Stages on Life’s Way

by Søren Kierkegaard

  Not until a higher passion enters into the passion of poetry, not until then does the duplexity under discussion here commence. Now the task becomes dialectical in itself, and this the poet’s task cannot and must never be. Admittedly, unhappy love, for example, has its dialectic, but it has it outside itself, not in itself. That which is intrinsically dialectical in itself contains the contradiction in itself. The poet’s task, however, is single, because the contradiction comes from outside. By itself, unhappy love is bound to become happy—this is the poet’s certainty, but the trouble is that there is a power outside that wants to prevent it. In poetry, therefore, love does not relate to itself but it relates to the world, and this relationship determines whether it becomes unhappy. Therefore, as soon as passion’s sonority ceases to sound from the one, as soon as there is conflict in passion itself—indeed, even if a higher passion announces itself in a new sonority—as soon as the concurrent sound of doubleness is detected in it, the poet cannot become involved with it. If the passion is love, then it must be undialectical in itself so that poetry can see in him an unhappy lover. If the passion is love of the fatherland, then this must be undialectical in itself, and if the hero sacrifices an erotic relationship because of his passion, he is not called an unhappy lover but is named after the passion that is undialectical in him. In his enthusiasm for his native land, the patriotic hero does not relate himself to himself, or the enthusiasm does not relate itself to itself, but it relates itself to a surrounding world and therein also to a relationship of erotic love, to a relationship of veneration. This is how poetry must understand it. The esthetic hero must have his opposition outside himself, not in himself. That this is not the case in Hamlet is perhaps precisely the anomaly—more on that later.

  Back to unhappy love. If we consider the distinctive characters among those unhappy lovers whom “song and saga” rewarded with renown, we shall promptly see that the passion [VI 380] is immediate and that the contradiction is from outside, some-what as the pastor on behalf of the engaged couple publicly invites objections, for he, too, cannot imagine that in the lover’s own passion there would be a contradiction, because in that case he might feel constrained like the poet, thus by a poetic call, to say of the guilty party: He does not love. Petrarch sees Laura joined to another.449 Abelard does not feel separated from Héloise by his holy orders (for love is the absolute passion)—he is separated by Fulbert’s wrath and, alas, by his cruelty.450 Romeo does not feel the family hatred as that which separates, because it also moves in him through filial piety toward his father; it is the family feud that actually separates him from Juliet; Axel has no conscientious scruples about the close relationship, and Valborg understands only that they love each other; it is the Church with its external power that separates them.451 Take the obstacles away, and those unhappy people are the happiest of lovers.

  In our day, unhappy love does not make a good show. We go to see Romeo and Juliet but really do not know what to make of it; at most it is the gallery that actually weeps. Besides, it is to Shakespeare rather than to Juliet that a tear is offered, and in the theater we feel ourselves in an almost embarrassing situation. Quite simply, this is because to love, like all passion, has become dialectical to the present generation. An immediate love such as that is incomprehensible, and in our day even a grocer’s boy would be able to tell Romeo and Juliet some astounding truths. It might seem that this anomaly could be overcome by being drawn into the play and brought to consciousness there so that the public would not feel completely alien in the theater but at least recognize itself in the grocer’s boy. The trouble is that it does not help, for then the grocer’s boy, a matter-of-fact philosopher, a pawnbroker, or whatever other representative of common sense one would use might walk off with the victory, because the threadbare side of the matter is precisely the truth. If this did not happen, then Romeo and Juliet not only would be alien to the spectators but in their eyes would lose as obstinate characters whose death was not tragic but well deserved ob contumaciam [because of contempt] toward all reason. Shakespeare does, of course, also have opposite viewpoints represented in his drama, but his fully definitive pathos makes him himself just as certain as Romeo and Juliet are undialectical in their passion.

  [VI 381] What, then, can be the consequence when people reject poetry and yet have no higher passion? This, of course—that people go astray in half-baked ideas and are made happy in fancies and self-delusions, and this generation becomes the most expeditious [skyndsomste] but not the most judicious [skjønsomste], the promising [lovende] and prevaricating [lyvende] generation without parallel, which can easily be demonstrated a priori. So, while one almost never hears mention of an unhappy lover, there is all the more competition about having been one, even more than once having suffered what those unhappy ones suffer, but also having overcome these sufferings etc. etc. etc. Poetry cannot use such people. It requires an essential expression for what one has essentially suffered and is not satisfied with the assurances of a few girlfriends who have seen her sufferings, or with a spiritual adviser’s trustworthiness, not even if he had a speculative eye and discerned the necessary development. Oh, what tempting fruits for a comic poet, and if he ever shows up, my only worry is that he himself, carried away by the vision of the inexhaustibility of the subject, will die of laughter and thus be prevented from accomplishing anything.

  A poet would be an especially useful figure as the main character in such a comedy; for example, Scribe, in particular, is comic despite his matchless talent, and comic because he has not understood himself, because he wants to be a poet and yet has forgotten that poetry and passion are inseparable, and comic because he has satisfied the age as poet—this whole thing is comic in the Aristophanic sense. Scribe’s whole existence is a contradiction just like that which is so often found in his plays. Take La Cameraderie,452 for example, his reception piece, with its masterly effect that one cannot admire enough. It describes the contemptible solidarity of some mediocre, seedy characters who in all sorts of contemptible ways know how to push their way ahead by their obtrusiveness; but a young lawyer scorns these methods and therefore becomes the object of persecution by carping criticism and lies. What happens? A young woman is so good as to take an interest in him. She is not inexperienced in intrigues, she carries all before her, and the lawyer rises to honor and status. As a result, one cameraderie wins over the other, one intrigue takes the [VI 382] power away from the other. Just as when the rubric “unhappy love” was dropped, one kind, more or less happy love, replaced the contrasts, so here the contrasts honesty/dishonesty and virtue/contemptibleness drop out and there is one kind, approximate honesty, or there ought to be a little more than honesty.

  Now when love itself has become dialectical, poetry must relinquish it, because its having become dialectical means in the first place that the poet cannot take on his task, cannot begin, inasmuch as there has been added an introduction of which the outcome is critical, and in the second place that there is no assurance that the outcome will be happy if only all the external obstacles are cleared away, and finally that in case of death there is no assurance that it will be a heroic death from love or from passion, since it might be a feverish cold of which one dies.

  Now if there comes to be a consciousness that love has been given up as an absolute passion, then poetry must forsake it; and where the carcass is, there the predatory birds453 gather, here in the shape of novelists, serial-story writers, hermaphrodites of tragicomic writers who are not sure whether they want to be writers of tragedy or of comedy and therefore are neither, for without passion there is no poet, not a comic poet, either. If poetry is to continue to exist, it must discover another passion, one just as legitimate as love was for poetry. It would not be hard to show that there is nothing like that precisely because of the distinctive synthesis of the erotic. I shall not, however, do it here, but neither shall I demand of anyone that he believe I can do it, since I do not do it. Yet there are also other passions that in the eyes
of poetry are legitimate. The same thing that weakened faith in love—the lack of a sense of the infinite—will also weaken faith in the other passions. Thus, forsaken by poetry, people will work their way down into finitude until they finally reach politics in the bad sense. If politics is viewed with the passion of the infinite, it will naturally be able to yield heroes such as there were in antiquity, when people also believed in love. In the world of the infinite, it holds that whoever offends in one thing offends in all,454 for the person who has a sense of the infinite has a sense of every infinity.

  [VI 383] The same reflection that corroded love will also corrode the infinite passion of politics. In an age such as that, a hero is a man who will work for a finite goal, will, as he says, sacrifice his life for it, perhaps through an error does that, and through a new error is canonized as a hero. Such a character, however, is completely unusable for poetry (possibly he could be used as the sausage peddler in Aristophanes455): he is unpoetic and contradicts himself. To that extent it is quite consistent that modern politics does not inspire its devotees to sacrifices, for it does not inspire at all: otherwise sacrifices come naturally. It is a contradiction to be willing to sacrifice one’s life for a finite goal, and in the eyes of poetry such behavior is comic, akin to dancing oneself to death or wanting to walk with spurs when one is bowlegged and falls down on them and is killed—rather than quit wearing spurs. Oh, what an enticing task for a comic poet, but without passion no poet, no comic poet, either. Subject matter he will not lack, for politics does not lack servants. A suitable main character could be a politician who, despite all his sagacity, wants to be inspired, wants to be a sacrifice but does not want to sacrifice himself, wants to fall but wants to be a witness to the acclamation himself and therefore does not manage to fall, and when, perhaps, all is said and done, has in himself the one and only person who stands in his way—an inspired person who has no intimation of what inspiration is. His pathos would culminate in this, inconceivably enough, not long since worn-out platitude: “I want to give my life as a sacrifice; no one shall say that I do not have heroic courage, but this blind courage is not the highest, and therefore I restrain myself—and go on living; therefore I restrain myself—and let someone else, someone less important, fall in my place. Plaudite [Applaud].”456 It is, of course, quite in order for a sagacious politician to be also sagacious enough to perceive—something that is hidden from the more simple—how important his life is for the state, that if he lives a long time no one is going to be in want, but inspiration this is not. All inspiration has its source in the passion of infinity, where every Tom, Dick, and Harry, together with all their sagacity, vanish as nonentities. God help poetry; with the help of politics it has been put on bread and water!

  Aristotle has already divided human beings into: ϑεολόγοι, [VI 384] φιλόσοφοι, πολιτιϰοί [theologians, philosophers, politicians].457 The politicians come last, to say nothing of the politicians of finitude who renounce the passion of infinity—they come at the very end, or rather, come tagging along behind, which always makes for thin beer. There is no inspiration in faith in oneself, even less in faith in one’s bit of shopkeeper shrewdness. All inspiration has its source either in faith in one’s passion or, deeper, in faith in a providence, which teaches a person that even the death of the greatest man is a jest for a providence that has legions of angels in reserve,458 and that he therefore should go resolutely to his death and leave his good cause to providence and his posthumous reputation to the poet. Just as one seldom sees an unhappy lover these days, likewise does one seldom see a martyr in the political world, but on the other hand there is overall competition in saying “The devil take me if I have not been willing, indeed, willing to be a martyr, if it were not obvious that it would be greater etc.” And politics has a countless host of titular heroes and volunteer martyrs, not armed but inter pocula [between goblets]. They all have that high-mindedness of the hero death, but they also with equally heroic wisdom have perceived that “it would be better for all, for society, to go on living, that they owed it to humankind to live—and clink the glasses.” There is one step left, and it is a true non plus ultra [no more beyond]; this is when such a generation of armchair life-insurance salesmen consider it an injustice on the part of poetry that it does not select its heroes among the worthy contemporaries. 459But one does poetry an injustice, or rather one does not goad it so much that it ends with poetry’s taking, Aristophanically, the first sausage peddler that comes along and making him a hero. In no other way can poetry be inspired when people are swearing and thumping on the table.

  So poetry’s day seems to be over, tragedy in particular. A comic poet will lack an audience, since not even the audience can be two places at once, on the stage and in the auditorium. Moreover, a comic poet has his own resource in a pathos that lies outside the play and shows by its existence that the day of poetry is over. Someone who pins his hope on speculative [VI 385] drama serves poetry only insofar as he serves the comic. If a witch or a wizard succeeds in bringing about such a thing, if by means of a speculative thaumaturgist460 (for a dramaturgist would not suffice) it would satisfy the requirement of the age as a poetic work, this event would certainly be a good motif for a comedy, even though it would achieve the comic effect through so many presuppositions that it could not become popular.461

  That the time of poetry is over really means that immediacy is at an end. Immediacy is not entirely without reflection; as poetry sees it, it has relative reflection by having its opposition outside itself. But immediacy is not actually over until the immediate infinity is grasped by an equally infinite reflection. At the same moment, all tasks are transformed and made dialectical in themselves; no immediacy is allowed to stand by itself or to be exposed to struggle only with something else, since it must struggle with itself.

  Back to love. When love does not stand on its own, this means that, self-given, it does not, as in poetry, have its obstacle outside but has its obstacle within itself. Thus a task emerges that every poet must reject but that still has its significance, a task that can be varied in many ways, and one of these variations I have chosen in my imaginary psychological construction. Love is given; no obstacle is seen. On the contrary, love is favored by peace and security, an absolute calm. But when it is to be ushered into infinite reflection, it runs into difficulties. Consequently, the difficulties do not arise because love collides with the world but because love must reflect itself in the individuality. The problem is so dialectical that the fact that love provokes resentment in this way can also invite the opposite question: Is love given, then? Now, if it is not a religious collision, then the issue does not exist at all except as silly talk; for the poetic is glorious, the religious still more glorious, but what lies between is silly talk, no matter how much talent is wasted on it.

  Now, love provokes resentment, or so it seems to the individual, and he states of himself that he has an unhappy love. I express myself very dubitatively and do not have the passion [VI 386] of my knight, but I am trying to understand him. The poet would now ask him, “What is the obstacle? Is it cruel parents who have to be pacified? Is it a family feud that has to be conciliated? Is it a papal dispensation that has to be procured? Another person who has to be eliminated? Or—alas, I must indeed grieve over myself and my situation—if it is a mite that I am to throw to you, if you need money to be happy, well, then, unless you prefer the first four situations, then I make you unhappy, but a hero.” The person involved says no. Then the poet turns away and says, “Well, my good friend, then you do not love.” Poetry is willing to do everything for love, is willing to embellish happy love, is willing to celebrate unhappy love in song, but in its charming naiveté it must be sure of one thing—erotic love, lest after having done everything it suddenly discovers that it was in vain because there were other obstacles.

  In order to stick to the task, one must constantly make double-movements.462 Anyone who cannot do that and cannot do it with ease does not
see the task at all, and then he is lucky if he has not lost his delight in poetry. But if he can do it, then he also knows that infinite reflection is not something alien but is immediacy’s transparency to itself.

  If love is assumed to have happily undergone infinite reflection, then it is something different, then it is religious; if it runs aground along the way, then it runs aground on the religious. This may not be immediately perceptible, because very frequently even under the name “infinite reflection” one is thinking of finite reflection. In relation to any finite reflection, immediacy is essentially higher, and it is an insult for it to have to be involved with something like this. Poets understand this very well, and that is why the obstacles come from the outside, and the tragic lies precisely in this, that these obstacles have the power to triumph in a certain sense over the infinity of immediacy; only bourgeois-philistines and hermaphroditic poets understand it otherwise. But an infinite reflection is infinitely higher than immediacy, and in it immediacy relates itself to itself in the idea.463 But this “in the idea” [VI 387] signifies a God-relationship of the widest scope, and within this scope there is a multiplicity of more specific determinants.

  The idea is also in immediacy; the poet does indeed see it, but for his hero it does not exist, or in his relation to it he is not in relation to himself. For this very reason he is not free in his passion. That is, freedom does not at all mean that he is to give it up, but freedom means that in order to hold on to it firmly he uses the passion of infinity by which he could give it up. Such a thought the poetic hero cannot think at all, and the poet does not dare to have him think it, for then he immediately ceases to be a poetic character.