KIERKEGAARD AS NOVELIST

Abstract

One of the many paradoxes of Kierkegaard's authorship is that in his critique of what he called 'the aesthetic' he made considerable use of conventional aesthetic forms—although in doing so he stretched them to and even beyond breaking-point. This is particularly true of what a Danish critic has called 'the great novels': Either/Or, Repetition and Stages on Life's Way. These highly complex and often bewildering books present Kierke gaard's most sustained reflection on what he regarded as the intrinsic inability of art to deal with certain fundamental issues of human life, issues which, he believed, could only be tackled ethically or religiously. It is no accident that this reflection was cast in established aesthetic forms (specifi cally novelistic forms) for Kierkegaard was intensely aware of the dynamics (or as he would say, the dialectics) of communication, of the interplay between medium and message, form and content, the 'how' and the 'what' of communication. Just as he constantly polemicizes against a philosophical approach to religion which says a great deal 'about' God but which expresses nothing of the passionate subjectivity of authentic religious faith, so here, with regard to the aesthetic, he recognizes that it is not enough merely to argue about the boundaries of aesthetic form in relation to ethics and religion. What he does instead is to offer a tangible example of what happens when one attempts to use aesthetic form to express a more-than-aesthetic content. In this way he makes the breakdown of aesthetics in the face of religious reality itself an aesthetic, more precisely a literary, event. In doing so, however, he sets up a new paradox, for this not only leads to an extension of the boundaries of theological investigation but also contributes to opening up new territories for aesthetic explorations of the human situation. The theological critique of the aesthetic thus belongs as much to the history of modern European literature as it does to theology: significantly it was the critic George Brandes who wrote the first major monograph on Kierke gaard's life and work, and his influence has arguably been as great amongst writers and artists as amongst the theologians. At first glance many English-speaking readers might well fail to see any resemblance between what I have called Kierkegaard's novels and what they are accustomed to think of as a novel. The narrative is minimal, and what there is of it is constantly interrupted by long sections of philosophy, aesthetic criticism, psychological analysis—even a sermon. Far from all this