later age to begin every philosophical work with the sentence: ‘*There once was a man named Descartes,’’?! one is tempted to compare it with the monk’s well-known practice.?? But now if only a few gifted men can more or less save themselves, it seems all the more dangerous for those who must be depend- ent on others for their living. They must clutch at the drifting terminology rushing by them, with the result that their expression becomes so mixed and motley (a kind of Blumenlese [anthology]) that, just as in French a foreigner may say some- thing with a double meaning, they often say the same thing * Just as some people, with an instinctive vehemence, rub writing paper to flatten it, so too there are those who, having heard a name, have promptly gone further.
Either/Or, I 463 throughout a whole book, but with different expressions from different systems. As a result of this, a phenomenon* has arisen that is quite similar to the famous dispute between a Catholic and a Protestant who convinced each other, inas- much as men can very easily convince one another because of the vague and indefinite meanings of the words. But in this wild hunt for ideas, it is still very interesting to observe the fe- licitous moment when one of these new systems achieves su- premacy.** Now everything is set in motion, and principally this also involves making the system popular—per systema in- fluxus physici,” it lays hold of all men. How Kant was treated in his time is well known, and therefore I need only mention the infinite mass of lexicons, summaries, popular presenta- tions, and explanations for everyman, etc. And how did Hegel fare later, Hegel, the one who of all modern philosophers, be- cause of his rigorous form, would most likely command si- lence? Has not the logical trinity been advanced in the most lu- dicrous way? And therefore it did not astound me that my shoemaker had found that it could also be applied to the de- velopment of boots, since, as he observes, the dialectic, which is always the first stage in life, finds expression even here, however insignificant this may seem, in the squeaking, which surely has not escaped the attention of some more profound research psychologist. Unity, however, appears only later, in which respect his shoes far surpass all others, which usually disintegrate in the dialectic, a unity that reached the highest level in that pair of boots Carl XII wore on his famous ride, and since he as an orthodox shoemaker proceeded from the thesis that the immediate (feet without shoes—shoes without feet) is a pure abstraction, he took it [the dialectical] as the first stage in the development.*4 And now our modern politicians! By veritably taking up Hegel, they have given a striking ex- ample of the way one can serve two masters, in that their rev- olutionary striving is paired with a life-outlook that is a rem- * Which, together with barenecked Danish bluffness, has made the polemic equally useless and nauseating.
“ The result presumably will be that philosophy is put up for auction; at the moment there really seem to be no buyers.
A 328 141 A 328 142 464 Supplement edy for it, an excellent remedy for lifting part of the illusion that is necessary for encouraging their fantastical striving. And the actuality of the phenomenon will surely not be denied if one recalls that the words “immediate or spontaneous unity” occur just as necessarily in every scientific-scholarly treatise as a brunette or a blonde in every well-ordered romantic house- hold. At the happy moment each one received a copy of sacred scripture in which there was, however, one book that was al- most always very brief and sometimes almost invisible, and this was, I regret—the Acts of the Apostles. And how curious it is to note that the present age, whose social striving is trum- peted quite enough, is ashamed of the monks and nuns of the Middle Ages, when at the same time, to confine ourselves to our own native land, a society has been formed here that seems to embrace almost the entire kingdom and in which a speaker began thus: Dear Brothers and Sisters. How remark- able to see them censure the Jesuitry of the Middle Ages, since precisely the liberal development, as does every one-sided en- thusiasm, has led and must lead to that. And now Christian- ity—how has it been treated? I share entirely your disapproval of the way every Christian concept has become so volatilized, so completely dissolved in a mass of fog, that it is beyond all recognition. To the concepts of faith, incarnation, tradition, inspiration, which in the Christian sphere are to refer to a par- ticular historical fact, the philosophers have chosen to give an entirely different, ordinary meaning, whereby faith”° has be- come the immediate consciousness, which essentially is noth- ing other than the vitale Fluidum of mental life, its atmosphere, and tradition has become the content of a certain experience of the world, while inspiration has become nothing more than the result of God’s breathing of the life-spirit into man, and in- carnation no more than the presence of one or another idea in one or more individuals. —And I still have not mentioned the concept that has not only been volatilized, like the others, but even profaned: the concept of redemption, a concept that jour- nalism in particular has taken up with a certain partiality and now uses for every one, from the greatest hero of freedom to the baker or butcher who redeems his quarter of the city by Either/Or, I 465 selling his wares a penny cheaper than the others. And now what is to be done about this? Undoubtedly it would be best if one could get the carillon-clock of time to be silent for a while, but since this presumably will not be achieved, we shall at least join with our banking people?’ and cry out to them: Savings, hefty and sweeping economies. Of course, to overbid one’s predecessors can be of no help, and instead of following the novelist who, in his indignation that a full facial blush of a girl in a novel was not a sign of her being a decent girl, swore that every girl in his novels should blush far down her back—in- stead of following him in making such an attempt, we wish rather to bring to mind a happier phenomenon: the move from cursing to simple statements. —We would also wish that pow- erfully equipped men might emerge who would restore the lost power and meaning of words, just as Luther restored the concept of faith for his age. In everything there is the trace of the invention so characteristic of the period: the pressure for speed, even in the curious reflection the age has gotten into, with the result that the age, continually limiting its expression by reflection, actually never manages to say anything. This cu- rious prolixity has also crowded out time-and-talk-saving pithy aphorisms and in their place has allowed the appearance of a certain oratorical jabbering that has taken over even our mealtimes. Only when this economizing, together with the restoration of the language’s prodigal sons, has been intro- duced, can there be hope for better times. And here it occurs to me, to touch again upon your letter,”* that there really is merit in Grundtvig’s attempt to vivify the old Church-lan- guage and to advance his theory of the Living Word,” al- though I still cannot omit reminding you that just as we use the word “scribbling” to designate bungled writing, we also have a particularly good expression to characterize muddled speak- ing: “hot air’ —and that this should really be more effective than writing. [ do not maintain, despite Pastor Grundtvig’s claim that the written word is powerless and dead, despite the court judgment” confirming his theories by a strange irony of fate: that his (written) words were dead and powerless—I still A 328 143 I A331 144 A331 145 466 Supplement “Because of this rush, the generation does not get much solid content; in spite of all its efforts it becomes a kind of Schattenspiel an der Wand [shadow play on the wall] and thereby it becomes a myth, yes, not even criticism, as Gérres rightly observes (see Die christliche Mystik,*' I, preface, p. vii, bot- tom—the passage should be quoted).7? —Finally the theater becomes actuality and actuality comedy.—JP V 5182 (PapI A 329) n.d., 1836-37 tThus the talk that suicide is cowardice is for most men nothing but a leap over a stage—those shrewd and proud fel- lows who have never known that it requires courage! Only he who has had the courage to commit suicide can say that it was cowardly to have done it.*°—JP V 5183 (Pap. I A 330) n.d., 1836-37 Sorrow has come to me since I last wrote to you.** You will note this from the black sealing wax I am obliged to use—al- though as a rule I hate such external symbols—since there is nothing else to be had in this tragic family. Yes, my brother* is dead, but oddly enough I am not actually grieving over him; my sorrow is much more over my brother* who died several years ago. On the whole I have become aware that my sorrow is not momentary but increases with time, and I am sure that when I get old I will come to think rightly of the dead,*” not— as it says in the rhetoric of consolation—to rejoice over the thought of meeting them yonder, but properly to feel that I have lost them. As far as my brother is concerned, I am sure it will take a long time for my grief to awaken. —At first there are so many ridiculous situations that I find it impossible not to laugh. For example, today my [brother’s] brother-in-law, Either/Or, I 467 the business agent—I have spoken of him before and will de- scribe him in more detail some day—makes a visit to console his sister. In his frail, strangely grating voice, a superb parody of the gentlemanly he tries to express in his appearance, he bursts out: Ja! Was ist der Mensch [Well! What is man]? A clari- net, I answered; whereupon he immediately fell out of his role and tried to explain to me that the proper gentleman does not have a voice like a bear but a sonorous and melodious voice. All this time he stood before the mirror and smoothed his hair or plucked out the occasional hair that had become a little gray or reminded him a bit too much of its original color—red— and for this he had a special instrument, a pair of tweezers, on his dressing table—and I really believe that it can truthfully be said of the hairs of his head what the gospel says of all hair, that they are numbered.** The undertaker came then to inquire if they wished to have more than ham, salami, and Edam cheese to be served, and offered to make all the arrangements; my brother-in-law the business agent declined, explaining that it would be good for his broken-hearted sister to have some- thing to think about so as to forget the emptiness and stillness prevailing around her now that her “sainted husband” was gone. (It is terrible how quickly people learn to say that, that is, the husband who as sainted no longer needs me, and it naturally follows that I do not need him either. I always notice how speedily people begin to say “my sainted husband, my sainted wife.” Similarly, the quicker a woman is to scold, the less modesty she has. Consider how in the beginning children respond to the question “What does the child want?’’—one of the questions put to every child in the concise epitome of knowledge inflicted upon them—by saying “Da-Da,” and with such melancholy observations the child’s first and yet most innocent period begins—and yet people deny hereditary sin!)°?
Since it was, in fact, moving time, he advised her to move to another place and the sooner the better, in order “‘to avoid sorrowful memories.” Yes, really: “to avoid sorrowful mem- ories.” That fits the pronouncement in the newspaper that “One has lost everything.”’ —Not so, for the memories of one A331 146 468 Supplement who has lost everything are precious, gratifying, for he can never, after all, live more happily than in the past.*° One thing is sure, that on such an occasion what most people lose is memory. —I shall pass over the intervening days. Then came the day of the funeral. Great quantities of the already men- tioned cheese, sausage, and ham are served; there is no lack of a variety of wines and cakes. —No one is seen eating any- thing—alas, so great is the grief! Here the rule of the book “about good manners’’#!—that no one is to begin to eat before his neighbor—is carried out literally. God help us, what if it were carried out literally at every meal! In the old days the nat- ural association of ideas led one on such occasions to recall the true dictum that without beer [@/] and food the hero is noth- ing, and therefore there was a funeral feast [Graval], but now- adays this has become a gravediggers’ feast [Graverol], for the funeral director, the pallbearers, the gravediggers, etc. are the ones who eat for all of us. On such occasions | always develop a fearful appetite and despite good manners I begin first—but no one follows my example anyway.—JP V 5184 (Pap. 1 A 331) n.d., 1836-37 On the wedding day came a letter from her brother; he was a captain in the Brazilian army. It was handed to her, and since we were eager to hear from him, I read it aloud: “Dear Sister! What he was to you I will not speak of; you yourself know it too well. I will just say that although over here I see 100 die daily, I nevertheless truly feel that death is a universal fate, but also that I have had only one brother-in- law, just as you no doubt also feel that he was your first and last love.
Your Brother = Postscript Excuse the short reply; you no doubt have had to put up with enough tedious talk, and I have just received orders to battle and must take off. Take care of yourself and remember Either/Or, I 469 that the short time was when the pole-star was at its apparent height, and thank God that it lasted as long as it did; as is the apparent height, so is the quotient of the true.
Your.
” December 2“ I will no longer converse with the world at all; I will try to forget that I ever did. I read of a man who lay abed* for fifty years, never speaking to anyone; like Queen Gudrun’ after she had quarreled with O, I shall go to bed after quar- reling with the world. Or I will run away to a place where no one knows, no one understands my language, or I theirs, where, like a Caspar Hauser*® the Second, I can stand in the middle of a Niirnberg street without really knowing how it all happened.
The trouble is that as soon as a person has thought up some- thing, he becomes that himself. The other day I told you” about an idea for a Faust, but now I feel that it was myself I de- scribed; I barely read or think about an illness before I have it.
Every time I want to say something, someone else says it at the same time. It is just as if | were a double-thinker and my other I continually anticipated me, or while I stand and talk everyone believes it is someone else, so that I may justifiably raise the question the bookseller Soldin*®® put to his wife: Re- becca, is it I who is speaking? —I will run away from the world, not to the monastery—I still have vigor—but in order to find myself (every other babbler says the same thing), in or- der to forget myself, but not over there where a babbling brook meanders through the grassy glen. —I do not know if this verse is by some poet, but I wish some sentimental poet or other would be compelled by inexorable irony to write it, but in such a way that he himself would always read something else. Or the echo—yes, Echo,*! you grand-master of irony, you who in yourself parody the loftiest and the most profound on earth: the word, which created the world, while you give only the outline, not the fullness—yes, Echo, take revenge upon all the sentimental rubbish that hides in woods and I A 333 147 I A 333 148 A 333 149 470 Supplement fields, in churches and theaters, and that every once in a while breaks away from there and drowns out everything for me. I do not hear the trees in the forest tell old legends and the like— no, they whisper to me about all the stuff and nonsense they have witnessed too long, beseech me in God’s name to chop them down and free them from the babbling of those nature worshippers. —Would that all those muddled heads sat on one neck; like Caligula,** I know what I would have to do. I see that you are beginning to fear that I will end on the scaffold. No, mark well, the muddle-head (I mean the one who em- braces them all) would certainly like to have brought me there, but you forgot that such a wish does no actual harm in the world. Yes, Echo—you whom I once heard chastise an admi- rer of nature when he burst out: Listen to that infatuated night- ingale singing its solitary flute-like notes in the light of the moon—and you answered: -oon-loon-lunatic® (revenge, yes, take revenge)—you are the man!** No, I will not leave the world—I will go into an insane asy- lum,*5 and I will see if the profoundity of insanity will unravel the riddle of life for me. Fool, why didn’t I do it long agd, why has it taken me so long to understand what it means when the Indians honor the insane, step aside for them. Yes, into an in- sane asylum—do you not believe that I will end up there?
—However, it is fortunate that language has a section of expressions for chitchat and nonsense. If it did not, I would go mad, for what would it prove except that everything said is nonsense. It is lucky that language is so equipped, for now one can still hope to hear rational discourse sometimes.
It is called a tragedy when the hero gives his whole life to an idea—folly! (Then I commend the Christians for calling the day the martyrs died their birthdays, because in this way they connected with them the festive notion men usually have about birthdays.) —-No, a misunderstanding! On the con- trary, I grieve when a child is born* and wish that at least it may not live to be confirmed! I weep when I see or read Eras- mus Montanus;>’ he is right and succumbs to the masses.*® Yes, that is the trouble. When every confirmed glutton is entitled to Either/Or, I 471 vote, when the majority decides the matter—is this not suc- cumbing to the masses, to fatheads? —Yes, the giants, did they not also succumb to the masses? And yet—and this is the only comfort remaining!—and yet every once in a while they terrify the Hottentots trotting over them by drawing in their breath and giving vent to a flaming sigh—not to complain—no, all condolences declined—but to frighten. I want—no, I don’t want anything at all.5? Amen!
And when one meets at twentieth-hand and more an idea that has sprung fresh and alive from an individual’s head— how much truth remains? At most one can reply with the old saying: ‘‘But at least it does taste like fowl,” said the old crone who had made a soup out of a branch on which a crow had sat.—JP V 5186 (Pap. I A 333) n.d., 1836-37 This is the road we all must walk—over the Bridge of Sighs into eternity.—JP 1 28 (Pap. I A 334) n.d., 1836-37 It is these trifling annoyances® that so often spoil life. I can cheerfully struggle against a storm until I almost burst a blood vessel, but the wind blowing a speck of dust into my eye can irritate me so much that I stamp my foot.
These small annoyances—they are like flies—just when a person is about to carry out a great work, a tremendous task, crucially important to his own life and the life of many others—a gadfly lands on his nose.®'—JP V 5187 (Pap. 1 A 335) n.d., 1836-37 One thought succeeds another; just as it is thought and I want to write it down, there is a new one—hold it, seize it— madness—dementia!—JP V 5188 (Pap. I A 336) n.d., 1836-37 If there is anything I hate it is these smatterers—often when I go to a party I deliberately sit down to talk with some old spinster who lives on telling news of the family, and I listen most earnestly to everything on which she can hold forth.—JP V 5189 (Pap. 1 A 338) n.d., 1836-37 I A333 150 A 340 151 A 340 152 472 Supplement I prefer to talk with old women who chatter about their families, next with demented people—and lastly with very sensible people.**—JP V 5190 (Pap. I A 339) n.d., 1836-37 Something about Hamann It is most interesting right now in our time when the rec- ognized achievement of thought holds that the important thing is to live for one’s age, and that the abstract immortality which men previously rejoiced in was an illusion—it is most interesting right now to see that there nevertheless is some- thing to living for a posterity® and being misunderstood by contemporaries. People move continually between these two extremes. Whereas a few stand isolated in the world, balancing with the agility of a Simeon Stylites,™ or at most beating their wings like tame geese, admired, or more correctly, stared at by the gaping crowd, despised by the philistines, served by an- gels, there are, on the other hand, enormous numbers who are living totally in the present age, who, so to speak, are to the body politic much like the brass hammers of a clavichord that swing at the slightest touch and cannot possibly maintain a def- inite impression; they are like certain patients who always get a little attack of every epidemic, a class of people so numerous that they have brought a kind of spiritual ventriloquism into the whole society. One hears a confused sound and scarcely knows whether it is oneself speaking or someone else, and is easily tempted to say with Soldin: Rebecca, is it I who is speak- ing?® To live in the age and die in the age in this fashion is not particularly inspiring, and yet there is not much left for the majority of men who have, for better or for worse, pawned their reason for the motto: Conform to the age. Certainly this has not been the idea of the few great men who first expressed this view of life, but the tragedy is that whenever a rational man opens his mouth there immediately are millions ready posthaste—to misunderstand him. Well, God help them. If in military fashion he should hear the password again from the last generation (there is a password that God delivered in Ad- am’s ear, that one generation is supposed to deliver to the next Either/Or, I 473 and that shall be demanded of them on judgment day)—God help him, it must be frightful!
So much for that misunderstanding, and I also hope that it will be apparent that every man who in the proper sense is to fill out a period in history must always begin polemically, pre- cisely because the subsequent stage is not purely and simply the result of the previous one. Was this not the case with Hol- berg, was it not the case with Goethe, was it not the case with Kant, and so on? And must it not be this way? Must it not be, as in a procession (the new that is to come), that the law court officials go first to clear the way? Here, again, so much de- pends upon how quickly the new follows on the heels of the polemic, and whether it is the truth that must be fought for day after day for years or is merely one insignificant modifi- cation or another.—JP II 1541 (Pap. 1 A 340) n.d., 1836-37 How very unfortunate we human beings are, how few the things that give us enduring and solid pleasures. I had hoped by this time through my perseverance to have come into “‘pos- session of the maiden” —. O excellent Holberg! How delight- ful to see a phraseologist like Mr., as I informally call him, Leander parody himself with a single phrase—his solid pleas- ures—his— ‘possession of the maiden”!6°—JP V 5191 (Pap. I A 341) n.d., 1836-37 What is friendship without intellectual interaction, a refuge for weak souls who are not able to breathe in the atmosphere of intelligence but only in the atmosphere of animal exhala- tions? How wretchedly it drags itself along in spite of all the external means with which one tries to patch it up (by drinking dus®’ etc.). What a caricature it is, except for those who straightforwardly admit that friendship is nothing else than mutual insurance. How disgusting to hear those insipid ster- eotyped screeds about mutual understanding, about friend- ship. Certainly understanding is part of friendship, but not the kind that makes the one continually aware of what the other is going to say. No, it is essential to friendship that the one never knows what the other is going to say; when that point is reached, friendship is past. But that kind of understanding Ul A22 24 Il A 22 25 474 Supplement leads such persons to believe that they understand everyone else, too. Out of this comes the self-satisfaction with which they say that they expected one to answer precisely as he did answer, etc., which frequently is not true and has its base in their presuming that everyone’s conversation is just like their own, insipid, trivial, and pointless, and they have no intima- tion of the whole host of individualizing traits etc. that make every observation interesting. It is always well to avoid such people, since in spite of all their understanding, they always misunderstand. How distressing for someone who is having doubts to hear from such a “one of a dozen” that “‘he has ex- perienced the same thing.” If the conversation is about a great man, he promptly has a little man whom he thinks to be just as great; naturally all phenomena are fetched out of his duo- decimo horizons* (a good example: Raketten med Stjerner com- plained that Sibbern was now beginning to write and found this doubly regrettable because it was at the very same time that Messrs. Blok Toxen and Lange laid down their pens).® If the conversation is about a great thinker, he promptly has an opinion because he perhaps has heard the man’s name at some time. As the years pass, as far as their conversation is con- cerned, people generally tend to become more and more like hand-organs, mobile automatons (including their expressions and movements), something like ship captains, who, even with the opportunity to walk the longest and most beautiful avenue, nevertheless prefer their standard skipper walk.”—JP I] 1279 (Pap. Il A 22) n.d., 1837 In margin of Pap. Il A 22: *The basis is that they, too, naturally are moved by the train of events and by the mightier spirits, and they reproduce them by way of parody, just as tame geese and ducks beat their wings, cry out, and quiver for a moment when a wild goose or duck flies over them.—JP II 1280 (Pap. II A 23) n.d., 1837 All true love is grounded in this, that one loves another in a third?!—all the way from the lowest stage, for example, where they love one another in a third, to the Christian teaching that Either/Or, I 475 the brothers should love one another in Christ.—JP III 2380 (Pap. Il A 24) n.d., 1837 In margin of Pap. Il A 24: If there were no higher individuality in whom the single in- dividual rests and through whom spiritual reciprocity is real- ized, the same would happen with individuality in this love as happened at one time with Catholics and Protestants who dis- puted and persuaded one another: namely, the one would be- come the other, just as the Catholic became Protestant and the Protestant Catholic.—JP III 2381 (Pap. II A 25) n.d., 1837 A thesis: great geniuses are essentially unable to read a book. While they are reading, their own development will always be greater than their understanding of the author.—JP II 1288 (Pap. I] A 26) n.d., 1837 That the Faust who is now supposed to represent the age is essentially different from the earlier Faust and from the Faust of every other age is so evident that one needs only to be re- minded of it. But how? If we look at the age, we find a host of men who in the elemental Greek sense are really ngaxtiyot [fit for doing], whom Aristotle” has already assigned to the low- est level of development—preoccupied by their chores of cul- tivating their land and, as it is called, bringing up their chil- dren—that is, as “confirmed consumers”’ they go on living carefree lives and even in death do something practical for the world—by decaying and enriching the earth. In them some- thing Faustian will hardly develop. On the other hand, there is a great number of men who have either turned their heads to investigate a vanished past or immerse themselves in investi- gating nature. Because of their busyness, the Faustian does not appear in them either, inasmuch as the appearance of the Faus- tian requires first of all that this energetic life be paralyzed in some way or other. —But now there finally appears the type of men we need to observe, namely, those who seek by intui- tion to comprehend the multiplicity of nature, of life, and of history in a totality-view. But here, too, there is something 27 i A29 28 476 Supplement