Stages on Life’s Way

by Søren Kierkegaard

  Is there no one who laughs! When I started out, intending to speak about the comic aspect of erotic love, you perhaps expected to laugh, for you are all easily provoked to laughter, just as I, too, am a friend of laughter, and yet you may not have laughed. My speech had another effect, and yet this proves precisely that I have spoken about the comic. If no one laughs at my speech, well, then, dear drinking companions, laugh a little at me; it will not surprise me, for what I on occasion have heard you say about erotic love, I do not understand—in all likelihood you are initiates!

  Thereupon the Young Man sat down. He had become almost more beautiful than he was before the meal; now he sat looking ahead without concerning himself with the others. [VI 49] Johannes the Seducer wanted to raise objections to the Young Man’s speech at once, but was interrupted by Constantin, who warned against discussions and decreed that there were only to be speeches. In that case, Johannes reserved the right to be the one who would speak last. This in turn gave rise to a dispute about the order in which they should speak, which Constantin again stopped by offering to be the next speaker if they acknowledged his competence to ask the others to speak in turn.

  Constantin128 spoke as follows.

  There is a time to be silent, and there is a time to speak;129 now it seems to be the time to speak briefly, for our young friend has spoken very much and very strangely. His vis comica [comic force] has made us contend ancipiti proelio [in a battle with uncertain outcome], for his speech was just as dubious as he himself is, sitting there again, a bewildered man who does not know whether he should laugh or cry or fall in love. Indeed, if I had had foreknowledge of his speech, as he demands to have of erotic love, then I would have forbidden him to speak, but now it is too late. So now I command, dear drinking companions, that “you be cheerful and jovial,”130 and if I cannot command that, then I command you to forget every speech as soon as it is delivered, command you to wash it down in a single gulp.

  And now for woman, of whom I will speak. I, too, have pondered and have fathomed her category; I, too, have sought but have also found and have made a matchless discovery,131 which I now communicate to you. She is properly construed only under the category of jest. It is the man’s function to be absolute, to act absolutely, to express the absolute; the woman consists in the relational. Between two such different entities no real interaction can take place.

  This misrelation is precisely the jest, and the jest entered the world with woman.132 It goes without saying that the man must know how to maintain himself under the absolute, for otherwise nothing manifests itself; that is, something very ordinary manifests itself—namely, that the man and the woman are suited to each other, he as a half man, and she as a half man.

  [VI 50] The jest is not an esthetic but an embryonic ethical category. It affects thought as it would affect the mind to hear a man begin a speech solemnly, deliver a few lines in that vein, and then say “Hmm!”—a dash, and then silence. So it is with woman. One aims at her with the ethical category, shuts the eyes, thinks of the absolute in the ethical requirements, thinks of man, opens the eyes, fastens one’s gaze upon this demure miss who is being constructed in one’s imagination to see if she meets the requirement; one becomes embarrassed and says to oneself: Ah, this surely is a jest. The jest is precisely this, to apply the category, to hold her under it, because this earnestness can never be in earnest, but this is precisely the jest, for if we dared to demand it of her it would not be a jest. To subject her to an air pump and pump all the air out of her would be a pity and not at all amusing, but to pump air into her, to inflate her larger than life, to allow her to have attained all the ideality a little miss of sixteen years can fancy herself wanting to have, is the beginning of the presentation, and the beginning of a very entertaining presentation. No young man has half as much imaginary ideality as a young girl, but it pays off in the long run, said the tailor, for hers is all illusion.

  133If woman is not looked upon in this way, she can cause irreparable harm; in my view she becomes harmless and amusing. There is nothing more terrible for a man than to catch himself in frivolous behavior. All true ideality is demolished thereby, for to be a villain can be repented, not to have meant a word of what one has said can be regretted, but to be frivolous, obviously frivolous, to have meant it all, and see, it was frivolousness—even repentance is disgusted with that. Not so with woman. She has a pristine privilege to be transfigured in the most innocent and forgivable galimatias in less than twenty-four hours, because far be it from her honest soul to want to deceive anyone. She meant everything she said; now she is saying the opposite, but with the same lovable ingenuousness, for now she will die for the opposite. If a man in all earnestness surrenders in erotic love, he can say that he is well insured—that is, if he can be insured at all, because the insurance company must inevitably be dubious about something as inflammable as a woman. What, then, has he done? He has identified himself with her; if she goes off with a bang on New Year’s Eve, he goes along, too, and if not, he still has come to a rather close affinity with the danger. And what can he lose? He can lose everything, for there is but one absolute [VI 51] opposite to the absolute, and that is frivolousness. He is not to take refuge in some association of depraved characters, for he is not depraved—far from it, he has merely been reduced in absurdum and made supremely happy in galimatias; he has been made a fool of. This can never happen between man and man. If a man pops off this way in nonsense, I despise him; if he dupes me with his shrewdness, then I simply apply the ethical category to him, and the danger is very slight. If it goes too far—well, then I put a bullet through his head; 134but to challenge a woman, what is that, who does not know that it is a jest, just as when Xerxes had the sea whipped.135 Othello gains nothing when he murders Desdemona,136 even if she actually had been guilty; he has been made a fool and continues to be made a fool, for even in murdering her he is only making a concession to a consequence that originally had rendered him ludicrous, whereas Elvira can with complete pathos be armed with the dagger to avenge herself.137 That Shakespeare has interpreted Othello as tragic (even apart from the unfortunate catastrophe that Desdemona is innocent) can be explained, but also absolutely justified, only by Othello’s being a colored man. For a colored man, dear drinking companions, who cannot be assumed to represent intellect, a colored man, dear drinking companions, who then becomes green in his face when he becomes angry (which is a physiological fact), a colored man can indeed become tragic by being deceived by a woman, just as the woman has the whole pathos of tragedy on her side when she is deceived by the man. A man who turns red in the face would perhaps be tragic, but a man of whom we dare demand intellect either does not become jealous or in becoming that becomes comic, and most of all if he comes running with a dagger. Too bad that Shakespeare has not produced a work such as that, in which the demand contained in a woman’s faithlessness was challenged by irony, for not everyone who is able to see the comic in that situation, indeed, is even able to develop it, is able to present it dramatically. But imagine Socrates surprising Xanthippe in flagranti [in the act] (for it would already be un-Socratic to imagine Socrates essentially concerned about or even spying on Xanthippe’s faithfulness)—I think that that subtle smile which turned the ugliest man in Athens into the most beautiful [VI 52] would for the very first time change into a roar of laughter. On the other hand, since Aristophanes at times wanted to portray Socrates as ludicrous,138 it is inconceivable that it never occurred to him to have Socrates come running onstage shouting: Where is she, where is she, so that I can murder her, that is, the unfaithful Xanthippe. Whether Socrates was made a cuckold or not really makes no difference; anything Xanthippe does in this respect is a waste of effort, like snapping one’s fingers in one’s pocket. Socrates, even with horns on his forehead, remains the same intellectual hero; but that he could become jealous, that he could want to murder Xanthippe—ah, then Xanthippe would have had a power over him that the whole Greek state and the death penalty did not have:
to make him ridiculous. A cuckold is therefore comic in his relation to his wife, but in his relation to other men he can be regarded as tragic. This is very close to the Spanish conception of honor. But the tragic is essentially this, that he cannot obtain redress, and the pain in his suffering is really that his suffering is meaningless, which is terrible enough. To shoot a woman, to challenge her, to despise her, all this only makes the poor man more ludicrous, for the woman is the weaker sex. This viewpoint shows up again and again everywhere and confuses everything. If she does something great, one admires her more than the man, because we had not thought of daring to require it of her. If she is deceived, she has all the pathos on her side. If a man is deceived, one has a little sympathy and a little patience as long as he is present, in order to laugh when he has gone.

  139This, you see, is why it is high time to regard woman as a jest. The amusement is incalculable. We regard her as an absolute magnitude and make ourselves into a relative magnitude. We do not contradict her—far from it, for that only helps her. Precisely because she cannot restrain herself, she shows up, in all seriousness, to the best advantage when we contradict her a little. We never doubt what she says—far from it, we believe every word. With a faltering gaze of unutterable admiration and blissful befuddlement we encircle her in the dancing steps of a worshiper. We fall on our knees, we languish, we raise adoring eyes to her, we languish, we take a breath again. Like obedient slaves, we do everything she says.

  Now comes the best part. That a woman can talk, that is, verba facere [make words], needs no demonstration. Unfortunately, she does not have enough reflection to insure herself in the long run, that is, maximum eight days, against contradicting herself if the man does not help her regulatively by contradicting [VI 53] her. The result is that in a short time confusion is in full swing. If one had not done what she said, the confusion would have been unnoticed, for she forgets just as promptly as she talks. But when her worshiper has done everything and in every way has been at her service, the confusion becomes palpable. The more gifted the woman, the more amusing it is. The more gifted she is, the more imagination she has. The more imagination she has, the gevaltigere [more vehement]140 she is at the moment, the more confusion there is in the next moment. In life, this amusement is rare, because this blind obedience to a woman’s whims is very rare. If it is found in a languishing shepherd, then he indeed lacks the ability to see how amusing it is. The ideality that a little miss has in the moment of fantasy is actually found neither with the gods nor with men, but it is all the more amusing to believe her and to fan the flames.

  The amusement, as mentioned, is incalculable. Yes, I know it; at times I have not been able to sleep at night just thinking about the new confusions I am going to experience at my beloved’s hand and out of my humble zeal, for no one who plays the lottery can experience stranger combinations than the person who has a passion for this game. One thing is certain—every woman has this potential to soar up and be transfigured in nonsense with a lovableness, with an unconstraint, a sureness, that befits the weaker sex. As an honorable lover, one discovers every charm in the beloved. Having come across this genius, one does not leave it as a potential but rather develops it into a virtuosity. More I need not say; ordinarily nothing more needs to be said—everyone understands me. Just as one person has his amusement in balancing a cane on his nose, in swinging a glass without spilling its contents, in dancing among eggs, and doing other similar routines just as entertaining as they are useful, just so and not otherwise the lover has with his beloved the most priceless amusement and the most interesting subject of study in his life. 141In the erotic sense, he believes her absolutely, not only that she is faithful—that game is soon boring—but believes absolutely all those eruptions out of an inviolable romanticism, in which she probably would perish if one did not provide a safety valve [VI 54] through which the sighing and the smoke and the aria of romanticism142 stream out and bestow bliss on the adorer. He adoringly keeps her on the pinnacle of a Juliet, but with the difference that no one has thought of hurting as much as a hair of Romeo’s head. With regard to intellect, he credits her with everything, and if he has been so fortunate as to find the right one, then, presto, he has an authoress who wants to lay eggs, and he himself adoringly shades his eyes with his hand while he marvels at what the little black hen produces in other respects.143 It is incomprehensible that Socrates did not choose to play this part instead of squabbling with Xanthippe, but then, of course, he wanted to practice, just like the riding master who, even if he has the best broken-in horse, still knows how to tease it in such a way that there may be sufficient reason to break it in.144

  I shall proceed a bit more concretely in order to shed light on a particular and really interesting incident. The faithfulness of woman is much discussed, but it is seldom discussed correctly. From the purely esthetic point of view, it belongs with the phantom the author has walk across the stage looking for the beloved, the phantom sitting at the spinning wheel waiting for the beloved—for when she has found him and he has come, well, then esthetics is at a dead end. Her unfaithfulness, which can be directly connected with that previous faithfulness, if viewed mainly ethically, then encounters jealousy as a tragic passion. There will be three examples, and the relation is to the woman’s advantage, because two of them show faithfulness, the third unfaithfulness. 145Incomprehensibly great is her faithfulness as long as she is not sure of her beloved, and just as incomprehensibly great when he declines her faithfulness. The third instance is unfaithfulness. Once one has the mind and the disinterestedness to think, sufficient justification will readily be found for the category of jest in what has already been said.

  146Our young friend, who in a way misled me at the outset, started out as if he wanted to deal with this, but backed away from it, terrified by the difficulty. 147But the explanation is not difficult if one is really serious about relating unhappy love to death, if one is sufficiently earnest to hold fast to this idea—and that much earnestness we ought to have at all times—for the sake of the jest. All the talk naturally comes from a woman or an effeminate male. It is recognized at once, for it is one of those absolute outbursts that, spoken with much self-assurance [VI 55] at the moment, are sure of much applause at the moment. Even though it is a discussion of life and death, it nevertheless is calculated to be enjoyed as one enjoys a whipped-cream meringue—at the moment; even though it concerns a whole life, it nevertheless does not at all obligate the one who is dying but obligates only the listener to hurry at once to the aid of the dying one. If a man were to hold forth in this manner, it would not be one bit amusing, for he is so despicable that one is unable to laugh at him. But woman is a genius, is lovable in her genius, and is amusing from first to last. So, then, she in love dies of erotic love; that is certain, for did she not say so herself. Here lies her pathos, for woman is man; at least she is man enough to say what hardly any man is man enough to do. Man she is. In saying this, I have viewed her ethically. Do likewise, dear drinking companions, and then understand Aristotle. He makes the correct observation that woman is really not usable in tragedy.148 This is, of course, obvious; she belongs in the pathos-filled and serious divertissement, in the dramatic half-hour jest, not the five-act play. And then she dies. But should she therefore not be able to love again? Why not—that is, if she can be revived. If she revives, then she is indeed a new human being; and a new human being, a different human being, begins, loves for the first time, and there is nothing remarkable about that. O death, how powerful you are; the most powerful emetic, the strongest laxative could not purge so clean.

  The confusion is superb—if only we pay attention to it and do not forget. A dead person is one of the most amusing figures to be met in life. Strange that this is not used on the stage more frequently149—now and then in real life we can meet such a one. Even one feigning death has an essentially comic oddity about him, but a person who is actually dead furnishes all the amusement one can reasonably require of a contribut
ion to amusement. Just keep on the alert; I myself actually became aware of this one day while walking along the street with an acquaintance. We met a passing couple. My companion’s demeanor led me to assume that he knew the couple, and I asked him about them. “Oh,” he answered, “I know them very well and very intimately, especially the lady, for she was my late departed.” “What late departed?” I asked. “Oh, my late departed first love; yes, it was a strange story. ‘I am dying,’ she said, and at the same moment departed, as is natural with death—otherwise one could have invested in the widows’ pension fund. It was too late; dead she was and dead she remained, and now I am wandering about, as the poet says, [VI 56] ‘looking in vain for my beloved’s grave so that I can offer her a tear.’”150