NOTES
NOTES
Dedication
1. unnamed yet so famed: The original text plays on the pair navnløs (nameless, anonymous) and navnkundig (celebrated, but in the sense of a famous name, as in the French renommé).
Preface
1. Nordisk Literaturtidende: A journal of current Scandinavian literature edited by J. F. Giødwad and P. D. Ploug, editors of the Copenhagen newspaper Fœdrelandet (The Fatherland).
Introduction
1. ‘a wandering star’: Jude 13: ‘… wandering stars, to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness for ever.’
2. like that new pharaoh …: Exodus 1:8: ‘Now there arose up a new king over Egypt, which knew not Joseph’
3. eo ipso: ‘By virtue of that very fact.’
4. Elagabalus: Roman Emperor, AD 218–22, under the self-given name M. Aurelius Antoninus, also called Heliogabalus, having as a child been made priest of the Sun-god of that name. Stupid and vain, he was killed by his own soldiers at the age of seventeen.
5. that the judgement he pronounces …: Matthew 7:1–2: ‘Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.’ Cf. Mark 4:24.
6. Slow to listen, quick to judge: James 1:19: ‘… let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath.’
7. the Socratic teaching …: Cf. Diogenes Laertius (II 22), according to whom Socrates said of Heraclitus’ words that since what he understood was good he presumed what he did not understand was also good.
8. the consequent following that brilliant antecedent: ‘Antecedent’ and ‘consequent’ are terms used to refer to the parts of a hypothetical proposition, the antecedent beginning ‘If …’ and the consequent beginning ‘then …’.
9. One cannot call it beginning with nothing: That philosophy should and could begin with no presuppositions was familiar to the many versed in Hegel’s philosophy at the time.
10. ‘the demand of the age’: An expression made popular by J. L. Heiberg, Madame Gyllembourg’s son. See Translator’s Introduction. That it was the age itself that made demands, rather than individuals who made demands of themselves independently of the age, was an idea constantly ridiculed by Kierkegaard.
11. the Ancient of Days: Daniel 7:13: ‘I saw in the night visions, and, behold, one like the Son of man came with the clouds of heaven, and came to the Ancient of days, and they brought him near before him.’ For St John’s similar vision, see Revelation 1:7.
12. ‘one in all’: Title of one of the feuilleton stories comprising A Story of Everyday Life. See Translator’s Introduction.
13. ‘moderation be known unto all men’: Philippians 4:5.
14. faithful over only a few things: Matthew 25:21: ‘His lord said unto him, Well done, thou good and faithful servant: thou hast been faithful over a few things.’
15. stricte sic dicta: ‘Strictly speaking.’
16. ideality: In distinguishing ‘ideality’ from ‘reality’, the philosophies of the time marked off an area we might today refer to in terms of ‘concepts’ or ‘conceptual schemes’ as distinct from mere things. At that time the former were more closely linked to possibilities of fulfilling action than today, closing the gap that has now grown in our language between ‘idea’ and ‘idea’. It is the latter that is implied by talking of religion’s ideality.
17. the peace and incorruptibility of a quiet spirit: I Peter 3:4: ‘But let it be the hidden man of the heart, in that which is not corruptible, even the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God of great price.’
18. Professor Heiberg: Johan Ludvig Heiberg, son of the author of Two Ages. See Translator’s Introduction.
19. For whatever objections there are …: Under the pseudonym Nicolaus Notabene (in Forord (Prefaces, C. A. Reitzel, Copenhagen, 1844); in Søren Kierkegaards Skrifter (SKS, Gads Forlag, Copenhagen, 1997), vol. 4, pp. 463–527) Kierkegaard had castigated Danish writers, including Madame Gyllembourg’s son, for indulging in this seasonal marketing practice.
20. a resting place or … a place of prayer: The Danish Bedested can mean a place of prayer and a place for travellers to rest.
21. cito citissime: ‘With all possible haste.’ The Latin was once written on letters intended for express delivery.
22. those novellas: The short stories that went under the name of A Story of Everyday Life. See Translator’s Introduction.
I Prospectus of the Contents of Both Parts
1. Waller: in Two Ages spelled ‘Valler’.
2. ‘whom the hard times have made prematurely hard to please’: A conflation of two passages from Two Ages, p. 8; Kierkegaard’s pagination in the text following refers to the first edition (J. L. Heiberg, Copenhagen, 1845).
3. Madame W.: Waller’s wife has the title ‘Madame’, while in Part Two the wife of Waller’s son, Commercial Counsellor Waller, is called ‘Mrs Walle’ though also Commerceraadinden, which may be roughly translated ‘the commercial counsellor’s consort’. At that time ‘Madame’ was a title generally applied to the wives of men of fairly good standing, such as Merchant Waller; while ‘Mrs’ (Fru) and the -inde ending gave higher status and were accorded to wives of men in state office. A Frue was a ‘lady’. Later in the century both forms of address lost their standing. ‘Madame’ was applied especially (originally ironically) to proletarian wives, while almost every middle-class married woman became a Frue or ‘Mrs’.
4. ‘qui ne revient plus pour les amants …’: From a song by the French writer Jean-Pierre Claris de Florian (1755–94), quoted in Two Ages, p. 171.
5. ‘where for ten summers now …’: A modified quotation from Two Ages, p. 177.
6. ‘Maren’: Not a normal abbreviation for ‘Mariane’; in Danish Mare means ‘nightmare’ and Maren ‘the nightmare’.
7. ‘advocate for a vanished age – or against a present one’: Two Ages, pp. 231–2.
8. twenty-five rix-dollars: A rix-dollar (rixstaler or riksdaler) was a coin minted the year the Danish State Bank (Riksbank) declared bankruptcy (1813, the year of Kierkegaard’s birth), to stay the monetary chaos that arose following the bombardment of Copenhagen by the British Navy in September 1807. Besides the attack itself, and the damage it caused, the continuing alliance with Napoleon proved equally costly for Denmark. It was not until the early 1830s that the country began to show significant signs of recovery. A rix-dollar at this time was worth between three and four crowns, equivalent in value to over four pounds sterling or five to six US dollars today.
9. ‘Amen, yes, we would hope for that’: Two Ages, p. 285.
II An Aesthetic Reading of the Novel and Its Details
1. ‘heart pounded violently, more violently than the Corybants’ …’: Plato, Symposium 215e. Corybants were priests of Cybele or Rhea in Phrygia, who celebrated her worship with ecstatic dances.
2. ‘looks like someone pestered …’: Two Ages, p. 188.
3. ‘Those are slanderous words you are using’: Two Ages, pp. 9–10.
4. ‘for all the blessings she enjoys in this dear household’: Two Ages, p. 25.
5. that winged steed: Pegasus, the winged horse of the fountain that sprang from the blood of Medusa when Perseus struck off her head. After several escapades, Pegasus continued his ascent to heaven and dwelt among the stars.
6. the great poet’s: Adam G. Oehlenschläger (1779–1850), the Danish poet and dramatist. (See Oehlenschlägers Tragødier (Copenhagen, 1841–4), III, pp. 136f.)
7. ‘my little wife’: Two Ages, p. 64.
8. the middle term: In classical syllogistic logic, the term that appears in both premisses (Every man is mortal, Socrates is a man) but not in the conclusion (Socrates is mortal). In Kierkegaard’s time ‘middle term’ had acquired a wider application through Hegel, designating that by which two apparently opposite notions must be ‘mediated’ in order to apply to one and the same reality. Here Kierkegaard’s use is informal and indeed metaphorical.
9. a comparison of the two ages: The author of Two Ages quotes Prosper Mérimée’s Chronique du temps de Charles IX in the Preface and adds: ‘These observations on the relation of the present age to a not so distant past seem to be still more relevant if the discussion is about much closer periods of world-historical significance.’
10. a ‘little slut’ like that, as her stepmother calls her: Two Ages, p. 223.
11. an ancient author: Ammianus Marcellinus (born Greek, last of the great Roman historians, of whose writings eighteen books of his history of the Roman empire are extant), XXIII 6, 85–6.
12. ‘Neither will I give back yours …’: Two Ages, pp. 222–3.
13. ‘by the quiet virtues’: A rendition of the author’s version in Two Ages, p. 217.
14. ‘You too, Brutus, my son!’: Tranquillus Suetonius (Roman historian who wrote Lives of the Caesars), Caesar 82.
15. ecclesia pressa: A suppressed and therefore hidden church.
16. the consequent: See note 8, p. 104.
17. referre pedem: ‘Retreat.’
18. purity of heart is to will one thing: James 4:8: ‘Cleanse your hands, ye sinners; and purify your hearts, ye double minded.’ In March the following year (1847) Kierkegaard published three Opbyggelige Taler i forekjellig Aand (Edifying Discourses in a Different Tenor, C. A. Reitzel, Copenhagen, 1847), the first of them on the proposition that ‘purity of heart is to will one thing’. This was written in 1846 subsequent to publication of the Review.
19. omnia ad conscientiam, nil ad ostentationem: Pliny the Younger, I 22, 5: ‘All things according to conscience, not to appearance.’
20. valore intrinseco: ‘According to the intrinsic value.’
21. true to the category: This probably means ‘true to the category of its framework’, namely human psychology.
22. something extinct and ruined …: Two Ages, pp. 181–2, where Milner uses these expressions of the lands (Greek, Oriental and American) that Lusard has visited.
23. Just a single line of Lusard’s …: Kierkegaard gives a reference (p. 243) in the margin which could be to Mrs Waller’s dismissive remark on Henrik Hertz’s drama Svanehammen (Swan’s Wings, lit. ‘Swan’s Skin’): ‘It proves that the author must himself be too much of a swan to swim in a village pond.’ Hertz (1798-1870) was a Danish poet of Jewish descent.
III The Results of Observing the Two Ages
1. The naked Archimedes …: According to the story he jumped naked from the bath when he discovered the principle of specific gravity and ran into the street crying, ‘I’ve found it [Eureka]!’
2. Agrippa: See Acts 26:27–9: ‘King Agrippa, believest thou the prophets? I know that thou believest. Then Agrippa said unto Paul, Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian. And Paul said, I would to God, that not only thou, but also all that hear me this day, were both almost, and altogether such as I am, except these bonds.’
3. plerophoria eis pathos: ‘Fullness of pathos.’
4. the children’s crusade: A movement in 1212 of thousands of children from Germany and France aiming to reach the Holy Land and recapture Jerusalem from the Turks. None reached that destination, those sold to slavery in North Africa coming nearest.
5. takes a wrong turn …: The Danish exploits the pun in the expression farer vild (‘goes astray’) and farer ilde (‘goes badly with’).
6. evasion: The original exploits the parallel between Udsigt (‘prospect’) and Udflugt (‘evasion’).
7. Vis inertia: ‘Inertial force.’
8. tergiversation: ‘Turning one’s back’ or ‘prevarication’.
9. the encyclopédistes: Encyclopedias, as comprehensive reference works, date from classical times, but the most dedicated and notable encyclopedists appeared in eighteenth-century Britain and France in connection with the Enlightenment. The 35-volume Encyclopédie of Denis Diderot (1713–84) and his associates (1751–76) became exemplary.
10. A profound religious renunciation …: I John 2:15: ‘Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.’
11. mir nichts und dir nichts: ‘Without so much as a take your leave.’
12. knight of faith: A key figure in Fear and Trembling, trans. Alastair Hannay (Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, 1985).
13. dare to say ‘Tomorrow’ …: James 4:14–15: ‘Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away. For that ye ought to say, If the Lord will …’
14. carefree as the lily of the field …: Matthew 6:28–9: ‘And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin. And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.’
15. ab posse ad esse: ‘From possibility to actuality.’
16. like all knowledge, reflection too increases sorrow: Ecclesiastes 1:18: ‘For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.’
17. facticity: Refers to the unalterable context of life, what remains the same through change, and what one can ignore only in forgetfulness or flights of imagination. In twentieth-century philosophy the term has acquired a more technical sense, referring to those structural aspects of life that we do not easily discern but which govern our thought and action. Kierkegaard’s concern was to remind philosophers of the need to apply their thought to ‘concrete’ reality.
18. charasso: Inf. charassein, Greek, meaning ‘make pointed’, ‘sharpen’, also ‘engrave’. ‘Character’ is from the same root: an engraved mark or sign, a letter.
19. sorites: Lit. ‘heap’, a compound syllogism or chain of syllogisms in which the conclusion of each prosyllogism is omitted. The metaphor conveys the idea of a procedure going on that will produce something on its own.
20. ‘in each other’s mouth’: Kierkegaard alludes to an expression literally translatable as ‘talking in each other’s mouth’, or ‘talking to each other at the same time’.
21. the grand master himself …: Socrates.
22. bearing witness with their spirit: Romans 8:16: ‘The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God.’
23. vitia splendida: ‘Glittering vices.’
24. the diagonal in a parallelogram of forces: In dynamics, the resultant of two forces acting at one point, if represented in quantity and direction by two sides of a parallelogram, is similarly represented by the diagonal drawn from the same point.
25. they know not what they do: Luke 23:34: ‘Then said Jesus, Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do. And they parted his raiment, and cast lots.’
26. examen rigorosum: ‘Rigorous examination’ or ‘trial’ for higher qualification.
27. evil: Genesis 50:20: ‘… ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good, to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save much people alive.’
28. just as offence must needs come …: Luke 17:1: ‘Then said he unto the disciples, It is impossible but that offences will come: but woe unto him, through whom they come!’
29. Holger Danske: A hero of Danish legend first immortalized in a French medieval poem (Ogier de Danemarche). First written in French, it was translated into Latin, then later into Danish by Christen (Christiern) Pedersen (c. 1480–1554), who lived for several years in Paris.
30. a peep-show: A reference to the contemporary Danish poet and aesthetician Henrik Hertz’s Perspektivkassen (Peep-Show).
31. in partibus infidelium: ‘In non-Catholic countries.’
32. Weep not for him, but weep for yourselves: Luke 23:28: ‘But Jesus turning unto them said, Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me, but weep for yourselves, and for your children.’
33. just as that resolute number three …: Plato, Phaedo 104c.
34. time both to speak and stay silent: Ecclesiastes 3:7: ‘… a time to keep silence, and a time to speak.’
35. ideality: See note 16, p. 104.
36. aduton: ‘Inner sanctum.’
37. Link: A character in J. L. Heiberg’s Nej (No).
38. posito: ‘Supposition’ or ‘posit’.
39. Träger der öffentlichen Meinung: ‘Bearer of public opinion.’
40. pointed out by Claudius …: A reference to Matthias Claudius (1740-1815), a German poet born in Holstein who wrote under the name ‘Asmus’. Kierkegaard possessed his collected works, which appeared under the title Asmus omnia sua secum portans (Asmus Carries All His Things with Him).
41. ‘What we prophesy will either happen …’: Horace, Satires II, 5, 59, s. It was said by Tiresias, not by the pre-Socratic philosopher.
42. only air and sea’: Calling to mind a caravaner’s song in Oehlenschläger’s Aladdin, Act 5, Digterværker (Literary Works), I-XVIII (Copenhagen, 1844–9), VI, p. 234.
43. ‘Look, all is ready’: Luke 14:17: ‘And sent his servant at supper time to say to them that were bidden, Come; for all things are now ready.’ The rich man had prepared a dinner but those he invited all excused themselves, whereupon he told his servant to fetch the poor, the maimed, the halt and the blind instead.
44. Thus Socrates …: Diogenes Laertius II, 40.