B. The Explanation: That the Author Is and Was a Religious Author
B
The Explanation: That the Author Is and Was a Religious Author
It might seem that a simple declaration by the author himself in this regard is more than adequate; after all, he must know best what is what. I do not, however, think much of declarations in connection with literary productions and am accustomed to take a completely objective attitude to my own. If in the capacity of a third party, as a reader, I cannot substantiate from the writings that what I am saying is the case, that it cannot be otherwise, it could never occur to me to want to win what I thus consider as lost. If I qua author must first make declarations, I easily alter all the writing, which from first to last is dialectical.
Consequently I am unable to make any declaration, at least not until I in some other way have made the explanation so obvious that the declaration in that sense is entirely superfluous, because then it can be admitted as a lyrical satisfaction, insofar as I feel a need for it, and it can be demanded as a religious duty. In other words, qua human being I may be justified in making a declaration, and from the religious point of view it may be my duty to make a declaration. But this must not be confused with the authorship—qua author it does not help very much that I qua human being declare that I have intended this and that. But presumably everyone will admit that if it can be shown that such and such a phenomenon cannot be explained in any other way, and that on the other hand it can in this way be explained at every point, or that this explanation fits at every point, then the correctness of this explanation is substantiated as clearly as the correctness of an explanation can ever be substantiated.
But is there not a contradiction here? If it is substantiated in [XIII 525] the preceding that the equivocalness is present to the very last, to the same degree as this succeeds, to the same degree it is made impossible to substantiate which is the explanation, then to that extent a statement, a declaration, seems here to be the only way to break the dialectical tension and knot. This seems very perspicacious [skarpsindig] and yet is actually only subtle [spidsfindig]. If, for example, someone in a certain situation found a mystification necessary, it is perfectly consistent with subtlety for him to do it in such a way that—the comic emerges—that he himself cannot make head nor tail of it. But this is also a lack of earnestness and an infatuation with mystification in and for itself instead of having its teleological truth. Thus where a mystification, a dialectical redoubling [Fordoblelse], is used in the service of earnestness, it will be used in such a way that it only wards off misunderstandings and preliminary understandings, while the true explanation is available to the person who is honestly seeking. To use the supreme example: Christ’s whole life here on earth would indeed have become a game if he had been so incognito that he had gone through life totally unnoticed—and yet he truly was incognito.
So also with a dialectical redoubling, and the dialectical redoubling is that the equivocalness is maintained. Once the requisite earnestness takes hold, it can also solve it, but always only in such a way that the earnestness itself vouches for the correctness. Just as a woman’s demureness relates to the true lover, and then, but only then yields, so also a dialectical redoubling relates to true earnestness. Therefore the explanation cannot be communicated to a less earnest person, since the elasticity of the dialectical doubleness is too great for him to manage; it takes the explanation away from him again and makes it dubious for him whether it is indeed the explanation.
Let us make the attempt; let us try to explain this whole authorship on the assumption that it is the work of an esthetic author. It will readily be seen that from the beginning this explanation is not in accord with the phenomenon but promptly runs aground on Two Upbuilding Discourses. If, however, we attempt to explain the authorship by assuming that it is the work of a religious author, we will see that step by step it tallies at every point. The only thing inexplicable is how it ever occurred to a religious author to use the esthetic in this way. That is, we are once again face-to-face with the equivocalness or the dialectical redoubling. The difference is only that the assumption that it is a religious author will have been established and the task is to [XIII 526] explain the equivocalness. Whether another person can do this, I do not decide; but the explanation is what becomes the content of the second part of this little book.
Just one more thing—which, as stated, both can lyrically satisfy me qua human being and is for me qua human being my religious duty: namely, a direct declaration that the author was and is a religious author. When I began Either/Or (of which, speaking in parenthesi [parenthetically], there existed literally only about one page, namely, a few Diapsalmata,13 whereas the whole book was written in eleven months and the second part first), I was potentialiter [in potentiality] as deeply influenced by the religious as I ever became. I was so profoundly shaken that I basically understood that I could not possibly succeed in finding the calm, secure middle course in which most people have their lives—I either had to plunge into despair and sensuality or absolutely choose the religious as the one and only—either the world on a scale that would be dreadful or the monastery. That it was the latter I would and must choose was basically decided. The eccentricity of the first movement was only the expression for the intensity of the second, that I had come to understand how impossible it would be for me to be sort of religious to a certain degree. Here lies Either/Or. It was a poetical emptying, which did not, however, go further than the ethical. Personally, I was far from tranquilly wanting to summon existence back to marriage, I who religiously was already in the monastery—an idea concealed in the pseudonym Victor—Eremita [the Hermit].
This is how it stands. Strictly speaking, Either/Or was written in a monastery, and I can attest (a declaration that is addressed especially to such persons, if they should happen to see this little book, who perhaps have neither the capacity nor the opportunity to survey such a production but who may yet be disturbed by my authorship’s odd merging of the religious and the esthetic), I can attest that the author of Either/Or regularly and with monastic scrupulousness spent a certain period of each day reading devotional writings for his own sake, that in fear and much trembling he considered his responsibility. He particularly had in mind “The Seducer’s Diary” (how strange!). And then what happened? The book was an enormous success, especially “The Seducer’s Diary” (how strange!). The world opened up, even to [XIII 527] a remarkable degree, to the admired author, who, however, was not “seduced” or changed by all this—for that he was an eternity too old.
Then followed Two Upbuilding Discourses—what is most important often seems so insignificant. The big work, Either/Or, which was “much read and even more discussed”—and then Two Upbuilding Discourses, dedicated to my late father,14 published on my birthday (May 5),15 “a little flower under the cover of the great forest, sought neither for its splendor nor its fragrance nor its food value.”* There was no one who in the profounder sense paid any attention to or cared about the two discourses; indeed, I even recall that one of my acquaintances came to me and complained that he had in good faith gone and bought them, thinking that since they were by me they must be something rather witty and clever. I also recall that I promised him that he would have his money back if he so desired. With my left hand I passed Either/Or out into the world, with my right hand Two Upbuilding Discourses; but they all or almost all took the left hand with their right.**
Before God I had made up my mind what I wanted; my preference was for the two upbuilding discourses, but I certainly understood that very few understood this†—and here for the first time comes the category: that single individual,19 “that single individual whom I with joy and gratitude call my reader,” which was repeated unchanged in the preface to every collection of upbuilding discourses. I cannot truly be charged with having changed, with perhaps having at a later time judged the public differently than previously because I possibly was not on such [XIII 528] good terms with it. No, if I have ever been on good terms with the public, this relation was highest or at its peak in the second or third month after the publication of Either/Or. This very situation—for many perhaps tempting, but to my thinking advantageous only for being able to get a good showing for what I had to do—I used in the service of truth to introduce my category that single individual. It was at that very moment that I made a break with the public, not out of pride or arrogance etc. (and certainly not because the public was unfavorable toward me at the time, since, the very opposite, it was altogether favorable toward me), but because I had made up my mind that I was a religious author whose concern is with the single individual, an idea (the single individual versus the public) in which a whole life-and worldview is concentrated.
From now on, that is, as early as Fear and Trembling,20 the earnest observer who himself has religious presuppositions at his disposal, the earnest observer to whom one can make oneself understood at a distance and to whom one can speak in silence (the pseudonym: Johannes—de Silentio), became aware that this surely was a very singular kind of esthetic production; and here the most worthy firm Kts21 placed the proper emphasis, which pleased me very much.