Written Images: Søren Kierkegaard's Journals, Notebooks, Booklets, Sheets, Scraps, and Slips of Paper

by Niels Jørgen Cappelørn, Joakim Garff, Johnny Kondrup

Søren Kierkegaard (1813-55) was an almost unbelievably prolific writer. At his death he left not only a massive body of published work (25 volumes in the recently completed Princeton University Press edition), but also a sprawling mass of unpublished writings that rivaled the size of the published corpus. This book tells the story of the peculiar fate of this portion of Kierkegaard's literary remains, which flowed ceaselessly from his steel pen from his late teens to a week before his death. It is the story of packets and sacks of paper covered with words and images that, after a vagabond existence in various homes, finally landed at the Royal Danish Library, where they are today guarded with great care.


Readers are also introduced to a selection of this enormous body of material, including drawings and doodlings (often human profiles with high foreheads) that escaped from Kierkegaard's pen in unguarded moments and complement the allure of the philosopher's strikingly variable, elusive handwriting. The authors of this book are among the editors of a modern critical edition of Kierkegaard's oeuvre currently being produced in Copenhagen.


By the end of his life Kierkegaard had become a controversial figure, engaged in a furious assault upon "Christendom." From the very moment of their discovery in the days following his death, the unpublished words and images constituted a highly problematic bonanza, an intellectual and religious hot potato (or sack of potatoes) that was passed from hand to hand, suppressed, selectively and tendentiously published and republished. Written Images offers readers a fascinating tour of the misadventures of these written images that will, finally, soon be published in their entirety.

Genres: Philosophy

184 pages, Hardcover

First published August 4, 2003

About the author

Niels Jørgen Cappelørn (born 1945) is a Danish theologian, Søren Kierkegaard scholar and former director of Søren Kierkegaard Research Center at the University of Copenhagen. He has written and edited a number of books on Kierkegaard, and was editor of Index til Søren Kierkegaards Papirer, bind XIV-XVI (1975–78). He was Director of the Danish Bible Society from 1980 to 1993.

Professor Cappelørn is a member of the Danish Council of Ethics, a body which provides advice to the Danish Parliament and raises public debate about ethical problems in the field of biomedicine, and a member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters. He was made a Knight of the Order of the Dannebrog in 1992. A festschrift in his honor, At Være Sig Selv Nærværende (To Be Present to Oneself) was published in 2010, on the occasion of Professor Cappelørn's 65th birthday.

Reviews

[Nick Wellings · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sadly - at least if the very brief conversation I had with a young Danish girl on a train home the other night is any indicator - and despite this being the Bicentennial year of Kierkegaard's birth, it seems that despite his (in my opinion correct) self-assessment that he was Denmark's greatest prose stylist of the first half of his century, it seems that he remains unknown to a great many people even in his native country. "I've never heard of him" she said in puzzlement.

Thus does the posthumous legacy of genius survive as the provenance of either the merely curious, the common reader, the dabbler such as I, or the ardent specialist. Kierkegaard has a lot to give a reader, and much to inspire any budding author. Those unashamed to say that they are a seeker after truth will find a boon companion in him. That a young Danish girl had never heard of him is no big deal as who among English kids could name more than one Dickens book? the French a book of Proust's? as each of us attends to our smaller concerns, The Present Age, to borrow an idea of SK's neglects foundations. It has probably ever been thus. We must life as we may. The young girl was interning at a prestigious company and does not need Kierkegaard to be who she sees herself becoming. She has what she has and wants what she wants. We each of us have our interests as we must: I don't impugn anybody for living or acting as they do, not least that girl.

I am glad though that books like this exist. They coincide with my interest. Through this book, I can look upon the written images produced by prodigious genius.

For some, the roar of a V8 engine as the gears go higher, and the steady thrumming of power as the car cruises, is life best lived. For others, a bungee jump, a kiss from a child, a seat by the sea. For me, some of those moments, sure, and then some things like reading this book. Reading to brighten and clarify my thoughts on an author. Biographical details humanise him. His doodles make me realise he was real, he got bored,his mind wandered even as it grappled with a genius it could barely contain. His furious deletions, scribblings out and strikethroughs show he thought, rethought, deliberated, and won his victories through terrible labour and sweat and effort. Above all this man Søren Kierkegaard lived. He is not just a name. He existed. And for all his powers he had frailties. (Poor Regine!) One may compare this intimate picture we can build with that which comes with reading the letters of Van Gogh.

Through books such as this we come to know another soul. In life, and certainly for me at least, this is as close to a special gift as could be wished for.