Soren Kierkegaard

the other hand, it is not entirely untrue, either, because from the very begin-
ning I have been aware that I was being brought up.”
Shifting our attention to Kierkegaard’s journal entries regardingThe Point
of View, we now see that his reflections on the relation between conscious
and unconscious activity in the writing process sometimes doubled the writ-
ing subject and sometimes reduced him by half: The “I ”of the text was
thus not simply identical with the “I ”who reread what had been written,
who in turn was not the same as the “I ”who reflected on the fact that the
two “I’s ”were not identical. In one of these journal entries Kierkegaardthe
readergives his impression of what he had just seen Kierkegaardthe writer
report concerning the publishedauthorof the same name: “The Point of View
for My Work as an Authormust not be published. No, no!—(1) And this is
what is decisive. (Everything else I have thought up about risks to my fi-
nances and to finding a job is of no importance): I cannot present myself
entirely truthfully. Even in the very first draft (which I wrote without any
thought whatever of publication) I was unable to accentuate what was the
principal thing for me: that I am a penitent, and that this is what explains
me at the deepest level. But then when I took out the manuscript with the
thought of publishing it, I had to make some minor changes because, after
all, the emphasis had been too strong for it to be published... .—(2) I
cannot quite say that my work as an author is a sacrifice. It is certainly
true that I have been unspeakably unhappy ever since I was a child, but
nonetheless, in this connection I must confess that the avenue of escape
God provided for me in permitting me to become an author has been rich,
rich in enjoyment. So I have surely been sacrificed, but my work as an
author is not a sacrifice—it is indeed what I would absolutely most like to
continue doing. Thus I cannot be entirely truthful here either, because I
cannot talk about my torments and my misery like this in print—and then
what is really most prominent becomes the enjoyment.”
Over and over and over again Kierkegaard qualifies what he says with
“but ”and “after all ”and “cannot quite ”and “it is certainly true ”and “but
nonetheless ”and, yet again, “but. ”These reservations echo throughout the
textual monologue, revealing Kierkegaard’s astonishment when he revisited
the manuscript. He unearthed the first draft, reread it, and ascertained that
“the principal thing”—voluntary penance—had been inadequately de-
picted. Then he made minor alterations and corrections that did not, how-
ever, strengthen “the principal thing, ”but rather weakened it. And what
caused this weakening of something that was already too weak to begin
with? It was this: The private, penitential motivation for Kierkegaard’s
works as an author didnotaccord with those works themselves, which had
not been “sacrifice ”but on the contrary had been “rich, rich in enjoyment. ”