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Kierkegaard Newsletter — Issue 50: August 2006
Between Irony and Witness: Kierkegaard’s Poetics of Faith, Hope, and Love
New York/London: T & T Clark
International, 2005, 198 pp.
ISBN 0567028410
Reviewed by Janne Kylliäinen
University of Helsinki, Finland
With an ease that stands in contrast to the complicated subject matter, Joel D.S. Rasmussen explicates what he calls Kierkegaard’s “Christomorphic poetics,” that is, Kierkegaard’s appeal to poetry in his attempt to clarify Christian truth. While some (Louis Mackey, Roger Poole etc.) have read Kierkegaard’s works as literature, and others have taken him as just a theologian (Arnold Come, for example), Rasmussen, like Sylvia Walsh in her Living Poetically (1994), wants to do justice both to the poetical and to the ethical-religious character of Kierkegaard’s work. His goal is a “constructive explication” of Kierkegaard’s Christian poetics of existence—a faithful interpretation, but one that assumes enough distance from its subject to create, in the words of Paul Ricoeur, new possibilities of being-in-the-world for the actual lives of its readers. (1-9.)
In Rasmussen’s view, the underlying assumption of Kierkegaard’s poetics is that God is like a poet who, in Christ, introduces himself into his work (see JP 2, 1391 and 1445 / Pap. X 1 A 605 and XI 2 A 98). The task of human being is to receive the truth communicated by God through Christ and to imitate Christ. As a religious poet, Kierkegaard works for this existential assimilation with his literary mimesis.
According to Rasmussen, Kierkegaard constructs his Christomorphic poetics through a “creative correction” of the Romantic ironists and of his teacher Poul M. Møller. In The Concept of Irony, Kierkegaard criticizes these ironists for lack of ethical earnestness and in Either/Or he caricatures their aestheticism and sensualism. The former work, however, defends “controlled irony,” while the latter uses it in negating both the position of the aesthete and that of the ethicist. Kierekgaard also appropriates from the ironists the ideal of “living poetically,” it is not enough to project the ideal into works of art, the ideal should be actualized by living poetically, but in the ethical-religious way, not in the aesthetic way of the Romantics Rasmussen sees this idea of living poetically as implicit in Kierkegaard’s criticism of P. M. Møller’s notion that works of art anticipate eternal salvation by bringing the universal and the particular into harmony in human consciousness (CA, 153; CUP, 313 n. 1). Kierkegaard implies that the true reconciliation of the ideal and actual takes place only if existence itself becomes an art (CUP, 351). However, in Rasmussen’s reading the problem turns out to be sinfulness, which makes it impossible for a human being to actualize the ideal in his existence. So is that the end of living poetically? (15-53.)
It would be, were it not for the intervention of the divine poet. Møller had considered the work of art as a point of departure for eternal consciousness. Rasmussen points out that in Chapter 3 of Philosophical Fragments the wonder of God’s “poem” becomes such a point of departure. Through the poetic analogy of romantic love, Johannes Climacus describes the supposed historical event of incarnation. The intervention of the divine poet into his creation reconciles the ideal and actual. But why does Climacus call this alleged historical event a “poem?” Because there is an analogy between the event and a poem: both produce a kind of reconciliation and both seek to create anew. The difference is that only God’s poem is true-in it the ideal really becomes actual. (55-84.)
This event, however, exists only for faith. Climacus again uses, poetical means to emphasize this point. Rasmussen notes that in Chapter 3 of Philosophical Fragments Climacus poetically describes human understanding’s reaction to the wonder of God’s poem. By using such “limit expressions (Ricoeur)” as “the absurd,” “the incognito,” and “the paradox,” the pseudonym seeks to fracture the pretenses of the intellect and to discourage the attempt to explain that which is beyond all understanding. (85-105.)
If truth “is a being, a life,” as Anti-Climacus claims in Practice in Christianity, then the task is not just to comprehend and admire it, but to imitate it (PC, 206). Rasmussen explains how Kierkegaard, having appropriated the movement of irony, returns back to the mimetic tradition that runs from the imitation of Homeric virtues in Greek education (paideia) to the medieval and Renaissance ideal of imitatio Christi. Like the Romantics, Kierkegaard uses irony to break both literary and social mimesis of conventional forms, but having negated these spiritless forms of life, he also posits Christ, the inimitable prototype, as the model for imitation. Rasmussen claims that in effect, if not also by intention, what Kierkegaard accomplishes is a retrieval of the mimetic tradition, both as literary and ethical-religious practice. As poet, Kierkegaard, like Homer and the gospel writers, sings the hero’s praises to promote and foster existential imitation. Against both the Romantic ironists and the cultured Lutheran admirers of Christ, Kierkegaard reintroduces imitation as a way that leads to the “decisive place of rest at the foot of the altar.” By receiving the Eucharist at the altar, the imitator, who through his imitation has become conscious of the extent of his sinfulness, symbolically participates in the holy story and receives the grace of Christ. Thus, there is a dialectic between the ethical imitation and liturgical assimilation of Christ, but mimesis is fundamental to both. (107-147.)
To conclude, Rasmussen does not accept Kierkegaard’s claim that he would have set aside the poetic, when advancing to the religious. Kierkegaard’s authorship implies a belief in a poetic production that may promote Christian imitation. Kierkegaard was indeed a kind of poet, namely, a religious poet whose songs were “to the glory of God, about faith, hope, and love (WL, 46).” As a religious poet, Kierkegaard was between a “witness to the truth,” whose life would have expressed perfectly the ideal, and an “ironist,” who just plays with imagined possibilities without striving to actualize any of them. (149-177.)
Rasmussen’s book is elegantly written and forms a lucid whole. His analysis of how Kierkegaard “creatively corrected” the Romantic ironists and P.M. Møller seems quite plausible. Rasmussen offers fresh and illuminating readings of highly complicated texts. Take, for example his intriguing gloss on “Ultimatum,” which makes one see all of Either/Or in a new light. Rasmussen has an ear for both the poetic force and the philosophical and theological meanings of Kierkegaard’s terms. Bringing Kierkegaard’s poetical practice in connection with ironic and mimetic traditions inspires further reflection and research. Taking the whole authorship to the foot of the altar reminds the reader of the concrete context of Kierkegaard’s poetics. All in all, Rasmussen’s book is an impressive and important contribution to the earnest study of Kierkegaard’s thought and practice alike.