Three Upbuilding Discourses (1843)
Three Upbuilding Discourses
1843
Michael Pedersen Kierkegaard69
FORMERLY A CLOTHING MERCHANT HERE IN THE CITY
MY FATHER
THESE DISCOURSES ARE DEDICATED
PREFACE 70 [III 271]
71 Although this little book 72(which is called “discourses,” not sermons, because its author does not have authority to preach, “upbuilding discourses,” not discourses for upbuilding, because the speaker by no means claims to be a teacher) knows quite well what its author knows even better—that it is a trifle that could easily be trampled underfoot or killed as it ventures out into the great world or snatched up by a bird of prey and never reach its destination—I nevertheless cheerfully, without fear, without anxious agitation, shut my door at the time of its departure. Small as it is, it probably will slip through, since it shifts for itself and goes its way and tends to its errand and discerns its own enigmatic path—until it finds that single individual [hiin Enkelte]73 whom I with joy and gratitude call my reader—until it finds what it is seeking, that favorably disposed person who reads aloud to himself74 what I write in stillness, who with his voice breaks the spell on the letters, with his voice summons forth what the mute letters have on their lips, as it were, but are unable to express without great effort, stammering and stuttering, who in his mood rescues the captive thoughts that long for release—that favorably disposed person whom I with joy and gratitude call my refuge, who by making my thoughts his own does more for me than I do for him. And if it does not find him, or not in this way, my joy still remains: to send it forth, because just as “the cold of snow in the time of harvest is a faithful messenger to the one who sends him, he refreshes the soul of his master” (Proverbs 25:13).
S. K.75