228

19

Northrop lrye and Soren Kierkegaard

^ot reriov.t, vbti.bea.

1he roots o lrye`s expansie ision o culture hae oten been remarked. Blake and the Bible are
obiously central to the deelopment o his ideas, and much has been written about lrye`s debts to
both. Much has been written as well about other signiicant inluences on lrye: Nella Cotrupi`s
book on lrye and Vico, Glen Gill`s study o lrye and twentieth-century mythographers ,Lliade,
Jung, and others,, lord Russell`s account o the inluence o Spengler, lrazer, and Cassirer on lrye,
and Sara 1th on lrye and Buber. No one, howeer, has considered the ways that Kierkegaard
inluenced lrye`s thought. As the impact o Kierkegaard on lrye is relatiely substantial, the
purpose o this essay is to examine lrye`s use o Kierkegaard.
1
Direct inluence is sometimes
diicult to demonstrate, but parallels between and similar ideas held by the two can be instructie.
Kierkegaard helps to deine, illustrate, and deelop lrye`s thought. Along the way, we will also
glance at lrye`s critique o certain Kierkegaardian ideas.
lrye was attracted to Kierkegaard or the same reason he was attracted to Spengler and a
host o other isionaries who wrote what he called kook books.` I was well aware,` he writes,

all the time I was studying |Spengler and lrazer| that they were rather stupid men and oten
sloenly scholars. But I ound them, or rather their central isions, unorgettable, while there
are hundreds o books by more intelligent and scrupulous people which I hae orgotten
haing read. Some o them are people who hae utterly reuted the claims o Spengler and
lrazer to be taken seriously. But the thinker who was annihilated on 1uesday has to be
annihilated all oer again on \ednesday. . . . 1his is not merely my own perersity: we all ind
that it is not only, perhaps not een primarily, the balanced and judicious people that we turn
to or insight. It is also such people as Baudelaire, Rimbaud, lolderlin, Kierkegaard,
Dostoesky, Nietzsche, all o them liars in \ilde`s sense o the word, as \ilde was himsel.
1hey were people whose lies got smashed up in arious ways, but rescued ragments rom
the smash o an intensity that the steady-state people seldom get to hear about. 1heir ision is
penetrating because it is partial and distorted: it is truthul because it is alsiied. 1o the Old
1estament`s question, \here shall wisdom be ound` there is oten only the New
1estament`s answer: \ell, not among the wise, at any rate.` ,Retigiov, 39-40,
2


lrye had more than a passing acquaintance with the writings o Kierkegaard. lis library
contained ourteen books by Kierkegaard, twele o which he annotated: 1be Covcet of Dreaa, 1be
Covcet of rov,, 1be Diar, of orev Kier/egaara, itber,Or ,ol. 1,, ear ava 1revbtivg, 1be ]ovrvat. of orev
Kier/egaara, Of tbe Differevce betreev a Ceviv. ava av .o.tte, 1be Poivt of 1ier for M, !or/ a. av .vtbor,
1be Pre.evt .ge, Reetitiov, 1be ic/ve.. vvto Deatb, and !"#$%& () *+)%,& -#.. lrye also owned
Kierkegaard`s aif,ivg Di.covr.e.: . etectiov and olume 2 o itber,Or, in his essay Blake`s Bible`
he reers to .ttac/ vov Cbri.tevaov ,Mittov, 423,, and in 1be Creat Coae he mentions a translation o
1be Pre.evt .ge dierent rom the one he owned. As lrye quotes a phrase rom Covctvaivg cievtific
Po.t.crit, he doubtless read that work as well.
3
On the eidence we hae, then, lrye was amiliar
with a substantial number o the books by Kierkegaard that were aailable in translation during his
lietime.
In his 1949 diary lrye reports that he has begun reading Kierkegaard`s Covcet of Dreaa again.
229

,Diarie., 189,. 1his would hae been \alter Lowrie`s translation o the book, which appeared in
1944 ,the translations into Lnglish o Kierkegaard by Lowrie, Alexander Dru, and Daid and Lillian
Swenson began to appear in the early 1940s,. So lrye`s reading o Kierkegaard had begun at least by
the late 1940s and perhaps earlier. 1here is a steady stream o reerences to Kierkegaard--more
than 250 altogether--in lrye`s writings, beginning in 1949 and continuing in his published and
unpublished work through the posthumous 1be Dovbte 1i.iov ,1991,. le began to reread
Kierkegaard in the late 1980s, and he gies a airly extensie account o this rereading in Notebook
50, one o his ate ^oteboo/..
Kierkegaard is oten regarded as the ather o existentialism, and lrye`s attention to
existentialism in general ollowed closely on the post-\orld \ar II maniestations o the moement.
le reports using the word existentialist` in a January 1949 discussion with his Victoria College
colleagues, and by 1950 he is lecturing on the existential moement` ,Diarie., 100, 282,. Seeral
dozen instances o his use o the word can be ound in his diaries rom the late 1940s and early
1950s.
4
lrye wrote nothing extensie about existentialism, but two thumb-nail accounts o the
moement can be ound in Speculation and Concern` ,avcatiov, 254-6, and 1he Uniersity and
Personal Lie` ,avcatiov, 36,.
1he central Kierkegaardian topoi that make their way into lrye`s writing relate to his
understanding o the myths or reedom and concern, the either,or dialectic, the principle o
repetition, Kierkegaard as a prophetic, kerygmatic, metaliterary writer, and his role in the
reolutionary explosion in nineteenth-century thought, which lrye characterizes by the metaphor o
the drunken boat. I propose to examine what lrye says about these subjects in turn. It is oten best
to let lrye speak or himsel, so the generous supply o quotations rom his published and
unpublished work results in a kind o Kierkegaardian anthology.

1. 1he Myth o Concern

1he OLD gies twenty-one meanings or concern` as a noun. In common parlance the word
reers to an actie interest or an important relation to some matter. In the mid-1960s lrye began to
use the word in a special way. Rather than recurring to the common distinction between act and
alue, lrye says in a 1965 essay entitled Speculation and Concern` that the existential terms
concern` and engagement` are touchstones or what the humanities create. 1hree years later in
relecting on the history o his interest in the Bible, lrye writes,

I was beginning to see that the language o religion and the language o literature were closely
connected, but the reason or the connection did not really become clear to me until the
existentialist people came along ater the war and I began reading Kierkegaard and his
ollowers. 1he reason or the connection is that myth is the language o covcerv. Man is in two
worlds: there is a world around him, an objectie world, which it is the business o science to
study. But there is also the world that man is trying to build out o his enironment, and this
is the world which depends on man`s iew o himsel and his destiny, or his concern about
where he came rom and where he is going to, and all his hopes and his ideals, his anxieties
and his panics, come into his iew o the society that he wants to build. ,Criticat, 24,

In 1be Criticat Patb ,191, lrye expands the meaning o the word concern,` setting up an elaborate
dialectic between the myths o reedom and concern. In 1be Creat Coae existential concern` enters
into lrye`s account o kerygma, and eight years later concern` is gien another twist in chapter 2 o
!ora. ritb Porer, entitled Concern and Myth.`
lrye neer points to a source in Kierkegaard or his appropriation o the word concern,`
230

but concern` in the senses just speciied ,e/,vrivg//concern, care, interest, worry, appears
throughout the Danish theologian`s works. le writes, or example, Not until the moment when
there awakens in his soul a concern about what meaning the world has or him and he or the world,
about what meaning eerything within him by which he himsel belongs to the world has or him
and he therein or the world--only then does the inner being announce its presence in this
concern.` \hat this awakened concern yearns or is a knowledge that does not remain knowledge
or a single moment but is transormed into action the moment it is possessed` ,igbteev |bvitaivg
Di.covr.e. 86,. Or again: 1here is a truth whose greatness, whose sublimity we are accustomed to
extol by saying that it is an ob;ectire truth, that it is equally alid whether one accepts it or not. . . .
1here is another kind o truth, or i this is more unassuming, another kind o truths, which we might
call the covcervea truths` ,aif,ivg Di.covr.e., 8,.
5

Although lrye read Kierkegaard beore he read Paul 1illich, the appeal o the word
concern` might also be traced to the irst olume o 1illich`s ,.tevatic 1beotog,, which appeared in
1951. 1illich had been signiicantly inluenced by Kierkegaard during his student years at the
Uniersity o lalle. 1he word concern,`` 1illich writes, points to the existential` character o
religious experience. \e cannot speak adequately o the object o religion` without simultaneously
remoing its character as an object. 1hat which is ultimate gies itsel only to the attitude o
ultimate concern. It is the correlate o an unconditional concern but not a highest thing` called the
absolute` or the unconditioned,` about which we could argue in detached objectiity. It is the object
o total surrender, demanding also the surrender o our subjectiity while we look at it. It is a matter
o ininite passion and interest ,Kierkegaard,, making us its object wheneer we try to make it our
object` ,,.tevatic, 12,. lrye had heard 1illich lecture at the Uniersity o 1oronto in lebruary
1950,
6
and he owned and annotated our o 1illich`s books.

ecvtatiov ava Covcerv. In lrye`s essay o this title, which aims to dierentiate between the
sciences and the humanities, speculation` is his shorthand or the detached mode o inquiry o the
sciences. Concern,` on the other hand, is what we ind in the containing orms o myths, it is in
these myths that the nature o man`s concern or his world is most clearly expressed` ,avcatiov,
256,. One ersion o concern` is ound in existentialism, particularly in Kierkegaard`s notion o
ethical reedom.` Lxistentialism, lrye writes, insists that i we think o the external world as a
human world, certain elements become primary that are careully kept out o science: the imminence
o death, the eeling o alienation, the perading sense o accident and o emptiness, and the direct
conrontation with something arbitrary and absurd.` Kierkegaard`s ethical reedom` reers to the
person, in lrye`s words, who has passed beyond speculation. It would be better to use the
existential terms engagement or concern to express the contrast between a reality which is there to
begin with and the greater reality which, like religious aith or artistic creation, does not exist at all to
begin with, but is brought into being through a certain kind o human act` ,avcatiov, 254, 256,.
1he parallel between speculation and concern, on the one hand, and Kierkegaard`s aesthetic` and
ethical` stages, on the other, will be considered shortly. 1he point here is that concern` in the
sense o committed or engaged deries rom Kierkegaard and his twentieth-century ollowers.
Concern` can mean a troubled state o mind, uneasiness, or anxiety ,Kierkegaard`s .vge.t,,
and this is the meaning it occasionally has or lrye. In his radio talk, gien as a prelude to a
perormance o Auden`s or tbe 1ive eivg, lrye writes, Kierkegaard says that all human actiity,
without exception, is the product o concern or anxiety about human lie, so rom one point o iew
all human actiity is hysterical, compulsie and neurotic.` lrye then adises his audience to |l|isten
or the word anxiety` in Auden`s play: it`s a ery important word. 1he neurotic can`t get at his
neurosis or become conscious o it without the help o a psychoanalyst. But or anxiety, which
deeats all o us equally, there aren`t any psychoanalysts. 1o try to become conscious o this takes us
into the mystery o what theologians call original sin and whateer it is that makes all human lie
231

grow out o a tense and rightened dissatisaction. \e can no more see inside this than we can see
our own backbones` ,ictiov, 298-9,.
8

1be M,tb. of reeaov ava Covcerv. In 1be Criticat Patb lrye claims that the process o
interpreting the social myths o culture is ery similar to criticism in literature` and that the
dierent orms o critical interpretation cannot be sharply separated, whether they are applied to the
plays o Shakespeare, the manuscripts o the Bible, the American Constitution, or the oral traditions
o an aboriginal tribe. In the area o general concern they conerge, howeer widely the technical
contexts in law, theology, literature or anthropology may dier` ,Criticat, 84,. 1his is the main
assumption on which the book is based: while literary critics are not qualiied to handle all the
technical contexts` o culture, they are especially prepared, particularly i they are archetypal critics,
to interpret the cultural phenomena that orm the social enironment o literature. 1he modern
critic,` lrye says, is . . . a student o mythology, and his total subject embraces not merely literature,
but the areas o concern which the mythical language o construction and belie enters and inorms.
1hese areas constitute the mythological subjects, and they include large parts o religion, philosophy,
political theory, and the social sciences` ,Criticat, 6,.
1be Criticat Patb treats a wide-ranging body o such subjects, including the dierence between
oral and writing cultures, Renaissance humanism, the critical theories o Sidney and Shelley, Marxism
and democracy, the idea o progress, adertising and propaganda, social contract theories and
conceptions o Utopia, contemporary youth culture, McLuhanism, and theories o education. \hat
holds these dierse subjects together is the dialectical ramework o that lrye establishes: whateer
issue he conronts, it always is set against the background o what he sees as the two opposing
myths o \estern culture, the myth o concern and the myth o reedom.
1he myth o concern comprises eerything that a society is most concerned to know. It is
the disposition which leads one to uphold communal rather than indiidual alues. It exists, lrye
says, to hold society together. . . . lor it, truth and reality are not directly connected with reasoning
or eidence, but are socially established. \hat is true, or concern, is what society does and beliees
in response to authority, and a belie, so ar as a belie is erbalized, is a statement o willingness to
participate in a myth o concern. 1he typical language o concern thereore tends to become the
language o belie` ,Criticat, 23,. Concern` is basically a social category: a society`s body o
concerns are all those religious, political, cultural, and economic presuppositions that the members
o society generally assent to and that thereore make communication possible. Concerns spring
rom humanity`s desire to know where it came rom, what its nature is, and where it is going.
A myth o concern has its roots in religion and only later branches out into politics, law, and
literature. It is inherently traditional and conseratie, placing a strong emphasis on alues o
coherence and continuity. It originates in oral or preliterate culture and is associated with
continuous erse conentions and discontinuous prose orms. And it is deeply attached to ritual,
to coronations, weddings, unerals, parades, demonstrations, where something is publicly done that
expresses an inner social identity` ,Criticat, 29,. Concerns, can o course, compete with one another,
and the monopoly o Christian concern in \estern culture started to gie way in the eighteenth
century so that a plurality o myths o concern, including secular ones, began to arise ,Criticat, 33,.
1he myth o reedom, on the other hand, is committed to a truth o correspondence. It
appeals to such sel-alidating criteria as logicality o argument or ,usually a later stage, impersonal
eidence and eriication.` It is inherently liberal,` helping to deelop and honoring such alues as
objectiity, detachment, suspension o judgment, tolerance, and respect or the indiidual. It
stresses the importance o the non-mythical elements in culture, o the truths and realities that are
studied rather than created, proided by nature rather than by a social ision` ,Criticat, 29,. It
originates in the mental habits which a writing culture, with its continuous prose and discontinuous
erse orms, brings into society.
232

1he way lrye uses this broad dialectic o reedom and concern can be illustrated by his
treatment o two classic deenses o poetry, Sidney`s and Shelley`s. Placing Sidney`s iew o poetry
against the background o Renaissance humanism, lrye concludes that Sidney accommodates the
role o the poet to the alues o a reading and writing culture, to the norms o meaning established
by writers o discursie prose. 1he conception o poetry in Sidney,` he says, is an application o
the general humanistic iew o disciplined speech as the maniestation or audible presence o social
authority` ,Criticat, 44,. lor Sidney, what is most distinctie about poetry is the poet`s power o
illustration, a power which is partly an ability to popularize and make more accessible the truths o
reelation and reason` ,Criticat, 45,. In other words, poetry is not qualitatiely distinct rom the
other erbal disciplines. \hat actually occurs in Sidney`s iew o poetry, according to lrye, is that
the original characteristics o the myths o reedom and concern are interchanged: 1he myth o
concern takes on a reasoning aspect, claiming the support o logic and historical eidence, the myth
o reedom becomes literary and imaginatie, as the poet, excluded rom primary authority in the
myth o concern, inds his social unction in a complementary actiity, which liberalizes concern but
also . . . reinorces it` ,Criticat, 51,.
In Shelley`s deense, on the other hand, we return to a conception o poetry as mythical and
psychologically primitie.

Shelley begins by neatly inerting the hierarchy o alues assumed in Sidney. . . . Shelley puts
all the discursie disciplines into an inerior group o analytic` operations o reason. 1hey are
aggressie, they think o ideas as weapons, they seek the irreutable argument, which keeps
eluding them because all arguments are theses, and theses are hal-truths implying their own
opposites. . . . 1he works o imagination, by contrast, cannot be reuted: poetry is the dialectic
o loe, which treats eerything it encounters as another orm o itsel, and neer attacks, only
includes. . . . 1his argument assumes, not only that the language o poetry is mythical, but that
poetry, in its totality, is in act society`s real myth o concern, and that the poet is still the
teacher o that myth. . . . |I|n Sidney`s day, it was accepted that the models o creation were
established by God: or Shelley, man makes his own ciilization, and at the centre o man`s
creation are the poets, whose work proides the models o human society. 1he myths o
poetry embody and express man`s creation o his own culture, rather than his reception o it
rom a diine source. ,Criticat, 64, 65,

1here is no denying the act the lrye`s sympathies lie on the side o Shelley, or both o them
beliee that the language o literature represents the imaginatie possibilities o concern. And both
o them are opposed to the constrictie iew o Sidney which makes the critic an ealuator and
which makes poetry subserient to whateer established ramework o concern an elite society
happens to be championing at the moment. 1o say that literature contains the imaginatie
possibilities o concern means, or lrye, that it displays the total range o erbal ictions and
models and images and metaphors out o which all myths o concern are constructed` ,Criticat, 6,.
lrye`s conclusion is that while Shelley`s ,and his own, iew o poetry take us back to the areas o
concern expressed in primitie and oracular mythology, the critic`s approach to the alues expressed
by a myth o concern must derie rom the myth o reedom. 1he critic qva critic,` lrye says, is
not himsel concerned but detached` ,Criticat, 6,.
1he merging o reedom and concern, howeer, is what produces the social context o
literature. I there is a central thesis to 1be Criticat Patb it is the dialectical tension lrye seeks to
establish between the myths o reedom and concern. 1his tension comprises his own central myth,
as it were, and the cultural phenomena he examines throughout the book are interpreted rom the
233

perspectie o this tension. A corollary to the tension is the necessity or a pluralism o myths o
concern, which can only occur in societies with open mythologies.

1he basis o all tolerance in society, the condition in which a plurality o concerns can co-
exist, is the recognition o the tension between concern and reedom. . . . Concern and
reedom both occupy the whole o the same unierse: they interpenetrate, and it is no good
trying to set up boundary stones. Some, o course, meet the collision o concern and reedom
rom the opposite side, with a naie rationalism which expects that beore long all myths o
concern will be outgrown and only the appeal to reason and eidence and experiment will be
taken seriously. . . . I consider such a iew entirely impossible. 1he growth o non-mythical
knowledge tends to eliminate the incredible rom belie, and helps to shape the myth o
concern according to the outlines o what experience inds possible and ision desirable. But
the growth o knowledge cannot in itsel proide us with the social ision which will suggest
what we should do with our knowledge. ,Criticat, 3-5,

1his is where lrye`s iew o the social unction o criticism enters the argument, the literary critic, or
at least lrye`s ideal critic, is prepared to see that myths o concern in society are like those in
literature in that they represent the range o imaginatie possibilities o belie. 1here are parallels
between lrye`s myths o reedom and concern and the two stages that Kierkegaard in itber,Or calls
the aesthetic` and the ethical. itber,Or is the chie source o the existentialist tradition and, or
lrye, the classical statement o the relation o concern and reedom` ,Criticat, 88,.
9
\e will
examine the either,or dialectic in section 2.
As or the social unction o art, lrye thinks that Kierkegaard position on that issue is
essentially wrongheaded:

1he whole argument ,oer the social unction o art, today is conused by the existential`
iews o S.K. |Soren Kierkegaard| ,through Auden,, which oppose a theatrical or aesthetic`
iew o reality to an ethical or actie one, & then go through that to repetition. But S.K.`s
repetition is really Aristotle`s anagnorisis, and the allacy o both aesthetic & ethical attitudes is
in the common objectiication o reality. I`m not talking about idolizing works o art, & S.K.
shouldn`t be talking about an external substantial reality a. rett a. existence, or rather, as
characteristic o the existential situation. Real existential thinking is hypothetical: that`s the
irst use o art that goes beyond qvia aga.. At a certain point all ethical situations become
unreal: that`s why casuistry is a dismal & illiberal science. Art trains us in the ision o the
unmodiied, unimproised existential situation. ,Criticat, 234,
10


Covcerv ava M,tb. 1his is the title o chapter 2 o !ora. ritb Porer, and in that book, as well
as in 1be Dovbte 1i.iov and a number o essays rom the 1980s, lrye distinguished between primary
and secondary concerns. lrye irst used the phrase primary concern` in 1be Criticat Patb ,191,:
lor Kierkegaard the detached, liberal, and impersonal attitude ostered by the study o an objectie
enironment, and which lowers into comprehensie intellectual systems like that o legel, is an
aesthetic` attitude. It is undamentally immature because with this attitude man tries to it himsel
into a larger container, the general outlines o which he can see with his reason, but orgetting that
his reason built the container. 1he crisis o lie comes when we pass oer into the commitment
represented by or,` take up our primary concern,` escape rom our psychological deences ,what
Kierkegaard calls shut-upness` in 1be Covcet of Dreaa,, and thus enter the sphere o genuine
personality and ethical reedom` ,Criticat, 88,. A decade later lrye began to deine primary
concerns` and to set them in opposition to secondary concerns.` lis attention to the distinction
234

becomes a requently sounded rerain in his late work: almost 200 instances o his use o the two
phrases occur in ate ^oteboo/. alone, and some ity instances appear in his essays rom the 1980s.
Primary concerns are the uniersal, indiidual, and physical needs and desires o human
beings. In his ate ^oteboo/. lrye engages in uninhibited speculation about the primary concerns,
letting his mind play reely with the basic things essential or our surial and noting a number o
analogues and links with other categories in his thinking about his second book on the Bible. 1he
ollowing chart can be taken as a summary o the chie eatures in this expansie ree-play:

"#$ %&'()&* +,-.$&-/

"#$ %&'( lood and drink Sex Property: lreedom o
)&*+$(*, and related bodily money, possessions, shelter, moement, play
needs clothing, & eerything that
constitutes property in the
sense o what is proper` to
one`s lie, structure,
property, in the Aristotelian
sense o the material
extension o the personality,
money

-./#&0(12#$( lrazer: linked mythology Graes: linked mythology G.R. Ley: linked mythology Gadamer,
with anxiety about ood with anxiety with anxiety about shelter luizinga,
supply about sex, lreud laelock Lllis

3($,454*0 6&5 lermes Lros Adonis Prometheus
&( 7*8&(94*0
3($,$*+$

)#14*:&8: animal, egetable human mineral mineral
;$4*0 <$=$>

;>1?$1* 1harmas Orc Urizen Urthona
@*1>&0'$

)$*/(1> Cae Garden Mountain lurnace
@(+#$/.2$

AB21*5$5 Bodily identity Loe Construction, creation lree energy that
-&5$ work is aimed at

C&'D>$ Separation ending in union, Union ollowed by Lmbryo within another Separation at the
6.($ separation aspect: excretion separation, excretory body beginning o lie
organs or union

31(&5. &( Lating and drinking Lxploiting the genital 1omb o the dead \ork ,penal,
C$9&*4+ the God-Man machinery: whoring God-Man
%&(9,


lrye eentually settles on ood, sex, property, and reedom o moement as the our primary
concerns but not beore wondering i they do not orm a quincunx, with breathing in the middle,
11

and he acillates on whether 1illich`s ultimate concern` might not be primary.
12
1here are other
qualiications--Actually ood, like breathing, while it`s a primary concern, isn`t one on quite the
leel o the others. Sex can expand into unity with nature, property into creatiity, and reedom o
moement into reedom o thought, but eating and drinking, along with breathing, hae to remain
on a more or less allegorical leel` ,ate, 641,--and there permutations o the our concerns: I
don`t include health in my our concerns, but it could come under property ,Job`s boils are an attack
235

on his property in the Aristotelian sense, or reedom o moement ,note how oten those cured by
Jesus are sick o the palsy,` ,ate, 660,. 1hese qualiications, which come rom lrye`s notebooks,
disappear in his accounts o the primary concerns in !ora. ritb Porer and 1be Dovbte 1i.iov, where
the ariations are resoled into the our concerns just mentioned. 1he axioms o primary concern,`
lrye says in a repeatedly sounded rerain, are the simplest and baldest platitudes it is possible to
ormulate: that lie is better than death, happiness better than misery, health better than sickness,
reedom better than bondage, or all people without signiicant exception` ,!ora., 51-2,.
13

Secondary concerns are ideologies arising rom the social contract. 1hey hae to do with
religious belies, patriotic attachments, class systems, gender status, communal structures o
authority, and arious other orms o identity politics. listorically, secondary concerns hae almost
always trumped primary ones:

\e want to lie and loe, but we go to war, we want reedom, but depend on the exploiting o
other peoples, o the natural enironment, een o ourseles. In the twentieth century, with a
pollution that threatens the supply o air to breathe and water to drink, it is obious that we
cannot aord the supremacy o ideological concerns any more. 1he need to eat, loe, own
property, and moe about reely must come irst, and such needs require peace, good will, and
a caring and responsible attitude to nature. A continuing o ideological conlict, a reckless
exploiting o the enironment, a persistence in belieing, with Mao 1se-1ung, that power
comes out o the barrel o a gun, would mean, quite simply, that the human race cannot be
long or this world. ,Retigiov, 10,.

1his is why lrye says that primary concerns had better become primary again, or else.
14
In lrye`s
theory o language in chapter 1 o !ora. ritb Porer, he calls the third mode o language ideological`
or rhetorical,` the unction o which is to rationalize authority, and ideological language supports
the anxieties o social authority` ,!ora., 4,. O course the myths that spring rom primary
concerns are most oten less about the satisaction o these concerns than about the anxieties
associated with their not getting satisied. Sexual rustration, or example, is a uniersal theme o
romance.
.viet,. Anxiety as a psychological and existential state is a regular part o lrye`s critical
ocabulary. 1he word itsel, along with its synonyms dread` and .vg.t,` appears well oer 900
times in lrye writings. As already noted, in the 1940s lrye read and then reread Kierkegaard`s 1be
Covcet of Dreaa ,or .viet, or .vg.t, depending on the translation,. lrye was also doubtless
inluenced by Paul 1illich`s 1be Covrage 1o e ,1952,, a copy o which he owned. 1illich
distinguishes three kinds o existential anxiety: ontic ,brought on by a sense o ate and death,, moral
,resulting rom guilt or condemnation,, and spiritual ,caused by eelings o emptiness and
meaninglessness,. And lrye was naturally amiliar with lreud`s arious theories o anxiety as both
caused by and causing repression. But Kierkegaard`s 1be Covcet of Dreaa appears to be a more
seminal inluence.
lrye`s most extensie consideration o anxiety is in the irst chapter o 1be Moaerv Cevtvr,, where
he examines the dilemma o alienation and anxiety in contemporary society, associated in large
measure with the idea o technological progress.

|l|or most thoughtul people progress has lost most o its original sense o a aourable alue
judgment and has become simply progression, towards a goal more likely to be a disaster than
an improement. 1aking thought or the morrow, we are told on good authority, is a
dangerous practice. In proportion as the conidence in progress has declined, its relation to
236

indiidual experience has become clearer. 1hat is, progress is a social projection o the
indiidual`s sense o the passing o time. But the indiidual, as such, is not progressing to
anything except his own death. lence the collapse o belie in progress reinorces the sense
o anxiety which is rooted in the consciousness o death. Alienation and anxiety become the
same thing, caused by a new intensity in the awareness o the moement o time, as it ticks
our lies away day ater day. 1his intensiying o the sense o time also, as we hae just seen,
dislocates it: the centre o attention becomes the uture, and the emotional relation to the
uture becomes one o dread and uncertainty. 1he uture is the point at which it is later than
you think` becomes too late.` ,Moaerv, 18,

1hen, changing his image rom the clock to the mirror, which also ocuses the issue on the response
o consciousness to time, lrye says,

Looking into the mirror is the actie mind which struggles or consistency and continuity o
outlook, which preseres its memory o its past and clariies its iew o the present. Staring
back at it is the rozen relection o that mind, which has lost its sense o continuity by
projecting it on some mechanical social process, and has ound that it has also lost its dignity,
its reedom, its creatie power, and its sense o the present, with nothing let except a earul
apprehension o the uture. ,Moaerv, 26,.

llash orward twenty-three years to the seenty-eight-year-old lrye giing his inal series o lectures
at Lmmanuel College, six months beore his own death, when the consciousness o death was ery
much on his own mind:

Reerting to our remark about the God o promises, all our conditioning is rooted in our
temporal existence and in the anxiety that appears in the present as the passing o time and in
the uture as death. I death is the last enemy to be destroyed, as Paul tells us |1 Corinthians
15:26|, the last metaphor to be transcended is that o the uture tense, or God in the orm o
Beckett`s Godot, who neer comes but will maybe come tomorrow. 1he omnipresence o
time gies some strange distortions to our double ision. ,Retigiov, 235,

1hese relections on time and anxiety hae their parallels in Kierkegaard`s oten intractable
speculations about time in chapter 3 o 1be Covcet of Dreaa.
15
Ater deining time as ininite
succession` ,6, Kierkegaard says that our tendency to diide time into the past, present, and uture,
which he calls spatialized time, is raught with diiculties. I in the ininite succession o time one
could in act ind a oothold which would sere as a diiding point, then this diision would be quite
correct. But precisely because eery moment, like the sum o moments, is a process ,a going-by, no
moment is a present, and in the same sense there is neither past, present, nor uture. I one thinks it
possible to maintain this diision, it is because we .atiatie a moment, but thereby the ininite
succession is brought to a standstill` ,6-,. lere is lrye`s similar ersion o the idea:

In our ordinary experience o time we hae to grapple with three dimensions, all o them
unreal: a past that is no longer, a uture that is not yet, and a present that is neer quite. \e
are dragged backwards along a continuum o experience, acing the past with the uture
behind us. 1he centre o time is now,` just as the centre o space is here,` but now,` like
here,` is neer a point. 1he irst thing that the present moment does is anish and reappear
in the immediate past, where it connects with our expectation o its outcome in the uture.
Lery present experience is thereore split between our knowledge o haing had it and our
23

uture-directed ears or hopes about it. 1he word now` reers to the spread o time in
between. ,Retigiov, 198-9,
16


\hen we experience time horizontally in this manner, lrye says, the primary emotion is anxiety
,1revtietb, 235,. lor Kierkegaard, howeer, dread enters the discussion only ater he has posited the
category o the eternal--the ullness o time in Christianity that makes all things new. 1he possible
corresponds precisely to the uture. lor reedom the possible is the uture, and or time the uture
is the possible. Corresponding to both o these in the indiidual lie is dread` ,82,. lrye`s account
o going beyond the temporal is less riddling, but the concluding lines o 1be Dovbte 1i.iov hae a
similar accent:

1he omnipresence o time gies some strange distortions to our double ision. \e are born
on a certain date, lie a continuous identity until death on another date, then we moe into an
ater`-lie or next` world where something like an ego suries indeinitely in something
like a time and place. But we are not continuous identities, we hae had many identities, as
babies, as boys and girls, and so on through lie, and when we pass through or outgrow`
these identities they return to their source. Assuming, that is, some law o conseration in the
spiritual as well as the physical world exists. 1here is nothing so unique about death as such,
where we may be too distracted by illness or sunk in senility to hae much identity at all. In
the double ision o a spiritual and a physical world simultaneously present, eery moment we
hae lied through we hae also died out o into another order. Our lie in the resurrection,
then, is already here, and waiting to be recognized. ,Retigiov, 235,

lrye`s notion o the physical and the spiritual being simultaneously present is similar to
Kierkegaard`s saying the eternal is the present . . . the eternal is annulled ,avfgebobev, succession`
,,. .vfgebobev is the legelian triple pun, meaning cancelation ,or annulment,, preseration, and
lited to another leel. 1o lit to another leel is one ersion o making all things new, which is
lrye`s interpretation o what Kierkegaard means by repetition ,examined in section 3, below,. \hat
Kierkegaard does not see is that angst is the state o Blake`s Spectre o Urthona: the egocentric or
proud desire to o..e.. tive, the reolt against the consciousness o death` ,Diarie., 222,.

2. Lither,Or

\e hae already mentioned the aesthetic` and the ethical` stages in the either,or choice. 1he
aesthetic` attitude or Kierkegaard is the detached, liberal, and impersonal attitude ostered by the
study o an objectie enironment . . . which lowers into comprehensie intellectual systems like
that o legel` ,Criticat, 88,. It conceies o art as a permanently detached object o contemplation`
,Criticat, 152,. It takes its name rom the act that Kierkegaard saw a similarity between this attitude
and the place o art in society, and its archetypal character is the medieal Don Juan, the uniersal
loer surrounded by a mass o attractie objects` ,Criticat, 54,. 1he pursuit o intellectual and
physical pleasures creates dread and eentually leads to despair. itber we remain trapped in the
aesthetic` mode, seeking ways to reliee our boredom, or else we pass oer into the realm o the
ethical.` 1his is the realm o genuine subjectie personality, characterized by commitment,
reedom, and the acceptance o aith.
Although the parallels are not exact, lrye`s myth o reedom with its disinterested
detachment has its counterpart in Kierkegaard`s aesthetic` attitude, and his myth o concern is
aligned with Kierkegaard`s ethical` attitude, with its emphasis on radical engagement and indiidual
238

reedom. 1here is a parallel, too, in the model o the tragic Neigung-Plicht conlict, the conlict
between inclination and duty, as in Kant`s ovvaatiov for tbe Metab,.ic of Morat. ,ate, 19,.
But as we know rom .vatov, of Critici.v, lrye rejects all either,or choices. le will not be
cornered into accepting the Kierkegaardian either-or` position. le wants the best o both possible
worlds: the detached, liberal, impersonal alues o the aesthetic` attitude which Kierkegaard rejects
and the alues o commitment which come rom the primacy o concern. le, o course, does not
think Kierkegaard`s own solution is satisactory: I we stop with the oluntary sel-blinkering o
commitment, we are no better o than the aesthetic`: on the other side o or` is another step to be
taken, a step rom the committed to the creatie, rom iconoclastic concern to what the literary critic
aboe all ought to be able to see, that in literature man i. a spectator o his own lie, or at least o the
larger ision in which his lie is contained` ,Criticat, 88-9,.
1his is lrye`s answer as to how one can be detached yet joined to the community o concern
at the same time. It is an answer in which the isionary imagination becomes the ultimate criterion,
or only in the world o imagination can the tension between reedom and concern be properly
maintained. It is out o this tension, lrye concludes,

that glimpses o a third order o experience emerge, o a world that may not exist but
completes existence, the world o the deinitie experience that poetry urges us to hae but
which we neer quite get. I such a world existed, no indiidual could lie in it. . . . I we
could lie in it, o course, criticism would cease and the distinction between literature and lie
would disappear, because lie itsel would then be the continuous incarnation o the creatie
word. ,Criticat, 11,
lrye comes to a ery similar conclusion in .vatov, of Critici.v, where the aesthetic`
perspectie o art as an autonomous must be complemented by ethical` criticism. But because art
can neer be subserient to the external goals o truth and beauty, ethical criticism must be
complemented in turn by archetypal criticism, which relates literature to ciilization, or a ision o
the goals o human work` ,.vatov,, 105,.
1
linally, archetypal criticism must be complemented by
anagogic criticism--which ocuses on a completely isionary erbal unierse.
18
1he parallel in
Kierkegaard is his moement rom the aesthetic to the ethical in itber,Or ollowed by the discoery
that he must get beyond the ethical to the religious stage, which he proceeds to do in ear ava
1revbtivg and !"#$%& (0 *+)%,& -#.. 1he real either,or turns out to be a choice between the aesthetic
and the ethical, on the one hand, and the religious, on the other. Kierkegaard says we moe to the
religious sphere, the ultimate subjectie action, by a leap o aith and by, in his amous phrase, the
teleological suspension o the ethical` ,ear ava 1revbtivg, 59,. Kierkegaard wants to transcend the
speculatie and disinterested in aor o the commitment o ethical reedom, but the either,or
dilemma can itsel be transcended. In 1be Criticat Patb lrye puts the Kierkegaardian position in these
terms:
\hat applies to a Christian commitment in Kierkegaard applies also to commitments to other
myths o concern, where Kierkegaard`s aesthetic` would be replaced by escapist` or
idealistic` or what not. Kierkegaard is saying, in our terms, that concern is primary and
reedom a deriation rom it, as the present discussion has also maintained. 1he indiidual
who does not understand the primacy o concern, the act that we belong to something beore
we are anything, is, it is quite true, in a alsely indiidualized position, and his aesthetic`
attitude may well be parasitic. But Kierkegaard, like so many deeply concerned people, is also
saying that passing oer to concern gies us the genuine orm o reedom, that concern and
239

reedom are ultimately the same thing. 1his is the bait attached to all either or` arguments,
but it does not make the hook any more digestible.
It is worth pausing a moment on this point, because Kierkegaard is not really satisied
with his own argument. le clearly understood the act that reedom can only be realized in
the indiidual, and sought or a Christianity that would escape rom what he calls
Christendom,` the merely social conormity or retigio o Christianity. le speaks o the
personal as in itsel a subersie and reolutionary orce, and sees the threat o what we
should now call the totalitarian mob in the impersonal.` lor him the highest orm o truth is
personally possessed truth, and he is not araid to ace the implications o what I think o as
the paranoia principle.` 1his is the principle, lurking in all conceptions o a personal truth
transcending the truth o concern, that it is only what is true only or me that is really true.
1his principle brings us back to the conception o a deinitie experience . . . as an unattained
reality o which literature appears to be an analogy. ,Criticat, 89,
19

In 1be Creat Coae lrye suggests that the disinterested and committed dialectic can be
transcended by an .vfbebvvg, and similarly, by a process o canceling, presering, and liting to
another leel Kierkegaard`s either,or dilemma can be transcended as well ,Creat, 244-5,. As I hae
argued elsewhere, lrye makes a similar moe to the religious sphere, especially in his late work. 1he
teleological becomes the ultimate recognition scene or the reader, described by lrye as apocalypse,
epiphany, reelation, spiritual sel-discoery, a reersal into the ision o the Logos, and similar
religious-laden phrases. Both writers are engaged in eorts to get be,ova. lor Kierkegaard, the
moe is beyond the aesthetic and the ethical--the leap into the existential` ,.vatov, ^oteboo/.,
164,. lor lrye, it is beyond the poetic, the hypothetical, myth, time and space, language, and death.
1he leap into the existential takes one into the realm o aith:
1he relating o one`s literal` understanding o the Bible as a book to the rest o one`s
knowledge, more particularly o the Bible`s background` in history and culture, thus creates a
synthesis that soon begins to moe rom the leel o knowledge and understanding to an
existential leel, rom Dante`s allegorical` to his tropological` meaning, rom Kierkegaard`s
either` to his or.` Such an intensiication, whether it has anything to do with the Bible or
not, takes us rom knowledge to principles o action, rom the aesthetic pleasure o studying a
world o interesting objects and acts to what Kierkegaard calls ethical reedom. 1his shit o
perspectie brings us to the word aith.` ,Creat, 250,
As regards legel, Kierkegaard leels an attack on the systematic philosophy o legel and replaces it
with one more closely attuned to human needs. Kierkegaard has been called a radical Christian
theologian, a religious thinker in the Augustinian tradition, the ather o existentialism, an ethicist, a
social and psychological critic, a metaliterary writer, an early postmodernist, but he was also a
staunchly anti-legelian philosopher.
20
lrye had a ery dierent iew o legel. In his late work
lrye embraced the dialectical transition described by legel as an .vfbebvvg, a term used to embody
the idea, as indicated aboe, that oppositions can be transcended without being abolished. Again,
the erb avfbebev has a triple meaning: to lit or raise,` to abolish or cancel,` and to keep or
presere.`
Both lrye and legel are climbing a spiraling ladder to a higher leel o being, except that
lrye is moing upward by way o the language o myth and metaphor. I legel had written his
Phenomenology in mythos-language instead o in logos-language,` lrye remarks in one notebook,
a lot o my work would be done or me` ,ate, 192,. In lrye`s notebooks legel oten becomes a
240

preoccupation. legel`s use o egriff or concept in his journey up the ladder o being and his iew o
dialectic as .vfbebvvg get mentioned in passing in 1be Creat Coae and !ora. ritb Porer, but legel and
legelianism are reerred to in the notebooks more than 220 times, and lrye declares in Notebook
53, 1he rush o ideas I get rom legel`s Phenomenology is so tremendous I can hardly keep up
with it` ,ate, 631,. Llsewhere lrye gies an eloquent testimony to legel as the great philosopher
o anabasis` ,1bira, 89, and to Pbevovevotog, of irit as the tremendous philosophical masterpiece`
that through its upward thrust inally abolishes the gap between subject and object ,Retigiov, 194,.
21

1hus, while Kierkegaard oered a critique o the legelian system because it was remoed
rom the lied existential experience o eeryday lie, lrye mined legel`s system or insights he
could appropriate or his own use. Still, as Merold \estphal argues, Kierkegaard was neer simply
an anti-legelian. \hile he critiques legel, at the same time he incorporate|s| legelian insights
so that the critique |is| an .vfbebvvg, a cancellation that preseres and a preseration that cancels`
,103,.

3. Repetition

1he earliest reerence to Kierkegaard`s Reetitiov is in lrye`s diary entry o 26 January 1952, where he
says that he is reading the book or the second time, adding wryly that one wouldn`t expect a book
with a name like that to yield much on the irst reading` ,Diarie., 488,. le is mostly interested in
identiying the book`s genre, which he decides is a combination o the nineteenth-century existential
anatomy and the conession, ater the manner o Carlyle`s artor Re.artv..
22
lrye is not immune to
the diiculties that eeryone aces in reading Kierkegaard, especially the aesthetic` works with their
layers o pseudonymous speakers: 1he trouble is that he disguises the conession & approaches the
anatomy quizzically, so it`s hard to igure out just what the hell he does mean. Like his Victorian
contemporaries in Lngland, he has a stentorian censor at his elbow ready to roar down any irony it
doesn`t eel it can control. By that I mean that one has to distinguish irony within a conention
rom irony that threatens the conention. Or humor, perhaps, een more than irony` ,Diarie., 488-
9,. But lrye concludes by remarking that Reetitiov deals with my epic circle idea, that the essential
quest is cyclic, but returns, not to the same point, but to the same point renewed and transormed.
As opposed to recollection, it`s the Protestant justiication by aith as opposed to the Catholic
sacramental repetition o substantial presence. At least I think it is: whether he |Kierkegaard| knows
it or not is another matter` ,Diarie., 489,.
23
Less than a week later lrye reports that in his graduate
seminar he tried to bring in Kierkegaard, equating looking down the spirals o the tower with his
recollection` and looking up with his repetition or anagogical ision o all things new` ,Diarie., 495,.
lere lrye picks up on the central distinction with which Kierkegaard`s book opens--the
dierence between recollection in Plato`s sense o avavve.i. and repetition. In his irst paragraph
Kierkegaard writes,

reetitiov is a crucial expression or what recollection` was to the Greeks. Just as they taught
that all knowing is a recollecting, modern philosophy will teach that all lie is a repetition. 1he
only modern philosopher who has had an intimation o this is Leibnitz. Repetition and
recollection are the same moement, except in opposite directions, or what is recollected has
been, is repeated backward, whereas genuine repetition is recollected orward. ,ear ava
1revbtivg , Reetitiov, 131,
24


1his distinction makes its way into .vatov, of Critici.v:

Kierkegaard has written a ascinating little book called Reetitiov, in which he proposes to use
241

this term to replace the more traditional Platonic term anamnesis or recollection. By it he
apparently means, not the simple repeating o an experience, but the recreating o it which
redeems or awakens it to lie, the end o the process, he says, being the apocalyptic promise,
Behold, I make all things new` |Reelation 21:5|. 1he preoccupation o the humanities with
the past is sometimes made a reproach against them by those who orget that we ace the past:
it may be shadowy, but it is all that is there. Plato draws a gloomy picture o man staring at
the lickering shapes made on the wall o the objectie world by a ire behind us like the sun.
But the analogy breaks down when the shadows are those o the past, or the only light we
can see them by is the Promethean ire within us. 1he substance o these shadows can only
be in ourseles, and the goal o historical criticism, as our metaphors about it oten indicate, is
a kind o sel-resurrection, the ision o a alley o dry bones that takes on the lesh and blood
o our own ision. 1he culture o the past is not only the memory o mankind, but our own
buried lie, and study o it leads to a recognition scene, a discoery in which we see, not our
past lies, but the total cultural orm o our present lie. It is not only the poet but his reader
who is subject to the obligation to make it new.` ,.vatov,, 321,
25


1he Platonic iew, then, is that knowledge is recollected rom the past. Kierkegaard`s Christian
position is that repetition, which is both a contrast and a complement to Plato`s iew, inds its inal
apocalyptic ormulation in the erse rom Reelation. Kierkegaard does not actually quote or
otherwise point to the biblical passage.
26
1he warrant or lrye`s using Behold, I make all things
new` is apparently this passage rom Reetitiov:

1he dialectic o repetition is easy, or that which is repeated has been--otherwise it could not
be repeated--but the ery act that it has been makes the repetition into something new.
\hen the Greeks said that all knowing is recollecting, they said that all existence, which is, has
been, when one says that lie is a repetition one says: actuality, which has been now comes
into existence. ,149,

lrye thinks that Kierkegaard may hae deried the idea o repetition rom biblical typology, but
een i he did not, the two are related, as what is prophesied in the Old 1estament is ulilled in the
New. lrye makes this obseration in Creatiov ava Recreatiov, where he is arguing against the notion o
eternal recurrence in the natural religion o pagan mythology and in Nietzsche ,Retigiov, 3,, and he
repeats is in 1be Creat Coae:

Kierkegaard`s ery brie but extraordinarily suggestie book Reetitiov is the only study I know
o the psychological contrast between a past directed causality and a uture directed typology.
1he mere attempt to repeat a past experience will lead only to disillusionment, but there is
another kind o repetition which is the Christian antithesis ,or complement, o Platonic
recollection, and which inds its ocus in the Biblical promise, Behold, I make all things new`
,Reelation 21:5,. Kierkegaard`s repetition` is certainly deried rom, and to my mind is
identiiable with, the orward moing typological thinking o the Bible. Perhaps his book is so
brie because he lied too early to grasp the ull signiicance o his own argument, as
typological rhetoric was then only beginning to take on many o its new and remarkable
modern deelopments. ,Creat, 101,

Kierkegaard`s repetition, then, buttresses the quarrel lrye always had with the implications o the
cycle. 1he treadmill o endless repetition, the dull sameness in the myth o the eternal return, the
Druidic recurrences o natural religion, the doctrine o reincarnation--all these backward-looking
242

cyclic myths were antithetical to lrye's belie in the Resurrection, one o his irmest religious
conictions. 1he cycle neer permitted what he called the reolutionary cvtbvte or oerturn in
indiidual and social lie--the possibility or a genuine reersal and a new beginning. In literature
there`s the cyclical quest where we either come home again ,Sam in 1olkien, or attain Kierkegaard`s
repetition, recreating the original orm` ,ate, 261,. Another powerul erse rom Reelation or
lrye was 22:1: And the Spirit and the bride say, Come. And let him that heareth say, Come. And
let him that is athirst come. And whosoeer will, let him take the water o lie reely.` 1hese words
at the ery end o the Bible signal or lrye a new beginning, a new creation, and this new beginning
is in the mind o the reader. All o this relates directly to the goal o lrye`s quest in his late work--
his eort to discoer the Lerlasting Gospel, Milton`s \ord o God in the heart, and the
interpenetration o \ord and Spirit.
In one o his notebooks lrye also draws a connection between, on the one hand, Platonic
recollection and what Blake calls the inhibiting memory that has nothing to do with imagination, and
on the other, Kierkegaard`s repetition and the kind o habit or practice memory that makes
imagination expressible` ,ibte, 109-10,. lrye`s notion o practice memory ,babitv., was deried
rom another o his nineteenth-century heroes, Samuel Butler. Practice memory is unconscious
memory deeloped rom habit that gies us the reedom to create. In that sense it is always
uture-directed, like repetition. lrye does not mention Kierkegaard in his essay on Butler`s ife ava
abit, though he does make the Kierkegaard-Butler connection in two other notebook entries:

Repetition deelops, in a legelian way, spirally & through avfbebvvg, in three stages. In the
irst stage reedom, existing in pure experience, dreads repetition as the thing that would spoil
it, in the second it comes to terms with it, and as it were harnesses its energy ,this is the
babitv.-repetition I got rom Butler, though S.K. |Soren Kierkegaard| doubtless wouldn`t think
so,, in the third reedom & repetition are identiied, where repetition is eternity and a new
creation. It`s heaen, in short, just as Nietzsche`s recurrence is hell, the place Antichrist goes
to prepare or his disciples. ,ate, 363,

Kierkegaard`s repetition` image . . . is ounded on . . . the habit-memory o practice rather
than the straight anamnesis memory. ,1bira, 236,

Another analogue or Kierkegaard`s repetition that lrye sees is in Irenaeus` recaitvtatio. Irenaeus
held recapitulation to be the summing up` o human history in Christ as the epitome o
redemption ,Irenaeus, bk. 5, chap. 20,, and this, lrye says, is the repetition` o Kierkegaard, the
new heaen and earth, the restated myth` ,ate, 169,.
In sum, Kierkegaard`s Reetitiov, which lrye returned to repeatedly oer the course o orty
years proided a oundation or and helped to deine his principle o recreation.

4. 1he Metaliterary Mode

In 1be Creat Coae lrye adopts the word kerygma` to indicate that while the Bible has obious
poetic eatures, it is more than literary because it contains a rhetoric o proclamation. Kerygma,`
the orm o proclamation made amiliar by Bultmann, thus designates the existentially concerned
aspect o the Bible, as opposed to its purely metaphoric eatures. Bultmann sought to
demythologize` the New 1estament narratie as an initial stage in interpretation: the assumptions
o the old mythologies, such as demonic possession and the three-storied unierse, had to be purged
beore the genuine kerygma could be saed,` to use his word. lrye, o course, has exactly the
opposite iew o myth: myth is the linguistic ehicle o kerygma` ,Creat, 48,.
243

But haing made his point about kerygma lrye drops the word altogether rom the rest o
1be Creat Coae, except or a passing reerence toward the ery end o the book ,Creat, 252,. In !ora.
ritb Porer the word kerygma` disappears completely rom lrye`s analysis in the sequence and
mode` ,or language`, chapter, we hae to wait until chapter 4, where we learn that the excluded
initiatie--what lies hidden in the background o the poetic--is what leads to kerygma, een though
lrye does not initially put it in these terms. le begins by saying, Our surey o erbal modes put
rhetoric between the conceptual and the poetic, a placing that should help us to understand why
rom the beginning there hae been two aspects o rhetoric, a moral and a tropological aspect, one
persuasie and the other ornamental. Similarly, we hae put the poetic between the rhetorical and
the kerygmatic, implying that it partakes o the characteristics o both` ,!ora., 105-6,. 1he
.vfbebvvg process now begins its liting operation, as lrye expands the meaning o kerygma ar
beyond what it had meant in 1be Creat Coae. It now becomes synonymous with the prophetic
utterance, the metaliterary perception that extends one`s ision or the Longinian ecstatic response to
any text, sacred or secular, that reolutionizes our consciousness.` Kerygma takes metaphorical
identiication a step urther and says: you are what you identiy with`` ,!ora., 110,. \e enter the
kerygmatic realm when the separation o actie speech and reception o speech` merges into a
unity ,!ora., 111,.
In one o his notebooks rom the late 1980s lrye reports that he is trying to reread
Kierkegaard but that he does not ind him an attractie personality, because he seems to play the
same cat-and-mouse game with his reader that he did with poor Regina--and that God played with
Abraham and Job. le`s a trickster writer, in short, and interests me because a literary critic sees him
as doing the opposite o what he thought he was doing, obliterating the barriers between the
aesthetic, the ethical, and the religious. 1hat is, he`s clearly a metaliterary` writer, like Dostoiesky,
Kaka and perhaps Nietzsche ,well, Mallarm too,` ,ate, 361,.
2
lrye inds the most aluable
insights in works where Kierkegaard assumes the mask o one o his many pseudonymous authors
and gets beyond the aesthetic-ethical-religious stages or spheres o existence. 1hese insights lrye
calls metaliterary,` and his most extended discussion o this eature o Kierkegaard`s prose is ound
in Notebook 50 ,ate, 361-6,

Oh, God, i Kierkegaard had only carried through his repetition` scheme, instead o sneaking
it out . . . in the course o abusing a harmless reiewer or not reading what he hadn`t written!
I`m not clear why his three stages are related only by transcendence, or why legel`s logic o
immanent mediation has to be rejected. But I`m sure he did, at that point, though he lost his
grip on it soon aterward. . . . It doesn`t matter that the context is one more ow-oo about
Regina: that`s the right context, a myth with enough existential` urgency to push it in a
metaliterary direction, a Vita Nuoa in reerse. ,ate, 365,

Len though lrye inds the really aluable works by Kierkegaard are his aesthetic` books--those
signed with pseudonyms--the metaliterary mode has its drawbacks: 1he ability to write ery well
ery easily may lead to Kierkegaard`s disease: the esthetic barrier against the kerygmatic` ,ate, 342,.
So not all o the pseudonymous works are kerygmatic. In his ate ^oteboo/. lrye writes:

ic/ve.. vvto Deatb is a work o casuistry, an existential rhetorical orm which is not kerygmatic,
except in so ar as it uses the Lazarus myth. It`s another example o pre-mythical rhetoric
usurping the post-mythical kerygmatic. ear c 1revbtivg is also casuistry, though in a less
concentrated orm. Casuistry means that the ethical area is not one o reedom: it`s a
labyrinth. S.K. realized this, or came to realize it, in theory, but he neer ound a genuinely
kerygmatic style: his aesthetic` style is much the closest to it, but one in which a Socratic
244

irony enters. ,ate, 364,

Kierkegaard struggled to go beyond the aesthetic,` lrye writes, but could produce only dialectical
& rhetorical orms ,he says this in his diary, but I can`t ind the reerence,` ,ate, 365-6,.
28
1his
notebook entry gets expanded in !ora. ritb Porer as ollows:

1he existential moement o the 1940s, also, reoled around a number o igures-
Dostoesky, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Kaka, Sartre-who were primarily literary igures, the
word existential` reerring to tendencies in them that were metaliterary, trying to get past the
limitations o literature into a dierent kind o identity with their readers. Kierkegaard diided
his works into the aesthetic` or literary, which he published under pseudonyms, and the
ediying,` where he spoke in his own name as an ethical` writer and teacher. le realized
that there was a prophetic dimension on the other side o the aesthetic, but eidently did not
realize that it was only in his aesthetic writings that he came anywhere near expressing it. 1he
ediying writings reert to standard dialectical and rhetorical orms, one book on the boundary
line between the two, 1be ic/ve.. vvto Deatb, being essentially a work in the seenteenth-
century rhetorical genre o casuistry. 1he implications or the conception o the kerygmatic
are, irst, that kerygmatic writing normally demands a literary, that is, a mythical and
metaphorical, basis, second, that the kerygmatic does not, like ordinary rhetoric, emerge rom
direct personal address, or what a writer says.` ,!ora., 109-10,

In the kerygmatic world one is released rom the burden o speech and writing: 1he gospels are
written mythical narraties, and or casual readers they remain that. But i anything in them strikes a
reader with ull kerygmatic orce, there is, using the word adisedly, a re.vrrectiov o the original
speaking presence in the reader. 1he reader is the logocentric ocus, and what he reads is
emancipated both rom writing and rom speech. 1he duality o speaker and listener has anished
into a single area o erbal recognition` ,!ora., 108,. \e do not speak in the kerygmatic world, but
God does, which is why the oice o reelation is rhetoric in reerse` ,ate, 660,. \hen lrye uses
kerygma in the sense o the prophetic or metaliterary utterance, human speech or writing does enter
the picture, and while there is no metaliterary style, there is a metaliterary idiom which takes the
kerygmatic as its model ,ate, 369,. It is because o this idiom that Kierkegaard is a one o the
orerunners o the new spiritual emancipation o man` ,ibte, 296,. lrye een projects his own
kerygmatic anthology. le says, without commentary, that it would include Blake`s 1be Marriage of
earev ava ett, Buber`s ava 1bov, and selections rom Dostoesky, Kaka, Rimbaud, and lolderlin
,ate, 366,. As we hae seen, it would include Kierkegaard`s aesthetic` works as well, and we could
add to the list some o Northrop lrye`s more isionary and oracular pronouncements--those that
issue rom what he reers to as heightened or expanded consciousness.
lor lrye one o the central archetypal scenes o the intensity o consciousness that arises
rom the desire to identiy is ound in the Paleolithic cae drawings, reerences to which appear on
more than thirty occasions in his work. 1he cae drawings at Lascaux, Altamira, and elsewhere
represent the titanic will to identiy` ,ecvtar, 346,. 1hey are an example o what Ly-Bruhl called
articiatiov v,.tiqve, the imaginatie identiication with things, including other people, outside the
sel, or an absorption o one`s consciousness with the natural world into an undierentiated state o
archaic identity. In such a process o metaphorical identiication the subject and object merge into
one, but the sense o identity is existential rather than erbal ,ate, 503,.
But what does the intensity or expansion o consciousness entail or lrye 1his is a diicult
question to answer with certainty, or lrye relects on the implications o the phrase only obliquely.
But we do know, irst, that it is a unction o kerygma, second, while it does not necessarily signiy
245

religion or a religious experience, it can be the precondition or any ecumenical or eerlasting-
gospel religion` ,ate, 1,, third, the language o such consciousness always turns out to be
metaphorical, ourth, ision` is the word that best its the heightened awareness that comes with
the imagination`s opening o the doors o perception, ith, the principle behind the epiphanic
experience that permits things to be seen with a special luminousness is that things are not ully
seen until they become hallucinatory. Not actual hallucinations, because those would merely
substitute subjectie or objectie isions, but objectie things transigured by identiication with the
perceier. An object impregnated, so to speak, by a perceier is transormed into a presence` ,!ora.,
8,, sixth, intensiied consciousness is represented by images o both ascent and descent, seenth,
expanded consciousness is both indiidual and social, it amounts to reelation ,ate, 61,.
Kierkegaard helped lrye to deine the kerygmatic utterance, and though Kierkegaard may
hae ailed to get beyond the dialectical and rhetorical thrust o his prose in the late works, in some
o his early ones he does write in a metaliterary mode.

5. 1he Drunken Boat

Kierkegaard plays a seminal role in the drunken boat` metaphor, which lrye uses to characterize
the great nineteenth-century reolutionary igures. 1he others are: Schopenhauer, Darwin, lreud,
and Marx. 1he image deries rom Rimbaud`s e ateav irre, which depicts the poet`s boat tossed
perilously upon the waes like a cork. 1he battering sea threatens the little boat, which represents
the enduring alues and structures o ciilized society. \hether boat can surie the orces that lie
below depends on the optimism o the mythographer. 1he dialectic might be summarized like this,
the undulating line representing the sea, separating what is present aboe rom what lies below:

E+#&2$*#1'$( C1(F4* G H'B>$. %($'5 I4$(?$011(5 -1(B
,188-1860, ,1809-82, ,1825-95, ,1856-1939, ,1813-55, ,1818-83,

ALL 1lL world as idea, consciousness & conscious higher impulses, ascendant
VALULS Ol morality, structure ego, ethics, morality o allen man something like class
CIVILIZA1ION o ciilization is an accidental the ego
sport

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

1lL \ORLD Ol world as will, ruthlessly unconscious, dread, angst excluded
PO\LR BLNLA1l, moral indierence, competitie, libidinous proletariat
1lRLA1ING eolutionary eolution impulse, the id,
1lL VALULS orce repressed Orc
Ol CIVILIZA1ION


\hat lies below the surace o the sea corresponds to the demonic leel o the pre-Romantic great
chain o being. lrye sometimes reers to the boat as an ark: the boat is usually in the position o
Noah`s ark, a ragile container o sensitie and imaginatie alues threatened by a chaotic and
unconscious power below it` ,igbteevtb, 89,. \hat is aboe` are the human alues o intelligence
and morality, o social and cultural tradition. Below the bateav irre, writes lrye is |o|ten an
innocent world, the sleeping beauty o nature & reason in Rousseau, Blake`s Orc & buried Beulah,
Shelley`s Mother Larth & Asia. lrom Schopenhauer on it becomes increasingly inscrutable:
menacing to conseraties & redeeming to reolutionaries, the world as will, Darwin`s eolution,
Kierkegaard`s dread, lreud`s libido-id, Marx`s proletariat` ,.vatov, ^oteboo/., 290,. \hat lies below
can be both a support ,Marx, Darwin, and a threat ,Kierkegaard, lreud, Schopenhauer,. It can also
246

lead to a creatie descent.
1he earliest account we hae o this reolutionary topocosm is in lrye`s description o a 1950
lecture he gae in his course on Nineteenth-Century 1hought: I started luxley, but got o on the
general anti-Cartesian or existential moement which, I said, produced in Darwinism a reersal o
the Cartesian deriation o existence rom consciousness. I went on to show the connection o this
with Schopenhauer`s will & idea, Nietzsche`s will to power & the all too human,` Marx`s ruling-
class & dispossessed, lreud`s ego & libido & the whole psychological conception o that which is
mental & yet not conscious ,I linked the anti-lreudian lrench existentialist doctrine o conscious
reedom with the Cartesian tradition, & Kierkegaard`s spiritless` natural reason & dread ,which, as I
saw or the irst time, links both with the Nietzsche-Marx reolutionary pattern & with Bergson`s
identiication o the subconscious will with duration: the existential is always the Spectre o
Urthona,` ,Diarie., 282,.
29
1his gets elaborated in lrye`s 1952 essay, 1rends in Modern Culture,`
where he writes that in the Romantic moement

nearly all branches o culture, the conscious mind is seen as deriing its strength rom a
subconscious reality greater than itsel. lence the importance o suggestion and eocation in
Romantic art, o the surrender o conscious intelligence to spontaneous mythopoeia. Ater
Schopenhauer, this subconscious world becomes eil, sinister, and yet immensely powerul,
and isions o nightmarish terror begin increasingly to creep into the arts. No matter where
we turn in the culture o the immediate past, the same picture meets us, a picture reminding us
less o the harassed boat than o the young lady o the limerick who smiled as she rode on a
tiger. In Schopenhauer the world o conscious idea thus rides on a cruel ,except that it is
unconscious, and inexorable world o will with the whole power o nature behind it. In
lreud, the conscious mind attempts, with ery partial success, to hold in check a mighty
libidinous desire. In Darwin, the conscious mind is the sport o an unconscious eolutionary
orce. In Marx, ciilization is the attempt o a dwindling minority to keep a astly stronger
majority away rom its priileges. In liberal thought, reedom is the possession o integrity by
a small group constantly threatened by a mob. In Kierkegaard, the consciousness o existence
rests on a ast shapeless dread` as big and real as lie and death together. 1here is hardly a
corner o modern thought where we do not ind some image o a beleaguered custodian o
conscious alues trying to end o something unconscious which is too strong to be deeated.
It seems the appropriate cultural pattern or a period in which the tiny peninsula o \estern
Lurope was encircling the world. ,Moaerv, 260-1,
30


lrye`s thesis is later expanded in 1he Drunken Boat: 1he Reolutionary Llement in Romanticism`
,1963,, which is urther deeloped into the irst chapter o . tva, of vgti.b Rovavtici.v ,1968,.
lere lrye argues that in Romanticism we hae a proound change in the spatial projection o reality.
1his means that the old hierarchy o existence ,the great chain o being, with its diine, human, and
natural leels was turned upside down. 1he metaphorical structure o the Romantic writers tended
to moe inside and downward instead o, as in the older model, outside and upward. Romanticism,
then, was primarily a reolution in poetic imagery.
Kierkegaard also plays a role in lrye`s expansie ision o the our leels o meaning. In one
twist on Dante`s our leels ,literal, allegorical, moral, and anagogic,, lrye relates the leels to both
their Blakean analogues and their corresponding reolutionary thinkers.
31


Leels o Meaning Blakean Analogue Reolutionary Sources

Psychological Urthona Jung
24

listorical Luah Spengler
Mythological 1harmas lrazer
1heological Urizen Kierkegaard
,.vatov, ^oteboo/., 64,

In our own time the structures o Romantic imagery are carried oer into Auden`s or tbe 1ive
eivg, Auden haing been ery much inluenced by Kierkegaard. Auden`s play, in which the word
anxiety` is sprinkled liberally throughout,

deelops a religious construct out o Kierkegaard on the analogy o those o Marx and lreud.
1he liberal or rational elements represented by lerod eel threatened by the reial o
superstition in the Incarnation, and try to repress it. 1heir ailure means that the eort to
come to terms with a nature outside the mind, the primary eort o reason, has to be
abandoned, and this enables the Paradise or diine presence which is locked up inside the
human mind to maniest itsel ater the reason has searched the whole o objectie nature in
ain to ind it. 1he attitude is that o a relatiely orthodox Christianity, the imagery and the
structure o symbolism is that o Provetbev. |vbovva and 1be Marriage of earev ava ett.
,igbteevtb, 89,
32


lrye sometimes speaks o the drunken boat complex as a ortical explosion` ,.vatov,
^oteboo/., 3-8, 39, 81, ecvtar, 168, Revai..avce ^oteboo/., 168-9,. Vortex` is a word that
Kierkegaard uses in 1be Covcet of Dreaa ,18,, Reetitiov ,222,, itber,Or ,Penguin ed., 1992, 168,, and
elsewhere. lrye may hae recalled the image o the sailor in aif,ivg Di.covr.e. who is out to sea,
when eerything is changing about him, when the waes are constantly born and die` ,16,, but his
chie source or ortex` is Blake, who uses the word in both 1be ovr Zoa. and Mittov. 1he central
passage or lrye comes rom the latter: 1he nature o ininity is this: 1hat eerything has its , Own
ortex, and when once a traeler thro Lternity. , las passed that Vortex, he perceies it roll
backward behind , lis path, into a globe itsel inolding, like a sun , Or like a moon, or like a
unierse o starry majesty` ,bk. 1, pl. 15, ll. 21-5,. lere is lrye`s gloss on the passage:

Blake says that eerything in eternity has what he calls a ortex` ,perhaps rather a
ortex-ring,, a spiral or cone o existence. \hen we ocus both eyes on one object, say a
book, we create an angle o ision opening into our minds with the apex pointing away rom
us. 1he book thereore has a ortex o existence opening into its mental reality within our
minds. \hen Milton descends rom eternity to time, he inds that he has to pass through the
apex o his cone o eternal ision, which is like trying to see a book rom the book`s point o
iew, the Lockian conception o the real book as outside the mind on which the ision o the
allen world is based. 1his turns him inside out, and rom his new perspectie the cone rolls
back and away rom him in the orm o a globe. 1hat is why we are surrounded with a
unierse o remote globes, and are unable to see that the earth is one ininite plane.` But in
eternity the perceiing mind or body is omnipresent, and hence these globes in eternity are
inside that body. ,earfvt, 341,
33


Vortex or lrye is an actie or moing geometric shape, an image that helps him to isualize
dierent eents, particularly transormatie ones, in the structure o literary and religious narratie
and meaning. In his published writing the word appears only occasionally: in 1be ecvtar critvre he
uses it to describe the passage o the action through a recognition scene in 1erence`s .varia, and in
!ora. ritb Porer to characterize the pattern o creatie descent in Melille. But in his notebooks he
248

repeatedly calls upon the ortex to assist him in isualizing, particularly, passages rom one state to
another, as in Blake`s account o Milton`s descent. Vortexes can moe in two directions: they can
whirl upward or spin downward. 1hey can attach themseles to each other at the point o the cone
or they can expand outward into an apocalyptic or demonic unierse. In the drunken boat complex
the ortex is an image o reolutionary change, a change in consciousness that enters the modern
world with Kierkegaard, Marx, Nietzsche, lreud, and Darwin. Reolutionary changes can be
indiidual moments o transormation, recognition, or enlightenment, or they can be social. Along
with the ortical explosion` o Kierkegaard we hae the central examples or lrye o Dante`s two
ortices, the swirling descent into the inerno and the circular climb up the purgatorial mountain.
Similarly, with \eats`s double gyres in . 1i.iov. But lrye writes about the ortex mostly in relation
to a sudden awareness that moes one rom a lower state o being to a higher one. O.i. is the
underlying category. One bursts through to a new awareness where things can now be .eev
dierently. \hen the action passes rom one leel to the other through the recognition scene, we
hae a eeling o going through some sort o gyre or ortex` ,ecvtar, 62,, and recognition scenes are
oten accompanied by reersals, as in the case o Oeaiv. tbe Kivg, where the central metaphors are
light and darkness, blindness and sight.
34
But nothing is eer purely isual in lrye: there is always a
dialectic o space ava time, and the ortex can apply to both categories, as we see in this notebook
entry, which is an abstract parallel to what Milton experienced in Blake`s poem:

1he cycle o the \ord is a series o epiphanies--creation, law, prophecy and apocalypse--and
the cycle o the Spirit is a series o responses--exodus, wisdom, gospel and participating
apocalypse. 1he true response is the historical one turned inside out. Not just upside-down:
that`s the other hal o the \ord cycle. But the Bible uses the up-down metaphors in the
crucial irst two chapters o Acts |the descent o the Spirit, the ascent o the \ord|. \hat
gets turned inside-out, as I said in GC |1be Creat Coae| and hae been stumbling oer all my
lie, are the categories o time and space. At present we tend to think o eternity and ininity
as time and space indeinitely extended, which they are anyway, and they hae to go into a real
reerse, another ortex. ,ate, 462,.

lrye`s ortices do not interpenetrate like \eats`s, but they can come together at their apexes to
orm an hour-glass igure. 1his point o contact takes place in the human mind, and ater the
ortical explosion has occurred, we can look back rom where we hae come, as i in a mirror.
Blake`s ]erv.atev, lrye says, attempts to show that the ision o reality is the other one inside out.
1he poem shows us two worlds, one ininite, the other indeinite, one our own home and the other
the same home receding rom us in a mirror` ,Cavaaiav, 32-3,. lrye writes about the ortex in
more than orty notebook entries, some o which are as cryptic as Kierkegaard`s diicult
speculations.
35
But the eect o the whole is another o lrye`s erbal ormulas, this one a dynamic
image, or trying to grasp what happens when one bursts through to a moment o illumination.`
lrye`s theory o the ortical explosion among nineteenth-century reolutionary igures, in which
Kierkegaard plays a deining role, is one o the keys to his isionary poetics.

Notes

1
lere and there I hae borrowed some sentences rom my ^ortbro r,e ava Criticat Metboa and
^ortbro r,e: Retigiov. 1i.iovar,.
2
Kierkegaard was hal a nut, ater all` ,ate, 210,. |1|he great prophetic igures o modern
literature, Rousseau or Swit or Kierkegaard or Dostoesky, may oten not hae been much more
than wrongheaded neurotics in their historical and biographical context` ,ecvtar, 168,.
249


3
In his ^oteboo/. for 1.vatov, of Critici.v23 lrye says about a lecture he gae in Vancouer: the talk
started with my usual stu on nursery rhyme, then established that ordinary speech is associatie &
not prose, then said that associatie babble was the oice o the ego, which is always sub-literary,
that this ego-oice is projected in the dead-language, ation-ation, rhythmless impersonal jargon o
the lonely crowd. 1hat the impersonal babble is the oice o the collectie or aggregate ego, &
according to Kierkegaard essentially demoralizing.` It consists in prodding relexes o |the|
inattentie, & is seen in adertising, then propaganda, then exhortatory jargon o the collectie
tantrum kind` ,285,. 1he Kierkegaardian phrase he quotes is rom this passage in Covctvaivg
|v.cievtific Po.t.crit: In this age, and indeed or many ages past, people hae quite lost sight o the
act that authorship is and ought to be a serious calling implying an appropriate mode o personal
existence. 1hey do not realize that the press in general, as an expression o the abstract and
impersonal communication o ideas, and the daily press in particular, because o its ormal
indierence to the question whether what it reports is true or alse, contributes enormously to the
general demoralization, or the reason that it is impersonal, which or the most part is irresponsible
and incapable o repentance, is essentially demoralizing ,28,.
4
In a 1952 diary entry, lrye writes: At tea we got into a discussion o existentialism, prompted by
the act that Jessie |Macpherson| had just seen the Sartre play that Don larron is in-they call it
Crive Pa..iovet here, although I think its original title was Maiv. ate.. I seemed to be the only one
present who had much notion o existentialism, & o course I know ery little, but we kept quite an
animated discussion going` ,Diarie., 583,. lor the other reerences to existential` and
existentialism,` see, in addition to those in the index o the Diarie., pp. 16, 243, 25, 36, 488, 591
and 592.
5
On Kierkegaard`s use o e/,vrivg as a term o philosophical import, see Stokes.
6
I cleared out & went to 1illich`s lecture-a huge crowd in \yclie. le talked on the theology o
despair`: the attempt to start with despair as a limit-situation.` It disappointed me a little, as I`d read
enough Kierkegaard to igure it out mysel. Len the eeling it gae me o being on top o 1illich
was hollow: I didn`t want to eel on top o 1illich: I wanted to eel a contact with something resh`
,Diarie., 24-8,.

ibticat Retigiov ava tbe earcb for |ttivate Reatit, ,1964,, Cbri.tiavit, ava tbe vcovvter of !orta Retigiov.
,1964,, ,.tevatic 1beotog, ,3 ols., 1951-63,, and 1beotog, of Cvttvre ,1964,.
8
On the Kierkegaard-Auden connection see ate, 48, Diarie., 306, iteratvre, 12, Cavaaiav, 108,
ibte, 229-30, Mittov, 328, igbteevtb, 89, and .vatov, ^oteboo/., 234-5.
9
1he act that lrye separates reedom rom concern and that reedom is a characteristic o
Kierkegaard`s concerned or ethical state should not be a stumbling block: they are using the word
reedom` in two dierent senses. lrye does say that the person o ethical reedom` is the one
who has passed beyond speculation` ,avcatiov, 256,. lor him there is a double opposition in
Kierkegaard`s notion o ethical reedom. It is opposed, on the one hand, to the aesthetic point o
iew, and on the other to the synthetic rationalism o legel ,Creat, 44,.
10
Qvia aga. is the moral leel o medieal allegorical interpretation, haing to do with right action.
In oot. of 1ive lrye speaks o the aesthetic in the pererted Kierkegaardian sense o externalizing
man`s ethical reedom` ,ba/e.eare, 323,.
11
Primary concerns a quincunx: breathing in the middle surrounded by ,a, ood & drink ,b, sex ,c,
property ,money, possessions, shelter, clothing, ,d, reedom o moement` ,ate, 01-2,. 1he
most primary concern o all, breathing, is transormed into spirit, & the spiritual meaning o ood &
drink, o loe, o security & shelter & the sense o home, all ollow it ,ate, 166,. Air, the primest
o primary concerns` ,ate, 125,. Spirit gets its name rom the most primary o all primary
concerns: breathing. And air is the medium or seeing and hearing` ,ate, 15,. Spirit means
250


breath, the most primary o all primary concerns, the great sign o the appearance o birth, the thing
we can`t lie twenty minutes without. Spirit is the antitype then o air, the inisibility that makes the
real world isible` ,ate, 183,.
12
Is ultimate concern a primary concern I think not. No one can lie a day without being
concerned with ood: anybody can lie all his lie without being concerned about God ,ate, 8,.
I`m wrong about religion as an ultimate but not a primary concern. \here did I come rom and
where am I going are primary concerns, een i we don`t beliee there are any answers` ,ate, 121,.
1hat`s my Lros-Adonis axis, o course, and it unites the primary concerns o lie, ood and sex,
with its primary anxiety and ultimate concern, death, and the passage through death. I should start
thinking in terms o primary anxieties: they help to show how 1illich`s ultimate concern` is also a
primary one` ,ate, 165,. In 1be Criticat Patb r,e writes, 1In origin, a myth o concern is largely
undierentiated: it has its roots in religion, but religion has also at that stage the unction o retigio,
the binding together o the community in common acts and assumptions. Later, a myth o concern
deelops dierent social, political, legal, and literary branches, and at this stage religion becomes
more exclusiely the myth o what 1illich calls ultimate concern, the myth o man`s relation to other
worlds, other beings, other lies, other dimensions o time and space` ,23,. And in lramework and
Assumption` lrye says, Paul 1illich distinguishes the religious concern as ultimate`: it may be that,
but it can hardly be primary. One cannot lie a day without being concerned about ood, but one
may lie all one`s lie without being concerned about God. At the same time one hesitates to rule
out the conscious and creatie concerns rom the primary ones` ,ecvtar, 432,. See also Criticat, 24.
13
C. the almost identical ormulations in ate, 434, ecvtar, 266, 353, !ora., 51-2
14
Retigiov, 354, ate, 545, ecvtar, 354, 434, !ora., 52
15
On Kierkegaard`s ideas about time see the articles by 1aylor and Bedell.
16
C. \e experience time in a way that is continually elusie and rustrating and exasperating, be-
cause we`re dragged through time acing the past with our backs to the uture. \e know nothing
about the uture except by the analogy o the past. 1hat means that all our hopes, when they`re
projected into the uture, hae this extraordinary limitation about them. I somebody starts out on a
career, let`s say as a doctor or a social worker, he or she must hae some kind o ision o a world o
better health or o better social organization in his or her mind in order to carry on the career with
any kind o consistent energy. It`s that sense o the ision in the present which is the real dynamic.
\ou can die without seeing that come. In other words, you can gie up the uture as ar as your own
lie is concerned and still carry on with the same ision` ,vterrier., 1016,. \e try to cope with time
acing the past, with our backs to the uture, and in relation to time human lie seems to be a kind o
untied Andromeda, constantly stepping back rom a deouring monster whose mouth is the mouth
o hell, in the sense that each moment passes rom the possible into the eternally unchangeable
being o the past. At death we back into a solid wall, and the monster then deours us too` ,Criticat,
358,. |1|here is no such thing as a orward-looking person. 1hat is a metaphor rom car-driing,
and it applies to space but not to time. In time we all ace the past, and are dragged backwards into
the uture. Nobody knows the uture: it isn`t there to be known. 1he past is what we know, and it
is all that we know` ,Moaerv, 285-6,. Man has doubtless always experienced time in the same way,
dragged backwards rom a receding past into an unknown uture` ,Moaerv, 16,.
1
C. |1he Kierkegaardian antithesis o ethical reedom & aesthetic idolatry is as unsatisactory as
eer` ,.vatov, ^oteboo/., 253-4,.
18
1he archetypal iew o literature shows us literature as a total orm and literary experience as a
part o the continuum o lie, in which one o the poet`s unctions is to isualize the goals o human
work. As soon as we add this approach to the other three, literature becomes an ethical instrument,
and we pass beyond Kierkegaard`s itber,Or dilemma between aesthetic idolatry and ethical
251


reedom, without any temptation to dispose o the arts in the process. lence the importance, ater
accepting the alidity o this iew o literature, o rejecting the external goals o morality, beauty, and
truth. 1he act that they are external makes them ultimately idolatrous, and so demonic. But i no
social, moral, or aesthetic standard is in the long run externally determinatie o the alue o art, it
ollows that the archetypal phase, in which art is part o ciilization, cannot be the ultimate one. \e
need still another phase where we can pass rom ciilization, where poetry is still useul and
unctional, to culture, where it is liberal, and stands on its own eet.` ,.vatov,, 10,
19
On the paranoia principle,` see also ibte, 93.
20
lor the Kierkegaard-legel connection, see \estphal, Perkins, and Stewart.
21
lor a uller treatment o legel`s inluence on lrye, particularly lrye`s appropriation o the
legelian .vfbebvvg, see my ^ortbro r,e: Retigiov. 1i.iovar, ava .rcbitect of tbe iritvat !orta.
22
Conession and anatomy are united in artor Re.artv. and in some o Kierkegaard`s strikingly
original experiments in prose iction orm, including itber,Or` ,.vatov,, 293,.
23
lrye reers to the sacramental repetition` elsewhere as the sacramental analogy,` by which he
means the Neo-1homist emphasis on belie as an imitation o Christ. 1hat is, one sets up a
construct or model, such as a saint`s lie or laws prescribed by Scripture, and then makes one`s lie a
sacramental analogy to that, with the result o ritual or institutional continuity.
24
It sounds as though recollection` is the word that translates as anamnesis, and reers to an
accumulation or structuring o the past` ,ate, 364,.
25
In one o his notebooks, lrye equates repetition and avagvori.i. ,recognition, discoery, ,.vatov,
^oteboo/., 232,.
26
On the erse rom Reelation, see also ibte, 151. In one o his notebooks lrye says that
Kierkegaard`s repetition doesn`t hae to retace Plato`s anamnesis: they`re two hales o the same
myth, the isual certainty o past & uture internalized in the present` ,ibte, 215,.
2
Llsewhere, lrye says that Kierkegaard recreates hieratic in the post-legel era` ,ibte, 2, and
that he leans toward the poetic ,ate, 261,.
28
1he passage lrye had in mind was written by Kierkegaard in 1846: I wanted particularly to
represent the arious stages or spheres o lie |aesthetic, ethical, religious|, i possible in one work,
and that is how I consider all my pseudonymous writings. \ith that in mind it was important to
keep an unarying balance so that, or instance, the Religious should not appear at a later time when
I had become so much older that my style would hae lost some o the loty, imaginatie
expansieness proper to the Lsthetic. 1he idea is not that the Religious should hae this
exuberance, but that the writer should be capable o producing it and making it clear that i the
Religious lacked this style the reason certainly was not that the writer lacked the necessary
youthulness` ,1be Diar, of orev Kier/egaara, 60,.
29
1he Spectre o Urthona is the isolated subjectie aspect o existence in this world, the energy
with which a man or any other liing thing copes with nature. It is neither the Selhood, which is
Satan, nor the egetable` existence, which is Luah, it is that aspect o existence in time which is
linear rather than organic or imaginatie. I one had to pin the conception down to a single word,
one might call Blake`s Spectre o Urthona the will` ,earfvt, 288,.
30
1he tiger limerick: 1here was a young lady o Niger , \ho smiled as she rode on a tiger, , 1hey
returned rom the ride , \ith the lady inside, , And the smile on the ace o the tiger.`
31
On Kierkegaard`s role in the elaborate scheme o the three awarenesses` or reolutions in human
consciousness, see my ^ortbro r,e: Retigiov. 1i.iovar,, 6-9, and charts 5- in the appendix.
32
On the Auden-Kierkegaard connection see Auden`s Presenting Kierkegaard` in 1be irivg
1bovgbt. of Kier/egaara, 3-22, and Mendelson, a..iv. Auden was also signiicantly inluenced by his
reading o 1illich.
252


33
Lxpanding on ininity and eternity in a letter to a riend, lrye writes, Reelation encourages us to
think in terms o ininity and eternity, not in the mathematical sense, but in the religious sense. As
we experience time, the present, the only part o it we do experience, neer quite exists. As we
experience space, the centre or the here,` neer quite exists either--eerything we experience in
space is there.` Under the impact o reelation the whole allen world turns inside out, into an
eternal now and an ininite here. In terms o the Kantian distinction between the thing perceied
and the thing in itsel, we neer see the thing in itsel because we are the thing in itsel. Reality is the
immediate data o ordinary experience uniersalized--that it why it is reealed to the childlike rather
than the sophisticated in us. 1he beginning o the ision o eternity is the child`s realization that his
own home is the circumerence o the unierse as ar as he is concerned. 1he end o it is the
regenerate Christian`s realization that the unierse is a city o God, the home o the soul, and the
body o Jesus` ,etectea, 31-2,.
34
1he reersal in Oeaiv. tbe Kivg is, o course, closely connected with the ironic reersal o the
central metaphors: 1eiresias ,the seer, is literally blind but can iguratiely see, Oedipus can literally
see and is renowned or his knowledge and insight but is iguratiely blind to his own situation, and
then at the reersal Oedipus is able iguratiely to see only ater he has literally blinded himsel.
35
lor the notebook entries haing to do with the ortex, see Revai..avce ^oteboo/., 100, 120, 148,
162, 164, 169, 11, ibte, 4, 96, 21, 22, 332, 44, ate, 46, 436, 43, 462, 690, Rovavce, 33, 49, 55,
3, 101, 108, 1bira, 2, , 10, 19, 191, 19, 260, and .vatov, ^oteboo/., 6, 19, 25, 26, 2, 33, 34,
3, 38, 39, 40, 59, 62, 263.