Soren Kierkegaard

understanding: “As soon as she is seduced, she is lifted up into a higher
sphere; there is a consciousness in her that Don Giovanni does not possess.”
So above all, language and consciousness constitute the difference be-
tween Don Giovanni and Johannes .“The immediate Don Giovanni must
seduce 1,003; the reflective one need seduce only one,” Aesthete A ex-
plains, and he continues instructively: “In this case it is a matter of indiffer-
ence how many he has seduced; what engages him is the artistry, the pains-
taking meticulousness, the profound cunning with which he seduces.”
If we now return to the “The Seducer’s Diary” it is possible to sketch
the following: The situation in which Cordelia finds herself after the night
of love with Johannes corresponds to Elvira’s situation after Don Giovanni’s
antics .Both women are left with pain, shame, and anger, but also with a
new self-understanding that in Cordelia’s case becomes a love-hatred which
she expresses violently in the three letters she writes to Johannes after the
relationshiphas been concluded, but which the editor of the diary placesprior
to the actual story of the seduction .Thus with respect to her self-under-
standing, Cordelia resembles ElviraafterElvira’s seduction, but with respect
to the intensity of desirebeforeher own seduction, Cordelia resembles—
and here is the fatal point—Don Giovanni!
Thus, of all the attributes that are employed in connection with Don
Giovanni there is not a single one that is not applicable to Cordelia .“He
desires .This desire, in turn, has a seductive effect .To that extent he seduces”:
These statements were made with reference to Don Giovanni, but if we
replace “he” with “she” the result is a nearly perfect description of Cordelia.
Like Don Giovanni, Cordelia is the representative of an unfathomable, pre-
reflective, seductive power that emanates from nature itself, the incarnation
of her sex .And it is also she who, thanks to her nature, her grace, and her
beauty, has control over the elemental abyss of seduction; it is her energetic
anxiety that keeps the tale moving forward .Like Don Giovanni in the opera,
she “resounds” everywhere in the diary; her “development” is the “anxiety”
that literally propels “the work.” From her very first appearance out on
Langelinie, Cordelia was what Johannes never became:seductive.
But can Cordelia, in the role of the seductive, be combined with Johannes
in the role of the seducer? Here, either/or must be replaced by both/and.
It is in fact erroneous to wish to isolate and confine the active initiative to
just one of the sexes .The seduction itself is a complex play or a field of
events in which intentions and tactics are undeniably real but are not nearly
so determinative as Johannes would like to imagine .Properly understood,
it is Johannes himself who ispossessed by the seduction, and consequently he
is controlled by a more-than-subjective power; in reality, Johannes is merely
the more-or-less instrumental executor of that power’s will to self-realiza-