Soren Kierkegaard

“elevation.” Though their upward leaps are splendid, when the ycome back
to earth again the yare incapable of immediatel yassuming the proper posi-
tion. The yhesitate for a brief instant, and in so doing the yreveal themselves:
“One does not need to see them in the air. One need onl ysee them at the
instant the ytouch and have touched the earth—and one recognizes them.”
The abilit yto leap into a particular position in such a manner that “in the
leap itself ” one assumes “the position” is reserved solel yfor the knight of
faith, whose inwardness can be detected “when one consults the scale.”
Johannes de silentio concludes b yremarking: “Luck ythe person who can
make these movements. He performs a marvel, and I will never tire of
admiring him. Whether it be Abraham or the servant in Abraham’s house,
whether it be a professor of philosoph yor a poor serving maid is a matter
of complete indifference to me, I look onl yat the movements. But I do
indeed look at them, and I do not let myself be fooled, either by myself or
b yan yone else.”
Johannes de silentio has no doubts about his own talent. Nonetheless, if
he is notoccasionallyfooled, if healwaysjudges correctl ywhat he has seen,
it can onl ybe because inwardness does reflect itself in the character’s outer
aspect and is thusnotincommensurable with it. If this were indeed so, the
tax collector would be lost, because he of course gained inwardl yand invisi-
bl ywhat he had lost externall yand visibl y; so in his case if we had focused
exclusivel yon his “movements” we would have onl yfollowed a chance
figure on a random walk in Copenhagen. Thus the example of the tax
collector makes it clear that it is “b yfaith that one resembles Abraham, not
b ymurder.”
Things go much worse in the tale of an unnamed person who has been
so completel ycaptivated b ythe stor yof Abraham that he has been unable
to close an eye, but has become sleepless. It began quietly enough. One
Sunda yin church he heard the Old Testament stor yand then went home
and “wanted to do just as Abraham had done.” No sooner had he made his
decision than he was paid a visit b ythe pastor, who cannot exactl ybe said
to have given the plan his blessing: “Abominable man, scum of society,
what Devil has possessed you thus, that you wish to murder your son?” To
this the sleepless man answered simply: “It was only what you yourself
preached about last Sunday.” The story is quite brief, and Johannes de si-
lentio then offers his commentar yon this peculiar episode: “The comic and
the tragic here contact each other in absolute infinity. In itself the pastor’s
speech was perhaps ridiculous enough, but it became infinitel yridiculous
in its effect, and yet this was quite natural.”
The little concluding clause is alarming, for it says, after all, thatdespite
everythingthe sleepless man’s behavior was “quite natural.” And why? Be-