Stages on Life’s Way
Page 77
4. Cf. II Corinthians 3:18.
5. A character in Jean de France, Mascarade, and other comedies by Ludvig Holberg.
6. In Rome the punishment for patricide. See Cicero, “Pro Sex. Roscio Amerino,” 10-11, 30, Oratio; M. Tullii Ciceronis opera omnia, I-IV and index, ed. Johann August Ernesti (Halle: 1756-57; ASKB 1224-29), II1, pp. 42-43; The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, I-II, tr. C. D. Yonge (London: Bell, 1903), I, pp. 45-46:
For after they perceived that the life of Sextus Roscius was protected with the greatest care, and that there was no possibility of their murdering him, they adopted a counsel full of wickedness and audacity, namely, that of accusing him of parricide; of procuring some veteran accuser to support the charge, who could say something even in a case in which there was no suspicion whatever; and lastly, as they could not have any chance against him by the accusation, to prevail against him on account of the time; for men began to say, that no trial had taken place for such a length of time, that the first man who was brought to trial ought to be condemned; and they thought that he would have no advocates because of the influence of Chrysogonus; that no one would say a word about the sale of the property and about that conspiracy; that because of the mere name of parricide and the atrocity of the crime he would be put out of the way, without any trouble, as he was defended by no one. . . . And yet they crown and add to them by other nefarious deeds,—they invent an incredible accusation; they procure witnesses against him and accusers of him by bribery; they offer the wretched man this alternative,—whether he would prefer to expose his neck to Roscius to be assassinated by him, or, being sewn in a sack, to lose his life with the greatest infamy.
7. See I Corinthians 14:32-35.
8. Laocoön had hurled his spear at the Greek wooden horse in the city of Troy, and his fate was interpreted by the Trojans as a penalty for a crime. See Virgil, Aeneid, II, 199-227; Virgils Aeneide, tr. Johan Henrik Schønheyder (Copenhagen: 1812), pp. 63-65; Virgil, I-II, tr. H. Rushton Fairclough (Loeb, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1978), I, p. 309 (Aeneas speaking):
“Hereupon another portent, more fell and more frightful by far, is thrust upon us, unhappy ones, and confounds our unforeseeing souls. Laocoön, priest of Neptune, as drawn by lot, was slaying a great bull at the wonted altars; and lo! from Tenedos, over the peaceful depths—I shudder as I tell the tale—a pair of serpents with endless coils are breasting the sea and side by side making for the shore. Their bosoms rise amid the surge, and their crests, blood-red, overtop the waves; the rest of them skims the main behind and their huge backs curve in many a fold; we hear the sound sent from foaming seas. And now they were gaining the fields and, with blazing eyes suffused with blood and fire, were licking with quivering tongues their hissing mouths. Pale at the sight, we scatter. They in unswerving course fare towards Laocoön; and first each serpent enfolds in its embrace the youthful bodies of his two sons and with its fangs feeds upon the hapless limbs. Then himself too, as he comes to their aid, weapons in hand, they seize and bind in mighty folds; and now, twice encircling his waist, twice winding their scaly backs around his throat, they tower above with head and lofty necks. He the while strains his hands to burst the knots, his fillets steeped in gore and black venom; the while he lifts to heaven hideous cries, like the bellowings of a wounded bull that has fled from the altar and shaken from its neck the ill-aimed axe. But, gliding away, the dragon pair escape to the lofty shrines, and seek fierce Tritonia’s citadel, there to nestle under the goddess’ feet and the circle of her shield.”
9. In a letter from Johann Georg Hamann to Jacobi, January 22, 1785, Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi’s Werke, 1-VI (Leipzig: 1812-25; ASKB 1722-28), IV3, p. 34 (ed. tr.): “There is doubt that must be dismissed with no reasons or replies but simply with a Bah!” See also Supplement, pp. 561-62 (Pap. V B 190:2); JP I 624; III 2489 (Pap. V A 47; X1 A 324).
10. See Daniel 3:15.
11. See Daniel 3:28.
12. After victory over the pagan Wends on the island of Rügen in 1169, “King of the Wends” became part of the title, symbolized by a wivern, of Valdemar (the Great) I (1131-1182). After the conquest of Gotland in 1361, “King of the Goths” became part of the title, symbolized by a lion surmounting nine hearts, of Valdemar (Atterdag) IV (c. 1320-1375). In 1460, when Christian I was elected Duke of Slesvig and Holsten, that title, symbolized by a pair of lions and the nettle leaf of Holsten, was incorporated in the royal title.
13. Cf. Supplement, p. 548 (Pap. V B 178:8) and note 77; Either/Or, II, p. 125, KW IV (SV II 114).
14. See Aesop, “The Boasting Traveller,” The Fables of Aesop, ed. Thomas Bewick (New York: Paddington, 1975), p. 59. See also, for example, G.W.F. Hegel, Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s Werke. Vollstöndige Ausgabe, I-XVIII, ed. Philihpp Marheineke et al. (Berlin: 1832-45; ASKB 549-65), VIII, pp. 18-19; Samtliche Werke. Jubiläumsausgabe [J.A.], I-XXVI, ed. Hermann Glockner (Stuttgart: 1927-40), VII, pp. 34-35; Hegel’s Philosophy of Right (tr. of P.R., 1 ed., 1821; Kierkegaard had 2 ed., 1833), tr. T. M. Knox (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978), p. 11:
The instruction which it may contain cannot consist in teaching the state what it ought to be; it can only show how the state, the ethical universe, is to be understood.
’Ιδοὺ Ῥόδος ίδοὺ ϰαὶ τὸ πήδημα
Hic Rhodus, hic saltus
[Here is Rhodes, jump here].
To comprehend what is, this is the task of philosophy, because what is, is reason. Whatever happens, every individual is a child of his time; so philosophy too is its own time apprehended in thoughts. It is just as absurd to fancy that a philosophy can transcend its contemporary world as it is to fancy that an individual can overleap his own age, jump over Rhodes. If his theory really goes beyond the world as it is and builds an ideal one as it ought to be, that world exists indeed, but only in his opinions, an unsubstantial element where anything you please may, in fancy, be built.
With hardly an alteration, the proverb just quoted would run:
Here is the rose, dance thou here.
15. After Aeneas and his people had been shipwrecked and beached, he tried to console them by casting present distress into future recollection and pointing hopefully toward their goals. See Virgil, Aeneid, I, 198-207; Schønheyder, p. 15; Loeb, I, p. 255 (Aeneas speaking):
“O comrades—for ere this we have not been ignorant of evils—O ye who have borne a heavier lot, to this, too, God will grant an end! Ye drew near to Scylla’s fury and her deep-echoing crags; ye have known, too, the rocks of the Cyclopes; recall your courage and put away sad fear. Perchance even this distress it will some day be a joy to recall. Through divers mishaps, through so many perilous chances, we fare towards Latium, where the fates point out a home of rest. There ‘tis granted to Troy’s realm to rise again; endure, and keep yourselves for days of happiness.”
16. An allusion to the placing of the vowel symbols below consonants in Hebrew.
17. See Genesis 33:4.
18. See John 4:24.
19. See Either/Or, II, Supplement, p. 384, KW IV (Pap. IV A 234).
20. Presumably an allusion to Nicolai Frederik Severin Grundtvig (1783-1872), Danish historian, mythologist, poet, politician, and preacher.
21. See Either/Or, II, pp. 62-88 KW IV (SV II 57-80).
22. Oehlenschläger, Aladdin, III, Adam Oehlenschlägers Poetiske Skrifter, I-II (Copenhagen: 1805; ASKB 1597-98), II, pp. 216-21; Aladdin or the Wonderful Lamp, tr. Henry Meyer (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1968), pp. 124-27.
23. See Johannes Climacus’s observations on Judge William’s expression, Postscript, KW XII (SV VII 150, 463).
24. A free version of a comment in Hamann’s letter to Johann G. Lindner, July 3, 1759, regarding objections by David Hume to Christianity. See Hamann’s Schriften, I-VIII, ed. Friedrich Roth and G. A. Wiener (Berlin, Leipzig: 1821-43; ASKB 536-44), I, p. 406. See also JP II 1539 (Pap. I A 100).
25. See Either/Or, II, p. 68, KW IV (SV II 63).
/>
26. See Herodotus, History, I, 32; Die Geschichten des Herodotos, I-II, tr. Friedrich Lange (Berlin: 1811; ASKB 1117), I, p. 19; Herodotus, I-IV, tr. A. D. Godley (Loeb, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981-82), I, pp. 39-41 (Solon speaking to Croesus):
“Many men of great wealth are unblest, and many that have no great substance are fortunate. Now the very rich man who is yet unblest has but two advantages over the fortunate man, but the fortunate man has many advantages over the rich but unblest: for this latter is the stronger to accomplish his desire and to bear the stroke of great calamity; but these are the advantages of the fortunate man, that though he be not so strong as the other to deal with calamity and desire, yet these are kept far from him by his good fortune, and he is free from deformity, sickness, and all evil, and happy in his children and his comeliness. If then such a man besides all this shall also end his life well, then he is the man whom you seek, and is worthy to be called blest; but we must wait till he be dead, and call him not yet blest, but fortunate. Now no one (who is but man) can have all these good things together, just as no land is altogether self-sufficing in what it produces: one thing it has, another it lacks, and the best land is that which has most; so too no single person is sufficient for himself: one thing he has, another he lacks; but whoever continues in the possession of most things, and at last makes a gracious end of his life, such a man, O King, I deem worthy of this title. We must look to the conclusion of every matter, and see how it shall end, for there are many to whom heaven has given a vision of blessedness, and yet afterwards brought them to utter ruin.”
27. Cf. John 5:24.
28. See “The Dog and the Shadow,” Aesop, p. 117.
29. Cf. Numbers 21:8.
30. With reference to the following two clauses, see Supplement, p. 562 (Pap. V B 190:5).
31. See Matthew 22:11-13.
32. In Greek mythology, the Milky Way was attributed to Hera (Roman Juno), wife of Zeus, in connection with her nursing the infant Hercules. See “Hera,” Paul Friedrich A. Nitsch, neues mythologisches Wörterbuch, I-II, rev. Friedrich Gotthilf Klopfer (Leipzig, Sorau: 1821; ASKB 1944-45), I, p. 814.
33. See Psalms 1:3, 128:3.
34. See Matthew 25:35-46; James 2:15-16; Luke 17:10.
35. Cf. Matthew 6:2,5.
36. See Horace, Odes, I, 32, 1; Q. Horatii Flacci opera (Leipzig: 1828; ASKB 1248), p. 77 (“Poscimur”); Horace The Odes and Epodes, tr. C. E. Bennett (Loeb, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1978), p. 87: “I am asked for a song.”
37. The Phoenicians bargained with the Libyans for as much land as could be encompassed by a bull’s hide, which they then cut into very fine strips that enclosed a large tract. See Virgil, Aeneid, I, 365-68; Schønheyder, p. 25; Loeb, I, p. 267 (Venus speaking to Aeneas): “‘They came to the place where now thou seest the huge walls and rising citadel of new Carthage, and bought ground—Byrsa they called it therefrom—as much as they could encompass with a bull’s hide.’”
38. See Exodus 20:5.
39. On “reality” and “actuality,” see JP III 3651-55 and pp. 900-03.
40. See, for example, “Legenden von Rübezahl,” Johann Karl August Musäus, Volksmärchen der Deutschen, I-V (Vienna: 1815; ASKB 1434-38), II, p. 70.
41. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Figaros Givtermaal, tr. Niels Thoroup Bruun (Copenhagen: 1817), II, 2, p. 40; The Marriage of Figaro, ed. Nicholas John (New York. Riverrun Press, 1983), p. 68.
42. See Galatians 4:4.
43. In Greek mythology, Orpheus, after the death of his wife, Eurydice, went to Hades to secure her release. The gods, charmed by his music, agreed, but he disobeyed their injunction not to look at her before they reached the earth, and she vanished. See Nitsch, II, p. 368.
44. Danish: Forklaring, which means both “explanation” and “transfiguration.”
45. See p. 63.
46. An allusion to Socrates. See, for example, Plato, Gorgias, 490 e-491 a; Platonis quae exstant opera, I-XI, ed. Friedrich Ast (Leipzig: 1819-32; ASKB 1144-54), I, pp. 572-73; Udvalgte Dialoger af Platon, I-VIII, tr. Carl Johan Heise (Copenhagen: 1830-59; ASKB 1164-67, 1169 [I-VII]), III, p. 111; The Collected Dialogues of Plato, ed. Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963), p. 273.
CALLICLES: Shoes! You keep talking nonsense.
SOCRATES: Well, if that is not what you mean, here it is perhaps. A farmer for instance who is an expert with good sound knowledge about the soil should have a larger share of seed and use the most seed possible on his own land.
CALLICLES: How you keep saying the same things, Socrates!
SOCBATES: Not only that, Callicles, but about the same matters.
CALLICLES: By heaven, you literally never stop talking about cobblers and fullers and cooks and doctors, as if we were discussing them.
See also Fragments, p. 72, KW VII (SV IV 236).
47. See Pius Alexander Wolff, Preciosa, tr. Caspar Johannes Boye (Copenhagen: 1822), p. 25. The piece (with music by Carl Maria von Weber) was first performed at the Royal Theater October 29, 1822, and in 1843 on January 5. See also Supplement, pp. 652-53 (Pap. VI A 78).
48. See Fear and Trembling, p. 121, KW VII (SV III 166).
49. See p. 84 and note 2.
50. See Matthew 26:49; Mark 14:45; Luke 22:47.
51. An allusion to Helene, a Greek princess, in Henrik Hertz’s drama Svanehammen (Copenhagen: 1841), I, 4, pp. 24-27.
52. See Either/Or, II, Supplement, p. 380, KW IV (Pap IV A 246).
53. Cf. Mark 12:17.
54. See Judges 13:22; cf. Isaiah 6:5.
55. See Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, I, 26; Diogenis Laertii de vitis philosophorum, I-II (Leipzig: 1833; ASKB 1109), I, p. 12; Diogen Laërtses filosofiske Historie, I-II, tr. Borge Riisbrigh (Copenhagen: 1812; ASKB 1110-11), I, p. 10; Diogenes Laertius, I-II, tr. R. D. Hicks (Loeb, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979-80), I, pp. 26-27.
56. See pp. 71-80.
57. See John 2:14.
58. In Kierkegaard’s published works and in his journals and papers, “primitive” in its various forms denotes an individual’s original capacity to receive an impression without being influenced by “the others” or by current views. See JP III 3558-61 and pp. 887-88; VII, p. 76.
59. Together with De incertitudine et vanitate omnium scientiarum & artium liber etc. (Frankfurt, Leipzig: 1622 [first published in Cologne, 1527]; ASKB 113). See Supplement, p. 511 (Pap. IV A 170).
60. On May 28, 1831, the Provincial Consultative Assemblies were announced and subsequently were established on May 15, 1834. The Twenty-eighth of May Society was formed in 1832 and was promptly banned. The day was celebrated annually, however, during the following decade. The speech is presumably Kierkegaard’s invention.
61. Agrippa, no pagination.
62. See Ecclesiastes 1:18.
63. With reference to the following sentence, see Supplement, p. 562 [Pap. VI B 4:1). With reference to the following footnote, see Supplement, pp. 562-64 (Pap. VI B 2-3, 8:8).
64. Anna Helene Dorothea Nielsen (1807-1850) was a member of the Royal Theater company from 1821 until her death. One of the great favorites of the critics, she portrayed especially the Danish woman of all ages from a young girl to a grandmother. See Letters, Letter 170, Dedication 15(b), KW XXV; Supplement, pp. 562-64 (Pap. VI B 2-3).
65. See Horace, Epistles, II, 1, 199-207; Opera, p. 636; Horace Satires, Epistles and Ars Poetica, tr. H. Rushton Fairclough (Loeb, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1978), pp. 413-15:
But for the authors—he would suppose that they were telling their tale to a deaf ass. For what voices have ever prevailed to drown the din with which our theatres resound? One might think it was the roaring of the Garganian forest or of the Tuscan Sea: amid such clamour is the entertainment viewed, the works of art, and the foreign finery, and when, overlaid with this, the actor steps upon the stage, the right hand clashes with the left. “Has he yet said anything?” Not a word. “Then what takes them so?” ‘T
is the woollen robe that vies with the violet in its Tarentine dye.
66. See Poul Martin Møller, En Danske Students Eventyr, Efterladte Skrifter, I-III (Copenhagen: 1839-43; ASKB 1574-76), III, p. 42.
67. See Exodus 25:20-21.
68. See Isaiah 22:13; I Corinthians 15:32.
69. See Horace, “The Poet’s Prayer,” 17-20, Odes, I, 31; Opera, p. 76; Loeb, p. 85: “Grant me, O Latona’s son, to be content with what I have, and, sound of body and of mind, to pass an old age lacking neither honour nor the lyre!”
70. See Job 29:18. The reference is probably also to King Frederik III, who, when advised to flee when Copenhagen was about to be besieged by the Swedes on August 8, 1658, replied, “I shall die in my nest.”
71. Othello, III, 3, 166-67, Kierkegaard’s Danish version of the Schlegel-Tieck German translation. Shakspeare’s dramatische Werke, I-XII, tr. August Wilhelm v. Schlegel and Ludwig Tieck (Berlin: 1839-40; ASKB 1883-88), XII, p. 63; cf. William Shakspeare’s Tragiske Værker, I-IX, tr. Peter Foersom and Peter Frederik Wulff (Copenhagen. 1807-25; ASKB 1889-96), VII, p. 97; W. Shakspeare’s dramatische Werke, I-VIII, tr. Ernst Ortlepp (Stuttgart. 1838-40; ASKB 1874-81), V, p. 76; The Complete Works of Shakespeare, ed. George Lyman Kittredge (Boston: Ginn, 1936), p. 1263 (Iago speaking): “the greeney’d monster, which doth mock / The meat it feeds on.”
72. In Norse mythology, Valhalla was the abode of slain heroes, who were carried into immortality by the Valkyries.
73. With reference to the remainder of the sentence, see Supplement, p. 564 (Pap. VI B 190:11).
74. See Luke 4:4.
75. The only desire of the Roman people, according to Juvenal, Satires, X, 80-81; D. Junii Juuenalis Satirae, tr. F. G. Findeisen (Berlin, Leipzig: 1777; ASKB 1249), p. 37’4; Juvenal and Persius, tr. G. G. Ramsay (Loeb, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979), p. 199: “Bread and Games!” See Either/Or, I, p. 286, KW III (SV I 258).
76. See Hamann, “Hirtenbriefe,” 5, Schriften, II, pp. 424-25. See also JP I 265 (Pap. II A 12).
77. Part of Strøget, now the main pedestrian street in Copenhagen.