garff. johannes de silentio. rethorician of silence
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Johannes
de
silentio: Rhetorician
of
Silence
By JOAKIM
GARFF
Translated
by
R U C E
H .
K I R M M S E
»If there were no
eternal
consciousness in a person; if the basis for everything were
only a wild fermenting power, which struggles with its own obscure passions to pro-
duce everything great and small; if, hidden beneath everything, there is a bottomless
and
inexhaustible emptiness - then what would
life
be but despair? [... I]f the human
race passes through the world like a ship through the sea, like the wind across the de-
sert, an unthinking and fruitless business; if an eternally insatiable oblivion waits for
its
prey,
and
there were
no
power strong enough
to
wrest
it
free
- how
empty
and de-
void of consolation life would be But precisely for that reason it is not like this, and
just as God created man and woman, he also created the hero and the poet
f.. .] .«
1
The
name
of the
poet
is
Johannes
de
silentio.
T he
name
of the
hero
is
Abraham. And the words cited above are the former's panegyric over
the
latter.
But the
panegyric
is not
only
a
panegyric. There
is
also
a
logical implication,
or at
least something that resembles
a
logical
im -
plication, namely that after the »if there were not«, which introduces
the phrases, there is the prospect of a »then«. This logical conse-
quence is omitted, however. A nd for this very reason, the
final
»therefore«
has even more
force,
and it is worth noting that this
»therefore«
is not
directly connected with
the
»eternal consciousness«
with
which the implication began, b ut rather with the hero and the
poet.
The
meaning-vacuum
which
characterizes these obscure pas-
sions
is
apparently
filled by
these
tw o figures, or
rather
by
what they
have in common with Adam and Eve, by the epic, the story.
Fear
a nd
Trembling
is a
story
of
this sort,
a
story about
the
story
in
Genesis 22, which tells of the Abraham who travelled to Mount
1
S0ren Kierkegaard
Samlede
vcerker [The Collected Works
of
S0ren Kierkegaard],
A.B. Drachmann, J.L. Heiberg,
and
H.O. Lange eds.,
3d ed.
P.P. Rohde ed.,
20
vols.,
Copenhagen 1962-1964
[1901-1906],
vol. 5, p. 17 (hereafter in the format
»SV3
5,
17«).
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Johannes de silentio: Rhetorician of Silence 187
Moriah to sacrifice his son Isaac. But at the same time, the story
forms the basis for a series of philosophical reflections, inasmuch as
Johannes
de
silentio proclaims that
he will
employ
the »form of
problemata
to
demonstrate
the
dialectic
in the
story
in
order
to
[show] what
an
enormous paradox faith
is [,..].«
2
Something similar will happen in what follows, only in reverse or-
der. It seems to me that the elements which Johannes de silentio ex-
tracts from
the
Abraham story
are
less pregnant with paradox than
the
story
he
tells about that story.
In other
words,
it is in the
area
of
narrative and rhetoric, rather than epistemology, that the problems
truly present themselves
in
earnest.
The
Individual th e Universal and the Paradox of Faith
Johannes
de silentio examines his problemata in three sections, all of
which can be read more or less explicitly as replies that are destruc-
tive
of the
position adopted
by
Judge William. This destruction
is not
aimed at the individual components of the judge's conciliating at-
tempt to establish equilibrium between the aesthetic and the ethical,
but
rather
at the
very desire
for
conciliation. Johannes
de
silentio
is
pretty close to being the very quintessence of irreconcilability. He in-
sists upon the distance between a human value orientation and the
divine revaluation of all values. Therefore he consistently denounces
the
human, all-too-human will toward
the
center,
and
both
the
con-
ciliatory William and the mediating Hegel come to
feel
his lash.
They would certainly
be
able
to
approve
of his
introductory
re-
marks, however. Johannes
de
silentio defines
the
relation between
the
universal and the individual as a relation in which the individual is
subordinated to the
universal, which
is the
historically specific
and
factual form in which the fundamental opposition between »good and
evil« makes
its
appearance. Johannes
de
silentio explains that »the
universal reposes immanently
in
itself,
has
nothing outside itself that
is
its own telos and is itself the telos for
everything outside itself
[,..].«
3
Therefore,
in relation to
this universal
it is the
individual's
»ethical task continually
to
express himself
in
[this universal],
to an-
nul his individuality in order to become the universal.«
4
On this point
2
SV3
5,50.
3
SV35.51.
4
Ibid.
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188 Joakim G arff
William, Hegel, and Johannes de silentio are in more or less complete
agreement.
But
that
is as far as their agreement extends, however, because
from
his
premises Johannes
de
silentio concludes that
if the
individ-
ual
is
subordinated
to the
universal, then
the
universal becomes
in
principle
identical with
the
final goal, which means that
the
universal
is
of »the same nature as a
person's
eternal salvation.«
5
A nd con-
versely,
this also means that if a person is to relate himself to eternal
salvation
this must take place
by
virtue
of faith as the
»paradox that
the individual is higher than th e universal [... and thus] stands in an
absolute relation
to the
Absolute.«
6
Beyond
good
and
evil,
faith
makes possible
a
suspension
of the
ethical
because
faith
receives
its
motive force
from
something other
than the
historical
period in which it exists. And, addressing himself
more or less directly to William and Hegel, Johannes de silentio
writes: »I t is therefore correct to say that every duty is at root a duty
to
God. Duty becomes duty
by
being referred
to
God,
but in the
duty
itself
I do not
enter into relation
to God
[...].
If in
this connection
I
then
say
that
it is my
duty
to
love God,
I am
really uttering only
a
tautology, inasmuch as >God< is here used in the completely abstract
sense as the divine, i.e., as the universal, i.e., as duty.«
7
Here
Johannes
de silentio does to William what Marx
will
later do
to Hegel - he turns him on his head. The duty which the judge had
defined in terms of the universal (because the universal was by
defi-
nition the ethical) is now shown to be a derived form of duty and as
such relative. God has become something different. He is no longer
the
ultimate guarantor
of the
validity
of
cultural arrangements
but is
almost
the opposite, nothing less than the radical reconfiguration of
the
principles constituting
the
human sphere. This becomes apparent
when
one
observes
the
paradox which springs
from faith and
con-
cerns the realm of communication. While,
from
the point of view of
ethics, everyone
is
obligated
»to
divest himself
of the
categories
of in-
wardness and express himself in the
external«,
8
Johannes de
silentio
maintains that
the
paradox
of faith is
that there exists
an
»inwardness
which
is incommensurable with the external [,..]«.
9
5
Ibid.
6
SV3 5,52.
7
SV3 5,63.
8
SV3 5,64.
9
Ibid.
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Johannes de silentio: Rhetorician of Silence 189
A nd because, from the point of view of ethics, inwardness is obli-
gated to suspend its own incongruity with the universal and submit to
the latter's demand to reveal oneself, this revelation has an eminently
verbal character. Thus,
from the
point
of
view
of
ethics, Abraham
is
obligated
to
tell Sarah, Eliezer,
and
Isaac about what
he is
contem-
plating
doing. But Abraham remains silent, and »he
cannot
speak -
therein lies the distress and the anxiety. For indeed, if I cannot make
myself understood when I speak, then I am not speaking
[...].«
10
Thus
because
of his absolute relation to the Absolute, Abraham is driven
away
from
the
realm
of the
universal
and of
communication,
a
realm
in
which
the
paradoxical duty could
be
formulated
but -
according
to
Johannes de silentio - in which it would be meaningless.
If this silence is paradoxically motivated by something beyond the
realm of communication, then it remains a paradox - or at least a
problem - for every text that wishes to reproduce it: How can one
speak about the silence without breaking it? That is, how can one de-
scribe Abraham without re-inscribing him in the very realm of com-
munication from which he has been ideologically suspended?
The
book's problemata pose these sorts
of
questions
but do not an-
swer them. Let us therefore make a mental
note
of this and pay care-
ful attention to the text.
Johannes
de
silentio:
Rhetorician
of silence
In his preface, Johannes de silentio introduces himself and his book
with
the
pathos
of
distance: »The present author
is by no
means
a
philosopher. H e is, to put it poetically and elegantly, a supplemental
clerk who neither writes the system nor makes
promises
about the
system,
who
neither pledges anything
about the
system
nor
binds
himself to the
system.«
11
If this »supplemental clerk« writes, it is be-
cause for him it is a pure and simple »luxury, which becomes more
pleasing and obvious as
fewer
buy and read what he
writes.«
12
Thus
he is also well aware of the fact that the work he is sending forth into
the
world
will
scarcely attract
any
attention
in an age
when »people
have crossed out passion in order to serve scholarly knowledge.«
13
10
SV 3 5,102; cf. 56.
11
SV3
5,11.
12
Ibid.
13
Ibid.
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190 Joakim Garff
This, however, is not the reason - or at least it is not the only reason
- that he has inscribed silence into his name. Johannes de silentio
owes his name fully as much to the fact that in many respects the
book
has
chosen
as its
theme silence -
the
negative presence
of
lan-
guage
in
silence.
He
writes
not
only
from
silence,
but
also about
si-
lence.
Or
rather, this
is
what
he
wants
to do, but is
unable:
the
silence,
of
course, does not expand along with the text; on the contrary, the
more
the
text expands,
the
less silence there is. Thus
in
order
to
main-
tain
Abraham as the representative of the paradox, whose silence
may
not be
abolished
in the
communicative realm
of the
text, Johan-
nes de
silentio must establish
a
distance between
his own
thought
and the unthinkability of the paradox. A nd he does so with thorough-
ness: »I can make the great trampoline leap whereby I go over into
infinity.
M y back is like a tightrope dancer's, twisted in my childhood
- therefore it is easy for
me.«
14
When, »on the other hand, [I] have to
contemplate Abraham, then it is as if I were destroyed [...]. I strain
every
muscle
in
order
to get a
look,
and at
that very instant
I am
paralyzed.«
15
Despite
the
silence
he has
inscribed
in his
name, Johannes
de
silen-
tio is a
particularly talkative fellow, which itself
of
course reveals
how
inadequately he relates himself to Abraham's silence. If he points out
the distance as much as he does,
16
it is not so much in order to point
out his personal limitations as out of consideration for the task the
book sets out to accomplish and which near the outset is formulated
in terms which almost seem to be an imperative. What the book sets
out to bring about is not »the artistic weaving of fantasy, but the
shiver and shudder of thought.«
17
With this imperative the work proclaims its connection with the
idealist tradition's concept of the sublime as that which intrudes upon
the self-understanding of enlightened humanism and also goes be-
yond
th e merely aesthetic by confronting a person
with
impressions
that break
in
upon
contemplation's
peaceful relation
to
beauty.
The
alien character
of the
sublime
- or the
almost violent
effect
it has
upon the power of imagination -
fills
the subject with fear. And trem-
bling.
14
SV35.35.
15
SV3 5,32.
16
SV3 5,36.45.47 et passim.
17
SV3 5,13.
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Johannes
de silentio: Rhetorician of Silence 191
And yet, as Kant so famously asserted, the danger is not really a
serious one. The sublime eludes every sort of representation, but at
the same time it awakens the notion of a world beyond what man
can
conceive.
In
other words,
fear
of
what
is
alien
is
accompanied
by
an awe of
reason's conciliating capacity
of
distancing itself
from the
chaos that
the
sensible world
can
display quite unexpectedly.
When Johannes de silentio demands »the shiver and shudder of
thought«, he is thinking of the sublime, which has evaded the concili-
ation of reason and which remains something alien and terrifying, a
calamity which resists both
the
social
and
philosophical center,
be-
cause - as we are ceaselessly warned - »Abraham cannot be medi-
ated.«
18
»One cannot weep over Abraham. One approaches him with
a horror
religiosus
as Israel approached Mount Sinai.«
19
This
is
precisely what
we
will
not do,
however, because everyone
knows the outcome of the story and thus also knows that the danger
was
not
really serious:
»We all
know that
it was
only
a
trial.«
20
It is
thus with this reconciling knowledge
and not
with religious terror
that
we
approach Abraham,
and
precisely
in
doing
so we
come
to
for-
get the
fear
and trembling with which Abraham once approached the
mountain. This sort of knowledge is repeatedly
criticized.
21
A nd this
criticism is all the more understandable because, through its own in-
ner logic, this knowledge makes the drama undramatic by permitting
one to
stand
at a due
historical distance
from
which
» to
suck worldly
wisdom out of the paradox.«
22
Although the imperative of the work is anti-aesthetic, inasmuch as
the
shudder
of
thought
is
opposed
to
every form
of
clear representa-
tion, nonetheless the imperative can only be obeyed by means of an
aesthetic praxis which re-establishes the medium of clear representa-
tion. And
thus Johannes
de
silentio also dramatizes
the
journey.
He
stretches
out the
time that
it
took, describing
the
necessary equip-
ment for butchery, so that Abraham on his way to Mount Moriah is
accompanied by writing which invests its energy in producing the
presence or the personal knowledge, the autopsy which forms the ba-
sis for the shudder, the shudder of thought. Every means is used in
order to catch the reader's eye and maintain the terror. This is made
18
SV 3 5,56.
19
SV35.57.
20
SV3
5,23.
21
Cf.
SV35.28.49.59.60.61.
22
SV3 5,36.
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192 Joakim Garff
clear as early as the section entitled »Mood«, which comes immedi-
ately after the
preface
and
which presents
four
variations
on the
story
that both separately
and
together have
the
purpose
of
bringing about
the
terror's
shuddering
return.
23
Thus
it is
scarcely
an
overstatement
to
claim that
the
teleological suspension
of the
ethical corresponds
to
the
aesthetic suspension
of
time.
The
autopsy
is
indeed
the
point,
and
time
is the
threat which
the
text
is to
ward
off - and
which
it at-
tempts to abjure aesthetically, »as if a few millennia were an enor-
mous distance.«
24
Thus
the
text
is
composed
of an
artistic
web of
fantasy, whose tex-
ture is the precondition of the shudder. And yet Johannes de silentio
is
painfully
aware that Abraham evades representation, because
in
the case of Abraham, he confesses, »I cannot think myself into [him];
when
I
have reached
the
high point,
I
fall
down,
fo r
what
is
offered
me is the
paradox.«
25
Therefore, just as one ought to approach Abra-
ham
with religious terror,
so
must
the
text which grasps
after
that
which cannot be grasped be a text that continually betrays its knowl-
edge of the fact that it does not admit of being written, because then
it
wants to be a text about something which itself was not a text but a
paradoxical action.
For
this same reason
the
text
can
only
say
what
it
wants to do, but cannot do it. Johannes de silentio explains: »If I were
to
speak
of
[Abraham], then
I
would
first
sketch
the
pain
of
trial.
To
that end, like
a
leech
I
would suck
all the
anxiety
and
distress
and
torment out of a
father's
suffering, so that I could describe what
Abraham
suffered
throughout it all, yet he believed. I would point
out
that
the
journey lasted three days
and a
good
bit of the
fourth;
yes, these three and a half days would become infinitely longer than
the
couple
of
thousand years that separate
me from Abraham.«
26
A text which wants to retell a story about a journey that took
three days, but which arranges the time of the retelling in reverse
proportion to the time of the story, is not a text but is a demonstra-
tion
of the
misrelation between
the
text itself
and its
object,
so
that
strictly
speaking Johannes
de
silentio ought
to fall
silent
in
impotent
gestures. But he doesn't. He chooses instead to have a series of tex-
tual characters mime
the
story
of
Abraham,
and he
thereby causes
the
event, which
he
himself does
not
understand,
to
fasten
its
shud-
23
Cf. SV3 5,13ff.
24
SV35,33;cf.61.50.
25
SV3 5,32.
26
SV35 5Q.
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Johannes de silentio: Rhetorician of Silence 193
dering grip on
others
- others, be it noted, who do not let the matter
stop
with shuddering but who repeat the story of Abraham in their
own stories.
As a
sort
of
synchronization,
on the one
hand,
of the vi-
sion which the text has produced aesthetically and rhetorically, and
on the other hand, of the demand which its author requires honored
existentially, Johannes
de
silentio
can
write that
at
»the moment
I re-
flect upon it, I call out to
myself:
ja m tua re s agitur [now the matter is
about you].«
27
In
brief,
the
tale
of
Abraham demands repetition,
re-
duplication.
A nd that is what happens in what
follows.
Three
Knights of the Order of Faith
The story of Abraham is not the only one in the book, but is one
among several fantastic stories. And of these there are more than
seven
-
nearer seven times seven,
of
which
the
majority
go
beyond
the fantastic and become terrifying. Thus there is quite an extensive
gallery
of
characters: knights
of
various orders
and
ranks; heroes like
Agamemnon, Jephtha, and Brutus, inspired with greater or lesser de-
grees
of
heroic courage; several Copenhagen citizens
of the
more
anonymous sort; and a series of couples, such as Agnes and the Mer-
man, Tobias and Sara, and Faust and Margaret, who, as is well known,
only
form couples because they never became such. Characteristic
of
all
these
characters
is
that they
are
placed
in
small narrative niches
in
the larger room in which the story of Abraham takes place. In accor-
dance with their placement, they come forth with commentaries rang-
ing from a dispirited monologue of encapsulation, to the Aristotelian
definition
of
drama,
and to
something
so
quiet that
for a
moment
it
could resemble silence.
These commentaries could be read as the subtext to the text which
Johannes
de
silentio
is
writing about Abraham,
and
they
function
like
prisms
through which the various theological, philosophical, or psy-
chological problems
in the
basic story
are
refracted
and
personally
appropriated.
In
this way,
the
textual characters make explicit
the
epistemological implications
of the
text
-
they live
the
lives
of the
thoughts, so to speak. And it is a rather burdensome existence, one
must say, because Johannes de silentio has appointed himself »tortor
27
SV3 5,32.
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194 Joakim
Garff
heroum
[tormentor of heroes]«,
28
a post he looks
after
with meticu-
lous care. Thus just as the hero seems to espy a way out, Johannes de
silentio makes »a little change«
29
which makes the
hero's
situation, if
possible, even more unfortunate.
In
what follows below, however,
the
three
figures are
treated more
gently by
their
poet - indeed, the last of them actually becomes
happy despite an otherwise uncertain
fate.
All of them are knights of
the
noble order
of faith. The first is
someone
as
insignificant
as a
»tax
collector«, while the two others have neither names nor civic titles,
and for the
sake
of
convenience
I
have therefore dubbed them »that
man«
and »the insomniac«.
First
the
»tax collector«,
who is
close
to the
ideal version
of a
»knight
of faith« as he might appear in Biedermeier Copenhagen. In
reading
the
description
of his
appearance
one
must continually bear
in mind that, like Abraham, he has made the double movement of
faith.
That is, he has definitively surrendered everything (as Abraham
surrendered Isaac) - and simultaneously, by virtue of faith as the fi-
nal,
absurd possibility, he has received everything again (as Abraham
in
the obedience of his
faith
receives Isaac again). Enormous though
the socio-cultural distance between Abraham and the »tax collector«
is, they are very closely connected in their existential mode: »Here he
is.
The acquaintance is made, I am introduced to him. At the instant I
first see
him,
I
thrust
him from me,
even jump
a bit away,
clap
my
hands, and say
half
audibly, > Good Lord Is this the man? Is it really
he? He looks just like a tax
collector <
But it
is
he, however. I move a
b it closer to him, keeping an eye peeled for the least signal from in -
finity,
a
glance,
an
expression,
a
gesture,
a
sadness,
a
smile
to
betray
the
infinite
in its
heterogeneity with
the
finite.
No I
scrutinize
his
fig-
ure from top to toe to see if there is a little tear through which the
infinite
peeked out. No He is solid all the way
through.«
30
And
Johannes
de
silentio pursues
his
»tax collector«
up one
street
and down
the
next, page
after
page
- with the
same zeal that Johan-
nes the Seducer had earlier pursued Cordelia - seeking that little
»tear«,
but in vain. To his pronounced amazement he can only ascer-
tain that the »tax collector« goes to church and takes walks in the
woods with equal ease and that he is able to assume whatever role a
situation requires with no apparent difficulty. Quite ironically, pur-
28
SV3
5,99.
29
SV3 5,98.
30
SV3 5,37.
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Johannes de
silentio: Rhetorician
of
Silence
195
sued by his spy day in and day out, the »tax collector« resembles
what he is not: a »bourgeois«, a »clerk«, a »money-making business-
man«,
a
»poet«,
a
»postman«,
a
»restauranteur«,
a
»capitalist«, indeed,
even a »sixteen-year-old girl«, as well as a »genius«, a »pork butcher«,
and
finally a
»do-nothing«.
31
And - as if a
parody
of
Abraham's sacri-
fice
- a lamb, the very saving moment of the peripeteia: toward eve-
ning he gets the idea
that
his »wife will surely have prepared a spe-
cial hot meal for him when he returns home, fo r example, a roast
head of lamb with vegetables.«
32
Quite
understandably
it
occasions certain difficulties
for
Johannes
de silentio when he has to reconcile himself to the
fact
that the »tax
collector«
is a
»knight
of faith« and not
just
the
smooth bourgeois
fellow that his spiritless behavior would seem to indicate. Naturally
this ambiguity is the whole point, because the function of the »tax
collector« is of course to demonstrate that there is »an inwardness
which is incommensurable with the external [,..].«
33
Thus the »tax
collector« is a knight of
faith
not so much in spite of his external ap-
pearance as by
virtue
of it.
Johannes
de
silentio illuminates
the
dia-
lectic:
»He
continually makes
the
movement
of
infinity,
but he
does
it
so correctly and with such certainty that he continually gets finitude
out of it, and not even for a second
does
anyone suspect anything
else.«
34
Thus no one ever suspects or has the least clue about the exis-
tential basis underlying the »tax collector«, because that basis is com-
posed
either
of the
wondrous experience
of
faith
or of
simple, every-
day
conformism. Johannes de silentio maintains that in the present
case
we are confronted with the former, inasmuch as »to be able to
fall
down
in
such
a
manner that
it
simultaneously looks
as if one
stood up and walked, to transform the leap of life into a walk, abso-
lutely to express the sublime in the pedestrian - only that knight can
do this, and this is the only miracle.«
35
To express the sublime in the pedestrian, the exalted in the ordi-
nary
-
this
is the
formula
for the
inwardness which
is
incommensura-
b le
with
the
world
b ut
which
at the
same time
is the
prerequisite
fo r
remaining in that world. The formula itself borders upon paradox, for
the sublime is of course at the farthest imaginable remove
from
the
31
SV3 5,38.
32
SV35,38.
33
SV3
5,64.
34
SV35 39.
35
Ibid.
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Johannes de silentio: Rhetorician of Silence 197
made clear
is
that »that man« simply collapses from fatigue every
time he has undertaken a journey to Mount Moriah. It is this autopsy
that the story has reproduced, which is why Johannes de
silentio's
rhetorical question makes good sense: »What
is the
value
of
taking
the trouble to remember that past which cannot become something
present.«
39
And with this sort of presence we have reached the third knight,
who was seized so completely by the vision of Abraham's sacrifice
that he could not close his eyes and thus became »the insomniac.« It
began rather quietly, though. One Sunday in church he had heard
about
the
sacrifice
and
then went home
and
»wanted
to do
just
as
Abraham
had done«,
40
that
is, he
wanted
to
repeat
or
reduplicate
the
story.
But no
sooner
had he
made
his
decision than
he met the
pastor,
who cannot exactly
be
said
to
have given
the
plan
his
blessing:
»Abominable man, scum of society What devil has possessed you to
make you want to murder your son.«
41
To this »the insomniac« re-
plied merely, »after all, it's what
you
yourself preached about
on
Sun-
day.«
42
The story does not really continue much further, and Johannes
de
silentio therefore comments upon
the
little scene: »The comic
and
the tragic here contact one another in absolute infinitude. By itself,
the pastor's sermon was perhaps ridiculous enough, but it became in-
finitely ridiculous through
its effect - and yet
this
was
quite natu-
ral.«
43
O f particular interest is Johannes de silentio's concluding assertion,
in which he makes it clear that despite its ridiculousness the effect
was quite natural.
And of
course, when »the insomniac« wants
to re-
peat the story of Abraham he is not possessed by a devil, as the pas-
tor assumes. He is possessed by the story, which therefore quite natu-
rally insists upon being repeated
- but of
course,
it
insists upon being
repeated
in the »external« and not merely in the »internal«, as was
the case with the two previous knights. But Johannes de silentio must
therefore ask how it can be explained that the one repetition is legiti-
mate while
the
other
is
not: »How does
one
explain such
a
contradic-
tion [...]?
Is it
because Abraham
has the
time-honored reputation
of
being a great man, so that what he does is great, and when another
39
SV3
5,30.
40
5V35,28.
41
Ibid.
42
SV35.29.
43
Ibid.
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198
Joakim Garff
does
the
same thing
it is a
sin,
a sin
which cries
out to
heaven? [...]
If
faith cannot make
the
willingness
to
murder
one's son
into
a holy
act,
then let the same judgment be passed upon Abraham as upon every-
one
else.«
44
With his straightforward will to action, »the insomniac« is the first
of the characters in Kierkegaard's works to dispute the thesis that in-
wardness
is
incommensurable
- and the first to
transform inwardness
into action. And this action is so fascinating that Johannes de silentio
cannot resist
the
desire
to
write
a
short postscript
to the
story about
the insomniac knight:
»[He]
was probably then executed or sent to
the madhouse. In brief, he became unhappy in relation to so-called
reality.
In
another sense,
I
truly think that Abraham made
him
happy
] ««
This »so-called reality« is the
socio-cultural
system in which Judge
William and the bourgeois philistine, despite all their differences, are
situated. The former has consciously identified himself with his social
role, while the latter has unconsciously assimilated himself to that
role.
The
insomniac knight,
on the
other hand,
is
situated outside
of
this
mediating system
and
ends
in
delinquency
or delerium. And yet
Abraham makes
him
happy. Why? Because
the
story supplied
him
with
the
epic material
in
which
he found his
narrative identity.
The
story proved
to be
about him.
As the knight of reduplication, »the insomniac« bears repetition
upon his coat of arms, so it would not be out of order for him to re-
peat the idea - and he does so. Not even ten pages after Johannes de
silentio has announced a possible
future
for »the insomniac«, the lat-
ter is resurrected in a new
form.
The situation is the same, however. A
pastor has told the story of Abraham and has done so in such a bor-
ing fashion that the
entire
congregation has fallen asleep, except for
that individual »who suffered from insomnia.«
46
When the pastor fi-
nally finishes
his uninspired sermon, »the insomniac« returns home to
meditate upon the matter, but as soon as his ideas begin to develop,
the
pastor again shows
up and
exclaims: »Wretch That
you let
your
soul
sink
into such madness No miracle takes place [...]«, to which
»the insomniac« then replies, yet again, »after all, that was what you
preached about
last
Sunday.«
47
And in
keeping with this simple, sub-
44
I b i d
45
I b i d
46
SV3 5,49.
47
Ibid.
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Johannes de
silentio: Rhetorician
of Silence 199
tie logic, Johannnes de silentio must conclude: »If Abraham is not a
nullity,
a phantom, a bit of decoration used as a diversion, then the
sinner can never err in wanting to do the same
[,..].«
48
It is no coincidence that Johannes de silentio mounts a defense of
this sort. The insomniac knight,
after
all, is not a chance character. He
is
the
straightforward representative
of
autopsy,
the
character whose
eye cannot free itself from the images in the story, »because the per-
son who has
seen these images
can
never
get rid of
them again.«
In-
somnia is not merely the appropriate reaction to the religious terror
of the story; it also makes clear that it is to the e ye that the story di-
rects its appeal. Insomnia is a metaphor for the moment the twin-
kling of an eye - of
religious terror,
the
wide-open
eye
transfixed
in a
continual stare, the eye whose pains are not soothed by the relief of
sleep. In brief, to be sleepless is to be exposed to genuine fear and
trembling: »There were countless generations who knew the story of
Abraham by heart, word for word, but how many did it make sleep-
less?«
49
Yet
as the
character
of the
seeing eye,
of the
moment
- the
twin-
kling
of an eye -
»the insomniac«
is
also
the
very character
of
visibil-
ity,
of making manifest. A nd this is not the least important of the re-
spects in which the insomniac differs from his two fellow knights, for
in
their cases
»it is
only
by
faith
and not by
murder that
one
attains
likeness with Abraham.«
50
Things
are
different
fo r
»the insomniac.«
H e realizes his inwardness in the external and defies the realm of
communication,
which
the
busy pastor only just barely manages
to
maintain intact. Had he not arrived in time, the catastrophe would
have taken place
and the son
would have been slaughtered.
To put it
mildly, the
text does
not
place
the
pastor
in a
favorable light,
but
brands him a hypocrite who condemns that for which he himself has
served
as the
occasion. Thus
the
pastoral parody also serves
to em-
phasize the distance between, on the one hand, the mediating ten-
dency
of institutions and, on the other hand, a will which is opposed
to
every sort
of
middle way, opposed
to the socio-cultural
system
-
opposed,
in short, to »the established order.«
48
Ibid
49
51/35,28.
50
SV3
5,30.
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200 Joakim
Garff
»The
Category of the
Turning
Point«
»In general, if poetry took notice of the religious and of the inward-
ness
of the
individual,
it
would take
on
fa r
more significant tasks than
those with which
it is
presently
occupied.«
51
This remark
is
allowed
to
fall in a
note
a bit
less than
20
pages
from the end of the
book,
but it
could well have been placed
a
good deal earlier,
in the
main text,
be-
cause Fear
a nd
Trembling
is
very attentive
to the
religious
and the in-
wardness
of the
individual,
and
thus even formulates
one of the
prob-
lems
with which, according
to
Johannes
de
silentio, poetry ought
to
occupy itself.
The
degree
to
which
the
book
has
dealt successfully with this prob-
lem
is
less certain, especially because Johannes
de
silentio
has
placed
himself in a
dilemma with
his
theory
of the
incommensurability
of in-
wardness. Thus, although poetry is required for the depiction of in-
wardness,
still, precisely because it is the medium of exposition and
externalization, it is also profoundly opposed to every form of in-
wardness.
Nonetheless Johannes
de
silentio presents
and
surveys
his
various characters
as if
they were stage actors whose
different
pos-
tures, scenes, and leaps indicated degrees on a scale of inwardness
which he could read from where he sits somewhere in his private
löge. From this
location
he follows faith's »double movement«,
52
and
evaluates it as pure, objectified inwardness: »Fortunate is he who can
make these movements. He does the marvelous, and I will never be-
come
tired
of
admiring him. Whether
it be
Abraham
or the
slave
in
Abraham's house, a professor of philosophy or a poor servant girl, is
a
matter
of
complete indifference
to me; I
look only
at the
move-
ments. But I do look at them, and I do not permit myself to be
fooled, either by myself or by anyone else.«
53
If
Johannes de silentio does not permit himself to be fooled now
and
then, either
by
himself
or by
others,
but
always judges correctly
about what
he
sees, then inwardness must
be
accompanied with
a
clearly readable correlate,
and
thus
it
must
be
anything
but
incom-
mensurable. If this is so, the »tax collector« is lost. He, of course, won
inwardly
and invisibly what he lost externally and visibly, so in his
case,
if one
paid attention only
to
»the movements«
one
would only
see a chance figure wandering aimlessly about Copenhagen. And it is
51
SV3 5,83n.
52
SV3
5,34.
53
SV3 5,36.
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Johannes de silentio: Rhetorician of Silence 201
pretty clear that something similar is the case for »that man.« And
yet so doggedly
does
Johannes de silentio emphasize the movements
and their importance that
his
condescending remark about
the
»bal-
let
master,
with
whom
the
poet
so
often
confuses himself these
days«
54
seems more than a little out of
place.
He explains
that
»knights of infinite
resignation«,
for
example,
can be
known
by
their
walk,
which
is »light and
daring«,
55
and this also is true to some ex -
tent for the »knights of
infinity«,
for they possess »elevation.«
56
Though they excel in their leap, they
nonetheless
do not manage to
assume the correct position when they return to earth; they vacillate
for an instant and thereby reveal themselves: »One need not see
them in the air; one need only see them at the instant they touch and
make contact with the earth, and one recognizes
them.«
57
On the
other hand,
the
ability
to
leap
in a
given position
so
that
in
»the leap
itself
[one] takes
the position«,
58
is
within
the
capacity
of the
knight
of faith and him alone, whose inwardness can be clearly read »when
one looks at the scale.«
59
As
tortor heroum Johannes
de
silentio takes
zestful
pleasure
in
calling
forth
»poetic individualities«
and
uses »the power
of
dialectic
to hold [them ...] at the point of
extremity.«
60
To do this he employs
the whip of despair so that victims »can discover one thing or an-
other
in
[their]
anxiety.«
61
Behind
his
brutal practice Johannes
de si-
lentio has a theory about man as a being who first becomes aware of
his
true essence when he is subjected to a dramatic re-versal. It is not
surprising that in this connection he thanks Lessing for the idea of »a
Christian drama«,
62
just
as it
makes good sense when
he
refers
to the
two concepts
in
Aristotle's poetics
which
are
connected
to
drama,
namely
peripeteia and anagnorisis: reversal and recognition.
In connection with these concepts, »the insomniac« again returns to
view. If he wishes to repeat the story of Abraham concretely and ex-
istentially,
it is
because
he
recognizes himself
in the
story
and
imme-
diately understands that
the
story
is
about himself.
The
distance
be-
54
SV3 5 8 5 .
55
SV3 5 3 6 .
56
SV3 5 3 9 .
57
Ibid
58
Ibid
59
SV3 5 4 5 .
6
SV3
5 80 .
61
Ibid
62
SV3
5 8 1n .
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204 Joakim
Garff
perspective which fo r want of a
better
name could be called bio-
graphical.
As is well-known, Kierkegaard's critique of the identity of the in-
ternal and the external is directed against Hegel, whose exchange be-
tween »Innere«
and
»Äussere« Kierkegaard
first
viewed
as an
exis-
tential
matter and then transformed it into a conflict between a
religiously-grounded inwardness and an external world, the universal.
Frater Taciturnus highlights this conflict: » It follows [...] of
itself
that,
in relation
to the
religious, such categories
of
actuality, such
as
that
the external is the internal and the internal is the external are in-
vented
by
Miinchhausens
who have absolutely no understanding of
the religious [...]. In matters such as this they [these Miinchhausens]
do about
as
much good
- to
cite
an old
proverb
- as
sticking
one's
tongue out the window and getting a smack because of
it.«
70
Kierkegaard
is no Baron von M unchhausen, naturally, but I am
certainly inclined to believe that his casting of suspicion upon the
connection between »internal«
and
»external«
has
cost
him no few
smacks because of his tongue - and indeed, what is worse, he ends by
contradicting
himself
and
putting
his
foot
in his
mouth. From being
the implacable defender of inwardness - for example, with the ty-
pological character »the tax collector« - over time Kierkegaard de-
velops into
a no less
implacable opponent
of
inwardness,
and
this
is
why
his writings can b e read retrospectively as an elaborate history of
the undoing of inwardness.
Nominally, this reversal
from
inner
to
outer
in
Kierkegaard's writ-
ings
is
situated
in the
reversal from Climacus
to
Anti-Climacus.
This
is
reflected
in the
settings announced
by
each
of
these
tw o
pseudonyms.
Whereas
the
first work asserts that »the setting
is
inwardness«,
71
the
second insists that »the setting is in Christendom.«
72
Although Anti-
Climacus, on the title page of his work Practice in Christianity issues
an
invitation
to
»Awakening
and
Inward Appropriation«, this invita-
tion is partially retracted by the book itself because Pract ice is, if any-
thing,
a
criticism
of the
religious sort
of
inward appropriation typical
of
the
times: »Here
we
have
the
concept
of
established Christendom.
In established Christendom we are all true Christians, but in hidden
inwardness. The external world has absolutely nothing to do with the
fact
that I am a Christian; therefore, my being as a Christian cannot
70
SK?8,225.
71
SV3
10,58.
72
SV 3 16,215.
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Johannes de silentio: Rhetorician of Silence 205
be measured [...]. And why this hiddenness, then [...]? Oh, naturally,
because I fear that if someone
were
to discover the degree to which I
am a true Christian, I would be rewarded with extraordinary honor
and
esteem.
And
furthermore,
I am too
much
of a
true
Christian to
want to be honored and esteemed because I am a
true
Christian. So
you see, that is why I keep it concealed in hidden inwardness; [...]
Everyone is a true Christian, but in hidden inwardness.«
73
Not only is this undoing of the concept of inwardness fraught with
a
series
of
theological
and
social psychological
implications, it
also
in-
vites
a
biographical reading. That
is, by
describing
a
movement from
the »internal« to the »external«, Kierkegaard's canon gradually, work
by
work, implicates
and
renders visible
the man
behind
it, the
actual
author, Kierkegaard.
In
other words, Kierkegaard
is not
only
a
subject
who
attempts
to
present an authentic self, he himself is also implicated in this process,
which
is why
every reading
of
Kierkegaard
has a
biographical ten-
dency from
the
outset. Thus, Kierkegaard criticizes Hans Christian
Andersen
for
writing novels
in
which there
is »a
residue,
as it
were,
of
the author's
finite
character, which often
chatters
at inappropriate
moments, like some impertinent third party or an ill brought-up
child.«
74
Impertinently and displaying my own lack of proper up-
bringing, I will turn this comment back upon Kierkegaard himself.
The life and the writings not only influence
[indvirker]
one another,
they also produce [udvirker]
one
another: reality
is
made into writing,
and writing is made into reality. Thus I will assert with respect to
Kierkegaard what he asserted with respect to Fichte in his doctoral
dissertation, namely that »the producing I is the same as the pro-
duced
I.«
75
Thus,
in a
journal entry
from
1837 Kierkegaard
can
imag-
ine the
following
»situation«, which verges
on
being
a
self-prophecy:
»Someone wishes
to
write
a
novel
in
which
one of the
characters
goes mad; as he writes the novel he himself slowly goes mad and
ends
in the
first person.«
76
»What
I
wrote,
I
wrote«
is
here transformed into »What
I
wrote,
I
became.« That is, the second »I« which becomes visible is the »I«
which the written work puts forth in writing, and of course it does so,
somewhat ambivalently, by writing off an empirical »I.« Conse-
73
SV 3 16,202-203.
74
5V3
1,39-40.
75
SV3 1,285.
76
Pap.
II A
634.
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206 Joakim
Garff
quently, the written canon can be read as a process in which the writ-
ing
subject traverses back
and forth
between
his own
construction
and destruction, and is thus deconstructed. This is why
as Kierke-
gaard himself eventually recognized
- he
could
not say »I« in a
solid
and autonomous
sense.
77
This sort of writing is biographical in the
specific sense that it
sees
both connection and separation between
life and writings, and I have chosen to highlight this in the following
by
placing a hyphen in bio-graphy.
It
goes without saying that
a
bio-graphical reading
is not
oblivious
to the notoriously autobiographical materials which appear in the
written
canon,
but it
justifies
itself
by
referring
to the way in
which
Kierkegaard describes his written corpus in
The
Point
o f
View
for My
Activity
a s a n
Author where indeed he states quite baldly that it was
»[divine]
Governance which
has
brought
me up, and
this upbringing
is reflected in the process of productivity.«
78
Although at first blush
this might be taken to be rampant megalomania, properly viewed, it
is Kierkegaard's confession of the fact that his autonomy has been
limited: it is not Kierkegaard who has guided the writings, but rather
the
reverse,
the
writings which have guided their writer. Kierkegaard
interprets this guidance religiously
as
»the role
of
[divine] Gover-
nance.« Kierkegaard's written works constitute a sort of
Bildungsro-
man
- or a novel depicting the process of his own undoing - in which
th e writing
in a
general
and
grammatological sense, stands
in a
maieutic relationship
to its
writer.
Viewed in this perspective, the attack on the church is not merely a
corrective
to
»the established order«,
it is
also
a
corrective
to the
pseudonymous
ventriloquism
of the
works, which
now
definitively
go
over to the personal out-spokenness of action. The turbulence of in-
wardness - which has become more and more dramatic since Judge
William
first
introduced the term »inner history« - must now mani-
fest itself with »the suddenness of the enigmatic« (as Vigilius Hauf-
niensis wrote in connection with the inexplicable precondition of
sin)
79
and
thereby become imperatively visible. Because,
as can be
read in the final issue of The
Moment
in which what is »decisive« is
said, »when the castle door of inwardness has long been shut and is
finally opened, it does not move soundlessly like an interior door
77
Pap.
X 2 A 89.
78
SV 3
18,125.
79
SV3
6,126.
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Johannes
de silentio:
Rhetorician
of
Silence
207
with spring hinges.«
80
The day on which this door opens is Wednes-
day, M ay 16, 1855, when Kierkegaard explains in Fcedrelandet that if
he were now to issue a new printing of Practice the book would not
»be by a
pseudonym,
but by
myself,
and the
thrice-repeated
preface
would be removed [...].
Earlier,
my idea was that if the established
order could be defended this was the only way, by poetically (thus
pseudonymously) passing judgment upon
it [...].
Now,
on the
other
hand, I have come to a quite definite conclusion concerning two mat-
ters, both that from a Christian point of view the established order is
quite untenable
and
that, Christianly understood, every
day it
contin-
ues to exist is a crime; and that it is impermissible to draw upon grace
in this fashion. Therefore take the pseudonymity
away.«
81
Practice
with its intensified demands which could only be met by a
pseudonym,
had
»contained
a
judgment concerning [Kierkegaard's]
own
existence.«
82
And now
Kierkegaard passes judgment
on his
times
by taking back [a t tage igen] that pseudonymity, that is, by repeating
[a t gentage] in his own name the demands of the pseudonymous
author. If one here adopts a narratological point of view, however, it
is
remarkable that by repeating these demands in his own name,
Kierkegaard is assuming the role of his textual character. Indeed, we
recall that »the
insomniac's«
story began when
he
heard
the
pastor's
sermon in church one Sunday, and then wanted to repeat it existen-
tially, to reduplicate it. With this, »the insomniac« not only became
the
first
character in Kierkegaard's writings to defend the notion of
the
incommensurability
of
inwardness,
but he
also became
the
first
of
the autopsy characters. And in this double
role
as the representative
of
autopsy
and of the
incommensurability
of
inwardness
he
also
be-
came
the
character
of
visibility,
of
making manifest, because with
his
paradoxical action he instituted a frightful disparity within the social
order. Kierkegaard does something similar
on
December
30,
1854,
when,
using
the definitive title »There the Matter Rests «, he says the
following:
» I have not passed judgment on Bishop Mynster. No, but
in the hand of [divine] Governance I was the occasion fo r Bishop
M ynster to pass judgment on himself. O n Mondays, he either did not
recognize
or
dared
not or
would
not
acknowledge
his
Sunday ser-
mons. Because, quite ironically and naively, I was his own sermon on
M ondays. And if Bishop Mynster himself had not, with worldly
80
SV3 19,93.
81
SV3
19,72-73.
82
Pap. X5
B
62, p. 274.
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208 Joakim
Garff
shrewdness, avoided shouldering the consequences of his Sunday ser-
mons on Mondays; if he had risked an existence and actions which
were
the equal of his Sunday rhetoric instead of employing worldly
shrewdness in
order
to gain advantage for himself in a variety of
ways - then his life would have taken on quite another appear-
ance.«
83
As »the insomniac« repeated the
pastor's
sermon on Monday, »S.
Kierkegaard«,
as the article is
signed,
now repeats
Mynster's sermon
on
Monday - the »Monday« constituted by Kierkegaard's actions of
1855. And the following journal entry makes it clear that Kierkegaard
thought his reduplication came under the same catastrophic category
as the one
used
in
connection with
the two
textual characters
who
are
members
of the
same knightly
order
which includes himself:
»How anxious people would
be for me if
they knew about
it, how
alien
it
would
be to
them:
for it is
certainly
the
case that
in
recent
times
I
have occupied myself quite exclusively with
the
question
of
whether
it was not
God's
will
that
I
should
do
this, that
I
should
risk
everything in
order
to
bring about
a
catastrophe,
to get
arrested,
judg ed, if
possible,
executed.«
84
The passionless times did not let themselves get lured into granting
Kierkegaard
the
per ea t
[»Let him die «]
which would have been
the
most
fitting
applaus [sign of approval], and this mismatch can serve
as the occasion either for lament or for ridicule, according to one's
point
of
view.
But the
mismatch
is not the
point. Rather,
the
point
is
that Kierkegaard's written canon
has
shown itself
to be
like
the
»novel«,
which Kierkegaard imagined in 1837, in which the author,
chapter by chapter, became inscribed in his story and
finally
ap-
peared
in the first
person singular,
in the
present tense, indicative
mood, active voice.
85
And
just
as
»the insomniac« wanted
to
repeat
the story of Abraham in a teleological suspension of the ethical
which was at odds with the social order, Kierkegaard repeats »the in-
somniac's« intention of unconditional
obedience
in defiance of the
world
and its
unchristian disorder. »The insomniac« became »un-
happy in relation to so-called reality« because he had been remuner-
ated with execution
or with
being sent
to the
madhouse,
but was
nonetheless
»in
another sense
happy.«
86
For his
part, Kierkegaard
be-
83
SV3
19,18-19.
84
Pap. X I
2 A 265, p.
267.
85
Pap. II A 634,
86
SV35.29.
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Johannes
de silentio: Rhetorician of Silence 209
came
unhappy in relation to so-called reality, which ignored his will-
ingness
to sacrifice, but he nonetheless became happy in the sense
that
his
will
was
ready.
So let the
world remain what
it has in
fact
al-
ways
been,
scanty
drafts
of
thin
beer.
In a passage from »This Must Be Said, So Let It Be Said, Then«
(which nonetheless seems to have said more than ought to have been
said,
and
which
was
therefore omitted
from the
published version),
Kierkegaard proclaims the clearly personal, indeed, almost private
motivation
behind
his
action: »Therfore, even
if
things worked
out
such that this attack ended as unfortunately as possible for me, so
that
I
accomplished nothing
at all and
only became
a
pointless victim
[...]. I say [...] that even if there were not a single person who bene-
fitted
from
my being sacrificed, it would not therefore be pointless,
not at all. It is of infinite value for myself, [...] and [divine] Gover-
nance is not a childish person who judges according to the
result.«
87
Should
we
childish people
- we who
know »the result«
and
know
how the martyrdom dropped out of the story, rather unfortunately
from a
narrative point
of view -
should
we
therefore conclude that
Kierkegaard's story became
a
fiasco
and
that
its
concluding chapter
was his desperate attempt to write himself free of the necessity of
history, whereby he became one of the ironic victims »demanded by
the development of the world.«
88
Or, conversely, should we renounce
the
narrative requirement
and
instead
focus our
gaze
on
Kierke-
gaard's paradoxical will to powerlessness? Should we let this be the
true point
at
which
he
deviates from
the
story,
and
therefore agree
in
this
respect with Climacus, who explains that what makes »the deed
the
individual's
own is the
intention,
but
this
is
precisely what does
not get
included
in the
world-historical«
89
- and
thus does
not get in-
cluded
in the
story about this history?
In my view, we should embrace
both
of the alternatives outlined
above. The silent little hyphen between
bios
and
grafce
in bio-graphy
must be maintained exactly as that which both separates and unites.
Because the fact that Kierkegaard's
bios
was transfigured in the writ-
ings does not mean that this grafce was completely congruent with
the life it
transfigured.
On the
street,
in
reality,
and in the
larger story
of
the world, Kierkegaard was a victim of a logic which was incom-
patible with
the
logic
in the
story into which
he
himself
had
been
in-
87
Pap. XI 3 B 62, p.
112.
88
SV3
1,276.
89
SV3 9,129.
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210
Joakim
Garff
scribed. On the other hand, on paper, in writing, and in the story the
canon tells about its author, the »producing I [becomes] the same as
the produced I«
90
, and Kierkegaard thus becomes »the insomniac«,
and specifically the knight of reduplication. For the same reason it is
fitting
that when Kierkegaard has to conclude his own story he does
so with a movement back and forth along the hyphen by
which bios
and
grafa
are
both united
and
separated: »Without falsifying
or
cheapening
the
concept,
I may say
that
my
life
is a sort of
martyr-
dom, but in a new pattern
[...].
Just come, History, and do your audit.
Everything is in its proper place; furthermore, I have run the risk vol
untarily
it was not something that happened to
me.«
91
A nd with this »historical audit« of Kierkegaard's story my own
audit of the story is concluded for the present.
90
SV3 1,285.
91
Pap.
XI1 A
484,
pp.
375-376.