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

beginning his famous course of lectures. In many respects it may
be held deplorable that, at a still formative stage, Kierkegaard
should have remained in the prosaic capital of Prussia and have
been influenced by bloodless abstractions; instead of journeying to
France, or still better, to England whose empiricism would, no
doubt, have been an excellent corrective of his excessive tendency
to speculation. In fact he was quickly disappointed with Schelling
and after four months returned to his beloved Copenhagen (which
he was not to leave thereafter except for short periods), with his
mind still busy on the problems which were peculiarly his own.
The tremendous impulse given by hi unfortunate engagement was
sufficient to stimulate his sensitive mind to a produc-tivity without
equal in Danish literature, to create a "literature within a
literature." The fearful inner collision of motives had lit an inner
conflagration which did not die down for years. "My becoming an
author is due chiefly to her, my melancholy, and my money."

About a year afterwards (1843) there appeared his first great work,
"Either-Or," which at once established his fame. As in the case of
most of his works it will be impossible to give here more than the
barest outline of its plan and contents. In substance, it is a grand
debate between the aesthetic and the ethic views of life. In his
dissertation Kierkegaard had already characterized the Сsthetic
point of view. Now, in a brilliant series of articles, he proceeds to
exemplify it with exuberant detail.

The fundamental chord of the first part is struck in the
Diapsalmata aphorisms which, like so many flashes of a lantern,
illuminate the Сsthetic life, its pleasures and its despair. The
Сsthetic individual this is brought out in the article entitled "The
Art of Rotation" wishes to be the exception in human society,
shirking its common, humble duties and claiming special
privileges. He has no fixed principle except that he means not to
be bound to anything or anybody. He has but one desire which is,
to enjoy the sweets of life whether its purely sensual pleasures or
the more refined Epicureanism of the finer things in life and art,
and the ironic enjoyment of one's own superiority over the rest of
humanity; and he has no fear except that he may succumb to
boredom.

As a comment on this text there follow a number of essays in
"experimental psychology," supposed to be the fruit of the
Сsthete's (A's) leisure. In them the Сsthetic life is exhibited in its
various manifestations, in "terms of existence," especially as to its
"erotic stages," from the indefinite longings of the Page to the fully
conscious "sensual genius" of Don Juan the examples are taken
from Mozart's opera of this name, which was Kierkegaard's
favorite until the whole culminates in the famous "Diary of the
Seducer," containing elements of the author's own engagement,
poetically disguised a seducer, by the way, of an infinitely