REVIEW ARTICLE

Man and World 16:145-155 (1983) �9 Martinus Ni]hoff Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands

SOME REFLECTIONS ON TWO AGES *

BARBARA ANDERSON

In the Journal entries of February, 1846, Kierkegaard tells us that he intends to renounce being an author in favor of becoming a pastor; and that whatever inward drive to write he cannot still, will be at least distilled in "reviews" of the books of others (SKJP 5877). 1 Two Ages, the little review, a reflection of as well as a reflec- tion upon Thomasine Gyllembourg's novel of the same name, is Kierkegaard's first effort at such a distillation - and immediately one is set to wondering. Why, at this critical juncture in his life, does he choose to write about this particular book and this particular author? Why, at the very time when he is struggling to get beyond the agonies of his own authorship to the simple life of a pastor in some obscure Danish village, does he choose to address the plight of the exceptional individual in a passionless age - particularly as it is the theme in the work of an author who, quite unlike himself, and unbecoming to his conception of the exceptional in- dividual, enjoyed extraordinary popularity among the Danish people?

Perhaps he was attracted by the duality explicit in the title and evident in the content of the novel Two Ages. Certainly that would provoke the interest of as polemical a thinker as Kierkegaard; for on its two pegs he could hang his own ex- tensive wardrobe of contradictions and dualities. The "little review" does in fact reflect and reflect upon these polarities. Yet Kierkegaard was not interested in tour de force for its own sake. Rather here, as throughout his authorship, he used it as part of an elaborately structured form of indirect communication. In the case of this review, the structure was designed to accomplish the task set for the excep- tional individual: the task of reintroducing Passion into the modern world. Though her method differs from his, this, too, is the task Kierkegaard discerns in Gyllem- bourg's novels. This moves him to write his "little review;" for he, too, claims to stand in the magic circle of exceptional individuals. His nature compels him to

Soren Kierkegaard, Two Ages (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1978), xii, 187 pp. bibliography p. 177. Out of print. Translation by Howard and Edna Hong of Soren Kierkegaard, En Literair Anmeldelse (Kjobenhavn: Reitzel, 1946), a review of Thomasine C. GyUembourg-Ehrensvard, To tidsaldre (Kjobenhavn: Reitzel, 1845).

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undertake the task of re-introducing Passion into the age in which he lived, and in 1846 he had decided that the way to this achievement lay in the parsonage rather than in the study. The writing of Two Ages, A Literary Review, amounts to a reversal of that decision. It is as fully a development of his exceptional authorship, as fully a distinction and choice between alternative modes of being an author, as it is of the opposition of the historical or categorial ages which he explicitly ad- dresses in the work.

No surprises here for those familiar with Kierkegaard. The Master of Irony has taught us to expect that the smile of a little panegyric may be defined by the ra- zor's edge of a fundamental critique. The review is at once a view of Gyllembourg's work as an author, and an overview which advances, indeed "leaps" dialectically beyond her to the point of view for Kierkegaard's own work as an author. Ar- riving at this point, Kierkegaard discovers that it would be quite impossible for him to become a country parson, that his authorship is made absolutely necessary by his task, which is to re4ntroduce Passion into the modern world.

While Kierkegaard's Two Ages is a re-view, the novel, Two Ages is a viewing. Through the language of art, this novel, like most novels, pictures a world, projects it on an imaginary screen, there to be viewed by the reader. Fascinating as life is for most people when viewed through art, it is, for Kierkegaard, of less consequence than the act of viewing itself. He is less impressed with Gyllembourg's portrait of human nature and conduct than he is with her skill in creating a path into the actual world. The way she leads the reader toward actuality is of greater signifi- cance than her depiction of the content of life. Kierkegaard's evident admiration of her as an author lies in her "faithfulness to herself" (TA 13), in her preoccupa- tion with saying one thing (TA 14); her appeal lies not in her artistry in imitating the world, but rather in the fact that she is not reconciled to actuality because her work presents actuality as the way out of the pain of actuality. Her novels suggest that novels are not the ways out of the actual problems novels depict; and it is this suggestion about the how of the way out which her novels repeat. Her art tran- scends the merely aesthetic because it creatively carves that opening through which a possible actuality can be glimpsed in the heart of the aesthetic portrayal of it. Gyllembourg's art expresses as immediate passion a love of actuality, but only as it appears in art.

In the modern age of Reflection, the task of the artist who intends to reintro- duce Passion into the world must be to represent the immediate Passion of art as a love of actuality, so to keep Passion burning as a bright alternative to the pale lure of Reflection which beckons us out of the inevitable, immediate pain of actuality, to dwell in the painless but vaporous realm of illusion and abstraction. But if art is to succeed in its competition with Reflection, it must repeatedly thrust us into the actualities of the world it portrays; it must lead us repeatedly beyond the aesthetic picture of actuality. Gyllembourg leads with great skill, but she leads only up to an illusory threshold, and her success is, at best, ironic.

Impartiality: in an author, it is the exclusion of his "person" from his work. If an author is impartial, can he enter into a personal relation with the reader? Can an

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author like Gyllembourg reintroduce Passion into an age of Reflection by excluding her "person"? If she cannot, the apparent heroism implicit in the sacrifice of the "person" is eclipsed by the contradiction which it introduces, for the subjective Passion of the author may be absolutely essential to bringing Passion back into the world. The contradiction which her authorship creates is just the contradiction which educates Kierkegaard in his authorship. Her presentation of the two ages is clear, direct, and impartial. It constitutes the immediate stage in the dialectic which leads to the active embrace of negativity-positivity - the hallmark of the subjec- tive thinker. Because Gyllembourg chose to be impartial, as she explicitly indicates in the Preface to Two Ages, because she is deliberately absent, anonymous, the two ages are presented as mere alternatives. If the artist fails to use subjective Passion as a way of evoking what lies beyond art, the contradiction limned by the work of art can only dissolve into another one of the illusions of art. The two ages are distinguished in the novel, Two Ages, with respect to the place of Passion in them, not by the subjective Passion of the author. Their difference is viewed, reflected upon, but not confronted by the author, and so appears as a mere image, a reflec- tion, to the reader. Kierkegaard's overt admiration for Gyllembourg thus seems odd indeed, for he so clearly chooses Passion over the age of Reflection. Is the admira- tion a device of his authorship? Are we to take it in the spirit of irony?

Gyllembourg set herself the task of stating the contradiction between the two ages by portraying Passion in an age of Passion, and setting this portrayal in rela- tion to the portrayal of its absence in an age of Reflection, as the possibility that Passion is the way out of the pain of its absence there. But as portrayed in art, i.e., in immediacy, the Passion loses its claim to save, to the greater attraction and scope of illusion. Who, in an age of Reflection, would be moved to decisive choice as a consequence of reading a novel? When Passion (which is subjectivity) is portrayed by art as illusion and gives itself over to interpretation as an "idea," the result is despair. Despair in the artist is the impartial withdrawal from his work. Despair is the objectivity of the work. Why does the creative effort in art, undertaken in the name of Passion, turn into a tool of Reflection? It happens, in part, because of the aesthetic mode by which Passion is portrayed - namely, as a single reflec- tion of actuality, and partly because of the withdrawal and consequent anonymity of the author which results from the aesthetic approach to her task.

II

The plight of the exceptional individual in a passionless age is epitomized in the work and in the person of the artist who, as Gyllembourg, honestly seeks to re- introduce Passion into the world. The present age of Reflection denies the in- dividual, however exceptional he may be, the possibility of accomplishing his task straightway, by the craft of artistic portrayal. The infinite elasticity of Re- flection engulfs even the most radical efforts of direct, singly reflected portrayal to overthrow it. Passion is more vulnerable to the pull of Reflection than Reflec-

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tion is to the pressure of Passion. Passion becomes an idea more readily than Re- flection becomes a feeling. It seems far easier to be Passionate abstractly, as when playing a role, than it does to Think with decisive feeling, as in committed medita- tion. While Passion separates in the absoluteness of concretion, Reflection incor- porates in the relativity of abstraction. All that lies outside of Reflection comes within it when named or brought in any intentional way before consciousness. Even the present age, because it is an age of Reflection, is hardly "present;" Reflec- tion has a stake in keeping the "here-and-now" continually at bay, lest immediacy catch up. Though the supremacy of the life of Passion may be the most com- pelling theme for an artist, it takes far more than craftsmanship (though excellence in craft it surely does take) to make that supremacy real in Passion's rather than in Reflection's terms. The critical problem for an artist like Gyllembourg is how to present Passion, to reintroduce it, and to "be passionate at the same time, i.e., to keep from falling victim to the demands of Reflection which are insidious because integral to the act of writing fiction. Nonetheless, GyUembourg taught Kierkegaard through her writing, and he teaches us through his, that the act of reintroducing Passion into the world is not as simple as portraying it, as the handing over of a gift which leaves the giver empty-handed - for the gift of Passion, especially in a Reflective Age, is nothing at all unless the giver is his Passion. The question re- mains: how to preserve Passion in the very language which destroys it, how to be Passionate in the act of giving it away?

III

Is there a way of breaking the bonds of Reflection, shattering the mirrors of the illusions art creates, to evoke Absolute Passion? Surely, the identification with the immediacy of the illusion of Passion (in art) or with the abstract clarity of the idea of Passion (in philosophy) will not evoke Absolute Passion. Just because her cul- tural acuteness and literary skills have been acquired through her anonymous self- sacrifice to a}t, Gyllembourg is unable to stand both in the illusion of the portrayal of actuality she develops in her art, and in the actuality to which she wants her art to point. Her absence makes her pointing but an element in her art, and so but an illusion. Despite the fact that she intends to point to the possibility of Absolute Passion, GyUembourg, because of her anonymity, manages only to present Passion as a simple, a single reflection. As readers, we view Passion in the portrayal of each of the two ages. They appear as the immediate illusions of art. But the actuality of Absolute Passion can never emerge in opposition to illusion through artistic portrayal. Portrayed actuality is but illusion; the pointing turns back into itself. Held in illusion, the ages are merely separate; each is, finally, only an idea, and to- gether they are only the idea of contradiction. Opposites related to each other in Passion are not held together as a gentleman's agreement to disagree - which is, of course, only the idea of disagreement. In Passion, the opposites are related by their opposition, not by their all-too-easily portrayed, and so illusory, similarity.

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In Gyllembourg's fiction, the relation between the two ages is no relation at all, but a mirage, a mirroring, a reflection. At best, Gyllembourg dimly projects the possibility of such a relation. Her anonymity cuts the possibility off. It is a euphe- mism for the despair which results from Reflection's metamorphosis of the contra- diction. The disappearance of the author is the fleeting image of Reflection's in- evitable indecision.

IV

Obviously, the exceptional individual whose task it is to reintroduce Passion in- to a Reflective age cannot avoid Reflection. Indeed, Kierkegaard himself, in part because a child of his age, and in part deliberately, does make the significance of Passion a Reflective issue. While Gyllembourg is an artificier, Kierkegaard is a thinker. His is not an obvious work of Passion. It is but a little review, as far from immediate Passion as any abstract thinking.

Gyllembourg portrays actual passions in her view of life and in her protagonists. Kierkegaard limns such views in his own Two Ages with the sharp crayon of thought; setting up what appears to be the very "dialectical tour de force" (TA 77), he ac- cuses a passionless age of substituting for Passion. Then why, though Passion is the theme of Gyllembourg's authorship, do her novels have such a markedly Reflec- tive character (which Kierkegaard points to in the second, more theoretical section of his review)? Why does the novel, Two Ages, lack the intensity of Passion which Kierkegaard's review of it so strongly has? His review is twice removed in double- reflection from the actuality singly-reflected in Gyllembourg's portrayal of the two ages, and it is this double-reflection of Passion which we, as readers, experience. If there is a way to reintroduce Passion into a Reflective age, to articulate its supre- macy without losing it to its reflective mode of articulation - in the case of art, by reflecting actuality in illusion - then the mode of articulation must itself carry Passion. The way of reflecting actuality must be made to carry Passion, but not so that the Passion disappears into illusion and thus becomes a form of Reflection, but so that it is repeatedly held and thrust forward by the act of reflecting.

In any work of Reflection (in art or philosophy) which can reintroduce Passion into a Reflective age, there must be Passion in Reflection, Reflection in Passion. This is the contradiction, the paradox Kierkegaard discerns in Gyllembourg's writing, the very paradox central to his own writings and authorship. But here the similarity ends; for Kierkegaard is not merely an artist who, like Gyilembourg, has withdrawn into anonymity and impartially mirrored the two ages in reflective language, thereby portraying the contradiction as mere illusion. He writes pseu- donymously. He takes his stand in his works, differently in each and every one of them, and so never as an impartial observer. Thus, his writing does not dissolve into portrayal; it bears the contradiction in such a way as to make it leap off the page into the heart of the reader, there to become the absolute urgency of neces- sary choice. The tension ingredient to the contradiction is felt pulling toward singularity. It evokes the subjective Passion which alone can be that singularity.

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V

Kierkegaard's review re-introduces contradiction into GyUembourg's Two Ages. He is a master of the art of breaking apart wholes, mediations and compromises, and remaking them into contradictions which pull toward singularity. If Gyllem- bourg shows the two ages separately reflected in the illusion of fiction, Kierke- gaard shows the illusion-of-fiction itself as reflecting the two ages it depicts. The three sections of the review are, for one thing, an interpretive repetition of (1) the immediate passion of art attained in illusion, (2) the singly reflected Passion of thought attained in the interpretation of illusion, and (3) a doubly-reflected Passion which does not mediate, but leaps ahead into Absolute Passion, attained in the inwardness of an authorship where one little review is another in the sequence of appearance and disappearance which constitutes a pseudonymous authorship. His review becomes a double-reflection, reformulating the novel so that it becomes another point in his authorship from which he can leap into Absolute Passion - a Passion which does not, like the aesthetic, disappear in immediacy, nor like the Passion of thought disappear in abstraction, but which, as Absolute, reverberates around art and thought. Kierkegaard's own authorship must develop even beyond the level of that reviewing which re-formulates the artistic portrayal of contradic- tion so that the Absolute Passion of Contradiction is evoked rather than projected through the veil of possibility. The first two sections of his review, for all their irony and involution, for all their suggestiveness and indirection, are still but the workings of Reflection, and thus wavering images of the subjective Passion of Contradiction; at best, distorted signs pointing to what they are not. Kierkegaard must not only re-view Two Ages, he must use the review as a step beyond his extant works, a free step forward into the doubly reflected immediacy of faith which is the Absolute Paradox held in Absolute Passion. But to do this, he, the author, must do the stepping. Only as present in this review as one of a sequence of appearances and disappearances which builds a pseudonymous authorship, can indirect commu- nication which works to evoke the subjectivity which holds the Absolute Paradox in the Passionate singularity of the act of faith - only then, can this communica- tion take place. The third section of Kierkegaard's review must open out into the fullness, the lacework of his authorship as a whole. It must bring to life the subjec- tive Passion of the author filling the hole carved by the possibility of Gyllem- bourg's art portrays, and it must do so by evoking the subjective Passion of the reader which transforms what for him was possibility into actuality. Kierkegaard takes GyUembourg's, Either . . . Or and reflects it into the singular Either/Or: a contradiction carrying urgency, the urgency and tension felt first in the author's, then in the reader's Passion as the incarnation of the Contradiction.

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VI

In the modern age of Reflection, the exceptional individual confronts the contra- diction of Passion/Reflection, of actuality/illusion. He must respond by creating a work which is the decisive leap contradiction demands. The work is neither an act of Passion nor an act of Reflection. It is somewhere not in between, but on both sides simultaneously. How can this be? But that is a question asked by Reflection which wants coherent explanations for everything. Absolute Passion is how this can be; for in Absolute Passion contradiction is held as the absolute opposition which it is. The grounding of contradiction in Passion discloses the urgency of the contradiction as a felt command to the author and his reader. If it is to succeed in its task of reintroducing Passion, Kierkegaard's "art" cannot be Passion; but neither can it be merely Reflection, however refined. If his task arises in an age of Reflec- tion, his work must have the appearance of Reflection and the deeper actuality of Passion, instead of the appearance of Passion and the deeper reality of Reflection which characterizes art. The work must appear as a kind of mediation which is, as actual, a wedge. It must be a duality which carries the contradiction which the author inwardly is.

In an age of Reflection it will not be enough for the exceptional individual to re-introduce Passion into the world by openly offering himself as an example of it. In a passionless age, the men of Reflection feel empty. Their Passion is sheer pos- sibility, and possibility lies beyond them. Passion, which is inwardness, is thus what is other than they, and they Envy anyone who is actually passionate. Their Envy separates them from Passion, but not absolutely. Through Envy, the man of Reflec- tion sees the man of Passion as what he might be, if only he had the means: the money, the power, the luck. By Envy, the man of Reflection "possesses" the man of Passion as a means to fill his emptiness; but this possession depends entirely on the means he uses to overcome the distance between himself and the man of Pas- sion. The pervasiveness of Envy in a passionless age reduces Passion to the distance of the means required of the mass man if he is to recognize and approach Passion.

Nor is Admiration any help, even on the rare occasions when it is possible. For admiration, the "secret ingredient" in Envy, cuts off the possibility of attaining the exceptional individual's Passion by absolute separation: Envy says of the passionate man: He is what I might be, if only . . . . Admiration says: He is what I can never be. Admiration posits the kind of absolute distance which Absolute Passion alone could bridge, and Passion is precisely the "means" Reflective men lack. They admire only possibility which drives them to emulsify all absolute distinctions, transform con- tradiction into ambiguity, and hear the voice of inwardness as an acoustic illusion, as the mere sound of naming Passion.

" . . . Not even a very gifted person," says Kierkegaard, "is able to liberate him- self from Reflection." Courage to do something excellent that the crowd also does is usually done with a passion to avoid the judgment of the crowd. Certainty that each individual made an individual decision, would require that men "agree on something in which it is a contradiction to be more than one" (TA 86). And is it

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not a contradiction for men to agree to act in faith - Kierkegaard's name for this "something?" But naming faith fails to be more than an illusion unless the naming is part of an Absolute Language which bespeaks the Absolute Passion of the Contra- diction held in the heart, the Subjectivity. All the many tongues of Reflective men cannot bespeak the demand of contradiction for Passion; they can only utter this demand as a name and see its fulfillment as possibility. They must somehow be brought to hear their utterance as an inverted "acoustic illusion." They must be made to hear the abstract names of Reflection as ironic echoes of the Passion which grounds Reflection. This is what Kierkegaard means by "indirect communication," and why he says that "Reflection itself is not the evil" (TA 96). What is pernicious is the loss of Contradiction, and the Passion it demands. Just as it is through God's Grace alone that the conditions for salvation are re-promised to the sinner, so the reintroduction of Passion into a Reflective age can only be accomplished by the exceptional individual, communicating indirectly and offering himself as the con- tradiction which is the Passionate ground of his speech. In an age which knows and wants to know nothing of the singular Either/Or, an age which would separate con- tradiction every which way, that individual must appear who himself holds the con- tradiction together in the singularity of his own inward Passion, who is himself the incarnation of the Either/Or.

VII

Christ was the Contradiction. Everything he said and did seemed ambiguous be- cause his works had the appearance of Reflection; everything he said and did com- pelled choice, because what he did was the working of Passion. But in the modern age of Reflection, the task of the exceptional individual is a reinterpretation of the imitation of Christ. In relation to his fellows, the man of Passion can neither be an authority on Passion nor an Impartial Observer. As an exemplification of Contra- diction, he is the singularity needed to hold together its mutually exclusive poles. He can neither be Envied nor Admired, for to be so would set him at such a dis- tance from men that he would loom as a man whom others could not be. "The bleakness of antiquity," says Kierkegaard, "was that the man of distinction was what others could not be. The inspiring aspect [of the modern era] will be that the person who has gained himself religiously is only what all can be" (TA 92). Thus, in the modern world, the distinction between the exceptional man and the mass man must remain invisible. He must seem to be just like everyone else.

If the subjective Passion which holds the Contradiction also renders the subject unrecognizable, how can he present himself as bearing the Contradiction into the world? To suffer recognition negatively like the heroes of antiquity would be of some ironic comfort - for exile, execution and crucifixion are at least clear testi- mony to the urgency with which Passion must be confronted, an urgency which, though negative, is at least passionate. " . . . in antiquity the host of individuals existed . . . in order to determine how much the excellent individual was worth"

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(TA 84-85). The basis for the modern hero's ecstasy, however, is also the source of his agony: that he might as well be the mass man, educated by the Public to re- flect it. But. But there is a little qualification. If the modern hero is, as Kierkegaard insists, a knight of faith, we must add that he is just like everyone else . . . but before God.

Does this qualification help to present him to his illusory counterpart: the mass man? If the man of religious Passion fails to provoke contempt or villification; if his age refuses him Admiration and Evy; if they humor him, ignore him, reduce him to a stereotype or what is worse yet - if they make him popular, how is he to be distinguished from the propagandist, the standard-bearer for the mass man? His task and message are the same: he speaks emphatically to all of what everyone can be. But his task and his message are also absolutely different: he speaks emphati- cally to all of what everyone can be. In the modern world, the exceptional in- dividual can bespeak Contradiction only indirectly. Should he speak from a plat- form separated from the crowd, he will only be drawn into it by the distorted arms of the Levelers. But should he fail to step up to that platform, should he take his place in the crowd, he will surely be destroyed by Leveling. The stepping up must also be a stepping down. While he works to reintroduce himself as the example of Passion which contradiction demands, the work of reintroduction must swirl back over him and protect him.

Anonymity, absence, is as inadequate as ostracism to the task set by an age of Reflection. And Kierkegaard rightly criticizes Gyllembourg's use of the Preface to her novel in which she removes herself absolutely from her writing. Having with- drawn, she becomes, at best, the possible subjectivity which could exemplify the Passion demanded by Contradiction. At best, she moves to the torn edge of the aesthetic-religious. But this best (though it is the basis for her popularity) is not good enough. The masses accorded her the false Admiration of fame - for as an absent author and absolutely distant, she presented no threat to their emptiness; and her work, as a portrayal of illusion, made no demands. It might be but a day's diversion, another book on the coffee table.

VIII

The Public "is an abstraction," a "phantom" (TA 90) which generates and main- tains Leveling. When the Public becomes everything, however, the individual is assigned to himself. "He will be religiously educated - or be destroyed" (TA 93). Gyllembourg was destroyed in some sense, because educated by the Public to be but its reflection. Her anonymity is the harbinger of that destruction, and her popularity seals the books. Had she rejected the absoluteness of the illusion in favor of living in her works in the subjectivity of actual Passion, she may well have been ignored by the Public and re-assigned to herself. Instead, she and her work are absorbed in the glow of illusion, and disappear, finally, into darkness. The Public makes her skfllfuUy articulated voice their own, makes her polished novels their

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Envious dreams. Her anonymity permits them to do this, to make of her what they will. Her self-exile is not a preface to self-assignment and the choice of Passion. It simply permits the Public to view her as "the author" of whatever they Level her novels off to be. For the Public, her novels will depict illusion, possibility; she will be the author of possibility, a possibility herself.

Kierkegaard, on the other hand, chooses a different form of self-exile - not anonymity, but pseudonymity. He chooses an absence which intensifies his pres- ence, a presence which opens into his absence. His pseudonymity is a Passionate act which, as presence, is the subjectivity which can hold the singularity of the Contra- diction, and which, as absence, in light of the Absolute Authority of God before Whom all are equally exceptional, allows the Passion to save. Self-assignment must become the Passionate act of a self-exile which is an inward-becoming-outward and an outward-becomingqnward. This is the edifying process of becoming pseudony- mous, the nature of the exceptional individual's "education" by the Public, and the nature of the "education" he gives to the Public. Outwardly, this becoming inward looks the same as the equalizing which is Leveling; but, in actuality, it is a doubly: reflected equality - of all men before God. Because the movement into inwardness is, at the same time, an outgoing, it seems to belong to the realm of Public acts; but inwardly, this becoming outward is a doubly-reflected Public act - in actuality, a religious act of the self-exiled who chooses himself into the Divine Public, or, as Augustine said, The City of God.

Being a member of the Divine Community does not, for Kierkegaard, involve a simple renunciation of the present age, however pernicious it may be. Being reli- gious is a task, a becoming which is a life-long education, different for each man in his own Time. The modem man's task is different from that of the medieval man or the Greek, and each man's task is different from that of every other. In each case, the task begins in a present age. The exceptional man begins his Eternal life in his own age; and this beginning must be rooted to the special features of his age. To- day, neither heroic death nor exile is the way to salvation. History changes our natures, the nature of the world and thus the task of the exceptional man. But if the particular content of the task has changed, its ultimate content remains the same: learning how to be assigned to oneself before God. In learning how to be assigned to God, the exceptional individual educates others. But the teaching is by example, in inwardness and so indirect. Both Gyllembourg and Kierkegaard were educated by the Public which taught them how to be authors; and the Public was educated by their respective authorships. This is one of the bases for the kin- ship Kierkegaard feels toward Gyllembourg; but his review also establishes his absolute difference from her.

Gyllembourg was educated by the Public, but too well. She learned that she must be assigned to herself, but only as a possible self, as the illusion which her art glorifies. Her exile was a single negation which disappeared in the possibility her artistry so skillfully portrayed. As an author, she leaves no trace of herself. Kierkegaard, on the other hand, undergoes a doubly-reflected education. He is educated by the Public into self-assignment, and re-educated by Gyllembourg into

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the Passionate self-exile which is pseudonymity. The review is thus as it should be, a tribute to her, although not a simple one. In response to her, Kierkegaard re-

covered once again, his own exceptional authorship, but as a consequence of recognizing how her authorship had been Leveled and its true significance lost.

It was quite impossible for Kierkegaard to retire from his work as an author to serve as the pastor in some obscure country church. He may have thought this was possible as he penned the entries in his journal in February, 1846. But the pressures of his task as an exceptional man in the modern age were not to be ignored; they became instead incarnate in the work of Thomasine Gyllembourg, an author who continued for the Public, his special education. His response to her teaching is a "tittle review," which, for all its slightness, is a paradigm. Much like the fellow who can refer a walk in the Deer Park to God's Infinite Grace, we, as readers, can refer this lit t le review to the repeated beginning of what Kierkegaard believed to be his Eternal Vocation.

NOTES

1. References are to sources as follows: SKJP 5877: Soren Kierkegaard Journals and Papers, edited and translated by H.V. Hong and E.H. Hong (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1967-78) VII volumes. Numerical reference is to item number. TA 13, etc.: Soren Kierkegaard, Two Ages (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978). 187 pp. Numerical references are to page number.