CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 9
the spiritual life of ‘the single individual … diametrically opposite to politics’: S. Kierkegaard, The Point of View, ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton University Press, 2009), p. 121.
‘Now I can see my way to writing’: Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Volume 5: Journals NB6–NB10, ed. and trans. Niels Jørgen Cappelørn, Alastair Hannay, David Kangas, Bruce H. Kirmmse, George Pattison, Joel D. S. Rasmussen, Vanessa Rumble and K. Brian Söderquist (Princeton University Press, 2012), p. 85: NB7, 13 (late August or early September 1848).
‘Christianity is not a doctrine’: ibid, p. 39: NB6, 56 (July or August 1848).
‘every human being is equally near to God’: ibid, p. 45: NB6, 63 (July or August 1848).
‘Compel a person to an opinion, a conviction, a belief – in all eternity, that I cannot do’: The Point of View, pp. 47, 52, 50.
the kind of reader ‘who thinks he is a Christian’: ibid, p. 54.
‘there is nothing that requires as gentle a treatment as the removal of an illusion’: ibid, p. 43.
‘not to comprehend Christianity, but to comprehend that they cannot comprehend it’: Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Volume 5: Journals NB6–NB10, p. 70: NB6, 93 (July or August 1848).
‘One does not begin directly with what one wishes to communicate’: The Point of View, p. 54.
‘One can deceive a person out of what is true’: ibid, p. 53.
‘the world has a thousand evasions and illusions’: Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Volume 5: Journals NB6–NB10, p. 45: NB6, 63 (July or August 1848).
‘Life isn’t like a romantic novel’: S. Kierkegaard, Either/Or, Part I, ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton University Press, 1988), p. 45.
Marry or do not marry, you will regret it either way’: ibid, pp. 38–9.
‘I have often sat beside a little running stream’: S. Kierkegaard, Either/Or, Part II, ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton University Press, 1988), p. 144.
‘earnestness of spirit … you will miss out on the highest’: ibid, pp. 6, 168.
‘Writing in the wake of the long revolutionary struggle in Haiti’: see Susan Buck-Morss, Hegel, Haiti, and Universal History (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2009).
‘My mind roars like a turbulent sea in the storms of passion’: Either/Or, Part I, pp. 324–5.
‘There I go on Saturdays to prepare my sermon, and everything widens out before me’: Either/Or, Part II, p. 338.
Another powerful figure was Henrik Nicolai Clausen: on H. N. Clausen and Kierkegaard’s relationship to him, see Hugh S. Pyper, ‘Henrik Nicolai Clausen: The Voice of Urbane Rationalism’, in Kierkegaard and His Danish Contemporaries, Tome II: Theology, ed. Jon Stewart (Ashgate, 2009), pp. 41–8.
‘Grundtvig looks on the development of Christian understanding’: Søren Kierkegaard’s Journals and Papers: Autobiographical, 1829–48, ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, assisted by Gregor Malantschuk (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978), p. 19: Pap. I A 62 (1 June 1835).
standing for election to Denmark’s Constitutional Assembly: In October 1848 Grundtvig won a seat on Denmark’s Constitutional Assembly, where he sat alongside his old adversary Clausen, who was one of the unelected members of the Assembly appointed by the Crown. On Kierkegaard’s relationship to Grundtvig, see Anders Holm, ‘Nicolai Frederik Severin Grundtvig: The Matchless Giant’, in Kierkegaard and His Danish Contemporaries, Tome II, pp. 95–151.
‘Every once in a while a religious enthusiast appears’: The Point of View, pp. 47, 42.
‘Perhaps my voice does not possess enough strength and heartiness to penetrate to your innermost thought’: Either/Or Part II, p. 354.
‘One must imagine what it is like to have to have a newspaper ready’: Encounters with Kierkegaard, ed. Bruce Kirmmse, trans. Bruce Kirmmse and Virginia Laursen (Princeton University Press, 1998), p. 56 – this is from Hother Ploug, son and biographer of Carl Ploug: see Carl Ploug. Hans Liv og Gerning, vol. I (1813–48), pp. 110ff. On Kierkegaard’s relationship to Giødvad, see Andrea Scaramuccia, ‘Jens Finsteen Giødwad: An Amiable Friend and a Despicable Journalist’, in Kierkegaard and His Danish Contemporaries, Tome I: Philosophy, Politics and Social Theory, ed. Jon Stewart (Ashgate, 2009), pp. 13–33.
‘I think that no book has caused such a stir … all holy feelings’: see Encounters with Kierkegaard, pp. 57–8.
‘there is much that must be forgotten’: see S. Kierkegaard, Discourses at the Communion on Fridays, trans. Sylvia Walsh (Indiana University Press, 2011), p. 119f.
‘My listener, you, to whom my discourse is addressed!’: ibid, p. 125f.