Summer reading with Korrektiv: In Vino Veritas
To what extent In Vino Veritas was meant as a joke on his reading public then I don’t know, but it certainly makes for something like a joke for this reader today. I even downed a bottle of chianti to see if that would help. It didn’t. In short, I’m a little lost at sea here.
Regarding the presentation of the aesthetic, I wonder if K. hadn’t felt he’d progressed far enough beyond it that he became a little more surreptitious in his dramatization.
"Nothing," said John, "because nothing is more unpleasant than a sentimental scene, and nothing more disgusting than the knowledge that somewhere or other there is an external setting which in a direct and impertinent fashion pretends to be a reality."
I take this to be Kierkegaard’s irony at work from the beginning. We are firmly fixed in the aesthetic sphere, where direct communication (which I believe K. elsewhere describes as belonging to the religious sphere) is impossible. But why?
“Whatever is to be good must come at once; for 'at once' is the divinest of all categories and deserves to be honored as in the language of the Romans: ex templo, because it is the starting point for all that is divine in life, and so much so that what is not done at once is of evil." (Victor Emerita)
Does this concern for ‘at once’ mark Victor’s comment as wholly aesthetic in nature? It would seem so to me, and I would note then the ironic placement of the word ‘divinest’ near the beginning, as well as a certain breeziness, if not confusion, about the categories of good and evil. A banquet certainly can be ‘divine’ (indeed, even in the most attenuated Protestantism – certainly in Lutheranism - there is usually some kind of ritual for the Last Supper), but I think the use of the descriptor by Victor Emerita here is telling.
I think the comparison with the “woman question” in these pages with the “Jewish question” in Nazi Germany is pretty astute; it all sort of reminded me of the Tom Cruise character in Magnolia. And didn’t Nietschze say something about a whip and a chair when it came to dealing with women? Hey, isn’t he an existentialist too?!
The supplementary fragment from the Hong volume is helpful. I have that Lowrie translation, and will see if he supplies anything else along the same lines. I haven’t reached the ending – and may not have, if you hadn’t given me something to look forward to.
Regarding the presentation of the aesthetic, I wonder if K. hadn’t felt he’d progressed far enough beyond it that he became a little more surreptitious in his dramatization.
"Nothing," said John, "because nothing is more unpleasant than a sentimental scene, and nothing more disgusting than the knowledge that somewhere or other there is an external setting which in a direct and impertinent fashion pretends to be a reality."
I take this to be Kierkegaard’s irony at work from the beginning. We are firmly fixed in the aesthetic sphere, where direct communication (which I believe K. elsewhere describes as belonging to the religious sphere) is impossible. But why?
“Whatever is to be good must come at once; for 'at once' is the divinest of all categories and deserves to be honored as in the language of the Romans: ex templo, because it is the starting point for all that is divine in life, and so much so that what is not done at once is of evil." (Victor Emerita)
Does this concern for ‘at once’ mark Victor’s comment as wholly aesthetic in nature? It would seem so to me, and I would note then the ironic placement of the word ‘divinest’ near the beginning, as well as a certain breeziness, if not confusion, about the categories of good and evil. A banquet certainly can be ‘divine’ (indeed, even in the most attenuated Protestantism – certainly in Lutheranism - there is usually some kind of ritual for the Last Supper), but I think the use of the descriptor by Victor Emerita here is telling.
I think the comparison with the “woman question” in these pages with the “Jewish question” in Nazi Germany is pretty astute; it all sort of reminded me of the Tom Cruise character in Magnolia. And didn’t Nietschze say something about a whip and a chair when it came to dealing with women? Hey, isn’t he an existentialist too?!
The supplementary fragment from the Hong volume is helpful. I have that Lowrie translation, and will see if he supplies anything else along the same lines. I haven’t reached the ending – and may not have, if you hadn’t given me something to look forward to.
posted by Quin Finnegan at 12:49 PM
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