Soren Kierkegaard

aged David with a peculiar horror. The theme is shame and is sounded in
the very first lines: “If there is any such thing as the torment of sympathy,
it is to have to be ashamed of one’s father, ashamed of the person one loves
most and to whom one owes the most—to be compelled to approach him
with one’s back turned, one’s face averted, in order not to see his disgrace.”
This is followed by a nocturnal scene in which Solomon is awakened by
sounds coming from within his father’s bedchamber: “He is gripped by
terror. He fears it is a knave who wants to murder David. He approaches
stealthily. He sees David broken in spirit. He hears the cry of despair from
the penitent’s soul. Faint, he returns to his bed. He dozes but he does not
rest. He dreams. He dreams that David is an ungodly man, rejected by God,
that royal majesty is God’s anger with him, that he must wear the purple as
a punishment, that he is condemned to reign, condemned to hear the praise
of the people, while the righteousness of the Lord secretly and in conceal-
ment passes judgment upon the guilty man. And the dream intimates that
God is not the God of the pious but of the ungodly, that one must be
ungodly in order to be God’s elect. And the terror of the dream is this
contradiction. As David lay upon the earth broken in spirit, Solomon arose
from his bed. But his mind had been broken. He was seized with terror
when he thought what it means to be God’s elect. He suspected that the
confidential relationship the righteous have with God, the uprightness of
the pure man before the Lord, was not the explanation, but that the secret
which explained everything was hidden guilt. And Solomon became wise,
but he did not become a hero. And he became a thinker, but he did not
become a man of prayer. And he became a preacher, but he did not become
a believer. And he could help many people, but he could not help himself.
And he became sensual, but not penitent. And he was broken, but was not
raised up, for the strength of the young man’s will had been taxed beyond
its powers. And he staggered through life, buffeted about by life, strong,
supernaturally strong.”
Precisely because Kierkegaardthe writerwas as artistic asthe personof the
same name was chaste, the concrete contents of the father’s confession re-
treat into self-created obscurity as the tale unwinds. What remains, how-
ever, is the fact that the son had suddenly attained an insight into the father’s
dual nature, more or less unintentionally coming to experience the sick-
ening, hidden side of piety: the lies, the injuries, the pain of hypocrisy, the
impotence of repentance, things eternally unforgivable, the pact with the
Devil in the old man’s heart, which not even the most contrite piety could
manage to conceal. No less villainous, however, is the portrait of the son,
Søren Solomon, who after that night lost his humanity, becoming a piece
of intellectual anti-nature, a monstrous brain grotesquely installed in a Co-