Kierkegaard
is a favorite of mine. He shows that it is possible to overdose on truth of a
certain kind, and keep it altogether just the same. “Altogether,” to be sure, may
not be a fitting word for S. K. He paid dearly for his spiritual and
intellectual obsessions. At least he didn’t go the way of Nietzsche, someone
else who was magnificently obsessed with the question of truth.
Here
is Kierkegaard on Job:
If I had not Job! It is impossible to
describe and to nuancer what significance he has for me, and how
manifold his significance is. I do not read him as one reads another book with
the eye, but I read this book as it were with my heart, with the eye of the
heart I read it, understanding as in a state of clairvoyance every
particular passage in the most various ways. As the child puts his school-book
under the pillow to make sure that he shall not have forgotten his lesson when
he wakes up in the morning, so do I take the book with me to bed at night.
Every word of his is food and gladness to my ailing soul. Now one word rouses
me from my lethargy, so that I awaken to new disquietude; now it quiets the
fruitless fury within me and puts an end to the horrible feeling of mute nausea
produced by passion. You surely have read Job? Read him, read him over and over
again.
(Kierkegaard, Repetition)
The quote is lifted from a post by Dave Beldman, a young scholar with excellent instincts. I hope he begins to blog more often. It is unpleasant, however, that Dave does not source his quote. My go-to Kierkegaard scholar, Donald Fox, informs me that it is excerpted from Repetition: An Essay in Experimental Psychology (trans. with introduction and notes by Walter Lowrie; New York: Harper & Row, 1964, c1941) 109. For the same text in a more recent translation, see Repetition (ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong; Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983) 204.
Appeal to fellow bloggers: sourcing of quoted materials is a must.
A number of Kierkegaard’s books are available online, but Repetition isn’t one of them.
Comments