ginal, exposed. And as though curiously presaging the use of exactlythe
words“witness to the truth” that would create a polemical connection be-
tween Kierkegaard and Martensen nine years later, the piece continued:
“There is an old book that has a list of witnesses to the truth....Onereads
the list of the rules governing rank and precedence at court and notes in
quiet exaltation how a person of rank ascends the many steps to the pinnacle
of honor. In this same way, one reads that book in quiet exaltation, noting
how the witness to the truth descends, step by step, into the small group
with which he belongs, until he stands entirely alone, rejected....The
crescendo states: I partook of the honor of being greeted with jubilation
and crowned by the people. The decrescendo: I partook of the honor of
being hooted off the stage.—Except there is the difference that the arched
vault under which the person of rank is speaking is not nearly so well con-
structed acoustically as that under which the witness to the truth is speaking,
for only the latter gives the reverberation of eternity.”
Kierkegaard delighted in calling himself a freelance humorist, but when
we read lines like those cited above, it would be at least as appropriate to
call him a freelance prophet. With a profound sensitivity to what would be
his own future role, he refrained from publishing his objections to Eiriksson.
He justified his decision in a “confession” in which he took a couple of
pages to explain why he had “not protested against M. Eiriksson’s stupid
appreciation.” Eiriksson was generally recognized to be a “fool,” so of
course Kierkegaard would only have been “damaged by [Eiriksson’s] ap-
preciation,” on the one hand, and would have gained an “advantage by
protesting against it,” on the other. But it wasprecisely for this reasonthat
Kierkegaard did not wish to make an official protest. Behind his resignation
lay an ethical-religious motive: “Pride is humility before God, and humility
before God is pride. What human beings call pride is a mean-spirited combi-
nation of modesty and vanity. See, that is why I have not rebuffed M. Eiriks-
son’s stupid appreciation.”
The argument is dialectical to the point of weirdness. And as so often
happens, the reader is left with a mild sense of amazement at the incredibly
fine line that, in Kierkegaard’s case, separated uncompromisingly following
the consequences of an argument from an equally consistent self-deception.
In any event, it would not be long before Kierkegaard elevated his negative
experiences into a positive principle that would serve as his rule from then
on: “Thus, the person who wants the approval of the crowd must always
be shrewd in amassing sensational effects, in half-hour performances—be-
cause the mass of mankind has no notion of greatness that lasts any longer
than this, it cannot endure longer than this....Butmyentire life as an
author is an operation that has been systematically carried out—indeed,
romina
(Romina)
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