Papers and Journals (Penguin Classics) by Soren Kierkegaard

Papers and Journals (Penguin Classics) by Soren Kierkegaard

Author:Soren Kierkegaard [Kierkegaard, Soren]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780141958668
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2015-08-05T22:00:00+00:00


Luther makes a good distinction in the sermon on the Second Sunday after Epiphany (Epistle) between reproving or punishing and damning. The one who damns wants the evil to come about, the one who punishes wants it to disappear.

49 X 1 A 54559

Thank heavens that in the end I didn’t publish that stuff about my literary activity, or in any way press myself into being more than I am.

The Sickness unto Death is now in print,60 and pseudonymously, by Anti-Climacus.

Practice in Christianity will also be pseudonymous. I understand myself now so entirely.

The point in it all is that there is a Christian ultimate of ethical rigour which must at least be heard. But preferably not more. It has to be left to each in his conscience to decide if he is able to build the tower that high.

But be heard it must. And the tragedy is precisely that almost all of Christendom, including the clerics, not only live their lives at best in worldly wisdom but also so as defiantly to insist on it, and the life of Christ must then for consistency be declared a delusion.

That is why this other thing must be heard, heard if possible like a voice in the clouds, heard like the flight of wild birds over the heads of the tame.

Not more. So it must be pseudonymous, myself only as editor.

Ah, what I have suffered before reaching this far, this which was really clear to me early on, but which I have had to grasp a second time.

As for the rest, God will no doubt take care of me.

If at this point I were to continue writing, my topic would be ‘Sin’ and ‘Atonement’, in the manner now employed in the edifying discourse, with the pseudonym jacking up the price appropriately.

That is what the pseudonyms are always used for. This idea was much in my mind once before, precisely in respect of Anti-Climacus’s assignment, and can be found somewhere in the journals, no doubt under ‘NB.’.

What has put me under such frightful strain lately is that I have wanted to over-exert myself and do too much, even though I myself saw that it was too much and so didn’t carry it out; but again I found it impossible to let the possibility go and to my own torment kept myself at its tip, which, though through no merit of my own, has been an extremely valuable exercise for me.

Now there has been action and there is air.

It was a sound thought to bring my productivity to a halt with a pseudonym. Like the Guadalquivir (that image attracts me so).

And then not a word about myself in respect of the authorship as a whole; a word like that changes everything and misrepresents me.

49 X 1 A 546

It is quite right – a pseudonym had to be used.

When the claims of ideality are set at the maximum one should above all take care not to be mistaken for them, as though one were oneself the ideality.

49



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