Διαψάλματα

52nd Street

The title Διαψάλματα is attributed to the editor and not to the putative author, A. It means or suggests the idea of a liturgical refrain and might, I suppose, be taken to mean the plaints or recurrent attitudes of this rather romantic, self-absorbed young man, if, that is, we take them as the products of one person. There is nothing crude or primitive about this 'aesthetic' personality. He has little or nothing in common with the 'wanton' as characterized by Harry Frankfurt. In fact he seems the antithesis of that luckless if imaginary construct. This young poet is in contrast someone who strives to be in complete control of his experience and he does this - or attempts to do this - by turning himself into a sort of experience-machine. He has ways of turning everything into an agreeable or at least satisfying experience. He manages to distance himself from the raw contingencies of life in this world, which is a kind of solution for life's difficulties. he doesn't gulp down life like the imaginary wanton, but instead he sips at it, like someone from a fifties film circling and sipping a cocktail. It is a relatively stable compromise with the world.

Look at the following examples of these life-refrains. Choose one or two and be prepared to give an account of them in some appropriate level of detail. You might like to consider the following questions as you proceed:

(a) What is the prevailing emotional tone of these diapsalmata? Is he a simple hedonist? If not, in what way is he different?

(b) Is this a durable outlook on life? In what ways might he be vulnerable?

(c) Would you be satisfied with this style of life? Or, more  strongly, to what extent and in what ways is your life different from his?

No doubt other questions will occur to you as you read these pieces. I've included more than appear in The Essential Kierkegaard.

Nice boy, likes Beethoven?

1. What is a poet? An unhappy person who conceals profound anguish in his heart but whose lips are so formed that as sighs and cries pass over them they sound like beautiful music. It is with him as with the poor wretches in Phalaris's bronze bull, who were slowly tortured over a slow fire; their screams could not reach the tyrant's ears to terrify him; to him they sounded like sweet music.  And people crowd around the poet and say to him, "Sing again soon"-in other words, may new sufferings torture your soul, and may your lips continue to be formed as before, because your screams would only alarm us, but the music is charming. And the reviewers step up and say, "That is right; so it must be according to the rules of aesthetics."Now of course a reviewer resembles a poet to a hair, except that he does not have the anguish in his heart, or the music on his lips. Therefore, I would rather be a swineherd out on Amager and be understood by swine than be a poet and be

misunderstood by people.

2. How unreasonable people are! They never use the freedoms they have but demand those they do not have; they have freedom of thought-they demand freedom of speech.

3. 1 don't feel like doing anything. I don't feel like riding the motion is too powerful; I don't feel like walking-it is too tiring; I don't feel like lying down, for either I would have to stay down, and I don't feel like doing that, or I would have to get up again, and I don't feel like doing that, either. Summa Summarum: I don't feel like doing anything.

4. In addition to my other numerous acquaintances, I have one more intimate confidant-my depression. In the midst of my joy, in the midst of my work, he beckons to me, calls me

aside, even though physically I remain on the spot. My depression is the most faithful mistress I have known-no wonder, then, that I return the love.

5. Old age fulfills the dreams of youth. One sees this in Swift: in his youth he built an insane asylum; in his old age he himself entered it.

6. It is cause for alarm to note with what hypochondriac profundity Englishmen of an earlier generation have spotted the ambiguity basic to laughter. Thus Dr. Hartley has observed: that when laughter first makes its appearance in the child, it is a nascent cry that is excited by pain or a suddenly arrested feeling of pain repeated at very short intervals. (see Flogel, Geschichte der comischen Litteratur,22 I, p. 50). What if everything in the world were a misunderstanding; what if laughter really were weeping!

7. There are particular occasions when one may be most painfully moved to see a person standing utterly alone in the world. The other day 1 saw a poor girl walking utterly alone

to church to be confirmed.

8. Comelius Nepos tells of a general who was kept confined with a considerable cavalry regiment in a fortress; to keep the horses from being harmed because of too much inactivity, he had them whipped daily - in like manner, 1 live in this age as one besieged, but lest 1 be harmed by sitting still so much, 1 cry myself tired.

9. 1 say of my sorrow what the Englishman says of his house: My sorrow is my castle. Many people look upon having sorrow as one of life's conveniences.

10. Aladdin is so very refreshing because this piece has the audacity of the child, of the genius, in the wildest wishes. Indeed, how many are there in our day who truly dare to wish, dare to desire, dare to address nature neither with a polite child's bitte, bitte [please, please] nor with the raging frenzy of one damned? How many are there who-inspired by what is talked about so much in our age, that man is created in God's image-have the authentic voice of command? Or do we not all stand like Noureddin, bowing and scraping, worrying about asking too much or too little? Or is not every magnificent demanding eventually diminished to morbid reflecting over the I, from insisting to informing, which we are indeed brought up and trained to do. Aladdin is so very refreshing because this piece has the audacity of the child, of the genius, in the wildest wishes. Indeed, how many are there in our day who truly dare to wish, dare to

desire, dare to address nature neither with a polite child's bitte, bitte [please, please] nor with the raging frenzy of one damned? How many are there who-inspired by what is talked about so much in our age, that man is created in God's image-have

the authentic voice of command? Or do we not all stand like Noureddin, bowing and scraping, worrying about asking too much or too little? Or is not every magnificent demanding eventually diminished to morbid reflecting over the I, from insisting to informing, which we are indeed brought up and trained to do.

11. The tremendous poetical power of folk literature is manifest, among other ways, in its power to desire. In comparison, desire in our age is simultaneously sinful and boring, because it desires what belongs to the neighbor. Desire in folk literature is fully aware that the neighbor does not possess what it seeks any more than it does itself. And if it is going to desire sinfully, then it is so flagrant that people must be shocked. It is not going to let itself be beaten down by the cold probability calculations of a pedestrian understanding. Don Juan still strides across the stage with his 1,003 ladyloves. Out of reverence for the venerableness of tradition, no one dares to smile. If a poet had dared to do this in our age, he would be laughed to scorn. among other ways, in its power to desire. In comparison, desire in our age is simultaneously sinful and boring, because it desires what belongs to the neighbor. Desire in folk literature is fully aware that the neighbor does not possess what it seeks any more than it does itself. And if it is going to desire sinfully, then it is so flagrant that people must be shocked. It is not going to let itself be beaten down by the cold probability calculations of a pedestrian understanding. Don Juan stillstrides across the stage with his 1,003 ladyloves. Out of reverence

for the venerableness of tradition, no one dares to smile. If a poet had dared to do this in our age, he would be laughed to scorn.

12. Alas, fortune's door does not open inward so that one can push it open by rushing at it; but it opens outward, and therefore one can do nothing about it.

13. 1 have, I believe, the courage to doubt everything; I have, I believe, the courage to fight against everything; but I do not have the courage to acknowledge anything, the courage to possess, to own, anything. Most people complain that the world is so prosaic that things do not go in life as in the novel, where opportunity is always so favorable. I complain that in life it is not as in the novel, where one has hardhearted fathers and nisses and trolls to battle, and enchanted princesses to free. What are all such adversaries together compared with the pale, bloodless, tenacious-of-life nocturnal forms with which I battle and to which I myself give life and existence.

14. What is going to happen? What will the future bring? I do not know, I have no presentiment. When a spider flings itself from a fixed point down into its consequences, it continually sees before it an empty space in which it can find no foothold, however much it stretches. So it is with me; before me is continually an empty space, and I am propelled by a consequence that lies behind me. This life is turned around and dreadful, not to be endured.

15. The most beautiful time is the first period of falling in love, when, from every encounter, every glance, one fetches something new to rejoice over.

16. My observation of life makes no sense at all. I suppose that an evil spirit has put a pair of glasses on my nose, one lens of which magnifies on an immense scale and the other reduces on the same scale.

Othello and Desdemona