Epilogue
EPILOGUE [XIII 576]
“But what have you done here!” I hear someone say. “Do you not see what you have lost in the eyes of the world by this information and attestation?” Indeed, I do see it very well. By doing this, I lose what from a Christian point of view must be regarded as a loss in being possessed: every worldly form of the interesting. I lose the interesting, to proclaim the seductive subtlety of pleasure and the enjoyment of life, the joyful gospel of the most sophisticated enjoyment of life, and mockery’s overweening pride. I lose the interesting, to be an interesting possibility, whether it was not just possible that the one who maintained the ethical with equal enthusiasm and warmth, whether it was not just possible that he was the very opposite in either one way or another, since, interestingly enough, it is impossible to say for sure which he is. I lose the interesting, to be a riddle, whether this defense of Christianity carried to the extreme was not the most subtly devised form of an attack. This interesting I lose; in its place is substituted what is anything but interesting, direct communication, that the issue was and is: becoming a Christian. I have lost the interesting in the eyes of the crowd, in the eyes of the world—if, that is, I get off that lightly, if it does not become furious that someone has dared to be cunning in this way.
True enough, in one sense things are going backward for me (Christianly understood, forward). I began as an author with a tremendous force, to be secretly regarded almost as a villain—but naturally for that very reason charming and, especially as such, tremendously interesting and pungent. This was necessary in order to get “the crowd” of Christians along somewhat. Even if [XIII 577] one were a saint, to begin with that means eo ipso to surrender everything, since in an age of reflection, in which we live, people are promptly defensive, and not even his death is of benefit. No, in reflection everything must be done inversely. That is how I began. At the time, I was at my highest point in relation to the multitude of people, and—since we are living in Christendom, where all are Christians—I was also at my highest point in relation to the multitude of Christians, the enormous multitude of Christians, all the novel readers male and female, the esthetes, the beautiful souls, who all are also Christians.
That was the beginning. Gradually, as I moved ahead and that public of Christians became aware, or came to suspect—indeed, that certainly is backward enough—came to suspect that I might not be so downright bad, the public dropped off more and more, and little by little I began to fall into the boring categories of the good—while I, who walked alongside in the upbuilding discourses, saw with joy that “that single individual, whom I with joy and gratitude call my reader,” became more than one, a somewhat more numerous category, but certainly not any public. And there when I acted with a little Christian decisiveness, did what I am conscious of having done as a true good deed for little Denmark, something that will unconditionally give me joy at my hour of death, when as a sacrifice I hurled myself against the uprising of rabble-barbarism—then I was regarded by the public as lunatic and eccentric, was judged to be almost a criminal—but of course there was not the slightest trace of villainy or scoundrelism in what I did.65 —How it does all fall together! I do not think that more can be demanded of a spy.
And now, now I am not at all interesting any longer. That what it means to become a Christian should actually be the fundamental idea in the whole authorship—how boring! And all this about “The Seducer’s Diary,”* this tremendously intriguing [XIII 578] book! Well, that also belongs. If someone in a purely esthetic sense were to ask me my opinion of the esthetic writing, I will not conceal that I know very well what is achieved there but add that for me the esthetic value of the achievement itself signifies in a deeper sense how infinitely important is the decision to become a Christian. In immediacy to become a Christian is very direct, but the criterion for the truth and inwardness of the reflective expression with regard to becoming a Christian is precisely how valuable that is which is discarded in reflection. One does not become a Christian through reflection, but in reflection to become a Christian means that there is something else to discard. A person does not reflect himself into being a Christian but out of something else in order to become a Christian, especially when the situation is Christendom, where one must reflect oneself out of the appearance of being a Christian. The nature of the something else determines how deep, how significant the movement of reflection is. The reflection-qualification is specifically this: that one comes from a distance, and from what distance one comes to become a Christian. The reflection-qualification is the difficulty, which is greater in proportion to the value and significance of what is left behind.
This is how I think that I have served the cause of Christianity, while I myself was being brought up in the process. The one who was regarded with amazement as nearly the most clever (and this was achieved by Either/Or), the one who was readily granted position as “the interesting” (and this was achieved by Either/Or)—he was the very one who was duty-bound [forpligtet68] in the service of Christianity, who had dedicated* himself to it from the first moment when he began that pseudonymous work as an [XIII 579] author; he was the very one who struggled within himself and as an author in order to set forth this simple matter: becoming a Christian. The movement is not from the simple to the interesting, but from the interesting to the simple—becoming a Christian—where Concluding Postscript is located, the turning point in the whole work as an author, which poses “the issue” and then itself in turn, by means of indirect fencing and Socratic dialectic, mortally wounds “the system”—from behind, fighting against the system and speculative thought, lest the way be from the simple to the system and speculative thought instead of from the system and speculative thought back to the simple, becoming a Christian, therefore fighting and cutting through in order to find the way back. Consequently, here it is not a former esthete who later turns away from the world, but it is one who had decisively turned away from the world and the wisdom of the world. He must indeed be said to have had from the beginning quite extraordinary qualifications for becoming a Christian, but these were still all dialectical. Moreover, at this moment he feels no need to go further than to become a Christian. With his conception of the task and his consciousness of being far from perfection, he feels only the need to go further in becoming a Christian.
If the well-disposed reader has read this little book attentively, he knows what I am as an author.* This is how I portray myself. If it should so happen that my contemporaries refuse to understand me—well, this is how I belong to history, where I know I shall find my place and which place it will be. Humble before God, I also know—and I know, too, that precisely here it is my duty not to suppress this but to say it, since if pride and haughtiness, which arrogate something to themselves, are an abomination to God, then cowardly fear of people, which in mendacious modesty disparages itself, is just as much so—I also know who I was, humanly speaking (historice [in a historical sense], because it is in God’s power every day, even today, to change this), that the extraordinary (verging on genius) was granted to me.
With the present little book, which thus also belongs to a bygone time, I bring to an end the entire earlier work as an author, and then as the author (not as an author, but as the author) I go [XIII 580] forward into the future. What the immediate future will be, I do not know; how what comes after that, the historical, will turn out—that I know. But whatever I know pertaining to this would not comfort me if I were not, although humble and also penitent, yet in faith and confidence, on my way to the future closest at hand and at every moment equally close: eternity. Suppose, if I live longer, that time deprives me of everything, suppose posterity makes full compensation—what harm or what benefit is there actually in this for me anyway—the former does not harm me if I just take care to be an absentee, and the latter will not benefit me since I will have indeed become an absentee.