Soren Kierkegaard

in order that they become aesthetically superior, but in order that the poetic
can go out in style. “For if poetry is truly to fall (and not because of the prattle
of a sullen and slow-witted pastor), it must be attired in festive finery.”
It was particularly in the first of theseThree Godly Discourses, as the pieces
constitutingThe Lily of the Fieldare subtitled, that Kierkegaard developed
this conflict between poetry and Christianity. “The poet is the child of
eternity, but he lacks the seriousness of eternity. So when he thinks of the
bird and the lily, he weeps. And as he weeps, he finds consolation in weep-
ing. A wish comes into being, and with it the eloquence of a wish: O,
would that I were a bird, the bird I read of in a picture book when I was a
child. O, would that I were a flower in the field, the flower that stood in
my mother’s garden. ”The poet is sentimental. He finds consolation in the
past, and he has a burning desire to be back in the days of his immediacy,
days that are long gone. “But if, with the Gospel, you said to him, ‘This is
serious, this is truly serious, the bird is seriously a teacher’—then the poet
would have to laugh. ”And he would have to laugh because the words of
the Gospel seem to him to be poetry raised to higher power, and thus to
be too beautiful to be true, too wonderful to be actual. “But the Gospel
dares tocommandthe poet, to say that hemustbe like the bird. And so
serious is the Gospel that the most irresistible invention of the poet cannot
make it smile.”
The three discourses—the themes of which aresilence,obedience, andjoy,
respectively—certainly do demonstrate all the poetic splendor and linguistic
loveliness that language can muster, on a good day. Everyone can see that
the words are clad in “festive finery, ”but doubts may linger about the
extent to which Kierkegaard has succeeded in getting poetry to “fall. ”The
tone in the three discourses is of carefree humming, of tranquil rhythm,
filled with spirit and gently touched by the eternal; and the eternal links the
discourses to one another, expanding into their theme: “What is joy, or
what is it to be joyful? It is truly to be present to oneself. But truly to be
present to oneself is thistoday, thisto betoday, trulyto be today. And the
more true it is that you are today, the more you are entirely present to
yourself in being today, the less the sorrows of tomorrow exist for you. Joy
is the present time, with the entire emphasis upon:the present time. Therefore
God is blesse ́d, He who says eternally: Today; He who is eternally and
infinitely present to himself in being today. And therefore the lily and the
bird are joy, because with their silence and their unconditional obedience
they are entirely present to themselves in being today....Thus, the fact
that you came into being, that you exist, that you receive the necessities of
existence ‘today’; that you came into being, that you became a human
being; that you can see (think of that, you can see!); that you can hear; that