Volume 12, Tome IV: Kierkegaard's Influence on Literature, Criticism and Art: The Anglophone World (Kierkegaard Research: Sources, Reception and Resources) [1 ed.] 9781409457633, 140945763X

Citation preview

KierKegaard’s influence on literature, criticism and art tome iV: the anglophone World

Kierkegaard Research: Sources, Reception and Resources Volume 12, Tome IV

Kierkegaard Research: Sources, Reception and Resources is a publication of the søren Kierkegaard research centre

General Editor Jon steWart Søren Kierkegaard Research Centre, University of Copenhagen, Denmark Editorial Board finn gredal Jensen Katalin nun peter ŠaJda Advisory Board lee c. barrett maría J. binetti istVÁn czaKÓ heiKo schulz curtis l. thompson

Kierkegaard’s Influence on literature, criticism and art tome iV: the anglophone World

Edited by Jon steWart

First published 2013 by Ashgate Publishing Published 2016 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business Copyright © Jon stewart and the contributors 2013 Jon stewart has asserted his right under the copyright, designs and patents act, 1988, to be identified as the editor of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data stewart, Jon (Jon bartley) Kierkegaard’s influence on literature, criticism and art. tome iV, the anglophone world. – (Kierkegaard research ; v. 12) 1. Kierkegaard, Søren, 1813–1855 – Influence. 2. philosophy, german – 19th century. 3. philosophy – english-speaking countries. 4. art and philosophy. 5. literature – philosophy. 6. criticism (philosophy) i. title ii. series 198.9–dc23 The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows: Kierkegaard’s influence on literature, criticism, and art / edited by Jon Stewart. p. cm.—(Kierkegaard research ; v. 12, t. 4) includes index. ISBN 978-1-4094-5763-3 (hardcover) 1. Kierkegaard, Søren, 1813–1855—Influence. 2. Kierkegaard, søren, 1813–1855—literary art. 3. criticism. i. stewart, Jon (Jon bartley) b4377.K5124 2012 198’.9—dc23 2012026885 isbn 9781409457633 (hbk) cover design by Katalin nun

contents List of Contributors Acknowledgements List of Abbreviations W.h. auden: art and christianity in an age of anxiety Leonardo F. Lisi

vii ix xi

1

James baldwin: “poetic experimentators” in a chaotic World Nigel Hatton

27

samuel barber: Kierkegaard, from a musical point of View Diego Giordano

41

harold bloom: critics, bards, and prophets Elisabete M. de Sousa

51

don delillo: Kierkegaard and the grave in the air Daniel Greenspan

81

louise erdrich: existence with an “edge of irony” Nigel Hatton

101

James Joyce: negation, Kirkeyaard, Wake, and repetition Bartholomew Ryan

109

david lodge: a therapy for the self Natalja Vorobyova Jørgensen

133

vi

Kierkegaard’s Influence on Literature, Criticism and Art

flannery o’connor: reading Kierkegaard in the light of thomas aquinas Christopher B. Barnett

157

Walker percy: literary extrapolations from Kierkegaard Joseph Ballan

175

george steiner: playing Kierkegaard’s theological-philosophic-psychological sports Paul Martens

193

William styron: styron and the assault of Kierkegaardian dread Nigel Hatton

213

Index of Persons Index of Subjects

229 237

list of contributors Joseph Ballan, university of chicago divinity school, swift hall, 1025 east 58th street, chicago, il 60637, usa. Christopher B. Barnett, Villanova university, department of theology and religious studies, saint augustine center 203, 800 lancaster avenue, Villanova, pa 19085, usa. Diego Giordano, Dipartimento di Filosofia e di Latinità e Medioevo, Università degli studi di salerno, via ponte don melillo, 84084 fisciano, italy. Daniel Greenspan, california state university, dominguez hills, 1000 e. Victoria st., sac-2, carson, ca 90747, usa. Nigel Hatton, school of social sciences, humanities and arts, university of california, merced, 5200 north lake road, merced, ca 95343, usa. Leonardo F. Lisi, the humanities center, the Johns hopkins university, gilman hall 213, 3400 n. charles st., baltimore, md 21218, usa. Paul Martens, department of religion, baylor university, one bear place #97284, Waco, tX 76798-7284, usa. Bartholomew Ryan, Centro de Filosofia da Universidade de Lisboa, Faculdade de letras, alameda da universidade, 1600-214 lisbon, portugal. Elisabete M. de Sousa, Centro de Filosofia da Universidade de Lisboa, Faculdade de letras, alameda da universidade, 1600-214 lisbon, portugal. Natalja Vorobyova Jørgensen, institute of english studies, university of Warsaw, ul. Nowy Świat 4, 00-497 Warsaw, Poland.

acknowledgements for the american rights to reprint the quotations that appear in the article on W.h. auden, we would like to thank random house, inc. “new Year letter,” copyright 1941 and renewed 1969 by W.h. auden, “leap before You look,” copyright 1945 and renewed 1973 by W.h. auden, “for the time being,” copyright 1944 and renewed 1972 by W.h. auden, “the sea and the mirror,” copyright 1944 and renewed 1972 by W.h. auden, “the age of anxiety: the seven stages,” copyright 1947 by W.h. auden and renewed 1975 by the estate of W.h. auden, “sext (horae canonicae: 3),” copyright © 1955 by W.h. auden, renewed 1983 by The Estate of W.H. Auden, “Academic Graffiti,” copyright © 1960 by W.H. Auden and renewed 1988 by the estate of W.h. auden, “a thanksgiving,” copyright © 1974 by the estate of W.h. auden, from Collected Poems of W.H. Auden by W.h. auden. used by permission of random house, inc. any third party use of this material, outside of this publication, is prohibited. interested parties must apply directly to random house, inc. for permission. for the uK rights to reprint the quotations that appear in the same article, we would like to thank curtis brown, ltd., new York. copyright © 1941; 1944; 1945; 1947; 1955; 1960 by W.h. auden, renewed. copyright © 1979 by edward mendelson, William meredith, and monroe K. spears, executors of the estate of W.h. auden. reprinted by permission of curtis brown, ltd.

list of abbreviations Danish Abbreviations B&A

Breve og Aktstykker vedrørende Søren Kierkegaard, vols. 1–2, ed. by niels thulstrup, copenhagen: munksgaard 1953–54.

Bl.art.

S. Kierkegaard’s Bladartikler, med Bilag samlede efter Forfatterens Død, udgivne som Supplement til hans øvrige Skrifter, ed. by rasmus nielsen, copenhagen: c.a. reitzel 1857.

EP

Af Søren Kierkegaards Efterladte Papirer, vols. 1–9, ed. by h.p. barfod and hermann gottsched, copenhagen: c.a. reitzel 1869–81.

Pap.

Søren Kierkegaards Papirer, vols. i to Xi–3, ed. by peter andreas heiberg, Victor Kuhr and einer torsting, copenhagen: gyldendalske boghandel, nordisk forlag, 1909–48; second, expanded ed., vols. i to Xi–3, by niels thulstrup, vols. Xii to Xiii supplementary volumes, ed. by niels thulstrup, vols. XiV to XVi index by niels Jørgen cappelørn, copenhagen: gyldendal 1968–78.

SKS

Søren Kierkegaards Skrifter, vols. 1–28, vols. K1–K28, ed. by niels Jørgen cappelørn, Joakim garff, Jette Knudsen, Johnny Kondrup, alastair mcKinnon and finn hauberg mortensen, copenhagen: gads forlag 1997–2013.

SV1

Samlede Værker, ed. by a.b. drachmann, Johan ludvig heiberg and h.o. lange, vols. i–XiV, copenhagen: gyldendalske boghandels forlag 1901–06. English Abbreviations

AN

Armed Neutrality, trans. by howard V. hong and edna h. hong, princeton: princeton university press 1998.

AR

On Authority and Revelation, The Book on Adler, trans. by Walter lowrie, princeton: princeton university press 1955.

xii

Kierkegaard’s Influence on Literature, Criticism and Art

ASKB

The Auctioneer’s Sales Record of the Library of Søren Kierkegaard, ed. by h.p. rohde, copenhagen: the royal library 1967.

BA

The Book on Adler, trans. by howard V. hong and edna h. hong, princeton: princeton university press 1998.

C

The Crisis and a Crisis in the Life of an Actress, trans. by howard V. hong and edna h. hong, princeton: princeton university press 1997.

CA

The Concept of Anxiety, trans. by reidar thomte in collaboration with albert b. anderson, princeton: princeton university press 1980.

CD

Christian Discourses, trans. by howard V. hong and edna h. hong, princeton: princeton university press 1997.

CI

The Concept of Irony, trans. by howard V. hong and edna h. hong, princeton: princeton university press 1989.

CIC

The Concept of Irony, trans. with an introduction and notes by lee m. capel, london: collins 1966.

COR

The Corsair Affair; Articles Related to the Writings, trans. by howard V. hong and edna h. hong, princeton: princeton university press 1982.

CUP1

Concluding Unscientific Postscript, vol. 1, trans. by howard V. hong and edna h. hong, princeton: princeton university press 1982.

CUP2

Concluding Unscientific Postscript, vol. 2, trans. by howard V. hong and edna h. hong, princeton: princeton university press 1982.

CUPH Concluding Unscientific Postscript, trans. by alastair hannay, cambridge and new York: cambridge university press 2009. EO1

Either/Or, part i, trans. by howard V. hong and edna h. hong, princeton: princeton university press 1987.

EO2

Either/Or, part ii, trans. by howard V. hong and edna h. hong, princeton: princeton university press 1987.

EOP

Either/Or, trans. by alastair hannay, harmondsworth: penguin books 1992.

EPW

Early Polemical Writings, among others: 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, princeton: princeton university press 1990.

List of Abbreviations

xiii

EUD

Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses, trans. by howard V. hong and edna h. hong, princeton: princeton university press 1990.

FSE

For Self-Examination, trans. by howard V. hong and edna h. hong, princeton: princeton university press 1990.

FT

Fear and Trembling, trans. by howard V. hong and edna h. hong, princeton: princeton university press 1983.

FTP

Fear and Trembling, trans. by alastair hannay, harmondsworth: penguin books 1985.

JC

Johannes Climacus, or De omnibus dubitandum est, trans. by howard V. hong and edna h. hong, princeton: princeton university press 1985.

JFY

Judge for Yourself!, trans. by howard V. hong and edna h. hong, princeton: princeton university press 1990.

JP

Søren Kierkegaard’s Journals and Papers, vols. 1–6, ed. and trans. by howard V. hong and edna h. hong, assisted by gregor malantschuk (vol. 7, index and composite collation), bloomington and london: indiana university press 1967–78.

KAC

Kierkegaard’s Attack upon “Christendom,” 1854–1855, trans. by Walter lowrie, princeton: princeton university press 1944.

KJN

Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, vols. 1–11, ed. by niels Jørgen cappelørn, alastair hannay, david Kangas, bruce h. Kirmmse, george pattison, Vanessa rumble, and K. brian söderquist, princeton and oxford: princeton university press 2007ff.

LD

Letters and Documents, trans. by henrik rosenmeier, princeton: princeton university press 1978.

LR

A Literary Review, trans. by alastair hannay, harmondsworth: penguin books 2001.

M

The Moment and Late Writings, trans. by howard V. hong and edna h. hong, princeton: princeton university press 1998.

P

Prefaces / Writing Sampler, trans. by todd W. nichol, princeton: princeton university press 1997.

PC

Practice in Christianity, trans. by howard V. hong and edna h. hong, princeton: princeton university press 1991.

xiv

Kierkegaard’s Influence on Literature, Criticism and Art

PF

Philosophical Fragments, trans. by howard V. hong and edna h. hong, princeton: princeton university press 1985.

PJ

Papers and Journals: A Selection, trans. by alastair hannay, harmondsworth: penguin books 1996.

PLR

Prefaces: Light Reading for Certain Classes as the Occasion May Require, trans. by William mcdonald, tallahassee: florida state university press 1989.

PLS

Concluding Unscientific Postscript, trans. by david f. swenson and Walter lowrie, princeton: princeton university press 1941.

PV

The Point of View including On My Work as an Author, The Point of View for My Work as an Author, and Armed Neutrality, trans. by howard V. hong and edna h. hong, princeton: princeton university press 1998.

PVL

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.

R

Repetition, trans. by howard V. hong and edna h. hong, princeton: princeton university press 1983.

SBL

Notes of Schelling’s Berlin Lectures, trans. by howard V. hong and edna h. hong, princeton: princeton university press 1989.

SLW

Stages on Life’s Way, trans. by howard V. hong and edna h. hong, princeton: princeton university press 1988.

SUD

The Sickness unto Death, trans. by howard V. hong and edna h. hong, princeton: princeton university press 1980.

SUDP

The Sickness unto Death, trans. by alastair hannay, london and new York: penguin books 1989.

TA

Two Ages: The Age of Revolution and the Present Age. A Literary Review, trans. by howard V. hong and edna h. hong, princeton: princeton university press 1978.

TD

Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions, trans. by howard V. hong and edna h. hong, princeton: princeton university press 1993.

UD

Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits, trans. by howard V. hong and edna h. hong, princeton: princeton university press 1993.

List of Abbreviations

xv

WA

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, trans. by howard V. hong and edna h. hong, princeton: princeton university press 1997.

WL

Works of Love, trans. by howard V. hong and edna h. hong, princeton: princeton university press 1995.

WS

Writing Sampler, trans. by todd W. nichol, princeton: princeton university press 1997.

W.h. auden: art and christianity in an age of anxiety leonardo f. lisi

it is widely agreed in the secondary literature on W.h. auden that søren Kierkegaard is one of the most important influences on his personal and literary life, and that the specific nature of this influence is dictated by Auden’s conversion to christianity some time around 1940. this consensus is arguably easy to explain. auden was a close friend of such early champions and scholars of Kierkegaard as charles Williams (1886–1945), reinhold niebuhr (1892–1971) and paul tillich (1886–1965), and told nicolas nabokov (1903–78) that “Kierkegaard [is] the only nineteenth-century thinker next to nietzsche worth talking about.”1 auden read the dane already in late 1937 or early 1938, when Kierkegaard’s impact on the anglosaxon world was only just beginning to take hold, and by 1946 he claimed to own virtually all his works.2 further, in addition to numerous allusions in his poetry and prose, auden left extensive documentation of his reception of Kierkegaard on three different occasions: first, in his 1944 review of the translation of Either/Or by david and lillian swenson and Walter lowrie, “a preface to Kierkegaard”; second, in his influential 1952 anthology of selections from Kierkegaard’s oeuvre, The Living Thoughts of Kierkegaard, which was accompanied by an extensive introduction; and finally in his 1968 review of the first volume of the Journals and Papers translated and edited by howard and edna hong, “a Knight of doleful countenance.”3 nicolas nabokov, “excerpts from memoirs,” in W.H. Auden: A Tribute, new York: macmillan 1975, p. 145. 2 alan ansen reports that he showed auden Kierkegaard’s For Self-Examination and Judge for Yourselves!, asking whether he owned it. auden replied: “Yes, i think i have them all now. i may not have some of the edifying discourses published by obscure houses, but i don’t think i want them very badly” (alan ansen, The Table Talk of W.H. Auden, ed. by nicholas Jenkins, princeton: ontario review press 1990, p. 7). 3 the latter two of these essays were subsequently reprinted in W.h. auden, Forewords and Afterwords, selected by edward mendelson, new York: Vintage books 1974, pp. 168–81 and pp. 182–97. in addition to the works discussed in this article, previous studies have also pointed to Kierkegaard’s presence in the following poems: “like a Vocation,” “law like love,” “in sickness and in health,” “the cave of nakedness,” “the maze,” the sonnetsequence “the Quest,” and “moon landing.” in these texts, however, the assumed connections to Kierkegaard rest on the mere presence of keywords or themes such as “despair,” “the absurd,” or “faith,” which nevertheless could just as well have been derived from elsewhere. accordingly, while these correspondences in my view very likely testify to the pervasive 1

2

Leonardo F. Lisi

What is revealing about the mentioned scholarly consensus, however, is not merely that it draws attention to this quantitative aspect of auden’s engagement with Kierkegaard, the sheer number of allusions and references to the dane that can be found in his works. rather, it also suggests its qualitative dimension by indicating that Kierkegaard’s influence on Auden is best examined in three different contexts: that of his personal biography, that of his activity as a poet, and that of his more strictly conceptual interest in Kierkegaard’s thought. in what follows i accordingly examine Auden’s relation to Kierkegaard under these three rubrics, focusing first on his life and conversion (section i), then on his literary reception of Kierkegaard (Section II), and finally on Auden’s treatment of the three philosophical and religious topics that he associates with Kierkegaard most frequently: anxiety (section iii), the stages of existence (section iV), and the loss of the universal and the human body (section V). i end by offering a brief conclusion (section Vi). it goes without saying that this overarching division of the material into biographical, literary, and conceptual is only intended to serve an analytic purpose and that i do not pretend that its various boundaries can be strictly observed in every instance. on the contrary, as will be seen, the divisions are always to some extent fluid since Auden’s religious interest in Kierkegaard inevitably manifests itself in his poetry and criticism, which in turn are closely linked to the trajectory of his personal life, and vice versa. I. Auden’s Life and Conversion W.h. (Wystan hugh) auden was born in York, england, in 1907. in 1920 he entered a progressive boarding school in norfolk, and in 1925 christ college, oxford, originally on a scholarship to study natural sciences before he changed his degree to PPE (politics, philosophy, and economics), and finally to English literature. Already in 1930 T.S. Eliot (1888–1965) helped publish Auden’s first volume of poems, soon bringing him widespread recognition as the leading voice of a new generation of english writers. after completing his studies in 1928, auden went to berlin together with his lover christopher isherwood (1904–86), a journey that was followed in 1937 by his trip to iceland and then spain to help the republican forces in the civil War. concluding the latter experience in disillusionment, he travelled to china in 1938, returning to europe via the united states. the following year auden decided to return to the united states, where he stayed until 1956, having become a naturalized citizen in 1946. in new York auden met the great love of his life, chester Kallman (1921–75), who to his great sorrow declared an end to their sexual relationship as early as 1941. around the same time auden began attending the episcopal church and embraced the religious faith of his childhood home. in 1948 auden began what would become annual visits to the bay of naples, which also inaugurated a new phase in his poetry where joy in the created world and the body gained a new centrality. eight years later auden returned to europe for good influence of Kierkegaard’s thought on Auden, they do not provide much information about the particular form this influence took, and I have accordingly decided to ignore the mentioned works and restrict my focus to more explicit and extensive allusions.

W.H. Auden: Art and Christianity in an Age of Anxiety

3

when he accepted the position of professor of poetry at oxford, which he held until 1961. he subsequently settled in the small town of Kirchstetten, austria, and died in Vienna in 1976. When auden returned to the christianity of his childhood around 1940, he did so in midst of a general loss of faith in secular, liberal humanism in the face of the rise of fascism and World War ii, and a disillusionment with communism in the soviet union. as auden himself explained in a retrospective account of his conversion, confronted with the rise of nazism, “it was impossible any longer to believe that the values of liberal humanism were self-evident. unless one was prepared to take a relativist view that all values are a matter of personal taste, one could hardly avoid asking the question: ‘if, as i am convinced, the nazis are wrong and we are right, what is it that validates our values and invalidates theirs?’ ”4 already somewhat prior to this realization, auden was brought closer to christianity during his experience in the spanish civil War, when to his own surprise he discovered that the emptiness of the churches in barcelona greatly affected him: “i could not escape acknowledging that, however i had consciously ignored and rejected the church for sixteen years, the existence of churches and what went on in them had all the time been very important to me. if that was the case, what then?”5 on his return from spain auden met the “anglican layman” charles Williams, who was closely involved in the publication of Kierkegaard’s works in english, “and for the first time in my life [I] felt myself in the presence of personal sanctity.”6 as a consequence of this encounter auden “started to read some theological works, Kierkegaard in particular, and began going, in a tentative and experimental sort of way, to church.”7 auden in his account proceeds to list another, more personal reason for his conversion (the experience of a “demonic” jealousy over chester Kallman’s infidelity),8 but his turn to Kierkegaard during the late 1930s and early 1940s is far from unique. the dane’s emphasis on themes such as dread, despair, the absurd and subjectivity have frequently been seen to echo the pervasive spiritual crisis of the period and to explain the rapid growth of his popularity in the united states during these years.9 in addition, according to edward mendelson, to auden, W.h. auden in Modern Canterbury Pilgrims: The Story of Twenty-Three Converts and Why They Chose the Anglican Communion, ed. by James a. pike, new York: morehousegorham 1956, p. 40. for a recent study of auden’s faith and conversion, see arthur Kirsch, Auden and Christianity, new haven and london: Yale university press 2005. 5 auden in Modern Canterbury Pilgrims, p. 41. 6 ibid. 7 ibid. 8 see ibid.; and Kirsch, Auden and Christianity, p. 23. 9 see george cotkin, Existential America, baltimore and london: Johns hopkins university press 2003, pp. 54–87; peter a. schilling, Søren Kierkegaard and Anglo-American Literary Culture of the Thirties and Forties, ph.d. thesis, columbia university, new York 1994; lee c. barrett, “the usa: from neo-orthodoxy to plurality,” in Kierkegaard’s International Reception, tome iii, The Near East, Asia, Australia and the Americas, ed. by Jon stewart, aldershot: ashgate 2009 (Kierkegaard Research: Sources, Reception and Resources, vol. 8), pp. 230–5. 4

4

Leonardo F. Lisi Kierkegaard’s existential christianity offered two strengths that psychoanalysis and politics could not: it perceived its relation to an absolute value; and it understood that it could never claim to know or embody that value…auden scarcely needed Kierkegaard’s absolute to know that hitler was in the wrong, but because it obliged him to acknowledge that he too was in the wrong, he could believe its implicit judgment against hitler more thoroughly than he could believe judgments that gave secret consolations to vanity.10

mendelson’s claim draws on Kierkegaard’s well-known maxim that “in relation to god we are always in the wrong,”11 which charles Williams had quoted in his 1938 The Descent of the Dove, one of the earliest english studies discussing Kierkegaard at some length and a profound influence on Auden.12 The more specific aspects of auden’s reception of Kierkegaard in this general context will be examined in the sections that follow. II. Kierkegaard and Literature it is striking that auden, unlike other artists in the twentieth century such as, for example, rainer maria rilke (1875–1926), does not appear to have had any appreciation for Kierkegaard’s literary qualities.13 in his earliest longer pronouncement on Kierkegaard, the 1944 review of Either/Or, auden thus echoes Walter lowrie in his opening assessment of the work: “Either/Or” is one of the less important books of a very important author…[T]hose to whom [Kierkegaard’s] works are still unfamiliar, should not begin with this one. the christian would do better, i think, to start with “fear and trembling” or “training in Christianity”; the philosopher, with his masterpiece, “Concluding Unscientific postscript”; the psychologist with “sickness unto death”; and the general reader, with “the present age,” perhaps, or “the Journals.”14

edward mendelson, Later Auden, new York: ferrar, straus and giroux 1999, p. 130. SKS 3, 320 / EO2, 346. 12 charles Williams, The Descent of the Dove: A Short History of the Holy Spirit in the Church, grand rapids, michigan: eerdmans 1980, p. 219. mendelson quotes a letter by auden to stephen spender from the spring of 1940, testifying to the importance that this statement held for him during the early period of his turn to christianity: “What you say about ‘center’ is probably true. i believe it to be true there but am very shy about revealing [that i believe] it, partly because the nearest i can get now to expressing it directly is Kierkegaard’s statement, ‘Before God we are always in the wrong,’ and carelessly made such a remark appears misleading and defeatist” (mendelson, Later Auden, p. 132). 13 as i have elsewhere argued at length, this fact may be due to the particular nature of the anglo-saxon reception of Kierkegaard, which adopts a marked biographical and theological approach during the 1930s and 1940s that aggressively sidelines the earlier, more literary appreciation of his writings. see leonardo f. lisi, “on the reception history of Either/Or in the anglo-saxon World,” in Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook, 2008, pp. 327–64. 14 W.h. auden, “a preface to Kierkegaard,” The New Republic, vol. 110, no. 20, 1944, p. 683. 10 11

W.H. Auden: Art and Christianity in an Age of Anxiety

5

What is remarkable in this comment is not only the ease with which auden dismisses one of Kierkegaard’s most literary works, but also the fact that in his roll-call of relevant social figures—Christian, philosopher, psychologist, and general reader— the poet appears to be the only one not represented. artists qua artists, it seems, do not strike auden as having any particular business with Kierkegaard. This view is confirmed in Auden’s “Introduction” to his anthology of Kierkegaard eight years later. Significantly, he begins by stating that, “Though his writings are often brilliantly poetic and often deeply philosophic, Kierkegaard was neither a poet nor a philosopher, but a preacher, an expounder and defender of christian doctrine and christian conduct.”15 The same view reappears in the final paragraph, where auden proclaims the collection known in english as The Attack upon “Christendom” to be Kierkegaard’s “most important” book, since it reveals his intentions and the perspective from which his entire authorship should be viewed.16 auden thus clearly reads Kierkegaard’s oeuvre as a teleological progression, making a specifically christian message the standard and measure of his texts. this lack of appreciation for Kierkegaard as a literary author as well as (or even rather than) a christian thinker is also apparent in the selections that make up The Living Thoughts of Kierkegaard. there is nothing to be found, for example, from “a seducer’s diary,” or from constantin constantius’ narratives in Repetition, and even the short section of “prefatory aphorisms” that opens the anthology is clearly chosen and organized according to thematic rather than formal principles.17 further, the length of the vast majority of passages is less than a page, and even the longer ones do not provide any hint of the author’s identity, thereby making all statements the product of a disembodied “Kierkegaard.” the approximately 250 pages of quotations, moreover, are presented without any critical apparatus or bibliographical information about the passages’ original location.18 a non-specialist would W.h. auden, “introduction,” in The Living Thoughts of Kierkegaard, ed. by W.h. auden, new York: new York review of books 1999, p. vii. 16 ibid., p. xxx. 17 Roughly, aphorisms 1–11 deal with the conflict between cognition and experience; numbers 12–19 with the objectification of experience in modern society and philosophy; and numbers 20–7 with christianity and its subjective mode of existence (see The Living Thoughts of Kierkegaard, pp. 3–9). the only other literary passages to be found in the entire book are a drastically shortened selection of four of the versions of abraham’s ascent to mount moriah from Fear and Trembling (pp. 97–100); the brief parable “the domestic goose” from the Journals (pp. 223–5); and the first-person narrative by Nebuchadnezzar from Stages on Life’s Way (pp. 238–44). it should be noted that auden in his later essay “a Knight of doleful countenance” does state that “even reading him in an english translation, one can tell that Kierkegaard is a master of his mother tongue, who can manage with equal effectiveness every style—the high, the homely, the abstract, the concrete….” he does not, however, develop this point (W.h. auden, “a Knight of doleful countenance,” The New Yorker, vol. 44, may 25, 1968, p. 152). 18 the only information provided occurs after the introduction, where the following note appears: “W.h. auden has selected and arranged the essence of Kierkegaard’s thought from The Journals, Either/Or, Repetition, Fear and Trembling, Philosophical Fragments, The Concept of Dread, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, The Present Age, The Works of Love, Two Minor Ethico-Religious Treatises, The Sickness unto Death, Training in Christianity” 15

6

Leonardo F. Lisi

accordingly not only be unable to find the original context of a given passage, but would remain unaware of any of its literary dimensions, such as the pseudonymous voice that speaks it from a particular fictional position, or its placement in a larger thought experiment. this abstraction from the concretization of discourses that Kierkegaard labored at with such care serves to reduce his writings to a bare conceptual content. at the same time, however, auden’s decision to organize the anthology into small sections, often breaking up longer passages of a text into separate units, also disrupts Kierkegaard’s philosophical analyses. the latter mostly develop particular concepts and dialectical relations over the course of extensive discussions with numerous digressions and elaborations, none of which can find a place in Auden’s selection. The Living Thoughts of Kierkegaard in this way not only works against Kierkegaard’s own literary principles, but in fact forces his writings into a short aphoristic form that— although not alien to the dane (one need only think of the “diapsalmata” in Either/ Or)—distinctly approximates what has become known as the “audenesque.” if, in this way, auden, on the one hand, is not particularly interested in Kierkegaard’s own literary qualities, on the other he would seem to adopt him to his own. it is accordingly no surprise that auden also draws on Kierkegaardian categories for the definition of his own aesthetic principles. In his 1946–47 lectures on shakespeare, auden puts forward the following claim at the beginning of his discussion of Romeo and Juliet: “art is divided not between the good and bad, but between the interesting and the boring, and what is interesting is the exceptional. the new in a work of art, tragic or comic, is the aesthetically interesting, the exception to the universal norm.”19 the shift toward the categories of the interesting and boring as the standard of aesthetic judgments, rather than the good and bad or the beautiful and ugly, has frequently been claimed to be central to modern art, and finds one of its earliest full-fledged explorations in Kierkegaard’s “Rotation of Crops,” in the first volume of Either/Or.20 that auden in fact is deriving his own claim from Kierkegaard is suggested by the analysis of Romeo and Juliet which follows and where he discusses the forces of contingency that govern its outcome. friar lawrence, auden points out, could have warned romeo that the poison Juliet took was only a sleeping potion, and thereby prevent the lovers’ death. “but if he had,” auden concludes, “you would get a play on marriage, which is not aesthetically interesting.”21 auden proceeds to elaborate his use of the category of the interesting here by explicitly drawing on Kierkegaard: (The Living Thoughts, p. xxxi). the description of the pages that follow this note as “the essence” further suggests the view that the literary aspects of Kierkegaard’s writings are accidental and superfluous. 19 W.h. auden, Lectures on Shakespeare, reconstructed and ed. by arthur Kirsch, princeton, new Jersey: princeton university press 2000, p. 44. for a similar statement, see also W.h. auden, The Enchafèd Flood: Three Critical Essays on the Romantic Spirit, new York: Vintage 1950, p. 100. 20 SKS 2, 271–89 / EO1, 285–300. for an illuminating analysis of the category of the interesting in Kierkegaard with respect to the development of modern art, see Karsten harries, The Meaning of Modern Art, evanston, illinois: northwestern university press 1968, pp. 49–60. 21 auden, Lectures on Shakespeare, p. 50.

W.H. Auden: Art and Christianity in an Age of Anxiety

7

in Either/Or, Kierkegaard distinguishes between the external history of an individual, a succession of events culminating in one intense clarifying moment, and internal history, in which “every little moment is of the utmost importance” and which must be understood in the context of the passage of time. The first, external history, Kierkegaard says, is the artist’s or poet’s natural subject because he can show it with the concentration that art requires. The second, internal history, is far more difficult to represent in art.22

this statement is followed by three long quotations from the second volume of Either/Or, in which Judge William describes the difference between marriage and first love. To the Judge, as he puts it in one of the passages quoted by Auden, Romantic [that is, first] love can very well be represented in the moment, but conjugal love cannot, because an ideal husband is not one who is such once in his life but one who every day is such. if i would represent a hero who conquers kingdoms and lands, it can very well be represented in the moment, but a cross-bearer who every day takes up his cross cannot be represented either in poetry or in art, because the point is that he does it every day.23

the uninteresting and unaesthetic nature of marriage is tied to its continuity in time, which precisely prevents it from generating the kind of deviation from a norm that modern art gives primacy. it is noteworthy that in drawing on Kierkegaard for his conception of the category of the interesting auden does not address the existential critique of the aesthetic that frames Judge William’s analysis. on the contrary, his discussion would appear to suggest that it is a good thing that romeo and Juliet did not marry, since otherwise we would have no play. to Judge William, however, the unsuitability of marriage to art is clearly not to the detriment of the former but the latter, since it lays bare the inability of the aesthetic adequately to grasp existence. contrary to what might appear, however, the absence of this dimension of Kierkegaard’s argument from auden’s account is not due to an oversight or deliberate silence, but rather to his implicit agreement with it. in The Sea and the Mirror, auden’s sequel to shakespeare’s The Tempest and his most complex poetic exploration of the relation between art and life, caliban thus makes the following statement: having learnt his language, i begin to feel something of the seriocomic embarrassment of the dedicated dramatist, who, in representing to you your condition of estrangement from the truth, is doomed to fail the more he succeeds, for the more truthfully he paints the condition, the less clearly can he indicate the truth from which it is estranged, the brighter his revelation of the truth in its order, its justice, its joy, the fainter shows his picture of your actual condition in all its drabness and sham, and, worse still, the more sharply he defines the estrangement itself…the more he must strengthen your delusion that awareness of the gap is in itself a bridge, your interest in your imprisonment a release, so that far from your being led by him to contrition and surrender, the regarding ibid. ibid., p. 51; SKS 3, 134 / EO2, 135. auden also included this passage in The Living Thoughts of Kierkegaard, p. 78. 22 23

8

Leonardo F. Lisi of your defects in his mirror, your dialogue using his words, with yourself about yourself, becomes the one activity which never…lets you down…a madness of which you can only be cured by some shock quite outside his control, an unpredictable misting over of his glass or an absurd misprint in his text.24

the full import of caliban’s statement in the context of The Sea and the Mirror as a whole is difficult to determine due to its deliberately convoluted prose and the various levels of discourse in which it is couched, but it is possible to trace its general outline. art, caliban claims, is “doomed to fail” because it cannot adequately grasp the human condition in its fallen state since it must either faithfully represent our estrangement from “the truth” and renounce capturing that truth itself; or, vice versa, represent “the truth in its order, its justice, its joy,” and not the misery of our estrangement; or, finally, make the gap between existence and truth its focus and thereby generate the illusion that the aesthetic awareness of that gap is itself the solution to it. What instead ought to be obtained is “surrender and contrition,” which can only be achieved by breaking with the aesthetic through “some shock quite outside [the dramatist’s] control.” like Judge William, caliban in this way claims that the aesthetic requires a point of reference beyond itself if it is to be retained and justified. The idea that art qua art falls short of the ultimate reality of experience and in fact provides an illegitimate escape from it can thus be seen as central to auden no less than to Kierkegaard.25 auden’s reliance on Kierkegaard for his discussion of the nature and function of art is further accompanied by his use of Kierkegaardian concepts for his analyses of specific literary works. In his reading of Shakespeare’s The Two Gentlemen of Verona he describes how “launce is faithful to his dog, Julia is faithful to proteus, and eglamour is faithful to his dead wife.”26 Quoting sylvia’s description of the last of these characters, “No grief did ever come so near thy heart / As when thy lady and thy true-love died, / Upon whose grave thou vow’dst pure chastity,”27 auden goes on to state that “Kierkegaard discusses the implications of such a vow in Works of Love,” and gives two long quotations from that text’s section “the Work of love in recollecting one Who is dead.”28 At first sight, the turn to Kierkegaard here seems weakly motivated. Eglamour is only a very minor character in The Two Gentlemen of Verona, and the faithfulness to his wife that provides the explicit link to Kierkegaard’s Works of Love merely serves the marginal function in the plot of justifying the chaste Sylvia’s confidence when she needs his help to make her way to Verona. the two long quotations from Kierkegaard on fidelity to the dead that follow, which take up approximately one-sixth of the entire analysis of The Two Gentlemen of Verona, thus seem disproportionate at best W.h. auden, Collected Poems, ed. by edward mendelson, new York: the modern library 2007, pp. 440–1. 25 in this respect see also auden’s essays “the Virgin and the dynamo” and “postscript: christianity and art,” in The Dyer’s Hand and Other Essays, london: faber and faber 1962, pp. 61–71; pp. 456–61. 26 auden, Lectures on Shakespeare, p. 30. 27 ibid. 28 ibid., pp. 30–1; SKS 9, 339–52 / WL, 345–58. auden also included this passage in The Living Thoughts of Kierkegaard, p. 82. 24

W.H. Auden: Art and Christianity in an Age of Anxiety

9

in light of the importance of this theme in shakespeare’s play. however, on closer consideration, it becomes clear that auden here intends Kierkegaard’s discussion further to expand his earlier distinction between love as a unique relation of spirit, and desire which always relates to a class of objects. as auden puts it: “if desire were really one to one, self to self, there would never be a problem of infidelity, but desire will always, without confusion, demand a particular class….all of the relation in friendship, a relation of spirit, can be unique. in sexual love the only uniqueness can be fidelity.”29 This perception of fidelity as the expression of spiritual love in a sexual relationship would clearly have carried particular weight for auden, whose return to christianity, as mentioned above, was amongst other things triggered by chester Kallman’s betrayal. by placing eglamour’s devotion to his deceased wife in the same category as launce’s to his dog and Julia’s to proteus, auden conceives of these relations as similar in nature to the love discussed by Kierkegaard, which stands in direct opposition to the fickle desire embodied by the aptly named Proteus himself. if “the point” of The Two Gentlemen of Verona, as auden claims, is the titlecharacters’ “final attainment of self-knowledge,”30 then this would accordingly seem to be grounded not in the return to their original objects of desire that the plot brings about, but to the attainment of a kind of christian agape which, as Kierkegaard puts it in the passage auden quotes, loves all living “disinterestedly, freely, faithfully.”31 in auden’s own words: “caring for a unique object is an illusion, but the feeling must be unique, and though that feeling may not be natural, it is a duty. You must love your neighbor as your self, uniquely.”32 What is remarkable about this discussion of shakespeare’s play in the present context is the way auden incorporates Kierkegaard on the basis of a completely minor moment in the text, and then uses him to draw radical implications for its meaning and structure as a whole. Kierkegaard provides auden with the framework through which to classify particular patterns of relation and to raise them to abstract conceptual categories. a similar use of Kierkegaard can be seen in auden’s discussion of Hamlet. summing up his analysis, auden there addresses the play’s classic crux in the following terms: Why doesn’t he act? He has to find an answer to the question, “Who am I?” He lacks a basic sense of a reason for existence at all. hamlet lacks faith in god and in himself. Consequently he must define his existence in terms of others, e.g., I am the man whose mother married his uncle who murdered his father. he would like to become what the greek tragic hero is, a creature of situation. hence, his inability to act, for he can only “act,” i.e. play at possibilities. he is fundamentally bored, and for that reason he acts theatrically.33

This definition of Hamlet’s condition as one of boredom is followed by two long quotations from Kierkegaard’s “rotation of crops” in Either/Or, which conclude Auden’s discussion. What is interesting here is that Auden uses these to define 29 30 31 32 33

auden, Lectures on Shakespeare, pp. 28–9. ibid., p. 28. ibid., p. 31; SKS 9, 351 / WL, 358. auden, Lectures on Shakespeare, p. 29. ibid., p. 164.

10

Leonardo F. Lisi

hamlet’s inability to revenge his father’s murder as not simply an absence of activity, but rather as its excess in the realm of possibility. from the Kierkegaardian perspective suggested by auden, hamlet’s problem arises from the fact that he is disengaged from experience and as a consequence remains unable to commit himself to himself. in auden’s view, brutus in Julius Caesar is an analogue to hamlet precisely in this sense: “i must realize that i mustn’t hide part of myself from myself and make the situation easier than it is, in the way brutus does. i have to choose myself.”34 A final example of Auden’s use of Kierkegaardian concepts in his reading of literature can be taken from his discussion of the mob scene at the opening of Julius Caesar: Julius Caesar begins with a crowd scene. first things in shakespeare are always important. there are three types of groups of people: societies, communities, and crowds….the members of a crowd have nothing in common except togetherness. the individual is a contradiction in a crowd. the “we” precedes the “i.” in itself the crowd has no function.35

auden proceeds to illustrate this point with a number of passages from what he refers to as The Present Age (that is, the review of Two Ages),36 longer versions of which he subsequently also included in The Living Thoughts of Kierkegaard.37 the importance of Kierkegaard’s concept of the crowd for Auden is again testified to in his return to this same problem at the conclusion of his 1954 poem “sext”: the crowd sees only one thing (which only the crowd can see), an epiphany of that which does whatever is done. Whatever god a person believes in, in whatever way he believes (no two are exactly alike), as one of the crowd he believes and only believes in that in which there is only one way of believing.38 34 ibid., pp. 163–4. auden’s comparison of brutus and shakespeare by means of Kierkegaard also occurs in the context of his earlier analysis of Julius Caesar. there he writes: “brutus is related to hamlet. hamlet knows he’s in despair, but brutus and other characters in Julius Caesar don’t know. in The Sickness unto Death, Kierkegaard emphasizes that unconscious despair is the most extreme form of despair, and he sees it as a condition of paganism. he praises the great ‘aesthetic’ achievements of pagan societies, but rejects the pagan’s aesthetic definition of spirit” (Lectures on Shakespeare, p. 136). this statement is followed by two long quotations from The Sickness unto Death in which anti-climacus argues that even the aesthetic modes of experience that do not appear to be in despair in fact are. 35 auden, Lectures on Shakespeare, pp. 126–7. 36 ibid., pp. 127–8. 37 auden, The Living Thoughts of Kierkegaard, pp. 24–6; p. 36. 38 auden, Collected Poems, p. 631. during the same period as his lectures on shakespeare auden also draws on Kierkegaard’s concept of the crowd for his analysis of Coriolanus in

W.H. Auden: Art and Christianity in an Age of Anxiety

11

This fluidity in Auden’s use of Kierkegaard’s description of the crowd, as both a tool for analysis and material for his poetry, is also characteristic of the concepts he engages with primarily at a religious or philosophical level. in the following section i discuss the three most important of these: the concept of anxiety, that of the stages of existence, and that of the loss of the universal which for auden accompanies the movement of infinite resignation. III. Anxiety in “a preface to Kierkegaard” auden describes Kierkegaard as part of a tradition of “existential” thought, which takes as its point of departure “man’s immediate experience as a subject, i.e., as a being in need, an interested being whose existence is at stake.”39 in this tradition, as auden goes on to explain, There is…no timeless, disinterested I who stands outside my finite temporal self and serenely knows whatever there is to know; cognition is always a specific historic act accompanied by hope and fear….from this viewpoint, the basic human problem is man’s anxiety in time; e.g., his present anxiety over himself in relation to his past and parents (freud), his present anxiety over himself in relation to his future and his neighbors (marx), his present anxiety over himself in relation to eternity and god (Kierkegaard).40

From Auden’s point of view, Kierkegaard’s specific concern with the concept of anxiety not only provides him with a place in the history of philosophy at large but also guarantees his contemporary relevance, side by side with the other two major figures of the age, Freud and Marx. What Auden more particularly understands by anxiety in this context is made clear in the following paragraph: man, says Kierkegaard, is not only a being, like an atom of hydrogen, but also a being who becomes, and not only a being who becomes, as an acorn becomes an oak tree, but a conscious being who at every moment must choose of his own free will one of an infinite number of possibilities which he foresees. moreover, each choice is irrevocable, i.e., man has, both individually and socially, a history; what happens to him does not happen in time, but time itself happens in what he does. hence his anxiety, for he can neither guarantee nor undo the consequences of any choice he makes.41

anxiety derives from the condition of having to make decisions without any guaranteed standards of judgment and without being able to undo any choice once made. this experience of living and acting in a void is brought to the forefront in his conversation with Howard Griffith; see Howard Griffith, Conversations with Auden, ed. by donald allen, san francisco: grey fox press 1981, pp. 60–76. for a further use of Kierkegaard’s concept of the crown by auden, see also the discussion of New Year Letter below as well as the “introduction” in The Living Thoughts of Kierkegaard, pp. xxvii–xxviii; “the rewards of patience,” in Partisan Review, vol. 9, no. 4, 1942, p. 336; and “the poet and the city,” in The Dyer’s Hand, pp. 72–89. 39 auden, “a preface to Kierkegaard,” p. 683. 40 ibid. 41 ibid.

12

Leonardo F. Lisi

The Age of Anxiety, one of auden’s major poetic works, begun the same year that “a preface to Kierkegaard” was written. as one of the poem’s personae puts it, the fears we know are of not knowing. Will nightfall bring us some awful order—Keep a hardware store in a small town….teach science for life to progressive girls—?42

What here receives a somewhat comic turn, the anxiety that results from the indeterminacy of our freedom and future in the absence of a governing order in modernity, is explored in a more somber fashion in auden’s earlier New Year Letter, written shortly after the outbreak of World War ii: The flares of desperation rise from signalers who justly plead their cause is piteous indeed: bewildered, how can i divine Which is my true socratic sign, Which of these calls to conscience is for me the casus fœderis, from all the tasks submitted, choose the athlon i must not refuse?... but where to serve and when and how? o none escape these questions now….43

placed in this desperate situation, Kierkegaard suddenly appears as a possible guide out of it, reminiscent of t.s. eliot’s use of dante in Little Gidding two years later: as out of europe comes a Voice, compelling all to make their choice, a theologian who denies What more than twenty centuries of europe have assumed to be the basis of civility, our evil Daimon to express in all its ugly nakedness What none before dared say aloud, the metaphysics of the crowd, the immanent imperative by which the lost and injured live in mechanized societies…44

42 43 44

auden, Collected Poems, p. 472. ibid., pp. 222–3. ibid., p. 223.

W.H. Auden: Art and Christianity in an Age of Anxiety

13

although auden does not explicitly name the voice in question, its association with europe, theology, choice and the crowd make it clear whom he has in mind.45 of particular interest here are the lines, “our evil Daimon to express / In all its ugly nakedness / What none before dared say aloud.” “Our evil Daimon” functions as the subject of the clause, which as a whole qualifies “a voice” in a manner analogous to the preceding three lines. Kierkegaard is thus identified as the Socratic daimon uselessly invoked in the passage quoted earlier (“Which is my true socratic sign…”), and whose role is to aid us in making our choices by telling us those truths that we have not previously known and do not necessarily wish to hear.46 notably central among these is again Kierkegaard’s analysis of the crowd and its relation to the homogenizing forces of capitalist modernity.47 What is particularly interesting in this passage’s vision of Kierkegaard is that it shows how auden draws on him not only for the tools to diagnose and discuss the negative crisis of contemporary society, but also as a positive guide out of it. in order to investigate further this latter dimension of auden’s reception of Kierkegaard, it will be useful to focus on his understanding of the latter’s three stages of existence— the aesthetic, the ethical, and the religious—which constitute the various responses to the condition of anxiety that defines Auden’s world. IV. Stages of Existence a sign of the importance that Kierkegaard’s notion of the three stages of existence held for auden can be found in the fact that no less than a quarter of all the passages in The Living Thoughts of Kierkegaard are placed under the heading “the aesthetic, the ethical, and the religious.”48 this importance is similarly emphasized in “a preface to Kierkegaard,” where auden, following his discussion of the nature of anxiety, proceeds to point out that besides the condition of despair that remains unable to act there are only three solutions to its predicament: either man must achieve faith, “the power by which, without blinding himself to his anxiety, he is nevertheless still able to choose,” or he must “become an idolater, i.e., invent an auden lists alexander dru’s edition of Kierkegaard’s Journals as one of the “contemporary sources” for the New Year Letter at the end of the “notes” attached to the original edition of the poem as part of the volume The Double Man (W.h. auden, The Double Man, new York: random house 1941, p. 161). in addition, a few pages after the lines quoted here, Kierkegaard appears by name as one of the “prophets” who “curse” the modern “empiric economic man”: “ironic KierKegaard stared long / And muttered ‘All are in the wrong’ ” (auden, Collected Poems, p. 230). in this context it might also be mentioned that auden himself in 1940 described The Double Man to John lehman as being “in the form of Pascal’s Pensées or Kierkegaard’s journal, i.e. a series of Reflections on art, politics and death etc.” (cited in John fuller, W.H. Auden: A Commentary, princeton, new Jersey: princeton university press 1998, p. 319). 46 presumably it is this negative relation by Kierkegaard to our normative existence that motivates the predicate “evil.” 47 auden also repeatedly draws on Kierkegaard’s conception of the crowd in the “notes” to New Year Letter; see auden, The Double Man, pp. 84–5; p. 101. 48 see auden, The Living Thoughts of Kierkegaard, pp. 41–110. 45

14

Leonardo F. Lisi

illusion of absolute certainty out of the individual passion of his immediate moods (the esthetic) or the universal abstractions of his intellect (the ethical).”49 While all three modes of existence are responses to the same condition of anxiety, the ethical and aesthetic merely seek to escape it by substituting anxiety for illusory certainties, whereas the religious is able to incorporate this aspect of experience and thereby remains true to the human condition in the moment of resolving it. this difference in approach to the condition of human experience manifests itself, according to auden’s exposition of Kierkegaard, in the categories each sphere applies to human action. a theft, for example, will be judged by the aesthetic through the category of the “interesting,” while the ethical will view it in terms of “good and bad” and the religious in those of “innocence and guilt.”50 the implications of such distinctions are made clear by auden elsewhere. in the “notes” attached to the original edition of New Year Letter, for example, he opposes the respective approaches of the aesthetic and the ethical: As far as I know, Kierkegaard was the first to distinguish accurately between tribulations, all the troubles that come upon us from without and can’t be disposed of by acts of will but can only be endured, that is, treated aesthetically; and temptations, all the internal conflicts that must not be endured but solved in action by the will, that is treated ethically. Further, he was the first to include among tribulation, not only physical disasters like flood, fire and famine, but also all images, impulses, feelings of guilt that rise from the subconscious. considered as practical applied activities, all sciences have as their aim the transformation of tribulations into temptations. Why is this desirable? because it turns an insoluble problem of passive endurance into a soluble problem of conduct, an aesthetic into an ethical problem.51

auden is here presumably expanding on two brief discussions included in alexander dru’s edition of Kierkegaard’s Journals, originally published in 1939.52 Significantly, Auden not only differentiates between the two modes of existence as passive and active, each with their respective fields of operation, but also emphasizes the desirability of subordinating the aesthetic to the ethical. in fact it is the inability to progress in this way, the attempt to continue viewing the ethical in aesthetic terms rather than vice versa, which to auden constitutes the danger of psychology.53 if auden the poet in this way once again restricts the validity of the aesthetic, elsewhere he also points to the limitations of the ethical with respect to the religious. in one of the columns written under the pseudonym didymus for The Commonweal at the end of 1942, auden thus remarks that the ethical’s “assumption, ‘to know the good is to will it,’ has no answer to the question: ‘Yes, but first of all one must will to know the good, and it seems only too clear that the majority of mankind auden, “a preface to Kierkegaard,” p. 683. ibid., pp. 683–4. 51 auden, “notes,” in The Double Man, p. 130. 52 see The Journals of Søren Kierkegaard, ed. by alexander dru, new York: harper 1959, pp. 207–8; pp. 246–7. 53 auden, “notes,” in The Double Man, p. 131. 49 50

W.H. Auden: Art and Christianity in an Age of Anxiety

15

lack that will.’ ”54 this critique of the ethical, that it cannot come to terms with the problem of human will and therefore, by extension, also lacks a conception of sin, is central to Kierkegaard’s polemics against it,55 and auden returns to this point in his “introduction” to The Living Thoughts of Kierkegaard a decade later: “knowledge of the good does not automatically cause the knower to will it. he may know the law and yet not only be tempted to disobey but yield to the temptation. he may even disobey deliberately out of spite, just to show that he is free.”56 only in the religious, as Auden proceeds to argue, can this conflict be grasped properly.57 the superiority of the religious with respect to the ethical repeats itself in its relation to the aesthetic. in The Sea and the Mirror, for example, prospero begins by discussing his imminent departure from ariel and the world of art and aesthetics that the latter represents: now our partnership is dissolved, i feel so peculiar: as if i had been on a drunk since i was born And suddenly now, and for the first time, am cold sober, With all my unanswered wishes and unwashed days stacked up all round my life.…58

The spirit of art is here clearly identified with deceit and illusion. A few stanzas earlier prospero even appears to allude to Kierkegaard’s The Concept of Anxiety when he describes how under Ariel’s influence, “the uncontrollable vertigo, / because it can scent no shame, is unobliged to strike.”59 in Kierkegaard’s work, vertigo is repeatedly linked to the experience of anxiety,60 which is also closely related to shame. both are ultimately grounded in the encounter with our own freedom, making the protection that art is said to grant us in The Sea and the Mirror a separation from ourselves. prospero’s rupture with ariel is in this way both painful and uncertain, but also provides the precondition for a new mode of existence that resembles Kierkegaard’s religious stage in a number of ways: When the servants settle me into a chair in some well-sheltered corner of the garden, And arrange my muffler and rugs, shall I ever be able to stop myself from telling them what i am doing,— sailing alone, out over seventy thousand fathoms—? Yet if i speak, i shall sink without a sound John deedy, Auden as Didymus: The Poet as Columnist Anonymous, mount Vernon, new York: paul p. appel 1993, p. 30. 55 see, for example, the excerpt from The Sickness unto Death in The Living Thoughts of Kierkegaard, pp. 160–3; SKS 11, 201ff. / SUD, 87ff. 56 auden, “introduction,” in The Living Thoughts of Kierkegaard, p. xix. 57 ibid., pp. xxi–xxiii. 58 auden, Collected Poems, p. 409. 59 ibid., p. 406. 60 see, for example, SKS 4, 365 / CA, 60. 54

16

Leonardo F. Lisi into unmeaning abysses. can i learn to suffer Without saying something ironic or funny on suffering? i never suspected the way of truth Was a way of silence….61

the seventy thousand fathoms are a direct quotation from Kierkegaard, who makes repeated use of the phrase to describe the condition of faith. in the Concluding Unscientific Postscript, for example, climacus writes: Without risk, no faith. Faith is the contradiction between the infinite passion of inwardness and the objective uncertainty. if i am able to apprehend god objectively, i do not have faith; but because i cannot do this, i must have faith. if i want to keep myself in faith, i must continually see to it that i hold fast the objective uncertainty, see to it that in the objective uncertainty i am “out on 70,000 fathoms of water” and still have faith.62

freed of the illusions generated by the aesthetic and the ethical, faith holds on to the ultimate impossibility of attaining objective certainty as its necessary condition: without uncertainty there can by definition be no faith, but only knowledge. further, the experience of this radical negativity is envisioned by prospero to occur in the midst of the everyday, similar to the way in which Johannes de silentio in Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling imagines the Knight of faith to “express the sublime in the pedestrian.”63 like abraham in that work, moreover, prospero will be forced to remain silent about his mode of experience, which is located beyond the universal structure of language and which, if expressed at all, can only take the form of irony.64 although some disagreement exists among critics as to whether prospero’s commitment to the religious is to be seen as genuine or not,65 it is clear that auden here places it after and above the aesthetic as its resolution.

auden, Collected Poems, p. 409. SKS 7, 187 / CUP1, 204. auden included this passage in The Living Thoughts of Kierkegaard, p. 129. the phrase is also echoed in his earlier poem “leap before Your look”: “A solitude ten thousand fathoms deep / Sustains the bed on which we lie, my dear: / Although I love you, you will have to leap; / Our dream of safety has to disappear” (Auden, Collected Poems, p. 312). 63 SKS 4, 136 / FT, 41. auden included this passage in The Living Thoughts of Kierkegaard, p. 110. 64 see “problema iii” in SKS 4, 172–207 / FT, 82–120. auden included an excerpt from this section in The Living Thoughts of Kierkegaard, pp. 100–1. 65 prospero’s movement from aesthetic to religious is seen as genuine by monroe K. spears, The Poetry of W.H. Auden: The Disenchanted Island, new York: oxford university press 1963, p. 220; herman servotte, “auden and Kierkegaard,” in Multiple Words, Multiple Words: Essays in Honor of Irène Simon, liège: university of liège 1988, p. 276; and dwight eddins, “Quitting the game. auden’s ‘the sea and the mirror,” Modern Language Quarterly, vol. 41, no. 1, 1980, p. 79. according to rachel Wetzsteon, however, prospero in fact remains stuck in the aesthetic in spite of his pretences of leaving it behind (rachel Wetzsteon, Influential Ghosts: A Study of Auden’s Sources, new York and london: routledge 2007, p. 98). 61 62

W.H. Auden: Art and Christianity in an Age of Anxiety

17

While these instances emphasize the opposition between the aesthetic, the ethical, and the religious, it must be noted that auden likewise grounds the latter’s superiority over the former two on its ability to synthesize them. as he summarizes this point in “a preface to Kierkegaard,” the religious sides with the esthetic against the ethical in upholding the unique importance of the individual will. but in asserting that the good act…is always and only the product of a good will, and the bad act…always the product of an evil will, it sides with the ethical against the esthetic belief that to will is valuable in itself.66

the importance that Kierkegaard’s conception of the religious held for auden is likewise made clear in his 1942 poem For the Time Being. Written as a “christmas oratorio,” several of the personae echo Kierkegaardian maxims. the rationalist Herod, for example, points out that “the notion of a finite God is absurd,” a view echoed earlier by simeon, who goes on to claim that men in relation to it, “would have no choice but either to accept absolutely or to reject absolutely, yet in their choice there should be no element of luck, for they would be fully conscious of what they were accepting or rejecting.”67 this conception of faith as an act of decision when faced with an absurd paradox is clearly in tune with auden’s understanding of Kierkegaard’s christianity as a subjectively determined assent held fast in objective uncertainty. The difficulty of this relation is again emphasized with reference to the experience of vertigo also invoked by prospero in The Sea and the Mirror. as the star of nativity proclaims, “Beware. All those who follow me are led / Onto that Glassy Mountain where are no / Footholds for logic, to that Bridge of Dread / Where knowledge but increases vertigo.”68 if art in The Sea and the Mirror obscures anxiety, faith in For the Time Being leads us to it.69 to the extent that the latter work constitutes one of auden’s most mature and comprehensive pronouncements on the nature of his christianity, it is thus clear that Kierkegaard is central to it. in addition to these various synchronic discriminations between the three stages of existence as different responses to the same human actions and events, auden’s most extensive engagement with them occurs in a diachronic exposition of their auden, “a preface to Kierkegaard,” p. 684. auden had already made the same claim two years earlier in another of his didymus columns; see John deedy, Auden as Didymus, pp. 36–7. 67 auden, Collected Poems, p. 394; p. 388. the claim that the incarnation is absurd is central to Kierkegaard, and can be found in, for example, Philosophical Fragments (see, for example, SKS 4, 242–53 / PF, 37–48). this work also emphasizes the subject’s contribution to the possibility of faith, which has frequently been identified with “the leap of faith” (SKS 4, 247–8 / PF, 42–3) and which likely underlies auden’s notion of an absolute choice in this passage. 68 auden, Collected Poems, p. 368. 69 somewhat more humorously, this religious imperative is repeated in For the Time Being in Joseph’s plea to gabriel for some proof that mary has not simply been unfaithful to him. As the archangel commands, “No, you must believe; / Be silent, and sit still” (Auden, Collected Poems, p. 364). 66

18

Leonardo F. Lisi

respective structures. in the “introduction” to The Living Thoughts of Kierkegaard auden writes: as [Kierkegaard] is concerned, for the most part, with describing the way in which these categories [the aesthetic, the ethical, and the religious] apply in christian or postchristian society, one can perhaps make his meaning clearer by approaching these categories historically, i.e., by considering the aesthetic and the ethical as stages when each was a religion, and then comparing them with the christian faith.70

While the reasoning here is somewhat muddled (it is unclear why precisely what Kierkegaard does not do should help explain what he does), auden proceeds to characterize “The Greek Gods,” “The Gods of Greek Philosophy,” and finally “Judaism and christianity” as representatives of, respectively, the aesthetic, the ethical, and the religious.71 In the first of these, the central experience is “the physical weakness of the self in the face of an overwhelming powerful not-self.”72 confronted by this hostile world, the subject can survive only by means of passions, which are conceived as independent, divine powers. it is not all men, however, who receive aid from these powers, but only the hero, who is “glorious but not responsible for his successes or his failures.”73 as such, in the aesthetic religion “the temporal succession of events has no meaning, for what happens is simply what the gods choose arbitrarily to will.”74 in the ethical religion of greek philosophy, on the other hand, ideas, the first cause, the universal as god, are set up as the causes of order in the world, which man is capable of apprehending. as a consequence, where “to the aesthetic, time was unmeaning and overwhelming; to the ethical, it is an appearance which can be seen through,” and “the ethical hero is not the man of power, the man who does, but the philosopher, the man who knows.”75 in the revealed religion of the third stage, finally, god…is no longer a ground that can be related to intermittently: in the aesthetic, the relation to the gods depends on the pleasure of the gods; in the ethical, it depends on the activity of the worshipper (he must discover and pursue the truth); but in revealed religion the relation is always presupposed and unbreakable: we as individuals can ignore it and deny it, but then we are simply rebelling against the relation to the ground which always precedes us, and are then in sin.76

The definition of God as the individual’s ineluctable ground echoes the philosophical anthropology of Kierkegaard’s The Sickness unto Death,77 and auden uses it here to conclude his exposition by claiming that it is only with revealed religion that the 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77

auden, “introduction,” in The Living Thoughts of Kierkegaard, p. xiv. ibid., pp. xiv–xxiii. ibid., p. xiv. ibid., p. xv. ibid., pp. xiv–xv. ibid., p. xviii. ibid., pp. xx–xxi. SKS 11, 73 / SUD, 13.

W.H. Auden: Art and Christianity in an Age of Anxiety

19

element of choice can be introduced. being inevitably bound to the ground that posits us, the question is only how we decide to relate to it.78 If the justification for his historical exposition of Kierkegaard’s stages is rather weak, Auden’s recurrent return to the figure of the hero in his discussion suggests that it is in fact his interest in this type that provides his motivation. this suspicion is supported by the fact that Auden in his classifications of different kinds of heroes elsewhere repeatedly returns to the Kierkegaardian triad as an organizing principle. In the essay “Ishmael—Don Quixote,” first published in 1950, Auden in this way defines the hero as “The exceptional individual…who possesses authority over the average,” and proceeds to specify that “this authority can be of three kinds, aesthetic, ethical and religious.”79 the distinctions here echo those put forward in the “introduction” to The Living Thoughts of Kierkegaard, making it clear that the stages of existence also served auden for his literary criticism: the aesthetic hero is favored by fortune and comes to grief in the leveling experience of death, the ethical hero possesses a surplus of knowledge that is nevertheless in principle accessible to others,80 the religious hero is related to an absolute object in infinite subjective passion.81 V. The Loss of the Universal Body although auden drew heavily on Kierkegaard’s categories and clearly shared much of his conception of the nature of religious faith, a number of criticisms of the dane appear in his writing towards the beginning of the 1950s. in his contribution to the discussion on the topic of “religion and the intellectuals” in the Partisan Review of february 1950, auden thus makes the following statement: we…live in a historical period of rival fanatical faiths, a religious period in the existentialist sense in which martyrdom has once more become a familiar event, and we auden, “introduction,” in The Living Thoughts of Kierkegaard, p. xxiii. W.h. auden, “ishmael—don Quixote,” in The Enchafèd Flood, p. 90. for a discussion of auden’s use of Kierkegaard in his typologies of heroes, see William c. James, “anthropological poetics: auden’s typology of heroism,” Kierkegaardiana, vol. 10, 1977, pp. 239–45. 80 While auden’s discussion here echoes that in his introduction to The Living Thoughts of Kierkegaard, it is arguably surprising that in this more literary context here he does not draw on Kierkegaard’s analysis of the tragic hero in Fear and Trembling. possibly this is because Auden in “Ishmael—Don Quixote” is not concerned with a specifically tragic figure, as Johannes de silentio is in Fear and Trembling, where the conflict turns on the hero’s choice between two opposed ethical principles. at the same time, when auden does discuss the tragic hero in his essay “the greeks and us,” he also foregoes any reference to Kierkegaard, which suggests that a deeper disagreement might be at stake. see auden, “the greeks and us,” in Forewords and Afterwords, pp. 18–22. 81 auden, “ishmael—don Quixote,” pp. 90–4. auden also makes use of Kierkegaard’s categories to distinguish between types of literary heroes in his essay “genius and apostle,” in The Dyer’s Hand, pp. 433–55 and in his didymus writings, deedy, Auden as Didymus, pp. 29–30. 78 79

20

Leonardo F. Lisi cannot, any of us, really accept a religion which provides no criteria for distinguishing one of these faiths from another. Kierkegaard’s statement that a passionate commitment to an untruth is religiously superior to a lukewarm interest in the truth is excellent polemics in a situation where both parties are agreed as to what the truth is. When they are not, it is highly dangerous. to kick a beggar or to give him a dime may both be existentially “authentic” choices of oneself, but we need to know in what respects they differ. a purely existentialist attitude, since it has no conception of the universal or the eternal, cannot be christian, to whom the existential is only one, admittedly very important, aspect of his situation.82

auden here has in mind the passage from the Concluding Unscientific Postscript in which Johannes climacus famously proclaims that the person who prays to an idol with infinite passion is in more truth than the one who does so to the Christian God but without passion.83 auden’s rejection of this claim as not truly christian because it fails to provide a criterion on the basis of which one can distinguish between different kinds of faith is revealing, since it suggests that he now sees Kierkegaard as failing to deliver precisely what, as discussed in section i above, had originally drawn him to the dane: an alternative to moral relativism that would be able to justify one ideological position over and against another. more importantly still, the reason for this shortcoming in Kierkegaard is linked to his lack of “a conception of the universal or the eternal,” further indicating that auden now feels unease at the accentuated subjectivity of Kierkegaard’s conception of faith. this latter claim, that Kierkegaard does not have a conception of the universal, is developed further in auden’s subsequent criticism of the dane. in his 1968 review of the first volume of the Journal and Papers, auden’s growing mistrust of Kierkegaard is made clear from the outset. in marked contrast to his earlier enthusiasm, auden now begins by stating that Kierkegaard, “like pascal, nietzsche, and simone Weil… is one of those writers whom it is very difficult to estimate justly.”84 upon rereading their writings, “one’s doubts grow, one begins to react against their overemphasis on one aspect of the truth at the expense of all the others, and one’s first enthusiasm may all too easily turn into an equally exaggerated aversion.”85 similarly, where in his “introduction” to The Living Thoughts of Kierkegaard auden had singled out the final polemic against the church and The Attack upon “Christendom” as the standard and measure for Kierkegaard’s authorship, now the attempt to obtain martyrdom in the struggle against mynster and martensen is presented as a rather ridiculous affair.86 further, if in 1944 Kierkegaard’s contemporary relevance was assured by his position next to freud and marx, auden in “a Knight of doleful countenance” clearly views him as somewhat historically dated.87 his religious W.h. auden, “religion and the intellectuals,” Partisan Review, vol. 17, issue 2, february 1950, p. 124. 83 SKS 7, 184 / CUP1, 201. 84 auden, “a Knight of doleful countenance,” p. 141. 85 ibid. 86 see ibid., p. 142. 87 ibid., p. 154. 82

W.H. Auden: Art and Christianity in an Age of Anxiety

21

position, in fact, is no longer of universal value but the outcome of his particular biography: given his extraordinary upbringing, it is hardly surprising that Kierkegaard should have become—not intellectually but in his sensibility—a manichee. that is to say, though he would never have denied the orthodox doctrine that god created the world, and asserted that matter was created by an evil spirit, one does not feel in his writings the sense that, whatever sorrows and sufferings a man may have to endure, it is nevertheless a miraculous blessing to be alive.88

Interestingly, Charles Williams, who first brought Auden to Kierkegaard, had worried in 1938 that this kind of biographical explanation of Kierkegaard’s thought would eventually arise and prevent its proper appreciation.89 for auden, in the present context, the reference to Kierkegaard’s childhood serves to explain what he takes to be the dane’s inability to see the positive aspects of earthly life, his emphasis on the sorrow of good friday at the expense of the joy of christmas.90 in this light auden critically opposes Kierkegaard to a quotation from dietrich bonhoeffer (1906–45): “to long for the transcendent when you are in your wife’s arms is, to put it mildly, a lack of taste and it is certainly not what god expects of us….if he pleases to grant us some overwhelming earthly bliss, we ought not to try and be more religious than god himself.”91 auden’s claim that Kierkegaard is unable to appreciate the importance of the body and earthly existence comes after his already-mentioned stay in the bay of naples in 1948 and the concomitant shift toward such topics in his own poetry. but it is important to note that the point of this criticism is not simply that Kierkegaard ignores the pleasures of sensuous immediacy. on the contrary, as in the essay from the Partisan Review, to auden Kierkegaard’s lack of a conception of the body and earthly life constitutes a lack of understanding for the universal. as he wrote in his contribution to Modern Canterbury Pilgrims, as a spirit, a conscious person endowed with free will, every man has, through faith and grace, a unique “existential” relation to god, and few since st. augustine have described this relation more profoundly than Kierkegaard. but every man has a second relation to god which is neither unique nor existential: as a creature composed of matter, as a biological organism, every man, in common with everything else in the universe, is related by necessity to the god who created that universe and saw that it was good, for the laws of nature to which, whether he likes it or not, he must conform are of divine origin.92 ibid., p. 151. Williams, The Descent of the Dove, p. 213. 90 auden, “a Knight of doleful countenance,” p. 151. 91 ibid., p. 152. in his contribution to Modern Canterbury Pilgrims, auden similarly states: “much as i owe to Kierkegaard…i cannot let this occasion pass without commenting upon what seems to be his great limitation, a limitation which characterizes protestantism generally. a planetary visitor might read through the whole of his voluminous works without discovering that human beings are not ghosts but have bodies of flesh and blood” (ibid., pp. 41–2). 92 ibid., p. 42. 88 89

22

Leonardo F. Lisi

the body is the locus of universality and necessity, making Kierkegaard’s “manichaeism” representative of a subjectivity that threatens to become anarchic if left unchecked. a similar view would appear to underlie auden’s lines on Kierkegaard in Academic Graffiti, written some time between 1952 and 1970: “Søren Kierkegaard / Tried awfully hard / To take The Leap / But fell in a heap.”93 in spite of all his efforts, poor søren cannot free himself from the earthly heap that binds him, framing the religious leap not only as a failed attempt to escape the world but also ridiculing it through the contrast of the grandeur of its capitalized letters to its destination’s shabbiness. The movement of infinite resignation is as illusory as the ethical or aesthetic certainty that auden had already criticized. in spite of the severity of auden’s rejection of Kierkegaard’s apparent negation of the human world, it is crucial to note that the standard that auden perceives the latter to fall short of in fact derives from Kierkegaard himself. in the opposition between the freedom of the individual subject and the necessity of the universal body, the aim, for auden, is not the negation of either but their harmonious combination. While Kierkegaard himself did not achieve this unity in his personal life, his Knight of faith in Fear and Trembling nevertheless provides the best example of that goal. as auden writes following the quotation from bonhoeffer in his review of the Journals and Papers, Kierkegaard could not honestly have said this about himself, but in his extraordinary portrait of the Knight of faith one discovers to one’s amazement that he knew—bless him!—that it was a defect, not a virtue, in him that he could not say it. the ideal christian he describes is happily married, looks like a cheerful grocer, and is respected by his neighbors. “that,” Kierkegaard says, “is what one should be, but, alas, to me he is incomprehensible: i only understand the Knight of the doleful countenance.”94

Kierkegaard’s fault, in short, was not that he was too Kierkegaardian, but that he did not manage to be Kierkegaardian enough.95 VI. Conclusion in spite of his growing unease with aspects of Kierkegaard’s life and thought, auden accordingly did not ultimately reject the dane’s religious position. unsurprisingly, as late as in “a thanksgiving,” written some two years prior to his death in 1976, auden in this way still describes how “Wild Kierkegaard, Williams and Lewis / guided me back to belief.”96 there can be no doubt, however, that the height of auden’s engagement with Kierkegaard was reached several decades earlier, in the 1940s. during this period it is visible particularly in his long poems, New Year Letter, The Sea and the Mirror, For the Time Being, and The Age of Anxiety, as well as his lectures on shakespeare and the essays of criticism published in The Enchafèd auden, Collected Poems, p. 680. auden, “a Knight of doleful countenance,” p. 152. 95 the centrality of Kierkegaard’s Knight of faith for auden’s late poetics is also pointed to by mendelson, Later Auden, pp. 291–2. 96 auden, Collected Poems, p. 890. 93 94

W.H. Auden: Art and Christianity in an Age of Anxiety

23

Flood. This temporal density in references to Kierkegaard confirms what was stated at the opening of this article, namely, that auden’s reception of Kierkegaard was determined by his christian conversion, which likewise occurred at the beginning of the 1940s. it also makes clear that Kierkegaard’s impact was not restricted to auden’s biography but played a pivotal role in his poetry and prose. although auden did not particularly appreciate Kierkegaard’s own literary qualities, he unquestionably found much he could agree with at a conceptual level and used it both as content for his own poems and in his analyses of aesthetics and specific works of art.

bibliography I. References to or Uses of Kierkegaard in Auden’s corpus “new Year letter,” and “notes,” in The Double Man, new York: random house 1941, pp. 15–74; pp. 84–5; p. 101; p. 128; p. 130; p. 134. “the rewards of patience,” Partisan Review, vol. 9, no. 4, July–august, 1942, p. 336. “lecture notes,” as didymus, The Commonweal, vol. 28, no. 5, november 20, 1942, pp. 108–9. “lecture notes,” as didymus, The Commonweal, vol. 28, no. 6, november 27, 1942, pp. 133–4. “a preface to Kierkegaard,” in The New Republic, vol. 110, no. 20, may 15, 1944, pp. 683–6. “the sea and the mirror,” and “for the time being,” in For the Time Being, new York: random house 1944, pp. 1–59; pp. 60–132. “leap before You look,” in The Collected Poetry of W.H. Auden, new York: random house 1945, pp. 123–124. The Age of Anxiety: A Baroque Eclogue, new York: random house 1947. “religion and the intellectuals,” Partisan Review, vol. 17, issue 2, february, 1950, pp. 123–4. The Enchafèd Flood: Three Critical Essays on the Romantic Spirit, new York: Vintage 1950, pp. 90–151. The Living Thoughts of Kierkegaard, ed. with an introduction by W.h. auden, new York: d. mcKay co. 1952. “sext,” in The Shield of Achilles, new York: random house 1955, pp. 67–72. Modern Canterbury Pilgrims: The Story of Twenty-Three Converts and Why They Chose the Anglican Communion, ed. by James a. pike, new York: morehousegorham 1956, pp. 31–43. The Dyer’s Hand and Other Essays, london: faber and faber 1962, p. 113; pp. 433–55; pp. 72–89. “a Knight of doleful countenance,” in The New Yorker, vol. 44, may 25, 1968, pp. 141–58. Academic Graffiti, new York: random house 1971, p. 58. “a thanksgiving,” in Thank You, Fog: Last Poems by W.H. Auden, new York: random house 1974, pp. 36–37. Conversations with Auden, by Howard Griffin, ed. by Donald Allen, San Francisco: grey fox press 1981, p. 25; pp. 60–76.

W.H. Auden: Art and Christianity in an Age of Anxiety

25

Lectures on Shakespeare, reconstructed and ed. by arthur Kirsch, princeton: princeton university press 2000, p. 28; pp. 30–1; p. 44; pp. 50–1; pp. 127–8; pp. 136–7; pp. 164–5. II. Sources of Auden’s Knowledge of Kierkegaard Williams, charles, The Descent of the Dove: A Short History of the Holy Spirit in the Church, new York: oxford university press 1939, pp. 205–33. III. Secondary Literature on Auden’s Relation to Kierkegaard callan, edward, “auden’s ‘new Year letter’: a new style of architecture,” Renascence, vol. 16, 1963, pp. 13–19. — “auden and Kierkegaard: the artistic framework of For the Time Being,” Christian Scholar, vol. 48, no. 3, 1965, pp. 211–23. — Auden: A Carnival of Intellect, new York and oxford: oxford university press 1983, pp. 170–8; pp. 180–8. eddins, dwight, “Quitting the game. auden’s ‘the sea and the mirror,’ ” in Modern Language Quarterly, vol. 41, no. 1, 1980, pp. 73–87. James, William c., “anthropological poetics: auden’s typology of heroism,” Kierkegaardiana, vol. 10, 1977, pp. 239-45. mendelson, edward, Later Auden, new York: ferrar, straus and giroux 1999, pp. 129–38. replogle, Justin, “auden’s religious leap,” Wisconsin Studies in Contemporary Literature, vol. 7, no. 1, 1966, pp. 47–75. — Auden’s Poetry, seattle and london: university of Washington press 1969, pp. 50–78. schilling, peter, Søren Kierkegaard and Anglo-American Literary Culture of the Thirties and Forties, ph.d. thesis, columbia university, new York 1994, pp. 134–90. servotte, herman, “auden and Kierkegaard,” in Multiple Worlds, Multiple Words: Essays in Honour of Irène Simon, ed. by hena maes-Jelinek, pierre michel and paulette michel-michot, liège: university of liège 1988, pp. 275–82. seymour, betty Jean, The Dyer’s Hand: Kierkegaardian Perspectives on Person, Word, and Art Re-discovered in W.H. Auden, ph.d. thesis, duke university, durham, north carolina 1975.

James baldwin: “poetic experimentators” in a chaotic World nigel hatton

James baldwin (1924–87) is regarded as one of the most important american essayists of the twentieth century and an impassioned advocate for equality and human individual freedom, who met with fame on both sides of the atlantic—from the avenues of harlem and the West Village in new York, to the cafes and rues of paris, where he arrived in 1948 with less than $50 to his name and the will to break away from the racism and inequity of his early experiences in the united states during the 1930s and 1940s.1 his pen produced prose—essays, book reviews, journalism, short stories, novels, poetry, and plays—marked by major influences as varying as the King James bible, henry James, shakespeare, and the african american tradition of jazz and blues musicians and singers. lewis gordon, cornel West, and robert reidpharr are among the most recent scholars to identify baldwin’s work in a tradition of black existentialism, a space of inquiry, call, and response, in which african american artists, writers, and philosophers like baldwin, richard Wright, and ralph ellison, have built upon the work of søren Kierkegaard and other thinkers commonly aligned with existentialist thought. Whereas baldwin’s writings against racism are generally over-determined as rhetorical acts of social-political criticism and triangulated within the turbulent racial and political atmosphere of america in the 1950s and 1960s, gordon, West, and reid-pharr situate baldwin’s attention to race within the category of an “existential/moral phenomenon” that relates as much to anxieties brought on by universal human problems as it does to any american racial nightmare.2 examining baldwin’s work in this light, which i do in this article, illuminates the trace of Kierkegaard that can be found in his ontology and humanism.3 in an analysis Joyce carol oates, “introduction,” in The Best American Essays of the Century, ed. by Joyce Carol Oates, New York: Houghton Mifflin Co. 2001, p. xxvi. 2 lewis gordon, “race, biraciality, and mixed race,” in“Mixed Race” Studies: A Reader, ed. by Jayne o. ifekwunigwe, london and new York: routledge 2004, p. 160. 3 robert cotkin’s helpful Existential America gives an account of the arrival of Kierkegaard’s ideas to america, establishes the link between african american blues and existentialism, and analyzes the existentialist writings of ralph ellison and richard Wright. Whereas cotkin shows that Wright and ellison were “attracted more to the rhetoric and categories of Kierkegaard than to the content of his religious faith,” i aim to show that Baldwin’s work has even more in common with Kierkegaard and does not conflict with Kierkegaard’s religious ideas. george cotkin, Existential America, baltimore: Johns hopkins university press 2003, pp. 165–6. 1

28

Nigel Hatton

of Baldwin’s fiction, for example, Reid-Pharr argues, “by rejecting the racialism that invades the existentialist project we might just gain access to the radical humanism that sartre, de beauvoir, camus, nietzsche, Kierkegaard, and their students imagined but seemed never truly to realize.”4 West contends that baldwin took risks and was “willing to be pushed in the danger zone intellectually and existentially.”5 identifying substantive principles that can be found throughout baldwin’s writings, reid-pharr argues that “the lesson for living that baldwin offers us as americans then is that we cannot always live alienated from our alienation,”6 and “the black individual who does not have some understanding, however vague, that they might reject commonsense notions of identity, that they might perhaps re-create themselves into something unknown or perhaps unimaginable, is an individual who lacks full status as a subject.”7 indeed, the failure to attempt to escape the subjectivity prescribed by state apparatuses and oppressive forces is contrary to a black intellectual tradition filled with examples of individuals who broke away and re-fashioned themselves as agents. from the slave narrative tradition to the development of the african-american novel, for example, the literature of african americans contains a radical melancholic trope of existential imagining. baldwin felt that “the conquest of the physical world is not man’s only duty. he is also enjoined to conquer the great wilderness of himself.”8 conquering the self requires the difficult state of being alone, which most men and women avoid because of the darkness and uncertainty, and the risk of paralysis of action. baldwin argues that the artist must shepherd society through the difficult journey, correcting “the delusions to which we fall prey in our attempts to avoid this knowledge.”9 thus, the aloneness of the artist becomes the laboratory to “illuminate that darkness, blaze roads through that vast forest” in order “to make the world a more human dwelling place.”10 baldwin’s life and work can be seen as an attempt to encourage these reconciliations, between the perceived self and the authentic self, and the authentic self and the world. lewis gordon divides “black existentialist thinkers” into two categories: first, there are theorists whose positions have an existential dimension, among other dimensions, and who may not have formally defined themselves as existentialists. These individuals fall under the designation of philosophers of existence. these individuals are existentialists in the way that europeans like søren Kierkegaard, friedrich nietzsche, fyodor dostoyevsky, martin heidegger, franz Kafka, martin buber, and even herbert marcuse are studied in existentialism courses in spite of their never having claimed to be existentialists and, in some cases, having even claimed not to be existentialists.11 robert reid-pharr, Once You Go Black: Choice, Desire, and the Black American Intellectual, new York: new York university press 2007, p. 98. 5 cornel West, Hope on A Tightrope: Words & Wisdom, carlsbad, california: smiley books 2008, p. 126. 6 reid-pharr, Once You Go Black, p. 118. 7 ibid., p. 113. 8 James baldwin, “the creative process,” in his The Price of the Ticket: Collected Nonfiction, 1948–1985, new York: st. martin’s press 1985, p. 315. 9 ibid., p. 316. 10 ibid., p. 315. 11 lewis gordon, “introduction,” in Existence in Black: An Anthology of Black Existential Philosophy, ed. by lewis gordon, london: routledge 1997, pp. 7–8. 4

James Baldwin: “Poetic Experimentators” in a Chaotic World

29

in this group he places black thinkers like frederick douglass, anna Julia cooper, W.e.b. du bois, zora neal hurston, alain locke, aimé césaire, angela Y. davis, Toni Morrison, Cornel West, bell hooks/Gloria Watkins, and Joy Ann James. In the second category, gordon lists black existentialist philosophers and social critics among those who have taken an openly admitted existential identity as philosophers of social existence, those who were and those who are, in other words, “out of the closet.” those include richard Wright, leopold senghor, frantz fanon, ralph ellison, James baldwin, William r. Jones, thomas f. slaughter, Jr., lucius t outlaw, naomi zack, tsenay serequeberhan, and [gordon himself].12

gordon’s division is useful, but for reasons i introduce in this article, baldwin would be best placed in the first category. For one, Baldwin says that upon his arrival in paris in 1948, he “was not impressed by the existentialist movement. i was not impressed by sartre, by beauvoir at that moment of my life.”13 baldwin also discusses french existentialism in his The Devil Finds Work. When he arrived to paris, he found that the “curious and, on the whole, rather obvious doctrine of l’existentialisme flourished.”14 arnold rampersad demonstrates that contrary to Sartre’s existentialism, this Negro existentialism often flourished in the world attended by properties such as lyricism, folkloric grace, exuberance, and sensuality. ralph [ellison] alluded to these qualities in his review of ottley’s Black Odyssey when he spoke of black culture as stylish and musical, embodying the power of “a very advanced philosophy of human freedom.” and yet this negro existentialism had a worrisome relationship to chaos. it did not lend itself easily to building social institutions that could form a reliable bulwark against chaos. indeed, this form of existentialism, under the pressure exerted on the black mind by industrialism, the urban experience, and continuing injustice (as in harlem), was a major purveyor of chaos.15

that existential chaos burdens the pages of baldwin’s prose, constructed, in part, through his reliance on Kierkegaard. in order to make the connection between baldwin and Kierkegaard, i examine the fictional work of the former through frameworks and concepts taken from the pseudonymous writings of the latter. according to hong and hong, in his pseudonymous writings, Kierkegaard is “the poetic Experimentator who makes or fashions the various pseudonymous, poetic, imaginative constructors, who in turn imaginatively shape characters, scenes, situations, and relations expressive in various ways of the hypothesis(es) informing the work.”16 baldwin takes a similar ibid. Wolfgang binder, “an interview with James baldwin,” in Conversations with James Baldwin, ed. by fred l. standley and louis h. pratt, Jackson, mississippi, and london: university of mississippi press 1989, p. 203. 14 James baldwin, The Devil Finds Work, new York: the dial press 1976, p. 38. 15 arnold rampersad, Ralph Ellison: A Biography, new York: alfred a. Knopf 2007, pp. 245–6. 16 howard V. hong and edna h. hong, “historical introduction,” in FT, p. xxv. 12 13

30

Nigel Hatton

approach to constructing fictional narrative.17 though his searing and prosaic essays have left an indelible imprint on the psyche of american history and human relations, baldwin relies on the rhythms, ambiguities, dialogues, and character networks of fiction to portray the “unimaginable” and the rejection of “commonsense notions of identity.”18 fiction, where he alludes to Kierkegaard both directly and indirectly, is his venue for indirect communication and the exploration of the categories of the religious, the aesthetic, and the ethical detached from the rhetorical normativity of the public sphere, where mediums of expression such as the essay and journalism are more beholden to aristotelian rhetorical demands and expectations of audience. baldwin biographer david leeming points out that baldwin “was never intellectually comfortable in his role as an essayist. he wanted to be a novelist.”19 after writing The Evidence of Things Not Seen, in which he covers a child-murder case in atlanta in the 1980s, baldwin admitted to feeling like a novelist disguised as a journalist. “i am a novelist,” he told elsa Knight thompson in a may 1963 radio interview shortly after the publication of The Fire Next Time, a cause célèbre that landed him on the cover of Time magazine in 1963.20 “essentially, it is much easier to read my essays, essays are easier to read,” he said.21 essays do not require readers to step out of their own comfort zones. readers laud his essays denouncing racism, white supremacy, and inequality, baldwin suggests, because “it is not fashionable to be a racist, but on the other hand it is not easy to be a person.”22 baldwin associates “person” with the novel and the work of the novelist, an art form that forces a reader to engage on a “private, personal, sexual, emotional” level.23 many agree with Joyce carol oates in deeming baldwin “the preeminent essayist of the american twentieth century,” and herman beavers is right to say that “baldwin’s stature as a novelist is overshadowed by his public life”;24 but baldwin makes clear that even his compelling essays have Conversations with James Baldwin, p. 155: “When i say poet, it’s an arbitrary word. it’s a word i use because i don’t like the word artist. nina simone is a poet. max roach is a poet. there is a whole list of people. i’m not talking about literature at all. i’m talking about the recreation of experience, you know, the way that it comes back. billie holiday was a poet. She gave you back your experience. She refined it, and you recognized it for the first time because she was in and out of it and she made it possible for you to bear it. and if you could bear it, then you could begin to change it. that’s what a poet does. i’m not talking about books. i’m talking about a certain kind of passion, a certain kind of energy which people produce and they secrete in certain people—billie holiday, nina simone, and max roach— because they need it and these people give it back to you and they get you from one place to another.” 18 reid-pharr, Once You Go Black, p. 118. 19 david leeming, James Baldwin: A Biography, new York: Knopf 1994, p. 52. 20 James baldwin, radio interview by elsa Knight thompson and fred leonard, Pacifica Radio, KPFA, Berkeley, California, May 7, 1963. Voices of Pacifica Series, Volume 4: James Baldwin, Pacifica Foundation, 1997. Audio Recording. 21 ibid. 22 ibid. 23 ibid. 24 Joyce carol oates, “introduction,” The Best American Essays of the Century, ed. by Joyce Carol Oates, New York: Houghton Mifflin Co. 2001, p. xxvi. Herman Beavers, “Finding common ground: ralph ellison and James baldwin,” in The Cambridge Companion to the 17

James Baldwin: “Poetic Experimentators” in a Chaotic World

31

limitations and provide readers with life preservers unavailable in the unpredictable diegetic and bakhtinian worlds of the novel.25 according to bakhtin, the novel orchestrates all its themes, the totality of the world of objects and ideas depicted and expressed in it, by means of the social diversity of speech types and by the differing individual voices that flourish under such conditions. Authorial speech, the speeches of narrators, inserted genres, the speech of characters are merely those fundamental compositional unities with whose help heteroglossia can enter the novel.26

as novelist, baldwin eschews the safe and formulaic, and incorporates the social and political, the creative and the factual, the autobiographical and the historical, the religious and the secular, and the familiar and the unfamiliar, into unifying narratives that force readers to struggle for indeterminate meaning and difficult resolution connected to their own lives. according to eleanor traylor: the baldwin narrator-witness has dramatized that tale in now six novels and one collection of short stories, and has staged it in two plays. its theme of the perilous journey of love which, if not risked, denies all possibility of the glorious in human life, which, if risked, ensures [not] the depths of sorrow but the ecstasy of joy; which if betrayed, leads to madness and death; and, which, if ignored or avoided, is directly responsible for the misery that afflicts the human world.27

Baldwin’s first three novels address the crisis of the individual when confronting the categories of the religious, the ethical, and the aesthetic, and the fourth attempts to synthesize them in a narrative that was published shortly after the assassination of martin luther King, Jr. baldwin’s debut novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953), is a semi-autobiographical meditation on the dilemmas of the individual African American Novel, ed. by maryemma graham, new York: cambridge university press 2004, p. 201. 25 for further commentary on baldwin as novelist and essayist, see, for example, langston hughes and henry louis gates, Jr. according to hughes, “few american writers handle words more effectively in the essay form than James baldwin. to my way of thinking, he is much better at provoking thought in the essay than he is in arousing emotion in fiction.” see langston hughes, “from harlem to paris,” New York Times Book Review, february 26, 1956, p. 26. gates argues that the “paradox of James baldwin’s career as a writer is that he wrote essays with all of the lyricism and subtlety of a great novelist; when it came time to write the novels, however, he approached his craft, especially in his later years, as an essayist—a didactic, heavy-handed essayist, at that, and not the subtle master of the form that baldwin-the-essayist, at his best, could be.” henry louis gates, Jr.,“introduction,” in harriet beecher stowe, The Annotated Uncle Tom’s Cabin, ed. by henry louis gates, Jr., new York: W.W. norton & co. 2007, p. xxvi. 26 mikhail m. bakhtin, “discourse in the novel,” in The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays, ed. by michael holquist, trans. by caryl emerson and michael holquist, austin: university of texas press 1981 (University of Texas Press Slavic Studies, vol. 1), pp. 259–422, see p. 263. 27 eleanor traylor, “i hear music in the air: James baldwin’s Just above my Head,” in James Baldwin: The Legacy, ed. by Quincy Troupe, New York: Simon & Schuster/Touchstone 1989, p. 96.

32

Nigel Hatton

who must confront the terror of christian salvation and religious obedience. characters tremble internally and externally, and journey “where there was no human help, no hand outstretched to protect or save. here nothing prevailed save the mercy of god—here the battle was fought between god and the devil, between death and everlasting life.”28 the parabolic Go Tell It contains a test of faith and sacrifice similar to the dialectic lyric contained in Johannes de silentio’s Fear and Trembling, and baldwin’s novel similarly compares and contrasts christian “joy unspeakable” with a “wellspring of despair not yet discovered,” much like in anticlimacus’ The Sickness unto Death.29 the teen-aged protagonist John grimes grows up in a religious household in Harlem and attends the storefront sanctified church named “the temple of the fire baptized.” John’s religious indifference angers his stepfather gabriel, who is head deacon of the church and symbolic of the hundreds of thousands of african americans who migrated north from the south at the start of the twentieth century. the narrative, divided into three parts, the second of which contains two prayers, moves back and forth between the brutal south that gabriel and his sister florence leave behind, and the new York city where he re-invents himself as a man of faith, ruling over the grimes household with a religious orthodoxy. he expects his two sons—John and his younger brother roy—to fashion themselves in his image, a devout believer whose every waking hour is sacrificed on behalf of the lord. gabriel’s religious convergence begins in the south, in the section of the narrative titled, “gabriel’s prayer.” in the midst of his wandering and searching, gabriel “desired in his soul with fear and trembling, all the glories that his mother prayed he should find” and “wanted to be master, to speak with that authority which could only come from god.”30 eventually gabriel hears a calling from god, enters the pulpit and comes across “no word in all that holy book which did not make him tremble.”31 he loathes the actions of the elders of the church because they “seemed to him so lax, so nearly worldly; they were not like those holy prophets of old who grew thin and naked in the service of the lord. these, god’s ministers, had indeed grown fat, and their dress was rich and various. they had been in the field so long that they did not tremble before God any more.”32 gabriel wants the elders to despair as he does, yet they take their own faith for granted. anti-climacus would render their arrogance “a lack of judgment as to what spirit is—to think that faith and wisdom come that easily, that they come as a matter of course over the years like teeth, a beard, etc.”33 Gabriel is flawed in his disdain for those who do not despair; he pretends to be superior in his faith and attempts to separate himself from the reality of his own sins. his sister florence challenges his holier-than-thou faith and reminds him of his past of illicit affairs, illegitimate offspring, violence, and vices. she dispels his self-image as the ultimate believer and spiritual provider. gabriel proudly exclaims, “i got a son,” referring to roy, who has had his share 28 29 30 31 32 33

James baldwin, Go Tell It on the Mountain, new York: Knopf 1953, pp. 124–5. ibid., p. 296. ibid., p. 120. ibid., p. 181. ibid., p. 138. SKS 11, 173 / SUD, 58.

James Baldwin: “Poetic Experimentators” in a Chaotic World

33

of fights in the Harlem streets, “and the Lord’s going to raise him up. I know—the lord has promised—his word is true.”34 florence reminds gabriel of their southern upbringing, of the illegitimate son gabriel had long before arriving in new York city. “When i go, brother, you better tremble, cause i ain’t going to go in silence.”35 the sins and contradictions of his stepfather temper the celebration that ensues when, near the end of Go Tell It, John grimes receives his calling in the church and “there began to flood John’s soul the waters of despair.”36 it is not clear whether or not his despair is the correct type of despair or whether the faith of his fellow parishioners is oriented toward the external or internal. the material world bears heavily on the experience of major and minor characters in the narrative, rendering christianity both a problem and a solution. gabriel operates under the guise of faith; his sister florence acts as his foil, turning his religiosity on its head. John grimes’ experience closely mirrors the early biography of James baldwin. he was born and raised in harlem and his stepfather encouraged him to become a preacher. at 14, baldwin entered the pulpit in a storefront pentecostal church, and the experience helped form the content and cadence of much of his writing. he would later register a surmountable critique of christianity, prompting many critics to deem him a secular writer. baldwin wrote, “John’s conversion is dictated by the powerful symbols of his inheritance, but his descent is really his first affirmation, the beginning of reconciliation, the beginning of his life as a man. he will not stay in the church, and fearfully, he knows it.”37 Yet, christianity and the religious remained important categories that he examined thoroughly and existentially in his prose. clarence e. hardy, author of James Baldwin’s God: Sex, Hope, and Crisis in Black Holiness Culture, argues, “baldwin can be considered a religious writer” because he “continued throughout his career to shape his memories of his black evangelical heritage into meaningful art and insightful social criticism.”38 baldwin’s evangelical church upbringing “offered a compelling cultural backdrop that he could exploit and vibrant characters to populate some of his most enduring works of fiction... even for his fiction set in environments far beyond the church walls.”39 baldwin dramatized religious experience not only as a means to depict the particular world familiar to him, but also to develop universal models for exploring the mysterious dimensions of the human condition. Without the category of the religious, baldwin’s existentialism is relegated to what he deemed obviousness.40 baldwin’s second novel, Giovanni’s Room, is an ethical parable on the obligation human beings have to love one another regardless of the immediate costs in the baldwin, Go Tell It on the Mountain, p. 291. ibid., p. 294. 36 ibid., p. 271. 37 James baldwin, “a special message to subscribers from James baldwin,” in Go Tell It On The Mountain, limited signed edition, franklin, pennsylvania: the franklin library 1979, [pp. v–iv] (unpaginated). 38 clarence e. hardy iii, “James baldwin as religious Writer,” in A Historical Guide to James Baldwin, ed. by douglas field, new York: oxford university press 2009, p. 64. 39 ibid. 40 in The Devil Finds Work, baldwin refers to the “rather obvious doctrine of l’existentialisme.” baldwin, The Devil Finds Work, p. 38. 34 35

34

Nigel Hatton

material world and the consequences the failure to love bring about not only for the individual, but also for humanity. baldwin’s initial attempts to publish the novel met with resistance because of the novel’s homosexual themes and lack of black characters. Keeping in mind baldwin’s focus on the novel as a technology in which artists are primarily concerned with the “person,” his creative decisions can be viewed as an imaginative approach to confronting readers in the “private, personal, sexual, emotional” sphere.41 like Kierkegaard, baldwin wanted readers to deliberate the dilemmas in the text detached from the interference of the author. the protagonist in Giovanni’s Room, david, is a white american midwesterner who has also spent time in new York and san francisco, a brief stint in the navy, and now finds himself in Paris, approaching 30 and wondering what to do with his life. he has asked hella to marry him, but she questions his sincerity and runs off to spain to consider his proposal. in the time they are apart, david makes his way to the bars and suddenly finds himself entangled in an intense affair with Giovanni, an italian bartender who escaped the catholic conservatism of his italian village for a parisian life; giovanni urges david to recognize their relationship as genuine, and constantly calls into question david’s insistence on maintaining his american identity—understood in the novel as a commitment to the strenuous life and a happy life with an obedient wife and model children. david holds to views consistent with an orthodox american life, and ultimately rejects giovanni, described throughout the narrative as darker than david, who is blond and tall. the decision is symbolically fatal, as giovanni leads a hustler’s life after their breakup and ends up accused of a crime (killing one of his benefactors, a gay man from a prominent family) that leads to his death by guillotine. hella returns to spain ready to marry david, only he reveals the truth of his actions during her absence. the novel ends and begins with david narrating this story as he prepares to return to the united states; everything is revealed as a flashback, and David is portrayed as responsible for Giovanni’s death. of the novella, baldwin said, it “is not so much about homosexuality, as it is what happens if you are so afraid that you finally cannot love anybody.”42 Giovanni’s Room finds its Kierkegaardian antecedent in the pages of the second part of Either/ Or. Judge William’s lessons for the aesthete mirror the ethical demands placed on characters in and readers of Giovanni’s Room. according to William, the secret the individual life has with itself [is] that simultaneously it is an individual life and also the universal, if as such not immediately, then nevertheless according to its possibility. the person who views life ethically sees the universal, and the person who lives ethically expresses the universal in his life.43

david is confronted in the novella with several questions about his relationship to other human beings and modernity. in each case, he makes choices he thinks will preserve an identity that grants him full access to the public sphere. his inability James baldwin, radio interview by elsa Knight thompson and fred leonard, Pacifica Radio, KPFA, Berkeley, California, May 7, 1963. Voices of Pacifica Series, Volume 4: James Baldwin, Pacifica Foundation, 1997. 42 Conversations with James Baldwin, p. 206. 43 SKS 3, 243–4 / EO2, 255–6. 41

James Baldwin: “Poetic Experimentators” in a Chaotic World

35

to break away from immediacy has consequences for david and those who exist within his character network in the novella. instead of breaking with immediacy, david chooses to pursue life in his garden of eden, a place of imagined safety. after giovanni’s death, david reasons that giovanni likewise should have stayed in his garden. the character Jacques tells david, “nobody can stay in the garden of eden,” and then asks, “i wonder why.”44 david’s response suggests that giovanni’s death has caused him to contemplate the balance between the ethical and the aesthetic: i have thought about Jacques’ questions since. the question is banal but one of the real troubles with living is that living is so banal. everyone, after all, goes the same dark road—and the road has a trick of being most dark, most treacherous, when it seems most bright—and it’s true that nobody stays in the garden of eden. Jacques’ garden was not the same as giovanni’s, of course. Jacques’ garden was involved with football players and giovanni’s was involved with maidens—but that seems to have made so little difference. perhaps everybody has a garden of eden, i don’t know; but they have scarcely seen their garden before they see the flaming sword. Then, perhaps, life only offers the choice of remembering the garden or forgetting it. either, or: it takes strength to remember, it takes another kind of strength to forget, it takes a hero to do both. people who remember court madness through pain, the pain of the perpetually recurring death of their innocence; people who forget court another kind of madness, the madness of the denial of pain and the hatred of innocence; and the world is mostly divided between madmen who remember, and madmen who forget. heroes are rare.45

david explains that the garden of eden for one type of individual is an imagined materiality based upon their worldly interests—football players for Jacques, maidens for giovanni. the gardens present little hope, longevity, and relation to the eternal. as Johannes tells the aesthete, the “person who lives esthetically expects everything from the outside.”46 those who reject the garden can be aligned with the ethical because they have replaced evasiveness and imagined possibilities with concrete realities; the ethical “individual sees this, his actual concretion, as task, as goal, as objective.”47 Judge William tells the aesthete that where those who live esthetically see possibility, those who live ethically see work, responsibility, and obligation, which “gives the ethical individual a security that the person who lives esthetically lacks altogether.”48 in this sense, if david rejects possibility and chooses responsibility, he is forced to think about his particular experience in the context of the universal. he must consider his self in relation to other selves. but even the security of the ethical has its limitations; Judge William will tell the aesthete that the ethical is not enough, and david ultimately sees the ethical and the aesthetic as two types of the same madness. With the publication of Another Country (1962), baldwin made his relation to Kierkegaard even more evident. a story about a collection of artists and musicians stuck in the aesthetic realm cast as 1950s new York city, baldwin scaffolds the architecture of Another Country with an early reference to Kierkegaard: 44 45 46 47 48

James baldwin, Giovanni’s Room, new York: dial press 1956, p. 36. ibid., pp. 36–7. SKS 3, 240 / EO2, 252. SKS 3, 240 / EO2, 251. SKS 3, 240 / EO2, 252.

36

Nigel Hatton they reached the park. old, slatternly women from the slums and from the east side sat on benches, usually alone, sometimes sitting with gray-haired, matchstick men. ladies from the big apartments buildings on fifth avenue, vaguely and desperately elegant, were also in the park, walking their dogs; and negro nursemaids, turning a stony face on the grown-up world, crooned anxiously into baby carriages. the italian laborers and small businessmen strolled with their families or sat beneath the trees, talking to each other; some played chess or read l’espresso. the other Villagers sat on benches, reading—Kierkegaard was the name shouting from the paper-covered volume held by a short-cropped girl in blue jeans—or talking distractedly of abstract matters, or gossiping or laughing; or sitting still, either with an immense, invisible effort which all but shattered the benches and the trees, or else with a limpness which indicated that they would never move again.49

the “totality of the world of ideas and objects” includes a blend of marxism and existential angst, as well as the fabrication and precariousness of american selffashioning and despair. racial and class difference imbue the passage, but baldwin has left them as mere allusions—his concern is the human being. indeed, the “negro nursemaids” are caring for the children of wealthy elites and not their own, and the “slatternly women from the slums” lead a markedly different life from the “businessmen” strolling “with their families.” this material critique represents one level of critical discourse in the text. like the novel itself—which bakhtin says unifies the varying social discourses through heteroglossia—the invoking of Kierkegaard universalizes the condition of the particular human beings, which is baldwin’s greater concern. in other words, the reference to Kierkegaard operates as a heteroglossia of human experience. Another Country contains the most extensive use of the jazz and blues in baldwin’s prose, and the musicality of the narrative is an essential component of baldwin’s methodology of poetic expression. the character-poets of the novel are struggling writers, singers, and actors who sleep during the day and search during the night. They have much in common with the Aesthete from the first part of Either/Or who describes the poet as an “unhappy person who conceals profound anguish in his heart but whose lips are so formed that as sighs and cries pass over them they sound like beautiful music.”50 Vivaldo, a novelist, “had been merely taking refuge in the outward adventure in order to avoid the clash and tension of the adventure proceeding inexorably within.”51 rufus, a struggling jazz musician, stands before the brooklyn bridge “because he knew the pain would never stop….he was black and the water was black.”52 eric, the actor, realizes that a “note of despair, of buried despair, was insistently, constantly struck. it stalked all the new York avenues, roamed all the new York streets.”53 the synthesis of allusions to Kierkegaard and dostoevsky, the despairing tone of the blues and jazz, and the continued teasing out of the religious, combine to dramatize the beauty and vulnerability of the aesthetic category. 49 50 51 52 53

James baldwin, Another Country, new York: the dial press 1962, pp. 28–9. SKS 2, 27 / EO1, 19. baldwin, Another Country, p. 133. ibid., p. 87. ibid., p. 230.

James Baldwin: “Poetic Experimentators” in a Chaotic World

37

in this article, i have attempted to demonstrate ways in which Kierkegaard can illuminate the existential and religious ideas of James baldwin. the resonance among their categories suggests that baldwin knew more about Kierkegaard than can be analyzed through the one direct reference he makes to Kierkegaard in his prose. like Kierkegaard before him, baldwin has mastered the imaginative to create narratives that prompt uneasy internal deliberation in readers. baldwin has also developed extensive ideas on the categories of the aesthetic, the ethical, and the religious, and evoked the musical and poetic as critical genres. as separate concepts, baldwin has denounced artist, christian, and existentialist, yet the synthesis of these terms is fundamental to his thought and forms the foundation of several of his narratives. in closing, i turn to baldwin’s fourth novel, Tell Me How Long the Train’s Been Gone (1968), which i have suggested contains such a synthesis. the protagonist leo proudhammer is a world-famous actor who re-examines his life after suffering a heart attack. The narrative structure of the novel comprises a series of flashbacks and ends with a forward-looking scene like “in many churches; of black feet stomping in the mud of the levee; of rites older than that, in forests irrecoverable. the music drove and drove, into the past—into the future.”54 as part of his self-examination, leo prodhammer participates in dialogues with his brother caleb, who is a priest. in Either/Or, William invokes the actor–priest relationship as a productive discourse for understanding the relationship between the ethical and the aesthetic: You, however, have another method, for i know full well that the polemical side you turn to the world is not your true nature. Yes, if deliberating were the task for human life, then you would be close to perfection. i shall illustrate. to be appropriate to you, the alternatives must naturally be bold: either a pastor—or an actor. here is the dilemma. Now all of your passionate energy is aroused; reflection with its hundred arms seizes the idea of becoming a pastor. You find no rest.…Now you conduct yourself the same way with the other alternative, and your enthusiasm for art almost exceeds your ecclesiastical eloquence. then you are ready to choose.55

When William wishes to explain to the aesthete the problem with his world-view, he creates the dilemma of the actor and the priest. the actor is guided by artistic principle, whereas the pastor must adhere to faith. Kierkegaard places them in a dialectic that will emit answers to difficult problems that go beyond the Aesthete’s performativity and alienation. baldwin’s fourth novel, Tell Me How Long the Train’s Been Gone, dramatizes the actor–priest relationship through the interactions and dialogues between the characters leo (actor) and caleb (priest) proudhammer, brothers who were subjected to and escaped the racism and despair of their harlem youth, only to find themselves faced with greater tragedies to address in their adult lives. as the novel that combines the religious meditation of Go Tell It on the Mountain, the ethical demand to love in Giovanni’s Room, and the despair of striving aesthetes found in Another Country, Tell Me How Long the Train’s Been Gone restages the respective tragedies of those novels—John grimes’ escape from organized religion, david’s failure to love on his own terms, and rufus’ jump from 54 55

James baldwin, Tell Me How Long the Train’s Been Gone, new York: dial 1968, p. 481. SKS 3, 162 / EO1, 165.

38

Nigel Hatton

the brooklyn bridge as a means of escape, in the context of the deliberation between two characters, an actor and a priest, who have chosen life instead of falling victim to challenges of the material world. but now they are placed in polar positions as actor and priest, an experiment designed to lead readers to deal with the ultimate human questions and reject the fear of aloneness. leo, for whom aloneness is central to his experience as a priest, wants to know how Caleb finds similar meaning in the work of and production of art: “leo,” he asked me, after a moment, “can you tell me what it is—an artist? What’s all about? What does an artist really do?” i had never known caleb to be cruel, and so i couldn’t believe that he was baiting me. i stared at him. “What do you mean, what does an artist do? he—he creates—” he stared at me with a little smile, saying nothing. “You know,” i said, “paintings, poems, books, plays. music.” “these are all creations,” he said, still with that smile. “Well, yes. not all of them are good.” “Why are you asking me these questions?” “because i want to know. i’m not teasing you. i don’t know anything about it. and you say you want to be an actor. that’s kind of an artist. isn’t it? Well, i want to know.” “i think it—art—can make you less lonely.” i didn’t trust this answer, either…. “sometimes,” i said, “you read something—or you listen to some music—i don’t know—and you find that this man, who may have been a very unhappy man—and—a man you’ve never seen—well, he tells you something about your life. and it doesn’t seem as awful as it did before.”56

for caleb, leo is describing the relationship human beings have with the eternal, yet he seeks to understand how Leo identifies with an aesthetic sense of creation. A demand is being made on readers, baldwin the “poetic experimentator” urging them to choose, embrace aloneness and understand their lives in relation to themselves and others.

56

baldwin, Tell Me How Long the Train’s Been Gone, pp. 386–8.

bibliography I. Works by Baldwin that Make Use of Kierkegaard Another Country, new York: dial press 1962, pp. 28–9. II. Sources of Baldwin’s Knowledge of Kierkegaard undetermined. III. Secondary Literature on Baldwin’s Relation to Kierkegaard allen, francine larue, Reclaiming the Human Self: Redemptive Suffering and Spiritual Service in the Works of James Baldwin, ph.d. thesis, georgia state university, atlanta, georgia 2005, p. 7. lobb, edward, “James baldwin’s blues and the function of art,” The International Fiction Review, vol. 6, no. 2, 1979, pp. 143–8. lynch, michael f., “beyond guilt and innocence: redemptive suffering and love in baldwin’s Another Country,” Obsidian II, vol. 7, 1992, pp. 1–18. — “James baldwin’s Quest for belief,” Literature & Theology, vol. 34, no. 3, 1997, pp. 284–98. miller, Joshua l., “the discovery of What it means to be a Witness: James baldwin’s dialectics of difference,” in James Baldwin Now, ed. by dwight a. mcbride, new York: new York university press 1999, pp. 331–59, see pp. 340–3. phillips, michelle h., “revising revision: methodologies of love, desire, and resistance in Beloved and If Beale Street Could Talk,” in James Baldwin and Toni Morrison: Comparative Critical and Theoretical Essays, ed. by lynn orilla scott and lovalerie King, new York: palgrave macmillan 2006, pp. 63–81, see p. 73. simawie, saadi a., “What is in sound? the metaphysics and politics of music in The Amen Corner,” in Re-viewing James Baldwin: Things Not Seen, ed. by Quentin miller, philadelphia: temple university press 2000, pp. 12–32, see pp. 19–26.

samuel barber: Kierkegaard, from a musical point of View diego giordano

I. Barber’s Life and Works samuel osborne barber ii was an american composer of orchestral, opera, choral, and piano music. born march 9, 1910 in West chester, pennsylvania, he was the elder of two children and the only son of marguerite mcleod (née beatty) (1881–1967) and samuel leroy barber (1879–1947). he began to breathe music from an early age since his uncle, Sidney Homer (1864–1953), was a prolific songwriter, while his aunt, louise dilworth beatty homer (1871–1947), was a famous operatic contralto. Barber wrote his first musical composition at age 7, attempted to write his first opera at age 10, and was an organist at age 12. at the age of 14 he entered the curtis institute of music in philadelphia, where he studied voice (with emilio de gogorza), piano (with george boyle), music theory and composition (with rosario scalero) and later conducting with fritz reiner (1888–1963). at curtis, barber met gian carlo menotti (1911–2007),1 with whom he would form a lifelong personal and professional relationship. he soon became a favorite of the conservatory’s founder, mary louise curtis bok (1876–1970) who introduced him to schirmer, the musical publishing company that would publish all his works. In 1931 Barber completed his first orchestral composition, Overture to the School for Scandal (op. 5), that contributed to establishing his national reputation, and the following year he left the institute to work uninterruptedly as a composer. in 1932, during a trip to europe, he wrote a Cello Sonata (op. 6), and in 1933 he composed Music for a Scene from Shelley (op. 7). With his studies completed with a bachelor’s degree in music (1934), he received a pulitzer traveling scholarship from 1935 to 1936 and spent two years of training in italy, at the american academy in rome, after winning in 1935 the american version of the Prix de Rome (for the op. 6 and 7), an award given to “the most talented and deserving student of music in america.”2 in 1936, during a stay menotti supplied libretti for barber’s opera Vanessa, op. 32, 1957 (for which Barber won his first Pulitzer Prize in 1958) and Chamber opera A Hand of Bridge, op. 35, 1959. 2 Wayne clifford Wentzel, Samuel Barber: A Guide to Research, london and new York: routledge 2001 (Composer Resource Manuals, vol. 55), p. 14. 1

42

Diego Giordano

in the french alps, he completed the (First) Symphony in One Movement (op. 9), that was premiered by rome’s philharmonic augusteo orchestra, and at the age of 26 he completed the score of the celebrated Adagio for Strings (arrangement of the second movement of his String Quartet, op. 11, 1938), which was performed for the first time in 1938 by the NBC Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Arturo Toscanini (1867–1957), along with the first Essay for Orchestra (op. 12, 1937). after having written a Second Essay for Orchestra (op. 17, 1942), in 1943 he was inducted into the army, and, while serving as a corporal during World War ii, he was commissioned by the air force to write a Second Symphony (op. 19, 1944) “about flyers.”3 during these years he also wrote Excursions (op. 20, 1942–44), his first published solo piano piece, a neo-Romantic composition “characterized by broad lyricism and dramatic expression,”4 and Capricorn Concerto (op. 21, 1944), a chamber piece designed like a baroque concerto grosso. in 1945, with his military service completed, he taught briefly at the Curtis Institute, and later he was awarded a guggenheim fellowship three times (1945, 1947, 1949). in 1946 barber accepted a commission to compose ballet music for martha graham’s choreography (1894–1991), freely revolving around the myth of medea (Serpent Heart, revised as Cave of the Heart, op. 23, 1946–47). he reworked the score again in 1955, reduced it to a single-movement concert piece originally titled Medea’s Meditation and Dance of Vengeance (op. 23a). in 1949 he accepted a commission to compose a work for piano (Sonata for Piano, op. 26) to be performed by renowned pianist Vladimir horowitz (1903–89) in celebration of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the League of Composers (a society founded in new York city in 1923 as an american arm of the international society for contemporary music). in 1953 the composer wrote a cycle of ten songs for voice and piano, Hermit Songs (op. 29), basing lyrics on a collection of anonymous poems written by irish monks and adapting music for the american soprano leontyne price (b. 1927) with whom he collaborated for more than two decades. in all probability it was for this singer that he composed Prayers of Kierkegaard (op. 30, 1954), a one-movement extended cantata composed in 1943, the symphony was originally titled Symphony Dedicated to the Army Air Forces (also referred to as Flight Symphony). it was premiered in early 1944 by serge Koussevitsky and the boston symphony orchestra and revised in 1947. in 1950 the composer recorded it in england (london gramophine corp. lps334), but in 1964 he destroyed the score and forbade future performances. in the same year he recast the symphony’s second movement as a one-movement orchestral work entitled Night Flight (op. 19a). in the preface to this work he explained that “times of cataclysm are rarely conducive to the creation of good music.” in 1984, three years after his death, parts of the symphony turned up in an english warehouse. gian carlo menotti, the composer’s executor, subsequently allowed andrew schenck to record the work with the new zealand symphony orchestra (stradivari scd 8012). cf. howard pollack, “review of Samuel Barber. Second Symphony, Op. 19” (new York: g. schirmer (1950) 1990), in Notes, vol. 47, no. 3, 1991, pp. 958–9. 4 susan blinderman carter, The Piano Music of Samuel Barber, ann arbor, michigan: University Microfilms International 1980, p. 26. 3

Samuel Barber: Kierkegaard, From a Musical Point of View

43

for soprano, choir and orchestra, based on texts by søren Kierkegaard. between 1957 and 1959 barber wrote two operas (Vanessa, op. 32; and A Hand of Bridge, op. 35) on original english librettos by gian carlo menotti, and in 1962, in celebration of the hundredth anniversary of the music publishing company g. schirmer, he composed on commission a Piano Concerto (op. 38) for which he received his second pulitzer prize (1963) and the music critics circle award (1964). the love of poetry and human voice drove barber, during his lifetime, to devote special attention to write compositions for voice and ensemble (Dover Beach, op. 3, 1931; Knoxville: Summer of 1915, op. 24, 1948; Andromache’s Farewell, op. 39, 1962), or for solo voice (more than one hundred songs memorable for their extremely lyrical quality). from 1966 until his death at age of 71 (on January 23, 1981, in new York city), even though composing became more difficult, he continued to be productive, writing another opera, Antony and Cleopatra (op. 40, 1966), a Ballade for piano (op. 46) commissioned for the 1977 Van cliburn competition, which was the last piano piece he composed, and a Third Essay for Orchestra (op. 47, 1978). after barber’s death the american composer aaron copland (1900–90) remarked, with balanced words that well describe his composition style: “he chose to write in a fairly conventional romantic idiom, but if his music is unadventurous, it is always beautifully made, is often affecting and sometimes dashing. his work is expert, high-toned and serious.”5 II. Barber’s prayers of Kierkegaard the Prayers of Kierkegaard (op. 30) is a one-movement extended cantata for mixed chorus, soprano solo, and orchestra, with incidental tenor solo and alto solo ad libitum, written by barber between may 1953 and January 1954, although it had been commissioned 12 years before, in 1942, by the Koussevitzky music foundation.6 the textual part of the piece, in english,7 is derived from four of Kierkegaard’s prayers. the cantata is subdivided into four parts, and the text readapted by the composer. the titles of each part and the corresponding textual sources used by barber are (1) “o thou Who art unchangeable,”8 derived from the Prayer that opens the edifying discourse entitled The Changelessness of God (Guds Uforanderlighed; 5 howard pollack, Aaron Copland: The Life and Work of an Uncommon Man, urbana and chicago: university of illinois press 2000, p. 193. 6 the Koussevitzky music foundation was created in 1942 by serge Koussevitzky (1874–1951), longtime conductor of the boston symphony orchestra (from 1924 to 1949), in memory of his late wife, natalie ushkov. barber’s piece would be dedicated to the memory of serge and natalie Koussevitzky. 7 the vocal score was also translated into german by lonja stehelin-holzing. 8 “grave and remote”; “moderato”; for tenors, basses, sopranos and altos. Kierkegaard’s text adapted by barber, excluding repetitions, says: “o thou Who art unchangeable, Whom nothing changes, May we find our rest and remain at rest in Thee unchanging. Thou art moved and moved in infinite love by all things: the need of a sparrow, even this moves Thee; and what we scarcely see, a human sigh, this moves Thee, O infinite Love! But nothing changes thee, o thou unchanging.”

44

Diego Giordano

august 1855);9 (2) “lord Jesus christ, Who suffered all life long,”10 from a Prayer11 in a 1850 journal;12 (3) “father in heaven, Well We Know that it is thou,”13 derived from the Prayer14 that opens the first discourse (on Luke 22:15) of the “discourses at the communion on fridays,” part iV of Christian Discourses (february 1848);15 (4) “father in heaven! hold not our sins up against us,”16 taken from a Prayer in a 1847 journal (august 14).17 it is not possible to claim precisely which editions of Kierkegaard’s works barber had consulted. surely he used some english editions published before 1954.18 for this reason we have to exclude the one-volume book (The Prayers of the discourse The Changelessness of God was published on september 3, 1855, between number 7 (august 30, 1855) and 8 (september 11, 1855) of The Moment; in SKS 13, 327 / M, 268. As each of the first Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses, it is dedicated by Kierkegaard to the memory of his “late father michael pedersen Kierkegaard, formerly a clothing merchant here in the city.” in the short preface (dated may 5, 1854) Kierkegaard advises the reader that “this discourse was delivered in the citadel church on may 18, 1851. The text is the first one I have used; later it was used on several occasions; now I return to it again” (SKS 13, 325 / M, 267). The sermon’s text is based on Jas 1:17–22, first used in the second discourse of To opbyggelige Taler (1843), in SKS 5, 39–56 / Two Upbuilding Discourses (1843), in EUD, 31–48. the text appears again in the second and third discourse of Fire opbyggelige Taler (1843), in SKS 5, 129–58 / Four Discourses (1843), in EUD, 125–58. on all these occasions the title of the discourse is “every good and every perfect gift is from above” (“al god og al fuldkommen gave er ovenfra”). for the 1855 discourse (The Changelessness of God) Kierkegaard changes the title and adds the prayer (used by barber). 10 “andante, con moto tranquillo”; for soprano solo. the text says: “lord Jesus christ Who suffered all life long that i, too, might be saved, and Whose suffering still knows no end, this, too, wilt thou endure: saving and redeeming me, this patient suffering of me with whom Thou hast to do―I, who so often go astray.” 11 part of this prayer is based on col 1:24. 12 in SKS 23, 17, NB15:15 / JP 3, 3444. 13 “un poco mosso”; “mysterious, gradually increasing in intensity”; for sopranos, altos, tenors and basses; tenor solo; alto solo; soprano solo, chorus. the text says: “father in heaven, well we know that it is thou that giveth both to will and to do, that also longing, when it leads us to renew the fellowship with our savior and redeemer, is from thee. father in heaven, longing is thy gift. but when longing lays hold of us, o, that we might also lay hold of the longing! When it would carry us away, that we also might give ourselves up! When thou art near to summon us, that we also in prayer might stay near thee! When thou in the longing dost offer us the highest good, o, that we might hold it fast!” 14 for this prayer Kierkegaard derives various elements from mt 13:44, 46; phil 2:13; col 4:5. 15 in SKS 10, 265 / CD, 251. 16 “allegro molto”; “Quietly”; ‘broad and straightforward’; for sopranos, altos, tenor, basses, chorus, entire chorus and soloists. the text says: “father in heaven! hold not our sins up against us but hold us up against our sins, so that the thought of thee should not remind us of what we have committed, but of what thou didst forgive; not how we went astray, but how thou didst save us!” 17 in SKS 20, 194, NB2:133 / JP 3, 3412. 18 The first translation of Kierkegaard into English was Selections from the Writings of Søren Kierkegaard, trans. by lee m. hollander, austin: university of texas bulletin 1923. 9

Samuel Barber: Kierkegaard, From a Musical Point of View

45

Kierkegaard) that first gathered Kierkegaard’s prayers, since it was only published in 1956.19 most likely for the second (2) and fourth (4) movement, the texts of which are based on journal entries, the source was the edition edited by alexander Dru, who was the first to translate into English a selection of Kierkegaard’s Nachlass under the title The Journals of Søren Kierkegaard (1938, reprinted in 1951).20 On the other hand, the text for the first (1) and third (3) movement could reasonably have been taken from Walter Lowrie’s translation. In the first case the source text can be traced in the english translation of For Self-Examination and Judge for Yourselves!, a version that also includes the discourse there entitled The Changelessness of God, first published in Great Britain in 1941 and reprinted in the united states in 1944 (while a third printing dates from 1968).21 in the second case the source is identified in Christian Discourses, edited and translated by lowrie in 1939.22 as noted, the musical work was written several years after its commission, since World War ii and other interruptions prevented barber from completing the score in due time. The resulting work was first performed on December 3, 1954 at the symphony hall, boston, with charles münch conducting the boston symphony orchestra and hugh ross as director of the cecilia society chorus, with soloists leontyne price (soprano), edward munro (tenor), and Jean Kraft (contralto).23 the critics, and barber with them, were not delighted with this opening performance and only at a later presentation did the work receive just praise: “the choral writing is bold and the orchestral elaborate. there is a bite in it which accords We are referring to the collection edited by perry lefevre, The Prayers of Kierkegaard, chicago: university of chicago press 1956. 20 The Journals of Søren Kierkegaard, ed. and trans. by alexander dru, london, new York, toronto: geoffrey cumberlege, oxford university press 1938. actually barber could have used the 1951 impression. in dru’s translation the prayer “lord Jesus christ, Who suffered all life long” is on p. 361 (sequential number: 1030), while “father in heaven! hold not our sins up against us” in on p. 217 (sequential number: 692). 21 Kierkegaard, For Self-Examination and Judge for Yourselves! and Three Discourses 1851, trans. by Walter Lowrie; first published in Great Britain, London: Humphrey Milford, oxford university press 1941; reprinted in the united states of america, princeton: princeton university press 1944. We note that The Unchangeableness of God is the only piece in this book not translated by lowrie, but by david swenson. the prayer that opens the discourse is on page 227. alternatively barber could consult also the book entitled A Kierkegaard Anthology, ed. by robert bretall, princeton: princeton university press 1946; london: geoffrey cumberlege, oxford university press 1946 (second printing 1947). actually this edition contains both The Unchangeableness of God (the prayer is on p. 470), and the prayer used by barber for the second movement, taken from the 1950s Journal (on p. 427). but in any case this edition as well is based on lowrie. 22 Christian Discourses, and The Lilies of the Field and the Birds of the Air, and Three Discourses at the Communion on Fridays, trans. by Walter lowrie, london and new York: oxford university press 1939. the prayer is on p. 259. 23 cf. peter dickinson, Samuel Barber Remembered: A Centenary Tribute, rochester, new York: university of rochester press 2010, p. 114 n22. 19

46

Diego Giordano

with the danish theologian’s austere piety….it had a certain stark impressiveness and sounds a new note in modern choral music.”24 III. Barber’s Reception of Kierkegaard barber never gave any express indication about his religious belief. but his orthodox presbyterian-Quaker background certainly left a deep imprint on him. We can primarily notice his religious inspiration in Hermit Songs (1953) and Prayers of Kierkegaard. the Hermit Songs is a cycle of ten songs for voice and piano based on a collection of anonymous poems written by irish medieval monks. although the texts are both sacred and profane, the majority of them lean toward an attitude of simple faith, which can be interpreted as the expression of the isolated lonely life of an artist. by contrast, the texts used for the Prayers of Kierkegaard, as well as the use of gregorian chant style, seem to reveal a more inner religious meditation. in the essay Samuel Barber: An Improvisatory Portrait, published in the sales catalogue of the works of barber prepared by his publisher, g. schirmer, the author paul Wittke writes: “Prayers of Kierkegaard is unequivocally a religious statement. here the no-nonsense realistic-yet-hopeful attitude of american protestantism, the nucleus of barber’s upbringing, has found a center.”25 the four movements have a majestic course and an intense and sincere choral line. The first prayer begins with unaccompanied male voices invoking a call to the infinite love and unchanging nature of god. then the orchestra enters, responding to the chant in imitative counterpoint, crying out, “but nothing changes thee, o thou unchanging,” until the chorus ends with a four-square chorale, joined in climax with the orchestra, on the words “Thou Art Unchanging.” The second section, recited in the first person, is opened by an oboe solo that introduces the soprano solo who asks for strength and redemption through suffering from “lord Jesus christ, who suffered all life long.” the prayer segues seamlessly into the third,26 which counts intricate and complex passages of counterpoint, featuring the tenor, alto, and soprano soloists, as well as the chorus, on the words, “but when longing lays hold of us, o, that we might lay hold of the longing!” the last prayer begins with a frenzied orchestral section, featuring 24 “Kierkegaard cantata: london philharmonic orchestra at the festival hall,” The Times, June 11, 1955 (which appeared the day after the first British performance at the Royal festival hall, london, on June 10, 1955). cf. also the review in Time, december 20, 1954, entitled “next to godliness.” 25 paul Wittke, Samuel Barber: An Improvisatory Portrait, new York: schirmer 1994. this article is divided into six brief parts. it is followed by the actual schirmer catalogue of barber’s music (pp. 32–53), compiled by norman d. ryan. throughout the pamphlet are several photographs of barber, some alone, some with others. for further information on this catalogue see Samuel Barber: A Guide to Research, p. 119 (n. 286). 26 some recordings merge the second and third movement into a single track. Jens staubrand in his International Bibliography Music Works and Plays Based on Words by Søren Kierkegaard, Copenhagen: The Royal Library 1998, improperly merges the first and second prayer (p. 23), presenting again the second prayer (“lord Jesus christ, Who suffered all life long”) as a separate text (p. 25).

Samuel Barber: Kierkegaard, From a Musical Point of View

47

the brasses, that goes on until the chorus cries “Father in Heaven!” The finale is performed by the entire chorus and soloists in a “broad and straightforward” tone. barber was drawn to Kierkegaard’s unceasing quest for spiritual truth. in the program notes for the premiere he wrote: It is difficult to give a philosophic appraisal of Kierkegaard’s standpoint since he elaborated no philosophy and was indeed the sworn enemy of philosophical systems…. the entire literary production of Kierkegaard is motivated by the intent of bringing men into a religious relationship with God, and throughout his writings one finds his three basic traits of imagination, dialectic and religious melancholy. the truth he sought after was “a truth which is true for me,” one which demanded sacrifice and personal response.27

it is not possible to state further relationships between barber and Kierkegaard, and perhaps they do not exist. but sources apart, admittedly barber used Kierkegaard for claiming religious needs, recognizing in the danish philosopher a clear, powerful, and absolute voice. and he did so in the only way he knew how: from a musical point of view.

barbara b. heyman, Samuel Barber: The Composer and His Music, london and new York: oxford university press 1992, pp. 350–1 (index voices: “Kierkegaard: studied by barber”; “program notes”; “texts.”) this information is also reported by elizabeth schwartz on the Program Notes written for the first Oregon Symphony performance of Barber’s Prayers of Kierkegaard, portland, arlene schnitzer concert hall, march 31, 2007. 27

bibliography I. References to or Uses of Kierkegaard in Barber’s corpus Prayers of Kierkegaard, new York: g. schirmer 1954. piano-vocal score (english and german). the english lyrics also printed separately as text. (45pp.). II. Sources of Barber’s Knowledge of Kierkegaard Kierkegaard, søren, The Journals of Søren Kierkegaard, ed. and trans. by alexander dru, london, new York, toronto: geoffrey cumberlege, oxford university press 1938; (second printing 1951). ― Christian Discourses, and The Lilies of the Field and the Birds of the Air, and Three Discourses at the Communion on Fridays, trans. by Walter lowrie, london and new York: oxford university press 1939. ― For Self-Examination and Judge for Yourselves! and Three Discourses 1851, trans. by Walter lowrie, london: humphrey milford, oxford university press 1941; princeton: princeton university press 1944. ― A Kierkegaard Anthology, ed. by robert bretall, princeton: princeton university press 1946; london: geoffrey cumberlege, oxford university press 1946 (second printing 1947). III. Secondary Literature Discussing Barber’s Relation to Kierkegaard dailey, William albert, “techniques in composition used in contemporary Works for chorus and orchestra on religious texts as important representative Works from the period 1952–62,” (d.m.a. thesis), Washington, d.c., the catholic university of america 1965. dickinson, peter, Samuel Barber Remembered: A Centenary Tribute, rochester, new York: university of rochester press 2010, p. 24; p. 114; p. 114, note 22. heyman, barbara b., Samuel Barber: The Composer and His Music, london and new York: oxford university press 1992, pp. 348–59. hicks, anne matlack, “samuel barber’s The Lovers,” (d.m.a. thesis), cincinnati, university of cincinnati 1991, pp. 39–49. redlich, hans ferdinand, “music from the american continent,” Music Review, vol. 19, 1958, pp. 246–53. staubrand, Jens, Søren Kierkegaard, International bibliografi, Musikværker og skuespil baseret på tekster af Søren Kierkegaard / International Bibliography Music Works and Plays Based on Words by Søren Kierkegaard, copenhagen: det

Samuel Barber: Kierkegaard, From a Musical Point of View

49

Kongelige Bibliotek/The Royal Library 1998, pp. 21–5; (reprint, Frederiksberg: edition søren Kierkegaard Kulturproduktion 2004 and 2009). Wentzel, Wayne clifford, Samuel Barber: A Guide to Research, london and new York: routledge 2001 (Composer Resource Manuals, vol. 55), p. 57; p. 140; pp. 144–5. Wittke, paul, Samuel Barber: An Improvisatory Portrait, new York: schirmer 1994, pp. 1–31.

harold bloom: critics, bards, and prophets elisabete m. de sousa

harold bloom’s readers are familiar with his habit of naming and citing with an ostensive lack of scholarly apparatus—footnotes, indexes, and page numbers for quoted passages tend to be rare, giving the impression, at times, that he quotes from memory. his elaborations are consistently intertwined with allusions and commentaries on a wide range of texts, and accordingly, bloom most often cites Kierkegaard leaving the source or the page number unmentioned, when he mentions the volume (the inverse also occurs).1 he unquestionably shows a consistent knowledge of the life and production of Kierkegaard and of his posterity as forerunner of various philosophers, theologians, and novelists, and though it may seem that Kierkegaard lags behind in the number of references, allusions, or indirect quotations in bloom’s writings, at least when compared to freud, nietzsche, Vico, or emerson, the words and the thought of the danish philosopher, as we shall see, are a fundamental part of many operative steps in bloom’s practical criticism, with Kierkegaard’s categories of repetition and recollection providing inspiration and substance for Bloom’s theory of influence. the bio-biographical note contains only what is deemed necessary to provide adequate context for subsequent references in this article. We must here mention that it proved unfeasible to cover all the volumes edited and prefaced by harold Bloom, since the continual outpouring of works published for almost five decades has brought their number to almost five hundred; however, as it is customary with bloom, many of the anthologies include articles or chapters of earlier works, and therefore special attention is given to the founding works of his theory which discuss the major points more richly stamped by Kierkegaard’s thought, and to the works where bloom’s practical criticism takes the danish thinker as witness to the truth of his ideas. following this introduction, the present article includes two parts: section i contains general references to Kierkegaard’s work that may seem minor when confronted with the massive use of Repetition, especially in A Map of Misreading, which is analyzed in section ii. these more general uses of Kierkegaard account for the centrality of Kierkegaard’s thought in bloom’s theory and on the other hand help to create the necessary familiarity with bloom’s practical criticism in order to as it is the case of most the scholars of his generation, bloom generally quotes from the existing english translations prior to the hongs’ edition of Kierkegaard’s Writings, although in more recent works the quotations belong to Kierkegaard’s Writings.

1

52

Elisabete M. de Sousa

grasp the full significance of the commentaries on Kierkegaard’s works included in section ii. harold bloom (b. 1930) is sterling professor of the humanities at Yale university and henry W. and albert a. berg professor of english at the new York university graduate school. he earned his ph.d. from Yale university in 1955 and has served on the Yale faculty ever since; he also served as the charles eliot norton professor of poetry at harvard university in 1987–88. he is the recipient of many american and international awards and honorary degrees and the author of over thirty volumes, as well as editor of hundreds of anthologies of literary criticism, aimed at different readers. even before the publication of The Anxiety of Influence in 1973,2 his works had already been focusing on the agonic relationships between great writers and their forerunners, manifest in their poems as readings of other poems; this is the case of Shelley’s Mythmaking (1959),3 The Visionary Company (1961),4 Blake’s Apocalypse (1963),5 Yeats (1970),6 and The Ringers in the Tower (1971).7 in the 1970s, following The Anxiety of Influence, bloom published an impressive number of works which put his theories into practice and, at the same time, consolidated his attack on deconstruction and the school of resentment, bloom’s label for cultural studies, or better still, for “[t]hose critics who value theory over the literature itself.”8 among these works, we count A Map of Misreading (1975),9 Kabbalah and Criticism (1975),10 Poetry and Repression and Figures of Capable Imagination (1976),11 as well as Deconstruction and Criticism (1980),12 Agon: Towards a Theory of Revisionism (1982),13 and The Breaking of the Vessels (1982).14 many of these texts are dialogically constructed, responding to the harold bloom, The Anxiety of Influence, oxford and new York: oxford university press 1973. 3 harold bloom, Shelley’s Mythmaking, new haven, connecticut: Yale university press 1959. 4 harold bloom, The Visionary Company: A Reading of English Romantic Poetry, revised and enlarged ed., ithaca and london: cornell university press 1971. 5 harold bloom, Blake’s Apocalypse, new York: doubleday anchor 1965. 6 harold bloom, Yeats, oxford, new York: oxford university press 1970. 7 harold bloom, The Ringers in the Tower, chicago and london: university of chicago press 1971. 8 see harold bloom, Shakespeare, The Invention of the Human, new York: riverhead books 1998, p. 9. 9 harold bloom, A Map of Misreading, oxford and new York: oxford university press 1975. 10 harold bloom, Kabbalah and Criticism, new York: seabury press 1975. 11 harold bloom, Poetry and Repression: Revisionism From Blake to Stevens, new haven, connecticut: Yale university press 1976; harold bloom, Figures of Capable Imagination, new York: continuum 1976. 12 harold bloom, Deconstruction and Criticism, new York: seabury press 1979. 13 harold bloom, Agon: Towards a Theory of Revisionism, oxford and new York: oxford university press 1982. 14 harold bloom, The Breaking of the Vessels, chicago: university of chicago press 1982. 2

Harold Bloom: Critics, Bards, and Prophets

53

criticism of relevant names of literary theory, among them northrop frye, ernst robert curtius, Kenneth burke, geoffrey hartman, paul de man, and Jacques derrida, and also to the thought of historians like gershom scholem and hans Jonas. bloom has also written books on shakespeare (Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human, 1998, and Hamlet: Poem Unlimited, 2003),15 and has other works deliberately intended to address literature not as a discipline, whose state of the art can be updated, but as an art whose status cannot be erased—among them, The Western Canon (1994),16 How to Read and Why? (2000),17 Genius: A Mosaic of One Hundred Exemplary Creative Minds (2003),18 and Where Shall Wisdom Be Found? (2004).19 in the last two decades, bloom has published a number of works focused on various features of religious texts, such as The Book of J (1990),20 The American Religion: The Emergence of the Post-Christian Nation (1992),21 Omens of Millennium: The Gnosis of Angels, Dreams, and Resurrection (1996),22 and Jesus and Yahweh: The Names Divine (2005).23 in very simple terms, the kernel of bloom’s theory deals with the belatedness experienced by ulterior “strong” poets in their agonistic endeavor in relation to one or more other strong poet, a claim that runs parallel to the defense of reading poems as “misreadings” of other poems. in bloom’s words: a strong poem, which alone can become canonical for more than a single generation, can be defined as a text that must engender strong misreadings, both as other poems and as literary criticism. texts that have single, reductive, simplistic meanings are themselves necessarily weak misreadings of anterior texts. When a strong misreading has demonstrated its fecundity by producing other strong misreadings across several generations, then we can and must accept its canonical status.24

in order to recognize the misreading of a poem and to give a rigorous account, to the reader and to himself, of what that misreading is about, bloom envisioned a method, thus explained:

harold bloom, Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human, new York: riverhead books 1998; harold bloom, Hamlet: Poem Unlimited, new York: riverhead books 2003. 16 harold bloom, The Western Canon, new York: harcourt, brace & co. 2004. 17 harold bloom, How to Read and Why, new York: scribner 2000. 18 harold bloom, Genius: A Mosaic of One Hundred Exemplary Creative Minds, new York: Warner books 2003. 19 harold bloom, Where Shall Wisdom Be Found?, new York: riverhead books 2004. 20 harold bloom, The Book of J, new York: grove press 1990. 21 harold bloom, The American Religion: The Emergence of the Post-Christian Nation, london: simon & schuster 1992. 22 harold bloom, Omens of Millennium: The Gnosis of Angels, Dreams, and Resurrection, new York: riverhead books 1996. 23 harold bloom, Jesus and Yahweh: The Names Divine, new York: riverhead books 2005. 24 harold bloom, “John ashbery’s Wet Casements and Tapestry,” in his Agon: Towards a Theory of Revisionism, p. 285. 15

Elisabete M. de Sousa

54

i propose, not another new poetics, but a wholly different practical criticism. let us give up the fated but failed enterprise of seeking to “understand” any single poem as an entity in itself. let us pursue instead the quest of learning to read any poem as its poet’s deliberate misinterpretation, as a poet, of a precursor poem or of poetry in general. Know each poem by its clinamen and you will “know” that poem in a way that will not purchase knowledge by the loss of the poem’s power.25

Clinamen is the first of the six revisionary ratios which can be traced in the poetical practice of any poet, the others being tessera, kenosis, daemonization, askesis, and apophrades. in The Anxiety of Influence these ratios are devised in terms of freudian defense mechanisms and of rhetorical tropes, and in A Map of Misreading they are connected to the Kabbalah.26 the next passage gives a general idea of the interrelations between mechanisms of defense, rhetorical tropes, and revisionary ratios: What determines them [the crucial patterns of interplay between literal and figurative meanings] is the anxiety of influence, because it is the war against belatedness that results in certain patterns of analogous images, tropes, psychic defenses, and revisionary ratios. i do not say that these patterns produce meaning, because i do not believe that meaning is produced in and by poems, but only between poems. but the interaction of these patterns, between poems, suggests or opens up all possibilities of poetic meaning. the hidden roads that go from poem to poem are: limitation, substitution, representation; or the dialectic of revisionism….tropism of meaning compels tropes themselves to be meaning.27

much of bloom’s theory will become self-evident in the various quotations illustrating his references to Kierkegaard; it suffices for now to retain that the poets’ agonistic endeavor is inseparable from the desire to reach immortality, and the anxiety of influence thus generated in the poem gets to be an inescapable experience for the ephebe (the young poet), determining a weak or a strong misreading of a poem by a stronger poet, who is the ephebe’s precursor. not even shakespeare, who according to bloom is the precursor of all authors, is exempt from anxiety—he may well have invented the human, but he “makes an implicit covenant with chaucer.”28 and not even the scriptures get away without scrutiny: 25

p. 43.

harold bloom, “clinamen or poetic misprision,” in his The Anxiety of Influence,

for a diagram of these interrelations, see bloom, A Map of Misreading, p. 84. bloom accounts for the use of the Kabbalah this way in his “poetry, revisionism, repression,” in his Poetry and Repression: Revisionism From Blake to Stevens, p. 14: “but, again like the poets, so many of whom have been implicitly gnostic while explicitly even more occult, i turn to the medieval system of old testament interpretation known as Kabbalah, particularly the doctrines of Isaac Luria. Kabbalah, demystified, is a unique blend of Gnostic and Neoplatonic elements, of a self-conscious subjectivity founded upon a revisionist view of creation, combined with a rational but rhetorically extreme dialectic of creativity.” 27 bloom, Kabbalah and Criticism, pp. 88–9 (emphasis in original). 28 bloom, Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human, p. 731: “beyond any writer—poet, dramatist, philosopher, psychologist, theologian—shakespeare thought everything through again himself. this makes him as much the forerunner of Kierkegaard, emerson, nietzsche, 26

Harold Bloom: Critics, Bards, and Prophets

55

the new covenant (testament) is throughout marked by belatedness in regard to the tanakh. but the partial exceptions are the logia, or sayings, and parables of Jesus. their enigmatics (to coin that) are sometimes unprecedented. hamlet, Kierkegaard, Kafka are the great ironists in the wake of Jesus. all Western irony is a repetition of Jesus’ enigmas/riddles, in amalgam with the ironies of Socrates.29

I. This section presents a significant number of brief, quite often epigrammatic, references and allusions, many of them typically used as synecdoche for longer passages. the quotations generally belong to the works published up to and including 1846, namely, The Concept of Irony, Either/Or, Repetition, Fear and Trembling, The Concept of Anxiety, Philosophical Fragments, the Concluding Unscientific Postscript, the upbuilding discourses from 1843–44, and among later works, The Point of View of My Work as an Author and The Changelessness of God, as well as a few passages from The Moment, Judge for Yourself!, and the journals and notebooks. one of the key concepts in bloom’s theory is the “uncanny,” borrowed from freud’s das Unheimliche, and Kierkegaard and the “uncanny” are associated in different ways. the following excerpt shows Kierkegaard as a representative of the “uncanny”: “gerda [a character from h.c. andersen’s “the snow Queen”] can be set against Kierkegaard at his uncanniest: The Concept of Dread, The Sickness Unto Death, Fear and Trembling, Repetition.”30 in the introduction to a recent volume on alienation, it is the role of post-Kierkegaardian anxiety in the emergence of the “uncanny” that is underscored: [but] alienation in the age of Kafka took on the meaning of existential dread. camus, influenced by Kierkegaard and Sartre, as well as by Kafka, shifted alienation to a category reflecting a dishonored post-war France still suffering under the stigma of the nazi occupation….in freud, alienation essentially is the estrangement he termed the “uncanny” (unheimlich), which, as i have argued elsewhere, is our modern version of the sublime.31

and freud as of ibsen, strindberg, pirandello, and beckett,” in “coda: the shakespearean difference.” see also ibid., p. 11. among shakespeare’s plays, hamlet stands at the peak of influence: “Hazlitt uttered a more-than-romantic truth in his: ‘It is we who are Hamlet.’ ‘We’ certainly included dostoevsky, nietzsche, and Kierkegaard, and in a later time, Joyce and beckett.” ibid., p. 413. see also notes 49 and 50 in the present article. 29 Harold Bloom, “Prelude: Eight Opening Reflections,” in his Jesus and Yahweh: The Names Divine, p. 10. see also bloom’s “the dark speaking of Jesus,” in his Jesus and Yahweh: The Names Divine, p. 29: “Whether in aphorisms or in parables, Jesus speaks riddles. he is the poet of the riddle, anticipating dante, shakespeare, cervantes, John donne, and even lewis caroll and James Joyce, as well as Kierkegaard, emerson, nietzsche, Kafka and many others in the literary and spiritual tradition of the West.” 30 see Hans Christian Andersen, ed. by harold bloom, philadelphia: chelsea house publishers 2005, p. xiv. 31 see Alienation, introduced by harold bloom, ed. by blake hobby, philadelphia: chelsea house publishers 2009, p. xv. his “modern version of the sublime” is associated with

56

Elisabete M. de Sousa

although Kierkegaard is seen to be “less a religious writer than he is a poetic speculator” and “one of the strongest modern poets,”32 and together with nietzsche, “he may endure as the critic of religiosity”33; his christian endeavor is seriously envisioned, but is defined in terms of perpetual agon, since Kierkegaard’s “speculative enterprise is the immense difficulty of becoming a Christian in a society ostensibly christian,”34 and seen as the root of his anxiety35 and of the fierceness of his attack.36 hence, Kierkegaard’s stance as a religious writer provides the logical explanation not only for his individual plight and his production as a whole, but also for the indelible stamp of despair: “increase in knowledge past certain bounds may bring sin, if the knowledge itself is unlawful, by greek, hebrew and christian belief, the modern equivalent being the Kierkegaardian dictum that every increase in consciousness means an increase in despair.”37 in an account of hans christian andersen’s work, bloom repeats the same idea, when he describes the two writers in reciprocal terms, making them complementary rather than antithetical literary persons: andersen professed a rather sentimental devotion to the christ child, but his art is pagan in nature. his danish contemporary, Kierkegaard, shrewdly sensed this early on. From the perspective of the twenty-first century, Andersen and Kierkegaard strangely his notion of poetical repression, or “the imagination of a counter-sublime,” patent in “the post-enlightenment crisis-poem”; in “poetry, revisionism, repression,” p. 24. 32 bloom’s introduction to Søren Kierkegaard: Modern Critical Views, ed. and introduced by harold bloom, new York: chelsea house publishers 1991, pp. 1–4, was republished as “søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855),” in Essayists and Prophets, philadelphia: chelsea house publishers 2005, pp. 110–13. for this quotation, see the last page in each case, p. 4 of “introduction” and p. 113 of “søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855),” in his Essayists and Prophets. 33 see bloom, Genius: A Mosaic of One Hundred Exemplary Creative Minds, p. 196. 34 bloom, “introduction” to Søren Kierkegaard: Modern Critical Views, p. 1; and in “søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855),” in his Essayists and Prophets, p. 110. the same statement is repeated in harold bloom, “coda: nemesis and Wisdom,” in his Where Shall Wisdom Be Found?, pp. 283–4. see also harold bloom, “the trinity,” in his Jesus and Yahweh: The Names Divine, pp. 104–5: “christian platonism dispenses with socratic irony, at least until the nineteenth century, with the advent of søren Kierkegaard, whose emphasis began where the trinitarians end. how can one become a christian, he asks, in a realm that proclaims its share in christendom? if christianity is to involve taking on some mystery of the suffering of Jesus, is it attainable when the new believer simply joins herself or himself to most of society? the question would have made little sense in the fourth century and would have oppressed Kierkegaard a millennium and a half later, and seems unanswerable in twenty-first century america.” 35 see bloom, Genius: A Mosaic of One Hundred Exemplary Creative Minds, p. 199. 36 see bloom, “the dark speaking of Jesus,” p. 27: “Kierkegaard, another [the other previously mentioned is Jesus] master of irony (which he called ‘indirect communication’), remarked in his Judge for Yourself!: ‘christianity has completely conquered—that is, it is abolished!’ evidently, the danish sage meant that you could become a christian only in opposition to the established order.” (cf. SKS 16, 235 / JFY, 188.) 37 see bloom, Shelley’s Mythmaking, p. 57. The allusion is to the chapter A a) α) “Infinitude’s Despair is to Lack Finitude,” in SKS 11, 25–8 / SUD, 30–3.

Harold Bloom: Critics, Bards, and Prophets

57

divide between them the aesthetic eminence of danish literature….Kierkegaard himself rightly analyzed his own project as the illumination of how impossible it is to become a christian in an ostensibly christian society. andersen covertly had a rather different project: how to remain a child in an ostensibly adult world.38

Prior to these remarks, the age of Kierkegaard had been classified as “[t]he night world of the romantic demonism and religiosity,” the opposite of “the natural sun of Keats,” whose “hedonistic and aesthetic humanism” would not have been rated by Kierkegaard “as ever attaining the ethical, let alone the religious stage,” since Keats outdoes any of the “categories made by a poet [Kierkegaard] who thought less of the earth than he [Keats] did.”39 In an essay on Dr. Johnson, whom he finds free of any form of despair in spite of being “uncannily dark,” bloom refers to “Kierkegaard’s two inevitable despairs: ‘the despair of having failed to become oneself, or the still greater despair of having become oneself.’ ”40 bloom also states that “[n]egation of seeming realities in an ostensibly christian society is the essence of Kierkegaard’s genius,”41 adding that his despair compelled him to move further, since his “quest was to become a christian instructed only by the christ himself.”42 further on, bloom analyzes the contrast between the initial prayer in The Changelessness of God, which he finds “poignant” in the anguished mode of the christian faced with the god’s non-changeability and the infiniteness of His love, and the actual content of the sermon’s text (James 1:17–21);43 he ends with the remark that “Kierkegaard preaches a sermon to us, his readers, for we are his only congregation.”44 the lonely path travelled by Kierkegaard is highlighted in this excerpt where nietzsche and Kierkegaard stand side by side: Kierkegaard tells us that christians are not christians, but something else. nietzsche, a step on from Kierkegaard, asserts that there was only one christian, and he died on the cross, but the author of Christian Discourses and Practice in Christianity fought hard see Hans Christian Andersen, ed. by bloom, pp. ix–x. this deeply rooted view is used again to comment on ibsen’s and W.h. auden’s interpretation of brand in “henrik ibsen (1828–1906), Brand / Hedda Gabler,” in his Drama and Dramatists, philadelphia: chelsea house publishers 2005, p. 144: “himself a Kierkegaardian, auden regarded brand as an apostle, someone who knows only ‘that he is called upon to forsake everything he has been, to venture into an unknown and probably unpleasant future.’ one can wonder if auden was correct in so assimilating Brand to Kierkegaard’s difficult question of ‘becoming a Christian’ in a country ostensibly already christian.” on an excerpt of auden’s The Sea and the Mirror, concerning The Tempest, bloom states in his Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human, p. 664: “auden assimilates caliban to himself…[t]his is primarily auden on auden, heavily influenced by Kierkegaard, but it catches Caliban’s dilemma: ‘The love nothing, the fear all.’ ” 39 harold bloom, “John Keats,” in his The Visionary Company: A Reading of English Romantic Poetry, pp. 391–2. 40 harold bloom, “James boswell (1740–1795),” in his Essayists and Prophets, p. 66. bloom had expressed the same opinion when talking about ibsen in his The Western Canon, p. 352. 41 bloom, “søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855),” in his Genius, p. 199. 42 ibid., p. 200. 43 SKS 13, 327–9 / M, 268–70. 44 bloom, “søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855),” in his Genius, p. 201. 38

58

Elisabete M. de Sousa against that despair. Kierkegaard prayed to become a christian, though he would have understood emerson’s denunciation of prayer as a disease of the will.45

Kierkegaard is also classified as a “moral psychologist,” again in the line of nietzsche, joined by pascal, montaigne and swift,46 whereas in an essay on george eliot, responding to a commentary on the english novelist, Kierkegaard is named as “prose prophet” and “storyteller of some sort.”47 Significantly, in what concerns enlarging “our vision of the enigmas of human nature,” Kierkegaard is elected as a term of comparison for shakespeare,48 an extremely complimentary honor in bloom’s world-view.49 Kierkegaard is also seen as having taken the mode of communication from hamlet50: indirect communication, the mode of Kierkegaard, so well expounded by roger poole, [was] learned by Kierkegaard from hamlet.…perhaps hamlet, like Kierkegaard, came into the world to help save it from reductiveness. if shakespeare brings us a secular salvation, it is partly because he helps ward off the philosophers who wish to explain us away, as if we were only so many muddles to be cleared up.51 ibid., p. 199. harold bloom, “blaise pascal (1623–1662),” in his Essayists and Prophets, p. 37: “Yet nietzsche also remarked, in a letter to georg brandes, that he almost loved pascal for having been ‘the only logical christian.’ the true link between the two was in their greatness as moral psychologists, a distinction they share with montaigne and with Kierkegaard, and in another mode with swift.” 47 harold bloom, “george eliot (1819–1880), Daniel Deronda / The Mill on the Floss / Silas Marner / Middlemarch,” in his Novelists and Novels, philadelphia: chelsea house publishers 2005, p. 139: “as the sybil of ‘unrecompensing law,’ eliot joined the austere company of nineteenth-century prose prophets: carlyle, ruskin, newman and arnold in England; Emerson in America; Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard and finally Freud on the continent. but this ninefold, though storytellers of a sort, wrote no novels.” 48 see bloom, Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human, p. 730. 49 another complimentary remark in the same line of thought in bloom, The Western Canon, p. 56: “Interpreting Hamlet becomes as difficult as interpreting such aphorists as emerson, nietzsche and Kierkegaard.” 50 When commenting on hamlet’s lines as the player king (act iii, scene ii, lines 183–209), bloom states in “hamlet,” in his Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human, pp. 425–6: “i assume that hamlet composed them as his key signature, as what that other melancholy dane, Kierkegaard, called ‘the point of View of my Work as an author.’ ” he goes on to explain the last lines (207–9) this way: “our ‘devices’ are our intended purposes, products of our wills, but our fates are antithetical to our characters, and what we think to do has no relation to our thoughts’ ‘ends,’ where ‘ends’ means both conclusions and harvests.” bloom had previously established a parallel between hamlet and ophelia and Kierkegaard and regine olsen in his The Western Canon, p. 56: “Kierkegaard also discovered that it was impossible not to be post-shakespearean, haunted as he was by his inimitable precursor as melancholy dane whose relation to ophelia presaged Kierkegaard’s to regine.” Kierkegaard is still eloquently referred to as “prince hamlet come again to denmark,” see bloom, “søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855),” in his Genius, p. 198. 51 see bloom, Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human, p. 730. another reference to roger poole’s analysis is found in bloom, Genius: A Mosaic of One Hundred Exemplary 45 46

Harold Bloom: Critics, Bards, and Prophets

59

not surprisingly, bloom includes Kierkegaard as one of the hundred geniuses he chose as canon for the new millennium. bloom conceives the category of genius as a Kabbalistic Sefirot, that is, “attribute[s] at once of god and of the adam Kadmon or Divine man, God’s image”; the Sefirot is a god in “the process of creation” and should be viewed as “lights, texts, or phases of creativity.”52 the various types of geniuses are named after the Kabbalistic designations for the various pillars of the tree of life; under the edge of Binah—“intellect in a receptive mode, an intelligence not so much passive as dramatically open to the power of wisdom”53—he places Kierkegaard, together with nietzsche, Kafka, proust, and beckett,54 united by their condition of “extraordinary knowers of the breaking of the light,” “visionaries” with an “exacerbated spirituality.”55 nonetheless, bloom believes that Kierkegaard “could not have appreciated the terrible irony that, for most of us, he is a literary genius, despite his intense spiritual aspirations”; and although he acknowledges his “religious insights,” he firmly states that the works which matter for the literary tradition are “his fascinating meditations upon seduction, repetition, and the dark night of the soul,” dominated by “his irony, inventiveness, and psychological acuity.”56 Quite often Kierkegaard’s words put on a plastic quality in bloomian texts— in itself, this is another common procedure, since all authors are taken as authors of texts who gain authority by being interpreted as strong misreading of former texts, and they are summoned to bloom’s texts on that condition. this excerpt, from an essay on José saramago’s The Gospel according to Jesus Christ, clearly demonstrates this feature: god, in saramago’s Gospel, has some affinities to the J Writer’s Yahweh and some to blake’s nobodaddy, but it is important to see that saramago resists giving us the Creative Minds, p. 198. more recently, however, bloom has claimed in Where Shall Wisdom Be Found?, p. 58: “Kierkegaard’s ‘indirect communication’ seems based on plato’s, perhaps as a swerve away from Hegel.” In this same work, he designates as “flamboyant heteronyms, [the] fictive authors of Kierkegaard’s treatises and [Fernando] Pessoa’s poems” (ibid., p. 120). 52 for these three quotations, see bloom, Genius: A Mosaic of One Hundred Exemplary Creative Minds, p. xi. 53 see ibid., p. xiii. 54 They are included in the first sequence (Lustre 5), while Molière, Ibsen, Chekov, Wilde and pirandello are included in the second (lustre 6). the “lustres” refer “to the conditions of shining by reflected light, the gloss or sheen that one genius imparts to another, when juxtaposed in my mosaic.” ibid., p. xv. 55 see ibid., p. 191. 56 the four expressions here cited belong to the opening paragraphs of the section dedicated to Kierkegaard in ibid., p. 197. in this same passage, bloom names Repetition, Either/Or, The Sickness unto Death, The Concept of Anxiety, but in his eyes, other works are also fascinating, namely, Fear and Trembling, Philosophical Fragments and the Concluding Unscientific Postscript. he also describes Kierkegaard using the words of nebuchadnezzar, in order to demonstrate that Kierkegaard was aware that in his christian quest his mind “had touched its limit.” a similar use can be found in bloom, Jesus and Yahweh: The Names Divine, pp. 136–7. further allusions to nebuchadnezzar are found in bloom, Figures of Capable Imagination, pp. 263–4. see note 119 in this article.

60

Elisabete M. de Sousa gnostics’ ialdaboth. Kierkegaard in his Concluding Unscientific Postscript ironically observed that “to give thinking supremacy over everything else is gnosticism” (341).57

the density of cross-references is even higher in the next excerpt where bloom alludes to Kierkegaard; after having first distinguished between Freud’s use of anxiety, grief, and sorrow, and when it comes to instantiate anxiety (in the ego, in the id, or the superego) in freud and in blake, bloom asserts that the spectre of urthona is neither the anxiety of influence, nor sexual anxiety. Before proceeding with an analysis combining “the insights of freud and Kierkegaard,” he states: los’s anxiety is larger and more constant, resembling Kierkegaard’s Concept of Dread, which must be why Northrop Frye ironically calls the Spectre of Urthona the first existentialist. a desire for what one fears, a sympathetic antipathy, or walking oxymoron; so Kierkegaard speaks of the dread, and so we learn of the spectre of urthona. to Kierkegaard, this was a manifestation of Original Sin; to Blake this manifests the final consequence of being one of tirzah’s children, a natural man caught on the spindle of necessity.58

Kierkegaard’s authority is summoned to underscore bloom’s commentary on shakespeare’s irony,59 as well as his conclusions on Yeats’ The Second Coming, in a passage where bloom’s knowledge of The Concept of Irony also becomes evident: “Kierkegaard, in the thirteenth thesis of the defense of his The Concept of Irony says that irony is like vexation over the fact that others also enjoy what the soul desires for itself. this is worth remembering in judging the irony of the second coming, and in brooding upon Poetic Influence.”60 in this context, Kierkegaard shares with freud the epithet of “great erotic ironist,”61 and his wisdom is said to be “desperately needed despite its ironic maskings,” and to halt “at the frontiers of the esoteric, at harold bloom, “José saramago (1922–), the gospel according to Jesus christ,” in his Novelists and Novels, p. 464. on the issue of gnosticism (this time Yeats’ and Jung’s), bloom comments on Kierkegaard’s contribution to modern views on subjectivity in “a Vision: the great Wheel,” in his Yeats, p. 225: “for recent readers, ‘subjectivity’ has taken on a special status as a value-word because of Kierkegaard, a peculiar irony since Kierkegaard, from a Yeatsian viewpoint, is a major monument of christian ‘objectivity.’ ” 58 this and the previous quotation are to be found in harold bloom, “blake’s Jerusalem: the bard of sensibility and the form of prophecy,” in his The Ringers in the Tower, p. 76. another example of cross references, including Kierkegaard’s, occurs in a segment of bloom’s analysis of the parable of the cave in “the sublime crossing and the death of love,” in his Agon: Towards a Theory of Revisionism, p. 235: “in so reading the parable of the cavern, i follow heidegger, and his pupil hannah arendt, who in her book Past and Future traces the turnings and crossings against yet within tradition, as made by Kierkegaard, marx and Nietzsche, back to Plato’s first great turning operation.” 59 see bloom, Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human, p. 391; see also bloom, How to Read and Why, p. 191. 60 harold bloom, “michael robartes and the dancer,” in his Yeats, p. 318. for further references to thesis Xiii, see note 110 in this text. 61 bloom, “introduction” to Søren Kierkegaard: Modern Critical Views, p. 1; bloom, “søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855),” in his Essayists and Prophets, p. 110. 57

Harold Bloom: Critics, Bards, and Prophets

61

what the great Kabbalistic scholar moshe idel terms ‘the perfection that absorbs.’ ”62 bloom makes use of Kierkegaard’s insight on anxiety on several occasions, as in this study on mary shelley’s Frankenstein: the profound dejection endemic in mary shelley’s novel is fundamental to the romantic mythology of the self, for all romantic horrors are diseases of excessive consciousness, of the self unable to bear the self. Kierkegaard remarks that satan’s despair is absolute because satan, as pure spirit, is pure consciousness, and for satan (and all men in his predicament) every increase in consciousness is an increase in despair.63

sometimes, more than once in the same work, readers come across bloom’s shiboleth: “he who is willing to do the work gives birth to his own father,”64 often accompanied by a direct or indirect citation from nietzsche,65 and then applied to the author in question, as here with dickens: Kierkegaard advised us that “he who is willing to do the work gives birth to his own father,” while nietzsche even more ironically observed that “if one hasn’t had a good father, then it is necessary to invent one.” David Copperfield is more in the spirit of Kierkegaard’s adage, as dickens more or less makes himself david’s father.66

the shibboleth often gains a decisive and operational role in the hermeneutics of bloom’s criticism, as in this section, where he corrects a commentary by malraux, itself a resonance of Kierkegaard in spirit and letter: “every young man’s heart,” malraux says, “is a graveyard in which are inscribed the names of a thousand dead artists but whose only actual denizens are a few mighty, often antagonistic, ghosts.” “the poet,” malraux adds, “is haunted by a voice with which words must be harmonized.” as his main concerns are visual and narrative, malraux arrives at the formula: “from pastiche to style,” which is not adequate for poetic influence, where the movement toward self-realization is closer to the more drastic spirit of Kierkegaard’s maxim: “he who does the work gives birth to his own father.”67

nonetheless, this typical use of Kierkegaard’s (and nietzsche’s) statements essentially reinstates the value of a poetical birth; shortly before, in the same comments on malraux, bloom had given an account of the poet’s admission that in see bloom, Where Shall Wisdom Be Found?, p. 2. harold bloom, “frankenstein or the modern prometheus,” in his The Ringers in the Tower, p. 127. The allusion is to the chapter A a) α) “Infinitude’s Despair is to Lack Finitude,” in SKS 11, 25–8 / SUD, 30–3; and possibly also to SKS 11, 159–60 / SUD, 44–5, and to SKS 4, 348–9 / CA, 43–4. 64 SKS 4, 123 / FT, 27. bloom refers to Fear and Trembling, trans. and ed. by Walter lowrie, princeton, new Jersey: princeton university press 1941, p. 34. 65 bloom calls them as “extraordinary europeans…obsessed by socrates.” see bloom, Where Shall Wisdom Be Found?, p. 209. 66 harold bloom, “charles dickens (1812–1870), A Tale of Two Cities / Great Expectations / David Copperfield / Hard Times / Bleak House,” in his Novelists and Novels, p. 105. 67 bloom, “clinamen or poetic misprision,” p. 26. 62 63

62

Elisabete M. de Sousa

order to write his own poem and poetry he must look for them (or be found by them) in other poems and poets: how do men become poets, or to adopt an older phrasing, how is the poetic character incarnated? When a potential poet first discovers (or is discovered by) the dialectic of influence, first discovers poetry as being both external and internal to himself, he begins a process that will end only when he has no more poetry within him, long after he has the power (or desire) to discover it outside himself again. though all such discovery is a self-recognition, indeed a second birth, and ought, in the pure good of theory, to be accomplished in a perfect solipsism, it is an act never complete in itself.68

this is the reason why bloom, later in the book, feels prone to give more reason to Nietzsche, stating that Kierkegaard’s claim is announced with “magnificent but absurdly apocalyptic confidence,” whereas Nietzsche’s is probably truer to the necessity that everyone feels “whether we are poets or not…to be located first in its origins, in the fateful morasses of what freud, with grandly desperate wit, called ‘the family romance.’ ”69 one might say that Kierkegaard’s biblical quotation and nietzsche’s formula actually stand as a synecdoche for the revisionary ratios,70 just as it occurs in a piece on oscar Wilde’s poem The Disciple,71 when the use of the expression “the case of the contemporary disciple doubled,” and the mention of Kierkegaard, stand for Bloom’s reflections on the chapter “The Contemporary follower” in Philosophical Fragments,72 which will be here commented upon in section II. On the other side, Bloom’s appropriation of Kierkegaard’s (and/or of nietzsche’s) words may be used quite frequently for a more ironic purpose, as in the following case: g.K. chesterton…observed that the heroine of Major Barbara ends by suggesting that she will serve god without personal hope, so that she may owe nothing to god and he owe everything to her. it does not seem to strike her that if god owes everything to her he is not god. these things affect me merely as tedious perversions of a phrase. it is as if you said, “i will never have a father unless i have begotten him.” “he who is willing

ibid., p. 25. harold bloom, “tessera or completion and antithesis,” in his The Anxiety of Influence, p. 56. 70 When discussing the revisionary ratios, bloom uses the same expression in the chapter “tessera or completion and antithesis,” p. 56. 71 Wilde’s prose poem narrates the mourning of the death of narcissus by the pool he drowned in. bloom writes in “oscar Wilde (1854–1900), The Importance of Being Earnest,” in his Drama and Dramatists, p. 152: “Kierkegaard might have called this ‘the case of the contemporary disciple doubled.’ narcissus never saw the pool, nor the pool narcissus, but at least the pool mourns him. Wilde’s despair transcended even his humane wit, and could not be healed by the critical spirit or by the marvelous rightness of his perceptions and sensations.” the adjective “double” may also suggest that bloom’s commentary on Wilde’s despair also applies to Kierkegaard. 72 SKS 4, 258–72 / PF, 55–71. bloom refers to Philosophical Fragments, trans. by david f. swenson, 2nd revised ed. by howard V. hong and niels thulstrup, princeton, new Jersey: princeton university press 1962, pp. 68–88. 68 69

Harold Bloom: Critics, Bards, and Prophets

63

to do the work gives birth to his own father,” Kierkegaard wrote, and nietzsche mused: “if one hasn’t had a good father, then it is necessary to invent one.”73

this particular use of “work” is explained by bloom as the necessary skill that poets (and critics and all readers74) should acquire in order to be able to read all the layers of meaning in a text: throughout this book [The Book of J], i have asked the reader to work back through three stages of varnish, plastered on by the rabbis, the christian prelates, and the scholars, stages that converted J into torah, torah into hebrew bible, and hebrew bible into old testament. to read J, you need to clear away three sealings-off, three very formidable layerings of redaction. but if you will do the work, then as Kierkegaard says, you will give birth to your own father.75

this particular sentence originally applies to the task and the effort of the believer in the pursuit of faith, paving the way to Johannes de silentio’s claim that the story of abraham urges to be reconsidered and retold, and this is exactly why bloom uses it as a construct in his argument. bloom’s awareness is clear in this passage from an essay on dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, since not only does he go beyond the links established with faith in that particular context, but he also summons Kierkegaard’s considerations on Job in Repetition: the image of the father, for the reactionary dostoevsky, is ultimately also the image of the czar and of god. Why then did dostoevsky risk the ghastly fyodor pavlovich as his testament’s vision of the father? i can only surmise that dostoevsky’s motivation was Jobean. if old Karamazov is to be our universal father, then by identifying with dmitri, or Ivan, or Alyosha (no one identifies with Smerdyakov!), we assume their Jobean situation. if your faith can survive the torment of seeing the image of paternal authority in Karamazov, then you are as justified as Job. Reversing Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, dostoevsky persuades us that if we haven’t had a bad enough father, then it is necessary to invent one.76

in an allusion to Johannes de silentio’s litany in the “eulogy on abraham,” Kierkegaard is once more joined by nietzsche, so as to draw attention to the perennial existence of an agonistic drive in belated poets: harold bloom, “george bernard shaw (1856–1950), Man and Superman / Major Barbara / Pygmalion / Saint Joan,” in his Drama and Dramatists, p. 156. 74 bloom, Kabbalah and Criticism, pp. 88–9: “poets have been governed in their development, by other poets, from homer and then pindar to the present, and this governance always has been personal, eccentric, and even perverse. but critics, meaning all readers, must have paradigms, and not just precursors.” 75 see bloom, The Book of J, p. 307. 76 harold bloom, “fyodor dostoevsky (1821–1881), Crime and Punishment / The Brothers Karamazov,” in his Novelists and Novels, p. 160. On Shakespeare’s influence on dostoevsky, bloom remarks in “King lear,” in his Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human, p. 489: “dostoevsky founded svidrigailov and stavrogin upon iago and edmund, while nietzsche and Kierkegaard discovered their dionysiac forerunner in hamlet, and melville his captain ahab in macbeth.” 73

Elisabete M. de Sousa

64

to study literary tradition today is to achieve a dangerous but enabling act of the mind that works against all ease in fresh “creation.” Kierkegaard could afford to believe that he became great in proportion to greatness that he strove against, but we come later. nietzsche insisted that nothing was more pernicious than the sense of being a latecomer, but i want to insist upon the contrary: nothing is now more salutary than such a sense.77

this particular chapter of Fear and Trembling, especially in the dichotomy between the hero and the poet, provides the source for many of the elucidations put forward by bloom for the category of “strong poet,” such as this one: the strong poet is strong by virtue of and in proportion to his thrownness; having been thrown farther, his consciousness of such primal outrage is greater. this consciousness informs his more intense awareness of the precursors, for he knows how far our being can be thrown, out and down, as lesser poets cannot know.78

in The Anxiety of Influence, Bloom compares Romantic love to Poetic Influence, defined as “another splendid perversity of the spirit, though it moves precisely in the opposite direction.”79 to explain both the comparison and this type of contrary movement, bloom quotes a passage from “the rotation of crops,” where Kierkegaard says that “[w]hen two people fall in love, and begin to feel that they are made for one another, then it is time for them to break off, for by going on they have everything to lose and nothing to gain.”80 bloom then proceeds to explain that “[w]hen the ephebe is found by his great original, then it is time to go on, for he has everything to gain, and his precursor nothing to lose.”81 in bloom’s practical criticism, the will to become a strong poet (or a strong critic) and the call for immortality come together; they are a desideratum and the greatest of all challenges, especially for those who come after “the Cartesian engulfment, the flooding-out of a greater mode of consciousness.”82 the chapter on tessera in The Anxiety of Influence ends with the demonstration that, in the case of Kierkegaard, we are faced with a poet who is conscious of the poetical imperative of his misprision, and thus of his 77

p. 29.

harold bloom, “the dialectics of literary tradition,” in his A Map of Misreading,

harold bloom, “poetic origins and final phases,” in his A Map of Misreading, p. 15. bloom, “clinamen or poetic misprision,” pp. 30–1. 80 SKS 2, 286 / EO1, 298. in “emerson and Whitman: the american sublime,” in his Poetry and Repression: Revisionism From Blake to Stevens, p. 243, another quotation from “rotation of crops” is used “to illuminate emerson’s kind of repression,” which takes him to “plac[e] the spirit wholly in the category that Kierkegaard called only ‘the aesthetic.’ ” the citation is: “forgetting is the shears with which you cut away what you cannot use, doing it under the supreme direction of memory. forgetting and remembering are thus identical arts, and the artistic achievement of this identity is the archimedean point from which one lifts the whole world. When we say that we consign something to oblivion, we suggest simultaneously that it is to be forgotten and yet also remembered” (SKS 2, 299 / EO1, 295). bloom refers to Either/Or, vols. 1–2, trans. by david f. swenson, lillian marvin swenson, and howard a. Johnson, princeton, new Jersey: princeton university press 1944, vol. 1, p. 242. 81 bloom, “clinamen or poetic misprision,” pp. 30–1. 82 bloom, “tessera or completion and antithesis,” p. 72. 78

79

Harold Bloom: Critics, Bards, and Prophets

65

hardships as ephebe confronting the strong poets and authors he stands against, and at the same time aware of the difficult task awaiting the critic who has to interpret through layers of reading. firstly, bloom cites Kierkegaard, as his mouthpiece for the role of the critic, in the words of the philosopher-poet Johannes de silentio: everyone shall be remembered, but each became great in proportion to his expectation. one became great by expecting the possible; another by expecting the eternal, but he who expected the impossible became greater than all. everyone shall be remembered, but each was great in proportion to the greatness of that with which he strove.83

bloom immediately proceeds to posit himself as a critic capable of decoding Kierkegaard’s poetic misprision, which is all the more curious, since he is in fact emulating the role of Johannes de silentio, as poet, confronted with abraham, the hero de silentio wants to immortalize.84 after quoting a larger section from the second paragraph of “preliminary expectoration,”85 he states that “[y]et Kierkegaard’s father here is isaiah,” a commentary obviously not intended as a revelation to the reader, but used instead as a reminder, enhanced as it is by the full citation of isaiah 26:16–19, of the comparison of the task of the poet to the words of the prophet; in fact, despite not being mentioned in Fear and Trembling, where Kierkegaard only rephrases 26:18, bloom suggests this verse should be read together with the previous and the following ones, thus allowing for the comparison of the task of the poet to the pains of the woman in delivery, and for decoding the words of the prophet—“[t]hy dead men shall live, together with my dead body shall they arise”—as a metaphor for “isaiah’s prophecy of the return of the precursors.”86 Fear and Trembling is also the source for other passages, and once again Kierkegaard’s development of ideas is used as input to bloom’s own thought, as in The Book of J; after an account of the Akedah, bloom highlights the personal nature of Kierkegaard’s version of the Akedah: Would the sublimity of the Akedah be lost in the J version i have sketched? hardly; nothing that is uncanny or awesome in the text as we have it now would be withdrawn, SKS 4, 113 / FT, 16. bloom refers to Fear and Trembling, trans. and ed. by lowrie, 1941, p. 19. see also bloom, “tessera or completion and antithesis,” p. 73. 84 When discussing Kierkegaard’s influence on Kafka, Bloom observes the following in The Western Canon, p. 450: “perhaps abraham’s role as the hero of Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling provoked Kafka to his negative reflections [on Abraham].” 85 SKS, 4, 123 / FT, 28: “he who will not work does not get bread but is deceived just as the gods deceived orpheus with an ethereal phantom instead of the beloved, deceived him because he was soft, not boldly brave, deceived him because he was a zither player and not a man. here it does not help to have abraham as father or to have seventeen ancestors. the one who will not work fits what is written about the virgins of Israel: he gives birth to wind—but the one who will work gives birth to his own father.” bloom mentions Kierkegaard once more, in the opening sentences of his discussion of orpheus as a precursor of the poet as ephebe: “Kierkegaard, in so unfavorably contrasting orpheus to abraham, followed plato’s symposium, where the poet-of-poets is condemned for his softness, which appears to mean his incapacity for sublimation.” bloom, “Askesis or purgation and solipsim,” in his The Anxiety of Influence, p. 116. 86 bloom, “tessera or completion and antithesis,” p. 73. 83

66

Elisabete M. de Sousa unless the mindless, total obedience of Abram/Abraham be considered an aesthetic or spiritual value in itself. Kierkegaard’s “teleological suspension of the ethical” would be utterly obliterated, but that has more of Kierkegaard than of the hebrew bible about it in any characteristic of J.87

Kierkegaard and calvin are considered to be “the most powerful commentators” on Job’s book, in spite of their “difficult Protestant statements.”88 in calvin’s condemnation, bloom underlines that “god will be condemned among us” and “[this] is how men exasperate themselves,” whereas in Kierkegaard, he chooses his exaltation of Job as “a hero of the spirit, a champion who has overcome the world.”89 before announcing that, to the readings of rudolf otto, Karl barth, and martin buber, he prefers “the answering irony of John calvin…or the more complex irony of Kierkegaard,”90 bloom states the premises of his own argument: i take from calvin his accurate sense that Job does not condemn god, does not accuse him of being “a tyrant or a hairbrain.” from Kierkegaard, i take his realization that it is see bloom, The Book of J, p. 207. another reference to Kierkegaard’s versions of the Akedah: “the aqedah…always renders me unhappy, despite the brilliant defense offered for it by Kierkegaard in Fear and Trembling, one of his ironic masterpieces. Kierkegaard interprets abraham as the Knight of faith who nevertheless interprets abraham as the Knight of faith who nevertheless understands that isaac will survive. that understanding is more lutheran than Judaic.…Kierkegaard reinvents the ancient christian idea of ‘the absurd.’ abraham, according to the Qur’an was a muslim, but only Kierkegaard regards abraham as a christian before the fact, as it were: ‘he believes by virtue of the absurd; for there could be no question of human calculation, and it was indeed the absurd that god who required it of him should the next instant recall the requirement.’ ” SKS 4, 131 / FT, 35–6, bloom’s source is Fear and Trembling, trans. and ed. by lowrie, 1941, pp. 47–8; see harold bloom, “the divine name: Yahweh,” his Jesus and Yahweh: The Names Divine, pp. 162–3. 88 harold bloom, “the hebrews: Job and ecclesiastes,” in his Where Shall Wisdom Be Found?, p. 13. these elaborations on Job are further developed in harold bloom, “the bible,” in his Essayists and Prophets, pp. 1–5. the chapter opens with a double epigraph. The first one is from John Calvin, Second Sermon on Job: “for Job could not better prove his patience than by resolving to be entirely naked, inasmuch as the good pleasure of god was such. surely, men resist in vain; they may grit their teeth, but they must return entirely naked to the grave. even the pagans have said that death alone shows the littleness of men. Why? for we have a gulf of covetousness, that we would wish to gobble up all the earth; if a man has many riches, vines, meadows, and possessions, it is not enough; god would have to create new worlds, if he wished to satisfy us.” the second epigraph comes from Kierkegaard’s Edifying Discourses: “and yet there is no hiding place in the wide world where troubles may not find you, and there has never lived a man who was able to say more than you can say, that you do not know when sorrow will visit your house. So be sincere with yourself, fix your eyes upon Job; even though he terrifies you, it is not this he wishes, if you yourself do not wish it.” see SKS 5, 128 / UD, 124. 89 bloom, “the bible,” p. 2. 90 these are the quotations bloom refers to: “god would have to create new worlds, if He wishes to satisfy us,” by Calvin and “Fix your eyes upon Job; even though he terrifies you, it is not this he wishes, if you yourself do not wish it.” (SKS 5, 128 / UD, 124.) for the paragraph with this sequence of quotations related to Job, see bloom, “the bible,” p. 4. 87

Harold Bloom: Critics, Bards, and Prophets

67

not the behemoth or the leviathan that causes Job to sink down when god comes at last to confront the sufferer and speaks out of the whirlwind to him.91

further on, he draws a parallel between Kierkegaard’s realization that “it is not the creation but the creator who overwhelms Job” and our own realizations as readers of literature, adding that “[o]ur desires for the good are incommensurate not with the good but with the creator of good.”92 II. this section renders explicit Kierkegaard’s input to the actual construction of bloom’s theories in The Anxiety of Influence and in A Map of Misreading, especially in what concerns the conception of the primal scene of instruction, which can be summarized as follows: [a] primal scene of instruction [is] a model for the unavoidable imposition of influence. The Scene—really a complete play or, or process—has six stages, through which the ephebe emerges: election (seizure by the precursor’s power); covenant (a basic agreement of poetic vision between precursor and ephebe); the choice of rival inspiration…the self-preservation of the ephebe as a new incarnation of the “poetical character”; the ephebe’s interpretation of the precursor; and the ephebe’s revision of the precursor. each of these stages then becomes a level of interpretation in the reading of the ephebe’s poem.93

in The Anxiety of Influence and in A Map of Misreading, these phases or stages are explained in great detail, and given other names which illuminate Kierkegaard’s contribution. after discussing freud’s oedipus complex and the slaying of the father by the rival son in Totem and Taboo, as well as derrida’s scene of Writing, as their primal scenes, and in spite of acknowledging derrida’s contribution to his own conception of a primal scene of instruction, bloom states that “derrida’s scene of Writing is insufficiently Primal both in itself and as exegesis of Freud.”94 he proceeds to explain his own primal scene of instruction, which is also an exegesis of freud’s and derrida’s, while naturally providing the framework for the above-mentioned six revisionary ratios. They are enumerated as follows: the first is Election-love or ahabah, “love unconditioned in its giving, but wholly conditioned to passivity in its receiving”;95 the second is covenant-love or chesed, the Hebrew word which finds bloom, “the bible,” p. 4. ibid., pp. 4–5. 93 the summary is a quotation from a commentator, taken by bloom as a reliable synopsis; see bloom, “poetry, revisionism, repression,” p. 27. 94 harold bloom, “the primal scene of instruction,” in his A Map of Misreading, p. 49: “derrida’s keenest insight, in my judgment, is that ‘writing is unthinkable without repression,’ which is to identify writing-as-such with the daemonizing trope of hyperbole. as derrida eloquently insists, ‘we are written by writing,’ an hyperbole that destroys the false distinction between reading and writing….” 95 ibid., p. 51. 91 92

68

Elisabete M. de Sousa

correspondence in luther’s Gnade, making it an equivalent to charis;96 the third is ruach, and “to invoke ruach is to call on a power and life transcending powers already in your control”; the fourth is davhar, when “poetic incarnation proper has taken place”; the fifth is lidrosh, “the deep sense in which the new poem is a total interpretation… of the poem or poetry of origin; and the sixth is “revisionism proper.”97 as he starts to discuss the second phase, bloom immediately states that “[w]e must confront here the romantic version of the dialectic of accommodation, the ironies of which are best expounded by Johann georg hamann as precursor, and by his disciple Kierkegaard as heroic ephebe.”98 further on, bloom introduces Kierkegaard as “the great theorist of the scene of instruction”99 and reveals the most substantial part of the influence of Philosophical Fragments and Repetition on his own theory. bloom starts by quoting the triple question on the title page of Philosophical Fragments,100 and elucidates that “Kierkegaard’s intent is to refute hegel by severely dividing christianity from idealist philosophy.”101 he also adds, though, that the triple question “is perfectly applicable to the secular paradox of poetic incarnation and poetic influence,”102 with the following clarification: “For the anxiety of influence stems from the ephebe’s assertion of an eternal, divinating consciousness that nevertheless took its historical point of departure in an intratextual encounter, and most crucially in the interpretative moment or act of misprision contained in that encounter.”103 Bloom identifies two issues that require resolution: (1) how the ephebe’s point of departure can “have more than merely historical rather than poetic interest”; and (2) the conditions that bring about “the strong poet’s claim to poetic immortality… upon an encounter trapped belatedly in time.” to solve them, bloom indicates “[t]wo sections of the Fragments are closest to the dilemmas of the poetic scene of instruction”104: the chapters “the god as teacher and savior” and the “the situation of the contemporary follower.”105 bloom contextualizes them in relation to hegel ibid., p. 53. the last four citations are found in ibid., p. 54. 98 ibid., p. 51. 99 all the commentaries from these two famous pages on Kierkegaard here quoted can be found in ibid., pp. 56–9; bloom, “introduction,” in Søren Kierkegaard: Modern Critical Views, pp. 1–3; and bloom, “søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855),” in his Essayists and Prophets, pp. 111–13. 100 the triple question from the title page of Philosophical Fragments is quoted from swenson’s translation (2nd revised ed. by hong and thulstrup, 1962), p. iii: “is an historical point of departure possible for an eternal consciousness; how can such a point of departure have any other than a merely historical interest; is it possible to base an eternal happiness upon historical knowledge.” see bloom, “the primal scene of instruction,” pp. 56–7; bloom “introduction,” in Søren Kierkegaard: Modern Critical Views, pp. 1–2; and bloom, “søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855),” in his Essayists and Prophets, p. 111. 101 bloom, “introduction,” in Søren Kierkegaard: Modern Critical Views, p. 2; and bloom, “søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855),” in his Essayists and Prophets, p. 111. 102 ibid. 103 ibid. 104 ibid. 105 bloom uses swenson’s translation: that is, “the case of the contemporary disciple,” in Philosophical Fragments, 2nd revised ed. by hong and thulstrup, 1962, pp. 68–8. 96 97

Harold Bloom: Critics, Bards, and Prophets

69

and to left-wing hegelianism, but he underscores the contrast established between on one side “socrates and his student [Kierkegaard] [who] have nothing to teach one another, no davhar or word to bring forward, yet each provid[ing] the other with a means towards self-understanding,”106 and, on the other, christ who “understands himself without the aid of students, and his students [being] there only to receive his incommensurable love.”107 hence, bloom comments, history is separated from necessity, and “[t]here is no immediacy by which one can be a contemporary of a divinity.”108 he then announces what he does with these particular passages from Philosophical Fragments and how he does it, giving an account of his own “misprision of Kierkegaard”: [t]he paradox of the peculiarly Kierkegaardian variety of “repetition” is at work here, and by an exploration of such repetition we can displace Kierkegaard’s polemical wit into a speculation upon the scene of instruction, and simultaneously expose again an inadequacy in freud’s account of the compulsion to repeat, and that compulsion’s relations to origins.109

the rest of bloom’s commentaries focus on the category of repetition; he starts by outlining the evolution of this category in Kierkegaard’s production, and begins with theses Xii and Xiii of The Concept of Irony, stating that thesis Xiii is “one of the founding apothegms for any study of poetic misprision,”110 thus citing: “irony is not so much apathy, divested of all tender emotions of the soul; instead, it is more like vexation over the fact that others also enjoy what it desires for itself.”111 Instead of commenting on the thesis, Bloom draws two sets of conclusions: the first bloom, “introduction,” in Søren Kierkegaard: Modern Critical Views, p. 2; and bloom, “søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855),” in his Essayists and Prophets, p. 111. 107 ibid. 108 this and the next citation can be found in bloom, “the primal scene of instruction,” p. 58; in bloom, “introduction,” in Søren Kierkegaard: Modern Critical Views, p. 2; and in bloom, “søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855),” in his Essayists and Prophets, p. 111. here is another reference to the same chapters from bloom, “the dark speaking of Jesus,” pp. 31–2: “my late fried hans frei concluded his The Identity of Jesus Christ (1975) by cautioning us that we always will be at a distance from Jesus ‘because he lives to god—not to time.’ Kierkegaard made the same observation but with superb doubleness, remarking that the disciples contemporary to Jesus received his love without understanding it, since Jesus alone understands himself perfectly. disputing Kierkegaard is dangerous, and the perplexities of Jesus are even more dangerous.” 109 see bloom, “the primal scene of instruction,” p. 58; bloom, “introduction,” in Søren Kierkegaard: Modern Critical Views, p. 2; and bloom, “søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855),” in his Essayists and Prophets, p. 111. 110 see bloom, “the primal scene of instruction,” pp. 58–9; bloom, “introduction,” in Søren Kierkegaard: Modern Critical Views, pp. 2–3; and bloom “søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855),” in his Essayists and Prophets, pp. 111–2. see also note 60 in this article. 111 a commentary in the same line of thought is the following: “irony is a dangerous mode, an invitation to misunderstanding. Voltaire, carlyle in Sartor Resartus, Kierkegaard, nietzsche, and freud risk weak misreadings, as did swift, particularly in his masterwork, A Tale of a Tub,” see harold bloom, “introduction,” in his (ed.), Jonathan Swift, new York: chelsea house 2009, p. xi. 106

70

Elisabete M. de Sousa

concerns Kierkegaard’s relation to hegel which is taken as a case of anxiety of influence, and the second deals with the implications of repetition to the Scene of primal instruction. he concludes that “[t]rue repetition, for Kierkegaard, is eternity, and so only true repetition can save one from the vexation of irony,” and he then posits repetition as “a substitute trope” for mediation, for “the process of dialectic itself.”112 this allows him to make a parallel between repetition as being “primarily a dialectical reaffirmation of the continued possibility of becoming a Christian” and “its aesthetic displacement” which “would reaffirm dialectically the continued possibility of becoming a poet.”113 the concluding section of bloom’s commentaries deserves a longer citation, since it is a breathtaking example of phrasing, with a Bloomian blend of vocabularies from all the sources he relies on, from freud, Kierkegaard, and nietzsche, to derrida, hebrew, and naturally, himself: no contemporary disciple of a great poet then could be truly his precursor’s contemporary, for the splendor is necessarily deferred. it can be reached through the mediation of repetition, by a return to origins and the incommensurable election-love that the primal bloom, “emerson and Whitman: the american sublime,” p. 243. bloom had already commented that “[Kierkegaard’s] notion of ‘repetition’…is his revision of the hegelian ‘mediation’ into a christian ‘conception’ of the anxious freedom,” and had expressed that “the anxious freedom” in “becoming a christian” consisted in the “blending” of “the desire for repetition” and “repetition itself.” bloom, “emerson and Whitman: the american sublime,” p. 243.) bloom inserted the following quotation from the Concluding Unscientific Postscript (trans. by david. f. swenson, posthumous completion by Walter lowrie, ed. by Walter lowrie, 9th impression, princeton, new Jersey: princeton university press 1968 [1941], p. 277 (which corresponds to SKS 7, 284 / CUP1, 312)): “The difficulty facing an existing individual is how to give his existence the continuity without which everything simply vanishes….the goal of movement for an existing individual is to arrive at a decision, and to renew it.” 113 bloom, “introduction,” in Søren Kierkegaard: Modern Critical Views, p. 2; and bloom, “søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855),” in his Essayists and Prophets, p. 112. bloom expresses the same ideas in his The Breaking of the Vessels, pp. 43–4: “but i am content with a misprision of Kierkegaard, while being uneasily aware that his ‘repetition’ is a trope that owes more than he could bear to the hegelian trope of ‘mediation.’ to talk about paradigms, however parabolically, in the context of poetry and criticism, is to engage the discourse of ‘repetition,’ in Kierkegaard’s rather than freud’s sense of that term. i haven’t ever encountered a useful discursive summary of Kierkegaard’s notion, and i myself won’t try to provide one, because of Kierkegaard’s idea of repetition is more trope than concept, and tends to defeat discursiveness. his little book, Repetition, is subtitled ‘an essay in experimental psychology,’ but ‘experimental’ there is the crucial and tricky term, and modifies ‘psychology’ into an odd blend of psychopoetics and theology. Repetition, we are told first, ‘is recollected forwards’ and is ‘the daily bread which satisfies with benediction.’ later, the book’s narrator assures us that ‘repetition is always a transcendence,’ and indeed is ‘too transcendent’ for the narrator to grasp. the same narrator, constantin constantius, wrote a long open letter against a hegelian misunderstanding of his work...: ‘it is the task of freedom to see constantly a new side of repetition.’ each new side is a ‘breaking forth,’ a ‘transition’ or ‘becoming,’ and therefore a concept of happening, and not of being.” see Repetition, trans. and ed. by Walter lowrie, princeton, new Jersey: princeton university press 1941, pp. 33–4 and p. 90 (which corresponds to SKS 4, 9 / R, 132–3 and SKS, 4, 57 / R, 186). 112

Harold Bloom: Critics, Bards, and Prophets

71

scene of instruction can bestow, there at the point of origin. poetic repetition repeats a Primal repression, a repression that is itself a fixation upon the precursor as teacher and savior, or on the poetic father as mortal god. the compulsion to repeat the precursor’s patterns is not a movement beyond the pleasure principle to an inertia of poetic preincarnation, to a blakean beulah where no dispute can come, but rather is an attempt to recover the prestige of origins, the oral authority of a prior instruction. poetic repetition quests, despite itself, for the mediated vision of the fathers, since such mediation holds open the perpetual possibility of one’s own sublimity, one’s election to the realm of true instructors.114

this is as far as bloom goes in A Map of Misreading; however, in his “introduction” to Søren Kierkegaard: Modern Critical Views, right after reinstating that Kierkegaard substituted repetition for mediation, he adds that we are now as helpless as Kierkegaard was, since “Kierkegaard was post-hegelian as we are post-freudian: there is no other option.”115 he extrapolates that hegel is “the mediated vision of the fathers for Kierkegaard himself,”116 and, insists on the relation of repetition to irony, namely because, on the one hand, “[r]epetition ironically was Kierkegaard’s path out of irony, lest he fall into the irony of irony, and so lose all invention,”117 and on the other hand, the category of repetition fills the present and the future with the past. moreover, bloom interprets “the situation of the contemporary follower” as the death of the idea of contemporaneity, “since it demonstrates that true passion is always for the past, that only the past can be a poet’s or a christian’s lover.”118 In Bloom’s view, Kierkegaard had sacrificed his present (Bloom adds that, after all, this is the condition of all creative misreading119) and his future had been one of a repetition of “a constructed joy,” while his scene of instruction “depends upon placing all love in the past.”120 Warning the reader that “Kierkegaard puts 114 bloom, “introduction,” in Søren Kierkegaard: Modern Critical Views, p. 2; and bloom, “søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855),” in his Essayists and Prophets, p. 112. 115 bloom, “introduction” to Søren Kierkegaard: Modern Critical Views, p. 3; and bloom, “søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855),” in his Essayists and Prophets, p. 112. 116 bloom, “søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855),” in his Genius, p. 199. 117 ibid. 118 ibid. 119 bloom uses Kierkegaard’s reference to nebuchadnezzar in order to demonstrate that only the supreme creator is free from the necessity to reinstate a primal scene: “Kierkegaard’s nebuchadnezzar, recollecting when he was a beast and ate grass, mused upon the god of the hebrews, and understood that only this mighty one was free of the scene of instruction. speaking for Kierkegaard, nebuchadnezzar teaches us where creative misreading has touched its limit, and where the difficulty of becoming a Christian at last is resolved: ‘And no one knoweth anything of him, who was his father, and how he acquired his power, and who taught him the secret of his might.’ ” see bloom, “introduction” to Søren Kierkegaard: Modern Critical Views, p. 4 and bloom, “søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855),” in his Essayists and Prophets, p. 113. see also note 56 in this text. Kierkegaard’s quotation is used to question god’s pre-history; see bloom, Jesus and Yahweh: The Names Divine, p. 204. 120 bloom accounts for the autobiographical content of Repetition in his “søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855),” in his Genius, pp. 199–200: “repetition is a monument to his act of bad faith, since by ‘repetition’ he intended to mean the will to undergo possibilities

72

Elisabete M. de Sousa

this slyly,”121 Bloom highlights his final considerations with two quotations: “Love is presupposing love; to have love is to presuppose love in others; to be loving is to presuppose that others are loving,”122 immediately followed by: “if there were no repetition, what then would life be? Who would wish to be a tablet upon which time writes every instant a new inscription? or be a mere memorial of the past?”123 the chapter on kenosis bears a quotation from Repetition as epigraph: “if the young man had believed in repetition, of what might he not have been capable? What inwardness he might have attained!”124 although the emphasis on repetition and inwardness125 is easy to grasp, it may prove difficult to find out whether Bloom intends to picture himself, the poet, the critic, the readers, or simply everybody, as “the Young man”; he still points out later in the chapter that lacan conceals the influence of Repetition on his own thought: “lacan’s sense of ‘his limit,’ our death, represents it as ‘the past which reveals itself reversed in repetition.’ encroaching upon his curious blend of freud and heidegger is the great shadow of the Kierkegaardian repetition, ‘the exhaustion of being which consumes itself,’ as lacan phrases it.126 bloom states once more that Kierkegaard’s formulation is “closer to the ironies of poetic misprision than the freudian ‘undoing’ or ‘isolation’ mechanisms could allow.”127 immediately after, two other quotations from Repetition are analyzed; his first commentary is quite consensual—he explains that “Kierkegaardian repetition never happens, but breaks forth or steps forth, since it ‘is recollected forwards,’ like

that would become transcendent, including marriage. the true hero of repetition is the faithful husband…irony turns against himself…and so Kierkegaard, like the Young man of the expiatory book, becomes a parody of repetition.” he inserts the following quotation to enhance his commentaries: “he solves the great riddle of living in eternity and yet hearing the hall clock strike, and hearing it in such a way that the stroke of the hour does not shorten but prolongs his eternity.” see SKS 3, 137 / EO2, 138. 121 ibid. 122 SKS 9, 225 / WL, 223. see bloom, “introduction” to Søren Kierkegaard: Modern Critical Views, p. 4; and bloom, “søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855),” in his Essayists and Prophets, p. 113. 123 SKS 4, 6 / R, pp. 132–3. see bloom, “introduction” to Søren Kierkegaard: Modern Critical Views, p. 4; bloom, “søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855),” in his Essayists and Prophets, p. 113. bloom’s source is Repetition, trans. and ed. by lowrie, 1941, pp. 33–4. 124 SKS 4, 28 / R, 146. see bloom, The Anxiety of Influence, p. 75. bloom’s source is Repetition, trans. and ed. by lowrie, 1941, p. 49. 125 on the issue of inwardness, bloom alludes to Kierkegaard’s commentaries on don Quixote as a case of “subjective madness in which the infinite passion of inwardness embraces a particular fixed idea, necessarily finite.” Bloom, “Introduction,” in his The Breaking of the Vessels, p. 8; cf. SKS 7, 179 / CUP1, 195–6. another allusion to Kierkegaard’s statements on don Quixote is in bloom’s Shakespeare, The Invention of the Human, p. 403: “You can prefer don Quixote to hamlet, as auden does, if you wish to follow Kierkegaard’s choice of the apostle over the genius.” 126 for these considerations on lacan, see harold bloom, “Kenosis or repetition and discontinuity,” in his The Anxiety of Influence, pp. 81–2. 127 ibid., p. 82.

Harold Bloom: Critics, Bards, and Prophets

73

god’s creation of the universe.”128 as for the second passage here cited, the case is different, in spite of (more likely, owing to) the fact that it is the best known of all quotations from Repetition: repetition and recollection are the same movement, only in opposite directions; for what is recollected has been, is repeated backwards whereas repetition properly so called is recollected forwards. therefore repetition, if it is possible, makes a man happy, whereas recollection makes him unhappy—provided he gives himself time to live and does not at once, in the very moment of birth, try to find a pretext for stealing out of life, alleging, for example, that he has forgotten something.129

this statement is believed to be a “grand introduction to the dialectic of misprision” and at the same time the “best joke” made by “the theorist of repetition…at plato’s expense.” in the ensuing parallel to poetic misprision, bloom claims that “[t]he strong poet survives because he lives the discontinuity of an ‘undoing’ and an ‘isolating’ repetition, but he would cease to be a poet unless he kept living the continuity of ‘recollecting forwards,’ of breaking forth into a freshening that yet repeats his precursors’ achievements.”130 taking into consideration all that is said about the category of repetition and the fundamental role in its poetics, it has always struck us as “uncanny” that the category of recollection, as posited by taciturnus in “in Vino Veritas,” or at least in its occurrences in Repetition, is not discussed by bloom. on the whole, bloom’s plight is against the death of literature, of great authors and great poems, by the unmerciful power of oblivion, be it under the guise of deliberation not to read or of a more sophisticated intemperance when it comes to modernize the canon, and if there is one thing that he urges us readers to do, is to repeat the act of reading. this means in practical terms that we ourselves, as humans invented by literature, should eternally let ourselves go in the movement of recollecting forwards, the exact movement that in bloom’s cosmology makes us part of the emulation of poets, dramatists, novelists, prophets, and philosophers by other poets, dramatists, novelists, prophets, and philosophers, who are themselves continually immersed in recollecting backwards, fighting to leave the site of their ibid., p. 83. see Repetition, trans. and ed. by lowrie, 1941, p. 35 (which corresponds to SKS 4, 6 / R, 133). the passage bloom cites is the following: “if god himself had not willed repetition, the world would never have come into existence. he would either have followed the light plans of hope, or he would have recalled it all and conserved it in recollection. this he did not do, therefore the world endures, and it endures for the fact that it is a repetition.” 129 see Repetition, trans. and ed. by lowrie, 1941, p. 33 (which corresponds to SKS 4, 3–4 / R, 131). 130 all quotations in this paragraph can be found in bloom, “Kenosis or repetition and discontinuity,” in The Anxiety of Influence, pp. 82–3. bloom states that he goes beyond freud and Kierkegaard in his own conception of the primal scene of instruction: “but what is a first Idea, unless it be what Freud termed a primal fixation or an initial repression? And what did that initial repression forget, or at least intend to forget? here freud touched his aporia, and so i turn beyond him to Kabbalah again, to seek a more ultimate paradigm for the scene of instruction than even Kierkegaard affords me, since here too Kierkegaard touched his aporia, and accepted the christian limit of the incarnation.” bloom, “emerson and Whitman: the american sublime,” pp. 244–5. 128

74

Elisabete M. de Sousa

primal scene of instruction, the point of departure for their movement of recollection forwards. nonetheless, bloom collates repetition, recollection, and hope in this quotation, in spite of omitting the previous analogies in Kierkegaard’s text where it is implied that one may outgrow recollection, but not repetition: it requires youth to hope, and youth to recollect, but it requires courage to will repetition….for hope is an alluring fruit which does not satisfy, but repetition is the daily bread which satisfies with benediction. When one has circumnavigated existence, it will appear whether one has courage to understand that life is a repetition, and to delight in that very fact….repetition is reality, and it is the seriousness of life.131

Kierkegaard scholars are familiar with bloom’s claim that “[w]hatever he may have yearned for, he was a genius and not an apostle, as he surely knew.”132 the statement culminates an analysis of Kierkegaard’s quest on the difference between a genius and an apostle, which probably dates back from the times of A Map of Misreading where bloom cites an excerpt from the journals on the topic, as the ideal epigraph for robert browning’s Childe Roland: the difference between a man who faces death for the sake of an idea and an imitator who goes in search of martyrdom is that whilst the former expresses his idea most fully in death it is the strange feeling of bitterness which comes from failure that the latter really enjoys; the former rejoices in his victory, the latter in his suffering.133

bitterness in victory and defeat, joy in death and suffering, are then evoked not only to announce the inner trials awaiting the untested knight on his journey, but especially as the key to “test any interpretation of Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came by this Kierkegaardian distinction.”134 in a way, this same excerpt could stand next to the one bloom chose to start his presentation of Kierkegaard as genius— “You get too much of everything; / of sunsets, of cabbages, of love”135—borrowed from aristophanes, via Kierkegaard from the introductory motto to “the rotation of crops” in Either/Or, part one. having cited Kierkegaard’s comparison of the genius to a thunderstorm,136 which one may relate to bloom’s claim that “genius is the god within,”137 he puts forward the idea that Kierkegaard might see christ 131 harold bloom, “testing the map: browning’s Childe Roland,” in his A Map of Misreading, p. 84. see Repetition, trans. and ed. by lowrie, 1941, pp. 34–5 (which corresponds to SKS 4, 5–6 / R, 132–3). 132 bloom, “søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855),” in his Genius, p. 202. 133 see bloom, A Map of Misreading, p. 107. cf. The Journals of Kierkegaard, trans. and ed. by alexander dru, new York: harper & brothers 1958, p. 50 (which corresponds to SKS 27, 130, Papir 129 / JP 1, 245). 134 bloom, A Map of Misreading, p. 107. 135 bloom quotes Either/Or, trans. by swenson, swenson, and Johnson, 1944, p. 233 (which corresponds to SKS 2, 72–3 / EO1, 282–3). 136 SKS 13, 259 / M, 204: “geniuses are like a thunderstorm: they go against the wind, terrify people, clear the air. the established order has invented various lightning rods. and it succeeded; it succeeded in making the next thunderstorm all the more serious.” 137 Harold Bloom, “Genius: A Personal Definition,” in his Genius, p. 11.

Harold Bloom: Critics, Bards, and Prophets

75

as such a “thunderstorm” genius, and cites a long passage where the comparison of the christian to the genius exploits the virtues of the extraordinary and the ordinary applied to the nature of the genius and to the freedom of the christian, with Kierkegaard’s conclusion that christians are more rare than geniuses.138 this “thunderstorm” quality is then applied by Bloom to both the genius / poet and the genius / apostle Kierkegaard wanted to be: “[t]he center of Kierkegaard’s genius is his awareness that, in a society ostensibly christian, it is virtually impossible to become a christian.”139 thus bloom stresses that “the essence of Kierkegaard’s genius”140 lies in the “[n]egation of seeming realities in an ostensibly christian society.”141 the “thunderstorm” quality and recollecting forwards are in the core of bloom’s statement, when he claims that “[t]he disciples’ mode of repetition is the perpetual renewal of their prospect for becoming a christian.”142 up to this point, he leaves the readers with the idea that Kierkegaard might after all have been a genius and an apostle. nonetheless, as bloom once again inserts climacus’ triple question on the title page of Philosophical Fragments, he is actually positing Kierkegaard as “the great theorist of the scene of instruction,”143 recalling what had been said about Kierkegaard’s poetical misprision and his own primal scene. accordingly, the disciples’ mode of repetition becomes a form of poetical misprision in face of christ’s words, a mode of repetition that corresponds to bloom’s elaborations on the initial prayer of The Changelessness of God, already mentioned in this article. practice in religion, in christianity, becomes then an image of what bloom calls the religion of literature, his own practice of gnosticism, which he had explained in the opening pages of Genius the following way: I propose a simplifying definition of Gnosticism in the apprehension of Genius: it is a knowledge that frees the creative mind from theology, from historicizing, and from any divinity that is totally distinct from what is most imaginative in the self. a god cut from the inmost self is the hangman god, as James Joyce called him, the god who originates death. gnosticism, as the religion of the literary genius, repudiates the hangman god.144

138 bloom quotes the initial paragraphs of The Moment, 5.2. (“A Genius / a Christian”): “that not everyone is a genius no doubt everyone will admit. but that a christian is even more rare than a genius—this has knavishly been consigned to oblivion. the difference between a genius and a christian is that the genius is nature’s extraordinary; no human being can make himself into one. a christian is freedom’s extraordinary or more precisely, freedom’s ordinary, except that this is found extraordinarily seldom, is what every one of us should be. therefore god wants christianity to be proclaimed unconditionally to all, therefore the apostles are very simple, ordinary people, therefore the prototype is in the lowly form of a servant, all this in order to indicate that this extraordinary is the ordinary, is open to all—but a christian is nevertheless something even more than a genius.” (SKS 13, 230 / M, 180.) bloom, “søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855),” in his Genius, p. 199. 139 bloom, “søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855),” in his Genius, p. 199. 140 ibid. 141 ibid. 142 ibid., p. 200. 143 bloom, “the primal scene of instruction,” p. 56. 144 harold bloom, “the religion of literature,” in his Genius, p. xviii.

76

Elisabete M. de Sousa

bloom ends the chapter with the full citation of the last paragraph of “chapter ii.b” from The Point of View of My Work as an Author, which he classifies as “a new kind of spiritual autobiography”;145 he adds that on embracing direct communication, Kierkegaard “allows himself the pathos of having been the ‘genius in a market town,’ ” thus comparing the relation between Kierkegaard and copenhagen in his days to the role of the genius in the roman practice of dedication of their town to town deities.146 As the Romans’ genii personified the town and presided over the cult ceremonies of their inhabitants, so does now Kierkegaard personify copenhagen, presiding over the acts of reading of all who someday come to him as lovers in the hope of reading all through the layers of meaning in his writings.

bloom, “søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855),” in his Genius, p. 202. the quoted paragraph (“Just one more thing. When someday my lover comes…”) ends chapter ii.b, “personal existing and religious Writing,” in SKS 16, 49-50 / PV, 69–70. 146 bloom refers to Kierkegaard’s context in the “conclusion” of The Point of View, Part Two: “The Martyrdom this author suffered can be described quite briefly this way: He suffered being a genius in a market town.” see SKS 16, 74 / PV, 95. for the romans, the “genius in a market town” was the genio vici augusto. see “town deities,” in Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, vols. 1–12, ed. by James hastings, new York: charles schribner’s sons 1908–27, vol. 2, p. 508. 145

bibliography I. References to or Uses of Kierkegaard in Bloom’s corpus Shelley’s Mythmaking, new haven, connecticut: Yale university press 1959, p. 57. Yeats, oxford and new York: oxford university press 1970, p. 225; p. 318. The Ringers in the Tower, chicago and london: university of chicago press 1971, p. 76; p. 127. The Visionary Company: A Reading of English Romantic Poetry, revised and enlarged edition, ithaca and london: cornell university press 1971, pp. 391–2. The Anxiety of Influence, oxford and new York: oxford university press 1973, pp. 25–6; pp. 30–1; p. 56; p. 75; pp. 81–3. Kabbalah and Criticism, new York: seabury press 1975, p. 84; pp. 88–9. A Map of Misreading, oxford and new York: oxford university press 1975, p. 15; p. 29; p. 51; pp. 56–9; p. 107. Figures of Capable Imagination, new York: continuum 1976, pp. 263–4. Poetry and Repression: Revisionism From Blake to Stevens, new haven, connecticut: Yale university press 1976, p. 24; pp. 243–5. Agon: Towards a Theory of Revisionism, oxford and new York: oxford university press 1982, p. 235; p. 285; p. 312. The Breaking of the Vessels, chicago: university of chicago press 1982, p. 8; pp. 43–4. The Book of J, new York: grove press 1990, p. 307. “introduction,” in Søren Kierkegaard: Modern Critical Views, ed. and introduced by harold bloom, new York: chelsea house publishers 1991, pp. 1–4. The Western Canon, new York: harcourt, bruce & company 1994, p. 56; p. 352. Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human, new York: riverhead 1998, p. 391; p. 403; pp. 425–6; p. 489; p. 664; p. 730. How to Read and Why, new York: scribner 2000 (1st touchtone ed.), p. 11; p. 191; p. 731. “frontspiece 22: søren Kierkegaard” and “søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855),” in Genius: A Mosaic of One Hundred Exemplary Creative Minds, new York: Warner books 2003, pp. 197–202. Genius: A Mosaic of One Hundred Exemplary Creative Minds, new York: Warner books 2003, p. xi; p. xiii; p. xv; p. xviii; p. 11; p. 56; p. 191. Where Shall Wisdom Be Found?, new York: riverhead 2004, p. 13; p. 58; p. 120; p. 209; pp. 283–4. Drama and Dramatists, philadelphia: chelsea house publishers 2005, p. 144; p. 152; p. 156.

78

Elisabete M. de Sousa

Essayists and Prophets, philadelphia: chelsea house publishers 2005, pp. 1–5; p. 37; p. 66; pp. 110–13. Hans Christian Andersen, ed. and introduced by harold bloom, philadelphia: chelsea house publishers 2005, pp. ix–x; p. xiv. Jesus and Yahweh: The Names Divine, new York: riverhead books 2005, p. 10; p. 27; p. 29; pp. 31–2; pp. 104–5; pp. 136–7; pp. 162–3. Novelists and Novels, philadelphia: chelsea house publishers 2005, p. 105; p. 139; p. 160; p. 464. “søren Kierkegaard, (1813–1855),” in Essayists and Prophets, philadelphia: chelsea house publishers 2005, pp. 110–13. Alienation, introduced by harold bloom, ed. by blake hobby, philadelphia: chelsea house publishers 2009, p. xv. Jonathan Swift, ed. and introduced by harold bloom, chelsea house publishers 2009, p. xi. II. Sources of Bloom’s Knowledge of Kierkegaard Kierkegaard, søren, The Journals of Søren Kierkegaard, trans. and ed. by alexander dru, london: oxford university press 1938. — Purity of Heart, trans. and ed. by douglas V. steere, new York: harper & brothers 1938. — The Point of View for My Work as an Author and On My Work as an Author [with “the individual”], trans. and ed. by Walter lowrie, london: oxford university press 1939 (new ed. by benjamin nelson, new York: harper & row 1962). — The Present Age and Two Minor Ethico-Religious Treatises (Has a Man the Right to Let Himself be Put to Death for the Truth? and Of the Difference between a Genius and an Apostle), trans. by alexander dru and Walter lowrie, introduced by charles Williams, oxford: oxford university press 1940. — Concluding Unscientific Postscript, trans. by david. f. swenson, posthumous completion and ed. by Walter lowrie, princeton, new Jersey: princeton university press 1941. — Fear and Trembling, trans. and ed. by Walter lowrie, princeton, new Jersey: princeton university press 1941. — For Self-Examination, Judge for Yourselves! [and three discourses 1851: “two discourses at the communion on fridays” and “god’s unchangeableness”], trans. by Walter lowrie, london: oxford university press 1941. — Repetition, trans. and ed. by Walter lowrie, princeton, new Jersey: princeton university press 1941. — The Sickness unto Death, trans. and ed. by Walter lowrie, princeton, new Jersey: princeton university press 1941. — Training in Christianity [and the edifying discourse “the Woman who was a sinner”], trans. and ed. by Walter lowrie, london: humphrey milford, oxford university press 1941. — The Concept of Dread, trans. and ed. by Walter lowrie, princeton, new Jersey: princeton university press 1944.

Harold Bloom: Critics, Bards, and Prophets

79

— Either/Or, vols. 1–2, trans. by david f. swenson, lillian marvin swenson, and howard a. Johnson, princeton, new Jersey: princeton university press 1944. — Kierkegaard’s Attack upon “Christendom” 1854–1855, trans. and ed. by Walter lowrie, princeton, new Jersey: princeton university press 1944. — The Gospel of Suffering and The Lilies of the Field, trans. by david f. swenson and lillian marvin swenson, minneapolis: augsburg 1948. — Gospel of Sufferings [edifying discourses in different spirits], trans. and ed. by a.s. aldworth and W.s. ferrie, london: clarke 1955. — The Journals of Kierkegaard 1834–1854 [an abridged edition of The Journals of Søren Kierkegaard], trans. by alexander dru, london: collins fontana 1958. — Philosophical Fragments, trans. by david f. swenson, 2nd rev. ed. by howard V. hong and niels thulstrup, princeton, new Jersey: princeton university press 1962. — Works of Love, trans. and ed. by howard V. hong and edna h. hong, london: collins 1962 and new York: harper & row 1962. — Stages on Life’s Way, trans. by Walter lowrie, introduced by paul sponheim, princeton, new Jersey: princeton university press 1940; new York: schocken 1967. — The Concept of Irony: With Constant Reference to Socrates, trans. by lee m. capel, introduced and notes by lee m. capel, new York: harper torchbooks 1966; 2nd impression, bloomington: indiana university press 1968. — Works of Love, trans. by david. f. swenson and lillian marvin swenson, introduced by douglas V. steere, port Washington, new York: Kennikat 1972. — Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses, trans. by howard V. hong and edna h. hong, princeton, new Jersey: princeton university press 1990. — The Moment and Late Writings, trans. howard V. hong and edna h. hong, princeton, new Jersey: princeton university press 1998. poole, roger, Kierkegaard: The Indirect Communication, charlottesville and london: university press of Virginia 1993. III. Secondary Literature on Bloom’s Relation to Kierkegaard caruth, cathy, “speculative returns: bloom’s recent Work,” MLN (Modern Language Notes), vol. 98, no. 5, 1983, pp. 1286–96. coleman, patrick, “beyond hyperbole” (review of A Map of Misreading by harold bloom), Diacritics, vol. 7, no. 3, 1977, pp. 44–52. godfrey, sima, “editor’s preface,” Yale French Studies, no. 66, 1984, pp. iii–ix. hartman, geoffrey h., “War in heaven” (review of The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry by harold bloom), Diacritics, vol. 3, no. 1, 1973, pp. 26–32. Klitgaard, anders h., “bloom, Kierkegaard and the problem of misreading,” in The Salt Companion to Harold Bloom, ed. by roy sellars and graham allen, cambridge: salt publishing 2007, pp. 290–302. polansky, steve, “a family romance—northrop frye and harold bloom: a study of Critical Influence,” Boundary 2, vol. 9, no. 2, 1981, pp. 227–46.

don delillo: Kierkegaard and the grave in the air daniel greenspan

I. The Philosopher midway through Falling Man, lianne, whose husband Keith has barely escaped the fall of the Trade Towers in the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 (“9/11”), reminisces about reading Kierkegaard huddled in her college dorm. delillo, it turns out, read the same volume. in a short letter, the author explains Kierkegaard’s influence and, at the same time, preserves its mystery, especially with regard to the philosopher’s role in Falling Man. “I’m not a full-fledged Kierkegaardian….I read his work decades back and still have an old anchor paperback and a Kierkegaard anthology, second hand, falling apart, and, as described in the novel, with the original owner’s underlinings…i’m not sure how K. found his way into the novel.”1 however it happened, Kierkegaard solicited delillo where the power of aesthetics crossed into religion, an ambivalence familiar from Kierkegaard’s own writings.2 at issue was not the philosophical or theological what of the work so much as the ability to powerfully name, a forceful how of writing. “the titles of his work drew me in back then. the immensity of vision, the will to be equal to eternal themes— fear, trembling, sickness, death. maybe it was a nordic extension of my roman catholic upbringing.”3 in place of the sublime art of the church, the vast blear of the heath where Kierkegaard’s father cursed god and his son’s tragedy began.4 the don delillo, letter to the author. september 26, 2009. see, for instance, Fear and Trembling’s discussion of the merman, a sensualist, an aesthete who operates outside the bounds of the ethical, in the category of “the demonic.” the demonic, at least potentially, “has the same quality as the divine, namely that the single individual is able to enter into an absolute relation to it.” SKS 4, 186 / FT, 97. in a note, de silentio adds: “of all the branches of knowledge, esthetics is the most faithless. anyone who has really loved it becomes in one sense unhappy, but he who has never loved it becomes a pecus [dumb brute]. SKS 4, 187, note / FT, 97, note. for a lengthy argument of the view, see Joakim garff, Den søvnløse. Kierkegaard læst æstetisk/biografisk, copenhagen: c.a. reitzel 1995 and Joakim garff, Søren Kierkegaard: A Biography, trans. by bruce h. Kirmmse, princeton: princeton university press 2005, makes a similar case by different means. 3 delillo, letter to the author. september 26, 2009. 4 see garff, Søren Kierkegaard: A Biography, pp. 7–46. by the end of his 21st year, five of Kierkegaard’s six siblings had died, and also his mother. He blamed the father’s blasphemy for this family curse. he expected, for the same reason, to die by 33, the age 1 2

82

Daniel Greenspan

mystery of Kierkegaard’s role in Falling Man originates—like the novel, amidst the haze of pulverized towers—in an overwhelming of the human that is also the beginning of a life, the center of a world. Kierkegaard appears suddenly in Falling Man, without anticipation or explanation, confirming the authorial ignorance DeLillo claims in his letter. The book never sketches Kierkegaard’s work for the reader. We cannot connect his ideas to its broader motions or themes and stay within its bounds. so i am going to resist isolating “Kierkegaardian” moments or presenting his ideas in detail. the moments would be incidental. cataloguing and footnoting them to Kierkegaard’s work would not tell us much about the novel itself. instead, i want to contextualize Falling Man alongside Kierkegaard’s writings generally, based on his locations within the text and the orientation they give. they suggest a reading of the novel in terms of Kierkegaard’s fundamental interest in what happens to people who struggle traumatically with the experience of something at the limits of understanding, who struggle to make it a part of their experience, what they know.5 he called this limit “the god” and described the self as something to be developed in relation to this transcendence, as a kind of perpetual violation.6 Falling Man seems to approach this limit, with the philosopher’s concerns about selfhood, from its near side—the total death communicated by 9/11—rather than the far side of eternity; but these are two edges of a single line, for Kierkegaard, and the novel’s penetration of death also crosses into the religious.7 Falling Man never explicitly aligns Kierkegaard with philosophy. mohamed atta, instead, the lead hijacker, takes on its mantle. His justification of mass death “sounded like philosophy.”8 it drives his followers, like the young hammad, who joins him on the planes, makes a certain understanding of violence possible, and with it, the assault on new York. this idea of philosophy as something imitated invites the question athens once imposed on socrates: how can we distinguish the philosopher from the sophist?9 how do we know whom to go to for truth—in this case, the truth about violence? of Jesus’ death. the expectation seems to have fueled the frantic production of his earlier authorship, as the “great earthquake” of his father’s, a tragically requisite doom, shaped his sense of life and his work more generally. see SKS 27, 291, Papir 305:3 / JP 1, 5430. “then it was that the great earthquake occurred. the frightful upheaval which suddenly drove me to a new infallible principle for interpreting all the phenomena….a guilt must be upon the entire family, a punishment of god must be upon it.” cf. Walter lowrie, A Short Life of Kierkegaard, princeton, new Jersey: princeton university press 1942, pp. 67ff. 5 in doing this, i will assume a “tragic” reading of Kierkegaard that i support at length elsewhere. see daniel greenspan, The Passion of Infinity, berlin and new York: Walter de gruyter 2008. 6 on “the god” as the “absolutely different,” see SKS 4, 245 / PF, 39 and SKS 4, 253 / PF, 47. 7 on the reversibility of death and god, mortality and immortality, as limits to the understanding which must be grasped practically-existentially, not conceptually, see SKS 7, 153–9 / CUP1, 165–71. 8 don delillo, Falling Man, new York: scribner 2007, p. 176. 9 see plato, Apology, 18b–d, where socrates defends himself against the charge of sophistry. cf. plato, Euthydemus, where socrates argues the difference between the sophistical and philosophical relationships to truth.

Don DeLillo: Kierkegaard and the Grave in the Air

83

if atta simulates the philosopher, Keith genuinely takes on his role. the collapse of the first tower, which he barely escapes, transforms Lower Manhattan into a shadowland of the dead. the world darkens; shocked by the blast, Keith’s consciousness intensifies. He disciplines himself intellectually, practicing the heightened self-awareness, the scrutinizing of consciousness that philosophy claimed would penetrate all darkness. in keeping with socrates’ prescription, Keith practices living this death as an essential condition of mental development and an art of the self.10 the cognitive demand death makes and its absolute resistance to the artist’s power to imagine, and even the philosopher’s power to conceive, ignites various “spiritual exercises.”11 Keith and others contend through these exercises with the absolute suddenness of 9/11, the tragic recognition of ignorance and weakness that christians like Kierkegaard called sin.12 II. The Descent to Hades Falling Man begins with Keith’s death, which, like the despair Kierkegaard analyzed pseudonymously in The Sickness unto Death, never concludes.13 after the planes, despite his timely exit from the building and the persistence of a pulse, Keith slips from life. “that was him coming down, the north tower,” where Keith’s friend and colleague, rumsey, “opened his eyes and died.”14 the opening of rumsey’s eyes, like the mouths of the dead around charon’s obolus, marks his crossing. “this is when [Keith] wondered what was happening here…there were dead, faintly seen, in offices to either side...In the stairwell...They walked down, thousands, and he was in there with them. he walked in a long sleep, one step and then the next,” as they descend zombie-like to the necropolis of manhattan.15 for philosophy as the practice of death, see plato, Phaedo, 64a. for more on the classical notion of philosophy as a crafting or an art of the self or soul, a τέχνη τοῦ βίου (also identified as ψυχῆς θεραπεία and ἐπιμέλεια σεαυτοῦ), see, for instance, plato, Gorgias, 464, 500–501b; Apology, 29e; Protagoras, 312b. on the penetration of darkness, see plato, Republic, book Vii, the allegory of the cave. 11 the term “spiritual exercises” belongs to pierre hadot. see, for instance, pierre hadot, What is Ancient Philosophy?, trans. by michael chase, cambridge, massachusetts: harvard university press 2002, p. 62. 12 an exemplary tragic recognition, such as oedipus’ in Oedipus Tyrannus, reveals the blindness and weakness latent within the apparent authority of human reason. christians “like Kierkegaard” would be those with roots in st. paul, st. augustine, and the lutheran inheritance of their emphasis on the debilitating effect of inherited sin. Augustine codifies this essential “ignorance” and “difficulty” as the definition of humanity’s conditioning by inherited sin. augustine, On Free Choice of the Will, trans. by thomas Williams, cambridge, massachusetts: hackett 1993, book 3, § 18, p. 107. for a discussion of sin in paul and luther, the flesh or σάρξ in which it resides, and the connection to Kierkegaard, see merold Westphal, The Critique of Reason and Society, macon, georgia: mercer university press 1987, pp. 107–11. 13 SKS 11, 134–5 / SUD, 18. 14 delillo, Falling Man, p. 243. 15 ibid. 10

84

Daniel Greenspan

at this point, Keith and his wife lianne have been separated for some time. before going to the hospital, though, Keith goes back home. “she dressed and undressed, he watched and did not. it was strange but interesting. a tension did not build.”16 He stands outside of things without the desire that qualifies the living. relieved of this hunger, he no longer participates. the goal implied by desire is missing. he crossed canal street and began to see things, somehow, differently. things did not seem charged in the usual ways, the cobbled street, the cast-iron buildings. there was something critically missing from the things around him. They were unfinished, whatever that means. they were unseen, whatever that means, shop windows, loading platforms, paint-sprayed walls. maybe this is what things look like when there is no one here to see them.17

Unobserved, they no longer register his presence, reflect or spark a hunger. “He tried to tell himself he was alive but the idea was too obscure to take hold.”18 the battery district—and Keith with it—has been discharged of its energy and purpose.19 the world no longer moves toward its goal. Keith descends the stairwell through water and smoke to a world viewed sub specie aeternitatis. unlike the perfection of divine perspective, which philosophy, plato to spinoza, traditionally accessed, it remains incomplete in its halt.20 the loss of a consummating telos—arch meaning and goal—deanimates the world. phenomena have been deracinated. a common nature or purpose no longer binds them. “two men ran by with a stretcher, someone face-down, smoke seeping out of his hair and clothes. he watched them move into the stunned distance. that’s where everything was, all around him, falling away, street signs, people, things he could not name.”21 the senselessness liberty plaza exudes, traces of objects, unidentifiable, strewn like husks, appears to be rooted in their disconnection. It was “a bombed-out city, things on fire, we saw bodies, we saw clothes, pieces of metal like metal parts, things just scattered.”22 nothing connects, meaningless parts, freed from the gravity of relations within which meaning takes place. the “worldhood” of the world—that it is a world, a total coherence, a way that the meaning of things, i.e., what they signify or refer to, comes together—folds and scatters.23 the chaos ibid., p. 35. ibid., p. 5. 18 ibid., p. 6. 19 Aristotle, originally establishing “energy” as a principle of motion, identifies ἐνέργεια with the fully actualized purpose, or τέλος, at which motion aims. see, for instance, Metaphysics, book iX, chapter 6. 20 baruch spinoza, Ethics, in The Ethics and Other Works, ed. and trans. by edwin curley, princeton: princeton university press 1994, book 2, § 44, p. 143. in plato, see, for instance, Phaedo, 80–1, Timaeus, 37e, and Republic, book Vi, 500–1, 509; book Vii, 518. 21 delillo, Falling Man, p. 246. 22 ibid., p. 58. 23 for more on this notion of “world” and the being of things in terms of “assignment” or “reference” to other things, “worldhood” as a structure of “involvements,” see martin heidegger, Being and Time, trans. by John macquarrie and edward robinson, new York: 16 17

Don DeLillo: Kierkegaard and the Grave in the Air

85

is the χάος of hesiod, an originary absence through which a world itself becomes possible.24 the anonymizing blear of violence fans beyond the plaza. it transforms manhattan. “[s]treets and cars were surfaced in ash…everything was gray, it was limp and failed, storefronts behind corrugated steel shutters, a city somewhere else, under permanent siege, and a stink in the air that infiltrated the skin.”25 martin— lianne’s father-in-law—enlarges the boundaries of this faded space. “i don’t know this america anymore. i don’t recognize it…there’s an empty space where america used to be.”26 by the end of the novel, the “crucial anonymity” of poker, the vacancy of the desert surrounding Vegas, have captivated Keith. “there was nothing outside the game but faded space.”27 liberty plaza, manhattan, america—reality itself— succumb to the gravity of missing towers. III. Sacred Violence and the Challenge of Representation culture declares some violence such as the trade towers coming down sacred.28 it invites prohibitions like adorno’s against poetry after the holocaust. Yet, there stands celan’s Todesfuge, fragmented and willowy, almost non-existent.29 adorno clarified later that yes, poetry becomes impossible after such an event, but even more necessary, the medium for expressing something that direct language or images always compromise.30 This is the difficulty DeLillo faces in Falling Man. the event must be written, because it is the kind of event that cannot be written, where writing becomes sacrilege. the volcanic haze opening the novel recalls the “grave in the air” from the chimneys of celan’s poem, the blackness of milk and daybreak, images of the failure of images. “it was not a street anymore but a world, a time and space of falling ash and near night.”31 Paradox defines Keith’s ordeal, the loss of harper and row 1962, pp. 119–21. “the relational totality of this signifying we call ‘significance.’ this is what makes up the structure of the world—the structure of that wherein Dasein as such already is….The context of assignments or references, which, as significance, is constitutive for worldhood, can be taken formally in the sense of a system of relations.” 24 hesiod, Theogony, in Hesiod, vols. 1–2, trans. by glenn most, cambridge, massachusetts: harvard university press, vol. 1, 116. the greek verb χαίνω means to gape, and the Theogony treats this original Chaos as an opening which is already filled with the generation of gods and men to come. 25 delillo, Falling Man, pp. 24–5. 26 ibid., p. 193. 27 ibid., p. 189. 28 for an analysis of the connection between sacrality and certain forms of violence, see rené girard, Violence and the Sacred, baltimore, maryland: Johns hopkins university press 1979. 29 see paul celan’s “deathfugue” in Selected Poems and Prose of Paul Celan, trans. and ed. by John felstiner, new York: norton 2001, pp. 30–3. 30 theodor adorno, Aesthetic Theory, trans. by robert hullot-Kentor, minneapolis: university of minnesota press 1997, pp. 443–4. on adorno’s criticism and celan’s objection, see Jerry glenn, Paul Celan, new York: twayne 1973, p. 73. 31 delillo, Falling Man, p. 3.

86

Daniel Greenspan

appearances—as it did celan’s poetic task and delillo’s as narrator of september 11—the impossibility of representing on which adorno insisted.32 “[t]he steady rip of sirens…lay everywhere they ran, stratified sound collecting around them, and he walked away from it and into it at the same time.”33 there is no longer any time in which to think. there is no longer any space to picture.34 this world-loss coincides with the loss of language. the explosion deafens Keith and reduces language to the visual, leaves these images spinning and upended.35 The stifling of language frustrates his recollection of the event. He cannot conceive the experience. “i don’t know how my mind was working,” he tells lianne.36 his mind was working, but in a way that he cannot grasp. “the movement was beneath him and then all around him, massive, something undreamed.”37 Keith’s lover, Florence, also fled the Towers. Recalling her ordeal, she slips from her experience into someone else’s, through the language that makes experience possible. “she saw a woman with burnt hair, hair burnt and smoking, but now she wasn’t sure she’d seen this or heard someone say it.”38 she struggles for words like “crowbar” to consolidate the most basic objects of perception.39 Yet the event itself, a suspension of language, also functions as a kind of communication. the violence is not random. it means something, communicates. the terrorists speak an inaudible language, one that cannot be seen. a language of absence, they erase a pair of buildings, install a world-defining gap to which everything now refers. They speak to Keith clutched in the tower in sounds that “that weren’t one thing or another,” that signify nothing, like the fragments ejected unidentifiably from the blast are part of nothing; yet, they communicate a “shift in the basic arrangement of parts and elements,” a shudder in the total web of significance.40 Falling Man evades adorno’s concerns about estheticized violence by respecting the tabu that it seems to violate, insisting on the anonymity of the event, its resistance to names, that no author has authority. A book ostensibly about 9/11, it refuses to really show or conceive its object. the physical prominence of the towers dissolves into semantics, slips into other registers. Falling Man masks the singularity of the event in deflections, equivocating between its grand murder and the onset of Alzheimer’s, or a modest still-life by the italian modernist, giorgio morandi; neither delillo’s language nor morandi’s images achieve their effect by representing their objects directly.

paradox, meaning literally, contrary, παρά, to how things seem or appear, δόξα. delillo, Falling Man, p. 4. 34 immanuel Kant establishes this distinction between time as an inner sense, through which subjectivity grasps and in this grasping constitutes itself reflectively, and space as outer sense, in terms of which this subject represents to itself the objects it stands against. Critique of Pure Reason, trans. by paul guyer and allan Wood, cambridge: cambridge university Press 1999, A34/B50–1. 35 delillo, Falling Man, p. 5. 36 ibid., p. 21. 37 ibid., p. 240. 38 ibid., p. 55. 39 ibid., p. 57. 40 ibid., pp. 239–40. 32 33

Don DeLillo: Kierkegaard and the Grave in the Air

87

objectively, their meaning recedes.41 the novel shifts the emphasis from the objectpole of an experience, i.e., those towers, that painting, to the subject-pole; their meaning is always a meaning for someone, a way of being conscious. immediately after Keith’s retreat from the tower, lianne joins her mother, nina, in a living room organized by two of morandi’s still-lifes. “these were groupings of bottles, jugs, biscuit tins, that was all, but there was something in the brushstrokes that held a mystery she could not name, or in the irregular edges of vases and jars, some reconnoiter inward, human and obscure, away from the very light and color of the paintings.”42 fixed spaces, like manhattan, with world-destroying mysteries at their center, the paintings by morandi defer lianne to the physical marks of the brush. like the unreality spread from the missing towers, they border on the senselessness of abstraction. but even the materiality of the painting comes undone. “i keep seeing the towers in this still life,” martin later tells lianne and nina.43 morandi’s images, like Falling Man’s representation of the towers, lead away from objects, back to the subject as the unseen source of vision, an estranged site of meaning for whom objects as such come to appear.44 Keith, once home, inhabits a world that is not a world, defined by the impossibility of representation. in the absence of anything to represent, the image as such aspires to the status of the real. he confronts this uncanny slippage between image and reality in television news reports “he’d just walked out of,” as if predicated of these images, a shadowy double of the man who died inside the towers.45 Keith and lianne watch the impact replay on tV, “his hand on hers, in pale light, as though to console her for his dying.”46 When Keith returns to his apartment, “[t]he man who used to live here” has vanished, he senses, replaced by image as the scene lapses into the cinematic. he inhabits “the movie version” of a life that ended the morning that the towers came down and the cameras turned on.47 in the shower, “standing numbly in the flow, a dim figure far away inside plexiglass,” he radiates the twodimensionality of a shade.48 lianne soon suffers the same dissipations. she slips into a nostalgically filmic sense of things. Her reflection in the mirror expands into “a scene in a movie”49—an image of an image—like the movie she enters making out with Keith in a taxi.50 desire keels into image. everything has already happened, preserved in the balm of celluloid. for the theory of this relation between consciousness and the object it “intends,” νόησις and νόημα, see edmund husserl, Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, vols. 1–3, trans. by f. Kersten et al., the hague and london: nijhoff 1980–89, vol. 1 (General Introduction to a Pure Phenomenology), §§ 87–96. 42 delillo, Falling Man, p. 12. 43 ibid., p. 49. 44 see edmund husserl, Cartesian Meditations, trans. by dorion cairns, the hague: martinus nijhoff 1977, §§ 8–9. of course, the transcendental subject, for husserl, is not estranged or mysterious, and can become fully present to itself in reflection. 45 delillo, Falling Man, p. 87. cf. p. 214. 46 ibid., p. 135. 47 ibid., p. 27. 48 ibid., p. 23. 49 ibid., p. 47. 50 ibid., p. 104. 41

Daniel Greenspan

88

The Las Vegas finally commanding Keith eliminates this endangered distinction between appearance and reality. its images confuse and mock reality, shame it, showing how unreal—by comparison—reality has become. “did you ever look at that waterfall? are you able to convince yourself you’re looking at water, real water, and not some special effect?’ Keith asks terry cheng, fellow gambler. “it’s not something we’re supposed to think about,” he answers.51 impressions lead to other impressions, unmoored from any reality they might represent. “[t]he waterfall was blue now, or possibly always was, or this was another waterfall, or another hotel.”52 the distinction between image and reality has been abandoned. there are only appearances. Without reference to a stable, underlying reality, they become appearances of appearance itself, essentially fleeting, fragments that communicate the disintegration of the overall picture; a senselessness in which names fall away. “Keith looked into the waterfall. this was better than closing his eyes. if he closed his eyes, he’d see something.”53 like morandi’s paintings, tV broadcasts of the falling towers or Keith’s recollection of the event, Falling Man persists in images of nothing. IV. The Knowledge of Death [lianne] watched the players, they drew her in, deadpan, drowsy, slouched, men in misfortune, she thought, making a leap to Kierkegaard, somehow, and recalling the long nights she’d spent with her head in a text. she watched the screen and imagined a northern bleakness, faces misplaced in the desert. Wasn’t there a soul struggle, a sense of continuing dilemma, even in the winner’s little blink of winning?54

the hazy unreality of casino life realizes the barrens in which lianne, watching poker on tV, imagines Kierkegaard’s religious struggle. like Kierkegaard, and socrates, whom he revered, Keith pursues a type of knowledge that is engaged, one that draws on and refines his entire personality. The struggles of Falling Man are not the objective ones of combating terrorism or winning at five-card stud; the disintegrations are not the visible ones of concrete and corrugated steel. the novel stakes its motions instead on Keith’s soul as submission to the total unreality of Vegas consummates a will to practice and know death completely. Falling Man describes several forms that the knowledge of death, communicated most obviously by mohammed atta, can take. some, impossibly, preserve the essential mystery, its transcendence, without annihilating the one dying. others reduce death to something that can be measured in human terms, fully conceived or represented. individuals can be destroyed by ecstatic emotions, such as love, or awe before a sublime demonstration of power; they can be undermined by forces as abstract as plot, or physically by “organic shrapnel” in which bomber merges with victim. “[t]he people nearby who are injured, sometimes, months later, they develop 51 52 53 54

ibid., pp. 204–5. ibid., p. 229. ibid., p. 205. ibid., p. 117.

Don DeLillo: Kierkegaard and the Grave in the Air

89

bumps, for lack of a better term, and it turns out this is caused by small fragments, tiny fragments of the suicide bomber’s body.”55 bodies also serve as a medium for the emotional death of the individual into the group. atta commands the hijackers to “[b]ecome each other’s running blood.”56 “they felt things together, he and his brothers. they felt the claim of danger and isolation,” its “magnetic effect.”57 it is plot that seals individuals together in collective emotion. a single body aimed at a single purpose.58 plot “drew them together more tightly than ever…there was the claim of being chosen, out there, in the wind and sky of islam.”59 hammad and the others die so effectively into the Jihadist narrative because death organizes this story. the practiced love of death strengthens and joins them to one another.60 “forget the world,” hammad thinks inside the plane: all of life’s lost time is over now. this is your long wish, to die with your brothers…he thought of the Shi’a boys on the battlefield in the Shatt al Arab…He took strength from seeing this, seeing them cut down in waves by machine guns, boys in the hundreds, then the thousands, suicide brigades, wearing red bandanas around their necks and plastic keys underneath, to open the door to paradise. recite the sacred words. pull your clothes tightly about you. fix your gaze. carry your soul in your hand.61

The biological death they face fortifies in advance their first dying into the fascinations of the group. despite this double death, the bounded plotting of the terrorists, appetitive and resolved, the sound picture of their goal, contain the ecstasies through which an essential knowledge of death mounts. the immanence of the group replaces that of individuals, shuttles them inside protectively, foreclosing on the transcendence of death’s essential mystery. the americans, on the other hand, have no serious mythology to absorb the reality of death, no grand narrative to bind it within a scale that can be grasped, conceptually or imaginatively. free of these restrictions, it excites desires independent of reason and choice.62 despite Keith’s renewed commitment to family, ibid., p. 16. ibid., p. 83. 57 ibid., p. 174. 58 for an account of the intertwining of several bodies into one, along these lines, see maurice merleau-ponty, “other selves and the human World,” in The Phenomenology of Perception, trans. by colin smith, new York: routledge 1995, pp. 346–65. 59 delillo, Falling Man, p. 174. 60 ibid., p. 178. 61 ibid., p. 238. 62 aristotle gives a capsule description of these ecstatic thoughts and passions in the Eudemian Ethics, trans. by J. solomon, in The Collected Works of Aristotle, vols. 1–2, princeton: princeton university press 1984, vol. 2, 1225a28–34. “therefore those who are inspired and prophesy, though their act is one of thought, we still say have it not in their own power either to say what they said, or to do what they did. and so of acts done through appetite. so that some thoughts and passions do not depend on us, nor the acts following such thoughts and reasonings, but, as philolaus said, some arguments [λόγοι] are too strong for us.” in a fragment, aristotle connects this ecstatic knowledge with the experience of death approximated, at times, in sleep. aristotle, Fragmenta, ed. by Valentin rose, stuttgart: 55 56

90

Daniel Greenspan

he returns to florence’s bed as if it were a fate, moved by passions whose conditions were “external,” that “he could not control.”63 he cannot resist this refugee from the towers. lianne also suffers passions that force her outside of herself. “ ‘i wake up at some point every night. mind running. can’t stop it…thoughts i can’t identify, thoughts i can’t claim as mine.’ ”64 as awareness builds of the death radiating from the towers, mania stirs in lianne, ecstatic emotion, like that driving Keith across the park to his lover. lianne’s father, glen, shot himself when she was a girl, and his suicide, defense against the progress of alzheimer’s, looms over his daughter. Falling Man traces suicide’s objectified understanding of death to another, even more deeply unwanted, humiliating, the irrevocable drift into dementia, transcendence past which a body lives but no one remains. lianne facilitates “storyline sessions” for alzheimer’s patients. through writing, they practice consolidating themselves, their experiences.65 “these people were the living breath of the thing that killed her father,” who preferred the deliberateness, the absolute choice of suicide to this dwindling of mind and self.66 “Sometimes it scared her, the first signs of halting response, the losses and failings, the grim prefigurings that issued now and then from a mind beginning to slide away from the adhesive friction that makes an individual possible.”67 the death of the individual into dementia repeats Keith’s coinciding loss of self and world, deprived of the necessary substrate of language by the explosions. “the world was receding, the simplest recognitions. she began to lose her sense of clarity, of distinctness,” testifies Rosellen S. Another member, Benny, found himself “in a mind and body that were not his,” as Lianne’s mind, unsleeping, was not her own, and Keith finds himself again in florence’s bed.68 An alien significance verges on the group, alien emotion. the loss of curtis b.’s wristwatch becomes “dark and fated.”69 What they will know, who death makes them, cannot be recovered. the performance artist known as the falling man, strapped to a variety of heights, reproduces the fatal drop of a man from the trade towers, an image circulated widely in the newspaper. the performances tend to isolate onlookers, deprive them of distractions and defense—holy wars, gun-muzzles, images from TV or film—against death’s knowledge. Lianne meets the Falling Man having leapt from a train platform in the boroughs, where there are fewer people, more space than in manhattan. it “was too near and deep, too personal. all she wanted was to share Teubner 1967, fragment 10. Pindar also identifies sleep with death as occasions for the divinity within human beings to become ecstatically active. pindar, The Odes of Pindar, 2nd ed., trans. by John edwin sandys, cambridge, massachusetts: harvard university press 1937 [1915], fragment 131. 63 delillo, Falling Man, p. 166. 64 ibid., pp. 124–5. 65 ibid., p. 40. 66 ibid., p. 62. maurice blanchot writes, for instance, about the suicidal assertion against the anonymity of “another death.” The Space of Literature, trans. by ann smock, lincoln, nebraska: university of nebraska press 1982, p. 104. 67 delillo, Falling Man, p. 30. 68 ibid., pp. 93–4. 69 ibid., p. 95.

Don DeLillo: Kierkegaard and the Grave in the Air

91

a look, catch someone’s eye, see what she herself was feeling.”70 she searches for other perspectives into which she can retreat, reclaim her bearing. but the falling man takes her hostage. he isolates and empties her; forces her back onto herself. “he remained motionless, with the train still running in a blur in her mind and the echoing deluge of sound falling about him, blood rushing to his head, away from hers.”71 the knowledge of death he communicates does not destroy the individual physically or psychologically compromise the transcendence of its object. the ecstasies he inspires magnify lianne’s sense of herself. she bleeds through him, incorporating this image of an image of death, an image refusing and shaming the image, restoring its third dimension and living heat, never explaining the horror, settling for a concept. the knowledge of death that the falling man communicates imposes selfhood unremittingly as a problem that cannot be represented and so cannot be solved. he recalls the socrates favored by Kierkegaard, for whom knowing and becoming oneself means confronting an unidentifiable monster: “the bare space he stared into must be his own.”72 V. The Art of the Self she loved Kierkegaard in his antiqueness, in the glaring drama of the translation she owned, an old anthology of brittle pages with ruled underlinings in red ink, passed down by someone in her mother’s family. this is what she read and re-read into deep night in her dorm room…she used to love Kierkegaard right down to the spelling of his name. the hard scandian k’s and lovely doubled a. her mother sent books all the time, great dense demanding fiction, airtight and relentless, but it defeated her eager need for self-recognition, something closer to mind and heart. she read her Kierkegaard with a feverish expectancy, straight into the protestant badlands of sickness unto death.73

the rituals of Falling Man—like the leaps of its title character—transcribe an experience of violence that cannot be resisted or denied, an occasion for heightened consciousness in which an art of the self can begin.74 these ritual practices either mask the meaning of death, objectifying it, or attune the individual to a firstperson experience of transcendence that ultimately crosses into the religious. the irreducibility of death opens a seam that rituals can mend—the group prayer of terrorists, the excessive formality of poker—a terrible openness to sew back into the fabric of things. It retrieves and polishes significances, meaningful relations destroyed by stray airliners, muzzle blast, or plaquing of the brain. the mindfulness of rituals distinguishes them from the mechanics of habit. “You have to break through the structure of your own stonework habit just to make yourself ibid., p. 163. ibid., p. 168. 72 ibid., p. 167. socrates did not know, Kierkegaard reminds us in Armed Neutrality, “whether he was a human being” or a typhon-like monster. Pap. X–5 B 107, p. 301 / PV, 141. Philosophical Fragments refers to the same lines from plato, Phaedrus, 229d–230a. SKS 4, 243 / PF, 37. 73 delillo, Falling Man, p. 117. 74 for more on the art of the self, see note 10. 70 71

92

Daniel Greenspan

listen,” Keith reflects on poker’s strict demands.75 “he began to think into the day, into the minute. he noticed things, all the small lost strokes of a day or a minute, how he licked his thumb and used it to lift a bread crumb off the plate and put it idly in his mouth.”76 but the ritual of poker absorbing Keith began years before, with the hijackers, on the other side of the world. they are part of the some practiced motion. His attackers “ordered [themselves] from within,” focusing “free-flowing energies and gestures…against the single counterforce, the fact of self-imposed restriction.”77 discipline translates their story into something the body knows, perpetuates through other bodies like Keith’s. he “prays and sleeps, prays and eats” and “had begun to understand that death is stronger than life.”78 “the plot shapes every breath he takes.”79 Violence becomes the holy alliance between all created things. “it was all Islam, the rivers and streams. Pick up a stone and hold it in your fist, this is Islam….He wore a bomb vest and knew he was a man now, finally, ready to close the distance to god.”80 through ritual hammad accesses the metaphysical force within plot, conscious repetitions that entrench and organize the world in narrative terms of struggle and martyrdom.81 Keith develops several rituals, after the planes, beginning with rehabilitation for a damaged hand, “a program of exercises” that he likens to prayer.82 he found these sessions restorative, four times a day, the wrist extensions, the ulnar deviations.83 these were the true countermeasures to the damage he’d suffered in the ibid., p. 229. ibid., p. 65. 77 ibid., p. 98. 78 ibid., p. 176; p. 172. 79 ibid., p. 176. 80 ibid., p. 172. 81 William gass examines the ways in which mythologizing accomplishes a metaphysical task of establishing the rules under which a world becomes possible, “telling us how it is” according to grammatical rather than dialectical principles. see William h. gass, “philosophy and the form of fiction,” Fiction and the Figures of Life, boston: nonpareil 1979, p. 5. Although “fiction is far more important to philosophy than the other way around…the novelist can learn more from the philosopher, who has been lying longer.” 82 delillo, Falling Man, p. 59. 83 measuring, like Keith’s, here, has always been at the center of what it would mean to be rational. the lack of measure—τὸ μέτρον—makes a thing unthinkable. the framing of measure includes something in the realm of possible experience. it provides the bounds necessary for intelligibility. Only something measurable can be counted and identified as being “this one.” see plato, Protagoras 356d–e on the relation between rationality and counting, and martha nussbaum’s discussion, The Fragility of Goodness, pp. 106–17. cf. aristotle, Metaphysics, book X, chapters 1–2, on the importance of measure and the equivalence of unity and being. counting, as this establishment of measure, surfaces constantly in the rituals of the novel. it tends toward madness, though; there is no limit to counting and often no purpose, other than counting itself. rumsey compulsively counts women’s toes. “to get that sameness…something holds. something stays in place” (p. 121). nina has her “mystical wheel” of medications, a kind of mandala with its “ritualistic design of the hours and days in tablets and capsules, in colors shapes and numbers.” She measures time, objectifies it, in 75 76

Don DeLillo: Kierkegaard and the Grave in the Air

93

tower….[i]t wasn’t the torn cartilage that was the subject of this effort. it was the chaos, the levitation of ceilings and floors, the voices choking in smoke.84

Keith’s ulnar deviations are a study in the sense of an étude, a movement to rehearse and perfect, staving off the emptiness, the faded space emanating from ground zero. these studious attentions to the body—as if new and foreign, something ungoverned—express a penetrating loss of identity. Keith chronically corrects the misspelling of his name on the mail, “[b]ecause it wasn’t him, with the name misspelled.”85 The distortions of language figure the loss of identity for Alzheimer’s patients, and aberrations in the mail’s typography threaten Keith with a similar loss. Keith and his poker buddies, as well as the terrorists, thrive on the imposition of structure and repetition. but the card-players celebrate their lack of motive, the absence of narrative and the goal it provides. “rules are good…the stupider the better.”86 the goal is erased, as it was for the ghost city left by the fall of the towers. Without this telos, the story holding things together goes flat. It is what they practice, the elimination of sense. five-card stud was their only game, but the dealer’s pronouncement before every hand, “five-card stud,” “became a proud ritual, formal and indispensable…the needless utterance of a few archaic words.”87 they sought “the transcendent effects” of mindful repetition, disciplining consciousness, intensifying it to new levels against the horizon of loss, as if preparing for the planes.88 Keith relocates after the attacks to the random manufacture of las Vegas. he celebrates senselessness on this enhanced scale as a practice ground, forming himself in death’s knowledge. The submission to poker reflects the Greek legacy that speaks in lianne’s desire for “self-recognition,” the delphic exhortation to self knowledge [Γνῶθι σεαυτόν] translated by socrates into a practiced knowledge of death.89 at the card tables “[e]verything happened remotely….he had a measure of calm, of calculated isolation…the choice that reminds you who you are.”90 reason liberates him; it refines emotion and harnesses desire, imprinting [χαράσσειν] its virtues pharmaceutical terms (p. 48). lianne, too, counts, by sevens, in reverse, arming herself against the possibility of the regressions afflicting her group; self dissolved into a world washed clean. “it was her form of lyric verse, subjective and unrhymed, a little songlike but with a rigor, a tradition of fixed order” (p. 188). Keith’s poker is an intensification of counting, the shuffling of numbers spiked with the adrenaline of the bet. the repetitive nature of ritual—religious or psychopathological—includes counting within it essentially. that a ritual or ritualistic behavior explicitly involves counting is a redundancy. 84 delillo, Falling Man, p. 40. 85 ibid., p. 31. 86 ibid., p. 99. 87 ibid. 88 ibid. 89 for Γνῶθι σεαυτόν as delphic inscription, see pausanias, Descriptions of Ancient Greece, vols. 1–4, trans. by W.h. Jones and h.a. ormerod, london: harvard university press 1918, vol. 4, 10.24.1. for more on philosophy as a lived practice, especially of death, see note 10. 90 delillo, Falling Man, p. 211.

94

Daniel Greenspan

in the soul that it shapes.91 “it was strength of mind, mental edge…a narrowness of need or wish, or how a man’s character determines his line of sight.”92 Knowing death on this model, allowing it to shape you, means working a living knowledge into the body. ritual facilitates this knowledge. Keith becomes “identical” with the gestures of the game, “the stacking of chips, the eye count, the play and dance of hand and eye”93—even “the air he breathed.”94 [T]here was nothing outside, no flash of history or memory that he might unknowingly summon in the routine of cards….the point was one of invalidation. nothing else pertained….these were the days after and now the years, a thousand heaving dreams, the trapped man, the fixed limbs, the dream of paralysis, the gasping man, the dream of asphyxiation, the dream of helplessness.95

the rituals of poker make sense of things, but only by magnifying the loss of meaning, building a world around the table’s empty center in the surplus of its language. the world beyond the Casino remains empty and dead. Keith responds to Lianne finally in vacant nods, “a kind of deep sleep, a narcolepsy, eyes open, mind shut down,” either a shaman or a corpse.96 lianne, too, submits herself to the stringencies of ritual. her fascinated running occupies an ambiguous gap between consciousness of death and a sense of god’s presence. the gap opens as the solidity of the everyday gives, the world of objects reduced by the razing of the towers to the eternity of consciousness. things slip everywhere into idea, signify like a language. “everything seemed to mean something. even when she was barely aware of an incident it came to mind later, with meaning attached, in sleepless episodes that lasted minutes or hours, she wasn’t sure.”97 she longs ecstatically for a misplaced objectivity. “she wanted to trust in the forces and processes of the natural world, this only, perceptible reality and scientific endeavor, men and women alone on earth.”98 nostalgia for the benignity of nature—dependable rules governing muscle and blood, the mastery rules make possible—compels her religiously committed athletics. lianne ran along the river in the mornings with “spiritual effort” because “god would consume her… god would crowd her, make her weaker. god would be a presence that remained unimaginable.”99 this god shows up like death, undoing lianne’s hold on the world, blocking images, frustrating the stability of concepts through which objects are Χαράσσειν, the idea of imprinting, sculpting or carving, is at the root of “character” [χαρακτήρ], and also the classical ideal of virtue. aristotle establishes the theory of virtue as a state of character, consolidated through habit, in which the soul takes a particular shape or form. Nicomachean Ethics, trans. by sir david ross, in The Complete Works of Aristotle, princeton: princeton university press 1984, ii.5–6. 92 delillo, Falling Man, p. 227. 93 ibid., p. 228. 94 ibid., p. 230. 95 ibid., p. 225; p. 230. 96 ibid., p. 216. 97 ibid., p. 67. for more on sleep, death, and ecstatic knowledge, see note 62. 98 ibid., p. 65. 99 ibid., p. 235; p. 65. 91

Don DeLillo: Kierkegaard and the Grave in the Air

95

identified, and experience as such becomes possible.100 With the fluidity of a dream whose center, always moving, will not be thought, everything means something else. running preserves her boundaries, washing with death’s knowledge into an experience of god that withdraws from all images and concepts. the rituals in Falling Man enforce the boundaries of a world as they flare and tense, and the individual with them, braced against the imposition of some annihilating force. but the “awful openness” of the falling man’s pose distinguishes his repetitions from the others.101 he does not enclose. he opens toward, embodies vulnerability, denying onlookers the distance of representations, refusing the circulation of his image.102 his performances move in the other direction, returning ideas and images of the event to the source of their appeal, understanding to something ruinously prior and sovereign. “headlong, free fall, [lianne] thought, and this picture burned a hole in her mind and heart, dear god, he was a falling angel and his beauty was horrific.”103 it is the horror, the religion, of bareness. his leap evokes religion at the edge of this bare state “that must be his own,” where understanding ceases, empty nexus of sky, planes and towers where the creatures of heaven spill.104 the falling man’s ritual aims at nothing, grasps nothing. it develops a superabundant image, gesture strained by meaning that will not be pictured or conceived. lianne herself had to become “the photograph, the photosensitive surface. that nameless body coming down, this was hers to record and absorb.”105 the object disappears, painfully, transformatively, as it did for Keith the morning it all began, turning the subject back upon herself. the beauty lianne sees in the falling man, shot through with terror, recalls the monstrous loss of words and images where Kant, adjunct to his analysis of beauty, discovers the sublime.106 sublimity erases the art object, confusing the artist’s representations and the subjectivity of audience members.107 and so the falling man becomes a vessel into which lianne’s blood the idea that there are cognitive conditions for representing to ourselves what appear to be natural facts, self-given, belongs originally to Kant. see Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, A51/B75: “Without sensibility no object would be given to us, without understanding no object would be thought. thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts blind.” 101 delillo, Falling Man, p. 33. 102 ibid., p. 220. 103 ibid., p. 222. 104 ibid., p. 167. 105 ibid., p. 223. 106 Kant distinguishes between the mathematical sublime, in which an “absolute magnitude” overwhelms imagination with an “immeasurable whole,” as in descartes’ chiliogon, that it cannot compass, and the dynamical sublime, in which the faculty of desire meets and exceeds a frightful “power” that overwhelms us physically. see immanuel Kant, The Critique of the Power of Judgment, trans. by paul guyer and eric matthews, cambridge: cambridge university press 2001, §§ 23–9. 107 for a founding version of this theory of sublime art, a criticism of the psychologizing or subjectivism of aristotelian or Kantian esthetics, see friedrich nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, trans. by Walter Kaufmann, new York: Vintage 1967, § 24. the term belongs originally to longinus’ On the Sublime, trans. by hamilton fyfe, cambridge, massachusetts: 100

96

Daniel Greenspan

flows, someone to become; not just the cancelled image, but the repetitions, too, the practice, is for her. morandi offers a muted counterpoint to the falling man’s attempts to capture the meaning of transcendent phenomena, another pivot for the practiced knowledge of mortality. the painter returns later in the novel with a series of galleried paintings, each titled Natura Morta.108 the way to the gallery is dark and empty. the work insists on blindness. Natura here is not the cartesian machine of modern science, an object of perfectly transparent knowledge.109 it decays, nourishes; it lives, conceals a certain mystery. “there was something hidden in the painting” for its audience to practice knowing.110 lianne “passed beyond pleasure into some kind of assimilation,” as she did beneath the train’s racing, the brutal swing of the falling man.111 the painting impelled, “[t]urn it into living tissue, who you are.”112 morandi’s cancelled image—like the slide into dementia or impressions of death in the towers—must be rehearsed, transformatively embodied. the canvas where martin saw the towers was also “ ‘about mortality…being human, being mortal…i think these pictures are what i’ll look at when i’ve stopped looking at everything else,’ nina tells lianne. ‘i’ll look at bottles and jars. i’ll sit here looking.’ ”113 Human life does not end in a blinding flash of light. The limit reveals itself darkly. the world ends quietly, obscurely; still life, Natura Morta, the only portrayal of death. Death cannot be seen in images of swollen smoke and fire, defenestrations, Bosch-like filling the sky. And so like Morandi, DeLillo gives us still lifes: the t-shirt that Keith sees coming “down out of the sky,” “arms waving like nothing in this life.”114 it is an image of transcendence that could not be more ordinary or effaced. He gives us the titular Falling Man, whose fixed position suspends itself behind the narrative, “awful openness,” self-revoking sign of something else, etching himself in this grave in the air. his terrible vulnerability, an openness outstripping any name, introduces something—an idea, an image—the individual cannot contain. VI. Religion and the Last Bare State Kierkegaard gave her a danger, a sense of spiritual brink. The whole of existence frightens me, he wrote. she saw herself in this sentence. he made her feel that her thrust into the world was not the slender melodrama she sometimes thought it was.115 harvard university press 1995, sec. 7, although the meaning, there, is not technical, as it is in Kant. Sublime literature, for Longinus, fills the soul with elevation. 108 delillo, Falling Man, p. 211. 109 For the identification of physical nature with the mechanics of clockwork, see René descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, in Discourse on Method and Meditations, trans. by laurence lafleur, upper saddle river, new Jersey: prentice hall 1952, meditation 6, p. 138. 110 delillo, Falling Man, p. 210. 111 ibid. 112 ibid. 113 ibid., p. 111. 114 ibid., p. 246. 115 ibid., p. 118.

Don DeLillo: Kierkegaard and the Grave in the Air

97

lianne had wanted “to feel dangerously alive” in marrying Keith.116 she wanted to hang with her Kierkegaard on a spiritual brink, “beyond the limits of safe understanding.”117 she inherits this religious impulse from a father committed to “a force behind [human existence], a principal being who was and is and ever shall be.”118 she too has a “mind and soul” that “keep dreaming toward something unreachable,” seem to extend “the plane of being, out beyond logic and intuition.”119 “[t]he hovering possible presence of god was the thing that created loneliness and doubt in the soul,” she felt, but also “the thing, the entity existing outside space and time that resolved this doubt in the tonal power of a word, a voice. god is the voice that says, ‘i am not here.’ ”120 language without a speaker, god creates an opening, divides the individual from the world; then, with the force of words that no one owns, the world returns. religious openness, on this model, begins where human thinking stops and another type—unspeakable, unimaginable—begins, someplace like ground zero, Morandi’s still lifes or the Falling Man’s, the final stages of dementia. Lianne’s group debates the boundary where reason runs up against the overwhelming grief carried by the planes. crossing this limit, according to rosellen, brings them closer to god.121 “this was their prayer room, said omar h.”122 thought becomes prayer, the clarity of a mind that has all but fled. “No one knew what they knew, here in the last clear minute before it all closed down.”123 this “breathless moment when things fall away, streets, names, all sense of direction and location,” carried rosellen, blind finally even to herself, into God’s house, a temple where “she’d found refuge and assistance.”124 Keith suffers and flees a similar loss of world. The Casino, instead, becomes his refuge, his church. the ultimate quarantine, antiseptic, totally cut-off, Las Vegas reflects the terrific openness, the transcendence of a God it rejects—the “sistine ceilings” and the “pure ritual” of the players—revealed to Keith in the collapse of the towers.125 the experience of god in Falling Man, such as lianne’s, has a language, anonymous, without a speaker, structured by this absence at its origin. that language must be practiced, embodied. and so, straying toward god, mind nearly empty, Rosellen “developed extended versions of a single word, all the inflections and connectives, a kind of protection perhaps, a gathering against the last bare state, where even the deepest moan may not be grief, but only moan.”126 she rehearses this word that is not a word, the beginning of language, but also the end, incarnating an agonizingly vulnerable form of thought. The book never identifies this word. But 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126

ibid., p. 11. ibid., p. 63. ibid., p. 231. ibid., p. 232. ibid., p. 236. ibid., pp. 60–3. ibid., p. 30. ibid. ibid., p. 156. ibid., p. 198. ibid., p. 156.

98

Daniel Greenspan

another resolves, for lianne, a single word—god’s name—in a bareness past this limit: the second plane coming out of that ice blue sky, this was the footage that entered the body, that seemed to run beneath her skin, the fleeting sprint that carried lives and histories, theirs and hers, everyone’s, into some other distance, beyond the towers…. every helpless desperation set against the sky, human voices crying to god and how awful to imagine this, god’s name on the tongues of killers and victims both.127

the crying from the planes joins these people, whose words for god were different, in a language before language.128 it hangs with rosellen’s grief between meaning and a hollow of pure sound. god’s name—the blindness of smoke, contortions of voice and steel, the deafening spree of fallout—gathers investment bankers and shi’a warriors, middle-class commuters and egyptian revolutionaries, saudi and lebanese islamists, in the singularity of the word. god in the sky, in their voices, together.

ibid., p. 134. for more on this notion of a language before language, see the discussion of Being and Time in note 23. derrida builds critically on heidegger’s interpretation of Rede, discourse, as a condition for Sprache, developing the notion of a “protowriting” through which empirical language, and intelligibility generally, becomes possible. see Jacques derrida, “Speech and Phenomena” and Other Essays on Husserl’s Theory of Signs, trans. by david b. allison, evanston: northwestern university press 1973, p. 85: “this protowriting is at the origin of sense. sense, being temporal in nature, as husserl recognized, is never simply present; it is already engaged in the ‘movement’ of the trace, that is, in the order of ‘signification.’ ” 127 128

bibliography I. References to or Uses of Kierkegaard in DeLillo’s corpus Falling Man, new York: scribner 2007, pp. 117–18. II. Sources of DeLillo’s Knowledge of Kierkegaard undetermined. III. Secondary Literature on DeLillo’s Relation to Kierkegaard born, daniel, “sacred noise in don delillo’s fiction,” Literature and Theology, vol. 13, no. 3, 1999, pp. 211–21. cowart, david, Don DeLillo: The Physics of Language, athens and london: university of georgia press 2002, p. 36; p. 119.

louise erdrich: existence with an “edge of irony” nigel hatton

Louise Erdrich (b. 1954) is one of the most prolific and widely read novelists writing about native american life in the united states. her publications include 13 novels, a short story collection, three books of poetry, five works of children’s fiction, and several essays and nonfiction manuscripts. Primarily regarded as a novelist, Erdrich has penned stories marked by humor, irony, spirituality, trickery, magical realism, myth, and indeterminacy—she displaces linear and chronological narrative forms with structures and tropes that nuance the duality of native american subjectivity produced by geographic, political, social, and cultural location within and outside of the united states. an estimated 5.2 million american indian or alaska natives are citizens of the united states, 22 per cent of them living on reservations and trust lands and 78 percent residing in cities and communities across the united states and the world.1 for erdrich, the experience produces an edge of irony. if you have a native american background, it’s also a non-Western background in terms of religion, culture, and all the things that are important in your childhood. there’s a certain amount of commitment because when you grow up and see your people living on a tiny pittance of land or living on the edge, surrounded by enormous wealth, you don’t see the world as just.2

Her first novel, Love Medicine, appeared in 1984 and earned erdrich the national book critics circle award.3 Love Medicine introduced readers to a cast of characters that would appear in her future work, but without chronological order or within a clearly marked and consistent spatiality. following Love Medicine, erdrich published several novels set on fictional reservations closely resembling Ojibwe territory in north dakota across the twentieth century. she is a member of the turtle source: u.s. census bureau, 2010 Census Redistricting Data (Public Law 94–171) summary file, table p1 and 2010 Census summary file 1. 2 louise erdrich and michael dorris, “louise erdrich and michael dorris,” interview with bill moyers, in Conversations with Louise Erdrich and Michael Dorris, ed. by allan chavkin and nancy fehl chavkin, Jackson: university of mississippi press 1994, p. 144. this interview was originally published in bill moyers, “louise erdrich and michael dorris,” in his A World of Ideas: Conversations with Thoughtful Men and Women About American Life Today and the Ideas Shaping Our Future, new York: doubleday 1989, pp. 460–9. 3 louise erdrich, Love Medicine, new York: holt, rinehart and Winston 1984. 1

102

Nigel Hatton

mountain chippewa tribe of north dakota; erdrich describes her background as “a mixture of chippewa and modoc and german-american and french and irish.”4 She grew up with the influence of both Catholicism and Ojibwe religion, cultural forms responsible in part for the rich symbolism and mystery in her writing. her work celebrates and borrows from the rich heritage and cultural practices of native american life, and confronts the discrimination, isolation, and alienation that have impacted those cultural practices. in order to negotiate seemingly separate worlds and the liminal spaces created by their concentricity, erdrich also draws from philosophy, theology, and the Western intellectual tradition. the ideas of socrates, christopher columbus, nietzsche, hegel, freud, and Kierkegaard appear in erdrich’s prose. in The Blue Jay’s Dance, erdrich asks, “Why is no woman’s labor as famous as the death of socrates?”5 John mauser, the client of hegelstead in Tales of Burning Love, “was considered strange by his work crew for screaming lines of poetry or repeating her philosophical maxims in his diatribes. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, he railed at his exhausted crews, near deadlines. Nietzsche! Nietzsche!”6 in Crown of Columbus, a novel co-authored by erdrich and michael dorris, the character Vivian twostar, an assistant professor of anthropology, is asked to write an article for the quincentennial of columbus’ “discovery” of america: “my primary urge, the same as every other sensible person of full or partial american indian descent, was to duck it.”7 erdrich’s native american narratives, grounded in local codes and storytelling practices, routinely rely on print culture—books, libraries, pamphlets, treaties, identity cards— as sites of contestation for pivotal ideas about identity and existence. for John carlos rowe, erdrich demonstrates to readers “how existentially homeless we all are” until the realization of “true justice” in the world.8 the resulting books within books, or narratives within narratives, complicate the lifeworld of Erdrich’s fiction and create labyrinths and layers that allow readers to struggle with the interiority of native american characters encountering the precariousness of existence. even erdrich’s penname has elements of disguise and misdirection. originally named Karen erdrich, she was inspired by the example of Karen blixen to change her name to louise. as John a. mcclure suggests, The conflict of ontological codes makes it difficult to situate oneself fully within any single sacred conception of the real. this is not to imply that erdrich gives equal time or weight to christian and ojibwa ontologies. her work clearly privileges ojibwa religious structures, powers, practices, and values. But the conflict of codes does seem designed to frustrate any dream of discovering, in her Native fiction, a sacred cultural enclosure erdrich and dorris, “louise erdrich and michael dorris,” interview with bill moyers, in Conversations with Louise Erdrich and Michael Dorris, p. 144. 5 louise erdrich, The Blue Jay’s Dance: A Birth Year, new York: harper perennial 1996, p. 35. 6 louise erdrich, Tales of Burning Love, new York: harpercollins 1996, p. 102. 7 michael dorris and louise erdrich, Crown of Columbus, new York: harpercollins 1991, p. 11. 8 John carlos rowe, “buried alive: the native american political unconscious in louise erdrich’s fiction,” Postcolonial Studies, vol. 1, no. 1, 2007, p. 202. 4

Louise Erdrich: Existence with an “Edge of Irony”

103

proof against the heteroglossia of the larger culture—or even a single sacred structure at the foundation of the world.9

alluding directly to Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling and The Sickness unto Death, erdrich’s novel The Bingo Palace (1994)10 conveys the struggles with identity formation faced by lipsha morrissey, a chippewa man who reveals and conceals himself in the shifting realities of life on and off the reservation. his relatives believe going “back and forth to the city weakened and confused him, and now he flails in a circle with his own tail in his teeth.”11 lipsha is a night watchman, linking him to Vigilius haufniensis of The Concept of Anxiety. a confessed bibliophile, he reads everything from the bible to thrillers and erotica in order to prevent him from thinking of the Regine Olsen figure in his life, a woman named Shawnee Raye. After Lipsha reads 1 Kings 17, “where elijah lays himself over a child three times and prays for the kid’s soul to return to its body,” he marvels at elijah’s faith—a faith similar to abraham’s— and envisions himself as a figure who can do “this sort of savior work.”12 he imagines himself saving shawnee raye’s child and rescuing his oft-imprisoned father, gerry nanapush or “gerry no-shit-barn-built-can-hold-a-chippewa nanapush.”13 He looks for his father in the library but finds Kierkegaard instead. The encounter with Kierkegaard comes as lipsha longs to replace homelessness with a sense of place and belonging, a reversal of the rootless identity caused by his movement “back and forth to the city.”14 similarly, lipsha seeks love through his longing for shawnee raye, but she is in a relationship with the owner of the bingo palace, an enterprise symbolic of how gambling has impacted reservation life. lipsha also desires kinship with his father and knowledge of his native language, which would further establish him as a rooted human being. failure to know his traditional language confounds him and forces him to confess that “all i can make out are these strange possibilities.”15 the Kierkegaard encounter also comes after lipsha’s casual reading of the Bible and imagining of himself as an Elijah figure. Erdrich describes his movement into the library as a crossing of borders, lipsha entering in the disguise of his face covered by snow after a storm. the white mask renders him no one “special, not an indian even, just another half-froze Vikings fan.”16 lipsha moves about the library, ignores the assistance of a library clerk, and calls his selection of Kierkegaard’s volumes, “fateful coincidence. things happen you can’t deny. good advice speaks from graves and love hints from the hearts of trees. bags of light float through open windows on a summer night.”17 When lipsha sees Fear and Trembling and The Sickness unto Death, he says: 9 John a. mcclure, Partial Faiths: Postsecular Fiction in the Age of Pynchon and Morrison, athens, georgia: university of georgia press 2007, p. 161. 10 louise erdrich, The Bingo Palace, new York: harpercollins 1994. 11 ibid., p. 7. 12 ibid., p. 230. 13 ibid., p. 232. 14 ibid., p. 7. 15 ibid., p. 233. 16 ibid., p. 237. 17 ibid., p. 238.

104

Nigel Hatton i see the book through the gunner’s vision of the eye holes in my face mask and my hands reach for it without any command of my conscious brain. luckily, i know enough to brace myself before i read the title. Fear and Trembling, it says, and The Sickness unto Death. i shut my eyes and for a minute i sway in the mystery. i am staring down, off the railings of a bridge, into a river that is treacherous, full of suck holes and underground streams. i have looked into that river once, and thought i’d crossed it for good on my way back to reservation home ground. the title of that book drives back upon me like the current of that river, flowing north, certain in its course with no meandering, no pardon. i feel how fragile i’ve strung my own heart above that river, like a bridge of spiderwebs. i open my eyes. it is a small dark volume with a covering like burnt skin. the title confronts me again, no letup. i stare straight back. i hold the book, careful, in my hands, and then I open it, random, to see my fate or pick a name out of it. I drop my finger on the words. If, at the foundation of things, there lay only a wildly seething power….i read. I consider. I think of the river in its misdirection, the fickle current, and the flood that washes out bridges and the porches of homes. i want to believe in the spirit, the order, the will, the blame. i want to believe in the blessed book where no stone can crumble, no arrow fall. but god won’t be watching when they take my father up the hill.18

lipsha has randomly opened to Johannes de silentio’s “eulogy on abraham,” a text he encounters after he has imagined himself as an Elijah figure. Lipsha admires the faith of Elijah and Abraham, but questions whether or not that faith can benefit native americans like himself and his father. lipsha describes an inferno, one in which he has been able to move north away from, but that would ultimately consume him because of his presence outside of the social sphere of american life. god, christianity, and faith hold great potential, but lipsha believes “god won’t be watching when they take my father up the hill.”19 fully understanding The Bingo Palace requires a return to Love Medicine, particularly the chapter “scales,” which links directly to “escape,” the section above that alludes to Kierkegaard. “scales” provides an extensive examination of how Native Americans find themselves battling against spiritual and social tensions with the dominant culture. legendary for “leading a hunger strike at the state pen,”20 lipsha’s father, chippewa indian gerry nanapush, 35, has been in and out of prison for the latter half of his life. the narrator of the chapter, albertine Johnson, says gerry “knew he did not belong in prison,”21 and he continues to escape because he suffers from a belief in “justice, not laws.”22 the overweight gerry makes incredible breaks from prison and, scaling buildings, gliding across north dakota landscapes, miraculously eludes authorities, once even to visit a hospital for the birth of his child that “was as restless a prisoner as its father, and grew more anxious and unruly as the time of release neared.”23 ibid., p. 238. ibid., p. 238. 20 louise erdrich, Love Medicine: New and Expanded Version, new York: harpercollins 1993, p. 195. 21 ibid., p. 201. 22 ibid., p. 201; p. 202. 23 ibid., p. 203. 18 19

Louise Erdrich: Existence with an “Edge of Irony”

105

gerry nanapush’s original crime stems from an altercation with a cowboy who asked, “whether a chippewa was also a nigger.”24 adhering to “reservation rules,” Gerry retaliates, kicks the cowboy in the “balls” and, in the aftermath of their scuffle, oddly winds up in court because, there is nothing more vengeful and determined in this world than a cowboy with sore balls, and gerry soon found this out. he also found out that white people are good witnesses to have on your side, because they have names, addresses, social security card numbers, and work phones. but they are terrible witnesses to have against you, almost as bad as having indians witness for you. Not only did Gerry’s friends lack all forms of identification except their band cards, not only did they disappear (out of no malice but simply because gerry was tried during powwow time), but the few he did manage to get were not interested in looking judge or jury in the eyes. they mumbled into their laps. gerry’s friends, you see, had no interest in the united states judicial system. they did not seem comfortable in the courtroom, and this increased their unreliability in the eyes of judge and jury.25

When a doctor testifies that Gerry had damaged the cowboy’s fertility, an incredulous gerry laughs aloud and says that, because he was drunk, he could not have been so accurate. the beer admission garners gerry an even tougher sentence “that was heavy for a first offense, but not bad for an Indian.”26 in The Bingo Palace, lipsha, like his father in Love Medicine, is confronted by a cowboy who conflates Native american and african american, and calls lipsha a “prairie nigger.”27 lipsha tries to diffuse the encounter with humor, a coping mechanism erdrich calls universal across native american tribal cultures: “survival humor—the humor that enables you to live with what you have to live with. You have to be able to poke fun at people who are dominating your life and family.”28 louise erdrich was among the inaugural class of women and native americans to be admitted to dartmouth college, and she later attended Johns hopkins university to study creative writing. great attention has been paid to her complex native american world, and the ways in which the same characters reappear in her novels and stories without consistency or chronology in time and space. making sense of narrative time requires going forward and backward across her published work, and she has even taken the liberty to revise narratives and stories after publication. her narratives also form a critique of the Western intellectual tradition, locating points of rupture and possible reconciliation. she bridges the divide literally in her Books and Islands in Ojibwe Country, a nonfiction work equating narrative in print culture with narrative in native american rock painting, lake rituals, and oral traditions.29 in The Bingo Palace, Kierkegaard is folded into the spiritual interrogation between native ibid., p. 201. ibid., pp. 201–2. 26 ibid., p. 202. 27 erdrich, The Bingo Palace, p. 71. 28 erdrich and dorris, “louise erdrich and michael dorris,” interview with bill moyers, in Conversations with Louise Erdrich and Michael Dorris, p. 144. 29 louise erdrich, Books and Islands in Ojibwe Country, Washington, d.c.: national geographic 2003. 24 25

106

Nigel Hatton

americans and christianity. the character lipsha is prepared to make the leap, but his father’s imprisonment and disenfranchisement leads him to reconsider. not everyone is convinced by the existential agency erdrich places with her characters, but criticism has yet to deter her from taking this approach in her fiction.30

for example, see leslie marmon silko, “review of louise erdrich, The Beet Queen,” in Studies in American Indian Literature, vol. 10, no. 4, 1986, pp. 180–1: “What erdrich, who is half-indian and grew up in north dakota, attempts to pass off as north dakota may be the only North Dakota she knows. But hers is an oddly rarified place in which the individual’s own psyche, not racism or poverty, accounts for all conflict and tension. In this pristine world all misery, suffering, and loss are self-generated, just as conservative republicans have been telling us for years.” 30

bibliography I. References to or Uses of Kierkegaard in Erdrich’s corpus The Bingo Palace, new York: harpercollins 1994, p. 238. II. Sources of Erdrich’s Knowledge of Kierkegaard undetermined. III. Secondary Literature on Erdrich’s Relation to Kierkegaard undetermined.

James Joyce: negation, Kirkeyaard, Wake, and repetition bartholomew ryan What comforted his misapprehension? that as a keyless citizen he had proceeded energetically from the unknown to the known through the incertitude of the void. James Joyce, Ulysses1 if i did not know that i am a genuine dane, i could almost be tempted to explain my self-contradictions by supposing that i am an irishman. for the irish do not have the heart to immerse their children totally when they have them baptized; they want to keep a little paganism in reserve; generally the child is totally immersed under water but with the right arm free, so that he will be able to wield a sword with it, embrace the girls. søren Kierkegaard, Journals and Papers2 …if one has the stomach to add the breakages, upheavals, distortions, inversions of all this chambermade music one stands, given a grain of goodwill, a fair chance of actually seeing the whirling dervish, tumult, son of thunder, self exiled in upon his ego…. James Joyce, Finnegans Wake3

How much of an influence did Søren Kierkegaard have on James Joyce? This is a question that is as dubious as its answer. for a start, with the multiplicity of references in Joyce’s works it is difficult to say who was an actual influence at all, with the exception of course of key players such as homer, dante, Vico, shakespeare, goethe, ibsen, and the authors and artists of the Book of Kells. as anyone will know who has dipped into at least the final two works of Joyce, there are references to Western culture ad infinitum and sometimes ad nauseam that has no rival in the history of literature. as one Joycean scholar wrote on Ulysses, “in a sense everything in the book is a quotation anyway.”4 it is important to realize when entering the universe of Joyce that he was not a philosopher per se, nor even 1 James Joyce, Ulysses, paris: shakespeare and company 1922, p. 650. see also reproduction of the 1922 edition with introduction and notes by Jeri Johnson in oxford World classics edition (oxford university press 2008). 2 SKS 27, 282-3, Papir 292 / JP 5, 5556. 3 James Joyce, Finnegans Wake, london: faber and faber 1939, p. 184. see also the reproduction of the original 1939 edition in the penguin books edition (london 1992) with introduction by seamus deane, p. 184. 4 declan Kiberd, Ulysses and Us: The Art of Everyday Living, london: faber and faber 2009, p. 309.

110

Bartholomew Ryan

an author in the strict sense of the word, but more an explorer and revolutionary storyteller and excavator who recycled the past in order to transform the present into something extraordinarily fresh and thereby giving the future some sense of affirmation. there are explicit traces of Kierkegaard in Joyce’s Finnegans Wake and more implicit traces in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Ulysses. as one looks closer and more carefully, more unconscious references and connections are made between Joyce and Kierkegaard. these connections can be viewed either through Joyce’s knowledge of Kierkegaard, or via his well-known admiration and knowledge of henrik ibsen, or through their similar interests, methods, and goals. this may seem quite unconvincing to the reader at this point, but the greatness and sheer play of Joyce’s last two works allow for connections, allusions, and influences to come into play and metamorphose through the incredible flexibility of the language in use. this is not to say at all that anything goes, but that if one takes this open approach at first, one can realize quite quickly the place given to the danish language, the emergence of modernism (and post-modernism), the city as the landscape, the use of irony and humor, the emphasis on repetition and transformation, an emphasis on fragmentation from the ruin of history, the musicality of language and voice, the emphasis on love and death, and the deep probing of self and construction of worlds that bind these two most self-conscious of writers. I. An Introduction to James Joyce let us pry. We thought, would and did. cur, quicquid, ubi, quando, quomodo, quoties, quibus auxiliis? You were bred, fed, fostered and fattened from holy childhood up in this two easter island on the piejaw of hilarious heaven and roaring the other place (plunders to night of you, blunders what’s left of you, flash as flash can!) and now, forsooth, a nogger among the blankards of this dastard century, you have become of twosome twiminds forenenst gods, hidden and discovered, nay, condemned fool, anarch, egoarch, hiresiarch, you have reared your disunited king-dom on the vacuum of your own most intensely doubtful soul.5

like Kierkegaard, Joyce’s life can be found in all its intimate detail in his writings. and also like Kierkegaard, there are so many ways to interpret the various love of riddles and innuendos that intermingle and distort the fact from the fiction in Joyce’s art in which he fused, not only his own biography, but all his hopes, fears, heart, and soul. James Joyce was born in dublin, ireland on february 2, 1882. for a man who spent most of his adult life outside ireland, he lived nearly all of it in his mind and imagination. like Kierkegaard, Joyce’s father and closest brother in age were the central family figures in his life and art. Joyce’s parents, John Stanislaus and Mary Jane, had ten children (not including three misbirths) in the space of 12 years.6 Joyce, Joyce, Finnegans Wake, p. 188. for a full biographical account of Joyce’s family and a biography of Joyce in general see richard ellmann’s classic study, James Joyce, oxford: oxford university press 1982.

5 6

James Joyce: Negation, Kirkeyaard, Wake, and Repetition

111

the first surviving child, was born in Rathgar, one of the first and prettiest of Dublin’s suburbs. soon after his birth however, the Joyces were on the move. this would become the norm for all of James Joyce’s childhood, as his father’s enormous debts grew greater mostly due to his careless business dealings, contracting mortgages, excessive drinking, and simply having too many children. the father would remain a towering figure in Joyce’s life. Joyce’s younger brother Stanislaus was born in 1884 and would become an important figure for James as supporter, babysitter, drinking companion, benefactor, worshipper, and bitter yet stoic guardian in taking on the role of being forever at the beck and call of his older brother whom he was convinced from a very early age was a genius.7 as stanislaus might have liked to have said himself, “We are probably those referred to as ‘our brothers’ keepers,’ possessed of one of the oldest and possibly one of the most futile and certainly one of the most haunting of instincts. it will not let us go.”8 Joyce was sent to a Jesuit school called clongowes Wood college in county Kildare just outside Dublin, but only for four years due to family financial problems. He then spent time at home studying, briefly attending a Christian Brothers School in dublin before being offered a place at another Jesuit college called belvedere with the hope that he would be a catholic priest. this was not to be. and although Joyce remained a fervent admirer of thomas aquinas all his life,9 he rejected the catholic church and faith vehemently already by the time he was 16 years old. this is all documented most vividly in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. he turned his intense faith from god to art. from 1898 to 1903, Joyce studied modern languages at University College Dublin and befriended famous Irish figures such as Francis Sheehy-Skeffington, Thomas Kettle, and Oliver St. John Gogarty.10 during this time he also published his first work—an article on Ibsen called “New Drama.”11 his admiration of ibsen would remain throughout Joyce’s life. he even received a letter of thanks from the norwegian playwright himself in response to the article. Joyce in Finnegans Wake, Joyce commemorates him with the lines: “enchainted, dear sweet stainusless, young confessor, dearer dearest, we herehear, aboutobloss, o coelicola, thee salutamt.” Joyce, Finnegans Wake, p. 237. 8 norman maclean, A River Runs Through It, chicago and london: university of chicago press 1976, pp. 28–9. 9 ellmann, James Joyce, p. 342, “furlan was in a phase of enthusiasm for schopenhauer and nietzsche, which Joyce tried to choke by urging that thomas aquinas was the greatest philosopher because his reasoning was ‘like a sharp sword.’ ” 10 Francis Sheehy-Skeffington (1878–1916) was a writer and pacifist who was killed by the british army during the week of the 1916 rising after being captured after an attempt to set up a citizens’ militia to protect damaged shops from looting. thomas Kettle (1880–1916) was an intellectual catholic and nationalist, who became a member of the british parliament as an irish home rule member. he joined the irish Volunteers in 1913 and fought in an irish regiment in World War i and died at the battle of the somme in 1916, and has no known grave. Like Joyce, he used to say, “If Ireland is to become a new Ireland she must first become a european” (ellmann, James Joyce, p. 63). oliver st. John gogarty (1878–1957) was a writer and politician who is immortalized in Ulysses as the character buck mulligan. 11 James Joyce, “ibsen’s new drama,” Fortnightly Review, vol. 73, april 1, 1900, pp. 575–90. 7

112

Bartholomew Ryan

wrote back a few days later via ibsen’s translator William archer writing, “i wish to thank you for your kindness in writing to me. i am a young irishman, eighteen years old, and the words of ibsen i shall keep in my heart all my life.”12 after graduating, Joyce made his first journey out of Ireland to Paris. There were thoughts of being a medical doctor, singer, business tycoon, and, finally, a writer. As depicted through the character of stephen dedalus in Ulysses, he would return to ireland a few months later, broke and to a dying mother. by 1904, Joyce was already formulating and writing his short stories which would finally come as Dubliners, and also parts of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, the posthumous Stephen Hero and a collection of poems called Chamber Music (which was published in 1907).13 in the same year, Joyce met his long-term companion and wife, the galway chambermaid nora barnacle. they would go out on their first date on June 16, 1904, the day in which Ulysses is set. in the same year the two eloped to zurich and then to trieste where Joyce taught english as a foreign language, and where they would stay, for the most part, until 1920. Joyce and nora barnacle had two children: giorgio in 1905 and lucia in 1907. the family would struggle financially for most of their lives and Lucia would become more and more mentally unstable throughout her life. carl Jung, who was one of the many doctors who tried to cure lucia, memorably remarked, “she and her father…were like two people going to the bottom of a river, one falling and the other diving.”14 Dubliners, the collection of short stories about ordinary dubliners in the defeated city of dublin, written in his mid-twenties, was finally published in 1914.15 however, by this stage he had given up on living in ireland altogether, disillusioned with the literati and censorship board (which would be a constant obstruction to his writings). in 1912, on his last visit to ireland, Joyce unleashed an invective in a broadside called “gas from a burner” with lines such as: i’ll burn that book, so help me devil. i’ll sing a psalm as i watch it burn and the ashes i’ll keep in a one-handled urn. i’ll penance do with farts and groans Kneeling upon my marrowbones. this very next lent i will unbare my penitent buttocks to the air.16

after publishing this rant, Joyce never set foot on irish soil again, although dublin would remain his obsession for the rest of his life. he published A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man in 1916 and his only play Exiles in 1918.17 during World War i, ellmann, James Joyce, p. 74. James Joyce, Stephen Hero, ed. by theodore spencer, london: Jonathan cape 1944; James Joyce, Chamber Music, london: elkin mathews 1907. 14 ellmann, James Joyce, p. 679. 15 James Joyce, Dubliners, london: grant richards 1914. 16 ellmann, James Joyce, p. 337. 17 James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, new York: b.W. huebsch 1916; James Joyce, Exiles, london: grant richards ltd. 1918. 12 13

James Joyce: Negation, Kirkeyaard, Wake, and Repetition

113

Joyce worked on Ulysses writing most of it in trieste and zurich before putting the final touches to it in Paris where it was finally published on his birthday in 1922 by Shakespeare and Co. and paid for by the first of his two most important patrons, sylvia beach.18 the book brought him international fame and in many literary polls it is voted the greatest novel of the twentieth century, doing perhaps what Walter benjamin once wrote elsewhere: “a major work will establish a genre or abolish it; and the perfect work will do both.”19 the book continues to polarize readers in whether it can be held up to the same praise as the greatest works of dante, Shakespeare, and Goethe, but its influence certainly rivals any of the most famous books of the world. after writing the modernist classic Ulysses, the non-eventful journey of an irishJewish everyman called leopold bloom around dublin city set on a single day, Joyce was mentally and physically exhausted. he did not write anything for a year after its publication, and his eyesight was steadily deteriorating. he had eleven eye operations throughout his life and was diagnosed with glaucoma and cataracts. in 1926 he published a small collection of poems under the title Pomes Penyeach.20 but, really for the last 16 years of his life, he worked on what he believed to be his greatest achievement, Finnegans Wake (1939). as novelist edna o’brien remarked in her elegant monograph on Joyce, “if Ulysses had angered people, this new work would send them into paroxysms.”21 the second of Joyce’s two great benefactors was another American woman, Harriet Shaw Weaver (1876–1961), who financially supported Joyce for most of the writing of Finnegans Wake until they fell out over the progress and contents of the book, although she still paid for his funeral. his last work would also alienate further former supporters and admirers such as literary giants t.s. eliot, ezra pound, Jorge luis borges, and Vladimir nabokov. Joyce himself remarked: “i made it [Ulysses] out of next to nothing. Work in Progress [Finnegans Wake] i am making out of nothing. but there are thunderbolts in it.”22 elsewhere, Joyce writes, “it is like a mountain that i tunnel into from every direction, but I don’t know what I will find.”23 Finnegans Wake is such a singular tour de force that perhaps Joyce is the only perfect reader with its layers of puns, references, and dialects where words continually change objects into people and into sounds where language becomes the only true hero. It is without doubt one of the most difficult and dazzling works in the history of literature. When germany invaded france in World War ii Joyce and his family left paris for zurich where he died on January 13, 1941. Joyce’s legacy is assured with statues in both dublin and zurich and the bookshop shakespeare and co. still surviving, positioned along the river seine across from notre dame cathedral. the day in which Ulysses is set is now called “bloomsday” and is celebrated by Joyce enthusiasts around the world every year. see Joyce, Ulysses. Walter benjamin, The Origin of German Tragic Drama, trans. by John osbourne, london and new York: Verso 1998, p. 44. 20 James Joyce, Pomes Penyeach, paris: shakespeare and company 1926. 21 edna o’brien, James Joyce, london: orion books 1999, p. 142. 22 ellmann, James Joyce, p. 543. 23 ibid. p. 543. interview with august suter. 18 19

114

Bartholomew Ryan

II. The Places in Joyce’s Writings where Kierkegaard is Mentioned or Used there is no proof how much of Kierkegaard Joyce actually read, although he was definitely aware of him and probably had read at least parts of Either/Or from the allusions to the book in Finnegans Wake. i will say also that Joyce was familiar with Stages on Life’s Way. of course, Joyce read ibsen thereby indirectly picking up many Kierkegaardian motifs. but things get more complicated when ibsen says, “of Kierkegaard, i have read little and understood even less.”24 however, it is impossible to ignore the shadow of Kierkegaard in some of ibsen’s most famous works especially in Peer Gynt and Brand, and Kierkegaard was just being discovered in norway at the time. most importantly, the great danish cultural and social critic, georg brandes (1842–1927), ally to ibsen, was the theorist behind the “modern breakthrough” in scandinavian culture. brandes wrote monographs on Kierkegaard (1877) and Ibsen (1890), as well as writing an influential work on Shakespeare, which Joyce refers to in the library episode in Ulysses.25 Joyce himself had a copy of brandes’ Kierkegaard monograph. so where exactly does Joyce actually refer to Kierkegaard in his works? dounia buni christiani in her work Scandinavian Elements of Finnegans Wake states that “it is often impossible to separate Kierkegaard from ibsen in the Wake,”26 and even then when we think we are hearing only echoes of Kierkegaard, Joyce might actually be referring to hans christian andersen. lack of clarity on who is being referred to continues as there are similarities with the three writers: they are all from Scandinavia, writing in the Danish language (with modifications pointing towards modern norwegian in the case of ibsen), and suffering from depression; in the case of Kierkegaard and ibsen, they are attacking the religious, ethical, and socio-political mediocrity in their respective countries; in the case of Kierkegaard and andersen, both might have been impotent, or repressing some secret sexual desire or experience. given these conditions, we can still decipher places in Joyce’s writings that can be given to Kierkegaard only. other passages can also be referred to Kierkegaard as well as Ibsen and/or Andersen as is the case and point with the multilayered canvas of Finnegans Wake. the direct references to Kierkegaard are to be found in Finnegans Wake. the first reference that we can point out is on page 33 of Finnegans Wake with the word “quidam.”27 Quidam meaning “someone” or “one unknown” is a latin word and yet another pseudonym within one of Kierkegaard’s most enigmatic works, Stages on Life’s Way. Quidam is the “author” of the section “Guilty/Not Guilty” and contains some of Kierkegaard’s most dazzling prose with intriguing riddles and allusions—something no doubt the author of Finnegans Wake would love. Quidam is a latin word and so why should we assume that Joyce was thinking of 24 fredrik ording, Henrik Ibsen “Kærlighedens Komedie,” Kristiania: cappelen forlag 1914, p. 55. 25 see, for example, Joyce, Ulysses, p. 187. 26 dounia bunis christiani, Scandinavian Elements of Finnegans Wake, evanston, illinois: northwestern university press 1965, p. 63. 27 Joyce, Finnegans Wake, p. 33.

James Joyce: Negation, Kirkeyaard, Wake, and Repetition

115

Kierkegaard at all? a part of the passage where “quidam” is found in Finnegans Wake goes as follows: “truth, beard on prophet, compels one to add that there is said to have been quondam (pfuit! pfuit!) some case of the kind implicating, it is interdum believed, a quidam (if he did not exist it would necessary quoniam to invent him)….” Quidam is invented by frater taciturnus, the silent brother, who responds to Quidam’s melancholic words of the midnight and midday time. it is necessary to invent him in order to attempt to move towards the religious sphere. Kierkegaard writes in his journal during the writing of “Guilty/Not Guilty,” “my interest is not to be a poet but to make out the meaning of the religious.”28 frater poses as some kind of “beard on prophet,” and brandes certainly viewed Kierkegaard as some kind of prophet for the “modern breakthrough.” christiani argues that if “quidam” is referring to Kierkegaard, then, ten lines down, “one even greater, ibid, a commender of the frightful” is referring to ibsen.29 also, on the same page, the word “gamellaxarksky” is used which we decipher as “gammel lax” meaning “old salmon” in Danish/Norwegian. What is interesting here is that this compelled christiani to conclude that Joyce is also thinking “old solomon” which of course might remind the reader of Quidam’s extraordinary insertion— “solomon’s dream.”30 a few pages on in Finnegans Wake, Joyce writes, “how he was setting on a twoodstool on the verge of selfabyss, most starved, with melancholia over everything in general, (night birman, you served him with natigal’s nano!)”31 Given the clues to thinking of Quidam and his diary entries of “Guilty/Not Guilty,” words such as “selfabyss,” “melancholia,” and “natigal’s” add to the argument. Kierkegaard writes in his journal “Og jeg tog feil; thi det var ikke Morgengal; men Midnatsgal” which translates as: “and i was mistaken because it was not the morning crowing but the midnight crowing.”32 the word “natigal” points to the danish midnatsgal, and the journal entry by Kierkegaard alludes to the “great earthquake” (the terrible and hidden family secret) that is alluded to through the six macabre and opaque insertions of “Guilty/Not Guilty” of which “Solomon’s dream” is the closest to disclosing that “earthquake” in Kierkegaard’s life. twenty pages on, Joyce writes “death seekness” alluding to Kierkegaard’s The Sickness unto Death.33 further on in Finnegans Wake, another passage can also be connected to Kierkegaard this time to Either/Or. Once again at first glance one wonders how there can be any connection at all, but as with nearly every line in Finnegans Wake, one must look again (and again if one has the patience) to discover what is behind

28 29

p. 34.

Pap. V B 148:5 / SLW, supplement, p. 622. christiani, Scandinavian Elements of Finnegans Wake, p. 98; Joyce, Finnegans Wake,

30 christiani, Scandinavian Elements of Finnegans Wake, p. 97; Joyce, Finnegans Wake, p. 34; SKS 6, 233–6 / SLW, 250–2. 31 Joyce, Finnegans Wake, p. 40. 32 SKS 17, 250, DD:93 / KJN 1, 241. 33 Joyce, Finnegans Wake, p. 62.

116

Bartholomew Ryan

the seemingly total anarchy of word formation and sound. the passage goes as follows: to not skreve, will, on advices, be bacon or stable hand, must begripe fullstandingly irers’ langurge, jublander or northquain bigger preferred, all duties, kine rights, family fewd, outings fived, may get earnst, no get combitsch, profusional drinklords to please obstain, he is fatherlow soundigged inmoodmined pershoon but aleconnerman, nay, that must he isn’t?34

the whole page where this passage is found is riddled with the danish language when we read Finnegans Wake aloud (which one must do in nearly all cases). in this passage alone, we can pick out skrev—the past tense of skrive, to write (“skreve”), fuldstændig—completely (“fullstandingly”), “jublander”—Jutlander (jysk / Jutland) and irer meaning irishman. christiani has already pointed out the possible connection of “all duties, kine rights” to the sermon at the end of Either/ Or.35 the word “kine” standing in for the german keine meaning “no” or “not any.” the jumble of words alludes to different aspects of Kierkegaard such as skreve—the “extra-skriver” of Fear and Trembling,36 and the “family fewd” and “fatherlow” as the “great earthquake” already alluded to in the connection between Finnegans Wake and Stages on Life’s Way. the answer given to this question in Finnegans Wake is “pore old Joe!” if we are still thinking Stages on Life’s Way, we turn to the first insertion from “Guilty/Not Guilty” called “A Quiet Despair,” where it begins with reference to Jonathan swift, then repeating the phrase “poor child,” and the theme is despair and guilt between father and son. We might also think of the suffering Job, tested by the father. there is also the “jublander” as the Jutlander—Kierkegaard’s father who was born and raised in Jutland the mainland of denmark and where the father cursed god on a heath. the word also can refer to the pastor from Jutland who gives the sermon at the very end of Either/Or. this is, of course, suggestive but also founded on the abundant use of particular danish words used throughout Finnegans Wake and the explicit mention of Either/Or. there is even an allusion to Judge William as the assessor of Either/Or: “Just a Fication of Villumses, this heer assasor neelson, of sorestate hearing.”37 the “Villumses” might be referring to the “vellum” that the aesthete writes on.38 on page 281 of Finnegans Wake is written “enten eller, either or.”39 towards the end of the book, Joyce adds either/or again this time in a combination of languages and pun: “andens aller, athors err,”40 and on another page: “ayther nayther.”41 the last one might seem far-fetched but three lines before, the word “kirkeyaard” is used which leads us to the next reference. 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41

ibid., p. 141. christiani, Scandinavian Elements of Finnegans Wake, p. 65. SKS 4, 103 / FT, 7. Joyce, Finnegans Wake, p. 242. SKS 2, 14 / EO2, 7. Joyce, Finnegans Wake, p. 281. ibid., p. 578. ibid., p. 201.

James Joyce: Negation, Kirkeyaard, Wake, and Repetition

117

the word “graveyard” in danish and norwegian allows Joyce to provide more than one meaning or association pointing also to dutch and german. the theme of death and the graveyard are central to both Joyce and Kierkegaard, and this connection would have unlikely been overlooked by such an exceptional excavator as Joyce was. here are three examples from Finnegans Wake: “We won’t have room in the kirkeyaard”; “de oud huis bij de kerkegaard”; “kirked into yord.”42 of course “Kierkegaard” means literally “churchyard,” and the name “søren,” as christiani has also already pointed out in a footnote, can be a danish euphemism for satan. christiani writes, “the Wake is full of fand, fanden ‘devil, the devil,’ and other danish terms related to shem, the black one, the denier.”43 both Kierkegaard and Joyce have been referred to as satan: Kierkegaard as a tragic one and Joyce in appearance, and both for cunning and deception.44 there are also at least three occasions in Finnegans Wake where “søren” emerges from the rubble of language: “What soresen’s head subrises thus tous out of rumpumplikun oak with, well, we cannot say whom we are looking like through his nowface?”; “sorensplit and paddypatched”; “soreen seen for loveseat.”45 to top it all off, the title of Joyce’s final book is a joy for any Kierkegaardian as it implies both awakening and death— central motifs throughout the whole of Kierkegaard’s authorship. III. A General Interpretation of Joyce’s Use of Kierkegaard there are a few key areas in which i will connect Joyce and Kierkegaard: in the death of the “father,” the rise of the city and bourgeois citizen and artist, the ruin ibid., p. 201; p. 246; p. 388. christiani, Scandinavian Elements of Finnegans Wake, p. 66. 44 Joyce was referred to by his neighbor in zurich as “herr satan,” and his son’s friends also referred to him as a Satan figure in appearance (see Ellmann, James Joyce, pp. 434–5). also, both the writer george russell and Wyndham lewis on separate occasions called Joyce as proud as lucifer (ellmann, James Joyce, p. 100; p. 494). in danish literature, Kierkegaard was described in an extraordinary passage from the novel De fortabte Spillemænd by William heinesen as “the tragic satan”: “Kierkegaard belongs to the mephistopheles category. like that devil’s chargé d’affaires in goethe, he is possessed of a superior intellect, which he deploys with the same supple facility and tirelessness. they are both, in their at once witty, impudent, and dazzling ways, irresistible. in fact, Kierkegaard goes one better than the devil, being without rival in the art of attacking reason with its own weapons. he is not just mephistopheles, but he is at the same time mephistopheles’ victim, man, faust. it is not only against others that he turns his weapons, in the end he turns them without mercy on himself…[While] mephistopheles simply dissolves in a smoke of brilliant conversation…. Kierkegaard is the dire sufferer of his own satanism. he is, one might say, the tragic satan.” William heinesen, De fortabte Spillemænd, copenhagen: gyldendalske boghandel 1950, p. 145. Although, Joyce does comment in regard to the final episode of Ulysses in a letter to his friend frank budgen: “Ich bin der Geist der stehts bejaht” (ellmann, James Joyce, p. 502), a twist of course on mephistopheles’ declaration “Ich bin der Geist der stehts verneint” (Faust I, 1338). this can also be viewed as a distinction or inversion between Joyce and Kierkegaard as mephistopheles. 45 Joyce, Finnegans Wake, p. 370; p. 596; p. 600. 42 43

118

Bartholomew Ryan

of history (fragmentation, interruption), selfhood and the aesthete, repetition and transformation, and the use of the danish language. A. In the Name of the Father Whenever we try to define and explain what modernity and modernism is we inevitably run into disagreements, but most of the connections that bring Joyce and Kierkegaard together pertain to what has been called modernism such as the death of the “father” figure in religion, state and family, the rise of the metropolis and bourgeoisie, the collapse and or relativity of history, and the emergence of the autonomous individual. Reflecting on his own time, Stephen Dedalus thinks it “an age of exhausted whoredom groping for its god.”46 the modern age has recently been called “the Jewish age,” and the twentieth century “the Jewish century,” and modernization about becoming Jewish.47 so it is no coincidence that the “hero” of Ulysses is an irish-hungarian Jew. Kierkegaard was fascinated by the “wandering Jew” myth all his life, and both writers view themselves as wanderers, travelers, exiles in their own land yet at the same time obsessed with the culture they come from, much like the Jew. both Joyce and Kierkegaard wander through their works haunted by the death of the father in the form of god, state, and biological father. although what will ultimately separate them is that Joyce will go on to celebrate the collapse of church and state as they were, while Kierkegaard never finds it so easy. in Ulysses alone, we have Bloom’s reflections on his father who killed himself as he makes his way to the funeral of paddy dignam in the “hades” episode. bloom also ponders on whether he has been a good father and not being able to experience having a son for more then eleven days. in the “library” episode, stephen dedalus tries to get to the bottom of the riddle of what hamlet is really all about, regarding father and son, shakespeare as father and son, and hamlet and the ghost of his father. The name Dedalus refers to the artificer who created wings leading to the death of his son icarus. Kierkegaard dedicates all his 18 upbuilding discourses of 1843–44 to his dead father whom he associates with guilt and cannot escape except perhaps through the experiment of repetition. even molly bloom feels overshadowed by her dead father major tweedy. the fathers are like ghosts and prevent Kierkegaard and his pseudonyms and Joyce and his characters from being free. but with Kierkegaard, Joyce, and modernism itself, perhaps “there can be no reconciliation, if there has not been a sundering.”48 Joyce, Ulysses, p. 198. see Yuri slezkine, The Jewish Century, princeton: princeton university press 2006, p. 1: “modernization is about everyone becoming urban, mobile, literate, articulate, intellectually intricate, physically fastidious, and occupationally flexible. It is about learning how to cultivate people and symbols, not fields and herds. It is about pursuing wealth for the sake of learning, learning for the sake of wealth, and both wealth and learning for their own sake. it is about transforming peasants and princes into merchants and priests, replacing inherited privilege with acquired prestige, and dismantling social estates for the benefit of individuals, nuclear families, and book-reading tribes (nations). modernization, in other words, is about everyone becoming Jewish.” 48 Joyce, Ulysses, p. 187. 46 47

James Joyce: Negation, Kirkeyaard, Wake, and Repetition

119

B. The City and the Bourgeoisie the city and the bourgeoisie are the landscape and writers of modernism respectively. both Joyce and Kierkegaard are city-dwellers; both come from small nations unsure of themselves beside larger, more jingoist nations; both have a love/hate relationship with their countries; both are exiles in a way—one within his city, the other outside his city; both are bourgeois and radical; both will forever be associated with their respective cities: copenhagen and dublin. in a way modernism is bourgeois: the bourgeoisie combating the impending mediocrity of the bourgeoisie. one commentator pointed out: “All of Joyce’s books, like Thomas Mann’s, fit into the broadening dialectical pattern of Künstler versus Bürger.”49 but today, we often confuse the faceless middle-class suburbia with the bourgeoisie. this is an error since the bourgeoisie are cut from a cloth that is struggling out of a repressive state, a new autonomous class of the modern age that is hungry, educated, and mobile, as slezkine so wonderfully expressed it.50 the age of the bourgeoisie might already have passed. Kiberd points out: the middle class has no real public culture or artworks which critique its triumph, because it has assimilated all the oppositional forces of modernism, by reducing them to mass entertainment. now the streets are places not of amenity but of danger, through which nervous people drive in locked cars from one private moment to another.51

this is the picture that Kierkegaard warned us about in A Literary Review of Two Ages and The Sickness unto Death. Kiberd states that Ulysses is “an epic of the bourgeoisie,”52 and goes on to point out that leopold bloom “sees no contradiction whatever between bohemian and bourgeois.”53 both Kierkegaard and Joyce’s fathers were charismatic merchants and businessmen who were not afraid to take risks and who came to the capital to conquer. Within Kierkegaard’s works that Joyce was familiar with, street names are mentioned, city parks are walked through, addresses are given, and the sights and smells of the city are presented. one becomes familiar with copenhagen when one travels with Johannes the seducer through his walks through the city center in Either/ Or. Johannes observes his muse: “in the street, she is on the open sea, and therefore everything effects her more, and likewise everything is more enigmatic.”54 the city holds the world in the form of streets, ways, labyrinths, and an array of crossroads. It is on the street in the city center where Joyce first spots Nora Barnacle, and it is on the street where he will first approach her. Both Joyce and Kierkegaard revel in the city landscape, acting as flâneurs. As Benjamin puts it quite magnificently: “the city is the realisation of that ancient dream of humanity, the labyrinth. it is 49

p. vii. 50 51 52 53 54

c.h. peake, James Joyce: The Citizen and the Artist, london: edward arnold 1977, see footnote 47 above. Kiberd, Ulysses and Us: The Art of Everyday Living, p. 24. ibid., p. 12. ibid., p. 13. SKS 2, 316 / EO1, 326.

120

Bartholomew Ryan

this reality to which the flâneur, without knowing it, devotes himself.”55 Joyce’s leopold bloom is an unconscious flâneur to Kierkegaard’s conscious flâneur. the cosmopolitan and the provincial sit comfortably side by side and this is what makes Ulysses and Either/Or such a memorable experience. the central episode in Ulysses (“the Wandering rocks”) takes place on the streets, and its symbol is “citizens,” and its technic is “labyrinth.”56 both are also coming to terms with the rise of the printing press, advertising, and the newspaper. Joyce has a lot of fun with this in the “aeolus” episode. Kierkegaard tries to confront the press by going to war with the Corsair. and while we might view Kierkegaard’s attitude to the press as pure animosity, he did immerse himself in it and published some of his finest essays in the newspaper such as “a crisis and the crisis in the life of an actress.” C. The Ruin of History both Kierkegaard and Joyce were convinced of their genius from a very early age and also saw their time as an “age of disintegration” (Opløsningens Tid).57 if we view Kierkegaard’s age as an age of disintegration with the beginning of democracy, the rise of nationalism, and the death of god and King, added to that, Joyce’s generation are living through an age of disillusion, with the experience of technological warfare and the collapse of empires. hegel’s optimistic “birth-time” and “period of transition to a new era”58 of progress is not to be trusted by either Joyce or Kierkegaard. Jacques derrida has called Joyce “perhaps the most hegelian of modern novelists”59 when reflecting on a line from Ulysses: “Jewgreek meets greekjew: extremes meet.”60 Elsewhere, Derrida remarked that the two definitive books in the world might be Ulysses and Finnegans Wake.61 While Joyce does try to encompass everything in these last two works and give a god’s eye view, there is also, of course, something very fragmentary, disrupted, eccentric, particular, and ruined about the two last works, in other words, something Kierkegaardian. in the “history” episode of Ulysses, Stephen, during teaching a history lesson, reflects on a pier and states, “Yes, a disappointed bridge.”62 this statement could represent the whole of Ulysses and the universe that Joyce is creating and articulating much Walter benjamin, The Arcades Project, trans. by howard eiland and Kevin mclaughlin, cambridge, massachusetts: the belkap press of harvard university press 2004, pp. 429–30 (m6a, 4). 56 This is according to Joyce’s official interpreter of Ulysses, stuart gilbert, who made a map and guideline called “the gilbert schema.” see stuart gilbert, James Joyce’s Ulysses, new York: Vintage books 1955, p. 30. 57 Pap. IX B 63:7 / JP 6, 6255. 58 g.W.f. hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. by a.V. miller, oxford: oxford university press 1977, p. 6. 59 Jacques derrida, Writing and Difference, trans. by alan bass, chicago: university of chicago press 1980, p. 153. 60 Joyce, Ulysses, p. 474. 61 Jacques derrida, “ulysses gramophone: hear say Yes in Joyce,” in Acts of Literature, ed. by derek attridge, new York: routledge 1992, p. 265. 62 Joyce, Ulysses, p. 25. 55

James Joyce: Negation, Kirkeyaard, Wake, and Repetition

121

like Kierkegaard. so many of Kierkegaard greatest works are like “disappointed bridges,” works that seem unfinished or breaking off like Repetition, the Concluding Unscientific Postscript, and his “report to history,” The Point of View. both Joyce and Kierkegaard can be absorbed into the hegelian dialectic, but both are far more mischievous than hegel could ever hope to be in their rapture at leaving trails off the beaten track, celebrating the world of chance and accident and always leaving behind a sense of inconclusiveness at the conclusion of their great works. Kierkegaard was enthralled by cervantes’ Don Quixote but thought the novel would have been far greater if don Quixote had wandered off into eternity and repetition instead of settling down and dying.63 stephen dedalus makes the famous comment: “history is a nightmare from which i am trying to escape.”64 there are few approaches to this sentence. stephen, of course, is attempting to loosen himself from the clutches of church, state, and family that he feels is oppressing and repressing his artistic expression. this expression brings Joyce closer to Kierkegaard here, and although both of them are steeped in the culture and history they are born into, in order to escape the nightmare they refer to throughout their works, they both go to war with their contemporary culture in a joyous and irreverent manner. Kierkegaard, as anti-climacus, separates what he calls “profane” history—that is, world history, from “sacred” history—the history of Jesus.65 The “History” episode begins with Stephen Dedalus reflecting on William blake’s words: “i hear the ruin of all space, shattered glass and toppling masonry, and one lived final flame. What’s left us then?”66 again, we come to the age of disintegration in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. stephen places emphasis on the destruction of space and time rather than Blake’s glorified truth as replacement. What both Joyce and Kierkegaard focus on is the details of our world that have been lost in the technological age and the conceit of system-building. With Kierkegaard, his interpretation of christianity focuses on the particularity of existence starting with the single individual: “the god-man’s essential heterogeneity to any other single individual, also to the whole human race, has been totally forgotten.”67 God is in the details. The particular confronts and ultimately confirms the universal. as Joyce remarked once, “in the particular is contained the universal.”68 elsewhere, in “Guilty/Not Guilty” Quidam writes, “the dark tree roots that poked out here and there in the murky darkness were vanished kingdoms and countries, each one a SKS 20, 107, NB:170 / JP 1, 771: “it is a sad mistake for cervantes to end Don Quixote by making him sensible and then letting him die. cervantes, who himself had the superb idea of having him become a shepherd! it ought to have ended there. that is, don Quixote should not come to an end; he ought to be presented as going full speed, so that he opens vistas upon an infinite series of new fixed ideas. Don Quixote is endlessly perfectible in madness, but the one thing he cannot become (for otherwise he could become everything and anything) is sensible. cervantes seems not to have been dialectical enough to bring it to this romantic conclusion (that there is no conclusion).” 64 Joyce, Ulysses, p. 34. 65 SKS 12, 40 / PC, 25. SKS 12, 76 / PC, 64. 66 Joyce, Ulysses, p. 24. 67 SKS 12, 236 / PC, 221. 68 ellmann, James Joyce, p. 505. 63

122

Bartholomew Ryan

discovery as important to me as antediluvian discoveries to the natural scientist.”69 this also is one of the motifs of Fear and Trembling where the “extra-skriver” restores the intensity of individual existence amidst the rubble of history in the story of abraham, thereby exposing the limitations of the universal. What emerges is a hidden history that Joyce brings to the extreme in Finnegans Wake, the “book of the dark,”70 distorting, disrupting, and transforming what we accept as history. While meditating on benjamin, adorno articulates the role of the “supplementary” part of philosophy, the role of Kierkegaard’s Extra-Skriver or what might be called the waste products and blind spots that have escaped the dialectic. it is in the nature of the defeated to appear, in their impotence, irrelevant, eccentric, derisory. What transcends the ruling society is not only the potentiality it develops but also that which did not fit properly into the laws of historical movement. Theory must deal with cross-gained, opaque, unassimilated quality, but is not wholly obsolete since it has outwitted the historical dynamic.71

D. Selfhood and the Aesthete the journey to some kind of authentic selfhood is central to both Kierkegaard and Joyce. in the increasingly dissipated and disseminated society that they both foresee and experience, it becomes increasingly difficult to be a grounded self without falling into narcissism and/or egoistic conceit. In the contradictory environment where individualism is more widespread than ever and yet a culture of sameness is more prevalent than ever, both Kierkegaard and Joyce discover new and exhilarating styles to bring forth the journey to selfhood in their writings. What binds these two is ibsen’s two most Kierkegaardian plays and characters—Peer Gynt and Brand. these two characters show the two most prominent sides to Kierkegaard’s self—the aesthete and the christian. after all, as climacus pointed out, “between religiousness and poetry, worldly wisdom about life performs its vaudeville. every individual who does not live either poetically or religiously is obtuse.”72 Joyce learns from Kierkegaard via ibsen, though i am sure he would have been critical of the way Kierkegaard lived—not having had the experience of living with a woman that for Joyce was essential to the mature self. for this very reason, he was critical of Jesus and also of faust whom he thought not even worthy of being called a man, since he had no home or family and at the same time was never really alone since mephistopheles was always lingering somewhere.73 for Joyce, like Kierkegaard’s ethical man, living with a woman was essential and that is why he saw odysseus as a far more complete man: “ulysses is son to laertes, but he is father to telemachus, husband to penelope, lover of calypso, companion in arms of the greek warriors around troy, and King of SKS 6, 336 / SLW, 363. see Joyce, Finnegans Wake, p. 251: “Turning up and fingering over the most dantellising peaches in the lingerous longerous book of the dark.” 71 theodor adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections on a Damaged Life, trans. by e.f.n. Jephcott, london: Verso 2005, no. 98. 72 SKS 7, 394 / CUP1, 457. 73 ellmann, James Joyce, p. 435. 69 70

James Joyce: Negation, Kirkeyaard, Wake, and Repetition

123

ithaca. he was subjected to many trials, but with wisdom and courage came through them all.”74 in their respective psychological and philosophical quests to seek out the “good” self, both Kierkegaard and Joyce fuse much of themselves into their pseudonyms and characters. While both want to cherish the ethical self that is at peace with history and lives a harmonious life with a woman, their journeys take them both beyond this goal and also fall short of it. on the ethical self, Kierkegaard’s Judge William writes: now he discovers that the self he chooses has a boundless multiplicity within itself inasmuch as it has a history, a history in which he acknowledges identity with himself. this history is of a different kind, for in this history he stands in relation to other individuals in the race and to the whole race, and this history contains painful things, and yet he is the person he is only through his history.75

but stephen dedalus and most of Kierkegaard’s pseudonyms are forever seeking forms of selfhood by looking at a multiplicity of selves, and something that is always becoming and never static or a product but rather creative and transformative. the “circe” episode in Ulysses is a revolutionary expression of, as well as the consciousness of, multiple persons and voices. and Kierkegaard’s various pseudonyms actually attempt to seduce the reader into finding out about himself or herself. as one follows bloom’s journey through dublin, one not only witnesses but also experiences the variety of flaws, qualities, desires, insecurities, and generosity that he carries. let us look a little more closely at the aesthete in the Kierkegaardian sense as one Joyce scholar has already done in connecting Kierkegaard’s aesthete with leopold bloom. brian cosgrove, in his essay “leopold bloom: passive hero or ‘aesthetic man,’ ” argues that bloom falls into Kierkegaard’s aesthetic sphere.76 cosgrove argues that Bloom only lives in the moment, fails to grasp a unified self and is ultimately too passive bordering on submissive fatalism. but in response to cosgrove, is not stephen a more sophisticated “aesthetic,” as the one who despairs, the one who “indulges in the fanatical hope of an endless journey from star to star,”77 who constantly uses irony and sarcasm as a weapon and who ultimately is in defiant despair in his desire to be greater than any family, nation or religion? When Kierkegaard’s Judge William writes to the aesthete, it could well be advice to stephen dedalus: Despair, then, and your light-mindedness will never more make you wander like a fitful phantom, like a ghost, among the ruins of a world that is lost to you anyway; despair, and your spirit will never sigh in despondency, for the world will once again become beautiful and happy for you, even if you look at it with other eyes than before, and your liberated spirit will vault up into the world of freedom.78 ibid., p. 436. SKS 3, 206 / EO2, 216. 76 brian cosgrove, James Joyce’s Negations: Irony, Indeterminacy and Nihilism in Ulysses and Other Writings, dublin: university college dublin press 2007, pp. 159–66. 77 SKS 2, 281 / EO1, 291. 78 SKS 3, 210 / EO2, 219. 74 75

124

Bartholomew Ryan

the problem that both Kierkegaard’s Judge and cosgrove actually overlook when they view this aesthete that lacks a unitary self is that the aesthete is the modern, fragmentary one that dedalus represents and what he is struggling to cope with and overcome, while the older bloom is the guide to take him there. stephen dedalus might be like a young Kierkegaard with an overactive consciousness, and as the seeking, melancholic, solitary, critical, and negating dandy. if teleology is the essence of the “ethical” man, then both Joyce and Kierkegaard are skeptical of this figure. other aspects of the aesthetic from Either/Or can be found in Ulysses. the recurring allusion to a particular duet from mozart’s Don Giovanni in Ulysses is also a highlight in Either/Or in the epic essay “the immediate erotic stages or the Musical Erotic.” The duet, “Là ci darem la mano” (Then we’ll go hand in hand), is between don giovanni and zerlina an innocent peasant girl whom he wants to lure away from her fiancé and into his arms, and is one of the most melodic and sensual moments from mozart’s masterpiece. these lines from the duet are repeated, though sometimes misquoted, in Ulysses: “Vorrei et non vorrei” (i would like to and i wouldn’t like to).79 it is also one of the two songs (the other being Love’s Old Sweet Song) that molly bloom will be practicing that day for the next show. it is this tune from bloom’s morning conversing with molly that stays with him the whole day which is soothing but which also causes his anxiety. this is exactly the motif of the seducer in Either/Or, except that in Ulysses, the roles are always interchanging through the prism of the consciousness of leopold, the “womanly man” in comparison to Kierkegaard’s more traditional man. added to that, both Kierkegaard and Joyce at times desire for their prose to be like music, which is what happens towards the end of the essay on mozart and large parts of Finnegans Wake. Bloom reflects, “All music when you come to think.”80 Joyce takes up pater’s challenge that “all art constantly aspires towards the condition of music”81 in devoting the music episode, “sirens,” to the ear and the fuga per canonem. both Joyce and Kierkegaard are well aware that the seductive use and sound of music is both edifying and devious in the journey to selfhood. E. Repetition and Transformation A fifth point that brings Kierkegaard and Joyce together is the use and understanding of repetition and the transformation it can bring to their respective works. focusing on the last two works of Joyce (where his knowledge of danish literature becomes more substantial) and not only Kierkegaard’s pseudonymous works, but also in his three major “upbuilding” works Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits, Works of Love, and Christian Discourses, repetition and transformation are always intertwined at least when repetition is successful (Kierkegaard’s essay on the actress Johanne luise heiberg (1812–90) being a prime example). Joyce’s Ulysses and Finnegans

see, for example, Joyce, Ulysses, p. 61; p. 74; p. 90; p. 419; p. 423. Joyce, Ulysses, p. 267. 81 Walter pater, The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry, new York: dover publications 2005, p. 90. 79 80

James Joyce: Negation, Kirkeyaard, Wake, and Repetition

125

Wake are in many ways a “continuity in nothingness,”82 as Vigilius haufniensis once remarked when reflecting on boredom in The Concept of Anxiety. after all, the preliminary subtitle for Repetition was “a fruitless Venture.”83 in the works that would also interest Joyce, such as Fear and Trembling and Repetition, there is no beginning and no end. Fear and Trembling opens and closes in the preface and epilogue with reference to the business world, and then trails off with the eleatics denying motion in their response to heraclitus. Repetition begins where Fear and Trembling left off with diogenes coming forward to confront the eleatics’ thesis. the author in question is constantin constantius. in Ulysses, repetition occurs throughout the day, as the reader’s patience is tested constantly as bloom recalls events and the same words again and again. the process in recalling these memories, events and encounters that are transforming before our eyes, reaches its climax in the “circe” episode where everything is distorted, intensified, and metamorphosed. Finnegans Wake goes to more extremes in the revolution of the word. the book ends with the word “the” and begins in mid-sentence, in which the last and first lines can actually form a sentence. There are many cases of this in Finnegans Wake. the opening lines of the text contain the words “vicus of recirculation,” “by” and “back,” and the very first word is “riverrun.” all of these words allude to aspects of repetition and transformation: in the “vicus” that can allude to giambattista Vico of the circular New Science, circulating again, by and back—forwards and backwards, and the river itself as the central theme, core, and key of the book, always moving but never emptied out, always changing, yet somehow the same. as Kiberd remarks on bloom and Joyce, “Yet his vision of a world in which almost everything can be recycled—even bodies helpfully manure the earth—is one he shares with Joyce, who in his book is recycling both the epic and the novel in order to give birth to a new form.”84 the motto at the beginning of Repetition is: “On wild trees the flowers are fragrant, on cultivated trees, the fruits.”85 now we have the transformation that follows the genuine repetition, at least this is what constantin constantius is aiming for. repetition is literally a “taking again” as Constantin is delighted to tell the reader and that is exactly what it signifies in the particular danish word Gjentagelse.86 for constantin, “repetition and memory are the same processes, but move in opposite directions; for what is remembered, what has been, is repeated backwards; whereas actual repetition is recalled forward.”87 Joyce declares to a friend, “imagination is memory.”88 imagination becomes positive when it is repeated in a transformative process, just as in the last line of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man when stephen boldly declares that he will “go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience” and to somehow “forge in the smithy” of SKS 4, 434 / CA, 133. Pap. IV B 97:1 / R, supplement, p. 276. 84 Kiberd, Ulysses and Us: The Art of Everyday Living, p. 107. 85 SKS 4, 8 / R, 127. 86 see SKS 4, 25 / R, 149: “ ‘repetition’ is a good danish word, and i congratulate the danish language on a philosophical term.” 87 SKS 4, 9 / R, 131. 88 Kiberd, Ulysses and Us: The Art of Everyday Living, p. 661. 82 83

126

Bartholomew Ryan

his soul “the uncreated conscience” of his race.89 it is in the creation of Ulysses, that a recreation and repetition of homer’s Odyssey is presented but all is transformed. the recurrence of the word “metempsychosis” in Ulysses shows also this theme of repetition and transformation. for that is the way Joyce’s universe revolves, and constantin remarks: “if god himself had not willed repetition, the world would not have come into existence….the world continues, and it continues because it is a repetition.”90 but it is vital that one remember forwards rather than remembering backwards, rather than repeating the past which leads to paralysis, but transforming the past through a combination of imagination, acceptance, and exploration. both constantin and stephen dedalus sometimes falter as they get themselves stuck in an aesthetic repetition, the continuity of nothingness of which they see no way out. While idly walking along the strand, stephen plays on the words “nacheinander— representing time, and “nebeneinander”—representing space,91 transforming them in repetition only to find himself at a dead end. Jørgen S. Veisland, reflecting on Joyce and Kierkegaard, points out that in A Portrait of the Artist as Young Man “the re-integration is purely aesthetic, and the self is brought back to its own social limitations in Ulysses which exemplifies the aesthetic of repetition.”92 the use of irony for both Joyce and Kierkegaard is to guide one through the days of tedium in repetition and ultimately conquer the aesthetic “continuity of nothingness” and somehow transform it. humor is also essential for both writers. While they differ in many respects, Kierkegaard might be, through his use of irony and humor, the funniest philosopher of the Western tradition, and Joyce makes a bold attempt to do the same in literature. to laugh is essential to both. laughing is a transformative event and is a key to breaking through the paralysis of repetition of the past that Kierkegaard felt so keenly in his own personal, individual depression and Joyce for his own intellectual tradition and ireland. so when Joyce writes, “he laughed to free his mind from his mind’s bondage,”93 we know exactly what he means. irony is still a form of paralysis since it is contained in the aesthetic stage, to use Kierkegaard’s language, and for this reason it is the border between the aesthetic and the ethical, while humor is the border between the ethical and the religious. Kierkegaard’s religious experience is analogous to Joyce’s artistic epiphany. it is the twinkling of the eye, the gleam of the laugh, the joy of being present to oneself for a moment. irony is protection for the gifted mind in a disintegrating world, while humor is the liberation of oneself from the suffocating fact and sometime truth. Joyce knew his nietzsche and the “holiness of laughter,” and he fused this spark into the laughing James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, originally serialized in The Egoist, ed. by ezra pound, london 1914–15, pp. 275–6. see also reproduction of original edition by penguin books (london 1992) with introduction and notes by seamus deane, pp. 275–6. 90 SKS 4, 10–11 / R, 133. 91 Joyce, Ulysses, p. 37. 92 Jørgen steen Veisland, Kierkegaard and the Dialectics of Modernism, new York: peter lang 1985 (American University Studies, series 3, Comparative Literature, vol. 19), p. 172. 93 Joyce, Ulysses, p. 204. 89

James Joyce: Negation, Kirkeyaard, Wake, and Repetition

127

demon that is Finnegans Wake that is irreverent towards everything. Kierkegaard merely smiled in comparison, but the simple smile was the way out of despair. F. The Danish Language Joyce belongs to that small group of writers who try to transform the written word. although not in the same radical way as Joyce, Kierkegaard, uses language for sound, order, meaning, allusion, and devotion. as an irishman it is easier for Joyce to be an iconoclast in making deep incursions into english literature, being less sensitive to verbal decorum and being audacious and downright rude in linguistic expression. Stephen Dedalus had already reflected on the English language in A Portrait: “[the english] language, so familiar and so foreign, will always be for me an acquired speech. i have not made or accepted its words. my voice holds them at bay. my soul frets in the shadow of his language.”94 he joins a list of other irish iconoclasts who allow the eccentric imagination to run free of formal restrictions such as george berkeley and his idealism, laurence sterne and his great comic novel Tristram Shandy, Jonathan swift and his immortal satire, flann o’brien and his wacky and hilarious novels, and samuel beckett with his bleak and black-humored prose and plays. Joyce tries to top them all in Ulysses by working through all the discourses in the english language. not only are Kierkegaard and Joyce united in their mastery and play of the language they grew up with in small, fringe countries beside larger, more powerful nations, but they are also united by Joyce’s increasing interest in the danish language and, as time goes by, by many things danish. in 1900, Joyce began studying dano-norwegian in order to read ibsen. he wrote a hero-worshipping letter to ibsen on his seventy-third birthday in 1901 in danonorwegian.95 it seems that Joyce was taking danish lessons around 1906–7 from a man named pedersen and took up danish again in paris in 1928 with a young dane whom Joyce called “mr. max” with whom he met at the danish church in paris. Joyce visited denmark with his wife in 1936. in copenhagen, he met the danish writer tom Kristensen (1893–1974) and the poet and critic Kai friis møller (1888–1960) with whom he practiced his danish and which he supposedly spoke fluently for a foreigner.96 he told Kristensen that he had studied danish with eight teachers, and that for him (though quite misleadingly) “danish was a weeping language and the danes a nation of weepers, of wild men with soft voices.”97 he also went to elsinore to visit the castle where Hamlet is set. Joyce enjoyed his stay in copenhagen immensely, intuited a special connection and brotherhood between ireland and denmark,98 and even had the unfulfilled intention of returning Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, p. 205. ellmann, James Joyce, pp. 86–7. 96 ibid., p. 692. 97 ibid. 98 here are a few examples of the mention and nods to the danes and to denmark in Finnegans Wake: p. 129 (“o, you’ve gone he way of the danes”), p. 189 (“ppenmark”), p. 192 (“the cockcock crows for danmark”), p. 201 (“my old dane hodder dodderer”), p. 255 (“the ivorbonegorerer of danamaraca be, his hector protector”), p. 301 (“Very glad you are going to penmark”), p. 420 (“dining with the danes”), p. 421 (“but i would not care to be 94 95

128

Bartholomew Ryan

the following spring.99 another reason for Joyce to learn the danish language was his admiration for the novel Niels Lyhne by the danish author J.p. Jacobsen (1847–85). Jacobsen would have appealed to Joyce not only for his brilliant precision and aesthetic perfection but also for the fact that he was a naturalist and botanist and had translated darwin’s Origin of the Species and The Descent of Man into Danish. This scientific background gave authenticity and careful detail to his descriptive passages that capture a particular mood and ambience alongside his sensitive approach to experience making his writings even in translation exquisite. there is a closeness and resemblance between Niels Lyhne and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. danish is the foreign language that is most often used in Finnegans Wake. this has not much to do with Kierkegaard but with a combination of other factors, the Viking invasion of dublin being the primary one. after Joyce’s visit to denmark, this interest in the Danish language only increased as he put the finishing touches to his final work. His first great hero was Ibsen who kick-started his exploration of the danish language, Jacobsen’s Niels Lyhne and brandes’ essays encouraged him further, and the long history between scandinavia and dublin cemented his interest. the fact that hamlet, perhaps the most famous character in english letters, is danish kept Joyce riveted. there are a few extra points to make that bring Joyce and Kierkegaard together in embracing danish, the obscure language at least by the nineteenth century to the english, the french, and the german literary traditions. Joyce knew that the use of danish in Finnegans Wake would cause even more bewilderment to the reader. for Joyce, there remained also the element of the pagan in the danish language, for example—christmas was still called Jul from Yuletide. expressions like slå ihjel which is danish “to kill,” comes from the old norse drepa í hel which is “to knock/beat into Hel”—the goddess of death, but also the realm of the dead. also, bersærk is the danish word for the wild warrior of the heathen age (bearsark or without (bare) sark). the pagan element that Joyce was seeking was the very thing that Kierkegaard liked about the irish in his one remark about them as a people (see the quotation at the beginning of this article). Kierkegaard’s knowledge of the irish is basically due to thomas croker’s (1798–1854) fairytales that had recently been translated into german by the brothers grimm.100 Kierkegaard was a lifelong lover of fairytales and some of these old oral tales that croker had written down as he wandered across ireland make their way into some of his works. one of the main characters and for many the main protagonist of Finnegans Wake, humphrey chimpden earwicker, is of scandinavian descent. and if one is familiar with the so unfruitful to my part as to swear for the moment positively as to the views of denmark”), p. 452 (“perish the dane”), p. 479 (“draken of danemork”), p. 480 (“from daneland sailed the oxeyed man, now mark well what i say”), p. 529 (“north great denmark street”), p. 606 (“anticidingly inked with penmark”). 99 ellmann, James Joyce, p. 696. 100 see Irische Elfenmärchen, trans. by Jakob and Wilhelm grimm, leipzig: friedrich fleischer 1826 (ASKB 1423). (original title: Fairy Legends and Traditions of the South of Ireland (first part published in 1825 which was quickly translated by the Brothers Grimm) by thomas crofton croker, london: J. murray 1825.)

James Joyce: Negation, Kirkeyaard, Wake, and Repetition

129

danish language, one can spot danish words all the way through Finnegans Wake, leaving it just a little bit less bewildering.101 the way Kierkegaard approaches language and his language in particular is through mood, sound, and the voice of storytelling or “the last word in stolentelling” as Joyce calls it.102 importantly for Joyce and Kierkegaard, their works should be read aloud. Joyce saw himself coming from an oral tradition of storytellers and singers, and with his love of the voice of dante in The Divine Comedy and the oral tradition of homer, Joyce wrote Ulysses to be read aloud. and if Finnegans Wake is to succeed at all, it must be read aloud, since it is in an important sense, music. one must feel the words and read slowly yet fluidly through the intricate but sonorous prose. the same goes for Kierkegaard. he is acutely aware of the oral tradition of the Christian sermon/discourses or Tale in danish, and he combines this aspect with his love of the oral tradition of fairytales and his acceptance that he ultimately is a poet. his prefaces alone are like a tuning up or tuning in to what will follow. The first preface in a work called Prefaces is an ode to the preface that he calls a “mood.” the danish word is Stemning which is far more resonant in danish since it is also associated with stemme, which as noun can mean “voice,” and as verb—“to tune.” Kierkegaard, as nicolaus notabene, gives a dazzling display of the danish language over two pages on the wonders of the “preface” as a Stemning. he gives seven sentences beginning with “to write a preface is like…” followed by shifting and turning synonyms.103 in Fear and Trembling, a chapter called a “stemning” (translated as “exordium” and “attunement” in the most recent english translations) follows the preface. this is another wonderful moment in Kierkegaard’s authorship, which again is lost in translation. this chapter gives four different interpretations of the Abraham story, and again it signifies a tuning up, an attempt at deciphering the various codes and secrets of the old Jewish story from genesis. finally, at the end of Stages on Life’s Way, after almost five hundred pages of challenging reading, the writer thinks himself all alone at this point and concludes the massive work by creating surely one of the most beautiful passages in the danish language.104 What is more fitting is that it is an ode to the Danish language. IV. Conclusion Joyce and Kierkegaard are saturated by the culture that they critique and ultimately transform. this is the essence of modernist culture—a dual role of serving and betraying the age. both are committed writers who inject themselves into their works without pulling any punches. stephen dedalus and Johannes climacus are as close to Joyce and Kierkegaard at certain important periods of their lives. both for a glimpse of the danish language in Finnegans Wake, see, for example, p. 52; p. 54; p. 127; p. 132; p. 141; p. 142; p. 163; p. 230; p. 279; p. 287; p. 304; p. 334; p. 357; p. 388; p. 413; p. 417; p. 496; p. 547; p. 552; and p. 611. christiani gives a list of danish words used in the text at the end of Scandinavian Elements of Finnegans Wake, pp. 235–48. 102 Joyce, Finnegans Wake, p. 424. 103 SKS 4, 469–70 / P, 5–6. 104 SKS 6, 451–4 / SLW, 489–94. 101

130

Bartholomew Ryan

inventions want to be the main characters of the book in question, and both are equally ironic, devious, and arrogant, although climacus might be a little more good humored and relaxed, yet he does have the advantage of being at least eight years older. Joyce reflected on Dedalus in a letter to a friend: “I haven’t let this young man off very lightly, have i? many writers have written about themselves. i wonder if any one of them has been as candid as i have?”105 both Joyce and Kierkegaard attempted to make the reader both hear and see more clearly. there so many times in Kierkegaard’s works that he invites the reader to wake up, look and see clearly whether it is in the motto at the beginning of The Sickness unto Death or the frenzy at the end of A Literary Review of Two Ages. the author pointing to the religious sphere is inviting the reader to see deeper and wake up from one’s slumber. as Joyce’s vision becomes worse, his emphasis on hearing and seeing become more powerful. by the time that Finnegans Wake is finished, the work has become a cacophony of sound that must be heard aloud and not read in silence, as well as being written by someone who thinks he can see clearly through every syllable and etymology of every word. Joyce may not have read so much of Kierkegaard at all, but as one journeys especially through Finnegans Wake, one can see the intuitive grasping and interest in the danish thinker through the various points i have made. perhaps we might say that Joyce has chosen art over life in dedicating his last 16 years to one book, and that Kierkegaard chose infinitude over this world in his ceaseless search for faith over life through his increasing solitude and alienation from people and the city he loved. finally, like dante, both Kierkegaard’s and Joyce’s stroke of genius and muse is bound to the love of a woman. Either/Or, Fear and Trembling, and Repetition spring from the pang of love for a lady by the name of regine olsen; Ulysses is set on the day that Joyce went out on his first date with his lifelong love Nora Barnacle. Bloom is the hero in Ulysses who declares that love is all that matters despite all the forces working against him, and at one point in Either/Or, Judge William stops and says simply to the aesthete: “Yet what is a human being without love?”106 like all great writers, there is madness to their vocation, and no two writers are as exhausted as they are by the end of their lives from the writing that consumes them. derrida chooses as his two mottos quotations from Kierkegaard and Joyce to begin his “cogito and the history of madness.”107 Yet, somehow, alongside the edge of madness, it is still love or at least the hope of love that drives these two absolutely uncompromising writers from beginning to end.

105 frank budgen, James Joyce and the Making of Ulysses, london: oxford university press 1972, pp. 51–2. 106 SKS 3, 208 / EO2, 216. 107 derrida, Writing and Difference, p. 31. the two mottos are from Fear and Trembling (“the moment of decision is a madness”) and a comment by Joyce in reference to Ulysses (“anyhow, this book was a terrible risk. a transparent veil separates it from madness”).

bibliography I. References to or Uses of Kierkegaard in Joyce’s corpus Finnegans Wake, london: faber and faber 1939, p. 33; p. 40; p. 62; p. 141; p. 201; pp. 241–2; p. 246; p. 281; p. 370; p. 388; p. 578; p. 596; p. 600. II. Sources of Joyce’s Knowledge of Kierkegaard balthasar, hans urs von, Apokalypse der deutschen Seele. Studien zu einer Lehre von letzten Haltungen, vols. 1–3, heidelberg: Kerle and salzburg et al.: pustet 1937–39, vol. 1 (Der deutsche Idealismus), pp. 693–734. brandes, georg, Søren Kierkegaard. En kritisk Fremstilling i Grundrids, copenhagen: gyldendal 1877. III. Secondary Literature on Joyce’s Relation to Kierkegaard christiani, dounia bunis, “Kierkegaard and others,” in her Scandinavian Elements of Finnegans Wake, evanston, illinois: northwestern university press 1965, pp. 63-75. cosgrove, brian, James Joyce’s Negations: Irony, Indeterminacy and Nihilism in Ulysses and Other Writings, dublin: university college dublin press 2007, pp. 42–3; pp. 161–5. schenker, daniel, “stalking the invisible hero: ibsen, Joyce, Kierkegaard, and the failure of modern irony,” ELH Academic Journal, baltimore: Johns hopkins university, vol. 51, 1984, pp. 153–83. tysdahl, bjørn, “James Joyce, ibsen og Kierkegaard,” Bokvennen, oslo, 1999, vol. 11, no. 1, pp. 40–5. Veisland, Jørgen steen, Kierkegaard and the Dialectics of Modernism, new York: peter lang 1985 (American University Studies, series 3, Comparative Literature, vol. 19), pp. 148–201.

david lodge: a therapy for the self natalja Vorobyova Jørgensen

I. Biography of David Lodge in one of The Guardian’s special series of reports, entitled “Writer’s rooms: portraits of the Spaces where Authors Create,” enthusiastic readers can find a report featuring david lodge’s study.1 it is a spacious, light-colored, bright room facing the back garden and patio on the ground floor of Lodge’s house in Birmingham. One might call it a representation of the creative process itself, a process often touched upon in lodge’s essays and novels. in the presentation of the workspace lodge remarks that his work-style has changed together with the advancement of technology, and that currently the printer became a working tool as important as a computer. for instance, one of his techniques is to print out everything he writes in order to see and track the progress of his work and to edit the pages. and it comes as a surprise to hear that each page can go through up to ten revisions. However, more than fifty years ago, the young man with an ambition of being a writer started creating his first texts at a small desk in a bedroom, and some years had to pass before he was able to comfortably organize himself in a study with executive furniture, massive bookshelves, and a “state-of-the-art” chair. With the publication of his last novel Deaf Sentence in 2008,2 a title which the writer called a tribute to all the translators of his works, lodge reappeared on the literary scene, in newspaper reviews and interviews. The novel confirms one of the statements concerning literature that lodge made quite some years ago and one he remained true to throughout his career: if someone intended to write realistic fiction, it was impossible to invent everything. The current novel is about deafness, its comic relief and tragic, painful everyday fights. But it also indirectly touches upon the themes of aging, death and mortality, not unknown topics to the 73-yearold writer. The protagonist, Desmond Bates, a retired professor of linguistics, fights with his acquired hearing loss. the novel is based on lodge’s personal experience of going deaf and the inconveniences it causes in family life.3 desmond says that 1 david lodge, “Writer’s rooms: portraits of the spaces where authors create,” The Guardian, march 2, 2007. 2 david lodge, Deaf Sentence, london: harvill secker 2008. 3 see the interview published in One in Seven magazine, no. 66, July 29, 2008, where lodge says: “the novel really started when one day i was shaving and i suddenly thought

134

Natalja Vorobyova Jørgensen

if blindness has always been regarded in literature as a tragic matter, deafness has always remained comic. it is hard not to smile at the absurdity and ridiculousness of some situations in which deafness puts desmond, yet frequently it could be called a smile with a shed of a tear. a writer, literary critic and—in the past—a university professor, admired not only by fellow academics and students of literature but also by general public all over the world, david John lodge was born on January 28, 1935 in dulwich, south london, to William frederick lodge, a professional dance musician, and rosalie marie murphy lodge, a daughter of an irishman and a belgian, and consequently a catholic.4 david was the only child; his mother lost a baby right after him. When World War ii broke out lodge was only four-and-a-half years old; his father joined the raf and was stationed in india, while david and his mother were occasionally evacuated to surrey and cornwall when london was under the threat of bombing.5 after the war the family returned to the same house in london, and david enrolled at st. Joseph’s academy in blackheath. it was a catholic school, which without doubt added to the beliefs cherished and conveyed by his mother, who attempted to bring him up in the religious spirit.6 later in life lodge paid his dues to the spirit of his childhood which had a significant influence on his world-views: i would regard myself as a liberal (writer), and in some way rather secular kind of liberal, in spite of the fact that i am a catholic—i am not the kind who wishes to persuade other i could write a comic novel about the experience of being deaf. the next day when i wrote this down in my notebook i thought i would link it to the experience of monitoring my father’s welfare in the last year or so of his life, which was an interesting and rather emotional experience,” another regretful issue for the writer is that he cannot hear what two of his youngest grandchildren say. but he is able to converse with his third one, who is now around 11. 4 see david lodge, “memories of catholic childhood,” in Write On: Occasional Essays 1965–1985, london: secker & Warburg 1986, p. 29: “i am the only child of what used to be called in catholic circles a ‘mixed marriage.’ my mother was catholic, and my father a ‘non-catholic’—as one said in those same circles implying that there was no positive form of faith outside the one true church.” 5 from the interview in the Telegraph: “His first emotional scars, he says, came when he was five, during the war, when he was left in a boarding convent in Surrey, while his mother returned to london for war work (his father was stationed with the raf in india)….it was a fairly dramatic experience. i was an only child and very dependent on my parents and, suddenly, i was all on my own, in a place where i hated the food. i was frightened by the nuns. i was expected to do things like brush my shoes every morning and i had no idea how to. the ordeal lasted only a fortnight.” Julia llewellyn, “bad reviews spoil my lunch,” Telegraph, august 23, 2004. 6 this is how lodge comments on his upbringing in his “memories of catholic childhood,” p. 29: “my mother was a dutiful but undemonstrative daughter of the church. i was given catholic schooling, but the atmosphere of the home was not distinctively catholic. there was no great profusion of holy pictures and statues in the house, religion was a topic rarely touched on in conversation, and there was little of the regular and complex social interaction with parish clergy and laity that is a feature of the typical large devout catholic family.”

David Lodge: A Therapy for the Self

135

people to accept his catholic beliefs. catholicism happens to be the ideological milieu i grew up in, that i know and write out of.7

it does not come as a surprise that lodge’s suburban upbringing in a traditional Catholic family is reflected in his early fiction. Lodge experienced and witnessed both the church and its views before the second Vatican council as well as after it, and then began questioning catholic orthodoxy. lodge had another rare opportunity, not available to the majority of the children from the low-middle class families, to visit europe several times. as he recalled: my aunt worked as a civilian secretary for the american army of occupation in germany, and I had a couple of holidays in Germany at a time when it was very difficult for British people to travel to the continent—certainly for people of my class. my aunt lived in this rather affluent and euphoric American expatriate community, which was really having a ball in post-war germany.8

his uncle settled in belgium, a country young david visited a couple of times. in many interviews lodge admits that these trips made him more open-minded and broadened his horizons. The year of Lodge’s graduation was the same year that his school for the first time sent someone to the university due to the 1944 education act, which concerned free schooling and opened new possibilities for working- and lower-middle-class children. not aiming at oxford or cambridge, the future writer enrolled in university college, london (1952) which at that time happened to have one of the best english Departments in the country. When he got his first degree (a B.A. in English literature, with honors) he was only around 17, and was not sure what exactly he wanted to do with his life. initially he had an ambition of becoming a writer and had not yet considered an academic career. he also wished to “broaden the horizons,”9 and the only available way to do so seemed to be national service. however, after a couple of weeks in the army lodge was completely sure that he wanted to go back to academic life. still, he had to spend two years in the royal armoured corps performing a duty of a clerk before he was able to do what he wanted. though the army did not become a lifetime occupation, it provided him with the subject of his novel Ginger, You’re Barmy.10 in 1957 lodge was back at the university, writing his m.a., which at

John haffenden, “david lodge,” in Novelists in Interview, london and new York: methuen 1985, p. 152. 8 ibid., p. 148. 9 ibid., p. 149. 10 david lodge, Ginger, You’re Barmy, london: macgibbon & Kee 1962. it took around five years for the novel to be finished. Lodge had to focus on writing his M.A. thesis, but partially it was an intended postponement. in one of the interviews bergonzi calls the novel “almost the act of revenge” and “a personal settling of scores” (bernard bergonzi, “david lodge interviewed,” Month, no. 299, february, 1970, p. 112) to which lodge responds on another occasion: “i hope its anger is controlled, for i deliberately delayed writing it for some years after completing my national service” (david lodge, Ginger, You’re Barmy, london: secker & Warburg 1982, p. 6). lodge characterized Ginger, You’re Barmy as a novel which 7

136

Natalja Vorobyova Jørgensen

that time was a two-year research program. his thesis on Catholic Fiction since the Oxford Movement turned out to be an enormous project of 700 pages. on may 16, 1959, lodge married mary frances Jacob, a fellow student. they were only 18 when they met and got married at 24. it is a still lasting marriage, with its ups and downs and three children.11 lodge confessed that he and his wife did not plan to have children right away; however, the first two came within the first four years of marriage. after the birth of the third one, he and mary made a rational decision to stop using the catholic-permitted way of birth control, which was not reliable enough. somewhat later lodge addressed the frustration connected with the issue in How Far Can You Go?, published in 1980.12 After his graduation Lodge started to apply for university jobs. The first year he was not successful, and in the end he had to take a post at the british council, teaching english as a foreign language and lecturing on english literature from beowulf to Virginia Woolf. he admitted that a job of that sort “was fun for one year,”13 and that he was quite lucky to get a position of a temporary lecturer in birmingham the very next year. the department kept him for another 27 years. some could say that lodge had it easy in life, yet he himself has a different opinion about it: i have had quite a lot of disappointment—who hasn’t?—and i don’t think i was particularly privileged or favoured in my early years. in fact i always felt that people slightly underestimated me, and they were surprised when i came up with the goods. but i certainly have no complaints about fortune or the way the academic world has treated me.14

lodge caught the wave of the greatest academic expansion in britain, which happened exactly during his first decade in Birmingham. One historian argues, “academics had

has some kind of universality in it, elaborating on boredom and frustration of those in the army. this is truly a novel which was born out of an autobiographical impulse. 11 see llewellyn, “bad reviews spoil my lunch”: “it was in 1966, with the birth of Christopher, a child with Down’s syndrome, that Lodge received his first sense of running up against a brick wall of life….until then, life had been an upward escalator full of possibilities and suddenly everything changed. i thought it was the end of all my plans, although of course it wasn’t…mary was quite young, it was unusual to scan in those days, so his having down’s was a total surprise. We hadn’t even considered the possibility, we were so naive. We were just very ignorant about sexual reproduction, so it never crossed my mind, but i was enormously worried about my grandchildren’s deliveries.” as a practicing, if skeptical, catholic, lodge is “very glad not to have been confronted with a choice” of terminating the pregnancy. “fortunately that question will always be hypothetical. in theory i’m opposed to abortion but i would understand situations in which people resorted to it.” today, christopher lives in a sheltered community in nearby ironbridge, returning home once a month. one of his recent articles is devoted to the institution for the kids with disabilities and what both the parents and their kids have to face in the light of the changes made by the system. 12 david lodge, How Far Can You Go?, london: martin secker & Warburg 1980. the book was renamed Souls and Bodies when published in the united states. 13 haffenden, “david lodge,” p. 149. 14 ibid., p. 150.

David Lodge: A Therapy for the Self

137

really never it so good as in early 1970s, when Changing Places was written.”15 but in retrospect Lodge regarded the ’50s and ’60s as the most significant years for his formation: “In 1950 I was fifteen, and in 1960—twenty-five. Those ten years were the most important of my life, as it is then under the influence of the young and furious i have decided to become a writer.”16 believing that realism is the ultimate narration mode, how was it possible that lodge had discovered comic writing? malcolm bradbury (1932–2000), a writer and an academic, teaching at Birmingham during Lodge’s first years there (1961–64), showed lodge his own potential and new possibilities. the two young men became close friends and bradbury encouraged and inspired lodge to develop his comic side: (Bradbury’s) confident professionalism and readiness to turn his hand to any literary task impressed me and inspired emulation. it was typical of his exceptional generosity of spirit that he actively encouraged me to work the vein of comedy that was his own forte, and in due course introduced me to his agent and his publisher. in 1963 he initiated a collaboration between the two of us and a gifted birmingham undergraduate, Jim duckett (who died young) to write a beyond the fringe-type revue for the birmingham rep. i have happy memories of hilarious script-writing sessions, with Jim and me pacing up and down, while malcolm pounded out and improved our lines on an upright typewriter. i’m not sure that writing was ever such fun again.17

For Bradbury, Lodge concludes, writing was his life. The first truly comic novel The British Museum is Falling Down is dedicated to him.18 Lodge started to write when he was around 18, yet his first work entitled The Devil, The World, and the Flesh has never been published. as bergonzi mentions, a couple of episodes from this novel later found themselves in The Picturegoers arthur marwick, British Society Since 1945, london: penguin 1982, p. 182. Jerzy Jarniewicz, Lista Obecności: Szkice o Dwudziestowiecznej Prozie Brytyjskiej i Irlanzkiej, Poznań: Rebis 2000, p. 256. 17 david lodge, “he was my literary twin,” The Guardian, november 29, 2000. 18 david lodge, The British Museum is Falling Down, london: macgibbon & Kee 1965. in this novel the serious and controversial (especially for catholics) subject of birth control is for the first time treated in a comic way. In addition, it is the first novel in which lodge experiments with narrative form, moving away from the traditional realistic narrative style of his earlier novels. the novel is a mixture of literary genres and styles which becomes the most salient feature of lodge’s creative writing (see more in david lodge, The Practice of Writing, harmondsworth: penguin 1997, p. 93) and a feature he owes not only to his creative vein, but first and foremost to his consciousness as an academic and critic. The insights into issues of literary criticism allow Lodge to write metafiction, making “the problem of writing a novel the subject of the novel.” (see lodge, The Practice of Writing, p. 6.) in the afterword to The British Museum is Falling Down, Lodge denies identification with the novel’s protagonist, adam appleby, yet the book is based on the autobiographical experience of writing a ph.d. thesis he went through in the early 1960s. The British Museum is Falling Down, makes literary allusion literal by recreating the style of several well-known authors for several of its passages. franz Kafka, henry James, c.p. snow, and James Joyce— amongst seven or so others—are all used for lodge’s pastiche. 15 16

138

Natalja Vorobyova Jørgensen

(1960),19 the first published novel which was in fact written much earlier: between 1955 and 1957, when lodge was in the army. after his return to civilian life he was not able immediately to revise it and prepare it for publication, since during those years he was particularly busy at the university. although many critics see this novel as full of youthful writing drawbacks, nonetheless it was favorably received and gave a young writer an encouraging start.20 lodge began writing in realistic mode, since it was to his mind the only way to produce good fiction. “My first two books, The Picturegoers and Ginger, You’re Barmy, had had their moments of humour but both were essentially serious works of scrupulous realism.”21 after 1962 and the publication of his second novel lodge might have given up devoting himself fully to an academic career or pursuing other goals: “Writing in the vein of scrupulous and observant realism, he had used up a lot of experience: a catholic childhood and family life in The Picturegoers and student days and military service in Ginger, You’re Barmy.”22 it seemed that there was nothing more left. but in 1964–65 lodge traveled with his family to the usa on a harkness commonwealth fellowship. it allowed him to spend half a year at brown university, studying american literature and getting to know american culture. a part of this experience was a drive across the states with his family, all the way to san francisco, where they spent the summer. this is how lodge’s saw that experience: One of my predominant mental images is of a black-and-white film turning coloured, and my own life has often taken that form: a sudden flooding of colour and opportunity and enjoyment into what had been a somewhat restricted and grey existence. going to america on a harkness fellowship in 1964 had that initial effect on me: they gave us a brand new chevrolet to drive around america in, and that was certainly one of the formative experiences of my life.23

it was his “grand tour,” which he, like many other promising british academics, had to take in order to complete his formal education. Reflecting on the significance of that trip, lodge remarked that later he was grateful for the possibility of taking his wife and two children, at that time two and four, along on the three-month drive, which otherwise would have been a painfully lonely experience for him. it bernard bergonzi, “david lodge interviewed,” p. 108. already in this work lodge uses intertextuality: one of the characters, harry, strongly resembles pinkie from graham greene’s Brighton Rock. as bergonzi notices, this could have occurred due to the fact that lodge was reading green for his thesis on catholic novelists (see bergonzi, “david lodge interviewed,” p. 31). mark underwood is one of the more significant characters in the novel. His experience is often drawn on Lodge’s own experience, for example, when Mark finds himself in Clare Mallory’s home which is full of religious objects and when he encounters people for whom all church-related activities constitute an important part of their lives. even though he notes the family’s indifference to news or the arts, he succumbs to the warmth and closeness of the family circle into which he was eagerly included. Lodge had similar feelings when he visited his fiancée’s family in the mid-1950s. 21 david lodge, The British Museum is Falling Down, 2nd ed. with afterword, london: secker & Warburg 1981, p. 163. 22 bernard bergonzi, David Lodge, plymouth: northcote house 1995, p. 5. 23 haffenden, “david lodge,” p. 164. 19 20

David Lodge: A Therapy for the Self

139

was on the drive that he started loving and appreciating america. and even though the america he describes in his essay “the bowling alley and the sun, or, how i learned to stop Worrying and love america” is a far-fetched illusive ideal,24 lodge succumbed to a lifestyle that was new and at that time unfamiliar to him. he took to smoking cigars, drove with a radio playing rock music and exceeding speed limits, developed a craving for rum-and-raisin ice cream, went to watch yacht racing, and even ended up on the radio and television (though both happened to him on his second visit in 1964). lodge was appointed visiting associate professor at the university of california, berkeley from 1969 and returned to the bay area together with his family. the majority of his experiences and observations during this period formed the basis for Changing Places.25 as he remarked, “novels burn facts as engines burn fuel, and the facts can come only from the novelist’s own experience or acquired knowledge. not uncommonly, a novelist begins by drawing mainly on facts of the former kind.”26 Yet lodge has always been aware of the difference between “resemblance” and “correspondence.” in the case of Changing Places, he himself did not go to berkeley on an exchange program and, unlike his two main characters zapp and swallow, he took his family along.27 his next career milestone was in 1967, when lodge received a ph.d. from the university of birmingham for the work done in connection with Language of Fiction. this critical work was an attempt to apply new criticism to the reading of the novel and to stress the significance of language and style for prose texts to the same extent as for poetry. already this early work shows that lodge was driven in the direction of formalism, escaping the moral and ethical criticism advocated by F.R. Leavis (1895–1978). Yet, if it is hard to find a critic who would doubt Lodge’s reputation as a novelist, it seems that there are more who doubt his authority as a literary critic, minding the fact that lodge has written quite a few critical books, david lodge, Write On: Occasional Essays 1965–1985, london: secker and Warburg 1986, pp. 3–17. 25 david lodge, Changing Places, London: Secker & Warburg 1975. This is the first out of the three so-called campus novels. the novel is set in an imaginary town rummidge, which screams with its resemblance of birmingham. “the membrane between fact and fiction, between ‘Birmingham’ and ‘Rummidge,’ has undoubtedly became thinner and more transparent with the passing of time, and i was concerned that it might be actually ruptured by the recent television serialization of nice Work (which i scripted) because it was filmed entirely on location in Birmingham, including the campus of the University” (quoted from lodge, The Practice of Writing, pp. 34–5). Changing Places tells the story of two professors, an american morris zapp (who has many of the idiosyncrasies of two prominent real-life american critics, stanley fish and harold bloom) and an englishman, philip swallow, who exchange positions and as it turns out later, wives. even though the plot seems to be conventional for the comic genre—two protagonists dropped into an unfamiliar environment—lodge manages to incorporate a play with form on a larger scale. the last chapter of the novel, for instance, collapses form and content and in general each of the six chapters alternates not only between the characters, but also between different styles. 26 lodge, The Practice of Writing, p. 27. 27 ibid., p. 33. 24

140

Natalja Vorobyova Jørgensen

essays, and articles, accompanied by a number of anthologies of literary criticism.28 lodge’s view on literary theory as a discipline could just as well be seen by some representatives of the profession as diminishing: “the theory became in university circles a very dangerous fetish, it stopped being a new and exciting tool and has changed into a professional jargon, into a hermetical ideology, which was supposed to impress the uninitiated.”29 as a writer lodge sees the need of promoting critical knowledge to the general public. and he succeeds in this task, for many of those who have read lodge’s novels have also read his critical works. in addition, it is quite possible that the majority of those readers have never had an encounter with literary theory before, and it is doubtful that they would have it afterwards. they have read his critical essays only because they were written by lodge, the novelist. the career of a novelist introduced a confusion of a similar sort to lodge’s academic life. as he observed in one of his interviews: “i think many students came to birmingham university having read my novels thinking i was going to be a riot and were very disappointed [laughs]. i was a rather severe teacher, i believe.”30

In 1966, two non-fiction books, Language of Fiction and Graham Green, appeared. in 1971–72 another three critical works come out: a collection of essays The Novelist at the Crossroads, a book entitled Evelyn Waugh, and an anthology Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism: A Reader. the last-mentioned was without doubt a product of lodge’s work as a university professor and was likely to appear as an encouragement of students’ interest in literary theory. There are a number of curious facts connected with this anthology. The first one concerns an influential British critic F.R. Leavis, who “refused to allow Lodge to include any of his work” in the Reader (from philip smallwood, Modern Critics in Practice: Critical Portraits of British Literary Critics, new York: harvester Wheatsheaf 1990, p. 232). another interesting feature of the anthology is that it included only texts written in english, even though some were originally written in foreign languages. (being) selective and categorizing, the edition could itself be called a critical response to literary criticism. The first critical work which lodge published after his retirement from the professorship was a collection of essays entitled After Bakhtin, which appeared in 1990. in the introduction to the volume lodge noticed that “though i intend to go on writing literary criticism, i doubt whether it will be ‘academic’ in the way most of the essays included in this book are academic.” (david lodge, After Bakhtin: Essays on Fiction and Criticism, london and new York: routledge 1990, p. 8.) in 1992 he published The Art of Fiction. this is a collection of short but informative articles originally written for the series in Independent on Sunday, which discuss technical and thematic literary devices using various classical novels by such authors as austen, dickens, eliot, Waugh, and Kundera. as the series was aimed at non-professional readers it encouraged many to investigate deeper the works discussed by the author. as martin summarizes: “lodge reports that since giving up his academic career he has most enjoyed writing the kind of criticism that ‘tries to demystify and shed light on the creative process, to explain how literary and dramatic works are made, and to describe the many different factors, not always under the control of the writer, that come into play in this process.” (bruce K. martin, David Lodge, new York: twayne 1999, p. 129.) 29 Jarniewicz, Lista Obecności: Szkice o Dwudziestowiecznej Prozie Brytyjskiej i Irlanzkiej, p. 254. 30 alice lagnado, “a Very anxious business” (interview with david lodge), One in Seven magazine, no. 66, august 1, 2008. 28

David Lodge: A Therapy for the Self

141

in 1977 another critical work appeared, The Modes of Modern Writing.31 it can be seen as a product of lodge’s personal interest developed in the late 1960s, when he began to study structuralism, since the theory seemed to address many of the issues that had interested him for some time. he used Jakobson’s distinction between metaphor and metonymy as a guideline. the results of his study were the pronouncements made in the essay, “the language of modern fiction: metaphor and metonymy,”32 as well as the publication of two anthologies: one from 1972,33 the other from 1988.34 in The Modes of Modern Writing, lodge still tried to combine theoretical discussion with the analysis of chosen literary works. in his next critical work, Working with Structuralism,35 which appeared in 1981, he attempted to show the practical side of literary criticism and how in general theory might be applied. smallwood sees this book as “directed largely at a student market.”36 the following collection of essays, Write On: Occasional Essays 1965–1985,37 came out in 1986 and was addressed to an even more general public. in fact, some of the essays are largely autobiographical, relating different stories from his private life, his experience as a university lecturer and influences as a novelist; and those essays which could be called “critical” present lodge in a similar light as a novelist, since they are not deprived of humor. Smallwood does not flatter the critical part of the book: “Lodge’s criticism rather gives the impression either of a man going stylishly through the motions of academic criticism, or laughing at them, than someone committed to the pursuit of critical truth.”38 the book is a collection of essays written previously for various newspapers and journals, among them The Guardian, the Observer, New Society, and as mentioned in the “foreword,” all the royalties from the publication of the book were to go to the charity organization, care. even though lodge’s contribution to literary discussions is largely recognized, there is a degree of truth in smallwood’s categorization of lodge’s criticism: his criticism works within terms of the given. and this is connected to lodge’s role as an illustrative, descriptive and explanatory critic. he takes other people’s ideas (as for example, the distinction between the “contemporary” and the “modern,” or between “metaphor” and “metonymy”), and shows how they work; how they can be made to apply.39

david lodge, The Modes of Modern Writing: Metaphor, Metonymy and the Typology of Modern Literature, ithaca, new York: cornell university press 1977. 32 ibid. 33 see 20th-Century Literary Criticism: A Reader, ed. by david lodge, london: longman 1972. 34 see Modern Criticism and Theory: A Reader, ed. by david lodge, london: longman 1988. 35 david lodge, Working with Structuralism: Essays and Reviews in 19th and 20th Century Literature, boston and london: routledge & Kegan paul 1981. 36 smallwood, Modern Critics in Practice: Critical Portraits of British Literary Critics, p. 237. 37 see lodge, Write On: Occasional Essays 1965–1985. 38 ibid., p. 243. 39 ibid., p. 244. 31

142

Natalja Vorobyova Jørgensen

in his criticism lodge remains an educator, a professor of literature attempting to appeal to the curiosity of his students. but it is a rare quality, for there are not that many critics who eagerly open up the secrets of their trade. in 1984 came the publication of Small World,40 the second campus novel and an “academic romance,” as its subtitle specifies. In the essay “Small World: An introduction,”41 the writer reveals how his own advancement in an academic career and in the experience as a participant of international conferences on various literary and critical subjects gave him an idea for a novel. one of lodge’s requirements is that every novel should contain a structural idea that shapes and conveys the meaning of the novel. this time he found it in the rich heritage of medieval romance and the legend of the grail, and, from then on, in ariosto’s sixteenth-century romance epic Orlando Furioso.42 lodge combines the chronicle of the haphazard comings and goings of a herd of professors all over the world, including morris zapp and philip swallow, with a model of chivalric romance, in particular with the grail quest as interpreted by Jessie laidlay Weston (1850–1928) in From Ritual to Romance.43 the protagonist, persse mcgarrigle, is a variation of percival, the knight who in most versions of the legend undertakes the grail quest. but the grails in the novel are numerous. persse, a young and innocent t.s. eliot scholar, is questing for the woman he loves. but the grail that most of the academics in the novel are in avid pursuit of is a new chair of literary criticism, which comes with the highest salary in the profession and can be occupied until its possessor wishes to retire. the grail quest, however, is not the only intertextual element: the legendary story adds a mythic resonance to the plot and at the same time sharpens the satire. furthermore, the novel is what can be called a self-conscious text, an example of metafiction. lodge assigns to one of the characters a comment in which the genre of romance is being defined: “Real romance is a pre-novelistic kind of narrative…full of adventure and coincidence and surprises and marvels…[and] lots of characters who are lost or enchanted or wandering about looking for each other, or for the grail, or something like that.”44 this is what mikhail bakhtin (1895–1975) called the “baring of the device”: when a character describes the fictional conventions on which his or her reality is based.

40 david lodge, Small World, new York: macmillan 1984. this novel was shortlisted for the booker prize. 41 david lodge, “small World: an introduction,” in Write On: Occasional Essays 1965–1985, pp. 70–6. 42 see lodge, “small World: an introduction,” in Write On: Occasional Essays 1965–1985, p. 73: “What made me think of the grail legend? Well, i had just been to see the somewhat preposterous but very enjoyable film, Excalibur, and been reminded of what a wonderful gripping narrative it was, the story of King arthur and the knights of the round table. but i was thinking also of t.s. eliot’s use of the grail legend in The Waste Land as a structural device comparable to Joyce’s use of the odyssey.” 43 Jessie laidlay Weston, From Ritual to Romance: History of the Holy Grail Legend, london: cambridge university press 1920. 44 lodge, Small World, p. 258.

David Lodge: A Therapy for the Self

143

in 1988 came the publication of Nice Work,45 the least “continuously funny”46 and the most conventionally realistic novel out of the three campus novels. Yet realism here is required by the choice of the undercurrent canvas, which this time is Victorian realism. Lodge made it the “industrial novel,” a field of specialization of the protagonist dr. robyn penrose, connecting it with real-life encounters with industry. dr. penrose, a temporary lecturer in english and Women’s studies takes part in a shadow scheme and is assigned to visit the rummidge’s factories in order to observe and gain experience from its director Vic Wilcox. as a dutiful and consciousness writer, lodge himself conducted extensive research in birmingham factories and industrial sites. in 1991 Paradise News came out,47 a story of a young and skeptical theologian bernard Walsh, a priest who has lost his faith, living a drab life of a theology teacher at a small college. lodge explores the meaning of bernard’s progress in a theology lecture that bernard delivers at the end of the novel. What can be salvaged from the “eschatological wreckage” of traditional religious faith? this is the question that bernard tries to answer for himself and in many ways this is what Paradise News is about. religious awe at earthly things and at earthly pleasures, and the wonder that attends the “uncertainty” of the existence of God, fill the void left by the discrediting of traditional Christian dogma. Bernard finds a kind of modest paradise in these wonders, and he prefers them to the distant possibility of heaven. apart from being a novelist lodge is an experienced scriptwriter. first, in 1989 there came an opportunity when the bbc decided to make an adaptation of Nice Work. later, in 1994, he was asked to write an adaptation of charles dickens’ Martin Chuzzlewit into a series broadcast. it proved lodge to be a successful scriptwriter. the essay “adapting martin chuzzlewit”48 reveals the circumstances and the author’s thoughts about the production of the series. during the 27 years lodge taught in birmingham, he wrote or edited almost twenty books plus a dozen uncollected essays, reviews, and journalistic pieces. his university career started in 1960, with the next advancement in 1971, when he was appointed senior lecturer; in 1973 he gained the position of reader and in 1976 he took the post of professor, which he occupied until 1987, when he decided to retire and was appointed honorary professor of modern english literature. upon his retirement lodge began to devote himself full-time to writing. shortly before the decision, Lodge had commented to an interviewer that as he got older he was finding it harder to juggle teaching and writing even under the half-time arrangement (“four months on, four months off”) he had had at birmingham for several years.49 does lodge regard himself as a man of success? in several interviews he admits that his career of a writer had its own ups and downs, and that he even went through david lodge, Nice Work, london: secker & Warburg 1988. the novel was chosen for the Daily Express book of the Year. 46 bergonzi, David Lodge, p. 23. 47 david lodge, Paradise News, london: secker & Warburg 1991. 48 lodge, The Practice of Writing, pp. 230–60. 49 Joan marecki, “david lodge,” in Contemporary Authors, ed. by linda metzger, detroit: gale research 1987 (New Revision Series, vol. 19), pp. 297–303, see p. 303. 45

144

Natalja Vorobyova Jørgensen

a crisis of faith in himself after the publication of Out of Shelter.50 even though the discovery of comedy as a genre came rather late to him he believes that it resembles his nature: “i think i am by temperament tentative, skeptical, ironic, and so that reflects itself in the structure and texture of what I write.”51 lodge often plays off different ideological and moral values and ideas against each other and hopes that it comes out in his books as doubt. his tendency is to balance those oppositions in one novel rather than expressing definite support to one of the ideas. A compromiser by nature, he is always the one looking for the reconciliation of opposite positions. he frequently shares techniques he uses to organize his work and be sure that it progresses: i start a notebook, on the book i think i am going to write, with a brief synopsis of the plot as i see it. then i begin the novel with a very vague sense where it’s all going, and at various stages when i think i must make a decision about the plot-direction i will write another synopsis. so i accumulate six to seven synopses which are different, and the book itself is actually different from the last synopsis.52

the most attractive side of the creative process is the possibility to create an illusion of life. this is probably why lodge names realism as his favorite convention. it allows him to focus on serious matters and topics, such as catholicism, and incorporate humor and satire in his text. II. Kierkegaard and therapy Reading Kierkegaard is like flying through heavy cloud. Every now and again there’s a break and you get a brief, brilliantly lit view of the ground, and then you’re back in the swirling grey mist again, with not a fucking clue where you are.53

“right, here goes.” lodge decides to open Therapy (published 1995), a novel with an intriguing title and about an intriguing topic, in a rather post-modern manner. the sentence creates an illusion of a speaker, of an actor standing in front of the audience ready to deliver his dramatic monologue. As for the figure of the author, one cannot stop wondering whether he has just started a real therapeutic exercise or is on the way to offer a fictional creation. The novel’s epigram from Graham greene’s preface to Ways of Escape is also suggestive, but in a slightly different manner. Lodge decides to quote only the first sentence from Greene’s famous lines: 50 david lodge, Out of Shelter, london: macmillan 1970. this was the fourth and, as the writer admits, most personal novel. lodge regretted that it did not work out the way he intended it to. in this novel he drew upon his childhood experience of war and evacuation; he intended to write a more universal Bildungsroman, yet according to many critics the novel was a total flop. Lodge was back to writing using the tradition of realism, which was best suited to the themes and moods of the book. however, after a successful comic novel, the devoted audience was slightly dissatisfied. 51 haffenden, “david lodge,” p. 152. 52 ibid., p. 162. 53 david lodge, Therapy, london: secker & Warburg 1995, p. 109.

David Lodge: A Therapy for the Self

145

“Writing is a form of therapy”—which goes on as follows: “sometimes i wonder how all those who do not write, compose or paint can manage to escape the madness, the melancholia, the panic fear which is inherent in the human situation.”54 as the novel goes, lodge encourages his readers to pose the question whether writing as an activity can cure depression. greene’s opinion is that it brings a solution for the few gifted ones. and so it does for the three men who appear in the course of the novel: two real figures—David Lodge, the author, glimpses of whose views and opinions are scattered throughout the text and søren Kierkegaard, the philosopher, whose biography and works become a leading line in the novel—and a fictional one: lawrence passmore, a scriptwriter, whose diary we are reading and whom we follow with great interest for the next couple of hundred pages. but the novel is not only about kinds of therapy or the therapeutic qualities of writing; it is to a large extent about the healing qualities of reading. in an article entitled “Kierkegaard for special purposes,” which originally was a presentation delivered at a conference organized by the søren Kierkegaard research centre in copenhagen, lodge acknowledges only a very limited usage of Kierkegaard: “readers of novels often assume that the knowledge of a particular subject displayed in their pages must be the visible tip of a submerged iceberg of information, when in fact there is often no iceberg—the tip is all there is.”55 Yes, there are no insights into Kierkegaard’s philosophy, no interpretations, theories, and hypotheses. but the way Therapy treats Kierkegaard shows not merely how an author could be inspired by such theories, but primarily how it is possible to popularize philosophical theories. lodge admits that before he started work on the novel he had only read Walter lowrie’s biography of Kierkegaard and a few of the philosopher’s works. he personally enjoyed Kierkegaard’s pseudonymous works because of the subject matter at stake and the fact that they were not deeply religious. Therapy started in a notebook of ideas, in the same way as many other lodge novels, and depression was to become its unifying topic. the choice of the subject matter sounds unexpected for lodge’s readers. but depression, anxiety, and therapy are rarely, if at all, treated in a comic manner. We do not laugh at these experiences; they affect lives too deeply and in a rather irksome fashion. lodge is a self-confessed neurotic. now in his seventies, he has experienced the condition and got used to living with a constant feeling of anxiety. he even went through a course of cognitive therapy, and it was not for the sake of psychological experiment, but a treatment. one may wonder why a successful author like him, a retired university professor, a winner of numerous awards, and an acknowledged and appreciated writer, would need any sort of psychological help. lodge’s answer: When you describe [my life], it sounds terrific. So why don’t I feel the same? Anxiety is my main psychological problem. that’s my really neurotic trait. it prevents me from enjoying my life. When i was young, these were not concepts that were bandied about. graham greene, Ways of Escape, harmondsworth: penguin 1981, p. 9. david lodge, “Kierkegaard for special purposes,” in Kierkegaard Revisited: Proceedings from the Conference “Kierkegaard and the Meaning of Meaning It,” Copenhagen, May 5–9, 1996, ed. by niels Jørgen cappelørn and Jon stewart, berlin and new York: Walter de gruyter 1997 (Kierkegaard Studies Monograph Series, vol. 1), p. 34. 54 55

146

Natalja Vorobyova Jørgensen there was something called a nervous breakdown that people had every now and again. but anxiety and depression were not common currency.56

an interest in depression and anxiety as theoretical and practical issues encouraged lodge to continue his acquaintance with Kierkegaard: lodge started reading the philosopher’s biography for the purposes of Paradise News. at some point in the notebook which lodge kept before he started writing Therapy, he made a comment that it could be interesting to create a character obsessed with Kierkegaard. for obvious reasons that character could not be a philosopher, a scholar, a university professor, or even a student of theology, for there would be nothing extraordinary in such an obsession. that character had to be someone utterly detached. and lawrence passmore, in the novel referred to as “tubby,” a self-taught television scriptwriter, became a perfect choice. tubby has no obvious reasons for depression. he has a career as successful scriptwriter of the sit-com The People Next Door, which made him wealthy and brought him a couple of million viewers across the country. he is in a long-lasting marriage with sally, a linguistics professor and has two grown-up children. he is an owner of a luxury car, which he teasingly refers to as his “rich-mobile,” a house in the suburbs, and a flat in London. He could not even complain at a loss of interest in his hobby—playing tennis with his wife. it is only his knee that keeps bothering him, keeps him awake at night, even after the operation. the sharp pain interferes with his daily activities and constantly shifts the focus of his thoughts. Physical pain finds a gradual correspondence in his mental state, adjusting the psyche, subduing tubby’s will power. Was this minor health problem enough to cause a depression? or was it something else that disturbed tubby? the therapies, and he had quite a selection of them, did not seem to have any effect.57 one of the therapists encourages tubby to start writing with the purpose of self-reflection. This is how his diary or journal comes into being, slowly grows, and develops. Writing becomes not a mere form of therapy, but a kind of retreat into isolation, solitude, and abstraction. if, in the case of Kierkegaard, such a life-denying state led to depression, or melancholy as he himself called it, in tubby’s case it turned out to be a therapeutic, revealing experience. lodge believes that every novel requires an additional structural idea. “i felt the need of another discourse, another perspective, another parallel story. this is a feature of several of my novels, and is something i learned, as did many other writers, from James Joyce’s use of homer’s Odyssey in Ulysses, and t.s. eliot’s allusion to the grail legend in The Waste Land.”58 What he knew about Kierkegaard was enough to stimulate him to investigate the idea of including the philosopher’s works and references from his biography in Therapy. Kierkegaard provided not only an analogous story, but also an intertextual canvas, inadvertently imposing see rachel cooke, interview with david lodge entitled “nice Work,” The Observer, april 20, 2008, p. 8. 57 see lodge, Therapy, pp. 13–14: “i have a lot of therapy. on mondays i see roland for physiotherapy, on tuesdays i see alexandra for cognitive behavior therapy, and on fridays i have either aromatherapy or acupuncture. on Wednesdays and thursdays i’m usually in london, but then i see amy, which is a kind of therapy too i suppose.” 58 lodge, “Kierkegaard for special purposes,” p. 38. 56

David Lodge: A Therapy for the Self

147

an additional interpretative layer. for lodge, the focus was on structure and “it wouldn’t matter if he [tubby] misunderstood Kierkegaard, as long as he did so in an interesting and instructive way.”59 the starting point of reference is the fact that Kierkegaard left a diary of over 10,000 pages, which tubby discovered soon after starting his own journal. he expresses both his fascination with the number of pages the philosopher has written and with the fact that he found a way of relief from his troubled state of mind in writing: “only when i write do i feel well. then i forget all of life’s vexations, all its sufferings, then i am wrapped in thought and am happy,”60 reads an entry in Kierkegaard’s journal from 1847. the choice of genre in which Therapy should be written was not only determined by Kierkegaard being a prolific diary-writer. A journal turns out to be the most convenient and persuasive genre for a scriptwriter, who is more familiar with using dramatic personas or voices and a narrative which has a direct addressee. at the beginning of the novel’s concluding section tubby muses about the differences between writing a novel, a script, or a journal. as he explains, the essential distinction is “a question of tense.”61 a script is always written in the present tense, everything is happening now. but as soon as the text is written, it appears to be all in the past. even if someone writes, “i am writing, i am writing,” over and over again, the act of writing is finished by the time somebody reads the result. What makes a journal special is that the writer does not know where his story is going or how it will unfold. this puts the story into a kind of continuous present, even though the events are described in the past tense. novels for that matter are written post factum, or they create an illusion that they are. for the reader it will in most cases look like the novelist has always known how and when the story he is writing would end. such an interlude serves as a perfect example of metafiction, adding a point to the question of authorship and the introduction of an author into a text. The first question that arises after reading the passage is whose voice is behind this diary entry, tubby’s or lodge’s? here the two merge. lodge mentioned in “Kierkegaard for special purposes”62 that for some time he had intended to write a novel using bakhtin’s category of “skaz”—a type of narration in which the protagonist explicitly uses colloquial language. Skaz’s narrators are usually unaware of their literary function and therefore succumb to colloquial speech with elements of improvisation. Skaz initiates a narrative flow resembling dramatic monologue and implements the narrative techniques of drama into prose, which allows the narrator to hide behind a textual mask. this type of narration suggests a theatricality which persistently forces a feeling of a speaking subject upon a reader. it is also a double-voiced narrative in which the authorial voice exhibits a semantic orientation towards the speech of another person. in Therapy the two voices of tubby and lodge become entangled. tubby’s voice of a male in his sixties, still mentally ibid., p. 39. see The Diary of Søren Kierkegaard, trans. and ed. by peter rohde, secaucus, new Jersey: citadel press 1960, p. 52. this passage corresponds to SKS 20, 83, NB:108 / KJN 4, 82. 61 lodge, Therapy, p. 285. 62 lodge, “Kierkegaard for special purposes,” p. 38. 59 60

Natalja Vorobyova Jørgensen

148

sane and active, having a habit of keeping a diary, which is not a conventional diary, but rather a place to collect thoughts, intellectual coquetry, troubles and worries, and humiliating troublesome experiences, seems to dominate. but the voice of the author is always present in a semi-academic discourse of the parts devoted to Kierkegaard and narrative theory. it is tempting to suggest that skaz could be another point of convergence between Kierkegaard and lodge. Kierkegaard’s fascinating pseudonymous writings, if not written in an explicitly colloquial language, at least insist on using masks and definitely endeavor into theatricality. But Kierkegaard never goes as far as incorporating straightforward scriptwriting techniques. Skaz permits a recreation of a strong, even authoritative voice, providing a constant narrative perspective, simultaneously retaining the qualities of the dramatic monologue. one can never know whether the author is true to himself or is just hiding behind a facade. lawrence starts his journey through Kierkegaard’s philosophy by looking up in a dictionary the term “angst”: reading through that last entry reminded me of amy’s odd question, “how’s your Angst?” and I looked the word up. I was slightly surprised to find it in my English dictionary: “1. An acute but unspecific sense of anxiety or remorse. 2. (In Existentialist philosophy) the dread caused by man’s awareness that his future is not determined, but must be freely chosen.” I didn’t fully understand the second definition—philosophy is one of the bigger blank spots in my education.63

Curiosity leads Tubby further into investigating existentialism, and one of the first names he stumbles upon is the name of Kierkegaard. tubby gets more intrigued by the titles of Kierkegaard’s books which “seemed to name my condition like arrows thudding into target.”64 naturally, tubby’s wish is to solve and understand his own ongoing, growing, developing anxiety or dread, and Kierkegaard’s terms look suitable, applicable, and clarifying. but The Concept of Dread not only does not answer lawrence’s burning questions, but even discourages him from reading. after finding the definition of “dread,” Tubby writes: “He defines dread, for instance, as ‘freedom’s appearance before itself in possibility.’ What the fuck does that mean?”65 Both Lodge and Kierkegaard leave it up to their readers to figure out the answer. the diary writing encourages tubby to rethink his past, to reconstruct it and to start creating his narrative self. furthermore, lodge chooses the concept of repetition as an embedded principle, a structural element of the plot. for starters he puts tubby through a number of literal repetitions the purpose of which is to reconcile the character with himself. if repetition is a recreation of past feelings, impressions, and the reconstruction of memories, then lodge forces tubby to experience what constantin constantinus has already proven: repetition is not possible; one is always bound to recollection instead. the memories of the past create merely “a dream world (that) glimmers

63 64 65

lodge, Therapy, p. 63. ibid., p. 65. ibid., p. 89.

David Lodge: A Therapy for the Self

149

in the background of the soul.”66 reality does not let the past materialize. the recollection transforms into more profound feelings than just those which are reevoked by distant memories. tubby sets off twice in search of his repetition. the first time he follows the desire to live out sexual opportunities he had lost and gain experience he has missed. this is his way of freeing himself from marriage and healing the pain caused by the split-up with his wife. in search of sex with other women, which would no longer be treated as adultery, he tries to find the part of himself which disappeared with marriage. as his sexual endeavors are unsuccessful, he re-confirms to himself that repetition is an illusion. his second venture is of a somewhat different nature. already, early in the novel, Tubby recalls his first love, Maureen, speculating about what happened to her after they split up. as the novel develops, his guilt towards the girl becomes more and more profound. this time it is the recollections that take charge of tubby’s mind, and after writing down the memories he has of maureen, he decides to seek her forgiveness. A repetition fulfilled in recollections leads to Tubby’s reconciliation with himself. The motive of the return of the first love could be read as a tribute to Kierkegaard’s biography. lodge, so to speak, offers the philosopher a second chance, one he never had, a possibility to ask for forgiveness and to know that he has been forgiven. there is no doubt that Kierkegaard regretted the decision of breaking his engagement with regine. lodge’s character had no regrets until the break-up of his marriage. Was that a prompt for him to remember and try to repay the mistakes of the past, or was that the only possible outcome of a series of “repetitions” with other women, and maureen was the last one left to try out? this could be seen as one of interpretations. another guess is that lodge, together with many other Kierkegaard fans, readers, and scholars, wonders what might have happened between regine and søren if he had ever given her a second chance. the account of tubby’s search for his first love could be seen as a speculation about the matter. And it has all the necessary elements: there is enough religion to interfere with the affair, even though this element constitutes an integral part only of a female character; there is also an element of seduction almost as sophisticated as that described by Johannes the seducer. another, this time straightforward reference to Kierkegaardian repetition, can be found when tubby elaborates on his theory of marriage and how repetition works within it: it occurred to me that you could turn that last metaphor around: not repetition is a beloved wife, but a beloved wife (or beloved husband) is repetition. to appreciate the real value of marriage you have to discard the superficial idea of repetition as something boring and negative, and see it as, on the contrary, something liberating and positive—the secret of happiness, no less. that’s why b, in Either/Or, begins his attack on a’s aesthetic philosophy of life (and the melancholia which goes with it) by defending marriage, and urging a to marry. (this is getting quite exciting; i haven’t thought as hard as this for years, if ever.)67

66 67

SKS 4, 39 / R, 152. lodge, Therapy, p. 127.

150

Natalja Vorobyova Jørgensen

lodge masterfully introduces this observation into the novel right before the crises in tubby’s personal life: sally announces that she wants a divorce. there is a subtle irony in the situation, before tubby had no particular reasons to be depressed, but as he finally starts figuring out his way through Kierkegaard’s works, which he treats as a sort of bible for therapy, and when he thinks that he not only understands, but can as well appreciate the opinions of the philosopher since they beautifully correspond with his perception of life, his situation changes dramatically, collapsing without any possibility of being restored. now he has every reason to be depressed. tubby confirms this in the part which he writes on behalf of Amy: “he is very depressed. I mean, he was depressed before, but now he’s really got something to be depressed about. Yes, i think he is quite conscious of the irony.”68 to a great extent Therapy offers an example of a non-academic reading of the philosophical works and encourages the general public to investigate a subject which at first glance might seem too obscure and have no appeal to nonprofessionals. at the same time the novel should be an interesting alternative for those who read Kierkegaard for a living and sometimes forget that the vast majority has tubby’s eyes when it comes to the reading and understanding of philosophical texts. Therapy traces the development from a habitual reading for pleasure into an obsession. Kierkegaard has never been considered an author one just picks up from a bookshelf, dashes through and after a couple of hours closes the cover filled with inspiring thoughts. One may ask, why not? Even Danes find his language tough, his vocabulary ambiguous, syntax confusing, and ideas peculiar. but if someone knows where to start, Kierkegaard’s texts can unfold themselves in a clear and fascinating reality of partially unconventional and partially universal views and ideas. at least this is the idea which lodge attempted to convey in Therapy. guided by a desire to explore and understand anxiety, tubby starts his reading endeavor with The Concept of Dread. attracted by the title and the table of contents, Lawrence at first is disappointed over not being able to find an immediate solution to his state. however, it does not come as a surprise; if lawrence is not able to find an explanation to his state using any of the numerous therapies he is involved in, his anxiety is purely Kierkegaardian—anxiety over nothing. We could never be sure whether his is the conclusion to which tubby himself would arrive, but one of the quoted passages suggests that he was deeply touched by the text: “i would say that learning to know dread is an adventure which every man has to affront if he would not go to perdition either by not having known dread or by sinking under it. he therefore who has learned rightly to be in dread has learned the most important thing.”69 from there on tubby continues speculating: “but what is learning rightly to be in dread, and how is it different from sinking under it? that’s what i’d like to ibid., p. 140. søren Kierkegaard, The Concept of Dread, trans. by Walter lowrie, princeton, new Jersey: princeton university press 1957, p. 139. in the reidar thomte edition this sounds somewhat different: “however, i will say that this is an adventure that every human being must go through—to learn to be anxious in order that he may not perish either by never having been in anxiety or by succumbing in anxiety. Whoever has learned to be anxious in the right way has learned the ultimate” (SKS 4, 176 / CA, 155). 68 69

David Lodge: A Therapy for the Self

151

know.”70 dread or, in other words, spiritual despair, once considered the biggest sin against god, according to the philosopher, became the greatest sin against life. if a man is in the state of passivity, he is not himself and is bound to suffer from both melancholy and dread. he lives in a state of constant repression which hinders all his actions and traps him within himself, making him unable to break through to a true existence. as the philosopher summarizes, “melancholy is a sin, really it is a sin instar omnium, for not to will deeply and sincerely is sin and this is the mother of all sins.”71 tubby has developed an elaborate feeling of guilt and admits that even as a non-religious person, someone who has no faith and therefore is not able to retreat into it, is able to explain his state using Kierkegaard’s religious categories. he feels self-reproach but he is not clear about its origin; as soon as he figures it out, he is able to break his anxiety. conversely, there in an entry in Kierkegaard’s journals which in a similar manner sheds light on tubby’s condition: and anxiety (as anti-climacus correctly observes in respect to immediacy—it is right at the beginning, in the discussion about the universality of despair) is most intense about nothing. this is the way the temper and the temptation saddle the person who knuckles under with the very discovery of the temptation—for say the temptation and the tempter: I really said nothing at all. You became anxious over nothing. Anxiety is the first reflex of possibility, a glimpse, and yet a terrible sorcery.72

tubby searches the reasons of his state in the outside world, forgetting to look inside himself. he has been leading a life of an immediate man; he lacks religiousness and faith, and it is only an illusion of spiritualism that is present in his life when we meet him. immediate life can develop only on the horizontal level of desires, and it does not look up in search of god, because “the self is bound up in immediacy with the other in desiring, craving, enjoying, etc., yet passively; in its craving, this self is a dative, like the ‘me’ of a child.”73 Tubby stops being satisfied and happy with what he has, and with the discovery of Kierkegaard he sets off on a path which will lead him to the discovery of his own religion and his own god. how true and relevant for tubby’s case is what Kierkegaard says about the immediate man who despairs: now something happens that impinges (upon + to strike) upon this immediate self and makes it despair. in another sense, it cannot happen at this point; since the self has no reflection, there must be an external motivation for the despair, and the despair is nothing more than a submitting. by a “stroke of fate” that which to the man of immediacy is his whole life, or, insofar as he has a minuscule of reflection, the portion thereof to which he especially clings, is taken from him; in short, he becomes, as he calls it, unhappy, that is, his immediacy is dealt such a crushing blow that it cannot reproduce itself: he despairs.74

70 71 72 73 74

lodge, Therapy, p. 89. SKS 3, 197 / EO2, 189. SKS 22, 238–9, NB12:154 / JP 1, 102. SKS 11, 49 / SUD, 51. ibid.

152

Natalja Vorobyova Jørgensen

and not only. he felt utter disappointment and pain over his wife’s disregard to thirty years of marriage, treating them as “worthless, meaningless.”75 What is significant, however, is that in retrospect, writing one-and-a-half months after the event, tubby comes to an important conclusion: “once you begin to doubt your marriage, you begin to doubt your grasp of reality. i thought i knew sally—suddenly i found i didn’t. so perhaps i didn’t know myself.”76 is it possible that tubby set on a path which would lead him from an immediate man into a reflective individual? Not to a complete extent, if we follow Kierkegaard’s definitions. Nevertheless, such an interpretation of his character is plausible. the third part of the novel starts with a number of revelations for the reader. One of them is Lawrence’s reflection upon what he had done earlier in life. He finds an old sin, an event kept in the farthest corner of his consciousness; he remembers how he broke the heart of maureen. as he writes down all the memories connected with those days and starts his own reflection. “I realized for the first time what an appalling thing i had done all those years ago. i broke a young girl’s heart, callously, selfishly, wantonly.”77 Kierkegaard becomes tubby’s religion and his alter ego. tubby starts looking at what happened between him and maureen as if they were Kierkegaard and regine: “it has resemblance to ‘the seducer’s diary,’ and resemblance to K’s own relationship with regine.”78 he even notices that the names rhyme. if The Concept of Dread was boring and confusing, both parts of Either/Or make a completely opposite impression on tubby. “a shocking great book”79 he concludes, especially “the unhappiest man.” in this essay its pseudonymous author speaks about a reflective man whom he defines as someone who suffers from conflicting temporal ecstasies. every human being with time develops a relation towards his or her past and future. the relation to the former is called memory, as for the latter it is hope. And while looking in both directions man should always be able to find an aspect of the self: the self that was and the self that will become. however, the unhappiest man suffers disorientation in time and therefore is timeless. because he exists within the conflict between memory and hope, memory prevents him from finding himself in hope and vice versa. But all in all the reason for his state is that he does not stand in a proper relation to the present. tubby catches precisely this way of looking at the self and puts it into more blunt terms: according to K., the unhappy man is “always absent to himself, never present to himself.” My first reaction was: no, Søren old son—I never stop thinking about myself, that’s the trouble. but then i thought, thinking about yourself isn’t the same as being present to yourself. sally is present to herself, because she takes herself for granted, she never doubts herself—or at least not for long. she coincides with herself. Whereas i, like one of those cartoon characters in a cheap comic, the kind where the colour doesn’t quite fit the outline of the drawing: there’s a gap or overlap between the two, a kind of

75 76 77 78 79

lodge, Therapy, p. 202. ibid., p. 203. ibid., p. 261. ibid. ibid., p. 100.

David Lodge: A Therapy for the Self

153

blur. that’s me: desperate dan with blue chin sticking out but not quite coinciding with his jawline.80

the unhappiest man can be called an embodiment of absence, which is framed by the failure to be in the present. tubby believes that he is partially lacking focus, yet fails to admit that his relation with the present is rather problematic. he begins to notice his present life only when things in it start to collapse. for the moment, he is just excited to discover that someone has already described his condition. “the unhappiest man. Why then am i grinning all over my face as i read?”81 if already described, the condition should have a treatment. but Kierkegaard’s remedies are unorthodox. besides, it is not at all true that if you know what you suffer from then the recovery can come faster. lawrence’s journey towards his self will start with a deep look into the past, with an inner repetition, which will be his transformation within the movement towards future, a recovery of the past leading to the real self. has lodge deliberately chosen tubby’s reading list? it seems so, for lodge has been looking for a thematic unity in the texts which tubby was reading: “Well, they’re all rum books. each one is different, but the same themes and obsessions keep cropping up: courtship, seduction, indecision, guilt, depression, despair.”82 interestingly enough, the list does not include the most discussed philosophical concepts and ideas presented in the works, nevertheless the choice of subject is straightforward and for the most part is drawn in such a way as to put in focus the philosopher’s biography. tubby devotionally undertakes a pilgrimage to copenhagen. to some extent it is his attempt to recreate the atmosphere in which Kierkegaard lived and worked, and a manifestation of his obsession, which slowly becomes a part of his self, related to the present: “call it conscience. call it Kierkegaard. they have become one and the same thing. i think Kierkegaard is the thin man inside me that has been struggling to get out, and in Copenhagen he finally did.”83 With determination tubby searches for the philosopher’s grave and is deeply touched by the experience of visiting the Kierkegaard room in the city museum of copenhagen.84 the experiences in the capital of denmark turns into religious revelation, a search for great moral significance. It allows Tubby to close the circle of becoming present to his own self. but does it cure tubby from depression? the trip to copenhagen, transformed into a “religious” pilgrimage, is balanced by maureen’s pilgrimage to spain. and even

ibid., p. 101. ibid., p. 102. 82 ibid., p. 123. 83 ibid., p. 209. 84 Coming out from the Cathedral in Santiago, the finishing point of Tubby’s second pilgrimage, he could not help recollecting his experience in copenhagen: “i couldn’t help contrasting the pomp and circumstance of this shrine with the small, austerely furnished room in the copenhagen bymuseum, its half-dozen cabinets containing a few homely objects, books and pictures, and the modest monument in the assistens Kirkegård. i wondered whether, if Kierkegaard had been a catholic, they would have made him a saint by now, and built a basilica over his grave. he would make a good patron saint of neurotics” (ibid., p. 311). 80 81

154

Natalja Vorobyova Jørgensen

though the later does not touch Tubby as much as the first one, both journeys add to a degree to him being a reflective individual, his inwardness. a result of his search for parallels and resemblances between his own life and Kierkegaard’s, Tubby starts regarding his first romantic fancy, Maureen, as “his regine” and her husband, tubby’s old rival, gets the title of “my schlegel.” the diary is broken by a memory about tubby’s early teenage years and the story of maureen. his original intention is not to evaluate or judge the past, but recover the memory. he even returns to handwriting, stressing that for him “the pen is like a tool, a cutting or digging tool, slicing down through the roots, probing the bedrock of memory.”85 another way of reconstruction of the past happens to be revision, and even though as a scriptwriter lawrence is quite familiar with the exercise, it turns out to be crucially different: “this time i was the only reader, the only critic, and i revised as i went along.”86 revision prompts tubby to re-think the experience, and he admits that he would never have done so unless he were unfamiliar with Kierkegaard: “going back over the history of our relationship in detail, i realized for the first time what an appalling thing I had done all those years ago. I broke a young girl’s heart, callously, selfishly, wantonly.”87 and even though he says that “it’s too late for repetition,”88 he retains a slight hope that there is a chance for it to be fulfilled. this time lodge chooses to send his characters on one of the most ancient and famous european routes, known in the anglophone world as the Way of st. James leading to santiago.89 the pilgrimage on which maureen sets off for personal and religious reasons, becomes a quest for tubby, a summary of how he has changed. Upon his return from Spain, when Tubby sets down to finish the writing of his journal, he concludes: “for i do feel i’ve reached the end of something. and, hopefully, a new beginning.”90 The route enchanted him, forcing him to come up with definitions and conclusions. for “what is a pilgrimage? and who is a pilgrim?”—lodge asks. this time tubby is able to respond, the pilgrim is “someone for whom it’s an existential act of self-definition, a leap into the absurd, in Kierkegaard’s sense.”91and he continues: the true pilgrim was the religious pilgrim, religious in the Kirkegaardian sense. to Kierkegaard, christianity was “absurd”: if it were entirely rational, there would be no merit in believing. the whole point was that one chose to believe without rational compulsion—one made a leap into the void and in the process chose oneself.92

Tubby has completed his study of Kierkegaard and passes the exam with flying colors on the way to santiago.

85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92

ibid., p. 260. ibid. ibid., p. 261. ibid., p. 278. see more in martin, David Lodge, pp. 153–4. lodge, Therapy, p. 286. ibid., p. 304. ibid., p. 305.

David Lodge: A Therapy for the Self

155

Therapy is not only a brilliant and funny novel, but an encouragement to explore Kierkegaard, as well as an extended essay on what lodge thinks about the philosopher. fortunately for a careful reader and unfortunately for literary critics lodge is a very self-conscious writer. he explains his intentions inserting authorial comments, leaving very little space, if any at all, for speculations. these numerous clues answer the questions a reader might have paused to ponder just a couple of pages before. due to Kierkegaard the novel acquires another dimension, that is, the interchange between the serious and the comic, philosophy and the trivial, life and history.

bibliography I. Works by Lodge that Make Use of Kierkegaard Nice Work, london: secker & Warburg 1988. Paradise News, london: secker & Warburg 1991. Therapy, london: secker & Warburg 1995. “Kierkegaard for special purposes,” in Kierkegaard Revisited: Proceedings from the Conference “Kierkegaard and the Meaning of Meaning It,” ed. by niels Jørgen cappelørn and Jon stewart, berlin and new York: Walter de gruyter 1997 (Kierkegaard Studies Monograph Series, vol. 1), pp. 34–47. II. Sources of Lodge’s Knowledge of Kierkegaard Kierkegaard, søren, Repetition: An Essay in Experimental Psychology, trans. by Walter lowrie, new York: harper and row 1941. — The Concept of Dread, trans. by Walter lowrie, princeton: princeton university press 1957. — The Diary of Søren Kierkegaard, trans. and ed. by peter rohde, secaucus, new Jersey: citadel press 1960. — Fear and Trembling, trans. by alastair hannay, harmondsworth: penguin 1985. — Either/Or: A Fragment of Life, trans. by alastair hannay, harmondsworth: penguin 1992. lowrie, Walter, Kierkegaard, new York: harper 1962. — Kierkegaard: A Short Life, princeton: princeton university press 1970. III. Secondary Literature on Lodge’s Relation to Kierkegaard bergonzi, bernard, David Lodge, plymouth: northcote house 1995, pp. 58–65. billeskov Jansen, f.J., “søren som terapi,” Politiken, march 11, 1995. martin, bruce K., David Lodge, new York: twayne 1999, pp. 152–7.

flannery o’connor: reading Kierkegaard in the light of thomas aquinas christopher b. barnett

alice Walker (b. 1944) has said that flannery o’connor (1925–64) was “the first great modern writer from the South,”1 no faint praise given the number of southern authors who rose to the fore of twentieth-century american letters—a group that, among others,2 included William faulkner (1897–1962), eudora Welty (1909–2001), tennessee Williams (1911–83), and carson mccullers (1917–67). other commentators, wary of limiting the scope of o’connor’s achievement, have placed her stories in a broader context. the writer and monastic thomas merton (1915–68) has likened o’connor to the ancient greek tragedian, sophocles, “for all the truth and all the craft with which she shows man’s fall and his dishonor.”3 thus he suggests that her oeuvre is universal, timeless. and yet, due to such literary accomplishment, it is all too easy to forget that O’Connor was not just a writer of fiction, but also a discerning reader and thinker. even as early as her student years (1942–45) at georgia state college for Women, it was clear that o’connor “was a very serious student,”4 whose interest in philosophical questions was matched only by her searching, yet assured, wit. an editor and cartoonist for the college newspaper, The Colonnade, o’connor once published a drawing of a “student standing before a quite impressive library checkout desk asking for books the faculty have not recommended.”5 george beiswanger, who taught o’connor at georgia state college for Women, was no stranger to her intellectual independence. leading a class on modern philosophy, which alice Walker, “the first great modern Writer from the south,” in Readings on Flannery O’Connor, ed. by Jennifer a. hurley, san diego, california: greenhaven press 2001 (The Greenhaven Press Literary Companion to American Authors), p. 34. 2 indeed, in addition to Walker herself, one also might mention zora neale hurston (1891–1960), thomas Wolfe (1900–38), erskine caldwell (1903–87), Walker percy (1916–90), truman capote (1924–84), harper lee (b. 1926), cormac mccarthy (b. 1933), and John Kennedy toole (1937–69). 3 Quoted from Jennifer a. hurley, “flannery o’connor: a biography,” in Readings on Flannery O’Connor, p. 23. 4 Quoted from Jean W. cash, Flannery O’Connor: A Life, Knoxville: university of tennessee press 2002, p. 66. 5 cash, Flannery O’Connor, p. 70, emphasis added. 1

158

Christopher B. Barnett

assumed the standpoint of secular humanism, beiswanger noticed o’connor’s quiet resistance: flannery sat in class, listened intently, took notes, and without her saying a word, it became clear that she didn’t believe a word of what i was saying. it was [in her opinion] philosophic modernism that has blinded the western mind. she knew aquinas in detail, was amazingly well read in earlier philosophy, and developed into a first rate “intellectual” along with her other accomplishments.6

beiswanger’s account is noteworthy in two respects. first, it marks o’connor’s considerable knowledge of and profound respect for the dominican thinker thomas aquinas. indeed, as is well-known, o’connor was not only a member of the catholic church, but also a dedicated student of thomas, so much so that she read the Angelicus Doctor daily7 and once identified herself—only half-jokingly—as a “hillbilly thomist.”8 second, it points to her overall intellectual curiosity. as ralph Wood explains, “to have an uninformed christian mind was, to her, an oxymoronic sin that no intelligent believer should commit.”9 a glance through o’connor’s personal library holdings confirms this observation. Though “[r]eligion and theology were closest to her heart,”10 she kept books from a variety of authors, ranging from antique greats such as aristophanes, plato, and aristotle to modern thinkers such as sigmund freud (1856–1939), martin heidegger (1889–1976), and eric Voegelin (1901–85).11 one would expect, then, that o’connor had some familiarity with søren Kierkegaard—an expectation that is borne out by o’connor’s own comments about the danish thinker. as will be detailed below, o’connor mentions Kierkegaard in a handful of letters from the 1950s. these references, whether taken singly or collectively, by no means amount to a sustained, comprehensive engagement with Kierkegaard’s thought. however, they do shed light on o’connor’s approach to Kierkegaard: though attracted to him as a thinker in his own right, o’connor principally was interested in relating Kierkegaard to her intellectual touchstone, thomas aquinas. that she made this connection, it will be reasoned, helps explain why her fiction evinces certain existentialist or Kierkegaardian tendencies, even as she maintained that “[m]y philosophical notions don’t derive from [Kierkegaard]… but from st. thomas aquinas.”12 for her, it seems, Kierkegaard’s insights were, at best, supplements to the more cogent, time-honored thought of thomas. Quoted from ibid., p. 67. flannery o’connor, Flannery O’Connor: Collected Works, new York: literary classics of the united states 1988, p. 945. 8 ibid., p. 934. 9 ralph c. Wood, Flannery O’Connor and the Christ-Haunted South, grand rapids, michigan: eerdmans 2004, p. 25. 10 richard giannone, “introduction,” in Flannery O’Connor: Spiritual Writings, ed. by robert ellsberg, maryknoll, new York: orbis books 2003 (Modern Spiritual Masters Series), p. 31. 11 for more information on o’connor’s library, including a thorough index of her holdings, see lorine m. getz, Flannery O’Connor: Her Life, Library and Book Reviews, new York: edwin mellen press 1980. 12 o’connor, Works, p. 897. 6 7

Flannery O’Connor: Reading Kierkegaard in the Light of Thomas Aquinas

159

I. Flannery O’Connor: A Vita born march 25, 1925 in savannah, georgia, mary flannery o’connor was the only child of edward francis o’connor, Jr. (1896–1941) and regina lucille cline (1896–1995)—a devout catholic couple whose ancestors, on both sides, were from ireland. edward’s father had been a “prominent businessman and banker in savannah,” while regina’s father had “had great success as a merchant, farmer, and politician.”13 Indeed, in 1888, Peter James Cline (1845–1916) became the first catholic mayor of milledgeville, a small town and onetime state capital in central georgia, about 180 miles inland from the port city of savannah. thus flannery o’connor’s family belonged to a minority within a minority: as catholics, they were outnumbered in largely protestant georgia, even as they thrived despite their social status. in that way, they established a pattern that o’connor herself would follow as a catholic author in the protestant south. o’connor’s early years were spent in savannah, where she attended catholic elementary schools and made her first communion at the age of seven. In 1938, e.f. o’connor accepted a job in atlanta, but, unhappy with “the urban lifestyle of atlanta,”14 regina and flannery moved to milledgeville at the end of flannery’s seventh grade school year. it was not an ideal arrangement—e.f. o’connor remained apart from his family during each work week—and so the family again returned to atlanta.15 Yet, when lupus began to afflict E.F. O’Connor’s health, eventually leading to his death in february 1941, the family permanently relocated to milledgeville. there flannery graduated from peabody high school in 1942, before completing a “special wartime three-year program”16 from georgia state college for Women in 1945. it was at that time that o’connor’s literary career began to take off. encouraged and aided by beiswanger, she entered the graduate program in journalism at the university of iowa. however, not long after arriving in iowa city, o’connor approached the director of the iowa Writer’s Workshop, paul engle (1908–91), and asked if she could change her affiliation to the Workshop.17 after examining a few drafts of her fiction, Engle unreservedly agreed. In addition to classes dedicated to reading and understanding fiction, the Workshop afforded o’connor opportunities to present her stories for commentary and critique. she made steady progress. in the summer of 1946, one of her short stories, “the Geranium,” was printed in a literary quarterly, and soon she began work on her first novel, which, in 1952, would be published as Wise Blood. recognition also came. in may 1947, her efforts garnered her the rinehart-iowa award, and, as she concluded her time at the Workshop, she was granted a residency at the prestigious Yaddo artists’ colony in saratoga springs, new York.18 cash, Flannery O’Connor, p. 7. connie ann Kirk, Critical Companion to Flannery O’Connor, new York: facts on file, inc. 2008 (Facts on File Library of American Literature), p. 4. 15 brad gooch, Flannery: A Life of Flannery O’Connor, new York: little, brown, and company 2009, pp. 61ff. 16 ibid., p. 83. 17 ibid., p. 118. 18 ibid., p. 138; p. 146. 13 14

160

Christopher B. Barnett

the next few years would see two major developments in o’connor’s life and career. first, due to her time at Yaddo, not to mention the publication of Wise Blood,19 O’Connor fully emerged as a significant new voice in American letters, admired by writers such as robert penn Warren (1905–89), robert fitzgerald (1910–85), and robert lowell (1917–77). that Wise Blood garnered “mixed”20 reviews from critics only seemed to enhance her reputation, for, despite criticism of the novel’s overt and ostensibly peculiar religious concerns, no one could deny the “high order of [her] talent.”21 as one reviewer put it, “flannery o’connor is perhaps the most naturally gifted of the youngest generation of American novelists, and her first book, ‘Wise Blood,’ has an imaginative intensity rare in any fiction these days.”22 second, around the turn of the 1950s, it became clear that o’connor was gravely ill. displaying a variety of symptoms, from kidney trouble to “heavy” arms, it initially was thought that she suffered from rheumatoid arthritis.23 however, after a lengthy hospitalization in late 1950, she began treatment for systemic lupus erythematosus, the same autoimmune disease that had killed her father.24 o’connor herself was not aware of the precise nature of her ailment until the summer of 1952,25 but, by then, her life already had been altered forever. as Jean cash explains, “[s]he would never leave milledgeville permanently again. she would publish all her books from the town and fall into a lifelong mutual dependency with her mother.”26 despite this sobering turn of events—indeed, she returned to milledgeville “most unwillingly,” believing that “she needed distance from the south in order to use it as a setting for universal concerns”27—o’connor remained committed to her literary vocation. as she once quipped to an interviewer, “[t]he disease is of no consequence in my writing, since for that i use my head and not my feet.”28 as usual, o’connor’s jesting deflected attention from the seriousness of her condition: there is no doubt that lupus “adversely influenced her daily life” and, as a result, limited the amount of time and energy she could dedicate to writing.29 nevertheless, she was right that the disease did not impair the quality of her work. Until her death on August 3, 1964, she produced some of the best fiction in all of American literature. In 1955, her first collection of short stories, A Good Man Is Hard to Find, came out.30 it includes “o’connor’s most famous story,”31 also called “a good man is hard to find,” which depicts an atlanta family and their collective murder by a wandering band of criminals. Its final scene is at once 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31

flannery o’connor, Wise Blood, new York: farrar, straus and giroux 1990 [1952]. gooch, Flannery: A Life of Flannery O’Connor, p. 205. ibid. ibid., p. 207. cash, Flannery O’Connor, p. 130. ibid., p. 131. ibid., p. 311. ibid., p. 131. ibid., p. 133. Quoted from ibid., p. 312. ibid., pp. 312ff. flannery o’connor, A Good Man Is Hard to Find, new York: harcourt brace 1955. Wood, Flannery O’Connor, p. 3.

Flannery O’Connor: Reading Kierkegaard in the Light of Thomas Aquinas

161

brutal and complex. the principal character, a genteel yet hypocritical grandmother, is being held hostage by the gang’s leader, a “bespectacled man”32 known only as The Misfit. Desperate, the grandmother pleas for her life: “You’ve got good blood! i know you wouldn’t shoot a lady! i know you come from nice people! pray! Jesus, you ought not to shoot a lady,”33 she tells the convict. these appeals prompt the Misfit to reflect briefly on the meaning of Jesus: if [Jesus] did what he said, then it’s nothing for you to do but throw away everything and follow him, and if he didn’t, then it’s nothing for you to do but enjoy the few minutes you got left the best way you can—by killing somebody or burning down his house or doing some other meanness to him. no pleasure but meanness….34

Suddenly sensitive to The Misfit’s frailty and lack of faith, the grandmother proclaims their kinship and touches him on the shoulder. but he recoils and shoots her “three times through the chest.”35 at story’s end, when asked of the grandmother’s supplications, The Misfit offers a memorable verdict: “She would of been a good woman if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life.”36 here is o’connor at her most incisive and stimulating. five years later, o’connor returned with her second novel, The Violent Bear It Away.37 it tells the story of francis marion tarwater, a teenage boy who struggles to accept his prophetic calling. much like Wise Blood, the book perplexed a number of critics, who objected to its “harsh” religiosity.38 others, however, compared it to the films of Swedish auteur, Ingmar Bergman (1918–2007),39 and Vogue magazine hailed o’connor as “a young writer with an uncompromising moral intelligence and a style that happily relies on verbs, few adjectives, and no inflationary details.”40 The Violent Bear It Away was o’connor’s last publication as a living author. Nevertheless, she continued to work until her final illness and death.41 first, she began “to lecture frequently and to read from her work at colleges and universities throughout the united states.”42 an anthology of these critical and methodological talks, Mystery and Manners, was issued posthumously in 1969. her friend, the writer and scholar, ted spivey (b. 1927), has argued that o’connor’s later turn to lecturing and criticism suggests the expansion of an already great literary mind: “[E]ven if she’d never written another piece of fiction, she could have been a great critic, a Woman of letters….she had a magisterial approach; she had an understanding 32 flannery o’connor, The Complete Stories of Flannery O’Connor, new York: the noonday press 1972, p. 126. 33 ibid., pp. 131–2. 34 ibid., p. 132. 35 ibid., p. 131. 36 ibid., p. 133. 37 flannery o’connor, The Violent Bear It Away, new York: farrar, straus and giroux 1960. 38 Quoted from gooch, Flannery, p. 320. 39 ibid. 40 Quoted from ibid., p. 321. 41 cash, Flannery O’Connor, pp. 315ff. 42 ibid., p. 282.

162

Christopher B. Barnett

approach; she was widely read.”43 there were other posthumous publications as well. in 1965, o’connor’s last collection of short stories, Everything That Rises Must Converge,44 came out. Observers acclaimed it as the fulfillment of “her promise,” “the work of a master.”45 Notably, its title story also marks O’Connor’s first (and only) foray into topical literature, as it illustrates and warns against some of the outcomes of the american civil rights movement—in particular, the violence bound to ensue from the meeting of human pride and socio-political romanticism. finally, in 1979, a compilation of o’connor’s letters was issued as The Habit of Being. according to richard giannone, it comprises a central part of o’connor’s oeuvre, for it not only reveals the “warm, probing woman” behind an often unsettling literary vision, but shines “with an understanding of spiritual aspiration, both her own and that of others, whether the correspondent is believer, unbeliever, or seeker of belief.”46 II. O’Connor’s Reception of Kierkegaard o’connor makes a handful of references to Kierkegaard in her letters, and these mentions, while brief, provide a window into her understanding of and relation to Søren Kierkegaard. The first turns up in a 1952 letter to Helen Greene, a friend and faculty member at georgia state college for Women.47 o’connor begins with a complaint: on a recent visit, some of greene’s students told her that she “was a follower of Kafka and exhibited that pessimism that had been going around with european intellectuals.”48 o’connor admits that she and czech author, franz Kafka (1883–1924) share a similar approach to literature—namely, they both ground the extraordinary in the ordinary—but wants to underline that her “beliefs are a long way from Kafka.”49 as she continues, “i don’t intend the tone of [Wise Blood] to be pessimistic. it is after all a story about redemption and if you admit redemption, you are no pessimist.”50 if she is going to be viewed as a pessimist, o’connor adds, perhaps she ought to be allied with the “christian pessimism”51 of american theologian reinhold niebuhr (1892–1971), who saw christianity as an “ultimate optimism which has entertained all the facts which lead to pessimism.”52 o’connor then contrasts this “pessimistic Quoted from ibid., p. 253. flannery o’connor, Everything That Rises Must Converge, new York: farrar, straus and giroux 1965. the title was taken from a french anthology of the writings of the Jesuit paleontologist, pierre teilhard de chardin (1881–1955), one of o’connor’s favorite modern catholic thinkers. as brad gooch explains, the phrase “Tout Ce Qui Monte Converge” encapsulates “the priest’s notion of all life, from the geological to the human, converging toward an integration of the material and the spiritual…” (gooch, Flannery, p. 331). 45 Quoted from gooch, Flannery, p. 372. 46 giannone, “introduction” in Flannery O’Connor: Spiritual Writings, p. 33. 47 cash, Flannery O’Connor, pp. 175–7. 48 o’connor, Works, p. 897. 49 ibid. 50 ibid. 51 ibid. 52 reinhold niebuhr, The Essential Reinhold Niebuhr: Selected Essays and Addresses, ed. by robert mcafee brown, new haven: Yale university press 1986, p. 6. 43 44

Flannery O’Connor: Reading Kierkegaard in the Light of Thomas Aquinas

163

optimism” with the positions of Kafka and of Kierkegaard,53 though, notably, she does not even attempt to clarify the nature of their respective views. rather, she is content to draw a line between her own roots in thomism and the current popularity of existentialist thinkers: “my philosophical notions don’t derive from Kierkegard (i can’t even spell it) but from st. thomas aquinas.”54 o’connor’s second reference to Kierkegaard is more favorable and, it seems, more informed. it occurs in a 1954 letter to carl hartman, which doubles as a short analysis of Wise Blood and of its main character, hazel motes. hazel is a street preacher whose gospel, as it were, is that there is no gospel. For him, Jesus’ crucifixion has no redemptive power, in part because people are already “clean.”55 “i don’t need Jesus…. What do i need with Jesus?”56 he announces. toward the end of the story, however, hazel realizes that he is “not clean,”57 and he comes to express his previous blindness to this fact in graphic fashion. o’connor tells hartman that hazel thereby “negates his way back to the cross,” insofar as “complete nihilism has led him the long way (or maybe it’s really the short way) around to the redemption again.”58 in that sense, she later puts in, Hazel is not a figure of Christ but, rather, someone who has suffered in and for christ. it is at this point that Kierkegaard comes up: “i believe that everybody, through suffering, takes part in the redemption, and i believe they suffer most who live closest to all the possibilities of disbelief. Kierkegaard perhaps throws light on this but i had not read Kierkegaard when i wrote [Wise Blood].”59 as will be discussed below, o’connor probably has either Fear and Trembling or The Sickness unto Death in mind here, though it is hard to say for sure. nevertheless, this remark seems to evince a transformation in her understanding of Kierkegaard. Whereas before she contrasted Kierkegaard’s “pessimism” with the views of thomas aquinas, now she sees Kierkegaard as a potential expositor of her own, implicitly thomistic perspectives. O’Connor’s final mention of Kierkegaard comes in a 1958 letter to “A,” the pseudonym for o’connor’s frequent correspondent, betty hester (1923–98). once again, this comment is more allusive than indicative, but it does show that o’connor retained an interest in Kierkegaard throughout the 1950s. as she writes: did i lend you a copy of Thought with a piece in it on Kierkegaard and st. thomas? You may have sent it back and i lent it to somebody else but for the moment i can’t lay my hand on it. the pseudo theol. society has started reading Kierkegaard and when i resurrect that copy i want to lend it to the minister. there is a psychiatrist from the state hospital who comes and he has slept through both times we have read K. doesn’t get it all, he says. We also now have the student worker who is a bright girl. have you read Fear and Trembling?60 o’connor, Works, p. 898. ibid., p. 897. 55 o’connor, Wise Blood, p. 51. 56 ibid., p. 52. 57 ibid., p. 228. 58 o’connor, Works, p. 920. 59 ibid., p. 921. 60 flannery o’connor, The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O’Connor, ed. by sally fitzgerald, new York: farrar, straus and giroux 1979, p. 273. 53 54

164

Christopher B. Barnett

With so many cryptic references, this paragraph will need to be unpacked below. for the moment, however, it is sufficient to note that this remark recapitulates O’Connor’s relation to Kierkegaard—namely, her general curiosity about the danish thinker and, above all, her desire to connect him to thomas aquinas in one way or another. taken by itself, this pattern in o’connor’s comments about Kierkegaard reveals little about any particular insights she had into his work. and, indeed, it appears that she was less concerned about formulating her own ideas about Kierkegaard than getting a sense of where he fit into the larger philosophical and theological picture. after all, her direct study of Kierkegaard’s works was quite limited. as has been seen, she admitted in 1954 that she was unfamiliar with Kierkegaard during the composition of Wise Blood—a period that spanned from late 1946 to early spring 1951.61 moreover, that her 1952 references to Kierkegaard lack content and seem primarily based on hearsay suggests that this unfamiliarity persisted beyond Wise Blood’s publication. here it is highly germane that the only Kierkegaard work in o’connor’s library was a 1954 dual edition of Fear and Trembling and The Sickness unto Death,62 and, as noted above, it was o’connor’s 1954 letter to carl hartman that first demonstrated her knowledge of and appreciation for Kierkegaard. Thus 1954 appears to be the beginning of o’connor’s earnest engagement with Kierkegaard. precisely how she interacted with Kierkegaard’s thought, however, is still hard to determine. there is but one mark in her Kierkegaard edition, where she highlighted a block of text from The Sickness unto Death. it concerns the form of despair found in the person who lacks imaginative possibility and, consequently, faith—a person, according to Kierkegaard, often from a secularized, “bourgeois” background: but the philistine-bourgeois mentality does not have imagination, does not want to have it, abhors it. so there is no help to be had here. and if at times existence provides frightful experiences that go beyond the parrot-wisdom of routine experiences, then the philistine-bourgeois mentality despairs, then it becomes apparent that it was despair; it lacks faith’s possibility of being able under god to save a self from certain downfall.63

it is hardly a stretch to suggest that this paragraph might be applied to the grandmother from “a good man is hard to find,” published, notably, a year after o’connor began studying Kierkegaard. suffused with the manners of the old southern gentry or, in o’connor’s words, “the banalities of [her] society,”64 the grandmother is devastated that The Misfit situates himself outside of the “parrot-wisdom” of the South’s Christian politesse. In other words, his rejection of Christ explodes her “superficial beliefs”65 and exposes them as a guise for despair. according to o’connor, only the mysterious arrival of grace, which “can and does use as its medium the imperfect, gooch, Flannery, p. 134; pp. 194–5. søren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, and The Sickness unto Death, trans. by Walter lowrie, garden city, new York: doubleday 1954. cf. getz, O’Connor: Her Life, Library and Book Reviews, p. 100. 63 SKS 11, 156 / SUD, 41. cf. Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, and The Sickness unto Death, p. 174. 64 o’connor, The Habit of Being, p. 389. 65 ibid., p. 437. 61 62

Flannery O’Connor: Reading Kierkegaard in the Light of Thomas Aquinas

165

purely human, and even hypocritical,” is able to save the grandmother, who at last is “touched by the Grace that comes through [The Misfit] in his particular suffering.”66 nevertheless, despite the apparent overlap here between Kierkegaard’s insight and o’connor’s story, it must be added that o’connor’s markings in The Sickness unto Death contain no further notes or glosses. in the end, then, o’connor’s explicit reaction to Kierkegaard remains opaque, clouded by scant, sometimes contradictory, comments in her letters and unexplained markings in her library’s only holding by Kierkegaard. and yet, o’connor’s note to “a” suggests that these direct responses need not be seen as her “last word” on Kierkegaard, since, in that letter, she mentions further encounters with the dane’s thought—namely, through secondary literature and a reading society in milledgeville. these sources, no doubt, gave her additional occasions to evaluate Kierkegaard’s overall importance, not to mention his place in her own thinking. for example, o’connor owned a book about existentialism, namely, The Existentialists: A Critical Study by the american catholic philosopher James collins (1917–85).67 this text came out in 1952, but it is noteworthy—if also, by now, unsurprising—that the inscription in her copy is dated 1954.68 Significantly, Collins does not treat Kierkegaard as an existentialist per se, but, rather, as one of the recent forerunners of existentialism, along with friedrich nietzsche (1844–1900) and edmund husserl (1859–1938). for him, this is a critical distinction, since it means that Kierkegaard’s thought bears “other and perhaps more significant relationships than that of being [a grandfather] to existentialism.”69 such a statement would have appealed to o’connor, who, as has been seen, was skeptical about modern philosophy and viewed thomas aquinas as an intellectual benchmark. in other words, it would have encouraged her to explore Kierkegaard’s meaning apart from a certain strand of existentialism. that collins’ own reading of Kierkegaard is largely positive and, in a sense, thomistic also would have promoted such an exercise. in his view, Kierkegaard is a “social critic,” who, with Karl marx (1818–83), stresses that “contemporary industrial society has endangered the dignity of the human person.”70 Yet, whereas marx wants to solve this problem by eliminating the distance between “human desires and material possibilities of social control,” Kierkegaard insists that social transformation “depends upon the basic transformation of individual existence.”71 this Kierkegaardian emphasis on the individual, collins notes, has been handed down to the existentialists. and yet, the dane is not calling for “economic or political individualism,”72 but, rather, a total personal orientation toward divine transcendence that simultaneously seeks out “[god’s] presence in the temporal ibid., p. 389. James collins, The Existentialists: A Critical Study, chicago: henry regnery company 1952. 68 getz, O’Connor: Her Life, Library and Book Reviews, p. 90. 69 collins, The Existentialists, p. 3. 70 ibid., p. 4. 71 ibid. 72 ibid., p. 5. 66 67

166

Christopher B. Barnett

process itself.”73 according to collins, this commitment to the religious life undergirds and propels Kierkegaard’s thought. in the tradition of aristotle and thomas aquinas, Kierkegaard exhibits an “implicit realistic metaphysics of creator and creature,” in which there is a “real rather than a dissimulated dependence of human intelligence upon the data of the physical world gained through the senses.”74 from this foundation stem his famous critiques of hegelian idealism. indeed, even Kierkegaard’s most obvious weakness—his failure to round out “his teaching on the individual with a complementary study of the community”—derives from his desire to protect religious faith against “the pressure of the herd.”75 The Existentialists was not the only text in o’connor’s library wherein she could have read about Kierkegaard. she also owned the compilation Four Existentialist Theologians, which contains readings from the works of Jacques maritain (1882–1973), nicholas berdyaev (1874–1948), martin buber (1878–1965), and paul tillich (1886–1965).76 it does not, then, feature Kierkegaard’s writings per se, nor do any of its selections deal principally with Kierkegaard. however, the book’s editor, Will herberg, touches on the dane in his “general introduction,” citing, for example, “the Kierkegaardian strain” in existentialism, inasmuch as primacy is given to “enacted being (existence) over the mere concept of being.”77 moreover, one of the excerpts from maritain—after thomas aquinas, arguably o’connor’s favorite philosopher—allies Kierkegaard’s understanding of subjectivity with that of the Angelicus Doctor. for maritain, following thomas, philosophy employs sense experience to gain knowledge about “the environing world of subjects, supposita, and persons in their rôle as objects.”78 subjectivity, however, cannot be known in that way. the thinking subject, which knows other subjects as objects, “is to itself not object but subject.”79 thus subjectivity “as subjectivity is inconceptualisable; is an unknowable abyss.”80 for that reason, subjectivity “marks the frontier which separates the world of philosophy from the world of religion,” since religion, at bottom, is a “relation of person to person with all the risk, the mystery, the dread, the confidence, the delight, and the torment that lie in such a relationship.”81 according to maritain, “[t]his is what Kierkegaard felt so deeply in his polemic against hegel,” who falsely sought “to assume and integrate religion into [philosophy].”82 the existentialism of both thomas83 and Kierkegaard serves to prevent philosophical encroachment into the religious life. ibid., p. 9. ibid., p. 14. 75 ibid., p. 9. 76 see Four Existentialist Theologians: A Reader from the Works of Jacques Maritain, Nicolas Berdyaev, Martin Buber, and Paul Tillich, ed. by Will herberg, garden city, new York: doubleday anchor books 1958. 77 Will herberg, “general introduction,” in ibid., pp. 3–4. 78 Jacques maritain, “the existent,” in ibid., p. 46. 79 ibid. 80 ibid., p. 47. 81 ibid., p. 50. 82 ibid., pp. 49–50. 83 cf. ibid., p. 41. 73 74

Flannery O’Connor: Reading Kierkegaard in the Light of Thomas Aquinas

167

examples of comparable Kierkegaard-related material in o’connor’s library could be added, from Werner brock’s lengthy introduction to heidegger’s Existence and Being (bearing another 1954 inscription!)84 to The Drama of Atheist Humanism by the french theologian, henri de lubac (1896–1991).85 however, the most important of these works is, doubtless, “Kierkegaard, aquinas, and the dilemma of abraham,”86 written by the then young american “development ethicist,” denis goulet (1931–2006). indeed, this is the piece that o’connor mentions in her 1958 letter to “A,” where, even more significantly, she also states that she has recommended and lent it to others. clearly, then, o’connor felt that goulet’s article demanded attention. goulet begins by noting that, in many respects, Kierkegaard and thomas might be seen as “vastly different minds.”87 and, indeed, his intent is not to argue otherwise. nevertheless, he does want to show that “fundamental Kierkegaardian insights into morality can be fruitfully interpreted in terms of the thomistic metaphysic of moral law.”88 moreover, he aims to do so “without doing violence to the peculiarly Kierkegaardian flavor of those intuitions.”89 in order to demonstrate these claims, he concentrates on the two thinkers’ respective readings of genesis 22, which, of course, relates the story of “abraham’s call to slay isaac on moriah.”90 according to goulet, the interpretation of genesis 22 found in Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling is characterized by “the repeated use of parallelism depicting the paradoxes inherent in abraham’s actions.”91 pointed in this respect is abraham’s decision to find the telos of the ethical life outside of the universal obligation of ethics itself. in other words, abraham’s willingness to heed the divine command to sacrifice Isaac ultimately gives priority to the individual (God’s call of Abraham) over the universal (the immanent demands of ethics). thus faith in god, it would seem, has opened abraham to the charge of murder. and yet, argues goulet, Kierkegaard’s formulation of this dilemma is not meant to promote an “anti-intellectual, anti-institutional, and anti-nomian” mindset. on the Werner brock, “introduction” in martin heidegger, Existence and Being, trans. by douglas scott, r.f.c. hull, and alan crick, chicago: henry regnery company 1949. cf. getz, O’Connor: Her Life, Library and Book Reviews, p. 97. 85 henri de lubac, The Drama of Atheist Humanism, trans. by edith m. riley, cleveland, ohio: World publishing 1963 [1950]. cf. getz, O’Connor: Her Life, Library and Book Reviews, p. 102. in The Drama of Atheist Humanism, de lubac dedicates an entire chapter to nietzsche and Kierkegaard, arguing that Kierkegaard presents a compelling and viable religious alternative to nietzsche’s atheistic critiques of modernity. for more on this topic, see my “henri de lubac, s.J.: locating Kierkegaard amid the ‘drama’ of nietzschean humanism” in Kierkegaard’s Influence on Theology, tome iii, Catholic and Jewish Theology, ed. by Jon stewart, aldershot: ashgate 2012 (Kierkegaard Research: Sources, Reception, and Resources, vol. 10), pp. 97–110. 86 denis a. goulet, “Kierkegaard, aquinas, and the dilemma of abraham,” Thought, vol. 32, 1957, pp. 165–88. 87 ibid., p. 165. 88 ibid., p. 166. 89 ibid. 90 ibid., p. 165. 91 ibid., p. 166. 84

Christopher B. Barnett

168

contrary, in Kierkegaard’s hands, law is not cancelled but, rather, scrutinized in the light of “god’s utter transcendence in moral matters.”92 as goulet goes on to explain: Kierkegaard has apprehended the wide range of true contingency and freedom residing in the will of the Creator. God’s will, consequently, could not be confined to one particular expression of itself, namely, those general commands which govern ordinary human behavior. in stressing the imperviousness of true religiousness to purely human categories, Kierkegaard rejected simultaneously schleiermacher’s immanentistic morality of aesthetic religious sense and hegel’s theory of objective idealistic ethics…. besides weaning his readers away from vapid religious sentimentality and hegelian idealization of duty, Kierkegaard wished to affirm the total insufficiency of mere pragmatism in religion….What is most important is not the action’s results but its intrinsic status before god.93

that is not to say, however, that goulet does not see potential trouble with Kierkegaard’s approach to genesis 22. in fact, with that very concern in mind, he quotes the french thinker gabriel marcel (1889–1973): “[t]here will always be danger that what, for exceptional individualities, presents itself as a tragic philosophy, with its own undeniable grandeur, may become at the mass level a mere pragmatism for the use of middlemen and adventurers.”94 hence, in the second half of his paper, goulet turns to thomas aquinas, whose thought ensures that Kierkegaard’s notions “are kept in their place.”95 in goulet’s view, thomas and Kierkegaard agree that “personal vocation places a man apart from ordinary law.”96 for both of them, “right disposition toward god” trumps the “material fulfillment” of ethical principles.97 put differently, although they both assert the validity of the universal law, they also concur that “certain elements of the ethical are incorporated into the higher [religious] level and certain others are completely overstepped.”98 Where, then, do thomas and Kierkegaard part? according to goulet, it is over the question of whether or not there is an “abysmal cleavage”99 between the universal and the individual. as he puts it, thomas “did not feel compelled to assert along with the great danish thinker that god’s most intimate personal commands contradict those of the ‘ethical sphere’ or, what is for st. thomas its equivalent, ‘natural law.’ ”100 at bottom, thomas’ stance derives from “god’s supreme mastery over human life,”101 a mastery that obtains both for natural law and for the divine call of individuals. indeed, in both cases, law is ordered to the same telos—namely, friendship. as thomas writes, “[e]very law aims at establishing friendship, either 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101

ibid., p. 174. ibid., p. 175. Quoted from ibid., p. 177. Quoted from ibid. ibid. ibid., p. 179. ibid., p. 180. ibid., p. 177. ibid. ibid.

Flannery O’Connor: Reading Kierkegaard in the Light of Thomas Aquinas

169

between man and man, or between man and god.”102 for thomas, furthermore, law and its purpose are always already ordained to the good: “[W]e know that whatever god wills, he wills it under the aspect of good.”103 hence, in the rare event that god abolishes the “secondary precepts”104 of the natural law, one can have confidence that he does so not only for the sake of friendship, but also in accordance with the good. the ethical may be suspended, but, insofar as such a suspension comes from god, it is never absurd. notably, goulet concedes that thomas and Kierkegaard may even agree on this point: “The reflective Dane regards, or at least tends to regard, ethics purely as Kant and hegel viewed it, that is, as humanly autonomous rules of behavior. thus considered, the ethical is in truth contradicted by god’s command to abraham.”105 nevertheless, goulet’s overall perspective is unaffected. although he gives “everlasting credit” to Kierkegaard’s portrayal of the “demands of faith, true obedience to god, and personal obligation,” he contends that thomas accomplishes the same without casting doubt on the “general principles of intelligibility and existential continuity that underlie the whole gamut of reality.”106 in short, thomas’ account better demonstrates the “dynamic connection” between abraham’s situation and “the world of universality.”107 Whether or not o’connor precisely agreed with goulet’s conclusion is unknown, though, again, the fact that she commended the piece to others hints at her approval. to be sure, she would have appreciated goulet’s endorsement of thomas, and, clearly, the article did nothing to discourage her study of Kierkegaard. after all, her 1958 letter to “a,” which states she is reading Kierkegaard in the “pseudo theol. society,” also indicates familiarity with “Kierkegaard, aquinas, and the dilemma of abraham.” it seems likely, then, that goulet’s essay offered philosophical confirmation of what O’Connor already thought, or at least what she had thought since 1954—namely, that for all of Kierkegaard’s strengths as a religious thinker, he was not as trustworthy as thomas. this kind of judgment is implied elsewhere in the same letter to “a.” there o’connor says that she wants to lend the goulet article “to the minister.” she is referring to William Kirkland, then an episcopal priest in milledgeville and a st. thomas aquinas, Summa Theologica, vols. 1–5, notre dame, indiana: christian classics 1948 (vol. 2, p. 1032), or, following the traditional manner of citation, see aquinas, Summa Theologica, i-ii, q. 99, a. 1. 103 ibid., p. 679, or Summa Theologica i-ii, q. 19, a. 10. 104 goulet, “Kierkegaard, aquinas, and the dilemma of abraham,” p. 182. 105 ibid., p. 185. 106 ibid., p. 188. 107 ibid. o’connor found a similar conclusion in Toward the Knowledge of God, a short work by the french scholar claude tresmontant (1925–97). indeed, o’connor reviewed this book in 1962, and she applauded tresmontant’s “closely reasoned” attempt to demonstrate the “possibility of knowing that god exists.” as she continues, “tresmontant is convinced that a knowledge of god is really possible by a correct use of human reason, beginning with the fact of creation and without asking the unbeliever to make Kierkegaard’s leap into the absurd.” see lorine m. getz, Flannery O’Connor, Literary Theologian: The Habits and Discipline of Being, lewiston: edwin mellen press 1999, p. 189. 102

170

Christopher B. Barnett

member of what o’connor jokingly dubbed the “pseudo theol. society.” Kirkland met o’connor “in 1954 or early 1955,” and, “[r]ecognizing [her] intellectual strength, [he] therefore decided that he and a few other people in milledgeville would benefit from meeting with her to talk about philosophy and theology.”108 an admirer of Kierkegaard, as well as of the german catholic thinker baron friedrich von Hügel (1852–1925), it was Kirkland who first suggested that the group read Kierkegaard.109 as he recalls, “We started with existentialism….i was curious to get her reaction to…the subject.”110 however, he soon concluded that o’connor was not only conversant with the topic, but also shared certain existentialist or, more accurately, Kierkegaardian tendencies. as he explains in a 1967 article: [o’connor] was well aware of modern currents of thought as regards religion; she certainly knew of the eagerness for “relevance.” but, as far as she was concerned the gospel was clear, and the choice for modern man no different now than in ages past. it was no part of her task, either as a writer or as a roman catholic christian, to bridge the radical discontinuity between christ and culture. for her, as for Kierkegaard (whose writings she liked), the choice was clearly either/or.111

of course, that Kirkland claims o’connor “liked” Kierkegaard merits emphasis: it is, after all, the most explicit declaration of O’Connor’s affinity for the Dane. And yet, O’Connor’s desire to loan Goulet’s piece to Kirkland is equally significant, suggesting that she never abandoned her basic approach to Kierkegaard—namely, to read him in the light of thomas aquinas. this conclusion seems to indicate that, for o’connor, Kierkegaard’s thinking was subordinate to thomas’. and, as far as it goes, that inference is true. however, there is another, far more interesting, way of understanding o’connor’s reception of Kierkegaard. in a recent book, farrell o’gorman argues that there were two waves, as it were, of twentieth-century Southern Catholic literature. The first was inaugurated by the poet allen tate (1899–1979), and his wife, the novelist caroline gordon (1895–1981). both converts, tate and gordon, entered the church by way of the thomist revival in twentieth-century catholicism, which was led by thinkers such as maritain and Étienne gilson (1884–1978). for tate, catholicism in general, and Thomism in particular, provided an “all-encompassing and unified philosophical system that stood in marked contrast to the apparent intellectual disorder of the day.”112 gordon, meanwhile, was more of “a ‘literary’ convert,” whose attraction to catholicism came through “other artists” and through her linking of “faith with literary aesthetics.”113 In both cases, Maritain was their “single greatest influence,” cash, Flannery O’Connor, p. 194. ibid., p. 196. 110 Quoted from ibid. 111 William m. Kirkland, “flannery o’connor, the person and the Writer,” The EastWest Review, vol. 3, 1967, pp. 160–1. 112 farrell o’gorman, Peculiar Crossroads: Flannery O’Connor, Walker Percy, and Catholic Vision in Postwar Southern Fiction, baton rouge: louisiana state university press 2004 (Southern Literary Studies), p. 66. 113 ibid., p. 69. 108 109

Flannery O’Connor: Reading Kierkegaard in the Light of Thomas Aquinas

171

partly because tate and gordon befriended maritain at princeton in the late 1940s, but also because they shared his cultural and artistic taste, from an affection for an older, more agrarian economy to a celebration of the medieval humanist art of dante alighieri.114 Of course, it already has been noted that O’Connor, too, was influenced by maritain. and yet, as o’gorman maintains, her reception of maritain’s “neothomism” was quite different from that of tate and gordon, thus putting her, along with Walker percy, at the forefront of the second wave of twentieth-century southern catholic literature. indeed, despite her appreciation of maritain, not to mention her veneration of thomas aquinas, o’connor did not think a self-enclosed neo-thomism was sufficient to address the problems of modern secular society. As a result, she turned to more eccentric catholic intellectuals such as marcel and romano guardini (1885–1968), as well as to existentialist thinkers such as Kierkegaard.115 but this was not so much a turn against thomism as an attempt to supplement it with different, yet compatible, sources. as o’gorman writes: [s]uch interest in existentialism could in fact be consistent with o’connor’s…reading of neo-thomism. the existentialists’ quarrel with modern philosophy was that it tended to deal in abstractions, to focus on systems that vaguely dealt with human nature rather than with the situation of individuals in a concrete world….thomistic philosophy, itself rigorously systematic and inclined to speak of the “essence” of human nature, was in one sense kindred to the modern systems the existentialists attacked; yet certain neo-thomists favored by o’connor…saw the two modes of philosophy as potentially consistent precisely because they read aquinas as emphasizing both the priority of existence over essence and the roots of human knowledge in sense experience.116

in this connection, o’gorman notes that o’connor owned James collins’ The Existentialists,117 which, as has been observed, located similarities between Kierkegaard and thomism. he fails to mention goulet’s piece, but, as was discussed above, it is an even more explicit attempt to compare Kierkegaard and thomas. thus o’gorman’s thesis matches up nicely with what this article has demonstrated—namely, that O’Connor’s Thomism did not close her off to figures such as Kierkegaard, but, rather, gave her a standard by which to evaluate them. in that way, o’connor greatly differed from tate and gordon, but that does not mean she was an abnormal or dissenting catholic intellectual. as o’gorman puts it, “of course, the catholic tradition itself is not limited to thomism or ‘humanism’; pascal—who has been called an antecedent of the existentialists—and augustine, for example, are more akin to Kierkegaard than to aquinas.”118 although a “hillbilly thomist,” o’connor’s reading of catholic authors such as marcel and guardini and non-Catholic figures such as Kierkegaard confirms that she was attuned to this broad (and broadminded) catholic tradition. ironically, it may be in just this sense 114 115 116 117 118

ibid., pp. 71ff. ibid., pp. 77–8. ibid., p. 79. ibid. ibid., p. 83.

172

Christopher B. Barnett

that o’connor most closely resembles thomas aquinas, whose famous—and, in his day, controversial—appropriation of aristotle revolutionized and enriched catholic thinking henceforward.119 III. Conclusion it was noted above that o’connor’s friend William Kirkland thought she shared certain tendencies with Kierkegaard—an insight that other commentators also have articulated, albeit in different ways. for thomas merton, o’connor “made a more devastating use of existentialist intuitions”120 than any other american writer. ralph Wood argues that O’Connor rejected the “identification of Christian faith and Western civilization,” and, with that in mind, he groups her with figures such as Kierkegaard, g.K. chesterton (1874–1936), and Karl barth (1886–1968).121 according to J. oates smith, Kierkegaard is one of o’connor’s principal forerunners, insofar as “o’connor’s world” at once depicts “Kierkegaardian anguish in the face of man’s certitude” and “Kierkegaardian saints” at odds with “ordinary human behavior.”122 A gentler reading is given by David Eggenschwiler, who identifies both O’Connor and Kierkegaard as christian humanists, concerned above all with contemplating “man in his finite and infinite extensions, as a creature of religious, psychological, and social depths.”123 for eggenschwiler, then, it is The Sickness unto Death that best complements O’Connor’s fiction, for there Kierkegaard tenders “the most impressive religious psychology since st. thomas,” showing that, no matter how flawed, human nature is not opposed to grace but, rather, longs for grace to bring it to fullness—a view that corresponds to and sheds light on o’connor’s “emphasis on the incarnation and sacramentalism.”124 it is hoped that the contribution of this article has been to show that such interpretations are not without foundation in o’connor’s life. that is to say, this piece has shown that connections between Kierkegaard’s thinking and o’connor’s stories have a basis in her own reception of the dane. at the same time, however, it also has been confirmed that O’Connor should not be seen as a Kierkegaardian per se—a reading that smith, for one, comes quite close to recommending—since she always evaluated Kierkegaard in the light of her intellectual standard, thomas aquinas. In nuce, hers was a Kierkegaardian-flavored Thomism and not the other way around.

119

2002.

see, for example, fergus Kerr, After Aquinas: Versions of Thomism, oxford: blackwell

Quoted from o’gorman, Peculiar Crossroads, p. 77. Wood, Flannery O’Connor, pp. 70–1. 122 oates smith, “ritual and Violence in flannery o’connor,” Thought, vol. 163, 1966, pp. 547–9; p. 559. 123 david eggenschwiler, The Christian Humanism of Flannery O’Connor, detroit: Wayne state university press 1972, p. 11. 124 ibid., pp. 17–19; p. 25. 120 121

bibliography I. References to or Uses of Kierkegaard in O’Connor’s corpus The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O’Connor, ed. by sally fitzgerald, new York: farrar, straus and giroux 1979, p. 273. Flannery O’Connor: Collected Works, new York: literary classics of the united states, inc. 1988, pp. 897–8; p. 921. II. Sources of O’Connor’s Knowledge of Kierkegaard brock, Werner, “introduction,” in martin heidegger, Existence and Being, trans. by douglas scott, r.f.c. hull, and alan crick, chicago: henry regnery company 1949, pp. 13ff. collins, James, The Existentialists: A Critical Study, chicago: henry regnery company 1952, pp. 1–39; pp. 40ff. goulet, denis a., “Kierkegaard, aquinas, and the dilemma of abraham,” Thought, vol. 32, 1957, pp. 165–88. heidegger, martin, Existence and Being, trans. by douglas scott, r.f.c. hull, and alan crick, chicago: henry regnery company 1949, p. 22; pp. 33–5; p. 62; p. 136; p. 174; p. 197; p. 239. herberg, Will, “general introduction,” in Four Existentialist Theologians: A Reader from the Works of Jacques Maritain, Nicolas Berdyaev, Martin Buber, and Paul Tillich, ed. by Will herberg, garden city, new York: doubleday anchor books 1958, pp. 3–4. lubac, henri de, The Drama of Atheist Humanism, trans. by edith m. riley, london: sheed & Ward 1949, p. 50; p. 53; p. 54; pp. 57–9; p. 117. maritain, Jacques, “the existent,” in Four Existentialist Theologians: A Reader from the Works of Jacques Maritain, Nicolas Berdyaev, Martin Buber, and Paul Tillich, ed. by Will herberg, garden city, new York: doubleday anchor books 1958, p. 49. tresmontant, claude, Toward the Knowledge of God, trans. by robert J. olsen, baltimore: helicon press 1961, p. 117. III. Secondary Literature on O’Connor’s Relation to Kierkegaard asals, frederick, Flannery O’Connor: The Imagination of Extremity, athens, georgia: university of georgia press 2007, pp. 29ff.

174

Christopher B. Barnett

benoit, raymond, “the existential intuition of flannery o’connor in The Violent Bear It Away,” Notes on Contemporary Literature, vol. 23, 1993, pp. 2–3. brinkmeyer, Jr., robert h., “asceticism and the imaginative Vision of flannery o’connor,” in Flannery O’Connor: New Perspectives, ed. by sura p. rath and mary neff shaw, athens, georgia: university of georgia press 1996, p. 178. eggenschwiler, david, The Christian Humanism of Flannery O’Connor, detroit: Wayne state university press 1972, pp. 25ff. evans, Jay alan, The Kierkegaardian Paradigm of the Radical Self in Flannery O’Connor’s Fiction, ph.d. thesis, the american university, Washington, d.c. 1984. getz, lorine m., Flannery O’Connor: Her Life, Library and Book Reviews, new York: edward mellen press 1980, p. 97; p. 102. gordon, sarah, “the news from afar: a note on structure in o’connor’s narratives,” Flannery O’Connor Bulletin, vol. 14, 1985, pp. 80–7. goulet, denis a., “Kierkegaard, aquinas, and the dilemma of abraham,” Thought, vol. 32, 1957, pp. 165–88. grimshaw, James a., The Flannery O’Connor Companion, Westport, connecticut: greenwood press 1981, pp. 96–7. hewitt, eben, “diapsalmata and numinous recapitulation: the tropology of ‘parker’s back,’ ” in Proceedings of the Northeast Regional Meeting of the Conference on Christianity and Literature, Regis College, 10–12 October 1996, ed. by Joan f. hallisey and mary-anne Vetterling, Weston, massachusetts: regis college 1996, pp. 61–4. Kirkland, William m., “flannery o’connor, the person and the Writer,” The East– West Review, vol. 3, 1967, pp. 160–1. martin, carter W., The True Country: Themes in the Fiction of Flannery O’Connor, nashville: Vanderbilt university press 1994 [1969], pp. 63–5. o’gorman, farrell, Peculiar Crossroads: Flannery O’Connor, Walker Percy, and Catholic Vision in Postwar Southern Fiction, baton rouge: louisiana state university press 2004 (Southern Literary Studies), pp. 76–83. schleifer, ronald, “rural gothic: the stories of flannery o’connor” in Critical Essays on Flannery O’Connor, ed. by melvin J. friedman and beverly lyon clark, boston: g.K. hall and company 1985 (Critical Essays on American Literature), p. 159. scott, r. neil, Flannery O’Connor: An Annotated Reference Guide to Criticism, murfreesboro, tennessee: timberlane books 2002, pp. 106ff. smith, J. oates, “ritual and Violence in flannery o’connor,” Thought, vol. 163, 1966, pp. 545–60. spivey, ted. r., The Journey Beyond Tragedy: A Study of Myth and Modern Fiction, orlando: university presses of florida 1980, pp. 139–47. Wood, ralph c., Flannery O’Connor and the Christ-Haunted South, grand rapids, michigan: eerdmans 2004, p. 71; p. 165; p. 203; p. 207.

Walker percy: literary extrapolations from Kierkegaard Joseph ballan

Walker percy (1916–90) was a novelist and essayist from the american south, well known for his commitment to catholicism and for his interest in so-called “existentialist” writings and themes. he was born into a mississippi family whose distinguished history includes a united states senator. Walker’s father committed suicide when he was young. he was entrusted into the care of William alexander percy (1885–1942), whose bestselling autobiography, Lanterns on the Levee, defended traditional southern manners and mores.1 percy studied the natural sciences at the university of north carolina at chapel hill, and took the degree of m.d. at columbia university’s medical school. during this period in new York city, as an intern at bellevue hospital, percy contracted tuberculosis and spent several months recovering at trudeau sanitarium at saranac lake in the adirondack mountains. While recovering, percy read extensively in the works of Kierkegaard, martin heidegger (1889–1976), gabriel marcel (1889–1973), Jean-paul sartre (1905–80), and albert camus (1913–60).2 these readings sowed the seeds of discontent with contemporary scientism in general and with the medical profession, the profession he himself had chosen, in particular.3 shortly after his stay in the sanitarium, percy went on a road trip with his childhood friend, the novelist shelby foote (1916–2005), during which time he decided to be married, to move to new orleans (or rather to covington, a suburb of new orleans), to become a writer rather than a medical doctor, and to become a catholic (his family was protestant). once he described his conversion as occasioned, at least in part, by a reading of Kierkegaard, from whom he learned, among other things, the importance of “willing one thing.”4 he published essays on faith and culture in periodicals like America and Commonweal, articles which would later comprise the nonfiction collections The Message in the Bottle and Signposts in a Strange Land. William alexander percy, Lanterns on the Levee: Recollections of a Planter’s Son, new York: Knopf 1941. on the percy family, see bertram Wyatt-brown, The House of Percy: Honor, Melancholy, and Imagination in a Southern Family, new York: oxford university press 1994. 2 patrick samway, Walker Percy: A Life, new York: farrar, straus and giroux 1997, p. 126. 3 ibid., p. 125. 4 paul elie, The Life you Save May be your Own: An American Pilgrimage, new York: farrar, straus and giroux 2003, p. 156. 1

176

Joseph Ballan

after two aborted attempts at novels, percy produced what would remain his most critically acclaimed novel, The Moviegoer, which won the national book award in 1961. Percy wrote five other novels and many essays before succumbing to cancer. I. Kierkegaard in the Writings of Walker Percy the close connection between percy’s literary reputation and the writings of Kierkegaard is made humorously manifest in a 1977 satirical self-interview entitled, “Questions they never asked me.” there, the interviewer percy asks the author percy, “do you have any favorite dead writers?” the response: “please don’t ask me about dostoevsky and Kierkegaard.”5 one cannot blame interviewers for having been interested in the unique influence exerted by Kierkegaard on the American novelist, given that already in a very early interview he had listed the authors of greatest importance to him as beginning with “dostoevsky, Kierkegaard, st. augustine.”6 in another early interview, establishing a pattern for interpretive remarks about Kierkegaard’s work that he would make throughout his life, he remarks that Kierkegaard aided him in realizing the “shortcomings” of modern science. one notion in particular gripped him in his early encounter with Kierkegaard: “hegel told everything about the world except one thing: what it is to be a man and to live and to die.”7 Much later, he identifies the occasion for his conversion to Catholicism in the 1940s as “the reading of Kierkegaard’s extraordinary essay: ‘on the difference between a genius and an apostle.’ like the readings that mean the most to you, what it did was to confirm something I suspected but that it took Søren Kierkegaard to put into words.”8 in spite of an annoyance at being asked about Kierkegaard, a consideration of the question of percy’s reception of Kierkegaard is aided by an interview conducted on precisely this subject by bradley dewey for The Journal of Religion in 1974. there we learn that percy reads the history of his own reception of Kierkegaard as a series of rereadings occasioned by initial confusion and frustration. percy reports he first read Either/Or but did not understand it. he then struggled through The Sickness unto Death and Repetition before having the difficulty of understanding these texts dissolved by a reading of Concluding Unscientific Postscript, which he found much more direct than the other texts.9 he knew the works through the Walker percy, Signposts in a Strange Land, ed. by patrick samway, new York: farrar, straus and giroux 1991, p. 399. 6 Walker percy, Conversations with Walker Percy, ed. by lewis lawson and Victor Kramer, Jackson: university press of mississippi 1980, p. 5. this is from a 1962 interview with Harriett Doar, shortly after the publication of his first major novel. 7 ibid., p. 11. 8 percy, Signposts in a Strange Land, p. 376. the text here is from a 1987 interview with zoltán abádi nagy. 9 percy, Conversations with Walker Percy, p. 107. patrick samway reports that percy also owned the two-volume augsburg press edition of Edifying Discourses, translated by david and lillian swenson, along with theodor haecker’s Søren Kierkegaard, presumably in alexander dru’s translation. see samway, Walker Percy: A Life, p. 126. 5

Walker Percy: Literary Extrapolations from Kierkegaard

177

english translations published by princeton university press.10 While he does not reveal much about what secondary sources, if any, he used in his reading of Kierkegaard, at one point in a cursory discussion of Kierkegaard’s relation to Kant, he briefly mentions James Collins’ work on this question.11 percy’s readings and rereadings of Kierkegaard had taken place in the 1950’s, before he had made his first appearance on the national literary stage as a novelist. By the time he reached this latter point in his career, which took place in the early 1960s in the wake of a very positive critical reception of The Moviegoer, Kierkegaard’s work had become for him a conceptual “framework” within which to work, but also on which to build.12 percy reports that his lack of formal philosophical training hindered an appreciation of what he took to be Kierkegaard’s criticisms of hegelianism, until one day he “realized that you could very successfully extrapolate his attack on hegel against what we might call scientism.”13 as we shall see, this “extrapolation” is the central operation performed by percy on the work of Kierkegaard. this is not to say that percy was wholly uncritical of Kierkegaard. We will come to a more extended line of criticism in a moment, but for now we simply note that in his interview with dewey, percy admits to having struggled with Kierkegaard’s emphasis on subjectivity as a corrective to objectivistic excesses at the expense of a proper appreciation for the intersubjective dimension of human life. interestingly, percy discovered in the dialogical philosophy of martin buber (1878–1965) a corrective to Kierkegaard’s excesses in the direction of “extreme individualism, subjectivity, and inwardness.”14 II. Kierkegaard in the Essays and other Nonfiction Writings The two essays by Percy in which one finds the most sustained explicit engagement with Kierkegaard are printed in his first collection of essays, The Message in the Bottle: the essay after which the book is named and an essay called “the man on the train.” in the latter piece, percy takes up the then-hot question of the “literature of alienation” and concludes that what gets called “literature of alienation” refers to a literature in which alienation actually becomes reversed and undone because it is recognized and represented.15 a truly alienated literature would be something on the order of a perry mason novel, not a short story by franz Kafka (1883–1924). When percy asks himself how it is that contemporary writers represent alienation such that it might be dispelled, he denies that alienation itself can be represented. he compares this impossibility with the impossibility of representing in literary form the “trials” that is, those of david and lillian swenson and Walter lowrie. see ibid., p. 122. he reports having owned all of them with the possible exception of Training in Christianity. 11 Walker percy, The Message in the Bottle, new York: farrar, straus and giroux 1975, p. 279. see James collins, The Existentialists, chicago: henry regnery company 1952, p. 95. 12 percy, Conversations with Walker Percy, pp. 116–17. 13 ibid., p. 117. 14 ibid., p. 119. 15 percy, “the man on the train,” in The Message in the Bottle, p. 83. 10

178

Joseph Ballan

of abraham and Job, according to Kierkegaard.16 alienation and trials are purely “existential,” as opposed to “aesthetic-existential,” categories, and therefore cannot be represented in direct fashion. the writer can confront alienation in an indirect way by making use of one of two categories definitively established by Kierkegaard, in Either/Or I and Repetition, respectively: rotation and repetition, which percy describes as “aesthetic-existential” categories. We can infer that percy recognizes that this distinction between the existential and the aesthetic-existential is his own, not Kierkegaard’s, when he distinguishes his concept of “rotation” from that of Kierkegaard (and marcel), who treat rotation as “an experiential, a travel category, rather than an aesthetic.”17 the central metaphor of the essay, namely, the man on the train, can illustrate any one of the three modes introduced there (alienation, rotation, repetition), which become for percy hermeneutic tools for the interpretation of a wide variety of examples from contemporary cultural life (movies, books, soap operas). The man on a train finds himself in a state of alienation by being unaware of his abiding in a no-place traveling through a variety of real places. a privileged example of rotation, a more contemporary analogue for which percy finds in the figure of the fugitive hopping aboard a train, any train, is Huck Finn in mark twain’s (1835–1910) Adventures. in both situations, the characters transgress what percy calls “zones” in the hopes of being happily surprised by the experience of the new.18 He identifies amnesia as a highly effective tool at the disposal of the literature of rotation; this fact accounts for its popularity in Western movies and in soap operas. ultimately, as in Either/Or, rotation comes down to an escapist practice. as the “category of the new,” rotation aims to escape from the condition of alienation and is therefore powerless to effect change in the character deploying it as a strategy for living.19 on the train, the category of aesthetic repetition is embodied in a character who deliberately seeks to recreate an experience from the past. Examples of such characters, in which one finds a greater degree of “identification” than in the characters representing rotation, are captain ryder from evelyn Waugh’s (1903–66) Brideshead Revisited and charles swann in marcel proust’s (1871–1922) Remembrance of Things Past.20 While both rotation and repetition offer a qualified reprieve from the tyranny of what percy calls, following the english translation of heidegger’s Being and Time, “everydayness,”21 both categories, as aesthetic approaches and as existential attitudes, fall short in that they omit “the serious ibid., p. 86. that Kierkegaard was, in percy’s mind, bound up with the whole problem of the “literature of alienation” is evidenced by the fact that he included the Concluding Unscientific Postscript in a seminar he taught on “the novel of alienation” at louisiana state university in 1974. see samway, Walker Percy: A Life, p. 314. 17 percy, The Message in the Bottle, p. 93. It is significant that in this context Percy gives the only indication that he is aware of the function of Kierkegaard’s pseudonyms, citing Victor eremita to show that rotation is essentially concerned with travel. 18 ibid., pp. 90–1. 19 ibid., p. 93. 20 ibid., pp. 95–6. 21 see martin heidegger, Being and Time, trans. by John macquarrie and edward robinson, new York: harpercollins 1962, pp. 117–30; pp. 166–80. 16

Walker Percy: Literary Extrapolations from Kierkegaard

179

character of the search.”22 that is to say, they bring about interesting variations within the sphere of immanence, but the main characters never aim for, much less reach, beyond that sphere. parenthetically acknowledging that this discussion ignores “Kierkegaard’s distinction that true religious repetition has nothing to do with travel”23 and, by extension, nothing to do with repetition as Percy finds it in modern and contemporary literature, he consigns the literatures of repetition and rotation to “Kierkegaard’s aesthetic stage—which can in no wise be self-transcending.”24 in “the message in the bottle,” percy brings Kierkegaard to bear on his own polemic against twentieth-century scientism. What one finds here and throughout Percy’s nonfiction writing is the construction of a historical analogy whereby the regnant hegelianism of Kierkegaard’s day becomes a parallel to the contemporary privileging of the natural sciences, their methodology, and the objectivity they purportedly achieve. like the “the man on the train,” this essay has a central metaphor: the castaway. percy’s main claim in this piece is that the human condition should be understood as comparable to the condition of a castaway, displaced from his proper home. the castaway who makes himself at home on his island is in despair, because he ignores his fundamentally homeless state of being. using the figure of the castaway as he receives messages that come to him in bottles that wash up onto the shore, percy considers the different types of messages, information, and truth-claims that human beings typically encounter.25 the primary distinction at which he arrives is “the difference between a piece of knowledge and a piece of news.”26 While the former includes all the synthetic and analytic propositions classified by the various Wissenschaften and that the castaway tries to see “sub specie aeternitatis,”27 the latter category names that type of information which has a direct bearing on the castaway’s state of being.28 specifying that his investigation concerns itself with “news as a category of information,” percy makes a further distinction between “island news,” the kind of information that reinforces the castaway’s false sense of home on the island, and “news from across the seas,” which is transcendent to the island situation and reminds the castaway of his true provenance.29 the castaway who is not in despair will eventually come to realize the insufficiency of both objective “knowledge” and “island news.” It is not difficult to imagine how Percy will use Kierkegaard to explain and justify further this basic framework. ultimately, percy wants to substantiate the claim that christianity is a piece of “news from across the seas” that christians and others have often mistaken for knowledge sub specie aeternitatis. opening the piece under the sign of Kierkegaard, with an epigraph that juxtaposes a quotation from the De veritate of thomas aquinas (“the act of faith consists essentially in knowledge”) with a 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29

percy, The Message in the Bottle, p. 96. ibid. ibid., pp. 96–7. ibid., pp. 119–25. ibid., p. 125. ibid. ibid., pp. 123–5. ibid., p. 140.

180

Joseph Ballan

statement from the Philosophical Fragments (“faith is not a form of knowledge”),30 percy credits Kierkegaard with having shown the irreducibility of christian faith to objective knowledge.31 indeed, in correspondence with charles bell, a boyhood friend who had also apparently tried his hand at writing about Kierkegaard, percy expresses a desire to write his own “theory of communication.” unlike Kierkegaard’s theory, however, percy’s would treat news “as a form of communication and specify its relevance to various modes of existence.”32 nevertheless, “the message in the bottle” marks one of the few places in percy’s writing where Kierkegaard’s work receives sustained criticism. even while he approves of and appropriates the distinction from the Philosophical Fragments between the teacher and the teaching,33 Percy qualifies this claim in a footnote, where he notes that while the teacher is of primary importance in the communication of christianity, this point should not obscure the fact that this communication is also a teaching.34 later in the essay, percy makes his disagreement with Kierkegaard much more pointed. percy thinks that Kierkegaard’s stark contrast between faith and reason ultimately fails to escape the hegelian framework, which for percy ultimately amounts to the privileging of objective knowledge. on percy’s reading, which admittedly does not evince much knowledge of hegel himself or of hegelianism more generally, Kierkegaard appears as little more than a kind of photographic negative of hegel, having “remained hegelian enough (‘scientist’ enough in our terminology) to accept the scientific scale of significance which ranks general knowledge sub specie aeternitatis very high and contingent historical knowledge very low.”35 by simply turning the framework on its head, revaluating what contradicts objective knowledge as the “paradox,” Kierkegaard loses the sense of the christian gospel as news, that is to say, as having a semantic content which, though irreducible to objective knowledge, nonetheless remains meaningful as information. elsewhere, Percy reports his own discovery of Kierkegaard as the opening up of new fields of knowledge to the young writer, knowledge that was “as serious as science” for him. When one takes this comment together with the line of criticism in “the message in the bottle,” it seems that percy attributes to Kierkegaard an unwillingness to name the importance, the specifically epistemological significance, of his discovery for what it was. On Percy’s reading of the cultural situation in which he finds himself, the stumbling-block for scientists and philosophers, including those he recognizes as Kierkegaard’s latter-day descendents (for example, Karl Jaspers (1883–1969) and martin heidegger), is that salvation comes by news that is heard and believed.36 by the end of the essay, one realizes that these criticisms of Kierkegaard are primarily aimed at the author of the Fragments and the Postscript. in those works, accepting 30 31 32 33 34 35 36

ibid., p. 119; SKS 4, 264 / PF, 62. percy, The Message in the Bottle, p. 145. Quoted in samway, Walker Percy: A Life, p. 274. SKS 4, 258–71 / PF, 55–71. percy, The Message in the Bottle, p. 140. ibid., p. 145. ibid., p. 146.

Walker Percy: Literary Extrapolations from Kierkegaard

181

the absolute paradox appears equivalent to receiving the “message in the bottle.” Yet even when this message is not of the order of objective knowledge, suggests percy, “the message in the bottle is not enough….there must be, as Kierkegaard himself saw later, someone who delivers the news and who speaks with authority.”37 given an earlier mention of the figure of the “apostle” in the context of his discussion of Kierkegaard,38 and given, as we have seen, the importance for percy of the essay on the difference between the genius and the apostle, we may conclude that this claim, which attests to some rough knowledge of the chronology of Kierkegaard’s writings, refers to that essay on the nature of christian authority. many of the passing references to Kierkegaard in percy’s other essays cite this essay on authority.39 as we shall see when we come to the only explicit nod to Kierkegaard in what is likely percy’s most accomplished novel, The Moviegoer, he appears to have been unclear (at least in the early 1960s) regarding the precise meaning of a discourse that is “without authority” in the specific sense with which Kierkegaard endows this locution, yet percy evinces familiarity with another important communicative concept from Kierkegaard’s corpus, namely, indirect communication, and he compares his art as a novelist to Kierkegaard’s employment of an indirect method of composition.40 the vast majority of the less substantial references to Kierkegaard in percy’s essays restate in one way or another the analogy, described above, between the hegelianism of Kierkegaard’s day and the scientism of percy’s.41 associating Kierkegaard with a critique of the privileging of a certain type of knowledge was absolutely decisive for percy’s interpretation of the nineteenthcentury writer; this can be witnessed in a proposed revision to the framework of existence-spheres, whereby percy “would go further than Kierkegaard” by “combin[ing] the aesthetic and the scientific. I think they are parallel. I think Einstein and mozart are on the same plane.”42 frequently, percy evokes Kierkegaard’s image of the thinker in the thrall of objectivity who understands the whole universe, but not himself, or who constructs the grandest of conceptual architectures only to have forgotten to include a space in which he himself might suitably, humanly dwell.43 indeed, percy describes the discovery of this image as being among the most important influences of Kierkegaard upon his own orientation, likening it to “a bombshell” and saying of Kierkegaard that he “expressed my own feelings about the whole scientific synthesis.”44 a variation on this attack on the contemporary scientific landscape is Percy’s observation that contemporary American psychiatry routinely ignores the existential-psychological issues of anxiety and despair treated with such verve by Kierkegaard and marcel.45 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45

ibid., p. 148. ibid., p. 146. see, for example, percy, Signposts in a Strange Land, p. 356; p. 389. ibid., p. 385. ibid., p. 151; p. 188; p. 271; pp. 301–2; p. 343; p. 375. percy, Conversations with Walker Percy, p. 204. SKS 7, 115–17 / CUP1, 118–20. percy, Conversations with Walker Percy, p. 109. percy, Signposts in a Strange Land, p. 252.

182

Joseph Ballan

the essays containing the most sustained conceptual engagements with the work of Kierkegaard, where the latter does not simply stand, more or less immediately, as the very symbol of anti-objectivism, are the two discussed above, “the man on the Train” and “The Message in the Bottle.” Not all of Percy’s nonfiction takes the form of essays, however. We have not yet come to his satirical Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book, a humorous, we might say indirect, attack on america’s self-help culture, on the one hand, and its unthinking privileging of the natural sciences (typified by fascination with the then-recent carl sagan television documentary, Cosmos), on the other. the book, which percy compares to Either/Or in its “potpourri” quality,46 promises to inform the reader “how you can survive in the cosmos about which you know more and more while knowing less and less about yourself, this despite 10,000 self-help books, 100,000 psychotherapists, and 100 million fundamentalist christians.”47 it categorizes and characterizes many different types of modern self and the problems facing each individual type. for instance, percy mentions Kierkegaard in a chapter on “the orbiting self,” that is, the type of self characteristic of both great artists and great scientists48 who transcend themselves in order to create their art or to discover scientific truths, but have difficulty making the movement of a return to the plane of immanence, a movement percy calls “reentry” into ordinary life. these people live, that is to say, perpetually “in orbit.” in Kierkegaard’s selfpresentation as an idler about copenhagen, chatting with the shopkeepers and so forth, in order to hide the secret of his massive authorial undertaking, Percy finds an example of a rather strange attempt at “reentry.”49 more seriously, percy claims that Kierkegaard identified a difficult “mode of reentry,” but one which, according to percy, is the “only viable” such mode according to Kierkegaard, pascal, and others: “reentry under the direct sponsorship of god,” that is, through the self’s becoming itself, in words taken from The Sickness unto Death, “transparently before god.”50 along with simone Weil (1909–43), martin buber, and dietrich bonhoeffer (1906–45), percy cites Kierkegaard himself as an example of an artist who managed to make this movement of “reentry into ordinary life.” interestingly, he also cites his fellow southern catholic novelist, flannery o’connor (1925–64), as an example of a writer who “outdid” Kierkegaard in seeing “both creation and art…as both dense and mysterious, gratuitous, anagogic, and sacramental.”51 o’connor goes beyond Kierkegaard, percy seems to suggest, by going beyond the paradoxical character of the christian message in order to bear witness to those non-paradoxical modes of relationship between god and humankind, namely sacrament and grace. percy, Conversations with Walker Percy, p. 285. Walker percy, Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book, new York: farrar, straus and giroux 1983, p. 1. 48 Note the combining of the aesthetic and the scientific in a single category, as noted above: “although science and art are generally taken to be not merely different but even polar opposites…the fact is that they both are practiced at a level of abstraction, both entail transactions with symbols and statements about the world, both are subject to confirmation or disconfirmation.” Ibid., pp. 143–4. 49 ibid., p. 144; p. 146. 50 ibid., p. 156. SKS 11, 146 / SUD, 30. 51 percy, Lost in the Cosmos, p. 157. 46 47

Walker Percy: Literary Extrapolations from Kierkegaard

183

A later chapter in the same book finds Percy once again appropriating the work of Kierkegaard. this time it is the latter’s concept of the “demonic,” which percy uses to introduce another type of self, the “demoniac self.” As is typical in Percy’s nonfiction, the author does not provide the bibliographic details of the passages of Kierkegaard’s on which he draws, but the discussion makes clear that the understanding of the demonic here comes not from the relevant passages in The Concept of Anxiety, but rather from the essay on music and the erotic in the first volume of Either/Or.52 the claim that fascinates percy in a work whose pseudonymous character percy recognizes53 is the idea that christianity posits music, the art of the “sensuouserotic” par excellence, by differentiating itself, as spirit, from this principle of sensuality.54 percy’s chapter on the demonic self opens with a paraphrase of this “strange statement” of Kierkegaard’s, that “Christianity first brought the erotic spirit into the world.” he opines that Kierkegaard’s style in presenting such claims “often seems designed as much to obfuscate as to enlighten the reader.”55 nevertheless, the notions of the erotic and the demonic that Percy finds in Either/Or are of use to him in making a point about contemporary life in america, where one observes a concomitant rise of eroticized culture and christian religiosity, which Kierkegaard “would have no difficulty explaining.”56 having begun the chapter by reference to Kierkegaard, percy leaves the latter behind for the most part, proceeding with his own definition of the demonic, which differs slightly from Kierkegaard’s in the cited work. percy thinks the concept points to the reality that the self of every human being is possessed by something. in the contemporary context, what possesses the self is “‘the spirit of the erotic’ and the secret love of violence,”57 which is to say, the demonic. even though he is largely constructing his own conceptual framework by this point in the essay, percy thinks he is still on “Kierkegaardian” territory here, and suggests that Kierkegaard, along with (peircean) semiotics allows us to reject the regnant paradigms of “modern psychology, which has not the means of saying anything at all about the self, let alone spirit.”58 III. Kierkegaard in the moviegoer and other Novels given the attestations by percy to the importance of Kierkegaard for him, it is tempting to look for the latter around every corner of Percy’s fictional work. Yet only in the first three novels, however (The Moviegoer, The Last Gentleman, and Love in the Ruins), can we identify specific textual themes traceable back to Kierkegaard’s writings themselves. Among these three, only the first exhibits a Kierkegaardian “frame of reference”59 in the deployment of its very narrative. in what follows, rather 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59

SKS 2, 71 / EO1, 65. SKS 2, 94–5 / EO1, 90. percy, Lost in the Cosmos, p. 176. SKS 2, 71 / EO1, 64–5. percy, Lost in the Cosmos, p. 175. ibid., p. 176. ibid., p. 178. ibid. percy, Conversations with Walker Percy, p. 116.

184

Joseph Ballan

than speculating upon possible “Kierkegaardian” interpretations of this or that work of percy,60 we limit ourselves to identifying those texts in the novels that clearly refer back to the work of Kierkegaard. in The Moviegoer, Kierkegaard’s influence exerts itself primarily on the concepts deployed by the narrator and main character, not in citations from Kierkegaard’s books. there are two exceptions to this: the epigraph, taken from The Sickness unto Death (“the specific character of despair is precisely this: it is unaware of being despair”) and the epilogue, which contains a reference to “the great danish philosopher,” a reference made all the more strange given that the narrator purportedly owns no books save doughty’s (1843–1926) Arabia Deserta. this explicit nod to Kierkegaard in the final pages of the book is nonetheless typical of the way Percy makes implicit use of “Kierkegaardian” concepts throughout the rest of the work. here the narrator, binx bolling, claims that, like Kierkegaard, he speaks without authority “of such matters other than the edifying” and, further, that it is much more difficult to be edifying in the present age than it was in Kierkegaard’s own day.61 this caveat at the end of the novel seems to differ from what Kierkegaard means when says that he speaks “without authority,” namely that, unlike a pastor, for example, he speaks about christianity without the institutional backing of the established church.62 as with the other concepts in the novel that have their provenance in Kierkegaard’s writings, Percy is not concerned in the novel with fidelity to these works, but with creating a set of ideas that allow binx to explain the conditions of his existential “search” for meaning. throughout the novel, binx continually refers to the “search” he has been undertaking. These reflections appear interspersed throughout the narration itself, a story in which the character of binx, a stockbroker, Korean war veteran, and suburban dweller suffering from modern “malaise” and attempting to escape it at the movies and in affairs with women, dramatizes the tension between the traditional southern values championed by an older generation and the moral rootlessness typical of modern life. this tension comes to a head in binx’s aunt’s expectation that binx will take care of her daughter, Kate, who is physically fragile and very depressed. Without telling her parents, binx takes Kate on a business trip from new orleans to chicago, less than a day after her attempted suicide. the two, who have been close friends for years, decide to be married. binx’s aunt’s extreme disappointment, brought about by her nephew’s irresponsibility, provides the occasion for a lengthy speech in which she lectures him on the disappearance of traditional values. for an example of this kind of reading, endorsed by percy as being “quite brilliant, both in its unerring dead aim on my characters, but also in his treatment of Kierkegaard,” who the author makes “more accessible than any writer in memory,” see Jerome taylor, In Search of Self: Life, Death & Walker Percy, cambridge, massachusetts: cowley publications 1986. 61 Walker percy, The Moviegoer, new York: Vintage 1960, p. 237. 62 one cannot attribute the misunderstanding to the narrator of the novel, but to percy himself, who makes reference to Kierkegaard’s essay on the difference between a genius and an apostle in an interview, explaining, “Kierkegaard had much more claim to having authority than i do. he was a preacher. but he was still not an apostle. a novelist least of all has the authority to edify anyone or tell them good news, to pronounce christ King.” percy, Conversations with Walker Percy, p. 64. 60

Walker Percy: Literary Extrapolations from Kierkegaard

185

as noted, percy explained his attraction to Kierkegaard by drawing an analogy between the nineteenth-century thinker’s struggle against hegelianism and his own struggle with what he took to be the contemporary humanist exaltation of science. one sees an echo of this in binx’s discussion of books he read in his younger days, books by albert einstein and erwin schrödinger (1887–1961), among others. these readings are grouped under what gets called the “horizontal search,” which percy later describes as having been inspired by the concept of the “sphere of immanence” in which the genius lives and operates, according to Kierkegaard’s essay on the difference between the genius and the apostle.63 despite his intense “horizontal” search for knowledge, binx reached what we might call the climacean conclusion that “though the universe had been disposed of, i myself was left over.”64 binx, an avid moviegoer, recalls another of Kierkegaard’s pseudonyms, constantin constantius, when he reports having carried out “a successful experiment in repetition” in a new orleans theater. the framework of an “experiment in repetition” is clearly taken directly from Kierkegaard’s novella, but the signification of the term differs from its nineteenth-century Danish deployment. Helpfully, Binx gives a definition of repetition, which he takes to be “the re-enactment of past experience toward the end of isolating the time segment which has lapsed in order that it, the lapsed time, can be savored of itself and without the usual adulteration of events that clog time like peanuts in brittle.”65 here he distinguishes between accidental and deliberate repetitions. a related concept to which binx refers more frequently is that of “rotation.” this concept, taken from volume one of Either/Or, he defines as “the experiencing of the new beyond the expectation of the experiencing of the new.”66 one might be tempted to read the character of binx in terms of the “existencespheres,” as a straightforwardly “aesthetic” figure, yet as the book’s epigraph suggests, binx has a strong sense of a category from the highest, religious pseudonym, namely despair.67 his narration attests to an acute sensitivity to that despair which, as in the quotation from the epigraph, does not recognize itself as such,68 mired in what binx refers to, with echoes of heidegger, as “everydayness”69 and, more frequently, his own term, “malaise.”70 as noted, throughout the book, binx refers to what he calls “the search,” which can take the form of scientific investigation or, and this is the kind of search with which binx attempts to replace his former scientific search, the form of a quest for personal meaning. He puts it this way: “to become aware of the possibility of [this latter type of] the search is to be onto ibid., p. 114. percy, The Moviegoer, pp. 69–70. 65 ibid., pp. 79–80. 66 ibid., p. 144. 67 the importance of the language of The Sickness unto Death for percy can be seen in an interview where he explains the narrative trajectory of the binx character in terms of a movement of “transcendence” formulated most succinctly by Kierkegaard: “the self becomes itself only when it becomes itself transparently before god.” percy, Signposts in a Strange Land, p. 388. 68 see, for example, percy, The Moviegoer, p. 82; p. 86; pp. 120–2. 69 see, for example, ibid., p. 145. 70 see, for example, ibid., p. 18; p. 107; pp. 120–3; p. 127; p. 135; p. 166; p. 170; p. 228. 63 64

186

Joseph Ballan

something. not to be onto something is to be in despair. the movies are onto the search, but they screw it up. the search always ends in despair.”71 as binx goes on to say, by ending in despair, he means sinking into the everydayness of the bourgeois life typical of the american suburbs. in an interview, while acknowledging that this interpretation “oversimplif[ies]” Kierkegaard, percy nonetheless explains the character of binx as one who spends most of the book in “the esthetic mode of consciously cultivating certain experiences, of living in a certain place with a certain feeling to it and having sensations about being there….but in the end—we’re using Kierkegaardian terminology—in the end binx jumps from the esthetic clear across the ethical to the religious.”72 the lack of a passage through the ethical sphere makes him incomprehensible to the guardians of southern manners in his family who criticize him and his decisions. a letter from percy to caroline gordon (1895–1981) records that he thought of himself, not primarily as a novelist, but as a “moralist” in the tradition of “pascal (and/or Kierkegaard).”73 consequently, percy often subordinates the art of narrative to his own ideas about culture and morality, with the result that his work occasionally lapses into didacticism. this is the case with percy’s next novel, The Last Gentleman, centered around a character described by percy as having existed in the religious sphere from the beginning.74 It is difficult to say, however, how the main character, Will barrett, is religious in a sense attributable to a reading of “religiousness” in Kierkegaard in any but the most trivial way. the religiosity of this character owes more to a figure in a novel written by that other nineteenth-century author admired by percy, namely prince myshkin in dostoevsky’s The Idiot.75 the only clear appropriation of Kierkegaard in this novel manifests itself in the character of sutter Vaught. sutter does not appear on the stage of the novel until approximately halfway through the book. as paul elie notes, “sutter and Val, brother and sister, are the two interesting characters in the novel, until they are enlisted to represent percy’s philosophy.”76 Will barrett discovers the private notebooks of sutter, in which the latter describes his sexual exploits, ruminates on contemporary life in america, and carries on a running argument with his sister Val, who is a nun. to some extent, one could say that these breaks in the narrative, organized in short, independent blocks of text, resemble the diapsalmata of Either/Or. sutter makes the same observations regarding the relationship between christianity and the erotic, both in general and in america, as we saw above in Lost in the Cosmos, where percy attributes these insights of his to a reading of Either/Or.77 We also note in Sutter’s reflections the same proximity between science and the aesthetic that we ibid., p. 13. percy, Conversations with Walker Percy, pp. 65–6. percy acknowledges that the interpretation of Binx as a religious figure at the end of the novel is a controversial one (p. 68). 73 Quoted in samway, Walker Percy: A Life, p. 223. 74 percy, Conversations with Walker Percy, pp. 66–7. 75 see ibid., p. 13. 76 elie, The Life you Save May Be your Own, p. 385. 77 Walker percy, The Last Gentleman, new York: farrar, straus and giroux 1966, p. 292. 71 72

Walker Percy: Literary Extrapolations from Kierkegaard

187

have seen at several other points in percy’s work.78 sutter, a doctor whose license to practice was revoked because he abandoned a patient to make love to a nurse, clearly represents a figure caught in the “aesthetic” sphere, as Percy understands it and as he thinks it ought to be understood. Later in the book one finds another instance in The Last Gentleman of themes from Lost in the Cosmos, whose Kierkegaardian provenance was made specific in the nonfiction work but not in the novel. This is the concept of “reentering” the sphere of immanence after one has entered into the sphere of transcendence. for sutter, once one has transcended the world of the everyday (in scientific abstraction, for instance), the only possible mode of reentry is that of sexuality.79 it is here that we might conceivably understand Will’s religiosity as being inspired in part by Kierkegaard. sutter’s pensées are full of reflections, not only on the erotic, but also on suicide. Will cannot understand the stark alternative around which sutter’s thoughts turn: belief in god or atheism, sexuality as the highest form of human spirituality or suicide. Will’s problem, on the other hand, “is how to live from one ordinary minute to the next on a Wednesday afternoon.” the narrator wonders, “has not this been the case with all ‘religious’ people?”80 this link between the “religious” and the “ordinary,” i would suggest, might be attributable to percy’s reading of the “knight of faith” in Fear and Trembling. While plausible, we do not insist too strongly on the veracity of this admittedly speculative interpretation. We can nonetheless put forward the more modest conclusion that, in this novel, percy takes the language of “sphere of immanence” and “sphere of transcendence,” from Philosophical Fragments and the essay “on the difference between a genius and an apostle,” both works which he explicitly cites elsewhere. We have already witnessed what is perhaps the most telling example of centrality of the problem of contemporary scientism for percy’s reading of Kierkegaard, namely, his wish to modify the theory of existence-spheres such that the lowest “stage” is not merely aesthetic, but also scientific.81 this proposed combination (or conflation) receives fictional illustration in Love in the Ruin. We know from the interview with bradley dewey that percy’s favorite section of Either/Or was the treatment of mozart in the essay on “the immediate erotic stages or the musicalerotic.”82 he interprets the love of mozart in general and Don Giovanni in particular in Love in the Ruins’ main character, the psychiatrist thomas more, in terms of his own predilection for that piece of Kierkegaard’s.83 moreover, in the character of More one finds an exceptionally close proximity between the scientific (he is, more specifically, a psychiatric researcher) and the aesthetic, best summarized in his introduction of his religious identity as a “bad catholic”: “i believe in god and the whole business but i love women best, music and science next, whiskey next, god ibid., pp. 279–80. ibid., p. 345. 80 ibid., pp. 354–5. 81 percy, Conversations with Walker Percy, p. 204. 82 ibid., p. 112. 83 see, for example, Walker percy, Love in the Ruins: The Adventures of a Bad Catholic at a Time Near the End of the World, new York: farrar, straus and giroux 1971, p. 13; p. 73. 78 79

188

Joseph Ballan

fourth, and my fellowman hardly at all.”84 that music and science occupy the same plane in this character’s characterization of himself suggests that more represents the connection between the aesthetic and the scientific of which Percy spoke. Another point at which Percy’s reading of Kierkegaard shows itself to be significant is in his use of the category of the “ordeal,” which percy likely discovered in his reading of Fear and Trembling85 and which is related to the category of the “trial,” discussed in “the message in the bottle.” it appears in this novel in the context of a discussion of “angelism,”86 a psychiatric problem of the future (the novel takes place “at a time near the end of the world”) caused by “excessive abstraction of the self from itself.”87 more has discovered a method for detecting this condition, as well as the cure for it: “recovery of the self through the ordeal.”88 IV. Conclusion In ways both explicit and implicit, through references to specific books and through subtler acknowledgments, Walker Percy attests to the significance of Kierkegaard for his self-understanding as a writer throughout his literary career. although the details of his conversion are less than clear, percy even suggests that a reading of Kierkegaard’s essay on the difference between a genius and an apostle led him to become a catholic. given that his identity as a catholic was absolutely central to his self-understanding as a writer,89 one can also recognize the significance of Kierkegaard’s work for his own personal narrative. Yet as a moralist who wrote novels, he does not bind himself to any strict criterion of faithfulness to the letter of Kierkegaard’s texts in his employment of them. it would seem that, for percy, what is needed is not another interpretation of Kierkegaard, but an extension or extrapolation of his insights as they might be brought to bear on contemporary issues. Ibid., p. 6 (emphasis added). For another instance of Percy’s grouping the scientific and the artistic under one category, see the list of types of self-consciousness in Lost in the Cosmos, pp. 11–13. there, alongside other choices such as “brahmin-buddhist self,” “christian self,” “standard american-Jeffersonian high-school-commencement republicanand-Democratic-platform self,” to name just a few, we find as a single category, “the scientific and artistic self.” this type of self is characterized as “so totally absorbed in the pursuit of art or science as to be selfless.” 85 for example, SKS 4, 116–18 / FT, 19–22. 86 the term “angelisme” was originally coined by Jacques maritain to describe the disembodied character of cartesian thought. see The Dream of Descartes, trans. by mabelle andison, new York: philosophical library 1944, p. 28. it was, however, applied rather loosely to contemporary writing in the criticism of percy’s friend and fellow catholic writer caroline gordon and her husband allen tate. see farrell o’gorman, Peculiar Crossroads: Flannery O’Connor, Walker Percy, and Catholic Vision in Postwar Southern Fiction, baton rouge: louisiana state university press 2004, p. 114. 87 percy, Love in the Ruins, p. 37. 88 ibid. 89 a few essays attest to this especially well: “how to be an american novelist in spite of being southern and catholic” and “Why are you a catholic?” in percy, Signposts in a Strange Land, pp. 168–85; pp. 304–15. 84

Walker Percy: Literary Extrapolations from Kierkegaard

189

in this article, we have noted several instances in which percy takes some concept or image from Kierkegaard only to either correct it (as in his expressed desire to write his own theory of communication, one which would compensate for the narrowness of Kierkegaard’s), to widen its sphere of application (for example, the collapsing of the aesthete and the scientist into a single category), to make it speak to a wholly different context than its original one (for example, the assimilation of an allegedly anti-hegelian critique to an anti-positivist one), or to imagine the narrative of a fictional character, loosely, on the basis of it (for example, Binx’s despair). The use of the word “framework” to describe what Percy finds in Kierkegaard’s books is, in this respect, very telling.90 for percy, the great achievement of Kierkegaard is that he did not produce a finished system, the analysis of which would henceforth be the business of scholars, but that he opened, as it were, a field of inquiry and a space of literary possibilities within which to work.

90

percy, Conversations with Walker Percy, pp. 116–17.

bibliography I. References to or Uses of Kierkegaard in Percy’s corpus The Moviegoer, new York: Vintage 1960, epigraph (n.p.), p. 237. Love in the Ruins: The Adventures of a Bad Catholic at a Time Near the End of the World, new York: farrar, straus and giroux 1971, p. 13; p. 37; p. 73. The Message in the Bottle: How Queer Man is, How Queer Language is, and What One has to do with the Other, new York: farrar, straus and giroux 1975, p. 58; p. 93; p. 108; p. 115; p. 119; p. 140; pp. 144–8; p. 279. Conversations with Walker Percy, ed. by lewis lawson and Victor Kramer, Jackson: university press of mississippi 1980, pp. 5–6; pp. 10–13; pp. 47–9; pp. 64–8; p. 73; p. 75; p. 79; p. 83; p. 86; p. 88; pp. 104–27; p. 159; p. 180; p. 184; p. 191; pp. 203–6; p. 209; p. 213; p. 222; p. 231; p. 276; pp. 279–80; p. 300; pp. 303–4. Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book, new York: farrar, straus and giroux 1983, pp. 143–6; pp. 156–7; pp. 143–6. Signposts in a Strange Land, ed. by patrick samway, new York: farrar, straus and giroux 1991, p. 3; p. 4; p. 136; pp. 151–2; p. 188; p. 208; p. 213; p. 223; p. 252; p. 271; pp. 301–2; p. 343; p. 356; pp. 375–6; pp. 385–9; p. 399. II. Sources of Percy’s Knowledge of Kierkegaard collins, James, The Existentialists: A Critical Study, chicago: henry regnery company 1952, pp. 1–39; pp. 40ff. haecker, theodor, Søren Kierkegaard, trans. by alexander dru, london: oxford university press 1937. (originally as Sören Kierkegaard und die Philosophie der Innerlichkeit, munich: Verlag J.f. schreiber, 1913). III. Secondary Literature on Percy’s Relation to Kierkegaard dewey, bradley, “Walker percy talks about Kierkegaard: an annotated interview,” Journal of Religion, vol. 54, no. 3, 1974, pp. 273–98. dupuy, edward, Autobiography in Walker Percy: Repetition, Recovery, and Redemption, baton rouge: louisiana state university press 1996, pp. 23–37. montgomery, marion, “Kierkegaard and percy: by Word, away from the philosophical,” Walker Percy: Novelist and Philosopher, ed. by Jan nordby gretlund and Karl-heinz Westarp, Jackson, mississippi: university press of mississippi 1991, pp. 99–109.

Walker Percy: Literary Extrapolations from Kierkegaard

191

taylor, Jerome, Walker Percy’s Heroes: A Kierkegaardian Analysis, new York: seabury press 1983. — In Search of Self: Life, Death, and Walker Percy, cambridge, massachusetts: cowley publications 1986, pp. 1–19; p. 46; pp. 54–5; p. 63; pp. 81–95; pp. 126–69.

george steiner: playing Kierkegaard’s theologicalphilosophic-psychological sports paul martens

i’m committed to the bitter passionate view that we live in a byzantine period, an alexandrian period, in which the commentator and the comment tower above the original. saint-beuve dies bitterly remarking, “no one will ever create a statue for a critic.” oh god, how wrong he was. today we’re told there is critical theory, that criticism dominates—deconstruction, semiotics, post-structuralism, postmodernism. it is a very peculiar climate, summed up by that man of undoubted genius, monsieur derrida, when he says that every text is a “pretext.”1

this brief excerpt from an interview published in 1995 by The Paris Review reveals much about George Steiner (b. 1929). At first glance, his comments intimate his presumption of a command of history that allows broad, sweeping generalizations and a command of literature that allows frequent allusions and appeals to authorities both famous and less so. more importantly, however, these comments also intimate his passion for reading, a “remedial reading in a deeply moral sense.”2 In his own terms, his life and work in the field of comparative literature is committed to a type of reading that “should commit us to a vision, should engage our humanity.”3 this vision is cultivated through true reading, that is, true or “the old” criticism. for steiner, only this true criticism can save us from the spirit of invidia that dominates our day.4 From the pages of his first book— Tolstoy or Dostoevsky (1960)—søren Kierkegaard has played an important role in the development and communication of steiner’s attempt to teach his idiosyncratic remedial mode of reading.5 1

p. 51.

george steiner, “the art of criticism ii,” The Paris Review, vol. 137, Winter 1995,

steiner, “the art of criticism ii,” p. 54. ibid. 4 see george steiner, “a responsion,” in Reading George Steiner, ed. by nathan a. scott, Jr. and ronald a. sharp, baltimore: Johns hopkins university press 1994, p. 276. 5 robert carroll has rightly noted that although steiner is certainly on reading terms with the major christian theologians and writers, Kierkegaard and pascal should not be forgotten as dominant influences. See Robert P. Carroll, “Toward a Grammar of Creation: On steiner the theologian,” in Reading George Steiner, p. 269. 2 3

194

Paul Martens

I. Introduction george steiner was born in paris 1929 to Viennese parents. his parents had arrived in Paris five years earlier in an attempt to escape the impending shadow of Austria’s most infamous son, adolf hitler. steiner’s childhood years were spent in paris, in a home full of books, music, and the culture that he referred to as “the Jewish central european tradition.”6 the steiner family moved to new York in 1940, just months prior to the nazi invasion of france. after acquiring a b.a. at the university of chicago and an m.a. at harvard, steiner spent most of the remainder of his life in england (he earned a d.phil. at oxford in 1955 and later became a founding fellow of churchill college at cambridge) and at the university of geneva where he served as a professor of english and comparative literature for twenty years. during much of this time, he also wrote for The Economist and, later, The New Yorker. When, exactly, steiner began reading Kierkegaard is a mystery. What is clear, however, is that he had imbibed a considerable amount by 1960. in Tolstoy or Dostoevsky, Kierkegaard appears a paltry six times: aside from his relations to Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) and Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821–88), he is identified with friedrich nietzsche (1844–1900) three times,7 with William blake (1757–1827) twice,8 with blaise pascal (1623–62) twice,9 and also with aeschylus and John milton (1608–74).10 a typical reference to Kierkegaard, both in this particular text and beyond, appears as follows: “no less than aeschylus or milton, tolstoy and dostoevsky were men whose genius had fallen into the hands of the living god. to them, as to Kierkegaard, human destiny was Either/Or. thus, their works cannot be truly understood in the same key as Middlemarch, for example, or The Charterhouse of Parma.”11 i will leave the distillation of what, summarily, steiner appropriates of Kierkegaard within this mélange for the next section of this article. but, in this introductory context, this brief depiction of Kierkegaard’s exemplary appearance in Tolstoy or Dostoevsky is presented in order to display the mode in which steiner stacks and mutually refracts interlocutors, texts, and ideas to suggest pregnant connections and relations without further specification, definition, or limitation. if it is not clear when steiner started reading Kierkegaard, it is relatively clear which Kierkegaard texts he was reading. in short, nearly all of them.12 in a 1980 book review, Steiner opined that to read Kierkegaard at a confident level requires steiner, “the art of criticism ii,” p. 61. george steiner, Tolstoy or Dostoevsky: An Essay in the Old Criticism, new York: alfred a. Knopf 1959, p. 227; p. 228; p. 290. 8 steiner, Tolstoy or Dostoevsky, p. 227; p. 290. 9 ibid., p. 227; p. 264. 10 ibid., p. 44. 11 ibid. 12 in 1994, steiner would note his reading and rereading Kierkegaard’s extensive “kaleidoscopic body of work.” see george steiner, “introduction,” in søren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling and The Book on Adler, trans. by Walter lowrie, new York: alfred a. Knopf 1994, p. xii. this piece has been republished as “on Kierkegaard,” in No Passion Spent: Essays 1978–1995, new haven: Yale university press 1996, pp. 253–65, and “the Wound of negativity: two Kierkegaard texts” in Kierkegaard: A Critical Reader, ed. Jonathan rée and 6 7

George Steiner: Playing Kierkegaard’s Sports

195

danish and that the third edition of the Samlede Værker is the “indispensable point of reference.”13 Without danish, however, he notes that german readers are also well served by emanuel hirsch’s (1888–1972) translation of Kierkegaard’s corpus.14 in fact, steiner goes as far as claiming that, even for the danish-speaker, the german translation offers a privileged access to Kierkegaard’s thought-world.15 the reason for this claim lies in his realization that many of the key terms and phrases used by Kierkegaard were defined in usage by the German Romantics. That said, he would also provide the following inverted caution a few years later: “Kierkegaard borrows heavily from the vocabulary of the German Idealists, but inflects his borrowings in a radically personal manner,”16 thereby effectively suggesting that several of the key danish terms will not translate even into german. arguably, however, steiner’s Kierkegaard is, first and foremost, the German Kierkegaard. Yet, as someone preoccupied with the labyrinthine challenges of translation for most of his life, steiner also found in Kierkegaard a fascinating example of a writer who required the passing of “generations” before being understood,17 and a writer who was compelled into reluctant clarity through translation out of his local tongue.18 as the years go by, steiner seems to accept that english translations will provide the Kierkegaard for the next generation of readers19 to the extent that he himself provided an introduction to the everyman edition of Fear and Trembling and The Book on Adler.20 Jane chamberlain, oxford: blackwell 1998, pp. 103–13. subsequent references to this brief essay will be made to the original publication in Fear and Trembling and The Book on Adler. 13 george steiner, “speaking essentially with god,” The Times Literary Supplement, January 25, 1980, p. 81. this claim is very interesting since it is widely recognized that steiner was a polyglot, and yet no one seems to have claimed that Steiner was fluent in Danish. 14 see Kierkegaard, Gesammelte Werke, vols. 1–28, trans. by emanuel hirsch, düsseldorf and cologne: diedrichs 1950–69. the obvious—hirsch was a national socialist loyalist and an influential Lutheran theologian—did not escape the Jewish Steiner, eventually provoking him to remark: “i add as a footnote, an ambiguous and curiously haunting footnote, that hirsch is also our greatest Kierkegaard editor and the man who in many ways brings Kierkegaard into the mainstream of european thought and into the background of existentialism.” george steiner, “totem or taboo,” in No Passion Spent, p. 227. 15 steiner, “speaking essentially with god,” p. 82. 16 george steiner, Antigones, new York: oxford university press 1984, p. 52. 17 george steiner, Errata: An Examined Life, london: Weidenfeld and nicolson 1997, p. 154. 18 george steiner, After Babel, new York: oxford university press 1975, p. 396. 19 see steiner, “speaking essentially with god,” p. 82. perhaps it is also relevant to note that although steiner was familiar with an english translation of Kierkegaard’s Papirer— Søren Kierkegaard’s Journals and Papers (vols. 1–6, ed. and trans. by howard V. hong and edna h. hong, assisted by gregor malantschuk, bloomington and london: indiana university press 1967–78)—his deep acquaintance with Kierkegaard precedes their publication, not to mention that of the now familiar translations of Kierkegaard’s Writings edited by howard V. hong and edna hong and published by princeton university press (which was just beginning in 1979) which was to “supersede the pioneering but often fitful versions of Kierkegaard’s writings made by Walter lowrie.” steiner, “speaking essentially with god,” p. 81. 20 søren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling and The Book on Adler, trans. by Walter lowrie, new York: alfred a. Knopf 1994. invoking Kierkegaard’s notion of repetition,

196

Paul Martens

before, and perhaps setting the stage for, moving to a closer examination of the content of steiner’s appropriation of Kierkegaard, a few prefatory comments concerning the perceived role of autobiography in Kierkegaard’s authorship are in order. in the course of his writing career, steiner has provided three sustained engagements with Kierkegaard: a book review in The Times Literary Supplement of two Kierkegaard texts and a book on Kierkegaard by nelly Viallaneix (d. 2005) which was published in 1980 as “speaking essentially with god,” a chapter devoted to Kierkegaard’s rendering of sophocles’ antigone published in Antigones (1984), and his introduction to Fear and Trembling and The Book on Adler (1994). in each of these, Kierkegaard is treated according to one of the stated tenets of the old criticism: “it tends to believe that the ‘supreme poets of the world’ have been men impelled either to acquiescence or rebellion by the mystery of god.”21 implied in this simple tenet are the assumptions that the author matters, that the life of the author matters, that the author’s relation to god matters, and that any true work of poetic art will be, in a very real and present sense, autobiographical. as we will see below, all three of the engagements with Kierkegaard profoundly illustrate steiner’s consistent application of this tenet, which is also redundantly reinforced by a footnote in Antigones that instructs the reader that “any discussion of Kierkegaard’s thought must lean heavily on the Papirer, the notebooks and unpublished jottings.”22 in acknowledging this autobiographical mode of approaching Kierkegaard, and especially the Kierkegaard of the Papirer, we are fortuitously provided with a natural structure for arranging and parsing—even if only tentatively— steiner’s understanding and appropriation of Kierkegaard. if the supreme poet is impelled to acquiescence or rebellion by the mystery of god, the poet must have a relationship with god. for Kierkegaard and steiner, a relationship with god cannot occur in the ordinary hustle and bustle of life. Therefore, the first step in relating to god, chronologically speaking, is a movement toward silence, toward individuality. a more direct discussion of steiner’s rendering of Kierkegaard’s encounter with god, therefore, must wait until this prerequisite movement is given its due.

steiner acknowledges that translation cannot and must be done. it is a notion “so puzzling that it puts in doubt causality and the stream of time.” steiner, After Babel, p. 72. see also steiner’s biographically-based suggestion concerning the link between heraclitus and Kierkegaard on unrepeatability in reiteration. steiner, Errata, p. 3. on this same theme, lionel abel has even claimed that steiner “took” the term “recapitulation” from Kierkegaard. see lionel abel, Important Nonsense, buffalo: prometheus books 1987, p. 23, and steiner, “the great tautology,” in No Passion Spent, p. 353. 21 steiner, Tolstoy or Dostoevsky, pp. 6–7. 22 steiner, Antigones, p. 51n1. although a more nuanced picture will emerge below, one should also note how steiner links Kierkegaard to proust in this respect: he “bent his physical life and the life of the magnum opus into coincidence. both terminated, at the same programmatic moment.” see george steiner, Grammars of Creation, new haven: Yale university press 2001, p. 237.

George Steiner: Playing Kierkegaard’s Sports

197

II. Kierkegaard and the “Echo Chambers of Silence” Steiner’s first extensive comments on Kierkegaard, offered in 1980, include the following graphic description: his works are a soliloquy all of which is to be overheard by god and much of which is to reach the ears of other men. the act of writing is an immediate extension, a making audible even more than visible, of an unbroken current of inward discourse. personal solitude (montaigne in his lower-room, Kierkegaard at his writing-stand) are the master builders of echo chambers of silence, the jealous cultivation of spiritual and physical apartness from the “racket” of common speech.23

the personal solitude depicted above is, of course, not merely solitude. it is a polemical task that casts a certain judgment on the common “racket.” this sort of privacy in extremis guards and empowers habits of concentration, attention, and withdrawal from the “impertinent.”24 it is the consequence of schooling that follows the training of memory and attention in an undisturbed locale (whether in the hermitage, Kierkegaard’s room, or martin heidegger’s (1889–1976) forest-hut).25 steiner has near universal praise for Kierkegaard’s exemplary relevance in this task, whether he is utilized in speaking against the “ironising pragmatism” of the english which yields a “colorless, low-key tolerance and calm good sense”26 or against the mass-media of an unbridled capitalism.27 When referring to 1848, the 1920s,28 steiner, “speaking essentially with god,” p. 81. one ought to note the importance steiner attributes to Kierkegaard’s Journals and Papers since he claims that they mark the transition from the “heuristic-meditational” diaries of the seventeenth century to the “modern vein.” see george steiner, “a note on the distribution of discourse,” Semiotica, vol. 22, no. 3, 1978, p. 204. 24 see george steiner, “the archives of eden,” Salmagundi, vols. 50–51, fall 1980–Winter 1981, p. 84; p. 88. 25 see steiner, Grammars of Creation, p. 314. It is difficult to determine precisely how Steiner values the absolute aloneness indicated by these figures because he will also describe this situation as the result of being “infected by the leprosy of pure thought, by the virus of questioning,” which leads one to remain a hermit. steiner will also name pascal, baruch spinoza (1632–77), nietzsche, and Kierkegaard as socrates’ successors who, unlike socrates himself, continued to argue out of aloneness. see george steiner, “two cocks,” in No Passion Spent, pp. 377–8. 26 george steiner, My Unwritten Books, london: Weidenfeld and nicolson 2008, pp. 129–30. 27 steiner, Grammars of Creation, p. 270; p. 312. the praise for Kierkegaard in this respect is only tempered by an ambivalent recognition of the complete lack of sensitivity that corresponds to his pathological incisiveness. of simone Weil (1909–1943), late in his life, he wrote: “Who else save Kierkegaard would at the moment of france’s surrender to hitler have found the sentence ‘this is a great day for indo-china,’ in which a hideous insensitivity is perfectly balanced by a political and humane clairvoyance of genius?” see george steiner, “bad friday,” The New Yorker, march 2, 1992, p. 90. 28 Writing of the great critics, steiner claims that they are the ones who hear the echo when a voice has been forgotten or before it is known. to illustrate, he notes that there were some who sensed, already in the 1920s, “that the time of blake and Kierkegaard was at 23

198

Paul Martens

or the present age, steiner understands that Kierkegaard is one of the disciplined clairvoyants (usually counted alongside blake and nietzsche) that saw the “disaster of Western humanism” like an “uncertain blackness on the horizon,”29 like a morbid fantasy that Franz Kafka (1883–1924) further specified as an “intolerable visage.”30 in all this, Kierkegaard, like pascal, is a silent and visionary voice that echoes “from the margin”31 or perhaps, stated more accurately in plural form, from religious, philosophic, and literary margins. this initial rhetoric of resistance and prophetic condemnation is not merely procedural. it also echoes deeply within steiner’s soul. in the opening pages of “begging the Question,” one of his “unwritten books,” he acknowledges that he is frequently asked about his own politics. other than a declared anguish about zionism, steiner states that he has never voted in any election and has never been politically active. in fact, his entire existence is somewhat like aristotle’s idiotes who stays at home and refuses to become involved in the affairs and responsibilities of the polis. he has refused to sign manifestos, appeals, and protests even though agreement is a foregone conclusion. in this, he basks in the shade of the “high masters of aloneness”: Kierkegaard, nietzsche, and ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951).32 after further ruminations, he concludes: What i would advance fervently is this: faith or the lack thereof is or ought to be the most private, the most discreetly guarded constituent of the human person. the soul, too, must have its private parts. Publication cheapens and falsifies belief irremediably. The adult believer seeks to be alone with his god. as i strive to be with his sovereign absence. already i have said, i have failed to say, too much.33

on a literal level, these are odd words from one who has published dozens of books and hundreds of articles and essays. throughout his explication of the echoes of silence, an incredibly personal equivocation remains. on the one hand, a profound secrecy in relation to the common “racket” is necessary to preserve one’s soul. on the other hand, the publication—the making public—of that secret is also the death of the secret. this is the irony of life in the academy: professors spend their lives seeking a flash of truth and the moment they discover some small spark, “they publicize what should be revealed only to intimates.”34 the result, expressed in rather strong language, is the castration and impotence of “university philosophy.” According to Steiner, Kierkegaard was the first to see this alliance between the hand.” see george steiner, “the critical moment 2: human literacy,” The Times Literary Supplement, July 26, 1963, p. 539. 29 george steiner, “K,” The Times Literary Supplement, June 7, 1963, p. 398. 30 steiner, “K,” p. 398. placing these characters in this particular order already indicates much about steiner’s reading of Kafka. see also george steiner, In Bluebeard’s Castle: Some Notes Toward the Redefinition of Culture, new haven: Yale university press 1971, pp. 48–9; pp. 67–8; p. 78. 31 steiner, Grammars of Creation, p. 8. 32 steiner, My Unwritten Books, p. 176. 33 ibid., p. 200. 34 george steiner, Lessons of the Masters, cambridge, massachusetts: harvard university press 2003, p. 113.

George Steiner: Playing Kierkegaard’s Sports

199

academy and journalism, between thought and high gossip, that would only become exacerbated in our days of “the planetary web of the graphic and electronic media.”35 This problem—the vacancy inflicted by academic philosophers—is so prevalent in our day that we no longer need Kierkegaard “to remind one that where a secret has been dislodged and published, a kind of malign emptiness remains.”36 in his own resistance to nineteenth-century denmark, Kierkegaard found “the truly private spirit, the guardian of the silent gravity we call a secret” in sophocles’ Antigone.37 it is also true that steiner is drawn towards Antigone for a very similar reason, namely, his profound worry about the modern preoccupation with “the laying waste of stillness” or “the showing of the secret.”38 in my own intentionally protracted movement toward steiner’s attempt at saying while preserving the secret, a short delay for the purpose of attending to his second extended engagement with Kierkegaard—more specifically, his engagement with Kierkegaard’s reconstruction of Antigone—is in order. in Either/Or, part 1, Kierkegaard pseudonymously includes a brief essay entitled “The Tragic in Ancient Drama Reflected in the Tragic in Modern Drama.”39 the latter half of this essay develops this theme in relation to sophocles’ Antigone and, by extension and necessarily, in relation to g.W.f hegel’s (1770–1831) as well.40 the key to Kierkegaard’s reading of Antigone is the internalization of the tragic. as one of the symparanekromenoi, one of “the living dead,” Kierkegaard’s antigone carries the secret knowledge of oedipus’ catastrophe and her own relation to it. she is alienated from humanity twice over—first because she is the child of her halfbrother and her mother and second because she must maintain inviolable secrecy about this matter. unlike the ancient antigone, Kierkegaard’s creation cannot give voice to the suffering. therefore, when Kierkegaard’s antigone falls in love with haemon, the modern tragic collision occurs: antigone is forced either to reveal her secret, thereby betraying the sacred dead, or to withhold the secret, thereby betraying Kierkegaard was followed by nietzsche here who, in turn, anticipates Wittgenstein. steiner, Lessons of the Masters, p. 113. see also steiner, Grammars of Creation, p. 270 and george steiner, “to civilize our gentlemen—ii: ice axes for the frozen sea,” The Listener, october 28, 1965, p. 661. 36 george steiner, “a note on language and psychoanalysis,” The International Review of Psychoanalysis, vol. 3, no. 3, 1976, p. 257. 37 steiner, Grammars of Creation, p. 318. 38 steiner, Antigones, p. 300. 39 the form of Either/Or, according to steiner, clearly indicates Kierkegaard’s debt to the romantics. it is a “hybrid of direct address, personal memoire, philosophic discourse, fictive letters, pseudonymous interventions, and analytic commentary,” all of which reflects and splinters in a self-dividing maze. as we will see below, steiner’s own attempt to articulate a “pythagorean genre” is indebted to this model of communication. see Antigones, p. 53. 40 as steiner reads Either/Or, Kierkegaard is indebted to hegel’s terms and antinomies. Yet, his antigone is ultimately “counter-hegelian.” see, for example, steiner, Antigones, p. 56; p. 61; p. 24; p. 28; p. 38; p. 104; and especially pp. 65–6. in a related vein, steiner places friedrich hölderlin (1770–1843) within the same “most vivid exchange of feeling and philosophical debate in intellectual history.” see steiner, After Babel, p. 327n1; p. 454, and Antigones, p. 103; p. 106. 35

200

Paul Martens

her love of haemon. her continued existence in this collision is tragic in that she is fatally wounded even though she lives. Kierkegaard brings his study to a close with the following illustration from plutarch that is also referenced by steiner: When epaminondas was wounded in the battle at mantinea, he let the arrow remain in the wound until he heard that the battle was won, for he knew that it was his death when it was pulled out. in the same way, our antigone carries her secret in her heart like an arrow that life has continually plunged deeper and deeper, without depriving her of her life, for as long as it is in her heart she can live, but the instant it is taken out, she must die. to take her secret away—this is what the lover must struggle to do, and yet it is also her certain death.41

after walking through this pseudonymous essay on tragedy, steiner steps back to consider it in light of Kierkegaard’s biography. he describes it as a “philosophicpsychological sport or concetto”42 that encodes precise references to Kierkegaard’s own intimate existence. Yet, the intensity of Kierkegaard’s struggle with his father and former fiancée Regine Olsen is presented, according to Steiner, in a “superbly controlled intellectual exploration and argument.”43 for steiner, it is precisely Kierkegaard’s prolix published novels and discourses that speak and do not speak, that reveal and hide a secret. in short, they belong in the romantic “critique, eloquent and pervasive throughout the early decades of the nineteenth century, of the new technological, journalistic inroads on the spiritual autonomy of the individual.”44 before jumping to steiner’s own non-identical repetition of this communicating through controlled philosophic-psychological sports, a final word about death in Antigone is needed. Kierkegaard, among others, recognizes that sophocles’ Antigone is “deathcrowded” in the sense that the living exist under pressure of the dead.45 but, it is not merely the presence of the dead that haunts Kierkegaard’s antigone. it is also her own impending death that is wrapped up in the secret, an idea that steiner does not hesitate to link to heidegger (or the “Kierkegaardian-heideggerian postulate” that one’s own death is inalienable to any other).46 With this observation, we return to the SKS 4, 162 / EO1, 164. see also steiner, Antigones, p. 61. steiner, Antigones, p. 62. 43 ibid., p. 63. this statement, however, in not meant to distance Kierkegaard’s biography from his rendition of antigone, as steiner will almost immediately refer to his character as “antigone-Kierkegaard.” rather, it is meant to express a formal way of preserving a level of secrecy throughout his indirect communication. in his introduction to Fear and Trembling and The Book on Adler, steiner reiterates graphically: “[Kierkegaard’s] aloneness turned to strategy. he took his stance at the frontiers of his community and of his psyche….allusions to intimate episodes and storms of sensibility are encased in the psychological, metaphysical and theological motions of argument even where these appear to be most abstract and general. Kierkegaard, in maneuvers of rhetoric not always attractive, strips himself naked while advocating uttermost reticence and the burial of the heart” (p. xiii). 44 steiner, Antigones, p. 65. 45 ibid., p. 263. 46 ibid., p. 32. We will return to heidegger below, but in this context, it is important to note that, according to Steiner, Kierkegaard foresaw the difficulty of dying one’s own death 41 42

George Steiner: Playing Kierkegaard’s Sports

201

apparent equivocation concerning steiner’s existence as a writer who reveals while maintaining a secret. at this point in our examination of steiner’s Kierkegaard, it is clear that physical isolation from the common “racket” is only the first step in preserving one’s existence. the second step in self-preservation is discovering a way of communicating that avoids common speech since, as Kierkegaard sensed, it is “fatally charged.”47 for steiner, this second step is attempted in the creation of what he refers to as the “pythagorean genre” and a wholesale humiliation of speech is required to cross this threshold. in 1965, steiner published a short essay—“the pythagorean genre”—in which he attempted to “liberate” traditional forms of discourse. in a sense, this particular essay proclaimed the bold recognition of the need for a new kind of communication that challenges the mendacity of common language by turning to a more primal and truthful mode of communication: music. steiner alleges that, historically, speech appeared later than music, an order that is also fundamental to orphic and pythagorean doctrines and to the harmonia mundi of boethius and the sixteenth century. therefore, in the face of the constant “racket” of clamorous speech, he asserts that music becomes one of the few possible means of mediating fragmentary incompletion, silence, and death.48 in the eyes of steiner, it is no accident that the two most observant visionaries of the nineteenth century—Kierkegaard and nietzsche— saw in music “the mode of preeminent energy and meaning.”49 but, music is not the only alternative mode of communication. the suggestion of a pythagorean genre, then, is steiner’s broad attempt to value the “energies” in the motion of music, in the presence of mathematical and spatial symbolism, and in the magic of language.50 casting the net rather wide, he appeals to the handful of thinkers and “feelers” in language who have actually had something to tell us about “what is music:” augustine, Jean-Jacques rousseau (1712–78), Kierkegaard, arthur schopenhauer (1788–1860), nietzsche, and theodor adorno (1903–69).51 in the midst of the invasiveness of modern clinical existence while heidegger followed and analyzed it. see steiner, Grammars of Creation, p. 325. that said, steiner is also adamant that Weil’s sketches of antigone and creon do not take us any further than hegel and Kierkegaard. rather, if there is anyone who goes further, it is heidegger. on the other hand, however, steiner looks more favorably towards Weil’s Gravity and Grace, which he considers to be “no mean heir” to the best of Kierkegaard. see george steiner, “sainte simone,” The Times Literary Supplement, June 4, 1993, p. 4. 47 steiner, Antigones, p. 208. 48 see george steiner, “the pythagorean genre,” in Ernst Bloch zu ehren. Beiträge zu seinem Werk, ed. by siegfried unseld, frankfurt: suhrkamp Verlag 1965, pp. 337–8; pp. 341–2. that is not to say, however, that steiner values all music equally. he is also very critical of rock and heavy metal which are, in his words, “the deconstruction of all human silence and of all hopes for human quietness and inwardness.” they are meant to deafen and humiliate and, in steiner’s eyes, they are “totally sadistic” in that they bring to an end “our sense of the harmony of life.” steiner, “the art of criticism ii,” p. 90. 49 steiner, In Bluebeard’s Castle, p. 123. 50 steiner, Extraterratorial, p. 168. 51 steiner, Errata, p. 72.

202

Paul Martens

as one can already sense, steiner is not interested in music simply as music (though he is certainly interested in Kierkegaard’s reflections concerning Wolfgang amadeus mozart’s (1756–91) Don Giovanni)52 but in music as a model for the actions of the mind within language. experimentally striving towards new poetic potentialities, he reaches out at this early stage to “the other principal grammars of human perception—art, music, or more recently, mathematics.”53 Years later, he would state that the truths (by which he means the necessities of ordered feeling in the musical experience) are not irrational. rather, they are simply irreducible to reason or pragmatic considerations. it is this irreducibility that can only be spoken of obliquely or in similes that serves as the spring of steiner’s argument.54 and, although blake lurks in the subterranean depths of this future poetics, Kierkegaard is explicitly named as its foreshadowing, especially his Either/Or which is “part metaphysics, part memoir, part reverie when language is in a state of total energy.”55 Yes, one can clearly see that steiner is seriously playing in Kierkegaard’s sports. following Kierkegaard, steiner names Wittgenstein as the next standardbearer of the pythagorean genre.56 in Extraterritorial, steiner quotes Wittgenstein: “nothing is lost if one does not seek to say the unsayable. instead, that which cannot be spoken is—unspeakably—contained in that which is said!”57 much more could be said in this direction but, since this article is concerned primarily with Kierkegaard, i will simply note that steiner understands, at that very least, that Wittgenstein is an heir to Kierkegaard’s anti-rhetoric. there are moments in this preliminary stage of steiner’s argument that he faintly resembles contemporary proponents of deconstruction that have, in his own words, undermined Friedrich Schleiermacher’s (1768–1834) confident paradox: neither the expression of an author’s putative intentions nor the reinterpretation have any stable, evidential status.58 perhaps one might even dare to read his appropriation of the “wounds of possibility”—one of his favorite Kierkegaardian images—as a claim that all interpretation must always remain open (which would look much like Jacques derrida’s (1930–2004) notion of “pretext” noted in the epigraph).59 52

p. 42.

see george steiner, “schoenberg’s Moses und Aron,” Encounter, vol. 24, 1965, p. 40;

steiner, “the pythagorean genre,” pp. 338–9. steiner, Real Presences, p. 19. 55 george steiner, “a note on literature and post-history,” in Festschrift zum achtzigsten Geburtstag von Georg Lukács, ed. by frank benseler, neuwied und berlin: luchterhand 1965, p. 510. 56 steiner, “the pythagorean genre,” p. 341. 57 george steiner, “the language animal,” Encounter, vol. 33, no. 2, 1969, p. 15. in the introduction to Fear and Trembling and The Book on Adler, steiner also notes that the interplay between philosophic propositions and poetic-dramatic means of expression is both fundamental to Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling and instrumental in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus (p. xiv). 58 steiner, Real Presences, p. 173. 59 one should also note that derrida is also not afraid to play in Kierkegaard’s sports. see Jacques derrida, The Gift of Death, trans. by david Wills, chicago: university of chicago press 1995, pp. 53–81. 53 54

George Steiner: Playing Kierkegaard’s Sports

203

after all, he shares with deconstructionists a profound fear of the triumph of massmedia and mass-market technocracy that would fatally “heal” this very wound.60 to stop at this point, however, would be to remain in the “autistic echo-chambers of deconstruction,” to remain in a “theory and practice of games which…subvert and alter their own rules in the course of play.”61 one can never forget that steiner’s mysterious god, even if it is the deus absconditus, “the god not-there,” remains, provoking both rebellion and acquiescence. the very density of god’s absence is “no empty dialectical twist.”62 for steiner, it is clear that there is a reason that talking about the gods seems to be “a compulsion grounded in man’s guts.”63 unsurprisingly, Kierkegaard also has a pivotal role to play in displaying and illuminating this conviction. III. Speaking Essentially with God one of the texts that steiner reviews in 1980 is nelly Viallaneix’s Ecoute, Kierkegaard.64 one of steiner’s criticisms of this text is that she leaves no doubt as to what needs to be done: “Je dois entrer en relation personnelle avec le Christ vivant.”65 Viallaneix’s existential christology is rooted in Kierkegaard’s own claims that the entire corpus is oriented toward the religious, toward an immediacy of discourse with god through the sole medium of communication accessible to humans, namely, the Word made audible in christ. in this way, the “aesthetic” and “ethical” stages must be transcended in order to achieve the authentic purpose of the corpus.66 as one ought to suspect by now, steiner responds: the aesthetician, the musical and literary critic, the secular psychologist, the political analyst, the virtuoso pamphleteer, are as much a part of the “religious” Kierkegaard as are the pietist of the Papirer and the preacher of the five Discourses at the Communion on Fridays. one must, therefore, learn to read certain parts of Kierkegaard against their author.67

steiner, like his Kierkegaard, anguishes in the collision of an experience of the “totally other”68 with the inviolable fact that, even in the hands of masters like the author of Job, augustine, dante alighieri, pascal, gerard manley hopkins (1844–89), and george steiner, “What is comparative literature?,” in No Passion Spent, p. 150. george steiner, “the uncommon reader,” The Times Literary Supplement, october 25, 1974, p. 1198. 62 steiner, Real Presences, p. 229. 63 steiner, My Unwritten Books, p. 193. 64 nelly Viallaneix, Ecoute, Kierkegaard, paris: editions du cerf 1979. 65 “i must enter into a personal relation with the living christ.” steiner, “speaking essentially with god,” p. 82. 66 this is how steiner renders Kierkegaard’s self-revelation in The Point of View. see steiner, “speaking essentially with god,” p. 81. 67 steiner, “speaking essentially with god,” p. 81. steiner’s assessment of tolstoy’s self-interdict and self-selection yields the same result. 68 see steiner, Errata, p. 186, and In Bluebeard’s Castle, p. 43. 60 61

204

Paul Martens

Kierkegaard himself, human language’s self-surpassing is illusory because it can never say more than itself in respect of religious experience.69 in order to develop Kierkegaard’s refracted role in steiner’s circling around this collision, the following pages will briefly and thematically address the complementary contributions of heidegger, the provocative disjunction between Jesus and socrates, and ultimately, Kierkegaard’s journey toward a Jewish god. as indicated above, the haunting reality of a deus absconditus remains in steiner’s work. Yet, even he worries that there may yet come a time when indifference and inattention to the human soul—“ ‘dis-traction’ flowing from ‘ab-straction’ ”70— may no longer allow even an absent god. any appropriate theological response to this situation must not simply follow the way of the chattering world but must begin anew from “some unsparing humiliation inside theology itself,” some naked acquiescence of defeat or failure to imitate christ in the midst of the prolonged night at gethsemane.71 steiner contends that to begin anew in this direction, theologians ought to look to the motions of spirit in Kierkegaard and in Karl barth’s (1886–1968) commentary on romans. and, if theologians search in this direction, they will find that Heidegger has already followed this path. Steiner finds Heidegger rather late in life. But, once found, Heidegger rarely leaves Steiner’s side. What did Steiner find in Heidegger? In short, he found “one of a number of postdoctrinal, postsystematic theologies” that could be compared with Kierkegaard’s ironic eschatology or the new gospel of nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra.72 this heidegger was formed, in large part, during the silent years between 1916 and 1927, the years when Karl barth’s The Epistle to the Romans (1918) influenced his entire style of textual exposition—his “word-by-word interpretation”—and directed him to the radical, psychologizing theology or “crisistheology” of Kierkegaard.73 steiner is right that in noting the relevant philosophic and theological circumstances in heidegger’s early development, especially in relation to substantial points of reference in Kierkegaard, he has still said very little about heidegger’s most influential text: Sein und Zeit.74 one of the keys for steiner is angst, that augustinian, pascalian, and, above all, Kierkegaardian concept that makes our being-in-the-world problematic and worth questioning. it is precisely (a) the Kierkegaardian stress steiner, My Unwritten Books, p. 187. george steiner, “a note on absolute tragedy,” Literature and Theology, vol. 4, no. 2, 1990, p. 153. 71 see steiner, “a note on absolute tragedy,” p. 156, and “speaking essentially with god,” p. 82. 72 george steiner, Martin Heidegger, new York: Viking press 1978, p. 62. 73 ibid., pp. 73–5; p. 101. Years later, steiner would also claim that “theological classics, st. augustine on time, Kierkegaard on ‘fear and trembling,’ were to generate fundamental moves in heidegger’s teaching.” steiner, Lessons of the Masters, p. 79. steiner also pregnantly suggests a link between heidegger’s early appropriation of Kierkegaard and that of the young georg lukács (1885–1971) while acknowledging that lukács grossly misread both nietzsche and Kierkegaard. see steiner, Martin Heidegger, p. 74; p. 148, and george steiner, “georg lukács and his devil’s pact,” The Kenyon Review, vol. 22, no. 1, 1960, p. 15. 74 steiner, Martin Heidegger, p. 76. 69 70

George Steiner: Playing Kierkegaard’s Sports

205

on rootedness in the concrete, temporal world and (b) the stress on angst, with its affirmation of “the nearness and time-governing presentness of death, that fuse Sein und Zeit into necessary oneness.”75 in fact, steiner will go as far as claiming that “in a very real sense, Sein und Zeit is a twentieth-century reprise and elaboration of Kierkegaard’s Either/Or and Fear and Trembling.”76 despite the intimate links drawn between heidegger and Kierkegaard (and irrespective of the defensibility of these links), steiner also notes two distinct differences, differences that have significant political and theological import. First, unlike Kierkegaard and nietzsche, heidegger’s possession of self and rejection of “theyness” do not cut off the individual from social responsibility, since “care” and genuine self-hood are indivisible.77 second, like augustine and luther, Kierkegaard eventually falls under the spell of the intellectual drive toward objective contemplation and conceptualization that forces him from the genuinely ontological into the merely theoretical, from immersion in existence into a technical diagnosis of the concept of existence.78 that said, heidegger does not escape without chastisement as steiner articulates a rather damning critique that relates directly to the early-twentiethcentury humiliation of theology. returning to the theme of god’s silent presence, steiner, in “two cocks” and “Two Suppers,” examines the idiosyncrasies of the final days in the lives of Jesus and socrates in order to shed light on both the relationships between Jews and christians and the relationship between theology and philosophy. in this discussion, steiner presses in frightening and provocative directions where few of his manifold guides can help. in the face of the horror of the holocaust, the masters of philosophic questioning whose very lives were implicated—Wittgenstein and heidegger—have “little or nothing to say to us.”79 christian history does not escape castigation either, as steiner also discerns an ideological-historical continuity which connects christian anti-semitism (as early as the gospels and the church fathers) to its terminal eruption in the heart of a christian europe.80 Yet, in the Crucifixion, Steiner glimpses the hope for Christian theology that cannot be provided by the calm and timeless death of Socrates. The Crucifixion is humiliation, horror, defeat that passionately reasserts the question: “Who do you say that i am?”81 in response, steiner calls upon the christian theologian to seek some kind of responsible dialectic of time and eternity, of the historical and the “intemporal.” the christian theologian must come to grips with the ultimate nakedness and humiliation in the face of the muteness of god. the christian theologian must come to grips with the historical, ideological, symbolic, metaphysical, and religious connections between golgotha and auschwitz.82 in this task, Kierkegaard is of some help as he 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82

ibid., p. 94; p. 79. ibid., p. 147. ibid., pp. 108–9. ibid., p. 79. george steiner, “two suppers,” in No Passion Spent, p. 395. ibid. see matthew 16:15. steiner, “two suppers,” pp. 394–5.

206

Paul Martens

forces the question, the either/or that allows no mediation: either Socrates or Christ; either hemlock or golgotha.83 unless things change, the prognosis is rather damning for christianity. to close “two suppers,” an essay comparing plato’s Symposium with the last supper in the gospel of John,84 Steiner sketches grimly: “The first of these two suppers concludes in the everyday light of socrates’ untroubled day, on the water of his ablutions and the noon of his wisdom. the second closes on a doubleblackness: that of the solar eclipse over golgotha and the unending night of Jewish suffering.”85 steiner offers no remedy for this double-blackness. What he does offer is a form of Kierkegaardian therapy: we will not penetrate the persistent psychosis of christianity’s anti-semitism unless we discern, in this pathology, the unhealed scars or stigmata that must, like Kierkegaard’s “wound of possibility,” be kept open.86 this is precisely what steiner has in mind when he speaks about the humiliation of theology and Kierkegaard’s delayed or “ironic” eschatology. not all hope is lost. steiner himself points to donald macKinnon as one of his contemporary christian theologians that, following Kierkegaard and dostoyevsky, persistently “questioned hell rather than heaven.”87 steiner is convinced that once christians are willing to encounter the mosaic and nazarene summons to perfection, to accept Kierkegaard’s “fear and trembling” and barth’s stress on the abyss separating god from human, christians will be drawn to the Judaism within itself.88 it will be drawn away from the “neon” proclamation that “i know that my redeemer liveth”89 toward shadday, the “god not-there,” the deus absconditus that is recognized by pascal, Kierkegaard, and barth.90 With Kierkegaard, christians will be drawn in fear and trembling before the god of genesis 22 with which moral understanding cannot cope. in ways Kierkegaard could faintly intimate, Jewish thought has circled around this chapter as an unendurable but ardent emptiness.91 83 steiner, “two cocks,” in No Passion Spent, p. 375. this strong opposition is but one of the several expressions of this relationship that became a nineteenth-century leitmotif. see also steiner, “two suppers,” p. 396. 84 steiner notes that these two texts, fundamental to our inwardness and to our entire culture, are, in an almost Kierkegaardian vein, acts of “indirect communication.” see steiner, “two suppers,” p. 400. 85 ibid., p. 419. 86 george steiner, “through that glass darkly,” Salmagundi, vol. 93, 1992, p. 39. 87 see steiner, Errata, p. 152. 88 steiner, “through a glass darkly,” pp. 39–40. steiner is also quick to note that although Kafka follows Kierkegaard and appears to have adopted much from him, there is very little evidence of adoption. rather, the formal and material similarities with Kierkegaard are drawn from motifs and concerns of “a radically Judaic-talmudic kind.” therefore, the principal code is that of the biblical and talmudic legacy that does not pass through Kierkegaard, but was also, in a loosely parallel fashion, drawn upon by Kierkegaard. see george steiner, “introduction to franz Kafka,” in franz Kafka, The Trial, trans. by Willa and edwin muir, new York: alfred a. Knopf 1992, p. x; p. xiv. 89 see Job 19:25. 90 george steiner, “introduction,” in The Old Testament: The Authorized or King James Version of 1611, london: everyman’s library 1996, p. xxv. 91 steiner, “introduction,” in The Old Testament, p. xxix. interesting, steiner refers to arnold schoenberg’s (1874–1951) god, in the opera Moses und Aron, as a Kierkegaardian

George Steiner: Playing Kierkegaard’s Sports

207

in the introduction to Fear and Trembling and The Book on Adler, steiner circles back and reiterates many of these themes in expanded form. he notes that, against Kant and hegel, only the true god could demand the sickening and unreasonable sacrifice of Isaac. In doing so, Steiner’s Kierkegaard forces a decision between the dieu des philosophes and the living god, between intellectual accountability and faith, between ethical criteria and the absurd. abraham’s encounter with god is radically singular and private. “no synagogue, no ecclesia can house abraham as he strides, in mute torment, towards his appointment with the everlasting.”92 and then steiner asks: “do such appointments come to pass in modern times?”93 here is the “vexatious” question that brings the past into the present. IV. Against the Narcissistic Sports of Deconstruction according to steiner, the posthumously published The Book on Adler—although instigated by the published visions of the minister adolph peter adler—is about “calling” in the very strongest sense of the term. or, to rephrase, it is about the question “how does a human being know that he/she is being summoned by god?” and, steiner continues, “nothing is more fascinating to note than søren Kierkegaard’s almost despairing attempts to clarify, to unravel a conundrum whose intricacies, whose scandalous implications, seem to ebb from his ardent grasp.”94 if one is called by god, one is called as an apostle who is authorized to announce a message in mortal speech. Yet, if one is called to be an apostle, one is also called to existential humility of the most radical kind, a humility that is synchronically in correspondence with the humilitas of Jesus on the way to the cross. this understanding of Kierkegaard’s elusive paradox evokes the similar paradox that has loosely stitched together this entire essay, the paradox of publishing a secret. therefore, reading steiner’s introduction with a view to his perennial concerns, one can sense his relief and perhaps even joy in the conclusion: ineluctably, the possibility that adolph peter adler has received direct communication from christ (however garbled, however unworthy his modulation of the message into his own words and person) survives Kierkegaard’s negation. how could it be otherwise if, in s. K.’s own phrase, those “wounds of possibility are to be kept open”? It is precisely these flaws, these knots in the argument, which generate the fascination of our text.95

The Book on Adler is, necessarily, an “imperfect masterpiece.”96 along with Fear and Trembling, steiner reads it as an account of Kierkegaard’s failure to meet the God, a God infinitely, scandalously transcending any human sense of cause and effect. See steiner, “schoenberg’s Moses und Aron,” p. 44. 92 steiner, Fear and Trembling and The Book on Adler, pp. xv–xvii. 93 ibid., p. xvii. 94 ibid., p. xx. 95 ibid., p. xxii. 96 ibid., p. xxiii.

208

Paul Martens

expectations of certain “normal” human existence.97 Yet, like pascal, nietzsche, and Weil, Kierkegaard experienced his truncated life as a trial whose meaning and sole dignity lay in defeat. but, this is what is admirable. according to steiner, if Western culture—and christianity in particular—are to move forward in humility and resist the common “racket” of the present age, we must accept the disturbing honesty of a Kierkegaard—one of the “supreme poets”—who is willing to speak essentially with god and suffer in silence because of it. in this respect, Kierkegaard’s great phrase, the “present past”—the past that can become a present—can be applied to the failed legacy of the author himself.98 this would be true remedial reading. after all, “hagiography diminishes its object.”99 to conclude, i would like to return to the issue that opened this article: steiner’s concern about the domination of criticism. in the introduction to his own reader, steiner asks the following question: “are the narcissistic sports of deconstruction the necessary and honest consequence of the passage of our culture into agnosticism (atheism rebels with mortal seriousness, it does not play with words)?”100 this question concerning an acknowledged transcendence haunts his life’s work and, despite all of the attendant trouble, draws him to Kierkegaard among others. in response, steiner can only answer by playing other mortally serious sports that refuse agnosticism. hoping that the past will become a present, he willingly though not uncritically also plays Kierkegaard’s theological-philosophic-psychological sports.

see ibid., p. xiii. steiner uses this phrase, taken from Fear and Trembling, to refer to the legacy of Walter benjamin and ezra pound’s translations. see steiner, “to speak of Walter benjamin,” p. 21, and george steiner, “introduction” to The Penguin Book of Modern Verse Translation, harmondsworth: penguin 1966, p. 33. 99 Steiner, “Speaking Essentially with God,” p. 82. This is his final closing repartee to Viallaneix’s characterization of the pious and “fundamentalist” Kierkegaard. 100 steiner, George Steiner: A Reader, p. 21. 97 98

bibliography I. References to or Uses of Kierkegaard in Steiner’s corpus Tolstoy or Dostoevsky: An Essay in the Old Criticism, new York: alfred a. Knopf 1959, p. 44; p. 227; p. 228; p. 264; p. 290; p. 316. “georg lukács and his devil’s pact,” The Kenyon Review, vol. 22, no. 1, 1960, p. 15. “the critical moment 2: human literacy,” The Times Literary Supplement, July 26, 1963, pp. 539–40. “K,” The Times Literary Supplement, June 7, 1963, p. 398. “to civilize our gentlemen—ii: ice axes for the frozen sea,” The Listener, october 28, 1965, p. 661. “a note on literature and post-history,” in Festschrift zum achtzigsten Geburtstag von Georg Lukács, ed. by frank benseler, neuweid und berlin: luchterhand 1965, p. 510. “the pythagorean genre,” in Ernst Bloch zu ehren. Beiträge zu seinem Werk, ed. by siegfried unseld, frankfurt: suhrkamp Verlag 1965, pp. 337–8; p. 341. “schoenberg’s Moses und Aron,” Encounter, vol. 24, 1965, p. 40; p. 42; p. 44. “introduction,” in The Penguin Book of Modern Verse Translation, ed. by george steiner, harmondsworth: penguin 1966, p. 33. Language and Silence: Essays 1958–1966, london: faber and faber 1967, p. 8; p. 67; p. 86; p. 87; p. 90; p. 121; p. 123; p. 132; p. 135; p. 276; p. 336; p. 337; p. 343; p. 390. “the language animal,” Encounter, vol. 33, no. 2, 1969, p. 15. “the future of the book 1: classic culture and post-culture,” The Times Literary Supplement, october 2, 1970, p. 1123. In Bluebeard’s Castle: Some Notes Toward the Redefinition of Culture, new haven: Yale university press 1971, p. 43; p. 49; p. 68; p. 78; p. 123. Extraterritorial: Papers on Literature and the Language Revolution, new York: atheneum 1971, p. 79; p. 168; p. 169. After Babel, new York: oxford university press 1975, p. 72; p. 138; p. 157; p. 327, note; p. 396; p. 454. “a note on language and psychoanalysis,” The International Review of Psychoanalysis, vol. 3, no. 3, 1976, p. 257. On Difficulty and Other Essays, new York: oxford university press 1978, pp. 59, 87. “god’s spies,” The New Yorker, may 8, 1978, p. 153. Martin Heidegger, new York: Viking press 1978, p. 62; pp. 73–6; p. 79; p. 94; p. 101; p. 109; p. 147; p. 148.

210

Paul Martens

“a note on the distribution of discourse,” Semiotica, vol. 22, no. 3, 1978, p. 204; p. 208. “speaking essentially with god,” The Times Literary Supplement, January 25, 1980, pp. 81–2. “the archives of eden,” Salmagundi, vols. 50–1, fall 1980–Winter 1981, p. 62; p. 73; p. 83; p. 88. Antigones, oxford: oxford university press 1984, p. 17; p. 19; p. 24; p. 28; p. 32; p. 38; p. 40; pp. 51–66; p. 69; p. 106; p. 130; p. 144; p. 152; p. 208; p. 242; p. 263; p. 278; p. 296. “our homeland, the text,” Salmagundi, vol. 66, Winter–spring 1985, p. 20. Real Presences, chicago: university of chicago press 1989, p. 19; p. 173; p. 230. “a note on absolute tragedy,” Journal of Literature and Theology, vol. 4, no. 2, 1990, p. 156. “bad friday,” The New Yorker, march 2, 1992, p. 86; p. 88; p. 90. “introduction,” in franz Kafka, The Trial, trans. by Willa and edwin muir, new York: alfred a. Knopf 1992, pp. ix–x; p. xiv. “through that glass darkly,” Salmagundi, vol. 93, Winter 1992, p. 39; p. 44. “sainte simone,” The Times Literary Supplement, June 4, 1993, pp. 3–4. “introduction,” in søren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling and The Book on Adler, trans. by Walter lowrie, new York: alfred a. Knopf 1994, pp. xi–xxiii. “the art of criticism ii,” The Paris Review, vol. 137, Winter 1995, p. 51; p. 90. “introduction,” in The Old Testament: The Authorized or King James Version of 1611, london: everyman’s library 1996, p. xxv; p. xxix. No Passion Spent: Essays 1978–1995, new haven: Yale university press 1996, p. 31; p. 61; p. 66; p. 110; p. 116; p. 126; p. 141; p. 150; p. 176; p. 178; p. 227; p. 243; p. 244; p. 248; pp. 253–65; p. 272; p. 284; p. 296; p. 302; p. 321; p. 336; p. 340; p. 353; p. 375; p. 378; p. 388; p. 394; p. 396; p. 400. Errata: An Examined Life, london: Weidenfeld and nicolson 1997, p. 3; p. 59; p. 72; p. 152; p. 154; p. 186. “foreword,” in iris murdoch, Existentialism and Mystics: Writings on Philosophy and Literature, ed. by peter conradi, london: penguin 1999, p. x; p. xiv. Grammars of Creation, new haven: Yale university press 2001, p. 2; p. 8; p. 237; p. 270; p. 312; p. 314; p. 318; p. 325. “to speak of Walter benjamin,” Benjamin Studien/Studies, vol. 1, no. 1, 2002, p. 21. Lessons of the Masters, cambridge, massachusetts: harvard university press 2003, p. 25; p. 52; p. 79; p. 113. My Unwritten Books, london: Weidenfeld and nicolson 2008, p. 45; p. 137; p. 186; p. 196; p. 203. George Steiner at The New Yorker, ed. by robert boyers, new York: new directions 2009, p. 67; p. 220; p. 225; p. 227. II. Sources of Steiner’s Knowledge of Kierkegaard anz, Wilhelm, Kierkegaard und der deutsche Idealismus, tübingen: J.c.b. mohr 1956.

George Steiner: Playing Kierkegaard’s Sports

211

bense, max, Hegel und Kierkegaard, eine prinzipielle Untersuchung, cologne: staufen 1948. fenger, henning, Kierkegaard: The Myths and Their Origins, trans. by george c. Schoolfield, New Haven and London: Yale University Press 1980. hirsch, emanuel, Kierkegaard-Studien, vols. 1–2, gütersloh: bertelsmann 1930–33. Kierkegaard, søren, Samlede Værker, ed. by a.b. drachmann, Johan ludvig heiberg, and h.o. lange, vols. i–XiV, copenhagen: gyldendalske boghandels forlag 1901–06. — Søren Kierkegaards Papirer, vols. i to Xi–3, ed. by peter andreas heiberg, Victor Kuhr, and einer torsting, copenhagen: gyldendalske boghandel, nordisk forlag 1909–48. — Gesammelte Werke, vols. 1–28, trans. by emanuel hirsch, düsseldorf and cologne: diedrichs 1950–69. — Søren Kierkegaard’s Journals and Papers, vols. 1–6, ed. and trans. by howard V. hong and edna h. hong, assisted by gregor malantschuk, bloomington and london: indiana university press 1967–78. — Letters and Documents, trans. by henrik rosenmeier, princeton: princeton university press 1978. — Two Ages, trans. by howard V. hong and edna h. hong, princeton: princeton university press 1978. — Fear and Trembling and The Book on Adler, trans. by Walter lowrie, new York: alfred a. Knopf 1994. löwith, Karl, Von Hegel bis Nietzsche, zürich: europa 1941, pp. 148–53, pp. 198–204, pp. 213–18, pp. 334–6, pp. 386–389, pp. 436–9, pp. 488–500. luzzatto, guido lodovico, “sofocle e Kierkegaard: l’antigone moderna,” Dioniso, vol. 20, 1957, pp. 99–105. manheimer, ronald, Kierkegaard as Educator, berkeley: university of california press 1972. murdoch, iris, Existentialists and Mystics: Writings on Philosophy and Literature, ed. by peter conradi, london: penguin 1999, p. x; p. xiv. poole, roger, Kierkegaard: The Indirect Communication, charlottesville: university of Virginia press 1993. rehm, Walter, “Kierkegaards antigone,” in his Begegnungen und Probleme, bern: a. franke ag 1957, pp. 274–316. thulstrup, niels, Kierkegaard’s Relation to Hegel, trans. by george l. stengren, princeton: princeton university press 1980. Viallaneix, nelly, Ecoute, Kierkegaard, paris: editions du cerf 1979. Wahl, Jean, Études kierkegaardiens (Suivi d’extraits du Journal de Kierkegaard, 1834–1839 et 1849–1854), paris: aubier 1938. III. Secondary Literature on Steiner’s Relation to Kierkegaard abel, lionel, Important Nonsense, buffalo, new York: prometheus 1987, p. 23.

212

Paul Martens

asensio, Juan, Essai sur l’oeuvre de George Steiner: La Parole soufflé sur notre poussière, paris: l’harmattan 2001, p. 54; p. 64; p. 79; p. 126; p. 142; p. 210; pp. 236–7; p. 242. carroll, robert p., “toward a grammar of creation: on steiner the theologian,” in Reading George Steiner, ed. by nathan a. scott, Jr. and ronald a. sharp, baltimore: Johns hopkins university press 1994, p. 269. Forest, Philippe, “George Steiner à contresens,” in Avec George Steiner: Les chemins de la culture, paris: albin michel 2010, p. 59.

William styron: styron and the assault of Kierkegaardian dread nigel hatton if you do what i continue to do, you write—as the canny isak dinesen said you must do—without hope and without despair. William styron

near the end of William styron’s (1925–2006) novel Sophie’s Choice,1 the protagonist, a young southern American aspiring novelist named Stingo, flashes back to a moment of crisis that causes him to endure “a real wrench of despair” and “writhe inwardly,”2 and his “heart to fill with pity and dread.”3 he is coping with the end of a friendship turned brief affair with sophie, a polish catholic survivor of auschwitz whose experience in the camp and subsequent refuge in brooklyn after the war is told through his twenty-something narrative voice. sophie’s days in the concentration camp go by with “increasing dread and anxiety”4 culminating in an “anxiety-drenched day”5 in which she is forced to make a “choice” about the fate of her two children. stingo’s crisis stems from the several narrative threads of the novel: hearing, internalizing, and telling sophie’s story; dealing with his physical desire for sophie as well as his friendship with her partner, the Jewish character nathan, who also takes an increasing interest in stingo’s novel, and completing the novel, in which he leads his characters “on their anxiety-sick funereal journey across the Virginia lowlands.”6 stingo describes his dilemma in Kierkegaardian terms: my novel of course was more than this, too, yet it was the vessel i have described, which is why i so cherished it as one cherishes the very tissues of one’s being. still, i was quite vulnerable; fissures would appear in the armor I had wrapped around me, and there were moments when i was assaulted by Kierkegaardian dread.7

William styron, Sophie’s Choice, new York: random house 1979. ibid., p. 408. 3 ibid., p. 431. 4 ibid., p. 394. 5 ibid., p. 392. 6 ibid., p. 418. 7 ibid., p. 438. the reference is to the Walter lowrie translation of Kierkegaard’s Begrebet Angest: The Concept of Dread, trans. by Walter lowrie, princeton: princeton university press 1944. a second edition was published in 1957. for one interpretation of this passage, see Elisabeth Herion-Sarafidis, A Mode of Melancholy: A Study of William 1 2

214

Nigel Hatton

Sophie’s Choice is the only styron novel in which Kierkegaard is mentioned directly, but the author’s entire fictional oeuvre borrows from and posits ideas that can be found in texts like The Concept of Anxiety, The Sickness unto Death, and Either/Or. Kierkegaard’s Works of Love, Christian Discourses and passages from his papers and journals also help to understand his presence in styron’s prose. critics have long made connections between styron and Kierkegaard, most notably in his novels Lie Down in Darkness (1951),8 Set This House on Fire (1960), and Sophie’s Choice. lewis a. lawson places styron among those american and english post-World War II writers “beginning to embody Kierkegaardian concepts in their fiction” at the same time as “a new generation of american preachers” trained by paul tillich, reinhold niebuhr, and richard niebuhr “was offering the same concepts in its sermons.”9 styron was aware of scholarship positing his interest in Kierkegaard; he had in his possession a 1976 master’s thesis by aubry martine titled, “William styron and the aesthetics of failure.” the fourth chapter is titled, “styron and Kierkegaard: the ‘stages on life’s Way’ (1) or the aesthetic stages in cass’s life.” the copy now sits among original styron transcripts in the William styron papers, rare book, manuscript, and special collections library at duke university. While previous analyses of styron and Kierkegaard have focused mainly on specific works and place emphasis on a modernist post-war malaise as the impetus for styron’s literary and religious attraction to Kierkegaard, none demonstrates how Kierkegaard can be seen as present in styron’s entire narrative production, from his acclaimed debut in 1951 until the dawn of his production at the end of the twentieth century. furthermore, the position of World War ii and modernity in their analyses is usually overdrawn. styron indeed draws upon Kierkegaardian concepts to express alienation and despair in the aftermath of mid-century horror, but his use of Kierkegaard aims to address even more fundamental questions about human action and inaction. the ethical dilemmas posed in Sophie’s Choice, for example, signify upon the dilemmas dramatized in Either/Or, and both Kierkegaard and styron rely on the novel to invite readers into the deliberation. in this article, i review and build upon the scholarship available on his work and its relationship to Kierkegaard and position styron as one of the most prominent american writers to have employed a Kierkegaardian lexicon to form the novel as a “vessel” for exploring questions about existence and the human condition, religious consciousness, and human beings’ struggles with modernity. if Kierkegaard’s writings represent a passionate confrontation with ethics, aesthetics, and religion in nineteenth-century denmark, then styron’s novels appropriate Kierkegaard’s concepts—anxiety, dread, despair (terms which dominate styron’s prose)—for a continuation of those concerns and to interrogate not only the twentieth century and its unprecedented mechanized forms of destruction, but also the legacies of the atlantic slave trade, colonialism, and the extermination of native peoples in the Americas. For Styron, whose fiction does Styron’s Novels, uppsala: uppsala university 1995 (Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, vol. 92), pp. 157–9. 8 William styron, Lie Down in Darkness, indianapolis: bobbs-merrill 1951. 9 lewis a. lawson, Kierkegaard’s Presence in Contemporary American Life: Essays from Various Disciplines, metuchen, new Jersey: scarecrow press 1970, p. xvii.

William Styron: Styron and the Assault of Kierkegaardian Dread

215

not directly name anxiety, dread, and despair as leitmotifs prior to the publication of his first novel, “the problem of race in this century would not be merely that of lynching in the american south but of widespread genocide and ethnic warfare that became endemic on virtually all of the continents.”10 as writers, Kierkegaard and Styron both understood the power of fiction as a means for communicating with readers—styron’s Sophie’s Choice and Kierkegaard’s Either/Or both belong in the anti-bildungsroman category; furthermore, both writers resisted the aristotelian privileging of plot over character in their work. the aesthete in Either/Or says character in the service of or subjugated to plot, purpose and action is a form of tragedy remnant of the classical period when characters lacked immediacy and “subjectivity reflected in itself.”11 conversely, “in the modern period situation and character are in fact predominant,” and “it automatically makes the individual responsible for his life.”12 anxiety is the lifeblood of character for the aesthete in Either/Or, because “anxiety always contains a reflection on time, for I cannot be anxious about the present but only about the past or the future, but the past and the future, kept in opposition to each other in such a way that the present vanishes, are categories of reflection.”13 styron takes a similar approach and believes that “ultimately character is the sine qua non of fiction.”14 he lauds “the autonomy of the character: how characters become more real than real.”15 the structure of styron’s first novel is patterned after novels written by his literary mentors, William Faulkner and robert penn Warren. his most critically acclaimed novels, The Confessions of Nat Turner and Sophie’s Choice, fictionalize major historical tragedies that shaped modernity, blending facts with styron’s own interpretation of how individuals reason and endure. in the case of all three novels, styron aims to examine consciousness and the human psyche by complicating the interiority of his protagonists. in other words, the novels are distinct for styron’s approach to character and positioning of plot as a lesser concern. the resulting existential novel leads to greater engagement between reader and text, styron putting the characters of his narratives set during slavery (The Confessions of Nat Turner), the holocaust (Sophie’s Choice), and just after World War ii (Lie Down in Darkness) in dialogue with the reader who has some knowledge of the real-life version of these events. defamiliarization occurs when styron constructs protagonists that depart from the historical record. in The Confessions of Nat Turner, for example, styron wanted to “re-create a man and his era, and to produce a work that is less an ‘historical novel’ in conventional terms from a 1991 speech delivered to the european parliament, strasbourg, france. William Styron, “Some Reflections on Europe and America,” presented to European Parliament, november 23, 1991, William styron papers, david m. rubenstein rare book & manuscript library, duke university. 11 the aesthete’s discussion can be found in part i of Either/Or, “the tragic in ancient Drama Reflected in the Tragic in Modern Drama.” SKS 2, 143 / EO1, 143. 12 SKS 2, 144 / EO1, 145. 13 SKS 2, 154 / EO1, 155. 14 george plimpton, “the art of fiction no. 156: William styron,” The Paris Review, vol. 41, no. 150, 1999, p. 141. 15 ibid. 10

216

Nigel Hatton

than a meditation on history.”16 their likeminded understanding of character as equally as significant as plot in modern modes of mimesis is central to why so many continuities exist between the philosophical, religious, and aesthetic ideas of the nineteenth-century thinker Kierkegaard and the twentieth-century novelist styron.17 I. John lang, drawing upon Kierkegaard’s commentary on guilt and innocence in the 1967 hong and hong translation of Journals and Papers,18 is among the critics to find Kierkegaardian ideas in Styron’s first novel Lie Down in Darkness. the novel centers on the world of a southern aristocratic family living in Virginia in the decades before and after World War ii. milton and helen loftis are coping with the loss of their daughter, peyton, who battles discontent with her surroundings and takes her own life in new York city. a locomotive has returned her body south to her native town, Port Warwick, Virginia, and the return is occasion for narrative flashbacks that provide insight into her life and the life of her family. the loftis family appears to be an idealization of southern gentility on the outside, but their private world is marked by alcoholism, infidelity, incest, bigotry, and betrayal. Their world is contrasted with the morality and seemingly simple lives of the black servants who work in their homes during the day and return to their own homes in an isolated section of the city in the evening. lang’s christian reading of the narrative, notable for its unpacking of biblical allusions in the text, focuses on peyton’s parents’ inability to acknowledge their sins and despair vis-à-vis Peyton’s own genuine struggle with the truth of innocence lost in the world. for lang, “in contrast to milton and helen, peyton actively addresses herself to the problem of personal salvation conceived as a religious quest.”19 at the immediate level, peyton’s quest is one of two in the novel, which ends with styron’s description of a religious revival in the black community where the loftis’ servant ella swan and her family reside. though the black housekeepers and laborers are minor characters in the novel, receiving only brief mention throughout, styron chooses to devote detailed attention to their religious 16

p. ix.

William styron, The Confessions of Nat Turner, new York: random house 1967,

lawson makes a similar argument but does not locate its connection to the aesthete: “Kierkegaard has also helped the novelist achieve a convincing narrative sequence. it is no longer sufficient for a novelist to begin at the beginning and tell his story until it ends. Ever since bergson men have acknowledged the falsity of compartmentalizing time into three separate and distinct spheres, past, present, and future. rather, human experience is always a state of becoming; thus the present is always a blur. and since, as an objective entity time has become so unreliable, the novelist has turned to other conceptions of narrative progression.” lawson, Kierkegaard’s Presence in Contemporary American Life: Essays from Various Disciplines, p. xvii. 18 John lang, “in Quest of redemption: the religious background of peyton’s monologue in Lie Down in Darkness,” The Critical Response to William Styron, ed. by daniel William ross, Westport, connecticut: greenwood press 1995, pp. 33–44. lang refers to JP 1, 424 (which corresponds to SKS 17, 218, DD:6g / KJN 1, 210). 19 styron, Lie Down in Darkness, p. 36. 17

William Styron: Styron and the Assault of Kierkegaardian Dread

217

ceremony at the end of his narrative. thus, as lang suggests, peyton’s “religious quest” as well as that of the black characters can be explained in Kierkegaardian terms found in Sickness unto Death: peyton’s and ella swan’s journey resembles the journey of despair that anti-climacus believes all christians, regardless of diversity, must endure. Peyton’s fifty-page monologue, a drowning in “concern for judgment, forgiveness, and resurrection,”20 ends with her crying, “oh my Lord, I am dying, is all i know, and oh my father, oh my darling, longingly, lonesomely, I fly into your arms!”21 the passage leads lang to conclude that even “in her suicide [peyton] chooses the possibility of redemption and styron’s imagery and allusions remind the reader of the religious tradition informing the book. Yet the desperation of peyton’s act helps map the twentieth-century’s spiritual wasteland.”22 styron’s narrative assigns culpability to both the individual and society, peyton for taking her own life, and society for its spiritual bankruptcy. suicide is not the answer to the despair peyton experiences; styron’s world mirrors that of Kierkegaard’s anti-climacus, where “suicide is basically a crime,” and “it cannot be said that suicide is despair.”23 the spiritual void of the novel mirrors the false christianity described by anti-climacus: nevertheless, it has to be said, and as frankly as possible, that so-called christendom (in which all are christians by the millions as a matter of course, and thus there are just as many—exactly just as many—christians as there are people) is not merely a shabby edition of the essentially christian, full of printer’s errors that distort the meaning and of thoughtless omissions and admixtures, but is also a misuse of it, a profanation and prostitution of christianity.24

Yet even in a milieu of hopelessness and despair, styron attempts to demonstrate that characters like peyton, her parents, and ella swan, have a choice. Writing to his father shortly after completing the novel in 1951, styron made a point to clarify the atmosphere of despair: Some people, too, will no doubt think the book is filled with a sense of needless despair. i don’t much care what they think; it has plenty of despair in it, but none of it, i think, needless. i’ve done what the true artist must do: paint life honestly according to his vision. if my vision is, to use a phrase, tragic, the tragedy is not gratuitous, but a part of our monstrously tragic times. the hope offered at the very end of the book is also not gratuitous; i think you’ll agree with me when you read it. title: Lie Down in Darkness.25

the hope is represented by the lives of minor characters in Lie Down in Darkness. the religious striving of black characters in the novel is equally important for styron and lang, “in Quest of redemption: the religious background of peyton’s monologue in lie down in darkness,” p. 37. 21 styron, Lie Down in Darkness, p. 386. 22 lang, “in Quest of redemption: the religious background of peyton’s monologue in lie down in darkness,” p. 17. 23 SKS 11, 161 / SUD, 46. 24 SKS 11, 214 / SUD, 102. 25 William styron, Letters to My Father, ed. by James l.W. West iii, baton rouge: louisiana state university press 2009, pp. 111–12. 20

218

Nigel Hatton

represents one of the ways in which he attempts to equate the humanity of all human beings in his prose. locating this early exploration of the human condition across racial lines should be kept in mind when reading styron’s later novels. Kierkegaard, i suggest, is instrumental in helping styron transcend the black and white divide that ostensibly separates human beings in his novel because of its southern setting in a racially segregated society. the “despair” of Lie Down in Darkness is the same despair Kierkegaard describes in The Sickness unto Death, thus denying any attempt to distinguish among racially defined despairs (black/pathological vs. white/sinful). despair as a condition or sickness human beings encounter in the process of their spiritual striving and relationship to christianity is available to all. earlier critics of styron’s work have made great efforts to place him in a southern literary tradition alongside writers like robert penn Warren and William faulkner. in particular, focus has been placed on the stylistic similarities between Lie Down in Darkness and Warren’s All the King’s Men,26 a classic of American fiction. Styron himself admitted to patterning the beginning of his novel after Warren’s opening;27 he admired his literary mentor’s use of the second person, an approach that not only 26

1946.

robert penn Warren, All the King’s Men, new York: harcourt, brace and company

All the King’s Men begins, “mason city. to get there you follow highway 58, going northeast out of the city, and it is a good highway and new. or was new, that day we went up it. You look up at the highway and it is straight for miles, coming at you, with the black line down the center coming at you, black and slick and tarry-shining against the whine of the tires, and if you don’t quit staring at that line and don’t take a few deep breaths and slap yourself hard on the back of the neck you’ll hypnotize yourself and you’ll come to just at the moment when the right front wheel hooks over into the black dirt shoulder off the slab, and you’ll try to jerk her back but you can’t because the slab is high like a curb, and maybe you’ll try to reach to turn off the ignition just as she starts the dive. then a nigger chopping cotton a mile away, he’ll look up and see the little column of black smoke standing up above the vitriolic, arsenical green of the cotton rows, and up against the violent, metallic, throbbing blue of the sky, and he’ll say, ‘lawd god, hit’s a-nudder one done done hit!’ and the next nigger down the next row, he’ll say, ‘Lawd God,’ and the first nigger will giggle and the hoe will flash in the sun like a heliograph.” penn Warren, All the King’s Men, p. 1. Lie Down in Darkness begins, “riding down to port Warwick from richmond, the train begins to pick up speed on the outskirts of the city, past the tobacco factories with their ever-present haze of acrid, sweetish dust and past the rows of uniformly brown clapboard houses which stretch down the hilly streets for miles, it seems, the hundreds of rooftops all reflecting the pale light of dawn; past the suburban roads still sluggish and sleepy with early morning traffic, and rattling swiftly now over the bridge which separates the last two hills where in the valley below you can see the James river winding beneath its acid-green rows of clapboard houses and into the woods beyond…. and most likely, as the train streaks past the little log-road stations with names like apex and Jewel, a couple of negroes are working way out in the woods sawing timber, and they hear the whistle of your train and one of them stands erect from his end of the saw, wiping away the beads of sweat gathered at his brow like tiny blisters, and says, ‘man, dat choo-choo’s goin’ to richmond,’ and the other says, ‘naw, she goin’ to po’t Wa’ick,’ and the other says happily, ‘hoo-ee, dat’s a poontang town, sho enough,’ and they laugh together as the saw resumes its hot metallic grip and the sun burns down in the swarming, resonant silence.” styron, Lie Down In Darkness, p. 9.

27

William Styron: Styron and the Assault of Kierkegaardian Dread

219

draws the reader in (addressing him or her as “you”) but also acknowledges the reader as human. additionally, the closing religious ceremony in Lie Down in Darkness has resonances with the ending of faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury.28 according to styron scholar and biographer James West, As I Lay Dying offered “little in the way of redemption for styron’s characters: only ella swan, the aged black servant, would finally understand and endure—much as Faulkner’s Dilsey had done in The Sound and the Fury.”29 interpretations like ruderman’s30 contrast the complex religion of white characters in the novel with the “carnival” religion and “primitive faith” of blacks like Ella Swan. Such simplification and segregation of religious and racial themes in the text miss the point of styron’s novel as a meditation on despair and the struggle for religious consciousness that applies to everyone regardless of, as Kierkegaard writes in The Sickness unto Death, whether you were man or woman, rich or poor, dependent or independent, fortunate or unfortunate, whether you ranked with royalty and wore a glittering crown or in humble obscurity bore the toil and heat of the day, whether your name will be remembered as long as the world stands and consequently as long as it stood or you are nameless and run nameless in the innumerable multitude, whether the magnificence encompassing you surpassed all human description or the most severe and ignominious human judgment befell you.31

Kierkegaard’s universal demand denies sentimentality; likewise, styron’s novel, draped in the guise of a southern narrative that dichotomizes the lives of blacks and whites, is actually equating the religious struggles of all characters. styron’s fascination with and knowledge of black religion stems from his newport news, Virginia, roots. While in prep school, he and his friends would attend an african methodist church. styron and his parents were often in the audience for africanamerican gospel concerts held at hampton institute (now hampton university), a college established during the reconstruction era to educate african-american and native american students who were not allowed to attend Virginia’s public colleges and universities. styron also knew about the slave rebellion of nat turner from an early age. turner’s 1831 insurrection, which took place near styron’s hometown, was religiously motivated, turner reasoning that he could not realize the greatness god planned for him if he remained enslaved. styron spoke of a childhood in which he was surrounded by african americans, but could not speak with them. Lie Down in William faulkner, The Sound and the Fury, new York: cape & smith 1929. James l.W. West, William Styron, a Life, new York: random house 1998, p. 157. 30 ruderman points out that “harry miller, peyton’s painter-husband, is a Jew” and concludes, “styron brings in harry the Jew along with the negro maids to suggest their undying affirmation, their violent persecution notwithstanding. While the two persecuted races last, the modern loftises disintegrate because of their inability to love and to endure…. harry the Jew, and the negro maids exemplify the power of compassion as they represent the two most persecuted races. they have experienced violence, endured suffering and are therefore compassionate through their understanding.” Judith ruderman, William Styron, new York: ungar 1987 (Literature and Life Series), pp. 72–3. 31 SKS 11, 214 / SUD, 27. 28 29

220

Nigel Hatton

Darkness, as with styron’s later novels, transgresses racial codes and boundaries in order to establish universality among his characters and, in turn, among his readers. While it is tempting to read Lie Down in Darkness as providing redemption for the oppressed in the novel, the characterization of ella swan is better understood as an unsentimental act of humanization, the understanding of the category of human being as “raised above” diversity and racial difference.32 she is based on a reallife woman who helped raise styron and impacted his view of religion during his childhood;33 similarly, she symbolically represents the dignifying of a dehumanized character from penn Warren’s All the King’s Men. in that 1946 novel, Warren introduces a black female character in a manner typical of American fiction of the period in general: “I could hear the nigger woman puttering around in the kitchen, humming to herself about her and Jesus.”34 styron borrows the scene and makes a humanizing revision in Lie Down in Darkness: “in the kitchen, amid the rattle of pots and pans, ella swan was singing a tune. about Jesus.”35 by naming ella swan, styron attempts to make his narrative, contra Warren’s and the impulse in Southern fiction at the time, one in which all characters are understood as human and struggling before god equally in their individuality. the naming of ella swan in a scene that is clearly taken from All the King’s Men indicates styron’s vision of a common humanity (suffering and redemption tied to individuals not racial groups), and his allusions to Kierkegaard should be read with this in mind. in the “social dimension of despair,”36 John W. elrod provides a Kierkegaardian analysis of a similar scene in the work of another southern writer, flannery o’connor. relying on Kierkegaard’s Works of Love and Christian Discourses, elrod interprets the importance of being a human being above all other temporal categories is constant in Kierkegaard’s writings, though here i am relying on his discussion in “to be contented With being a human being,” in Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits. 33 the name “swan” is taken from a woman who worked for the styrons. the swan family lived in Newport News, Virginia, Styron’s birthplace and hometown. The first name, Ella, is fictional, but also has a local explanation. The songstress Ella Fitzgerald was also born in newport news. thus, ella swan in Lie Down in Darkness is a symbolically rich character and the scenes in which she sings spiritual music are central to the novel. in A Tidewater Morning, “imaginative reshaping of real events” from his childhood, styron writes, “ordinarily, if i was up this late, i would sit and listen with florence [the basis for ella swan] to these evangelical jamborees. i loved them, although i would never have admitted this to my friends. i loved them mainly for the music. the hysteric preaching was beyond my grasp, but the singing stirred my blood, thrilled me, aroused in me a latent sense of christian joy and glory long stilled by ‘abide with me’ and other such whiney presbyterian solicitations. When the far-off choirs burst into gospel hymns like ‘precious lord’ and ‘didn’t it rain!’ i got a charge that began to encircle my bottom and then moved straight up my spine to my skull, where it climaxed in a mini-electrocution, setting all the hairs of my scalp on end.” William styron, A Tidewater Morning: Three Tales from Youth, new York: random house 1993, p. 95. 34 penn Warren, All the King’s Men, p. 42. 35 styron, Lie Down in Darkness, p. 25. 36 John W. elrod, “the social dimension of despair,” in The Sickness unto Death, ed. by robert l. perkins, macon, georgia: mercer university press 1984 (International Kierkegaard Commentary, vol. 19), pp. 107–19. 32

William Styron: Styron and the Assault of Kierkegaardian Dread

221

the short story “everything that rises must converge”37 as one denying racial separation, sentimentality, and small-mindedness. he writes: the black woman’s denial of the social arrangements of white supremacy constituted nothing less than denial of white identity. o’connor’s story strongly conveys Kierkegaard’s notion of the spiritual ground of cultural and class conflict in its portrayal of Julian’s mother as one who “naturally” and “innocently” builds her identity in and through the subjugation of the blacks. Whether in the intimate relations of friendship, family, and eros or in the public relation of classes, the immediate individual implicates others in instrumental relations given the necessity of the other in each individual’s striving for the end of selfactualization.38

the implicit and explicit interdictions in styron’s novels are constructed mainly through his knowledge of how readers will generally interpret the master narratives of american culture. Yet, in trying to “recreate man and his era” and move beyond the conventional historical novel, styron resists interdictions and restores the universality of the human condition. if black and white characters are deemed fundamentally different at the start of Lie Down in Darkness, by the end of the novel they are joined in their relation to Kierkegaardian anxiety and despair. at a baptismal ceremony attended by the african-american characters in styron’s novel, a woman comforts ella swan because she has heard that swan “had sorrow in yo’ fambly today.” the woman is referring to peyton as ella swan’s family in a society structure that only sees ella as servant. ella swan acknowledges and accepts the understanding of peyton as her family, nevertheless: “’deed we did,” ella sighed, “de lawd plucked off the prettiest creature in dis world.”39 soon, the entire group of african-american characters, those close to peyton and those who did not know her, mourn her and understand her as family. the publication of Lie Down in Darkness made styron a budding celebrity in literary circles in the united states and europe. the book won the prestigious american academy of arts and letters Prix de Rome, reserved for promising young writers, and as part of the award he was required to complete a residency in the italian capital. before his arrival he spent a week in copenhagen and then, like many writers before him, journeyed by train from denmark to germany and eventually france and italy. after his arrival in rome, styron familiarized himself here is elrod’s synopsis of the story: “a white mother and her college-aged son, Julian, are riding to the local YWca. at a stop the bus is boarded by a black woman and her four-year-old son, who immediately attracts Julian’s mother’s attention. throughout the ride, the white mother treats the child with gratuitous and condescending gestures of the sort that one makes to an inferior. as the four persons leave the bus, Julian’s mother gives the young black boy ‘a shiny new penny.’ his mother’s rage, which had been slowly building throughout the ride, erupts with a slap across the white woman’s face. she then grabs her son’s hand and storms down the street, leaving Julian’s mother dazed and sprawled across the sidewalk. Julian accepts this violent reproach as a lesson justly deserved.” elrod, “the social dimension of despair,” p. 113. 38 ibid. 39 styron, Lie Down in Darkness, p. 25. 37

222

Nigel Hatton

with the work of french existentialists like sartre, camus, and de beauvoir. he read them in English translation, though later in his career Styron would have a fluent knowledge of french and work closely with translators on french editions of his work. in particular, styron enjoyed the work of camus, whom he called his favorite among his contemporaries in france. the norwegian writer Knut hamsun’s novel Hunger also moved him. Though the influence of and intertextuality with French writers is recognizable in styron’s authorship, the religious themes of his work would make it difficult to situate him entirely in a French tradition of existentialist ideas. after the publication of a war novella titled The Long March styron returned to the introspective meditative novel form. his second novel, Set This House on Fire, has received the most attention as a narrative informed by Kierkegaard. lewis lawson, gunnar urang, Kenneth a. robb, and others have pointed to the allusions to Sickness unto Death in styron’s text, a transatlantic story that moves between the american south, including the port Warwick setting of Lie Down and Darkness, and the cityscapes of Western europe. the narrator of Set This House on Fire, peter leverett, a thirty-something american lawyer, flashes back to an encounter in Sambuco, Italy, with a pair of troubled archrival figures, the alcohol-fueled Cass Kinsolving and Mason Flagg, an affluent womanizer bold enough to justify his sexual inclinations with “nietzsche’s concept of the apollonian and the dionysian—a marvel of romantic yet totally acceptable logic, really.”40 like Lie Down in Darkness, the narrative approach of Set This House on Fire looks backward in order to posit possibilities about the future action or inaction in the lives of the protagonists. lewis calls the character Kinsolving a “Kierkegaardian man of despair”41 and argues that even if cass has apparently never read Kierkegaard, styron surely has: “despair,” “selfloathing,” “selfishness,” “self,” “sick unto death”!—all suggest that Styron is positing Kinsolving as a character who travels through the stages of despair until he reaches the faith that saves him from madness. styron relies mainly, of course, upon Kierkegaard’s The Sickness unto Death.42

styron’s novels consistently demonstrate his interests in the history, philosophy, and music of the Western intellectual tradition. Set This House on Fire, in particular, can be seen as a musical text with allusions to great composers and their works. Kenneth A. Robb traces the musical influence of Either/Or in Set This House on Fire and suggests that styron is borrowing from Kierkegaard’s “the immediate erotic stages” and “the seducer’s diary”: “the novel is in large measure a complex translation, into prose and into the contemporary world, of mozart’s version of the don Juan legend as it is discussed in the Either part of Kierkegaard’s Either/Or.”43 it is important to note that when the protagonist hears mozart’s Don Giovanni, the William styron, Set This House on Fire, new York: random house 1960, p. 424. lewis lawson, “cass Kinsolving: Kierkegaardian man of despair,” Wisconsin Studies in Contemporary Literature, vol. 3, no. 3, 1962, pp. 54–66. 42 ibid., p. 55. 43 Kenneth a. robb, “William styron’s don Juan,” in Kierkegaard’s Presence in Contemporary American Life: Essays from Various Disciplines, p. 177. 40 41

William Styron: Styron and the Assault of Kierkegaardian Dread

223

experience is not merely one of cosmopolitan aestheticism: “perhaps it was pure volume alone, or some left-over nostalgia for this music from my native shires, but i thought i had never heard anything at once so lovely and so horrible, and my mind began to swarm with southern weather, southern voices, southern scenes.”44 by the 1960s styron was widely acknowledged as a writer comfortable in the use of existentialist concepts, but commentators parted in their assessment of the existentialist meditation at the heart of his third novel, The Confessions of Nat Turner, which garnered him the Pulitzer Prize for fiction and the Howells Medal of the american academy of arts and letters. the novel is based on a historical event that has become important in african-american history and cultural memory. in 1831, nat turner and a group of fellow slaves in southampton, Virginia, killed 55 white men, women, and children in an attempt to gain their freedom. turner cited Divine inspiration (one day while working in the fields he was told from above that he was designated to be great) for leading the rebellion, saying, “i would never be of use to anyone as a slave.”45 turner and the group he gathered were executed for their actions, and slaves throughout the colonies were punished or killed by their masters in the aftermath of the insurrection. styron knew the story well: as a child he came across the marker for nat turner’s slave rebellion in southampton, Virginia, during a school field trip. He was born and raised in nearby Newport News, Virginia, the basis for Port Warwick, the fictional settings in Lie Down in Darkness and Set This House on Fire. at a point when he was among the most successful american writers, styron decided to assume turner’s identity and write a novel from his point of view. he based his understanding of turner on the controversial document that is ostensibly a white lawyer’s transcription of turner’s confession in a southampton jail after his capture. a voracious reader, styron researched widely in the area of africanamerican history and various studies of slavery in the americas and other societies. in his “author’s note,” preceding the start of the novel, styron writes that he has “rarely departed from the known facts about nat turner and the revolt” and reminds readers looking for moral suasions that it has mainly been his “intention to try to recreate a man and his era, and to produce a work that is less an ‘historical novel’ in the conventional terms than a meditation on history.”46 his approach brought about the styron, Set This House on Fire, p. 121. also, see styron on his relationship with music: “i’ve said before that i don’t think that i would have been able to write a single word had it not been for music as a force in my life. i come from a musical family: my mother had studied voice in Vienna and she played music a lot. We had a primitive phonograph on which she played classical music, baroque music, romantic music; and she often accompanied herself on piano. i was immersed in music from the beginning and i never lost the sense that music is the ultimate inspiration—the wellspring for my creativity.” in plimpton, “the art of fiction no. 156: William styron,” p. 139. 45 the quotation comes from thomas gray’s The Confessions of Nat Turner (1831). gray transcribed a confession from nat turner shortly after his capture and incarceration. scholars differ on the authenticity of language gray attributes to nat turner. the text is the only source from which the rebellion can be reconstructed. it is available in the appendix of William Styron’s Nat Turner: Ten Black Writers Respond, ed. by John henrik clarke, boston: beacon 1968, p. 101. 46 styron, The Confessions of Nat Turner, p. ix. 44

224

Nigel Hatton

ire of many african-american intellectuals, some of whom collected their dissent in William Styron’s Nat Turner: Ten Black Writers Respond. the controversy that ensued after the novel’s publication far overshadowed any critical assessment that built upon those analyses of Lie Down in Darkness and Set This House on Fire. styron’s biographer James West argues that The Confessions of Nat Turner “must be the focal point of any discussion of styron’s current american reputation.”47 in “the failure of William styron,” collected in Ten Black Writer’s Respond, ernest Kaiser calls styron “alienated and psychologically sick,”48 a condition he says prevents styron from writing a novel that accurately depicts the conditions turner faced as a slave. Kaiser derives his language from the Kierkegaardian analyses of styron’s previous work: now finkelstein, in his book Existentialism and Alienation in American Literature (1965), calls Styron a disciple of Faulkner and an existentialist whose fiction is technically good but more subjective and narrower in focus than Faulkner’s thus of less significance. John howard lawson, in an essay “styron: darkness and fire in the modern novel” (Mainstream, oct. 1960), disagrees somewhat with newberry. he calls styron a brilliant and sensitive writer who has moved from the freudian, psychoanalytic frame of reference of his first novel to the existentialism of the third.…Lawson says that Styron is angry at the evil of the social environment which destroys people but also feels that the trouble is mystical and hidden in the soul.49

for Kaiser, whereas writers like styron have employed the concepts of Kierkegaard and existentialism with the intent of the “humanization” of a character and historical figure like Nat Turner, “their view of society and of other human beings is colored by their subjective, freudian views of their own problems and the effect of their art is further alienation rather than humanization.”50 in a sermon at the duke university chapel on June 14, 1968, the rev. professor James t. cleland vowed to give a “meditation on styron’s meditation” in order properly to understand the author’s attempt to explore the intricacies of racism and its effect on human beings. styron, who stood behind his portrayal of turner despite backlash and boycotts, emphasized his intent to explore a human problem, not a racial one: i would never have written a book having to do with harlem or contemporary black experience because i didn’t know the idiom—i don’t know the idiom now. but i felt that writing about slavery in 1831 in Virginia was to deal with an area of experience in which i was as knowledgeable as a black person because the lifestyle and the manner of speaking—indeed the entire culture—were entirely accessible to me, no more or less than to a black writer. also, it seemed to me that for a black to deny me the attempt to enter a black skin would be to deny our common humanity.51 47

p. xv.

James l. West, William Styron: A Descriptive Bibliography, boston: g.K. hall 1977,

ernest Kaiser, “the failure of William styron,” in William Styron’s Nat Turner: Ten Black Writers Respond, p. 65. 49 ibid., p. 51. 50 ibid., p. 65. 51 styron made the remarks during an interview that was published in The Paris Review, a publication he helped found. plimpton, “the art of fiction no. 156: William styron,” p. 145. 48

William Styron: Styron and the Assault of Kierkegaardian Dread

225

styron contends that he felt the period when Kierkegaard lived was more “accessible” to him than even the material history of the twentieth century. the “entire culture” he can relate to is one in which human beings had been denied their freedom and, rightly or wrongly, embarked on religiously motivated quests to break away from immediacy. While styron underestimated the power of racial and cultural identity politics as well as the importance of legends, myths, and heroes to cultural groups, his decision to examine the despair, religious consciousness, and anxiety of a human being denied his freedom, is consistent with the approach and intent of his first two novels and further underscores his preference for a “common humanity.” describing her father’s interest in the human condition, novelist alexandra styron noted how he was “compelled by experiences antipodal from his own: to be black, to be a Jew, a woman, a Nazi; to be dispossessed, disaffected, condemned to die, unable to fight. otherness stirred his imagination, his moral conscience, his pathos and his guilt.”52 undeterred by the nat turner controversy, styron published his fourth novel, about horrors of the holocaust, in 1979. Sophie’s Choice shows that at this point in his career styron is still informed by the ideas of Kierkegaard. like each of his previous novels, the meditation on ethics, aesthetics, and religion filters throughout the narrative. Whereas the earlier works appear to rely on The Sickness unto Death, styron, in Sophie’s Choice, makes “anxiety” a more prominent category in his meditative prose. it is clear that the “Kierkegaardian dread” that seizes the novel’s protagonist is a condition that is informed by lowrie’s translation of Kierkegaard’s 1844 publication Begrebet Angest,53 later translated by thomte and anderson as The Concept of Anxiety: A Simple Psychologically Orienting Deliberation on the Dogmatic Issue of Hereditary Sin.54 It is in this text that we can find a discussion of the anxiety caused by human beings’ relations to sin, good and evil, and freedom. in the case of Sophie’s Choice, the holocaust has permanently fractured the global psyche, and the characters in the novel are trying to cope with the senseless destruction of millions of human lives. stingo, sophie, and nathan endure innocence as ignorance and wonder variously about the present and future in relation to their immediate and ancestral pasts. they experience “sickening dread”55 or “leaden, reasonless anxiety,”56 and struggle with the demands of faith. in writing his novels, styron admits, “i’ve always been partially intent on contrasting the spiritual impulse as it is defined by Christianity with the hypocritical ritual and hypocritical shallowness and thought that surround much of its manifestations in life.”57 styron’s novel, pro forma, prompted controversy: alexandra styron, Reading My Father: A Memoir, new York: scribner 2011, p. 159. søren Kierkegaard, The Concept of Dread, trans. by Walter lowrie, princeton, new Jersey: princeton university press 1944. 54 søren Kierkegaard, The Concept of Anxiety, trans. by reidar thomte in collaboration with albert b. anderson, princeton, new Jersey: princeton university press 1980. 55 styron, Sophie’s Choice, p. 300. 56 ibid., p. 305. 57 lang cites this passage in “in Quest of redemption: the religious background of peyton’s monologue in lie down in darkness,” p. 42. it originally appears in robert K. morris, “an interview with William styron,” in The Achievement of William Styron, ed. by robert K. morris and irving malin. athens: university of georgia press 1975, p. 33. 52 53

226

Nigel Hatton i have been criticized in some quarters for “de-Judaizing” and “universalizing” the holocaust by creating, in my novel Sophie’s Choice, a heroine who was a gentile victim of auschwitz. such was not my intention; it was rather to show the malign effect of antisemitism and its relentless power—power of such breadth, at least in the nazis’ hands, as to be capable of destroying people beyond the focus of its immediate oppression. at auschwitz, as in the inferno, Jews occupied the center of hell but the surrounding concentric rings embraced a multitude of other victims.58

interestingly, styron is concerned with the breadth of humanity impacted by the events of the holocaust. characterizing the breadth of victims is of greater importance to him than remaining true to historical fact and accompanying master narratives. Just as he entered into the psyche of nat turner to meditate on conditions under slavery, styron uses sophie to facilitate a meditation on the tragic events of the holocaust. IV. Conclusion William styron’s posthumously published collection of short stories, The Suicide Run: Five Tales of the Marine Corps (2009),59 reprises the concept of “dread” or “anxiety” present throughout his authorship. While the title hints at stories of battle and war, the collection, as one reviewer notes, avoids “the trap of reductiveness into which too much late 20th-century american war literature tends to fall. styron chronicles what happens to those damaged by battles they did not fight—those who must dwell always in anticipation of the horrors to come.”60 in this article, i have attempted to demonstrate the ways in which Kierkegaard has helped styron to use fictional narrative as a “vessel” for explorations of human problems old and new. from Kierkegaard, he obtained aesthetic, philosophical, religious, and structural inspiration for developing the novel form into something that could contain his meditations on the human condition. happiness is rare in styron’s prose, and even when it does arise it is quickly supplanted by anxiety, despair, and dread. as murthy points out, styron relies on modern philosophy in general, and Kierkegaard in particular, “as part of his strategy to vividly portray the contemporary tragedy.”61 in the end, he tries to make particular conflicts the reflective responsibility of all human beings and not only those groups who find themselves personally impacted through historical, cultural, political, and social material and realities. the process has led him to be heavily criticized, but styron never wavered in his allegiance to the human condition. he meditated backward in order to unite us moving forward.

William styron, “the enduring metaphors of auschwitz and hiroshima,” Time, January 11, 1993, pp. 28–9. for a thorough critique, see eric J. sundquist, “mr. styron’s planet,” in Shades of the Planet: American Literature as World Literature, ed. by Wai chee dimock and lawrence buell, princeton: princeton university press 2007, pp. 103–40. 59 William styron, The Suicide Run: Five Tales of the Marine Corps, new York: random house 2009. 60 elizabeth d. samet, “marine dreams,” The New York Times, october 8, 2009. 61 s. laxmana murthy, Violence and Compassion in the Novels of William Styron: A Study in Tragic Humanism, new delhi: prestige books 1988, p. 112. 58

bibliography I. References to or Uses of Kierkegaard in Styron’s corpus Sophie’s Choice, new York: random house 1979, p. 438. II. Sources of Styron’s Knowledge of Kierkegaard undetermined. III. Secondary Literature on the Styron’s Relation to Kierkegaard finkelstein, sidney Walter, “cold War, religious revival, and family alienation: William styron, J.d. salinger and edward albee,” in his Existentialism and Alienation in American Literature, new York: international publishers 1965, pp. 211–42. Herion-Sarafidis, Elisabeth, A Mode of Melancholy: A Study of William Styron’s Novels, uppsala: uppsala university and almquist & Wiksell international 1995, pp. 157–9. lang, John, “in Quest of redemption: the religious background of peyton’s monologue in lie down in darkness,” in The Critical Response to William Styron, ed. by daniel William ross, Westport, connecticut: greenwood press 1995, pp. 33–44. lawson, lewis a., “cass Kinsolving: Kierkegaardian man of despair,” Wisconsin Studies in Contemporary Literature, vol. 3, no. 3, 1962, pp. 54–66. — “Kierkegaard and the modern american novel,” in Essays in Memory of Christine Burleson in Language and Literature by Former Colleagues and Students, ed. by thomas g. burton, Johnson city, tennessee: east tennessee state university 1969, pp. 113–25. — Kierkegaard’s Presence in Contemporary American Life: Essays from Various Disciplines, metuchen, new Jersey: scarecrow press 1970, pp. 7–20. murthy, s. laxmana, Violence and Compassion in the Novels of William Styron: A Study in Tragic Humanism, new delhi: prestige books 1988, p. 103; pp. 112–13. robb, Kenneth a., “William styron’s don Juan,” in Kierkegaard’s Presence in Contemporary American Life: Essays from Various Disciplines, ed. by lewis a. lawson, metuchen, new Jersey: scarecrow press 1970, pp. 177–90. urang, gunnar, “the Voices of tragedy in the novels of William styron,” in Adversity and Grace: Studies in Recent American Literature, ed. by nathan a. scott and preston m. browning, chicago: university of chicago press 1968, p. 269.

index of persons

abraham, 16, 63, 65, 66, 103, 104, 122, 129, 167, 169, 178, 207. adler, adolph peter (1812–69), danish philosopher and theologian, 207. adorno, theodor W. (1903–69), german philosopher, 85, 122, 201. aeschylus, 194. andersen, hans christian (1805–75), danish poet, novelist and writer of fairy tales, 55, 56, 114. antigone, 199, 200. aquinas, thomas (ca. 1225–74), scholastic philosopher and theologian, 111, 158, 163–72, 179. archer, William (1856–1924), scottish critic, 112. ariosto, ludovico (1474–1533), italian author, 142. aristophanes, 74, 158. aristotle, 158, 166, 198. auden, W.h. (1907–73), english-born american poet, 1–25. augustine of hippo (354–430), church father, 21, 171, 176, 201, 203, 204, 205. bakhtin, mikhail (1895–1975), russian philosopher, 31, 36, 142, 147. baldwin, James (1924–87), american author, 27–39. barber, samuel (1910–81), american composer, 41–9. barnacle, nora (1884–1951), wife of James Joyce, 112, 119, 130. barth, Karl (1886–1968), swiss protestant theologian, 66, 172, 204, 206. beach, sylvia (1887–1962), 113.

beauvoir, simone de (1908–86), french philosopher, 28, 29, 222. beavers, herman, 30. beckett, samuel (1906–89), irish author, 59, 127. beiswanger, george, 157–9. bell, charles, 180. benjamin, Walter (1892–1940), germanJewish literary critic, 113, 119, 122. berdyaev, nicholas (1874–1948), russian philosopher, 166. bergman, ingmar (1918–2007), swedish director and writer, 161. berkeley, george (1685–1753), irish philosopher, 127. blake, William (1757–1827), english poet, 59, 60, 71, 121, 194, 198, 202. blixen, Karen (1885–1962), danish author, 102, 213. bloom, harold (b. 1930), american literary critic, 51–79. boethius (ca. 480–ca. 524), roman christian philosopher, 201. bok, mary louise curtis (1876–1970), american founder, 41. bonhoeffer, dietrich (1906–45), german protestant theologian, 21, 22, 182. borges, Jorge luis (1899–1986), argentinian author, 113. bradbury, malcolm (1932–2000), english author, 137. brandes, georg (1842–1927), danish author and literary critic, 114, 115, 128. brock, Werner, 167. browning, robert (1812–89), english poet, 74.

230

Kierkegaard’s Influence on Literature, Criticism and Art

buber, martin (1878–1965), german philosopher, 28, 66, 177, 182. burke, Kenneth (1897–1993), american literary theorist, 53.

de man, paul (1919–83), belgian-born literary critic, 53. derrida, Jacques (1930–2004), french philosopher, 53, 67, 70, 120, 130, 193, 202. dewey, bradley, 176, 177, 187. dickens, charles (1812–70), english author, 61. dinesen, isak, see “blixen, Karen.” diogenes laertius, 125. don giovanni, 124. don Quixote, 19, 121. dostoevsky, fyodor mikhailovich (1821–81), russian author, 28, 36, 63, 176, 186, 194, 206. douglass, frederick (1818–95), american social reformer, 29. dru, alexander, 14, 45. du bois,W.e.b. (1868–1963), africanamerican sociologist, 29.

calvin, John (1509–64), french protestant theologian, 66. camus, albert (1903–60), french author, 28, 55, 175. celan, paul (1920–70), romanian-born french writer, 85, 86. cervantes, miguel de (1547–1616), spanish author, 121. césaire, aimé (1913–2008), martiniqueborn french poet, 29. chaucer, geoffrey (1343–1400), english poet, 54. chesterton, gilbert Keith (1874–1936), english writer, 62, 172. christ, 55, 69, 74, 75, 121, 122, 161, 163, 164, 170, 203–7. christiani, dounia buni, 114–16. cleland, James t., 224. cline, peter James (1845–1916), 159. collins, James (1917–85), american catholic philosopher, 165, 166, 171, 177. cooper, anna Julia (1858–1964), africanamerican author, 29. copland, aaron (1900–90), american composer, 43. cosgrove, brian, 123, 124. croker, thomas (1798–1854), irish author, 128. curtius, ernst robert (1886–1956), german literary scholar, 53.

eggenschwiler, david, 172. einstein, albert (1879–1955), german physicist, 181, 185. elie, paul, 186. eliot, t.s. (1888–1965), american-born british author, 2, 12, 58, 113, 146. ellison, ralph (1914–94), american novelist, 27, 29. elrod, John W., 220. emerson, ralph Waldo (1803–82), american essayist, 51, 58. engle, paul (1908–91), american writer, 159. erdrich, louise (b. 1954), native american author, 101–7.

dante alighieri (1265–1321), italian poet, 12, 109, 113, 129, 130, 203. darwin, charles (1809–82), english scientist, 128. davis, angela Y. (b. 1944), africanamerican political activist and scholar, 29. delillo, don (b. 1936), american essayist, 81–99.

fanon, frantz (1925–61), martinique-born french-algerian psychiatrist and philosopher, 29. faulkner, William (1897–1962), american author, 157, 215, 218, 219, 224. fitzgerald, robert (1910–85), american poet and critic, 160. foote, shelby (1916–2005), american historian and novelist, 175.

Index of Persons freud, sigmund (1856–1939), austrian psychologist, 11, 20, 51, 55, 60, 62, 67, 69, 70, 72, 102, 158. friis møller, Kai (1888–1960), danish poet and critic, 127. frye, northrop (1912–91), canadian literary critic, 53, 60. giannone, richard, 162. gilson, Étienne (1884–1978), french philosopher, 170. goethe, Johann Wolfgang von (1749–1832), german poet, author, scientist and diplomat, 109, 113. gogarty, oliver st. John (1878–1957), irish poet, 111. gordon, caroline (1895–1981), american novelist, 170, 171, 186. gordon, lewis, 27, 28. goulet, denis (1931–2006), american scholar, 167–9. greene, helen, 162. grimm, Jakob (1785–1863), german linguist, 128. grimm, Wilhelm (1786–1859), german linguist, 128. guardini, romano (1885–1968), italian catholic theologian, 171. hamann, Johann georg (1730–88), german philosopher, 68. hamlet, 9, 10, 55, 58, 118, 127, 128. hamsun, Knut (1859–1952), norwegian author, 222. hardy, clarence e., 33. hartman, carl, 164. hartman, geoffrey (b. 1929), german-born american literary theorist, 53. hegel, georg friedrich Wilhelm (1770– 1831), german philosopher, 68, 70, 71, 102, 120, 168, 169, 176, 177, 180, 199, 207. heiberg, Johanne luise (1812–90), danish actress, 124.

231

heidegger, martin (1889–1976), german philosopher, 28, 72, 158, 175, 178, 180, 185, 197, 200, 204, 205. heraclitus, 125. herberg, Will, 166. hesiod, 85. hester, betty (1923–98), 163. hirsch, emanuel (1888–1972), german protestant theologian, 195. hitler, adolf (1889–1945), 4, 194. homer, 109, 126, 129, 146. homer, louise dilworth beatty (1871–1947), american opera singer, 41. homer, sidney (1864–1953), american songwriter, 41. hong, edna h. (1913–2007), american translator, 1. hong, howard W. (1912–2010), american translator, 1. hopkins, gerard manley (1844–89), english poet, 203. horowitz, Vladimir (1903–89), russianborn american pianist, 42. hügel, baron friedrich von (1852–1925), austrian roman catholic thinker, 170. hurston, zora neal (1891–1960), africanamerican author and anthropologist, 29. husserl, edmund (1859–1938), german philosopher, 165. ibsen, henrik (1828–1906), norwegian playwright, 109–15 passim, 122, 127, 128. idel, moshe (b. 1947), romanian-born israeli philosopher, 61. isaiah, 65. isherwood, christopher (1904–86), britishborn american author, 2. Jacobsen, Jens peter (1847–85), danish author, 128.

232

Kierkegaard’s Influence on Literature, Criticism and Art

James, henry (1843–1916), american novelist, 27. James, Joy ann, african-american scholar, 29. Jaspers, Karl (1883–1969), german philosopher, 180. Job, 63, 66, 67, 116, 203. Johnson, samuel (1709–84), english critic, 57. Jonas, hans (1903–93), german-born american philosopher, 53. Jones, William r. (1933–2012), africanamerican scholar, 29. Joyce, James (1882–1941), irish author, 75, 109–31, 146. Jung, carl gustav (1875–1961), swiss psychiatrist, 112. Kafka, franz (1883–1924), czech-austrian novelist, 28, 55, 59, 162, 163, 177, 198. Kaiser, ernest, 224. Kallman, chester (1921–75), american poet, 2, 3, 9. Kant, immanuel (1724–1804), german philosopher, 95, 169, 177, 207. Keats, John (1795–1821), english poet, 57. Kettle, thomas (1880–1916), irish poet, 111. Kiberd, declan, 119. Kierkegaard, søren aabye (1813–55) The Concept of Irony (1841), 55, 60, 69. Either/Or (1843), 1, 4–7, 9, 34–6, 55, 64, 74, 114–16, 119, 120, 123, 124, 130, 149, 152, 176, 178, 182, 183, 185, 187, 199, 202, 205, 214, 215, 222. Fear and Trembling (1843), 16, 22, 32, 55, 64, 65, 103, 104, 116, 122, 125, 129, 130, 163, 164, 167, 187, 188, 195, 196, 205, 207. Repetition (1843), 5, 51, 63, 68, 72, 73, 121, 125, 130, 149, 176, 178. Upbuilding Discourses (1843–44), 55.

The Concept of Anxiety (1844), 15, 55, 60, 103, 125, 148, 150, 152, 183, 214, 225. Philosophical Fragments (1844), 55, 62, 68, 69, 75, 180, 187. Prefaces (1844), 129. Stages on Life’s Way (1845), 114–16, 122, 129. Concluding Unscientific Postscript (1846), 16, 20, 55, 60, 121, 176, 180. A Literary Review of Two Ages (1846), 10, 119, 130. The Book on Adler (ca. 1846–47), 195, 196, 207. Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits (1847), 124. Works of Love (1847), 8, 124, 214, 220. Christian Discourses (1848), 44, 45, 57, 124, 214, 220. “the crisis and a crisis in the life of an actress” (1848), 120. The Point of View for My Work as an Author (ca. 1848), 55, 76, 121. The Sickness unto Death (1849), 18, 32, 55, 83, 103, 104, 115, 119, 130, 163, 164, 165, 172, 176, 182, 184, 214, 217–19, 222, 225. Two Ethical-Religious Essays (1849), 176, 185, 187, 188. Practice in Christianity (1850), 57, 121. For Self-Examination (1851), 45. Judge for Yourself (1851–52, published posthumously in 1876), 45, 55. The Changelessness of God (1855), 45, 55, 57, 75. The Moment (1855), 43, 55. Journals, notebooks, Nachlaß, 1, 14, 20, 22, 44, 45, 55, 74, 115, 147, 151, 196, 216. King, martin luther, Jr. (1929–68), american civil rights leader, 31. Kirkland, William, 169, 170, 172. Kristensen, tom (1893–1974), danish writer, 124.

Index of Persons lacan, Jacques (1901–81) french psychoanalyst and psychiatrist, 72. lang, John, 216. lawson, lewis a., 214, 222. laxmana murthy, s., 226. leavis, f.r. (1895–1978), english literary critic, 139. leeming, david, 30. lequier, Jules (1814–62), french philosopher, 3. locke, alain (1885–1954), africanamerican writer, 29. lodge, david (b. 1935), english author and literary critic, 133–56. lowell, robert (1917–77), american poet, 160. lowrie, Walter (1868–1959), american translator, 1, 4, 45, 145, 225. lubac, henri de (1896–1991), french Jesuit, 167. luther, martin (1483–1546), german protestant theologian, 68, 205. mcclure, John a., 102. mccullers, carson (1917–67), american author, 157. macKinnon, donald, 206. malraux, andré (1901–76), french author, 61. mann, thomas (1875–1955), german author, 119. marcel, gabriel (1889–1973), french philosopher, 168, 171, 175, 178, 181. marcuse, herbert (1898–1979), german philosopher, 28. maritain, Jacques (1882–1973), french catholic philosopher, 166, 170, 171. martensen, hans lassen (1808–84), danish theologian, 20. marx, Karl (1818–83), german philosopher and economist, 11, 20, 165. mendelson, edward, 3. menotti, gian carlo (1911–2007), italianamerican composer, 41, 43. mephistopheles, 122.

233

merton, thomas, 172. milton, John (1608–74), english poet, 194. montaigne, michel de (1533–92), french essayist and philosopher, 58, 197. morrison, toni (b. 1931), african-american author, 29. mozart, Wolfgang amadeus (1756–91), austrian composer, 124, 202, 222. münch, charles (1891–1968), french conductor, 45. mynster, Jakob peter (1775–1854), danish theologian and bishop, 20. nabokov, nicolas (1903–78), russian-born american composer, 1, 113. niebuhr, reinhold (1892–1971), american theologian, 1, 162, 214. nietzsche, friedrich (1844–1900), german philosopher, 1, 20, 28, 51, 56–64 passim, 70, 102, 126, 165, 194, 198, 201, 204, 205, 208, 222. oates, Joyce carol (b. 1938), american author, 30. o’brien, edna (b. 1930), irish novelist, 113. o’brien, flann, 127. o’connor, flannery (1925–64), american author, 157–74, 182, 220, 221. o’gorman, farrel, 170, 171. olsen, regine (1822–1904), 130, 149, 152, 154, 200. otto, rudolf (1869–1937), german protestant theologian, 66. outlaw, lucius t., 29. pascal, blaise (1623–62), french mathematician, physicist and philosopher, 20, 58, 171, 182, 186, 194, 198, 203, 204, 206, 208. penn Warren, robert (1905–89), american poet, 160, 215, 218, 220. percy, Walker (1916–90), american novelist and essayist, 171, 175–91. percy, William alexander (1885–1942), american lawyer, 175.

234

Kierkegaard’s Influence on Literature, Criticism and Art

plato, 73, 84, 158, 206. plutarch, 200. poole, roger, 58. pound, ezra (1885–1972), american poet, 113. price, leontyne (b. 1927), american pianist, 42, 45. proust, marcel (1871–1922), french author, 59, 178. rampersad, arnold (b. 1941), trinidad and tobago-born american literary critic, 29. reid-pharr, robert, 27, 28. reiner, fritz (1888–1963), hungarian-born american conductor, 41. rilke, rainer maria (1875–1926), german poet, 4. robb, Kenneth a., 222. ross, hugh, 45. rousseau, Jean-Jacques (1712–78), french philosopher, 201. ruderman, Judith, 219. sagan, carl (1934–96), american astronomer, 182. saint-beuve, charles augustin (1804–69), french literary critic, 193. saramago, José (1922–2010), portuguese author, 59. sartre, Jean-paul (1905–80), french philosopher, 28, 29, 55, 175, 222. schleiermacher, friedrich d.e. (1768–1834), german protestant theologian, 168, 202. scholem, gershom (1897–1982), germanborn israeli philosopher and historian, 53. schopenhauer, arthur (1788–1860), german philosopher, 201. serequeberhan, tsenay, 29. shakespeare, William (1564–1616), english dramatist, 6–10, 22, 27, 53, 54, 58, 60, 109, 113, 114, 118.

Sheehy-Skeffington, Francis (1878–1916), Irish suffragist, pacifist and writer, 111. shelley, mary (1797–1851), english novelist, 61. senghor, leopold (1906–2001), senegalese francophone poet, 29. slaughter, thomas f., Jr., 29. smallwood, philip, 141. smith, J. oates, 172. socrates, 12, 13, 55, 69, 82, 83, 88, 91, 93, 102, 205, 206. sophocles, 196, 199, 200. spinoza, baruch (1632–77), dutch philosopher, 84. spivey, ted (b. 1927), american scholar, 161. steiner, george (b. 1929), french-born american author, 193–212. sterne, laurence (1713–68), anglo-irish novelist, 127. styron, alexandra, 225. styron, William (1925–2006), american novelist, 213–27. swenson, david f. (1876–1940), american philosopher, 1. swenson, lillian m., 1. swift, Jonathan (1667–1745), anglo-irish satirist, 58, 116, 127. tate, allen (1899–1979), american poet, 170, 171. tillich, paul (1886–1965), germanamerican protestant theologian, 1, 166, 214. tolstoy, leo (1828–1910), russian author, 194. toscanini, arturo (1867–1957), italian conductor, 42. traylor, eleanor, 31. turner, nat, 223. twain, mark (1835–1910), american author, 178. urang, gunnar, 222.

Index of Persons Veisland, Jørgen s., 126. Viallaneix, nelly, 196, 203. Vico, giovanni battista (1668–1744), italian political philosopher, 51, 109, 125. Voegelin, eric (1901–85), german-born american political philosopher, 158. Wandering Jew, 118. Watkins, gloria (b. 1952), african-american author and social activist, 29. Waugh, evelyn (1903–66), english writer, 178. Weaver, harriet shaw (1876–1961), english political activist and patron of James Joyce, 113. Weil, simone (1909–43), french philosopher, 20, 182, 208. Welty, eudora (1909–2001), american author, 157. West, cornel (b. 1953), american philosopher, 27–9, 224.

235

West, James 219. Weston, Jessie laidlay (1850–1928), english scholar, 142. Wilde, oscar (1854–1900), irish writer and poet, 62. Williams, charles (1886–1945), british writer, 1, 3, 4, 21. Williams, tennessee (1911–83), american writer, 157. Wittgenstein, ludwig (1889–1951), austrian-british philosopher, 198, 202, 205. Wittke, paul, 46. Wood, ralph, 158, 172. Wright, richard (1908–60), africanamerican author, 27, 29. Yeats, William butler (1865–1939), irish poet, 60. zack, naomi, 29. zerlina, 124.

index of subjects

absurd, 3, 17, 66n, 154, 207. alienation, 28, 37, 55, 102, 130, 177, 178, 199, 214, 224. angst, see “anxiety.” anguish, see “anxiety.” anti-semitism, 205, 206, 226. anxiety, 11–13, 15, 17, 54, 60, 68, 124, 145, 146, 148, 150, 151, 181, 204, 205, 214, 215, 221, 225, 226. apostle, 74, 75, 181, 185, 188. authority, 19, 32, 59, 86, 181, 184. bible, genesis, 129, 167, 168, 206. isaiah, 65. Job, 63, 66, 67, 116, 203. boredom, 9, 125. bourgeois, 117–19, 164, 186. catholicism, 102, 111, 135, 144, 158, 159, 170, 175, 176, 188. christianity, 1, 3–5, 9, 17, 18, 20, 22, 32, 33, 56, 57, 68, 70, 75, 104, 106, 121, 143, 154, 162, 170, 172, 179, 180, 182–4, 186, 205, 206, 208, 217, 218, 225. comic, the, 6, 137. communication, 180. direct, 76. indirect, 58, 181. community, 166. conscience, 12, 153. contemporaneity, 71. contingency, 168. Corsair, 120. crowd, 10–13.

death, 19, 31, 32, 72, 74, 75, 81–3, 88–96, 110, 117, 128, 133, 200, 201, 205. of god, 120. decision, 11, 17. deconstruction, 193, 202, 208. democracy, 120. demonic, the, 183. despair, 3, 13, 32, 33, 36, 56, 58, 61, 83, 116, 123, 127, 151, 153, 164, 179, 181, 184–6, 189, 213–22 passim, 225, 226. dialectic, 6, 37, 47, 62, 70, 73, 121, 122, 205. Don Giovanni, 124, 202, 222. eleatics, the, 125. eternity, 82. time and, 205. ethics, the ethical, 167. existence, 187. existentialism, 20, 21, 27–9, 33, 148, 165, 166, 170, 171, 175, 222, 224. fairytales, 128, 129. faith, 16, 17, 20–2, 32, 33, 103, 104, 130, 151, 164, 167, 169, 179, 180, 198. fascism, 3. fear, 81. freedom, 12, 27, 168, 225. gnosticism, 75. god, 11, 16–18, 20, 21, 32, 46, 59, 66, 94–8, 126, 167–9, 182, 196, 203, 205–7. god is dead, see “death, of god.” god-man, 121. grace, 21, 164, 165, 172, 182.

238

Kierkegaard’s Influence on Literature, Criticism and Art

great earthquake, 115, 116. guilt, 14, 118, 151, 153, 216, 225. hegelianism, 69, 179, 180, 185. hero, 9, 18, 19, 35. history, 7, 69, 118, 120–3, 222, 223. holocaust, 85, 205, 215, 225, 226. hope, 74, 152. humor, 101, 110, 126. idealism, 166, 195. immanence, see “transcendence and immanence.” immediacy, 151, 152. incarnation, 172. indirect communication, see “communication.” individual, the (see also “single individual, the”), 166. individualism, individuality, 177. interesting, the, 6, 14. inwardness, 16, 72, 177. irony, 16, 55, 59, 60, 69, 70, 101, 110, 123, 126. Judaism, 18, 206. knight of faith, 16, 22, 187. language, 16, 86, 97, 110, 127–9, 201, 202. leap, 22, 154. love, 9, 57, 64, 67, 72, 74, 110, 130. marriage, 7, 149, 152. martyrdom, 19, 20, 74. marxism, 36. mediation, 70, 71. melancholy, 47, 115, 146, 151. memory, 125, 152, 154. modern breakthrough, 114, 115. modernism, modernity, 12, 13, 34, 110, 118, 119, 158, 214, 215. music, 41–9, 183, 187, 188, 201, 202. nationalism, 120.

natural law, 168, 169. nazism, 3. nihilism, 163. nothingness, nothing, 126. ordeal, 188. paradox, 17, 69, 85, 167, 180, 181, 202, 207. passion, 16–20, 90. poetry, 1, 2, 5, 7, 11, 21, 23, 27, 36, 37, 43, 53, 54, 56, 61–8, 70, 71, 73, 75, 85, 101, 102, 122, 139, 196, 202. postmodernism, 193. post-structuralism, 193. psychoanalysis, 4. recollection, 51, 73, 74, 148. redemption, 46, 162, 163, 217, 219, 220. reflection, 151, 215. reflectivity, 152. repetition, 51, 59, 69–74, 75, 93, 110, 118, 124–6, 148, 149, 153, 154, 179, 185. romanticism, german, 195. science, 14, 96, 176, 179, 180, 182, 185–8. seduction, 59, 149, 153. selfhood, 82, 122. semiotics, 193. sickness, 81, 91, 218. sin, 15, 33, 56, 83, 151. single individual, the, 121. solitude, 130, 146. spanish civil War, 2, 3. stages, 11, 13, 14–19, 30, 37, 126, 179, 186, 187, 225. the aesthetic, 14, 16–19, 30, 37, 126, 179, 186, 187, 225. the ethical, 14–19, 30, 37, 126, 186, 225. the religious, 14, 17–19, 30, 37, 126, 186, 225. sub specie aeternitatis, 84, 179, 180. subjectivity, 3, 20, 166, 177. suffering, 16, 21, 46, 74, 147, 163, 165, 206, 220. suicide, 187, 217.

Index of Subjects suspension, see “teleological suspension.”

uncanny, 55.

teleological suspension, 66, 169. tragic, the, 6. transcendence and immanence, 179, 182, 185, 187. trial, 74, 123, 177, 178, 188, 208.

vaudeville, 122. World War i, 113. World War ii, 3, 12, 42, 113, 134, 214, 216.

239