NB NB
1848
Jan. 29. Christ cast out a devil and it was dumb. Have you never been dumb, or known what it is to be dumb. One can go about and be dumb, not wishing to speak : but that is not what is meant. One can play at being mysterious and be dumb : but that is not what is meant. But have you never been so indescribably distressed, that the power of sorrow over your whole being was almost like the powers of nature: then you have experienced what it means to be dumb, experienced the feeling of being unable, even though your life were at stake, to express the agony that rocked deep within you, and selfish of itself made you dumb—in order that you might not rid yourself of it. For that is how infinite sorrow is egotistical; it makes a man dumb in order to keep him in its power.
All this fear of Germany is a fancy, a game, a new attempt to flatter national vanity. A million people who honestly own up to being a small nation, and then if everyone is resolved before God to be what they are : is a tremendous strength; there is no danger there. No, the misfortune is quite another; the misfortune is that this little people is demoralised, divided against itself, disgustingly envious one of another, insubordinate towards everyone in power, petty towards everyone who is something, impertinent and unbridled, incited to a sort of tyranny of the plebs. That produces a bad conscience, and therefore people fear Germany. But no one dares to say where the misfortune lies—and so people flatter all these unhealthy passions and become self-important by fighting against the Germans.
Denmark is facing a loathsome period. Provincial-mindedness and ill-natured pettiness fighting among themselves; in the end one will be suspected of being German unless one wears a particular kind of hat, etc., etc. On the other side the Communist rising; everyone who owns a little will be marked out and persecuted through the press.
That is Denmark’s misfortune—or the punishment which has come upon Denmark, a people without a true fear of God, a people whose national consciousness is small-town gossip, a people who idolise being nothing, where school-boys are the judges, a people where those who should govern are afraid and those who ought to obey are impertinent, a people among whom are to be found daily proofs that there is no public morality in the land—a people who can only be saved by a tyrant or a few martyrs.
NB NB
Wednesday, April 19, 1848.
My whole being is changed. My reserve and self-isolation is broken—I must speak.
Lord give thy grace.
It is indeed true, what my father said of me: “you will never be anything so long as you have money.” He spoke prophetically, he thought that I would lead a riotous and debauched life. But that is just where he was wrong. But with an acuteness of mind and a melancholy such as mine, and then to have had money: what an opportunity for developing all the agonies of self-torture in my heart.
(Just as I had decided to speak, curiously opportunely, my doctor arrived. But I did not speak to him, it was too sudden for me. But my decision to speak stands fast.)
Alas, she could not break the silence of my melancholy That I loved her—nothing is more certain—and thus my melancholy received enough to feed upon, oh, it received a terrible addition.32 It is essentially owing to her, to my melancholy and to my money that I became an author. Now, with God’s help, I shall be myself; I believe that Christ will help me to be victorious over my melancholy, and so I shall become a priest.
And yet in that melancholy I loved the world, for I loved my melancholy. Everything has helped to heighten the tension of my position, her sufferings, all my exertions, and finally the fact that I was derided has, with the help of God, contributed to my breaking through now, finally, when I am obliged to worry about my livelihood.
NB NB
April 24, 1848, Easter Monday.
No, no, my self-isolation cannot be broken, at least not now. The thought of breaking it occupies me so much, and at all times, that it only becomes more and more firmly embedded.
Yet it consoles me to have spoken to my doctor. I have often felt anxious about myself for perhaps being too proud to speak to anyone. But just as I did so earlier I have done so again. And what had the doctor really to say? Nothing. But for me it was of importance to have respected the human relationship.
NB NB
May 11. The majority of men (if they find that from their earliest years it is their lot to bear one suffering or another, one cross or another, one of those sad limitations of the soul) begin by hoping, or as they say, believing that things will go better, that God will make things all right etc., and then at length, when no change occurs they come little by little to rely upon the help of eternity, i.e. they resign themselves and find strength in contenting themselves with the eternal.—The deeper nature, or he whom God has fashioned on a more eternal plan begins at once by understanding that this is a thing he must bear as long as he lives, he dares not require of God such an extraordinary paradoxical help. But God is perfect love just the same, nothing is more certain to him. So he is resigned and inasmuch as the eternal lies close to him he thus finds repose, blessedly assured all the while that God is love. But he must put up with suffering. Then in the course of time, when he becomes more concrete in the actuality of life, comes more and more to himself as a temporal being, when time and its succession exercises its power over him, when in spite of all his effort it becomes so difficult to live on with the assistance of only the eternal, when he becomes a human being in a humbler sense or learns what it means to be human (for in his resignation he is still too ideal or too abstract, for which reason also there is something of despair in such resignation) :—then the possibility of faith presents itself to him in this form: whether he will believe by virtue of the absurd that God will help him temporally, (Here lie all the paradoxes.) So the forgiveness of sin also means to be helped temporarily, otherwise it is mere resignation, which can endure to bear the punishment, though still convinced that God is love. But belief in the forgiveness of sins means to believe that here in time the sin is forgotten by God, that it is really true that God forgets.
That means to say, that most people never attain to faith. For a long time they live on in immediateness and finally they attain to a certain amount of reflection, and so they die. The exceptions begin the other way round, from childhood up dialectical, i.e. without immediateness, they begin with dialectics, with reflection and in that way live on year after year (just about as long as others live merely in the immediate) and then, at a ripe age, the possibility of faith shows itself to them. For faith is immediateness after reflection.
The exceptions, naturally, have a very unhappy childhood and youth; for to be essentially reflective at an age which is naturally immediate, is the depths of melancholy. But they are recompensed; for most people do not succeed in becoming spirit, and all the fortunate years of their immediateness are, where spirit is concerned, a loss and therefore they never attain to spirit. But the unhappy childhood and youth of the exception is transfigured into spirit.
It is wonderful how God’s love overwhelms me—alas, ultimately I know of no truer prayer than what I pray over and over again, that God will allow me and not be angry with me because I continuously thank him for having done and for doing, yes, and for doing so indescribably much more for me than I ever expected. Surrounded by scorn, pestered day in and day out by the pettiness of men, even of those nearest to me, I know of nothing either at home or in my inmost self than to thank and thank God; for I understand that what he has done for me is indescribable. A man —and what is a man before God, nothing, less than nothing; and what is more a poor man who from childhood up has fallen into the most wretched melancholy, an object of dread to himself : and then God helps me and grants me what he has granted me ! A life which was a burden to me however much I may at times have understood all its fortunate aspects, but which was all embittered for me by the dark spot which ruined all; and as I understood, if other men knew the secret of my life, I should from the very beginning have been the object of their pity and sympathy, a burden to myself: God takes charge of such lives. He lets me weep before him in silent solitude, pour forth and again pour forth my pain, with the blessed consolation of knowing that he is concerned for me—and in the meanwhile he gives that life of pain a significance which almost overwhelms me, gives me good fortune and strength and wisdom for my whole undertaking, in making my life the pure expression of ideas, or he makes it into that.
For I now see so clearly (once again in renewed joy to God, a new occasion of thanks) that my life is so arranged. My life began without immediateness, with a terrible melancholy, in its earliest youth deranged in its very deepest foundations, a melancholy which threw me for a time into sin and debauchery and yet (humanly speaking) almost more insane than guilty. Thus my father’s death really pulled me up. I dared not believe that the fundamental misfortune of my being could be resolved : and so I grasped eternity with the blessed assurance that God is love, even though I was to suffer thus all my life; yes, with that blessed assurance. That is how I looked upon my life. Then once again and sympathetically, I was flung down into the abyss of melancholy by having to break off my engagement and why, simply because I dared not believe that God would resolve the fundamental misfortune of my being, take away my almost insane melancholy, which I now desired, for her sake and then again for mine, with all the passion of my soul. It was as difficult as possible to have to reproduce my own misery. Once again I was resigned. Thinking only of working to free her I went to meet a life of this kind but, God be praised, always certain and with the blessed assurance that God is love, nothing has been more certain to me.
And now, now that in many ways I have been brought to the last extremity, now (since last Easter, though with intervals) a hope has awakened in my soul that God may desire to resolve the fundamental misery of my being. That is to say, now I am in faith in the profoundest sense. Faith is immediacy after reflection. As poet and thinker I have represented all things in the medium of the imagination, myself living in resignation. Now life comes closer to me, or I am closer to myself, coming to myself.—To God all things are possible, that thought is now, in the deepest sense, my watch-word, has acquired a significance in my eyes which I had never imagined it could have. That I must never, at any moment, presume to say that there is no way out for God because I cannot see any. For it is despair and presumption to confuse one’s pittance of imagination with the possibility over which God disposes.
Most people really believe that the Christian commandments (e.g. to love one’s neighbour as oneself) are intentionally a little too severe—like putting the clock on half an hour to make sure of not being late in the morning.
NB
Here again is one of the most important points regarding man’s relation to God.
If it were possible to have a physical certainty that God would use one as an instrument (like a king his minister)—how could it be possible not to submit willingly to every sacrifice. But is it possible to have a real certainty, or even a purely immediate certainty of one’s relation to God. For God is spirit. One can only have a spiritual relationship to a spirit; and a spiritual relationship is eo ipso dialectical. —How an Apostle understands himself in having been called by a revelation and in having an immediate certainty which cannot in any way be dialectical, I do not understand—but it can be believed. I understand an ordinary man’s relation to God and to Christ, Socratically. Socrates did not know with certainty whether he was immortal. (Oh, the rogue, for he knew that immortality was a spiritual qualification and eo ipso dialectical, and beyond all immediate certainty. So that even though he did not know to what degree he was immortal—which so many dunces know exactly—he knew what he was saying.) But his life expresses the fact that there is an immortality and that he himself was immortal. The question of immortality, he says, concerns me so infinitely, that I stake everything on that “if.”
Mynster has always had a great partiality for “these quiet hours in holy places,” because then he can dispense Christianity as one of life’s ingredients not as the absolute. . . . For Mynster, however, it would be quite impossible, indeed the most impossible thing of all, to preach in the market-place. Yet this preaching in churches has become an almost heathenish and theatrical thing, and Luther is quite right in insisting that we should not preach in churches. In paganism the theatre was the church—in Christendom the churches have practically become theatres. How so? Why, in this way. It is agreeable, and not devoid of a certain pleasure, to commune with the highest thoughts through the imagination once a week. Nothing more than that. And this has actually become the norm for the sermons in Denmark. Hence the artistic remoteness—even in the clumsiest sermons.
My years of penitence are fast running out. I have nothing to complain of; I understand with God why I suffer—and give thanks. I live, and with God’s help I shall die in the belief that when death has carried me away (and this cannot happen before, or else it would not be penitence to the end) he will place the imprint of providence upon my life so that it will help men to become aware of God and to see how thoughtlessly they hinder themselves from leading the highest life, a life in communion with God.
I feel a longing to say nothing more except: Amen. I am overwhelmed by gratitude for all that providence has done for me. How is it possible for things to go so well? Poetically speaking I can only say that there is nothing which has happened in my life of which I cannot say, that is the very thing which perfectly suits my nature and disposition : I lack nothing. I was unhappy in my love; but I simply cannot imagine myself happy unless I were to become a different person altogether. But in my unhappiness I was happy. Humanly speaking, I am saved by one already dead, my father; but I simply cannot imagine myself having been saved by someone living. And so I became an author in exactly the way which suited the latent possibilities of my nature; and then I was persecuted —oh, had that been wanting my life would not have been mine. There is melancholy in everything in my life, but then again an indescribable happiness. But in that way I became myself through God’s indescribable grace and support and, as I am almost tempted to say, by his special favour, if that did not mean less to me than the blessed thought, which I believe and which brings me such perfect peace : that he loves all men equally. I have, quite literally, lived with God as one lives with one’s father. Amen.
If I could be reconciled with her, that would be my one wish, and a heartfelt joy. But her marriage rests upon me. If I were to give her any certainty as to how she was and is loved : she would regret her marriage. She is held together by the thought that however much she may have seen in me, admired me and loved me, I behaved meanly to her. She was not religious enough to stand by herself with an unhappy love—I have never dared to help her directly, that has cost me suffering enough.
I owe everything, from the beginning, to my father. When melancholy as he was, he saw me melancholy, his prayer to me was: Be sure that you really love Jesus Christ.
The Archimedian point outside the world is an oratory where a man really prays in all sincerity—and he shall move the earth. And it is unbelievable what a man of prayer can achieve if he will close the doors behind him.
From now on the human race will no longer be led on by prophets and judges but forced back by martyrs, who will run headlong against that human discovery, progress. Otherwise there can be no progress : in intensity. The problem is set, once and for all; there is nothing further to add. The thing is to become more inward.
The result of human progress is that everything becomes thinner and thinner—the result of divine providence is to make everything more inward.
I should have been able to bear everything else, would have been able to bear indescribable suffering far more easily, all the attacks upon me (for in that respect I am sufficiently conscious of my superiority)—if my financial future had not tortured me.
The communication of Christianity must ultimately end in “bearing witness,” the maieutic form can never be final. For truth, from the Christian point of view, does not lie in the subject (as Socrates understood it) but in a revelation which must be proclaimed.
In Christendom the maieutic form can certainly be used, simply because the majority in fact live under the impression that they are Christians. But since Christianity is Christianity the maieuticer must become the witness.
In the end the maieuticer will not be able to bear the responsibility because the indirect method is ultimately rooted in human intelligence, however much it may be sanctified and consecrated by fear and trembling. God becomes too powerful for the maieuticer and so he is the witness, though different from the direct witness in that he has been through the process of becoming one.
NB NB
It has constantly been maintained that reflection inevitably destroys Christianity and is its natural enemy. I hope, now, that with God’s help it will be shown that a godfearing reflection can once again tie the knot at which a superficial reflection has been tugging for so long. The divine authority of the Bible and all that belongs to it has been done away with; it looks as though one had only to wait for the last stage of reflection in order to have done with the whole thing. But behold, reflection performs the opposite service by once more bringing the springs of Christianity into play, and in such a way that it can stand up—against reflection. Christianity naturally remains completely unaltered, not one iota is changed. But the struggle is a different one; up to the present it has been between reflection and simple, immediate Christianity; now it will be between reflection and simplicity armed with reflection.
And that, in my opinion, is sense. The problem is not to understand Christianity but to understand that it cannot be understood. That is the holiness of faith, and reflection is sanctified by being thus used. . . .
Oh, the more I think upon all that has been vouchsafed me the greater my desire for an eternity in which to thank God.
It now seems as though I were to be on good terms with the leading people, and why, partly because they have become polemical; now they themselves are, or think themselves, in the minority, and I, well, if my genius can be said to be related to anything at all then it is to being in the minority.
It is very dangerous to go into eternity with possibilities which one has oneself prevented from becoming realities. A possibility is a hint from God. One must follow it. In every man there is latent the highest possibility, one must follow it. If God does not wish it then let him prevent it, but one must not hinder oneself. Trusting to God I have dared, but I was not successful; in that is to be found peace, calm, and confidence in God. I have not dared: that is a woeful thought, a torment in eternity.
When I sold the house33 I thought of giving up writing and travelling abroad for two years, and then returning home and becoming a priest. I had in fact made 2,200 Rd. on the deal.
But then the thought occurred to me : you want to travel abroad, but why? In order to break off your work and for the sake of recreation. But surely you know from experience that you are never so productive as when abroad, living as you do in complete isolation, so that you would return from a two-years’ journey abroad with an enormous pile of MSS.
So I took rooms, a flat which had attracted me particularly for some time back, and which I had often said was the only one I really wanted.
The idea of travelling for two years was all imagination. Particularly since I had a whole work lying ready for publication and, as I have already said, by going abroad I should only have opened the sluice-gates of production.
But it was with the idea of travelling for two years that I bought government bonds with the cash from the sale of my house, which I had otherwise decided to leave lying idle—the stupidest thing I have ever done and which must certainly be looked upon as a sort of lesson; for now I have lost c. 700 Rd. on them. For the rest of the cash I afterwards bought some shares on which I have not perhaps lost.
And so I rented the flat; printed Christian Discourses and was in the midst of proof-correction when confusion broke loose—Anders34 was taken from me: and it was a good thing I had the rooms.
I moved in. In the flat I suffered indescribably because of its inadequacy. But on the other hand providence helped me as usual to achieve my desire, though I always grasp at the wrong methods and use the wrong means; the same thing happened again. If anything is to help me to be less productive, to slacken the pace, and in general make me worldly, then it is worldly troubles and inconveniences.
As for the rest, I have written some of the best things I have ever written in this house; and in the meanwhile I had the opportunity of getting used to the thought of gradually stopping my production or in any case of being somewhat more careful about my resources. That would not have happened in an eternity abroad where, far from all disturbances, suffering too a little from melancholy, I throw myself into my work on a tremendous scale.
Last summer I drew Rasmus Nielsen closer to me; that meant decreasing my work and yet doing something towards carrying it out.
If I could travel without becoming productive, travel and travel for some time, it might perhaps be a good thing. But a prolonged stay in any one place only makes me write more than ever. It has been much better for me to learn a little by doing without Anders and other such comforts, which were perhaps too conducive to work.
But the financial question in these troubled times has certainly weighed upon me. However, it was undoubtedly a good thing that my attention was drawn to it in time. It also helps to consume such selfishness as there is in me and in my work; for my position as an author will certainly become serious enough.
It is terrible when I think, even for a single moment, over the dark background which, from the very earliest time, was part of my life. The dread with which my father filled my soul, his own frightful melancholy, and all the things in this connection which I do not even note down. I felt a dread of Christianity and yet felt myself so strongly drawn towards it.
And later on what I suffered through Peter, when he became morbidly religious.
As I have said, it is terrible to think, at moments, of the life I led in the hidden centre of my heart, of course literally never a word breathed to anyone, not even daring to note down the least thing about it—and that I was able to clothe that life with an outwardly lively and cheerful existence.
How true are the words I have so often said of myself, that as Scheherazade saved her life by telling fairy stories I save my life, or keep myself alive by writing.
Severity first, that is to say the severity of the ideal, and then gentleness. I myself have as much need as anybody of being spoken to gently, my soul is much disposed to speak gently—but in a time of confused thinking the first must be put first, lest gentleness be an occasion for slothful indulgence.
Fundamentally a reformation which did away with the Bible would now be just as valid as Luther’s doing away with the Pope. All that about the Bible has developed a religion of learning and law, a mere distraction. A little of that knowledge has gradually percolated to the simplest classes so that no one any longer reads the Bible humanly. As a result it does immeasurable harm; where life is concerned its existence is a fortification of excuses and escapes; for there is always something one has to look into first of all, and it always seems as though one had first of all to have the doctrine in perfect form before one could begin to live—that is to say, one never begins.
The Bible Societies, those vapid caricatures of missions, societies which like all companies only work with money and are just as mundanely interested in spreading the Bible as other companies in their enterprises : the Bible Societies have done immeasurable harm. Christendom has long been in need of a hero who, in fear and trembling before God, had the courage to forbid people to read the Bible. That is something quite as necessary as preaching against Christianity.
The only person of whom I can say that I am envious is the person, when he comes, whom I call my reader, who in peace and quiet will be able to sit down and purely intellectually enjoy the drama of infinite comedy which I, by living here, have allowed Copenhagen to play. To be sure, I perceive the value of the drama better than he; but I have felt the misery and bitterness of every day, as well as the new misunderstanding of people not even daring to laugh with me, because they were suspicious and unable to conceive that in the midst of all that nonsense I still had an eye for the comic. Poetically it is of no interest that the drama was played every day year after year, poetically it is too absurd; poetically it must be shortened. And so it will be, for my reader. But in and through the daily repetition begins religion and that is how I understand my life : to me that infinitely comic drama was a martyrdom. And yet if I were not conscious of being absolutely religiously bound, I should feel like going to some lonely place to laugh and laugh—though I should still suffer at the thought that this Gotham, the beloved country of my birth, is the prostituted residence of the bourgeoisie, my beloved Copenhagen.
. . . The first form of rulers in the world were the “tyrants,” the last will be the “martyrs”; in the history of the world this development is an ever-increasing worldliness ; for worldliness is at its greatest, must have the upper hand in the most frightful way, when only martyrs can be rulers. When one man is the tyrant “the masses” are not entirely worldly; but when “the masses” want to be the tyrant, then worldliness has become quite universal, and then only the martyr can be the ruler. Between a tyrant and a martyr there is of course an enormous difference, although they both have one thing in common: the power to compel. The tyrant, himself ambitious to dominate, compels people through his power; the martyr, himself unconditionally obedient to God, compels others through his suffering. The tyrant dies and his rule is over; the martyr dies and his rule begins. The tyrant was egoistically the individual who inhumanly made the others into “the masses,” and ruled over the masses; the martyr is the suffering individual who educates others through his Christian love of mankind, translating the masses into individuals—and there is joy in heaven over every individual whom he thus saves out of the masses. And on this whole books could be written, even by me a sort of poet and thinker, not to speak of him when he comes : the thinker-poet or the poet-thinker who, moreover, will have seen at close quarters what I dimly suspect, who will have seen what I only dimly imagine will be done one day in the distant future.
There really only exist two parties; to choose between them is an Either-Or! It goes without saying that in the activity of the world there are many parties—but it is not really so, it is only figuratively that one can speak in this case of making a choice, because it does not matter and is equally wrong whatever one chooses. In the profoundest sense, really, there are only two parties between which to choose, and there lies the category “the individual” : either obedient to God, fearing and loving him, to cling to God against men, so that one loves men in God; or to cling to men against God, so that one distorts and humanises God and “savours not the things of God but those that be of men.” For between God and man there is a struggle, a struggle for life and death; was the God-Man not put to death!—And so on this alone, which is solemn; and about “the individual”; what demonia is: whether the demoniacal is good or evil; about silence in regard to evil and in regard to good; on “deceiving into truth”; on indirect communication, how far it is a betrayal of the human, an importunity towards God; what one learns about the demoniacal through consideration of the God-Man—on that alone whole books could be written even by me, a sort of thinker, not to say by him, when he comes : “the thinker” who will have seen “the missionary of Christendom,” and will know at first hand about all that I have only little by little learnt to understand a little.