A Literary Review by Soren Kierkegaard

Author:Soren Kierkegaard
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780141958651
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2009-12-28T05:00:00+00:00

III The Results of Observing the Two Ages

So here I am now at the final section, and with the difficulty the author has posed the critic by himself making as if to offer a criticism. Would the author had not done that! I say this not for my own sake, certainly, since in another respect I am happy to take the hints offered, though I shall not copy them and pass the criticism off as my own. But I think the book is the worse for that Preface, precisely because it makes it possible for quick minds and loose tongues to say straight away, ‘Is that all?’ – ‘That can be said in a page.’ Well, of course, it makes no difference at all what a voluble person says, or an impudent and naughty child. But all the same, with regard to a book with a literary signature distinguished by its honour and dignity, it is clear there is something even more to be desired, something we who are perhaps all too used to malice almost forget: that the voluble person or the naughty child simply keep quiet. What seems unimportant when it happens to others appears a significant incongruity when it happens to the exalted; and what seems bearable when it happens to oneself distresses one when it happens to the distinguished. When, because of the muddy going, a person has pulled on his rubber boots, he sets off with confidence. But if, just then, he sees a young girl, say, who has resolved without a single splash the difficult task of negotiating the not so very short way from her home, happily aware of the lightness of her own gliding gait – and then along comes some oaf who splatters her in passing, it pains him. It seems to him an injustice on the part of life to lump the heterogeneous together in time, it discomfits him that the street is for everybody instead of everybody getting out of the young girl’s way – and in Danish literature at present there is no right of way, and absolutely no police who might at least keep the pavements clear of labourers for hire, porters and louts.

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