commonplace level.” A Faust who no longer despairs over his doubt is not
Faust but a heretical convert, a renegade who imagines that he has recon-
ciled himself to his own irreconcilability.
Thus there was more substance in the medieval version of Faust that
Kierkegaard first encountered in October 1836. At a sho pat 107 Ulkegade,
owned by the widow of a bookbinder named Tribler, Kierkegaard pur-
chased a Danish chapbook on Faust. This was a greatly abridged version of
older books about Faust, all of which were descended from the original
German edition of 1587. A mere glance at the title page with its half-length
picture of Faust, however, was enough to convince Kierkegaard that he
simplyhad toown the book:
The World-Renowned
Arch-Practitioner of the Black Arts
and
Magician,
Doctor
Johan Faust,
and
the Pact He Made with the Devil,
His Astonishing Life and Frightful DoomKierkegaard’s copy of the book has been preserved, and from the many
underlinings and marginal notes it can be seen that he read it very carefully.
On one of his walks in the city the following spring, he chanced upon the
book in one of the “lowliest bookshops,” and he found it very “touching”
that in this humble fashion “the most profound things” are “offered for sale
to the simplest class of people.” Faust was for aristocrats, and Kierkegaard
was about to become one. Six years later, when he was working on the
manuscript of “The Immediate Stages of the Erotic” (fromEither/Or, part
1), in which Faust and Don Juan personify the demonic in its intellectual
and sensual forms, respectively, he recalled the little chapbook on Faust:
“There is a chapbook whose title is well-known even if the book itself is
little used, which is especially odd in our times when we are so preoccupied
with the idea of Faust....Andindeed, this chapbook is worthy of atten-
tion. More than anything, it has something that is praised as a noble quality
in a wine: It has bouquet, it is an excellent medieval vintage, and when it
is opened it confronts one with a fragrance that is so spicy, delicious, and
distinctive that one feels quite strange.”
Along with his euphorical metaphorical language Kierkegaard does,
however, permit himself a few harsh remarks about a “prospective assistant
professor or professor,” who is attempting to “present his credentials at the
court of the reading public by publishing a book on Faust in which he