answering the question of who were they, the most important task for a biographer is to justify themselvesjustify their presence and voiceas the deliverer of the answer to that most important question.
There are lesser writers than Carlisle, and these lesser writers would not have been able to justify themselves as gracefully as Carlisle has here, She prioritizes style and fluidity and shares only the facts of Ks life that dont interrupt this riverlike forward motion, So, some details are missed and some stories never told, but the overall feeling by the end is one of overwhelming contentment, Similar to the way K designed his image and his life to be posthumously understood, this biography both illuminates and encourages, A treat of a biography of a treat of a person,
This questionwho am Iwas the thing that animated Ks entire life, Every decision, every thought, every word: who am I And although his efforts to answer this question reached an eventual fever pitch, he never managed to find a totally satisfactory answer.
Perhaps the answer lies beyond lifes liminal limits, But still he wrestled. And wrestled and wrestled, like Jacob did, until finally, death life, silence song, dusk dawn, . . Cualquier opinión /reseña /comentario no haría justicia a la tan vasta e inquietante vida de Kierkegaard ni a la tan enriquecedora biografía de la autora, cuya tesis doctoral sobre él, le cambió la vida.
Por ello, copio aquí una de las cartas que recibió de una joven:
Me dejaba llevar por la frivolidad o, tal vez, como usted señala en alguna parte, por la melancolía de estos tiempos y no tenía en cuenta a Dios ni mi relación con él.
Esto pronto llenó de infelicidad mi vida entera, Busqué consuelo en la oración, pero sentía que Dios no me escuchaba, Fui a la iglesia, pero mis pensamientos dispersos me impedían seguir los del pastor, En los libros de filosofía que estaban al alcance de mi inteligencia intenté hallar reposo para mi alma perdida y algo hallé, Leí O lo uno o lo otro con profunda admiración e intenté conseguir algunos de sus libros pidiéndolos prestados porque no podía permitirme comprarlos.
Me hice con los Discursos cristianos de, No era uno de los que buscaba, pero lo leí, No podré agradecérselo nunca lo bastante! Ahí, en sus discursos, encontré la fuente de la vida que no me ha fallado desde entonces, Cuando sufría, buscaba refugio en ellos y lo encontraba, Cuando la necesidad o el azar me llevaban a la iglesia y me marchaba de allí abatida, desconsolada, consciente del pecado cometido por estar en la Casa del Señor sin la veneración ni la humildad debidas, leía sus discursos y hallaba consuelo.
En todo lo que me sucedía, en la pena, en la alegría, esa pequeña porción de las riquezas que ha legado usted al mundo era la fuente de donde manaba, sin cesar, mi consuelo, mi alimento.
El domingo pasado vi su nombre en el anuncio de la misa en la Ciudadela, No podía dejar de acercarme y no me decepcionó, No fue como esos sermones que tantas veces he oído y que olvidaba en cuanto se acababan, No, desde el corazón cálido, lleno de riqueza, la palabra brotaba aterradora, pero edificante y dulce a la vez, como una nana, En el corazón ha calado, no la olvidaré ya nunca,
Coge en un bote y pon un poco de Séneca, Pascal, Montaigne, Rousseau y mucho de Sócrates, Agita bien y te saldrá un Kierkegaard, Sobre todo de ese último ingrediente, porque pretendió ser el Sócrates de la cristiandad, He aprendido o entendido más del cristianismo en esta biografía que en todos los años que estuve en un colegio religioso, No soy creyente y mucho menos practicante, pero me ha abierto bastante la mente, Kierkegaard sacudió los cimientos de su Dinamarca natal y la de media Europa, An absolutely wonderful read. I confess to having very little knowledge of Kierkegaard before this book, . . and much more knowledge after! I pretty much knew that Kierkegaard was a philosopher of some kind, but I did not know much else, This quirky and surprisingly beautifully written biography did much to show me the man that Kierkegaard actually was, Written in a bit of a spacey and elliptical fashion and jumping between Kierkegaard's present, future and past, I found myself enthralled with the life of this Danish Christian philosopher.
Although Kierkegaard himself may quibble with my description of him, as he did not always feel at home or comfortable in his own home of Denmark.
And as philosopher, he was one who was often scorned and mocked in his own lifetime, other contemporaries receiving the lion's share of adulations and praise.
And as a Christian He would surely say he was one who followed Christ, but he sneered and wept over the Danish state church and their version of Christianity.
This was one of the things that surprised me the most I with my very little knowledge did not realize how much of Kierkegaard's writings revolved around his faith and his struggles to understand how a Christian ought live.
And really at the end of this book, it seems as if Kierkegaard according to the author spent his passion and his life attempting to understand the answer to two questions.
What is it to be human And what is it to be a Christian I find myself very interested to read some of Kierkegaard's writings myself now.
Although I somewhat doubt my intellectual acuity to read and fully grasp Kierkegaard's writings, I am intrigued by the subjects Kierkegaard focused on and would like to at least read his "easiest" book.
Recommendations Apart from that though, this book is not just a book about Kierkegaard's philosophy and professional life, This is also or even primarily! a book about Kierkegaard as a man and how his experiences throughout his life both shaped and were shaped by his writings.
This is certainly well known to anyone who knows anything about Kierkegaard, but I did not realize that he was engaged to a woman when he was young, broke it off, then was continually haunted and tormented by his memories and thoughts of her until the day he died.
His thoughts and ponderings on himself, Regine and their relationship are found all throughout his writings and surely contributed a bit to the angst that we see poured out in his works.
And then of course, I discovered how Kierkegaard related to his father, his brothers and how he interacted with the other intellectual and cultural figures of the day.
The author's breadth and depth of research is impressive here and I most enjoyed this book, Not always an easy read, but it was surely one that made me think and ponder, It made me think of my own life, and what it means to be human, And it made me think on the nature of suffering and how we as Christians so often quail from the thought, Kierkegaard didn't have all the answers and I think that at times he could be too hard on others who didn't understand the Christian walk precisely as he did.
So he wasn't perfect. But he was striving to understand God better as he peered into the depths of his own heart, Might we all examine ourselves and in this examining, realize that we have a desperate and sure need to know God, And in this realization, may we look to Christ and Him crucified and in this looking find total joy and eternal salvation as we believe on His name! Very elegant prose.
presumes familiarity with SK's writings, وقتی کتاب میخوانی باید حواست جمع باشد. باید بدانی امکان این هست که تکهای از نویسنده یا کتابی که میخوانی جدا شود و به تو بچسبد. جوری که تکهای از روحت شود و باقی بماند. جوری که هستی خود را با آن به حساب آوری و بدون آن تکه حس گمشدگی بخشی از وجودت را داشته باشی.
سورن کیرکگور برای من همان تکه است. از یک شب پاییزی دو سال پیش که غرق در اضطراب بودم او را پیدا کردم و با من ماند. در فکر و رفتار و کردارم باقی ماند. مثل دوستی مضطرب که دقیقا مثل خود توست. دوستی که از تو میخواهد فکر کنی که انسان بودن در جهان یعنی چه. دوستی که مدام تو را به زندگی شورمندانه سوق میدهد. دوستی که دلنگران این است که مبادا خودت را به اعماق آن کاری که در زندگی می کنی پرتاب نکنی
حالا او را بهتر میشناسم. دوستیمان پایدارتر شده و آهنگ صدایش را هر روز در ذهنم میشنوم. صدای اضطرابش که مبادا "شاید همه جهان را به دست آوری اما من خودت را از دست بدهی".
آنچه به راستی نیاز دارم فهم این است که چه باید بکنم نه اینکه چه باید بدانم. مهم یافتن یک هدف است. مهم یافتن حقیقتیست که برای من حقیقت باشد یافتن اندیشهای که حاضر باشم برایش زندگی کنم و بمیرم. تا حتی اگر کل جهان از هم فرو بپاشد من بتوانم به او چنگ بزنم. این همان چیزیست که به آن نیاز دارم وبرای آن به جان میکوشم
"If there were no eternal consciousness in a man, if at the bottom of everything there were only a wild ferment, a power that twisting in dark passions produced everything great or inconsequential if an unfathomable, insatiable emptiness lay hid beneath everything, what would life be but despair If it were thus, if there were no sacred bond uniting mankind, if one generation rose up after another like the leaves of the forest, if one generation succeeded the other as the songs of birds in the woods, if the human race passed through the world as a ship through the sea or the wind through the desert, a thoughtless and fruitless whim, if an eternal oblivion always lurked hungrily for its prey and there were no power strong enough to wrest it from its clutches how empty and devoid of comfort would life be!"
Søren Kierkegaard lived in a melancholy way and this biography of him inescapably has the same character.
Kierkegaard exemplified human life as a trial at the end of which lies the eternal, towards which people whose vision remains clear try to strive.
That he lived during a period in which Europe was rapidly modernizing in every manner makes his philosophy more interesting, He saw a world in which most people, including Christians whose religious belief tended towards the merely aesthetic, lived under what he saw as a form of illusion.
To pull people out of an illusion you have to do so gently and also be willing to step consciously into the illusion with them.
Kierkegaard wrote evocatively and reflected deeply on his inward state, before passing away at the young age of, In that time he thought, a lot, about how to live well as a human being, Perhaps in a less confused age the answers would have come more naturally and with less pain inflicted on himself and others,
This biography is structured atypically, in that it does not follow a chronology but rather dips in and out of episodes from his life.
What did Kierkegaard do Not much other than write, preach, reflect on minor to us personal dramas while anxiously awaiting his final departure from the world, something that he always felt to be right around the corner.
Kierkegaard did not exactly live a cheerful life, But he strived hard to find meaning in suffering and see joy on the other side of it, In that, he could be called either a Platonist, Stoic, Sufi or whatever one prefers the basic outlook bears much in common, This biography is worth it for the elegant prose, as well as the moving excerpts from Kierkegaard's own books, Carlisle the author has a keen feel for the tension between the worldly Kierkegaard the one who flooded his journals with admissions of vanity, pettiness, rivalry and concerns about status and the spiritual man, determined not to confine himself to the sensualist basement“ of existence, but rather make use of the entire house“
Reading a biography is such a great way to make a
new friend!
I really enjoyed this biography of Søren Kierkegaard.
I liked the atypical structure, not being in chronological order, as well as the many cited thoughts and notes of his journal entries and publications.
I already started reading into one of his own works, Søren definitely was some interesting dude,
Writing became the fabric of his existence, the most vibrant love of his life for all his other loves flowed into it, and it swelled like the ocean that crashed restlessly against his native land.
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for we can never see another persons inward labour, nor know all the joys and sorrows stirring in another soul“
when he composes his works, he reads his sentences aloud, often many times, to sound out their rhythm and melody.
He spends hours like this, like a flautist entertaining himself with his flute“, and during these hours he falls in love with the sound of language that is, when it resounds with the pregnancy of thought“.
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because irony is to existence what doubt is to science: just as scientists maintain that there is no true science without doubt, he asserted, so it may be maintained that no genuinely human life is possible without irony.
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there is nothing that requires as gentle a treatment as the removal of an illusion“
I went out to the cafe where I had gone every day the previous time to enjoy the beverage that, according to he poets precept, when it is pure and hot and strong and not misused“, can always stand alongside to which the poet compares it, namely friendship.
At any rate, I am a coffeelover, “
Kierkegaard writes so beautifully, I really loved Kierkegaard after reading about kierkegaard and then reading fear and trembling, He spent his life trying to be a good person and he really suffered for feeling like he was bad but he tried, .