Soren Kierkegaard

but there is one thing to which no person has ever felt naturally drawn—
suffering and degradation. That is something we human beings believe we
ought to flee from, as far away as possible, and in any case we must be forced
into it. But you, our Savior and Redeemer; you, the degraded one; you,
who compel no one—and least of all compel us to be what of course is and
must be a human being’s highest honor, to dare to want to resemble you:
Would that the image of you in degradation might remain before us, so
vividly, with such awakening and persuasiveness, that we feel ourselves
drawntoyouinyourlowliness,drawntowanttoresembleyouinlowliness,
you, who from on high will draw all unto yourself.”
The prayer is not merely a prayer. It also contains elements of the tactics
the text itself employs to overcome the resistance with which the natural
self encounters suffering and degradation. The text wants to overcome this
sort of resistance by means of an “image” that makes suffering and degrada-
tion not only “vivid” and “awakening” but also so “persuasive” that the
reader is drawn to want to resemble the degraded one. In keeping with this,
the text continually addresses itself to the reader’s gaze, forcing the reader
to look at what the text intends to make visible. After a macabre exhibition
of the degraded Savior, the text makes its appeal: “Aren’t you moved by
that sight?... So, look yet again at him, him the degraded one! What an
effect that sight produces—shouldn’t it be capable of moving you to want
to suffer in some fashion as he did...?”
This sort of imagistic writing is meant to move the reader, not to tears
or to other sentimental outbursts, butawayfrom the text to an actionoutside
the text itself. Such action would in fact be the true conclusion of the read-
ing. The text resembles a hypnotic formula: “If possible, forget for a mo-
ment everything you know about him. Force yourself out of what may
indeed be the lazy, habitual way in which you have knowledge of him. Let
it be as though it were the first time you heard the story of his degradation.”
And if this gesture does not have the desired effect, the text is again ready
to help: “Now, then, let us help ourselves in another way. Let us have a
child help us, a child,... who now hears the story for the first time; let us
see what effect it produces even if we only tell it tolerably well.”
Then an experiment is conducted: When positioned in the right time
and place, the juxtaposition of the familiar and the alien can produce a
violentcollision.A childisconfrontedwithvarious pictures—oneofNapo-
leon, one of William Tell, and so forth—each accompanied by an interest-
ing explanation. Just as the child is moving along from one picture to an-
other in “unspeakable delight,” the child suddenly sees a picture “which
was deliberately placed among the others, and which depicts someone cru-
cified.” At first the child cannot associate anything with the image, but he