Kierkegaard, Literature, and the Arts
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Kierkegaard, Literature, and the Arts
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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780810135963 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Northwestern University Press |
| Publication date: | 01/15/2018 |
| Pages: | 344 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.90(d) |
About the Author
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CHAPTER 1
Part I
Literature
The Bonfire of the Genres
Kierkegaard's Literary Kaleidoscope
George Pattison
In reflecting on Kierkegaard's relation to literature and the arts, two tasks immediately present themselves. The first is to see how he himself related to the literature and other arts of his own time as reader or recipient. The second is to see how he then contributed to his cultural world, specifically as a writer. It is to these two tasks that this essay offers a preliminary contribution.
That Kierkegaard might be read in the perspective of literature and the arts is no new discovery. An early reviewer of Either/Or commented that its message would be clear to those "who have followed the many branchings of modern literature, not so much in the realm of pure academic study, but in the sphere of belles-lettres," while another compared it (favorably) with the novels of Edward Bulwer-Lytton and Eugène Sue. Subsequent commentators in the Danish and German traditions have always been well placed to recognize that many of the questions addressed in various of Kierkegaard's writings were precisely the kinds of questions that constituted the core agendas of Romanticism and literary modernism in their own traditions, and it was no accident that the first significant monograph on Kierkegaard, Brandes's 1877 "Critical Presentation," was the work of a literary critic rather than of a philosopher or theologian. In English, too, the earliest articles about Kierkegaard situated him in relation to literary modernism, primarily Ibsen and Nietzsche, but with references also to Flaubert, Renan, Carlyle, Emerson, Dostoevsky, and Wagner. This last name reminds us of the importance of music to Kierkegaard, evidenced not least by the essay in Either/Or on Don Giovanni, which, recent research has shown, was curiously influenced by none other than Richard Wagner! Subsequently, Kierkegaard has not only been compared with one or another literary figure or claimed for one or another literary movement but has himself entered into the symbolic world of several major modern novelists, including Franz Kafka and Thomas Mann. (In the latter's Doctor Faustus, it is while the composer Adrian Leverkühn is reading Kierkegaard's essay on Don Giovanni that Mephistopheles first appears, and Kierkegaardian themes of angst and the demonic permeate the novel.) Several major poets too have been receptive to a certain Kierkegaardian influence, notably W. H. Auden and R. S. Thomas.
Kierkegaard's Response to the Arts of Denmark's Golden Age
Turning to Kierkegaard himself, what gradually become more and more apparent are the sheer scale and variety of his engagement with literature and the arts. The early studies on Faust, Don Juan, the Wandering Jew, and folk literature are well known, but the same journals also witness extensive notes on the poetry of the troubadours — among the longest reading notes anywhere in the journals. He also offers an extensive essay on how to tell stories to children (SKS 17:122–33, BB:37, n.d. 1837 / KJN 1:116–25). Although there are few significant discussions of contemporary Danish poetry, notes suggest he took a keen interest in this and was especially admiring of Christian Winther (SKS 20:34, NB32, n.d. 1846 / JP 5:5909). Eric Ziolkowski has recently drawn attention to the importance of Aristophanes — an enthusiasm Kierkegaard shared with Early Romanticism — while Thomas Miles has written of Horace as "one of the earliest and longest lasting of Kierkegaard's influences." Kierkegaard's first publication was essentially a review of a novel by Hans Christian Andersen (SKS 1:15–57 / FPOSL 61–102), while another contemporary Danish novelist, Madame Thomasine Gyllembourg, was the focus for the review known by the title of the novel in question, Two Ages (To Tidsaldre, 1845). There are also notes for a review of one of Scandinavia's first feminist novels, Clara Raphael (SKS 24:136–38, NB22:63, n.d. 1850 / KJN 8:133–34). Drama, too, was central to his writing about literature. As well as the essay on Scribe's The First Love in Either/Or and the justly celebrated eulogy of Mme Heiberg's stagecraft (SKS 14: 93–107 / CCLA 301–25), the journals contain a more or less complete celebration of another contemporary giant of the Danish stage, J. L. Phister, in the comic role of Captain Scipio, a tipsy Vatican police captain (SKS 16:125–43 / "PCS" 327–44). Published and unpublished works also contain a vast number of brief allusions, full-blown references, and occasional extensive discussions of plays and playwrights. The great Danish playwright Ludvig Holberg is among the most cited of all Kierkegaard's sources, and such contemporaries as Johan Ludvig Heiberg are also frequently mentioned. Sophocles and Shakespeare provide occasions for extensive reflections on the nature of tragedy, as well as images and scenarios with which to explore psychological traumas that may have been Kierkegaard's own. In a quite different register, the farces of the Austrian writer Johann Nestroy provide the pseudonym Constantin Constantius with an opportunity to test whether repetition is possible (SKS 4:29–43 / R 154–69). The essay on Don Giovanni has already been mentioned, but Kierkegaard published a further short review of a contemporary performance of the opera, and there are passing references to, for example, guitar playing and ballet.
It is only in the case of the visual arts that Kierkegaard seems to have been lacking an all-around and in-depth familiarity with classic and contemporary material. When pictures do enter his work, they are not, for the most part, examples of great art. We might think of the use of the trick picture of Napoleon's grave in The Concept of Irony (SKS 1:80–81 / CI 19; see SKS K1:169 for illustration) or the reference to a copperplate print of sea-maidens (i.e., waves that seem to take the shape of female figures) in the essay on Don Giovanni (SKS 2:97 / EO 1:92; see SKS K2:129 for illustration). Of course, the Church of Our Lady, where he regularly worshipped and occasionally spoke, housed a collection of statues of the apostles by Europe's greatest living sculptor, Bertel Thorvaldsen, but although many passages of his later religious writings seem unmistakably to allude to the all-dominating statue of Christ, this is never commented on with regard to its artistic quality. Here, however, we should be mindful of André Malraux's caution that, until the advent of quality color reproductions in the mid-nineteenth century and of easier travel access to the great sites and museums of Western art, even the most influential critics and theorists were, by our contemporary standards, familiar with only a few great works or with black-and-white reproductions. Had Kierkegaard, like many of his artist contemporaries, traveled to Italy, we might have had some very different visual records from his pen. His keen observation of scenes from daily life, his ability to conjure forth word pictures, and the extraordinary plasticity of his style in both aesthetic and religious works are well known, while notes from 1846 offer a remarkable meditation on the nature of color (SKS 27:369, Papir 344:3 / JP 3:2844). It is therefore clear that he was not lacking in visual intelligence, only that, in this case, he did not find a corresponding range of artistic works through which to develop, express, and interpret what and how he saw.
It is very tempting to scholars to see Kierkegaard's relation to literature primarily in terms of reading, and the roll call of writers whom he read is impressive. He cites Holberg, Goethe, Shakespeare, and other great dramatists at will. But we must also remember that he was an avid theatergoer. When, as he describes in The Point of View, he let himself be seen nightly at the theater so as to give the impression that he was nothing but a flâneur and lounger, the ruse could work only in a context in which he was known to be a regular member of the audience at Copenhagen's Royal Theater, and it is in relation to performances at this theater that the review of The First Love, the note on the seduction of Zerlina, the commentary on Madame Heiberg's stagecraft, and the portrayal of Captain Scipio by Herr Phister were all written. This theater therefore deserves special mention in relation to Kierkegaard's experience of literature and the arts. By modern standards, it staged an extraordinary range of productions. In the 1831 season, from September 1 to May 31, there were approximately one hundred different productions, from across the whole range of theatrical genres, including both works by "the greats" and contemporary light entertainments. Performances were held on Sundays and public holidays, with rest days only on Christmas Day, Easter, and Whit Sunday. A Copenhagen resident such as Kierkegaard could therefore soon build up a rather rich stock of theatrical experiences.
As in the case of the visual arts, theater, too, was in a golden age. Frederikke Bremer, a Swedish novelist who visited Copenhagen in the late 1840s (but was rebuffed by Kierkegaard when she proposed calling on him; see SKS 28:467–69, Brev 308–10 / LD 286–88, letters 201, 203–4), wrote of Danish theater:
It is the Danes' most favored form of enjoyment. And, in truth, here we find fresh life: there is life in what is put on, life in the acting, life in the audience's participation. It is only small, this theater, where so many great plays have been played and so many artists have trodden the boards in recent times, but how friendly, how lively it is! There is life in these boxes full of people, and the public involuntarily reveals its involvement by a rapid buzz and a sympathetic movement. And there we see the front stalls, where the poets sit, where people can see their favorites, where Thorvaldsen died while listening to a Beethoven symphony and where, each evening still, people whisper to each other "Look! There's Øhlenslæger, Hertz, Hauch, Andersen ..." etc.
"Not just for pleasure" is written above the entrance to Copenhagen's Temple of Thalia. And those who have seen Øhlenslæger's tragedies, the comedies of Holberg, Hertz, and Overskou, who have seen them played by Nielsen and his wife, Rosenkilde, and his daughter, Phister, the young Wiehe, and the enchanting Mme Heiberg, the pearl of the Danish stage (talents that are rare in any land), those who have seen Bournonville's ballets, consummate works of art of their kind — they will have to acknowledge that the moral spirit of the North has ennobled the magical powers of the stage and that here the theater is indeed "not just for pleasure." We do not merely enjoy ourselves here, we become better while we enjoy ourselves, and the mind is raised to a noble longing for higher, more noble dramas than those of everyday life, to intimations of what human glory is, both in its greatest sufferings as well as in its greatest pleasures.
In a work of exceptional scholarly microscopy, Peter Tudvad has tracked possible references in Kierkegaard's writing to live theater by working through the performance schedules of the Theater Royal for the period of Kierkegaard's possible theatergoing life. There is some uncertainty as to when this began. Children under ten were not allowed in the Danish theater until 1849, and Tudvad consequently guesses that Kierkegaard, having been born in 1813 (and coming from a rather conservative family), is unlikely to have started attending the theater until the late 1820s, which, as Tudvad suggests, makes it just possible for him to have seen Mme Heiberg's reputation-making performance as Juliet in the 1828–29 season (when he would have been fifteen or sixteen years old). The first clear reference to a contemporary performance is from September 1834 — among the earliest of all Kierkegaard's journal notes — to a comedy by Scribe, Fra Diavolo.
In a small but significant way, Tudvad's work changes or at least shifts our view of Kierkegaard's own creative writing process. To take one example among many: a journal note from November 1834 contains references to yet another play by Scribe, to Goethe's Egmont, and to a comedy by Holberg. It might seem natural to assume that these references were based on Kierkegaard's private reading, but since Tudvad shows that these were all performed at the Theater Royal earlier in the year, Kierkegaard is as likely as not drawing on his memories of live theatrical performances. In other words, Kierkegaard is not just sitting at home or in the library reading books: he is out there in the theater and writing not just on what he has read but on what he has seen and heard. Even in Berlin, it is actual performances that are the focus of his interest in theater. And while notes on Hegel's Aesthetics and on a German translation of Antigone from his first Berlin visit indicate the seeds of the essay on ancient and modern tragedy that would be included in Either/Or (SKS 2:137–62 / EO 1:137–64), it is probably not coincidental that a much-publicized production of Antigone, with music by Mendelssohn and the translation used by Kierkegaard in his notes (SKS 19:286–87, Notesbog 10:2–4 / KJN 3:282–83), was staged at Potsdam in the days after his arrival. As in the case of the visual arts, we therefore need to take the material context of Kierkegaard's relation to literature and the arts rather more seriously than earlier scholarship has done. Further testimony of a rather different kind to the kinship between Kierkegaard and the theater is the fact that he was even represented as a character, the theology student Søren Kirk (later changed to Søren Torp), in the musical comedy The Neighbors (Gjenboerne) by J. C. Hostrup, first performed in 1844 in Copenhagen's Court Theater and later going on tour to Norway, where, in December 1847, it was greeted with "rapturous applause," one Mr. Smith playing the Kierkegaard character (SKS K27:776–77).
In this bourgeois age that is "post-Romantic" in the specific sense of having been permeated through and through by the Romantics' valorization of art as a, if not the, central mode of human beings' self-experience and self-understanding, the world of the arts is not just a matter of intellectual inquiry but is, effectively, the living body of both individual and social self-representation. When Kierkegaard describes his age as "aesthetic," he is not just alluding to the proliferation of dreamy poetic types (such as his own "A") but pointing to the most immediate testimony to how the age and its people feel about themselves or to who and how they experience themselves as being. It is not just about a professed faith in beauty, truth, and goodness (which was often lacking) or the "aesthetic" values of later nineteenth-century aesthetes, but — as idealist theory in fact emphasized — the immediate and spontaneous self-expression of lived life. Or, to look at it from a different theoretical angle, the aesthetic provided a symbolic order or semiosphere that could be collectively and individually appropriated and enacted as showing how life in this emergent modern world felt.
It is for this reason — not in the sense of some carefully calculated program, but as the "reason" in his own intuitive relation to his age — that Kierkegaard's own writing about literature and the arts engages as often with what posterity has judged to be ephemeral and minor as with the great. Of course, there are discussions of Aristophanes, Sophocles, Shakespeare, Lessing, Mozart, and Goethe as well as of the great figures of Romantic literature. But Kierkegaard is just as ready to write about light comedies by contemporary writers such as Scribe and Vernoy de St. Georges (author of Ludovic, in which the character of Captain Scipio appears), popular women's novels (Two Ages), and commonplace book illustrations as he is capable of analyzing and extolling "classic" works. Even the humble art of the street musician was not outside his range of interest (SKS 2:39 / EO 1:30). And, as his writings about theater show, he was also fascinated by the phenomenon of live performance, which, in an age before film and sound reproduction, was by definition an ephemeral art that could live on only in the memories and memoirs of those who had, as it is said, "been there."
(Continues…)
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