Stages on Life’s Way
Page 59
That this story is trustworthy, one would certainly be willing to believe in other times, but in these unbelieving times, but in these times one has—what I have indeed learned and preserved in my recollection—mistaken Magnus Eriksen55 for a pseudonymous name.
That a bookbinder takes the trouble to publish books—but I have not done anything more than a bookbinder ordinarily does in making one book by stitching together several parts.
* and the reading of handwriting (I. Levin).
** What a glorious gift and donation God had allotted to his house.—Pap. VI B 6 n.d., 1844
From draft; see 3:23:
. . . . . .that even the best and palest people, for the literatus was not ruddy of complexion, . . . . .
—Pap. VI B 7:1 n.d., 1844;
From draft; see 6:23:
Christianshavn in March 1845.
—Pap. VI B 7:4 n.d., 1844
From draft; see 6:14-20:
Should Prof. Heiberg56 make a fuss on account of N. Notabene,57 a sentence could be inserted about one’s being deterred from writing a preface by his example, and then a little malice. This provides the added advantage of H.’s acquiring a name for himself.—Pap. V B 192 n.d., 1844
From draft; see 7:2-19:28:
Rapport ad se ipsum [Report to himself] [V B 155 265]
Preface [Forord] Preface [Forerindring] 58
What is as seductively enjoyable as a secret, how greedy one can be for it, and yet how dubious it can be to have enjoyed it, how rarely does it agree with one very well! In other words, if someone believes that his only difficulty in enjoying it is seeing to it that he does not betray it, he is not very competent, for he also assumes the responsibility of not forgetting it—which is indefensible with respect to those concerned and dubious for oneself. This is how oblivion and recollection [Erindring] fight about the secret; for every person it must be forgotten as if it had never existed, and for oneself it must be recollected. Oblivion is the silken curtain one draws before it; recollection is the vestal virgin who never sleeps.[*] But recollection itself must be not only accurate; it must also be happy; in bottling the recollection, the fragrance of the experience must be sealed within when it is corked. In this respect recollection requires a far more careful study than one usually thinks when one confuses recollection and memory. Just as grapes cannot be pressed at any time, just as the weather at the time of pressing has great influence on the wine, so also what is experienced cannot be recollected at any time, nor are any time and any place propitious for undertaking the transformation by which what is experienced becomes recollection. For example, one can remember very well every detail of an event without being able to say that one recollects it, for memory is the antecedent condition; by means of memory the experience presents itself for the consecration of recollection. [V B 155 266] Everyone who can remember is not therefore a poet, but everyone who can recollect has something of a poetic soul in him. This is discernible in a consideration of the difference between the generations. The old person cannot remember, loses memory, and yet the old person is regarded as prophetic and the dying as inspired, and the old person can indeed recollect.[**] The old person cannot remember, but he can recollect, has poetic farsightedness. His gaze is formed like the glasses with which one cannot see close at hand but only at a distance. It is the reverse in childhood, which has memory and quickness of apprehension to a high degree but really no recollection. There is an old saying that what one apprehends [nemme] in childhood one does not forget [glemme] in old age; relative to the subject at hand one could say: What the child remembers the old person recollects. At the same time old age’s recollection, like childhood’s happiness, is nature’s gracious gift that with special solicitude embraces the two helpless[*] periods of life, and the art, on the other hand, requires coming to the assistance of nature or assisting oneself in the other period of life. The old person’s weakness is that he cannot remember, that his soul becomes like his eyes, for ordinarily old people cannot see close at hand and use glasses for that; if they must see at a distance, they take off their glasses. The child’s imperfection is that it cannot recollect at all; like its eyes, its soul is very nearsighted, very much in the moment, fixed in the moment, but is unable to place anything at a distance.
[*] goes behind the curtain
[**] In margin: and recollection is precisely the old person’s consolation
[*] In margin: and yet in a certain sense happy
The art of recollection first of all requires a unity of these two contraries: to be able to remember like a child and to recollect like an old person, to be able to see the finest detail close at hand and immediately be able to place it at a distance. To be able to do this is also a gracious gift, but a gift of the spirit, and is also an act of freedom. But next it calls for a close acquaintance with and a study of contrasting moods. To be able to make this change of scene quickly and accurately and happily, which is more difficult than to be able to live both on land and in the water, to be this amphibian that is both child and old person, is achieved only through much practice. To [V B 155 267] go on living in an illusion [**] is easy enough, and in this respect the imperfect person has the advantage, but to be able to conjure oneself into an illusion, to allow it to work fully upon one, and yet continually to realize that one is in an illusion—that is a free art that unfortunately people neglect far too much. Memory can be assisted immediately, recollection only reflectively, and therein lies the difference, a difference that manifests itself in all sorts of misunderstandings in life. For example, homesickness is not something remembered but something recollected. If a person wishes merely to remember his birthplace, he can go there and look at it; if he wishes to feel homesickness, he must be absent. But the art is to be able to feel homesickness even though one is at home; this takes proficiency in illusion. Here again memory and recollection are ordinarily confused—indeed, by means of this confusion one can properly study the depth of a person. A man has lived on a farm, his wife may have died there, and he has deeply felt this loss—then he never wants to see that place again. Obviously he fears memory and is not at all afraid of recollection. Such a person is always a prosaist, for otherwise he would especially fear recollection and soon experience that there is nothing that kills recollection better than the very sharpening of memory at the same point. Now, since that man may have lacked the inwardness of soul required in order to recollect, he behaved very properly, for he only cut off memory. If he had had sufficient depth to recollect, he probably would have learned—if to him the pain was bitter, which became gigantic precisely by recollection—to use memory against it. He would then have come to the aid of memory by visiting the same place every day; it would soon have enriched him with a mass of details that would have smothered recollection. [V B 155 268] Thus one can immediately perceive the ideality in the lovers by paying attention to whether they resort to memory or to recollection in the moment of separation. So it is with the immortality of the soul*, for one is tempted to doubt whether many a person who departs this life can be immortal since he does not take with him a single recollection but leaves behind him only a well-nourished memory.[**]
[**] In margin: where it is continually dawning and is never day.
In margin: * And I pledge myself to clip thoughtlessness very lightly in such a way that if I merely fail to mention the phrase a whole congregation Sunday after Sunday will believe that I am speaking edifyingly.
[**] In margin: So also with respect to repentance or the actual recollection of guilt, which is very different from remembering it. The moment a sin is committed, a person remembers every detail, and yet it has a totally different meaning when many years later he recollects it and does not remember it nearly as well.
If this is how it is, then it is easy to perceive how much practice it takes to have such self-control that with regard to illusion, which is the condition for recollection, one can help oneself in the same way as the pelican.[*] To reflect oneself out of all illusio
n is not so difficult, but to reflect oneself into an illusion and yet to be aware of it is a great art. It is a matter of understanding counterpoint, of knowing contrasting moods and situations and surroundings, and the happy contrast is not always the direct contrast. It is a matter—if one wishes to dig the treasure of recollection—of having, like that treasure hunter, all the magic formulas at hand, and also, as Lichtenberg says: the treasure59—that is, here the power to use it. An erotic situation in which the specific salient feature was forest solitude can at times be best recollected, or embalmed for recollection, in a theater, where the noise and all the surroundings force the soul to recollect; but it is not always thus.[**] It [V B 155 269] would be a mistake, however, to go out to that lonely place to recollect, for then one nourishes memory. Thus for two opposite reasons two people may wish not to see the same place again: the one fears nourishing memory lest he get something to remember; the other fears that by nourishing memory he will lose recollection.
[*] Penciled in margin: Themistocles wanted to forget.
[**] In margin: If it is defensible to use people as means, it can at times be right to use a new love precisely in order to gain the opportunity to recollect the old.—Pap. V B 155 n.d., 1844
From draft; see 9:10:
(which is indefensible with regard to the persons concerned and precarious for oneself.*)
* since it demonstrates that it is not a true recollection.—Pap. V B 186:1 n.d., 1844
From draft; see 10:20-27:
To recollect is not identical with to remember.
To recollect is the appropriation of ideality. This is why ordinarily very few want to recollect. One God, one faith, etc. understood in this way: out of one piece, uno tenore [uninterrupted].
In order to recollect, the unity of remembering and recollecting is required.
Next something beneficial. Memory can be assisted immediately, recollection not.
In margin: one can recollect only the essential—but neither can one forget what is recollected (Thor’s hammer—the battle-seasoned dove).—Pap. V B 159 n.d., 1844
From draft; see 10:22-11:12:
[V B 157 272] . . . It is the same with immortality of the soul, for many a person departs this life whose immortality one is tempted to doubt[*] since he does not take with him a single recollection but leaves behind a well-nourished and glutted memory. That is, recollection, like all ideality, makes life strenuous. There is something terrifying in an eternal recollecting; and yet recollection is the true upbuilding and the eternal protest against all Sunday prattle about how every other hour one becomes a new person, who is rejuvenated and falls in love again and becomes a veterinarian after having been a philosopher. This, of course, is the sensual person’s craven wish** and is thought lessness† [V B 157 273] but nevertheless I am convinced that merely by clipping thoughtlessness and decorating it a little one would Sunday after Sunday be able to preach a whole congregation consolation and solace unto true upbuilding, whereas the person who actually would speak in an upbuilding way would inevitably be regarded as a fanatic and a hothead. It is a dubious matter that Jacobi is the only person in whom I at least have ever read the comment that it is terrible to think that one is immortal—indeed, so terrible that it sometimes seemed as if the thought would drive him out of his mind. Poor Jacobi.‡ Sunday guests and those toughened pulpit orators who have become toughened merely by pounding the pulpit no doubt find it gelaüfig [easy] enough.
[*] In margin: Thus one at times finds people who relate recollections of their life in which there is not a trace of recollection.
In margin: **not to become something for oneself and by oneself, but to become by accident something great in the world and for the world.
In margin: † not to want to be renewed by the spirit but by life’s masquerade costumes that change people.
‡he certainly must have had bad nerves!
—Pap. V B 157 n.d., 1844
From draft; see 11:8-12:
In recollection a person draws on the eternal, and everyone is indeed allowed to do this; in this respect everyone is solvent—alas and yet how many are solvent. There are perhaps few occasions in which fools are made of people or rather they make fools of themselves as they do when they talk in lofty tones about never wanting to forget (be it out of love or out of hate). Anyone who knows anything about human beings knows very well what this means: one or two weeks, or a year, or once in a while if the occasion comes from without.—Pap. V B 158 n.d., 1844
From draft; see 11:8-12:5:
Posito, I assume, that one person[*] had loved only once, a second had been married seven times—who then had more to recollect? Or one person had pursued only a single thought, had always been occupied with the same eternal thought; another had been an author in seven branches of science, even in astronomy[**]—who then had more to recollect? Or one person had found rest in the one thing needful; another had countless necessities, all of which had been satisfied—who then had more to recollect?
[*] In margin: had spoken day in and day out in general assemblies, had measured his fund of eloquence with even full measures and also with heaped measures, had made his wife happy even by talking at night as if he were in the general assembly—the other was silent
[**] In margin: and was interrupted by death just as he was about to begin veterinary science.
—Pap. VB 160:8 n.d., 1844
From final draft; see 11:23-24:
Here a few mathematical problems that do not belong under profit sharing according to contribution. (A man loves but once, perhaps even unhappily; another marries seven times, without, however, having time to fall in love; they live the same length of time; here the question of the result is raised or who has more to recollect?)
In margin: One could make such problems an assignment.
—Pap. V B 186:4 n.d., 1844
From draft; see 13:2:
. . . . . for remembering is an art and a collector’s storeroom, not that kiss of the eternal.
—Pap. V B 160:11 n.d., 1844
In margin of draft; see 14:6:
. . . . . or a third person, who certainly understands recollection, but does not want to hear wisdom’s counsel, the dejected timorous one who fears the first pain.—Pap. V B 160:13 n.d., 1844
From draft; see 14:36-15:3:
Only there is the difference that, insofar as what one recollects (with which by recollecting it one always becomes alone) is something in which several are interested, one does not have the necessary caution as when it is a secret.—Pap. V B 156:2 n.d., 1844
In margin of draft; see 15:10-19:
In other words, the scope of what I have to remember is very little (some speeches and a few minor remarks), but it has been difficult for me to grasp it with recollection.—Pap. V B 169:1 n.d., 1844
In margin of draft; see 15:25:
If there perhaps is a difficulty with the correctness of the name the participants had given it—in vino veritas—insofar as the truth proclaimed by the speakers certainly was in vino but as veritas was dubious, my telling of it is at least veritas. —Pap. V B 169:2 n.d., 1844
From draft; see 15:25-27:
I have not supported memory by once again visiting the places but, on the contrary, with some written notes that have the value of reliability.—Pap. V B 169:3 n.d., 1844
From draft; see 16:16-17:
. . . . . so here I have sought to recollect the exuberance of spirit in nature’s vegetative lushness.—Pap. V B 169:4 n.d., 1844
From draft; see 16:18-19:15:
Preliminary
Albertus and his friend chance to run into each other at the Nook of Eight Paths. The friend has lost his way; Alb. is there “to put an experienced event into the framework of contrast.” At first he is irritated by the encounter, but after having more or less spent his rage he is quite happy that the other person has come since now he could wish to have someone to whom he could communicate.
A. When I am alone, all this enthusi
asm is meaningful to me, but not as soon as someone is present.—Pap. V B 161 n.d, 1844
From draft; see 16:18-19:15:
[V B 162 276] Fantastic. sentimental-ironic.
A. Ye gods! I could sooner have expected to see (to be developed at length) a deer or a robber
a pursued innocent or a hermit.
B. Be quiet, by the devil’s skin and bones!
A. or to see a black horse (a monster, a dragon) (to be developed).
B. Be quiet—what is this harangue supposed to mean.
A. It is supposed to mean that I will retaliate when someone comes inopportunely to disturb my solitude.
B. Well, that is another matter, this is not the case with me, because you come most opportunely* for me so that I can ask you what this means more precisely out here—in other words, where am I, what is the name of this place, what people live here, how do they make a living, do they raise potatoes, are they pagans, perhaps cannibals.
[V B 162 277] A. Be quiet, by the devil’s skin and bones.
B. But if I am disturbing you, I will leave immediately.
A. It’s too late; you should have thought of that before.
B. And you should have said it before.
A. This is nonsense.
B. It was indeed nonsense.
A. Let’s call it quits.
B. Quits.
A. Yet now it doesn’t matter, for after all, you are really opportune for me—the gods have protected my solitude, and now I am qualified to communicate. The only gain that now is already detectable is that I am a bit more talkative than conversational. So be it.
*A. ille nefasto te posuit die [he did it on an evil day who planted you]60—what are you here for
B. in the first place, to use the fortunate circumstance of meeting you here, to ask you: Where am I?—Pap. V B 162 n.d., 1844
From draft; see 16:18-19:15:
Albertus—His Friend [V B 163 277]
A. Ye gods! You here! I would sooner have expected to see the snorting steed and the pursued deer, and the noble maiden’s waving veil, or to see the robber rushing out of his dark hiding place, or a girl who had escaped from a robber den, or a hermit who had made this place his home for a generation, or Robinson [Crusoe], or Friday, or