Aesthetic Language Transformed

In an aside in On Authority and Revelation Søren Kierkegaard makes it clear that he avoids writing in verse because it is artificial, is too heavy with rhythm and rhyme for his purposes. He says he wants “to produce a lyrical effect in prose better than it can be done in verse.” I present a collection of his prose set in free verse form in order to emphasize its rare power and beauty. From the study of this “lyrical prose” from various of Kierkegaard's aesthetic works several important conclusions are drawn. First, Kierkegaard's use of language in these aesthetic writings is similar to that of the images, language, and style of the German Romantics, with which he was very familiar. Secondly, we see that these aesthetic writings, or more correctly, the themes growing out of them, are a very important part of Kierkegaard's dialectic of communication. Thirdly, and most important, we observe the relationship of these key themes of Kierkegaard's “poetry” to the more mature themes developed in his philosophical and religious works, showing that these writings are all cut from the same cloth. In his “poems” Kierkegaard takes the emphasis on inwardness found in Socrates, Holderlin, Kant, and the German Romantics and unites it with Hegel's powerful theme of the dialectic (in content it is actually not the Hegelian dialectic but a Kierkegaardian-Socratic dialectic). The resulting combination bursts forth as dynamic poetic prose emphasizing the sweeping power of the world dialectic, while keeping the emphasis on “the individual” through the ultimacy of inwardness. Kierkegaard's imagery moves constantly inward from the “irony of nature” of Either/Or, with images of wind, night, man-child, and Don Juan, to the more personal images of the theatre and thunderstorm of Repetition, and finally into the scarcely veiled concepts of inwardness and pain of Stages on Life' Way, his “story of suffering.” Kierkegaard is truly a poet, turning his pain into “ravishing music.”

Aesthetics · Art · Aside · Beauty · Dialectic · Epistemology · German · Hegelianism · Linguistics · Literature · Poetry · Revelation · SOCRATES · Theme (computing) · Kierkegaardian Philosophy and Influence · Philosophy