Melancholy, irony, and Kierkegaard

Abstract

Almost everyone who knows anything about Kierkegaard knows that his writings tend to be melancholy. Some know rightly of the irony with which he writes. Still some others know that both melancholy and irony are thematic features primarily of his early writings. But probably very few know that he perceives melancholy and irony as two closely related concepts. The conceptual nexus between the two, taken almost for granted, remains largely unexplored and somewhat surprisingly disquieting. A footnote in his doctoral dissertation, providing some evidence of Xenophon's failure to understand Socrates correctly, arouses the disquietude. Drawn from Memorabilia III, 14, 2ff., the evidence is Xenophon's depiction of a young dinner guest who is presumed to understand Socrates' remarks on greed. Kierkegaard contends that instead of representing the youth as taking a little bread with his meat in order to indicate his moral improvement, Xenophon should have shown him as "becoming so melancholy (Melancholf) that he gave up eating meat altogether."1 This disquietude stirs as we try to find an answer for why the young man should be cast as being melancholy (Melancholi). The reply that melancholy is a fitting expression for Socratic irony is neither lucid nor perceptive. Although an 1849 passage from his journal2 in which Kierkegaard states that the melancholy person tends, like the ironist, to become the henpecked partner in a marriage is a vague hint at an answer, the passage, nevertheless, makes the question more vexing, and the demand for an adequate account of their conceptual nexus more pressing. Hence, this paper aims to put the disquietude to rest by clarifying the relationship between melancholy and irony. More specifically, the clarification is beneficial on two counts. One, it sheds more light on the way in which Kierkegaard exploits scepticism; the other is that is permits the drawing of a tighter compass around the meanings of "Melancholi" and "Tungsind", each purportedly representing different degrees of melancholy in his writings.3 Kierkegaard's early pseudonymous writings have been used as the basis for drawing the purported distinction between "Melancholi" and "Tungsind". However, the nature and intention of the works, the first of which is Either/Or issued in two volumes, are such that the distinction between these two terms is not a priority. Artfully constructed to be dramatically provocative, they make use of