‘© 2013 Vitae Pensiero / Pubblicazioni dell" Universith Cattolica del Sacro Cuore Rivista di Filosofia Neo-Scolastica, 3-4 (2013). pp. 945-961 BARTHOLOMEW RYAN” KIERKEGAARD’S FAIRYTALE What does the soul find so recuperative about reading fairytales? When I am tired of everything and ‘full of days’, fairytales are for me always the refreshing bath that proves beneficial. There all earthly, all finite cares vanish; joy, yes sorrow even, are infinite (which is just why they are so expanding and beneficial). One sets ‘out to find the bluebird, just like the princess who, cho- Sento be queen, lets someone else take care of the king- dom so that she herself.can seek out her unhappy lover. What infinite sorrow is implied in her saying to the old woman she meets, as she roams about dressed as a peasant girl: «1 am not alone, good mother, Ihave with me a great following of trouble, cares and suffering». S. KIERKEGAARD! We say of ourselves that we live ina world, but it would perhaps be truer to say that we live ina tale told. J. Moriarty? * Universidade Nova de Lisboa. ' DD:94, (Pap. 2 A 207], in SKS 17; Papers and Journals: A Selection, ed. and trans. by A. Hanaay Penguin Clastct, London 1996.p. 96 2], MORIARTY. Dreamtime, Lilliput Press; Dublin 1994, 103.946 BARTHOLOMEW RYAN Introduction ‘Once upon atime, there lived a restless and melancholy man who wrote star- tling and complex books that unleashed the multiplicity of the human self. Soren Kierkegaard is world-renowned as the striking existential thinker and brilliant proto-psychologist of anxiety, love, despair, and impending death. He is also recognized as a «kind of poet»?, dressed up as a master prose stylist in the Danish language inserting his Shakespearian soliloquies into the texts, as well as being a profoundly religious writer and the most exciting Christian thinker of modemity. But what is often overlooked is that he is also the thinker who appropriates and weaves fairytale (Eventyr) into his writings. He treats the fairytale very seriously as a way to think in images* when logical argument fails, as a form of spiritual guidance that predates Christianity, and as a perfect example of parabolic or indirect communication that invites the reader to interpret what is being presented in the text, in order to think for him/herself and awaken the imagination. Fairytale is our first introduction into psychology and hermeneutics as children and allows our imagination to find a natural home; it is also a story with a moral; and it has the capacity for spiritual awakening and therapy against the sometimes overwhelming struggle with anxiety and melancholy that Kierkegaard was painfully aware of and what is usually lacking in philosophy as a guide to life. While one could analyze Johannes Climacus and his indolent adventures into philosophy, the aesthete’s darkly romantic poetic essays from Either/Or, Constantin’s cerebral and farcical reflections under the Berlin moonlight in Repetition, the various symbols and allegories used in The Concept of Anxiety, or the fairytale inserts and allusions in The Sickness unto Death, instead I choose to look inside Stages on Life's Way. Contrary to what many critics view as boring and tedious, a repetition of his previous publications, or not having much substance, I perceive Guilty/ Not Guilty as a fascinating and extremely dense work that is quite unique in going one step further than the other pseudonymous texts as it conflates lite- rature, philosophy, theology, psychology, autobiography and fantasy more explicitly than all the others. The manner in which Kierkegaard achieves this combination is in the appropriation of the fairytale, which he has ma- stered into doing in Stages on Life’s Way. 3 See L. Mackey, Kierkegaard: A Kind of Poet, University of Pennsylvania Press, Phila- delphia 1971, “ For more on Kierkegaard’s thinking in images, see, for example, R. PURHARTHOFER, Images of Infinitude, in J. MiRANDA JUSTO - E.M. DE Sousa - R. Rostont (eds.), Kierke- gaard and the Challenges of infinitude, CFUL, Lisboa 2013, pp. 135-149 and I. WOskEL Hou, Tanken i Billedet: Seren Kierkegaards Poetik, Gyldendal, Kebenhavn 1998.KIERKEGAARD’S FAIRYTALE 947 T will show how and why Kierkegaard inserts the fairytale into his wri- tings, which contains aesthetic, ethical and religious value, looking spe- cifically at Taciturnus* preface which he calls a Fremlysning (translated in the Princeton editions as: Notice: Owner Sought) to Quidam’s dairy. I will not discuss the six interludes or fables of Guilty/Not Guilty from Stages on Life’s Way given the brevity of this article and that there has also been more written on these interludes than Taciturnus’ preface as a prism to explore the fairytale’. Divided into three parts, I will first place fairytale between poetry and philosophy; second, ! will present Stages on Life's Way as a mutilated fairytale and «totality of ruins»®; and third, I will explore the motifs of the mirror, the lake, and the forest that are given in Taciturnus’ preface/Fremlys- ning as an example of Kierkegaard’s fairytale that incorporates thinking in images, spiritual therapy, and indirect communication to awaken the reader. 1. Between Poetry and Philosophy As long as fairytales are told, life witl survive. C. Macris” The fairytale sits comfortably in Kierkegaard’s writings because it acts as bridge between poetic expression and philosophical discourse. Louis Mackey pointed out the point of convergence and difference in philosophy and poetry in his book on Kierkegaard: Both poetry and philosophy use signs to embody and communicate meaning. The difference between poetry and philosophy is a function of the duality that is latent in every sign [...] Philosophy strives toward pure theoria, and so stresses the sig nicer of its signs. Poetry aims at pure poiesis, and so looks upon the sign chiefly as thing’. + For a discussion on the six interludes or stories in Quidam’ diary from points of view of literary theory, psychoanalysis, and thinking about the fairytale and parable respective- ly, see, for example, R. POOLE, Kierkegaard Indirect Communication, University Press of ‘Charlottesville - London 1993, pp. 108-139; J. GaRre, SAK. Seren Aabye Kierke- ‘saard: A Biography, trans. by B.H. Kirmmse, Princeton University Press, Princeton 2005, pp. 340-353; and for some comments on the stories on Periandar, Neuchadnezzar and Leper ‘T.C. ODEN (e4.), Parables of Kierkegaard, Princeton University Press, Princeton 1989, pp. 134.137. “TW. Abonw. Kierkegaard: Construction ofthe Aestheric, tans. by R Hull Kenor,948 BARTHOLOMEW RYAN Fairytale is different to poetry in that it contains a moral or lesson; and it is different to philosophy in that it naturally communicates through sym- bols, signs and parable. Thus, fairytale is much like religious storytelling. The Bible, for example, is in essence a collection of many stories that make up much of the European tradition. Kierkegaard uses old clichés in new forms to create books that do not quite fit in to either philosophy or literature. His own work is a prime example of inter-disciplinarity as the refusal of fixed disciplinary boundaries in order to critique modern philosophy, and thereby employs fairytale where philosophy falters as a framework and a form for many of his pseudonymous works. In an age where it is increasingly difficult to use the word «God» in our vocabulary, fairytales are another medium of parabolic communication that includes a moral, a form of therapy and frees the imagination. The poet Octavio Paz once commented: «There’s something terribly mean spirited about the modern mind. People who tolerate all sorts of debased falsehoods in real life and swallow every kind of worthless fact, won't accept the existence of the fable»®. This I think is a salient point to where we are now, as most of us live in a world where the power of advertising and television is such that it makes us not see what effectively we are consuming or accepting. Kierkegaard views fairytale and the folk story as much a revelation of the universe as mathematics. In the fairytale, as with the Bible, it would be more helpful to think with the ear and see with the imagination in order for the reader to be able delve deeper into the book. This is the wish that Kierkegaard makes explicitly in the prefaces to his upbuilding discourses on the art of hearing and seeing when reading his works. For example, regarding the ear, Kierkegaard writes: ‘That favorably disposed person who reads aloud to himself what I write in still- ness, who with his voice breaks the spell on the letters, with his voice summons forth what the mute letters have on their lip, as it were, but are unable to express without great effort, stammering and stuttering who in its mood rescues the captive thoughts that long for release'®, In regard to seeing with the imagination, he writes in another preface: «But Lalso saw, or thought I saw, how the bird I call my reader suddenly noticed it, flew down to it, picked it, and took it home, and when I had seen this, I ° See the Introduction by Octavio Paz in E. LisB0A - L.C. Tavtor (eds.), A Centenary Pessoa, Routledge, New York 2003, p. 7. 10 Tre opbyggelige Taler,in SKS5. 63; Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses, trans, by H.V. Hong - E.H. Hong, Princeton University Press, Princeton 1990, p. 53.KIERKEGAARD’S FAIRYTALE 949 saw no more>". Or, at the beginning of his long and indefinable Letter to the Reader, Frater Tacitumus comments on Quidam’s performance as one who speaks so that the reader can see him: «How honestly, how amply he does his part by talking so that you can see him (loquere ut videam) (speak so that I may see]»!2, The passage below by Kierkegaard’s copyist (Israel Levin) gives us a glimpse of the power of his imagination and the seriousness in which he took the genre of the fairytale: Thus he unburdened himself in dreams and poetic pictures and with his articulate- ness and his almost demonic imagination, it was surprising the effects he could produce. [...} We talked about [Hans Christian] Andersen one evening in Frede- riksberg Gardens: «Andersen has no idea what fairy tales are». And then he pro- duced in an instant six or seven fairy tales, so that I became almost uncomfortable. So vivid was his imagination, it was as if the pictures were before his eyes. It was as if he lived in a spirit world”. As is well known, Kierkegaard and Andersen tried to avoid each other as much as possible and did not feel comfortable with one another. Kierke- gaard probably found him too sentimental, and the way Andersen was per- ceived in Danish society was perhaps a reflection on how it also viewed Kierkegaard. Yet, here we have Denmark's two most famous writers, living at the same time and, just before the age of modernism, both equally fas- cinated by the fairytale. Kierkegaard tries to reveal the difference between the two in their conception of the fairytale as late as 1847 in a journal entry: «Now Andersen can tell the story of the tale of the galoshes of good for- tune, but I can tell the story of the shoe that pinches; or rather, I could tell it but just because I won't tell it but bury it in deep silence I can tell a lot else»'*, This is a fine example of Kierkegaard articulating his own form of fairytale: one that is critical and performing like the Socratic gadfly; and one that is concealed and masked and lying dormant in deep, foreboding silence. Kierkegaard’s fairytale is placed between philosophy and poetry, revealing at the same time an incredibly rich inner life transformed into a modern, existential fable. 1 To opbyggelige Taler, in SKS 5,113; ibi, p.5. Stadier pa Livets Vei, in SKS 6, 369; Stages on Life's Way, trans. by H.V. Hong - EH. Hong, Princeton University Press, Princeton 1991, p. 398. See J. TuomPson, Kierkegaard, Alfred A. Knopf, New York 1973, p. 76. “| NB:156 {Pap. VII 1 A 44), in SKS 20; Papers and Journals: A Selection, p. 259. Hannay makes the point that the fairytale that Kierkegaard is referring to includes a parrot that has been read as a parody on Kierkegaard himself, but that there is no indication that Kierkegaard read it in this way. See Hannay's note 47 in Papers and Journals, p. 672.950 BARTHOLOMEW RYAN I. Inside the Ruins of a Book When I was a child, a little pond in a peat excavation was everything to me. The dark tree roots that poked ‘out here and there in the murky darkness were vani- shed kingdoms and countries, each one a discovery as important to me as antediluvian discoveries to the natural scientist. Quipam's Stages on Life's Way is a mutilated fairytale. A fairytale is always a story that contains fantastical forces, beings or improbable events that leads to a happy ending. It can also be a fantastical story designed to mislead the read- er. Kierkegaard’s fairytale is mutilated as it does not seem to have a happy ending or any real conclusion at all, Even by Kierkegaard’s standards, Stag- es on Life’s Way is a strange book. If Concluding Unscientific Postscript is the culmination of Kierkegaard’s ‘philosophy’, then Stages on Life’s Way is the conclusion to his ‘literature’. Like Concluding Unscientific Postscript, many of the previous pseudonyms show up, but this time they speak. In fact, it becomes complicated to count up how many writers and voices there are in this rather large book. The book itself is like the Heksebrev (liter- ally translated as «witch’s letter»), which is a set of magic picture segments of people and animals that recombine when unfolded and tured. This is a term used at the end of The Concept of Anxiety by the watchman Vigilius Haufniensis to describe anxiety'®, by Judge William to define the aesthete and his attitude to friendship in Either/Or'’, and by Quidam in reference to the affair he had had with the girl in question’*. Stages on Life’s Way is bound by Hilarius Bookbinder, whose name provides a welcome antidote to the humourless and extremely melancholy diary of Quidam. After a jolly welcome by Bookbinder, the section Jn Vino Veritas is ‘related’ by William Afham («by himself») in which speeches on women are given by five men — four of whom we have encountered in previ- ‘ous pseudonymous works. This is followed by a long essay by Judge Wil- liam; and then we come to the section Guilry/Not Guilty which is meant to be an imaginary psychological construction as well as a story of suffering 'S SxS 6 ,338; Stages on Life's Way,p. 363. °S Begrebet Angest, in SKS 4, 458; The Concept of Anxiety, trans. by R. Thomte, Prince- ton University Press, Princeton 1980, p, 159. " Enten-Bller, in SKS 3, 246, 301; Either/Or, Part I, trans. by H.V. Hong - E.H. Hong, Princeton University Press, Princeton 1990, pp. 258, 318. 48 SKS 6,230; Stages on Life's Way, p. 246.KIERKEGAARD’S FAIRYTALE 951 or passionate narrative (en Lidelseshistorie) by Frater Taciturnus («silent brother»). Then after this detailed title page, a fairytale preface by Tacitur- nus and two epigraphs on separate pages, we enter the painful universe of Quidam’s diary for two hundred pages before returning to Taciturnus again with his hundred-page Letter to the Reader with its various inserts. In total, there are probably ten voices and that is not including either Kierkegaard or the wife of Judge William who says a few words at the end of In Vino Veri- tas before the five «nocturnal guests»"® disappear in five separate carriages in the early morning light. Kierkegaard is having fun alright at the end of this section in the last paragraph when the author William Afham asks after stealing Judge William’s essay from Victor Eremita: «But who, then, am 1?». This may be an old strategy of Romantic literature or something to ana- lyse on the issue of subjectivity and identity in philosophy, but we have also entered the world of imagination and fantasy. Shakespeare, being no stranger to fairytale, has had a profound influence on Stages in Life’s Way. The opening words of Hamlet are «Who's there?», and there are a multitude of masks and shifting of identities in King Lear. Kent, Edgar and the Fool are always in disguise, and Edmund goes to war with his identity of bastard. And is Cordelia who she appears to be? This is also a play where a wise man goes blind and the king only begins to see the truth when he goes mad. Of course, Kierkegaard is no playwright but instead creates a new kind of book that doesn’t sit comfortably with theolo- gy. philosophy or literature. Guilty/Not Guilty, like the fairytale, is a story, and more specifically a Kierkegaardian story of suffering that Kierkegaard needs to tell through the various masks, voices and perspectives, paradoxi- cally to conceal in order to reveal. He tells his story to keep himself alive, and he has already been clear on this in a journal entry: «How true, therefore, the remark I have often made conceming myself, that like Scheherazade who saved her life by telling fairy-tales, I save my life, or keep myself alive, by writing»®. The motto from Hamann for Quidam’s diary expands on this idea: Periissem nisi periissem (I would have perished had I not perished)". ‘The Hexebrev is in full flow when we also read the first epigraph on the legend of the rich Norwegian farmer”, and before that we read underneath the subtitle of the story of suffering that the section is also «an imaginary psychological construction». And we haven’t even begun the first page of Quidam’s diary yet! SKS6,80; ibip.81. 2 NBB:36 [Pap. IK A 411}, in SKS 21; Papers and Journals: A Selection, p. 342. 2 SKS 6, 182; Stages on Life's Way. p. 194. 2 SKS 6, 181; ii, p. 193.952 BARTHOLOMEW RYAN Taciturnus’s Fremlysning begins exactly like the fairytale: «Every child knows that Saborg Castle is a ruin that lies in north Sjelland about two miles from the coast near a little town of the same name», Like Lear’s «ruined piece of nature»™, ruins are what we are walking through when we encounter the various interruptions, intervals and riddles. This is something that two of the most prominent critical theorists of the twentieth century have picked up on. For example, Theodor Adomo calls Kierkegaard’s three existence spheres (discussed directly by Taciturnus in Guilty/Not Guilty) «a totality of ruins, and in the depth of the chasms between them a dialec- tic surges that does not flow uninterruptedly from one to the other»; and ‘Walter Benjamin, under the influence of Kierkegaard, states in The Origin of German Tragic Drama: «Allegories are, in the realm of thoughts, what ruins are in the realm of things», We are about to enter the ruins of Quid- am’s mind. Every child is awake to the fairytale just as every child knows that Sgborg Castle is a ruin. Séborg Lake is all that remains, and the reeds that surround it are like a vast forest to Taciturnus’s (and Quidam’s) imagi- nation. Within the lake's deeps Taciturnus will find the diary of Quidam in a box in which the key is inside — a metaphor for Kierkegaard’s famous Indesluttethed («inclosing reserve»). The story is set up and motifs of the fairytale such as the mirror, the lake and the forest are carefully presented in this Fremlysning, which I will focus on for the rest of this article. ILL. Looking into the Mirror, the Lake, and the Forest i, The Mirror Only in the water of rivers and ponds could he look at his face. And the very posture ‘he had to assume was symbolic. He had to bend over, stoop down, to commit the igno- miny of beholding himself. The inventor of the mirror poisoned the human heart. B. Soares” 23 5x3 6, 175; bi, p. 187. 4 W. SHAKESPEARE, King Lear, Act 4, Scene 6, in P. ALEXANDER (ed.), The Complete Works of Wiliam Shatepeare, Collis London ~Claagow 2011p. 110. 5 AporNo, Kierkegaard: Construction of the Aesthetic bys ‘Osbome, Verso, Lon- 2 W, BENIAMIN, The Origin of German Tragic Drama, don 1998,p. 178. ston F. Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet, ed. and trans, by R. Zenith, Penguin Books. London sp. 384,KIERKEGAARD’S FAIRYTALE 953 ‘The mirror is a classic motif in fairytale. It can be a portal into another world in the case of Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass, a symbol of know- ledge in the case of Snow White in the Seven Dwarves or function as a crystal ball in Beauty and the Beast. It is an object that has the power to distort the appearance of things reflected in it in Hans Chris Andersen's The Snow Queen; and a symbol of creation which mirrors the divine intelligence, or a dim reflection of divinity such as in St. Paul’s famous expression: «through a glass darkly»’*, The eye and the face are referred to as the mirrors of the soul. ‘Thus, often the mirror appears as a symbol of vanity and lust as in the case of the myth of Narcissus who bent over to see his reflection in the river only to fall in and drown. The symbol of vanity is perhaps also in the image of the mermaid holding a mirror in her hand, while her mirror may also symbolize the nature of her duality ~ as beautiful and dangerous, and as human and fish. It can also have an apotropaic effect in keeping evil creatures away such as vampires, Vampires cannot see their reflections in the mirror, having become shadowy creatures that are neither dead nor alive, much like the picture we often have of Kierkegaard’s aesthete who constantly refers to himself as echo and abyss and is often portrayed as a shadowy or transparent being with vampyric traits”. Also, people are often cursed if the mirror is smashed, such as with the common superstition of seven years bad luck or how Tennyson's Lady Shalott is cursed when her mirror shatters. % 1 Cor 13, 12, in The Bible: Authorized King James Version (New Testament), Oxford University Press, Oxford 2008, p. 218. ® In Kierkegaard’'s most consciously aesthetic works, the protagonist comes across ‘more inconspicuously as kind of vampire, residing in the shadows of the city streets, deftly moving in and out of the city crowds, and always alert with the sleepless eye. The references {o this image are numerous in The Seducer's Diary such as «living in a kingdom of mist». «eyes in a cape» and «continually seek my prey. Through the use of the cape (Kappe) or cloak (Kaabe) throughout the diary, the seducer’s shadow world is vividly evoked. See, for example, Enen-Eller,in KS 2299, 321.310, 314,341, 382.428; Bther/Or, Parl, ans. by H.V. Hong - E.H. Hong, Princeton University Press, Princeton 1990, pp. 310,314, 321,323, 352, 363, 441. The seducer is the hunter with his cape (Kappe) chasing Cordelia as the prey with her green cloak (Kaabe): SKS2,315,317, 319-321; ibi, pp. 325, 327, 329-331. Deleted from the final draft, Kierkegaard actually does write: «this vampyric tendency of his. Just as. the shadows of the underworld sucked the blood out of the real human beings and lived so long, so did he» (BOA (Pap. Il! A 45:2 nd.], in SKS 15; Bither/Or, |, p. 553). This vampire image is also apparent in Repetition where, in Berlin, Constantin relishes watching the city by a window at moonlight, and desiring to throw on a cape after midnight, looks out his win- dow and «sees the shadows of passersby hurrying along the walls» where a «dreamworld glimmers in the background of the soul» (Gjentagelsen, in SKS 4,28; Fear and Trembling! Repetition, trans. by H.V. Hong - E.H. Hong, Princeton University Press, Princeton 1983, p. 151)-And in the closing passages of the essay Zn Vino Veritas in Stages on Life's Way, when the meeting breaks up, the men dissolve into the nocturnal shadows of the night,954 BARTHOLOMEW RYAN The first epigraph (by Lichtenberg) of Stages on Life's Way equates views this book as a mirror: «Such works are mirrors: when an ape looks in, no apostle can look out». The book as mirror is both a source of truth and deception and the symbol for the reflection of oneself. How we read and interpret is often who we are. This opening motto is also a call then to unleash your imagination, to open yourself up to the different perspec- tives and voices within and try to interpret and determine what messages are given. The symbol of the mirror is central in the first of the six stories inserted in Quidam’s diary called A Quiet Despair. This little story is a fairytale within the fairytale, beginning (after a prelude), as all fairytales should, with the template: «Once upon a time (Det var engang)». The mir- ror also exists in the human face that serves as a recollection of the past and foreboding of the future. Both father and son encounter a deep melan- choly in this mirror but spend most of their lives acting out in high spirits in each other’s company. The mirror serves as an insight into the truth but also serves as a shadowy deception that can, via our imagination, distort our perception of the past and the future. Thus, the mirror can let us know who we are, while it can poison the human spirit, inspire or expand it. It is always a judgment on us as well being ambiguous for who we really are. We sometimes don't recognise ourselves or don't want to recognise ourselves in the mirror or a photo we may take five times with our mobile phones until we capture the image of ourselves that we want for our dubi- ous posterity. And yet if we never saw our reflections in them, we might always ask the question: «who am I?>, As a fairytale, Stages on Life's Way offers the reader a chance to both enjoy and look beyond the symbols to uncover the many secrets hiding within. The book as the mirror is both a distorted reflection of Kierkegaard and the possibility for the reader to reflect on oneself in the search for the subjective self. ii. The Lake Beside the quiet lake, when the reeds whis- per, | would be reminded of her. Quipam"! The mirror in Taciturnus’ preface appears also in the form of the lake. The preface is another little story within a story full of intrigue, Romantic and ® SKS 6. 16: Stages on Life's Way, p.8. 3" SKS 6, 325; ibi, p. 350.KIERKEGAARD’S FAIRYTALE 955 fairytale clichés mutilated into the philosophical project of Kierkegaard. ‘The narrator, the silent brother Frater Taciturnus, takes a small boat out on the spooky Sgborg Lake with an elderly friend who is a naturalist. The lake as a motif is often used as a place of mystery and the supematural: from the famous example of the sword Excalibur rising up from the depths of the lake in Arthurian legend, or of the magical lakes of Corrib, Derg, Eme, Gur, Neagh and Ree throughout Ireland. Tacitumus describes Sborg Lake and the surrounding landscape as something akin to a ghost story. He explains that the «lake is not easy to approach, for it is surrounded by a rather wide stretch of quagmire»; and the wailing of the concealed «strange bird» that breaks the silence deepens the eerie atmosphere. The «stillness» is almost like anxiety where, as Tacitumnus describes, «the ear grasped in vain for a support in the infinite»**. Quidam wistfully recollected the image of his beloved by most likely the same quiet lake in a midnight entry* before put- ting all his thoughts and sufferings on the matter into a box in the same lake. Early interpreters Rudolph Kassner and Georg Lukacs judge Kierkegaard as making a «poem out of his life»*, and this description fits with Stages on Life’s Way with a slight modification in that we can rather say he makes a fairytale out of his life in this book. ‘The boundaries of the lake are shifting with time. The word «boundary» in this preface is pertinent when we think of both the symbol of the lake and Kierkegaard’s fairytale placed between poetry and philosophy: Here the boundary dispute between the lake and the land goes on night and day. There is something melancholy about this battle, of which, however, no trace of destruction gives an indication, for what the earth gradually wins from the lake is transformed into a smiling and exceedingly fertile meadow, ‘The boundary is always changing, where the lake is disappearing, much like cour perception of the value of the fairytale, but it leaves behind fertile mead- ‘ows or myths for us rediscover and retell. ‘The lake is also a reflection like the mirror, and the surface of the water is similar to the mirror. But the symbol of the lake can also be viewed as an open eye of the earth. It is not a coincidence then that the word «cyclopeanly» is 28 SKS 6, 176: ibi,p. 188. ™ SKS 6,33 |. p.350. 38 See Georg Lukécs’ essay The Foundering of Form against Life: Soren Kierkegaard and Regine Olsen, in G. Lux4cs, Soul and Form, trans. by A. Bostock, Merlin Press, Lon- don 1974, pp. 30-31. % SKS 6, 175; Stages on Life's Way, p. 187.956 BARTHOLOMEW RYAN used in this preface in reference to Gregor Rothfischer from 1751 — the year that Quidam's diary was purportedly written’”. Contemplating cyclopeanly, hardly complementary, is a warning against one-dimensional reading, as the Cyclops represents the one-eyed, narrow-minded, arrogant and ignorant figure and hence has a very limited way of seeing things. Rather, this book (and this preface) contains a plurality of voices and many eyes staring out, which in tum the reader must be open to with the capacity of his/her imagination. ‘This particular lake is special in that it has attracted the attention of the naturalist «to make observations of marine plants»*®. In the naturalist and the poet, we have here presented before us a duality: something mysteri- ous lies deep within the lake for scientific discovery, and something else that been buried deep for almost a hundred years that has importance for the understanding and probing of the spiritual quest. This is a theme that Kierkegaard returns to again later in the book when, analogous to the natu- ral scientist, Quidam remembers staring into a small pond as a child and see- ing the dark tree roots as vanished kingdoms. The antediluvian discoveries by the scientist can be compared with Kierkegaard’s powerful imagination. Asachild, a pond can be transformed into an ocean, and a lake into an entire universe. In Kierkegaard’s own life, there is the fascinating real-life story of his sisters’ husbands’ brother, Peter Wilhelm Lund, the world famous natural scientist who left Denmark in 1833 to explore the jungles of Brazil. Deep in the caves of Minas Gerais, he discovered the remains of previously unknown prehistoric animals. This discovery, conflicting with his Christian beliefs, seems to have slowly made him mad. Like Kierkegaard, Lund was a loner and remained a bachelor all his life. Kierkegaard wrote a long letter to him in 1835, which he never sent and can probably be viewed as one of his Faustian Letters. And as late as 1850, Kierkegaard reflects again on the same comparison, this time in his journals: «Today it occurred to me that my life resembles his (William Lund]. Just as he lives in Brazil, lost to the world, condemned to excavating antediluvian fossils, so I live as though I were outside the world, condemned to excavating Christian concepts»®, 37 SKS 6, 178; ibi, 3 SKS 6, 175; ibi, p. 187. » See AA:12 [Pap. 1A 72], in SKS 17; Either/Or, 1, pp. 453-459. See also Howard and Edna Hong's comments on Emanuel Hirsch’s conclusion that this is a fictive letter and forms part of what Hirsch calls Kierkegaard’s «Faustian Letters» project (Either/Or, 1, pp. 662). “© NB19:77 [Pap. X 3 A 239], in SKS 23; Journals and Papers: A Selection, p. 501. The Danish novelist Henrik Stangerup wrote an historical novel based on Peter Wilheim Lund’s adventures, the impact of his discoveries on the man’s beliefs, and his fascinating connec- tion and analogous journey with Kierkegaard. See H. STANGERUP, The Road to Lagoa Sania, trans by B, Bluestone, Paladin Grafton Books, London 1988.KIERKEGAARD’S FAIRYTALE 957 Kierkegaard is also on the verge of madness with his constant fall into melan- choly and so writes his story in various ways to keep himself alive. iii, The Forest Why do you walk deeper into the forest? JOHANNES THE SEDUCER* ‘We have already touched on the final motif of this article in mentioning the reeds by the lake, the dark tree roots that Quidam gazes at as a child, and Kierkegaard’s comparison with Peter Wilhelm Lund. In Stages in Life’s Way, the reeds and dark tree roots are transformed into a vast solitary fo- rest; and the forest is where William Afham makes his walk through Grib- skov and recounts the banquet for the five men in Jn Vino Veritas. But before returning to Taciturnus’ Fremlysning, let us take a moment to look at the motif of the forest itself. It is the perfect home for the fairytale. It can often be the symbol of the unconscious, a symbolic relation that can be manifest in dream images as well as in real anxiety about dark forests. It can also be the place of isolation and hideaway from the bustle of the world. Thus, it is a dwelling place for bandits and outcasts, implying dan- ger and loneliness; and for ascetics and hermits, implying mental concen- tration and inwardness. It has also been an ancient, sacred and mysterious place in which good and evil spirits and demons, wild men, pixies, and fairies live. Some of the only truly isolated territories left in this world, where the animal kingdom of the wild still flourishes, are in the immense forests of the Amazon and Congo, and parts of Canada and Russia. The forest is the symbolic place to get lost in or take a wrong turn in order to find one’s way back. This idea is most famously poetically captured in the opening line of Dante’s Divine Comedy, as he finds himself lost in a dark wood in the middle of his life, and so begins the arduous journey from hell to paradise: «Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita / mi ritrovai per una selva oscura / che la diritta via era smarrita (In the middle of the journey of our life I came to myself within a dark wood where the straight way was lost)»‘?, Heidegger turns this state into a starting point or way (Unterwegs) to philosophy in the desolated age, manifested most explici- tly in the title of a collection of essays called Holzwege (a rural term for «off the beaten track»). Out in the forest all the mirrors have disappeared, and the imagination reigns supreme. “" SKS 2,390; Either/Or.1, p. 402. “2D. ALIGHERI, The Divine Comedy, trans. by J.D. Oxford 1961, Inferno Canto I, p.23. inclair, Oxford University Press,958 BARTHOLOMEW RYAN For Taciturnus, to get to the lake, he must wade his way through the reeds: «Finally we made our way beyond the reeds, and the lake lay before us as a mirror, sparkling in the afternoon light»*>. These reeds are not simply reeds. Through the eyes of the imagination of Taciturnus and Quidam, the reeds are as vast as Lund’s Brazilian forests. Like Lund’s landscape, Qui- dam's «dark tree roots» in the «murky darkness» are «vanished kingdoms and countries». The naturalist in the Fremlysning thinks that the quagmire with its overgrown reeds by the lake is completely unique in Denmark“, giving the setting an almost supernatural aura. The stillness is almost unbearable, with only the rustling of the reeds (as the enormous forest) and despairing cry of a concealed bird to break the silence. The Russian film- maker, Andrei Tarkovsky, captures the wind rustling through the trees per- fectly in cinema as something akin to the divine sweeping through. The final scene in his most persona! film, Mirror, is a return to the primeval forest as the camera and the viewer watches the meadows and the characters fading away as both the audience (us) and the camera disappear into the wood. The forest is a constantly changing environment with a wide variety of liv- ing and non-living things. It is a natural habitat for the human eye to make «magic pictures (Hexebreve)» from the shadows and unidentified move- ments in the dark wood. Like Quidam, Johannes in The Seducer’s Diary lives as if in a fairytale and views his victim as the hidden princess from folklore: Just set out upon your walk with your bundle into the enormous woods that pre- sumably stretch many, many miles into the country to the border of the blue mountains. Pehaps you are not actually a fisherman's daughter but an enchanted princess; you are a troll’s domestic servant, and he is cruel enough to make you pick up firewood in the woods. So it always goes in the fairy tale. Otherwise, why do you walk deeper into the forest?*. Here we have a classic example of the motif of the forest in fairytale. Meta- morphosis is paramount as well as the curiosity to step into the unknown. To walk deeper into the shadowy forest represents that sensuous anxiety of desiring what we fear and fearing what we desire“. In contrast to Stages on Life's Way, the journey in Either/Or I moves from the take to the forest: «Rocked on the surface of the lake, which is dreaming about the deep dark- © SKS 6,176; Stages on Life's Way.p. 188. 4 SKS 6, 175; ii, p. 187. 4 SKS 2, 390; Either/Or,1, p.402. “This is Vigilius Hanfoiensis’ famous definition of anxiety: «Anxiety is a sympathetic antipathy and an antipathetic sympathy». See SKS 4,348; The Concept of Anxiety, p. 42.KIERKEGAARD’S FAIRYTALE 959 ness of the forest, one vanishes in the mysterious solitude of the forest»*7. Here, in the last pages of The Seducer’s Diary, we see the aesthete’s end- less pleasure in ever shifting possibility, instead of making one’s way to the transparency of the lake as symbol of the eye of the earth where Quidam’s «sinclosing reserve» in the box shall be revealed. The forest is the realm of the ferninine and her secrets (and it is also used as a metaphor for the city). At another part of The Seducer’s Diary, it is as if the woman returns to the forest when Johannes is not with her, and he must enter this realm again to find her. He writes to her at one point: «the trees of the forest are in motion, tossed about by troubled dreams. You have disappeared from me into the forest. Behind every tree I see a feminine creature that resembles you; if I-come closer, it hides behind the next tree». At the end of his Diary, the seducer declares that the Greek goddess Diana, the twin sister of Apollo, is his «ideal» as «pure virginity, this absolute coyness»%. What is not men- tioned is that Diana is in fact the guardian of forests as well as being the protector of women (especially during childbirth). ‘The forest also provides a place of solace and silence for Tacitumnus and Quidam, except this time it is moving away from the purely aesthetic and seductive and to something more supernatural and also religious. It is coming closer to the forest of Dante, where one must go through the forest to get to the lake, «which is clear as a mirror, and find the concealed truth at its bot- tom. Once one has dared to enter the dark wood and experience it in all its labyrinthine vastness, then one may possibly reach the clearing of the lake to come face to face with the deepest feelings and desires or, in Quidam’s case, © SKS 2,429; Either/Or,1, p.442. “ Often Johannes the Seducer treats the city of Copenhagen as akin to a vast forest, as the quintessential urban jungle full of strange voices and shadowy figures. At the end of Stages on Life's Way, Taciturnus also compares walking in a forest to the landscape buzzing with the masses. See, for example, SKS 6, 449: Stages on Life's Way, p. 488: «And just as someone walking in the great forest, amazed at everything, sometimes breaks off a branch, sometimes a leaf, then bends down to a flower. now listens to the screeching of birds — so does one walk around among the populace, amazed at the wondrous gift of language pluck- ing this expression and that in passing». In his Arcades Project, Walter Benjamin uses a quote from Victor Hugo's Les Misérables to use the metaphor of the forest fo the city or urban jungle: «Cities, like forests, have their dens in which all their vilest and most terrible monsters hide» (See W. BENIAMIN, The Arcades Project, rans. by H. Biland - K. McLaugh- lin, The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge (Massachusetts) 2004, A, 15,4,p.415). “® SKS 2, 386; Either/Or,1, p.399. % $x$ 2, 422; ibi, p.436. The trees are also a place of solace for the woman in the essay ‘on Don Giovanni. For example, commenting on Elvira: «She runs into the forest, and it clos~ es around her and hides her, and I see her no more but hear only the sighing of the forest» (SKS 2, 190; ibi,p. 194).960 BARTHOLOMEW RYAN the «inclosing reserve (Indesluttethed)». Hence, along Quidam’s joumey, he states: «I am as agitated as the forest’s quivering before the storm»*!, In the quietness of the surrounding, in silence, side by side with the natural scientist ‘on a small boat, what is concealed is revealed slowly. In opening the box, a grating sound is made, much like the birds in the reeds, and again Tacitur- nus conjures up the fairytale to describe the opening of Quidam’s box or his inclosing reserve: «When the castle gate has not been opened for many years, it is not opened noiselessly like an inside door that tums with springs»°?. Conclusion The word «nothing (Intet)» concludes Judge William and Quidam’s sec- tions in Stages on Life’s Way. Judge William declares in a moment of uncon- vincing bravado in the last sentence of his essay on marriage: «I am afraid of nothing»; and Quidam’s very last word is «nothing» in stating what his diary contains. But he admonishes, «it is the hardest life that deals with nothing»°>. Perhaps, this nothing is the fairytale and the myth itself. It is never completely graspable and contains multiple readings. This nothing of the fairytale may be the thing that Judge William is afraid to thread and which will destroy Quidam. The power of the human imagination only grows and enlarges in how and what we see and hear when reading. Quidam will say of reading a book: «Take a book, the poorest one written, but read it with the passion that it is the only book you will read - ultimately you will read everything out of it; that is, as much as there was in yourself, and you could never get more of reading, even if you read the best of books»™, In thinking about Kierkegaard in relation to the fairytale, more vistas are opened to looking at where he honed his strategies and styles. One must never underestimate either Kierkegaard’s imagination or his delight in it, and it might help to think of a line from one of Wallace Stevens’ last poems which may turn out to be the mantra for all poets: «We say God and the imagination are one»*’. Kierkegaard has made his mark in the history of critical philosophy and strived at the same time to salvage the passion of Christianity in the modern world, and yet he himself admitted that the muse of the fairytale always remained within him: SKS 6, 202; Stages on Life's Way, p. 216. 2 SKS 6, 196; ibi,p. 210. © SKS 6, 368; ibi, p. 397. + SKS 6, 338; ibi, p. 364. 33 W. STEVENS, Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour, in Selected Poems, Faber and Faber, London 2010, p. 128.KIERKEGAARD’S FAIRYTALE 961 If I didn’t know I was a genuine Dane I could almost be tempted to attribute the contradictions astir in me to the hypothesis that I was an Irishman. That nation ‘hasn't the heart to immerse its children totally when it has them baptised, they want to keep a little paganism in reserve. And while usually one immerses the child com- pletely, they leave the right arm free, so that with it he can wield a sword, embrace girls®, Abstract Kierkegaard is a thinker who appropriates and weaves fairytale into his writings, as a way to think in images when logical argument fails, as a form of spiritual gui- dance that predates Christianity, and as a perfect example of parabolic or indirect. communication that invites the reader to interpret what is presented in the text in order to think for him/herself and awaken the imagination. Fairytale is our first introduction into psychology and hermeneutics as children and allows our imagination to find a natural home; it is also a story with a moral; and it has the capacity for spiritual awakening and therapy. I will show how and why Kierkegaard inserts the fairytale into his writings, which contains aesthetic, ethical and religious value, looking specifically at Tacitumnus” preface or what he calls a Fremlysning to Quidam’s dairy in Stages in Life's Way. First, I place fairytale between poetry and philosophy; second, I present Stages on Life's Way as a mutilated fairytale and «totality of ruins»; and third, | explore the motifs of the mirror, the lake, and the forest that are given in Taciturnus’ Fremlysning. Keywords: Kierkegaard, fairytale, poetry, imagination, indirect communication, forest, lake, mirror, image, Stages on Life's Way % Papir 284 [Pap. Ill A 223]. in SKS 27; Papers and Journals: A Selection, p. 147.