"Selections From the Writings of Kierkegaard" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kierkegaard Soren)

attacking the most abstruse matters with a chattiness bordering on
frivolity, yet without ever losing dignity.

For four and a half years Kierkegaard had now, notwithstanding
his feeble health, toiled feverishly and, as he himself states,
without even a single day's remission. And "the honorarium had
been rather Socratic": all of his books bad been brought out at his
own expense, and their sale had been, of course, small. (Of the
"Final Postscript," e.g., which had cost him between 500 and 600
rixdollars, only 60 copies were sold). Hardly any one had
understood what the purpose of this "literature" was. He himself
had done, with the utmost exertion and to the best of his ability,
what he set out to do: to show his times, which had assumed that
being a Christian is an easy enough matter, how unspeakably
difficult a matter it really is and what terribly severe demands it
makes on natural man. He now longed for rest and seriously
entertained the plan of bringing his literary career to a close and
spending the remainder of his days as a pastor of some quiet
country parish, there to convert his philosophy into terms of
practical existence. But this was not to be. An incident which
would seem ridicuously small to a more robust nature sufficed to
inflict on Kierkegaard's sensitive mind the keenest tortures and
thus to sting him into a renewed and more passionate literary
activity.

As it happened, the comic paper Korsaren "The Corsair" was then
at the heyday of its career. The first really democratic periodical in
Denmark, it stood above party lines and through its malicious,
brilliant satire and amusing caricatures of prominent personalities
was hated, feared, and enjoyed by everybody. Its editor, the Jewish
author Meir Goldschmidt, was a warm and outspoken admirer of
the philosopher. Kierkegaard, on the other hand, had long regarded
the Press with suspicion. He loathed it because it gave expression
to, and thus subtly flattered, the multitude, "the public," "the mob"
as against the individual, and because it worked with the terrible
weapon of anonymity; but held it especially dangerous by reason
of its enormous circulation and daily repetition of mischievous
falsehoods. So it seemed to him who ever doubted the ability of
the "people" to think for themselves. In a word, the Press is to him
"the evil principle in the modern world." Needless to say, the
tactics of "The Corsair," in particular, infuriated him.

In a Christmas annual (1845) there had appeared a blundering
review, by one of the collaborators on "The Corsair," of his "Stages
on Life's Road." Seizing the opportunity offered, Kierkegaard
wrote a caustic rejoinder, adding the challenge: "Would that I now
soon appear in 'The Corsair.' It is really hard on a poor author to be
singled out in Danish literature by remaining the only one who is
not abused in it." We know now that Goldschmidt did his best in a
private interview to ward off a feud,. but when rebuffed he turned