Soren Kierkegaard

is profoundly affected when he learns that it depicts an execution. And all
at once the image seizes hold of the child’s field of vision so totally that he
becomes “anxious and afraid of the adult and of the world and of himself,”
forgetting everything about the other pictures which, “as the folk song says,
will turn their backs, so different isthisimage.”
When this picture has forced its way in front of the other pictures, posi-
tioning itself in first place, the narrator must now explain the exemplar’s
specifically religious significance. Anti-Climacus takes charge of the situa-
tion: “See, this is the moment. If you have not already made too strong an
impression on the child, now is the time to tell the child about him, the
lofty one, who from on high will draw all unto himself. Tell the child that
this lofty person is the crucified one. Tell the child that he was love, that he
cameintotheworldoutof love,thatheassumedtheformof alowlyservant,
that he lived foronething only, tolove and tohelp humanbeings,especially
all those who were sick and sorrowful and suffering and unhappy. Tell the
child how that person’s life went, how he was betrayed by one of the few
people who were close to him, how the few others denied knowing him,
and how all the others insulted and mocked him until they finally nailed
him to the cross—as can be seen in the picture.... Tell it to the child in
lively fashion, as though you yourself had never heard it or told it to anyone
before. Tell it as though you had made it up yourself, but do not forget to
relate every detail that has been preserved and handed down—except that
when you tell it, you should forget that it has been handed down.”
At the sight of this gory image the child loses his sense of “time and
place” so entirely that he quite forgets that the event itself, the crucifixion,
took place “more than 1,800 years ago.” Transported almost hypnotically
into this contemporaneity, the child begins to wonder why God does not
intervene to prevent the death of this loving person. And when the inevita-
ble has taken place, the child is deeply affected by it and can “think and talk
about nothing but weapons and war—because the child has resolved that
when he grows up he will kill all these ungodly people who had treated the
loving person in this manner.” But this is not how things turn out: “When
he becomes older and reaches his maturity, he will not have forgotten this
childhood impression, but he will understand it differently. He no longer
wishes to lash out, because, as he says, in doing so I will not attain any
likeness with him, the degraded one, who never lashed out, not even in
retaliation when he had been struck. No, now he wishes only for one thing,
to suffer approximately as he [the crucified one] suffered in the world.”
The story goes on to explain that this early “sight” of the crucifixion
never eases its grip on the child’s view of the world, but accompanies the
childand shapeshisunderstandingof life:“Throughthepower ofhisimagi-