Stages on Life’s Way

by Søren Kierkegaard

  It was a symbolic act on Constantin’s part when he flung away the goblet, and yet in a way this fling became a decisive blow, for at the last blow the door opened, and, like someone who has presumptuously knocked on death’s portal and when it is opened sees the forces of annihilation, we saw that demolition crew ready to destroy everything—a memento that instantly changed the participants into refugees from that place and in the same instant had already transformed, as it were, the whole surroundings into a ruin.

  A carriage stood ready at the door. At Constantin’s invitation they took their seats and drove away in high spirits, for that tableau of annihilation in the background had given their souls new resilience. A few miles away the carriage stopped; here Constantin as host said goodbye and informed them that there were five carriages at their service; each of them could follow his own inclination, drive wherever he wanted, alone or if he so desired in the company of whomever he wished. So it is that a skyrocket is propelled in one single shot upward by the force of the gunpowder, comes to a standstill for a moment, totally concentrated in that one split second, and then explodes to the four winds.

  While the carriages were being made ready, the nocturnal guests went for a little walk down the road. The brisk morning air tempered their fevered blood with its coolness and they surrendered completely to its invigoration, while their silhouettes and the group they formed made a fantastic impression on me. That the morning sun shines upon field and meadow and upon every creature that found rest in the night and strength to enable it to rise up jubilantly with the sun—in this is but a salutary mutual understanding—but nocturnal revelers seen in the morning light in a smiling rustic environment have an almost unheimlich [disquieting] effect. One comes to think of ghosts surprised by dawn, of the subterranean creatures that cannot find the fissure through which they disappear [VI 80] because it is visible only in the dark, of the poor unfortunates for whom the difference between night and day has vanished in the monotony of suffering.

  A footpath took them across a little field to a hedged-in garden, behind which a modest country house was visible in the background. At the end of the garden over toward the field was an arbor formed by trees. Aware that there was someone in the arbor, they all became curious, and with the searching gaze of spies the besiegers surrounded that friendly hideout, themselves as concealed and tense as police agents out to surprise someone. 225As police agents, well, as far as that goes, their external appearance made a confusion possible—the police agents could be out looking for them. Each one had taken his place in order to peek in when Victor stepped back and said to his neighbor: Oh, my God, it’s Judge William226 and his wife.

  They were surprised—not those two hidden by the leaves, that happy couple much too absorbed in domestic pleasure to be watchers, much too secure to think of themselves as objects of observation by anyone but the morning sun, which with delight was peeking in at them, while a soft breeze stirred the branches and while the peacefulness of rustic simplicity, like everything around them, protected this little arbor. The happy married couple were not surprised and did not notice a thing. That they were a married couple was quite obvious, that was immediately apparent—alas, at least to someone with the observer in his blood. Even if nothing, nothing in the wide, wide world, nothing undisguised and nothing disguised has any disguised or undisguised intention or desire to disturb the happiness of lovers when they are sitting close to each other, they are not secure in the same way. Blissful they are, and yet they cling so closely to each other as if there were some power that wanted to separate them; it is as if there were some enemy against whom they are protecting themselves and as if they could never feel sufficiently secure. 227It is not so with married people, and not so with that married couple in the arbor.

  How long they had been married could not, however, be stated definitely. To be sure, the way the wife busied herself at the tea table had a practiced sureness, but nevertheless there was so much almost childlike zeal about it as if she were just married, in that intermediate state where she still did not know for sure whether marriage is jest or earnestness, whether being a housewife is a task or a game, a pastime. Yet she may have been married for some time but did not usually function at the tea table; perhaps she did it only out here in the country, or perhaps she was doing it only this morning, which possibly had a special significance for them. Who can say for sure? Up to a point, all conjecturing runs aground on every individuality with an originality in his soul, because this [VI 81] prevents time from making its marks. When the sun shines in all its summer brilliance, one immediately thinks that there must be some festive occasion or other, it cannot be this way every day, or that this is the first time or at least one of the first times this is being done, for this cannot be repeated for a long time. So thinks anyone who sees it only once or sees it for the first time, and I was seeing the Judge’s wife for the first time. The person who sees it every day presumably thinks otherwise, provided that he sees the same thing. But this is the Judge’s affair. So, then, our charming housewife was busy; she poured boiling water into two cups, supposedly to heat them properly, poured it out, set the cups on a tray, poured the tea, served what goes with it, and now she was ready—was this jest or earnestness? If anyone is not ordinarily a friend of tea, he should have been in the Judge’s place. To me at that moment this drink appeared most inviting, and to me only the wife’s friendly inviting look appeared more inviting. Up until now she presumably had had no time to talk; now she broke the silence and as she handed him the tea she said, “Hurry now, dear, and drink your tea while it is hot; the morning air is still somewhat cool, and the least thing I can do for you is to be a little solicitous.” “The least?” replied the Judge laconically. “Well, or the most, or the only thing.” The Judge looked questioningly at her, and while he was fixing his tea to taste she continued, “You interrupted me yesterday when I started to say this, but I have been thinking about it again; I have thought about it many times, and right now especially, and you know very well on account of whom. It is certain and true that if you had not married you would have become much greater in the world.” With the cup still on the saucer, the Judge drank the first mouthful with visible delight and seemed really refreshed, or was this perhaps joy over this lovable woman. I believe the latter; she, however, seemed only to delight in his relishing the tea. Now he set the cup on the table beside him, took out a cigar, and said: “May I light it at your chafing dish?” “Please do,” she answered, taking a coal with a teaspoon and handing it to him. He lit the cigar, put his arm around her waist while she leaned against his shoulder, turned his head aside to blow away the smoke, then rested his eyes on her with all the devotion a look can communicate, yet smiling, although this smile of joy was tinged with sad irony. Finally he said: “Do you really believe that, my dear?” “What do you mean?” she asked. He was silent [VI 82] again; the smile spread, although his voice was still very earnest. “Since you yourself have forgotten it so quickly, I forgive your silliness a moment ago, for your talk was like that of a silly woman—what sort of great person was I supposed to be in the world?” The Judge’s wife seemed to be momentarily embarrassed by this turn, but she quickly regained her poise and went into detail with feminine eloquence. The Judge looked straight ahead; he did not interrupt her, but as she continued speaking he began drumming on the table with the fingers of his right hand and hummed a melody. The words of the ballad were momentarily audible; just as the pattern in the fabric in a loom becomes visible and disappears again, so the words faded away again into the humming of the melody of the ballad: “The husband went out to the forest and cut the switches white.”228 After this melodramatic discourse, that is, the wife’s explication, which was accompanied by the Judge’s humming, the dialogue began again. “Very likely,” he said, “very likely you are not aware that Danish law permits a husband to beat his wife; the only trouble is that the law does not state in what situation it is allowed.” The wife smiled at his threat and w
ent on, “But why can’t I ever get you to be serious when I talk about this. You do not understand me; believe me, I honestly mean it, I myself think it is a very beautiful idea. Of course, if you were not my husband I would not venture to think it, but right now I have thought it for your sake and for my sake, and now please be properly serious for my sake and answer me honestly.” “No, you are not going to make me be serious, and you are not going to receive a serious answer; I must either laugh at you or make you forget it, as before, or beat you, or you must stop talking about it, or in some other way I must make you be silent. You see it is a jest, and that is why there are so many ways out.” 229He stood up, kissed her on the forehead, put his arm in hers, and they disappeared down a thickly wooded path leading away from the arbor.

  230So the arbor was deserted, and there was nothing more to do here; the enemy occupation troops retreated without any plunder [Bytte]. None of them seemed gratified by this outcome [Udbytte], but the others were content with making a malicious remark. They turned back but missed Victor. He [VI 83] had gone around the corner, and along the garden he had reached the country house. Here the veranda doors stood open to a lawn; a window facing the road also stood open. Presumably he had seen something that drew his attention. He jumped in through the window, and just as he was jumping out, the others, who had been looking for him, were standing nearby. Triumphantly holding some papers in his hands, he shouted, “A manuscript by His Honor the Judge. If I have published his others,231 it is no more than my duty to publish this also.” He stuck it in his pocket, or rather he intended to stick it in his pocket, but as he bent his arm and already had his hand with the manuscript half in his pocket, I slipped it away from him.

  But who, then, am I? Let no one ask about that. If it did not occur to anyone to ask before, then I am saved, for now I am over the worst of it. Moreover, I am not worth asking about, for I am the least of all, and people make me very bashful by asking this question. I am pure being and thus almost less than nothing.232 I am the pure being that is everywhere present but yet not noticeable, for I am continually being annulled.

  I am like the line with the arithmetic problem above and the answer below—who cares about the line? By myself, I am capable of nothing at all, for even the idea of tricking Victor out of the manuscript was not my own notion, but the very notion according to which I borrowed the manuscript, as thieves put it, was in fact borrowed from Victor. Now, in publishing the manuscript, I again am nothing at all, for the manuscript233 belongs to the Judge, and in my nothingness I as publisher am only like a nemesis upon Victor, who presumably thought he had the right to publish it.

  SOME REFLECTIONS ON MARRIAGE IN ANSWER TO OBJECTIONS

  by

  A MARRIED MAN1

  [VI 86] Motto: “The deceived is wiser than one not deceived.”2

  My dear reader, if you do not have the time and opportunity [VI 87] to take a dozen years of your life to travel around the world to see everything a world traveler is acquainted with, if you do not have the capability and qualifications from years of practice in a foreign language to penetrate to the differences in national characteristics as these become apparent to the research scholar, if you are not bent upon discovering a new astronomical system that will displace both the Copernican and the Ptolemaic—then marry; and if you have time for the first, the capability for the second, the idea for the last, then marry also. Even if you did not manage to see the whole globe or to speak in many tongues or to know all about the heavens, you will not regret it, for marriage is and remains the most important voyage of discovery a human being undertakes; compared with a married man’s knowledge of life [Tilværelse], any other knowledge of it is superficial, for he and he alone has properly immersed himself in life. It is true, of course, that no poet will be able to say of you what the poet says of the wily Ulysses—that he saw many cities of men and learned to know their mentality,3 but the question is whether he would not have learned just as much and things just as gratifying if he had stayed at home with Penelope. If no one else is of this opinion, my wife is, and if I am not very much in error, every wife agrees. Now that is a bit more than a simple majority, all the more so since he who has the wives on his side no doubt has the men, too. Of course, the traveling companions on this expedition are few; it is not, as on five- and [VI 88] ten-year-long expeditions, a large group, which also, please note, continually remains the same; but then it is reserved for marriage to establish a unique kind of acquaintance, the most wonderful of all, and in which every addition is always the most welcome.

  Therefore, praised be marriage, praised be everyone who speaks in its honor. If a beginner may allow himself an observation, then I will say that the reason it seems to me to be so wonderful is that everything revolves around little things that the divine element in marriage nevertheless transforms by a miracle into something significant for the believer. Then, too, all these little things have the remarkable characteristic that nothing can be evaluated in advance, nothing worked out in a rough plan; but while the understanding stands still and the imagination is on a wild-goose chase and calculation calculates wrongly and sagacity despairs, the married life goes along and is transformed from glory unto glory,4 the insignificant becomes more and more significant by a miracle—for the believer. But a believer one must be, and a married man who is not a believer is a tiresome character, a real household pest. There is nothing more fatal when one goes out in the company of others to enjoy demonstrations and ventures in natural magic than to have a killjoy along who continually disbelieves even though he cannot explain the feats. Yet one puts up with a calamity such as that; after all, it is seldom one goes out that way, and moreover there is the advantage that a fusty spectator like that gets in on the act. Ordinarily the professor of natural magic has it in for him and makes a fool of him by using him to entertain the rest of us with his cleverness, just as Arv5 entertains with his stupidity. But a slug of a married man like that ought to be put in a sack like a patricide and thrown into the water.6 What agony to see a woman exhaust all her lovableness in persuading him, to see him, after having received the initiation that entitles him to be a believer, only spoil everything—spoil everything—because, jesting aside, marriage in many ways is really a venture in natural magic and a venture in it is truly wonderful. It is nauseating to listen to a pastor who himself does not believe what he says, but it is still more nauseating to see a married man who does not believe in his estate, and all the more shocking because the audience can [VI 89] desert the pastor, but a wife cannot desert her husband, cannot do it, will not do it, does not wish to do it—and even this cannot persuade him.

  Ordinarily we speak only of a married man’s unfaithfulness, but what is just as bad is a married man’s lack of faith. Faith is all that is required, and faith compensates for everything. Just let understanding and sagacity and sophistication reckon, figure out, and describe how a married man ought to be: there is only one attribute that makes him lovable, and that is faith, absolute faith in marriage. Just let experience in life try to define exactly what is required of a married man’s faithfulness; there is only one faithfulness, one honesty that is truly lovable and hides everything in itself, and that is the honesty toward God and his wife and his married estate in refusing to deny the miracle.

  This is also my consolation when I choose to write about marriage, for while I disclaim any other competence, I do claim just one—conviction. That I have it I know in myself, and I share it with my wife, which to me is of major importance, for even if it behooves the woman to be silent in the congregation7 and not to be occupied with scholarship and art, what is said about marriage ought essentially to be such that it meets with her approval. It does not follow that she is supposed to know how to evaluate everything critically—that kind of reflection is not suitable for her—but she should have an absolute veto, and her approval must be respected as adequately reassuring. My conviction, then, is my one and only justification, and in turn the guarantee for my firm co
nviction is the weight of the responsibility under which my life, like every married man’s life, is placed.

  To be sure, I do not feel the weight as a burden but as a blessing; to be sure, I do not feel the bond as binding but as liberating, and yet it is there. The bond? No, the innumerable bonds by which I am bound fast in life as the tree is bound by the multiple branching roots. Suppose everything were to change for me—my God, if that were possible!—suppose I were to feel tied down by being married—what would Laocoön’s misery8 be compared to mine, for no snake, no ten snakes, would be able to wind themselves as alarmingly and tightly around a person’s body and squeeze as does the marriage that ties me down in hundreds of ways and consequently would fetter me with a hundred chains. So you see, then—if [VI 90] this is a guarantee—while I feel happy and content and give thanks without ceasing for my happiness here on earth, I also have a presentiment of the terror that can overwhelm a man along this way, of the hell that he builds up who as a husband adscriptus glebae [bound to the earth] tries to tear himself loose and thereby continually finds only how impossible it is for him, tries to cut one chain and thereby only discovers one even more elastic that binds him indissolubly—if this is an adequate negative guarantee that what I may have to say is not idle thoughts conceived in a spare moment, is not crafty brain webs designed to trap others, then please do not disdain what I may have to say.