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The Child and Kierkegaard's "One Who Loves": The Agapic Flip Side o f Peter Pan
Eric Ziolkowski

W hile K ierkegaard scholars routinely discuss the crucial bear ing o f his unusual childhood, and especially his early relationship w ith his father, upon his later developm ent as a thinker and w riter,1 surprisingly little attention is devoted to the significance of the child as a type in his published w orks, both pseudonym ous and nonpseudonym ous, as w ell as in his journals. The im port of this subject is hinted at in the brief note to the eight entries on childhood and children, dating from 1837 to 1849, com piled in the H ong ed ition o f the Journ als : "In connection w ith his illum ination of the variou s steps in the developm ent of the individual, K ierke gaard con sid ers the period of childhood in som e detail. Through his ow n experience in childhood he knew how im portant this por tion o f life is for a p erso n 's later d evelop m en t" (JP, 1:509). T hat K ierkegaard w as, in the H ongs' w ords, "a keen observer of ch ild ren " (JP, 1, p. 510), is already apparent in a jou rnal entry o f 1837 w here, reacting to a recent essay by Poul M. M ller on telling stories to ch ild ren,2 he elaborates thoughts o f his ow n about childhood and about the sort of storytelling he deem s appropriate for child ren (JP, 1:265). In an entry tw elve years later on G alatians

1In the standard biographies such discussions often involve declarations to the effect that "if ever the child was father of the man, it was in this instance" (W alter Lowrie, A Short Life o f Kierkegaard [Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1965] 54); or that his childhood relationship with his father, "above all, made him the man he later becam e; the shadow of Michael Pedersen Kierkegaard was cast across the whole path of his life" (Josiah Thompson, Kierkegaard [New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1973] 33). 2"O m at fortaelle B rn Eventyr" (1836-1837), in Poul M. Mller, Efterladte Skrifter, 3 vols. (Copenhagen: Reitzel, 1839-1843) 3:322-25.

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4:1-7, K ierkegaard invokes the child to illustrate the G od-relation ship. A fter observing our progression from first being "slav es under the la w ," to then becom ing "ch ild ren ," then finally "child ren w ho cry A bba, Father, and co-heirs of C h rist," he concludes that there is an increasing openness in relation to God. But it is like the relationship between adults and children, in which openness comes after the child has grown up; here it is reverse one does not begin as a child but as a slave, and openness increases as one becomes more and more a child. 1:272) not the the the (JP,

Singled out by the H ongs as representative of the m any allu sions to the child that are found in K ierkegaard's w ritings, these tw o jo u rn al entries w ould furnish helpful starting points for a deeper in vestigation o f the use of children by him and his pseudo nym s. A lthou gh differently nuanced insights into children are arrived at in each o f his w orks, m y ultim ate aim in w hat follow s w ill b e to exam ine the specific use o f the child figure in W orks o f Love, w hose appearance in 1847 fell betw een the years o f the tw o entries above. As w e shall see, the perspective conveyed by W orks o f Love tow ard childhood, like those expressed in K ierkegaard 's other w ritings, displays a distinctive dialectical oscillation betw een positive and n egative attitudes, thus befitting the m aieutic aim peculiar to his entire corpus. H ow ever, as the conception of childhood as a stage sui generis in a h um an b ein g 's life appears to be a relatively recent develop m ent in W estern intellectual and cultural history, the extensive usage o f the child as a type throughout K ierkegaard's oeuvre crystallizes w hat w as in his tim e still a relatively new , developing C hristian tendency o f perceiving children as creatures endow ed w ith a p sychology distinct from that of adults, and hence w ith m inds that w ill respond differently from adult m inds to the central doctrines and im ages o f C hristian faith. For this reason, before we exam ine the em ploym ent o f the child as a type in Works o f Love, it w ill be ben eficial first, briefly, to consid er the general h istory of reflection on the child in the C hristian W est, concentrating on the view s of Jesus, St. Paul, St. A ugustine, and Rousseau as chief points o f reference; and then, again briefly, to locate K ierkegaard and h is pseud onym s in their relationship to that history.

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Bipolar W estern Views o f Childhood Today, n otw ithstanding the not-so-rare new s stories of terrible crim es com m itted by children, such as the 1993 abduction and slaying of tw o-year-old Jam es Bulger by a pair of ten-year-old boys in L iverpool, England, or the m ore recent proliferation of fatal shootings in A m erican high schools by students sixteen years old and younger, the conventional notion of childhood still approxi m ates the one sum m ed up by the entry on "C h ild " in The H erder D ictionary o f S ym bols :
A sym bol o f sp ontaneity and innocence, qualities alluded to in the N ew T estam en t ("E x cep t ye be converted and becom e as little child ren, ye shall n ot enter into the kingdom of h ea v en ." M att.

18:3).3 This d eclaration by C hrist (cf. M ark 10:15; Luke 18:17), together w ith his teaching that the kingdom of heaven "b elo n g s" to "su ch " as ch ildren (M att. 19:14; M ark 10:14; Luke 18:16), m ight seem to d issociate them from A d am 's guilt and to defy A ristotle's idea of the child as an "im p erfect" being w hose "excellence is not relative to h im self alone, bu t to the perfect m an and to his teach er."4 To be sure, w hile he praises children for their hum bleness, Jesus him self never ch aracterizes them as perfect or innocent; if he privileges them in the order of salvation, he does not explicitly do so because of any inherent spiritual qualities or dispositions.5 Yet these facts have m attered little, as Jesus has often been m istaken as the source of the clich d R om antic notion of children as little innocents. D irectly related to the popular m isunderstanding of Jesu s' exaltation of children is the com m on assum ption that the trad ition al C hristian view of them has alw ays been identical w ith his view . In actuality, although Jesu s' association of children w ith hum ility

3The Herder Dictionary o f Symbols: Symbols from Art, Archaeology, Mythology, Literature, and Religion (W ilm ette IL: Chiron Publications, 1986) 37. 4Aristotle, Politics, trans B. Jow ett, 2.1260a.31-33, in The Complete Works o f A ristotle, 2 vols., ed. Jonathan Barnes (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984) 2:2000. 5As noted by S. Lgasse, Jsus et l'enfant: "Enfants," "petits" et "simples" dans la tradition synoptique (Paris: J. Gabalda, 1969) 340.

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and salvation is supported by 1 Peter 2:2 ("L ik e new born babes, long for the pure spiritu al m ilk, that by it you m ay grow up to salv atio n "), his positive assessm ent o f them finds stiff opposition elsew here in the N ew Testam ent, particularly in the fam ous analogy invoked by St. Paul to illustrate his ow n religious conversion: "W h en I w as a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; w hen I becam e a m an, I gave up childish w ay s" (1 Cor. 13:11). For Paul, abandoning "ch ild ish w ay s" connotes recognizing that know ledge and the capacity to convey it p roph etically or in tongues are faulty, and hence are less valuable gifts than faith, hope, and love. Seem ing to assum e the A ristotelian notion o f the child as an im perfect being w hose "e x ce lle n ce " is relative to the perfect m an, he has already subm it ted that "w h en the perfect com es, the im perfect w ill pass aw ay " (1 C or. 13:10). H ere "th e p erfect" m eans spiritual m aturity, or becom ing "a m an ," w hile "th e im p erfect" m eans spiritual infancy, or "ch ild ish w ay s." Paul is essentially urging his readers to grow up, and to stop thinking like little children (see 1 Cor. 14:20). P au l's prom otion o f the spiritual superiority o f adulthood over childhood corresponds to his figural understanding of the first m an, A dam , through w hose transgression hum ankind inherited sin, cond em nation, and death, as the "ty p e " o f C hrist, the second A dam w ho acquits, ju stifies, and restores hum ankind to life (Rom. 5:12-21; 1 C or. 15:22, 45-49). O f all stages of life, infancy and childhood w ould seem the ones m ost closely linked to original sin, as every infant born is an heir of A d am 's fallenness and can only hope to be redeem ed by converting later in life to faith in C hrist, as Paul him self w as converted on the road to Dam ascus. If the view s expressed by Jesus and Paul established tw o m ain, opposed poles of opinion betw een w hich subsequent C hristian attitudes tow ard children could develop, it w as P au l's perspective, not Jesu s', that conditioned C hristian thinking about children for well over the next m illennium and a half. H ow ever, not Paul, but A ugustine w as chiefly responsible for this legacy. It is in A ugus tin e's w ritings, m ost notably the opening books of his Confessions, that the im plicit Pauline linkage of infancy and childhood w ith A d am ic sin first achieves full and explicit expression. A n astute ponderer of babies, he believed that the earliest evidence of sin is detectable in their behavior, and consequently that all unbaptized

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children, even if born o f the faithful, perish (pereunt ).6 H aving seen that an infant, even w hen fully fed, w ould becom e angry and jealou s at seeing another infant at its m oth er's breast, he concluded that "it is n ot the m ind o f infants that is 'inn ocen t,' but the w eakness o f its infantile m em b ers."7 In other w ords, infants w ould sin if only they could physically do so. A u gu stin e's rejection o f the notion of infantile "in n o cen ce" carried over to his view o f older children, w hom he saw as existing w ithin the fallen condition bequeathed by A dam ,8 m uch as Paul had recalled having lived as a law less child (Rom . 7:9). In associating children w ith A dam ic guilt rather than the heavenly hum ility that Jesus ascribed to them , A ugustine could only strain to square the latter view w ith the m em ory of his ow n peccadillos as a boy: lying, theft, cheating, and indulgence in frivolity. A d dressing G od he asked:
Is this boyish innocence [in n o cen tia p u e r ilis ]? It is not, Lord. It is not. . . . For these are the sam e things, the very sam e things, w hich, as w e d epart from teachers and m asters, from nuts and balls and pet bird s, proceed in g to kings, gold, estates, and slaves, continu e on as m ore years pass in su ccession, ju st as greater pu n ish m en ts succeed the ferule. T herefore, our King, it w as [only] a sym bol o f h um ility w hich you praised in the [dim inu tive] stature o f child hood , saying: To such belongs the kingdom o f h eaven.9

Thus preclud ing any literalistic interpretation of Jesu s' ex pressed favoritism for children, the A ugustinian view of the child as innately sinful predom inated throughout the M iddle A ges in the C hristian W est. C onsequently, as suggested by m edieval art, child ren w ere valued m ainly as adults-to-be. The rare pictures in w hich they appear tend to portray them as dim inutive m en; accord ing to Philippe A ris, this absence of lifelike representations

6E.g., Augustine, Serm on 294.19.18, delivered at Carthage, in Patrologia cursus completus. Series latina, 221 vols., ed. J.-P. M igne (Paris, 1844-1866) 38:1347. 7Augustine, Confessions 1.7.11; my translation. All references to this work are to Sancti Aureli Augustini Confessionum, libri tredecim, ed . Pius Knll, Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum 33. 8E.g., Augustine, Confessions 1.9.14; City o f God 22.22.34. 9Augustine, Confessions 1.19.30; my translation.

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o f children show s that "th ere w as no place for childhood in the m ed ieval w o rld ."10 O nly during the thirteenth century did actual child m orphology begin to be depicted in art, w hich anticipated w hat A ries chronicles as the gradual "d isco v ery " of childhood as a period o f life separate and distinct from adulthood, and the m od ern idea of ch ild ish innocence. This idea, by A ries' account, em erged in the m oral and pedagogical literature of the late sixteenth century and the seventeenth century, and w as exem pli fied by the frequency w ith w hich painters and engravers o f that p eriod portrayed the G ospel scene of Jesu s' blessing of the children, a scene w hich hitherto had been rarely portrayed .1 1 A n irony w h ich A ries does not adequately account for is that these develop m ents follow ed the age of the Protestant reform ers, w hose d om inan t theologies had reem phasized the doctrine of original sin and hence the notion that children are inherently depraved. H eigh tening this irony, the tendency of thought aw ay from the m edieval n egativism tow ard children culm inated only a couple of centuries after the R eform ation in R ousseau 's treatise on edu cation, m ile (1762), w hich opens w ith the assertion: "E v ery thing is good as it leaves the hands o f the A uthor o f things; everything degenerates in the hands of m a n ."12 H ere w e arrive at an attitude tow ard children that is the very antithesis of the centuries-old A ugustinian w ariness tow ard them. For R ousseau, n ot only is nothing w rong w ith childhood; on the contrary, children are m eant by N ature "to be children before being m en. . . . C hildhood has its w ays of seeing, thinking, and feeling w h ich are proper to it. N othing is less sensible than to w ant to substitute ours for th eirs."13 H is position on the educative value of punishing children is thus the opposite of A ugustine's. The

10Philippe Aris, Centuries o f Childhood: A Social History o f Family Life, trans. Robert Baldick (New York: Vintage, 1962) 33. 1 1See ibid., 100-27. On the rarity of medieval depictions of Jesus' blessing of the children, and the frequency of late-sixteenth-century and seventeenth-century portrayals of that scene, see Lexikon der christlichen Ikonographie, 8 vols, ed. Engelbert Kirschbaum with Gnter Bandmann et al. (Rome: Herder, 1968-1976) 2:513-14, s.v. "K indersegnung Jesu ." 12Jean-Jacques Rousseau, mile, or, On Education, trans., intro., and notes by Allan Bloom (New York: Basic Books, 1979) 37. 13Ibid., 90.

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latter, citing the paternal advice o f Ecclesiasticus (Sirach) 30:12, could suggest that the harsh corporal punishm ents em ployed in R om an schools w ere necessary for counteracting ch ild ren's natural inclination tow ard sloth, indolence, and other vices, and w ere but a natural consequence of the perverted, fallen nature w ith w hich every child is en dow ed at b irth .1 4 Rousseau, in contrast, contends that becau se the ch ild 's actions are devoid of m orality, "h e can do nothing w hich is m orally bad and w hich m erits either punishm ent or rep rim a n d ."1 5 It is to R ousseau, A ries notes, that the m odern association of childhood w ith prim itivism and irrationalism m ay be traced, although H egel, as noted by another scholar, is right to observe that Jesu s anteceded Rousseau in exalting the child as n orm .16 The later hallow ing o f childhood by Rom antic poets and theorists, m ost notably Blake, W ordsw orth, and C oleridge in England, and Schiller and N ovalis in G erm any, is w ell docum ented. A nticipated by Jesus and R ousseau, as w ell as by the seventeenth-century English religious poets Thom as Traherne and H enry V aughan, w ho saw the child as view ing the w orld through prelapsarian eyes, the R om antics equated childhood w ith A dam 's condition in Eden and exalted the ch ild 's "fresh n ess of sensation" (C oleridge) as a norm for adult artistic exp erience.17 This brings us to K ierkegaard, w hose birth in 1813 coincided w ith the m ajor period of G erm an Rom anticism , the so-called Jngere R om an tik or H ochrom antik w hich encom passed the years of the N apoleonic w ars (1805-ca. 1815). A s a student for eleven years at the U niversity o f C openhagen, he w ould be initially allured but eventually disenchanted by the literature, aesthetics, and ph iloso phy o f that m ovem ent. R eflecting the conflicting but lasting im pacts of both his youthful im m ersion in R om anticism , and his

14Augustine, City o f God 22.22.34. 15Rousseau, mile, 92. 16See Aris, Centuries o f Childhood, 119; M. H. Abrams, Natural Supernaturalism: Tradition and Revolution in Romantic Literature (New York: W. W. Norton, 1973) 382. 17See, e.g., Peter Coveney, The Image o f Childhood: The Individual and Society: A Study o f the Theme in English Literature, rev. ed. (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1967) esp. 37-90; Abram s, Natural Supernaturalism, esp. 377-483.

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earlier, austerely pietistic upbringing by his father, K ierkegaard's w ritings convey attitudes tow ard the child that fluctuate rem ark ably betw een Pauline, A ugustinian w ariness, and the favoritism expressed b y Jesus, Rousseau, as w ell as the Rom antics. A Sinner without the Consciousness o f Sin" In a jou rnal entry of February 1836, m idw ay through his career as a university student, K ierkegaard w rote: "T h e irony o f life m ust of necessity be m ost intrinsic to childhood, to the age of im agina tion; . . . this is w hy it is present in the rom antic sch o o l" (JP, 2:1669; repr. in C I, 425). This com m ent seem s innocuous enough; the association draw n betw een childhood and the Rom antic school does not im ply anything unfavorable about either the child or R om anticism , both o f w hich are in turn associated w ith the im agination, that hum an capacity the R om antics extolled above all others. If neither o f these associations was original, w hat is n ote w orthy about this entry is that it show s him already contem plating childhood as a d istinct stage of life. H is reflections on childhood thereafter w ould not alw ays prove so neutral. In his aforecited jou rnal entry of the next year, K ierkegaard asks, "what significance does childhood really have? Is it a stage w ith significance only because it conditions, in a way, the follow ing stages or does it have independent valu e?" (JP, 1:265). Both these positions strike him as laughably flawed. A dherents to the first position essentially kill tim e, as though all w ould be w ell "if child ren could be shut up in the dark and force-fed on an acceler ated schedule like ch ick en s" (JP, 1:265). A dherents to the second position com e to regard childhood as "fun d am entally the highest level attainable by hum an b ein g s," beyond w hich everything is "p rog ressiv e d eg en eration " (JP, 1:265). Both view s are m isleading because both "m u st presuppose the em ptiness of ch ild hood " (JP, 1:265). W hile not constituting criticism s of childhood per se, these observations call attention to the conceptual pitfalls o f regarding childhood in either of two w rong ways. A lthough he never defines childhood here, he does distinguish it by stressing that storytelling, instruction, and upbringing should be conducted in a special Socratic m od e "to allow the child to bring forth the life within him in

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all stillness" (JP, 1:265). By the sam e token, as K ierkegaard else w here m ade clear during the sam e year this entry w as w ritten, if stories told to ch ildren m ust be conveyed only in a certain w ay, then it is also im perative for stories about childhood to offer a faithful portrayal of the ch ild 's m ind. In his scathing 1838 review of H ans C hristian A nd ersen 's Kun en Spillem and (1837, O nly a Fiddler), a novel w hose first six chapters portray its protagon ist's childhood, K ierkegaard contends that the author there fails to depict "a com pletely childlike con sciousness":
Instead , it often beco m es either child ishn ess, und igested rem in is cences from a specific, con crete period o f childhood, or, w h at we p articularly have in view here, one speaks as an adult about the im pression m ade by life and then adds at approp riate intervals that one m u st rem em ber child hood , the great creative pow er of child hood im agination. (EPW , 86)

As these com m ents reveal, a significant change has occurred in K ierk eg aard 's thinking since he called childhood "th e age of im ag in atio n " in his aforecited 1836 jou rnal entry. There, he used that phrase earnestly in associating childhood w ith Rom anticism . H ere, w ith undisguised sarcasm he draw s the phrase "child h ood im ag in atio n " directly from the pages of Kun en Spillem and to deride w hat he view s as A nd ersen 's unsuccessful attem pt to depict a fictional child through a clich d, adult, rom anticized notion of ch ild h o o d .1 8 This change o f attitude tow ard childhood as "th e age of im ag in atio n ," and hence tow ard the association of childhood w ith R om anticism , w ould com e to a head four years later in a passage tow ard the end of K ierkegaard 's dissertation (1841) on Socratic and R om antic irony. M aking reference to a criticism leveled by H einrich H eine specifically against the poet and dram atist Ludw ig Tieck, b u t also, by extension, against the w hole school of Rom antic

1 8 Julia Watkin supplies the following two examples from H. C. Andersen, Kun en Spillemand, 3 vols. (Copenhagen: C. A. Reitzel, 1837) 1:15, 18: "B u t for childhood imagination a wealth lay in it"; "Childhood imagination needs only to scratch in the ground with a stick in order to create a castle with halls and corridors" (EPW , 256n.117; W atkin's trans.).

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poets and w riters,19 K ierkegaard sum s up his ow n disenchantm ent w ith that school by likening w hat he now sees as the R om antics' som nam bu listic detachm ent from reality to the m entality of an infant:
T h e w orld is reju venated , bu t as H eine so w ittily rem arked , it w as rejuvenated by rom anticism to such a degree that it becam e a baby again. T he tragedy o f rom anticism is that w h at it seizes u pon is not actuality. P oetry aw akens; the pow erful longings, the m y sterious in tim ations, the inspiring feelings aw aken; nature aw akens; the enchanted princess aw akens the rom anticist falls asleep. (C I, 304)

As anticipated by this passage, the attitude tow ard childhood that will tend to underlie references to the infant in K ierkegaard's subsequent w ritings, both published and unpublished, p seudony m ous and nonpseudonym ous, is one utterly divorced from the R om antic id ealization of children. H aving m used as early as 1837 that "[c]h ild h o o d is the paradigm atic part of life; adulthood its sy n tax" (JP, 1:266), he realized that anything "p arad ig m atic" m ust share the essence of w hatever it is the paradigm for, and therefore that the child cannot be dissociated from the sinfulness o f the adult hum an condition. A ccordingly, w hile sarcastically stating his preference "to talk w ith children, for one m ay still dare to hope they m ay becom e rational b ein g s," the aesthete " A " of Either/O r notes no less sarcastically that w hen a baby is asked w hat it w ants, it babbles da-da , an utterance w hich in D anish also connotes "sp a n k in g ": "A n d w ith such observations life begins, and yet we deny hered itary sin " (EO, 1:19; see 606n.8; cf. JP, 5:5184; repr. EO, 1:467). The ethicist Ju dge W illiam , though referring only once ex plicitly to "h ered itary sin " (EO, 2:190), stresses: "[T ]h at a child is born in sin is the m ost profound expression of its highest w orth, that it is precisely a transfigu ration of hum an life that everything related to it is assigned to the category of sin " (92). A nd Johannes C lim acus sim ilarly affirm s that C hristianity rejects "th e sentim ental view of the ch ild 's in nocence"; as the idea of hum ankind as fallen

19The Romantic School, bk. 1, trans. Helen Mustard, in Heinrich Heine, The Romantic School and Other Essays, ed. Jost Hermand and Robert C. Holub (New York: Continuum , 1985) 18.

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assum es the notion o f "th e child as sinner," C hristianity "can n o t provide the period of childhood w ith any ad van tage" (CUP, 1:592). The child, its consciousness qualified as "im m ed iate" and hence in determ inate and excluding doubt (see JC , 167), can therefore be de fined as "a sinner w ithou t the consciousness of sin " (CU P, 1:592). W e m ight pause here to locate this insight in relation to A ugustine and R ousseau, our tw o nonbiblical reference points in W estern thinking regarding the child. W hile R ousseau and the R om antics w ould easily concur that the child by nature is "w ith o u t the consciousness of sin ," the idea o f the child as "a sin n er" is anti thetical to their view . O n the other hand, the w hole idea of the child as "a sinner w ithout the consciousness of sin " seem s borne out by a com m ent that surfaces during one of A ugu stine's painful listings o f his ow n boyhood flaw s and m isdeeds: "F o r I did not see the w hirlpool of filthiness into w hich I had plunged from [the sight of] your eyes [non enim uidebam uoraginem turpitudinis, in quam proiectus eram ab oculis tuis ]." 20 H ow ever, if A ugustine can recall his ow n life as a puerile "sin n er w ithout the consciousness of sin ," it is his obsession w ith recollecting his own various types of boyhood transgressions and distinguishing them as sym ptom s of sin that distingu ishes his view of childhood from those o f K ier kegaard, C lim acu s, and K ierkegaard 's other pseudonym s. Perhaps reflecting in part his experience of having been regularly m ocked by boys in the streets during the period of the C orsair A ffair,2 1 passing allusions to naughty children do crop up in K ierk eg aard 's w ritings (e.g., W L, 203-204). N onetheless, he and his pseudonym s depict the sinfulness of children no less than the sinfulness of adults as "som eth in g quite other than a series of transgressions; it is a spiritual attitude that is at the sam e tim e psychological and m etap h ysical."22 H ereditary sin is certainly discussed in his w ritings, particularly The Concept o f A nxiety and The Sickness Unto D eath ; yet K ierkegaard and his pseudonym s display nothing approaching the A ugustinian preoccupation w ith

20Augustine, Confessions 1.19.30; my translation. 21 See JP, 5:5887 (repr. in COR, 212); 5:5894 (repr. in COR, 217); 5:5937; 5:5998 (repr. in COR, 220); 6:6160 (repr. in COR, 227). 22Henri Rondet, Original Sin: The Patristic and Theological Background, trans. Cajetan Finegan (Staten Island NY: Alba House, 1972) 206.

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it.23 For Vigilius H aufniensis, w hat is anticipatory (if not yet explic itly sym ptom atic) of sin in the child is "[t]h e anxiety that is posited in in n o cen ce" (CA, 42), w hile the closest that A nti-C lim acus com es to associating children w ith original sin is in finding them m arked by the sam e "im p erfectio n " as the unchristian "n atu ral m an ," nam ely, "n o t to recognize the horrifying, and then, im plicit in this, to shrink from w hat is n ot h orrify in g" (SUD, 8). In identifying sin w ith the d espair w hich adults feel in the face of the eternal, A ntiC lim acus observes that "o n ly bad tem per, not despair, is associated w ith ch ild ren ," since w e can only assum e "th a t the eternal is present in the child [potentially]" (SU D, 49n .). Located som ew here betw een the opposed attitudes of A ugus tine and R ousseau, C lim acu s's view of childhood, like K ierke g aard 's ow n, show s no sign of having been directly influenced by either of those tw o thinkers.24 The closest precursor to K ierke g aard 's am bivalent perspective on children, I believe, is the poetphilosop her W illiam Blake. A lthough a celebrant o f child hood 's innocence, Blake w as also, like K ierkegaard, a sober acknow ledger of how that innocence is inevitably tem pered by experience; hence the child as a type figures prom inently in both his Songs o f Innocence (1789) and Songs o f Experience (1794), w hich, w hen published together, bore the subtitle: "Sh ew ing the Tw o C ontrary States of the H um an S o u l."25 A nticipating K ierkegaard's notion of

23See Johannes Hohlenberg, Sren Kierkegaard, trans. T. H. Croxall (New York: Pantheon, 1954) 131; cited by Rondet, Original Sin, 206. 24Kierkegaard expressed mixed reactions to Augustine and Rousseau. Although his examination of the stages of existence was presum ably influenced by Augustine's notion that "m a n " must develop through "three stages" (JP, 1:29), he saw Augustine as having "done incalculable harm " by "confus[ing] the concept of faith" (JP, 1:180). And while he could consider a statement by the vicar in book 4 of Emile "splendid " (JP, 3:3824), he viewed Rousseau himself as "totally ignorant of Christianity," particularly with regard to the matter of suffering (JP, 3:3827), and therefore ranked him among "m uddleheads" (JP, 6:6794). (Cf. the Hongs' com m ents on Kierkegaard's journal entries on these two figures [JP, 1, p. 504; 3, pp. 924-25].) Nowhere, however, does Kierkegaard com ment specifically on either A ugustine's or Rousseau's attitude toward the child. 25A s Northrop Frye points out, "real children are not symbols of innocence: the Songs o f Innocence would be intolerably sentimental if they were. One finds a great deal more than innocence in any child: there is the childish as well as the childlike; the jealousy and vanity that all humans naturally have" (Fearful Symme

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child hood as "th e p aradigm atic part of life," Blake saw it in A lfred K azin 's w ords "a s the nucleus of the w hole hum an sto ry ."26 For exam ple, "T h e Little Boy L o st," the eighth poem of Songs o f Innocence, expresses an intense form of childish anxiety through the sam e im age of lostness that H aufniensis em ploys to characterize in nocence "b rou g h t to its u tterm ost": "In n ocen ce is n ot guilty, yet there is anxiety as though it w ere lo st" (CA, 45).27 Y et K ierkegaard knew nothing of Blake. The tw o chief sources o f influence upon K ierkegaard 's attitude tow ard the child are clearly Jesu s and Paul, neither of w hose ow n assessm ents of children he entirely or straightforw ardly accepted. True to the irrepressibly dialectical tendency of his thinking, K ierkegaard was keenly aw are of the opposition we noted earlier betw een Jesu s and P au l's view s o f childhood, both of w hich view s are invoked in serm ons o f 1844, and later in A nti-C lim acu s's Practice in C hristianity.28 In 1849, the year before Practice appeared, K ierkegaard suggested in his jou rnal that the w ay som eone assesses his or her childhood in the light of the C hristic and Pauline view s w ill provide a key to that person's personality. A fter quoting 1 C orinth ian s 13:11 he w rote: "O n e could speak on the them e: w hat judgm en t do you m ake on your childhood and your youth? Do you ju d ge that it w as foolishness and fan cies?" in accordance w ith the Pauline passage. "O r do you judge that you w ere at that tim e closest to the M ost H ig h ?" in consistency w ith C h rist's claim about heaven belonging to "su ch " as children. "Ju st tell m e how you judge your childhood and your youth, and I w ill tell you who you are" (JP, 1:271). A lthough K ierk eg aard 's notion that one's "op en n ess" in rela tion to G od "in creases as one becom es m ore and m ore a ch ild "

try: A Study o f William Blake [Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1947] 235). 26Alfred Kazin, introduction to his edition of The Portable Blake (New York: Viking, 1946; repr. Harm ondsworth, Middlesex, England: Penguin, 1986) 39. 27This particular analogy betw een Blake and Haufniensis is drawn by Lorraine Clark, Blake, Kierkegaard, and the Spectre o f Dialectic (Cambridge: Cam bridge Uni versity Press, 1991) 57. 28See EUD, 240 (on Matt. 18:3), 399 (on 1 Cor. 13.11); PC, 191 (on Matt. 18:3), 198 (for an apparent allusion to 1 Cor. 13.12, the verse that immediately follows the Pauline verse in question).

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accords w ith Jesu s' idea of h eaven 's belonging to "su ch " as children, and although he had once enunciated a w arning con so nant w ith the one issued by Jesus about the fate that aw aits corru pters o f children (M att. 18:6; cf. JP , 1:91; repr. in CA , 169), he apparently held little sym pathy for the conventional reading of Jesus' consecration o f children. A nticipating several critiques w hich K ierkegaard w ill elaborate in 1854 of the literal interpretation of M atthew 19:13-15 and Luke 18:15-17 (see JP, 1:370; 1:548; 1:549), C lim acus observes that a "ch ild ish ," "sen tim en tal" understanding of Jesu s' blessing of children m akes C hristianity ridiculous. For if it w ere literally true that the child w ill face none of the difficulties that an adult m ust face to enter heaven, then it w ould seem "b est to die as a ch ild " (CU P, 1:593). D espite the lack here of any explicit citation of 1 C orinthians 13:11, w e can hardly m iss C lim acu s's im plicit affirm ation of the truth behind P au l's testim ony to the need for giving up "child ish w ay s" and becom ing "a m an ." H ow ever, this verse itself can be m isleading; as K ierkegaard elsew here urges in reference to it, "let us never forget that even the m ore m ature person alw ays retains som e of the ch ild 's lack o f ju d g m en t" (EUD, 399). Likew ise C lim acus asserted earlier that "it is a m ediocre existence w hen the adult cuts aw ay all com m unication w ith ch ild h o o d " (CU P, 348). This view squares w ith tw o other crucial ideas articulated by K ier kegaard and his pseudonym s, ideas that m ight seem upon first con sid eration to suggest that C hristianity involves a kind of recovery of child hood innocence and sim plicity. O ne of these ideas, w hich has an unacknow ledged R ousseauistic resonance, is that from G o d 's perspective the definitive, m ost desirable quality of the single individual is "p rim itiv ity ." As explained by the H ongs, this term for K ierkegaard "d o es not have the slightly disparaging ring of the undeveloped that it has in m odern D an ish "; rather, it is used in his various w ritings to denote the hum an b ein g 's "original and uncorrupted capacity to receive an im pression w ithout being influenced by 'th e others' . . . or by current v iew s."29

29JP, 3, p. 887. For Kierkegaard's own discussions of this notion in entries dat ing from the years 1849-1854, see JP, 3, pp. 3558-61. A number of allusions to "prim itivity" in the pseudonym ous writings are cited by the Hongs, JP, 3:887-88.

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The notion o f p rim itivity is clearly related to the other idea, w hich is first developed by Johannes de Silentio in his reaction to the H egelian valuation of the outer (das ussere ) or externalization (die E ntusserung ), as sym bolized by the adult, over the inner (das Innere ) , as sym bolized by the child. The paradox of faith, according to Silentio, is that it elevates interiority above exteriority. H ow ever, as he further suggests, this does not m ean that faith brings about a return to a childlike state. For ju st as the single individual's "p rim itiv ity " m ust finally not be equated w ith the condition of childhood, so this h igher interiority is one "th at is not identical, please note, w ith the first but is a new in teriority " (FT, 69). Phrased otherw ise, "F aith is not the first im m ediacy," that is, the aesthetic im m ediacy of the child, "b u t a later im m ed iacy " (FT, 82) a conclusion reiterated not only by K ierkegaard in a journal entry of 1848 (JP, 2:1123) but by Frater Taciturnus (SLW , 399) and Johannes C lim acu s (CU P, 1:347, 347n.). U ltim ately, regardless how m uch C lim acus's im plicit agreem ent w ith 1 C orinth ian s 13:11 m ust be qualified by notions of prim i tivity and of faith as a second im m ediacy, P aul's talk of giving up "ch ild ish w a y s" and becom ing "a m an " itself begs the question. As the rest o f his verse indicates, the m ature, true C hristian is som e one w ho is no longer a child, and w ho, like the converted Paul, no longer speaks, thinks, or reasons "lik e a ch ild ." Y et the w hole passage in w hich this verse occurs revolves around the them e of love, w hich Paul sets above faith and hope as a spiritual gift (1 Cor. 13.4-13). So w hat is the relation of the child to C hristian love? O n Septem ber 29, 1847, nineteen m onths after the publication of the book in w hich C lim acus m ade his observations above, Works o f Love appeared under K ierkegaard's own nam e. In this book, as w e m ight suspect from its title, answ ers are provided to the question ju st posed, and we shall find proof that the sam e thing m ight be said o f K ierkegaard that has been said o f Blake: "H is faith in the creative richness of love has the sam e source as his feeling for the secret richness of ch ild h o o d ."30

30Kazin, introduction to The Portable Blake, 39.

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The Child's Significance in W orks o f Love R eferences to the child abound in W orks o f Love, particularly in the second of the b o o k 's tw o series of discourses. Y et from the first of these references on, the view s reflected display the sam e p endu lum -like oscillation w hich we have observed elsew here in K ierke gaard betw een the opposed attitudes expressed by C hrist and Paul tow ard children. The initial allusions occur tow ard the end of the second discou rse of the first series, w here the child is associated w ith "th e sim plest p erso n " and "th e w isest" insofar as all three types exist "a t the distance of a quiet hour of life's con fu sion ," and u nderstand "w ith alm ost equal ease, w hat every person should d o ," nam ely, to love one's neighbor (W L, 78, 79). Ju st as the associ ation w ith sim plicity calls to m ind Jesu s' em phasis on ch ildren's hum ility, so the association w ith w isdom contradicts P au l's view of the child as spiritually and epistem ologically im perfect. H ow ever, lest w e be deceived that K ierkegaard has forsaken his ow n dialectical perspective on the m atter, he presently closes this discourse by m aking a pointedly Pauline allusion to "ch ild ish n ess" as representing the very low est of the ascending stages of m aturation through w hich a person m ust progress in order to becom e fully receptive to the divine im perative, " you sh all." H arking back to the ironic hom ology im plied by Either/O r's " A " betw een the in fan t's utterance of da-da and the spankings w hich child ren provoke as a result o f hereditary sin (EO, 1:19), K ierke gaard perceives the inherent self-centeredness of children as a cond ition w hich any individual m ust outgrow in order to enter into a relationship o f obeisance to the eternal:
It is a m ark o f ch ild ishn ess to say: M e w an ts, m e m e; a m ark of ad olescence to say: I and I and I ; the sign of m aturity and the devotion o f the eternal is to w ill to und erstand that this I has no sign ifican ce unless it becom es the y ou to w hom eternity in ces san tly speaks and says: Y ou shall, y o u shall, y ou shall. (W L, 90)

This last passage does not exhaust K ierkegaard 's usage of the child in the first series of discourses in Works o f Love. H aving in voked the child as typifying in and of itself a pair of positive virtues (sim plicity, w isdom ) as w ell as a pair of venial flaw s (selfcenteredness, im m aturity), he also refers to the child as a sym bol

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of, or an analogue to, specific aspects o f adult hum an existence. Early in the third discourse, to illustrate the ease w ith w hich a person w ill b ackslid e from a prom ise to fulfill the law , he likens such a p rom ise to a changeling. At the m om ent o f birth,
w h en the m o th er's jo y is greatest because her su ffering is over, . . . then com e, so thinks su perstition, the hostile pow ers and place a ch angeling in place o f the child. In the great b u t therefore also d an gero u s m om ent o f begin ning, w hen one is supposed to begin, the h ostile p ow ers com e and slip in a changeling prom ise and p revent one from m aking the actual beginning. (W L, 95)

N otew orthy here is n ot only the focus on the relationship of m other to child (a relationship w hich receives closer scrutiny in the second series of discourses) but the appeal to "su p erstitio n " regard ing this m atter. N ear the end of this discourse, w hether w ittingly or not, K ierkegaard likew ise introduces w ith regard to the hum an "sp irit" an analogy that recalls the stock usage of the child figure in m edieval art as a sym bolic representation o f the hum an sou l.3 1 That "a child m ust learn to spell before it can learn to read " is likened to the fact that a person's spiritual advancem ent m ust begin not at "th e great m om ent of the resolution, the intention, the p ro m ise," but rather, in "stru g g l[ i n g ] w ith oneself in self-d en ial" (W L, 133). The use of the child to sym bolize aspects of adult existence reaches its first point of culm ination in the fifth and final discourse of the b o o k 's first series, w here a sim ile is established betw een a certain d isposition of w ell-raised children and a certain hallm ark of C hristian love. Even w hen aw ay from hom e and am ong strangers, according to K ierkegaard, the w ell-raised child will behave as it has been brought up, because it "n ev er forgets that the ju d gm en t is at hom e, w here the parents do the ju d g in g " (W L, 189). L ikew ise it is God w ho cu ltivates a p erson's C hristian love. Y et ju st as a child is earnestly brought up not in order to rem ain at hom e w ith parents but in order to go out into the w orld, so G od cultivates a p erso n 's C hristian love so as "to send love out into the w o rld " (W L, 190). Like the w ell-raised child am ong strangers, such love "n ev er for a m om ent forgets w here it is to be ju d g ed " (W L,

3lOn this symbol see, e.g., Aris, Centuries o f Childhood, 36, 124.

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190). A sim ilar idea is further evoked to distinguish the C hristian from the su rrou nding w orld, and thereby to explain G od 's invisibility and inaud ibility in the w orld.
W hen a strictly brou ght-u p child is together w ith naughty or less w ell behaved child ren and is unw illing to jo in them in their m isbehavior, w hich they them selves, for the m ost part, do not regard as m isbeh avior the naughty child ren know o f no other explanation for this than that the child m ust b e a queer and daft child. T hey do not see that . . . the strictly brou gh t-u p child, w herever it is, is con tinu ally accom panied b y its paren ts' criterion for w hat it m ay and m ay not do. (W L, 203)

This scenario furnishes a m etaphor for the difference betw een the C hristian and the w orld. As long as the parents (=G od) o f the w ell-raised child (=th e C hristian) rem ain invisible, this ch ild 's naughty peers (=th e w orld) w ill m istakenly assum e that it sim ply does not like their kind of fun and is "q u eer and d aft," or that it likes their fun bu t is afraid to jo in in. Like the w orld in its ow n b afflem ent at the C hristian w ho does not share its passions and desires, the naughty children "th in k w ell of their m isbehavior, and therefore they w ant [the strictly brought-up child] to join them and be a plucky boy ju st like the others" (W L, 204). In draw ing to a close the first series of discourses in Works o f Love, this use of the child to explain the distinctness of the C h ristian 's G od-relationship prepares for the use o f the child in the second series, w hich w ill likew ise end w ith a reference to "th e w ell-disciplined ch ild ," w hose "un forgettable im pression of rig orou sness" is com plem ented by the "un forgettable fear and trem blin g " experienced by "th e person w ho relates him self to G o d 's lo v e" in an earnest m anner (W L, 385-86). In the second series, not only does the child continue to be associated w ith "sim p licity " (W L, 346) and m entioned as a sym bol of spiritual qualities, but increasingly the ch ild 's relationship w ith parents, and especially w ith the m other, will be analyzed as a m etaphor for the agapic relationship betw een the C hristian and God. O ne reason w hy K ierkegaard can so readily appeal to the child as a m etaphor for certain spiritual qualities is that, as w e noted earlier, he, like Blake, does not allow the distinct aspects of child hood to obscure the ch ild 's "p arad ig m atic" nature. This point becom es all the m ore clear in the third discourse of the second

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series, w here he consid ers the association o f the child w ith hope. The child and the youth are easily associated w ith hope, as they them selves are both "still a p o ssibility " (W L, 250), and as the child, the antithesis o f the dead person, "th riv e [s] and grow [s] tow ard the fu tu re" (W L, 350). N onetheless, K ierkegaard scoffs at the conventional tendency to call the initial period of a p erson's life "th e age of hope or o f p o ssibility " (W L, 251). H ope is oriented tow ard the p ossibility o f good, w hose ow n possibility is dependent upon the eternal, w hich extends over a p erson's entire life, not ju st over a single age. To illustrate how anyone w ho fails to see that "th e w hole of o n e's life should be the tim e of h op e" m ust be in d espair, K ierkegaard again draw s upon his ow n insight into child psychology. To assist a child w ith a very large task, he observes, one does not present the task all at once; to do so w ould cause the child to despair. Instead,
O ne assign s a sm all part at a tim e, bu t alw ays enough so that the child at no p o in t stops as if it w ere finished, but n ot so m uch that the child cann ot m anage it. T his is the pious fraud in upbringing; it actually su ppresses som ething. If the child is deceived, this is because the instru ctor is a hum an being w ho cannot vouch for the next m om ent. (W L, 252)

H ere, in stressing a pedagogic m ethod that allow s the child to fulfill tasks on its ow n, K ierkegaard's advice reflects his ow n m aieutic strategy as author. H ow ever, in functioning as m idw ife in the Socratic sense, the ideal educator in his view also does som ething in relation to children that is analogous to w hat G od does in relation to hum an beings. The ideal educator, in bringing up m any child ren at once, "tak es the individual ch ild 's eyes aw ay from him that is, in everything he m akes the child look at h im " (W L, 377). The sam e thing is done by God: through his glance into every hum an b ein g 's conscience, God requires each person to look back at him , and thereby governs the entire w orld and brings up innum erable hum an beings. "B u t," like the adult w ho m istakes his or her w orldly dealings for actuality, but is led by G od to grasp that these are only being em ployed for his or her upbringing, "th e child w ho is being brough t up readily im agines that his relation ship to his com rades, the little w orld that they form , is actuality, w hereas the edu cator teaches him w ith his glance that all this is being used to brin g up the ch ild " (W L, 377). Through this analogy,

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it is as if K ierkegaard w ere retelling P lato 's m yth of the cave, inserting G od as the edu cator w ho frees the prisoners and enables them to discern the unreality of the shadow s w hich they m istook for real. The ch ild 's earliest upbringing is a task assigned by nature not to an "e d u ca to r" but to the ch ild 's parents, and initially to the m other in particular. U nlike A ugustine, w ho practically deified his m other in his Confessions to reveal the role of providential agent w hich he believed she had played in his childhood, youth, and early ad u lthood,32 K ierkegaard fam ously m akes no m ention ever of his ow n m other. N onetheless, he shares w ith his ancient predecessor a fixation w ith the im age of the m other breast-feeding her infant as a m etaphor for the dem onstration of G o d 's love for the hum an being. Ju st as A ugustine could suggest that he him self in ad ulthood w as like an infant being suckled by God (sugens lac tuum ), or that converted sinners are those who cast them selves upon G o d 's breast (in sinu tuo), or that G o d 's W ord w as m ade flesh in order that G o d 's w isdom m ight suckle our infancy (ut infantiae nostrae lactesceret sapientia tua ),33 so K ierkegaard finds G o d 's encom p assing love reflected in the "u p bu ild in g sigh t" of a m other lovingly holding a sleeping baby at her breast (W L, 214). Still, as forew arned by the "E xo rd iu m " of Fear and Trem bling, w here Johannes de Silentio contem plates the deception and concealm ent through w hich, and the sorrow w ith w hich, the m other m ust ultim ately w ean the child from her breast (FT, 11-14; cf. JP, 5:5640; repr. W L, 398; see also FT, 246), K ierkegaard is well aw are o f m ore painful im plications of the breast-feeding im age. C onsistent w ith his am bivalence tow ard the child, w hich w ill lead him still in the b o o k 's "C o n clu sio n " to lam ent the ease w ith w hich G o d 's love is sentim entalized and softened into "a fabulous and childish co n cep tio n " (W L, 376), K ierkegaard never succum bs to conventional, sentim ental assum ptions about the spectacle of the m other w ith child. For him , the m om ent the m other's love ceases to be visible in her expression, the sight of her w ith her child

32See Eric J . Ziolkowski, "St. Augustine: M onica's Boy, Antitype of A eneas," in Journal o f Literature and Theology 9 (1995): 1-23. 33Augustine, Confessions 4.1.1; 5.2.2; 7.18.24.

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ceases to be ed ifying (see W L, 214). Likew ise he confides in his jou rnal his suspicion that "m atern al love as such is sim ply self-love raised to a higher p o w er," though it is still "a beautiful figu re" (JP, 3:2425; repr. W L, 483). A ccordingly, in the first discourse of the second series in Works o f Love, w hen deliberating upon P aul's claim that "lo v e bu ilds u p " (1 Cor. 8:1), he clarifies w hat is m eant by the saying that the m other tolerates "a ll her ch ild 's naughtiness" (W L, 221). The saying m eans not that such a m other forbearingly endures evil but that "a s a m other she is continually rem em bering that this is a child and thus is continually presupposing that the child still loves her and that this w ill surely show itself" (W L, 221). In other w ords, presupposed by the m other is the econom ic logic w hich underlies another proverb cited m uch earlier, nam ely, "th at child ren are in love's debt to their parents because they have loved them first, so that the ch ild ren's love is only a part-paym ent on the debt or a rep ay m ent" (W L, 176). This factor of "rep ay m en t" m akes possible the cynical distinc tion w hich K ierkegaard draw s betw een "th e tw o greatest w o rk s" of love, giving a h um an being life and recollecting one w ho has died: unlike the latter w ork, the form er involves repaym ent. W ere it not for this factor, he speculates, there would be m any fathers and m others "w h ose love w ould grow co ld " (W L, 349). Indeed, w ere the otherw ise helpless infant incapable of crying and thus of "e x to rt[in g ]" w orks of love from its parents, num erous parents w ould probably "fo rg et the ch ild " (W L, 351, 352). C onveyed in the ninth and penultim ate discourse of the second series, these cynical speculations about a frequent contingency of parental love m erely present the opposite side of the picture w hich this series' second discourse painted of the child w ho tries to deceive the parents. O nce again evoking the analogy betw een the parent-child and G od-hum an relationships, K ierkegaard there asserted that it is ju st as im possible for a child to deceive its parents as for an adult hum an to deceive G od, and that both the child and the adult in such cases deceive them selves, since the parent and G od are superior to them , and "tru e superiority can never be deceived if it rem ains faithful to itself" (W L, 236). In the fifth discourse of the book's second series, that is, about halfw ay betw een the second and ninth discourses w ith their dis cussions o f self-deceptive children and parents w hose love for their

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children "w o u ld grow co ld ," w e encounter the m ost poignantly positive im age of the child in the entire book, an im age that w ould reinforce C lim acu s's notion o f the child as a creature "w ith o u t the consciousness o f sin " w hile doing nothing to support the accom pa nying idea of the child as "a sinn er." In discoursing upon the phrase "lo v e covers a m ultitude of sins," from 1 Peter 4:8, K ierke gaard relates this text to 1 C orinthians 14:20, suggesting that the life o f the person w ho loves expresses the Pauline com m and to be a babe in evil (see W L, 285). The w orld, he observes, reveres know ledge of evil as w isdom , though w isdom is know ledge of the good. O n the assu m p tion that "th e one w ho lo v es" neither has nor w ants know ledge o f evil, K ierkegaard asserts that "in this regard he is and rem ains, he w ants to be and w ants to rem ain, a ch ild " (W L, 285). H aving m ade this assertion, w hich rem arkably defies P aul's testim ony about the need to give up "ch ild ish w ay s" to becom e "a m a n ," K ierkegaard introduces a thought experim ent involving a child an experim ent com parable to the one elaborated elsew here by A nti-C lim acu s to im agine how a child m ight react w hen first show n a picture of, and told about, the C rucifixion (see PC, 174-78; cf. JP , 1:270; W A , 55).34 "P u t a child in a den of th ieves," K ierkegaard now tells us,
(but the child m u st not rem ain there so long that it is corrupted itself); that is, let it rem ain there only for a very brief tim e. Then let it com e hom e and tell everythin g it has experienced. You w ill note that the child, w ho is a good observer and has an excellent m em ory (as does every child), w ill tell everything in the greatest detail, yet in such a w ay that in a certain sense the m ost im por tant is om itted. (W L, 285)

W hat is m issing from the ch ild 's story, K ierkegaard points out to us, is som ething the child never discovered: the evil. Yet, as he further insists, the ch ild 's account of w hat it saw and heard is com pletely accurate. W hat the child lacks, and w hat "so often m akes a ch ild 's story the m ost profound m ockery of the ad u lts," is "kn ow led g e of e v il" (W L, 286). The child know s nothing of evil,

34For discussion see Eric J. Ziolkowski, "A Picture Not Worth a Thousand Words: Kierkegaard, Christ, and the Child," in Religious Studies and Theology 1 7 /2 (January 1999).

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nor even feels any inclination to desire know ledge o f evil, and it is in this respect that "th e one w ho loves is like the ch ild " (W L, 286). That "th e one w ho lo v es" w ill fail to discover the "m u ltitu d e of sin s" o f w hich the author o f 1 Peter spoke rem inds K ierkegaard o f a ch ild 's gam e, as w hen we play that w e do not see the child stand ing right before us, or the child plays that it does not see us: "T h e childlikeness, then, is that, as in a gam e, the one w ho loves w ith his eyes open cannot see w hat is taking place right in front of him ; the solem nity is that it is the evil that he cannot see" (W L, 287). W ith this analogy, the pendulum o f K ierkegaardian attitude tow ard children sw ings closer than in any other place in his w ritings to Jesu s' injunction to the disciples that they should "b eco m e like ch ild ren ." Y et even here, in K ierkegaard's hypotheti cal experim ent w ith the child w ho is to be placed in a thieves' den, there is a dialectical im plication that subtly rem inds us of how tenuous the ch ild 's ascribed "in n o cen ce" m ust be. Just as Jesus follow ed up his ow n injunction w ith the w arning about the awful d row ning that aw aits "w h oev er causes one of these little ones . . . to sin " (M att. 18:6), so the success of K ierkegaard's experim ent in establishing the analogy betw een the child and "th e one who lo ves" depends on the parenthetical qualification that the child m ust not rem ain am ong the thieves "so long that it is corrupted itself." This qu alification, together w ith K ierkegaard's portrait of "th e one w ho lo ves," m ay m ark the distance betw een the author of Works o f Love and readers today in their perceptions of children. Conclusion A lthough there is am ple docum entation of w hat Leslie Fiedler called "th e profanation of the ch ild " in tw entieth century litera ture,35 one need think only o f Peter Pan, the character created by J. M. Barrie during the early decades of the century, and Richard

35See Leslie Fiedler, "T h e Eye of Innocence," The Collected Essays o f Leslie Fiedler, 2 vols. (New York: Stein and Day, 1971) 502-11. For more recent cogita tions on the same phenom enon see, e.g., Joyce Carol Oates, "K iller Kids," The New York Review (11 N ovem ber 1997): 16-20.

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H u gh es's 1929 novel The Innocent Voyage, later republished under the title A H igh W ind in Jam aica, to gauge tw o crucial differences betw een us and K ierkegaard in our attitude tow ard the child. Barrie, w hose depiction o f children as "g ay and innocent and h ea rtle ss"36 aptly sum s up the sentim ental V ictorian view of children, bequeathed to W estern culture w hat has becom e one of our m ost popular m yths of childhood, the story of "th e boy who w ould not grow u p ."37 This epithet m ay seem suggestively close to K ierk eg aard 's description of "th e one w ho lo v es" as som eone w ho "is and rem ain s," "w an ts to be and w ants to rem ain a ch ild ." Y et the pagan personality, not to m ention the pagan nam e, of B arrie's hero is a far cry from K ierkegaard's ideal C hristian as is also the com m on "sy n d ro m e" of arrested social developm ent am ong contem p orary adult m ales that has been nam ed after Peter Pan.38 Indeed, though they both rem ain not grow n up in certain senses, Peter Pan and K ierkegaard's "o n e w ho lo v es" w ould seem to be ethically and religiously opposed flip sides of each other. As for K ierk eg aard 's im agining w hat a child w ould or w ould not observe "in a den o f th ieves," A High Wind in Jam aica attests to our ow n cen tu ry's loss o f even a pretended restraint about trying to preserve any false sense of the child as an uncorrupted type. W hereas K ierkegaard w anted his im aginary child rem oved from am ongst the thieves before it w as "corru p ted itself," H u ghes's novel, w hose p u blication is said to have delivered the death blow to the V ictorian cult of childhood, tells of a group of children captured by pirates, am ong w hom one, a ten-year-old girl, becom es a rem orseless killer. In subsequent novels such as W illiam G o ld in g 's Lord o f the Flies and W illiam M arch 's The Bad Seed, both of w hich appeared in 1954, it does not take the com pany of pirates to prom pt equally w icked behavior am ong children.

36 T h e closing phrase of the novel Peter and Wendy (1911), in J. M. Barrie, Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens. Peter and Wendy, ed. Peter Hollindale (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991) 226. 37The subtitle of the play Peter Pan (premiere 1904), in The Plays o f J. M. Barrie (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1929) 1-94. 38See Dan Kiley, The Peter Pan Syndrome: Men Who Have Never Grown Up (New York: Dodd, M ead, and Co., 1983).

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From the vantage of our ow n prodigious, m illennial con scious ness of sin and evil, w e can only speculate over the fear and trem bling w ith w hich K ierkegaard m ight have pondered the conse quences o f not rem oving the child from am ong the thieves before it w as too late.