Last Explanation," however, the pseudonyms remain. They are the same - Kierkegaard asserts the importance of this fact repeatedly in "A First and Last Explanation" - and yet, for readers aware of both the poetical actuality of the pseudonyms and Kierkegaard's factual actuality, they are changed in the explanation. Kierkegaard notes, in the eighteenth upbuilding discourse (the fourth of the Four Upbuilding Discourses of 1844), something of the grammatical relationship between the words Forklaring and Forklarelse - in English translation, roughly, explanation and transfiguration. As Niels Nymann Eriksen notes in his valuable study, Kierkegaard's Category of Repetition, for Kierkegaard, 'Torklarelse is the passive of Forklaring; it literally means 'being explained', but in ordinary usage it means transfiguration."14 The pseudonymous authors receive a 14

Niels Nymann Eriksen Kierkegaard's Category of Repetition: A Reconstruction (Kierkegaard Studies. Monograph Series, vol. 5), Berlin/New York: Walter de Gray-

Being Explained

first and last explanation from their author, Kierkegaard. In being explained, they are quite literally transfigured - they remain unchanged by the explanation, and yet, they are changed in the explaining. This is not entirely comprehensible. In that eighteenth discourse, "One Who Prays Aright Struggles in Prayer and is Victorious - in that God is Victorious," Kierkegaard writes of one who prayed for an explanation from God, but received none. Who, then, was victorious? It was God, because he did not give the explanation requested by the one who prayed, and he did not give it as the struggling one requested it. But the one struggling was also victorious. Or was it not a victory that instead of receiving an explanation [Forklaring] from God he was transfigured/explained [forklaret] in God, and his transfiguration [Forklarelse] is this: to reflect the image of God.15

Kierkegaard's explanation of the pseudonymity tries to leave the pseudonymous authors thoroughly independent of - and thus, essentially unexplained by - Kierkegaard. This explanation-without-explanation is not insignificant, however, for it is only by way of a Forklaring of the sort in "A First and Last Explanation" that the pseudonyms can be transfigured, as they have been transfigured, in readings and for readers of the authorship. And their transfiguration is this: to reflect the image of their author. According to the anonymous reviewer in From the Papers of One Still Living, the true poet is a "dead and transfigured [forklaret]" personality, a purely poetical authorial persona, ever-living and eternally young because he or she is free from the changing fortunes of factual actuality, fixed forever instead in poetry as the author and implication of a definite work or corpus. According to that same reviewer, the author of A Story of Everyday Life "rises up, transfigured [forklaret]," safe from the intruding presence of some real person whose life and will might threaten the poetic integrity of the authored text. Both the anonymous reviewer and the author of A Story of Everyday Life, however, attain immortality after death in the transfiguring implication of another author, each "his" own author - the authors of the anonyms who author these anonymous books. Both remain purely poetical because neither pretends to a factually actual author at its origin. Andersen and Only a Fiddler err precisely in this way. In "A First and Last Explanation," Kierkegaard affords the pseudonymous authors an explanation by way of which they, too, rise up, transfigured. Secure in their poetical actual-

15

ter 2000, p. 56.1 am indebted to William McDonald for having brought this passage - and something of the import of this grammatical relationship - to my attention. EUD, 399-400 / SKS 5, 380. The translation is slightly modified.

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ity, the pseudonymous books and articles are freed of their problematic proximity to Kierkegaard. By way of this security and this freedom, however, by way of the independence of the pseudonyms as authorial personae and only in this way, the creatures come to reflect the image of their creator, the author of the pseudonymous authors. According to "A First and Last Explanation," we do not find Kierkegaard in the pseudonymous authorship. But we do find a reflection, an image, a trace of him there. Kierkegaard is not the author of the pseudonymous works, nor is he identical with the pseudonyms, nor does he "speak through" them in any meaningful sense of the verb "to speak." The pseudonymous authors are implied by, and thus only accessible through, the works authorship of which is ascribed to them. Those authors are retroactively - and yet, for readers reading after February 27, 1846, always already - transfigured in Kierkegaard's explanatory postscript to the Postscript. The explaining interpretation Kierkegaard offers in "A First and Last Explanation" functions as did Kjerkegaard's poetizing preface to From the Papers of One Still Living, as did the anonymous reviewer's explanation of Andersen's stunted poetical development in the review, Andersen as a Novelist. The only difference lies in that, as put forward by Kierkegaard, the pseudonyms' Forklaring somehow touches upon and uncovers something about factual actuality, about a factually actual relationship that holds between a factually actual poet and the products of his poetry. As the pseudonyms themselves are thoroughly poetically actual, the factual actuality of the explanation must derive entirely from its origin in a veronymous author. S0ren Kierkegaard, man resident in Copenhagen, brings the full force of his real existence to bear upon the pseudonyms (by way of effecting a real transfiguration), as well as upon the readers of "A First and Last Explanation" (by way of effecting a real explanation). This is, no doubt, the most commonsense explanation of the explanation - Kierkegaard finally reveals the truth to us about his pseudonymity - but it is nevertheless a highly problematic one, given the nature and function of veronymity within the Kierkegaardian authorship.

"Edited by S. Kierkegaard" Kierkegaard's explanation of the pseudonymous authors is, at least in one sense, simultaneously a self-explanation. While the pseudonyms are transfigured by the power of that explanation, however, Kierkegaard is not and could not have been - there is no active transfigura-

"Edited by S. Kierkegaard"

1

tion. Forklarelse is a passive "being explained," and the self-reflexive at forklare sig means no more than the ordinary English "to interpret oneself" or "to explain oneself." However many are transfigured, no one transfigures. "A First and Last Explanation" is thus no self-transfiguration; it is, however, an attempt at an explanation or interpretation of Kierkegaard's relation to the pseudonymous authorship. That explanation divides responsibility for the pseudonymous works more or less along the same line that divides poetical actuality from factual actuality. While the poetically actual pseudonymous authors bear full authorial responsibility for their works - Kierkegaard cannot be held responsible for having written what the pseudonyms have written - Kierkegaard bears whatever responsibility for the works that factual actuality might demand of him. This responsibility is, according to "A First and Last Explanation," largely legal in nature. Thus, he notes, with regard to the law, "I am not aware of any offense, and simultaneously with the publication of a book the printer and the censor qua public official have always been officially informed who the author was."16 Here, as in the opening acknowledgement of his role in the authorship, Kierkegaard refers to himself loosely as the author of the works in question. While not literarily true - one of the main points of "A First and Last Explanation" is to divest Kierkegaard of such responsibility for the works - it is, in another sense, the fact of the matter. Thus, with regard to the authorship of the pseudonymous works, Kierkegaard writes: In a legal and in a literary sense, the responsibility is mine, but, easily understood dialectically, it is I who have occasioned the audibility of the production in the world of actuality, which of course cannot become involved with poetically actual authors and therefore altogether consistently and with absolute legal and literary right looks to me. Legal and literary, because all poetic creation would eo ipso be made impossible or meaningless and intolerable if the lines were supposed to be the producer's own words (literally understood).17

Again, then, as noted above, Kierkegaard takes "civil" responsibility for the works, reserving for himself the role of "the altogether indifferent foster father of a perhaps not undistinguished production."18 He leaves the "feminine," maternal, directly authorial responsibility for the works, again, as noted, to the poetically actual pseudonyms.19 16 17 18 19

CUPI, 625 / SKS 7, 569. CUPI, 627 / SKS 7, 570-571. CUPI, 626 / SKS 7, 570. There is an intriguing connotation here that the literary father both produces and reproduces with the literary mother in pseudonymous authorship. Moreover, one

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Opera and Explanation

The passage cited above makes clear that, for the Kierkegaard of "A First and Last Explanation," poetic creation is the province of poetically created poets (regardless of whether those poets are pseudonymous or veronymous), not the direct utterances or expressions of the factually actual persons responsible for the writing. Kierkegaard thus thoroughly rejects the general understanding of authorship, ascribable to the German Romantics, that poetry is the exalted production of a factually actual person in history, and that the demonstration of poetic genius (typically by way of the existence of a poem) implies a real poet and a poetic life of a particular sort. While this view is certainly put forward by the anonymous reviewer of Andersen as a Novelist, and Kierkegaard himself will come to take veronymous authorial responsibility for that work in A Literary Review, the Kierkegaard of "A First and Last Explanation" does not agree. Such a conception renders poetry impossible. Thus Kierkegaard reestablishes the familiar bounds between the literary and the real. The consequences within reality of blurring these bounds have already been noted: psychological inconsistency or moral transgression. The literary consequence, however, is the total dissolution of the pseudonymity of the pseudonymous authorship. Given that, for Kierkegaard, the pseudonymous works are essentially pseudonymous, the destruction of the pseudonyms to whom authorship of the works is ascribed poses a serious problem for Kierkegaard and the Kierkegaardian authorship generally - even beyond the bounds of Kierkegaardian pseudonymity, as the blurring of the bounds between Kierkegaard and the pseudonyms is the beginning of a blurring of every authorial boundary at work in the authorship. The clarity of all of the significant authorial distinctions (such as that between Kierkegaard and the anonyms, or between Kierkegaard the veronymous author and the historically actual S0ren Kierkegaard) hangs in the balance when the clarity of any of the authorial distinctions is questioned. This is perhaps especially true of the distinctions between the pseudonyms, and between Kierkegaard and the pseudonyms, given the centrality of pseudonymity to the authorship overall. Kierkegaard does not overstate the case, then, when he cautions, "A single word by me personally in my own name would be an arrogating self-forgetfulness that, regarded dialectically, would be guilty of might be interested to note that, over the course of the Kierkegaardian pseudonymity, the literary mother, although "femininely responsible" for the works, only ever manifests herself in masculine form.

"Edited by S. Kierkegaard"

1

having essentially annihilated the pseudonymous authors by this one word."20 Writing "personally in his own name" is to be distinguished here from the peculiar authorial role Kierkegaard admits to playing within the pseudonymous authorship, a role that is played in his own name, naturally, but "impersonally or personally in the third person."21 Kierkegaard is not himself - that is, he is not the actual person, S0ren Kierkegaard - as author of the pseudonymous authors. As was seen before, in the case of the author of the authors of From the Papers of One Still Living, the author of an author is essentially barred from entering authorially into the written work of the author in his or her own name. Two named authors at work in a single text are co-authors, and maintain equivalent poetical status. Co-authors are always the poetic productions of another, anonymous, ever silent author implied by their existence within and as implications of the work. A single word by Kierkegaard in his own name, veronymously, within any of the pseudonymous books or articles would make "Kierkegaard" the name of but one such co-author. To be named as co-author to a pseudonym, however, and then to deny that pseudonymous author's factual actuality elsewhere veronymously (as in "A First and Last Explanation"), is confusion precisely of the sort characteristic of Andersen, Lehmann, and the many other authors criticized in the Kierkegaardian authorship essentially for mistaking fiction for fact (or fact for fiction). For Kierkegaard's claim to authorship of the pseudonyms to hold, then, as Kierkegaard notes, he must remain entirely free of ascribability for authorship of the pseudonymous works or any portion - even a single word - thereof. Insofar as he relates to the pseudonyms and their works, Kierkegaard must be an unnamed but active souffleur, occasioning the audibility of the authors but inaudible himself. The pseudonyms are cleared of all responsibility in the world for the legal (or moral, political, or religious) ramifications of the publication of their works. They are themselves works of poetry, and thus incapable of legal responsibility. As discussed in Chapter Two, and according to Kierkegaard in "A First and Last Explanation," a veronymous author is no less poetically actual than an anonymous or a pseudonymous one. We saw in Chapter Two, however, that the veronymous author names him- or herself with a real name, the name of a specific and specifically authorially involved person - precisely that person responsible for occasioning the veronymous author's audibil20 21

CUPI, 626 / SKS 7, 570. CUPI, 625 / SKS 7, 569.

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Opera and Explanation

ity in factual actuality. As author of "A First and Last Explanation," Kierkegaard names himself with the name of S0ren Kierkegaard, man resident in Copenhagen, but he is not that man or any other factually actual man. To remain capable of being the author to whom a work or works are ascribed, the veronymous authorial persona (like all authorial personae) must maintain a feasibly independent perspective. A persona aware of himself as the poetically actual creation of a factually actual poet is not independent in this way, precisely because the awareness of oneself as fictional prevents the coherence of the personality requisite for authorial (or any other kind of) production. The Kierkegaardian veronym must maintain a belief in his own factual actuality in order to function adequately as an author, but from the perspective of factual actuality - from our perspective - he is incapable of bearing legal responsibility for the factually actual consequences of his works. This means, among other things, that although Kierkegaard can claim "legal and literary" responsibility for the pseudonymous authorship in "A First and Last Explanation," no reader is justified in believing that Kierkegaard is actually responsible. As readers, then, we must brace ourselves against the inclination to rely on matters of historical fact when coming to Kierkegaard's claims to responsibility. Near the end of "A First and Last Explanation," Kierkegaard writes: Insofar as the pseudonymous authors might have affronted any respectable person in any way whatever, or perhaps even any man I admire, insofar as the pseudonymous authors in any way whatever might have disturbed or made ambiguous any actual good in the established order - then there is no one more willing to make an apology than I, who bear the responsibility for the use of the guided pen.22

We are inclined to read into this claim our knowledge of the fact that the pseudonymous works in question were written by S0ren Kierkegaard throughout the 1840s. That Kierkegaard makes this claim in writing, that he makes it eloquently and directly, encourages us to draw together what we know of the life of Kierkegaard and what is written in the works of Kierkegaard and to affirm, without question, Kierkegaard's claim to legal responsibility for the pseudonymous works. I do not wish to dispute the truth of the conditioned ascribability of the Kierkegaardian authorship to the thoroughly factual Danish writer, S0ren Kierkegaard. But "A First and Last Explanation" is only naively understood as S0ren Kierkegaard's testament to his own factually actual involvement in the pseudonymous authorship. Vero22

CUPI, 629 / SKS'1,512.

"Edited by S. Kierkegaard"

1

nymity does not function in that manner. Rather than the work of any factually actual author, "A First and Last Explanation" is the work of a completely poetical authorial persona who happens to be veronymous. More fundamental than the author's veronymity is his poetical actuality. As has been noted numerous times before, all authors are purely poetical by virtue of their authorial natures. Veronymous authors are no exception. Nothing of the nuanced character of the veronymous authorial structure of "A First and Last Explanation" implies that S0ren Kierkegaard, man resident in Copenhagen, was not also the man holding the guided pen. Kierkegaard's Writings are rightly named; there is some sort of ascribability to that peculiar man named "Kierkegaard." "Kierkegaard," however, is not the name of the author of the pseudonymous authors - or of any other author of any author or authors. The instant an author gives him- or herself a name, that name names one more poetical implication of the work written after or under the name. The freedom of literature - its true immortality - is its absolute distance from the factual. From the perspective of history, we can talk of Kierkegaard finishing the Postscript in February 1846, of the disputes he had with the printers, or of the very particular typographical orders regarding "A First and Last Explanation." Such talk does not encroach upon poetry's proper domain; it does not even touch upon poetry. From the poetical, or literary, perspective, all such talk is meaningless. Factually actual readers of works only touch upon poetry in their readings, and a reading can never get a reader legitimately from the Postscript to Kierkegaard. As contrary to the dominant view among scholars as it may seem, a reading likewise cannot get one from "A First and Last Explanation" to S0ren Kierkegaard, the man holding the guided pen. The gulf between the two is too wide. To make the point again: a reader qua reader can never travel the distance between a literary work and the person working at its factual origin in history. As readers of the veronymous authorship, we simply cannot get from "Kierkegaard" - the name on the title page - to Kierkegaard.23 S0ren Kierkegaard, the man resident in Copenhagen, is thus out of the picture. Left in his stead, as author of numerous works including "A First and Last Explanation," is Kierkegaard, the poetically actual poet sharing the other man's name. This Kierkegaard, the only one to whom a reader can have any access in a reading, proclaims himself the author of the pseudonymous authors. The claim includes a claim to le23

Understood here as S0ren Kierkegaard, the factually actual human individual.

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gal and moral accountability for the pseudonymous authorship, an accountability only ascribable to factually actual persons. Kierkegaard thus gives evidence of his belief in his own factual actuality - but, as poetically actual, Kierkegaard can only honestly be described as "poetically factual." As the anonymous reviewer poeticized Andersen qua author in order to explain Only a Fiddler in its poetic truth, so is Kierkegaard poeticized in order to explain "A First and Last Explanation." This poeticization, although never justified by the text itself, appears to be a necessary component of the reading of veronymous works. Whether we call it "poeticization of" - and thus emphasize its activity - or "recognition of the poetical actuality of" - with an emphasis on the passivity of the reader - is ultimately a matter of interpretive indifference. Both readings result in the same model of the reading of veronymity, in which the factual "author," such as he or she is, enters at no point in a reading. Reading begins in factual actuality with the reader, and moves into poetical actuality with the work. It does not, however, move through poetical actuality into another factual actuality on the other side of the work, where "the real author," a factually actual author, resides. Thus, while the man resident in Copenhagen can be held responsible in a legal and in a literary sense on the basis of what is written in "A First and Last Explanation" (veronymity, Chapter Two), the author of "A First and Last Explanation" is not identical with that man residing in Copenhagen in anything but name. Failings of the implied author of "A First and Last Explanation" as an author are not necessarily ascribable to that other man. In a footnote from that most significant claim, "In a legal and in a literary sense, the responsibility is mine," Kierkegaard writes: For this reason my name as editor was first placed on the title page of Fragments (1844), because the absolute significance of the subject required in actuality the expression of dutiful attention, that there was a named person responsible for taking upon himself what actuality might offer.24

The title pages of both Philosophical Fragments and Concluding Unscientific Postscript bear the line of editorial ascription, just below the ascription of authorship to Johannes Climacus, "Edited by S. Kierkegaard."25 The line is (or ought to be) a perplexing one for readers of 24

25

CUPI, 627n. / SKS 7, 570 n. 1.1 have treated the significance of this passage differently (and perhaps unduly naively) elsewhere, in relation to the nature of Johannes Climacus as an author. See "Reading the Epigraph to Philosophical Fragments" in Kierkegaardiana 23, 2005, pp. 126-141. PF, 1 / SKS 4, 213; CUPI, 1 / SKS 7, 7.

"Edited by S. Kierkegaard"

1

Fragments and Postscript. While Johannes Climacus is granted full authorial responsibility for those works - as both his name on the title pages, and Kierkegaard's declaration in "A First and Last Explanation," attempt to indicate - Kierkegaard also appears to bear some responsibility for the work in his own name. This is unprecedented in the Kierkegaardian authorship, although the practice is repeated in the case of the authorship of Anti-Climacus. S. Kjerkegaard, Victor Eremita, and Hilarius Bogbinder have all been written as the editors of books to which they make little if any authorial contribution. But none of those three (with the possible, orthographical exception of Kjerkegaard) are veronyms, and so they enter comfortably into coauthorship with the books' pseudonymous or anonymous authors.26 Kierkegaard, by contrast, cannot enter into that relationship at all. The identity of S. Kierkegaard, editor, is thoroughly problematized thereby. Kierkegaard's explanation in the footnote to "A First and Last Explanation" evades the problem by invoking the factual actuality of the author of the authors, rather than the poetical actuality of Johannes Climacus. The name "S. Kierkegaard" is placed in its place on the title page in order to indicate to factually actual readers of Fragments (and Postscript, presuming the explanation holds for both works) that a factually actual, living individual in Copenhagen can be held responsible for the appearance of the work(s) in print. The assurance is made in light of the significance of the subject matter, Christianity and Christian faith. Works like Fear and Trembling and The Concept of Anxiety, touching as they do upon religious but not specifically Christian matters, evidently do not demand such accountability of their authors, and remain pseudonymous without reference to the veronym. The explanation of the editorial ascription is reminiscent of the discussions of reformative and critical writing in the Kj0benhavns flyvende Post and Fcedrelandet articles. Works written in certain genres may very well require veronymity of their authors. Kierkegaard, however, is not the author of Fragments or Postscript. While he demanded true veronymity - not a pseudonym with a veronymous editor - of Lehmann and Beck, Kierkegaard does not demand it of Johannes Climacus (or himself). 26

If "Kjerkegaard" is but an alternative spelling of "Kierkegaard," and the editor of From the Papers of One Still Living is veronymous, then his situation is identical to that of Kierkegaard's in Fragments and Postscript. If, on the other hand, Kjerkegaard is a pseudonym, then he is in the same situation as Eremita and Bogbinder. In either case, no special argument need be made on Kjerkegaard's account.

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The difference between Kierkegaard's veronymity and Climacus' pseudonymity is, however, a more significant problem for Kierkegaard than this.27 Kierkegaard maintains, passively, that his name "was first placed on the title page." He does not identify the agent of that placement, the author of the line(s), "Edited by S. Kierkegaard." Nevertheless, that the name is identified as Kierkegaard's name forces ascription away from the two authors involved other than Kierkegaard - Climacus, and the author of Kierkegaard as an author. Neither can be held authorially responsible for the editorial ascription without depriving himself (in the case of Climacus) or Kierkegaard (in the case of Kierkegaard's author) of his independence, and thus his identity, as an author. Climacus cannot make reference to Kierkegaard without asserting his own fictionality; Kierkegaard's author always already implies Kierkegaard's fictionality. The former is a direct denial of Kierkegaard's explanation of his role in the pseudonymous authorship, undermining the integrity of "A First and Last Explanation" and Kierkegaard as an author thereby. The latter is not a problem for Kierkegaard's readers, but it certainly is one for Kierkegaard himself, if we are to understand him to be aware of the author at the origin of the editorial ascription. While it is certainly the case (from the perspective of factual actuality) that Kierkegaard's anonymous author is the author of the line, "Edited by S. Kierkegaard," this view is unascribable to Kierkegaard. Thus, when Kierkegaard writes, "my name as editor was first placed on the title page," he cannot be understood to indicate that his name was placed there by anyone but himself. Here, it seems, we have found that single word Kierkegaard worried would annihilate the authorship - and the word is "Kierkegaard." While it is reasonable to accept Kierkegaard's word that he is related to the authorship of Fear and Trembling only "impersonally or personally in the third person," the reasonability of such acceptance rests entirely upon the fact that Kierkegaard's name never appears on or within the text so as to challenge the ascription of authorship to Johannes de silentio. Kierkegaard is the author of "A First and Last Explanation," however, and his relation to and responsibility for that work (as signified by the signature at the end of the piece) extends into the personal and the first person, albeit the thoroughly poetical first person of the veronymous author. If we must accept that the ap27

Naturally, throughout this discussion, the name "Kierkegaard" is used only to refer to the poetically actual authorial persona - a persona convinced of his own factual actuality, but certainly not to be confused with the factually actual S0ren Kierkegaard.

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pearance of Kierkegaard's name on the title pages of Fragments and Postscript is the work of Kierkegaard as author - as, I believe, after reading "A First and Last Explanation" we must - then we are left with the strange fact that, authorially speaking, Kierkegaard is not the author of Climacus, but his co-author. Despite Kierkegaard's protestations to the contrary within "A First and Last Explanation," Kierkegaard fails to distance himself sufficiently from the pseudonymous authorship of Johannes Climacus to maintain both Climacus' independence as an author and his own identity as Climacus' author. Kierkegaard fails, moreover, in precisely that way he singles out in "A First and Last Explanation" as the most destructive of the authorship. Recall: "A single word by me personally in my own name would be an arrogating self-forgetfulness that, regarded dialectically, would be guilty of having essentially annihilated the pseudonymous authors by this one word."28 If Kierkegaard is the author of the line, "Edited by S. Kierkegaard," then Kierkegaard has at best "essentially annihilated" Johannes Climacus as pseudonymous author. At worst, his "arrogating self-forgetfulness" has undermined the entire pseudonymous authorship "A First and Last Explanation" seems to have been written to explain. In either case, by virtue of the apparently perfect alignment of the strict authorial standards set forth in "A First and Last Explanation" and the authorial contradiction established on the title page of the pseudonymous volume in which "A First and Last Explanation" is contained, Kierkegaard has - with or against his will - demonstrated his own unreliability as an author.

Authorship, Interpretation, Performance We must remember not to confuse Kierkegaard with Kierkegaard's author, a confusion to which that author tempts readers by way of Kierkegaard's veronymity, as well as Kierkegaard's veronymous but insupportable claim to be the author of the pseudonymous authors. What purpose the author of Kierkegaard as author might have for writing Kierkegaard as a failed critic, a failed interpreter of the pseudonymous authorship, is not clear - and could not be clarified, at least not directly. Unnamed and inaudible, authors of authors can never offer up interpretations of their own works, the authors they have authored. To do so, as we have noted before and have seen dem28

CUPI, 626 / SKS 7, 570.

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onstrated, by way of "A First and Last Explanation" in the case of Kierkegaard himself, is simply to reveal oneself as an author to be resident in the very same poetical actuality inhabited by the characters one creates. Kierkegaard's explanation fails, but it need not have failed for Kierkegaard to reveal himself as a poetically actual authorial persona therein. Again, as has been noted, all authors - including veronymous authors, including Kierkegaard - are the poetically actual implications of the works authorial responsibility for which is ascribed to them. Kierkegaard's reality as an author, then, is in one sense no greater (or lesser) than that of any of his pseudonymous or anonymous authorial creations, even if we grant that Kierkegaard is the author of the pseudonymous authors. From the perspective of factual actuality, there are not degrees of poetical actuality - no fictional characters are "more real" than others. It is only from within the poetical actuality established by the author of the authors that we find such distinctions as those maintained by Kierkegaard in "A First and Last Explanation." From Kierkegaard's (poetically actual) perspective, the pseudonymous authors are "merely" poetical creations of his own making. For Kierkegaard's perspective to remain the perspective of a viably independent author, of course, his own fictionality cannot be evident to him, and he certainly cannot make it evident to his readers through the works (or authors) he authors. Nevertheless, coming as readers to Kierkegaard as author, we need not have Kierkegaard's poetical actuality demonstrated dialectically. The fictionality of all authors follows directly from the notion of the author at work in the Kierkegaardian authorship, at least insofar as it can be determined from Kierkegaard's own practice and performance as an author. There is a distinction here, between Kierkegaard's interpretation or explanation of authorship, and his performance as an author. The question of the sustainability of this distinction is a formidable one, especially given the centrality of its strict maintenance to the reading of Kierkegaard put forward here. I by no means wish to dispute Gadamer's keen observation, that "All performance is primarily interpretation" (although I might dispute his corollary claim, that all performance therefore "seeks, as such, to be correct").29 In many languages, as was once the case in English, there is no distinction in use between the words "performance" and "interpretation" - in modern 29

Hans-Georg Gadamer Truth and Method, trans. Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall, New York: Continuum 2000, p. xxxi. The line appears in the Foreword to the Second Edition. My dispute would rest largely on our understanding of the term "correct" in Gadamer's usage.

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Italian, to take but the clearest example, the English words "interpretation" and "performance" are both translated "interpretazione." Nevertheless, there is a difference between the sort of interpretation given through performance, and the sort of interpretation given by way of an at least semi-scientific, dialectical or critical explanation. The latter sort almost certainly corresponds in Kierkegaard's Danish to Ytring or Erklcering. To show that the former corresponds, for Kierkegaard, to Forklaring - that one's performance as an author is a kind of Forklaring, for Kierkegaard - is the task set before us in the rest of this chapter. A constellation of related concepts begins to appear at this point: explanation, interpretation, transfiguration, performance. All but transfiguration have both an active and a passive component; transfiguration is only ever passive. We have seen how "being explained" is tantamount to transfiguration, and by now we can see how "being interpreted" could be understood likewise as transfiguration (insofar as both are understood in terms of the Danish Forklaring). The relevance for Kierkegaardian authorship, however, and especially pseudonymous authorship, is in what remains to be seen: what it means for an author to "be performed," and how "being performed" is, like "being explained" and "being interpreted," a kind of transfiguration. Before moving on to a Kierkegaardian consideration of performance, however, we should make some brief notes on transfiguration. While transfiguration implies an agent in its passivity, the agent of transfiguration ("the transfigurer") remains unidentified and unknown - anonymous, so to speak. In traditional Christian theology, the implied transfigurer is presumably (but is never positively identified as or known certainly to be) God. The appearance of presumability here, in the place of knowledge, is what opens up the possibility of Christian faith - so long as God is only presumably present, we cannot know but must have faith in God. Likewise, we will find that the implied transfigurer of the "dead and transfigured" authorial persona is presumably (but cannot be positively identified as or known certainly to be) the author of the authorial persona in question. This will become, with some explanation, one more articulation of the essential invisibility, inaudibility or anonymity of the author of an author. The transfiguring power always originates and forever remains in the unknown. This also seems to imply, or to begin to imply, that an instance of transfiguration can itself never be positively identified as or known certainly to be an instance of transfiguration. Rather, in whatever manner we believe an author to have been transfigured, we

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do not know it to be so. Presumably, there is here an analogy to what some Kierkegaardian pseudonyms call "faith." Kierkegaard, as the named author of "A First and Last Explanation," attempts the authorially impossible: to transfigure those other, pseudonymous authors. As we saw in Chapter Two, Kierkegaard as veronymous author is quite capable of writing a successful Forklaring. By way of his journalistic Forklaringer, authors such as Lehmann and Beck are explained, interpreted, poetically reconstructed in their identities as failed authors and reformers. Kjerkegaard similarly forklarer the anonymous reviewer, as the anonymous reviewer does Andersen. The question, then, is not one of power: Kierkegaard certainly has the power to forklare, to write another author's Forklaring. The question is one of authority - and this, as was seen in the case of Kierkegaard's critical self-identification with (and thus elimination of) B. in "To Mr. Orla Lehmann," Kierkegaard lacks. No author has the authority to undermine the identity and authorial independence of another author, presumably even in cases wherein the author of both authors is one and the same.30 The primary consequence of this view for the Kierkegaardian authorship seems to be the elimination of Kierkegaard's privilege as a veronymous author among anonymous and pseudonymous authors, especially in matters related to the nature, structure and purpose of the Kierkegaardian authorship as a whole. Although there are numerous and good reasons for maintaining an attitude of skeptical distance from the explanations of the authorship given throughout the authorship (Joakim Garff has made this point plain31), the most fundamental, structural reason for taking Kierkegaard's explanation as but one more interpretation of the authorship lies in the fact that Kierkegaard as an author - like all authors who have attempted such explanations - lacks the authority to deprive the pseudonymous authors of their independence from him. "A First and Last Explanation" attempts to drive one articulation of this point home to its readers, that Kierkegaard is not identical with the pseudonymous authors, and that his relation to them is a matter of indifference. Nevertheless, that very work attempts to subsume the pseudonyms as authors under the umbrella of Kierkegaard's authorial power, something Kierkegaard is perhaps 30 31

Authors are genii, not apostles. See 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 Rèe and Jane Chamberlain, Oxford: Blackwell Publishers 1998, pp. 75-102.

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potent enough, but not authorized, to do. Put another way, what we have here is the most basic distinguishing mark between Forklaring and Forklarelse: while any author may have the power to explain or interpret another, no author has the authority to transform the identity of that other author by way of that explanation. Kierkegaard can forklare the pseudonyms, but they cannot be forklaret by him - or anyone. It would seem, then, that "A First and Last Explanation" fails both to explain the pseudonymous authors (in the sense of Erklcering) and also to transfigure them, and this must be in some sense correct. I wish, however, to maintain that, in another sense, "A First and Last Explanation" amounts to the transfiguration of the pseudonymous authors, although not to their transfiguration alone. Insofar as Kierkegaard attempts to transfigure the pseudonyms on his own authority in "A First and Last Explanation," Kierkegaard fails. "A First and Last Explanation" is not their transfiguration or the origin of the power that is responsible for their transfiguration, but the work is an occasion for their transfiguration as authors. Likewise, in offering readers the author, Kierkegaard, in his failed attempt to transfigure other authors, "A First and Last Explanation" is also an occasion for the transfiguration of Kierkegaard as an author. All their transfigurations rest upon the realization that can follow from a reading of "A First and Last Explanation," that these authors are themselves authored for some authorial purpose. The precise nature of that purpose is beyond the ken of readers as readers (per the intentional fallacy, if nothing else), but the purposiveness of these authors as themselves authored works of poetic art would follow naturally from the identification of them as authored. Authors author for a purpose, despite the fact that readers are universally incapable of discerning purposes in authorial creations, whether works, corpora, or authors. Nevertheless, the apparent purposiveness of an authored author can serve as the occasion for the transfiguration of that author - and must, if understood in terms comparable to those at work in the Kierkegaardian authorship. The author comes to be understood by his or her readers as both author and work, simultaneously but separately the creator of the work and a created element within it. In some very real, although thoroughly literary sense, an author of this sort - a transfigured author - gives birth to him- or herself by writing the work in which he or she is written. As with the pseudonyms of Kierkegaard's "A First and Last Explanation," so with all authors: they are responsible not only for their literary productions, but for their names also.

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Neither Kierkegaard nor any of the pseudonyms is his own author, however, and this deepens the paradoxical nature of the relationship that holds between written works, their authors, and the authors of their authors. The appearance of a written work within factual actuality cannot be the result of actions taken by the thoroughly poetical authors of those works. As such, from our readerly perspective in the factually actual real world, there must always be a factually actual author of the poetically actual author, underlying the work and guaranteeing its existence in factual actuality (as we saw in Chapter Two). As readers, we can never know that author - the author of the author - as there is no trace of that author within the works or corpora published. But the works and corpora are nevertheless themselves traces of the real existence of the author of the authors of those works or corpora, and they imply his or her existence thereby. From our readerly perspective, then, all that can be said of the author of the authors is that, in writing the works that will ultimately receive right ascription to their own authors - anonymous, pseudonymous, or veronymous - the author of the authors takes upon him- or herself the role of the authored author or authors. The performance of that role is, in a very specific sense, perfect performance, insofar as the performer - the author of the author - is never visible behind the role. This perfection in performance is of a sort that could never be realized on the stage, given the very real physical presence of the performer performing. The author of the author is, as we have seen, necessarily absent from the work and the author authored. Thus, then, is authorship performance of a sort unto itself, although analogous to more dramatic forms of performance. This claim is to be distinguished from the perhaps related claim, that the works that constitute the Kierkegaardian corpus are somehow performative, in the sense introduced by J. L. Austin (How To Do Things With Words) and later appropriated by John Searle (Speech Acts) and Jacques Derrida (Limited Ine), although not by them alone.32 Without deciding the matter one way or another, I wish to avoid making the claim here that all writing is performative, or that the opposition of performative and descriptive (or illocutionary and locutionary) statements is inherently ambiguous or has any relevance 32

See J. L. Austin How To Do Things With Words, ed. J. O. Urmson and Marina Sbisa, Cambridge: Harvard University Press 1962; John Searle Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language, New York: Cambridge University Press 1969; and Jacques Derrida Limited Inc., trans. Samuel Weber and Jeffrey Mehlman, Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press 1988.

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to the present treatment of Kierkegaard. I use the term "performance" in an almost exclusively operatic or dramatic sense, while one of the primary points of contention in the contemporary discussion of performatives seems to be the proper classification of those problematically dramatic utterances constituting works of literature. Austin hardly begins the discussion of the performative utterance before he is making exceptions for lines spoken onstage in the theater; Searle and Derrida continue to debate the nature of performative agency in language, and the resulting questions as to the possibility of distinguishing meaningfully between fiction and non-fiction.33 On the basis of what has already come, I take as demonstrated that Kierkegaard makes a meaningful distinction between the fictional (or poetically actual) and the non-fictional (or factually actual), argues for the strict maintenance of that distinction, and then proceeds to confuse them with a suspicious regularity in his veronymous works. Nevertheless, I do not mean to make reference to this set of issues concerned with the performativity of (written) language when I maintain - as, later in this chapter, I will maintain - that Kierkegaardian authorship is performative, or that the Kierkegaardian author might best be understood as a kind of performer. Another potential confusion lies in the fact that Austin, Searle, Derrida, et al. are very much interested at different points with the phenomenon of writing. Although I use the word ("writing") frequently to refer to the Kierkegaardian author, the "writing" with which I claim Kierkegaard is chiefly concerned is not writing as such - the grammatological phenomenon and practice of same - but with authoring, and I use "to write" almost exclusively as a synonym for "to author." On those rare occasions on which I distinguish between "writing" and 33

For a concise and interesting survey of the development of the notion of the performative in the history of philosophy and literary theory, see Henry McDonald "The Performative Basis of Modern Literary Theory" in Comparative Literature 55:1, 2003, pp. 57-77. Of particular interest to readers of Kierkegaard is McDonald's claim that, "Usually set in opposition to the Aristotelian and more rationalistic concept of 'essence', the notion of existence has its sources in the distinctively Christian account of creation ex nihilo. It was given special emphasis by Martin Luther during the Reformation and gained currency in modern times through the work of Soren [sic] Kierkegaard, which influenced Heidegger and other existentialist thinkers," p. 64. The difference between "writing" and "authoring" is very much concerned with the difference between generality (the written language) and particularity (a written work), and although I hesitate to ascribe an ontology to Kierkegaard (as McDonald has done), McDonald's observation regarding the role of existence in Kierkegaard should not go without notice.

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"authoring," the distinction being made is between the activity proper to the factually actual human being, S0ren Kierkegaard (writing), and that proper to the person, persona or personae to whom authorship of the work is ascribed (authoring). Treating writing (in my sense) as a brand of dramatic performance would be nonsensical - although, in Austin's sense of performance as mere action, sense reappears, albeit in an entirely different realm of discourse. In their discussions of performativity, Austin, Searle, Derrida, et al. are addressing the performative aspects of writing (again, in the sense in which I use the term); Kierkegaard, on the other hand, is concerned only with the performative aspects of authoring. Writing is a matter of linguistics and grammatology; authoring is a matter of identity, and the authorities and responsibilities that adhere thereto and follow therefrom. In terms closer to those of Kierkegaard, writing is scientific; authoring is existential. When S. Kierkegaard writes of himself as the author of the pseudonymous authors, it is no less a performance - and therefore no less purely poetical - than the performances of the actors playing the roles of the actors performing Hamlet's play before Claudius and his court in Hamlet. That the actors play actors does not grant their roles the many-angled, worldly, palpable reality of the factual. Likewise, that the authorial performance in "A First and Last Explanation" pretends to a factual actuality greater than that of the pseudonyms does not make it so. Veronymity seems to confuse the issue, coinciding as it does with the name of a factually actual human being, resident in Copenhagen, but in the end this ought be no more confusing than were one of the characters in Hamlet named "William Shakespeare." That character would no more speak for Shakespeare the playwright than do Hamlet or any of the other characters, although some would certainly find his veronymity confusing. (Such an analysis would naturally and inevitably extend to Shakespeare himself as playwright, and the veronymous playwright's own author, providing readers and hearers of the Shakespearean corpus with an extraordinarily similar, if somewhat less problematic, authorial structure with which to deal.) Looking beyond Kierkegaard to his author, we find an author whose primary task is to engage readers of the Kierkegaardian authorship in engaging, perfect performances, alternating among the many Kierkegaardian authorial roles possible - the anonyms, the pseudonyms, and the veronym, S. Kierkegaard. For reasons already treated at length in Chapter Two, and having everything to do with Kierkegaard's views on moral and authorial

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responsibility, I hesitate to argue that Kierkegaard is but one more pseudonym in an essentially pseudonymous authorship. Nevertheless, Kierkegaard and the pseudonyms are all purely poetical authorial personae of the one author of the authors, and Kierkegaard is no more or less poetical than the others. The subtle and perfect failure of "A First and Last Explanation" to transfigure the pseudonyms in Kierkegaard's light (by virtue of revealing Kierkegaard as an author as thoroughly flawed - and poetical - as are the pseudonyms) can serve as an occasion for the transfiguration of all of the Kierkegaardian authors in readings of the authorship. That transfiguration, however, is as little the reader's work as it is the author's. In a reading, the reader bears witness to the transfiguration of Kierkegaard in Kierkegaard's author's performance as Kierkegaard. In this sense, Kierkegaard is performed by the author of the Kierkegaardian authors, as are the pseudonymous and anonymous authors. Also in this sense can "being performed" be understood as a Forklarelse, and authorial performance as a kind of Forklaring. To this end, it is worthwhile to turn our attention to the first independent occurrence of a work of dramatic criticism in the Kierkegaardian authorship, an article ascribed to the anonym, A.

P e r f o r m a n c e , M a y 1845: Z e r l i n a a n d G i o v a n n i After a hiatus of five years, Mozart's Don Giovanni returned to the Copenhagen stage with five performances in the winter and spring of 1845 to at least moderate public acclaim. The source of much of the run's popularity seems to have been the performance (returning, with the opera itself) of J. C. Hansen in the title role, and much of the ink expended on Don Giovanni'?, account was used to enumerate the perceived successes and failings of the opera's lead. Shortly after the final performance of the 1845 run, Fcedrelandets Feuilleton published the first of a two-part article on Don Giovanni, ascribed to the familiar anonym, A.; the first part appeared on May 19, the second part on the following day. Like the other reviews of the opera in the Danish press, the anonymous article seems to begin with a discussion of Hansen's performance. The focus shifts quickly, however, from Hansen as Don Giovanni, to Giovanni's duet with Zerlina in the first act, to a discussion of the performance of Zerlina - and the actress performing Zerlina - herself. The discussion is couched in terms of a general theory of operatic performance, and the qualities distinguishing the operatic

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from the dramatic in terms of performance. The article stands now as one short entry among Kierkegaard's many writings. Unlike all but one of the other anonymous works in the Kierkegaardian corpus, however, "A Cursory Observation Concerning a Detail in Don Giovanni" is never publicly identified by Kierkegaard as a work of his own. The other such work is another newspaper article, a satirical tract on women's education entitled, "Another Defense of Woman's Great Abilities," also ascribed to the anonym, A. As a matter of fact, however, "A Cursory Observation" stands alone as the sole published Kierkegaardian work of literary or dramatic criticism never accorded an official place in the Kierkegaardian authorship by Kierkegaard in a published work.34 The article (like the earlier article, 'Another Defense") is thus in a very important sense inadmissible to the Kierkegaardian authorship, and inclusion of the article in a discussion of Kierkegaardian works - such as the present one - borders on the thoroughly unjustified. A. is A., and Kierkegaard is Kierkegaard, and never the twain shall meet. The distance between them is even greater than that which Kierkegaard attempts to preserve between himself and the pseudonyms in "A First and Last Explanation," where he takes at least some sort of authorial responsibility for the pseudonyms themselves, if not for their works. One approach to this apparent difficulty would be to read through the anonymity of the article in one way or another, so as to treat the anonym as nothing but the mask of some other, named author, presumably the veronym.35 As was demonstrated with regard to Kierkegaard and the anonymous author, B., however, in the discussion of "To Mr. Orla Lehmann" in Chapter Two, no one has the authority to undermine A.'s independence as the author of "A Cursory Observation" in that way. Another means of bridging this divide - an approach taken by Howard Hong in his editorial notes to his translation (with Edna Hong) of The Corsair Affair, although Hong is certainly not alone - is to presume the identity of the A. of "A Cursory Obser34

35

In a draft of the opening paragraph of "A First and Last Explanation," only published posthumously among his journals and papers, Kierkegaard takes responsibility for the authorship of "a serial article in two numbers (about Zerlina)" (CUP2, 109; Pap. VII 1 B 74). This admission does not make it to the final, published draft, however, and is never repeated elsewhere. This is the standard treatment of Kierkegaard's anonymous newspaper articles, as well as the anonymous review within From the Papers of One Still Living. Perhaps surprisingly, it is not the approach to "A Cursory Observation," which is more often ascribed to the "pseudonymous" A of Either/Or.

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vation" and the A of Either/Or?6 After all, the two authors share an anonym, and the discussion of Don Giovanni in the article does seem in accord with the discussion of Don Giovanni in one of the essays forming the first volume of Either/Or. Alphabetic anonyms lack the reliable specificity of pseudonyms, however, and so it seems imprudent to form a corpus of Either/Or I and the Fcedrelandets Feuilleton article. A name names a single author, while an anonym stands in not only for that author's name, but quite possibly for any number of other anonymous authors. Anonymity effaces the author's name, but it does not erode his or her individuality as an author and ought not be believed to do so, at least not in the absence of other, mediating factors. Unless one is willing to make the incautious attempt to equate the two authors on the basis of an agreement in their interpretations of Mozart's opera, however, there are no such other factors. Thus, the most careful approach to both texts, but especially to "A Cursory Observation," given how much more this short article has to lose than would Either/Or, is to treat the anonyms as distinct, and the two (or three, if 'Another Defense" is also considered) anonymous authors likewise. This is, in fact, the position Julia Watkin seems to take in the enumeration of Kierkegaard's pseudonyms and anonyms in her Historical Dictionary of Kierkegaard's Philosophy, and it is the position taken here.37 Further references to A. in the present chapter, then, should be taken to indicate the author of the Don Giovanni article, not the aesthete of Either/Or. The situation is, however, not as problematic as it seems. Although we do find later, in A Literary Review, that Kierkegaard takes veron36

37

In a note to A's signature on the final page of the article, Howard Hong writes, "Presumably the young Mr. A. who was the pseudonymous author of Either/Or, I, which contains the long essay on music and on Mozart's Don Giovanni in particular," COR, 277-278, n. 92. Watkin's "Appendix B: Kierkegaard's Pseudonyms" offers two entries for "A." The second of these is, of course, the A of Either/Or, and need not be discussed here. The first entry, however, reads in its entirety: "Author of 'Another Defense of Woman's Great Abilities' and of 'A Cursory Observation Concerning a Detail in Don Giovanni'. There does not seem to be any special link between the two articles. With the second article, Kierkegaard possibly has in mind the person of A in Either/Or (see later discussion)." Watkin Historical Dictionary of Kierkegaard's Philosophy, p. 401. Although Watkin notes the possibility of A's identity with the author of Either/Or, the distinct entries seem to indicate some skepticism regarding that conclusion. Watkin does appear ready to identify the A of "A Cursory Observation" with the A of "Another Defense," however, and in this I think she is overhasty, for the same reasons I believe Hong is overhasty in his collapse of the one A into the other.

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ymous responsibility for the authorship of From the Papers of One Still Living, nothing within From the Papers of One Still Living itself suggests this to us (except, perhaps, the name, "Kjerkegaard"). Likewise with the anonymous newspaper articles, ascribed to B. They are only in a later article subsumed into the Kierkegaardian corpus. Our readings of those anonymous works did not rest on their justifiable inclusion within the scope of Kierkegaard's production, even if their inclusion within the scope of the present work did. Whatever the views expressed in or by "A Cursory Observation," then, we must be vigilant in our hesitance to ascribe them in any way to Kierkegaard. Such a connection - between Kierkegaard and A., through "A Cursory Observation" - would be mere speculation. Although not itself rightly called "Kierkegaardian," however, "A Cursory Observation" presents us with an understanding of performance that will prove at least as helpful as "A First and Last Explanation" in coming to know the Kierkegaardian author. In fact, the special unascribability of "A Cursory Observation" to Kierkegaard seems in this light itself distinctly Kierkegaardian. After a brief introduction to the matter at hand - the recently completed run of Mozart's Don Giovanni in Copenhagen's Royal Theater - and a similarly brief nod in the direction of Hansen's performance as Giovanni (a nod which, it must be said, is less than effusive in its praise), A. steers readers of "A Cursory Observation" in the direction of that point in the opera analysis of which will form by far the largest part of his article: "This point is the duet with Zerlina in the first act, which must be regarded as the absolute prize."38 The rest of the article, insofar as it is devoted to this specific performance of the opera, will be devoted to a consideration of the performance of the character of Zerlina, with only occasional references to Giovanni himself. Surprisingly, however, despite the fact that A. will have very little to say about Hansen's performance in a role he had been playing for years, he has even less to offer with respect to Madame39 U. A. Stage (the new Zerlina, in the five performances of the 1845 run). Although much of 38 39

COR, 28 / SVI XIII, 448. It was customary to refer to the married ladies of the Danish stage with the imported title, "Madame." Only Fra J.L. Heiberg was granted an exception to this rale - and only by permission of the king - yet another testament to her apparent singularity among the greats of Danish theater. See the translator's introduction to Henning Fenger The Heibergs, trans. Frederick J. Marker, New York: Twayne Publishers 1971, p. 7. Stephen Crites goes into a bit more detail in the introduction to his translation, Crisis in the Life of an Actress, London: Collins 1967, p. 12.

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the piece considers Mozart's opera and the performance of the roles therein in the abstract, A. does offer one telling and detailed criticism, of Madame B. A. Kragh (the old Zerlina, with a decade of experience in the role, performing it in Copenhagen from 1829 to 1839).40 Before entering into a discussion of Zerlina's role in the duet with Giovanni, however, A. delivers a brief theory of operatic performance. A. divides the performer's performance into two discreet but interdependent tasks, characterized by way of the two roles the performer must play in opera: as singer, and as actor. As singer, the operatic performer has three requirements to fulfill: voice, delivery, and suitability of mood. The first requirement for a singer is voice, then delivery, which is a unity of voice and mood and is different from vocal flexibility in coloratura and runs, since as possibility it is the mutual compatibility of the two and as actuality the harmony of voice and mood in the delivery. The final requirement for a singer is that the mood suit the situation and the poetic character.41

These are largely technical requirements, although taken in combination, the three do very much inform the interpretive quality of the performance. Voice seems simply the most basic, nearly physical requirement imposed upon a singer, that he or she have a fine singing voice. Mood is something of the emotional charge of the voice - whether a singer sings gently, or angrily, or demurely, is a matter of mood. The pairing of voice with mood, then, is what A. calls delivery, and is a matter of matching one's physico-musical capability to the emotional impression one wishes to make by way of singing the song. Thus, one might criticize a performance in terms of the failure of the singer's voice adequately to convey the singer's mood, for example, such that the singer's voice simply does not convey well the anger he or she is trying to convey. Largely, it seems, voice and delivery ought to be at the forefront of the opera's concerns when casting and rehearsing the 40

41

It appears to be unclear who took over the role of Zerlina for the 1840 performances. Madame Kragh died in 1839, and Madame Stage did not take up the role until 1845. Janne Risum, in an otherwise very thorough article, writes only, "When the beautiful and admired Boline Kragh died in childbed in 1839, someone else took over the part until 1840. The opera was not performed again until the opening with a new cast, on February 23, 1845, with Ulriche Augusta Stage as Zerlina," p. 334. Risum "Towards Transparency: S0ren Kierkegaard on Danish Actresses," trans. Annette Mester, in Kierkegaard and His Contemporaries (Kierkegaard Studies. Monograph Series, vol. 10), ed. Jon Stewart, pp. 330-342. In any event, A.'s interest in the women playing Zerlina only extends to Mesdames Kragh and Stage, not to their intermediary colleague. COR, 29 / SVI XIII, 448.

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various roles. Failures of voice or delivery are technical failures, and can as such be at least to some degree foreseen. The suitability of mood is a far less technical, far more interpretive requirement - but still a requirement of the singer, rather than the actor. Should a singer sing convincingly gently, and with a voice perfectly suited to gentleness, but in a scene in the opera which commands something other than gentleness from the role the singer sings, then the singer has not made a technical mistake (it is a problem neither with voice nor with delivery, nor even with mood), but an interpretive one. Dividing the singer from the actor as he does, A. must understand this requirement as a matter of the musical performance, rather than the dramatic one, and it is thus on his view a requirement of the operatic performer as singer. Acting, for A., encompasses the gestures and movements of the performer on the stage, and is thus the aspect of opera concerned primarily with storytelling and the dramatic progress of the opera. The actor's role is thus continuous throughout the opera, and the actor must be evaluated in terms of the character and the development of the situations in which the character finds him- or herself. Each aria is an isolated moment in the life of a character, however, and although transitions or developments can occur in the midst of a singer's performance, they are not made by way of the singing but by way of the action accompanying or encompassing the singing. Thus, suitability of mood is a requirement that could be as easily made of singers singing operatic arias independent of the performance of the opera(s) in which the arias appear (such as is often done as a part of vocal concerts or recitals), and is as such not totally or exclusively operatic. For this reason, A. assigns the suitability of mood to the operatic performer as a singer, rather than as an actor, or a performer generally. The failure to suit the mood to the character or situation in which the character finds him- or herself in a particular song is a singing failure. Passion, then, as a function of the relationship between character and mood, is the province of the musical in opera. This passion - be it artistic passion exclusively, or passion more broadly construed - is opposed to reflection in operatic performance. Yet reflection, or a capacity for reflection, is an absolute requirement of the successful performer. If the singer has voice and joins it with mood, he has artistic passion. If he is also an actor, by means of miming he will even be able to encompass contrasts at the same time. The more reflective he is and the more skilled at managing his voice on the pianoforte of mood, the more combinations he will have at his disposal and thus be able

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to do full justice to the composer's demands, if, of course, the composer's work knows how to make demands on the singer's delivery and is not one of the unendurable and unperformable operas. If he is less reflective, he will not have such a great range in mood and character.42

Insofar as he or she is a singer, the operatic performer must fulfill the three requirements A. enumerates, all of which taken together make passion possible in the performance. Insofar as he or she is an actor, however, the operatic performer evinces a capacity for pantomime - which, by itself, is perhaps not so very much, but taken together with the passion of the singer, makes possible a subtler, more sophisticated performance. As singer, the performer must strive to unite voice, delivery and mood in the service of a single goal. But, as both a singer and an actor, the performer can introduce contrasts into his or her performance - Giovanni can sing gently to Zerlina, while his actions convey the intentions of a seducer. Such a performance, in which the performer performs against him- or herself, introducing contrast and the possibility of self-contradiction, is only possible if the performer (rather than the character performed) is not merely passionate in the manner of a singer, but also reflective. Reflection and passion are thus both requisite, according to A., in the better and more demanding performances, and an opera such as Don Giovanni demands, among other things, irony, which is possible only in reflection. The operatic performer, then, according to A., must be both passionate and reflective, at least in the performance of an opera of the caliber of Don Giovanni. To this, however, A. adds one more thing. "But there is still one more thing: all the more universal foundations of mood, the ability to infuse voice with imagination, to be able to sing with imagination."43 A role cannot be performed with passion and reflection alone. The performer must also have imagination, and the ability to transform him- or herself through imagination so as to display, not his or her own passionate and reflective attributes (the attributes of a performer), but those of the character being performed. Neither Giovanni nor Zerlina is a reflective character, according to A., but both can only be performed by deeply reflective performers. By way of the coupling of passion and reflection, the performer - that is, the successful performer - effaces all traces of his or her own reflective nature in the presentation of him- or herself as another. Such presentation is only possible by way of imagination, specifically, the 42 43

COR, 29 / SVI XIII, 448. COR, 29 / SVI XIII, 448.

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ability to imagine for oneself another actuality - a poetical actuality - and then to bring that actuality to the fore, to inhabit it convincingly enough that one is no longer apparent oneself. Although the audience remains in factual actuality with the performers, the performers are no longer ostensible within that actuality. All that remains are the characters being performed - Hansen's Giovanni, for example, or Stage's Zerlina. Any break with that other actuality within the performance, then, must result in the dissolution of that actuality as a whole. Even the slightest misinterpretation or misperformance destroys the world that is Don Giovanni, according to A.

1. Zerlina This danger is brought out most clearly in A.'s treatment of a single line in the performance of Zerlina. "The situation is essentially this," A. writes, she did not know how it happened, but it did, and so she was seduced; and the result of Zerlina's most strenuous mental exercise is this: It cannot be explained [forklaret]. This is very important for an understanding of Zerlina. Therefore, it was a mistake for an otherwise fine actress, Madame Kragh, to sing the line "No, I will not" with force, as if it were a resolve fermenting in Zerlina. Far from it. She is confused, dazed, and perplexed from the start. If reflection is attributed to her at this point, the whole opera is a failure.44

Madame Kragh's failure, however, is not merely a failure of mood or the suitability of mood. Rather, it is a failure of imagination. In performing the line as she does, Madame Kragh makes evident her lack of understanding of Zerlina's character, her inability to imagine Zerlina as significantly different from herself, and thus her failure to effect the independence of Zerlina's perspective from that of her performer in the performance. In order to play the role, Madame Kragh must be reflective. Such is the nature of performance, that it requires reflection. Nevertheless, without imagination, reflective Madame Kragh cannot give independent life to Zerlina. Zerlina becomes a thinker, aware of Giovanni's intentions (contrary to her role in Mozart's opera), not naive but worldly wise. Although he accompanies the criticism with apparent praise - she is "an otherwise fine actress," he notes - A. essentially faults Madame Kragh with the failure of the opera as a whole. 44

COR, 30 / SVI XIII, 449-450.

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At least in the context of the operatic performance, then, imagination is a matter of perspective. Passion and reflection are necessary attributes of the performer, according to A., but they are not necessarily attributable to the character performed. Madame Stage need not necessarily imagine herself as Zerlina, a capacity which seems something more like sympathy than performance. Rather, in order to correct Madame Kragh's wrong, Madame Stage must be able to imagine quite the opposite: Zerlina as absolutely distinct from Madame Stage herself. Only in this way can she bring all of her personal qualities to bear in the self-concealment that is genuine performance. And only when herself concealed can Madame Stage reveal to those seated in the Royal Theater Mozart's Zerlina. Of course, Madame Stage's performance of Zerlina can only ever be an interpretation of Mozart's character, and this is both natural and necessary to operatic performance. Thus, any performed Zerlina is not Mozart's alone; in the case of the 1845 performances, the Copenhagen operagoers find Madame Stage's Zerlina, or perhaps more appropriately, Stage's Mozart's Zerlina. The bivalence of the ascription is not accidental: the Zerlina is both Mozart's and Madame Stage's, but the Mozart of the Copenhagen performances - the Mozart implied by the particular interpretation of Don Giovanni performed in 1845 - is also Madame Stage's Mozart, by virtue of her role as both interpreter (the performer choosing to perform Zerlina in a specific way) and text (the performer as the character, Zerlina). For A., the danger in Madame Kragh's misperformance is not the misrepresentation of Zerlina as such, but the resultant inconsistencies with the rest of the world of Mozart's Don Giovanni.*5 When Zerlina does not fit into the world she inhabits, a split occurs within that world - and the opera that presents that world, and perhaps even within Mozart, insofar as he is the author of that world - much as Andersen's failure to present Christian as independent of himself caused a rift that extended from Christian, through Only a Fiddler, all the way into Andersen himself. With Christian, nothing could be done; the novel was published as it was published, and no one can unpublish it. Don Giovanni, however, is not a novel to be published, but an opera to be repeatedly reperformed. If Madame Kragh's performance of Zerlina ruins the opera, the Royal Theater can hire Madame Stage to play the role, instead. If Madame Stage likewise fails, there is certainly some other actress ready to take her place. An actress who, perhaps - and perhaps after 45

See the second footnote at COR, 30-31 / SVI XIII, 450.

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reading certain published reviews of earlier performances of the role in, say, Fcedrelandets Feuilleton - will bring the appropriate degree of imagination to the part. An actress whose talent for adopting other, independent perspectives in the self-concealment of performance rivals Kierkegaard's author's own.46 A. concludes the first part of the article with a relatively lengthy justification of his presentation of Zerlina as unreflective and naive with regard to Giovanni's intentions, primarily by way of comparison with the two other female seductees within the opera, Donna Elvira and Donna Anna. Following these comparisons, however, and by way of beginning the second and final part of the serial, A. writes: Now to Don Giovanni. If the singer combines imagination with voice and uses this delivery as an accessory, what then? Then the situation becomes a situation of seduction. Perhaps, but not in an opera - on the contrary, this occurs in a drama, where a seducer does not sing to the girl but for the girl, using this means to stimulate her imagination.47

Here, A. departs from Zerlina for a moment - but returns to the terms of the more theoretical discussion of performance from the very beginning of the article. Largely by way of working into a criticism of Hansen's performance of the role of Giovanni, A. posits a new situation, wherein a singer combines imagination with voice with the apparent intention of using the resultant delivery as a means of affecting another character in the scene - in this case, still, Giovanni's duet with Zerlina. A. goes on to elaborate a scenario, in which a seducer decides to attempt to seduce a girl by way of song, and the song he chooses to sing for the girl is one of Giovanni's from Don Giovanni. Here, then, the singer serenades - although most subtly - the girl, and hopes the quality of his performance will inspire her to acquiesce to his seduction. The donna listens and feels safe, and since she knows that he is not singing to her, that the song does not pertain to her, she surrenders to infatuation, and since they are assumed to be equally strong, the seducer has to create the first tryst in her imagination and in the fleeting face-to-face encounter of imaginative intuitions and presentiments. If this is depicted, then it is not essentially an opera, but in a drama or narrative the transition is formed from this situation to the reflected actuality of the seduction.48

According to A., such a situation is essentially dramatic - as opposed to essentially operatic - for the same reason that Madame Kragh's 46 47 48

Actresses like Fru Heiberg, at least on Inter et Inter's reading. COR, 33 / SVI XIII, 453. COR, 33-34 / SVI XIII, 453.

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performance of the one line of Zerlina's ("No, I will not") ruins the whole opera. There is a strict boundary dividing the performer from the role performed, for A., and the maintenance of that boundary rests largely on the performer's ability to portray a character other than him- or herself through the union of passion and reflection in imagination. When the performer fails to respect that boundary, the operatic in the performance suffers. In Kragh's case, performing as she was in the context of an opera, the character of Zerlina and, then, the whole of the opera lose hold of the operatic. In the case of A.'s posited singer-seducer, we find ourselves incapable of placing such a character successfully within an opera. If, as A. posits, there were to be such a character on the stage, he would only be comprehensible there (at least as understood within the framework of A.'s performance theory) in the context of a drama. A. goes on to identify the essentially dramatic character he posited with Hansen's Giovanni in the 1845 performances, thereby leveling a criticism of Hansen comparable in force only to his earlier criticism of Madame Kragh. Although A. refrains from specifically accusing Hansen of ruining the whole opera, it is difficult to see how Hansen, if guilty of the misperformance described by A., did not do so. The only possible difference would be that Hansen's misperformed Giovanni is not as central to Don Giovanni as Kragh's misperformance of Zerlina, but this, too, is difficult to believe. Presumably, within the context of the seduction of Zerlina by Giovanni, and their duet in the first act, the nature of the seduction rests as much in the nature of the seducer as it does in the nature of the seduced. More to the point, however, is that Hansen is accused of nothing less than making Don Giovanni unoperatic, singing the song dramatically, rather than operatically The force of A.'s criticism of Hansen rests entirely upon the difference between singing to and singing for. To sing to the girl is to communicate oneself to her through the medium of song. If she, or the audience, were to come under the impression that singing was an odd or inappropriate means of communicating oneself to the girl - if a gap were opened up by reflection between the communication, the situation, and the song - then, whatever else might be the case, the operatic has surely been lost, and the situation becomes at best dramatic (at worst, it becomes unbelievable, although it is more likely simply to come under the rubric of the comic within the category of the dramatic). The most interesting aspect of this theory of opera lies in this fact, that in order for the seducer to be properly understood as singing to the girl, it must be the case that the girl and the seducer

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both are totally encompassed by and representative of the musical (one instantiation of which might be the operatic in opera). To sing to, then, is not only to sing, but to inhabit a purely musical world. Only within the sort of actuality opened up by opera - in this case, the particular opera, Don Giovanni - are we able to understand the seducer as one who seduces without reference to song. Singing to - opera - is a singing that effaces itself as song, precisely because the context within which the performer sings is an exclusively musical context. Giovanni can be understood as singing to Zerlina, if A.'s rendering of opera and of Mozart is correct, precisely because Giovanni is not a singer. Hansen sings; Giovanni, if performed well by Hansen, simply seduces. In this sense, to sing to is not to sing at all, but to be performed by a singer. This is a deep insight of A.'s into the nature of opera, and its difference from other staged performance. A.'s point in criticizing Hansen as he does, then, is to show up Hansen's performance for what it is - a failure to perform Giovanni by way of attempting to sing well. "Now if Mr. Hansen's task were to lay the groundwork for that situation in a drama," A. writes, with reference to his earlier positing of a seducer who sings for the girl, rather than to her, "then his performance was omnibus numeris absoluta, and anyone who has a flair for such observations certainly will not deny that it is astonishing to hear such superb delivery"49 All this takes place, of course, in a very narrow space, between two lengthier considerations of Zerlina's part in the duet with Giovanni. Nevertheless, by way of his quick criticism of Hansen, A. establishes the central operative distinction between opera and drama following from his basic theory of performance. Hansen's failure is a failure of imagination, as was Madame Kragh's - as were Andersen's, and Lehmann's, and Beck's. Unable to imagine a thoroughly independent perspective from which Giovanni can seduce Zerlina, Hansen ends up confusing the situation by appearing on the stage, not as Don Giovanni, but as J. C. Hansen, singer, in the guise of a Giovanni. As A. notes, "Don Giovanni is no mawkish zither player nor a seducer who uses such a disguise at the outset."50 And further: "It is easy to endow Don Giovanni with a little reflection, but in the opera the art is precisely to keep it out so that Don Giovanni does not become an ordinary character and the opera is structurally flawed."51 Singing for Zerlina, Hansen remains 49 50 51

COR, 34 / SVI XIII, 453-454. COR, 34 / SVI XIII, 454. COR, 35 / SVI XIII, 455.

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cut off essentially from Giovanni, because Giovanni is essentially one who sings to. This is not the same confusion the anonymous reviewer observed in Only a Fiddler, or Kierkegaard observed in Lehmann and Beck; in those other cases, the criticized author was found guilty of confusing the poetical with the factual, fiction with fact. Here, A. accuses Hansen and Kragh of what seems to be a lesser confusion, between two poetical actualities, one operatic and one dramatic. Nevertheless, underlying the failure of both performances is the inability of reflection to conceal itself in imagination and, ultimately, performance. Understood in this light, Hansen and Kragh fail not only to distinguish adequately between the operatic and the dramatic; they fail to distinguish adequately between themselves as performers and the characters being performed, so much so that essentially unreflective characters present themselves onstage as, in fact, deeply reflective. Giovanni and Zerlina are imbued with the personalities of factually actual Hansen and Kragh, just as the narrator of Andersen's Only a Fiddler was imbued with the personality of factually actual Andersen. Moreover, just as the ostensibly veronymous narrator of Only a Fiddler split from himself and was thrust into incoherence thereby, so too with Hansen's Giovanni and Kragh's Zerlina. Stage's Zerlina, it seems, succeeds where Kragh's failed, and insofar as this is true, we can say that A. sees in the Zerlina of the 1845 run nothing of Madame Stage at all. If this is the case - A. is silent on the matter - then Madame Stage is a perfect model of operatic performance, by virtue of a concealment that leaves us without any knowledge or direct experience of Madame Stage as operatic performer. If one can see the performer performing in the opera, then the performer has failed, the performance is not true (or truly) performance.

2. Giovanni It is important to note that, even when perfectly performed, Don Giovanni cannot sing to the audience assembled in the Royal Theater. The opera and the audience are separated from one another absolutely, by way of the very same distance that separates readers from S. Kierkegaard in readings of the Kierkegaardian authorship, the difference between poetical and factual actualities. For this same reason, however, Giovanni cannot sing for the audience, even if Hansen is singing for their benefit. Don Giovanni, as operatic character, cannot sing for anyone; if Giovanni is misperformed so as to sing for Zer-

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lina, then Don Giovanni as operatic character never comes into being in the performance. In that case, some other character is being performed, a dramatic rather than an operatic one. If we grant Hansen the power to transform Mozart's Don Giovanni from opera to drama (a power we may very well wish to deny), then Giovanni can sing for the girl, but even as dramatic character he cannot sing for the audience. For Don Giovanni, poetically actual seducer, there is no audience. Giovanni and the audience exist in distinct actualities which, for all the reasons already established in the case of the Kierkegaardian authors, cannot be justifiably confused. Don Giovanni, whether operatic or dramatic, attempts to elicit a certain response from the women he attempts to seduce through song, singing to (seduction via direct communication in song) or singing for (seduction via indirect communication in song). He can have no such intentions with regard to the theatrical audience at all. Nevertheless, Giovanni can have an effect upon the audience - and can, at least according to A., be performed so as to have that effect. While the performance itself is the work of the performer - Hansen, for example - the character performed exists to some extent outside of any individual performance. This ambiguity of authorship was noted earlier, briefly, in the relation between Madame Stage, Zerlina, and Mozart. While Stage is responsible for her interpretation of Zerlina, and is in that sense her author, the character preexists Madame Stage as an element within Don Giovanni. In that second sense, Mozart is her author. Of course, in any given performance of the opera, if Zerlina is performed well, then no trace of the actress survives the performance - for the audience, there is no actress performing Zerlina; there is only Zerlina. In this case, Zerlina exists primarily as one element within the greater opera, and she thus implies Mozart far more directly than she implies the actress performing her in any given performance. Each new performance of Don Giovanni finds some actress struggling in the attempt to perform the same role each of her predecessors has performed. The sameness of the role springs, again, from Mozart as author of Zerlina, composer of the opera as a whole. Mozart does not sing. He composes, he authors, but he sings neither to nor for anyone. Without straining the bounds of grammar too far, however, one might legitimately ask whether he composes to or for - whether, as composer, Mozart is essentially "operatic" or "dramatic." This is not to ask whether Mozart was essentially a composer of operas or a playwright, but instead to ask, in his operas and especially in Don Giovanni, whether Mozart addresses his audience directly (com-

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posing to) or indirectly (composing for). This is, likewise, perhaps the most difficult and central question of the Kierkegaardian authorship - whether those works (anonymous, pseudonymous, or veronymous - and individually, or taken together) are written to or written for their readers. This is a question, however, that Kierkegaard does not even begin to address in "A First and Last Explanation," a question that will not receive a direct, veronymous consideration in the authorship until 1851 and On My Work as an Author.52 On My Work as an Author suffers from the same veronymity as does "A First and Last Explanation," however: both are elements within the authorship they attempt wholly to explain. That explanatory task is only possible from a perspective external to the authorship - and y et, no author other than the author of Kierkegaard and the Kierkegaardian authors has the authority to make such an explanation (Chapter Two) - and yet, the author of the authors must remain silent and anonymous, never responsible for even a single word within the authorship itself (Chapter One). What seems to be needed is a Kierkegaardian work that stands outside of the Kierkegaardian authorship, a work unascribable to Kierkegaard but in which a way into Kierkegaard can be found. What seems to be needed is some sort of "secret key" designed so that, with careful analysis, exegesis and/or interpretation, the meaning and nature of the Kierkegaardian authors and their works is unlocked once and for all. A. does not give us that key, or any key, to the Kierkegaardian authorship. Although A. stands outside the authorship, by way of never having been brought within it by the veronym (who is the only Kierkegaardian author whose works are automatically subsumable into the Kierkegaardian authorship, by virtue of their veronymous ascription), for that very reason A. lacks the authority to reveal anything about the Kierkegaardian authors or their works. A. could offer an interpretation of Kierkegaard, as he does of Don Giovanni and Zerlina, but that interpretation would have no special privilege among competing interpretations. A. is not Kierkegaard, and cannot speak for Kierkegaard. As it is, A. never even mentions Kierkegaard. His only concern is Mozart, and the performance of one opera of Mozart's composition. 52

Victor Eremita seems to have some at least primitive sense of this distinction when, in the Preface to Either/Or, he suggests that coming to an understanding of the individual authors and the essays, fragments, and letters authored by them is less important than is being acted upon by the interplay of the two distinct life-views those authors provide. For this reason, Eremita entitles the work so as to centralize the reader's role in any confrontation with the contrast between A and B. See EOI, 13-14 / SKS 2, 20-21.

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A. does, however, compare himself to J. C. Hansen in the closing lines of "A Cursory Observation." Apologizing for having devoted so much of the article to the performance of Zerlina, despite having made it seem early on as if he were going to discuss Hansen's performance as Giovanni exclusively, A. writes: Mr. Hansen can easily forgive me. How fortunate for someone who has the desire and has made his choice in life to have the singing voice he has, how fortunate for someone who has the desire and has chosen his profession and then has all the fine qualifications for an actor that he actually has. When one has been given so much and has also acquired something, I daresay one could squander a little time practicing how to walk and how to stand. I really do not believe that my legs or my gait have any connection with my interpretation of the most immortal opera; then I would have to get other legs for walking.53

While the references to A.'s legs can be anachronistically (and anauthorially) explained with reference to Corsareria depictions of Kierkegaard a year later,54 what seems of most interest to the present work is the easy comparison A. is willing to make of Hansen's and his own interpretations of Don Giovanni - of performance and criticism both as modes of interpretation. The specific reference to Hansen's need to practice walking and standing, however, is not irrelevant. Earlier in the second part of the article, in a lengthy passage on another point in the opera, A. writes: Essentially, this outburst ["Poverina, poverina"] is not addressed to anyone - it is Don Giovanni standing there pondering and anticipating pleasure. Therefore, imagination must be combined with the voice, and the irony must not arise in Don Giovanni's reflecting on the relationship but must be in the mind of the spectator, who understands Don Giovanni. Therefore, the actor ought to see to it that he is calm and collected at that moment, although it is quite right for him to pace back and forth in a kind of tension during the aria. But, above all, he must not come up front while singing these words, for Elvira is not supposed to hear them. Nor is he to sing them to Leporello, as he does in the rest of the aria. Essentially, they signify only that Don Giovanni is in good humor. The matchless effect of the situation must not result from Don Giovanni's reflection or planning but is to be sought in the total effect, as a writer has pointed out.55

In this analysis of Giovanni's famous interjections into Elvira's solo, A. unifies a number of the most important elements of his article. The actor performing Giovanni must be certain not to allow reflection to arise as a quality of Giovanni's, but must be reflective himself in presenting the spectators in the audience an occasion for irony to arise in their own minds, in their own understandings of the opera. Hansen 53 54 55

COR, 36-37 / SVI XIII, 456. See COR, 111 n. 91. COR, 34 / SVI XIII, 454.

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must in some sense sing for the audience, despite the fact that Giovanni could and ought never do so. The performer and the composer become co-authors in the attempt to utilize indirection in the service of the operatic irony. Mozart achieves this indirection in giving the line, "Poverina, poverina," to Giovanni in the middle of Elvira's solo, offering Hansen an occasion for a challenging but true performance. Hansen, however, achieves indirection in the contrast between singing - "Poverina, poverina" - and acting, in this case, standing and walking. Both Mozart and Hansen are, at their best, ironists. Both are authors of Don Giovanni and Don Giovanni, both. Mozart's legs and his gait, however, have nothing do with his role in the irony in the scene upon which A. offers commentary. As composer, Mozart makes the performance possible - but he does not make it actual. The actualization of the opera, and the irony, is the work of performers like Hansen. Having composed, Mozart stands back and allows performers to enact his composition, depriving himself of full authorial responsibility for any given performance of the opera thereby. Mozart composes and Hansen performs in full knowledge of the necessity of their interdependence; neither Mozart nor Hansen can afford to be anything but a co-author with regard to Don Giovanni. A., the critic, seems to stand alone. Like A., Mozart is distanced from Giovanni by virtue of his absence from the performance itself. While Hansen and A. are both interpreters of Mozart's opera (and in this the two share much), A. is more like Mozart than he is like Hansen with regard to the actual performance of the opera and the roles constitutive thereof. In this regard, however, we see that Mozart and Hansen are more like each other than either is like the critic, A. As critic, he can offer his interpretation of the 1845 performances - or of performance of the opera in general - without entering into any kind of real relationship with either Mozart or Hansen. Nevertheless, A.'s authorial isolation is merely apparent, by virtue of the fact that, as author of "A Cursory Observation," A. is (and as anonym, is only) an author. He writes and publishes an article in Fcedrelandets Feuilleton. A., like Giovanni, is a purely poetical person, confined by his nature as an author to the realm of poetical actuality. A. seems to write to us, his factually actual readers. He seems to attempt to engage us in criticism of certain, very real performances of Mozart's Don Giovanni. Giovanni's confinement to the poetical actuality of the universe authored by Mozart in the opera, however, forces us to be vigilant in coming to an understanding of A. and his criticism. If A. is in fact a poetically actual authorial persona of some

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other, anonymous, factually actual author, then A. is bound in the very same way Giovanni is bound. A. cannot write to us, because, from the perspective of A., we cannot exist. A.'s perspective, and the work(s) written from within that perspective, would become wholly incoherent if we were to understand A. as attempting to communicate from one actuality to another. Nor, then, can A. be understood to write for the factually actual readers of "A Cursory Observation," for the same reason. Writing to and writing for are both modes of communicative interaction, and communication between fictional characters and real persons is quite literally impossible. Of course, these limitations are A.'s insofar as he is an author, and so we must understand all authors - anonymous, pseudonymous, or veronymous - to share these limitations with A. To author a work is not to communicate at all.56 Still, A. argues, the purpose of Giovanni's "Poverina, poverina" is to occasion irony in the minds of the opera's factually actual spectators, and this need not contradict the claim that the authorship of a work is neither to nor for. As A. readily admits, and as we have quite clearly seen, Giovanni cannot bring about an occasion for irony in the spectators. But Giovanni can be understood as himself such an occasion. Hansen, in performing the role of Don Giovanni well, can offer Giovanni to the spectators as an occasion for an understanding of irony in the opera. Thus, while everything Giovanni sings and does in the opera is essential to occasioning irony in the spectators - Giovanni is only insofar as he sings and does - it is not how Giovanni performs his words and deeds but how Giovanni is performed that brings about an occasion for the irony A. suggests is the purpose of the scene. While we can acknowledge that factually actual J. C. Hansen is the performer performing the role of Giovanni, however, so long as the performance is successful, there is no J. C. Hansen in the opera for us. Hansen becomes, like any author, merely an implication of the text - in this case, the character - he authors (or co-authors). Sorting out what was Hansen's and what was Mozart's in any given performance would be impossible, or at least nearly so, in any event. We can perhaps more clearly see how Mozart is but a textual (operatic) impli56

Merold Westphal makes clear the opposition to this point shared by Gadamer, Barthes, Foucault, and Derrida. On Westphal's reading, Kierkegaard shares the view that authorship is a form of communication (as, it seems, does Westphal); in every case, there is no consideration of even the possibility of a limitation on the communicative power of an author by virtue of his or her poetical actuality. See Westphal "Kierkegaard and the Anxiety of Authorship" in International Philosophical Quarterly 34:1,1994, pp. 5-22.

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cation of the work (the opera), but his and Hansen's cases are on this point identical. Mozart co-authors Don Giovanni with some future performer or string of performers; Hansen co-authors Giovanni with Mozart. From the readerly perspective of the opera's spectators and critics, both, as authors, are poetically actual implications of the work they author. They are, without relinquishing any of the complexities inherent to the term, veronymous authors. In the ambiguous reference to walking in the passage cited above, A. suggests that, while he and Hansen are both interpreters of Don Giovanni, A. is not also an author ofthat opera. In doing so, A. emphasizes Hansen's strange dual identity as a performer, both (co-)author and interpreter simultaneously. Yet it is precisely this strangeness that is characteristic of the identity Kierkegaard creates for himself in "A First and Last Explanation," as both author and (mere) interpreter of the pseudonymous authorship. The strangeness is not possible, however, for an author whose interpretation does not have some connection with his legs or his gait, an author for whom authorship is not also performance. A. classifies himself as such an author, one who does not perform but merely criticizes, merely communicates something to his readers, one who writes to his readers. Following A. into the case of Don Giovanni, however, we have seen how the sort of author A. describes cannot exist, except perhaps in fiction, where individual works (if not whole authorships) are understood as written to. Don Giovanni does not sing to the audience, but he is performed for them. Although an understanding of each of Giovanni's utterances and actions in the opera is essential to coming to an understanding of the opera as a whole, he is not performed so as to provide the spectators with individual utterances or actions to analyze. Rather, as A. notes, the "matchless effect of the situation" is "to be sought in the total effect" of the opera and its performance. So, I wish to argue, with the Kierkegaardian authorship.

Performance, February 1846: S. Kierkegaard In "A First and Last Explanation," Kierkegaard makes the argument that he is not the author of the pseudonymous works, but instead, the author of the pseudonymous authors. As author, he contrasts himself with the poet, "who poetizes characters and yet in the preface is himself the author."57 Kierkegaard, he seems to claim, is never himself in 57

CUPI, 625 / SKS 7, 569.

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the pseudonymous authorship "A First and Last Explanation" seeks to explain - neither in the pseudonymous "characters" he poetizes, nor in the prefaces to the works for which those characters are responsible. The contrast, however, does not expel Kierkegaard from the realm of poetry; rather, Kierkegaard maintains that, with regard to the pseudonymous works, he is in fact a poet or an author, albeit one whose medium is not words or works but creative authorial personalities. With regard to the veronymous authorship, however, he is "very literally and directly the author."58 "A First and Last Explanation" tries to reveal Kierkegaard, then, as an author in two modes. As veronymous author, Kierkegaard is responsible for the words printed on the page, as well as the views to which those words attest. As author of the pseudonymous authors, Kierkegaard is but the means by which the poetically actual pseudonymous authors find their voices in factual actuality. "A First and Last Explanation" thus shows Kierkegaard up as some sort of communicative conduit, making possible either his own communication (directly), or the communications of the pseudonyms (indirectly, by way of the double reflection of author authorship). "A First and Last Explanation" presumes the possibility of authorship as communication. "A Cursory Observation," on the other hand, makes evident the difficulties with such an understanding of authorship. Although the article is itself opera criticism, much of the force of the argument of "A Cursory Observation" derives from its tacit reliance upon the absolute distinction between the poetical and factual actualities of the characters in and spectators of the opera, respectively. Don Giovanni sings neither to nor for the audience, precisely because Don Giovanni is fictional and the spectators in the audience are not. Nothing - but especially not communication - can legitimately cross the line separating fiction from fact. Thus, in addition to the two failures already ascribable to "A First and Last Explanation" -a failure of perspective, by way of which "A First and Last Explanation" pretends to a point of view external to the authorship itself; and a failure of integrity, by way of which Kierkegaard (apparently unwittingly) reveals how he has illegitimately usurped authorial responsibility from Johannes Climacus on the title pages of Philosophical Fragments and Concluding Unscientific Postscript - there is a third, a failure of coherence, whereby Kierkegaard presumes the possibility of an incomprehensible communication between purely poetical and purely factual personalities. 58

CUPI, 627 / SKS 7, 571.

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These three failures amount to the insupportability of Kierkegaard's argument in "A First and Last Explanation," leaving the Kierkegaardian pseudonyms unexplained - and untransfigured - in Kierkegaard's veronymity. Whatever sense the pseudonymous authorship may make in its relation to Kierkegaard, it does not do so in the manner Kierkegaard claims for it (and for himself) in his postscript to Climacus' Postscript. As we have seen, however, Kierkegaard's failure in "A First and Last Explanation" can serve as an occasion for the transfiguration of the pseudonyms in the minds of Kierkegaard's readers, and the nature of that transfiguration can now be clearly expressed in the terms that A.'s "A Cursory Observation" sets forth. Within the poetical actuality or actualities proper to the pseudonymous authors (whether the multiple authors inhabit multiple poetical actualities, or they all reside within a single one, cannot definitively be said), each of the pseudonymous authors, insofar as he is an author, must be understood to understand himself as writing for his readers, whoever they might actually be. From within our perspective as factually actual readers of the Kierkegaardian authorship, we can say that none of the pseudonyms is writing to or for readers similarly factual. Nevertheless, in order to remain feasibly independent perspectives in their own right, each of the pseudonyms must understand himself as factually actual - and thus capable of engaging his own factually actual readers by way of the authorship ascribed to him. None of the pseudonymous authors is justified in the belief that he could write to his (poetical) factually actual readers, of course, on the same grounds that we excluded all authorship from the realm of communication. The pseudonymous authors, then, must be presumed aware of their perceived poetical actuality from the perspectives of their readers. But, as (they believe themselves to be) factually actual authors, the pseudonyms are equally justified in believing themselves capable of writing for their readers, using their own veronymous authorial personae to communicate themselves indirectly through their works.59 Were Kierkegaard not to lack the authority to take from the pseudonyms a measure of the authorial responsibility for their works, Kierkegaard too would be justified in the belief that he could, through the pseudonymous books and articles, write for his factually actual readership. Kierkegaard does 59

From their own perspectives, of course, the pseudonyms are veronymous authors. With this in mind, we can safely say that indirect communication is only possible from within veronymity - a claim that rests more on the communicative nature of indirect communication, rather than its indirectness.

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lack this authority, however, and so, as has been said, the explanation in "A First and Last Explanation" explains nothing. Of course, again, such an authorized Kierkegaard would be unjustified in believing that his veronymous authorship communicated anything directly to his readers - a claim he makes in passing in "A First and Last Explanation" - but he could believe himself capable of writing veronymously for them. This would seem to be the most charitable reading of "A First and Last Explanation," but even this reading denies the truth of the explanation. From outside the poetical actuality of Kierkegaard as veronymous author, however, we must avoid joining Kierkegaard in this belief. Kierkegaard must maintain belief in his own factual actuality in order to remain an author, but as his factually actual readers, we must acknowledge Kierkegaard's poetical actuality as an implication of the works he authors. Thus, although Kierkegaard can (and perhaps does) believe that he writes for the reader when he writes "A First and Last Explanation," we know that such a writing for is impossible. Kierkegaard is the poetically actual creation of his own author, factually actual and absolutely anonymous. Recognizing Kierkegaard as authored, however, we can take some insight from A.'s discussion of performance in "A Cursory Observation." We are placed in the position of the spectator in the Royal Theater, to or for whom Giovanni cannot sing - but, recall, for whom Giovanni is performed. Being performed is a passivity with which the one being performed can have nothing to do. Giovanni cannot know himself as performed, only as performer (insofar, say, as he performs for Zerlina or Donna Elvira within the poetical actuality of the opera); likewise for Kierkegaard, or any of the Kierkegaardian authors. Of course, as spectators in the Royal Theater, we can more or less accurately say that Giovanni is performed by J. C. Hansen - or, perhaps more to the point, that Hansen performs the role of Don Giovanni. There is no comparably active expression of authorial performance as I have been using the term here. We can never say who performs Kierkegaard. Had we a name, or an authorial identity, by which to identify Kierkegaard's performer, we would not be able to name the author of the author with that name, but instead would be presented with yet another named author, poetically actual, implied by the authored work (in this case, the work is the author, Kierkegaard). Theatrical performance terminates on the very first level, in the embodied presence of the performer of the role. We need not concern ourselves in dramatic (or operatic) criticism with "the author of the performer," as such a construct is not

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only useless but is not implied in the performance or the presence of the performer on the stage. This has everything to do with the embodiment and the presence of the performer in the theater; authorial performance differs essentially from theatrical performance precisely in these terms. The author of the author is neither present nor embodied, and as such, as pure textual implication, can be imagined out into an infinity of authors and authors of authors. The end to that infinitude does not lie in the same direction as does the end of the (relatively short) chain of identities involved in theatrical performance, but in the opposite direction - not in embodiment and presence, but in disembodiment and absence. All authors are as authors disembodied, but not all authors are absent. Quite clearly, the named author of a work - pseudonymous or veronymous - presents him- or herself in the work by way of the ascription of the work to the author by name. Anonymous authors, although anonymous by virtue of never being named, nevertheless present themselves in the work through the work, by way of the authorial perspective the work implies - as do the anonymous authors of Andersen as a Novelist and A Story of Everyday Life. Anonymous authors are not alone in this regard; the perspectives or points of view of pseudonymous and veronymous authors are likewise implied, at least in part, by the works they author. Although not literally embodied, authors of works (or corpora) find their bodies in a figurative sense in the works they author - the books and articles that convey those works to readers are very much, and quite literally, the sole physical manifestations of their authors in the world. Authors of authors, however, have no such even figurative bodies. The author of an author is not implied by the work the authored author authors, but by the author who is implied by the work. Authoring an author, then, is essentially different from authoring a work, at least in this regard, that when one authors a work, one leaves some physical trace of oneself behind.60 An authored work or corpus is some sort of thing in the world. An authored author is not. Thus, while on the stage one reaches the end of one's quest for the ultimate performer of a role with the very real, very present actor or actress performing the role, the quest for the ultimate author of a written work ends only in the cognition of the absence of the author of 60

This is so, I think, even in the case of purely electronic authorship, or in the composition of music, neither of which results necessarily in tactile embodiment, but both of which manifest themselves and are evident in essentially corporeal ways - the former occupying at least visual space, the latter, at least aural.

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the author. Again, this is why Kierkegaard's argument in "A First and Last Explanation" must fail. Kierkegaard is present in the work, by way of the work's ascription to the veronym. While, in the theater, the performer's body must be present to the spectator in some way for the performance to be a performance, works of literature and other written works are almost exclusively read in the absence (of the body) of the author. While the stage performer's body is a limiting constraint on his or her performance - hence the tradition of masks, costumes, and makeup in stage performance - the authorial performer, the author of the author, requires no mask. In the case of the author of the author, indeed, there is nothing to mask. The author of the author is not present in the work; the author of the author is not even present in his or her performance as the author. This is why there is no "author of the author of the author" implied by the author of the author. The author of the author would have to be present to imply anything, and the author of the author is by his or her very nature never present. The author of the author is essentially absent. The absent performer is naturally incapable of ever appearing as active subject of the performance. For this reason, authorial performance must always be understood as the passive performance of Kierkegaard does not perform as the author of the pseudonymous authors, although the pseudonymous authors are being performed. Likewise, as named author of the veronymous authorship, Kierkegaard is performed. The author of a work is therefore bound up in the reader's understanding both with authorial activity and authorial passivity. As author, the author of a work actively asserts claims, poetizes characters, directs the reader, misdirects the reader, and so on; as authored, the author of a work is a persona performed. Holding these two very different (and in some sense incompatible) notions of the author together in one's understanding of any given author of a work or corpus is difficult work, but work which is necessary for a full understanding of the author's authorship. The author of an author is not like a poet or playwright - not like Shakespeare - who poetizes characters but stands apart from them, the omniscient, omnipotent author-god so railed against by theorists like Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault. Rather, at least with regard to the Kierkegaardian authorship, the author of an author is only insofar and as long as the authored author is performed. The author of the author is present in the author, but only as the reader's recognition of the absence of the author's implied author who never appears. Successful maintenance of this duality in our understanding of authorship or the author is occasion for a radi-

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cal revisioning of our understanding of the Kierkegaardian authorship - a transfiguration not only of the pseudonymous authors (which Kierkegaard attempts in "A First and Last Explanation"), but also of Kierkegaard as veronymous author himself. In the most accomplished stage performances, the performer disappears in his or her presentation of the character being performed. The disappearance so effected, however, can only ever be a limited disappearance, constrained as the performer is by the constant presence of his or her own body in the performance. Not so with authorial performance, which always occurs only when the performer (the author of the author) is totally absent. As totally absent, the author of the author can change nothing in the work or the author of the work. Recognition of the author of the work as authored, however, in the performance of the author by an admittedly absent performer, changes everything. No longer is the most basic interpretive question solely one of directness or indirectness - Is the author writing to or for the reader? - but, in light of an awareness of the author as being performed, we must also ask as to what purpose the author is performed for us. The performer is never present for analysis or interpretation in the attempt to resolve this second basic question, and so a wide interpretive field is opened to the reader - not so wide that anything goes, as the reader remains bound to the author of the work and the work authored, but wide enough that dialectical necessity plays a diminishing role in determinations of the meaning of the work and the author in the performance.61 In the wideness of this field, interpretation and criticism reveal themselves at their most cooperative, the reader and the author (of the author) co-constituting better or worse (rather than good or bad, or true or false) interpretations. The reader/interpreter/ critic is thus apparent as a co-worker with the author of the author, enabling that author's performance, and assisting that performance in coming to meaning. While reading is not performance, it is the sole condition necessary for the possibility of authorial performance - much as the spectators are necessary for theatrical performance. Performance is only ever performance for. Central, then, to authorship and authorial performance is the repetition occasioned by the location of meaning in the cooperation of 61

This is not to affirm Foucault's thesis, that "The author is the principle of thrift in the proliferation of meaning." To the contrary: the Kierkegaardian author as presented here, opens up the possibility for further interpretations, rather than closing them off. Michel Foucault "What is an Author?" in The Death and Resurrection of the Author?, ed. William Irwin, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press 2002, p. 21.

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the author and the reader. As the cautious reader attempts to alter that which is read as little as is possible - the only constraints on readings and interpretations are, indeed, those established by the text read - we might say that a successful reading occurs when the reader changes nothing but everything is nevertheless explained. Each new reading is a repetition of the work, a repetition in which the author is reperformed for the reader in a (perhaps only slightly) new way Repetition and reperformance are bound up conceptually with the work of the reader, interpreter, or critic, insofar as that work is understood as review. And it is in the review - a thoroughly literary brand of repetition - that the transfiguration of the dead author finally takes place. Recalling the anonymous reviewer's criterion for the true poet in From the Papers of One Still Living, then, we begin to see that poet - "dead and transfigured" - as the product of the union of authorial performance and the readerly reperformance of review. In the review, the author is explained -forklaret, transfigured - but that transfiguration can occur only in the total and perpetual absence of the author from the text (what we might call, in both the Kierkegaardian and the Barthesian senses, the death of the author). Authorial performance is only possible in a reading, and so we see that both the performance and the repetition of that performance, the reperformance, occur in each reading of the work. Authorship and review are simultaneous performances. Yet they are separate, performed separately in the presence of the reader aware of the absence of the author. Simultaneous but separate in a reading, authorship and readership do not constitute petition and repetition in time. Nevertheless, a reading does have bound up within itself a repetition - both reperformance and review.

Chapter Four Repetition and Reperformance: A Literary Review Oddly enough, Kierkegaard's last published work of literary criticism - excluding for the moment works of self-criticism - takes as the object of its criticism that very author with whom the anonymous reviewer in Andersen as a Novelist appeared to have been so pleased, the anonymous author of A Story of Everyday Life. In 1846, one year after the publication of Two Ages, the last novel by the author of A Story of Everyday Life, Kierkegaard published under his own name what is by far his longest, most extensive treatment of the work of another author, the aptly titled A Literary Review. The review is, Kierkegaard admits, a return - a repetition of his first book, From the Papers of One Still Living, for which he takes authorial responsibility - a second attempt at putting himself to the task of literary review. Seven years pass between the publication of From the Papers of One Still Living and A Literary Review, seven years and nearly the entire pseudonymous and upbuilding authorships, through Concluding Unscientific Postscript and Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses (both of which are themselves quite literally repetitions - Postscript as a sequel to Philosophical Fragments, and Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses as the collation and republication of the six shorter volumes of upbuilding discourses). A Literary Review can thus be understood to stand alongside Postscript (first pillar: the pseudonymous) and Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses (second pillar: the upbuilding) as the culmination of that "third pillar" of the Kierkegaardian authorship, the critical.1 To this schema we might at present only wish to add a silent, fourth pillar, 1

Niels J0rgen Cappel0rn first suggested to me that the critical works be considered as a distinct element within the Kierkegaardian authorship, and I am grateful for (and have certainly been influenced by) that suggestion. One might, of course, also turn to Merete J0rgensen's seminal Kierkegaard som kritiker, Copenhagen: Gyldendal 1978.

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the anonymous authorship. Silent only because its only full2 members, "Another Defense of Woman's Great Abilities" and "A Cursory Observation Concerning a Detail in Don Giovanni," cannot be brought fully or legitimately into the Kierkegaardian authorship - by virtue of their anonymity 3 Much has been made of A Literary Review, at least in the English-language Kierkegaard literature - certainly much more than has been made of any of the other works treated in the present study. The reason for this phenomenon is, I think, twofold. On the one hand, A Literary Review is a more substantial book by far than either of the other two works of criticism published as books during Kierkegaard's lifetime, From the Papers of One Still Living and On My Work as an Author, and is clearly more so than any of the works published in the Danish newspapers or feuilletons. Thus, more is said of A Literary Review because more is said in A Literary Review. On the other hand, however, and I think more significantly, A Literary Review has met with much acclaim among its readers for the stance Kierkegaard takes therein on matters of social and cultural significance. While the great majority of the veronymous works in the Kierkegaardian authorship are devoted explicitly to religious matters, A Literary Review (although still substantially religious, as we will see) offers Kierkegaardian commentary on contemporary events and trends - perhaps most especially, the phenomenon Kierkegaard calls "leveling." One would be mistaken to believe that A Literary Review is solely a work of social commentary, however, or even a work of social commentary

2

3

"Full" only in the sense that they are never retroactively brought under the umbrella of Kierkegaard's veronymity. In another sense, of course, all of the works ascribed to anonyms at publication remain anonymous, as Kierkegaard lacks the authority to veronymize them. This loose categorization of the Kierkegaardian works ought not be understood to imply mutual exclusivity. There is one pseudonymous work of criticism in the authorship ("The Crisis and a Crisis in the Life of an Actress"), there are veronymous works that are not strictly speaking upbuilding or critical (The Concept of Irony, Works of Love), and there is the closing, reformative phase of the authorship ("An Open Letter to Dr. Rudelbach," For Self-Examination, the later Fcedrelandet articles, and The Moment - fifth pillar?). I presume it as given, however, that no simple understanding of the structure of the authorship will be adequate to the complexities inherent in the authorship, and use the metaphor of the pillars only to reemphasize the elevation of the critical authorship into serious consideration of its own, on a par with the consideration heretofore given to the so-called "pseudonymous authorship" and "upbuilding authorship."

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17

masquerading as a literary review.4 The portion of the work most commented upon by scholars, and most widely understood as the central portion of the work, is from a subsection of the work's final chapter that constitutes only slightly more than one-third of the book's length. The rest of the work is devoted primarily to a consideration of the novel, Two Ages, and its literary and authorial merits.5 Despite the nearly exclusive scholarly interest in the social and cultural commentary within the work,6 the present chapter will be devoted primarily to A Literary Review insofar as it is a literary review. Although Kierkegaard claims that, by way of A Literary Review, he makes "a second and last try" at the work of literary criticism,7 he is able to make this claim only by way of taking authorial responsibility for Andersen as a Novelist and From the Papers of One Still Living. This he does - with or without the authority to do so - much in 4

5

6

7

See Stephen Crites' introduction to his translation of "The Crisis and a Crisis in the Life of an Actress." There, he writes, "A Literary Review, on the novel by Heiberg's mother, was published in 1846, but was more concerned with social criticism than aesthetics," p. 32. Crisis in the Life of an Actress, trans. Stephen Crites, London: Collins 1967. The prejudice among English-speaking readers is made evident in (and likely reinforced by) the two longest-standing translations of the work: in 1940, Alexander Dru and Walter Lowrie made available the first English translation of any portion of the work, but only saw fit to translate that final subsection - the translation appearing under the title, The Present Age; thirty-eight years later, in 1978, Howard and Edna Hong brought their translation of the complete work to print, but under the title, Two Ages. Only now (over sixty years after its first English appearance!), as of 2001, does the work appear in English under its proper title, in Alastair Hannay's translation of A Literary Review. Perhaps the appearance of this translation will renew interest in the literary aspects of the review, and remind readers of the nature of the review as a review. See The Present Age and Two Minor Ethico-Religious Treatises, trans. Alexander Dru and Walter Lowrie, Oxford: Oxford University Press 1940. And A Literary Review, trans. Alastair Hannay, New York: Penguin Books 2001. Every one of the essays in the volume of the International Kierkegaard Commentary devoted to A Literary Review treats the social, the socio-political, or the ethical in Kierkegaard; not one treats questions of literature, the literary, authorship or reviews. See International Kierkegaard Commentary: Two Ages, vol. 14, ed. Robert L. Perkins, 1984. To be fair, Perkins sets forth in his Introduction as the express purpose of the work the demolition of the common understanding of Kierkegaard as lacking a viable social theory. He does this in explicit contrast to Hegel's and Hegelian understandings of what philosophy can say about society, presenting Hegelian philosophy as admittedly incapable of anything but reflection and rationalization on the past - rather than able to put forth positive theories or imperatives for action. Perkins' volume has certainly contributed to the undermining of the view once common among Kierkegaard scholars it sets out to demolish. TA, 23 / SKS 8, 26.

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the same way as Kierkegaard retroactively ascribed the anonymous authorship of B. to himself in "To Mr. Orla Lehmann." With this in mind, then, we can expect to find an array of authorial strategies at work in and authorial problems undermining A Literary Review similar in sort and structure to those we have seen elsewhere in the Kierkegaardian authorship. And, as we saw perhaps most pointedly in the case of From the Papers of One Still Living, although these problems remain unresolved within the work or the authorship as a whole, some sense can nevertheless be found in coming to terms with Kierkegaard as authored author. Kierkegaard's authorship, like the Kierkegaardian authorship - these are not, I think, the same thing - can well be understood despite its problems. Nevertheless, this requires constant attention on the part of the reader, who must keep ever in mind Kierkegaard's role in the authorship as authored, veronymous author, and who might also benefit in his or her readings from the recognition of the named author as being performed. The three chapters of A Literary Review draw their relative orientation from the manner in which each of them relates to Two Ages. The first chapter is a "Survey of the Contents of Both Parts" of the novel, the first part taking place in "the age of revolution," the second in "the present age."8 The second chapter, more than the literal center of Kierkegaard's review, is "An Esthetic Interpretation of the Novel and Its Details."9 The third and final chapter, although more devoted to issues raised by the novel than to the novel itself, presents Kierkegaard's "Conclusions from a Consideration of the Two Ages."10 By way of his uneven division of the contents of the book's three chapters, Kierkegaard presents his readers with an at least preliminary division of the critic's labors: in the first chapter, Kierkegaard summarizes the novel; in the second chapter, Kierkegaard interprets the novel; and, in the third chapter, Kierkegaard engages in his own discussion of the ideas and hypotheses underlying the novel, only ever making reference to the novel to offer examples of the points he himself is making. Each of the three divisions, like each of the three chapters of A Literary Review, is thus already an attempt at a repetition of Two Ages. And each of the three is after the same thing: to say again - or to say better - what the author of A Story of Everyday Life has already said in or by way of the novel. The first three sections of the present chapter, then, 8 9 10

TA, 25-31 / SKS 8, 26-32. TA, 32-59 / SKS 8, 32-58. TA, 60-112 / SKS 8, 58-106.

Two Ages

will follow the basic pattern set forth by Kierkegaard in the structure of A Literary Review: a summary consideration of Two Ages and the two ages (§ 1); an analysis of Kierkegaard's interpretation of Two Ages and the two ages (§ 2); and a study of Kierkegaard himself as aesthetic interpreter or reviewer of the author of A Story of Everyday Life's work (§ 3). In that third and final section of the chapter, I will argue that the Kierkegaardian author, whether in authorial performance, reading, or review, opens up an occasion (or, perhaps more appropriately, is opened up as an occasion) for the transfiguring repetition of authorial reperformance - rereading, or review.

Two A g e s Two Ages tells two related stories, both of which set the difficulties of young lovers against the backdrop of the ages in which they live." In the first part of the novel, set in the late eighteenth century, Claudine, a young woman living in Copenhagen, who has suffered through something of an oppressive upbringing, meets and falls in love with Charles Lusard, a member of a delegation of Frenchmen in residence in Copenhagen. Over the course of a series of accidents, Claudine and Lusard enter into a secret love affair that culminates, unbeknownst to Lusard, in the conception of a child. Lusard leaves Denmark for the war, a German proposes marriage to Claudine, Claudine has her child, a baron proposes marriage to Claudine, and so on. Years pass. Lusard returns to Denmark - not to Copenhagen, but to an estate in Jutland - believing Claudine has married and is living in Germany. At long last, however, and without too much apparent mishap, Claudine's cousin, Ferdinand Waller (the son of a Copenhagen merchant, and a republican and poet, the author of a book of revolutionary poetry, Primula veris), informs each of the unhappy lovers of the situation of the other. Claudine moves to the estate in Jutland, and she and Lusard raise their son - also named Charles Lusard. Fifty years pass between the first and second parts of the novel. The half-century elapses without comment; what development there is from the first to the second parts is not made evident in the novel, except insofar as its effects are evident in the changes that occur in the passage from the first to the second age. Only a few characters appear 11

What follows is essentially a summary of Kierkegaard's summary of the novel, constituting the entirety of the first chapter of A Literary Review.

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in both of the two parts - and thus, both of the two ages - as Kierkegaard notes in his synopsis. Dalund, a young lawyer in the first part, reappears in the second part as an aged councilor of state. While in the first part - the first age, the age of revolution - Dalund appeared as an advocate of revolutionary ideals, at least insofar as they translated into a loosening of traditional concepts of marriage (he makes this appearance both theoretically, as the advocate he is, and practically, as the extramarital lover of the aunt of the first part's primary character), in the second part - the second age, the present age - Dalund, an old man, "takes up the cudgels with his mild yet somewhat sarcastic views as 'attorney for a vanished age - or against the present age'."12 Thus, just as there is no explicit development in the novel from the revolutionary to the present age, there appears to be no implied development in the characters inhabiting the two ages. Attorney Dalund and State Councilor Dalund have essentially the same view of the age of revolution, the only difference lying in the older Dalund's opportunity to turn that view to criticism of the present age, a task from which the younger Dalund is barred simply for chronological reasons. Ferdinand Waller, the cousin who reintroduces Claudine and Lusard at the end of Part I, also reappears - now as the father of Mariane, a young woman who has suffered through something of an oppressive upbringing. Mariane has fallen in love with a young man, Ferdinand Bergland, but the young man is nowhere to be found. Charles Lusard the younger, a guest in Ferdinand Waller's house, comes to care for Mariane - although his affection is publicly mistaken for amorous interest, which it is not. Mariane's love affair with Ferdinand Bergland is a secret love, but Lusard comes to suspect she loves Arnold, a law student whom Lusard finds particularly empty. Worried for Mariane, Lusard spies on her, and overhears a conversation she has with her secret lover - whose identity remains a mystery to Lusard until he sees the young man's signet ring, the same signet ring worn by a young man who outbid Lusard at an auction of a copy of Ferdinand Waller's Primula veris. The ring identifies the mysterious lover as Ferdinand Bergland, after whom all have been searching. Lusard overhears Bergland telling Mariane that their love affair must end, because he is worried of the possibility of financial difficulties if they marry. Lusard, fearing for Mariane and Ferdinand Bergland the suffering that befell his own parents in the first part, steps in - and saves both the lovers and himself. Mariane and Bergland marry, and join Lusard in 12

TA, 29 / SKS 8, 30.

Two Ages

his castle in Jutland, gaining for the Franco-Danish bachelor the family and heirs he lacked. The novel ends with Mariane, Bergland and Lusard in conversation: Mariane comments on how beautiful Ferdinand Waller's poetry is, representing as it does the age of revolution; Ferdinand Bergland suggests that, although there was genuine refinement in the earlier age, the present age offers the hope of even better things to come; and Lusard remarks that the world more or less repeats itself. The novel's final words are from Lusard, in the form of an advisory nautical analogy. Like brave travelers at sea, we will keep eyes on the powerful hand that controls the rudder, even though we are only able to see it dimly through the fog, and we will hold fast to the anchor, even though the waves hurl themselves angrily at it and threaten to tear us away from it.13

Here, Lusard offers a cautious synthesis of Mariane's and Ferdinand Bergland's thoughts on the two ages, and the location of Lusard's comment - at the very conclusion of the novel, the author's final words, as it were - grants the analogy a significance it might not otherwise have attained for itself. The mediating vision set forth by Lusard in the novel's closing passage seeks to unite the visions articulated by Mariane and Bergland immediately prior, and in so doing, to join the lovers a second time. Mariane looks back longingly to the age of revolution; Bergland looks forward optimistically from the present age. Lusard seems to try to situate the aspirations of the latter within the context provided by the former, and given that the revolution of "the age of revolution" is the French Revolution of 1789, Lusard's reticence to leap boldly with Bergland into the future is unsurprising. Lusard's hesitance signals for readers of Two Ages a second meaning of Lusard's assertion regarding the prevalence of repetition: the present age, with its bold optimism and willingness to sacrifice the ideals of the past (i. e., what were revolutionary ideals in a prior age) for whatever is to come, is itself revolutionary in spirit. The present age - an age of rationalism - is, in its own way, an age of revolution, as well. Ferdinand Bergland embraces that fact; Lusard warily accepts it. If we remain aware both of the rudder (the present age) and the anchor (the age of 13

"Conclusion of the Novel Two Ages" trans. Howard and Edna Hong, TA, 157. The author of A Story of Everyday Life [Thomasine Gyllembourg] To Tidsaldre, ed. Anni Broue, Copenhagen: Det danske Sprog- og Litteraturselskab & Borgen 1986, pp. 229-230. There is no complete English translation of the novel; the Hongs include a translation of the Preface and the concluding pages in the supplementary material to their translation of A Literary Review.

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revolution, the prior age), then we are more likely to remain secure, to maintain ourselves and our possibilities for the future - such as the marriage of Mariane and Bergland, or the adoptive heirs Lusard will find in their children. Lusard's vision, then, as set forth in the concluding lines of Two Ages, is essentially a conservative vision, despite its acceptance of the potential advantages of future progress. Lusard's concept of repetition, as he asserts it in conversation with Ferdinand Bergland, is ultimately a mark of the continuity between the ages - of the lack of an essential difference between the age of revolution and the present age. To quote from that conversation at length: "Yes," observed Ferdinand, "and when we consider that it is only half a century, after all, since that time we are talking about, does it not seem as if in this space of time the world has in so many respects become another world?" "Ah!" said Lusard, "At the moment you are saying this I am gripped by the thought that everything in life so strikingly repeats itself. We are sitting here on a September evening in the moonlight, in an arbor adorned with lights and flowers, and are reading this book which according to my parents was celebrated in this very same way when it came out, in an arbor such as this, on an evening such as this; and in a veritable replica of that little ceremony, my father celebrated the memories of his youth with his lost friend in the same arbor where we are now sitting, and here for the first time he learned from Ferdinand Waller of his son's existence and the fate of his faithful beloved. Here we have also celebrated a repetition of those evenings so unforgettable to my parents, but - like everything in life - in another form, and thus it seems to me that in great matters as well as small ones everything repeats itself. I confess that I do not believe in a new golden age here below, or a millennium in which all conflicts will be reconciled. The human race remains essentially the same; the same passions, the same ideas return, but in changed forms."14

Although Lusard seems aware of the two, perhaps mutually incompatible, aspects contained within the notion of repetition - that is, novelty and continuity - he seems, in the end, unhappy with any conception of historical progress (such as that proposed, however briefly, by Ferdinand Bergland) that sacrifices the latter for the former. Nevertheless, Lusard's synthesis foregoes consideration of the more remarkable differences between the two ages as they are reflected in the domestic goings-on of the novel's two principals, Claudine and Mariane. Lusard offers, as an example of the continuity-through-repetition from one age to the next, the stories of the two sets of lovers, Claudine and Charles Lusard in the prior age, Mariane and Ferdinand Bergland in the present one. But even this "repetition" begins to ring false when one considers the stories in detail. Although Lusard makes 14

TA, 156. To Tidsaldre, p. 229.

Two Ages

allowances for difference with his acknowledgement of the "changed forms" repeated events take in the present age, the point at which formal differences signify differing contents - that is, two distinct events rather than a repetition of events - is difficult to judge. Each pair of lovers is faced with the threat of an end to their love, an end brought about by the choices made by the men involved, choices reflective of a perceived incompatibility between the continuity of each man's love and each man's life-view. Bergland threatens to leave Mariane for fear of financial difficulty, which fear is eradicated by the friendly and financial intervention of Lusard the younger in their affairs. Lusard the elder, however, does not only threaten to leave Claudine, but does in fact leave her - in order to join the army in fighting the revolutionaries in France. Thereafter, the two lovers are kept apart not by fear, but by ignorance. A third party also intervenes in their case, but when Ferdinand Waller plays the third, he does so simply by dispelling the lovers' common ignorance, his own role in the romance effaced by way of the revelation. This is not the case with Mariane and Bergland, into whose love Lusard the younger intrudes and in the context of whose love Lusard the younger will ever remain. In short, although Lusard the younger casts himself in the same light as Ferdinand Waller (by virtue of casting Mariane and Bergland in the same light as his parents), he is not Ferdinand Waller or a repetition of Ferdinand Waller. Lusard brings the unhappy lovers together, and sustains them in their togetherness; Waller merely opened up the possibility for the unhappy lovers to come together again of their own accord. In fact, as Kierkegaard notes, Waller does so with an intentionally light hand, "so that the reunion might not be a poor, reluctant acquiescence but an enthusiastic repetition."15 Without disputing the authenticity of the love between Mariane and Bergland, it is worth noting that Bergland - advocate of possibility, progress, and the present age - is willing to close off what possibilities the future might hold in the love he shares with Mariane for fear of (mere) material poverty. It is difficult not to ascribe some awareness of this difference between Bergland and Lusard the elder to Mariane, when she praises the "beautiful voice" of Waller's Primula veris, "a young voice sounding from the depths of the heart," which, "even if it now and then strikes a single false note, it nevertheless sings like a bird, merely to sing, from an honest, warm, exuberant breast." Her present-age lover, Bergland, responds critically - noting, "with all love and respect for [his] grandfather," that the 15

TA, 28 / SKS 8, 29.

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poems would be considered "insignificant" by present-age readers.16 And, in his discomfort with the idea of a marriage into poverty, he certainly does not seem to sing "like a bird, merely to sing." Nevertheless, immediately contradicted by Bergland, Mariane does not speak again in the novel. Over the course of the fifty years intervening between the two ages, ideals that were once revolutionary have become, in essence, nostalgic. Dalund, once a practitioner of his age's revolutionary (if adulterous) morality, becomes, as he ages, but one more elderly gentleman calling for a return to the old ways. Ferdinand Waller's poetry, repeated in readings of Primula veris, likewise is transformed essentially from incitement to revolution to, as Mariane notes, but one more beautiful example of the passion of a dead age - from political art to historical artifact. Lusard, however, fails to note either of these examples, even when he remarks upon the repetition he perceives in the reading of Primula veris "in an arbor such as this, on an evening such as this." Nothing about Dalund's ideals or Waller's poetry has changed - or could have changed, if they are in fact to be the same ideals and the same poetry - but, in their repetition fifty years after their conception, both have come to play an essentially different role than they once did. Although Primula veris itself remains unchanged (it is, in fact, an original copy, bought at auction), the age in which it is being read has changed considerably. Thus, Dalund's morality, although once revolutionary, is in the present age considered rather old-fashioned. Waller's poetry, although once thought dangerous, is in the present age considered quaint, and antiquated, and out-of-style. In Lusard's sense, however, wherein repetition is a matter of continuity between ages - "everything in life so strikingly repeats itself" - Dalund and Ferdinand Waller demonstrate, as does the romance of Mariane and Ferdinand Bergland, that there is no such thing as a repetition. The changing of contexts, whether historical or otherwise, forbids it. Despite the impossibility of a repetition in the ideals or the poetry themselves, however, Kierkegaard holds open the possibility of a repetition in one's understanding of the ideals or the poetry - or, as in the case of Lusard the younger, the love between Claudine and Charles Lusard. Just then as a separation similar to that in Part I is about to take place, in which a faithful woman (like Claudine) is about to be abandoned by her lover who does not wish to go to war (like Lusard) but hopelessly does not dare risk marriage out of fear 16

TA, 155-156. To Tidsaldre, pp. 228-229.

Two Ages of financial difficulties, just as the horoscope might indeed be cast in such a manner that Mariane, like Claudine, would remain faithful to herself over the years, but less zealously and secretly suffering more - Lusard steps forth, and once again the recollection of Part I has a transfiguring [forklarende] effect. What filial piety recollects in sadness, the noble spirit now sees before him in renewed repetition.17

Central to the admission of the possibility of repetition into Lusard's subjective perspective is his recollection of his parents' love. For Lusard, the situation of Mariane and Ferdinand Bergland is a repetition, precisely because, from Lusard's perspective, any such situation will be reminiscent of what is for him the original situation of unfulfilled love, that of his parents, Claudine and the elder Lusard. Thus, even though Lusard does not present an objectively valid case for understanding Mariane and Bergland as a repetition of Claudine and Lusard, we can understand how, for Lusard, that case would seem to be valid - even objectively valid, despite its apparent subjectivity.18 In Repetition, Constantin Constantius makes the case that recollection is fundamentally opposed to and incommensurable with repetition.19 Nevertheless, in A Literary Review, Kierkegaard presents us with an instance of repetition the existence of which depends entirely upon the recollection of the observing subject. Only Lusard's recollecting filial piety makes repetition possible. The possibility of repetition is secured, then, by the transfiguring power of recollection, and this reintroduces the importance of transfiguration into the discussion of authorship and review. According to Kierkegaard, Lusard sees a repetition in Mariane and Bergland by virtue of the transfiguration of their situation in the power of his recollection of Claudine and Lusard. In short, Lusard explains/transfigures the present-age lovers in light of his understanding of the situation in which his parents found themselves fifty years prior. Merchant Waller - Ferdinand Waller's father, who exiled Claudine from his home would not see a repetition in Mariane and Bergland, and would not be justified in believing the new situation to be a repetition of the old. He lacks Lusard's memory, by way of which the new lovers are transfigured in light of the old and the old lovers are renewed in the repeti17

TA, 30/5X5 8,31.

18

It would be difficult, if not impossible, to make the case that any existing thinker was capable of overcoming the obstacle set before Lusard by the shape of his own subjectivity. This does, of course, as explored by Johannes Climacus in Concluding Unscientific Postscript, threaten the coherence of the very notion of objective validity. R, 131-133 / SKS 4, 9-11, although important comments are also made elsewhere throughout the book.

19

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tion. We must note, however, that, for Lusard, the transfiguration of the new is the repetition of the old. There is no objective distinction between repetition and transfiguration; they are merely two aspects of the same understanding, which looks simultaneously backward and forward and sees, somehow, the same thing. Despite their differences, when Lusard looks at Mariane and Bergland he cannot help but see his parents reflected there - and so must understand what he sees in terms of a repetition. The identification of repetition with transfiguration - treated at length by Niels Nymann Eriksen in Kierkegaard's Category of Repetition20 - is not new. Nor, however, is the association of transfiguration with reflection. Recall the passage from Kierkegaard's Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses, cited earlier in Chapter Three: Who, then, was victorious? It was God, because he did not give the explanation requested by the one who prayed, and he did not give it as the struggling one requested it. But the one struggling was also victorious. Or was it not a victory that instead of receiving an explanation [Forklaring] from God he was transfigured in God, and his transfiguration is this: to reflect the image of God.21

In this passage already, then, in 1844, Kierkegaard has identified transfiguration with being brought to reflect one's origin (or Origin), the author (or The Author). The transfiguration Kierkegaard depicts in Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses, of the one who prays aright, is also another case of the subjectivity of genuine repetition. The one who prays aright prays for an explanation of his or her struggles in the world - that is, he or she prays to have his or her struggles given back by God in the light of a divine explanation. This, Kierkegaard maintains in the discourse, God does not do. Rather, in struggle and prayer (and struggling with prayer), the one who prays aright comes to see him- or herself anew, he or she is given back to him- or herself by God, as a reflection of God. Like the one who prays aright, Mariane and Bergland also come to reflect their origin - although, in their case, they do not reflect the image of God, but the image of Lusard's parents instead. Understood in this way, however, repetition is very much reminiscent of Forklaring, explanation in the sense of interpretation or poetic reconstruction. We must say, then, that in an important sense Lusard 20

21

See, again, Niels Nymann Eriksen Kierkegaard's Category of Repetition: A Reconstruction (Kierkegaard Studies. Monograph Series, vol. 5), pp. 56-57. The section in question is entitled, "Transfiguration is the Explanation." EUD, 399-400 / SKS 5, 380.

Two Ages

explains Mariane and Bergland in terms of his own parents, or that he poetically reconstructs, or poetizes, them in those terms. In coming to understand the events of Part II of Two Ages as a repetition, Lusard plays the critic's role vis-à-vis not only those events of the present age, but also the events of the age of revolution, set forth in Part I of the novel. In the character of Charles Lusard the younger - whose point of view is put forward at the very end of the novel in a manner that lends it dominance over the other characters' points of view - the second part of the novel looks back to, or recollects, the first. Insofar as recollection of Part I informs our reading of Part II, then, Part II is a repetition. Insofar as it does not, it is not a repetition - for us. The novel's closing conversation makes this point plain: that the reflection of Claudine and Lusard the elder in Mariane and Bergland is itself, at least in part, a reflection of the age of revolution in the present age. Lusard's claim, that "everything in life so strikingly repeats itself," and his further guidance not to lose sight of the prior age as the present one progresses, both serve as reemphasis of the continuity between the ages despite their differences. Regardless of whether we understand it as such or not, the story of Mariane and Ferdinand Bergland will always be a repetition for Lusard - but not only for Lusard. In the preface to the novel, the author of A Story of Everyday Life observes, "It is hardly a mistake to say that there has been a great change in our morals and attitudes in the last 50-60 years, although on the other hand it seems as if the same things are constantly repeating themselves in a changed form."22 Lusard's view, that Part II is a repetition, is thus not merely privileged by virtue of its placement at the very conclusion of the work; in addition, the author of that work puts the same view forward in "his" own name. Although the standards of rectitude in social life by which even private relationships are publicly judged change from age to age, the essential content of the lives of the individual members of the society - quite especially in terms of their passions, virtues, and vices - stays the same. The author of A Story of Everyday Life writes, again, in the preface: This power of the spirit of the age over individuals' innermost feelings, over their completely private relationships and their judgment of themselves and others, the glaring contrast in which the very same human passions, virtues, and weaknesses appear in the various ages - this is what I have wished to depict as it has presented itself to me in my own experience and the experience of others.23 22 23

TA 154. To Tidsaldre, p. 74. TA 155. To Tidsaldre, pp. 74-75.

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Two Ages, then, is (according to the author) intended to serve not as a depiction of either of the two ages, but as an illustration of the reflection of each age in the personal lives and personalities of individuals living in the age. As Kierkegaard notes, The novel has as its premise the distinctive totality of the age, and the production is the reflection of this in domestic life; the mind turns from the production back again to the totality of the age that has been so clearly revealed in this reflection. But (according to the preface) the author did not intend to describe the age itself; his novel lies somewhere between the presupposed distinctive character of the age and the age in reflection as illustrated by his work.24

As Lusard saw his parents' story reflected in the story of Mariane and Bergland - in fact, repeated therein - so does the author of A Story of Everyday Life indicate in the preface that each of the novel's two parts is intended to depict its age as reflected - or repeated - in the lives of its characters. In this sense, we can say of Claudine and Lusard that they are a repetition of the age of revolution, and of Mariane and Bergland that they are a repetition of the present age, at least from the perspective of the author of A Story of Everyday Life. Kierkegaard takes this further, however, in situating the novel itself, Two Ages, in-between the ages-in-themselves (the age of revolution/ the present age) and the ages-as-reflected (Claudine and Lusard/Mariane and Bergland). Two Ages can present neither. The critic is obliged to assume the double approach by which the story has made its task so difficult. The author does not dare to present the age as having automatic consequences in the individuals, for then he would transgress his task as novelist and merely describe the age and illustrate it by examples, instead of viewing the reflection in domestic life and through it illuminating the age. Action must always occur through the psychological middle term of the individual.25

Were the novel to present the ages-in-themselves directly, it would become either a work of history or a didactic, unpoetic novel, neither of which is the case. Were it to reflect the ages indirectly, however, it could only do so as a product of its own age - presumably, the present age - and would thereby lose the capacity to reflect both ages in accord with its author's published intention. Rather, in order to succeed as a novel and as the novel its author claims "he" wishes it to be, Two Ages must recede from the reader'sfieldof vision - as must the author of A Story of Everyday Life - and open up an actuality within which

24 25

TA, 32 / SKS 8, 32. Translation slightly modified. TA, 41I SKS 8, 41.

Two Ages

the characters themselves can be seen as reflections of their ages. The author of A Story of Everyday Life must remain anonymous. As we saw in the case of Only a Fiddler in Chapter One, the novelist as novelist must absent him- or herself from the novel in order for the novel's characters to exist coherently within a poetical actuality of their own. Intrusion on the part of the author - even of the slightest sort - shakes the poetical actuality of the work beyond its ability to remain standing. Although A Literary Review overflows with praise for A Story of Everyday Life and the author of A Story of Everyday Life, the review of Two Ages notes - admittedly, only very briefly - a failing on the part of the novel's author of the very same sort as was lambasted at length in Andersen as a Novelist. Of course, as we have seen, Two Ages attempts (again, according to its author) to present each of the two ages as reflected in the domestic lives of the characters populating Parts I and II. If left to its own devices, the novel would be an unmitigated success as a novel, Kierkegaard seems to indicate in the review. Nevertheless: "The questionable aspect of all this seems to be that the author in a preface seems to have set himself a third task - to compare the two ages. But however superbly the two parts of the novel are arranged for the comparison, the author probably should not have hinted at such a thing."26 This comparative third task does not originate organically from within the novel, but is an external imposition couched in the author's own terms of authorial intent. In offering "his" readers a ready-made, authorially authorized interpretation of the novel, the author of A Story of Everyday Life complicates rather than elucidates things for those readers. Much as Andersen was criticized for intruding in his own name into the affairs of his fictional characters, so does the author of A Story of Everyday Life open "himself" up to criticism. The characters and their stories are not left to speak for themselves, and the readers of the novel in which those characters and stories appear are likewise not left to read, think and interpret for themselves. The encounter between the reader and the work read - an encounter that cannot be mediated by a third party and continue to exist - is interrupted by the author's omniscient, if still "merely" interpretive, voice. Most importantly, perhaps, in light of the role played by repetition in Two Ages, the author's interference in the reader's reading eliminates the possibility of a repetition of the novel in the reader's mind. The project of reading Two Ages becomes something more like philosophical criticism than Forklaring, 26

TA, 47 / SKS 8, 47.

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and the cause is the author's apparent lack of confidence in the novel and the reader to meet in the "right" or "most appropriate" way. The "authorized interpretation" closes off the possibility of interpretation itself, at least insofar as interpretation is anything other than agreement or disagreement with other interpreters. The creative aspect of Forklaring is eradicated entirely and, with that eradication, Forklaring is replaced by the author's Erklcering of the novel: this is what the novel means. There is no transfiguration, and thus no repetition, in an Erklcering. Of course, repetition is not necessary and may not even be desirable in art, and so Kierkegaard must present his criticism in lighter terms than those to which we are accustomed: the author "probably should not have hinted" at the comparative task to which "he" wished to set the novel and readers of the novel. Nevertheless, without the possibility of a repetition in the subjective reader - we might call it appropriation - reading is reducible to the author's explanation in the preface. Telling us what it means eliminates our need to figure out what it means for us. Forklaring remains possible, perhaps, but only insofar as we are willing to question the authority of the author to fix the meaning of the work he or she has authored. All in all, if the goal is ultimately to open up an occasion for change - for repetition and change - in the reader, an author is better off foregoing any attempt to clarify or explain the meaning or purpose of the work in the work.27 Criticism of Two Ages in A Literary Review is exceedingly light, especially considering the degree to which Kierkegaard was willing to ridicule other authors in other of his critical works. Kierkegaard nevertheless does level some criticism - oft-overlooked in the scholarly readings of the review - and that criticism is of substantially the same sort as that Kierkegaard leveled on those other authors. The author of A Story of Everyday Life intrudes unnecessarily into the poetical actuality of the work authorship of which is ascribed to "him." Although the point is made only very briefly in A Literary Review - once, di27

Kierkegaard comes close to erring in the same manner as Andersen and the author of A Story of Everyday Life in "A First and Last Explanation," but even there, Kierkegaard does not attempt to elucidate the meaning or purpose of the pseudonymous authorship to his readers. Despite his failed attempt to clarify his own role in the Kierkegaardian authorship, Kierkegaard seems to this point to have heeded the critical advice he gives to these other authors. This will, of course, not always remain the case. In On My Work as an Author, Kierkegaard offers his readers "the authorized interpretation" of his authorship, in specifically religious terms, a matter treated at length in Chapter Five.

A Novel by the Author of A Story of Everyday Life

189

rectly, as already noted, and once again, in the concluding remark of the section entitled, "An Esthetic Interpretation of the Novel and Its Details"28 - the point made is not different in kind from that made in From the Papers of One Still Living with regard to Andersen, whose novel, work as an author, and personality are all criticized harshly on that point's basis. In From the Papers of One Still Living, the relative situation of Andersen and the author of A Story of Everyday Life was much the same - the former the object of ferocious criticism, the latter lionized as an author. There, it seemed that much of the praiseworthiness of the author of A Story of Everyday Life lay in "his" anonymity, but the consideration in Chapter One and From the Papers of One Still Living was for the most part focused on H. C. Andersen. Now, then, it is time to turn that same attention - looking both at the present work, A Literary Review, as well as back to From the Papers of One Still Living in recollection, as it were - to the anonymous author of A Story of Everyday Life.

A Novel by the Author of A Story of Everyday Life Of popular Danish novelists, the anonymous author of A Story of Everyday Life was among the most celebrated by "his" contemporaries in Denmark's Golden Age - despite the fact that, as only slightly more than an anonym, the author of A Story of Everyday Life had no factually actual, personal or public life to humor the rumor- and 28

Kierkegaard writes, "Because all the details in Part II are weighted with significance, it could not occur to me to cite particular ones. Only one single line by Lusard grated on me at least, because I did not think it consistent of Lusard to say this to a lady. The statement may be altogether true, but the dubious aspect is its relation to the speaker and the speaker's situation," TA, 59 / SKS 8, 58. Here, Kierkegaard makes only the slightest - but still perceptible - move in the direction of the sort of criticism used to humiliate H. C. Andersen. One of the primary criticisms of Only a Fiddler was the lack of development in the character of Christian in the novel's different parts; that Christian seemed to behave in a manner inconsistent with his own character, as it had been established early in the work, and that no explanation for a shift in Christian's character had been given. Admittedly, Kierkegaard's observation in A Literary Review is limited to a single, short paragraph, and the inconsistency it notes in Lusard's character is a minor one. Nevertheless, it does not seem that the force of the criticism of Andersen rested on the size of his mistake, but entirely upon its nature. Here, Kierkegaard seems to note that the author of A Story of Everyday Life has committed a similar mistake. In A Literary Review, the author gets off with a mere slap on the wrist, it seems; in From the Papers of One Still Living, the author in question is made ludicrous.

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gossipmongers. This lamentable literary fact was perhaps offset by the continued association of a single name with that anonymous author - Johan Ludvig Heiberg. Heiberg was the editor of the newspaper - Kj0benhavns flyvende Post - where A Story of Everyday Life was published in its original, serial form, and when the author of A Story of Everyday Life would appear as the author to whom any of a number of novels were ascribed, Heiberg's name (as Udgiver) always joined "the author of A Story of Everyday Life" on the work's title page. The anonymity of the author was thus always conjoined with the veronymity of the editor/publisher, such that a named person was always available to readers - and, presumably, to the censor and other public officials, to accept "legal and literary" responsibility for the anonym's works. We have seen two important examples of this phenomenon, the shifting of authorial responsibility to the Udgiver, already: first, in the case of the anonymous reform movement in Kj0benhavnsposten, responsibility for which fell to the only named person available, the editor of the newspaper, A. P. Liunge (Chapter Two); second, of course, in the case of Kierkegaard himself, the veronymous editor of Philosophical Fragments and Concluding Unscientific Postscript (Chapter Three). In both cases, recall, the shifting of ascription fails literarily, insofar as it does not acknowledge the Udgiver'?, lack of authority to take authorial responsibility - even merely legal responsibility - from the author, with or against the author's will. In both cases, recall, the shifting of ascription also succeeds - at least insofar as Liunge did suffer the consequences of being held responsible by the public for the anonymous articles advocating press freedom reform, and Kierkegaard was (and often still is) held responsible for not only the publication, but also the production of Fragments and Postscript. In both cases, as Kierkegaard feared in "A First and Last Explanation," the intermingling of an anonymous or pseudonymous authorship with the veronym results in the collapse of the poetical actuality of the anonymous or pseudonymous work. Factual actuality intrudes upon the works, and in doing so, again to use Kierkegaard's words from "A First and Last Explanation," makes poetry "impossible or meaningless and intolerable."29 In addition, however, to the thoroughly literary consequences of such authorial confusion, the reascription of authorial responsibility for the works lends itself not only to a certain public interpretation, but also to very real consequences for very real, fac29

CUPI, 627 / SKS 7, 571.

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tually actual persons. The factually actual Liunge was censured and fined for infringement of the press laws in 1837; the factually actual Kierkegaard was ridiculed in Corsaren in 1846. Heiberg, of course, suffered no such indignities. Nevertheless, Kierkegaard does seem to ascribe a great deal of the responsibility for the original form of the publication of the Stories of Everyday Life (later published, in book form, as A Story of Everyday Life) to Heiberg. He notes, "So it was in the beginning when Professor Heiberg took esthetic command of Danish literature and in Flyveposten's gay, witty, edifying, instructive, entertaining way episodically interspersed these stories in such a way that we were fooled and could not tell if it was fact or fiction."30 Kierkegaard situates responsibility for the confusing nature of the first appearance of the stories - as notes appearing in the newspaper, as if placed there by factually actual parties - with Heiberg alone. The novelty of Heiberg's willingness to blur the line between fiction and fact on the pages of his newspaper assured the Stories of Everyday Life instant popularity, and secured for the author of A Story of Everyday Life an enduring name in Danish letters. The irony of this last accomplishment is not lost on Kierkegaard. How beautiful to be such an author, how beautiful to be the celebrity [Navnkundige] who has added his famous name to this as editor; just as the stories are a faithful unity, so also this relationship. The editor has not become famous because of them, he was already famous; but the stories, which themselves have won a name for themselves next to the editor's, one of the most important of names, nevertheless with the deference of anonymity [Navnl0shedens Hengivelse] continue to seek a place among the renowned [Navnkundige].31

Having become renowned for the Stories of Everyday Life, and persisting in the use of "the author of A Story of Everyday Life" as "his" peculiar anonym, the author of A Story of Everyday Life has, in one sense, named "himself" by way of "his" anonymity. Like the famous Heiberg, the author of A Story of Everyday Life is known essentially by name. Heiberg's veronymous editorship had its own consequences for public perception of the Stories of Everyday Life. When, in 1834, he published three plays and a novel by the author of A Story of Everyday Life in a single volume, he prefaced the collection with an introduction in which he denied authorial responsibility for the works.32 Constant 30 31 32

TA, 17 / SKS 8, 20. TA, 16 / SKS 8,19-20. See Henning Fenger The Heibergs, p. 146.

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association of his name with the anonymous stories had apparently led to such speculation on the part of the reading public. The fame of the stories was not, however, derivative of Heiberg's fame - at least not for long. The stories' anonymity worked, perhaps counterintuitively, to create a greater proximity between reader and authorial persona. Kierkegaard writes, "However sad it is that the Danish reading public is so small, this can still have its attractive side and make it possible for an author, precisely by excluding his person, to enter into an almost personal relationship with his readers in a cozy, friendly way."33 Left without a public personality to whom they could ascribe the stories, readers were forced to confront the stories themselves in the absence of whatever readerly prejudices their (first- or secondhand) personal knowledge of the author might have occasioned. (A. F makes a very similar argument in his article, "Who is the Author of Either/ Or."34) By virtue of the close relationship the author of A Story of Everyday Life is able to establish with readers, Kierkegaard goes on to say, readers live their own lives in accord with what they take to be the model set forth in the novels. "Since people had the prior assurance that no actual relationship, neither love, nor marriage, nor family, nor station in life, would be cast in a misleading light but on the contrary would be clarified and made endearing, these novels also contributed to the increased mutual give-and-take among people."35 The thoroughly poetical Stories of Everyday Life, it seems, make factually actual lives better. Copenhagen - and Copenhageners - have been socially and ethically improved by the anonymous author, by way precisely of the author's anonymity. This should give us pause. There is something curious about Kierkegaard's treatment of the anonymity of the author of A Story of Everyday Life in A Literary Review. While anonymity was seen in From the Papers of One Still Living to be a means to greater distance between author and text in the mind of the reader, in A Literary Review, anonymity becomes the only means by which the author can establish a personal relationship with the reader. And, despite the fact that, with regard to the anonymous reform movement of Kj0benhavnsposten, we saw that anonymity eradicated the possibility of social, political or ethical reform, in A Literary Review, Kierkegaard seems admiringly

33 34 35

TA, 17 / SKS 8, 20. COR, 13-16 / SVI XIII, 407-410. TA, 18 / SKS 8, 21.

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to describe the social good derived from readings of the anonymous stories. In something of a backhanded compliment, Kierkegaard suggests that the literary strength of the Stories of Everyday Life derives from the life-view consistent through all of them, which is itself derivative of the life-view possessed by their author. But then if it is not a matter of something specific in a particular novel or of his superiority as a novelist that enables the author to do this, what is it but his being a representative of a specific life-view, and that is precisely the something more which he essentially has over novelists in general, a point of preference quite different from what may be claimed for him by comparison within the novelist category.36

Although the author of A Story of Everyday Life may not be quite the best novelist, "he" possesses something other novelists lack: a consistent life-view. In A Literary Review, as in Andersen as a Novelist and Either/Or, the life-view is representative of the ethical in its opposition to the aesthetic. The anonymous reviewer of Andersen as a Novelist - soon to be revealed as Kierkegaard - praised the author of A Story of Everyday Life for the very same possession of a life-view, and in A Literary Review, Kierkegaard repeats that praise of the Stories of Everyday Life, extending it to include Two Ages. In the repetition, however, the praise acquires an additional aspect. No longer merely opposition to Andersen, the notion of a life-view is opposed to what, in literary terms, Kierkegaard calls "the demand of the times." The times demand something new, always; to give in to that demand is, thus, to turn one's back on continuity of the self and personal commitment. In novelistic terms, it is to write different novels espousing different life-views - which is essentially to lack a life-view altogether as an author. At work in A Literary Review, then, right from the start of the work, is the opposition of the demand of the times and the life-view in works of literature. Kierkegaard is clear as to which side of the opposition he favors. "In other words, if the ethical is not granted a decisive predominance over all the rashness of the demands of the times, then not only our age but every age is guilty of unjust, unbecoming, and nonsensical behavior toward all older authors."37 And, perhaps more gravely, Pandora's box could not contain as many disasters and as much misery as are concealed in the little phrase: the demand of the times. Everyone who has flirted with the phrase pays the penalty; after all, he cannot complain about the demand of the times 36 37

TA, 18 / SKS 8, 21. TA, 8 / SKS 8,12.

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when he himself has called for it! And yet people are unwilling to understand what follows. We do not seem to have the patience to learn what it is to be human and to renounce the inhuman by letting ourselves be guided in self-concern, by fervently and admiringly deriving pleasure from the older person when he remains true to himself, by being built up by the faithful service of fifty years, by comprehending slowly, by learning from the venerable one, from whom one learns something quite different than from the luminaries of the moment.38

In "his" consistent commitment to an ethical life-view, the author of A Story of Everyday Life succeeds where perhaps more popular or more talented authors fail. "He" presents (and represents) the continuity with an older age that was characteristic of Lusard the younger in Two Ages. In so doing, the author of A Story of Everyday Life offers both prudence and possibility to "his" readers, a duality that "the luminaries of the moment," who set themselves entirely to satisfying the demand of the times, cannot offer. When a novel is of its time in this Kierkegaardian sense, it instantiates novelty's break with continuity. Authors like the author of A Story of Everyday Life, who produce novels from within the same life-view for nearly twenty years, offer reliability and experience in addition to whatever particular idiosyncrasies each of the successive novels in the author's production possesses. The author of A Story of Everyday Life, like Lusard, both keeps "his" eyes on the rudder and holds fast to the anchor, and this endears "him" to the mass of Danish readers, who are ennobled in the endearment. Of particular interest to Kierkegaard is the ennobling, or edifying, power of the Stories of Everyday Life. In "his" consistency and commitment to "his" life-view, the anonymous author becomes in essence an advocate for the ethical. Kierkegaard writes: If a poet is said (and here it is not a matter of comparing individual poets but of the qualitative predicate for being a poet in essence) to transport and inspire because he produces his effect mainly through imagination, then I would say of the author of A Story of Everyday Life that he persuades, for being captivating and entertaining are not such distinctive qualities, since the same can be said of the poet and of many other novelists. He persuades, and this in fact is a difficult but also a beneficent art. If the poet (stricte sie dicta) is said to have only elevated or profound tones and therefore cannot actually talk with people as they are in real life, then it may be said that the life-view of the author of A Story of Everyday Life has the intermediate tone of persuasion, and the enunciation of the life-view has its very perfection in that.39

38 39

TA, 11 / SKS 8,14-15. TA, 18-19 / SKS 8, 22.

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The author of A Story of Everyday Life and Two Ages thus comes, on Kierkegaard's reading in A Literary Review, to be opposed to the essential poet, the "poet in essence." This is not altogether surprising, however much (or little) it says of the literary talents of the author of A Story of Everyday Life. Like B in Either/Or, the anonymous author is a presentation of the ethical, not the aesthetic, life-view.40 When compared with the poet or the aesthete, the author of A Story of Everyday Life succeeds in demonstrating the superiority of "his" life-view - not by virtue of actually arguing for that view in a dialectical or didactic fashion, but simply by virtue of the clarity and force of the presentation. Written in "the intermediate tone of persuasion," the Stories of Everyday Life and Two Ages mediate between the reader-in-despair, a stranger to factual actuality, and factual actuality itself. That mediation, despite its presentation of a distinct and distinctly poetical actuality (in terms of the stories the novels tell), occurs precisely by way of the reader's appropriation of the ethical life-view espoused by the works. "But here persuasion is not a matter between two people," Kierkegaard writes, "but is the path in the life-view, and the novel leads one into the world that the view creatively supports. But this world, as a matter of fact, is actuality; thus one has not been deceived but simply has been persuaded to remain where one is."41 The stasis and continuity of the life-view underlying the Stories of Everyday Life is central to the author's role as an advocate for the ethical. Presuming, with B and Kierkegaard, that the aesthetic is a break with factual actuality - the attempt to lodge oneself nihilistically within the poetically actual, by way of interpreting and continually reinterpreting factual actuality and oneself in purely poetical, and thus ultimately meaningless, terms - the ethical force of the life-view is conciliatory. When read as a simple repetition of the review in From the Papers of One Still Living - a reading Kierkegaard encourages in his Introduction - A Literary Review, like that first book, becomes an advocate itself for the life-view of the author of A Story of Everyday Life and for the ethical. Returning to From the Papers of One Still Living, Kierkegaard can demonstrate his own appropriation of the continuity inherent to the life-view of Lusard and the author of A Story of Everyday Life, an anti-aesthetic, mediating return to factual actuality. This is, in fact, a common read40

41

Strictly speaking, of course, there is no aesthetic life-view; the aesthetic, as despair, is the lack of a life-view. TA, 19-20 / SKS 8, 22-23.

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ing of A Literary Review - a reading perhaps more interested in preserving a continuity of life-view in Kierkegaard's authorship than in reading (or performing) a literary review itself. Some of the curiosity of Kierkegaard's treatment of anonymity in the review can be explained, however, in light of the significant differences between the reviewer's vision of the Stories of Everyday Life in Andersen as a Novelist, and Kierkegaard's vision in A Literary Review. The aesthete can be reconciled with him- or herself, Kierkegaard argues, in the reading of the Stories of Everyday Life and, more importantly, the appropriation of their life-view. The author of A Story of Everyday Life is thus clearly differentiated from the aesthete. In addition, however, in mediating between the individual and (factual) actuality, the author of A Story of Everyday Life is clearly differentiated from the religious. Esthetically the individual is led away from actuality and translated into the medium of imagination; religiously, the individual is led away and translated into the eternity of the religious: in both instances the individual becomes a stranger and an alien to actuality. Esthetically the individual becomes an alien to actuality by being absent from it; religiously the individual becomes an alien and a foreigner in the realm of actuality. Consequently a difficulty is implied, or it is implied that the intrinsic, immediate coherence of happiness and immediacy is broken, but the break neither eventuates meaninglessly in despair nor does it become the beginning of a qualitatively new life. Just as a bent and bruised flower is held up by its stalk until it gets its strength again, even though it still bears the mark of having been bruised, so also this life-view is the support that sustains the bruised and broken one until he recovers again. But this is precisely what persuasion is, because it does not need healing, but the religious is unable to persuade for the very reason that it presupposes a new beginning.42

The religious, like the aesthetic, estranges the individual from factual actuality. The aesthetic does this, according to Kierkegaard, by way of making imagination dominant over reality. How the religious does this is not explained - but, however it is done, the doing is a similar upending of reality's dominance within the individual's life-view. Understanding reality here as factual actuality, the religious must be, on Kierkegaard's view, unreal. In its preference for some other thing to factual actuality, the religious alienates the individual from the very reality to which the author of A Story of Everyday Life tries to persuade the individual to return. In contrast to the reviewer's apparent understanding in From the Papers of One Still Living, or B's explicit view in Either/Or, Kierkegaard drives a wedge between the ethical and the religious with A Literary Review. 42

TA, 20 / SKS 8, 23.

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Kierkegaard does note, earlier in the review, that "the author's life-view lies on the boundary of the esthetic and in the direction of the religious."43 This statement has led some readers of A Literary Review to advocate a continuity between Kierkegaard's first and last book-length literary reviews (as has Sylvia Walsh in her book, Living Poetically"), but this view fails, I think, to present adequately the form of Kierkegaard's criticism in the review. Kierkegaard does not present the aesthetic and the religious in A Literary Review such that the life-view of the author of A Story of Everyday Life falls along a confinium between the two, an intermediary but transitional stage in the development of the individual. As we have seen, the religious is presented in such a way in the review that the only transition into it would have to be a break with factual actuality. The religious "presupposes a new beginning," not the continuity with and return to factual actuality characteristic of the life-view informing all of the Stories of Everyday Life. The life-view persuades, it heals, but it does not occasion a new beginning. The author of A Story of Everyday Life favors a life of repetition understood only in the simplest sense, as the continuity of all things, the vision of life that can assert, with Lusard, that "everything in life so strikingly repeats itself." The religious life is likewise a life of repetition, but repetition understood in that other, transfiguring sense. Lusard does not believe in new beginnings, and the Stories of Everyday Life are authored such that they confirm Lusard in his disbelief. Although Kierkegaard refrains from direct criticism of the author of A Story of Everyday Life throughout A Literary Review, he does make clear the very serious consequences of the author's persuasive power, and maintains his own distance from the life-view espoused in Two Ages and the Stories of Everyday Life. In addition to depicting the life-view of the author of A Story of Everyday Life as resigned and contented - characterized, he writes, "by the resignation that gives up - not everything, but the highest - and by the contentment that changes the next best into something just as good as the highest"45 - Kierkegaard passionately distinguishes himself (and his criticism of the author of A Story of Everyday Life) from the newspaper-reading public, which calls ever for authors to meet "the demand of the times." In a lengthy but telling passage, Kierkegaard writes: 43 44 45

TA, 14 / SKS 8,18. Sylvia Walsh Living Poetically, pp. 185-188. TA, 19 / SKS 8, 22.

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No doubt many have been persuaded and have found their foothold in this life-view, and even if others demand more decisive categories, A Story of Everyday Life is still a place of rest, or if you please, a place of prayer, for a certain religious tinge is unmistakable simply because the life-view is not merely common sense but common sense mitigated and refined by persuasive feeling and imagination. But what am I saying: if someone demands more decisive categories? Am I not speaking of the demand of the times? Instead of being a single human being, who like all such cannot be confused with the age, with criticism, etc., and therefore, faced with a phenomenon like A Story of Everyday Life, readily learns respect, have I not become an agitator at the head of a gallery crowd that stomps the floor, chanting for the demand of the times? Fortunately not, and fortunately there is still something that eo ipso instantly becomes nonsense when it is made the demand of the times. For is there anything we cannot contrive to call the demand of the times, and is there anything that does not acquire a certain prestige by being the demand of the times? But for decisive religious categories to become the demand of the times is eo ipso a contradiction. Generally speaking, if one has any concern or inclination in this direction at all, it is perplexing enough to decide whether this or that actually is the demand of the times; consequently the investigation here is briefer and in fact not at all an investigation as to whether or not this is actually the case, for it is impossible for this to be a demand of the times. Therefore even if it actually were the demand, it still would not be the demand, that is, if for a demand a realization of what one demands is demanded. "The times" is too abstract a category to be able as claimant to demand the decisive religious categories that belong specifically to individuality and particularity; loud, collective demands en masse for what can be shared only by the single individual in particularity, in solitariness, in silence, cannot be made.46

Here, then, we find the culmination of a concerted effort to draw an absolute distinction between factual actuality and the religious, an effort that leaves the author of A Story of Everyday Life confusing "the next best" with "the highest," and thus mistaking the ethical (or the "ethical-religious") for true religiousness. The Stories of Everyday Life have mass appeal, and have had, if Kierkegaard is correct, much effect on the social lives of ordinary Copenhageners. A Story of Everyday Life and Two Ages bring common sense to bear on their readers, advocating a conversion of heart in those unduly influenced by the aesthetic, alienated by imagination from reality, entrenched in possibility, poetical actuality and the despair such entrenchment occasions. This is a good thing. But, by virtue precisely of being good, that is, inasmuch as the good is a category exclusive to the ethical and factual actuality, it is not decisively religious. And, insofar as the author of A Story of Everyday Life persuades "his" readers back into the static continuity of their factually actual lives, "his" life-view is decisively anti-religious. Only for the single individual, who can repeat the immediacy of the aesthetic in a higher form as the religious - and is 46

TA, 21 / SKS 8, 23-24.

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transfigured in the repetition - is the ethical life-view "in the direction of the religious." For all others, including, it seems, the author of A Story of Everyday Life, the ethical is but the self-perpetuating mediation of self and world that we call contentment - or resignation. The life-view of the author of A Story of Everyday Life, then, goes hand-in-hand with the dispassionate character of the present age, as it is diagnosed in Kierkegaard's analysis in that famous final section of A Literary Review. There, Kierkegaard sets out the contrast between the two ages in terms of the distinction between passion and reflection. In a characteristic passage, he writes: A passionate, tumultuous age wants to overthrow everything, set aside everything. An age that is revolutionary, but also reflecting and devoid of passion changes the expression of power into a dialectical tour deforce: it lets everything remain but subtly drains the meaning out of it; rather than culminating in an uprising, it exhausts the inner actuality of relations in a tension of reflection that lets everything remain and yet has transformed the whole of existence into an equivocation that in itsfacticity is - while entirely privatissime a dialectical fraud interpolates a secret way of reading - that it is not.41

Here, as we saw in Two Ages, the distinction between the age of revolution and the present age is not cast in terms of the revolutionary nature of the former, for the latter is also quite revolutionary in its appeal to reflection. Rather, the difference lies in the manner in which each of the two ages, or the two approaches associated with the two ages, seeks to enact its revolt. The prior age, an age of passionate revolutionaries such as those who fought in France, seeks genuine, literal revolution: the overthrow of everything. The goal of the French Revolution was, after all, to depose the monarch and institute a republic. This is not the approach of the present age, according to Kierkegaard. Rather, the present-age revolutionary overthrows nothing, choosing instead to allow the old order to stand, but depriving that order of the meaning it once had in the inactive inwardness of reflection. This is the approach of the king's subject who will not challenge the king's power decisively, but is content in the knowledge that the king has no power over his subjects' internal worlds. The established order continues to stand, but since it is equivocal and ambiguous, passionless reflection is reassured. We do not want to abolish the monarchy, by no means, but if little by little we could get it transformed into make-believe, we would gladly shout "Hurrah for the King!" We do not want to topple eminence, by no means, but if simultaneously we could spread the notion that it is all make-believe, we would approve and admire. In the same way we are willing to keep Christian terminology but

47

TA, 77 / SKS 8, 74-75.

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privately know that nothing decisive is supposed to be meant by it. And we will not be repentant, for after all we are not demolishing anything.48

The present age - as Kierkegaard understands it, as the age of passionless reflection - is reflected in the life-view informing not only Two Ages, but all of the Stories of Everyday Life, as well as the author in whom the life-view of those works is itself reflected, and from whom it is derived. Despite the "unmistakable religious tinge" of the life-view, in failing to demand decisive Christian categories or to overthrow those categories decisively, the author of A Story of Everyday Life chooses instead to cast a passionless perspective in traditional religious terms. The life-view presented in Two Ages and the Stories of Everyday Life is certainly not an aesthetic one, but it is not a religious one, either. Thus, despite the fact that the author of A Story of Everyday Life does not seek to satisfy the demand of the times, "he" nevertheless contributes to what is, for Kierkegaard, the most dangerous aspect of the present age: leveling.49 Leveling is a complex notion in A Literary Review and, although it is explained far less fully than it is employed by Kierkegaard, it is (one of) the review's central conceptual components. Leveling has everything to do with the reflective lack of passion of the present age; it is advanced everywhere by the popular press; and it is the force quietly eroding the decisiveness and passion underlying what Kierkegaard takes to be genuine Christianity. Alastair Hannay makes much sense of the notion when he writes: What characterizes [Kierkegaard's] age, as he sees it, is not that individuals reflect on their own account but that reflection is the general background mode of the shared life that is anyone's and correspondingly no one's. The reflection of a reflective age has none of the intensity of reflective irony, for it has lost its foothold in the individual, or "subjectivity."50

Leveling, wherein the individual cedes him- or herself to contentment and resignation through the methodical emptying of the categories by way of which he or she interacts with the world, eliminates the particularity of particular individuals in favor of a universal, subjectless, 48 49

50

TA, 80-81 / SKS 8, 77-78. I have treated the notion of leveling in the context of authorship elsewhere before, with regard to the unpublished, pseudonymous work, "Writing Sampler." See "Things of the Utmost Importance: Author Creation in 'Writing Sampler'" in International Kierkegaard Commentary: Prefaces and Writing Sampler / Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions, vols. 9-10, ed. Robert L. Perkins, 2006. Alastair Hannay "Leveling and Einebnung" in Kierkegaard and Philosophy: Selected Essays, London: Routledge 2003, p. 174.

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common actor called "the public." Everyone attends the church services, of course, but everyone knows that their attendance is effectively meaningless. Everyone celebrates Christmas, but empties incarnation of paradox. Everyone does this, and everyone knows that this is how it is done, and so no single one actually chooses for it to be done this way. The apparent lack of choice, however, implies at least the appearance of a lack of responsibility. When leveling eradicates the decisiveness - the passion - of the old categories, however, it does so, as Hannay notes, at the expense of the single individual. Hence the central role played by the public in the present age, for Kierkegaard. For leveling really to take place, a phantom must first be raised, the spirit of leveling, a monstrous abstraction, an all-encompassing something that is nothing, a mirage - and this phantom is the public. Only in a passionless but reflective age can this phantom develop with the aid of the press, when the press itself becomes a phantom. There is no such thing as a public in spirited, passionate, tumultuous times, even when a people wants to actualize the idea of the barren desert, destroying and demoralizing everything.51

The possibility of leveling rests entirely upon the existence of the public, which itself requires the press in order to come into being. These three forces, working in concert, however, are the natural result of an age of passionless reflection, by way of the eradication of the single individual. Just like the party men Kierkegaard criticized in the Danish newspapers and feuilletons, the public is no one but speaks for everyone. The singularity of each person is sacrificed on the altar of reflection, and the end result is the public acting on behalf of each and every human being: a fiction acting on and on behalf of very real, factually actual persons. Those persons, in turn, by allowing the public to speak in their name, divest themselves of their own personalities. The public becomes a poetically actual persona for each and every person, who is both author of and authored by public opinion. Such a creature as the public is limited in the scope of its actions, as are all creatures of poetical actuality. Although the public lacks the passion for genuine revolution, it also lacks the capacity. Poetically actual personae cannot act in factual actuality; that the public has so much factually actual power is the fault of a confusion on the part of the factually actual persons turning themselves over to the public. In the end, the public cannot overthrow the monarchy by way of leveling, and so it does not. Instead, it attempts to make the monarchy mean51

TA, 90 / SKS 8, 86.

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ingless in the minds of the monarch's factually actual subjects. The king retains whatever factually actual powers he had before leveling took charge of Denmark, but those powers are reinterpreted through the lens of public opinion as articulated anonymously in the press, and eventually, little by little, the Danish subjects come to see the monarchy as make-believe. No doubt, the king can still fine and censure individual, named persons for transgressions of the press laws. But when the monarchy is understood by the public and presented in the press as a fiction, the king loses something of his kingliness - and with it, the appearance of the authority to fine and censure. Whatever the factually actual value of monarchy, that a fiction, the "monstrous abstraction" that is the public, has the power to undermine a nation's government is the result not of genuine revolution (of the sort attempted in France, and from which that age gets its name, "the age of revolution") on the part of passionate, and passionately individual, revolutionaries, but of a confusion between poetical and factual actualities, fiction and fact. No one chooses to overthrow the king, and so no one is responsible for whatever follows. As noted in Chapter Two, whatever such action is, it is not genuinely ethical or political action. In Chapter Two, we saw that the force advocating reform of the press laws in Kj0benhavnsposten was anonymous, what Kierkegaard called (and criticized as) an "anonymous reform movement." The authors of the newspaper articles calling for press freedom reform wrote without consequence, and without ethical or legal responsibility for the articles they wrote. Only named persons can be held responsible for their actions, and thus, only named persons can take genuinely ethical action in the public sphere. Anonymous persons are not persons at all, but purely poetical personae - little instantiations of the public, little levelers. In A Literary Review, Kierkegaard returns to the relationship between anonymity and veronymity, and returns that relationship to the heart of the matter. Kierkegaard writes that, "Anonymity in our age has a far more pregnant significance than is perhaps realized; it has an almost epigrammatic significance. Not only do people write anonymously, but they write anonymously over their signature, yes, even speak anonymously."52 While, in the Kj0benhavns flyvende Post articles, Kierkegaard seemed to call simply for the anonymous authors to reveal their names - to take responsibility for their authorial production - here, in an analysis of the present age, Kierkegaard maintains that even veronymous articles are significantly anonymous. 52

TA, 103 / SKS 8, 98.

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The significance of anonymity has less to do with the absence of the author's name than it does with the author's willingness to write or speak, not on his or her own behalf, but on behalf of the public. The author of A Story of Everyday Life, consistently anonymous in "his" authorship, and a consistent advocate of a life-view that contributes, if only passively, to leveling, is at the very least consistent. The anonymity of the author is mediated somewhat by the constancy of the life-view; although not opposed to the public, the author of A Story of Everyday Life produces works that address their readers straightforwardly, from within a distinct, if detrimental, perspective. The anonymous author does not stand in the way of leveling, but then again, as Kierkegaard notes, no one could. "No particular individual (the eminent personage by reason of excellence and the dialectic of fate) will be able to halt the abstraction of leveling, for it is a negatively superior force, and the age of heroes is past."53 Thus, the author of A Story of Everyday Life is not subject to criticism for not attempting to put an end to leveling; nor is the author subject to criticism for pushing leveling along. Although anonymous - and anonymity, for Kierkegaard, is the name of the mode of poetical actuality proper to the public - the author of A Story of Everyday Life has a consistent lifeview, and is thus essentially named. Perhaps, as Henning Fenger suggests, "the author of A Story of Everyday Life" is more appropriately considered a pseudonym than an anonym.54 In any event, although A Literary Review is tacitly critical of Two Ages and the author of A Story of Everyday Life for lacking passion, neither is undermined in the manner of Lehmann and the proponents of the anonymous reform movement. With Heiberg, however, it is a different matter. As already noted, Kierkegaard opens up the possibility of an anonymous veronymous author - an author who signs his or her own name, but is nevertheless anonymous. He explains: "Nowadays it is possible actually to speak with people, and what they say is admittedly very sensible, and yet the conversation leaves the impression that one has been speaking with an anonymity. The same man can say the most contradictory things, can coolly express something that, coming from him, is the bitterest satire on his own life."55 With such an individual, the question of a life-view goes entirely missing: the named anonym merely parrots the 53 54 55

TA, 87 / SKS 8, 83. Fenger The Heibergs, p. 146. TA, 103 / SKS 8, 98.

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public, undermining him- or herself in the process. Heiberg was the most prominent man of letters in the Copenhagen of his day. He was not only the editor of Kj0benhavns flyvende Post and other newspapers, but an author in his own right, the translator of numerous plays into Danish (with an especial preference, it seems, for the French playwright, Eugène Scribe) - and the first major proponent of Hegelianism in Denmark. The irony of Heiberg's situation is not limited to his veronymous editorship of Two Ages and the Stories of Everyday Life, but it is most pronounced there: as editor, he is the named person responsible for the publication of the anonymous author's contribution to leveling in the present age. And, on the conjoined basis of his Hegelianism and that support, Heiberg had become one of the most renowned individuals in the Copenhagen of his day. Heiberg's situation is, largely, that of the most famous of the German and Danish Hegelians, as well as that, presumably, of Hegel himself: by virtue of expounding a philosophy that undermines the (Kantian or Romantic) singularity of the creative genius in history (as but a moment - and a necessary moment, without freedom - in the development of Spirit), they became leading philosophical personalities with reputations for great genius. Heiberg especially, deeply involved as he was in the development of Danish theater, wrote eloquently of his specific task, the union of taste and the public. Identifying himself with those responsible for the management of the theater, Heiberg writes: A theater management thus has two elements to consider, demands of taste and demands of the public. If it cannot reconcile these two, it thereby reveals its own worthlessness, just as the playwright proves his impotence when he cannot solve the same problem. For while the public obviously demands to be entertained, it also has the unconscious desire to make some progress in the recognition of beauty, hence giving itself the opportunity to reconcile both these elements. In this sense it can thus be said: vox populi vox dei.56

In the attempt to reconcile himself with the people, Heiberg at least rhetorically equates the public with God. No comparison could be more telling, from the perspective of A Literary Review, than this. The public is but an abstraction, a poetically actual persona functioning simultaneously as the instrument and chief proponent of leveling. The religious, on the other hand, insofar as the religious is a matter of the single individual and decisive categories, is the only genuine op-

56

J. L. Heiberg in Fenger The Heibergs, pp. 81-82. From, of all things, a manifesto on vaudeville.

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position to leveling in the present age.57 In his perhaps well-meaning deification of the public, Heiberg - despite his famous name - is made anonymous. In what is, I think, best understood as an indirect comparison with Heiberg, Kierkegaard holds out what hope he can in the face of the present age. Whereas in older structures (relations between individual and generation) the noncommissioned officers, company commanders, generals, the hero (that is, the men of excellence, the men prominent in their various ranks, the leaders) were recognizable, and each one (according to his authority) along with his little detachment was artistically and organically ordered within the whole, himself supported by and supporting the whole - now the men of excellence, the leaders (each according to his respective rank) will be without authority precisely because they will have divinely understood the diabolical principle of the leveling process. Like plainclothes policemen, they will be unrecognizable, concealing their respective distinctions and giving support only negatively - that is, by repulsion, while the infinite uniformity of abstraction judges each individual, examines him in his isolation.58

No Dane was more recognizable in his authority - at least in matters cultural and artistic - than J. L. Heiberg. And, after the Corsaren affair, none was more recognizably without authority than S0ren Kierkegaard. Kierkegaard continues: The unrecognizables recognize the servants of leveling but dare not use power or authority against them, for then there would be a regression, because it would be instantly obvious to a third party that the unrecognizable one was an authority, and then the third party would be hindered from attaining the highest. Only through a suffering act will the unrecognizable one dare to contribute to leveling and by the same suffering act will pass judgment on the instrument. He does not dare to defeat leveling outright - he would be dismissed for that, since it would be acting with authority - but in suffering he will defeat it and thereby experience in turn the law of his existence, which is not to rule, to guide, to lead, but in suffering to serve, to help indirectly.59 57

58 59

For a deeper comparison of Heiberg and Kierkegaard on the relation between the individual, the public, and religion, one might consult Michael Plekon "Towards Apocalypse: Kierkegaard's Two Ages in Golden Age Denmark" in International Kierkegaard Commentary: Two Ages, vol. 14, pp. 19-52. Parallel to his desire to unify taste and the public in the theater, Heiberg is depicted by Plekon as striving for the "ideal unity of culture, state, and religion," p. 38. For Heiberg, according to Plekon, the individual's best interests are only served when he or she is brought under and unified with the public, the state, and the Church - each of which, for Kierkegaard, might be characterized as a "monstrous abstraction." Although Kierkegaard and Heiberg both set themselves up as critics of the Golden Age, Kierkegaard, by way of his notion of the single individual, sets himself very much in opposition to Heiberg, as well. TA, 106-107 / SKS 8,101. TA, 109 / SKS 8,103.

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No doubt, biographical or psychoanalytical readings of the Kierkegaardian authorship have much to say on this point, but we should recall that, from the perspective of a philosophical or literary understanding of the works, the factually actual suffering of S0ren Kierkegaard ought not be a factor in our interpretation of A Literary Review, despite its veronymous ascription. Nevertheless, as before, the example of S0ren Kierkegaard, factually actual resident of Copenhagen, pushes itself forward in a reading of this passage as an instance of precisely the suffering, unrecognizable critic of leveling described here, at the very end of A Literary Review. More important, however, is the indirect reference to Heiberg as heroic by the standards of a dead age. No matter how successfully Heiberg can merge the demands of taste - the vox dei - with the demands of the public - the vox populi - he cannot evade his role as the only named person associated with the authorship of A Story of Everyday Life. Like Kierkegaard before him, Heiberg injects his own factual actuality into the poetical actuality of the anonymous (or pseudonymous) author, threatening the integrity of that authorship. Moreover, Heiberg's veronymous anonymity confuses the issue considerably more than does his ascription of editorship on the title page alone. While Heiberg threatens the poetical actuality of Two Ages and the Stories of Everyday Life, his apparent advocacy of leveling (or the public, the spirit of leveling) threatens his own presumed factual actuality. As anonymous (or anonymously veronymous, or veronymously anonymous), Heiberg is not only poetically actual as an author; the force of Kierkegaard's critique lies in the fact that, even in ordinary discourse and everyday life, such a one as Heiberg is but an anonym. As Udgiver of Two Ages, he is "factually actual" in a poetical actuality; as everyday anonym, he is "poetically actual" in factual actuality. In neither case, however, does he have the authority his recognizability would seem to lend. The author of A Story of Everyday Life is a consistent, and consistently fictional, authorial persona. Heiberg is inconsistent, and his inconsistency is a confusion between fiction and fact - between his own fictionality and facticity - a confusion comparable only to that Andersen wrought on his character, Christian, in Only a Fiddler, but one with far graver because less exclusively literary consequences for Heiberg. The dangers of anonymity, then, have never been clearer in the Kierkegaardian authorship. Although anonymity seemed, in From the Papers of One Still Living, to be an effective strategy for avoiding the undue intrusion of factual actuality into a written work, we have seen

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since then a continual development toward the view put forward in A Literary Review, whereon anonymity is an irresponsible shirking of one's ethical responsibilities as an author. The veronymous author remains purely poetically actual, as discussed in Chapter Two, but also as discussed in that chapter, the coincidence of the veronym with the name of some particular, factually actual person provides factual actuality with some one individual to hold responsible for the veronymous work. The Stories of Everyday Life not only espouse but advocate a certain life-view and, as Kierkegaard notes, the novels produced supporting that life-view gained popularity not only as works of literature, but as commentaries, analyses, diagnoses and prescriptions in factually actual matters, both individual and private, as well as common and public. The veronymous editorial ascription to Heiberg is a failed attempt at alleviating that concern. Nevertheless, as we have just seen, even veronymity is not an escape from leveling and the destructive confusion between poetical and factual actualities of which leveling is the cause. Thus, by the end of A Literary Review, we seem to be in something of a literary bind. Neither the consistent, pseudonymous anonymity of the author of A Story of Everyday Life, nor the inconsistent, veronymous anonymity of J. L. Heiberg, resolves the particularly literary problem that stems from the greater, social problem of leveling in the present age, the same problem diagnosed time and again in the Kierkegaardian literary criticism. If pseudonymity, veronymity, and anonymity (in either its "pseudonymous" or "veronymous" forms) must fail in the attempt to maintain a strict distinction between the poetical actuality of fiction and the factual actuality of fact, then the author would seem to have no alternative to failure but abstinence - a choice neither Kierkegaard nor any of the Kierkegaardian authors seems to have made. In the following section, then, I will attempt to sort out Kierkegaard's place in all of this as the author of A Literary Review, and to suggest as the only, and a distinctly Kierkegaardian (if not Kierkegaard's) alternative, the anonymous, invisible, unrecognizable performance of the author of the author.

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ship as a whole, more often than not, and concerned with the authorship of all of the Stories of Everyday Life more often than with Two Ages. The particularity of Two Ages as a novel gets its due, no doubt, but the author of A Story of Everyday Life as the author of Two Ages does not. When the review discusses the author as an author, it discusses "him" as the author of a corpus, of which Two Ages is but a single member, never even broaching the possibility that Two Ages is in some way essentially distinct from the other works ascribed to the author of A Story of Everyday Life. And so, unlike Andersen who, in From the Papers of One Still Living, was very much considered only in light of having authored Only a Fiddler - although Only a Fiddler was Andersen's third novel, consideration of the first two novels and Andersen's fairy tale literature is conspicuously missing - in A Literary Review, the author of A Story of Everyday Life is considered as an author, generally, without real reference to any specific work. It is in this same generalizing vein that Kierkegaard presents himself as the author of two literary reviews, both very much concerned with the author of A Story of Everyday Life. Whatever differences there might be between the two Kierkegaardian works, Kierkegaard seems uninterested. As we have already seen, however, those differences are not only of interest to the reader of Kierkegaard, but also serve to inform that reader of some of the significance of Kierkegaard's break with the author of A Story of Everyday Life in A Literary Review.60 Central to the difference between the two works, again, as we have already seen, is the demand for "decisive religious categories" in the second review, a demand absent from the first. This would appear to be a change of momentous import to Kierkegaard's approach as a reviewer. Nevertheless, Kierkegaard seems to dismiss its importance at the close of the Introduction to A Literary Review. What I first wrote was in the nature of a review or, more correctly, an effusive discourse on these novels. Since then I have not tried my hand as a reviewer. Now, after seven years, I want a second and last try at it, again using A Story of Everyday Life. I hazard the conjecture, as decorum permits in connection with an anonymous author, that the honored unknown author read my little piece in the past - if he will again do me the honor of reading these lines, I trust he will find me unchanged or, if possible, changed in the repetition: a little more clarity in the presentation, a little more lightness in a flowing style, a little more consideration in recognition of the difficulty of the task, a little more inwardness in discernment: consequently changed in the repetition.61 60

61

The differences are comparable in many ways - not least in the introduction of a third category, the religious, into the earlier dichotomy of the aesthetic and the ethical - with the differences between Stages on Life's Way and Either/Or. TA, 23 / SKS 8, 26.

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In this passage, Kierkegaard makes no mention of Two Ages - in fact, he states that this second attempt at literary review will, like the first, address itself to A Story of Everyday Life. For whatever reason, he does not remind us that the first attempt was a review of Andersen's Only a Fiddler, or that this second attempt is, at least in name, a review of Two Ages. Regardless of the discrepancy, however, what is of real interest here is Kierkegaard's maintenance of the claim that A Literary Review is continuous with From the Papers of One Still Living, and that the only changes one might expect from Kierkegaard as a reviewer are technical ones - that is, over the course of the seven years separating the two works, Kierkegaard suggests, the only perceptible change ought to be one of clarity and competence, not one of substance. Essentially, as a critic, Kierkegaard remains unchanged. The authorship of From the Papers of One Still Living, one might recall, was a matter of some dispute - namely, between the two authorial voices at work in that work. The reviewer of Andersen's novel - the author of Andersen as a Novelist - remained anonymous, while the Udgiver of the work, named on the title page, was one "S. Kierkegaard." Little light has been shed on whether that author, Kjerkegaard, is a subtle pseudonym or the result of linguistic flexibilities; nevertheless, as an author, Kjerkegaard distinguishes himself and must be kept distinct from the anonymous author of the review. In Chapter One, we noted the grave consequences of resolving the co-authors of From the Papers of One Still Living into a single authorial voice: the implied perspective from which the resultant work would have been written would be at cross purposes with itself, and the author implied by that perspective could only be considered a schizophrenic or an aesthete. The problematic tension of the work was, we saw, of central importance to the structure of the work. Without it, the work fails in the very same manner as Andersen. With it, the review does come to contradict itself, at least insofar as it does not meet the standards it sets forth for written works, and by which it criticizes Andersen - but it is nevertheless precisely by way of the tension instantiated in the work in the struggle of authorial voices that From the Papers of One Still Living establishes an important place for itself, not only in the critical corpus, but in the Kierkegaardian authorship as a whole. Looking back briefly to From the Papers of One Still Living, we can see how, even there, the contrast between the expressed philosophy of authorship and the author's (or authors') performance as an author (or authors) evaded subsumption into what, in A Literary Review, is called "leveling," but what various of the Kierkegaardian authors elsewhere

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call "Hegel," "the Socratic," or "the system."62 In the end, everything rested on the maintenance of an authorial tension within the works, by way of a purposive (if not purposeful) splitting of saying and doing in the Kierkegaardian authorship, what Johannes Climacus calls the "what" and the "how." Andersen as a Novelist begins, in fact, with a discussion of the attempt to "begin from nothing," first in Hegel and contemporary philosophy, and then in the political sphere. In the third paragraph of that review, the reviewer writes: After these more general observations, whose more intimate organic relationship to our project will, we hope, in the proper place become clear to readers, we shall try to orient ourselves a little in our novel and short-story literature, reminding readers that here, too, a similar attempt to begin from the beginning and from nothing has taken place, has actually been realized, for we do not know how to describe in any other way the cycle of short novels that began with A Story of Everyday Life (with nothing).63

The tone in Andersen as a Novelist is, of course, far more satirical than it is in A Literary Review. Nevertheless, it is worth noting that the first mention of the Stories of Everyday Life in the Kierkegaardian authorship is in the context of the systematism of Danish Hegelianism and the Hegelian trend. One might, on this basis and in light of the content of A Literary Review, return to Andersen as a Novelist for a critical rereading. Such is beyond the scope of our purposes here. Still, the recollection of the early association in the Kierkegaardian authorship of the author of A Story of Everyday Life with a kind of literary Hegelianism is a potent one. Early in A Literary Review, Kierkegaard makes an only slightly veiled version of his later, passionate critique on behalf of religiousness of the static life-view proper to the author of A Story of Everyday Life and the ethical. Here, as later, one of the central issues is suffering. Switching places briefly with the author of A Story of Everyday Life, Kierkegaard writes:

62

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Naturally, "Hegel," "the Socratic" and "the system" are all theoretical articulations of the phenomenon that is evident culturally (and therefore practically) in Denmark, and which Kierkegaard dubs "leveling." For my purposes here, however, what is of primary importance is that each of the terms signifies the subsumption of particularity into generality, and the resultant abasement of the single individual in favor of the elevation of the representative (generic) human being. Christianity, for many of the Kierkegaardian authors, is opposed precisely to this understanding of human significance. EPW, 64 / SKS 1, 20.

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But then the author of this story - if I may be allowed to make him the examiner while I submit to examination in order to show how and what I have learned from him - would warn the enthusiast not to skip over the difficulties of life, not to minimize fortune's encouragements of merit; he would no doubt recall what may be described by a previously used expression, that "the road goes over the Bridge of Sighs,"* and then again to let his "forbearance become known to all men" in resignation's quiet joy over life, which precisely here beautifully reveals that it is just as we learn in the stories, yes, is even better, that not only does everything gradually get to be good again but that it was and remained good. And yet, however willingly he submitted to guidance and accepted instruction, that enthusiastic religious individual perhaps would return to his view that does not overlook suffering, does not rashly hope in the world, but religiously wants success and failure to signify equally much, that is, equally little, and does not want the religious to have significance by way of or along with something else, but wants it to have absolute meaning in itself.64

Aside from the poetic license Kierkegaard takes in speaking for the author of A Story of Everyday Life, this passage is notable for two reasons. First, here we find the religious perspective engaged in direct "discourse" with the ethical - and, despite the persuasiveness of the ethical life-view, returning to its original demand for the absolute significance of decisive religious categories, as opposed to the category of the "ethical-religious" as it is espoused by the author of A Story of Everyday Life and by Either/Of?, B. That compromise position, then, is pointed out for what it is. This, again, is the first point of importance. Secondly, however, we find Kierkegaard hearkening back to (and quoting from) From the Papers of One Still Living for the first time in his authorship. In fact, Kierkegaard is the only of the Kierkegaardian authors to refer back to From the Papers of One Still Living, and Kierkegaard only makes such references in A Literary Review. There are only two of them, the second of which I cited first, at the beginning of this section, and the first of which is noted as such in a footnote to the asterisk in the passage above. The footnote simply reads: "See From the Papers of One Still Living. Edited by S. Kierkegaard. Copenhagen: 1838."65 This would seem, in part, to resolve the orthographical question concerning the meaning of the presence of "S. Kjerkegaard" on the title page of that first book - and that it certainly does, at least in part. But the apparently meaningless footnote does more than simply correct what had become, by 1846, a spelling mistake. By clarify64 65

TA, 13 / SKS 8,16-17. TA, 13n. / SKS 8,16n. Although the Hongs force this citation into consistency with From the Papers of One Still Living, and thus offer us, "Edited by S. Kjerkegaard," Hannay maintains Kierkegaard's replacement of the j with an i, as it appears in the original published edition. See both SKS 8, 16n. and En literair Anmeldelse, Copenhagen: C. A. Reitzel 1846.

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ing the name of the Udgiver of From the Papers of One Still Living, and also, in that later passage, taking authorial responsibility for the review of Andersen ("What I first wrote was in the nature of a review or, more correctly, an effusive discourse on these novels ..."), Kierkegaard subsumes the two competing authorial personalities at work in that first work into himself. The book remains as it always was, of course, as is the nature and enduring consequence of publication. In eradicating the anonymity of the reviewer, however, and identifying himself with both the anonym and the misspelled veronym, Kierkegaard simultaneously deprives From the Papers of One Still Living of the tension that once sustained it, and incorporates that tension into his own personality as an author. Kierkegaard becomes the author both of the review and of the Preface to the review, and given that the author of the Preface distinguishes himself and his aims from the author of the review, Kierkegaard, the newly named author of From the Papers of One Still Living, appears to be at war with or within himself. Whatever the state of his personality - factually actually, as a man resident in Copenhagen, or poetically actually, as an author - Kierkegaard reveals himself as lacking precisely that integrity and coherence characteristic of the life-view ascribed to the author of A Story of Everyday Life, and heralded in literature in From the Papers of One Still Living. As an author, then, Kierkegaard does not reside within the ethical. By his own standards, he lacks a life-view. He is, as far as B is concerned, an aesthete. And, as far as he himself is concerned, Kierkegaard - the author of the originally anonymous Andersen as a Novelist - agrees with B. As author of From the Papers of One Still Living, he writes squarely from within the aesthetic. As author of A Literary Review, however, Kierkegaard seems less willing to categorize himself as an aesthete merely on the grounds of an inconsistency in his authorial personality, or the consequent lack of a life-view. For the Kierkegaard of A Literary Review, there is at least the possibility of the decisively religious, opposed to the ethical in much the same way as is the aesthetic, in terms of immediacy and a break with factual actuality. The eternity of the religious differs from, but is presumably difficult to differentiate from, the poetical actuality of the aesthetic. From within the perspective of the ethical, in fact, they are one and the same - for B, the author of Andersen as a Novelist, and the author of A Story of Everyday Life, religiousness is an aspect of the ethical, not a distinct and passionately unmediated category of its own. The understanding of religiousness as immediacy, even if of a "higher" order, is, from the

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perspective of the ethical, a thoroughly aesthetic understanding. Ethically speaking, the view lacks merit. This is a difficult position for Kierkegaard, authorially speaking, considering that he expends much of his praise of the author of A Story of Everyday Life on the consistency of "his" life-view. Not only is the authorship of From the Papers of One Still Living fragmented between two Kierkegaards, but to those two must be added a third, the author of A Literary Review. Kierkegaard offers a perspectivally relative interpretation of the qualities of the author of A Story of Everyday Life in A Literary Review, suggesting that, from the ethical perspective, the anonymous author is to be commended while, from the religious perspective, that same author is to be criticized for "his" lack of rigor. The mediating power of Kierkegaard's perspectivalism is missing, however, from the review of Andersen in From the Papers of One Still Living, responsibility for the authorship of which Kierkegaard takes upon himself. These are two distinct views, reconciliation of which is only possible by way of arguing for a development in Kierkegaard's own authorial perspective over the seven years. While this may be explicable by the biographer or the historian, literarily and philosophically speaking, the criticism is the same as it was of Christian in Only a Fiddler - the difference is obvious, but the development is missing. Neither Kierkegaard as author of Andersen as a Novelist nor Kierkegaard as author of A Literary Review meets the standards for authorship set forth by either Kierkegaard. Both fail. As for the Kierkegaard who is (or was) Kjerkegaard, this figure is ironically excluded by virtue of his incorporation into Kierkegaard. The distinction Kjerkegaard maintains between himself and the author of Andersen as a Novelist must either be overlooked by readers or simply disappear, as its maintenance renders both From the Papers of One Still Living and Kierkegaard as its author unintelligible. All of this contributes to a general authorial incoherence on the part of the veronymous Kierkegaard. One might at this point suggest that the alternative voice at work in the Preface to From the Papers of One Still Living is merely Kierkegaard at play, Kierkegaard writing humorously in the altogether obviously artificial voice of an altogether comically superficial author. Such would not be beyond the scope of what we might call "properly Kierkegaardian" strategies, and brings to mind my own discussion of authorship as performance in Chapter Three. Nevertheless, the suggestion assumes a distinction between the "true" Kierkegaard, as author of the review, and the "false" Kierkegaard, who Kierkegaard

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pretends to be in the Preface to some literary end. Distinguishing between "true" and "false" authors in this way, although helpful to the production of interesting readings of the various Kierkegaardian works, is, I think, impossible. When it comes to authorship, either everything is performance - in which case, there is no distinguishing between performer and role performed in the manner suggested - or nothing is. In neither case can Kjerkegaard's difference from the author of Andersen as a Novelist be tossed aside as just another literary excess - even if, historically-biographically speaking, our best guess is that the factually actual author was simply a self-indulgent twenty-eight-year old dilettante, hoping to make a name for himself in the Danish feuilletons with a bit of pseudo-Heibergian wit and play at H. C. Andersen's expense. As readers, we must therefore press on in our examination of the unintelligibility of Kierkegaard as veronymous author. The reascription of From the Papers of One Still Living to Kierkegaard in A Literary Review seems to attempt to bring the Kierkegaardian authorship into accord with the theory of authorship Kierkegaard articulates in his review of the author of A Story of Everyday Life. The very dissonances and self-contradictions with which From the Papers of One Still Living seemed to play - primarily, by way of splitting its authorship between two fictional personae - are not lost in Kierkegaard's attempt to eradicate them, however, but are made infinitely more destructive thereby. Neither Kierkegaard nor the anonymous reviewer and Kjerkegaard, who preceded him as authors of From the Papers of One Still Living, ever enters into factual actuality; insofar as they are authors, they are the poetically actual implications of the works of which authorship is ascribed to them. But, in playfully recognizing the contradictions inherent in the authorship, the multiple authorial personae of From the Papers of One Still Living defuse their irresolvably problematic natures in terms of indirectness, irony, and authorial difference. Kierkegaard incorporates those problemata into himself and A Literary Review, and - by way of the explanatory works, like "A First and Last Explanation" - into the Kierkegaardian authorship generally. He cannot unpublish problematic works in the authorship, but by veronymizing them after the fact, he unmakes the sophistication of the structure of the authorship as a whole. In this sense, we can say that it is the reliably pseudonymous Kierkegaardian authors, like Johannes de silentio or Constantin Constantius, far more than Kierkegaard, who present us with the least problematically indirect works in the authorship. The problems inhabiting and instan-

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tiated in their works are almost always on the surface, and thus inform any careful reading. De silentio and Constantius are clearly problematic authors whose works diverge from themselves in myriad, irresolvable ways. So, however, are Kierkegaard and the veronymous works, only without the redemptive clarity. The problems ensuing from Kierkegaard's assumption of responsibility for the authorships of both personae at work within From the Papers of One Still Living almost incline one to wish that Kierkegaard had not published A Literary Review at all. Although the book does find Kierkegaard as social theorist and critic for the first and only sustained time (one might read The Moment as social criticism, but certainly of a less concentrated sort), this gift is delivered to Kierkegaard's readers at the expense of the coherence of much of the rest of the Kierkegaardian authorship. The authorial systematism of the veronymous criticism - the attempt, in both "A First and Last Explanation" and A Literary Review, to bring the authorship into some sort of intelligible harmony with itself, to deny its contradictions, and efface divergent and anonymous authorial voices - is matched in the authorship only by the seeming philosophical systematism of Concluding Unscientific Postscript. With its sophisticated complex of stages, and its convenient interpretation of pseudonymity and indirect communication, Postscript seems to many readers to "make sense of everything," and as such, Johannes Climacus is often described as the "most philosophical" of Kierkegaard's pseudonyms, or is treated as a cipher for Kierkegaard "himself," that is, the factually actual thinking man, resident in Copenhagen. Climacus successfully evades the charge of systematism (and the incumbent charge of "Hegelianism"), however, by way not only of Kierkegaard's veronymous intrusion upon his authorial independence ("Edited by S. Kierkegaard"), but also by way of Postscript's famous concluding revocation. There, Climacus "takes back" what he has written, and maintains that, ultimately, Postscript was only about himself, Johannes Climacus, and the very subjective question of his own Christianity (or lack thereof). This, in direct contrast both to leveling and to Hegel. In revoking his work, Climacus effects two important changes in the reader's reading. First, Climacus throws his own sincerity into question, forcing the reader to return to the claims Climacus has made throughout Postscript with only the authority of his or her own personality and interpretation, unencumbered by what authority Climacus (or Kierkegaard) might have seemed to have had. The question thus ceases to be one of dialectical truth and objective reality, and

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becomes (or is revealed always to have been) one of subjective appropriation, and the individual subject's capacity for appropriation. Second, and in at least partial contrast, Climacus centralizes his own authorial personality in readings of Postscript. If Postscript lacks the dialectical force necessary to compel its readers to adopt its assertions as objective truths, then Climacus' nature as author of those assertions naturally enters into any interpretation of their meaning, value, or validity. These two shifts in the reader's attitude, invoked by the revocation, work against each other to produce a tension in the work and in readings of the work, if not in Climacus' authorial personality itself. As Climacus notes in his revocation, it is not the same thing to have written something that one later revokes, and not to have written anything at all.66 In closing Postscript with a revocation, Climacus pushes the reader to a repetition - to return to the claims made in Postscript, and reevaluate them in light of the subjectivity of their author. The reader thus repeats his or her own performance as reader, by way of accepting an open invitation to rereading. That repetition is an occasion for transfiguration, opening up the possibility of the reader's overtaking Climacus as author of Postscript, at least insofar as Climacus' revocation divorces Climacus from the claims Postscript makes. If Climacus lacks the authority to make those claims objectively, for all persons, then the reader who, in rereading Postscript after the revocation, asserts the truth of the claims, asserts their truth for him- or herself and on his or her own authority alone. In this regard, post-revocation, Climacus and the (re)reader stand in the very same relation to the claims and the truth of the claims made in Postscript and, although the words are in some sense more properly Climacus' than they are anyone else's, that sense is akin to the extremely limited sense in which Hamlet's words are properly Shakespeare's, or Climacus' own are Kierkegaard's. Once the transfigured reader has appropriated the claims in their subjective truth, we must say that, although the words have their origin in Climacus, the single individual asserting their truth on his or her own authority is, properly speaking, their author.

66

Edward Mooney has much to offer on this point, as made evident in his recent paper, "A Curtain Call for Climacus: How to Revoke a Text and Keep It Too," presented at the S0ren Kierkegaard Society meeting, concurrent with the American Philosophical Association Eastern Division meeting, New York City, December 29, 2005. Mooney's interpretation^) of Climacus' revocation come as a critical response to the work of James Conant.

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A Literary Review, too, ends with a revocation. Although Kierkegaard refuses redemption for his failures as an author by way of the playfully poetical self-contradictions of From the Papers of One Still Living, he disowns the refusal - and all the rest of the review - in its final pages. He writes: But I must cut this short. Of course this can be of interest only as banter, for if it is true that every person has to work out his own salvation, then forecasting the future is at best tolerable and admissible only as a means of recreation, as an interesting game such as bowling or tilting the barrel. In conclusion my thoughts turn back in gratitude to the novel, which at no time has been forgotten. The above criticism is my own interpretation of what I have learned from the author, and therefore if anything immature, untrue, or foolish is contained in it, it is my own doing. Anyone who finds it false should look to me, but anyone who finds truth in it, finds his outlook strengthened or enriched by it, is referred to the teacher - the author of the novel.67

Although the revocations differ in form - Climacus revokes Postscript far more explicitly than Kierkegaard revokes A Literary Review - they share their author's essential disownment of any claims to responsibility for the truth of the works revoked. If the reader finds Kierkegaard's review persuasive, it is because Kierkegaard has elucidated the novel under review, not because Kierkegaard has something of his own to say. If, on the other hand, the reader of A Literary Review finds fault with the interpretation of the two ages put forward there, then the blame is Kierkegaard's alone, for having put the interpretation forward in the first place. With particular reference to his prophecy regarding the salvific suffering of the "unrecognizables," in fact, Kierkegaard claims that it is essentially banter, idle talk.68 Salvation is a matter of the subjective appropriation of the truth, not interference in one's spiritual life by a veronymous (Kierkegaard) or anonymous (the unrecognizable) other. Thus, in the end, Kierkegaard leaves the reader of A Literary Review with a chain of authorial responsibility to follow. For any faults or falsehoods one might find in the work - blame Kierkegaard. For any successes - credit the author of the novel. The author of the novel is, of course, an anonym, and an anonym who does not discourse philosophically (in the manner of Kierkegaard as reviewer), but writes 67 68

TA, 109-110 / SKS 8,104. Compare Peter Fenves "Chatter": Language and History in Kierkegaard, Stanford: Stanford University Press 1993. Of particular interest in this case are Fenves' first and fifth chapters, on From the Papers of One Still Living and A Literary Review, respectively.

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novels from which philosophical or social critical principles can be derived only indirectly. Moreover, as the author of A Story of Everyday Life is anonymous, "he" lacks any factually actual authority by way of which to persuade readers to agree with "him." Whatever truth the reader finds in A Literary Review, despite the work's veronymity, then, can only ever be subjective truth, truth as personal appropriation. That Kierkegaard's review is disclaimed as merely Kierkegaard's "own interpretation" implies the possibility of other and otherwise subjective interpretations, other readers' own interpretations of the novel. As in Postscript, the disclaimer or revocation in A Literary Review returns the reader to the position of interpretive innocence, from which he or she must read Two Ages - and A Literary Review - for him- or herself, interpreting it on his or her own authority. As did the reader of Postscript, the reader of A Literary Review comes to share responsibility for the authorship of what truth he or she finds in the review. Although Kierkegaard defers responsibility to the author of A Story of Everyday Life, as anonym that author must also defer to another author - not, this time, "his" own author, but instead the reader-as-author, whose authorial responsibility derives from the authority he or she uniquely possesses to come to an interpretation (an explanation, a Forklaring) of the review for him- or herself. For the reader, then, reading Kierkegaard is a kind of co-authorship, but co-authorship of a peculiar sort. Kierkegaard's veronymous explanatory authorship, recall, was undone precisely by the intermingling of poetical and factual actualities, as made evident in his attempt to explain the appearance of the Kierkegaardian veronym on the title pages of Postscript and Philosophical Fragments. In the discussion of "A First and Last Explanation" in Chapter Three, we saw that authorship, in order to remain possible, must occur exclusively within the realm of poetical actuality, at least insofar as the reader of the work is concerned. Thus, although Kierkegaard suggests in A Literary Review that the reader join him and the author of A Story of Everyday Life in co-authorship of the novel and the review, the reader cannot do so. Kierkegaard is well within the scope of his possibility in believing himself to be factually actual as the author of A Literary Review, but the reader of that work (or any Kierkegaardian work) is not. For the reader, Kierkegaard is a poetically actual implication of the review, not the man at its factually actual origin. To read Kierkegaard is to join in the authorship oneself, but not with Kierkegaard. Kierkegaard is himself, of course, the authored work of his own author, the anonymous author of the Kierkegaardian authors, whom we

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have come to understand as a performer par excellence. The author of the Kierkegaardian authors plays the role of Kierkegaard in the authorship of A Literary Review, as he or she played the role in "A First and Last Explanation" and the first four explanations. As we have already seen, the author of the authors is essentially anonymous, and as such must remain inaccessible to the reader in every way. All that we can know of that author is that he or she exists, and even this we cannot know directly. Furthermore, as we (as factually actual) encounter the works themselves as objects in factual actuality - A Literary Review, although perhaps a work of poetry, does nevertheless appear as a book in factually actual bookstores in the factually actual world - we must presume the factual actuality of the author at the origin of the books, even if that author bears no responsibility for the authorship of the works published as books in factual actuality. Some one factually actual individual must stand at the origin of A Literary Review, making possible the publication of works authored by Kierkegaard (and the other Kierkegaardian authors) in the real world. That individual is the author of the Kierkegaardian authors, and he or she is the author with whom Kierkegaard's readers engage in co-authorship. The reader thus co-authors A Literary Review, not with A Literary Review'?, author (S. Kierkegaard), but with the author of its author. The co-authors do not know each other, and even if they were to meet in factual actuality, they would not meet as co-authors. The authorship of the reader-as-author only occurs in the repetition of a rereading; the authorship of the author of the Kierkegaardian authors is almost entirely unknowable. Both of the co-authors create the work, albeit by different methods, and as such, both of the co-authors are responsible for the authorship, not only of the works, but of the authorial personae implied by those works, as well. The reader is thus co-author of both A Literary Review (by way of bearing responsibility for the truth of the work as its author) and Kierkegaard. Kierkegaard as author derives his identity, insofar as he has an identity as an author, from the relationship that holds between the contents and the structures of the works he authors. As the reader bears some authorial responsibility for both (as both are only knowable through interpretation, and interpretation is the province of the reader), the reader bears some authorial responsibility for Kierkegaard. Co-author with Kierkegaard's author, Kierkegaard's reader co-authors Kierkegaard. This is, of course, not an historical claim; it is nevertheless a true one. Moreover, and perhaps most strangely, as co-author of Kierkegaard, the reader must be understood as one of Kierkegaard's many

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performers. Alongside the author of the Kierkegaardian authors (on the one hand) and all of Kierkegaard's other readers (on the other), the single individual as reader of Kierkegaard performs Kierkegaard in his or her reading. Thus, although the lines remain the same, Kierkegaard can appear in a reading as more or less European, more or less Danish, more or less male, more or less a product of his time, all depending upon the performer - the reader - performing those lines. The divergent performances do not necessarily owe their divergences to their situation as nearer to or farther from the "truth" of Kierkegaard or the Kierkegaardian authorship, seeing as there is no such truth outside of a particular performance, but to the different identities and perspectives from which Kierkegaard is performed. This is not to say that anything goes in Kierkegaard interpretation, however, as the reader is not sole author but co-author with Kierkegaard's author. But it is to say that there are, perhaps, many more careful, rigorous and responsible readings of Kierkegaard than might have occurred to those readers co-authoring Kierkegaard (or any of the other Kierkegaardian authors) in the Copenhagen of 1846. In opening our understanding of the Kierkergaardian authorship to the possibility of the reader's co-authorship, we radicalize the notion of authorial performance to include an active readerly reperformance of the work of the author of the author. The reader-as-author appropriates the work at hand, of course, as the work at hand is all that is available to the reader as a reader. Nevertheless, as the author of the work is an implication of the work - and thus an element within the work, rather than a force external to it - in his or her appropriation, the reader also appropriates the author of the work. Appropriation, however, is entirely subjective, and requires as its precondition an understanding of the work (or the claims made by the work, or by the author by way of the work) in the mind of the individual reader engaged in appropriation. In the absence of an authority or an authorized interpretation, the reader is thus forced to interpret the work before he or she can appropriate it - and, as a natural consequence of that interpretation, the reader must formulate at least for him- or herself some interpretation or explanation of the author or authors at work in the work. Critical reading is thus far more than mere agreement or disagreement with the author's self-explanatory preface. Critical reading is Forklaring, and by way of the Forklaring, the transfiguration of the author in the mind of the single individual reading. That transfiguration takes place in the world in terms of what to this point I have been calling authorial performance.

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The reader performs the author of the work in a critical reading of the work aimed at appropriation, and in so doing, the reader joins in the activity heretofore exclusively the province of the author of the author of the work. The reader does not replace, or dissolve into, the author of the author, however, and in literary terms, the author of the author remains necessary for the possibility of the existence of the author and the work. Nevertheless, just as author authorship was cast in terms of performance in Chapter Three, so now with critical readership. It is here, in the unwritten, invisible, unrecognizable performance proper to both readers and authors of authors, that we find the beginning of an answer to the question of the possibility of coherent authorship at all, as posed at the end of the last section. If, as I suggested there, the only coherent author is the abstinent author - the author who abstains from authoring, who is, in fact, not an author - then the only coherent authorship is that produced by the author of an author or authors. Far from demanding an end to authorship as such, the philosophy of authorship at work in the work of the Kierkegaardian authors forces us to recognize the essentially and irresolvably problematic nature of authorship, and thus the need for us to move ourselves in critical reading to an awareness of the author of the author of the work we read. The Kierkegaardian author par excellence is the author who does not author, the author of the author - or the reader, who co-authors the author in an act of readerly reperformance. From the perspective of the reader, the author of the author is, as we have seen, essentially unknown and unknowable. But the same holds true for the reader, from the perspective of the author of the author, who cannot foresee which person or persons will engage the works produced by the author or authors he or she produces in a reading. Kierkegaardian authorship as co-authorship is blind, because, from the perspective of each of the co-authors, the other co-author is only insofar as his or her existence is posited as necessary. The work stands before each as the only tangible evidence of the existence of the other. For Kierkegaard as reviewer, author of A Literary Review and so many other works, the authorships of H. C. Andersen, Orla Lehmann, and the author of A Story of Everyday Life are all fundamentally flawed. Although the works produced by each of the authors might successfully communicate coherent ideas to their readers, they do not do so coherently - that is, in the end, in each case the author's authorship is undermined by a contradiction between the content of the work and its author's performance as an author, between the "what" and the "how" of the authorship. As we saw in Chapter Three, this

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apparently universal failing - the only author Kierkegaard reviews whose works do not suffer such criticism is Kierkegaard himself, and we have seen for ourselves what merit the veronymous authorship has in this regard - demonstrates authorship's incapacity for communication of any sort, direct or indirect. Although at the very heart of our inquiry, the author is decentered in critical readership, becoming himor herself but one more aspect of the work read. The author seems to have become secondary to the author of the author, just as the work seems to have become secondary to the author, and one might already suspect that the author of the author is to become secondary to his or her unknown co-author, the reader. Authorship has become performance, performance reading, and reading authorship again. The world of the Kierkegaardian author seems to have been turned upside down - and, to some extent, it has. In the next and final chapter, I hope to restore something of that world to its proper orientation again, largely by way of a consideration of the notions of self-criticism and performance as presented (again) in Kierkegaard's On My Work as an Author, and Inter et Inter's "The Crisis and a Crisis in the Life of an Actress." Although the author might seem at this point, as noted above, to have become eccentric to his or her authorship, I do not think all is as it seems. One must recall throughout a consideration of the Kierkegaardian author Kierkegaard's reasoned plea in " A First and Last Explanation," that responsibility for works be ascribed only to their authors, which has been a guiding principle throughout the study. And we would do well not to forget the closing reminder of Johannes Climacus, that to write a book and revoke it is not the same as to refrain from writing it at all. Ultimately, I think, the Kierkegaardian author is not removed from the center. He or she is simply not alone there.

Chapter Five Writing S. Kierkegaard: On My Work as an Author and "The Crisis and a Crisis in the Life of an Actress" Authorship, as practiced by Kierkegaard, is always already revocation - and this point is nowhere more clearly made than in Kierkegaard's final published explanation of the authorship itself, his last work of selfcriticism, On My Work as an Author. This very brief work, the length of an article but published as a monograph, asserts that, from the very beginning, the Kierkegaardian authorship had the religious as its orientation and goal. From the first edition of Either/Or (1843) through "The Crisis and a Crisis in the Life of an Actress" (1848), Kierkegaard argues, the purpose of the authorship and his purpose - his work as an author - has been "'Without authority' to make aware of the religious, the essentially Christian."1 Here, as once with "A First and Last Explanation," we seem to have the total, final and complete explanation of the authorship from Kierkegaard himself. In relinquishing any claim to authority, however, Kierkegaard simultaneously distances himself absolutely from the authorship and the religiousness of the authorship. As did A Literary Review, On My Work as an Author contains a revocation - not only of itself and the interpretation of the authorship it sets forth, but also of the Kierkegaardian authorship as a whole. As we will see in more detail, Kierkegaard revokes the authorship inasmuch as he deprives himself of the authority to assert as objectively true that with which he claims the authorship is essentially concerned: the religious. In some very real sense, then, On My Work as an Author plays the same role with regard to the Kierkegaardian authorship as Johannes Climacus' revocation played with regard to Concluding Unscientific Postscript. The little book constitutes a concluding postscript of Kierkegaard's own. 1

PV, 12 / SVI XIII, 501.

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On My Work as an Author is published as a work in progress: although it is dated March 1849, it bears a footnote dated October 1849, and an appendix dated November 1850. The preservation of these dates within the published text only serves to confirm Kierkegaard's claim, that the nature of the authorship did not come to him whole, but was worked out over the course of its writing. That Kierkegaard's reading of his own authorship developed over time does throw into question the truth of his claim, however, that from the very beginning (that is, from the time of the original publication of Either/Or - which is not "the very beginning," exactly) the authorship was in the service of, or, to recall what was said of the author of A Story of Everyday Life in A Literary Review, in the direction of, the religious. If Kierkegaard is, in fact, the authorship's author, then the essential religiousness of the authorship as presented in On My Work as an Author must be understood as a later interpretation (a Forklaring, if ever there was one), rather than a methodological revelation. That is, of course, unless some extra-Kierkegaardian plan preceded Kierkegaard's work as an author in the conception and development of the Kierkegaardian authorship. In that case, Kierkegaard would be, at most, co-author with the author of such a plan. Readers of Kierkegaard's unpublished account of the authorship, The Point of View for My Work as an Author, can attest to one version of this exceptional possibility, namely, that the plan for Kierkegaard's authorship comes about as the result of the cooperation of God (or Governance) in Kierkegaard's authoring.2 On My Work as an Author makes no claim comparably grand, although there does seem to be an implicit reliance upon the assistance of the divine throughout Kierkegaard's explanation - a matter to be treated later in this chapter. For the present, it is sufficient for our purposes to note that, if we are to accept even the basic outline of Kierkegaard's account of his authorship in On My Work as an Author, we can only do so on one of two grounds: either Kierkegaard did not intend to write a religious authorship, ended up doing so, and puts forward his self-interpretation on that basis; or, assisted in his authorial tasks by a higher power, Kierkegaard is not solely or entirely responsible as an author for the authorship. This second claim is, of course, a familiar one, and its familiarity will be recalled explicitly by Kierkegaard in On My Work as an Author, insofar as the Kierkegaardian anonyms and pseudonyms 2

See especially the third chapter of The Point of View, "Governance's Part in My Authorship," PV, 71-90 / SVI XIII, 556-575.

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are not Kierkegaard, and so do share with Kierkegaard in the matter of authorial responsibility. Nevertheless, the claim to divine authorial activity (or design, or, at the very least, complicity) in Kierkegaard's authorship is a new one, set forth nowhere in the authorship, and implied only in the argument of On My Work as an Author. Before examining Kierkegaard's implication of a divine understanding of the religious form and plan of the authorship, however, we must attend to the explicit statements of self-criticism. In this regard, On My Work as an Author suffers no less - albeit differently - than did "A First and Last Explanation" from inconsistencies and misrepresentations in the restrospective reconstruction of the Kierkegaardian authorship. Of the work's many minor failings, however, none is as crucial to undermining Kierkegaard's ostensible project in On My Work as an Author, nor as evident in all of Kierkegaard's self-criticism, as is the impossibility of a work ascribed to Kierkegaard standing sufficiently outside of the Kierkegaardian authorship to offer an interpretation of that authorship as a whole. As it is the case that any work ascribed to Kierkegaard, as well as any work authorial responsibility for which is somehow taken by Kierkegaard, is necessarily bound within Kierkegaard's authorship, readers are placed in the position of having to read those works - including the explanatory ones - in the same manner (and with the same philosophical suspicion) as they read any of the works constituting the authorship. As such, and as we saw in the discussion of "A First and Last Explanation" in Chapter Three, Kierkegaard could never communicate to us directly his purpose in the authorship. Nor could he provide us with anything but one more interpretation of that authorship, and an interpretation perhaps more (rather than less) suspect of misdirection. Again, as we have seen, the only works of which it is possible to say that they stand far enough outside of the authorship to relate to it are those anonymous works never subsumed under the Kierkegaardian veronym. After 'Another Defense of Woman's Great Abilities" (1834) and "A Cursory Observation Concerning a Detail in Don Giovanni" (1845), the only anonymous work in the Kierkegaardian corpus is Two Ethical-Religious Essays (1849), ascribed to the anonym, H.H. Kierkegaard leaves 'Another Defense" and "A Cursory Observation" untouched in On My Work as an Author, but - in an odd little footnote about which something still has to be said - Kierkegaard takes authorial responsibility for H. H.'s book. Thus, to the very end of the authorship (and of Kierkegaard's productivity as an author), the two newspaper articles ascribed to the anonym, A., are the only works

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that truly stand outside of the overarching corpus. To the very same extent that they remain outside of the authorship, however, they must not be considered Kierkegaardian. For the reader seeking a work in the authorship that might help to explain the authorship, this poses something of a problem. In reading "A Cursory Observation," however, we began to see the value of reading the Kierkegaardian authorship as a performance, performed not by Kierkegaard himself (who is, after all, only an author), but by Kierkegaard's author, the immortally anonymous author of the Kierkegaardian authors. While doing so requires us to take some liberties as readers - to read Kierkegaard with Kierkegaard against Kierkegaard, so to speak, borrowing a part of a phrase from Joakim Garff3 - we saw in Chapter Four the central importance of the quasiauthorial power of a reading when dealing with the Kierkegaardian author (or authors). That power is couched entirely in terms of performance and repetition, and of the transfiguring power of performatively rereading the authorship as authorial performance. In that vein, the final turn of the present study is toward the last and most mature work of dramatic criticism in the Kierkegaardian authorship, Inter et Inter's "The Crisis and a Crisis in the Life of an Actress." The article appears serially in Fcedrelandet in four parts. Published in the summer of 1848, it concerns itself directly with the case of an hypothetical actress who, according to Inter et Inter's hypothesis, has performed the role of Juliet in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet twice: once as a young girl, and then again, as a maturer woman. "The Crisis" makes at no point the claim that the poeticized actress of Inter et Inter's imagination is meant to correspond to any factually actual, living Danish actress, but the similarities between the actress of "The Crisis" and the very real wife of J. L. Heiberg, Johanne Luise Heiberg, are both obvious and well-known.4 Thus, while Inter et Inter never names the actress at the center of his work, it is reasonable to assume that he was aware his readers would make the connection. Although it is beyond the scope of our authority as readers to force Inter et Inter's 3 4

See Joakim Garff "The Eyes of Argus" in Kierkegaard: A Critical Reader, p. 77. Following Kierkegaard's death, Heiberg had "The Crisis" republished in book form, writing a new preface himself. That edition of the work includes a personal note from Kierkegaard to Fru Heiberg, in which her role as the basis for Inter et Inter's actress is made plain. For her part, Fru Heiberg wrote in her memoirs that Kierkegaard, although not an actor himself, had been remarkably able to capture what it is to be an actress in this work - a remark perhaps more than anecdotally significant to readings of the Kierkegaardian authorship.

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hand on this point, we must nevertheless keep this overt indirectness very much in mind. While he is not saying who the model for the actress might be, Inter et Inter is not refraining passively. Fru Heiberg's name is actively not written in the work; Inter et Inter's silence on this point is a deliberate silence. Central to Inter et Inter's depiction and review of his imaginary actress' performance as Juliet is the recurring notion of repetition in the Kierkegaard authorship: for Inter et Inter, the actress has not truly performed Juliet until she has, as an older woman, reperformed her. Essential to this argument, for Inter et Inter, is the fact that the idea informing the character of Juliet is the idea of feminine youthfulness, and that this idea is only poorly represented on the stage by a girl in the bloom of actual youth. Rather, to perform youthfulness is, for Inter et Inter, the task of an accomplished actress - one who can relate herself ideally to the idea of feminine youthfulness, regardless of her actual age. There is more to be said on this point, certainly, but for the moment it is of the utmost importance that we see that the crisis in the life of the actress has everything to do with the repetition that occurs when she reperforms youthfulness after her own actual youthfulness has passed. This transformation in the actress, from young to old, sets the standard for determinations of genuine dramatic talent (one cannot discern whether a young actress is talented in portraying a young woman on the stage, according to Inter et Inter, as one will be blinded by her actual, physical youth), and the name Inter et Inter gives to this transformation is "the metamorphosis." As we will see, the metamorphosis is yet another incarnation of the notion of transfiguration. Shakespeare's character remains eternally the same, speaking ever the same lines, loving Romeo ever in the same, tragic way. Different actresses bring their differing talents to their performances of the role, of course, as we saw in the case of Don Giovanni'?, Zerlina in "A Cursory Observation." Inter et Inter's actress performs Juliet twice, and yet from two different perspectives. She repeats herself - the two Juliets say and do the very same things - but, even for the attentive member of the audience (and this is, perhaps, the central point), she is changed in the repetition. Thus, after some consideration of Inter et Inter's philosophy of performance, delivered by way of his examination of his poetical actress, we will find a much richer ground for exploring Kierkegaard's performance as an author than we did in On My Work as an Author or the other veronymous, explanatory works. In this sense, the present chapter serves as a continuation of the suggestion made with regard to "A

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Cursory Observation" in Chapter Three. In another sense, however, I think we will find that a careful reading of "The Crisis" will help us to see parallels between performance and the Kierkegaardian author as he is presented in the literary critical works - most especially, A Literary Review. One might even think of A Literary Review as Kierkegaard's own reperformance (as was discussed briefly in Chapter Four), a repetition of From the Papers of One Still Living. The repetition is, I think, of the very same sort as Inter et Inter ascribes to the actress - and rests upon an at least analogical metamorphosis in the Kierkegaardian author. The very next work published in the Kierkegaardian authorship, after "The Crisis," is the second edition of Either/Or, perhaps best considered a quite literal authorial reperformance. The present chapter will begin, then, with a consideration of Kierkegaard's self-presentation (and self-criticism) in On My Work as an Author. In the first section, I will offer an account and explanation of that Kierkegaardian understanding of the authorship - and the resultant vision of the author and authorship in general derivative therefrom. Central to that vision is the lack of authority proper to the author of a literary work (or author). The second section of the present chapter will continue with On My Work as an Author, looking forward to the implications of a divine co-author at work in the Kierkegaardian authorship. Of particular interest, I think, will be the (admittedly limited) correspondence between what Kierkegaard will call (in The Point of View) "Governance," and the notion of an anonymous author underlying the various Kierkegaardian authors. After the consideration of On My Work as an Author, I will turn my attention to the ways in which "The Crisis and a Crisis in the Life of an Actress" might supercede On My Work as an Author as an insight into the nature of Kierkegaardian authorship and the Kierkegaardian author. The third section will thus enter into "The Crisis" in some depth, in an attempt to uncover the precise nature of the theory of performance put forward by Inter et Inter in that work. Above all, the third section will be concerned with grounding Inter et Inter's notion of the metamorphosis in the earlier Kierkegaardian notions of transfiguration and repetition. In the fourth section, I will continue my treatment of Inter et Inter and "The Crisis," focussing primarily on what he calls "a performance in the eminent sense." The Kierkegaardian authorship as a whole is best summarized, I will argue, in such terms - a performance in the eminent sense. In the fifth and final section of the present chapter, I will offer some concluding thoughts on Kierkegaard's literary and dramatic criticism, and the important

Without Authority

role I think those works play in considerations of Kierkegaard as an author. With the help of the Kierkegaardian author, I will argue, Kierkegaard simultaneously crafts himself and is crafted as an author of the most eminent sort. Performer and performed, Kierkegaard collaborates with his own, anonymous author in the production of the anonymous, pseudonymous, and veronymous Kierkegaardian texts. As far as we, as readers, can be concerned, the author of Kierkegaard and the Kierkegaardian authors is but the purely literary implication of Kierkegaard's existence as a named author. As far as Kierkegaard is concerned, however, that author must be God.

Without Authority On My Work as an Author is published in 1851, one of the last published works in the Kierkegaardian authorship. The only book to follow will be For Self-Examination (1851); aside from that work, the rest of the authorship is composed of newspaper articles in Fcedrelandet (1854-1855), and Kierkegaard's own journal, The Moment (1855; the tenth and last issue is published posthumously). On My Work as an Author thus has the unique privilege among Kierkegaard's explanatory works of a nearly complete vantage point on the rest of the preceding authorship. The work is composed of two parts: the first, "The Accounting," attempts to set forth an understanding of the authorship as originally and fundamentally religious; the second, an appendix called, "My Position as a Religious Author in 'Christendom' and My Strategy," attempts to situate the authorship (and approach to authorship) described in "The Accounting" in the Lutheran Denmark of Kierkegaard's day. While the appendix takes the form of a well-structured essay, "The Accounting" breaks down into a number of loosely connected fragments apparently sharing a common purpose, despite the fact that they are not elements of a single, continuous argument. Thus, "The Accounting" is something more like "Accountings." Some of Kierkegaard's accountings in "The Accounting" reiterate points made earlier in the authorship, either veronymously or by one of the pseudonyms. For the Kierkegaard of On My Work as an Author, Johannes Climacus plays an important role in the development of the Kierkegaardian authorship, and Concluding Unscientific Postscript is heralded as the centerpiece of that authorship's religiousness. Oddly, nowhere in On My Work as an Author does Kierkegaard mention his own "A First and Last Explanation," appended to Postscript;

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he does manage, however, to remind us of the appearance of his own name as editor of that work. In fact, from a reading of On My Work as an Author, one finds no indication of the fact that Kierkegaard's last explanation is preceded by five other explanations of the authorship of various significance. As with "A First and Last Explanation," On My Work as an Author foregoes the opportunity to add to or amend the earlier explanatory attempts, opting instead merely to repeat those attempts - both in terms of their explanatory power, as well as their seeming finality and completeness. The work is thus quite easily classified among the other Kierkegaardian explanations in spite of its actual finality, bringing the total number of published explanations of the authorship to six. One thing that does set On My Work as an Author apart within the explanatory authorship, however, is Kierkegaard's willingness to engage his readers in at least some of the details of his own life. Given what has been written to this point, it should be clear that, regardless of what Kierkegaard writes, as readers we are never justified in believing the author of On My Work as an Author to be the factually actual S0ren Kierkegaard of Golden Age Denmark. Nevertheless, Kierkegaard opens On My Work as an Author with an only slightly veiled reference to his dealings - almost entirely pseudonymous - with Corsaren immediately prior to and following the publication of Postscript. Setting the stage with reference to the ideal situation for an author in a "little country" like Denmark, Kierkegaard suggests that, under normal circumstances, authors in such countries are in a good and favorable accord with themselves, their readers, and the nation - and that, as such, the nation is typically somewhat appreciative of such authors. But Kierkegaard goes on: Whether the opposite of this has in any way been my experience, whether I have been treated shabbily by anyone or by some persons, is really not my concern but quite properly is their business. What is my concern, however - and I am so happy that it is my concern - is that I should and ought to give thanks for whatever favors and kindness and courtesy and appreciation have been shown to me in general or by particular individuals.5

Perhaps such a remark of gratitude is but a small matter in a work such as On My Work as an Author, and does little to erode the distance that naturally pertains between an author and the readers of that author's work. But Kierkegaard does not let the matter rest with this gentle reminder of the public humiliation suffered by the factually 5

PV, 5 / SVI XIII, 493.

Without Authority

actual S0ren Kierkegaard at the hands of the factually actual editors of the factually actual Corsaren. Later in the short explanation, Kierkegaard tries to take full responsibility for the Corsaren affair, writing And precisely at the critical moment when Concluding Postscript, which, as stated, poses "the issue," was delivered to the printer so that the printing could commence as soon as possible and the publication presumably quickly follow - at precisely that moment a pseudonym, most appropriately in a newspaper article, made the greatest possible effort to alienate the public* and after that began the decisively religious production.6

On this accounting, Kierkegaard wilfully provokes the mockery he suffers from Corsaren. Although it is a convenient means by way of which Kierkegaard can reenter the discussion of the deleterious effect of the public and the notion of the public in literary and philosophical-literary life, this comment subsumes the presumably free actions of the editors of Corsaren under Kierkegaard's own plan for the Kierkegaardian authorship. This is its own authorial problem for Kierkegaard the author, but it is not the end of his introduction of the Corsaren affair into On My Work as an Author. In a footnote to the asterisk in the passage above, Kierkegaard offers his final comment on the nature of his bout with the satirical feuilleton: Just one thing more, the press of literary contemptibility had achieved a frightfully disproportionate coverage. To be honest, I believed that what I did was a public benefaction; it was rewarded by several of those for whose sake I had exposed myself in that way - rewarded, yes, as an act of love is usually rewarded in the world - and by means of this reward it became a truly Christian work of love.7

Thus, in five short pages, the Corsaren affair has gone from a minor note in the introductory fragment of Kierkegaard's On My Work as an Author to the ostensible fruit of Kierkegaard's Christianity in the world. Four years prior, however, in another work ascribed to the veronymous S. Kierkegaard, Works of Love, we are warned against those who come to us claiming to love Christianly. Although Kierkegaard maintains in that work that love will be recognizable by its fruits - perhaps something quite like the suffering Kierkegaard endures throughout the Corsaren affair - he closes the work insisting that the one who truly loves (in this passage, by way of praising love) will not seek to benefit from that love by way of identifying him- or herself as 6 7

PV, 9-10 / SVI XIII, 498. PV, lOn. / SVI XIII, 499n.

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one who loves. "If, then, someone undertakes to praise love and is asked whether it is actually out of love on his part that he does it, the answer must be: 'No one else can decide this for certain; it is possible that it is vanity, pride - in short, something bad, but it is also possible that it is love'."8 This is not Kierkegaard's answer, however. In that footnote in On My Work as an Author, Kierkegaard tells us that he has performed a "truly Christian work of love." Oddly, according to Kierkegaard, that truly Christian work of love was pseudonymously instigating a short-lived newspaper rivalry with the satirists and cartoonists employed by Corsaren. This not only seems to run counter to Kierkegaard's views on the necessary veronymity of ethical and religious actions - as detailed in Chapter Two - but also to his claims regarding his role in the Kierkegaardian authorship, both in "A First and Last Explanation" and in On My Work as an Author. In the closing fragment of "The Accounting," in a passage cited already in part above, Kierkegaard writes: •'Without authority" to make aware of the religious, the essentially Christian, is the category for my whole work as an author regarded as a totality. From the very beginning I have enjoined and repeated unchanged that I was "without authority." I regard myself rather as a reader of the books, not as the author?

The term in quotation marks - "without authority" - is derived, of course, from H. H.'s anonymous Two Ethical-Religious Essays (1849), specifically the second essay, "The Difference between a Genius and an Apostle" (dated 1847). Kierkegaard admits as much in a footnote to On My Work as an Author, dated 1849, after the publication of Two Ethical-Religious Essays. In a significant portion of the long note, he writes: And a little earlier in that same year, there appeared a little book: Two Ethical-Religious Essays by H. H. The significance of this little book (which does not stand in the authorship as much as it relates totally to the authorship and for that reason also was anonymous, in order to be kept outside entirely) is not very easy to explain without going into the whole matter. It is like a navigation mark by which one steers but, note well, in such a way that the pilot understands precisely that he is to keep a certain distance from it. It defines the boundary of the authorship. "The Difference between a Genius and an Apostle" (essay no. 2) is: "The genius is without authority." But precisely because genius as such is without authority, it does not have in itself the ultimate concentration that provides the power and justification for accentuating in the direction of "letting oneself be put to death for the truth" (essay no. 1). Genius as such re-

8 9

WL, 374 / SKS 9, 367. PV, 12 / SVI XIII, 501.

Without Authority mains in reflection. This in turn is the category of my whole authorship: to make aware of the religious, the essentially Christian - but "without authority"10

Much as we saw with "Another Defense" and "A Cursory Observation," in this footnote, Kierkegaard associates the anonymity of Two Ethical-Religious Essays with the location of that work (and its anonymous author, H. H.) in a position somehow outside of the authorship. In the cases of those first two anonymous newspaper articles, however, it was Kierkegaard's veronymous silence about them that ultimately preserved them from subsumption into the Kierkegaardian authorship. Once again, in this footnote in On My Work as an Author, we find Kierkegaard betraying himself in the precise moment (and the specific text) in which he establishes the criterion for betrayal. Two Ethical-Religious Essays would stand outside of the authorship, in relation to it rather than substantially within it, had Kierkegaard not taken responsibility for its authorship (or the authorship of its author) in On My Work as an Author. By laying claim to Two Ethical-Religious Essays, and assigning the work a specific (and rather important) place in the authorship - as that work "by which one steers," and that "marks the boundary of the authorship" - Kierkegaard deprives H. H. of his anonymity, and Two Ethical-Religious Essays of its exteriority to the authorship and to Kierkegaard himself. "The Difference between a Genius and an Apostle" does, however, establish Kierkegaard's use of the term "without authority" in "The Accounting," and it is thus worth looking more fully into H. H.'s use of the term in its original context. For H.H., the essential difference between a genius and an apostle is that the apostle is endowed with divine authority; while the genius may offer something new to be known, the apostle "communicates" the paradoxical-religious, which can only be believed. Negotiating this difference is, for H. H , a matter of the relevance of form. H. H. uses the analogy of royalty to describe the nature of an authority that is, as far as H. H. and the apostle are concerned, ultimately divine. He writes: Authority is what is qualitatively decisive. Or is there not a difference, even within the relativity of human life, although it immanently disappears, between a royal command and the words of a poet or a thinker? And what is the difference but this, that the royal command has authority and therefore forbids all esthetic and critical impertinence with regard to form and content? The poet, the thinker, on the other hand, does not have any authority, not even within this relativity; his utterance is evaluated purely esthetically or philosophically by evaluating the content and form.11 10 11

PV, 6n. / SVI XIII, 495n. WA, 97 / SVI XI, 99.

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Adopting H. H.'s use of the term "without authority" as an essential component of "the category of [his] whole authorship," Kierkegaard opens himself and his authorship - not only the veronymous authorship, of course, but all of the works authorial responsibility for which somehow arrives, at least in part, with the veronym - to an evaluation of both content and form, the "aesthetic and critical impertinence" of aesthetic-philosophical criticism. That is, in short, Kierkegaard delivers himself into the hands of his readers - into our hands - as the object of a Kierkegaardian-style criticism. There are two issues at work in Kierkegaard's adoption of H. H.'s discourse on authority, and both are relevant to any reading of the Kierkegaardian authorship. The first of these is that to be with or without authority is, divine calling aside, a matter of authorial perspective. The apostle, endowed with authority to speak for God by God, may utter the very same statements uttered by a poet or a thinker who lacks authority, and yet the apostle's utterance demands belief without reference to the factors that might incline one to agree with the poet or the thinker. H.H. makes this point twice, once in a secular, and then once in a religious, context. "When someone who has the authority to say it says to a person, 'Go!' and when someone who does not have the authority says, 'Go!' the utterance (Go!) and its content are indeed identical; evaluated esthetically, it is, if you like, equally well spoken, but the authority makes the difference."12 To make the point more clearly, H. H. takes the example to its most extreme: When Christ says, "There is an eternal life," and when theological graduate Petersen says, "There is an eternal life," both are saying the same thing; there is in the first statement no more deduction, development, profundity, richness of thought than in the second; evaluated esthetically, both statements are equally good. And yet there certainly is an eternal qualitative difference!13

Essential to both cases here, I think, is the fact that, for H. H. as for Kierkegaard, the possession of authority frees one from the possibility of criticism. Asking of Christ that he express himself in clearer, more dialectical language - or that he offer arguments for the truth of his claims about the eternal life - is, H. H. maintains, blasphemous, the religious equivalent of asking the king to explain why he has made the commands he has. To question the form of a statement made from a perspective of authority is to question the authority of the one making the statement, as if a well-articulated command from the king de12 13

WA, 98-99 / SVI XI, 100. WA, 101-102 / SVI XI, 103.

Without Authority

mands more obedience from the king's subjects than a poorly-articulated one. Thus, in terms of authority - especially the divine authority of which H. H. writes - who the author is matters essentially. In cases where apostolic authority is not an issue, however, such as the authorship of Either/Or (a question to which A.F.... responds directly), the reader or listener must approach the author's production with an impertinently critical attitude. Such readerly criticism extends not only to the content of the author's production, but also to the form by way of which the production is presented, and this is the second issue to which I referred above. The question of authority is bound up with the questions of anonymity and veronymity, as they were discussed in Chapters One and Two. Only the named author has the (relative) authority to speak or write on his or her own behalf; for this reason, Orla Lehmann is justly criticized for his abuse of Johannes Hage's anonymity. Only Kierkegaard can write for Kierkegaard. As the Kierkegaard in question is an author, however, and thus purely literary, we must return again to the realization that S. Kierkegaard, the veronymous author, does not possess the authority to write on behalf of S0ren Kierkegaard, man resident in Copenhagen. Whatever Kierkegaard writes of the truly Christian works of love he has performed for Denmark, it must not be thought to apply to that other, factually actual Kierkegaard. As far as we are concerned, there is nothing to be known about the factually actual Kierkegaard's thoughts on the Corsaren affair. Kierkegaard, the author for whom authority is of such great import in On My Work as an Author, thus tempts us (once again) to believe him, for no reason other than that he is Kierkegaard. Uncritical belief, however, is an appropriate reaction only to the utterances of apostles, and Kierkegaard is no apostle. His anapostolic authorial perspective forces Kierkegaard away from communicating himself - or his thoughts on what he claims in On My Work as an Author is the essential question, that of becoming a Christian - directly. The Kierkegaardian authorship thus becomes, as Kierkegaard recounts in On My Work as an Author, an attempt at indirectness - at indirectly making readers aware of the religious, a kind of Christian maieutics. Of primary importance in critically examining Kierkegaard's representation of the authorship in On My Work as an Author, however, is that the lack of authority inherent to the authorship is not merely the result of Kierkegaard's occasional pseudonymity or anonymity, but of the fact that neither Kierkegaard nor any of the pseudonyms - nor, for that matter, any of the anonyms - is endowed with divine authority.

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The form of the work is as important in readings of the veronymous and explanatory works as it is in the pseudonymous or anonymous authorships, and if the form undermines the content of the veronymous works, the undermining is no less important for the veronymity. This we have already seen in the cases of "A First and Last Explanation" and the first four explanations, as well as A Literary Review. Nevertheless, looking now to Kierkegaard's veronymity one last time, it is worth remembering. On My Work as an Author is but one more work in the Kierkegaardian authorship. It should come as some surprise, then, to readers of On My Work as an Author that, in the very same text in which he attests to being "without authority" and to relating to the authorship "as a reader of the books, not as the author," Kierkegaard not only holds open the possibility of direct communication; he maintains that the authorship has already terminated in directness. But just as that which has been communicated (the idea of the religious) has been cast completely into reflection and in turn taken back out of reflection, so also the communication has been decisively marked by reflection, or the form of communication used is that of reflection. "Direct communication" is: to communicate the truth directly; "communication in reflection" is: to deceive into the truth. But since the movement is to arrive at the simple, the communication in turn must sooner or later end in direct communication.14

Kierkegaard also delineates something more of the precise development in his own authorship, from communication in reflection to direct communication. Thus, The movement the authorship describes is: from "the poet," from the esthetic - from "the philosopher," from the speculative - to the indication of the most inward qualification of the essentially Christian; from the pseudonymous Either/Or, through Concluding Postscript, with my name as editor, to Discourses at the Communion on Fridays, of which two were delivered in Frue Church.15

The line Kierkegaard draws through the authorship in this manner is both aesthetically and philosophically pleasing. The authorship begins in pseudonymity - that is, indirect communication, communication in reflection - with Either/Or, and then proceeds more or less directly toward veronymity. Kierkegaard authors the pseudonyms; then Kierkegaard veronymously edits Philosophical Fragments and Postscript; then Kierkegaard authors veronymous religious works (like Discourses at the Communion on Fridays), to which he is himself so 14 15

PV, 7 / SVI XIII, 495. PV, 5-6 / SVI XIII, 494.

Without Authority

closely bound that he can deliver them in person, in church. The more veronymous the authorship becomes, the more Christianly religious. The plan seems nearly flawless; as Kierkegaard notes: This movement was traversed or delineated uno tenore, in one breath, if I dare say so - thus the authorship, regarded as a totality, is religious from first to last, something anyone who can see, if he wants to see, must also see. Just as one versed in natural science promptly knows from the crisscrossing threads in a web the ingenious little creature whose web it is, so an insightful person will also know that to this authorship there corresponds as the source someone who qua author "has willed only one thing."16

It is an argument for the existence of Kierkegaard as an author from design. Like William Paley's watchmaker God, Kierkegaard sits over the authorship, the "ingenious little creature" who "has willed only one thing." As was noted briefly in Chapter Three, much has been written to debunk the myth Kierkegaard tries to perpetrate, in On My Work as an Author and elsewhere, as to the unity and singleminded religiousness of the authorship - most notably, perhaps, by Louis Mackey and Joakim Garff.17 The authorship does not begin with the pseudonymous Either/Or, for example, but with the anonymous, satirically antifeminist article in Kj0benhavns fly vende Post, "Another Defense of Woman's Great Abilities," which is followed by a number of other newspaper articles, and then From the Papers of One Still Living - a work to which Kierkegaard himself refers, in A Literary Review, as "what I first wrote."18 More to the point in On My Work as an Author, however, in a footnote to the passage cited above, Kierkegaard tries to force other elements of the authorship into the beautiful mold he has just created. In an attempt to explain the appearance of another pseudonym, Anti-Climacus, after the publication of the Three Discourses at the Communion on Fridays, Kierkegaard begins to seem as if he is having some trouble himself maintaining the vision of the authorship as progressing toward direct communication. Later, however, there appeared a new pseudonym: Anti-Climacus. But the very fact that it is a pseudonym signifies that he is, inversely, coming to a halt, as the name (Anri-Climacus) indeed suggests. All the previous pseudonymity is lower than "the upbuilding author"; the new pseudonym is a higher pseudonymity. But indeed "a halt 16 17

18

PV, 6 / SVI XIII, 495. See Garff "The Eyes of Argus." And Louis Mackey "Points of View for His Work as an Author: A Report from History" in Points of View: Readings of Kierkegaard, Tallahassee: Florida State University Press 1986, pp. 160-192. TA, 23 / SKS 8, 26.

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is made" in this way: something higher is shown, which simply forces me back within my boundary, judging me, that my life does not meet so high a requirement and that consequently the communciation is something poetical.19

Kierkegaard goes on in the same note to address the appearance of the anonymous Two Ethical-Religious Essays ("And a little earlier in that same year,..."), and then, the second edition of Either/Or ("And finally, to include even the smallest,..."). The footnote is dated October 1849, seven months after the date on "The Accounting" in which it appears, preserving within the published text itself the sense that Kierkegaard attempts this additional defense only as an afterthought. If nothing else, this long addendum of a footnote contributes to the fragmentation characteristic of the text, which does little to assist Kierkegaard in his argument. At least insofar as it is instantiated in On My Work as an Author, the movement of the authorship does not seem to have been "traversed or delineated uno tenore, in one breath." The footnote alone seems to have been written in three. Perhaps most telling, however, is Kierkegaard's apparent reversal of his position in one of the closing fragments of "The Accounting." There, after delineating an understanding of the authorship as a single, religious piece, progressing steadily toward direct communication and the Christian religious without interruption, Kierkegaard writes: This is how I now understand the whole. From the beginning I could not quite see what has indeed also been my own development. This is scarcely the place for a lengthy account. Here it is just a matter of being able very briefly to fold together in simplicity what is unfolded in the many books or what unfolded is the many books, and this brief communication is more immediately prompted by the fact that the first book in the authorship now comes out the second time, the new edition of Either/Or, which I earlier was unwilling to have published.20

The apparent reversal is not a revocation, however, by virtue of the fact that the two views of the authorship Kierkegaard puts forth in On My Work as an Author - that it implies a religious author with purity of intention and heart, and that it is the developing product of an author's existential and religious development - are not incompatible. The former view argues for an interpretation of the authorship rooted in a readerly perspective on the implied author of the works, authors and corpora that constitute that authorship. The latter suggests that, from the writerly or authorial perspective - for Kierkegaard, as an author - the meaning and nature of the authorship developed over time. 19 20

PV, 6n. / SVI XIII, 495n. PV, 12 / SVI XIII, 500.

Without Authority

At the time of the writing of On My Work as an Author, Kierkegaard seems to claim, he is in agreement with the interpretation he has put forward. But this is not the only interpretation, and not the only interpretation the author himself has adopted. We find here, then, tacit acknowledgement on the part of the veronymous author that the author of a work is not some factually actual human being situated significantly at the work's origin in time, but "merely" a purely poetical implication of the literary reality instantiated by the work - and in which the work and its author (or authors) forever participate. Kierkegaard maintains that the authorship implies an author who, in a single breath, articulated the authorship as religious from first to last. He also admits that he is not this author - in fact, he goes so far as to say that, with regard to the authorship, he regards himself not as its author, but as one of its readers. We have seen the phenomenal creative power of readership, especially with regard to an authorship such as the Kierkegaardian, in Chapter Four. Nevertheless, Kierkegaard's point in On My Work as an Author does not seem to be that he has created the authorship, albeit in a more readerly than authorial fashion. Rather, Kierkegaard seems to admit here, at the very end of "The Accounting," that, when he comes to the Kierkegaardian authorship, he comes to it as if from the outside. The author behind or implied by the authorship, although named with Kierkegaard's name, is not exactly Kierkegaard. If he is not to risk self-fragmentation and a perhaps more-than-literary schizophrenia, Kierkegaard must rely on an understanding of authorship very much like the one proposed throughout the present work. The distinction between poetical actuality and factual actuality must be rigorously maintained, and the method of that maintenance must be something akin to what I have called authorial performance. Kierkegaard's reliance in On My Work as an Author, however, is not upon such an understanding. Naturally, were Kierkegaard to admit his own purely poetical nature as an author, his existential perspective - his life-view - would become substantially untenable. Although, as readers of the Kierkegaardian authorship, we can and must regard S. Kierkegaard as the name of but one more poetically actual textual implication, as S. Kierkegaard, Kierkegaard cannot and must not. An author must be real to him- or herself. From the perspective of the reader who is not Kierkegaard, "The Accounting" serves interestingly as the occasion on which the Kierkegaardian veronym admits that the reader only ever encounters Kierkegaard as poetically actual, and this admission very deeply informs

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the interpretation of the authorship Kierkegaard offers in "The Accounting." On My Work as an Author is, thus, a work in which a fictional authorial persona tells his readers that the author of the authorship ascribed to him can only ever appear as a fictional authorial persona. The authority on which he relies to make this claim, however, rests entirely upon the reader's belief in that persona's factual actuality - we can believe Kierkegaard about Kierkegaard because, in the end, he is Kierkegaard. This dilemma fundamentally undermines the argument set forth in On My Work as an Author, as it must, and as it has, to some degree, already undermined the other Kierkegaardian explanations. Nevertheless, for the first time in the authorship, Kierkegaard does all he can as an author to address the nature of the dilemma of his own authorship, and to this end he must suggest an explanation unlike any other the authorship has already provided. For On My Work as an Author to succeed in Kierkegaard's terms (as opposed to those with which Kierkegaard's readers come to any text), he must provide an account of the authorship and his own authorial identity that simultaneously affirms his authorial independence and the fact that his very existence as an author implies the existence of another, anonymous author - the author of Kierkegaard as an author. Poetically actually, this is no problem, as it was no problem for our understanding of the anonymous or pseudonymous works and authors. Factually actually, however - that is, from the perspective of Kierkegaard's presumed veronymous factual actuality in a work such as On My Work as an Author - Kierkegaard must existentialize an apparent paradox. Contrary to everything we have already seen with regard to authorship and the authorship of authors, Kierkegaard must acknowledge his own author.

With the Help of God By On My Work as an Author and 1851, Kierkegaard has written himself into a strange corner: he must not only affirm the existence of his own author, but must recognize the role his author has played in the authorship of the Kierkegaardian authorship. This is no light matter. Although it may seem an obvious and easy conclusion to an authorship such as Kierkegaard's - to come right out and say that, in the end, my author and I (or, perhaps more appropriately, my Author and I) have collaborated in the production of the authorship that, in one way or another, bears my name, is to transgress that most delicate of

With the Help of God

bounds, set already by the anonymous reviewer (later, Kierkegaard) in From the Papers of One Still Living, between poetical and factual actualities. From the perspective of factual actuality, any assertion of authorial creation on the part of one party implies necessarily the poetical actuality of the work, corpus, or author authored. Kierkegaard tries to skirt this requirement, at least in part, in "A First and Last Explanation," where he asserts the creative independence of the authors he claims that he himself has authored - but the assertion there never attempts to make the impossible claim, that the authors for whom Kierkegaard bears authorial responsibility are themselves factually actual persons. Authored authors remain personae. From a certain perspective, authorship is as simple as that. The author of the Kierkegaardian authors is not God. When we replace "the author of the authors," or "Kierkegaard's author," with "God," we clarify little and obfuscate much. As readers who are not Kierkegaard, we can easily assign the author of the Kierkegaardian authors another link in the extended chain of authorial responsibility without confusing fiction with fact thereby. Kierkegaard does not have the luxury of a truly readerly perspective, however. He must insist upon his own factual actuality in a way that we must not. Moreover, to confer upon the anonymous author of the authors a specificity tantamount to naming is to deprive that author of his or her anonymity - an anonymity not only central to the author of the author's authorial duties, but essential to the very concept of the author of the Kierkegaardian authors, as we have seen. Thus, while it may seem aesthetically and philosophically appropriate for Kierkegaard, at this point, to suggest that he is himself an author authored by another Author - that is, by God - it is precisely this suggestion that marks the boundary of available explanations of the authorship. We have seen the consequences of naming the author of the author. If Kierkegaard names God as his own author, and thus as a co-author in the production of the Kierkegaardian authorship, the result is not the elevation of the authorship into the realm of divine works. The result is the thorough poeticizing of Kierkegaard's God. This is, presumably, a result that Kierkegaard is interested to avoid. We find here, among other things, the fundamental difference between the published account given in On My Work as an Author, and the unpublished correspondent to that account contained within The Point of View for My Work as an Author. On My Work as an Author is regularly viewed as but a lesser equivalent to The Point of View, owing in large part, perhaps, to the research that has been done on the writ-

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ing of the two works, and the original situation of unpublished drafts of On My Work as an Author within The Point of View. Nevertheless, The Point of View is very clear: Governance collaborated with Kierkegaard in the authorship of the authorship. On My Work as an Author avoids making precisely this claim. Thus, even if we set aside the fact that The Point of View was never published by Kierkegaard, we must come to The Point of View with a great deal of skepticism about its claims. If Kierkegaard means to make the claims he seems to make in The Point of View, then Kierkegaard has wilfully undermined the factual actuality of the Christian God. We must, then, maintain a strict distinction between two apparently similar claims about God's role in the authorship. The first of these claims, as made in The Point of View, is that the divine had a specific plan for Kierkegaard and the Kierkegaardian authorship, and that, without reference to Kierkegaard's own will, God brought that plan to fruition by having created, or authored, Kierkegaard as an author. Such a claim creates for God the same kind of poeticized intentions for authorship as were invented for H. C. Andersen in Andersen as a Novelist. The second of these claims, however, merely notes Kierkegaard's reliance upon God (or Governance, or the divine) in the production of the authorship. This claim ultimately says nothing about God; it is, instead, an apparent testament to or of Kierkegaard's faith. Put another way, the difference between the two claims has everything to do with the scope of Kierkegaard's authority. As an author, Kierkegaard has no authority to write on behalf of another author, even if (perhaps, especially if) that author is God. As we have already noted, however, Kierkegaard does have the authority to offer claims on his own behalf - presuming that these claims are understood to apply only to S. Kierkegaard, the poetically actual authorial persona, and not that other, factually actual Kierkegaard. Kierkegaard's claims about God in On My Work as an Author are exclusively of this second sort. As he writes, early in "My Position as a Religious Author in 'Christendom' and My Strategy," the appendix to and second section of On My Work as an Author, "My strategy was: with the help of God to utilize everything to make clear what in truth Christianity's requirement is - even if not one single person would accept it, even if I myself might have to give up being a Christian, which in that case I would have felt obliged to acknowledge publicly."21 Rather than the articulation of a divine plan for the authorship, as is made 21

PV, 16 / SVI XIII, 506.

With the Help of God

in the third chapter of The Point of View, "My Position" is an attempt at explaining the critical function of the authorship as a totality with regard to the Danish Church of Kierkegaard's day. Although Kierkegaard claims to know what Christianity truly is in On My Work as an Author, he never claims to know God's plan for Danish Lutheranism or for Kierkegaard himself. He is faithful that he works in the service of God in Denmark, but that is a far cry from knowing (or claiming to know) the mind of God. On My Work as an Author is thus characterized by a lack of the knowledge - and, thus, the authority - to which The Point of View pretends. Kierkegaard is ignorant of God's role in the authorship, whatever it might be. The Kierkegaardian authorship, as explained by Kierkegaard in the 1850 appendix to On My Work as an Author, is concerned primarily with the relation between human persons within the context of Christianity, not with any person's or group of persons' God relation (an endeavor which, as is pointed out succinctly by H. H., could only be rightly attempted by an apostle, at any rate). This relation constitutes, for Kierkegaard, the religiousness of the authorship. He writes: What I have wanted to prevent is that someone, confining himself to and contented with the easier and lower, thereupon goes further, abolishes the higher, goes further, sets the lower in the place of the higher, goes further, makes the higher into fantasticality and ludicrous exaggeration, the lower into wisdom and true earnestness; I have wanted to prevent people in "Christendom" from existentially taking in vain Luther and the significance of Luther's life - I have wished, if possible, to contribute to preventing this. What was needed, among other things, was a godly satire.22

Not only is this passage reminiscent of the subtle criticisms of the author of A Story of Everyday Life in A Literary Review, but the desire to educate through the production of "a godly satire" also brings to mind the manner in which Socrates is famous for having attempted to educate the Athenians. With the Socratic in mind - and the long history of reliance upon admittedly occasionally varying interpretations of Socrates and the Socratic in the Kierkegaardian authorship - the nature of Kierkegaard's brief introduction to "My Position" (entitled, succinctly, "My Position") comes more fully to light. There, he writes, "Never have I fought in such a way that I have said: I am the true Christian; the others are not Christians, or probably even hypocrites and the like."23 "Again," 22 23

PV, 17 / SVI XIII, 506-507. PV, 15 / SVI XIII, 505.

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Kierkegaard notes later of the authorship, with particular reference to Practice in Christianity, "no one, not one, is judged."24 Yet, recalling the personal biographical claims Kierkegaard makes at the beginning of "The Accounting," and with which we began our consideration of On My Work as an Author in the present chapter, we find an authorial attitude at least somewhat akin to the Socratic ironic. There, recollect, after discoursing briefly on the "proper" and "natural" relation between a little country and the authors at work in the language of such a country, Kierkegaard concludes: "Whether the opposite of this has in any way been my experience, whether I have been treated shabbily by anyone or by some persons, is really not my concern but quite properly is their business."25 That Kierkegaard bothers to mention it at all, however, and then makes his mention of it the very first fragment of his fragmented explanatory work, pushes the reader toward an ironic interpretation of the claim - that, in fact, whether Kierkegaard has "been treated shabbily" is really very much Kierkegaard's concern. Such a reading is bolstered by the importance Kierkegaard places on having entered into the shabby public relations to which he here makes reference, later in On My Work as an Author. The Socratic nature of the irony does not, however, find its fullest expression in the cheap shots Kierkegaard takes at Corsaren and those influenced by Corsaren's treatment of Kierkegaard. Rather, in the appendix, "My Position," we find Kierkegaard making a series of claims that, although never directly related to one another by Kierkegaard in On My Work as an Author (or elsewhere), do paint a Socratic picture when brought into relation in a reading. Kierkegaard's position as a religious author in "Christendom," as he calls it, is not to teach others directly what Christianity is, although he does claim to possess such knowledge for himself. It is, rather, as we have seen, to "prevent" the elevation of the lower above the higher - that is, to do what he can to discourage the belief in Denmark and the Danish Church that the easy interpretation of Christianity common to modern Europe is truly, essentially, decisively Christian. His task is a negative one, and one by way of which he hopes, not to bestow the truth upon others (something, again referencing H. H., that an apostle alone would have the authority to do), but to disabuse them of the mistaken belief that what they know of Christianity and take Christianity to be is anything but a dangerous form of ignorance. As the truth of Christianity, for 24 25

PV, 15 / SVI XIII, 505. PV, 5 / SVI XIII, 493.

With the Help of God

Kierkegaard, is a matter of subjectivity, he cannot speak that truth to others - it cannot be spoken, a silence very much in the manner of that ascribed to Abraham by Johannes de silentio in Fear and Trembling. Thus, he does not come to Copenhagen as the sophists came to Athens, claiming to be able to teach virtue for a price - whatever it cost to purchase one of Kierkegaard's infamously unpurchased books - but distinguishes himself from such figures (be they Hegel or the Hegelians, Martensen and, ultimately, Mynster, or even such relative literary giants as Heiberg and the author of A Story of Everyday Life) precisely in terms of that inability to speak. Kierkegaard, Kierkegaard claims, is not a teacher of virtue or of Christian truths, but merely a reminder of the essential decisiveness of truly Christian categories. The problem of On My Work as an Author does not stem from Kierkegaard's maieutics, however, but instead from his claim within the work to be a maieutician. The maieutic value of Socratic irony lies in the ambiguity of the claims made and deeds performed from within the ironic perspective; if it is clear that Socrates does not mean what he says, exactly, then the maieutic power of Socratic irony is lost. When Socrates' position is fixed, then those to whom Socrates speaks are not forced any more into reflection or existential decision than they are in the presence of any of the numerous sophists offering their views on the various topics of the day. The potency of Socrates lies precisely in the fact that his position is more or less unknown; that he does not speak the truth, at least not in any way easily appropriated by those to whom he speaks; that, whatever the Athenians believe themselves to have learned from Socrates, they do not believe it on the authority of Socrates. This is the argument - Kierkegaard's, as well as our own - for an authorship so deeply informed by indirectness and irony, not to mention pseudonymity and anonymity, and the ambiguities and uncertainties derivative therefrom, as is the Kierkegaardian. As Kierkegaard notes, in a footnote to a claim about the indirectness of Practice in Christianity, It cannot be said directly that the book (except for the editor's preface, which stands by itself) is a defense of the established order, since the communication is doubly reflected; it can also be just the opposite or be understood as such. This is why I directly say only that an established order that understands itself must understand it in this way; all doubly reflected communication makes contrary understandings equally possible; then the one who passes judgment is disclosed by the way he judges.26

26

PV, 18n. / SVI XIII, 507-508n.

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There is a difference between a "doubly reflected communication" and "communication in reflection," two terms used in On My Work as an Author to denote elements of the authorship, but Kierkegaard differentiates both essentially from direct communication. A doubly reflected communication, as far as Kierkegaard is concerned in "A First and Last Explanation" and On My Work as an Author, is a written work ascribed to a pseudonym. Communication in reflection is, simply, what Johannes Climacus calls "indirect communication" - it is, we might say, the genus of which doubly reflected communication is but a species. This is to say that pseudonymity is not the only form of indirect communication. There are other forms of indirectness and, as we have seen, some of the most important of them, such as irony, are available to the veronym. Numerous scholars have offered interpretations of various of the veronymous works, arguing that such works are themselves essentially ironic. Sylviane Agacinski and Louis Mackey have both argued, separately, for the irony of The Concept of Irony; Gene Fendt has made the case for the irony of Works of Love.21 That Kierkegaard may be an ironist in his own name is not a new claim. That Kierkegaard's ironic voice might extend so far as to encompass his explanation of the authorship in On My Work as an Author, however, seems to run against the sense of the argument of On My Work as an Author itself. That is, however, the nature of Socratic, or Kierkegaardian, irony. Unlike The Point of View, On My Work as an Author does not take advantage of the opportunity to offer an explicit condemnation of Kierkegaard's critics - specifically, the perpetrators of the affair with Corsaren. Nevertheless, by way of an eerily Socratic indirectness, Kierkegaard levels his criticism without leveling his criticism. The only person mentioned by name, on whom the judgment falls that in the striving for ideality (see the thrice-repeated preface) he is only a very defective Christian, the only person judged is myself - to which I willingly submit, since it is of infinite concern to me that the requirements of ideality at least be heard. But this, again, is surely the greatest distance possible from passing judgment on others.28

27

28

See Sylviane Agacinski Aparté: Conceptions and Deaths of S0ren Kierkegaard, trans. Kevin Newmark, Tallahassee: Florida State University Press 1988. Louis Mackey "Starting from Scratch: Kierkegaard Unfair to Hegel" in Points of View: Readings of Kierkegaard, Tallahassee: Florida State University Press 1986, pp. 122. And Gene Fendt Works of Love?: Reflections on Works of Love, Potomac, MD: Scripta Humanistica 1990. PV, 15 / SVI XIII, 505.

With the Help of God

Unlike Corsaren, Kierkegaard refrains from judgment of others, including the judgment of his journalistic adversaries at Corsaren. Setting aside for the moment the numerous judgmental comments in "The Accounting" (of which we have seen some examples, above), we nevertheless find something critical in Kierkegaard's indirect treatment of those responsible for his public mockery in "My Position." Immediately following the important claim, that, "What was needed, among other things, was a godly satire," Kierkegaard continues: This I have represented, especially with the help of pseudonymous writers, who did not let me get off unscathed either. But lest any confusion could occur, lest this satire could be confused with what all too readily wants to pass itself off as satire - the profane revolt of the most deeply sunken profane powers - then I, who have represented this godly satire, then I was the very one who hurled myself against and exposed myself to that mob-revolt's profane satire. In this way I have devoutly striven from the very beginning to be honest.29

Whether or not we have grounds to believe Kierkegaard's claim to honesty, and despite the fact that the passage does not make direct reference to M.A. Goldschmidt, P.L. M0ller, or Corsaren, the passage does set Kierkegaard up as the representative of "godly satire" in Manichean opposition to (and, perhaps, at war with) the representatives of "profane satire." The newspaper skirmish - instigated, on all accounts of the affair, by a Kierkegaardian pseudonym - takes on a religious quality. Kierkegaard satirizes on God's behalf or in the tradition of the Christian God; Corsaren does not. Such a claim poses an at least marginal problem for Kierkegaard's other claim in On My Work as an Author, that, by way of the essential religiousness of the Kierkegaardian authorship, no one is judged. On My Work as an Author may be less explicit than Plato's Apology, but it is no less clear in its assertion of the purpose of all this indirectness. To undermine the sophists is a good that neither Socrates nor Kierkegaard seems able to leave undone for the sake of the essential uncertainty and ambiguity of his teaching. Socrates, of course, does not write, and so he is spared authorial responsibility for the directness of his defense, which falls exclusively to his author, Plato. Kierkegaard, on the other hand, although no less purely literary than the Socrates of the Platonic dialogues, is a named author, and names himself as the author of On My Work as an Author. Kierkegaard is the responsible one; he is the author; somehow, he is Socrates and Plato both in an authorship the only serious threat to 29

PV, 17 / SVI XIII, 507.

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the success of which lies in his Platonic desire to make the point of his Socratic suffering known to and understood by all. The author cannot say directly that the authorship is an attempt at a Christian maieutics, at becoming an occasion for his Danish readers to reorient themselves in the direction of (what he takes to be) true Christianity. To say so would be to undermine the indirectness that makes maieutics possible - and yet, Kierkegaard says so in On My Work as an Author. Two points must be made here. The first is that, insofar as we read On My Work as an Author as an explanation or defense of the Kierkegaardian authorship in Christian religious terms, it fails - the content of the work is made untenable by the authorial structure of the work, as was the case with "A First and Last Explanation." The second point is that we can read On My Work as an Author in more than one way By reading the failed explanation not as a declaration of Kierkegaard's authorial intentions and understanding of authorship, but as yet another instance of Kierkegaard's work - his performance - as an author, we can come closer to our own, readerly understanding of the Kierkegaardian authorship and the role and nature of the Kierkegaardian author within and as an implication of that authorship. On My Work as an Author cannot contain a readerly understanding of the authorship, precisely because, from an authorial perspective, it can only ever imply its readers. The readers remain outside. Despite his multiple protestations to understanding himself as a reader and not the author of the authorship, Kierkegaard's veronymous readership can only ever be expressed authorially, by way of one or more of the works constituting the authorship. As we saw, in other terms in Chapter Four, we see again here that the reader contributes something to the work itself in a reading. Taking our cue from "A Cursory Observation of a Detail in Don Giovanni," and recollecting that Socratic irony, as practiced by Socrates in the Platonic authorship, is only ever situational, and thus performative, we must begin to consider On My Work as an Author - as well as the authorship as a totality - in terms of performance.

T h e Crisis As he did in "A First and Last Explanation," Kierkegaard tries in On My Work as an Author to explain the authorship but, in so doing, fails to bring about the self-transfiguration the explanation seems to attempt. Insofar as he is himself, veronymously, an author and a performer, Kierkegaard substantially fails. As he was in "A First and Last

The Crisis

Explanation," however, in On My Work as an Author Kierkegaard is performed. While it is important, in a reading of On My Work as an Author (or "A First and Last Explanation," for that matter), to consider very seriously Kierkegaard's role as a veronymous ironist, an indirect author in his own right, it is not enough. Kierkegaard as a named author is not his own creation - whether or not he is responsible for his own name, he has his origin in the authorial work of another author. Kierkegaard's author's work, as we have already seen, is performative in nature, as is all author authorship. No explanation of the Kierkegaardian authorship or of Kierkegaard's explanations of that authorship is possible without some examination of Kierkegaard's role as created creator at work in the authorship. It is in this sense that, although not a pseudonym himself, Kierkegaard as an author shares a great deal with the pseudonyms. Kierkegaard's last work of published dramatic criticism, and the last work before us in our examination of authorship in Kierkegaard's critical works, is itself a pseudonymous work. "The Crisis and a Crisis in the Life of an Actress," published as four serial newspaper articles in the summer of 1848, is ascribed to the Latinate author, Inter et Inter.30 Although there has been some speculation as to the reason behind the conjunctive pseudonym, there seems to have been little thought on the corresponding conjunction in the title - the work not only announces a crisis in the life of an actress, after all (as in the abbreviated title of Stephen Crites' translation and collection), but also, and somewhat more ominously for its ambiguity, "the crisis." Whether the crisis is just another crisis in the life of an actress, or is a crisis without reference to an actress or the actress of Inter et Inter's hypothesis, is never specified. Inter et Inter seems unconcerned enough never to mention it, and readers of "The Crisis" and the Kierkegaardian authorship seem to have followed Inter et Inter in that lack of concern. Nevertheless, it seems important to note that, from the very outset of the work, there is an at least structural correspondence between the strange title of the work and the strange name of its author. "The Crisis and a Crisis in the Life of an Actress" appears at a strange moment in the Kierkegaardian authorship. Prior to "The Crisis," the last pseudonymous work - in fact, the last work that was not 30

Alternatively translated as "between and between," or "between one thing and another." See Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong "Introduction" in C xv-xvi. Also, Stephen Crites "Introduction" in Crisis in the Life of an Actress and Other Essays on Drama, trans. Stephen Crites, London: Collins 1967,129 n. 1.

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veronymous - was Concluding Unscientific Postscript, and Postscript, like the dispute with Corsaren surrounding its publication, made it seem very much as if the pseudonymous portion of the authorship was complete, or, at least, finished. Between Postscript and "The Crisis," from February 1846 until July 1848 (an enormous gap in an authorship like the Kierkegaardian, in which works had appeared with astonishing frequency), only four works are published, all veronymous: A Literary Review, Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits, Works of Love, and Christian Discourses. With the exception of A Literary Review, the case can be (and has been) made that each of these works is in the Kierkegaardian religious discursive genre; in this light, A Literary Review, as a literary critical work, does seem an odd contribution. Following the publication of "The Crisis," however, the first second edition of any of the works published during Kierkegaard's lifetime appears: Either/Or. On the same day as the second edition of Either/Or, a veronymous discourse - The Lily in the Field and the Bird of the Air - also appears. From that point forward, aside from the occasional, brief upbuilding discourse, the Kierkegaardian authorship experiences a renewal of pseudonymous and anonymous authorship. The anonymous Two Ethical-Religious Essays appears one year after Either/Or; The Sickness unto Death, by Anti-Climacus, is published a few months later; Practice in Christianity, also by Anti-Climacus, a year after that. Only in 1851, with the publications of On My Work as an Author and For S elf-Examination, does the authorship depart again from the original model (longer, pseudonymous or veronymous books published alongside much shorter, veronymous discourses). After another extraordinary period of silence following For Self-Examination (three years, 1851-1854), the authorship returns, in some sense, to its very beginning: the focus from that point forward is almost exclusively journalistic.31 "The Crisis," then, seems to mark a significant moment of change in the development of the Kierkegaardian authorship. As if the republi31

This is the final period of Kierkegaard's authorship, in which the bulk of the published material appears either as articles in Fcedrelandet, or as a part of Kierkegaard's own journalistic endeavor, The Moment. During this period, a few standalone works are also published - This Must Be Said; So Let It Be Said, What Christ Judges of Official Christianity, and The Changelessness of God - but these works are, like On My Work as an Author, of article length, and, perhaps more importantly, are in the same journalistic-reformative vein as The Moment and the Fcedrelandet articles. Delineating what differences might exist between these three works and the late Kierkegaardian journalism, however, is beyond the scope of the present work.

The Crisis

cation of the first pseudonymous work were not indication enough, the string of pseudonymous and anonymous publications following "The Crisis" is in direct contrast to the string of veronymous publications preceding it. Anti-Climacus is, naturally, a kind of return to or repetition of Johannes Climacus, even more so in light of the fact that two substantially philosophical works are ascribed to Anti-Climacus, as were to Climacus, and that the veronym appears on the title pages of both of Anti-Climacus' books as Udgiver, as it did on both of Climacus'. Contrary to Kierkegaard's attempt in On My Work as an Author to explain away the recurrence of pseudonymity in the authorship as something other than a recurrence, the structure and development of the authorship - especially this late period of the authorship, after Postscript - argues for an authorial-structural repetition. The Kierkegaardian authorship does not seem to come closer and closer to religiousness and the factual actuality of S0ren Kierkegaard, but seems to repeat itself, returning from the illusory directness of veronymous religiousness back into double reflection. Postscript, although it does mark the end of the "first pseudonymity," is not the center of the authorship. If there is a center, it would seem to be "The Crisis," by the increasingly aptly named pseudonym, Inter et Inter. The account Kierkegaard offers in On My Work as an Author differs somewhat from the one apparent from an examination of the publication and development of the works constituting the authorship, as expounded above. Of the post-Postscript period of the authorship, Kierkegaard writes: From that moment the gleam of the directly religious ceases, since now the exclusively religious writing begins: Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits, Works of Love, Christian Discourses. But in order inversely to recall the beginning (corresponding to what Two Upbuilding Discourses was at the beginning, when the voluminous works were esthetic), there appeared at the end (when for a long period the writing was exclusively and voluminously religious) a little esthetic article by Inter et Inter in the newspaper Fcedrelandet, no. 188-191, July 1848. The gleam of the two upbuilding discourses at the beginning meant that it was actually this that should advance, this at which it was to arrive; the gleam of the little esthetic article at the end was meant, by way of a faint reflection, to bring to consciousness that from the beginning the esthetic was what should be left behind, what should be abandoned.32

The account in "The Accounting" begins to unravel when one questions the picture of the later authorship as exclusively religious, a picture Kierkegaard paints throughout the work. Specifically, as we have already noted, the period immediately following the publication 32

PV, 8-9 / SVI XIII, 496-497.

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of Postscript begins with A Literary Review, which is anything but an insignificant, aesthetic work. The argument in A Literary Review is, if anything, ethical - or ethical-religious - and it is not a work as easily discounted as the aesthetic-critical newspaper articles, such as "The Crisis." Nevertheless, as a literary review, A Literary Review is anything but "directly religious" in the manner of Christian Discourses or Works of Love. Moreover, and perhaps more importantly, the works that follow "The Crisis" constitute a rather direct return to the indirectnesses of anonymity and pseudonymity. While the matters about which Anti-Climacus writes are, admittedly, far more directly religious than are the matters with which Inter et Inter concerns himself, as pseudonymous, The Sickness unto Death, Practice in Christianity, and "The Crisis" do not differ in terms of doubly reflected communication. In this regard, The Sickness unto Death and Fear and Trembling (or Philosophical Fragments, or The Concept of Anxiety, or Concluding Unscientific Postscript) are of the same sort: pseudonymous meditations on the nature of the religious. There are, of course, important differences in the perspectives from which the different pseudonyms author the works they author - Johannes de silentio is not Anti-Climacus. But he is not Johannes Climacus or Vigilius Haufniensis, either, and looking over the authorship as a totality, the distinction Kierkegaard tries to draw between the works (and pseudonymities) before and after Postscript seems rather arbitrary. If Postscript is not the turning point, however, then the explanation of the appearance of "The Crisis" in the authorship loses much of its explanatory power. That is, if the aesthetic, indirect, anonymous and pseudonymous elements of the authorship persist into the period beyond Postscript, then there is no real need to remind readers of (or for readers to recollect) the aesthetic beginnings of the authorship - the aesthetic nature of the authorship is its own reminder. For a brief moment, On My Work as an Author draws Inter et Inter and "The Crisis" into the spotlight, but only as one part of an unsatisfactory interpretation of the religiousness of the Kierkegaardian authorship. To this, however, we must add the fact that the Kierkegaard of On My Work as an Author finds some significance in the second edition of Either/Or - it is, he claims, the occasion for the explanation, and something he "earlier was unwilling to have published."33 And, in addition to the deliberateness of the repetition of Either/Or, which is the very next work to appear in the Kierkegaardian authorship after "The 33

PV, 12 / SVI XIII, 500.

The Crisis

Crisis," we must consider the nature of his explanation of the appearance of A Literary Review. In a footnote late in "The Accounting," to a passage in which he maintains that the "next substantial book" after Postscript was Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits, Kierkegaard writes: "The little literary review of the novel Two Ages followed Concluding Postscript so closely that it is almost concurrent and is, after all, something written by me qua critic and not qua author."34 Because of the veronymity of A Literary Review, Kierkegaard cannot discount it as "merely aesthetic" in the manner he dismisses "The Crisis." Thus, in order to maintain the integrity of the religious vision of the post-Postscript authorship that On My Work as an Author tries to establish, Kierkegaard makes an incredible distinction between the critic and the author and, presumably, criticism and authorship. "The Crisis" is, however, a pseudonymous work of dramatic criticism. If, as we have seen, its pseudonymity fails to differentiate it sufficiently from the rest of the authorship, then it would seem that Kierkegaard's only recourse is to the same explanation he offers for A Literary Review. While "The Crisis" is not ascribed to Kierkegaard in terms of authorial responsibility (very much in accord with the parsing of responsibility in "A First and Last Explanation"), the distinction between works produced by a critic and works produced by an author nevertheless seems to apply. Inter et Inter is not an author, properly speaking. Inter et Inter is a critic. The force and meaning of the distinction is never explained. The most obvious rebuttal to Kierkegaard's bizarre classification is that the critic is but a species of author, namely, the author of a work or works of criticism. We might construct for Kierkegaard a more sophisticated explanation of the difference - that works of criticism do not contribute to or form an authorship, while the author is concerned primarily with authorship creation (as opposed to the production of individual works exclusively for their own sakes) - but, in the end, it does not seem reasonable to exclude the Kierkegaardian critics from the authorial cacophony that is the Kierkegaardian authorship, especially in light of the apparent impossibility of ascertaining the nature or purpose of the work of an author. While A Literary Review is certainly a work of literary criticism, this fact does not seem sufficient grounds for excluding it from consideration within the larger context of the Kierkegaardian authorship, as the Kierkegaard of On My Work as an Author would seem to like us to do. As with A Literary Review, 34

PV, 10n. / SVI XIII, 499n.

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so with "The Crisis": although Kierkegaard attempts to drive it whole from the arbitrary (and thus somewhat artificial) corpus he dubs his "whole work as an author regarded as a totality,"35 there seems to be no compelling reason for allowing him to do so. We are thus left with the structure of the authorship as it developed through publication as our primary guide to understanding the nature and role of "The Crisis" within the authorship, and that record seems to indicate, as noted above, that "The Crisis" serves as something of a midpoint between two disproportionate articulations of a pseudonymous authorial movement, in both cases from Either/Or forward. This is not to argue, as Kierkegaard argues, that the authorship begins with Either/Or. From the Papers of One Still Living is evidence enough in opposition to such a view. But it is simultaneously to acknowledge the intelligibility of the corpus formed beginning with the first edition of Either/Or and ending with Postscript, and to deny the power of the intelligibility of that corpus to define the nature and structure of the Kierkegaardian authorship, regarded as a totality. Even if one were to argue that, hinging on "The Crisis," the initial movement of the Either/Or-to-Postscript corpus is repeated in a second, briefer (but somewhat more focussed) Either/Or-lo-Practice in Christianity corpus, certain significant works - all of the works, in fact, with which we have dealt here - remain unaccounted for on that explanation. Along with other works (those constituting much of the journalistic authorship, for example), the Kierkegaardian critical authorship is an everpresent occasion for the recollection of the basic indefinability of the Kierkegaardian authorship. I introduce "The Crisis and a Crisis in the Life of an Actress" in this way, not because I think the work only makes sense in light of this alternative reading of the structure of the authorship, but because I think that, in the context of this alternative reading, another aspect of "The Crisis" comes to light. In addition to an interesting discourse on the nature of performance, and fertile ground for coming to an understanding of authorship in the Kierkegaardian, performative sense, "The Crisis" presents also, in the story of the actress, an analogy to the story of the anonymous author of the Kierkegaardian authors. The direct subject matter of "The Crisis" is a repetition in the life of an actress. As a young girl of seventeen, she performed the role of Juliet in Shakespeare's play, and was a great success. Then, fourteen years later, at thirty-one, she plays the role again. The role is, natural35

PV, 12 / SVI XIII, 501.

The Crisis

ly, the very same - fourteen years do nothing to change Shakespeare's Juliet - yet the actress is different. For Inter et Inter, the true success of the second performance rests entirely upon the talent of the actress as an actress. To portray the youthfulness of Juliet in her thirty-first year, however, the actress must have developed much since her performance at seventeen. Her relation to "feminine youthfulness," as Inter et Inter calls it, was, when she was seventeen, the direct relation of actual youth. She seemed young because she was young. There is no talent to such a portrayal of youth; no performance is necessary. When she is thirty-one, however, her relation to feminine youthfulness is a relation to an idea, an indirect relation in reflection, at best. The actress no longer exists in external relation to youthfulness; in order to portray Juliet convincingly, then, she must foster an internal relation to youthfulness or the idea of feminine youthfulness. Having cultivated such a rich, developed, interior relationship to the idea is the true mark of the excellent actress. For the audience at the Royal Theater, the actress is herself very much present in the first performance of Romeo and Juliet. Watching her perform, the spectator is impressed, not by her talent (although the spectator may very well believe it is her talent that he or she admires), but by her actual youth. A seventeen-year old girl resembles Juliet far more than a thirty-one-year old woman does. This "first youth" is, for Inter et Inter, not incompatible with genuine talent, but it does obscure the possibility of the existence of such talent in the young actress. He writes: When it comes to the feminine, most people's art criticism has categories and thoughtpatterns essentially in common with every butcher's assistant, national guardsman, and store clerk, who talk enthusiastically about a damned pretty and devilishly pert wench of eighteen years. These eighteen years, this damned prettiness and this devilish pertness - this is art criticism - and also its bestiality. On the other hand, at the point where, from the esthetic point of view, the interest really begins, there where the inner being beautifully and with intense meaning becomes manifest in the metamorphosis - there the crowd of people falls away. If one continues to admire, then they think one is chivalrous or is lenient, because when she is only thirty years old she is basically perdue?6

In addition to training, and diction, and grace of movement, then, the actress' "natural charm" - her damned prettiness and devilish pertness - constitute her "definable possession" as an actress, that which can not only be identified, but easily discussed.37 What fame the sev36 37

C, 305 / SVI X, 325-326. C, 313 / SVI X, 332.

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enteen-year old girl can garner from her performance as Juliet rests largely on the popular discussion of these definable qualities. The metamorphosis, however, is what Inter et Inter thinks is central to the quality of the actress as an actress, and the metamorphosis is largely indefinable and goes undefined. Inter et Inter says only enough in "The Crisis" to indicate the inestimable value he places on the metamorphosis in his evaluation of the poetical actress of his hypothesis. I have in mind, therefore, an actress at the very beginning of her career, in the first success of her early youth, at the moment when she first made her appearance and the first time she scored a brilliant success. It is esthetically appropriate for me to speak of this here and to have the joy of speaking of it, because this investigation is ideal and does not concern itself with an actual actress of sixteen years who is contemporary. It is esthetically proper, also for another reason, for me to describe such a first youth; since the real subject of the investigation is the metamorphosis, not even in the thought of the essay am I contemporary with that youthfulness. The description of the first period is to prepare the ground, is a poetical and philosophical reflection entirely devoid of sadness. The first period is not dwelt upon but instead is hastily superseded just as one always hastens on to what is higher, and the author is indeed esthetically convinced that the metamorphosis is the highest.38

The first period - the first youth of the actress - is superseded, however, not only on gentlemanly grounds. Inter et Inter is very clear that only an essential genius can undergo the metamorphosis, and that any actress to have undergone the metamorphosis was essentially a genius even in her first youth and early performances. The presence of her genius is difficult to ascertain in her youth, however, if not impossible. Not only has she not fully developed as an actress, has not yet come into her own - as Inter et Inter notes, speaking for the essential aestheticians, "No, her time has not really come yet"39 - but she is damnably pretty and devilishly pert. Such factors apparently make essential genius difficult to see. Her essential genius, unlike her natural charm, cannot be defined. The actress has a power over the audience that simply cannot be explained. She possesses - well, what she possesses is very difficult to define, simply because it is an indefinable something that nevertheless omnipotently asserts itself and is unconditionally obeyed. The grumpiest, the most boring person - it is useless for him to harden himself, he must obey. A mathematician - it is useless for him to rear up pugnaciously and ask, "What, then, does it demonstrate?" - he must obey, he is basically

38 39

C, 307 / SVI X, 327. C, 314 / SVI X, 333.

The Crisis convinced. Ergo, she possesses - well, what she possesses is very difficult to define simply because it is an indefinable something.40

Despite its indefinability, however, Inter et Inter does make a number of attempts at articulating aspects of the indefinable something that is the essential genius of the actress. In one sense, it is good fortune. In another, it is youthfulness. In neither sense, however, is it ordinary. The indefinable something is nothing like ordinary good fortune, or youthfulness ordinarily understood. This second point - about a youthfulness that is not youthfulness - is reminiscent of the eternal youth of the dead and transfigured author of From the Papers of One Still Living. Describing the actress as, somehow, indefinable youthfulness and thus restlessness, Inter et Inter elaborates: Restlessness, in the sense of the hubbub of finitude, soon palls; but restlessness in the pregnant sense, the restlessness of infinity, the joyous, robust originality that, rejuvenating, invigorating, healing, stirs the water is a great rarity, and it is in this sense that she is restlessness. Yet in turn this restlessness signifies something, and something very great; it signifies the first fieriness of an essential genius. And this restlessness does not signify anything accidental; it does not mean that she cannot stand still; on the contrary, it signifies that even when she is standing still one has an intimation of this inner restlessness, but, note well, in repose. It does not mean that she comes running onto the stage; on the contrary, it means that when she is merely moving one has an intimation of the impetus of infinity.41

The actress in repose gives one an intimation of the impetus of infinity - an extraordinary, and extraordinarily lofty, expression for what Inter et Inter will reformulate in his fourth and final attempt at an articulation of the indefinable something the actress possesses. Her indefinable possession finally signifies: that she is in proper rapport with the onstage tension. Every tension can affect in a twofold way; this is the dialectic's own dialectic. It can make the exertion manifest, but it can also do the opposite; it can conceal the exertion, and not only conceal it but continually convert, transform, and transfigure [forklare] it into lightness. The lightness, then, is invisibly based on the exertion of the tension, but this is not seen, is not even intimated - only the lightness is made manifest.42

The actress is an essential genius, and is thus only truly herself when engaging her genius - when acting. To act, however, is to conceal oneself, in both the obvious ways in which an actress plays a role but also and, for Inter et Inter, more importantly, insofar as the actress, in

40 41 42

C, 307-308 / SVI X, 327. C, 309 / SVI X, 329. C, 312/.SV7X, 331.

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proper rapport with the onstage tension, transfigures "the weight of all those eyes" into lightness.43 None of the articulations of the indefinable something comes as close to the notion of performance put forward in "A Cursory Observation Concerning a Detail in Don Giovanni," however, as the third. Although the other three - good fortune, youthfulness, and being in proper rapport with the onstage tension - are no less full expressions of the indefinable something, and no more capable of defining that something, the third articulation captures an aspect of the actress that the others miss. Inter et Inter writes: Her indefinable possession, in order to come yet a little closer to defining it, further signifies: expressiveness of soul - that in the mood of immediate passion she is attuned to idea and thought, that her as yet unreflective inwardness is essentially in harmony with ideality, that every touch of a thought or idea strikes a note and gives a sonorous echo, and that she has an original and unique sensitiveness. Thus she relates herself soulfully to the author's words, but she relates herself to herself in the something more that very properly may be called resonance in relation to the lines and consonance in relation to the whole character. She does not merely take the author's words correctly from his mouth, but she gives them back to him in such a way that in the co-sounding of roguishness, in the co-knowledge of ingeniousness, it is as if she were also saying: Can you do the same thing that I do?44

The actress relates herself to herself in her performance, and in the self-relation, is productively concealed. The media for her self-concealing self-relation are the author's words and, through the proper relation of her self-relation to the character authored by the author, the actress can return the author's words to him as if they were not his own. The actress enters into creative collaboration with the author; in her performance, however, the character performed is freed both from the author and from the actress herself. The actress' essential genius is that, for the audience, Juliet is Juliet and no other. In the performance, the actress has disappeared. Of central importance to the kind of critical analysis that Inter et Inter employs is that such an actress - an essential genius - can only ever be identified and understood retrospectively, examining her life as a performer from the perspective of its maturity looking backward. Essential genius only becomes apparent in and after the metamorphosis, and the metamorphosis only ever occurs through the passage of time. In addition, it is important for us to note that, within the parameters set by Inter et Inter, the actress could never communicate 43 44

C, 312 / SVI X, 332. C, 311-312 / SVI X, 331.

The Crisis

directly to others that she was an essential genius. Essential to the indefinable something that constitutes the genius of the genius is the concealment inherent to the manner of her self-relation. In order to communicate any facts about herself, the actress would have to relate herself to herself in an essentially different manner than the one in Inter et Inter's account - her self-relation would have to be such as to allow for her to disclose herself to her audience. Although the essential genius is marked only by an indefinable something - and is thus quite impossible to identify with certainty - the mark of a performer's lack of genius is any public attempt at self-definition, or the definition of one's work or talent. If the terms of Inter et Inter's analysis of performance can be applied to authorial as well as dramatic performers, we can say with some degree of confidence that, after "A First and Last Explanation" and On My Work as an Author, Kierkegaard is no genius. Journals and papers and unpublished books like The Point of View are one thing. Published testaments to one's own work, identity, and quality as an author, however, are something else - something tantamount to the actress breaking character on stage and, from the balcony with Romeo below, announcing to the audience gathered there: "I am an actress; I strive for the highest. Can you do the same thing that I do?" Of course, were the actress to behave in the manner described above, the nature of the theater would almost certainly leave the audience in a confused - if not amused - state. As if a character from Beckett, the actress would be taken in earnest only by a few of the theatergoers. The rest, convinced by the context in which the actress' declaration appeared - she is on a stage, in the midst of a set, surrounded by other performers, wearing a costume, and has just been reciting the lines written by Shakespeare for Juliet - would naturally believe her veronymous outburst to be nothing but another part of the show. Likewise, the veronymous explanations of and within the Kierkegaardian authorship must fail to be taken in earnest by their readers as expressions of the nature and purpose of the authorship and the works of the authorship. Although readers of the Kierkegaardian authorship seem to have taken Kierkegaard in earnest to a degree far exceeding that of the hypothetical theater audience, they, like the audience, do not have good reason to take Kierkegaard's explanation seriously. The veronym is in no position to explain the authorship of which he is merely a constitutive member, the work of his own author. It is like the clown who, seeing a fire burning in the theater, runs onstage and begins to shout, "Fire! Fire!" The audience laughs and applauds, mistaking the

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clown's earnestness for jest. They are not wrong to do so: the clown is, after all, a clown, and his warning is spoken in the context of a clown's performance. Nor is the clown wrong to believe the people ought to be warned about the fire. The problem is one of authorial-performative perspective. Someone needs to shout. The clown is just the wrong person for the job.

A Crisis in t h e Life of a n A c t r e s s Somewhere between the first performance of Romeo and Juliet and the second, the genius of the actress becomes evident. That becoming-evident is the metamorphosis. The actress disappears in her performance of Juliet, and that disappearance is bound up entirely with the essential genius of the actress as an actress, and the relation of her essential genius to the idea. So now to the metamorphosis. The essential constituent of this actress was not what is ordinarily called feminine youthfulness. In that sense, this youthfulness is the prey of the years; however lovingly, however carefully time takes away, it nevertheless takes away this temporary quality. But there was in this actress an essential genius that related itself to the idea: feminine youthfulness. This is an idea, and an idea is something totally different from the externality of being seventeen years old, which is also the case with the most idea-less girl who becomes seventeen years old. If there had not been this relation of genius to the idea, a metamorphosis would be out of the question; but just because this is the case and the idea is what it is, the metamorphosis can become the rare occurrence.45

The absence of the actress in the performance - her disappearance, her self-concealment - is what makes evident the relation of genius to the idea of feminine youthfulness. Thus, only when the actress is totally concealed is the essence of the actress as an actress revealed, although, presumably, only to one aware or properly attuned to the genius of performance - one Inter et Inter calls "an essential aesthetician." Of course, as noted above, the actress overpowers everyone who views her performance. But only the essential aesthetician understands the actress and her power. The actress' first performance, at seventeen, will not be the object of the essential aesthetician's criticism. As Inter et Inter noted earlier in "The Crisis," when viewing those early performances, the essential aesthetician is of the opinion that the actress' time has not yet come. While a young girl, the actress relates to feminine youthfulness in 45

C, 319 / SVI X, 338.

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two ways: she is a young girl, and she is a genius in relation ideally to the idea of feminine youthfulness. Although the former is irrelevant to the essential aesthetician, it nevertheless prevents the latter from coming to full expression in performance. Only as the actress ages - and the former relation to feminine youthfulness, the actress' "first youth," dissolves in the passage of time - does her essential genius truly come to the fore. Of course she will not be young again in the ridiculous sense in which butcher assistants and the public speak of a devilishly pert wench, but only in the sense of ideality will she be young and younger. Now she is very properly a subject for an essential critique, now when for the second time and raised to the second power she relates herself to the same idea or, expressed more exactly, just because it is the second time she relates herself ideally to the idea.46

Essential to Inter et Inter's understanding of the essential genius is the repetition - the return, again, to the same role, with the same genius, repeated but somehow changed in the repetition. Put in this way the notion of the metamorphosis in "The Crisis" helps us better to understand Kierkegaard's claim in A Literary Review, that, although he is writing a review of the author of A Story of Everyday Life for the second time, and his understanding of that author has not changed substantially since From the Papers of One Still Living, he, as a reviewer, is changed in the repetition. Kierkegaard does give us a list of those things he thinks have changed in his style as a reviewer since that first book - "a little more clarity in the presentation, a little more lightness in a flowing style, a little more consideration in recognition of the difficulty of the task, a little more inwardness in discernment"47 - but these seem to amount to something like an increased maturity, and in that sense, perhaps, we find a parallel between Kierkegaard as a reviewer and the actress as an actress. At any rate, both are presented as if their essence has only become truly apparent upon repetition. The presentation has everything to do with Inter et Inter's understanding of ideality, and the relation to the idea. "With regard to all natural qualifications, it holds true that the first time is the highest, is the culmination. In the sense of ideality, it holds true that the second time is the highest, since what is ideality other than precisely - the second time."48 There is something very important in this formulation of repetition and its relation to ideality. Although centrally concerned 46 47 48

C, 319-320 / SVI X, 339. TA, 23 / SKS 8, 26. C, 320 / SVI X, 339.

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with the metamorphosis, and the actress' performance of Juliet again at thirty-one, the repetition that is ideality is already present in the seventeen-year old girl's performance of Juliet - if she is an essential genius. Inter et Inter is very clear: the actress has always related as genius to the idea of feminine youthfulness; the second performance, fourteen years later, only serves to make that fact more evident. In relating ideally to the idea, the seventeen-year old actress engages feminine youthfulness for the second time; that is to say, her first performance is already a repetition. The metamorphosis is only possible if this is the case, and the metamorphosis only makes it possible for the actress' performances to reveal themselves more fully as repetitions, as opposed to mere spectacles, the putting-on-show of a pretty and pert seventeen-year old girl. The reflection of Inter et Inter's analysis of the actress back onto Kierkegaard as an author - whether we take him as the author of From the Papers of One Still Living and A Literary Review, or of the authorship as a totality (as in On My Work as an Author) - is almost explicitly justified in Inter et Inter's further elucidation of the relation of genius to the idea in ideality. Following hard upon the claim, cited above, that ideality is the second time, and the second time is the highest, Inter et Inter clarifies. Let us take another example. There is a lyricism that might be called the lyricism of youthfulness; every young person erections ingenii has a little of it. But then there is a young man who qua youth has this lyricism of youthfulness and also has genius, the idea of which is the lyricism of youthfulness. Now the question is, when will he produce his best lyrical poetry - in his twentieth year? By no means. His best lyrics will come at a somewhat older age, when time has taken away the fortunate accidentals of his youthfulness so that he now relates himself to his idea purely ideally and thereby, serving, also relates himself in a profounder sense to his idea.49

Taken alone, this passage can only reasonably be read to indicate that, for Inter et Inter, the categories in which he analyzes the actress are similarly applicable to poets and authors - that essential genius is not the province of actresses alone in the world, and that the idea of youthfulness is not limited to performances of Juliet. But the passage brings to mind earlier passages in "The Crisis," as well, passages that, when read together, draw a somewhat more precise picture of the genius poet of repetition of the example. The third installment of "The Crisis" serves as something of an interlude between Inter et Inter's earlier consideration of the actress at 49

C, 320 / SVI X, 339-340.

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seventeen, and his later consideration of her at thirty-one. This interlude, or interval (to use Inter et Inter's term), moves into a brief discussion of the relation that holds between a genius and the public. For Inter et Inter, the relation is almost always necessarily imbalanced and marred by the public's tendency to praise the genius profusely at first, habitually at second and, ultimately, only from habit - before it turns on the genius entirely, making of him or her a kind of pariah. There have thus developed, he notes, a number of strategies used by performers and authors to evade the habituation of the public and thus, hopefully, its scorn. Such strategists reveal in their strategies their only conditional service to the truth. The unconditionally unselfish servants of the truth, however, have always had the practice of associating considerably with the people; they have never played hideand-seek with the crowd in order to play in turn the wonder game when, on the rare occasion, they appear in public as the surprising object of wonder ... They have, on the contrary, deceived by doing the opposite, that is, they have judged the world by appearing unimportant.50

At this point, although this third installment of the article appears as a long analogy to the hypothesis of the actress with which he has been working, Inter et Inter seems to have left the actress far behind. As he describes her, the actress makes a great sensation as a youth, her fame only increasing through her thirty-first year. Although it is true that she must appear in public in order to perform, the theater is hardly "the crowd" as it is described above, even when we keep the baseness of Inter et Inter's gallery (the butcher assistants, the shop clerks, etc.) in mind. In addition to the two passages already cited, there is a third in which the analysis of the actress seems to have been foregone for the sake of some other purpose. In an inexplicably long passage the ostensible point of which seems only to berate the public and its treatment of certain authors, Inter et Inter writes: If an author who neither has a considerable fund of ideas nor is very industrious were to publish at long intervals an elegant copybook that is especially ornate and is resplendently provided with many blank pages - the crowd gazes at this elegant phenomenon with amazement and admiration and thinks that if he has been such a long time in writing it and if there is so little on the page it really must be something extraordinary. If, on the other hand, an idea-rich author who has something else to think about than elegance and making a profit from an illusion, exerting himself with an ever greater diligence, finds himself able to work at an unusual speed, the crowd soon becomes ac-

50

C, 316 / SVI X, 335.

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customed to it and thinks: It must be slovenly stuff. The crowd, of course, cannot judge whether something is well worked out or not; it sticks to - the illusion.51

Thus, just before returning to the actress and the consideration of the metamorphosis ("So now to the metamorphosis") in the fourth and final installment of "The Crisis," Inter et Inter gives us something of a portrait of an author in caricature: the author is productive for a period of time extending from his youth into a greater maturity; as an "unconditionally unselfish servant of the truth," he has spent a great deal of time among the crowd and in public; he has produced a voluminous authorship over the course of a relatively short time; and he has been treated the worse by the public for it. For the reader of Fcedrelandet in 1848, there are few living persons to whom such a description better applies than S0ren Kierkegaard. Inter et Inter's reasons for hinting indirectly at the maltreatment of Kierkegaard by the Danish public and in Copenhagen literary life cannot be known; Inter et Inter is not one for naming names, and as such his references are always already couched in the ambiguity of anonymity 52 The end result, however, is the beginning of a tacit comparison of the actress and Kierkegaard, or an author like Kierkegaard, at the declared midpoint of "The Crisis" - Inter et Inter's way of marking the fourteen years that pass between the actress' first and second appearances as Juliet. The precise nature of the mistake made by using the butcher assistant's gallery categories to evaluate the performance of Juliet lies, perhaps unsurprisingly at this point in our consideration of the Kierkegaardian authorship, in a confusion between poetical actuality and factual actuality. Inter et Inter explains: What the gallery wants to see is, of course, not an ideal performance, a representation of the ideality - the gallery wants to see Miss Juliet, a devilishly lovely and damnably pert wench of eighteen years who plays Juliet or passes herself off as Juliet, while the gallery is entertained by the thought that it is Miss Jane Doe. Therefore the gallery can, of course, never get it into its head that in order to represent Juliet an actress must essentially have a distance in age from Juliet.53

51 52

53

C, 316 / SVI X, 335-336. One person to whom the description more or less also applies is A. P. Adler, on the subject of whose purported revelations from God the Kierkegaardian pseudonym, Petrus Minor, produced much - in the form of an unpublished work, The Book on Adler. Although references to Adler were excised therefrom, much of what was ascribed to Petrus in The Book on Adler was published in Two Ethical-Religious Essays under the anonym, H. H. From a certain perspective, it is difficult to distinguish between the projects of Adler and the later Kierkegaard. C, 321 / SVI X, 340.

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The gallery is blinded to the purely poetical Juliet of Shakespeare's authorship and the actress' performance (although, as in the discussion of Mozart's Zerlina in Chapter Three, her performance is very much a sort of co-authorship with Shakespeare), and it is blinded precisely by the factual actuality of the actress. If, as Inter et Inter asserted before, the actress is somehow aesthetically omnipotent - even the most boring person, even the mathematician, is overpowered by her performance - then it is difficult to understand how the gallery is able to persist with its categories. The only real difference seems to be that the most boring person and the mathematician go to the theater to see a performance of Juliet, or of Romeo and Juliet; the butcher assistant goes to see the actress. The perspectives from which the different members of the audience come to the performance affect the significance of the performance to a profound degree. From the gallery perspective, she is never the actress as an actress; she is only ever the actress as a damnably pretty and devilishly pert seventeen-year old girl. In its anaesthetic ardor, the gallery does not allow the actress to perform. While the essential aesthetician is able to see through the gallery's evaluation of the actress, of course, the public is somewhat less discerning - and the fame accorded the actress upon her successful first performance is in no small part accorded for the sake of her damnable devilishness and her pretty pertness. For Inter et Inter, this is what makes the metamorphosis an essential element of the actress coming into her own as a genius. Time has asserted its rights; it has taken away something from the immediate, the first, the simple, the accidental youthfulness. But in so doing time will in turn specifically make her genius more essentially manifest. In the eyes of the gallery, she has lost; in the sense of ideality, she has gained. The time of the gallery's confusion of identities is over. If she is to play Juliet, it can no longer be a matter of creating a furore as Miss Juliet. If she is to play that part, it must become an eminent performance or, even more correctly, a performance in the eminent sense. And precisely this is the metamorphosis.54

The metamorphosis is that which makes possible a performance in the eminent sense. Such a performance requires time in order to become possible for the essential genius, and genius is naturally the condition necessary for the possibility of the metamorphosis. Thus, for Inter et Inter, it is only the essential genius who has lived, has passed through time and undergone the metamorphosis, who is capable of a performance in the eminent sense. As Inter et Inter notes earlier, for the essen54

C, 322 / SVI X, 341.

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tial aesthetician, it is difficult to conceive of a young girl able truly to perform the role of Juliet - to perform the role in the eminent sense. The change that the actress undergoes in time, the series of small changes that result in the greater transformation, the metamorphosis, is precisely the eradication of accident in the actress and her task as a performer. As a seventeen-year old girl, the actress cannot help but be defined, at least in part, in terms of accident - she is, after all, only seventeen years old. The possibility of accident, the accidental, is the category under which can be understood all those qualities the actress possesses that might overtake or obscure her essential genius in a performance - chief among these, for the gallery, at least, her youthfulness. What is left, after that first youthfulness is gone, are the idea and service to the idea. It is this serving relation to the idea that is actually the culmination; precisely this conscious self-submission under the idea is the expression of the eminent elevation of the performance. The youthfulness of the seventeen-year-old is much too coy, much too self-confident, much too happy to serve in the deepest sense or, which is the same, in the highest sense. But wholly to serve is inwardness; the inwardness of the seventeenyear-old is essentially a hankering outward that with all its happiness can never be secure in the face of one or another accidental. Or if the emergence of the accidental is avoided, one still must say each time: That was lucky, since it is always possible. Only in the completely serving relation to the idea is the accidental made completely impossible.55

The mature actress relates herself ideally in service to the idea of feminine youthfulness. Like the hypothetical author of Inter et Inter's interlude, the actress can only give full expression to herself as essential genius in complete self-submission to her idea - what, in the case of that author who may or may not be S0ren Kierkegaard, was called "unconditionally unselfish service to the truth." Although related to the self-concealment of the actress in her performance, the self-submission of the actress to her idea is not a brand of self-concealment alone. In addition to concealing herself, the actress denies the possibility of the accidental in her life as an actress; she is something of an aesthetic ascetic in this regard. As the traditional ascetic denies the body in favor of the soul, that is, in the service of truth and of what he or she takes to be the true self, the actress as aesthetic ascetic denies (and is denied, by time) accident in the service of the idea - and is most fully herself as essential genius, as actress, thereby. Secured only by aging and the passage of time, the eminence of the actress is essentially a relation to time - or, more correctly, the 55

C, 322-323 / SVI X, 341-342.

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relation to time of the actress' self-relation. As we have seen, in a performance, the performer relates him- or herself to him- or herself through the role being performed. The actress reflects herself back into herself through the role, such that, for the actress, performance is inwardness. That inwardly directed self-relation, however, makes an outward presentation of the role performed. All those who view the eminent performance, then, encounter the character being performed anew, as if for the first time. This is true even for the author of the character and the dramatic work in which the character appears; as Inter et Inter notes, the actress returns Juliet to Shakespeare in her own voice. To echo the critics: Never before has there been such a Juliet, so perfectly Shakespeare's, and yet so completely the actress' own. The eminence of this performance is only possible for the actress through time and the actress' metamorphosis; it is only possible for the audience through time and the actress' recollection. Time has asserted its rights; there is something that has become a thing of the past. But then in turn an ideality of recollection will vividly illuminate the whole performance, an incarnation that was not present even in those days of the first youthfulness. Only in recollection is there complete tranquillity, and therefore the calm fire of the eternal, its imperishable glow. She has been calmed in the eternity of her essential genius; she will not childishly or plaintively long for the blazing of what has vanished, because in the metamorphosis itself she has become too warm and too rich for that. This pure, calmed, and rejuvenating recollecting, like an idealizing light, will transilluminate the whole performance, which in this illumination will be completely transparent.56

While it is not necessary for the individual spectator to recollect for him- or herself the actress' first youth and the performances of her first youth, it is necessary in an eminent performance for the actress to recollect that first youth. "The metamorphosis, then," Inter et Inter writes, "will in an eminent sense become a return to her first state."57 Transformed by the metamorphosis and in reflection, the actress is transfigured in the light of eternity - returning not to her first youth, which is impossible, but to what is called, in From the Papers of One Still Living, an eternal youth. Recall: Eternal youth - understood, not as a foolish anxiety about development has imagined it, as the age of youth bounded by childhood, manhood, and old age, and fixed as such, but as that vigorous certainty in oneself that is above all ages, thus also above youth as such - would be the most desirable with regard to the intensity in writing the short novel and novel. Likewise the standpoint corresponding to this - and momentarily clear in truly great individualities, as the rich present tense of childhood, youth, and 56 57

C, 323 / SVI X, 342. C, 322 / SVI X, 341.

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Writing S. Kierkegaard

manhood - is the only one qualified to produce the writing in which a whole development takes place.58

The actress, like the true poet hypothesized in Andersen as a Novelist, enters into an eternal youth. And for the actress as for the poet, eternal youth is only possible after death - that is, only upon the total eradication of the authorial personality from the performance. As the author is transfigured after such death in the published work, so the actress is transfigured in the eminent performance. Upon transfiguration, the factually actual origins of the author's and the actress' productions recede, to reveal the purely poetical personae with whom responsibility for the production resides. Freed from the bonds of the accidental - that is, cast fully into poetical actuality - the actress and the author "transilluminate" the poetical contexts of which they have become mere implications. The performance becomes a performance in the eminent sense; the written work gains "an immortal spirit that survives the whole."59 There could not be a starker contrast with the vision of genius put forward by H. C. Andersen in Only a Fiddler, where the genius must be coddled, lest life's accidents prevent his or her genius from coming to expression. In the language of Inter et Inter, Andersen denies the possibility of the essential genius. "The Crisis" is thus, in at least one sense, a continuation of the criticism of the Andersenian view from the first book in the authorship. We have already seen that the transfiguration of the author is or implies repetition, recollection, and revocation. Now we must add to that series of seconds the fact that, at least for Inter et Inter, all eminent performance is reperformance - recollection and repetition, of course, but also a brand of revocation on the part of the performer. In order to come to the highest, the actress must deny herself in the quasi-ascetic sense Inter et Inter describes: her performance is total self-concealment in the role, and total self-submission to the idea. Juliet must be Juliet in each performance, without reference to the actress, and yet Juliet is performed. Although in one sense, from the perspective of time and history - the perspective of factual actuality - the performance of Juliet has its origin with someone in time, in a more perfect sense, that is, from the perspective more perfectly suited to theatrical performance - the perspective of poetical actuality - Juliet, like her performance, touches upon eternity. The eternality of a performance in the eminent sense springs directly from the transfiguration of the 58 ßp\Y, 85 / SKS1, 41. 59 EPW, 83 / SKS 1, 38.

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actress in the serving relation of her self-relation to the idea in ideality. From the perspective of the audience, the actress is not apparent in Juliet. From the perspective of the essential aesthetician, the actress (still unapparent) is implied by the performance of the role as being transfigured. As we have already seen, to be transfigured is somehow to imply one's own author - no one transfigures oneself. Thus, in performing Juliet, the actress, too, is performed. This phenomenon is not easily explained, if it can be explained at all. The factually actual woman to whom the public refers as "actress" both is and is not the actress. She does and does not perform. From within the world of the play, the actress does not exist as anything but an implication, a condition necessary for the possibiliity of performance - but a condition never apparent in the performance itself. This must be true, if Inter et Inter is correct in asserting that a performance in the eminent sense implies some affiliation with eternity. The eternal is not factually actual; at least, it is not understandably so.60 Nevertheless, when the members of the audience come to the theater, they are not mistaken in asserting that the person traipsing about the stage in the garb of Juliet is, in fact, a factually actual human being very much like themselves. They may, in fact, know the actress in the world outside the theater; presumably, like other human beings, she has a family and friends, acquaintances and associates of various sorts - and, even if she does not, such factually actual relationships do remain possible for her in the future. On Inter et Inter's account, the mature actress, in her second and eternal youth, has no association with the accidental; she is entirely essence. But such a being - an essential genius who is nothing but essence, that is, nothing but genius - is not human. The actress' dilemma, as established in "The Crisis," is not unlike that of the veronymous author, and is only resolvable in the manner of the veronym. The actress to whom Inter et Inter consistently refers must be understood as the purely poetical implication of Juliet-in-performance; while the gallery may confuse that immortal implication with the woman who, outside of the theater, is not engaged in a performance (and thus is not an actress, strictly speaking), the essential aesthetician must not. As the author is an author only in a reading of the works ascribed to the author, so is the actress an actress only in a viewing of the performance. While there is an ordinary sense of the 60

Were one to admit the possibility of paradox at this point, of course, anything would be possible.

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term, "actress," as there is of the term, "author," by way of which we mean to indicate those factually actual persons whose income is derived from some sort of performative or authorial labor, these persons are not actresses or authors in the eminent sense. Authors and actresses, strictly speaking, are only ever poetically actual implications of the works or performances to which their names are appended. Strictly speaking, Johanne Luise Heiberg is not an actress; Fru Heiberg is, although she is so only onstage - only when neither she nor Johanne Luise, but only the role performed, is truly present.

T h e K i e r k e g a a r d i a n A u t h o r : Writing S. K i e r k e g a a r d Inter et Inter is a pseudonym unlike any other. He stands at the center of the Kierkegaardian authorship, but he does not stand out - he does not stand for something. Inter et Inter stands between. Despite Kierkegaard's attestation to its importance in On My Work as an Author, "The Crisis and a Crisis in the Life of an Actress" is among the least read works in the Kierkegaardian authorship. This seems to have a great deal to do with the ostensible aesthetic orientation of the work, although other overtly aesthetic works - Either/Or, for example, or Prefaces - have achieved much higher and far more central acclaim. Perhaps more important is the impression "The Crisis" gives of being concerned merely with a particular moment in time, at which "Fru Heiberg" was the name on the lips of most Copenhageners at all concerned with culture. Of course, Inter et Inter is no Victor Eremita; nor is he even a Nicolaus Notabene. Inter et Inter is, like the third installment of his article, an interlude, a pause in the authorship - a dash, in perhaps something like the sense in which it is described by Kierkegaard in Works of Love.61 He is the space between Christian Discourses and the second edition of Either/Or, a taking-in of breath before the recommencement of the authorship. Put another way, Inter et Inter is a nothing - a very deliberate, very articulate, terribly important nothing. If we take the correspondence between the actress and Kierkegaard seriously as it is established indirectly in "The Crisis," we find a somewhat different account of the development of the Kierkegaardian authorship than was given in On My Work as an Author. The actress first appeared onstage in the bloom of her first youth, a direct but ac61

Cf. WL 275-279; SKS 9, 273-277.

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cidental relation to feminine youthfulness. The author hypothesized by Inter et Inter in "The Crisis" likewise first appears on the literary scene engulfed in the purely accidental lyricism of youthfulness, available, like the actress' damnable prettiness, to almost all youths by virtue simply of their youth. In both cases, the admiration of the public is a confused matter, organized as it is around this accidental quality that seems to emulate the effects of an essential genius. Only with the passage of time and the fading of that first youth is the essential aesthetician - the true critic - able to discern the genius of the actress and her ideal relation to the idea. This metamorphosis is made most apparent in the actress' return to the role of Juliet from her first youth, such that, in the absence of a confusing accidental youthfulness, she can let her essential relation to the idea of feminine youthfulness shine through her performance, through Juliet, to pervade the play. After the most intensive veronymous and overtly religious period of the Kierkegaardian authorship (followed by the parenthesis that is the "The Crisis"), the authorship repeats itself for the first time: a second edition of Either/Or, demonstrating only few and minor differences from the first edition, comes to print. The reappearance of Either/Or may be a simple coincidence, although Kierkegaard seems to think it significant in On My Work as an Author - recall: Here it is just a matter of being able very briefly to fold together in simplicity what is unfolded in the many books or what unfolded is the many books, and this brief communication is more immediately prompted by the fact that the first book of the authorship now comes out the second time, the new edition of Either/Or, which I earlier was unwilling to have published.62

Although On My Work as an Author was published in 1851, "The Accounting" is dated 1849, the year Either/Or reappeared in bookstores, and the year after the publication of "The Crisis." Of course, despite the passage above, the timing of the second edition may very well have been mere coincidence - there is no uncovering the author's intentions, and much less so the intentions of the author of the author. But the coincidence is a fortuitous one, if coincidence it is; the second edition of Either/Or heralds the return to pseudonymity in the Kierkegaardian authorship, with or against the author's will. In the lines above from On My Work as an Author, Kierkegaard refers to On My Work as an Author itself in its situation alongside the second edition of Either/Or - but Kierkegaard refrains from publishing On My Work 62

PV, 12 / SVI XIII, 500.

272

Writing S. Kierkegaard

as an Author another two years. In its stead, as it were, come Inter et Inter and "The Crisis" - an article that is certainly not a folding together of "what is unfolded in the many books or what unfolded is the many books," but is, instead, the dramatic work of an essential aesthetician, a true critic. There is a reason that Johannes Climacus' explanation of the Kierkegaardian authorship in Concluding Unscientific Postscript is only rarely taken as seriously by scholars of Kierkegaard as is The Point of View. It has everything to do with Climacus' pseudonymity, and it is a bad reason. Climacus takes the other pseudonyms seriously, that is, as authorial personalities with a degree of actuality comparable to his own. Scholars - philosophers, especially - seem to come to the texts they read with a bias for the factually actual. Such a bias in one's factually actual, lived existence is a normal and necessary thing - the only other options, as we have seen, are moral or psychological fragmentation and collapse. Such a bias with regard to the written word, however, as well as writing, authorship, and the author is, in the end, a denial of the very nature of authorship and the production of written works, corpora, and authors. The philosopher, traditionally understood, prefers a book like The Point of View or On My Work as an Author because it at least pretends to directness. Such books fold together what came to us unfolded - they straighten the authorship's crooked path, communicating directly what was originally indirectness and double reflection. In short, the books seem to say what they mean, and to say what is meant by the Kierkegaardian authorship taken as a totality. There is anything but a direct line from "The Crisis and a Crisis in the Life of an Actress" to an explanation of the Kierkegaardian authorship and the role of the Kierkegaardian author; as with "A Cursory Observation Concerning a Detail in Don Giovanni," the use of "The Crisis" in a discussion of authorship can seem sometimes rather arbitrary. If we take the pseudonymity and the anonymity seriously, however, we cannot believe Kierkegaard capable of the task he sets for himself in On My Work as an Author. "Here it is just a matter of being able very briefly to fold together in simplicity what is unfolded in the many books or what unfolded is the many books." If we take indirect communication, communication in reflection, and the doubly reflected authorship seriously, we cannot accept the premise of that Kierkegaardian claim, that what is communicated indirectly in the pseudonymous and anonymous authorships can be communicated directly. If that is the case, of course, the pseudonymous and anony-

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mous authorship is a pointless literary extravagance - and when we read the works constituting the Kierkegaardian authorship, we do not think them pointless. Philosophers have tried to fold the authorship together before, and their attempts have almost always demonstrated the folly inherent to the folding. In the place of such folly, then, Inter et Inter sets "The Crisis." We cannot simply dismiss Kierkegaard and his explanations; he is, after all, Kierkegaard and the veronym. As readers, however, we must read the works of the authorship with a properly readerly care and attention. Over the course of such reading, we find the Kierkegaardian explanation to be a bad one, incomplete and overtly dismissive of the pseudonymous and anonymous authors. A reading of the Kierkegaardian authorship makes it clear that no work could offer a simple account of what it is the authorship means; a reading of On My Work as an Author makes it clear that, even if such an account were possible, On My Work as an Author is not it. "The Crisis," on the other hand, does not pretend to explain the authorship - it does not even mention the authorship, and can only be read to make reference to the author indirectly. Still, when read as an indirect account of the Kierkegaardian authorship, "The Crisis and a Crisis in the Life of an Actress," like "A Cursory Observation" before it, suggests a far more complex, far richer, far more faithful understanding of the authorship and its authors than any of the veronymous works achieves. Such a reading of "The Crisis" requires that we unseat Kierkegaard as the author at the head of the authorship once and for all. Kierkegaard is not the author of Either/Or, nor does he pretend to be, and Either/Or is the authorship's Juliet. Other repetitions exist in the Kierkegaardian authorship - sequels like Postscript and A Literary Review, or series like the upbuilding discourses, or even collections like Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses - but each of these is unlike the actress' second appearance in Romeo and Juliet insofar as they are repetitions by way of being continuations or revisitations; that is, they repeat their predecessors' contents, but not their forms. Republished again after six years, Either/Or is the author of the author's first genuine reperformance. The work is the same; the authors are the very same. The only difference is the second edition's location in time, and its precedence by the first edition. The significance of the second Kierkegaardian pseudonymity (running from the second edition of Either/Or through the second of Anti-Climacus' works) does not rest upon its verbatim repetition of the first pseudonymity (running from the first edition of Either/Or through the second of Johannes Clima-

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eus' works), but the verbatim (or nearly verbatim) nature of the second edition of Either/Or does serve as a powerful occasion for readerly recollection. To read Either/Or a second time, after Postscript - after Works of Love and Christian Discourses - is not to read the same work twice. The author implied by the authors implied by the second edition of Either/Or is not the author implied by the authors implied by the first edition of Either/Or, even though the authors implied by both editions of Either/Or are the same. Neither Victor Eremita nor A, nor B, nor Johannes the seducer, nor the anonymous Jutland pastor is changed in the repetition. Either/Or, like Romeo and Juliet, remains the same. But the author of the authors of Either/Or has undergone a transformation in the six years between the two editions - a metamorphosis, so to speak, by way of which his or her unconditionally unselfish service to the truth has become manifest, not in veronymity, to which the author of an author can never aspire, but in the steady development of an authorship the authors of which (pseudonymous, anonymous, and veronymous) more and more completely conceal the essential genius of their author. The more forcefully the ostensibly religious veronymity of S. Kierkegaard comes to the fore, the more perfectly the masterwork of the author of the Kierkegaardian authors is obscured until, in the very end, the author of the authors is almost totally hidden behind Kierkegaard in The Moment. To allow oneself to be secreted away is never the same as to cease to exist, even in the purely poetical authorial universe. "The Crisis" stands alone in the in-between of the Kierkegaardian authorship, as "A Cursory Observation" stands nearly alone in the outside. By way of their exclusion, dramatic criticism and explicit theories of performance are centralized in the authorship in a way that, for all their importance, literary criticism and explicit theories of authorship are not. Kierkegaard, the veronym, seems actively to push the discussion of performance aside. Inter et Inter receives mention in the veronymous works, but is only ever credited by Kierkegaard with the authorship of a minor, aesthetic piece that ultimately serves only to remind readers of the parallel aesthetic and upbuilding authorships running together since Either/Or; A., the anonymous author of "A Cursory Observation," is never mentioned in or brought into the authorship at all. That there is a performative aspect of authorship is not lost on Kierkegaard or the other Kierkegaardian literary critics; Andersen as a Novelist offers something of a psychoanalytical reading of Only a Fiddler, recall, on the basis of how Andersen acts as an author. When they are read as themselves authorial performances, however,

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the literary critical works unwind, exposing some of the contradictions coiled at the heart of a literary critical authorship. This seems to be especially true of the veronymous self-criticism, largely because it quite fully presents the problem all criticism instantiates, namely, the privileging of one reader's reading of a work over other possible readings. Criticism rests simultaneously on the nature and structure of the work under criticism, and the interpretive free choice of the critic. To favor an alternative interpretation is to bring other of the work's flaws to the surface, and to reinterpret as strengths what another critic might understand as weaknesses. Critics are readers, of course, and to be a reader one must choose to have a reading, one reading over the others. The nature of any totalizing interpretation, however, is necessarily to dismiss the heterogeneous, to push anything standing on the margins - in the in-between, or in the outside - aside. And yet, as has been seen in the works of Foucault and Derrida whether or not we are deconstructionists, recentering the margins forces a new reading and, thus, new criticism. Criticism thus always is or implies a second time. The Kierkegaardian author - the author of the authors - does not write. He or she is the occasion for the authorship of the authors he or she authors; as Kierkegaard once claimed of himself, the Kierkegaardian author has "occasioned the audibility of the production in the world of actuality, which of course cannot become involved with poetically actual authors."63 The poetically actual Kierkegaardian authors write their articles and books, and are responsible for what they write therein. The Kierkegaardian author, then, their author (and the singular always distinguishes this author from those other, plural, poetically actual authors), simultaneously conjures the authors forth and is only ever present as an anonymous implication of their production, taken as a totality. In this, the Kierkegaardian author is like Inter et Inter's actress, who is only ever present but always totally concealed in the performance - who, in her own performance, is performed. In an authorship that is significantly attributable to the Kierkegaardian author, the Kierkegaardian author is authored. He or she is, in a sense, authored without an author - self-created and self-creating, auctor ex nihilo, as it were. Plato, veronymous author of the dialogues to which his name is appended, is a purely poetical implication of the dialogues he authors. As a named author, Plato implies his own author, the author of the author, who must remain ever anonymous. As a dialogist, however, Plato is 63

CUPI, 627 / SKS 7, 570-571.

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Writing S. Kierkegaard

also authorially responsible for another poetically actual persona - like Shakespeare authors Juliet, Plato authors Socrates. The strange relation between Plato and Socrates is difficult to understand: in one sense, both Plato and Socrates are factually actual human beings in the context of fifth- and fourth- century Athens; in another sense, both Plato and Socrates are poetically actual products of some author's authorial endeavor; in yet another sense, Plato is Socrates' author, and thus stands in relation to him as factually actual to poetically actual; and yet, in another sense still, Socrates is the factually actual origin from which the poetically actual Plato's dialogues are derived. Socrates is Plato's midwife, and helps Plato to bring himself as philosopher into being. Plato is Socrates' author, however, and thus likewise causes Socrates to come to be. This is, perhaps, the classic conundrum of philosophical authorship, and it is largely - and quite wonderfully - unresolved. The richness and depth of the Platonic authorship owes very much to the convolutions of authorship and authorial responsibility to which it is prone. The maieutic power of the Platonic dialogue - the manner in which Plato, or Plato's author, helps the reader to give birth to him- or herself - rests very much upon the irresolvability of the Platonic authorship's authorial problemata. One need only bring some of the most overtly authorially problematic dialogues to mind - Symposium, for example, or Sophist - to see the strictly dialectical aspect of the dialogues give way to something that can only be understood either as utter failure or maieutic indirection. Of course, even that choice is left to the reader, and thus itself might be understood as an exercise in Platonic maieutics. This, in addition to the irony and dramatics inherent to Socrates and the Platonic authorship, is a means of seduction, of deceiving into the truth, of midwifery, of maieutics. The Kierkegaardian author is, in this light, a Platonic figure: simultaneously author and implication, written but writing, indirect and seductive. S. Kierkegaard, the veronymous author of "A First and Last Explanation," A Literary Review, and On My Work as an Author - not to mention Works of Love, Christian Discourses, and the rest - is not like this, exactly. Perhaps the most visible author in the Kierkegaardian authorship, S. Kierkegaard plays Socrates to the Kierkegaardian author's Plato. And, like Socrates, Kierkegaard is not a seducer, properly speaking. He is the seduction. In a short article published in Fcedrelandet on May 16,1855,64 "For the New Edition of Practice in Christianity," Kierkegaard writes: 64

The twelfth anniversary of the publication of the first book of upbuilding discourses, Two Upbuilding Discourses.

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Because I regard this book as a historical document, I have had it come out in a totally unaltered edition. If it were to come out now, now when both pious consideration for the late bishop has lapsed and I have convinced myself, also by having this book come out the first time, that Christianly the established order is indefensible, it would be altered as follows: it would not be by a pseudonym but by me, and the thrice-repeated preface would be dropped and, of course, the Moral to No. 1, where the pseudonym turns the matter in a way I personally agreed to in the preface.65

There is no clearer example in the authorship of Kierkegaard's veronymous willingness to overcome - and thus eradicate - the pseudonymity. This is very much opposed to the Socratic tendency, evinced at various points in the dialogues, to enjoin his listeners not to believe what he says because he says it, but instead, because it is the truth. Nevertheless, there is something Socratic in the way in which, even here, Kierkegaard marks the transfiguring repetition of rereading - something Socratic in the figure cut by Kierkegaard in the article, if not in the claims Kierkegaard makes therein. The ascription of Practice in Christianity to the veronym has only now become appropriate, Kierkegaard notes, as readers have disassociated themselves somewhat from their love of the late Bishop J. P. Mynster, but also - and this is key - because Kierkegaard has "convinced [himself], also by having this book come out the first time." Having reread Anti-Clima cus' Practice, Kierkegaard has come to believe that, with some minor revisions, he could appropriate the work for himself. Reading, rereading, appropriation, authorship: this is the movement Kierkegaard describes, by way of which he could come to be Practice'?, author. This is the movement the critical authorship describes, as well, the equation of readership with a kind of co-authorship in appropriation, although certainly not with regard to Kierkegaard's dissolution of Anti-Climacus as the author of Practice. In the dissolution and the article, Kierkegaard is wrong about the nature of authorship - but remarkably so. Maieutically, seductively so.

65

TM, 69 / SVI XIV, 80.

Abbreviations JP

JSK PJ

KW

AN AR BA C CA CD CI COR CUPI CUP2 EOI E02 EOP EPW

EUD

S0ren Kierkegaard's Journals and Papers, ed. and trans. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, assisted by Gregor Malantschuk, vol. 1-6, vol. 7 Index and Composite Collation, Bloomington and London: Indiana University Press 1967-78. The Journals ofS0ren Kierkegaard, ed. and trans, by Alexander Dru, New York and London: Oxford University Press 1938. Papers and Journals: A Selection, trans, with introductions and notes by Alastair Hannay, London and New York: Penguin Books 1996. Kierkegaard's Writings, trans, by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, vol. I-XXVI, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1978-98. Armed Neutrality, KW XXU. On Authority and Revelation, The Book on Adler, trans, by Walter Lowrie. Princeton: Princeton University Press 1955. The Book on Adler, KW XXIV. The Crisis and a Crisis in the Life of an Actress, KWX\U. The Concept of Anxiety, trans, by Reidar Thomte in collaboration with Albert B. Anderson, KW VIII. Christian Discourses, KW XVII. The Concept of Irony, KW II. The Corsair Affair; Articles Related to the Writings, KW XIII. Concluding Unscientific Postscript, KW XII,1. Concluding Unscientific Postscript, KWXll,2. Either/Or, Part I, KWlll. Either/Or, Part II, KW IV. Either/Or, trans, by Alastair Hannay, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books 1992. Early Polemical Writings: From the Papers of One Still Living; Articles from Student Days; The Battle Between the Old and the New Soap-Cellars, trans, by Julia Watkin, KWl. Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses, KWV.

280

FSE FT FTP JC JFY KAC LD P PC PF PLR

PLS

PVW

PV R SBL SDP

SL SUD TA TD UD WA

WL

Abbreviations

ForSelf-Examination,KWXXl. Fear and Trembling, KW VI. Fear and Trembling, trans, with an introduction by Alastair Hannay, London and New York: Penguin Books 1985. Johannes Climacus, or De omnibus dubitandum est, KW VII. Judge for Yourselves, KW XXI. Kierkegaard's Attack upon "Christendom," 1854-1855, trans. by Walter Lowrie, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1944. Letters and Documents, trans, by Hendrik Rosenmeier, KW XXV. Prefaces / Writing Sampler, trans, by Todd W. Nichol, KW IX. Practice in Christianity, KWXX. Philosophical Fragments, KW\U. Prefaces: Light Reading for Certain Classes as the Occasion May Require, trans, by William McDonald, Tallahassee: Florida State University Press 1989. Concluding Unscientific Postscript, trans, by David F. Swenson and Walter Lowrie, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1941. The Point of View for My Work as an Author including On My Work as an Author, trans, by Walter Lowrie, New York and London: Oxford University Press 1939. The Point of View including On My Work as an Author and The Point of View for My Work as an Author, KW XXII. Repetition, KWVl. Notes of Schelling's Berlin Lectures, KW II. The Sickness unto Death, trans, with an introduction and notes by Alastair Hannay, London and New York: Penguin Books 1989. Stages on Life's Way, KW XL The Sickness unto Death, KWXIX. Two Ages: The Age of Revolution and the Present Age. A Literary Review, KW XIV. Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions, KWX. Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits, KW XV. Without Authority including 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, KW XVIII. Works of Love, KWXWl.

Bibliography Works by Kierkegaard Danish En literair Anmeldelse, Copenhagen: C A . Reitzel 1846. Kierkegaards polemiske debut:Artikler 1834-36 i historisk sammenhœng, ed. Teddy Petersen, Odense: Odense Universitetsforlag 1977. S0ren Kierkegaards Samlede Vœrker, 1st ed., ed. A.B. Drachmann, J.L. Heiberg and H. O. Lange, 14 vols., Copenhagen: Gyldendalske Boghandel, Nordisk Forlag 1901-1906. S0ren Kierkegaards Efterladte Papirer, 2nd ed., vols. 1-13, ed. Niels Thulstrup; vols. 14-16 Index, Niels J0rgen Cappel0rn, Copenhagen: Gyldendal 1968-1978. S0ren Kierkegaards Skrifter, ed. N.J. Cappel0rn, J. Garff, A.M. Hansen, J. Kondrup, A. McKinnon, 55 vols., Copenhagen: S0ren Kierkegaard Forskningscenteret and Gads Forlag 1997-.

English

Translations

Crisis in the Life of an Actress and Other Essays on Drama, trans. Stephen Crites, London: Collins 1967. Either/Or: A Fragment of Life, abridged and trans. Alastair Hannay, London: Penguin Books 1992. Journals and Papers, vols. 1-6, trans, and ed. Howard V. and Edna H. Hong, assisted by Gregor Malantschuk; vol. 7 Index, Nathaniel J. Hong and Charles M. Barker, Bloomington: Indiana University Press 1967-1978. Kierkegaard's Writings, ed. Howard V. Hong, vols. 1-25.; vol. 26 Cumulative Index, Nathaniel J. Hong, Kathryn Hong and Regine Prenzel-Guthrie, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1978-2000. A Literary Review, trans. Alastair Hannay, New York: Penguin Books 2001. Papers and Journals: A Selection, trans. Alastair Hannay, New York: Penguin Books 1996. The Present Age and Two Minor Ethico-Religious Treatises, trans. Alexander Dru and Walter Lowrie, Oxford: Oxford University Press 1940.

282

Bibliography

Other Works Sylviane Agacinski Aparté: Conceptions and Deaths of S0ren Kierkegaard, trans. Kevin Newmark, Tallahassee: The Florida State University Press 1988. Hans Christian Andersen Kun en Spillemand, Copenhagen: Gyldendalske Boghandels Forlag 1901. Hans Christian Andersen Mit Livs Eventyr, Copenhagen: C A . Reitzels Bo og Arvinger 1855. J.L. Austin How To Do Things With Words, ed. J. O. Urmson and Marina Sbisa, Cambridge: Harvard University Press 1962. Ernst Behler German Romantic Literary Theory, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1993. Lars Bejerholm "Anonymity and Pseudonymity" in Kierkegaard: Literary Miscellany (Bibliotheca Kierkegaardiana vol. 9), ed. Niels Thulstrup and Marie Mikulovâ Thulstrup, Copenhagen: C.A. Reitzels Boghandel 1981, pp. 18-23. J0rgen Bonde Jensen Jeg er kun en digter: Om S0ren Kierkegaard som skribent, Copenhagen: Babette 1996. Wayne Booth The Rhetoric of Fiction, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press 1961. Georg Brandes S0ren Kierkegaard: En Kritisk Fremstilling i Grundrids, Copenhagen: Gyldendals Ugleb0ger 1967. Frithiof Brandt Syv Kierkegaard Studier, Copenhagen: Munksgaard 1962. Sean Burke Authorship: From Plato to the Postmodern, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press 1995. Sean Burke The Death and Return of the Author: Criticism and Subjectivity in Barthes, Foucault and Derrida, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press 1992. Jacob B0ggild "The Fine Art of Writing Posthumous Papers: On the Dubious Role of the Romantic Fragment in the First Part of Either/Of in Kierkegaardiana 19,1999, pp. 95-112. Jacob B0ggild "H.H. - Poet or Martyr?" in Anthropology and Authority: Essays on S0ren Kierkegaard, ed. Poul Houe, Gordon D. Marino, and Sven Hakon Rössel, Amsterdam: Rodopi 2000, pp. 171-178. David A. Cain "Reckoning with Kierkegaard: Christian Faith and Dramatic Literature" Ph.D. dissertation, Princeton University 1976. Niels J0rgen Cappel0rn "The Retrospective Understanding of S0ren Kierkegaard's Total Production" in Kierkegaard: Resources and Results, ed. Alastair McKinnon, Wilfrid Laurier University Press 1982, pp. 18-38. Niels J0rgen Cappel0rn, Joakirn Garff, and Johnny Kondrup Written Images: S0ren Kierkegaard's Journals, Notebooks, Booklets, Sheets, Scraps, and Slips of Paper, trans. Bruce H. Kirmmse, Princeton: Princeton University Press 2003. Roger F. Cook The Demise of the Author: Autonomy and the German Writer, 1770-1848, New York: Peter Lang 1993. Jacques Derrida Limited Ine, trans. Samuel Weber and Jeffrey Mehlman, Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press 1988.

Bibliography

Steven M. Emmanuel "Reading Kierkegaard" in Philosophy Today 36:3, 1992, pp. 240-255. Niels Nymann Eriksen Kierkegaard's Category of Repetition: A Reconstruction (Kierkegaard Studies. Monograph Series vol. 5, ed. Niels J0rgen Cappel0rn and Jon Stewart), Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter 2000. Gene Fendt Works of Love?: Reflections on Works of Love, Potomac, MD: Scripta Humanistica 1990. Henning Fenger The Heibergs, trans. Frederick J. Marker, New York: Twayne Publishers 1971. Henning Fenger Kierkegaard: The Myths and their Origins, trans. George C. Schoolfield, New Haven: Yale University Press 1980. Peter Fenves "Chatter": Language and History in Kierkegaard, Stanford: Stanford University Press 1993. Hans-Georg Gadamer Truth and Method, trans. Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G Marshall, New York: Continuum 2000. Joakim Garff Den S0vnl0se: Kierkegaard lœst œstetisk/biografisk, Copenhagen: C A . Reitzels Forlag 1995. 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. Jonathon Rèe and Jane Chamberlain, Oxford: Blackwell Publishers 1998, pp. 75-102. Joakim Garff S0ren Kierkegaard: A Biography, trans. Bruce H. Kirmmse, Princeton: Princeton University Press 2005. Thomasine Gyllembourg Dr0m og Virkelighed I To Tidsaldre, ed. Anni Broue, Copenhagen: Det danske Sprog- og Litteraturselskab & Borgen 1986. Ronald L. Hall Word and Spirit: A Kierkegaardian Critique of the Modern Age, Bloomington: Indiana University Press 1993. Alastair Hannay Kierkegaard: A Biography, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2001. Alastair Hannay Kierkegaard and Philosophy: Selected Essays, London: Routledge2003. Aage Henriksen Methods and Results of Kierkegaard Studies in Scandinavia: A Historical and Critical Survey, trans. Annie I. Fausb0ll, Copenhagen: Ejnar Munksgaard 1951. William Irwin The Death and Resurrection of the Author?, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press 2002. Nerina Jansen "The Individual versus the Public: A Key to Kierkegaard's Views of the Daily Press" in International Kierkegaard Commentary: The Corsair Affair, vol. 13, ed. Robert L. Perkins, Macon, GA: Mercer University Press 1990, pp. 1-21. W. Glyn Jones "S0ren Kierkegaard and Poul Martin M0ller" in Modern Language Review 60,1965, pp. 73-82. Merete J0rgensen Kierkegaard som kritiker, Copenhagen: Gyldendal 1978. Burt Kimmelman The Poetics of Authorship in the Later Middle Ages: The Emergence of the Modern Literary Persona, New York: Peter Lang 1996. Bruce H. Kirmmse Kierkegaard in Golden Age Denmark, Bloomington: Indiana University Press 1990.

284

Bibliography

Bruce H. Kirmmse Encounters with Kierkegaard: A Life as Seen by His Contemporaries, trans. Bruce H. Kirmmse and Virginia R. Laursen, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1996. Louis Mackey Kierkegaard: A Kind of Poet, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press 1971. Louis Mackey Points of View: Readings of Kierkegaard, Tallahassee: The Florida State University Press 1986. Gregor Malantschuk Kierkegaard's Thought, trans, and ed. Howard V. and Edna H. Hong, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1971. Henry McDonald "The Performative Basis of Modern Literary Theory" in Comparative Literature 55:1,2003, pp. 57-72. C. Molbech Dansk Ordbog, 2nd edition, Copenhagen: Den Gyldendalske Boghandling 1859. Edward Mooney "A Curtain Call for Climacus: How to Revoke a Text and Keep It Too," oral presentation, S0ren Kierkegaard Society Meeting, December 29,2005. Finn Hauberg Mortensen '"View of Life' - On S0ren Kierkegaard and Hans Christian Andersen," trans. Kim Andersen, unpublished essay. George Pattison "Bakhtin's Category of Carnival in the Interpretation of Writings of S0ren Kierkegaard" in Kierkegaard Studies. Yearbook 2006, ed. Niels J0rgen Cappel0rn, Hermann Deuser, and K. Brian Söderquist, Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter 2006, pp. 100-128. George Pattison Kierkegaard: The Aesthetic and the Religious: From the Magic Theatre to the Crucifixion of the Image, London: SCM Press 1999. George Pattison Kierkegaard, Religion and the Nineteenth-Century Crisis of Culture, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2002. George Pattison "Kierkegaard's Theory and Critique of Art: Its Theological Significance," Ph.D dissertation, University of Durham 1983. George Pattison Kierkegaard's Upbuilding Discourses: Philosophy, Theology, Literature, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2002. George Pattison "S0ren Kierkegaard: A Theater Critic of the Heiberg School" in Kierkegaard and His Contemporaries: The Culture of Golden Age Denmark (Kierkegaard Studies. Monograph Series, vol. 10), ed. Jon Stewart, Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter 2003, pp. 319-329. Bertel Pedersen "Fictionality and Authority: A Point of View for Kierkegaard's Work as an Author" in S0ren Kierkegaard, ed. Harold Bloom, New York: Chelsea House Publishers 1989, pp. 99-115. Robert L. Perkins "Power, Politics, and Media Critique: Kierkegaard's First Brush with the Press" in International Kierkegaard Commentary: Early Polemical Writings, vol. 1, ed. Robert L. Perkins, Macon, GA: Mercer University Press 1999, pp. 27-44. Michael Plekon "Towards Apocalypse: Kierkegaard's Two Ages in Golden Age Denmark" in International Kierkegaard Commentary: Two Ages, vol. 9, ed. Robert L. Perkins, Macon, GA: Mercer University Press 1984, pp. 19-52. Stephen Railton Authorship and Audience: Literary Performance in the American Renaissance, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1991. Janne Risum "Towards Transparency: S0ren Kierkegaard on Danish Actresses," trans. Annette Mester, in Kierkegaard and His Contemporaries:

Bibliography

The Culture of Golden Age Denmark (Kierkegaard Studies. Monograph Series, vol. 10), ed. Jon Stewart, Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter 2003, pp. 330-342. H. P. Rohde Gaadefulde Stadier paa Kierkegaards Vej, Copenhagen: Rosenkilde og Bagger 1974. Vanessa Rumble "Eternity Lies Beneath: Autonomy and Finitude in Kierkegaard's Early Writings" in Journal of the History of Philosophy 35: 1, 1997, pp. 83-103. Vanessa Rumble "Love and Difference: The Christian Ideal in Kierkegaard's Works of Love" in The New Kierkegaard, ed. Elsebet Jegstrup, Bloomington: Indiana University Press 2004, pp. 161-178. John Searle Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language, New York: Cambridge University Press 1969. Brita K. Stendahl S0ren Kierkegaard, Boston: Twayne Publishers 1976. Michael Strawser Both/And: Reading Kierkegaard from Irony to Edification, New York: Fordham University Press 1997. Richard M. Summers "Aesthetics, Ethics, and Reality: A Study of From the Papers of One Still Living" in International Kierkegaard Commentary: Early Polemical Writings, vol. 1, ed. Robert L. Perkins, Macon, GA: Mercer University Press 1999, pp. 45-68. Sylvia Walsh Living Poetically: Kierkegaard's Existential Aesthetics, University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press 1994. Julia Watkin Historical Dictionary of Kierkegaard's Philosophy, Lanham, MD: The Scarecrow Press 2001. Merold Westphal "Kierkegaard and the Anxiety of Authorship" in International Philosophical Quarterly 34:1,1994, pp. 5-22. William K. Wimsatt and Monroe C. Beardsley "The Intentional Fallacy" in The Verbal Icon: Studies in the Meaning of Poetry, Lexington: University of Kentucky Press 1954, pp. 3-20.

Index of Persons Adler, A. P. 264 Agacinski, Sylviane 3, 246 Andersen, Hans Christian 23-24, 3253, 56, 58-62, 65-68, 90-91,108-110, 113,115,121,126,129-130,142,155, 158-159,187-189,193, 206, 208-209, 212-214, 221, 242, 268, 274 Aristophanes 5-6 Aristotle 4, 7,18, 30,145 Augustine 16 Austin, J. L. 27,144-146 Baggesen, Jens 48 Bakhtin, Mikhail 19 Barthes, Roland 13-16,17,112,164, 170,172 Beardsley, Monroe C. 11 Beck, A.F. 98-102,104,109, 111, 137, 142,158-159 Beckett, Samuel 259 Behler, Ernst 12 Bejerholm, Lars 2 Blicher, Steen Steensen 19 Bonde Jensen, J0rgen 49 Booth, Wayne 12 Borges, Jorge Luis 25 Brandes, Georg 48 Brandt, Frithiof 48 Burke, Sean 16,112 B0ggild, Jacob 51 Cain, David A. 18 Cappel0rn, Niels J0rgen 13 Caputo, John 11 Conant, James 216 Crites, Stephen 150,175, 249 Derrida, Jacques 3,16,144-146,164, 275 Dinesen, Isak (Karen Blixen) 7

Dru, Alexander

175

Eliot, George (Mary Ann Evans) 7 Emerson, Ralph Waldo 17 Emmanuel, Steven 10,11 Eriksen, Niels Nymann 128,184 Fendt, Gene 246 Fenger, Henning 95,150,191, 203 Fenves, Peter 32, 217 Foucault, Michel 13,15,164,170-171, 275 Freud, Sigmund 3 Gadamer, Hans-Georg 140,164 Garff, Joakim 2, 3, 34, 44-45, 49-51, 54, 81,142, 226, 237 Goldschmidt, M. A. 247 Gyllembourg, Thomasine 33,78,179 Hage, Johannes 81-86, 94, 99,104, 235 Hall, Ronald 64 Hannay, Alastair 47, 72, 77, 80, 82,175, 200-201, 211 Hansen, J0rgen Christian 147,150, 154,156-160,162-165,168 Hawthorne, Nathaniel 17 Hegel, G. W. F. 36,95-96, 204, 210, 215, 245 Heiberg, Johan Ludvig 2, 33, 36, 48-49, 78, 81, 95,106-107,175,190-192, 203207, 226, 245 Heiberg, Johanne Luise 22, 78,150, 156, 226-227, 270 Heidegger, Martin 145 Henriksen, Aage 49 Hoffmann, E. T. A. 113 Hong, Howard V. and Edna H. 67, 98, 102,148-149,175,179, 211, 249

288

Index of Persons

Jansen, Nerina 79, 99 J0rgensen, Merete 18-24, 42,173

Pattison, George L. 18,19, 22-23, 4142, 75,77-78, 81, 86,114 Pedersen, Bertel 17 Perkins, Robert L. 79, 85-86,175 Phister, Ludvig 22 Plato 1, 5-6,7, 48, 247-248, 275-276 Plekon, Michael 205 Poe, Edgar Allan 17 Pückler-Muskau, H. L. H. 48

Kant, Immanuel 16,18 Kierkegaard, Peter Christian 2,10 Kierkegaard, Michael Peter 48 Kimmelman, Burt 16 Kirmmse, Bruce 32, 80 Kragh, Boline A. 151,154-159 Lacan, Jacques 3 Lehmann, Peter Orla 25, 80-89, 94, 97, 99,102,104,109, 111, 137,142,158159, 203, 221, 235 Liunge, A. P. 85-87,190-191 Lowrie, Walter 175 Luther, Martin 25, 85, 87,145, 243 Mackey, Louis 3,11,12,15, 237, 246 Madvig, Johan Nicolai 107 Malantschuk, Gregor 53, 55 Marcabru 16 Martensen, Hans Lassen 98, 245 McDonald, Henry 145 Melville, Herman 17 Molbech, C. 77 Mo oney, Edward 216 Mortensen, Finn Hauberg 48, 49 Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus 16, 21, 26,147,149-151,154-155,158,160-161, 163-165, 265 Mynster, J. P. 97, 245, 277 M0ller, P. L. 247 M0ller, Poul Martin 2, 36, 48, 95 Nielsen, Rasmus 95, 98 Nietzsche, Friedrich 3 Novalis (Friedrich von Hardenberg)

Railton, Stephen 17 Reitzel, C. A. 2 Risum, Janne 151 Rohde, H. P 48 Rumble, Vanessa 9, 36 Schlegel, Friedrich 12,113 Schleiermacher, Friedrich 12 Scribe, Augustin Eugène 69, 204 Searle, John 144-146 Shakespeare, William 4-5,16, 29,125, 146,170, 216, 226-227, 254-255, 259, 265, 267, 276 Sl0k, Johannes 10,115 Socrates 5-6, 48, 243, 245, 247-248, 276-277 Stage, Ulriche Augusta 150-151,154155,159-160 Stendahl, Brita K. 49 Strawser, Michael 3, 32 Summers, Richard 41 Laylor, Mark C. 11 Lhoreau, Henry David 17 Lwain, Mark (Samuel Clemens) 7 Unsmann, Frederick

69

12

O'Connell, Daniel 25, 85, 87 Oehlenschläger, Adam 19 Orwell, George (Eric Arthur Blair) 7

Walsh, Sylvia 36, 41,197 Watkin, Julia 80, 95,149 Westphal, Merold 30,164 Wimsatt, William K. 11

Paley, William

Xenophon

237

5-6