Sřren Kierkegaard
from Either/Or (1843): Vol I (“A’s Papers”):
The Seducer’s Diary (Excerpts)
Sua passion' predominate
e la giovin principiante
-- Don Giovanni, Aria No. 4
April 4
CAUTION, my beautiful unknown! Caution! To step out of a carriage is not so simple a matter, sometimes it is a very decisive step. I might lend you a novel of Tieck's in which you would read about a lady who in dismounting f rom. her horse involved herself in an entanglement such that this step became definitive for her whole life. The steps on carriages, too, are usually so badly arranged that one almost has to forces about being graceful and risk a desperate spring into the arms of coachman and footman. Really, coachmen and footmen have the best of it. I really believe I shall look for a job as footman in some house where there are young girls; a servant easily becomes acquainted with the secrets of a little maid like that. --But for heaven's sake, don't jump, I beg of you! To be sure, it is dark; I shall not disturb you; I only pause under this street lamp where it is impossible for you to see me, and one is never embarrassed unless one is seen, and of course if one cannot see, one cannot be seen. So out of regard f or the servants who might not be strong enough to catch you, out of regard for the silk dress with its lacy fringes, out of regard for me, let this dainty little foot, whose slenderness I have already admired, let it venture forth into the world, and dare to trust that it will f ind a footing. Should you tremble lest it should not find it, or should you tremble after it has done so, then follow it ,quickly with the other foot, for who would be so cruel as to leave you in that position, so ungracious, so slow in appreciation the revelation of beauty? Or do you fear some intruder, not the servants of course, not me, for I have already seen the little foot, and since I am a natural scientist, I have learned from Cuvier [SK: French scientist who affirmed that from a single bone the whole animal could be deduced.] how to draw definite conclusions from such details. Therefore, hurry! How this anxiety enhances your beauty! Still anxiety in itself is not beautiful, it is so only when one sees at the same time the energy which overcomes it. How! How firmly this little foot stands. I have noticed that girls with small feet generally stand more firmly than the more pedestrian large-footed ones.
Now who would have thought it? It is contrary to all experience; one does not run nearly so much risk of one's dress catching when one steps out of a carriage as when one jumps out. But then it is always risky for young girls to go riding in a carriage, lest they finally have to stay in it . The lace and ribbons are wasted, and the matter is over. No one has seen anything. To be sure a dark figure appears, wrapped to the eyes in a cloak. The light from the street lamp shines directly in your eyes, so you cannot see whence he came. He passes you just as you are entering the door. Just at the critical second, a side glance falls upon its object. You blush, your bosom becomes too full to relieve itself in a single sigh; there is exasperation in your glance, a proud contempt; there is a prayer, a tear in your eye, both are equally beautiful, and I accept both as my due; for I can just as well be the one thing as the other .
But I am still malicious -- what is the number of the house? What do I see? A window display of trinkets. My beautiful unknown, perhaps it may be outrageous in me, but I follow the gleam . . . She has forgotten the incident. Ah, yes, when one is seventeen years old, when at that happy age one goes shopping, when every object large or small that one handles gives one unspeakable pleasure, then one easily forgets. She has not even seen me. I am standing at the far end of the counter by myself. A mirror hangs on the opposite wall; she does not reflect on it. but the mirror reflects her. How faithfully it has caught her picture, like a humble slave who shows his devotion by his faithfulness, a slave for whom she indeed has significance, but who means nothing to her -- who indeed dares to catch her, but not to embrace her. Unhappy mirror, that can indeed seize her image but not herself! Unhappy mirror, which cannot hide her image in its secret depths, hide it from the whole world, but on the contrary must betray it to others, as now to me. What agony, if men were made like that! And are there not many people who are like that, who own nothing except in the moment when tines show it to others, who grasp only the surface, not the essence, who lose everything if this appears, just as this mirror would lose her image, were she by a single breath to betray her heart to it?
And if a man were not able to hold a picture in memory even when he is present, then he must always wish to be at a distance from beauty, not so near that the earthly, eye cannot see how beautiful that is which he holds and which is lost to sight in his embrace. This beauty he can regain for the outward sight by putting it at a distance, but he may also keep it before the eyes of his soul, when he cannot see the object itself because it is too near, when lips are closed on lips. -- Still, how beautiful she is! Poor mirror, it must be agony! It is well that you know no jealousy. Her head is a perfect oval, and she bends it a little forward, which makes her forehead seem higher, as it rises pure and proud, with no external evidence of intellectual faculties. Her dark hair wreathes itself softly and gently about her temples. Her face is like a fruit, every plane fully rounded. Her skin is transparent, like velvet to the touch, I can feel that with my eyes. Her eyes -- well, I have not even seen them, they are hidden behind lids armed with silken fringes which curve up like hooks, dangerous to whoever meets her glance. Her head is a Madonna head, pure and innocent in cast; like a Madonna she is bending forward, but she is not lost in contemplation of the One. A variety of emotions finds expression in her countenance. What she considers is the manifold, the multitude of things over which worldly pomp and splendor cast their glamour. She pulls off her glove to show the mirror and myself a right hand, white and shapely as a. antique, without adornment, and with no plain gold ring on her fourth finger. Good! -- She looks up, and how changed everything is, and yet the same; the forehead seems lower, the oval of her face a little less regular, but more alive. She is talking now with the salesman, she is merry, joyous, chatty. She has already chosen two or three things, she picks up a fourth and holds it in her hand, again she looks down, she asks what it costs. She lays it to one side under her glove, it must be a secret, intended for -- a lover? -- But she is not engaged.- -- Alas, there are many who are not engaged and yet have a lover; many who are engaged, and who still do not have one . .
Ought I to give her up? Ought I to leave her undisturbed in her happiness? -- She is about to pay, but she has lost her purse. -- She probably mentions her address, I will not listen to it, for I do not wish to deprive myself of surprise; I shall certainly meet her again in life, I shall recognize her, and perhaps she will recognize me; one does not forget my side glance so easily. Her turn will come when I am surprised at meeting her in circles where I did not expect to; If she does not recognize me, if her glance does not immediately convince me of that, then I shall surely find an opportunity to look at her from the side, and I promise that she will remember the situation. No impatience, no greediness, everything should be enjoyed in leisurely draughts; she is pointed, she shall be run down.
April 7
"All right! Monday at
She is the child of the devil, the way she storms through all the rooms. You must learn to conceal your anxiety a little . Remember the advice given to the young Lisbed: "Is it becoming for a young girl to show her feelings like that?" Now of course this meeting is an innocent one. -- A rendezvous is generally regarded by lovers as a most beautiful moment. I even remember as clearly as if it were yesterday, the first time I hastened to the appointed place, with a heart as true as it was ignorant of the joy that awaited me; the first time I knocked three times, the first time a window opened, the first time a little wicket gate was unfastened by the unseen hand of girl who hid herself as she opened it; the first time I hid a girl under my cloak in the light summer night. There is still much illusion blended in this judgment. The reflective third party does not always find the lovers most beautiful at this moment. I have witnessed rendezvous where although the girl was charming and the man handsome, the total impression was almost disgusting, and the meeting itself was far from being beautiful, although I suppose it seemed so to the lovers. As one becomes more experienced he gains in a way; for though one loses the sweet unrest of impatient longing, he gains ability in making the moment really beautiful. I am vexed when I see a man with such an opportunity, so upset that mere love gives him delirium tremens. It is caviar to the general.. Instead of having enough discretion to enjoy her disquiet, to allow it to enhance and inflame her beauty, he only produces a wretched confusion, and yet he goes home joyously imagining it to have been a glorious experience.
But
where the devil is the fellow? It is nearly
She
has sat down. Poor girl, she looks so sad, I believe she has been crying, a least she has tears in her eyes. It is outrageous -- to
make such a girl cry. But be calm, you shall be
avenged, I will avenge you, he shall learn what it means to wait. -- How
beautiful she is, now that her conflicting emotions have subsided and her mood
is relaxed. Her being is a harmony of sadness and pain. She is really
captivating. She sits there in a traveling dress,. and yet she was not going to travel; she wandered out in
search of joy, and it is now an indication of her pain, for she is like one
from whom gladness flees. She looks like one who had forever said farewell to
the beloved. Let him go! The situation is favorable, the moment beckons . Now may I express myself so that it will seem as
if I think she is looking for her family, or a party of friends, and yet warmly
enough to make every word significant to her feelings, thus I get a chance to
insinuate myself into her thoughts. -- Now may the devil take the scoundrel!
There is a man approaching, who undoubtedly is he. flow
write me down as a bungler if I cannot shape the situation as I want it. Yes
indeed, a little finesse brings one well out of it . I
must f
9th day
Have I gone blind? Has the inner eye of my soul lost its power? I have seen her but it is as if I had seen a heavenly vision, so absolutely has her image again vanished from me. Vainly have I exerted all the power of my soul to recall this image. If I were to meet her again, then I should recognize her instantly, even among a hundred other girls. Now she has fled away, and my soul's eye vainly seeks to overtake her with its longing . -- I was walking along the shore boulevard, apparently unconcerned and indifferent to my surroundings, although my roving eye let nothing pass unnoticed, when I saw her. My eye fixed itself steadfastly upon her, it paid no attention to its master's will. It was impossible for me to direct its attention to the object I wished to look at, so I did not look, I stared. like a fencer who becomes frozen in his pass, so was my eye fixed, petrified in the one appointed direction . It was impossible for me to look away, to withdraw my glance, impossible for me to see because I saw too much. The only thing I have retained is that she wore a green cloak; that is all, that is what one may call catching the cloud instead of Juno; she slipped away from me as Joseph did from Potiphar's wife, and left only her cloak behind. She was accompanied by a middle-aged lady, presumably her mother. I can describe her from top to toe, and that although I glanced at her only en passant . So it goes. The girl made an impression upon me, and I have forgotten her; the other made no impression upon me, and I can remember her .
14th day
I scarcely recognize myself . My mind is like a turbulent sea, swept by the storms of passion. If another could see my soul in this condition, it would seem to him like a boat that buried its prow deep down in the sea, as if in its terrible speed it would rush down into the depths of the abyss . He does not see that high on the mast a look-out 'fits on watch. Roar on, ye wild forces, ye powers of passion! Let your dashing waves hurl their foam against the sky. You shall not pile up over my head; serene I sit like the king of the cliff . . .
16th day
How beautiful it is to be in love, how interesting to know that one is in love. Lo, that is the difference. I could become embittered at the thought that for a second time I have lost sight of her, and yet in a certain sense it pleases me. The image I now have of her shifts uncertainly between her actual and her ideal form. This picture I now summon before me; but precisely because it either is reality, for she certainly lives in the town, and that is enough for me at present. This possibility is the condition of her image appearing so clearly -- everything should be savored in slow draughts. And should I not be content, I who regard myself as a favorite of the gods, I who had the rare good fortune to fall in love again? That is something that no art, no study can effect, it is a gift. But having been fortunate enough to start a new love affair, I wish to see how long it can be sustained. I coddle this love as I never did my first. The opportunity falls to one's lot seldom enough, so if it does appear, then it is in truth worth seizing; for the fact is enough to drive one to despair, that it requires no art to seduce a girl, but that one is fortunate to find one worth seducing .
19th day
So her name is Cordelia. Cordelia!
That is a lovely name, and that, too, is of importance, since it is often very
embarrassing to have to use an ugly name in connection with the tenderest predicates. I recognized her a
long way off; she was walking with two other girls on, the left side. Their
pace seemed to indicate that they would soon stop. I stood on a street corner
and read a poster, while constantly keeping an eye on my unknown. They took
leave of each other. The two had evidently gone a little out of their way, for
they took an opposite direction. She came on toward my corner. When she had
taken a few steps, one of the other girls came running after her, calling
loudly enough for me to hear: Cordelia! Cordelia! Then the third girl came up,
and they stood with their heads together for a secret conference, which I tried
in vain to hear. Then all three laughed and went away somewhere more hastily in
the direction the two had taken before. I followed them. They went into a house on the
Cordelia! That is a really excellent name, and it was also the name of King Lear's third daughter, that remarkable girl who did not carry her heart on her lips, whose lips were silent while her heart beat warmly. So it is with my Cordelia. She resembles her, I am certain of that. But in another way she does wear her heart on her lips, not in the form of words, but more cordially in the form of a kiss. How healthily full her lips were! Never have I seen prettier ones.
That I am really in love I can tell among other things by the reticence with which I deal with this matter, even to myself. All love is secretive, even faithless love, when it has the proper aesthetic factor in it. It never has occurred to me to desire a confidant or to boast of my affairs. So I am almost glad that I did not find out where her home is, but only a place where she often comes. Perhaps on account of this I have also come a little nearer to my goal. I can, without attracting her attention, start my investigations, and from this fixed point it will not be difficult to secure an approach to her family. Should this circumstance, however, appear to be a difficulty-- eh bien! It is all in the day's work; everything I do, I do con amore; and so too I love con amore.
20th day
Today I got some information about the house into which she disappeared It belongs to a widow by the name of Jansen, who is blessed with three daughters. I can get an abundance of information there, that is to say, insofar as they have any. The only difficulty is in understanding this information when raised to the third power, for all three talked at once. Her name is Cordelia Wahl, and she is the daughter of a sea captain. He died some years ago, and her mother also. He was a very hard and austere man. She now lives with an aunt, her father's sister, who resembles her brother, but who otherwise is a very respectable woman. This is good as far as it goes, but for the rest, they know nothing about the house. They never go there, but Cordelia often visits them. She and the two girls are taking a course in cooking at the Royal Kitchen. For this reason she usually comes there early in the morning, but never in the evening. They live a very secluded life.
Thus her story ends. There appears to be no bridge by which I can slip over into Cordelia's house... .
22nd day
Today I saw her for the first time at Mrs. Jansen's. I was introduces to her. She did not seem to care much about it, or to pay any attention to me. I made myself as inconspicuous as possible in order to observe her the better. She stayed only a moment, she has merely called for the daughters on the way to cooking school. While the two Miss Jensens were getting their wraps, we two were alone in the room. With a cold, almost supercilious indifference I made some remark to her, to which she replied with a courtesy altogether undeserved. Then they left. I could have offered to accompany them, but that might have set me sown as a ladies' man, and I am convinced that she is not to be won that way.-- On the contrary, I preferred to leave a moment after they had gone, but to go more rapidly than they, and by another street, but likewise in the direction of the cooking school, so that just as they turned into Great Kingstreet I passed them in the greatest hurry, without even a greeting or other recognition, to their great astonishment.
Everywhere our paths cross. Today I met her three times. I am conscious of her slightest movement, when and where I shall meet her: but this knowledge is not used to secure a meeting with her; on the contrary, I squander my opportunities on a frightful scale. A meeting which has cost me many hours of waiting is thrown away like a mere bagatelle. I do not meet her, I touch only the periphery of her existence. If I know that she is going to Mrs. Jansen's, then my arrival does not coincide with hers, unless I have some important observation to make. I prefer to arrive a little early at Mrs. Jansen's and then to meet her, if possible, at the door or upon the steps, as she is coming and I am leaving, when I pass her by indifferently. This is the first net in which she must be entangled. I never stop her on the street; I may bow to her, but I never come close to her, but always keep my distance. Our continual encounters are certainly noticeable to her; she does indeed perceive that a new body has appeared on her horizon, whose orbit in a strangely imperturbable manner affects her own disturbingly, but she has no conception of the law governing this movement; she is rather inclined to look about to see if she can discover the point controlling it, but she is as ignorant of being herself this focus as if she were a Chinaman. It is with her as with my associates in general; they believe that I have a multiplicity of affairs, that I am always on the move and that I say with Figaro, "one, two, three. four intrigues at the same time, that is my delight." I must first know her and her entire intellectual background before beginning my assault. Most men enjoy a young girl as they do a glass of champagne, in a single frothing moment. Oh yes, that is all right, and in the case of many young girls it is really the most one can manage to get; but here there is more. If the individual girl is too frail to endure the clearness and transparency, oh well, then one enjoys the obscurity; but she can evidently endure it. The more one can sacrifice to love, the more interesting. This momentary enjoyment is, if not in a physical yet in a spiritual sense, a rape, and a rape is only an imagined enjoyment; it is like a stolen kiss, a thing which is rather unsatisfactory. No, when one can so arrange it that a girl's only desire is to give herself freely, when she feels that her whole happiness depends on this, when she almost begs to make this free submission, then there is first true enjoyment, but this always requires spiritual influence . . .
June 3rd
Even yet I cannot decide how she is to be understood. Therefore I wait very quietly, very inconspicuously -- aye, like a soldier on vedette duty who throws himself on the ground and listens for the faintest sound of an approaching enemy. I really do not exist for her in any real sense, not only not in a negative relationship, but simple not at all. Even yet I have not dared to experiment. -- To see her was to love her, that is the way it is described in novels -- aye, it is true enough, if love had no dialectics; but what does one really learn about love from novels? Sheer lies, which help to shorten the task. . .
The question is always whether her femininity is strong enough to become reflective, or whether it is only to be enjoyed as beauty and charm; the question is whether one dares to tense the bow more strongly. It is indeed a wonderful thing to find a pure immediate femininity, but if one dares to attempt a change, then one gets the interesting. In such a case it is always best to simple to provide her with a suitor. Some people are superstitious enough to believe that this would be injurious for a young girl. If she is, indeed, a very fine and delicate plant whose charm is her crowning quality, then it might always be best for her never to hear love mentioned, but if this is not the case, it is an advantage, and I should never hesitate to bring forward a suitor, providing there were none. This suitor must not be a mere caricature, for then nothing is gained; he must be a respectable young man, attractive is possible, but not a man big enough for her passion. She looks down on such a man, she gets a distaste for love, she almost doubts her own reality, when she feels what her destiny might be and sees what reality offers. If this is love, she says, and not something else, then it is nothing to boast about. Her love makes her proud, this pride makes her interesting, it penetrates her being with a higher incarnation; she is also approaching her downfall, but all this constantly makes her more and more interesting. However, it is always best to find out about her acquaintances first, to see whether or not there might be such a suitor. Her own home furnishes no opportunity, or as good as none, but still she does go out, and such a one might be found. To provide a suitor before knowing this is altogether inadvisable. To allow her to compare two equally insignificant suitors might be bad for her. I must find out whether there may not be such a lover in the offing, one who lacks the courage to storm the citadel, a chicken thief who sees no opportunity in such a cloistered house . . .
5th day
I did not have to go far after all. She visits the home of a wholesale merchant, Baxter by name. Here I found not only Cordelia, but also a man who appears very opportunely. Edward, the son of the house, is dead in love with her, one needs only hah an eye to see that, when one looks at his two eyes . He is in business with his father, a good-looking young man, quite pleasant, somewhat bashful, which I think does not hurt him in her eyes.
Poor Edward! He simply does not know how to go about his courtship. When he knows that she is to be there in the evening, then he dresses for her sake alone, puts on his dark suit with collar and cuffs, just for her sake, and cuts an almost ridiculous figure among the quite commonplace company in the drawing room. His embarrassment is almost incredible. If it were assumed, Edward would become a very dangerous rival. Embarrassment needs to be used very artistically, but it can be used to great advantage. How often have not used it to fool some little maiden. Girls generally speak very harshly about bashful men, yet secretly they like them. A little embarrassment always flatters a young girl's vanity, she feels her superiority, it is earnest money. When you have lulled them to sleep, when they believe that you are ready to die from embarrassment, then you have an opportunity to show that you are very far from that, that you are very well able to shift for yourself. By means of bashfulness, you lose your masculine significance, and therefore it is a relatively good means of neutralizing sexuality. Then when they notice that this shyness was only assumed, they are ashamed, they blush inwardly, and feel very strongly that they have certainly gone too far. It is the same as when people continue too long to treat a boy as a child.
7th day
We
are fast friends now, Edward and I; a true friendship, a beautiful relationship,
exists between us, such as has not been seen since the palmiest
days of
I have never before been accustomed to preparing for my part in a conversation; now this becomes necessary in order to entertain the aunt. I have assumed the disinterested task of conversing with her. Thereby covering Edward's loving advances toward Cordelia. The aunt formerly lived in the country, and by my own prodigious studies of agricultural literature, coupled with the aunt's information drawn from experience, I am making definite progress in insight and efficiency.
When I sit thus in the comfortable Living room, while she like a good angel diffuses her charm everywhere, over everyone with whom she comes in contact, over good and evil alike, then I sometimes become out of patience with myself; I am tempted to rush forth from my hiding place; for though I sit there, visible to everyone in the living room, still I am really lying in ambush. I am tempted to grasp her hand, to take her in my arms, to hold her to myself for fear someone else should take her away from me. Or when Edward and I leave in the evening, when in taking leave she offers me her hand, when I hold it in mine, it sometimes becomes very difficult to let the bird slip out of my hand. Patience ---quod antea fuit impetus, nunc ratio est -- she must be quite otherwise ensnared in my web, and then suddenly I let the whole power of my love rush forth. We have not spoiled that moment for ourselves by tasting, by unseemly anticipation -- for which you must thank me, my Cordelia. I work to develop the contrast, I tense the bow of love to wound the deeper. Like an archer, I release the string, tighten it again, listen to its song, my battle ode, but I do not aim it, I do not even lay the arrow on the string.
When a small number of people are frequently together in the same room, a sort of easy pattern soon develops, in which each one has his own place and chair; thus a picture of the room is formed which one can easily reproduce for himself at will, a chart of the terrain. It was that way with us in the Wahl home; we united to form a picture. In the evening we drink tea there. Generally the aunt, who previously has been sitting on the sofa, moves her little work table in front of the sofa, Edward follows her, I follow the aunt. Edward tries to be secretive, he talks in a whisper; usually he does it so well that he becomes entirely mute. I am not at all secretive in my outpourings to the aunt -- market prices, a calculation of the quantity of milk needed to produce a pound of butter; through the medium of cream and the dialectic of buttermaking, there comes a reality which any young girl can listen to without embarrassment, but, what is far rarer, it is a solid reasonable, and edifying conversation, equally improving for the mind and heart. I generally sit with my back to the tea table and to the ravings of Edward and Cordelia. Meanwhile I rave with the aunt. And is not Nature great and wise in her productivity, is not butter a precious gift, the glorious result of nature and art! I had promised Edward that I would certainly prevent the aunt from overhearing the conversation between him and Cordelia, providing anything was really said, and I always kept my word. On the other hand, I can easily overhear every word exchanged between them, hear every movement. This is very important to me, for one cannot always know how far a desperate man will venture to go. The most cautious and faint-hearted men sometimes do the most desperate things. Although I have nothing at all to do with these two people, it is readily apparent that Cordelia constantly feels that I am invisibly present between her and Edward . . .
Our relationship is not the tender and loyal embrace of understanding, not attraction; it is the repulsion of misunderstanding. My relationship to her is simply nil; it is purely intellectual, which means it is simply nothing to a young girl. The method I am following has extraordinary advantages. A man who approaches as a gallant awakens mistrust and encounters resistance. I escape all such suspicions. She is not on guard against me, instead she regards me as a trustworthy man who is fit to watch over a young girl. The method has but one drawback, namely, it is tedious, but it can, therefore, only advantageously be used against an individual when the interesting is to be the reward . . ..
Soon I hope that I shall have brought her to the point of hating me. I have presented a perfect picture of a confirmed bachelor. All I talk about is sitting at my ease, being comfortably lodged, having a competent servant, friends of good standing whom I can rely upon as intimates. Now I can induce the aunt to abandon her agricultural interests, then I can interest her in these, in order to get a more direct occasion for irony. One can laugh at a bachelor, even have sympathy for him; but a young man who has any spirit at all shocks a young girl by such conduct. The entire significance of sex, its beauty and its poetry, are destroyed.
So the days go on, I see her but I do not talk with her, I talk with the aunt in her presence. Occasionally at night it occurs to me to give my love air. Then wrapped in my cloak, with my hat pulled down over my eyes, I go and stand outside her window. Her bedroom looks out over the yard, but since it is a corner house, it can be seen from the street. At times she stands a moment at the window, or she opens it, looks up at the stars, unseen by anyone except the one she would least of all believe was watching her. In these hours of the night 1 forget everything, I have no plans, no calculations, I throw reason overboard, I expand and strengthen my chest by deep sighs, an exercise which I need in order not to suffer from the systematized routine of my life. Some are virtuous by day, sinful at night; I dissemble by day, at night I am sheer desire. If she could see me here, if she could look into my soul -- if!
. . . One would not believe it possible to calculate the developmental history of a soul so accurately. It shows how wholesome Cordelia is. She is in truth a remarkable girl. She is quiet and modest, unpretentious, but unconsciously there is in her a prodigious demand. This was evident to me today when I saw her enter the house. The slight resistance that gust of wind can offer awakens, as it were, all the energy within her, without arousing any fight She is not a little insignificant girl who slips between your fingers, so fragile that you almost fear that she will go to pieces it you look at her; but neither is she a showy ornamental flower. Like a physician I can therefore take pleasure in observing all the symptoms in her case history.
Gradually I am beginning to approach her in my attack, to go over to more direct action. Were I to indicate this change on my military map of the family, I should say that I have turned my chair so that my side is toward her. Her soul has passion, intensity, and without being foolish or vain, her reflections are remarkably pointed, she has a craving for the unusual. My irony over the foolishness of human beings, my ridicule of their cowardice, of their lukewarm indolence, fascinate her. She likes well enough to guide the chariot of Apollo across the arch of heaven, to come near enough to earth to scorch people a little. However, she does not trust me; hitherto I have discouraged every approach on her part, even intellectually. She must be strong in herself before I let her take rest in me . By glimpses it may indeed look as if it were she whom I would make my confidante in my freemasonry, but this is only by glimpses. She must be developed inwardly, she must feel an elasticity of soul, she must learn to evaluate the world . What progress she is making, her conversation and her eyes easily show me. I have only once seen a devastating anger in her. She must owe me nothing, for she must be free; love exists only in freedom, only in freedom is there enjoyment and everlasting delight. Although I am aiming at her falling into my arms as it were by a natural necessity, yet I am striving to bring it about so that she gravitates toward me, it will still not be like the faring of a heavy body, but as spirit seeking spirit. Although she must belong to me, it must not be identical with the unlovely idea of her resting upon me like a burden. She must neither hang on me in the physical sense, nor be an obligation in moral sense. Between the two of us only the proper play of freedom must prevail. She must be mine so freely that I can take her in my arms .
July 3rd
. . . As a woman, she hates me; as an intelligent woman she fears me; as having a good mind, she loves me. Now for the first time I have produced this conflict in her soul. My pride, my defiance, my cold ridicule, my heartless irony, all tempt her, not as if she might wish to love me; no, there is certainly not a trace of such feeling in her, least of all toward me. She would emulate me. What tempts her is a proud independence in the face of men, a freedom like that of the Arabs of the desert. My laughter and singularity neutralize every erotic impulse. She is fairly at ease with me, and insofar as there is any reserve, it is more intellectual than feminine. She is so far from regarding me as a love, that our relation to each other is that of two able minds. She takes my hand, pressed it a little, laughs, pays some attention to me in a purely Platonic sense. Then when irony and ridicule have duped her long enough, I shall follow that suggestion found in an old verse: "The knight spreads out his cape so blue, and begs the beautiful maiden to sit thereon . . . “
Today my eyes have for the first time rested upon her. Someone has said that sleep can make the eyelids so heavy that they close of themselves; perhaps my glance has a similar effect upon Cordelia. Her eyes close, and yet an obscure force stirs within her. She does not see that I am looking at her, she feels it through her whole body. Her eyes close, and it is night; but within her it is luminous day.
Edward must go; he has reached the very end. At any moment I may expect him to go to her and make a declaration of love. There is no one who knows this better than myself, who am his confidant, and who assiduously keeps him over excited so that he can have a greater effect upon Cordelia. To allow him to confess his love is still too risky. I know very well that she will refuse him, but that will not end the affair. He will certainly take it very much to heart. This would perhaps move and touch Cordelia. Although in such a case do not need to fear the worst, that she might start over again, still her self-esteem would possibly suffer out of pure sympathy. If this should happen, it frustrates my whole plan concerning Edward.
. . . One could think of several methods by which to surprise Cordelia. I might attempt to raise an erotic storm, powerful enough to tear up trees by the roots. By its aid I might try, if possible, to sweep her off her feet, snatch her out of her historic continuity; attempt, in this agitation, by stealthy advances to arouse her passion. It is not inconceivable that I could do this . . . However, this would be all wrong from the aesthetic standpoint. I do not enjoy giddiness, and this condition is to be recommended only when one has to do with a girl who can acquire poetic glamour in no other way. Besides, one misses some of the essential enjoyment, for too much confusion is also bad. Its effect upon Cordelia would utterly fail. In a couple of draughts I should have swallowed what I might have had the good of for a long time, moreover what with discretion I might have enjoyed more fully and richly. Cordelia is not to be enjoyed in over-excitement. I might perhaps take her by surprise at first, if I went about it right, but she would soon be surfeited, precisely because this surprise lay too close to her daring soul.
A simple engagement is the best of all methods, the most expedient. If she hears me make a prosaic declaration of love, item asking for her hand, she will perhaps believe her ears even less than if she listened to my heated eloquence, absorbed my poisonous intoxicants, heard her heart beat fast at the thought of an elopement.
The curse of an engagement is always on its ethical side. The ethical is just as tiresome in philosophy as in life. What a difference! Under the heaven of the aesthetic, everything is light, beautiful, transitory; when the ethical comes along, then everything becomes harsh, angular, infinitely boring. An engagement, however, does not have ethical reality in the stricter sense, as marriage does; it has validity on ex consensu gentium. This ambiguity can be very serviceable to me. It has enough of the ethical in it so that in time Cordelia will get the impression that she has exceeded the ordinary bounds; however, the ethical in it is not so serious that I need t ear a more critical agitation. I have always had a certain respect for the ethical. I have never given any girl a marriage promise; not even in jest . Insofar as it might seem that I have done it here, that is only a fictitious move. I shall certainly manage it so that she will be the one who breaks the engagement. My chivalrous pride scorns to give a promise. I despise a judge who by the promise of liberty lures an offender into a confession. Such a judge belittles his own power and ability.
Practically, I have reached the point where I desire nothing which is not, in the strictest sense, freely given. Let common seducers use such methods. What do they gain? He who does not know how to compass a girl about so that she loses sight of everything which he does not wish her to see, he who does not know how to poetize himself into a girl's feelings so that it is from her that everything issues as he wishes it, he is and remains a bungler; I do not begrudge him his enjoyment. A bungler he is and remains -- a seducer, something one can by no means call me. I am an aesthete, an eroticist, one who has understood the nature and meaning of love, who believes in love and knows it from the ground up, and only makes the private reservation that no love affair should last more than six months at the most, and that every erotic relationship should cease as soon as one has had the ultimate enjoyment. I know all this, I know too that the highest conceivable enjoyment lies in being loved; to be loved is higher than anything else in the world. To poetize oneself into a young girl is an art, to poetize oneself out of her is a masterpiece. Still, the latter depends essentially upon the first.
23rd day
. . . The decisive moment is approaching. I might address myself to the aunt in writing, asking for Cordelia's hand. This is indeed the ordinary procedure in affairs of the heart, as if it were more natural for the heart to write than to speak. What might decide me to choose this method is just the philistinism in it. But if I chose this, then I lose the essential surprise, and that I cannot give up . . .
On my side there is nothing now to obstruct the engagement. Consequently, I go ahead with my wooing, though no one realizes it but myself. Soon will my humble person be seen from a higher standpoint. I cease to be a person and become -- a match; yes, a good match, the aunt will say. She is the one I am most sorry for; she loves me with such a pure and sincere agricultural love, she almost worships me as her ideal . ...
31st day
Today I have written a love letter for a third party. I am always happy to do this. In the first place it is always interesting to enter into a situation so vividly, and yet in all possible comfort. I fill my pipe, hear about the relationship, and the letters from the intended are brought out. The way in which a young lady writes is always an important study to me. The lover sits there like a fathead, he reads her letters aloud, interrupted by my laconic comments: She writes well; she has feeling, taste, caution, she has certainly been in love before, and so on. In the second place I am doing a good deed. I am helping to bring a couple of young people together; after I balance accounts. For every pair I make happy, I select one victim for myself; I make two happy, at the most only one unhappy. I am honorable and trustworthy. I have never deceived anyone who has taken me into his confidence. Little fools always fail there. Well, it is a lawful perquisite.
And why do I enjoy this confidence? Because I know Latin and attend to my studies, and because I always keep my little affairs to myself. And do I not deserve this confidence? Indeed I never misuse it.
August 2
The moment came. I caught a glimpse of the aunt on the street, an so I knew she was not at home. Edward was at the custom-house. Consequently there was every likelihood of Cordelia's being at home alone. And so it was. She sat by her work-table occupied with some sewing. I have very rarely visited the family in the forenoon, and she was therefore a little disturbed at seeing me. The situation became almost emotional. She was not to blame for this, for she controlled herself fairly well; but I was the one, for in spite of my armor she made an uncommonly strong impression upon me . . . She was really charming, childlike, and yet adorned with a noble maidenly dignity that inspired respect. However, I was soon again dispassionate and solemnly stolid, as is proper when one would do the significant as if it were the insignificant. After a few general remarks, I moved a little nearer to her and began my petition. A man who talks like a book is exceedingly tiresome to listen to; sometimes, however, it is quite appropriate to speak in that way. For a book has the remarkable quality that you may interpret it as you wish. One's conversation also acquires the same quality, if one talks like a book. I kept quite soberly to general formulas. It cannot be denied that she was as surprised as I had expected. To describe how she looked is difficult. Her expressions were so variable, indeed much like the still unpublished but announced commentary to my book, a commentary which has the possibility of` any interpretation. One word, and she would have laughed at me, one word, and she would have been moved, one word, and she would have fled from me; but no word crossed my lips, I remained stolidly serious, and kept exactly to the ritual. --"She had now me so short a time." Good heavens! such difficulties are encountered only in the narrow path of an engagement, not in the primrose path of love.
Curiously enough. When in the days preceding I surveyed the affair, I was rash enough and confident enough to believe that, taken by surprise, she would say yes. That shows how much thorough preparation amounts to. The matter is not settled, for she neither said yes, or no, but referred me to her aunt. I should have foreseen this. However, I am still lucky, for this outcome is even better than the other.
The aunt gives her consent, about that I never had the slightest doubt. Cordelia accepts her advice. As regards my engagement, I do not boast that it is romantic; it is in every way ver matter of fact and commonplace. The girl doesn't know whether to say yes or no, the aunt says yes, the girl also says yes, I take the girl, she takes me -- and now the story begins.
3rd day
So now I am engaged; so is Cordelia, and that is all she needs to know about the whole matter. If she had a girl friend she could talk freely with, she might perhaps say: "l don't really understand what it all means. There is something about him that attracts me, but I can't really make out what it is. He has a strange power over me, but I do not love him, and perhaps never shall; on the other hand I can stand it to live with him, and can therefore be very happy with him; for he certainly will not demand so much if one only bears with him." My dear Cordelia! Perhaps he may demand more, in return for less endurance. -- Of all ridiculous things imaginable, an engagement is the most ridiculous. Marriage, after all, has a meaning, even if this meaning does not please me . An engagement is a purely human invention which by no means reflects credit upon its inventor. It is neither one thing nor the other, and it has as much to do with love as the scarf which hangs from a beadle's back has to do with a professor's gown. Now I am a member of this honorable company. That is not without significance, for, as Trop says, it is only by first being an artist that one acquires the right to judge other artists. And is not a fiancé also a make-believe artist?
Edward is beside himself with rage. He is letting his beard grow, he has hung away his dark suit, which is very significant. He insists on talking with Cordelia in order to describe my craftiness td her. It is an affecting scene: Edward unshaven, carelessly dressed, shouting at Cordelia. Only he cannot cut me out with his long beard. Vainly I try to bring him reason. I explain that it is the aunt who has brought about the match, that Cordelia perhaps has a warmer feeling for him, that I am willing to step back if he can win her. For a moment he wavers, wonders whether he should not shave his beard in a new way, buy a new black suit, then the next instant he abuses me. I do everything to keep on good terms with him; however angry he is with me, I am certain he will take no step without consulting me; he does not forget how helpful I have been to him in my role as mentor. And why should I wrest his last hope from him, why break with him? He is a good man; who knows what may happen in the future?
What I now have to do is, on the one hand, to get everything in order for getting the engagement broken, thus assuring myself of a more beautiful and significant relation to Cordelia; on the other hand, I must improve the time to the uttermost by enjoying all the charm, all the loveliness with which Nature has so abundantly endowed her, enjoying myself in it, still with the self-limitation and circumspection that prevents any violation of it. When have brought her to the point where she has learned what it is to love, and what it is to love me, then the engagement breaks like an imperfect mold, and she belongs to me . This is the point at which others become engaged, and have a good prospect of boring marriage for all eternity. Well, let others have it. . .
Auf heimlich erröthender
Wange
Leuchtet des Herzens Glühen
She sits on the sofa by the tea table, I in a chair by her side. This position has the advantage of being intimate and yet detached. So tremendously much depends upon the position, that is, for one who has an eye for it. Love has many positions, this is the first. How regally Nature has endowed this girl: her pure soft form, her deep feminine innocence, her clear eyes -- all these intoxicate me. I pay her my respects. She cheerfully greets me as usually still a little embarrassed, a little uncertain: the engagement still makes our relationship somewhat different, just how she does not know. She shook hands with me, but not with her usual smile. I returned the greeting with a slight, almost imperceptible pressure. I was gentle and friendly without being erotic. -- She sits on the sofa by the tea table. sit in a chair by her side. A glorified solemnity diffuses itself over the situation, a soft morning radiance. She is silent; nothing disturbs the stillness . My eyes steal softly over her, not with desire, in truth that would be shameless. A delicate fleeting blush passes over her, like a cloud over the meadow. rising and receding. What does this blush mean? Is it love? Is it longing, hope, fear; for is not the heart's color red? By no means. She orders, she is surprised -- not at me, that would be too little to offer her; she is surprised, not at herself, but in herself -- she is transformed within. This moment demands stillness, therefore no reflection shall disturb it, no intimation of passion interrupt it. It is as it were not present, and yet it is just my presence that furnishes the conditions for her contemplative wonder. My being is in harmony with hers. When she is in this condition, a young girl is to be worshiped and adored in silence, like some deities
I cannot regret the time that Cordelia has cost me, although it is considerable. Every meeting has demanded long preparation. I am watching the birth of love within her. I am even almost invisibly present when I visibly sit by her side. My relation to her is that of an unseen partner in a dance which is danced by only one, when it should really be danced by two. She moves as in a dream, and yet she dances with another, and this other is myself, who, insofar as I am visibly present, am invisible; insofar as I am invisible, I am visible . The movements of the dance require a partner, she bows to him, she takes his hand, she Rees, she draws near him again. I take her hand I complete her thought as if it were completed in herself . She moves to the inner melody of her own soul; I am only the occasion for her movement. I am not amorous, that would only awaken her, I am easy, yielding, impersonal, almost like a mood . . .
So now the first war with Cordelia begins, in which I flee and thereby teach her to triumph in pursuing me. I constantly retreat before her, and in this retreat I teach her, through myself, to know all the power of love, its unquiet thoughts, its passion, what longing is, and hope, and impatient expectation. As I thus set all this before develops correspondingly in her. It is a triumphal procession. I lead her in it, and I also am the one who dithyrambically sings praises for her victory, as well as the one who shows the way. She will gain courage to believe in love, to believe that it is an eternal power, when she sees its mastery over me, sees my emotions. She will believe me, partly because fundamentally what I teach is true. If this were not the case, then she would not believe me. With every movement of mine, she becomes stronger and stronger: love is awakening in her soul, she is becoming initiated into her significance as a woman. Hitherto I have not set her free in the ordinary meaning of the word. I do it now, I set her free, for only thus will I love her. She must never suspect that she owes this freedom to me. The temporary results may be what they will. If she becomes dizzy with pride, if she should break with me -- oh, well, she is free; but she shall yet be mine. That the engagement should bind her is foolishness; I will have her only in her freedom. Let her forsake me, the second war is just beginning, and in this second war I shall be the victor,
just as certainly as it was an illusion that she was the victor in the first. The more abundant strength she has, the more interesting for me. The first war was a war of Liberation, it was only a game; the second is a war of conquest, it is for life and death.
Do I love Cordelia? Yes. Sincerely? Yes -- in an aesthetic sense, and this also indicates something important. What good would it do this girl to fall into the hands of some numskull, even if he were a faithful husband? What would she then become? Nothing. Someone has said that it takes a little more than honesty to love such a girl. That more I have -- it is duplicity. And yet I really love her. Rigidly and abstemiously I watch over herself, so that everything there is in her, the whole divinely rich nature, may come to its unfolding. I am one of the few who can cto this, she is one of the few who is fitted for this; are we not then suited to one another?
Is it sinful of me that, instead of looking at the preacher, I fix my eye on the beautiful embroidered handkerchief you hold in your hand? Is it sinful for you to hold it thus? It has your name in the corner. --Your name is Charlotte Hahn? It is so fascinating to learn a lady's name in such an accidental manner. It is as if there were a helpful spirit who mysteriously made me acquainted with you. --Or is it perhaps not accidental that the handkerchief was folded just right for me to see your name? --You are disturbed, you wipe a tear from your eye, the handkerchief again hangs carelessly down. --It is evident to you that I am looking at you, not at the preacher. You look at the handkerchief, you notice that it has betrayed your name. --It ~ really a very innocent matter that one should get to know a girl's name. ---Why do you take it out on the handkerchief, why do you crumple it up? Why are you so angry? Why angry at me? Listen to what the preacher says: "No one should lead a man into temptation; even one who does so unwittingly, has a responsibility, he is even in debt to the other, a debt which he can discharge only by increased benevolence. "
My Cordelia!
Love loves secrecy--an engagement is a revelation; it loves silence--an engagement is a public notice; it loves a whisper--an engagement is a proclamation from the housetops; and yet an engagement, with my Cordelia's help, may be an excellent trick for reviving the enemies. On a dark night there is nothing more dangerous to other ships than hanging out a lantern, which is more deceptive than the darkness.
Thy Johannes.
She sits on the sofa by the tea table. I sit by her side; she holds my arm, her head weighed down by many thoughts rests on my shoulder; she is so near me, and yet so far away. She resigns herself to me, and yet she does not belong to me. Even yet she resists me, but this is not subjectively reflective; it is the ordinary feminine resistance, for woman's nature is renunciation in the form of resistance. --She sits on the sofa by the tea table, I sit by her side. Her heart is beating, yet without passion; her bosom moves, yet not in disquiet; sometimes she changes color, yet in an easy transition. Is that love? By no means. She listens, she understands. She listens to the winged word, she understands it as her own; she listens to another's speech as it echoes through her; she understands this echo also, as if it were her own voice, which is manifest to her and to another. ...
Cordelia becomes more and more indignant whenever we go to my uncle's house. She has several times requested that we should not go there again; there is no help for her, I always know how to find an excuse. Last night when we left she pressed my hand with unusual passion. She had probably felt tortured at being there, and it was no wonder. If I did not always get some amusement out of watching the artificiality of these artistic performances, it would be impossible for me to stand it. This morning I received a letter from her wherein she, with more wit than I expected from her, ridiculed the engagements . I have kissed that letter; it is the dearest one I have received from her. Rightly so, my Cordelia, this is the way I wish it....
My Cordelia!
Outside the door stands a little carriage which to me is large enough for the whole world, since it is large enough for two; hitched to it are a pair of horses, wild and unmanageable as the forces of nature, impatient as my passion, spirited as your thoughts. If you are willing, I shall carry you away, my Cordelia! Only command it. Your command is the word which loosens the reins and the lust of flight. I carry you away, not from one person to another, but out the world. Rear, horses! The carriage comes, the horses rear up almost above our heads; we ride heavenward through the clouds, they bluster about us; is it we who are sitting still while all the world is moving, or is it our daring flight? Does it make you dizzy, my Cordelia? Then hold fast to me; I do not become dizzy. One never becomes giddy in a spiritual sense when one thinks only of a single thing, and I think only of you -- in the physical sense one is never giddy if one fastens the eyes on one single object. I look only at you. Hold fast; if the world passes away, if our comfortable carriage vanishes beneath us, we still hold each other close, floating in the harmony of the spheres.
Thy Johannes
It is almost too much. My servant has waited six hours, I myself have waited two, in the wind and rain, just to meet that dear child, Charlotte Hahn. She is in the habit of visiting an old aunt of hers regularly every Wednesday between two and five. Today she doesn't come, just when I was so eager to see her. And why? Because she puts me in a very definite mood. I bow to her, she curtsies to me in a manner at once indescribably worldly, and yet so divine; she almost stops, sinks nearly to the ground, looking all the time as if she might ascend to heaven. When I look at her, my mind is at once solemn and yet filled with desire. As for the rest, the act does not interest me in the least. All I want is this greeting, nothing more, even it she were willing to give it. Her greeting creates a mood in me, and it is this mood which I then squander on Cordelia . . .
My letters do not fail of their purpose. They develop her mentally, if not erotically. For that purpose I must not use letters but notes. The more the erotic is to come out, the shorter they should be, but the more positively they should stress the erotic side. However, in order not to make her sentimental or soft, irony must again stiffen her emotions, while yet giving her an appetite for the nourishment dearest to her. The notes vaguely and remotely suggest the absolute. As soon as this suspicion begins to dawn in her soul, the relation is ruptured. By my resistance the suspicion takes form in her soul, as if it were her own thought, her own heart's impulse. This is just what I want . . .
My Cordelia!
Speak - - I obey. Your wish is a command. Yourr prayer is an all powerful invocation, every fleeting wish of yours is a benefaction to me; for I obey you not like a servile spirit, as if I stood outside of you . When you command, then your will increases, and with it I myself; for I am a confusion of the soul which only awaits your word.
Thy Johannes.
My Cordelia!
Because I have loved you so short a time you almost seem to fear hat I may have loved someone before. There are manuscripts on which the trained eye immediately suspects an older writing, which in the course of time has been superseded by insignificant foolishness. By means of chemicals this later writing may be erased, and then the original stands our plain and clear. So your eye has taught me to find myself in myself. I let forgetfulness consume everything which does not concern you, and then I discover a very old, a divinely young, original writing -- then I discover that my love for you is as old as myself.
Thy Johannes.
My Cordelia!
People say that I am in love with myself; I don't wonder, for how could they notice that I am in love, since I love only you? How could anyone suspect it, since I love only you? I am in love with myself, why? Because am in love with you; for I love you truly, you alone, and everything which belongs to you, and so I love myself because this myself belongs to you, so if I cease to love you, I cease to love myself. What is, then, in the profane eyes of the world an expression of the greatest egoism, is for your initiated eyes an expression of purest sympathy; what is for the profane eyes of the world an expression for the most prosaic self-preservation, is in your sacred sight an expression for the most enthusiastic self-annihilation.
Thy Johannes.
My Cordelia!
Mine, what does this word signify? Not what belongs to me, but what I belong to, what contains my whole being, which is mine insofar as I belong to it. My God is not the God who belongs to me, but the God to whom I belong, and so again when I say my native land, my home, my calling, my longing, my hope. If you had not been immortal before, then would this thought, that I am thine, break through Nature's accustomed course.
Thy Johannes.
...Last evening the aunt had a little party. I knew Cordelia would have her knitting-bag with her, so I had hidden a little note in it. She dropped it, picked it up, read it, anct showed both embarrassment and wishfulness. One should never fail to take advantage of such opportunities. It is incredible how much it can help. The note had nothing of importance in it, but it became infinitely significant to her when she read it under such circumstances. She had no chance to talk with me; I had arranged it so that I had to escort a lady home. Consequently Cordelia had to wait until today. It is always best to give an impression time to sink into her soul. It always looks as if I were very attentive. This gives me the advantage of everywhere being in her thoughts, of everywhere surprising her ...
Love has many positions; Cordelia makes good progress. She is sitting on my knee, her arm, soft and warm, encircles my neck; she rests upon my breast, light, without bodily weight; her soft form hardly touches me; like flower a graceful figure twines about me, freely as a ribbon. Her eyes are hidden behind her lashes, her bosom is of a dazzling whiteness Like snow, so smooth that my eye cannot rest upon it, would glance off, if her bosom did not move. What does this agitation mean? Is it love? Perhaps. lt may be its anticipation, its dream. lt still lacks energy. She embraces me elaborately, as the cloud the glorified, casually as a breeze, softly as one caresses a flower; she kisses me as dispassionately as heaven kisses the sea, softly and quietly as the dew kisses a flower, solemnly as the sea kisses the image of t he moon .
So far I should call her passion a naive passion. When the change comes, and I begin to draw back in earnest, then she will really muster all her resources in order to captivate me. She has no way to accomplish this except by means of the erotic, but this will now appear on a very different scale. It then becomes the weapon in her hand which she swings against me. Then I have the reflected passion. She fights for her own sake because she knows that I possess the erotic; she fights for her own sake in order to overcome me. She develops in herself` a higher form of the erotic. What I taught her to suspect by inflaming her, ms coldness now teaches her to understand, but in such a way that she believes she discovered it herself. Through this she will try to take me by surprise; she will believe that her boldness has outstripped me, and that she has thereby caught me. Then her passion becomes determinate, energetic, conclusive, logical; her kiss total, her embrace firm. --In me she seeks her freedom, the more firmly I encompass, the better she finds it. The engagement is broken. When this happens, then she needs a little rest, so that this wild tumult may not bring out something unseemly. Then her passion gathers itself again, and she is mine...
An ancient philosopher has said that if a man were to record accurately all of his experiences, then he would be, without knowing a word of the subject, a philosopher. I have now for a long time lived in close association with the community of the engaged. Such a relationship ought then to bear some fruit. I have considered gathering all the material into a book, entitled: Contribution to the Theory of Kissing, dedicated to all tender lovers. It is, too, quite remarkable that no such work on this subject exists. If, then, I am fortunate in being prepared, I also remedy a long-felt want. Could this lack in literature be due to the fact that philosophers do not consider such matters, or that they do not understand them? I am able to offer one suggestion immediately. The perfect kiss requires a man and a girl as participants. A kiss between men is tasteless, or what is worse, has a bad taste. Next, 1 believe a kiss comes nearer the ideal when a man kisses a gir}than when a girl kisses a man. When in the course of years there has come about an indifference in this relation, then the kiss has lost its significance. This is true about the domestic kiss of marriage with which married people dry each other's lips in lieu of a napkin, as they say "you are welcome." If the difference in age is very great, then the kiss is without idea. I remember that in a girl's school in one of the provinces, the senior class had a peculiar byword: "to kiss the judge," an expression connoting only agreeable ideas. It had originated in this way: The schoolmistress had a brother-in-law who lived in her house. He was an elderly man, had been a judge, and took advantage of his age to kiss the young girls. The kiss ought to be the expression of a definite passion. When a brother and sister who are twins kiss each other, it is not a true kiss. This also holds true of kisses given during Christmas games, as well as of the stolen kiss. A kiss is a symbolic action which is unimportant when the feeling it should indicate is not present, and this feeling can only be present under certain conditions.
If one wishes to classify the kiss, then one must consider several principles of classification. One may classify kissing with respect to the sound. Here the language is not sufficiently elastic to record all my observations. I do not believe that all the languages in the world have an adequate supply of onomatopoeia to describe the different sounds I have learned to know at my uncle's house. Sometimes it was smacking, sometimes hissing, sometimes sticky, sometimes explosive, sometimes booming, sometimes full, sometimes hollow, sometimes squeaky, and so on forever. One may also classify kissing with regard to contact, as in the close kiss, the kiss en passant, and the clinging kiss. ...One may classify them with reference to the time element, there is still another classification, and this is the only one I really care about. One makes a difference between the first kiss and all others. That which is the subject of this reflection is incommensurable with everything which is included in the other classifications; it is indifferent to sound, touch, time in general. The first kiss is, however, qualitatively different from all others. There are only a few people who consider this....
There is a difference between spiritual love and physical. Hitherto I have chiefly tried to develop the spiritual in Cordelia. My physical presence must now be something different: not only an accompanying mood, it must be a temptation. I have in these days been constantly preparing myself by reading the celebrated passages in Phaedrus concerning love, It electrifies my whole being and is an excellent prelude. Plato really understood about love.
...Today we were at a party. We had not exchanged a word with each other. We were leaving the table; a servant came in and informed Cordelia that a messenger wished to speak with her. This messenger was from me, he brought a letter which explained the meaning of a remark I had made at the table. I had managed to introduce it into the general table conversation so that Cordelia, although she sat at a distance from me, must necessarily overhear it and not understand it. The letter was calculated with this in mind. Had I not been fortunate enough to give the conversation this turn, then I should have been ready at the right tome to confiscate letter. When she returned to the room, she had to tell a little fib. Such things consolidate the erotic mystery, without which she cannot progress on her appointed way.
Jacta es alea. Now the change begins. I was with her today, quite carried away by an idea that has always engaged my thought. I had neither eyes nor ears for her. The idea was interesting in itself, and it fascinated her. Besides, it would have been wrong to begin this new plan of action by treating her coldly. Now when I have left her and the idea no longer interests her, she will readily discover that I was different from what I used to be. That she should come to realize this change when she is by herself makes it more painful to her; it acts more slowly but more earnestly upon her. She cannot immediately fire up, and so when the opportunity does come, she has already imagined so much that she cannot find expression for it all at once, but will retain a residuum of doubt. Unrest increases, the letters cease, the erotic nourishment is diminished, love is ridiculed as laughable. Perhaps she gets along for a short time, but in the long run she cannot endure it. Then she wishes to captivate me by the same means I had used with her, by means of the erotic....
Today I was with Cordelia. With the speed of thought I adroitly directed the conversation to the same subject we had considered yesterday, in order again to arouse ecstasy within her. "There is something I really should have said yesterday; it occurred to me after I had gone." That succeeded. As long as I am with her she enjoys listening to me; when I have gone, she realizes that she has been cheated and that I am indeed changed. In this way one extends his credit. This method is underhanded but very inadequate, like all indirect methods. She can very well argue to herself that the things I talk about can really engross me, that they even interest her for the moment, and yet I defraud her of the real erotic....
Now she lets drop numerous remarks which clearly indicate that for her part she is tired of our engagement. They do not pass my ear unheeded, they are the scouts of my plans in her soul, who give me enlightening hints; they are the ends of the thread by which I weave her into my plans.
My Cordelia!
You complain about the engagement. You think our love does not need an external bond which exists only to hinder. In that I immediately recognize my wonderful Cordelia! In truth, I adore you. Our external union is only a separation. And yet there is a wall between us that separates us like Pyramus and Thisbe. Even now the consciousness of men is disturbing. Only in contrast is there liberty. When no outsider suspects the love, then it first gets significance. When every stranger believes that the lovers hate each other, then first is love happy.
Thy Johannes.
...Woman will always offer an inexhaustible fund of material for my reflection, an eternal abundance for observation. The man who feels no impulse toward the study of woman may, as far as I am concerned, be what he will; one thing he certainly is not, he is no aesthetician. This is the glory and divinity of aesthetics, that it enters into relation only with the beautiful; it has to do essentially only with the literature which is beautiful, with the sex which is beautiful. It makes me glad and causes my heart to rejoice when I represent to myself how the sum of feminine loveliness spreads out its rays in an infinite manifoldness, splitting itself up in a confusion of tongues, where each individual woman has her little part of the whole wealth of femininity, yet so that her other characteristics harmoniously center about this point. In this sense feminine beauty is infinitely divisible. But the particular share of beauty which each one has must be present in a harmonious blending, for otherwise the effect will be disturbing, and it will seem as if Nature had intended something by this woman, but had not realized her plan.
My eyes can never weary of surveying this peripheral manifold, these scattered emanations of feminine beauty. Each particular has its little share and yet is complete in itself, happy, glad, beautiful. Every woman has her share: the merry smile, the roguish glance, the yearning look, the drooping head, the exuberant spirits, the calm sadness, the deep foreboding, the prophetic melancholy, the earthly homesickness, the unbaptized movements, the beckoning brows, the questioning lips, the mysterious forehead, the ensnaring curls, the concealing lashes, the heavenly pride, the earthly modesty, the angelic purity, the secret blush, the light step, the graceful airiness, the languishing posture, the dreamy yearning, the inexplicable sighs, the willowy form, the soft outlines, the luxuriant bosom, the swelling hips, the tiny foot, the dainty hand. --Each woman has her own, and the one does not merely repeat the other. And when I have gazed and gazed again considered this multitudinous variety, when I have smiled, sighed, flattered, threatened, desired, tempted, laughed, wept, hoped, feared, won, lost -- then I shut up my fan, and gather the fragments into a unity, the parts into a whole. Then my soul is glad, my heart beats, my passion is aflame. This one woman, the only woman in all the world, she must belong to me, she must be mine. Let God keep Heaven, if I could keep her. I know what I chose; it is something so great that Heaven itself must be the loser by such a division, for what would be left to Heaven if I keep her? The faithful Mohammedans will be disappointed in their hopes when in their Paradise they embrace pale, weak shadows; for warm hearts they cannot find, all the warmth of the heart is concentrated in her breast; they will yield themselves to a comfortless despair when they find pale lips, dim eyes, a lifeless bosom, a limp pressure of the hand; for all the redness of the lips, the fire of the eye, and all the restlessness of the bosom, and the promise of the hand, and the foreboding of the sigh, and the seal of the kiss, and the trembling of the touch, and the passion of the embrace -- all, all are concentrated in her, and she lavishes on me a wealth sufficient for a whole world, both for time and eternity....
I shall now for variety's sake attempt, myself being cold, to think woman as cold. I shall attempt to think woman under her category. Under what category must she be conceived? Under being for an other.... Woman shares this category with nature and, in general, with everything feminine. Nature as a whole exists only for an other; not in the teleological sense, so that one part of nature exists for another part, but so that the world of nature is for an Other -- for the Spirit. In the same way with the particulars. The life of the plant, for example, unfolds its hidden charms in all naiveté, and exists only for an other. In the same way a mystery, a charade, a secret, a vowel, and so on, has being only for an other. And from this it can be explained why when God created Eve, He let a deep sleep fall over Adam; for woman in the dream of man. In still another way the story teaches that woman is a being for an other. It tells, namely, that Jehovah created Eve from a rib taken from the side of man. Had she been taken from man's brain, for example, woman would indeed still have been a being for an other; but it was not the intention to make her a fantasy, but something quite different. She became flesh and blood, but this causes her to be included under nature, which |is essentially being for an other. She awakens first at the touch of love; before that time she is a dream. Yet in her dream life we can distinguish two stages: in the first, love dreams about her; in the second, she dreams about love.
When woman is determined as virginity, she is thereby characterized as being for an other. Virginity is, namely, a form of being which, insofar as it is a being for itself, is really an abstraction and only reveals female innocence. It is therefore possible to say that woman in this condition is invisible. As is well known, there existed no image of Vesta, the goddess .who most nearly represented feminine virginity. This form of existence is, namely, jealous for itself aesthetically, just as Jehovah is ethically, and does not desire that there should be any image, or even any conception of one. This is the contradiction, that the being which is for an other is not, and first becomes visible, as it were, by the interposition of another. Logically, this contradiction will be found to be quite in order, and he who knows how to think logically will not be disturbed by it, but will be glad in it. But whoever thinks illogically wil1 imagine that whatever is a being for an other exists, in the finite sense in which one can say about a particular thing: that is something for me.
This being of woman (for the word existence is too rich in meaning, since woman does not persist in and through herself) is rightly described as charm, an expression which suggests plant life; she is a flower, as the poets like to say, and even the spiritual in her is present in a vegetative manner. She is wholly subject to nature, and hence only aesthetically free. In a deeper sense she first becomes free by her relation to man, and when man courts her properly, there can be no question of a choice. Woman chooses, it is true, but if this choice is thought of as the result of a long deliberation. then this choice is unfeminine. Hence it is, that it is a humiliation to receive a refusal, because the individual in question has rated himself too high, has desired to make another free without having the power. --In this situation there is deep irony. That which merely exists for another has the appearance of being predominant: man sues, woman chooses. Woman is in the idea the vanquished, man the victor, and yet the victor bows before the vanquished; but this is quite natural, and it is only awkwardness, stupidity and lack of erotic sensibility, to seek to set one's self above that which immediately reveals itself in this fashion. It has also a deeper ground. Woman is, namely, substance; man is reflection. She does not therefore choose independently; man sues, she chooses. But man's courtship is a question, and her choice only an answer to a question. In a certain sense man is more than woman, in another sense he is infinitely less.
This being for an other is the true virginity. If it makes an attempt to be a being for itself, in relation to another being which is being for it, then the opposition reveals itself in an absolute coyness; but this opposition shows at the same time that woman's essential being is being for an other. The diametrical opposite to absolute devotion is absolute coyness, which in a converse sense is invisible as the abstraction against which everything breaks, without the abstraction itself coming to life. Femininity now takes on the character of an abstract cruelty the caricature in its extreme form of the intrinsic feminine brittleness. A man can never be so cruel as a woman. Consult mythologies, fables, folktales, and you will find this view confirmed. If a natural principle is to be described, whose mercilessness knows no limits, it will always be a feminine nature. Or one is horrified at reading about a young woman who callously allows all her suitors to lose their lives, as so often happens in the folktales of all nations. A Bluebeard slays all the women he has loved on their bridal night, but he does not find his happiness in slaying them; on the contrary, his happiness has preceded, and in this lies the concrete determination; it is not cruelty for the sake of cruelty. A Don Juan seduces them and runs away, but he finds no happiness at all in running away from them, but rather in seducing them; consequently it is by no means this abstract cruelty.
Thus the more I reflect on this matter, the more I see that my practice is in perfect harmony with my theory. My practice has always been impregnated with the theory that woman is essentially a being for an other. Hence it is that the moment has here such infinite significance; for a being for an other is always the matter of a moment. It may take longer, it make take shorter time before the moment comes, but as soon as it has come, then that which was originally a being for an other assumes a relative being, and then all is over. I know very well that husbands say that the woman is also in another sense a being for an other, that she is everything to her husband through life. This is something that we must leave to the husbands. I really believe that it is something which they mutually delude one another into believing. Every class in life generally has certain conventional customs, and especially certain conventional lies. Among these must be reckoned this sailor's yarn. To understand it at the moment is not so easy a matter, and he who misunderstands it naturally acquires such a boredom for the rest of his life. The moment is everything, and in the moment, woman is everything; the consequences I do not understand. Among these consequences is also the begetting of children. Now I fancy that I am a fairly consistent thinker, but if I were I to think myself crazy, I am not a man who could think this consequence; I simply to not understand it -- to understand it probably one must be a husband....
How Cordelia engrosses me! And yet the time is soon over; always my soul requires rejuvenescence . I can already hear, as it were, the far distant crowing of the cock. Perhaps she hears it too, but she believes it heralds the morning. --Why is a young girl so pretty, and why does it last so short a time? I could become quite melancholy over this thought, and yet it is no concern of mine. Enjoy, do not talk. The people who make a business of such deliberations do not generally enjoy....
Have I been constantly faithful to my pact in my relation to Cordelia? That to say, my pact with the aesthetic. For it is this which makes me strong, that I always have the idea on my side. This is a secret, like Samson's hair, which no Delilah shall wrest from me. Simply and directly to betray a young girl, that I certainly could not endure; but that the idea is set in motion, that it is in its service that I act, to its service that I dedicate myself, this gives me a strictness toward myself, abstemiousness from every forbidden enjoyment. Has the interesting always been preserved? Yes, dare say it freely and openly in this secret conversation with myself. Even the engagement was interesting, exactly because it did not offer that which one generally understands by the interesting. It preserved the interesting by the fact of the outward appearance being in contradiction to the inner life. Had I been secretly bound to her, then it would have been interesting only in its first potentialities. This, however, is interesting in another potentiality....The engagement is broken, but in such a ways that she herself breaks it, in order to raise herself to a higher sphere. So it should be; this is, in fact, the form of the interesting which will occupy her most.
Sept. 16
The bond is burst; longing, strong, daring, divine, she flies like a bird which now for the first time gets the right to stretch its wings. Fly, bird, fly! In truth if this royal night were a withdrawal from me, then my pain would be infinitely deep. As if Pygmalion's love were again turned to stone, so would this be for me . Light have I made her, light as a thought, and why should not this, my thought, belong to me! That would be a cause for despair. A moment earlier it would not have mattered, a moment later it would not trouble me, but now--now--this now, which is an eternity to me! But she does not fly away from me. Fly, then, bird, fly; soar proudly on your wings, glide through the soft realms of the air; soon I shall be with you, soon I shall hide myself with you in a profound solitude!
The aunt was somewhat taken aback by the news. However, she is too detached to wish to coerce Cordelia, although, I, partly to lull her to a sounder sleep, partly to fool Cordelia a little, have made some attempt to get her to interest herself in my behalf. As for the rest, she shows me much sympathy she does not suspect how much reason I have for deprecating all sympathy.
She has received permission from her aunt to spend some time in the country; she will visit a family. It happens very fortunately that she cannot immediately give herself up to excessive moods. She will still, for some time, be kept tense by all kinds of external criticism. I maintain a desultory communication with her by means of letters, so our relationship is sustained. She must now be strengthened in every way; especially, it is best to permit her to make a few eccentric flights to show her contempt for mankind in general. Then when the day for her departure arrives, a trustworthy man will appear as coachman. Outside the gate my confidential servant will join them. He will accompany her to her destination and remain with her to render attention and assistance in case of need. Next to myself I know no one who is better fitted for this than John. I have myself arranged everything out there as tastefully as possible. Nothing is lacking which can in any way serve to delude her soul and to soothe it with a sense of well-being.
...Spring is the most beautiful time of the year to fall in love; autumn the most beautiful to reach the goal of one's desires. There is a sadness in the autumn which well corresponds to the movement with which the thought of a fulfillment of one's desires courses through one. Today I have been out in the country where some day Cordelia will find surroundings that are attuned to her soul. for myself I do not desire to participate in her surprise and pleasure over this; such erotic conditions would only enervate her soul. If she is alone there, she will pass her time in revery, everywhere she will see allusions, hints, an enchanted world, but all this would lose its significance if I were with her; it would cause her to forget that, for us, the period of time when such things enjoyed in fellowship have significance, is past. This environment must not like a narcotic ensnare her soul, but constantly incite it to rise up, because she sees it as a play, which has no significance in comparison with that which is to come. I even intend in these days which still remain to visit this place more often, in order to retain my mood.
My Cordelia!
Now I call you mine in truth, no external sign reminds me of my possession. --Soon I call you mine in truth. And when I hold you fast in my arms, when you entwine me in your embrace, then we need no ring to remind us that we belong to each other, for is not this embrace a ring, which is more than a sign. And the more firmly this ring encloses us, the more inseparably it knits us together, the greater our freedom, for your freedom consists in being mine, as mine in being yours.
Thy Johannes.
My Cordelia!
Soon, soon you are mine. When the sun closes its spying eye, when history is over and the myths begin, then I not only fling my cloak about me, but I fling the night about me like a cloak, and hasten to you, and harken to find you, not by the sound of footfalls, but by the beating of your heart.
Thy Johannes.
My Cordelia!
What, frightened? When we keep together, then are we strong, stronger than the world, stronger even than the gods themselves. You know there once lived a race of people on the earth who were indeed men, but who were each self-sufficient, not knowing the inner union of love. Yet they were mighty, so mighty that they would storm heaven. Jupiter feared them, and divided them so that from one came two, a man and woman. Now, if it sometimes happens that what had once been united are united again in love, then is such a union stronger even than Jupiter. They are not only as strong as the individuals were, but even stronger, for love's union is an even higher union.
Thy Johannes.
The
night is still--the clock strikes a
I do not yet see the carriage. --I hear the crack of the whip, it is my coachman. --Drive now for dear life, even if the hhorses drop dead, only not a single second before we reach the place.
Sept. 25
Why
cannot such a night be longer? If Alectryon could
forget himself, why cannot the sun be equally sympathetic? Still, it is over
now, and I hope never to see her again. When a girl has given away everything,
then she is weak, then she has lost everything; for a man guilt is a negative
moment, for a woman it is the value of her being. Now all resistance is
impossible, and only as long as that is present is it beautiful to love; when
it is ended there is only weakness and habit. I do not wish to be reminded of
my relation to her; she has lost the fragrance, and the time is past when a
girl suffering the pain of a faithless love can be changed into a heliotrope. I
will have no farewell with her; nothing is more disgusting to me than a woman's
tears and a woman's prayers, which alter everything and yet really mean
nothing. I have loved her, but from now on she can no longer engross my soul.
If I were a god, I would do for her what
It would, however, really be worthwhile to show whether one might not be able to poetize himself out of a girl, so that one could make her so proud that she would imagine that it was she who tired of the relationship. It could become a very interesting epilogue, which, as a matter of observation, might have psychological interest, and along with that enrich one with many erotic observations.
Tr.
Robert Bretall, A Kierkegaard Anthology.