happier than ever. It is a new crisis. It means either that I will now begin to
live or that I must die. There could also be another wa yout: I could lose
m yhead. God knows that. But however I come down, I will never forget
to uphold the passion of iron yin justified opposition to those inhuman half-
philosophers who understand nothing whatsoever, and the whole of whose
talent consists in scribbling digests of German philosophy.”
On Tuesday, May 30, 1843, the steamshipSvenska Lejonetarrived in
Copenhagen harbor at ten o’clock in the morning. Kierkegaard was back
in town. This time his baggage contained the manuscripts of two new works
that would appear on October 16, when readers who had perhaps scarcely
managed to turn the last page ofEither/Orcould enlarge their Kierkegaard
librar ywithRepetition,Fear and Trembling, andThree Edifying Discourses, con-
sisting of 157, 135, and 62 pages respectively.
Repetition
One da yin the late summer of 1843, whenRepetitionwas just beginning to
take shape at Bianco Luno’s print shop, Kierkegaard giddil ywrote in his
journal: “This is the wa yliterature ought to be, not a nursing home for
cripples, but a playground for healthy, happy, thriving, smiling, vigorous
little scamps, well-formed, complete beings, satisfied with who the yare,
each of whom has the express image of its mother and the power of its
father’s loins, not the aborted products of feeble wishes, not the afterbirth
that comes of postpartum pains.”
Repetitionis such a “pla yground,” a nois ylaborator yin which each indi-
vidual concept is made the object of more or less ever ypossible sort of
investigation. As far as that goes,Repetitionis also happy, conscious of itself,
and smiling, but it is debatable how thriving or well-formed it is, because
its form is fragmented, unsteady, replete with sudden changes of direction.
If it would be of an yhelp, one could sa ythatRepetitionis an example of
romantic irony’s reluctance to be subjected to any structure—not merely
to the structure of the novel, but even to the structure of writing itself—
which makes it eas yto explain wh yin the postmodern eraRepetitionwas,
earl yon, the darling of deconstructionists.
But despite its quirks,Repetitionhas aplot. Indeed, it has more than that:
The plot ofRepetitionin fact is about plot, or about things that happen,
eitherentirel yaccidentall y, because things just happen,orbecause someone
else, God, wants it that way. In any event,Repetitionhas certain difficulties
that need clearing up, and doing so pulls the work in two different direc-
tions; in an aesthetic direction that packs the text with the wrong sort of