B. Personal Existing in Relation to the Religious Writing
B
PERSONAL EXISTING IN RELATION TO THE RELIGIOUS WRITING
In December 1845 I had completed the manuscript of Concluding Postscript31 and had, as is my custom, delivered it lock, stock, and barrel to Luno,32 for which the skeptical need not take my word, since this can be shown in Luno’s records. This book constitutes the turning point in my entire work as an author, inasmuch as it poses the issue: becoming a Christian. Thereafter the transition to the second part is made, the series of exclusively religious books.
That my personal existing had to be conformed to this, or that I had to try to give my contemporaries another impression of my personal existing, I perceived at once. I also even had my eye on what had to be done when in a very convenient way something happened; a little circumstance, in which I saw a hint from Governance, assisted me in acting decisively in that direction.
But I am unable to develop this before I have tried in a few [XIII 550] strokes to recall in the reader’s recollection the state of things in Copenhagen at that time, a description that perhaps will now also show up better by comparison with the present state of war.33 Gradually the not unremarkable circumstance developed that the whole population of Copenhagen, especially to the degree that it was more ignorant and uncultured, became ironic and witty—it was irony and irony first and last. If the matter were not so serious, if I dared to regard it purely esthetically, I would not deny that it is the most ludicrous thing I have seen and that I actually believe one must travel far and still be very lucky to encounter anything so basically comic. The entire population of a city, first and foremost all the casual idlers on the highways and byways, down to schoolchildren and cobblers’ apprentices, all the many legions of the only favored and privileged class in our day, those who amount to nothing, they become—en masse the entire population of a city, guilds, fraternities, tradespeople, people of station (in just about the same way as a middle-class citizen is accustomed to go to the carnival in Deer Park), they, with their families become—those thousands and thousands become (the one and only thing I would venture unconditionally to insist is impossible for them to become, especially en masse or in families)—they become “ironic” with the help of a newspaper,34 which in turn, ironically enough, by means of an editorial staff of street-corner loafers,35 usurpingly dominates the fashion, and the fashion that is stipulated is—the ironic. I believe it is impossible to think of anything more ludicrous. Irony presupposes a very specific intellectual culture, which is very rare in any generation—and this chaos of people consisted of ironists. Irony is unconditionally unsocial. Irony that is in the majority is eo ipso [precisely thereby] unconditionally not irony. Nothing is more certain, inasmuch as it is implicit in the concept itself. Irony essentially tends toward the presence of only one person, as is indicated in the Aristotelian view that the ironist does everything ἑαυτοῦ ἓνεκα [for his own sake]36—and here an enormous public, arm in arm in bona caritate [good-naturedly], had become, damned if it hadn’t, ironic.
But the matter was only all too serious. Even though the actual [XIII 551] ringleader was indeed a man of not inconsiderable talent,37 this irony, by passing into these thousands upon thousands, naturally became essentially nothing else than rabble-barbarism, which unfortunately is always popular. It was a demoralization that was all too terribly reminiscent of the punishment with which one of the ancient prophets in the name of the Lord threatens the Jews as the most dreadful of punishments: Boys shall judge you.38 It was a demoralization that in relation to the proportions of the little country actually threatened a complete moral disintegration. To get an idea of the danger, one must see it close up, how even good-natured and worthy people become like totally different creatures as soon as they become the “crowd.” One must see it close up, the spinelessness with which even otherwise honorable people say, “It is a disgrace; it is shocking to do or say anything like that”—and then themselves contribute their little bit to blanket the city and land in a snowstorm of blather and town gossip. One must see it close up, the callousness with which otherwise kind people act in the capacity of the public because their participation or nonparticipation seems to them a trifle—a trifle that with the contributions of the many becomes the monster. One must see how no attack is so feared as that of laughter, how even the person who courageously risked his life for a stranger would not be far from betraying his father and mother if the danger was laughter, because more than any other this attack isolates the one attacked and at no point does it offer the support of pathos, while light-mindedness and curiosity and sensuality grin and the nervous cowardice that itself shivers before such an attack incessantly shouts, “It is nothing,” and the cowardice that despicably ransoms itself from an attack by bribery or by putting on a good face to the one concerned says, “It is nothing,” and sympathy says, “It is nothing.” How terrible it is when blather and grinning threaten to become “public opinion” in a little country. Denmark was about to be absorbed into Copenhagen, and Copenhagen was just at the point of becoming a market town. To do this is easy enough, especially with the help of the press; and once it is done, perhaps a generation is needed in order to recover from it.
But enough about this. It was of importance to me to alter my personal existing in accordance with my transition to setting forth the religious issues. I had to have a supporting existence-form corresponding to that kind of work as an author. As stated, it was in the month of December, and it was desirable to have [XIII 552] everything in order by the time Concluding Postscript was to be published. So the step was taken,39 still in the month of December. Given my familiarity with such situations, I readily perceived that two words40 to that instrument of irony, which in one sense, that is, if I had not been the person I was, had up until now not without cunning venerated and immortalized me,41 would be sufficient to turn my whole life situation around altogether dialectically in order to get that whole incalculable public of ironists to take aim at me, so I would become the object of everyone’s irony—alas, I, the master of irony.42
So the order was then given. Lest capital be made of it as a newly invented and very stimulating form of irony, a considerable dose of the ethical was added by my requesting to be abused by that nauseating instrument of nauseating irony. That incalculable monster of ironists has naturally regarded me as lunatic. The individuals who saw more deeply into the matter probably did not without a shudder see me make this leap, or they thought it beneath my dignity to concern myself with something like that (because they had only a worldly understanding of dignity and did not consider what is divinely understood by it), whereas I would have found it beneath my dignity to have lived contemporaneously, without having acted decisively, with such a demoralization, satisfied with the cheap virtue of conducting myself like “the others”—that is, shirking action as much as possible while such a disproportionate journalistic contemptibility was surely bringing people to the grave, violated and infuriated, if not always the ones attacked, then certainly their wives, children, relatives, and close friends, was defilingly intruding into everything, even into the most intimate relationships of private life, even into school secrets, even into the sanctuary of the Church, was spewing out lies, slander, insolence, and juvenile jokes—all in the service of corrupt passion and wretched avarice, and responsible for all this were “street-corner loafers,” the ones responsible under the press law! I realized that in order to serve my idea this was the right thing to do, and I did not vacillate. The consequences of that,43 for which certainly no one at that time [XIII 553] envied me, I therefore historically claim as my legitimate possession, the perspective value of which my eye easily discovers.
I had now figured out that the situation was dialectically right for using indirect communication again. Although I was devoting myself exclusively to religious writing, I dared to count on these daily drenchings of rabble-barbarism as negatively supporting, on their having an adequate cooling effect so that the religious communication would not become much too direct or would not much too directly gain adherents for me. The reader could not directly relate himself to me, because I now had in place, instead of the incognito of the esthetic, the danger of laughter and grins, which scare away most people. Even those whom it would not scare away would be disturbed by the next, the thought that I myself had voluntarily exposed myself to all this, had plunged myself into this, a kind of insanity. Ah, yes, surely that was just what the contemporaries thought of that Roman who made his immortal leap to save his country,44 a kind of insanity—ah, yes, and once again, ah, yes, since dialectically it was exactly Christian self-denial—and I, the poor master of irony, became the sorry object of the laughter of a highly cultured public.
The costume was right. Every religious author is eo ipso polemical, because the world is not so good that the religious can be assumed to have triumphed or to be in the majority. A triumphant religious author who is in vogue is eo ipso not a religious author. The essentially religious author is always polemical and in addition suffers under the opposition or endures the opposition that corresponds to what in his time must be regarded as the specific evil. If it is kings and emperors, popes and bishops, and power that are the evil, then he must be recognizable by his being the object of their attacks. If it is the crowd—and blather, the public—and the brutish grinning that are the evil, then he must also be recognizable by his being the object of that kind of attack and persecution. And if the essentially religious author has just one syllogism that he uses as the jack, the miraculous syllogism, when asked whereby he demonstrates he is right and that what he says is true, he answers, “I demonstrate it by this, that I am persecuted; it is truth, and I demonstrate it by this, that I am laughed to scorn.” That is, he does not demonstrate the [XIII 554] truth or the justice of his cause by the honor, esteem, etc. he enjoys—just the opposite, because the essentially religious person is always polemical. Any religious author or speaker or teacher who shirks, who is not present where the danger is and where the evil has its haunt, is a deceiver, and this will also become manifest.
It holds for everyone that when he comes to death’s door and it is opened for him he must discard all pomp and glory and wealth and worldly esteem and starred medals and emblems of honor—whether bestowed on him by kings and emperors or by the crowd and the public—discard them as totally irrelevant and superfluous. An exception is made only for anyone who has been a religious author, teacher, speaker, etc. in his lifetime and has been that on his own responsibility and at his own risk. If he is found to be in possession of any such thing, he is not allowed to discard it—no, it is packed up in a bundle and handed to him; he is compelled to keep it or to carry the bundle in the same way as a thief is himself compelled to carry stolen goods. And with this bundle he must enter the place where he shall be judged. After all, he was a religious teacher; so he will be judged by the authentic religious teachers, all those who as long as they lived were insulted, persecuted, laughed to scorn, mocked, spat upon. Ah, if it is terrible for the sensate human being to stand here on earth laughed to scorn, mocked, insulted, how much more terrible to stand in eternity with this bundle under one’s arm or arrayed with—decorations.
The costume was right. In a grinning age (as was the one of which I speak, and in this regard it is at least my opinion that “the war” has been good fortune for Denmark), the religious author must for heaven’s sake see to it that he more than anyone else becomes laughed to scorn. If the evil is coming from the crowd, then the contemporary religious author must for heaven’s sake see to it that he becomes the object of its persecution and in this regard receives the first treatment. And my entire view of the crowd, which even the more perceptive at that time perhaps found somewhat exaggerated, now in 1848,45 assisted by the gesticulations of existence (these are more powerful and in comparison with the single individual’s thin voice are like the raging of the elements), now the objection probably is that I have not exaggerated enough. And that category the single individual, which was regarded as eccentric and the invention of eccentricity, which it indeed was, for was not the person who in one sense was its inventor, Socrates, at the time called ἀτοπώτατος (the [XIII 555] most eccentric of men)46—I would not trade having brought it forth decisively at the time, I would not trade it for a kingdom. If the crowd is the evil, if it is chaos that threatens, there is rescue in one thing only, in becoming the single individual, in the rescuing thought: that single individual.
One triumph I have experienced, only one, but it satisfies me so completely that as a thinker I ask unconditionally nothing more in the world. The all too overwhelming world-historical events of the past few months have brought into the world the confused spokesmen of newborn, romantic, obviously confused thoughts and on the other hand have either silenced everything that hitherto had in various ways been the spokesman or placed it in the embarrassing position of having to obtain brand-new clothes in the greatest haste, and every system has been broken up. With such passion as if there were a gap of a generation, the past was broken from the present in the course of a few months. During this crisis I sat and read proof pages of a book47 that accordingly had been written earlier. Not one word was added or deleted. It was the view that I, “the odd thinker,” had already enunciated for several years. If one reads it, one will get the impression that the book was written after the crisis. A world-historical crisis such as that, which ranks so high that not even the disintegration of the ancient world was so imposing, is the absolute tentamen rigorosum [rigorous examination] for anyone who was an author. I experienced the triumph of not needing to modify or change one iota—indeed, what I had written before, if it were read now, would be much, much better understood than when it was written.
Just one more thing. When someday my lover comes, he will readily see that when I was regarded as being the ironic one the irony by no means consisted in what a highly cultured public thought it did—and of course my lover cannot possibly be so fatuous that he assumes that a public can be the judge of irony, which is just as impossible as being the single individual en masse. He will see that the irony consisted in just this, that in this esthetic author and under this Erscheinung [appearance] of worldliness the religious author concealed himself, a religious author who at that [XIII 556] very time and for his own upbuilding perhaps consumed as much religiousness as a whole household ordinarily does. Furthermore, my lover will see that irony was again present in connection with the next part, and precisely in that which the highly cultured public regarded as madness. For the essential ironist there is nothing else to do in an ironic age (that great epitome of fools) but to turn the whole relation around and himself become the object of the irony of everyone. My lover will see how it all tallied at every single point, how my existence-relations turned around in altogether accurate correspondence to the change in my writing. If I had not had an eye or the courage for that and had changed the writing but not my existence-relations, then the relation would have become undialectical and confused.