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

suffer for the teaching of Christianity"; whereas "the truth is that
Mynster was wordly-wise to a degree was weak, pleasureloving,
and great only as a declaimer." But once more striking proof of his
circumspection and single-mindedness he kept this harsh letter in
his desk for nine months, lest its publication should interfere in the
least with Martensen's appointment, or seem the outcome of
personal resentment.

Martensen's reply, which forcefully enough brings out all that
could be said for a milder interpretation of the Christian categories
and for his predecessor, was not as respectful to the sensitive
author as it ought to have been. In a number of newspaper letters
of increasing violence and acerbity Kierkegaard now tried to force
his obstinately silent opponent to his knees; but in vain. Filled with
holy wrath at what he conceived to be a conspiracy by silence, and
evasions to bring to naught the whole infinitely important matter
for which he had striven, Kierkegaard finally turned agitator. He
addressed himself directly to the people with the celebrated
pamphlet series Щeblikket "The Present Moment" in which he
opens an absolutely withering fire of invective on anything and
everything connected with "the existing order" in Christendom an
agitation the like of which for revolutionary vehemence has rarely,
if ever, been seen. All rites of the Church marriage, baptism,
confirmation, communion, burial and most of all the clergy, high
and low, draw the fiery bolts of his wrath and a perfect hail of
fierce, cruel invective. The dominant note, though varied
infinitely, is ever the same: "Whoever you may be, and whatever
the life you live, my friend: by omitting to attend the public divine
service if indeed it be your habit to attend it by omitting to attend
public divine service as now constituted aiming as it does to
represent the Christianity of the New Testament) you will escape
at least one, and a great, 4b in not attempting to fool God by
calling that the Christianity of the New Testament which is not the
Christianity of the New Testament." And he does not hesitate to
use strong, even coarse, language; he even courts the reproach of
blasphemy in order to render ridiculous in "Official Christianity"
what to most may seem inherently, though mistakenly, a matter of
highest reverence. The swiftness and mercilessness of his attack
seem to have left his contemporaries without a weapon: all they
could do was to shrug their shoulders about the "fanatic," to duck
and wait dumbly until the storm had passed.

Nor did it last long. On the second of October, 1855, Kierkegaard
fell unconscious in the street. He was brought to the hospital where
he died on the eleventh of November, aged 42. The immense
exertions of the last months had shattered his frail body. And
strange: the last of his money bid been used up. He had said what
he thought Providence had to communicate through him. His
strength was gone. His death at this moment would put the crown
on his work. As he said on his death-bed: "The bomb explodes, and