Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Kierkegaard's Writings, XIV, Volume 14: Two Ages: The Age of Revolution and the Present Age A Literary Review
    Kierkegaard's Writings, XIV, Volume 14: Two Ages: The Age of Revolution and the Present Age A Literary Review
    Kierkegaard's Writings, XIV, Volume 14: Two Ages: The Age of Revolution and the Present Age A Literary Review
    Ebook261 pages4 hours

    Kierkegaard's Writings, XIV, Volume 14: Two Ages: The Age of Revolution and the Present Age A Literary Review

    By Søren Kierkegaard

    3.5/5

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    After deciding to terminate his authorship with the pseudonymous Concluding Unscientific Postscript, Kierkegaard composed reviews as a means of writing without being an author. Two Ages, here presented in a definitive English text, is simultaneously a review and a book in its own right. In it, Kierkegaard comments on the anonymously published Danish novel Two Ages, which contrasts the mentality of the age of the French Revolution with that of the subsequent epoch of rationalism.


    Kierkegaard commends the author's shrewdness, and his critique builds on the novel's view of the two generations. With keen prophetic insight, Kierkegaard foresees the birth of an impersonal cultural wasteland, in which the individual will either be depersonalized or obliged to find an existence rooted in "equality before God and equality with all men."


    This edition, like all in the series, contains substantial supplementary material, including a historical introduction, entries from Kierkegaard's journals and papers, and the preface and conclusion of the original novel.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPrinceton University Press
    Release dateJul 6, 2009
    ISBN9781400832286
    Kierkegaard's Writings, XIV, Volume 14: Two Ages: The Age of Revolution and the Present Age A Literary Review
    Author

    Søren Kierkegaard

    Nace en 1813 y fallece en 1854. Figura entre los grandes de la historia del pensamiento. Su personalidad y su obra han sido calificadas de «tumultuosas, desbordantes e incontenibles». Conviven en él una radical vanguardia en cuanto a los temas (valoración del individuo, crítica de la sociedad de su tiempo, angustia existencial, radicalidad de la culpa, sentimiento de soledad y abandono) y al estilo (cuestión de los pseudónimos, disolución de los géneros clásicos, diálogo entre literatura, filosofía y religión) con una vuelta al cristianismo originario, la reivindicación del patronazgo moral del socratismo platónico o la universalidad de la herencia clásica. Arrinconado al principio por su enfrentamiento con el cristianismo establecido de su época, fue rescatado por G. Brandes, T. S. Haecker y M. Heidegger. A España llegó tempranamente a través de Høffding y Unamuno, que le llamaba «el hermano Kierkegaard». Recientemente se ha recuperado el interés por su magnífica obra y su inquietante personalidad, fruto del cual son los numerosos estudios en torno a su pensamiento y la publicación de una nueva edición de sus escritos. En el marco de la edición castellana de los Escritos de Søren Kierkegaard, basada en la edición crítica danesa, han sido ya publicados: Escritos 1. De los papeles de alguien que todavía vive. Sobre el concepto de ironía (2.ª edición, 2006); Escritos 2. O lo uno o lo otro. Un fragmento de vida I (2006); Escritos 3. O lo uno o lo otro. Un fragmento de vida II (2007); Escritos 5. Discursos edificantes. Tres discursos para ocasiones supuestas (2010) y Migajas filosóficas o un poco de filosofía (5.ª edición, 2007). De Kierkegaard han sido también publicados en esta misma Editorial: Los lirios del campo y las aves del cielo (2007), La enfermedad mortal (2008), Ejercitación del cristianismo (2009), Para un examen de sí mismo recomendado a este tiempo (2011), El Instante (2.ª edición, 2012) y La época presente (2012), Apuntes sobre la Filosofía de la Revelación de F. W. J. Schelling (1841-1842)(2014), El libro sobre Adler. Un ciclo de ensayos ético-religiosos (2021) y Escritos 6. Etapas en el camino de la vida (2023).

    Read more from Søren Kierkegaard

    Related to Kierkegaard's Writings, XIV, Volume 14

    Titles in the series (26)

    View More
    View More

    Related ebooks

    Philosophy For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      From The Trojan War To Conflict In Ukraine

      Nov 30, 2023

      THE YEAR 2023 HAS BEENrich in works composed in tempore belli. The most impressive is Conflict: The Evolution of Warfare from 1945 to Ukraine (William Collins, £26) by General David Petraeus and the historian Andrew Roberts. This is an ambitious and

      6 min read

    • Article

      Coming Into The Country

      Mar 2, 2018

      Coming Into The Country
      10 min read

    • Article

      Chapter & verse

      Feb 10, 2023

      Chapter & verse
      7 min read

    • Article

      Chapter & verse

      Feb 10, 2023

      Chapter & verse
      7 min read

    • Article

      Michael Wood On…

      May 11, 2023

      Michael Wood On…
      3 min read

    • Article

      Man of the World

      Sep 6, 2016

      Shakespeare may never have left England, but he became the most global writer who ever lived.

      4 min read

    • Article

      Bloomsberries At War PAUL BAILEY Writing In The Dark: Bloomsbury, The Blitz, And Horizon Magazine

      Jul 28, 2021

      Bloomsbury £20 The subtitle of Will Loxley’s first book does not sound especially adventurous or challenging. Haven’t we, both readers and writers, been here before? It’s not entirely fanciful to imagine a bookshop that sells nothing but biographies,

      3 min read

    • Article

      Churchill And Ukraine At Chartwell

      Nov 2, 2022

      Among the thousands of objects on display at Chartwell are many of the books inscribed to Winston Churchill. These consist of gifts from family, friends, colleagues, and acclaimed authors. Churchill valued them so closely that he explicitly referred

      2 min read

    • Article

      ‘Miracle Find’: Rare Don Quixote And Short Stories Could Sell For €900k

      Oct 6, 2022

      One day in the early 1930s, a young Bolivian diplomat named Jorge Ortiz Linares walked into the illustrious Maggs Bros bookshop in London to ask if they might have a particularly fine edition of Don Quixote for sale. But even for Ortiz Linares – a de

      3 min read

    • Article

      Books

      May 17, 2019

      Books
      9 min read

    • Article

      A Mar Vellous Miscellany

      Feb 11, 2023

      In these columns I have inevitably tended to focus on the longer, high-profile volumes which make up the backbone of the Society’s publication list, so it is a pleasure to be able to turn in this issue to a too-often neglected genre: the miscellany v

      2 min read

    • Article

      'The World Broke In Two': Four Writers, One Transformational Year

      Jul 25, 2017

      Using excerpts from letters and diaries, historian and critic Bill Goldstein follows writers Virginia Woolf, E. M. Forster, D. H. Lawrence and T. S. Eliot through the tumultuous literary year of 1922.

      3 min read

    • Article

      A Sense of Sensibility: On ‘The Collected Essays of Elizabeth Hardwick’

      Oct 19, 2017

      In Hardwick’s criticism, we encounter an uncondescending intelligence, a humane sensibility, and a forthright independence of mind for which we, in our scatterbrained era, cannot be grateful enough. The post A Sense of Sensibility: On ‘The Coll

      5 min read

    • Article

      The Reader Over Your Shoulder

      Jan 4, 2018

      The Reader Over Your Shoulder
      6 min read

    • Article

      Thought Experimenters

      Sep 1, 2023

      We tend to think of philosophers as solitary creatures. Whether it be Diogenes or Socrates, Spinoza or Rousseau, Thoreau or Nietzsche, the philosopher is by necessity a loner. Several recent books, however, remind us that philosophers can also travel

      4 min read

    • Article

      Writing In The Ruins

      May 16, 2023

      Writing In The Ruins
      11 min read

    • Article

      The Big Idea: Could The Greatest Works Of Literature Be Undiscovered?

      May 30, 2022

      When the great library at Alexandria went up in flames, it is said that the books took six months to burn. We can’t know if this is true. Exactly how the library met its end, and whether it even existed, have been subjects of speculation for more tha

      4 min read

    • Article

      Seeking Salvation

      Jan 29, 2020

      Seeking Salvation
      3 min read

    • Article

      Twin Totems Of Teutonic Angst

      Jun 29, 2023

      Twin Totems Of Teutonic Angst
      8 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Kierkegaard's Writings, XIV, Volume 14

    3.5/5

    14 ratings1 review

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 2/5
      I'm baffled by the goodreads' community's high ratings for this book. It has nice passages, but as a whole it's a freaking mess: summary of a boring novel; over-interpretation of said novel; awful post-Hegel babble about contradictions; random romantic assertion about passion/love and so on.

      I thought, for the first half, that Kierkegaard was doing his usual irony, and actually mocking the novel under discussion. It appears not. I thought he was mocking the 'passion' of the romantic era; not so.

      All that said, it's Kierkegaard, so there's great sentences and even paragraphs and some pretty good ideas, too (his discussion of reflection vs action turns out to be much more nuanced than it initially seems). And you can't help but think whether our own age is more like the revolutionary/ passionate, or the reflecting/prudent age. Neither, really. But it's worth thinking about, at least.

    Book preview

    Kierkegaard's Writings, XIV, Volume 14 - Søren Kierkegaard

    TWO AGES

    KIERKEGAARD’S WRITINGS, XIV

    TWO AGES

    THE AGE OF REVOLUTION AND THE PRESENT AGE

    A LITERARY REVIEW

    by Søren Kierkegaard

    Edited and Translated

    with Introduction and Notes by

    Howard V. Hong and

    Edna H. Hong

    Copyright © 1978 by Howard V. Hong

    Published by Princeton University Press,

    41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540

    In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, 6 Oxford Street,

    Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1TW

    All Rights Reserved

    Sixth printing, and first paperback printing, 2009

    Paperback ISBN: 978-0-691-14076-6

    The Library of Congress has cataloged the cloth edition of this book as follows

    Kierkegaard, Søren Aabye, 1813–1855.

    Two Ages.

    (His Kierkegaard’s writings ; 14)

    Translation of: En literair Anmeldelse.

    Bibliography: p.

    Includes index.

    1. Gyllembourg-Ehrensvärd, Thomasine Christine Buntzen, 1773–1856.

    To Tidsaldre. I. Hong, Howard Vincent, 1912– .   II. Hong, Edna Hatlestad,

    1913– .   III. Title.

    IV. Series: Kierkegaard, Søren Aabye, 1813–1855. Works. English. 1978 ; 14.

    PT8131.G9T63413 1997    839.8’1’36       77-71986

    ISBN 0-691-07226-4                                         Rev.

    British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available

    Editorial preparation of this work has been assisted by a grant from Lutheran Brotherhood, a fraternal benefit society, with headquarters in Minneapolis, Minnesota

    Printed on acid-free paper. ∞

    Designed by Frank Mahood

    press.princeton.edu

    Printed in the United States of America

    7   9   10   8   6

    CONTENTS

    HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION

    Two Ages: The Age of Revolution and the Present Age, A Literary Review

    PREFACE

    INTRODUCTION

    I Survey of the Contents of Both Parts

    II An Esthetic Interpretation of the Novel and Its Details

    III Conclusions from a Consideration of the Two Ages

    The Age of Revolution

    The Present Age

    SUPPLEMENT

    Key to References

    Original Title Page

    Selected Entries from Kierkegaard’s Journals and Papers Pertaining to Two Ages: A Literary Review

    Preface and Conclusion from Thomasine Gyllembourg’s Two Ages

    EDITORIAL APPENDIX

    Acknowledgments

    Collation of Two Ages: A Literary Review in the Danish Editions of Kierkegaard’s Collected Works

    NOTES

    BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

    INDEX

    HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION

    Søren Kierkegaard had long esteemed the writings of Thomasine Christine Gyllembourg-Ehrensvärd, née Buntzen (1773-1856), whose writings were published anonymously by her son, Johan Ludwig Heiberg (1791-1860), poet, philosopher, dramatist, editor, esthetician, and the dominant literary personage in Denmark at that time. Kierkegaard had read her first novels,¹ The Polonius Family (Familien Polonius) and A Story of Everyday Life (En Hverdags-Historie) in the Kjøbenhavns flyvende Post, a weekly paper edited by her son. When Mrs. Gyllembourg’s last novel, Two Ages, was published—again, anonymously—on October 30, 1845, with J. L. Heiberg as its editor, Kierkegaard was prompted to write not only a review of that particular book but also a commendation of her writings as a whole, and in addition a cultural critique. Thus the review developed into something more than a review, more than a booklet, and ended up almost as long as the novel under review!

    Kierkegaard assumed—as did all Mrs. Gyllembourg’s readers—that Denmark’s popular anonymous author (until her death known only as "the author of A Story of Everyday Life") was a man. When he sent a gift copy of his review of Two Ages to the author through the book’s stated editor, J. L. Heiberg,² he had only rumored knowledge that he was writing to one of the most spirited and intelligent women in Copenhagen.

    Thomasine Gyllembourg did not begin writing until she was fifty-four years old—no doubt encouraged by the brilliant son of her brief marriage to P. A. Heiberg, essayist, novelist, playwright, and spokesman for the radical republican minority in Denmark. Because of his political agitation and social-political criticism, he had been banished from Denmark in December 1799 and had taken up residence in Paris. Thomasine chose separation and divorce from the man who was twenty years her senior and poles apart from her own lively, passionate nature. In 1801 she married Karl Gyllembourg-Ehrensvärd, who had been banished from Sweden for his political activities and had been a frequent visitor in the Heiberg home. Their happy marriage ended in his death in 1815, at which time Thomasine was granted a royal pension and moved to the home of her gifted son, who two years before, at the age of twenty-two, had already published his first book. The J. L. Heiberg home, wherever it happened to be in the ensuing years, became a lively center of cultural life in Copenhagen. This extraordinary home was enhanced in 1831 by Heiberg’s marriage to Denmark’s greatest actress, henceforth known as Luise Heiberg, to whom Kierkegaard dedicated his little book The Crisis and a Crisis in the Life of an Actress (1847).

    In the anonymously printed A Story of Everyday Life, which Danish literary historians consider Denmark’s first modern novel of significance, the reader encounters Thomasine Gyllembourg’s intense craving for meaningful form in everyday life as well as her strong sympathy for those who, like her, have experienced the turmoils of the heart. She emerges in the book as a champion of the rights of both heart and mind. Kierkegaard had read the novel in serial form in Heiberg’s literary weekly and already in 1838 had expressed his appreciation of the novel, or, more correctly, had given an effusive discourse (p. 23) on the series in his review of Hans Christian Andersen’s Only a Fiddler.³ In his review of Two Ages, Søren Kierkegaard states that he wants a second and last try, trusting that he is changed in the repetition: a little more clarity in the presentation, a little more lightness in a flowing style, a little more consideration in recognition of the difficulty of the task, a little more inwardness in discernment: consequently changed in the repetition (p. 23).

    Thomasine Gyllembourg’s view of life comes forth most vividly in Two Ages, which, as the title suggests, contrasts the mentality of two different generations, especially as that mentality is reflected in family life. Having lived through the one age, the age that felt the world-wide impact of Rousseau’s thought and of the French Revolution, and into the age of rationalism, Thomasine Gyllembourg could depict the advantages and disadvantages of both. Endowed as she was with both a feeling-full heart and a thought-full mind, she found elements of resonance in each age. In this book Kierkegaard found his own Socratic esteem for reflection as deliberation, as a presupposition for the essentially human life. He found, as well, his own propensity to drop no subject until it had been thoroughly discussed. He also found his own multiple use of the word reflection, at times meaning the reflected image and effect of the age in private, domestic, and social-political life (Danish Reflex), and also reflection as deliberation (Danish Reflexion). In fact, Robert Bretall points out that in Kierkegaard’s review of Two Ages ‘reflection’ is the principal category . . . with the ambivalence typical of all Kierkegaard’s categories. . . .⁴

    Versatile categories pose difficulties for translators. For the sake of distinction, in the translation of Kierkegaard’s Two Ages, Reflex as reflected image and effect has been translated reflexion. The Danish Reflexion as deliberation has been translated as reflection, but this again is a complex term in Søren Kierkegaard’s Two Ages and at times also has the meaning of calculating prudence or procrastinating indecision lacking in the passion of engagement.

    Søren Kierkegaard’s review of Thomasine Gyllembourg’s Two Ages seems to have been prompted by more than sheer admiration for that particular book. Two other factors seem to have entered in. Various drafts of the review suggest that he had been writing the piece in 1845, shortly after the publication of Mrs. Gyllembourg’s book in October 1845. But the drafting was set aside while he completed the manuscript of Concluding Unscientific Postscript, which he delivered to the printer in December 1845. As the word Concluding and also the appended piece, First and Last Declaration, indicate, Kierkegaard had every intention of ceasing to be an author. As early as the writing of Either/Or he had wrestled with the possibility of becoming a rural pastor.⁵ In a journal entry dated February 7, 1846, just before the publication of Concluding Unscientific Postscript and Two Ages, he reiterated his intention to become a pastor.⁶ But writing was in his blood and bone, and he artfully formulated a way out of his self-imposed stricture: he would write reviews.⁷ This, in fact, was what he was doing with Thomasine Gyllembourg’s Two Ages— continuing his writing without being an author. The same idea was expressed some months later in the draft title page for what became the unpublished Book on Adler,⁸ and three years later in connection with the same manuscript.⁹

    A third factor involved in Søren Kierkegaard’s review of Two Ages was "the Corsair affair," the vilifying attack upon his own person by the slanderous paper The Corsair during the months of January and February 1846. Kierkegaard’s penetrating discussion of levelling, demonic anonymity, the loss of individuality and organic community in the irresponsible crowd, and the emptying of language in Part III of his review of Two Ages is an independent cultural analysis with the occasional aspect of the Corsair affair in the transmuted form of universality.¹⁰

    Søren Kierkegaard’s review of Thomasine Gyllembourg’s Two Ages was published as a book on March 30, 1846, under the simple title A Literary Review. Although there was no contemporary review of Kierkegaard’s book,¹¹ selections from it did appear in Dannevirke.¹² The third edition appeared in 1904, one year after the printing of the work in Volume VIII of the first edition of Kierkegaard’s collected works (Samlede Værker, 1902-1906). The fourth edition appeared in 1945. The major portion of Part III was published in English in 1940 under the title The Present Age.¹³

    The meagerness of contemporary response to Kierkegaard’s Two Ages and the paucity of printings are not, however, a reliable gauge of the importance of the book. To many present-day readers the insights into the elemental trends in private and public life seem very penetrating and contemporary, a kind of prophecy from a solitary thinker of another century. As to the significance of the work in understanding Kierkegaard’s thought, Walter Lowrie’s estimate is sound when he stresses its importance together with that of the Postscript and The Book on Adler, works of the same period.¹⁴

    Although present-day readers are most interested in the social-political thought and cultural analysis in Part III of Kierkegaard’s Two Ages, the entire review is of importance as an instance of the way Kierkegaard read books. First of all, he read thoughtfully and appreciatively: Often when reading a good poem or some other work that bears the mark of genius, I have thought that it was good that I myself was not its author, for then I would not be allowed to express my joy without the fear of being accused of vanity.¹⁵ For him a book also awakened wonder over the complexities involved in the composition: When I read a book, what gratifies me is not so much what the book is itself as the infinite possibilities there must have been in every passage, the complicated history, rooted in the author’s personality, studies, etc., which every phrase must have had and still must have for the author.¹⁶

    Kierkegaard’s Two Ages gives ample indication of his appreciation of the writings and of the writing, and also of a third characteristic way of reading: using a book as an occasion for his own thinking. A thesis: great geniuses are essentially unable to read a book. While they are reading, their own development will always be greater than their understanding of the author.¹⁷ The first two aspects of reading are exemplified in the Introduction and in Parts I and II; the third is represented by Part III.

    The result of this multiple approach to a book is itself a work on various levels: exposition, literary criticism, cultural analysis, social-political thought, and even prophecy. With regard particularly to the latter levels, Kierkegaard’s concluding advice (p. 112) applies to his own book, available here in the first unabridged English translation: If anyone asks me for my advice, I would advise him to read it, and if he has read it, to read it again.

    ¹ Danish Novelle, short story. The Polonius Family is 114 pages, A Story of Everyday Life is 58 pages. The later writings are considerably longer; Two Ages is 247 pages—too long to be called a short story.

    ² See Letters, KW XXV, no. 134; Supplement, p. 143.

    ³ See Supplement, pp. 123-27.

    ⁴ A Kierkegaard Anthology, ed. Robert Bretall (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1947), p. 260.

    ⁵ See Gregor Malantschuk, Søren Kierkegaard—Poet or Pastor? prefatory essay in Kierkegaard, Armed Neutrality and An Open Letter (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1968).

    ⁶ See JP V 5873 (Pap. VII¹ A 4).

    ⁷ See JP V 5877 (Pap. VII¹ A 9); Supplement, p. 119.

    ⁸ See JP V 5936 (Pap. VII² B 242); Supplement, p. 149.

    ⁹ See JP VI 6334 (Pap. X¹ A 90); Supplement, p. 149.

    ¹⁰ See p. 98, 1. 15-p. 99, 1. 7 and note.

    ¹¹ See Søren Kierkegaard International Bibliography, ed. Jens Himmelstrup (Copenhagen: Nyt Nordisk Forlag, 1962), p. 11.

    ¹² A bi-weekly newspaper published in Haderslev, Jutland. See Supplement til "Almindeligt Forfatter-Lexicon . . .," ed. Thomas H. Erslew (Copenhagen: 1864), II, K-R, p. 37.

    ¹³ Søren Kierkegaard, The Present Age, tr. Alexander Dru (London, New York, Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1940).

    ¹⁴ See Walter Lowrie, Kierkegaard (London, New York, Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1938), p. 293.

    ¹⁵ JP V 5117 (Pap. I A 118).

    ¹⁶ JP V 5297 (Pap. II A 693).

    ¹⁷ JP I 1288 (Pap. II A 26).

    TWO AGES

    THE AGE OF REVOLUTION AND THE PRESENT AGE

    A LITERARY REVIEW¹

    by S. Kierkegaard

    TO THE NAMELESS, YET SO RENOWNED,² AUTHOR OF [VIII 4]

    A Story of Everyday Life

    THIS LITTLE PUBLICATION IS DEDICATED

    PREFACE³ [VIII 5]

    This review originally was intended for the Nordisk Literaturtidende.⁴ I soon realized that it was too long for the limited space of that journal, since as much as half of it is devoted to Swedish and Norwegian literature, and also that I am unqualified to write for journals. There is no journal of esthetics—well, then, let this also be what reviews presently refer to as the unity of the reflexion⁵ of the environment and the psychological consequence—the unity of my being the author, which explains the excessive length of the review, and of the circumstance that nowadays a more detailed review must be published as a book by itself. Moreover, it will be readily apparent that this review is not for esthetic and critical readers of newspapers but for rational creatures who take the time and have the patience to read a little book, although not necessarily this one. The fact that this book is written for them does not mean that it obligates them to read; at most it means only that it exempts from reading those whose esthetic and critical discernment had been formed by reading newspapers.⁶

    S. K.

    INTRODUCTION [VIII 7]

    Complaining about disloyalty and faithlessness between man and man is not uncommon in the world, and frequently enough the situation borders on the comic: the relation is not one of difference but, regrettably, of a faithful image of mutual resemblance, two changed persons⁷ who in new misunderstanding continue their association, each as the accuser of the other, instead of each one separately accusing himself and finding understanding. However much and however justifiably one person upbraids another for disloyalty, changeableness, and instability, he still guards against accounting for his own instability on those grounds, because he thereby declares himself as one who has the law of his existence outside himself—but what is changeableness if not that? If it is true that time changes everything, the changeable, then it is also true that time reveals who it was who did not change. Instead of complaints and accusations and differences and going to court, every faithful and committed person has the hope of vindication, that in time a re-examination will reveal whether he was unfaithful and whether the charge of unfaithfulness had the power to change him or not. Ironically enough, sometimes the person who promptly accused another person could almost wish in the moment of inspection that the vehemence of the accusation had had an effect opposite to what he originally desired, because it is now apparent that the accuser was the one who changed and now perhaps in fresh vehemence is true to form in complaining about this unchangeableness. Just as pain and suffering and peril of one’s life are not always where the shrieking is, so also faithfulness to oneself is not always present where the accusation of another is most strident.

    The same thing is frequently repeated in the literary world: [VIII 8] an author accuses his age of unfaithfulness, and the age accuses the author of the same, be it the presumed decline of his capacities or perhaps that in trying to fulfill the demands of the age he all too anxiously and frantically seizes upon something that still does not satisfy the age. Perhaps there is fault on both sides, but here again a re-examination will determine whether he is an author who essentially remains true to himself, while the world is changed, or he is an unstable mind, a wandering star,⁸ who wants to capture the changeable by means of changeableness, while nemesis captures him in his own snare. The situation is similar to the one above between two persons, but in literature it becomes complicated in another way and is made dialectical, for in a certain factual sense the two individuals do remain the same, but an age, a reading public, is much more dialectical. A slightly older author discerns quickly whether he has been dropped or is approved when he is encompassed by a new and dominant age, be it better justified in its demand or misled like that new pharoah⁹ who knew not Joseph and his merits. Then the altered age sometimes voices its demand by accusing the author of unfaithfulness to his age, which is dubious, especially when it is not made clear what is to be understood by his age or the age; for then eo ipso every author inevitably and ultimately becomes unfaithful to his age simply by remaining faithful to his age, since the age is sophistically always the new replacement, while the author as the individual who gets older with each year can be renewed only within himself but cannot become a new man with each age. If the apparent metaphysical profundity about the demands of the times is not to disintegrate in confusion, here again the re-examintion must ethically be assumed to be able to judge by determining whether he was an author who remained true to himself despite the demands of the times, or one who betrayed himself and his consciously undertaken commitments and thereby frustrated the fulfillment of a justifiable demand, or, finally, a Jack-of-all-trades who ended by hoodwinking himself. In other words, if the ethical is not granted a decisive predominance over all the rashness of the demands of the times, then not only our age but every age is guilty of unjust, unbecoming, and nonsensical [VIII 9] behavior toward all older authors.¹⁰ Even if a power-hungry older generation wants to protect

    Enjoying the preview?
    Page 1 of 1