editorial

Transcription

editorial

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editorial
Iva
Jevtić
Anxious for Anxiety
7
poetry
Barbara
Korun
Esad
Babačić
11
Poems
Stanislava
Chrobáková Repar
17
22
Jure
Novak
Hand-picked Poems
29
Primož
Repar
Poems
35
Barbara
Simoniti
Sea, River, Flood & Thirst
45
prose
Jurij
Hudolin
Stepchild (Life on the Devils Land 1987 - 1990)
51
Iva
Jevtić
Gravity
70
haiku
Primož
Repar (ed.)
Josip
Osti
Anthology of Slovene Haiku
(Milan Dekleva, Jure Detela, Alenka Zorman,
Darja Kocjančič, Josip Osti, Rade Krstić, Jože Štucin,
Dimitar Anakiev, Primož Repar, Tone Škrjanec)
79
A Selection of Haikus from
“I Love Life, yet Death Loves Me.”
94
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gender
Ana
M. Sobočan
From Detachment to Pleasure
97
Alenka
Koželj
The Sweetness of the Unreachable Fruit
118
Ana
Makuc
A Voice of Her Own: Dramatic Monologues
by Augusta Webster and Carol Ann Duffy
139
Ana
M. Sobočan
Orlando Inside Orlando’s
Orlando: ‘The Oak Tree’91
154
Stanislava
„My Vanishing Point“
Chrobáková Repar (ed.) or Transcribing Oneself to Poetry
161
Alenka
Koželj
165
Stanislava
Chrobáková Repar
To Be Heard Everywhere!
A Megaphone
(Jana Bodnárová, Tereza Riedlbauchová,
Zuzana Mojžišová, Anna Grusková, Daniela Fischerová,
Mária Ferenčuhová, Meta Kušar, Derek Rebro, Breda Smolnikar, Jana
Pácalová, Nataša Sukić, Dana Podracká,
Lenka Daňhelová, Stanislava Chrobáková Repar, Eva Maliti,
Katarina Marinčič, Ivica Ruttkayová, Jana Kolarič,
Jakuba Katalpa, Vida Mokrin Pauer, Uršula Kovalyk,
Iva Jevtić, Božena Správcová, Etela Farkašová,
Barbara Korun, Pavla Frýdlová; questionnaire:
I- selectionUSA/ II- togetherIVA
172
Amanda
Montei
Crotchless-Pants-and-a-MachineGun Feminism
196
Tea
Hvala
Grassroots Media in Europe (Survey)
Interview with Stanislava Repar
200
kierkegaard
Primož
Repar
New Oikonomy of Relationships:
The Neighbour and the Existential Turn.
215
Pavle
Goranović
A Dizzy Spell of Søren Kierkegaard
220
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Primož
Repar
Cross and Hammer
224
Martin
Beck Matuštík
Singular Existence and Critical Theory
227
Jon
Stewart
Hegel’s Treatment of the Development of
Religion After Christianity: Islam
243
Abrahim
H. Khan
Muhammad Iqbal and Kierkegaard’s
“Judge William”
259
Merigala
Gabriel
The Concept of Love
in Kierkegaard and Gandhi
282
José
Garcia Martin
The Ethical-Existential Demand
of Kierkegaard’s Single Individual
294
Tibor Máhrik
Roman Králik
Paradox as Prophecy: Kierkegaard
in Central Europe
307
Primož
Repar
Choice and Decision:
Kierkegaard New Ethics
332
Reasons for Poetry
343
essay
Kornelijus
Platelis
personality
Martin
Beck Matuštík
Where Do People Go?
Reflection on Vaclav Havel’s Leaving
359
Martin
Beck Matuštík
Havel and Habermas on Identity
and Revolution
363
Cvetka
Hedžet Tóth
Edvard Kocbek:
His Creative Search
386
gallery
Humberto
Ortega Villaseñor
401
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art work and reflection
Wolfgang
Vogt
Mexico’s Cultural Diversity
409
Humberto
Ortega Villaseñor
Metamorphosis in the Core
of the Word and Image
412
review within review
9th International Festival
»Review within Review« 2012
435
List of Invited Guests
»Review within Review 2012 Festival«
439
Gallery for Review within Review
Festival Škocjan 2012
443
Eva
Zakšek
The Outer Edge of Centre
451
Zoran
Pevec
What is Our Time Made of?
453
Alenka
Koželj
The Mystery of a Flower
456
Iva
Jevtić
From Acts of Faith to Acts of Love
459
Špela
Žakelj
New Foundations of Moral Philosophy:
Redefinition of the Subject
465
reviews
about the authors
469
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dvd supplement
Raúl Aceves Lozano
and Humberto
Ortega Villaseñor
Raúl Aceves Lozano
and Humberto
Ortega Villaseñor
Fish Travelling Towards the Light
Fish Travelling Towards the Light
(short presentation)
dvd supplement * limited edition extra
01_165-166-167_editorial_ENG_3_uvodnik
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Anxious for Anxiety
This is an all-out war, of all against all, all against All, an
old Germanic word for space, for everything without limit:
without limit our greed, without limit our capacity for sorrow.For this is, literally, war against space and our place
within it. We have lost our sense of dimension and time.
Hier gibt es kein Warum: in a world of totality there is
no space for pause and nothing gives youpause. The gap
between action and reaction has beenreduced to virtual
nothingness, we are hyperventilating, hurling through life
like bullets shot from a gun.It is protest to close your eyes,
to breathe in and out. Speed is no longer an attribute of
grace but rather of an impossible weighing down: our
souls are heavy with flight.
7
To be quick or to be real?
To be smart or to be true?
This technologically mediated implosion of space and
time gives the impression of incessant movement while, at
the same time, leads absolutely nowhere. We are mired in
nothingness, witnessing the rise of “materialist mysticism”,
as Paul Virilio calls it, an incidence of “picnolepsy” (from
the Greek picnos, frequent): “[F]or the picnoleptic nothing really has happened, the missing time never existed. At
each crisis, without realising it, a little of her or his life simply escaped.”1 If mysticism can be defined as the direct,
knowing and unmediated experience of reality, it follows
1 Paul Virilio, Aesthetics of Disappearance, Semiotext(e), New York:
1991, p.10.
editorial
editorial
Iva Jevtić
editorial • iva jevtić
8
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that materialist mysticism, induced by repetitive, lightning fast lapses of consciousness, is the direct but also heavily mediated,
unknowing experience of the social.
This catastrophic, apocalyptic sensory perception invites anxiety into our lives as its corollary, a commonplace, unpleasant daily
motivator that incites everfurther re/action and speed. The simultaneous commodification of anxiety, in the guise of cures and practices of self-care,returns it within the folds of the economy of selfinterest.As such anxiety no longer facilitates “the conditions for
decision”, as Primož Repar writes in “Choice and Decision”, his
essay included in this volume, i.e. it is no longer the fault line
between the social and the individual, but rather the full and final
confirmation of the supremacy of the social.
As Repar rightly points out, such “collective” anxiety is contrary to
the singularity of despair: “The carefree existential callousness is
replaced by preoccupation, by worry which is not identity-related.”Fully aware of the difference in kind between the two, let us,
however, allow ourselves anxiety over anxiety: if anxiety is the condition of choice, then what, nowadays,is the condition of anxiety?
We are faced with a specifically contemporary task of consideringthis question, firstly, within the context of society as a technologically managed totality, and also, as we have seen, in its relation to
temporally and spatially impoverished dimensions of experience.
If choice is made within a specific historical nexus, it should be
vital to look at the historical in that nexus, questioning the emergence of anxiety in a world where anxiety is ubiquitous. Because of
the increasing drive towards the anesthetization of experience,
perhaps what is primarily called for today is, in Ivan Illich’s terms,
a philosophy of technology that examines seriously the role of
objects and matter as “creators of perception”.2 This unravelling of
the senses is a precursor to a new askesis, a renunciation of objects
that leads to a perceptual loosening enablingus to engender practices of care for the Other.
Speaking of his students studying medieval monastic texts on
friendship, Illich says “Many of them are [then] shocked by the
amoral sterility of their hearts, livers and loins when the moment is
2 Ivan Illich, »Philosophy... Artifacts... Friendship«. http://www.aislingmagazine.com-
/aislingmagazine/articles/TAM28/Artifacts.html (Last access November 2012).
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appropriate to address another person as Thou.”3 Might not this
very sterility of hearts endanger anxiety itself? The question of time
and its implosion into a never ending, impoverished now, now as
the return of always-the-same, is the final reason which points
towards a necessity of such an askesis; for this temporality cannot
conceive of a break or instant that would enter time. It effectively
precludes choice. For all of this, it makes sense to fret over anxiety,
to be anxious over being anxious; to remember the practices of
turning towards the Other, so we could re/turn toward the Other.
3 Ibid.
editorial • iva jevtić
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I Kissed Him
11
grains grown in the ear
and the poppy opened
its woody heart
with a cry
I kissed him
on the sticky red earth
in the shade of an old olive
I kissed him
crickets went silent
and the air shuddered
from the commotion
all the cornstalks shook
I kissed him
deep on the very bottom
of a forgotten well
where his voice
still echoes
I kissed him
the sun gave birth
to a ruby gemini
and the restless bodies of bats
smouldered against the moon
as the sky drowned
into scarlet evening bells
poetry
poetry
Barbara Korun
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I kissed him
with the sister moon
we played
with his belt
and the cocks lost
their treacherous voice
seven dawn stars
shut their eyes
in the shade of a fig tree
a spinning wheel grew
with our breath we spun
a cobweb thread
and hanged ourselves
happy as we were
we swung
into a new day
Whom
poetry • barbara
korun
whom I always take along. or you me, it's hard to say. obsessed
with you, relentlessly tender, with sadness. when I first wake
I bump into you, before sleep, I caress you, and you're with me
in the silence, or when I speak, you are my blending perceptions,
my feelings in the light, in what is most gentle, most mine.
I nestle, nestle, open and soften, winding myself around you,
scoop out some sand for this small earthen nest, and you
are the axis, I am rooting you, anchoring you, knowing you,
protecting you, for you I open myself, for you who presses
me with all your weight, for a moment you cover all of me. no,
not an inch is left out, let all of me be in you, all.
When
When I have nothing else
to give you
but death
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when you
made of light
transform in me
to a lump of silence
that thickens,hardens
like honey
between the legs
you open girls
revealing them
like seashells
no longer swollen
rose-pink
ambrosia
of pearl
pours out
fleshy rose
between your legs
with thorns
wounding me
calling me
you are hot wet
when I penetrate you
I go home
feed me
me with moving hips
with words
unuttered
with the one
13
***
two strip each other
they take off their clothes
take off their shoes
remove jewelry and watches
strip to bare skin
poetry • barbara
korun
Translated by Ana Jelnikar & Barbara Siegel Carlson
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they strip further
stroking with their hands
they take off their professions,
their names and habits
with patient kisses
they strip off their past loves,
their expectations
with deep bits their age, their lust
with their mouths
they strip off each other's sex
they take off their childhood
(this takes a long time)
mother father they wash off
by hugging by rubbing
flesh against flesh
the juice pours out
poetry • barbara
korun
they reach the dark
never named
give it names from the past
forgetting them
caught in the fire
they strip further
through crying out
moaning, screaming
to the nameless
body
beyond birth
they are naked
Page 14
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Woman Without a Name, Noah’s Wife
after the Flood
For months, for years I’ve been hiding here in the hold.
Out of pity I descended into the groaning, moaning
animals. It’s dark, damp, stifling. Unbearable
stench. Crocodiles opening long snouts of teeth,
Snakes hissing, lions roaring with hunger,
over all the thundrous stamping of caged elephants.
In the beginning I trembled at the darkness and noise,
and of the incomprehensible swarming of creatures unseen,
with only a premonition – spiders, mice, millipedes, scorpions.
Large and small, all of them moving in monstrous
formation as the invisible water, dark
and ungraspable. I became one with them, feeling
our total being--warm, damp and stifling.
15
40 days, 40 years. We got older, settled down
in our grief, our hunger. Down here there is no God.
in a safe haze, we wait for the bearded face of
someone to fulfill God’s commands.
poetry • barbara
When my husband, who has forgotten me, opens the door,
into his chest filled with wind and sun
will rush a herd of animals –
a multi-tailed body with thousands of glittering eyes
moving through every premonition. First – Me.
korun
I hear noise: Noah’s releasing the animals back to the land.
I lean my face against a crack in the door
and light pours all over me, the light I had forgotten..
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Henry Masson, 46, a French black worker, lost his hand in
a machine and was given the hand of a German student who
had died in a car accident.
Marseille, late 20th century
16
I have the hand of God, God’s hand.
So beautiful it makes me cry.
And I can move it, I, I move it. See?
Thumb, forefinger, little finger…
The finger of God moves by my will.
How is it written?
Whoever is touched by the finger of God…
I am God’s finger.
Whomever I touch awakens.
Or dies, unless already dead.
My arm is black,
but my fingers are white, soft, thin.
Who would have thought God a German?
Nothing is the same.
Whatever I touch becomes light.
I create out of nothing, destroy into nothing.
When I sleep my hand glows in the dark,
on my chest.
poetry • barbara
korun
Translated by Barbara Siegel Carlson
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Esad Babačić
Poems
Tropea
17
The windows too ripe
sink into late July.
One person hangs
in the laundry of another.
Grateful
Grey is forever
grey is sacred.
Grey washes away
all
that
is
not
worth
staying.
Divan
To know that
and remain modest.
poetry
I could die,
I could rise.
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*
The one who doubts first,
wins.
That’s love too.
*
18
The place I have entered
has entered me.
I’m no longer afraid
of stepping out.
Sylvia
Devotion is mortal,
its witnesses dead.
*
poetry • esad babačić
Report
The report is delivered,
letters denied.
Rudeness forgotten,
worries hidden,
cursing squandered.
A man feeds a baby,
the mission handed to him
gives him courage.
He kicks the floor with his foot,
when the crying
rips from
the sky.
Outside
a truck
is waiting,
heavy with dirt
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which tomorrow
he will
drive away.
The Long Poem
19
On New Year’s Day
I went to the supermarket.
While my image
was mercilessly
filling up the basket,
my ego was considering
a question
unworthy of a poet
of my reputation. Why are my poems
becoming shorter and shorter
and the lines at the cashier
longer and longer?
And finding no answer
my ego turned back to my image
pushing the basket.
My image admitted:
sometimes I don’t have
anything else to do
so I am remembering Kaliningrad,
remembering people
who are too good and too happy
to be able to think
in the egoistical way that you do
while you are buying food
for the new year. After that, my image
hid, the way it always does
when it’s been honest, and I remained
alone with my basket,
asking myself why the line is becoming
shorter and shorter, and this poem so long.
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Who Is Going to Bury You, Father
Who will bury you, Father,
for I will not let you die,
will not let you die, Father.
20
You taught me to stare at sadness
like the last door to peace.
When I’m happy
it’s only because I’ve climbed over you, Father,
like one climbs the highest mountain.
We walked the same road
without knowing each other,
we’ve been praying to the same god
without asking his permission,
we’ve been eating the same meat
without shame.
When you ordered me to start
living with all my powers,
I ignored you
like the first frost.
You remained cold,
great teacher of sadness,
I was only beginning to learn how to lie,
I spent too much of my wealth
cheating you, you called it
the wound of early youth,
as if a later one was to come.
You played the cards, face down,
no ace, no extra colors,
you played badly
to expose the heart.
I’ve exposed myself to sharp metal,
I even showed my cards,
I’ve become your voluntary
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victim, by pure coincidence,
rubbish in the universe, orbiting
the uninterrupted sadness
not knowing how to really embrace it.
The cosmic valve
drains away your
veteran blood,
great raw stuff, more
black than the hallowed graves.
I didn’t dare to ask
where your advantage lay,
Father, until I wasn’t burned
by the first defeat.
21
For only the hellish
fire can brighten the home upstairs
above the roof of the world, Father, gods
howl from your spinal cord.
For who will bury you,
for I will not let you die.
Translated by Kelly Lenox
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Stanislava Chrobáková Repar
22
Double Exposure
(En voyage... Around the world...)
Inclining deeply,
at the moment when light swallows
Prince Myshkin, I am watchful as the seams
running from armholes to nipples,
impressed on the memory of an armchair, in a theatre
that communes with Fyodor's power,
I, vain as a cobweb tablecloth;
(on the oak table water –
a jar, sign of fertility),
in my head a child,
pupa,
tyrant.
The sea overflows the heavens when you enter.
A thin indecisive line past desperation.
poetry
Idiotically fervent ars protetica,
I say, closing the eyes
of the century, totally
alive.
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Icon
Past these great waters
the jingling of a ring
against teeth, tongue
in the ear, fever
in the spirit – panting.
Orthodox Christmas touched us
with crooked finger.
23
Should you (or I,
or you and I) not find
the way, the book will open wide,
the line will catch fire: a word
striking like a match;
a green dragon.
Compass of high
voices, stopping still,
The unreal tear of blood and gold
washes real shores.
poetry • stanislava chroba´kova´repar
– thus
we are driven by the suffering
of the Madonna without.
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Kirke to Gaard, by a detour
I.
I miss you in the taciturn Primus,
and I miss myself too,
when we sit at the table and eat,
and each of us wanders about,
indistinguishably lonely.
24
I miss you in his fondling,
and I miss myself too,
when my eyes are tracing
his inaccessible face and I say:
Love won't be forged in the body.
With a short sigh of yours
in bed I comb his long beard.
II.
And I try to survive them:
buoyancy and the swimmer
with star in eye, forget-me-not
in hand, arms stretching to pain;
in good times and bad to stay
afloat.
I catch my own fragrance
while the hoarse cocks are crowing.
Gold script of images: waft
of five colours of the five rainbows. Room
No. 7, rented for love, and ttt(ouch).
For soothing – heaven and hell, paradise
and purgatory, everything
anDante.
To the Pantheon of divine
desires in human bodies!
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(She and He on a marble bier
above the Alyki quarry.)
To sobs,
to the two stars above the line
of the horizon! – we drink,
ah, with a wine called
(eternal irony!)
Kouros...∗
25
III.
Dew-eyed – dewy-eyed; mature Man and mature Woman.
While Greece, navel of cultures, proclaims its
“hour of truth with music for the deaf”.
It will place the story in the legend of ages,
stretching souls and bodies like threads
on the loom of mythologies – orgies of love. Oh,
still divine and already
bitter, to the point –
∗
In Ancient Greek kouros signified a young man; Homer uses it referring to young
soldiers. From the 5th century A.D. it has meant principally an adolescent, still beardless but no longer a child.
And then a Minoan fresco
with dolphin pair, moving commingled in harmony.
In suffocation –
yours, mine, most tender –
I do not breathe, in your symmetry I heal
my disguised
thirst.
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un/freedom:
overflow
of event
and dream.
Mutability
I.
26
Through this valley winds
the mist,
a mosaic of contending
stones.
Snowdrift
issuing from the wood.
If you walked silent through
the land, the trees would outspread
and share their ornament.
But you gush from the depths,
sighing,
and day begins
with mutability.
The interrupted dark touches you,
underlining the notice:
Nicht reserviert.
Intervals and spaces rush past you,
a chapel with a tilted cross,
protruding rocks, far as the eye can see.
Only you outrunning yourself.
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Rigid, in milky
silhouettes.
II.
Beyond the rough-surfaced wall
two truncated golden turrets run,
citytrain jolts away
to another horizon.
27
You will never discover
what it was like, the ceremony
that put your heart in pain,
and the reason for all that concealment
of mature architecture.
(A smile; as if your immediacy
was heard speak
behind glass.)
With the image of roundwood in snow,
of white plains with a footpath
carved into the body,
you'll transport yourself where the tender
touch of a tongue awaits you;
the boat rocks in the ravelled
sun, but your world seems attuned
to the techno in the head alongside:
absent-minded and overgrown,
it suggests glittering, water.
III.
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“The land intervening decently,”
you say again, rather helplessly.
“The land intervened in decently”
comes back from the distance,
an undertone.
IV.
28
The sleeping vineyards turn over. Each
slope is their home. Only
they show no interest in
this shore that has crumpled your face.
Beyond the shore a pond,
depth frozen in circles.
You are divinely rural, bewildered
in disbelief.
Henceforth the day moves towards
its climax, the stubble on the chin
of your husband has blossomed
in new light.
Ars Amatoria?
Or Remedia Amoris?
Winter will remind you again
that purity itself is not secure.
(18. 2. 2010)
Translated by John Minahane
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Jure Novak
Hand-picked Poems
The Surplus Value of Being
29
Thirty years, thirty years,
young and perspective cadre.
I turn outward, for there’s where the world is,
they say.
I turn outward,
for inward it’s calm for now
and one doesn’t disturb the calm,
they say,
for fear of something sprouting.
Thirty years, yet no one cheers,
the company men are gone,
while HR rattles,
& sniffles:
it was supposed to be different.
HR and PR (harumph and ptew-argh)
happiness’s jailors.
The surplus value of being
an ontological redundancy,
a deficit.
poetry
Thirty years inward, and old outward;
I turn to the side,
I was an older soul once,
they say.
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They say:
young and perspective. Cad(av)re.
aught : fifty-three
I world-test
my mornings.
30
Positive.
They’re part-time
double agents;
part-time
paramilitary.
My mornings have lives of their own.
Cunning mornings,
evening keen,
never wake me sleeping,
never lull awake.
My mornings dream me,
part-particle
and lie in wait:
poetry • jure novak
I grow by coffee and vitamins,
a splash of water to wash away the scent.
The morning wash load (of consciousness, conscience) – an ambush
along the way.
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All the World’s Words Have Lost My Mind
A poem on sleep,
the scattered freight of perception,
fragments of whispers,
naked paint-by-numbers;
we wallow into tomorrow ominously,
cities fly past our windows
(like dreams,
the flattering gypsies).
Some words have lost my mind:
31
dreamos, that
live under
cold windows;
buzzwuzzers from beneath
heavy stones;
the dead river sleeves with tiny
wrists I used to love to kiss.
Cities breathe, cough & spit,
the summer smog opens the streets’ nostrils,
the buildings disband, all
the world’s buildings have lost the cities.
All the world’s words have lost my mind.
An Unday Diary
A year/and a half of undays
had passed, it would seem.
An unday is an unending day.
The poem on sleep awaits their return;
the dreams await the return
of the dead freight of perception.
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An unday doesn’t count
hours
and in it hours don’t count.
A year/and a half of undays then;
in it but that: a year/and a half.
32
An unday tips its hat
“Unday/and a half”
“charmed, I’m sure.”
And then
“Where to?”
“Home. It would seem.”
An unday is always at home
somewhere
and en route elsewhere,
in between you and I
over you, over I
(always en route)
unto self, you and I. Each day
an unday takes everyday.
“Where to?”
“To a day. It would seem.”
An unday is a done day,
a day, done away with,
for a year/and a half.
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An Apology
An apology, hugging breasts tight,
shimmering mind-game rule-boards
in front of second-hand day-time allowances.
She loves/loves me not,
positions shift her/me on top,
talking shop,
deeper, harder. Remembering
wild scarf-bound spring curls,
remembering smiles,
table-top finger struggles.
I won her/she won over.
33
Lips tight lips, I think and
thighs spread thighs love –
an apology.
Never, she said
and I look in cold-cold north-bound trains
for sunny vales to slip in/over the horizon.
A car-scene, she waits there,
smiles for eternity. Cheese, says eternity,
click-click it goes.
Love
I dream of her sometimes and it is and isn’t her.
I see her on the street never knowing if it’s her I’ve seen.
I talk to her on the phone. I love you, I tell her, I tell most of them
that.
tooo
tooo
She loves me too.
An apology for eternity’s fucked-up career
as career photographer.
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Hair color she changes. Makeup she wears and does not wear.
She is my first, my last, the current ex.
In dreams we run in the far future, entwine, entwine.
34
Too many people, the future is full of people,
a solitude solo.
She will not be, never has been. Love is flesh in mind in mouth
love is my dark closet of memory love is always
only when gone.
My Street
My street is being torn down today. It's settling into dust and
bruising, my street's bruising today, while the bruisers in blue hang
off the walls, through the walls, though the walls (in my street
today) are gone.
And it's not even my street being torn down, they're tearing saved
souls, souls saved on junk and on air, they too do sleep (have slept,
are sometimes slept with) in my street.
That they’re tearing today, I only found later, a while ago and there
- no bulldozers,
yet I know perfectly well the souls are waiting for them...
At night the souls and bulldozers shall dance.
The fluttering souls and thunderous bulldozers --- what a dance
it shall be!
Awkward bulldozers in tailcoats/ ties/ souls in arms
erroneously tear down my street.
Translated or written in English by Jure Novak
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Primož Repar
Poems
Persona Grata
35
***
A forest fairy
has wrecked me.
Should I sob to you,
o forest god,
I,
the child of your dreams.
I was king to the goddess.
You ravished the grapes
that dropped from my tears. Then.
***
I am Your fruit.
I love You.
The sun in your eyes smiles.
The joy of god passing by.
poetry
***
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The mildly gentle cape of joyous furrows of days and hours past.
Suffering grows into a garden. A rainforest of hope grows lush.
***
The allegory of the unappeased, its sadness
flowing under.
To leave without saying goodbye.
36
***
A black night on the outskirts of dreams,
a piece of blue in the ring of your voice
calms me – a feast of disquiet and resurrection.
A volcanic Spanish spring of the absolute and the absurd.
***
You are the frightened seed of a foreign tribe:
the light of earnestness embodied in you.
Your illegible forest is my cove
as a delta’s thick river – that salty and that bitter.
poetry • primož repar
A temple in my heated palm,
the diluted crystals of a gushing river’s overflow
on a fresh wound
that painful
ad infinitum.
***
When will I hear your voice in darkness?
In this mute night – when?
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Come,
I await you,
love.
***
A seriousness of purpose calls the sun
to confirm morning –
blood in bloom, a touch of the blessing of mercy.
37
***
I’ve lost control over words and sayings.
And now deaf to them, I listen to the drumming earth
screaming your voice, your tears and your laughter.
***
I wander nameless – alone through the woods;
amid the monstrous world disintegrating in front of my eyes.
Some day the holy will set the sky afire:
on that day a desert will burn in every dwelling of man.
***
Dies Irae
And desperation.
Is a rock,
crumbling
This eye knows.
And I smell the tracks.
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cracking my face
into a fresco
a chiseled tear
you drive in icy desolation
into a white tear
shimmering with horror
38
the glistening of unbearable silence
the endless dark
of a tremendous ride
you, a woman of beauty
your tongue of veiled language
examining
the flooded continent of your delta
it’s a gift
for you to take
into your lap
to mold
to spill across your palms
into the snowy whiteness
and to stay there
until it withers
a rose bush without thorns
sprinkled in rosemary
splayed with roses
and the thyme scent of our garden
seeping underground
into vibrations of dusk’s
vivid colors, into seeds of the sun,
into the blindness of nothing.
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Imaginarium of the Grave
I stood above your grave,
although I’ve never been there.
A bitter clay builds in my mouth,
my anguish quicker than fear,
and even more so – a barely perceptible shiver
of bodies, a symphony of the pulsing whole –
39
the scent of the other sex,
a ferocious animal sunk in buried mouths.
Blood drips from them, I wished
to say something else, so I write no verse.
Not to you, dear, who is not my world.
My world is lonely, we are far apart,
as we gaze into each others eyes
in silence.
No longer.
Iconostasis
the candles made of flowers
are woven by knives
a sadly wonderful salt crystal
everything crumbles
the illumination of centuries on edge
the view above
apparently the sun
sees fear through the walls
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into the vertigo of winter
the eternal frost of its sense
I give over to the word
Everything is lonely
no joy to be found
40
all is azure
and gold, gold of the alchemists
as you dissolve
in my arms
as each word
wounds you eternally
my silence
awakens you
from nothingness
I
and the wall before me
behind me
sparkling eyes
of goodness
and mercy
Happy Birthday to Me
A morning. Alone. Completely alone.
There is no one to
console me. No one.
I trespass the border
where my friend
stumbled. Also alone.
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I am three years old, soon
to be four. All around
I’m surrounded by deep water.
It’s warm and
pleasant. Different now.
Completely different.
I trespass the border
where I stumbled. My steps
shiver. Shivering–all of them.
A glade at first sun.
No one around.On the border
only a deeply
vulnerable landscape.
I await you in vain.
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41
Don’t Give In to Desperation
as it comes on its own.
I stand silent,
still water,
deep
and empty.
I cool my forehead
in ancient oblivion
because
I’m alive.
Even when I’m not.
You’re far away-behind eight mountains
It is the feast day
and you’re spring water
from a narrow glen.
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lies the ninth sky.
No toil
helps
along this merciless
path.
42
You are me
and I you
time
escaping
loneliness.
That comes on its own
silent
absent.
With no remains.
The Sole Nonangel
were you who asked how to think
and what of men.
You were a man and not an angel.
Endlessly saying what you thought
without backing it up.
You were no angel. Only a man.
With no place to land.
In torn clothes.
Covered with ashes.
My tent deserted
as is my thought
broken from the core,
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undigested.
I am no angel,
Only a man.
It’s stifling up here
from you to myself.
And there is no man down there.
43
If you pass by
I will offer
the human in me. Not much.
Just this.
From myself to you.
The Third Letter
Is pro forma.
I wait for you to come
and stay, you know.
Your Eyes
are salty,
your feet are bare.
You glow red hot,
as I take refuge in you.
For the other too,
once.
Another
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You annoint me with resin juices.
Your eyes are salty,
your feet are bare.
In the mirror, we flow from green to brown.
A sea, a sea of light.
44
When our tremors meet
our bodies are salty.
We sink into this sea
and rays scorch me from your eyes
and from a greater warmth:
earthbound is the hope of blood.
We circle
moving inside one another
and again you bloom under the veil of night.
Just for yourself and me this time.
From a deep wound
a living lava, a sea of light.
Translated by Jure Novak
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Barbara Simoniti
Sea, River, Flood & Thirst
I.
45
When I drown in the deepest water,
I shall open up my blue eyes widely
to have a look around the watery land:
the opaque bed of the ocean will slowly
clear up behind the weeds of eyelashes,
the algae will open up in the current and
I shall have a premonition of the sea speech,
from behind my white nails silvery scales
will begin to sprout unstoppably and
my heals will spread out smartingly
into a fan-shaped tail fin – and it will be
only then, while unraveling the restlessness
of the fish, that it will become a relief
not to have my skin any more, since
I have given it up ultimately with
all the voracious blood that was
sown into the arid time behind me.
I am a ship untied from the pier and
I groan with the afternoon high tide
when it batters against my rotting hips:
I have long since yielded to the algae
and the companions of shells that gnaw
into the arches of my ribs, and it is only
at the bows that cumbersome runes are getting
poetry
V.
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drenched, a woodcut oath for the beginning
that I shall be taken over by the silent volume,
that the azure shall be as shoreless as
the sky, interlaced with fish trails through
the gorges of the sea, through the salty
dunes of the storms past that have had
their faces watered down by perseverance,
while my mouth has been filled up so as
never to yell out of agony while being
ploughed by the keel of everydayness.
poetry • barbara simoniti
VI.
The waves are retreating from the
shingle leaving behind them a shore
awakened from earlier foams,
my footsteps are teeming with the
residents of caves and barrows and
fragile shells being flooded by water,
yet in constant changing they manage
to dig a burrow into the sandbank:
they duck into the wet sand leaving
me stranded in the forceful outburst
of the waves, two dry feet submerged
in the murky sandbank, and thus in
persistent insecurity that is their only
constant, they live in flight from water
in the sea, and it is only I who can not
determine from the fragments in
which change of the world I reside.
XIV.
I have been writing into the river for
a long time, leaf by leaf, with the
whisper of tree characters, while
the egrets fall silent and stand still,
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motionless, and a coppery kingfisher
dashes under the lids of moss; bitter
sketches are flying off my skin in
the final wind before the dusk – it
does not grow back over broken bones –
and ever longer words are sloughing off
me, a calendar scattered into a tin
pond, so that I would spell myself into
the autumn, yet there are ever larger
drops of blood among the torpid birch
and naked willow, falling among the
shadows on the waves, biting into the
water and washing away the trace of life.
47
All the riverbed is my bathtub made of
grey stone, with slippery stairs of mud
and gnarled wood leading thither, when
I pluck up the courage to pass them with
odd steps, the immortal ghost of myself;
the blossoming grasses and poppies are
fading when I immerse my feet and furrow
the willowy pond, some pebbles at the bottom
tingle, while the marsh marigolds darken
on the bank – I am being swallowed up by
the wet jaws of water as clear as glass,
from ankles upwards, I am rendered
breathless by its cold over my skin, there
is more of me in each gulp and less
of the hollow doll left ashore, and in those
moments that are eternity I know
surely it is not worth coming back.
XVI.
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XXII.
48
I have been long envious of the green skin
of water lilies as they spread it
silently into the surface, numb sea
bats, and then they remain in their
horizontal equilibrium, immovably caught
in a touch, without the haunted
perfection of self-appropriation smarting
painfully when they cease to be a
plant growing from the flood into sunlight,
but are caught in their own eternity by
the blend of the world and their body,
until they hand out again all their pollen
to accidental strollers through the bounty
of spring – or is it only I who have
allowed it in vain to hover over this
place of perfection without ever
being able to step out of my blindness.
XXIV.
I am sinking into the insatiable marsh among
the crunching cries of grebes and lapwings
at the edge of a willow temple, bound for
the intermediary world of everything that
was washed away by years and that which
will be watered down eventually; beneath
my blind feet the gulping mud is clumping
from the time of tree religions when the
sky leaned beneficially to the waste land
and the language of both was written out
by dark water, when the goddess of fertility
levelled out life from red-haired swamps
made of water and death – let her swallow
me back into the emerald slime of conception,
since I know now to the very tips of
my orphaned fingers that it shall make
no difference on the surface of living.
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XLVIII.
I am of water and my language is thirst,
no cell passes away, they all undulate
in simmering desire for something
greater – perhaps as early as tomorrow
listlessness will fill me to the very
edge, where I will end in a fringed
pattern of nails and hair – yet thirst
is the only scream that lasts in the
universe of vessels, after I have realised
that my body is the final station and
there is no hope of water on nearby
planets – with dried up beds they spin
each in its track, always in equidistance,
lasting their measured time, and
from their drunk merry-go-rounds
they leave to me the gravity and
constancy and the thirst of water.
49
Translated by B. S.
A selection of poems from Water (Ljubljana: Apokalipsa 2012).
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Stepchild
(Life on the Devil's Land 1987–1990)
Prologue
When Benjamin was twelve his parents split up. They
hurriedly settled at court and, like two runners dizzied by
the midday sun in the middle of a burnt out vineyard, both
trotted away to find life’s happiness along untrodden
pathways. Valter Zakrajšek, Benjamin's father, an economist and a bon vivant, went off to heal his alcohol-weathered conscience in the arms of other women; his mother
Ingrid was left with their son who was about to plunge
into adolescence. Basically, alone… Soon after, at some
trade-union-organised trip for administrative workers, she
met Loris Čivitiko, a wealthy pub and land owner, who
puffed up like a toad and showed off his muscles on his
property in Panule, a small Istrian seaside village on the
Croatian coast, positively bustling with life in the summer,
while in winter it was much like the dark hole of a bottomless cavern.
In the mid eighties Yugoslavia was still a country. At a
glance, it even looked quite stable, and besides falling
madly in love, perhaps this was also one reason that Ingrid
packed up, withdrew Benjamin from his Slovene school,
and, after a couple of passionate visits, moved to Mr.
Čivitiko's place on the Croatian coast. Benjamin cried the
most; in fact, he was the only one who did. No one asked
him what he thought. A child is a child and is subordinate
to the will of his parents, even if this will is lined with sheer
egomania, animal instincts and the simple denialthe child
has of any need for nurturing or for someone to occasionally listen to him. At the time he was a fragile boy who,
51
prose
prose
Jurij Hudolin
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much like every twelve year old, liked to idealise things and so was
probably still too young for the staggering wheel of life’s experiences to have taught him to recognise the devil in people's eyes, or
at least sense its existence, so that he might have been able to help
himself before he was clamped into the vise. Too young to know
that when time awards the devil’s handprint an iron mark, it never
washes away.
So, I must tell the story of Benjamin's life in Panule.
prose • jurij hudolin
52
1.
Leaning on a pile of beer crates by the storeroom door behind
the bar Loris showed off as he looked over his restaurant, his inheritance and, admittedly also something he worked hard for. He
looked over it proudly and prophetically, as if he were the owner of
the entire world and in control of all the fatal words the creator of
the universe ever spoke. Senad, the waiter, was afraid to look him in
the eye if he needed to ask him something, usually to do with the
bills that he issued depending on the degree of intoxication of his
guests. He didn't bat an eye when he rantedand hissed “more pepper”, and Senad knew that the price of the services provided had
gone up by a third on everything the guests had consumed. Senad’s
mental turmoil was how to justify this one and what lies to come up
with if the guests decided to indulge in an unexpected financial
dessert; Čivitiko only ever intervened if any one of the guests had to
be chucked out head first through the revolving doors into the parking area. Everyone always paid. Loris had a hand the size of a shovel and cared not about the prudence of his stroke. He used it on his
own turf and when Senad pleaded with him that there had been
enough violence and that the bill-querying guest was barely showing any signs of life, he shouted: “Just don't make me humiliate him
further and force him to suck cock on top of all this!”
On a stuffy August evening in 1987, with the Ferragosto drawing to a close and the overheated dusty air scattering about its energy of base instincts, the terrace of Loris Čivitiko's restaurant Terens
in Panule was full of Italians. The night’s ‘black catch’ filled the
tables with lots of acqua minerale, vino blanco, Pelinkovac and
Amaro. Čivitiko always tricked the Italians. They were prepared to
pay double, as long as the feast was properly laid out from the
beginning. He didn't have to beat up Italians. In a way, he actually
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liked them, though he always sang “Amara terra mia” to himself
when he saw the mess they left behind on the tables, under them
and everywhere else on the property. Senad was nervous and
worked up, barely managing to serve the twelve long tables on his
own, with Čivitiko's eyes constantly watching the trays he was holding like a hawk.
“Dio porco, hurry up Senad, are you made out of straw or what?”
he would hasten him during the August holidays, while feasting on
Italian swearwords. When Čivitiko returned from the kitchen
where he was chucking slices of lemon into jugs of hot water, with
Senad immediately taking them out to the tables so the Italians
could clean their fingers after their scampithon, a fat Italian in hunting gear was waiting for him at the bar. Obviously into some kind
of hunting tourism and inappropriately drunk for an Italian hedonist, he was furiously waving his arms around, sputtering: “Merda,
merda, merda!”
His right hand was covered in blisters, redder than a cooked
lobster or his beefy face. After a brief discussion Čivitiko bellowed: “Senad!”, making the entire terrace shake and everyone
turn and stare.
Knowing that this meant all hell was about to break loose,
Senad came sidling up to the bar, cajoling like a weasel. Čivitiko
grabbed him by the collar and pushed him past the crates into the
storage room.
“You pig! You scalded the fat guy, and he's furious! And he
ordered more drinks which you still haven't brought to his table!”
“Boss, it happens, I didn't want to get you involved in the disgrace, and I did forget the man's drinks. But I'm no octopus, I only
have one pair of hands!” Senad, for the first time and to Loris' great
astonishment at the unexpected courage of his waiter, even raised
his voice a tone. Čivitiko bent over the much shorter Senad, pressing his nose into his subordinate’s nose, instantly causing Senad’s
forehead to produce drops of cold sweat.
“You apologize to the fat guy or I'll have these,” Loris squashed
Senad’s balls so hard that he squealed like a dog that senses its final
trip to the vet.
Senad poured out a generous shot of a strong spirit and stepped
out to face the fat man who was fixing his Brilliantine-stiffened
hairdo with his short sausage fingers, whining.
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“Cameriere, cameriere,” the man nodded his head and waved
both hands around like a monkey.
“Fuck you, pig,” Senad hissed as he placed the drink down in
front of him, managing to spill a little over the edge of the glass.
It was a mistake. As he turned around, the huge shovel-like hand
hit him so hard that he fell across the table, rolling off and under
the next one where people were already getting up to leave.
“I'm the owner here! All this is mine! Don’t fuck with me!”
Čivitiko yelled, ignoring the presence of all the guests.
Loris grabbed Senad by the hair and dragged him off to the loos
from where the sound of breaking tiles could be heard. It sounded
like a ceramic tile cutter metronomically set to a semibreve.
When Čivitiko returned he was wiping his hands with a paper
towel and seemed quite unruffled. Singing “Amara terra mia”, he
gathered up all the lira the Italians had left on the tables in fearful
haste, and poured himself a glass of mineral water at the bar.
Despite his being six-and-a-half feet tall and having a muscular
appearance, he looked as tame as a kitten when he approached the
only remaining table of guests. Smiling pleasantly, he apologized
that life also brings a burden of conflicts that we all have to deal
with patiently, but with a creature like Senad sometimes one has no
choice but to use force. He explained that he had sacked him and
swore he was only going to hire waitresses from now on. He went
on to explain how the little Bosnian son-of-a-bitch must have lined
his pockets with a whole load of his money in the two years he had
been feeding him and allowing him to live in one of the holiday
caravans. This would surely teach him that life is like a staggering
wheel that can easily get stuck in the mud when you are ungrateful
to those who have shown you kindness.
He kissed Ingrid who was trembling with fresh love, stroked
Benjamin’s hair and said: “Welcome to Panule.”
2.
There were around fifty houses in the village, belonging to the
native inhabitants of Panule and their relatives. According to village
tradition they all despised each other and spat at one other when
they met. If they did speak to another villager it was only to slander
someone else and when they met this other person they would
mock someone else; however, at the first sign of a stranger step-
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ping onto their patch, even if it was just a farmer from the neighbouring village, they all joined forces. There were around seventy
Čivitikos in Panule, if they weren't Loris's brothers they were his
cousins, nephews, aunts or uncles twice removed. The village
might as well have been called Čivitikodom. No property was
smaller than fifty acres and, to prevent one brother from striking
another brother over the head with a hoe if one dared to plough a
few inches into his land, all plots were precisely measured out and
carefully fenced. Life’s motto for all the Panule locals was:
“I'm the owner here!”
In September Panule locals changed from tourist workers to land
farmers, cattle breeders and multifaceted business men, though
Benjamin never understood quite what kind of business was actually involved. Normally cows, a few horses and some pigs don't get
you a row of houses, your own caravan park and a vacation home on
the coast just a mile outside the village. Though Čivitiko deposited
crateloads of money in his safe in a good tourist season, it is still hard
to imagine that, in the three summer months, one could amass the
small fortune the Čivitikos of Panule accumulated. It later emerged
that most of it was their inheritance. In a way this pleased the twelve
year old Benjamin as it reminded him of Dynasty, which so fascinated him at the time. It was like the Carringtons, not in a made-up soap
or pulp, but in the real landscape, the real story and real life of the
local Čivitikos. There was no phone in Panule or in the neighbouring
villages. The nearest post office was in Rakična, five miles away and
only from there could one make a phone call in private. The local primary school was also in Rakična, attended by children from all the
surrounding villages. The headmaster there also had a telephone,
one that would later become a source of shame to Benjamin and
make him blush with embarrassment.
Benjamin took the bus to school. It picked up all the children
from the surrounding villages and settlements and was run by
Nandu, a fat alcoholic but professional driver who was an hour or
so late at least once a week, and it was fairly obvious why.
Sometimes he didn't turn up until near eleven o'clock and then
honked his horn around Panule, with the usual cigarette in his
mouth and a hip flask showing from the pocket of his ever
unzipped overalls. The missed lessons never had to be made up,
and Nandu vehemently continued to cock about behind the steer-
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ing wheel until the end of his life. He was at that steering wheel
when he was washed away into metaphysics. At the time Benjamin
was finishing secondary school, Nandu lost control of his vehicle
on a straight stretch of road and plowed into a stone house in a
nearby field, wearing his overalls with the usual flask in his pocket
of course. It was only later, with a touch of amnesia, that the sudden end to the driver's story was rumoured to have been caused by
a heart attack rather than his hip flask.
On the first day of school in Rakična, a town kid came who was a
child from another part of the country that was, throughout
Yugoslavia, including Panule and the surrounding villages, considered the richest and most progressive. Benjamin Zakrajšek was the
son of the renowned Loris Čivitiko, whom everyone admired for his
wealth and inheritance, a Slovene and an excellent student on top of
all this, with a school report stamped in a city school. Loris himself
drove up to the school gate with a dressed up and petrified
Benjamin, who was by now already mastering the Croatian language, peppered with local Istrian phrases, that was the official language at the school. A sort of tangled up linguistic mixture where various Slavic dialects, as well as Italian influences, were bundled up in
an articulation accepted, understood and spoken by all the locals.
This meant no more streets, no more traffic lights, no more
shops on every corner, no more old friends, no more football training, no more piano lessons, no more time spent waiting with Ingrid
for Valter to come home for lunch. He was now in a village where
cows grazed in front of the school, where the nearest traffic lights
were twenty miles away and where the hub of relevance was the
local pub; apart from this and animals, there was little else around.
When he had to introduce himself to the fifteen boys and girls in
his new class whose fathers were all well aware that he had become
Loris Čivitiko’s son, Benjamin was overcome by a strange childlike
sadness topped with a bout of adolescent blushing.
In a village news spreads fast, but the truth is inclined towards
the iron hand and money.
3.
Since Ingrid's main role now was as a housewife, lunch was usually already waiting on the table for Benjamin when Nandu dropped
off the six school children from Panule in the centre of the village.
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Čivitiko promised to pay her pension contributions, but it
turned out a few months later that he had forgotten his promise. A
regime of absolute patriarchy prevailed in Panule. Finances were in
the hands of men who dealt with their businesses and went to
work; women were in charge of the kitchen, the animals and the
fields. And they were beaten if anything went wrong. The shutters
in the house of Loris' cousin Dejan – who had, just as Loris had
done with Benjamin, adopted Benjamin's class mate Dalen in a
package deal with a new wife – were always down. Dalen limped
and never played football. Benjamin had never seen Dalen's mother. No one was ever allowed to visit Dalen since Dejan always kept
the gate to the yard and all the doors in the house firmly locked. He
could occasionally be seen on the tractor, stacking up the wood or
on his way to muck out the pigsty. Dalen's toes were permanently
stuck together by the blood that oozed out of them, flattened,
squashed and battered like a marinated piece of meat before you
stick it on the barbecue. For each mistake and every time he didn't
finish his chores on time, he was whacked on his toes by the flat
handle of a spade or an axe. People knew about this, but it was not
something anyone would ever talk about. This was Dejan's speciality, his endemic gourmet dish, and only rarely did he hit Dalen on
any other part of his body or in any other way, even when he was
in a hurry. It was, apart from a few rumours, never openly mentioned at school and, of course, there was never a psychologist or
social worker there anyway. It was not mentioned, so it wasn't happening. Except for Dalen. Benjamin thought it strange and often
felt sorry for him, but he then always figured Dalen must be so very
naughty that he deserved punishment. At the time, in his innocence, he accepted that this is the way some people educate their
offspring or any strays they happen to be in charge of feeding. At
lunch time Benjamin would get a daily list of tasks awaiting him as
the day progressed towards sunset. Take the goats out to graze,
clean out the pig sty, chop up the wood, dig this ditch or move that
pile of sand; Loris was forever extending the summer terrace or
building something, just to show to the world that his property was
continuously growing and improving. In the evening there was the
work in the restaurant known simply as the Taverna that Loris
owned in the centre of the village, though the court case between
his brother and him as to who was the true heir of this eating estab-
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lishment was still unresolved. Farmers from surrounding villages
would come here for sausages and wine, eying each other with
piggy suspicion, like some ruined demagogue. In the autumn and
winter they would sit by the fire place and swear with lazy melancholy about the whole world and the injustices that politics kept
throwing their way. The more lively ones would play briscola and,
in their intellectual roughness would always argue passionately as
they played. Occasionally, Loris' brother Mauro would come
around and argue with him over the real ownership of the place.
Guests were used to this more than they were used to breathing in
the sea air and always just waved it off, probably also because, so
far, there was no real physical fighting involved. Benjamin poured
out the wine and took it to the tables with the occasional comment
from Čivitiko about how clumsy he was and how the best thing he
could do was to become a lawyer. Čivitiko had no education. To
the police and everyone else he declared himself a technician.
Technician was the first thing he mentioned when he introduced
himself; entrepreneur, restaurant owner and business man only
came later. It turned out that Čivitiko's unusual kindness at the time
came from the fact that Ingrid was eight months pregnant with his
son. Despite two failed marriages, Čivitiko didn't have any heirs
and wished for a son. If any of the Čivitikos dragged a woman to
Panule whom they then decided they didn't want, they just packed
her bags, threatened her and made her leave. There was no compensation, no courtesy, no nice memories, nor was there ever any
goodbye or good luck; there was no time for such things. They just
had to obey. And give birth to a son. For centuries, land in Panule
belonged to the Čivitikos, and to continue this tradition one had to
have a wife to give birth to a son. This was the driving force and
meaning of existence. Not just any child, but an heir to your land.
Oh, such a damned, stubborn stock.
Of course, at first Benjamin didn't really understand all this,
since for the first six months Čivitiko didn't really have any
demands on him and would never beat him like Dejan did Dalen.
He only beats up bastards and thieves like Senad, thought
Benjamin and was even proud of Loris. Adolescence now truly had
its grip on him, but unlike his town friends in Slovenia, he was left
to his own devices and to working in the fields. Besides school,
where he never had any real friends, the only contact he had with
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people was work in the Taverna, where he would listen to the farmers, drunk more often than not, dreaming away about having a
decent sexual experience. Dreams which, with the woman back
home all haggard and useless, never materialized into even touching the sweet barrenness of her groin. These farmers never got any,
not even from the tourists in the summer, and even Loris would
often bark at them that no woman would even come close to such
vulgar slobs.
Their deliberations were little more than just words, rancidand
sharp, devout desires, a primary form of fiction, metaphysics on
the lowest level. Masturbation and hatred. Because of their sorry
wives they hated women more than they hated their messed up,
wasted lives. In their primitive nature they never realized that they
themselves cultivated the hatred and hyperpotency inside them
and that the world around them was not to blame nor had any
need for the submissiveness of their drained and languid wives
who no longer possessed the will or power to resist.
59
When Ingrid gave birth to Friderik that winter, Loris went all
mad, as if he had just solved an oceanographic mystery the whole
world had been studying. All of Loris' Corleone brothers from
Panule, apart from Mauro, gathered at the feast to celebrate the
event. Benjamin served them not bottles, but buckets full of wine,
and they poured it over themselves and their land. He saw them as
a strange, strong and inexplicably obsessed company.
Loris had his heir. For the first time Benjamin felt a sort of jealousy, he felt hurt that he didn't have a father, that he was just a stray,
an extra, a waiter to the mighty brothers, a servant and a porter, a
lackey without portfolio, a bell-boy, the dregs of the occasion and a
packhorse, though he so much wanted to be part of them and, looking for an idol, tried to find one in Loris Čivitiko. There was no one
else. So he strived to be strong and well built, to haughtily brag
around the neighbouring villages in a cowboy pick-up truck like the
Čivitikos. To be high and mighty and untouchable, to have the power
to drag along and subordinate all and everyone the way it suited him.
Though people in the village and at school said he was Čivitiko's, that
he was also one of them, one of the owners and swaggerers of all the
words in the region, that he was the heir who in years to come would
4.
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be doing anything his heart desired, Benjamin sensed that things
were not quite like that. That he was merely an accessory to the
object that gave Loris an heir. That his excellent marks at school and
his work on the estate meant little. That the gist of the game is blood,
that the story of life runs strictly along blood lines and little else matters. Others are there to be used and discarded once they are no
longer of any use, to roll off into the bushes like a small cogwheel
that is easily instantly replaced, fallen off a huge greed-machine. That
whatever you obtain or grab from others probably stinks in some
way, so the best thing to do is to dispose of it or sell it as soon as
possible, but never ever let inheritance out of your grip; such bad
luck would ruin the lineage. But Benjamin felt comforted by the idea
that, after all, perhaps they did like him, since no one beat him up,
and this was, considering how Loris behaved to others and how
ready he was to growl and lash out, and compared to what was going
on with Dalen, something unusual and extraordinarily kind; it was a
true temple of gentleness. This was an oddity, a difference to be
blessed as sacred or used to motivate a displaced person.
Inevitably, despite his innocence, baby Friderik soured Loris' attitude to Benjamin; he was no longer kind, nor was he wicked, he was
merely official. He churned out orders in a machine-like fashion.
Three months later Friderik was to be baptised. There was a
small, old, neglected church with a few unfinished wall paintings
on its interior next to the school in Rakična. Loris chose Ingrid's sister Filomena as the godmother. She lived in Germany and had a fair
amount of dosh stacked under the mattress. Probably thinking of
his son, but also and primarily thinking of himself.
When the delegation from Germany arrived in Panule in a
Mercedes, Filomena and her and Ingrid's mother exclaimed:
“Where is this! What is this place? How did you end up in a place
that isn't even on the map?”
This was the truth.
“Twice we got absolutely lost down some dirt tracks,” they exaggerated a little. Contempt was born the moment they set eyes on
this god-forsaken place.
Filomena, who was, due mostly to the weight of her wallet and
remembering her fat bank accounts, a little more self-confident and
whom Čivitiko kept vulgarly and blatantly sucking up to, had a go
at her younger sister with a barrage of rude remarks; how she had
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come to the arse end of nowhere, into a backwater without comparison, a place no normal person, let alone a sophisticated and
refined gentleman, would ever dream of setting foot in.
Ingrid's theory that love conquers all only provoked ridicule and
outrage in the eyes of her mother and sister, since, apart from the
messed up marriage with the jovial Valter Zakrajšek, Ingrid had been
through a number of long-term relationships. It turned out that
Čivitiko sweated and sucked up to Filomena, hoping that she would
pay out any cash she intended as a gift for the baptism directly to him.
He was not happy or satisfied with the gift of a gold chain for Friderik.
“Do come in, please do come in, isn't it nice round here, look, I
created all this myself, this is it, this is my place and you are always
welcome here, we have pigs, goats, sheep, cows, dogs and cats, olive
trees, tomatoes, fresh vegetables, a vineyard, yes, I make my own
wine, would you like some, here, let me pour some out for you,
please do, you're welcome, you know, I love you all just like I love
my dear Ingrid and these two golden boys, this is all for them, I
work for them, this is my investment in the future, a blink of immortality, might we not come to an agreement, to co-operate, for you to
invest into this, I am honest, you know I say things straight out,
please don't be taken aback by this, I am hardworking, I achieved all
this with my own two hands, the doors are open to you too, this
place will become a tourist paradise, you'll see, invest your money
here, no need to have it lying idly in the bank, after all you are the
godmother, invest for your nephews, we can co-operate, it'll be nice,
put your money here …” Loris Čivitiko spurted out the words like a
nervous machine gun, shivering with deathly fever, with only the
briefest of pauses due to the saliva accumulating in his mouth.
Čivitiko annoyed Filomena and she told him so in snappy sentences straight to his face. What obscene pigs and tricksters everyone in the business world is. That, to be quite honest, he was even
more slimy than most. She didn't even want to stay the night in
Panule. Nor did Ingrid's mother. By mid afternoon, even before
dessert that Benjamin should have been bringing out to the table,
any possible cash gift dwindled to the realm of Loris Čivitiko's
imagination. He was on his own turf and here he could demand
other people's money, cash in hand, or any shit he wanted! After
everyone had left in a mood of conflict after Čivitiko's unsuccessful
probing for Deutschmarks, the performance began. Loris Čivitiko
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went berserk and the storm burst into full flourish. His defeat concerning the Deutschmarks was not one swallowed easily.
Vanquished on his own territory and to think he had even sucked
up to them; this he could not get past. Sucking up to someone for
nothing! To some boastful fucking gastarbeiters for a pathetic
chain. He was not going to beg for a piece of tarted-up scrap metal!
Frothing at the mouth, humiliated, he could never get over such a
defeat and had to take his revenge on the first person within the
reach of his hand.
“Ingrid!” he screamed with only the whites of his eyes showing, something for which four glasses of wine alone were usually
enough.
“Just listen to me here, you with your fucking Slovene mother, didn't you say that that Kraut cunt of a sister of yours would bring
Deutschmarks with her? What now? No one messes with me like this!”
Then he stopped. He paced up and down like a wounded beast.
Up, down. Up, down. Up, down. Every so often between an up and
a down he spat and growled about stingy bastards and Slovene gastarbeiters.
“Ingrid!” he screamed again, so that Benjamin who was hiding
behind the oven in the kitchen wetted his underwear.
Whack, slap! He hit Ingrid so hard she rolled under the table on
the lawn in front of the house.
“I'll show you! Empty promises. Who do these shitty Krauts think
they are to leave Panule like this. I am the owner here!” he roared. He
took the carry cot with baby Friderik, unaffected in his innocence,
sucking on his dummy, and shut himself in the bedroom.
When Ingrid had wiped away the blood, she hobbled into the
house after him. In his room, Benjamin, hiding under the blanket, was
drowning in tears of fear. At the time he was not yet aware that the
beating of his mother in front of him hurt more than if he himself had
been beaten up. How could he have been aware of it, for this beating
after Friderik's baptism was the first one he had ever seen in Panule
and the first time he had ever seen anyone beat up hismother.
5.
When Benjamin got up the following morning he found his
mother and Čivitiko in the kitchen. She had a black eye and Čivitiko
avoided looking Benjamin in the eye, as if somewhere deep down
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he actually felt uncomfortable in front of the hanger-on. This was
the first time he had ever seen a woman with a black eye, and, in
comparison to Valter's smashed up nose he had once seen – the
result of his father's loud mouth and boasting in some pub – this
was horrible. Čivitiko looked in the other direction as he sent him
to the Taverna, and Ingrid was in a good mood, as if she was in
someone else’s skin, someone who had never been beaten. As if
there was no scandal, no beating, no screaming, no resentment
engraved in Čivitiko's memory. Loris never forgave anyone. To him
this was a sign of weakness, and something that inevitably led to a
humiliating succession of fellating failures.
By then, Benjamin was used to opening up the Taverna on his
own and had mastered a number of things, including adding the
extra one-third that Čivitiko would add to the bill, depending on
the degree of intoxication of his guests. By the time the first farmers and weekend home owners who visited their property
throughout winter, slightly drunk before setting out from home, or
rich townsfolk with large seaside villas, started dropping in,
Benjamin had the fire going, had wiped all the glasses, polished all
the tiles in the washrooms, removed the layers of shit from the toilet and cleaned the coffee machine. Loris never gave him any
money for any of the work he did, not even pocket money and if,
in his ignorance, he did something wrong, he would threaten not
to buy him the pair of trainers he needed. Any pocket money he
did have came either from Valter or from small change Ingrid
would give him out of Loris' wallet, before he started locking it all
up in his safe. With time, he managed to save up for the BMX bike
he yearned for. Some guy from a town, even larger than the town
where Benjamin was born, brought him one the next time he came
to his seaside villa. Valter would probably have brought one if he
had given him his savings, but Loris didn't even want to hear his
name, let alone see him turn up in Panule.
“Stop showing off,” Loris would say to him when, admittedly
slightly boastfully, he rode his BMX around the village.
“Go and work! You sure aren't much like a Slovene,” Čivitiko
would tease him.
Since he had little time left for his bike after all the daily chores,
he decided he would sell it. He didn’t have to look hard for a buyer
as kids from surrounding villages kept coming round, begging him
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to sell the bike to them. He even managed to make some money on
the deal. He put the money in a sock in his drawer. When, three
days later, he opened the drawer to see whether the money was
still there, much like a tight-fisted paranoid might check that it had
not evaporated or that the mice had not started nibbling away at it,
the money was gone. Ingrid knew nothing about it and Loris was
away somewhere in Italy. That night Benjamin couldn't sleep.
At five in the morning the door to his room, hinges included,
crashed within inches of Benjamin's head.
“You motherfucking bastard! How dare you sell my things! You
thief! Give me my money back!” Loris raged, kicking him in the
neck as he was still lying down.
Benjamin managed to jump up and slip under Loris' legs, out
into the corridor, down the stairs and out of the house. Barefoot,
wearing only his underpants he ran across the estate, jumped over
the fence and into the neighbouring forest. He ran through the
undergrowth, tripping over branches until he reached the sea.
There, he dragged himself into an abandoned holiday caravan.
Then he started to think about what he had done wrong to make
Loris so livid; he never took any money from the till or from the
draw; occasionally he stuck a tip into his pocket, despite Loris'
orders that this was not allowed. The money from the bike was his,
since it didn't come from Loris' pocket. It was freezing cold and
the sound of the crashing waves and the howling wind in the dark
just added to his fear. He started talking to himself, apologizing as
if his heart and brain were truly marked by some vile and shameful act that he could never excuse to the world. He waited to hear
Loris' shouting – this was horrifying and made him even more
scared for his life than the beatings. He rummaged around the caravan and found a piece of a falling apart tent. Wrapping himself in
it, he listened closely in case Loris was already near the caravan,
laughing at the naivety of his prey and at the loud beating of
Benjamin's heart. All this was in the realm of paranoia. There was
no one out there but the wind and the beatingwaves; but
Benjamin felt like he was holding his heart in his sweaty palms,
repeatedly asking himself: Why?
At the time he wasn't familiar with Loris' stubborn and persistent
principles, of preying on one’s victim until the moment they least
expected it, and then punish them for everything in arrears.
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6.
65
The following day Čivitiko took the pick-up truck he used to
transport animals, crates, wood, meat, people, rubbish and slops
and drove off towards the town of Teslić in Bosnia. Here he had
connections as well as his own trading post for hiring seasonal
workers. He would stick them in the dilapidated trailer on the edge
of his property and introduce them to the harsh rules of business.
The workers slogged away from early morning well into the
evening. They worked on the land, waited on tourists, herded and
fished, undertook building work, cooked slops for the animals and
picked olives. There was no task Loris would not assign to them.
Admittedly he himself was capable and experienced in all these
jobs and that was why he demanded at least as much from others
if they wanted a wage as he could accomplish himself. He demanded that the seasonal workers knew in advance how things were run
and expected them to perform each task at the same level as the
locals who had been doing the job all their lives. In most cases they
were sent packing back home with a pittance or an even greater
hole in their pocket than the one that brought them to Panule in
search of food and work in the first place.
He hardly spared another thought for Benjamin or the audacity
he had shown in trying to sell off his stuff. What cheek the little
Slovene had in thinking he could try himself out in business on his
land. He would just have to be stricter. If the lad continued to muck
about he would just have to stick his face into the steaming pile of
manure in front of the barn. That would surely make him run off
and start doing some serious work. No need for friendly words
from now on. If he wanted to be fed he could jolly well work for it.
His excellent marks at school in Rakična and the rapturousness of
the local teachers over the knowledge he had acquired at school
back in Slovenia, were of little worth in his work. All that was of no
use, nor would it bring in any profit. At best it did the opposite; the
lad has started to flap his wings and thinks that he can take control
of things. Perhaps he even believes he might be in for some inheritance. He should be put straight. Nothing can come of a pedigree
wastrel of a bastard but an ordinary bondsman, a good bondsman
perhaps, a lackey who instead of only loathsome insults and a kick
here and there just might be awarded with the occasional pat or
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even praise from his master. Then he brushed aside all thoughts of
the stepson. He would be easy to restrain. He has nowhere to go
were he to throw him out of his house and banish him from Panule
where he and his gullible mother had come hopping into his care
without two pennies to rub together. Not only into his care but
onto his land where he would brandish his sword, according to his
own creative purposes.
Now his heir was born. Baby Friderik was here and Ingrid
would have to slowly start pulling her weight. True, she gave birth,
but that was not enough. Work calls. The best solution would be to
stick her into the kitchen of the Taverna in winter and at Terens in
summer. The bitch will just have to make the best of the situation.
Whenever he wielded his shovel-like hand she was so scared she
never dared to talk back or assert her opinions. She would silently
plod into the bedroom and open her legs even though she usually
kept her eyes shut. As far as he was concerned she could keep them
shut tight throughout, as long as she kept her cunt available. He
liked this aspect of the relationship to be absolutely clear. He had
been known to throw out quite a few women just because of their
moaning and whining, so if she began screwing up he would not
hesitate to send her away. He would rip out her cunt if he had to.
Now he had an heir.
He was satisfied. He changed gears slowly and drove along
aware that he was the owner and no one could get to him. He
would choose the best workers. Two men and a woman. A sprightly woman. Perhaps he could just push her up against a wall somewhere if he felt the urge. Yes, he would choose one that he could
use to freshen up with the occasional quickie and then push away
like a mangy dog to show her who is in charge. None of the seasonal workers denied him his right anyway. Even mothers with
children. They shut their eyes and allowed him to have his way,
tensing up and imploring him to get it over and done with; the few
hundred deutschmarks they were hoping to gain, dancing in front
of their eyes. Peanuts that he could easily add on to a single bill of
any slightly larger group of intoxicated guests and pay off the hustling vermin. It had been a while since he had stuck his rod into
anyone but Ingrid. He would slowly have to start using it elsewhere
not to forget the variety available. It was imperative he kept his ability to differentiate between women’s genitalia. He always entered
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them feeling triumphant. It was as if he was going over the registry
of his property. A little worse perhaps, since he would never spit
on the mapped-out deeds of his inherited property. With human
beings he never thought twice; humans screw things up; property
remains - far better than people. His heir was born, history was
secured, behold a new Čivitiko.
He would be stricter with the workers from now on. They
would not be allowed to lounge about like a bunch of drugged up
snobs on holiday. There would be no dipping into the sea. The
whole purpose of the abdominal nerves is to keep them in constant motion, throbbing like a mechanical device, their owner
afraid to stop even when the master is not around. Who else provides employment that includes a roof over their head and food as
well as the occasional penny for a treat these days? Who else, uh?
Who could deny his benevolence? Who would come up with such
a dirty and disingenuous lie? The fact that they work from dawn till
dusk, through the midday heat in the most exposed sites, laying
concrete at one, two or three o’clock in the early afternoon when
the sun scorches their frail and pale Bosnian bodies, frequently
causing them to faint and fall down like stags shot down in a game
hunt, was irrelevant. They would just have to be tougher. He never
collapses! In any case, he didn’t really care. Why should he bother
with such trivial matters, after all, he was the owner, the boss, the
big dog, the chief, the heir; he was whatever he wanted to be. He
was Loris Čivitiko.
One thing was certain – he would expand. This was of the
essence now. He must have his eyes wide open, stay alert and on
the prowl. No more loose strings, no further indulgencies, no benefaction, not a penny to anyone, no one, nothing. Enough is enough;
they will all work to his whistle. If he felt like it, he could just not
pay any of them at all and see who had the balls to protest.
As he drove into Teslić there were over thirty people waiting for
him, begging for work. He raised his sun glasses, turned around
swiftly on the heels of his polished hobnailed boots and spat on the
ground in front of them. Fucking lazy jobless cunts. What he quietly wished was for them to start fighting amongst themselves over
the wage he offered.
Now he had an heir.
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7.
68
Benjamin, shivering from the cold, wearing only his underpants, draped in the piece of tent he had managed to find, made his
way through the bushesback towards Panule. Curtains were drawn
back slightly and he could sense people moving around behind
closed shutters as he walked through the village. Very soon there
wouldn’t be a soul around who would not be informed about the
young Slovene lad totally losing it. Walking around the village half
naked at ten in the morning; why wasn’t he working? Why wasn’t
he at the wheel of a tractor, or why wasn’t he at school?
Clear evidence that the boy was a freak and an oddball. Reading
books on psychology behind the bar, written by some lying charlatan called Karl May who dreamt of Indians and strange stuff like
that somewhere in the middle of Germany. Now they had proof the
boy was sick in the head, was the gossip among the women in the
village within the hour. The men would get the news by the afternoon. We knew that not all was right with this child; no one else
reads books behind the bar orwhile out herding. Who else could
even think of something like this and at whose expense is this lad
living? Čivitiko should have been tougher with him. He should
have whipped him with a hose or something. Why have we never
seen the lad on a tractor, at least bailing hay and silaging? Our kids
plough the fields in third grade, Dalen even earlier! Who cares that
if he upturned the tractor by mistake he was whacked on his toes
with the axe handle? Dalen now ploughs for anyone who cannot
afford a tractor of their own and Dejan makes good money on it.
Dejan has been training Dalen for the last decade, though there is
still some room for improvement. What about this lad?
It was obvious he was not Čivitiko’s own, people would say sitting around the fireplaces that evening.
Benjamin decided he would risk it. He went through the gates
to the property straight to the house. There was nothing else he
could do. He risked a beating, maybe even permanent damage or
at the least an endless stream of humiliation, but in this state he had
no choice. The police station was thirty kilometres away, and even
if he did manage to get there the cops, all Čivitiko’s allies, were sure
to bring him right back here to be slaughtered like a lamb under
Loris’ blade. But this time he was lucky. Loris was not there. He had
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gone on a business trip, Ingrid told him as she was sweeping the
leaves in the yard. Apparently he had said he would not beat him
for selling his bike and running away. He would arrange for a
week’s absence from school. He would speak to the Headmaster
personally. This meant Benjamin could be initiated into work on
the estate during the day and continue working at the Taverna in
the evenings. All would be fine, Ingrid comforted him; you know
what a quick temper Loris has. But deep down he is a good and
honest man. Yes, honest, she said; he would buy you a hundred
bikes as long as you are not an embarrassment to him. The way you
sold that bike people will think we are penniless. That’s what bothered Loris. Loris says we have to be careful about what people
think. He will not stand for useless pieces of shit delighting in gossiping at his expense. Stop behaving like that and have a rest. Go to
sleep and think about it; stop making me dizzy; we are a family and
a family should stick together; we cannot go about selling each
other’s property, she tried to defend her husband. Anyway, nothing serious happened, she added. Benjamin shivered despite being
covered with numerous blankets. He did not understand. He stared
at the bloody mark on the wall where he had killed a mosquito with
his trainer a few days earlier.
69
Translated by Gregor Timothy Čeh
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Iva Jevtić
Gravity
prose
70
There are three objects on my desk. When I look away, they
move somewhatsubtly but decisively changing the desk’s configuration. They find this funny.
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When I was a child I was afraid of the dark. My parents told me
not to swallowpips because a tree could grow from them, Don’t
swallow pips, the world leans towards growth! I had a night fear and
a day fear, two mutually exclusive fears, since trees don’t grow at
night and days aren’t terribly frightful. Together my fears covered
twenty-four hours.
prose • iva jevtić
71
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Snowmen everywhere.
Just here and there a field without hands, empty of children to
work the snow into head body ball instead of just feet.
Snowmen have eternal drive.
At other times they live invisibly, in rain. In leaves and grass,
in tears, in the slow pulse of blood – snowmen are everywhere.
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I know a woman who carries the universe inside her.
When she yawns, you can see the stars.
When she breathes and out, I imagine the silence in between.
Sometimes she screams.
Worlds then disappear.
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Last time I stepped down I accidentally crushed an entire city.
Ever since then Ikeep my feet in the air.
Birds nest in them.
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No use screaming into the sky. Snow muffles your voice and
melts in your mouth, on your face, in your palms, and it falls to
the ground becoming fire and stone. Better close your eyes.
75
76
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The only gift, apart from appetite, that God granted family
Radovich, was the gift for stating the obvious.This is why already
my greatgrandfather Ilija once said, Na sirotinju se i zecu
nadigne(Even rabbits hump the poor).
But even though words can kill, it wasn't words that proved fatal
for my greatgrandfather.Greatgrandfather Ilija died because of
boundless appetite.One day during his afternoon nap, after having
eaten, as so often before, too much turkey.
And so we Radovichs are not people of many talents, yet those
we do have are all the more deadly.
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Gravity is boring.
Gravity causes all things to dangle a bit making some of them
fall.
Gravity is a natural law.
My father, a doctor, knows all about natural laws. He knows that
a leads to b that results in c which, in turn, is a universally valid d.
Sometimes he’s right and sometimes he’s not, but it’s difficult to say
when.
One day my father explained to me the natural law of genetics.
He said, Yourson will be a genius.
I said, Why not me?
77
Because of genetics.
If I had a son, his name would be Bor. What I really want is a
chocolate brown Labrador that I could name Bor, a beautiful Slavic
name, but my mother says it’s too good a name for a dog. Instead I
should give it to my son. If I had a son who wasn’t a chocolate
brown Labrador named Bor, he’d be a genius.
Today I’ve overcome genetics and finally sat down to write this
story. With every word I write, I notice a difference. Things aren’t so
much things any more, they’re growing lighter and have stopped
clinging to earth. They’re floating. My father is floating, my mother
is floating and so is most of humanity, both men and women, while
some, still undecided, skip between heaven and earth.
I now walk the earth in the company of animals that are slowly
returning. I am surrounded by cats and dogs, due to the sudden
assault of the skies, birds have come down:peregrinesrobins crows,
the timid wolves thathave descended from the hills. Welike it here.
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From an unknown universe I fell. I’d like to think I share with
others space and circumstances, but this world is only mine alone.
Its edges sharpen the consciousness of air and water. Such noise.
Translated by the author
78
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No trails.
The dry, glassy sand.
What silence!
79
Honey on top
The sound in paradise hollow.
No flames, no birds.
I touch you
to the same music's blossom,
the same world's sway.
Let us be fire,
a barefoot thought
desires us – ash.
You come by darkness,
The air a razor, your
breasts a wound.
Cigarettes &
lips. A body in heat
plays with smoke.
haiku • primož repar, ed. anthology of slovene haiku
haiku
Milan Dekleva
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White birches. Only
snow and the water
of your black hair fall.
The bitter scent of fruit
is not lost. Autumn
falls away.
haiku • milan dekleva
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Jure Detela
Stars swim in silence,
A meadow opens.
Who awaits?
81
The solitude in live birds' flight
getting worse
If one face
speaks
from death
you die.
A stroke of white light
an insect pinned to the cross.
Rushing, rushing, endless rushing,
rushing in total solitude
A broadened consciousness
a friend on the horizon
A rifle sounds
through mountain herbs
in autumn cold.
A branch I know too well
the garden shadows burst
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With you more than
All poems before. Mallarmé.
February 7th , 1991, Amazement
82
A cruel glimmer in the eyes
the minister prepares
to speak.
Father,
how come streams don't sleep
at night?
haiku • jure detela
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Alenka Zorman
83
peach buds
his glance
under by blouse
child's eyes
rolling to the ball
in the shop-window
a rose bud
opens its petals –
she, her tiny fingers
ebb tide
a small sea
only in my navel
friends are far away
a single spider's thread
in the moonlight
Translated by Alenka Zorman
in mother's lap
her newborn
and a sunbean
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Darja Kocjančič
84
postcard from the seaside –
on the tottery table
coffe splashes
two deep blues –
supplesness of wave
on seagull's sparking wings
evening in a tavern:
you, me
and a mayfly
footsteps in front of the door –
all he has, the refugee gives:
a toothless smile
clockseller's shop:
each customer shows
his own time
Translated by Alan McConnell Duff
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Josip Osti
In midsummer
I warm my chilly palms
by the flame of flowers.
85
There are times when
dandelion flowers are –
stars of David.
A snowflake fell
into your eye
and became a tear.
Wind of space
shaking a black treetop.
Stars fall.
Gregorian chant
of birds and steps
of dawn on the moss.
A blind man is looking at me.
As I look at
the invisible.
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For birds, flowers, and for me
the gold coin in the sky
is quite enough.
All night the dog's bark
finds no way out
from the deep dark.
Translated by Alan McConnell Duff
haiku • josip osti
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Rade Krstić
escaping wind
a cactus twig
in hand
87
a horse eats
fresh grass
a cherry on top
an army of ants –
no, they are grains of earth
raised by rain
a peacock,
his shadow
on a blooming bush
restless flies
among crumbs
of old bread
an open window
has gathered all
the night
in outside wind
drunkards' hands
stretch
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black ivy
and sadness
so great
living knurs
of clouds
into the fire
88
in front of a mirror
a dazed child
with a toy
on the anvil
mysterious
insects
white caterpillar,
white tulip,
winter
haiku • rade krstić
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Jože Štucin
89
Rustle of keys.
She, a virtual lover
writes me a letter.
A puppy at the door.
Love towards his master
drinking beer.
The black moonshine –
The kisses of Jesus
Are the metastases.
Translated by Alenka Zorman
A firefly in the grass.
Greed for revelation
uncovers a worm.
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Dimitar Anakiev
90
old barracks –
among young trees
the ruins
sun glare –
clear water murmurs
over stones
leaves in water –
at the pool bottom
shadows whirling
stalactite
I check
my watch
squeezed in a storm
stones and roots
white mountain –
a little cloud
on its top
craggy stone –
the cobweb droops
into frost
Translated by Jim Kacian
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Primož Repar
Wood amid garden:
a deer stares astonished
at a man
91
Lucky Strike
in sprucewood's crown a soul
strikes a match
moss,
the headrest
of the moon
woods, bells
bells, woods
god rings very smoothly over the rims
A monk's life:
water, cliffs, plants and birds.
No man in sight …
Reflections of light
on the lake. The holy face
of the great Icon.
A wonder
my mother's smile
back from eternity
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A red-hot sword melting
the heart: another god is entering
an unknown eyeball.
The face of a chamois
is asking, What is your intention,
Doe
92
One single glance of yours,
you evil murderer of faces,
makes my eyes swell.
haiku • primož repar
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Tone Škrjanec
93
at first the rabbit,
then the path
disappears in the grass.
trembling apricot branch,
was it the sparrow
or the wind?
sky or sea?
only the fish
can tell.
this morning
even the grass
smells like cherries.
not blossoms,
but children
in the cherry tree.
Translated by Joshua Beckman
five o clock. two suns
and a fly on my knee.
that’s it.
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Josip Osti
A Selection of Haikus from »I Love Life,
yet Death Loves Me.«
94
Awakened again
by the flute of Pan. And all
is in my garden.
As I lift the crust
of dry leaves – the snowdrop bloom
catches sight of day.
From the buds I hear
a quiet song. Tomorrow
the peach will blossom.
The almond blossoms
quietly, not to awake
the sleeping apple.
haiku
You talk to the still
alive, while I talk to
the already dead.
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All lies beneath the white
snowbandage along with
the wound of the world.
If I'm in love with just one
snowflake, at the same time
I'm in love with the whole world.
In winter, time is also
white and lost
wandering in the dark.
95
It smells of snow
and the countless shades
of its colour.
From snow
I have learnt much.
Not only about silence.
All that I can see
is snowbound. Perhaps
even the universe.
I see only white,
and what I do not see
is also white.
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I am the answer
to a question I did not
ask of myself.
All my houses are
empty. Except for the last
one, which will be, too.
96
Placed in a garden
I am a pupil of the birds and blossoms
calmly awaiting death.
I hear the wind
already playing the flute
made from my bone.
The circle is
enchanted: I love life, yet
death loves me.
Selected by Jure Novak
Translated by Alan McConell-Duff and Jure Novak
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From Detachment to Pleasure
Feminist Film Theory and/in the Cinema (a study
in Dangerous Liaisons 1988, Stephen Frears)
97
Introduction
I often wonder how you managed to invent yourself.
I had no choice, did I? I’m a woman.
(Dangerous Liaisons, scene 11: Mme de Metreuil to
Vicomte de Valmont)
As Sigmund Freud has written, the libido is only one
and it is male: hence, there is no femininity – it is a concept which leans on the definition of masculinity, a reaction to it, re-dressing of it. Femininity is hollow in itself,
without substance: it has to be invented. But what does
the invention overwrite? What does it conceal?
Joan Riviere, another psychoanalyst, has discussed femininity in her famous study Womanliness as a masquerade:
“Womanliness therefore could be assumed and worn as a
mask, both to hide the possession of masculinity and to
avert the reprisals expected if she was found to possess it –
much as a thief will turn out his pockets and ask to be
searched to prove that he has not the stolen goods. The
reader may now ask how I define womanliness or where I
draw the line between genuine womanliness and the ‘masquerade.’ My suggestion is not, however, that there is any
such difference; whether radical or superficial, they are the
same thing.” (Riviere 1991: 213)
Mary Ann Doane (1991) has written about Joan
Riviere’s concept of masquerade as a possible subjective
gender
gender
Ana M. Sobočan
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gender • Ana m. sobočan
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position of female spectators. In her view, psychoanalytic theory
and film theory, as well as mainstream cinematography deny the
female gaze or over-identify it with the image, and therefore it
becomes blind, desireless. The female spectator is a point of oscillation between the female and male position and calls for the
metaphor of transvestism. A woman that identifies herself with the
female character must, by the structure of the narrative, accept
either a passive or a masochistic position, whereas ‘masculanization’ of the spectator. Mulvey’s influential theory has been questioned many times, especially from the point of view that she does
not leave any possibility of a female not masochistic or transvestitelike taking pleasure in watching a film: the first possibly connected
to patriarchal submissiveness, the second to lesbian identification.
Applying theory to (film) text(uality), in this essay, I will focus
on Dangerous Liaisons (1988), a film by Stephen Frears, which won
three Academy awards1, and from that perspective might be regarded as a mainstream film. Closely studying selected visual and textual segments of this film, I will consider if visual representation follows or is supported by the dialogues and discuss the implications
proposed on these grounds. Through the lens of Laura Mulvey’s
(1992) spectatorship theory I will examine if this film can be read a
feminist work and explore whether it leaves space for the female to
enjoy watching it. I will expand on these investigations by revisiting
Mary Ann Doane’s (1991) theory on masquerade attempting to
connect the masquerade in the spectator with the masquerade of
the protagonists in the film. The objective of this paper is to present
psychoanalytic film theory in brief and then sketch a possible film
analysis. I expect to find the psychoanalytical theories in many
ways insufficient for the possibility of female enjoyment and identification in the film, since they have all arisen from the work of a
man who has never questioned himself: Was das Weib will? Or,
even more provocatively: Was will das Weib?
I. Who’s (That) Woman?
a) The ‘nature’ of a woman
The social presence of a woman is different in kind from that of
a man. A man’s presence is dependant upon the promise of power
1 For: best adapted screenplay, best art direction/set decoration and best costume design.
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which he embodies. If the promise is large and credible, his presence is striking. If it is small or incredible, he is found to have little
presence. The promised power may be moral, physical, temperamental, economic, social, sexual – but its object is always exterior
to the man. A man’s presence suggests what he is capable of doing
to you or for you. His presence may be fabricated, in the sense that
he pretends to be capable of what he is not. But the pretence is
always towards a power which he exercises on others.
By contrast, a woman’s presence expresses her own attitude
towards herself, and defines what can and cannot be done to her.
Her presence is manifest in her gestures, voice, opinions, expressions, clothes, chosen surroundings, taste - indeed there is nothing
she can do which does not contribute to her presence. Presence for
a woman is so intrinsic to her person that men tend to think of it as
an almost physical emanation, a kind of heat or smell or aura.
To be born a woman has been to be born, within an allotted and
confined space, into the keeping of men. The social presence of
women has developed as a result of their ingenuity in living under
such tutelage within such a limited space.
But this has been at the cost of a woman’s self being split into
two. A woman must continually watch herself. She is almost continually accompanied by her own image of herself. Whilst she is walking across a room or whilst she is weeping at the death of her
father, she can scarcely avoid envisaging herself walking or weeping. From earliest childhood she has been taught and persuaded to
survey herself continually.
And so she comes to consider the surveyor and the surveyed
within her as the two constituent yet always distinct elements of her
identity as a woman.
She has to survey everything she is and everything she does
because how she appears to men, is of crucial importance for what
is normally thought of as the success of her life. Her own sense of
being in herself is supplanted by a sense of being appreciated as
herself by another.
Men survey women before treating them. Consequently how a
woman appears to a man can determine how she will be treated. To
acquire some control over this process, women must contain it and
interiorize it. That part of a woman’s self which is the surveyed so
as to demonstrate to others how her whole self would like to be
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treated. And this exemplary treatment of herself by herself constitutes her presence. Every woman’s presence regulates what is and
is not ‘permissible’ within her presence. Every one of her actions –
whatever its direct purpose or motivation – is also read as an indication of how she would like to be treated. If a woman throws a
glass on the floor, this is example of how she would wish it to be
treated by others. If a man does the same, his action is only read as
an expression of anger. If a woman makes a good joke this is an
example of how she treats the joker in herself and accordingly of
how she as a joker-woman would like to be treated by others. Only
a man can make a good joke for its own sake.
One might simplify this by saying: men act and women appear.
Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at.
This determines not only most relations between man and women
but also the relation of women to themselves. The surveyor of
woman in herself is male: the surveyed female. Thus she turns herself into an object – and most particularly an object of vision: a sight.
(Berger 1975: 45-47).
b) Mirror, mirror on the wall
Studying the history of visual representation, namely painting
(film being a very young artistic expression), John Berger (1975)
discusses the use of a mirror, often regarded as a symbol of a
woman’s vanity, in painting women.2 More importantly, the mirror
was present to connive a woman into treating herself as, first and
foremost, a sight. She joins her spectator in looking, just to offer up
her femininity as the surveyed.
The first scene of Dangerous Liaisons opens with a mirror
image of a woman, studying her visage, touching it gently with her
fingers, caressing her cheeks, putting on a gentle smile… she
inspects her image in the mirror, her left side, her right: she enjoys
what she sees. Then she averts her gaze and starts to comb her hair.
Sitting behind a desk with a mirror, her rich, lively but darkish
frame against the morning light as the sun shines on her in her
sleeping gown. The beginning of a new day.
2 Which was off course just a sham, a hypocrisy: by painitng vanity, one could paint
a woman that was naked without raising any moral objection (cf. also Berger 1975).
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In the next scene we see men coming from the dark, entering
a room, pouring water with silver jugs; one offers a handkerchief
to a person under the bedcovers: he waves with it – what could
signify defeat.
The woman sitting, in her corset, a maid putting cream on her
breasts. A man tweezing hair from her nose and another polishing
her nails. She, standing as a marionette while being dressed in her
crinoline. A man’s hands showing another man a pair of shoes. She,
sniffing perfume, while someone dresses her in jewellery. A variety
of wigs on stands: he, pointing to one with a mask. A close-up of
her breasts: pinning her dress to her slip. A corset being tightened.
He, holding a mask to his face, his toupee being powdered. A closeup of the mask: he takes it off, staring directly at the camera – is it a
mirror? The camera is lowered showing a man drawing his sword
from the left. The woman enters a room, stops, stares at the camera.
He looks ahead once more, then leaves. Driving a carriage and
arriving at a mansion. Credits end.
The mirror-scene with Mme Merteuil is followed by alternating
syntagmas showing her getting dressed up in the presence of
Vicomte de Valmont, protagonist of Dangerous Liaisons. The opening of the film presents the third party in the game of love and
deceit, an image full of meaning: a woman’s hands, a bracelet of
pearls on her right wrist; she holds a letter, sealed with red wax,
addressed to Mme de Tourvel – the inscription inside bears film’s
title – Dangerous Liaisons. The music is strong, almost terrifying in
the beginning, reaching a climax as the letter is opened, and then
silence. This scene informs us that we are in an age when letters
were still written with ink (and goose feathers for that matter, which
the calligraphy handwriting gives away) and were sealed with wax.
The jewellery suggests that the drama takes place among affluence
(petite aristocracy as we later find out), and will be directed by a
woman since the hands are those of a female (we later recognize
the same bracelet on Mme Merteuil’s hand).
From the first few minutes of the film we can conclude what the
conflict will be, and who its agents are. The meaningful iconography of the mirror-scene connotes a relation with Jacques Lacan’s
mirror image: the making of a subject with the aid of a mirror
image which reflects the person as a complete entity. Importantly,
this first scene is followed by Mme de Merteuil and Vicomte de
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Valmont, persons as social subjects, dressing-up: they are both
‘being created’, by their choice of shoes, the appearance of their
dress, their perfume, their jewelry… And what is more significant,
the alternating images of a man and a woman following the mirrorscene implies that this may be the making of two representatives of
the same principle of social conduct. Merteuil and Valmont are in
fact holding up narcissistic mirrors to one another.
The entire film features mirrors: in its theatre-like staging, these
18th century apartments have mirrors in place of paintings on the
walls, doors are hidden behind the cover of mirrors, chandeliers,
made of thousands reflecting parts are almost like mirrors. The act of
looking is immensely important and is also inscribed in the dialogues: “It’s just that looking at you makes me weak,” are the first
words with which Valmont declares his love to Mme de Tourvel, and
than follows her to her room peakng through her keyhole to reassure
himself that he is gaining control over her. During his visit to Mme
Merteuil, Valmont notes how she manipulates Mme de Volanges,
their common enemy, first by hiding behind the paravan, and later by
watching her in the large wall-mirror, also where Valmont for an
instant recognizes his own reflection and realizes he has to find a better hiding place. Cécile, after being forced to spend the night with
Valmont, cannot stand his stares, how he looks at her at breakfast,
and she runs to her room in tears. Later Merteuil comes to have a talk
with her, and sternly while looking at herself in the mirror and fixing
her hat says, “You’ll find that shame is like pain. You only feel it once,”
she explains, more to herself than to Cécile. “You don’t have to speak.
Just look at me,” Valmont invites Mme de Tourvel to express her love
for him, and he explains to Merteuil: “I feel she is inches from surrender. Her eyes are closing,” – she is losing her ‘look’, she is surrendering. In a conversation between Merteuil and Valmont, when he says:
“Surely I have explained to you before how much I enjoy watching
the battle between love and virtue,” she replies, challenging him:
“What concerns me is that you seem to enjoy watching it much more
than you used to enjoy winning it.”
From these examples we can clearly see that looking in
Dangerous Liaisons is most of all about power. “You see, until I met
you, I had only ever experienced desire. Love, never. […]” continues
Valmont in his conquest for Tourvel, “I’m not going to deny that I
was aware of your beauty, but the point is, this has nothing to do
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with your beauty”: looking is actually not about desire but about
falling under the spell of how the object of the gaze looks or
appears (as may Valmont insinuate in his love-statements to
Tourvel), not about blindness coming from looking, but about the
power exercised from the act of looking, surpassing the object’s
desirability (as can be seen in the latter quote).
The one who is looking, who is able to look, has the power over
the other, as in the cases of Valmont in relation to Cécile and
Tourvel, but interestingly, Merteuil is expressing another dimension of looking: looking is not yet winning, as she points out. The
one who is watching is not winning, but is just passively present, as
Valmont is, when he is watching the manipulating play of Merteuil
over Mme Volanges. It seems that for Valmont, his look is crucial for
his victory, but for Merteuil, it has to go deeper and be more complex. Following Berger (1975), we might deduct, that Valmont’s
presence, his being a man, the looks of him suggests power and
thus, also his look, his gaze, is power. While for a woman, for
Merteuil, her presence is her ‘gestures, voice, opinions, expression,
clothes, chosen surroundings, taste.’ He ‘acts’, she ‘appears’. But
still, is Dangerous Liaisons surpassing this dichotomy?
103
Scene 3
Merteuil
Valmont
Merteuil
Valmont
Merteuil
Do you know why I summoned you here this
evening?
I’d hoped it might be for the pleasure of my company.
I need you... to carry out a heroic enterprise. You
remember when Bastide left me?
Yes.
And went off with that fat mistress of yours whose
name escapes me.
c) The three Graces
Is Merteuil really just appearing? In concordance with Merteuil’s
famous principle: “Win or die”, she alone is the winner of
Dangerous Liaisons. Still, being a woman, confined to her body
and codex of appropriate behavior, especially in this highly theatrical period of the history in which the whole drama is set, she has to
use a man (as her tool, notably).
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Valmont
Merteuil
Valmont
Merteuil
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Valmont
Merteuil
Merteuil
Valmont
Merteuil
Valmont
Merteuil
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Yes, yes.
No one has ever done that to me before. Or to you I
suspect.
I was quite relieved to get rid of her, frankly.
No you weren’t. For some years now, Bastide has
been searching for a wife. He was always unshakeably prejudiced in favour of convent education.
And now he’s found the ideal candidate.
Cécile Volanges.
Very good. [...]
He stands in a close-up. She is behind him, on his
left. He stares straight ahead as if he was watching
himself in a mirror.
Love and revenge. Two of your favourites.
It’s too easy. She has seen nothing. She knows nothing. She’s bound to be curious. She’ll be on her
back before you’d unwrap a bunch of flowers. Any
one of a dozen men could manage it. I have my
reputation to think of.
I can see I am going to have to tell you everything.
[...] To seduce a woman famous for strict morals,
religious fervour and the happiness of her marriage...What could possibly be more prestigious?
I think there’s something degrading about having a
husband for a rival. It’s humiliating if you fail and
commonplace if you succeed. [...] I don’t think you
can hope for any actual pleasure.
Oh yes. You see, I have no intention of breaking
down her prejudices. I want her to believe in God
and virtue and the sanctity of marriage and still
not be able to stop herself. I want the excitement of
watching her betray everything that’s most important to her. Surely you understand that. I thought
‘betrayal’ was your favourite word.
No, no. ‘Cruelty’. I always think that has a nobler
ring to it.
From this short transcription of the dialogue between Merteuil
and Valmont we can clearly gather all the important information
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regarding the diegesis, characterization, implicit and explicit
meaning… What is most obvious is who is leading the game and
who is playing it in Dangerous Liaisons. Due to the mores of 18th
century, it is Valmont who comes to the Merteuil’s salon when he
is summoned. He is hoping that she might find pleasure in his
company (not the other way around, as we might believe), and she
directly declares that she needs him in order to carry out a plan,
which she cannot realize herself. Merteuil knows Valmont completely and doesn’t let him deny anything that might degrade him,
and even points out their possible common wish to take revenge
on the one that has humiliated both of them. This man is now marrying a girl/woman and is expecting her to be a virgin (which is,
again a characteristic of the time), and Merteuil has devised a plan
how to make Bastide’s pride suffer, as she did when he left her for
another woman. It is not a matter of love but a matter of power, victory and an abhorence for defeat. Her plan is to deflower Cécile,
and for that, Merteuil needs a man, herself being a woman and in
no position to do that. Cécile has convent education, which equals
no real-life education, she is simple and young: but what is more
interesting is, she will, eventually accept Valmont’s sexual education in the pleasures of desire and Merteuil’s moral education in
the pleasures of deceiving men (and mothers). After the night of
Valmont’s first visit to Cécile, it is actually Merteuil who experiences victory: image perfectly follows the narrative, the dialogue
and we can see Cécile in desperation writing to Merteuil, we see
her crying, fragile in her sleeping gown, terrified by Valmont’s
banging on her door. Her words complete what is going on, and
we can read/hear her mind in the voice over. When she writes
despair, the sound is off, and two sequences follow: Cécile writing,
Merteuil reading. It is precisely the word despair that connects the
two: despair of one is the victory of the other.
Even if at this point of diegesis, quoted here, this task seems too
simple to Valmont, he will still take it up later and thus become a
tool of Merteuil’s revenge. Valmont himself has other plans, seducing a woman of highest moral values. Valmont’s words evoke
another image, from the film Peeping Tom (1960, Michael Powell),
where a series of women found dead all have a single feature in
common: all have an expression of ultimate horror on their faces.
What have these women seen the moment before their death that
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left such a devastating impression? Peeping Tom is a filmmaker: his
obsession is not to kill these women; this is just the effect of his
more ‘sublime’ plan: to film them when they are at the verge of
death. He films his victims while he is killing them, and the horror
that they see is the reflection of their own faces in the mirror. The
look, literally, is the object of a phantasm. This is precisely
Valmont’s paradigm and his plans with Mme de Tourvel. He wants
her to maintain her virtues and betray them at the same time: this
means she will be conscious that she is doing something she
should not. He wants the consciousness of this ‘death’ to precede
the actual death, and he is excited by that. He wants her to be aware
of her decline.
d) And the winner is…
Even though I do not want to discuss the literary foundations for
the script of this film in detail in this essay, I should mention some
points that may clarify the context of reference, since the film itself
is faithful to this epistolary novel. Les Liaisons dangereuses (1782)
by Choderlos de Laclos is, in literary criticism, often considered a
novel on the war of the sexes, one which dissects the relationship
between women and men that is seen as sexual warfare. Regarding
the title of the novel itself, in present time the word ‘liaison’ has a
connotation of romantic relationship, but at the time it was written,
it did not yet bear this meaning. In the 18th century ‘liaison’ connotated only social relations that were carefully calculated. After all,
much had to do with calculating in the era of the reign of Reason,
and also, the protagonists of these liaisons, Valmont and Merteuil
conduct themselves in the spirit of their time. They are products of
the Enlightenment, where the philosophic spirit associates Reason
with right and Emotion with error. A man as a self-conscious reasonable being can, due to his self-knowledge, independent from
divine or human imperatives appropriately choose between different alternatives; Emotion is an imperative that only confines
Reason. Furthermore, The Enlightenment distinguishes between
those who have, possess Reason and those who do not hold it yet.
The latter may obtain it, through the instruction of the wiser and
thus education becomes of vital importance. In Les Liaisons dangereuses, the importance of education is a prevailing theme: not
only does the narrow education that Cécile and Mme de Tourvel
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have received make them Valmont’s prey, but also their social horizons are dominated by the marriages which were arranged for
them. On this, it may be noted that Laclos is consistent in his criticism of convents and the ‘marriage de raison’.
Laclos’ novel is a metaphor for love that becomes war: the novel’s
symbolic space is that of institutions – of religion and of the society’s
language, its operational concepts are strategy and tactics, its terms
of description confrontation and battle. It is Merteuil who literally
declares war on Valmont, when she, speaking in Freudian terms, in
her mind finally denies her desire of Valmont by converting her loveobject into a rival, an enemy. With this act she also renounces that
what is considered to be essentially feminine: the flesh, carnality. By
transcending her female body, she becomes Valmont’s equal opponent. Until this happens, she doesn’t seem to be a real threat to the
male power. Merteuil has disguised her desire for winning, for dominance, for power – her desire of Phallus. In Lacan’s formulation femininity is like a fetish pretending to hide the possession of or desire
for Phallus, to hide non-existent castration. A latent enemy of
Valmont, Merteuil had presented herself as a future reward, a desire
to be fulfilled, if Valmont would have successfully ‘castrated’ another
woman in this charade of power: Mme de Tourvel.
Mme de Tourvel is an intensely pious and chaste woman, a symbol of a Virgin, who is struggling against Valmont’s desire to make
an object out of her, a ‘real woman’, not just wearing a masque of
femininity like Merteuil. Thus she is a man’s equal, and if I am speaking in war imagery – she can be the man’s equal opponent, like one
of the Amazons, relinquishing her objectification, a real counterwarrior to male armies. Tourvel is entering the fight with her femininity, denying any desire and Merteuil (masquerading her desire),
with her masculinity: for – the libido is male, as Freud tells us, and so
femininity is a dissimulation of the female unconscious masculinity.
Taking into account Riviere’s work on femininity as a masquerade, the young girl, later becoming an intellectual woman, wants
to castrate her father and devour her mother, eliminating them
both. Merteuil is the only survivor of the games of love and
revenge, even literally so: both Valmont (who may be her symbolic father) and Tourvel (who may be her symbolic mother), die in
this Oedipal drama. And what is in it the role of Cécile? She may
be the successor of Merteuil, and thus also the daughter in the
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Oedipal triangle: when in bed with Valmont, he reveals to her that
her mother was just like her in her youth and he also has been on
occasion her lover. Having intercourse with Cécile’s mother
makes Valmont a symbolic or even possibly a biological father of
Cécile. She herself will probably follow in Merteuil’s footsteps,
should she receive enough education.
II.What Does That Woman Want?
108
a) ‘I’ve always known I was born to dominate your sex and
avenge my own.’
Scene 11
Valmont
Merteuil
Valmont
Merteuil
I often wonder how you managed to invent yourself.
I had no choice, did I? I’m a woman. Women are
obliged to be far more skilful than men. You can
ruin our reputation and our life with a few wellchosen words. So, of course, I had to invent not only
myself but ways of escape no one has ever thought
of before. And I’ve succeeded because I’ve always
known I was born to dominate your sex and
avenge my own.
Yes, but what I ask was, how?
When I came out into society I was 15. I already
knew that the role I was condemned to, namely to
keep quiet and do what I was told which gave me
the perfect opportunity to listen and observe. Not to
what people told me, which naturally was of no
interest, but to whatever it was they were trying to
hide. I practiced detachment. I learned how to look
cheerful while under the table I stuck a fork into the
back of my hand. I became a virtuoso of deceit. It
wasn’t pleasure I was after, it was knowledge. I consulted the strictest moralist to learn how to appear.
Philosophers to find out what to think. And novelists, to see what I could get away with. And in the
end I distilled everything into one wonderfully simple principle... win of die.
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b) The masque
Merteuil creates her identity by learning from moralists, philosophers, novelists… and finds a perfect way out of her condemnation,
namely out of being a woman, as the society wants to construct her.
For, in any case, as already Joan Riviere has pointed out, quoted in
the introduction to this essay, there does not exist a ‘real’ femininity: it is a construct, whether imposed by the society or invented by
oneself. The latter option is still more promising, is an agency that
fights the patriarchal power. Looking for what others have to hide,
she herself stayed an enigma. Merteuil, as she says, has practised
detachment, and from her virtuosity of deceit has sprung her pleasure, the pleasure of victory.
The motive of the masque, the masquerade is implied in the first
scene previously discussed, where Merteuil is looking at herself in
the mirror and putting on her feminine ‘face’. She is being dressed
(by other women) in a luxurious, shining dress with a crinoline, making more of her body than there is of it, making up her feminine presence: but there is another ambiguity inherent – a close-up of her
breasts is followed by a close up of pulling the laces, tightening her
corset on her back; it is already here that explicit sexuality meets and
contradicts the high moral principles, as in the whole of the film.
Stephen Frears uses close-ups of the face very often in
Dangerous Liaisons: Face, being the most readable space of the
body because it is revealed and also points to the interior, the
depth, and at the same time it can be a perfect space for disguise
and masquerade. Manipulating expressions on her face, putting on
faces, Merteuil manipulates feelings and reactions of people looking at her. And in a close-up, the face is bigger in reality and creates
an atmosphere of intimacy between the figure on the screen and
the spectator. The face is also that part of the body that is not accessible to the subject’s own gaze, except when it is accessed as a virtual image in the mirror – as in the case of Merteuil. Her virtual
image is the starting point in this film; Merteuil’s virtual image is
how we first perceive it in the film – as a masque.
The concept of masquerade that Joan Riviere discussed in psychoanalysis at the beginning of the century has also been applied
to film theory in the late 80’s in the work of Mary Ann Doane. She
conceptualizes masquerade as a devise that produces a lack in the
form of a distance between a subject and its image, doubling repre-
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sentation and constituted by a “hyperbolization of the accountments of femininity.” (Doane 1991: 26) A woman uses her own
body as a disguise and thus demonstrates a representation of a
woman’s body. By doing this, she is ‘defamiliarizing the female
iconography’, (Doane 1991: 26) destabilizing the image; with that
the masquerade is confronting and subverting the masculine structure of the look, the patriarchal law.
For Joan Riviere, the masque of femininity is a concept, a reaction to female sexual identification, her transvestism: after she has
acquired possession of the Phallus, reached the position of the subject of discourse, rather than its object, the female intellectual from
Riviere’s article felt compelled to compensate for this theft of masculinity. Merteuil also appropriates her visual appearance, her disposal for to-be-looked at, but is at the same time subverting the male
gaze: she lets herself be looked-at by Valmont, but at the same time
declares war on him and does not conform to their agreement of
sexual satisfaction. Merteuil masquerades herself as an object of
desire, whereas it is she who is objectifying the others with the help
of Valmont, and, at the end defeating him too. As Nietzsche has
already written in Gay Science “Woman’s great talent lies in the area
of deception or dissimulation, in what would appear to be the very
opposite of truth: in giving herself, she plays a part, produces herself
as a spectacle.” (in: Doane 1991: 57) Behind this spectacle, behind
this masque, behind the presentation of the subject other than as he
is, there is the ‘opposite of truth’: the visible always having inherent
a lack, which connects the gaze and desire. Merteuil hides her possession of the Phallus, herself as castrated – as a female body is
always reminded of castration in order not to be castrated again.
c) The gaze
Woman, functioning as a symbol of castration, is in patriarchal
society positioned as the man’s ‘other’. Returning to the first chapter of this essay, a woman is turned into an object, an object of
vision, ‘a sight’. Her appearance is appropriated so that it pleases
the man who is looking.
A special, privileged place for looking is the cinema. In the psychoanalytic view, where film can be considered as an imaginary
signifier, representation and identification are processes referred
to a masculine subject, build on and build for a subject of phallic
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desire, where castration is an instance that defines the object
(female) and thus differs it from the subject (male). This situation is
especially difficult for a woman: according to the phallic order3, she
is at the same time the mirror – the reflection of the subject’s gaze,
and the screen – the projection for the subject’s gaze. In the act of
viewing, the spectator identifies with himself as an ‘act of perception’ (Lauretis 1984: 32) as the look, the gaze, and with it, the one
who can do nothing but identify with the camera. The woman here
can be only the ‘cinema’s object of desire’4, the imaginary of the
film, naked and absent, body and sign, and at the same time, image
and representation. Therefore it is not a coincidence that the
woman’s critical attention to the cinema most often insists on
notions of representation and identification in which are articulated the social construction of sexual difference and the woman’s
place, at once both image and viewer, spectacle and spectator.
As the founding text of feminist theory of film, consider Laura
Mulvey’s “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” from 1975.
Mulvey describes the cinema as an activity of looking in which
three different ‘looks’ are involved: the look of the spectator to the
screen, that of the camera to the happening and the acting, and
that of the actors within the film between each other. In classic
cinema these three looks are carefully arranged so that they never
coincide: the camera never looks at the space that the audience
‘occupies’ (the 180 degrees rule), the actors never look down the
axis of the camera. This allows the exploitation of all the pre-existing patterns of fascination already at work within the individual
subject and the social formations that the subject was socialized
into. The cinema offers a number of possible pleasures, the first
pleasure in looking itself, the scopophilic drive directed towards
submitting others to a controlling and curious gaze. This drive is
partly developed into a narcissistic form through which the viewer identifies him/herself with figures perceived as existing outside of the self of the viewer. These two structures of looking exist
in a tension with each other and are crossed by a further pair of
contradictory structures produced within the castration complex:
voyeurism and fetishism. Voyeurism is an active, mobile form,
3 Cf. Lauretis and Doane.
4 Cf. Mulvey.
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associated with the change and narrativization. It demands a
story, depends on making something happen forcing a change in
another person.
The fetishistic representation attempts to abolish the distance
between spectator and representation. Fetishism, according to
Mulvey (1992) is in contradiction with voyeurism: it involves a fixation which impedes narrative, centres on repetition of situations,
on the displaying of the star. Fetishism is a form of looking which
disavows castration and hence sexual difference, whereas
voyeurism involves an acknowledgement of sexual difference in
its attempts to demystify or punish the woman as the object of the
look. Fetishism in Mulvey’s account is disavowal of woman’s lack
of a penis, and therefore should always involve avoiding the direct
sight of the female genitals and finding the substitute penis in particular fetish objects, as is originally implied and explained in
Sigmund Freud’s work, or in the whole figure if the woman is
made phallic. I believe that this phallicism can also be a matter of
sheer representation, constellation of the figures in the setting:
Merteuil, when explaining her plan5 to Valmont is sitting on her
sofa in a barely upright position, which is, at many times opposed
to Valmont’s lying down, half-lying down… but she completely
loses her ‘figure’ when he denies her wish, her phallocentric plan.
But, one of the problems in Mulvey’s theory is, as Jackie Stacey
has suggested (Stacey 1992: 254) that her discussion of the female
figure is restricted only to its function as the masculine object of
desire. Following Mulvey’s line of argumentation, we can see that in
her view, the male is discussed as the subject of the gaze, the one
who looks and the one who looks at the looking-one, and the
female is discussed only as the object which structures the masculine look according to its active (voyeuristic) and passive (fetishistic) forms. Therefore, there is actually no place for the female subject in the whole picture.
All this, of course can be built only on the proposition that
women necessarily take up the feminine, objectified role and men
a masculine spectator position. On this point it may be argued that
the film can be enjoyed from both perspectives.
5 See quotation from Scene 3 in this essay.
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d) The female spectator
So who, actually, is the female spectator? Is she a pseudo male?
Analysis of female spectatorship raises three points of departure:
the spectator as constituted by the processes of subjectivity, the
spectator as a socially and historically constructed figure, and the
spectator as the female audience. Mulvey has analysed a position of
the female spectator when called upon to identify with a woman as
the central protagonist where the woman was an active, strong figure. Mulvey concluded that in this context the female spectator
undergoes an impossible ‘phantasm of masculization’. In a
response to this notion, Theresa de Lauretis (1984) argued that the
nature of female identification is neither single nor simple. She
argues that identification is itself a movement, a subject-process, a
relation… She concludes that the female spectator is always
involved in a double identification to which she identifies both the
passive woman (woman, body, landscape), and the active subject
positions (the look of the male and the camera): “Place of the
female spectator is between the look of the camera (the masculine
representation) and the image on the screen (the specular fixity of
the feminine representation), not one or the other, but both or
either.” (Lauretis 1984: 35)
Mary Ann Doane develops the question of the female spectatorship even further. She believes that a woman’s sexuality, as spectator, must undergo a constant process of transformation. The
woman must look, as if she was a man with the phallic power of the
gaze, at a woman who is the object of the gaze in order to be that
woman. “I submit myself as if I were a man, who thought he was a
woman, to a woman who thinks she is a man.” (Doane 1991: 221)
Doane draws attention to the way in which a woman’s image is
represented in the cinema (larger than life, glamorous, and consumable) as an object of desire for the male spectator. In what
sense is the woman in the audience given access to her own objectified and fetishized image? Does a woman simply appropriate the
male gaze and subject another woman to her voyeuristic/fetishistic
look? Whereas Mulvey drew on the dichotomy of active/male and
passive/female, Doane proposes the binary opposition of proximity and distance.
What is more, Doane starts from Freud’s (1955) account of
asymmetry in the development of masculinity and femininity to
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argue that women’s pleasures are not motivated by fetishistic and
voyeuristic drives. A woman cannot ‘fetishize away’ her body,
because it is too close to her and constantly reminds her of castration. For the female spectator there is a certain over-presence of the
image: she is the image. Given the closeness of this relationship, the
female spectator’s desire can be described only in terms of a kind
of narcissism – the female look demands a becoming.” (Doane
1991: 102) Here, Doane refers to the daughter’s pre-oedipal relationship with the mother, which she sees as posing a number of difficulties for the female spectator. It is a woman’s inability to separate fully from the maternal body which makes it difficult for her to
achieve a distance from the text, from the image on the cinema
screen. But there is a further reason why she finds it difficult to
establish distance from the image: unlike the boy, the girl has no
need to use her body to symbolize difference. The boy’s early experiences, including the possibility of losing the penis, help him construct a distance from his body while also largely predetermining
his destiny as a fetishist. In the case of a woman, it is almost impossible for her to establish this difference and become a fetishist. If a
woman identifies so much that she cannot adopt a critical distance,
than she is over-identifying and adopting masochistic position.
Here enters the concept of the masquerade, already touched
upon in this essay. The masquerade provides a way of conceptualizing the female spectator in terms other than voyeurism or fetishism.
Feminine masquerade is represented in two forms in the diegetic
world of the film. First the female protagonist in the diegesis can
appropriate the gaze, can masquerade as the controller of the look,
and hence threaten the conventional system of looking in which the
gaze is usually aligned with masculinity. Second, the female protagonist in the film can masquerade the feminine by presenting the femininity in excess6. The female spectator who sees through the masquerade understands that femininity can be a performance, is better
able to stand back from the image and adopt a critical attitude. The
value of the latter position is that it enables the female spectator to
create a distance from the image to generate a problematic within
which the can be manipulated, produced and read by a woman.
6 Here, Doane introduces the concept of femme fatale. Cf. Doane.
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Conclusion: A Feminist Reading of Dangerous Liaisons?
115
Let us now imagine a woman in front of a screen, watching
Dangerous Liaisons. What kind of identification(s) does the narrative offer to her?
The spectator sitting in a darkened theatre repeats the scene of
an infant before a mirror staring at itself through an alienating
image. The mirror has a social dimension – the child situates himself in a social setting through a comparison with the other and that
becomes an equation: if one child is hit, the other one cries. The
very first images we see of Dangerous Liaisons are the images of
Merteuil, watching herself in a mirror, us watching her watching
herself in a mirror. Merteuil likes what she sees. At the end of the
film, she is once more confronted with the mirror. After society
rejects her, in the opera, notably, a perfect place for looking, and in
the 18th century, a perfect place to look at other spectators as well
showing oneself and letting oneself be seen, she returns home.
Half undressed, in her under dress and a crinoline, which looks hollow and takes substance from her body before giving the impression of fullness. The lightning is dim, it is evening. Day’s end. She
stumbles to her room, breaking all her ceramic make-up boxes and
her perfume bottles – all that constitute her external masque – and
sits in front of the mirror again. Again her frame is set against the
light but she doesn’t lift her gaze this time. Instead, she starts wiping off her makeup, her face now looking old, crushed. The
masque is off; her subjectivity is not whole anymore. She is unable
to look at herself in the mirror.
Dangerous Liaisons, a film where there is a woman, a bearer of
the look, where an immense feminine power is exercised throughout the film, where Valmont, the main and the only truly notable
male character declares, “It is beyond my control,” and with this
implies that he is in control of another, that it is actually Merteuil
who utters these words to regain control over him and at the end
defeats and out wins him, and where there actually is no war
between the sexes but just a war among one – female – sex, where
men are just tools, mechanisms in the hands of female manipulation… and ends with the defeat of the female protagonist. The society rejects her because she has outdone Valmont. She lives but
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becomes an outcast, while Valmont’s death is presented as an honourable suicide.
With whom does the female spectator identify, with whom the
male? Who is the hero of this drama, and who identifies with the
sadistic position in it? Is it all a matter of transgression, a flow, an
ongoing transvestism? By transvestism (by which Mulvey and
Doane mean a metaphorical, subjective transfer of the woman to
the male point of view), we might also accept ideas about the
greater sexual mobility of women, or bisexuality, about which
Freud and Hélène Cixous agree7. On the contrary, returning to the
masquerade as a hyperbolical, excessive representation of femaleness as a cultural construct is not, according to Doane, inherent to
the definition of a woman as a body (Cixous) or as an object and
sign of cultural exchange (Lévi-Strauss)… the masquerade shows
that femaleness itself is constructed as a masque, as noted before,
and a woman can preserve a distance that is necessary for an adequate reading. Mary Ann Doane attempts to find a place in heterosexuality where the female spectator can see and mark her desire
in the remoteness of the image.
Doane’s position is nevertheless still a passive, conventionally
female position. In a way, Doane marginalizes the female spectator,
and Mulvey defines her primarily in male terms. Jackie Stacey
(1992) criticizes both in relation to the problematic of identification
in the case of female homoeroticism pointing out a very important
characteristic of psychoanalytical theories, notably the confines of
binary oppositions that tend to masculinize the (lesbian) woman.
So where is the way out for the (female) spectator, does she have
to invent herself?
Maybe the best solution is the one proposed by Mme de
Merteuil in Dangerous Liaisons8: let us listen and observe, what the
countless narratives (all around us, not only in the cinema) are saying, or better what are they hiding. And let’s practice detachment
but find pleasure in NOT keeping quiet.
7 Cixous (1976): bisexuality not as andogyny, but as an excess.
8 See quote in this essay from Scene 11.
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Bibliography
117
Cixous, Hélène (1976), The Laugh of the Medusa. Signs. 1,4: 875-893.
Doane, Mary Jane (1991), Femmes Fatales. Feminism, Film Theory,
Psychoanalysis. New York and London: Routledge
Freud, Sigmund (1955), “Beyond the Pleasure Principle.” The
Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of
Sigmund Freud. Vol. XVIII. London: The Hogarth Press, 1955.
Mulvey, Laura (1992), “Visual pleasure and narrative cinema.” The
Sexual Subject. A Screen Reader in Sexuality. New York and
London: Routledge. 22-34.
Heath, Stephen (1992), “Difference.” The Sexual Subject. A Screen
Reader in Sexuality. New York and London: Routledge. 47-107.
Pollock, Griselda (1992), “What’s wrong with images of women?”
The Sexual Subject. A Screen Reader in Sexuality. New York and
Ellis, John (1992), “On pornography.” The Sexual Subject. A Screen
Reader in Sexuality. New York and London: Routledge, 146-170.
Lacan, Jacques (2001), Écrits: A Selection. New York, London :
Routledge.
Pajaczkowska, Claire (1992), “The heterosexual presumprion.” The
Sexual Subject. A Screen Reader in Sexuality. New York and
Stacey, Jackie (1992), “Desperately seeking difference.” The Sexual
Subject. A Screen Reader in Sexuality. New York and London:
Routledge. 244-260.
Lauretis, Theresa de. (1984), “Desire in Narrative.” Alice doesn’t.
Feminism, Semiotics, Cinema. London: Mcmillan press. 103-57.
Riviere, Joan (1991), “Womanliness as a masquerade.” International
Journal of Psycho-Analysis 1: 303-313. Republished: Atholl
Hughes (ed). The Inner World and Joan Riviere: Collected
Papers 1920-1958. London: Karnac Books, 90-101.
Monaco, James (1981), “The Language of Film. Signs and Syntax.”
How to Read a Film. The Art, Technology, Language, Histoy, and
Theory of Film and Media. New York, Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1981. 121-191.
Berger, John (1975), Ways of Seeing. London: BBC and Penguin
Books.
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Alenka Koželj
The Sweetness of the Unreachable Fruit
118
Introduction
gender
(Some Comments on Sylvia Plath’s Journals and Her
Letters Home)
In the foreword to Bitter Fame, her controversial biography of
Sylvia Plath, Anne Stevenson somewhat naïvely argues that we could
read various literary works by Plath with the help of a map of the
poet’s personal life, and her diaries and letters inversely, using her
poetry (or even the poetry of her husband Ted Hughes) as the key.
To some extent, Jacqueline Rose is captivated by a similar prospect:
“Put the poem and the journal entry together, plus the letters which
she is writing to Aurelia Plath at the same time, and you get an
extraordinary instance of intertexuality, one which offers a striking
demonstration of the forms of denial, suppression and connection
that can link different utterances or texts.” (Rose, The Haunting 89).
Although her deductions are much more theoretically informed
than Anne Stevenson’s, she does not seem entirely to escape the
trap which many of Sylvia Plath’s admirers fall into: consideration of
the elements of an original poetic creation on the basis of information from the personal life. Of course, we cannot deny that admirers
of other artists also encounter this problem – when we raise those
questions, we enter a battlefield where a war has been going on for
far more than a hundred years over where to draw the line between
the author as a person and the voice, the I that pronounces the
poem, dwells hidden in the strokes of a brush, or ascends from the
music paper. Because we ourselves are afraid of equating the tragic
fate of Sylvia Plath with the putting into words of the world in her
poems, we have decided not to include in this article artistic works
where we are supposed to guess the echo of the poet’s personal life.
No matter how many alluring points of community exist between
biography and the thematic concept of an opus, we will try to do
everything in our power to avoid the temptation of highlighting
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them (without any assurance that we will always succeed in doing
so). On what do we base our decision?
On the one hand, consideration of the relations between biography and poetry would exceed the scope of the present paper,
which is limited to the inter-textual web formed by the diaries and
the letters. Interwoven there are threads from two sources: here, the
threads of intimate inner life; there, the threads of social life and
communication with the demands of the outer life, where there is
collision with the two critical figures that always dominated Sylvia
Plath’s life and work (namely the outer and the inner censor). On
the other hand, we have opted (although with some crucial deviations from this conceptual frame) for an approach of distancing
ourselves from the biographical treatment of literary works, for the
reason expressed by Susan Van Dyne: “We need to resist the unexamined assumption (and often in biographies of women what
amounts to the misogynist practice) that a woman can only write
out of or about what she has actually lived. Such a premise disallows the transformative power of a woman’s art as epistemology, as
an alternative, equally self-constituting form of knowing and
being.” (Van Dyne, “The problem” 17)
“Women’s poetry” is degraded by the syntagma itself.
Notwithstanding how irrelevant we find the distinction between
“men’s” and “women’s” poetry, it would, despite its ridiculousness, at
least equalise the receptive context in which poetry written by
women and poetry written by men is located. Women’s poetry is perceived as deviating from the canon, established through many centuries primarily by men; it is considered to be too lyrical, too directly
linked to concrete images and events, too irrational, too sensual and
intuitive. In the light of these findings we cannot help but feel slightly
disloyal, since we are seemingly debating the biography of an
already notorious artist whose work is often still far too casually
regarded as dependent on her personal story of love and disillusion.
That is why we stress that we are not promoting the frivolous
assumption that the letters and diaries will help to elucidate the
secrets of poetic expression or remove the veil which prevents an
objective, unambiguous interpretation of the poet’s short life. What
fascinates us on our endeavour is precisely what Van Dyne expresses
in her words: “For Sylvia Plath, revising her life was a recurrent personal and poetic necessity. In her letters and journals as much as in
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gender • alenka koželj
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her fiction and poetry, Plath’s habits of self-representation suggest
she regarded her life as if it were a text that she could invent and
rewrite. In her earliest journal entry at seventeen, she already exhibits
a sense of her identity as a projected persona: “I think I would like to
call myself ‘The girl who wanted to be God’” (LH 40).
I/ Biography (“American Poetess”)
120
Sylvia Plath was born on the 27th of October 1932 in Boston, followed three years later by her brother Warren. She grew up by the
Atlantic Coast, and the experience of a childhood in close contact
with the sea, among other things, also influenced her poetic
imagery. When she was eight her father, Otto Plath, who was of
German descent, died. His death had a huge impact on his daughter
and left her with a wound with which she was wrestling, opening
and afterwards struggling to close it, throughout her life. Though
impoverished by her husband’s death, Sylvia’s mother Aurelia,
through hard work and exceptional devotion, ensured the best education for her children, enabling them to develop all their potential.
Sylvia, who as an adolescent was already extremely bright, talented
and disciplined, attended Wellesley High School and afterwards
enrolled at the distinguished Smith College. There she continued
her thread of outstanding academic achievements, while her personal life flourished also. In the summer of 1953 she was one of a
group of girls chosen to travel to New York and edit an issue of the
Mademoiselle magazine. Soon after her return home she fell into
deep depression and tried to kill herself. The episode was followed
by treatment in one of the most prestigious mental health clinics in
the United States. After recuperation she continued with her work
and graduated in 1955 summa cum laude. She won a Fulbright
scholarship to pursue her studies at Cambridge, where she met an
English poet named Ted Hughes and married him in June of 1956,
four months after their first encounter. In 1957 the couple moved to
the United States, where Sylvia was appointed to the position of professor of English at Smith. She remained there only for a year, and
afterwards Sylvia and Ted decided to dedicate themselves exclusively to writing and moved to Boston as freelance writers, taking odd
jobs on the side. In December 1959 they returned to England, where
their daughter Frieda was born on the 1st of April 1960. On the 31st
of October of the same year Sylvia’s first collection The Colossus and
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Other Poems came out in England. At the beginning of February of
1961 she had some serious health problems: first she endured a miscarriage and immediately afterwards an appendectomy. She was
presumably writing her novel The Bell Jar from March to May of that
same year. At the end of the summer the family moved to Devon,
where Sylvia’s and Ted’s son Nicholas was born on the 17th of
January 1962. However, their marriage was starting to disintegrate,
and in the autumn of 1962 they separated: Ted moved to London.
Sylvia remained in Devon with the children until December, when
she too moved to the capital. In January 1963 she published her only
novel under the pseudonym Victoria Lucas. On the 11th of February
of the same year she committed suicide. Ariel, her famous book of
poems, was first published in Great Britain in 1965 (and in the
United States a year later) and instantly turned her into one of the
brightest stars of the poetic world.
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Documentation of the publication of Plath’s entire (literary or
non-artistic) legacy, including her diaries, is notoriously problematic
and in many cases insufficient. The reader cannot escape the feeling
that all editors, Aurelia Plath, Ted and Olwyn Hughes, are looking
over their shoulders, persistently demanding all at once to be heard,
to expose their side of the story, their fabulation of a life, their version, which they defend arduously and refuse to let go of. Each one
of them is probably convinced that theirs is the most likely version
of the story of Sylvia Plath. Given the particularity of her life’s story
(particularly of her tragic end), all endeavours in the field of her private life are extremely sensitive – one gets the feeling that one is
walking through a minefield and senses very distinctly that all the
others who came in contact with her diaries encountered the same
difficulties. Plath’s diaries were published in two versions, separated
by a period of twenty years. The journals of Sylvia Plath was edited
by Frances McCullough (in a debatable and for many, even today,
controversial) collaboration with Ted Hughes. Everyone, from
Hughes’s fanatic opponents to his admirers, is obliged to admit that
the editorial involvement of the main participant in the most of the
entries is more than questionable. The outcome was predictable: in
1982 a considerably curtailed version of “the journals of Sylvia
Plath” came out (in the United States only), and it was not until 2000
II/ Diaries (Letters to a Demon)
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that Karen V. Kukil published, uncensored, The Journals of Sylvia
Plath: 1950-1960 (to which we refer later on in the article) and The
Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath (the former in Great Britain and
the latter in the United States). Plath wrote her diaries for various
reasons: through them she tried to capture the experience of everyday life as in a single glance. Numerous entries, therefore, look like
miniatures of a sort, and many excerpts were used later on in her literary works. She did not keep her diaries in the most usual form of
a ledger or notebook. Her entries have many forms: “The word
“journals” itself might be put in scare quotes. Plath’s “journals”
include handwriting in bound and spiralled notebooks, typing on
miscellaneous pieces of paper, and scrawls on sheets of varying
sizes, colours, types and formality.” (Brain, “Plath’s” 144) Another
(and for the reader, especially one who has experienced the difficulty of putting inner movements into words intelligible to human
beings, very attractive) characteristic of the diaries is their role of
“slave-driver”: the poet incessantly menaces herself, exercises selfpunishment, writes threatening letters to herself, and treats herself
as a demanding coach. Those diaries are a valuable catalogue of the
struggle for writing, the struggle that an artist is fighting against herself to protect her art; and they are an important chronicle of creation, of the battle for poetic expression in the context of what intellectual craftsmanship demands.
III/ Letters Home (“Dear Mommy”)
In 1975 Harper & Row published a selection of the letters, edited by Aurelia Schober, Sylvia’s mother, followed the next year by
the British publisher Faber & Faber. The collection contains some
700 letters that Sylvia had sent home (mostly to her mother, but
also to her brother Warren and Olivia Higgins Prouty, who had
contributed financially to Plath’s education) from college and
from England. Most researchers of Plath’s life draw attention to the
striking difference between the diaries and the letters home, in
tone, content and structuring of autobiographical material into a
coherent composition of life experience. The letters construct the
image of a brilliant, energetic, out-going, even slightly elated perfect daughter who repays her mother’s sacrifice and maternal
devotion in the form of academic success, intellectual accomplishments, optimism and creativity, and social triumphs. The picture of
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Plath’s life which the letters convey is therefore somewhat idealized; this is particularly blatant in her first years. But as time goes
by the letters grow calmer, as it becomes obvious that the writer
cannot achieve her hypomanic state without great effort, using the
last resources of her energy, when her power has almost been
drained and occasionally will not serve her any more. It is obvious
that the selection of Plath’s personal correspondence published
under the title Letters Home represents only a meagre part of her
epistolary activity (Lilly Library, for instance, holds some letters
from her childhood). Many researchers acknowledge the patent
fact that even those letters which came into the possession of
Aurelia Plath were manipulated and sometimes censored on various pretexts: they were supposedly of no interest to the general
public, they revealed very personal data about acquaintances, etc.
Reading the letters home we should therefore always bear in mind
that we are dealing with a very restricted amount of the epistolary
material written by Sylvia Plath.
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One of the most prominent qualities of Plath’s diaries and letters
is a detailed sketch of the evolution that the poet had to endure in
order to become after her death what she is now: one of the most
astonishing voices of her time, addressing a growing number of
readers, until she became a true literary icon, a heroine. These private writings illustrate the tension that gives painful birth to the
greatest and most convincing poetry. Reception of the diaries and
the letters has concentrated mostly on the question of putting one’s
life into words: Sylvia Plath tried to give form to her existence, to
achieve a readable and comprehensible whole, a construction of a
life with a beginning and an end. At the same time, the diaries and
letters home should be perceived as an attempt at dialogue with
oneself, which in the letters takes the form of conveying information to the other and in the diaries the attempt to embrace one’s
identity. In both cases we are dealing with the revelation of the
most vulnerable core of the self, with the process through which
the author recalls various stages of her development as an individual on her way to self-realisation. Although the other as a reader,
explicit in the letters, is implicit in the diaries, we should face the
fact that what we have in front of us are two sides of the same need,
IV/ Identity (The Green Fig-tree)
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the need to pronounce, to unfold oneself in the search for one’s
own identity. The letters home are destined primarily for the mother; the diaries are dedicated to the hallowed anonymous authority
which assumes in the letters the form of a self-sacrificing parent. In
the diaries, however, it remains a concealed, internalised power,
forcing the “I” of the diaries into a ruthless analysis of itself, into
correspondence with the ongoing call of its deepest core trying to
break away from the myriad of abstract ideas and realise itself in
the outer world on its own terms, with a success that would satisfy
only its own expectations. The reader who would see the image of
an ideal daughter Sylvia in the letters as opposed to a “genuine”,
uncorrupted Self of the diaries, is greatly mistaken. The motivation
behind the letters and the diaries is the same. In both cases we are
confronted with the game of revealing and concealing, played in
attempt to answer the questions of one’s own identity.
On the 28th of September 1950, for instance, Sylvia sends her
mother an euphoric letter from her new college (she just entered
Smith) which does not even for a moment reveal the anxiety that is
so distinct in previous entries. More than information for her mother, this letter serves as a self-confirmation, as persuasion of herself
that her life steps are the right ones and that she is on the only right
path, that the stay at Smith will become a part of her identity. We
have to stress that this is not by any means an isolated case: Sylvia
Plath’s letters and, to greater extent, the diaries are full of “orders”,
directives, addressed to herself, in which we can sense the internalized voice of society and the mother’s caring look, as well as the
demand for an extreme discipline to which she is subordinated.
She can drive herself towards a satisfying perfection only by constant validation of her own guidelines, chosen path and values.
In the summer of 1953 Sylvia went to New York to collaborate in
the publication of an issue of Mademoiselle. She returned home
utterly exhausted and began to slip into deep depression. After various unsuccessful suicide attempts with drowning and cutting her
wrists, she took her mother’s sleeping pills, drank the whole bottle
and hid herself in a corner in their cellar. A large-scale search was
launched to find her, and the case of the disappeared college-girl
received considerable media attention. The progress of her illness
and her treatment inspired her later in life to write her novel The
Bell Jar, perceived by many as an autographical report on her strug-
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gle with a mental disorder. She was hospitalized (with the help of
her benefactor Olive Higgins Prouty, the popular writer of romance
novels, who had one book filmed starring Bette Davies) in one of
the most distinguished American mental hospitals. There she was
subjected to insulin therapy and electric shock treatment, which
gradually improved her condition and enabled her to leave the hospital and pursue her studies. Sylvia was not shy about her episode
– she described it at length, for instance, in a letter to her pen-friend
Eddie Cohen (and the story she tells is very similar to the events
described in The Bell Jar). The diaries in their present-day form do
not include detailed reflection on her condition and treatment, but
they do reveal some interesting entries, written shortly before her
suicide attempt, in which she admonishes herself for being passive,
undecided, without any control of her life and throwing all her talents and advantages away.
In 1956 Sylvia obtained the Fulbright scholarship to study at
Cambridge. That was another important step on her way towards
her own identity. Not only did she find herself in a new social environment but she was close to the European culture which she so
strongly admired and aspired to: she was living in the land of T. S.
Eliot and Dylan Thomas; she felt close to Yeats; she might easily
travel to France or to Germany, which, being the birth-place of her
father, had a special meaning for her. There are several researchers
who take much interest in Sylvia Plat’s so-called “transatlanticism”.
The question is a pertinent and fruitful one: although she could
never forget her American roots (the bond with the Atlantic Ocean
being particularly important), she turned European culture into an
integral part of her identity, both knowingly and involuntarily: for
instance she began to use some English expressions instead of
American (replacing the word “raven” with “rook”) and even took
on the English spelling (e. g. “realise” instead of “realize”, and so
forth). On the other hand, used to the comfort of living in the relatively wealthy United States, she had difficulty accepting the much
harsher reality of life in England, still impoverished from the war
(before moving to England for the last time she stressed that she
would do so only on condition of having access to a good dentist).
Especially in some of her short stories and prose sketches (but only
rarely in her letters home), she returns to her nostalgic memories of
childhood in America (America! America!, Ocean 1212-W) and
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exposes the cultural differences between the land of her origin and
England (Snow Blitz).
Returning to the States a happily married woman, in 1957 Sylvia
began her teaching days at Smith. The already shattered cardboard
of her life thus gained another piece: an academic career, which she
renounced after her first wearisome year. At this point the diary
turns into a confessor, a receptacle into which the young teacher
pours her anxieties, frustration at the workplace, disappointments
in the face of students and college personnel. She was intimidated
by her listeners and could not hide her disillusion with academic
life. She found the people to whom she looked up to as a young girl
petty, hypocritical and essentially boring. Since she was living in
America, there was no need to write her mother many letters, but at
this time she entrusted her grievances to her diary.
After this depressing year of unfulfilling teaching, both Ted and
Sylvia decided to abandon any prospect of a safe career and devote
themselves exclusively to writing. This choice was hard on Sylvia.
She had to face not only harsh criticism from her social environment, but above all to persuade her mother that her decision was a
sensible one. In the Summer of 1958 Sylvia finally achieved her first
publication in The New Yorker, which had always been her prime
ambition. The publication came at the right time as well: she and
Ted began their life as professional artists and this considerable
success confirmed their belief in the path they had chosen as their
only option, no matter how risky and uncertain.
The choice for an artistic career seemed more doubtful to Sylvia
and probably roused more disquiet in her than she was willing to
admit: she, the golden daughter, a brilliant student, a zealous housewife, the American beauty, all in all a perfect woman of her time in
every respect ran the risk of being humiliated in the eyes of her
mother and the society corresponding to the latter’s practical mind.
The fear of the unknown obviously frustrated the poet to the extent
that her poetic inspiration ran dry, which (as normally happens in
a vicious circle) gave birth to even greater fears and uncertainty. To
find her confidence and self-realisation without the guilt feelings
she had to attack the ambivalent figure of the mother, which was
the first step towards her conflict with the conformist society that
not only deems poetry worthless (especially in matters of material
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gain) but considers people who choose to be professional artists
irresponsible and unworthy of trust.
To deal with the conflicts of her youth (father’s death, mother’s
influence) in 1958 Sylvia started therapy with Ruth Beuscher, a psychiatrist who had treated her earlier at the time of her mental breakdown in 1953. Their conversations mostly deal with the relationship between mother and daughter, the question of separation
from the maternal figure, the need to distance herself from her
mother’s wishes: she would have to stop regarding her mother as
the only arbiter of the difference between success and failure (usually judged in terms of financial gain), making her a figure on an
altar who accepted or rejected offerings that her daughter brought
to her feet. Sylvia noted those conversations at length in her “notebooks” from the therapy, where she deals with some of the most
painful aspects of her life: her ambivalence towards her mother and
father, her uncertainty and jealousy regarding her husband, her
feelings of abandonment and fear of being unloved.
In April 1960 Sylvia Plath became a mother for the first time. In
February 1961 she was hospitalized for an appendectomy. She
described some details of her experience in journal entries entitled
INMATE. Her stay (during which her surroundings included a
woman in plaster and tulips in a vase) inspired her to write some of
her most famous poems, which (in the opinion of Ted Hughes
also) point to the switch in her poetics to the specific style of Ariel.
In 1961 the family of three moved to Devon. Despite its strenuousness, the move represented not only an important turning point
in the life of the Plath-Hughes family but also an important shift in
Sylvia’s search for her own identity. The spacious house with a big
garden where she had, as she had always wanted, a working room
of her own, maternity and the expectation of another child contributed to the strengthening of her self-confidence and to belief in
herself and in her work. She was adapting with a growing enthusiasm to the role of “Earth Mother”, ruler of her home, owner of her
domain. As already noted, the diaries from that time are missing.
What we have are some observations about village life, especially
the life of her closest neighbours, which do not really qualify as
diary entries, but are more in the nature of sketches that she might
later use in her art.
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In Devon Sylvia and Ted decided to keep bees. The first meeting
of the bee-keepers is described in her notes. This activity echoed
significantly in Plath’s poetry from the very beginning. One of the
reasons for this is the fact that Sylvia’s father was an enthusiastic
bee-keeper. Beekeeping therefore enabled a “safe”, non-threatening dialogue with her own past and childhood traumas. Her care of
the hives finally succeeded in creating an identification that was,
albeit still painful and sensitive, safer than the hazardousness of
memories, psychoanalysis, or nostalgic ruminations. Sylvia faced
the world as the “bee-keeper’s daughter”.
By September the marriage with Hughes was well-nigh impossible to resuscitate or save. Sylvia continued with all her power building an identity not founded on her relationship with Ted. She had
to give up many things, and the happy, somewhat childish Sivvy at
the close of most of the letters to her mother gives way to a serious,
darker Sylvia.
V/ Love and Sex (The Black Marauder)
For Sylvia Plath love was a passionately physical as well as spiritual experience. In many diary entries and occasionally even in her
letters (though of course she does not send her mother uncensored
reports of her sexual activity) Sylvia deals with the question of how
to appease her physical needs without “falling” in the eyes of a conservative, chauvinistic society. She knows that conventionally premarital affairs are reserved for men, while a woman must wait passively, much like a gentle, undemanding flower, to be plucked by a
suitable, socially approved man, with whom she will start a traditional and (at least on her part) monogamous relationship, with sex
being purely a means of reproduction. A full-blooded woman who
in some ways incarnated the young American beauty, Sylvia often
despaired of her sexual needs, which could not be satisfied in a
socially acceptable manner, or only in unspoken and unrealised
fantasies. On the other hand, knowing her temperament, ambition
and belief in her own expectations, she feared that she would
engage in a relationship with a man who would not be able to cope
with her (a reason for her to despise him) or whose opportunities
and licence to be a world participant she would envy, while herself
remaining chained to house and children. When she met Ted
Hughes, she recognized the ideal she had been dreaming of (and
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decided to erase or at least overlook all the points in which his
image didn’t fit the perfect mould). The pair believed that they
were united by fate. Diane Middlebrook points out that their cohabitation was always very fertile and enriching for both of them in the
artistic sense, thus countering criticism largely from feminist analysts, who accuse Hughes of killing Sylvia’s creative energy and
hold him responsible for her death.
In Plath’s earlier diary entries, especially those written when she
was leaving high school, we can detect an intense anxiety connected to the painful oscillation between two tendencies which, when
Sylvia was young, were mutually exclusive: the desire to preserve
the “unblemished” image of virtue on the one hand, and the unpredictable, raw force of lust on the other. Torn between those two
options, the young woman experienced extreme frustration and
scorned those expectations of society that forced this tormented
existence upon her (even though, eager to please, she would never
think of renouncing them).
Evoking Ted in her diaries, Sylvia sometimes lets an occasional
doubt, a treacherous fear, the uncertainties that accompany every
new attachment, to darken her usual elation. However, in her letters home she usually idealised the circumstances and began creating a sort of parallel reality, where she found it very difficult to
bring herself to have the remotest doubt of Ted or their written-inthe stars relationship.
When she was disappointed by the Other (and most biographers and theoreticians see in every such Other an echo of the
pain of being “abandoned” by her father), Sylvia’s infinite adoration turned into the opposite: the statue did not simply begin to
crumble gradually, it fell off the pedestal and shattered, which hurt
Sylvia just as much as the person who earned her wrath. Those
falls were even more fatal, since the gods in whom Sylvia, always
extreme in her emotions, was losing faith, were falling from such
unreachable heights.
On his visit to the hospital in 1961, described in the journal titled
INMATE, Ted awakened in his wife the affection of their first
encounters; thus the adjective-filled descriptions reappeared:
“black”, “huge”, “dark. Ted is humongous. Ted is memorable. Ted
stands out. Ted is better than the rest of the visitors, and his wife is
beaming with pride.
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VI/ Art, Career, Work
130
Sylvia never allowed herself to do things halfway. From her
childhood she had been ambitious, extremely successful and determined to achieve her goals. She took her writing very seriously and
resolutely kept sending her stories and poems to the most distinguished magazines in spite of many rejections. In times of diminished productivity she despised herself cruelly. Writing was in her
every pore: she was not deterred from it by travels, by constant
changes of residence or by the state of her marriage. Regardless of
what some think (particularly concerning Ariel, which supposedly
represents a kind of mad cry in the guise of controlled verse that
has crystallised from suffering), Sylvia never wrote superficially, following coincidental inspirations. The studious approach developed already in her childhood years was constantly nurtured and
improved. She never allowed her changes of style to divert her
from the principle that emotions and thought are something the
artisan must reshape into an exemplary work. To the end Plath
approached her work as an accomplished artisan, an undeniable
master of poetic style and rhythm. It is somewhat naïve to think that
Ariel represents a clean break with the previous poems: Sylvia
never relinquished the conviction (which distinguishes her from
contemporary so-called “confessional poets”) that poetry is supposed to convey as universal a life experience as possible. If her
early poems are born through painful labour, with the dictionary
always present, in her final works she found a new voice, seemingly
more spontaneous but in truth just as precisely elaborated (which
the numerous drafts for every poem confirm). Citing Christina
Britzolakis, Linda Wagner-Martin concludes: “This reading creates a
self-reflexive Plath, a “highly rhetorical poet whose work is shaped
by an awareness of audience, of the complex legacies of literary tradition, and of the cultural authority wielded by poetic discourse.”
(Wagner-Martin, “Plath” 59-60)
Sylvia came to college as a relatively established young poet. She
was accepted in the Alpha Phi Kappa Psi sorority, and academic
achievements followed one after another. In the Autumn of 1957
she accepted the offer to teach at her former college. But the work
was an ordeal (partly due to her merciless perfectionism) and,
although the opportunity was there to continue working at Smith,
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she renounced it and followed the far more risky path of professional writing. In her letters she attempts to convince her mother
that, despite the latter’s doubts and worries, it is a good (and virtually the only possible) decision. However, her diaries reveal that she
was prey to the same fears as her mother. Perhaps it was not just
Aurelia Plath that the letters home were meant to persuade: they
may have appeased her daughter’s anxiety as well. In 1959, just
before the move to England, the couple spent some time in the art
colony Yaddo. The peace, the ample working space, and the wonderful rural setting spurred Sylvia to write some of her best poems
to that date, which already, slowly, announce the break with her formerly very impersonal poetic expression.
After his affair with Assia Wevill in 1962, Ted left home. Sylvia,
staying alone and abandoned, began her famous practice of writing before dawn, before the children awoke. Virtually in a month
Ariel was created, and Sylvia had no doubt: it was the book that
would make her name. Encouraged by the eruption of creativity,
Sylvia at long last experienced certain tectonic movements in the
deepest, most intractable, hardest layers of her identity. The mother’s authority was fading and the internalized values and norms,
absorbed so early in life, that she considered them a part of her
identity, started to erode like a palimpsest: one discourse started to
emerge from the other. Since no diaries exist from this period, the
unique situation is only partly portrayed in Sylvia’s letters home.
Even there, Aurelia Plath took the liberty of suppressing material
she deemed unsuitable to appear in a public form.
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In works about Sylvia Plath we often come across the opinion
that she is a precursor of the second wave of feminism, which fully
established itself at the end of the 1960s and the ’70s. Sylvia, an educated, attractive girl from a good family, due to her exceptional sensibility soon began to feel the weight of the expectations that (a distinctly patriarchal) society thrusts upon women. In the ’50s, when
Sylvia’s personality and writing were forming itself, a woman (even
one who, like Plath, had attended one of the most prominent colleges) was expected to dedicate all her spiritual and intellectual
powers and all her emotions to creating a welcoming, peaceful,
VII/ The Question of Poetry and the Role of Women in
Society (“The American Virgin”)
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morally unblemished home. That was to be the only realm of her
validation and self-realisation. Perfection (even visual) at all times,
an image of which her husband can be proud, is her norm. Sylvia,
like probably all the reflective girls of her time, felt torn between the
desire to please, to fit in, and the need for intellectual challenges. But
feeling as she did a constant need for perfection, she tried to conciliate these demands, thus becoming an intellectually active, talented,
revered artist and an outstanding wife, mother and object of man’s
desire, at the same time. As Jo Gill puts it, referring to Plath’s diaries:
“Firstly, they offer a valuable reminder of the social expectations of
young women during this period. The destiny of bright young
women of Plath’s generation was to fulfil their potential, repay their
parents and sponsors, attract and keep a male, and inculcate their
offspring in the way society deemed appropriate. /…/ Success in
one field was not enough – and mere adequacy in a number of
areas was no substitute.” (Gill, Cambridge Companion 107)
Some diary entries reveal that Sylvia harboured numerous
doubts, consistent with the image of the two principles that guide
one’s action: the active one (male) and the passive one (female).
Because the passive principle is considered to be negative, the poet
puts the blame squarely upon it: here is the cause of her underachievement and subordination to men, who can walk the world
freely, do what they want with no consequences, and change their
sexual partners with impunity, while running no risk of social
degradation. Susan Van Dyne explains: “The pattern of her journal
suggests to me that Plath felt she inhabited two bodies: one she
believed she had inherited from her mother and read as a source of
disgust and embarrassment; the other she interpreted as male in its
ambition, sexual appetite, fierce pride, and potential violence.”
(Van Dyne, Revising 71)
Although Sylvia was terrified of pregnancy and birth, she never
stopped dreaming about becoming a poet, connected to nature
and life, who would not escape into the unrealistic paper world of
intellectual speculation and would (using once more the metaphor
of a fig-tree) freely reach for fruits from all the branches. She was
afraid of the influence that the child could have on her work. She
therefore remained torn between her work and the productivity of
her body, although she worked hard at reconciling them, making
them two faces of the same creative endeavour.
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VIII/ Politics and Society (America! America!)
IX/ Mother (Medusa)
The relationship between Sylvia and her mother is, in its pertinence for the poet’s inner life and biographic-personal sphere,
probably almost as important as her relationship with Ted Hughes.
The ambivalence of the mother-daughter relationship is portrayed
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Because of the incredible confessional power of her poetry, it
has usually been supposed that Sylvia Plath did not venture into the
field of politics and current social issues; that political questions simply floated past her and were used by her only metaphorically, in
order to illustrate the individual’s inner suffering and existential
problems (in Daddy, for instance, we encounter a (controversial for
many) comparison of the intolerable position of the subject with the
fate of a Jew on his way to Auschwitz). Today more and more studies
are emerging which reveal the political interest not only in her
poems and prose but also in her letters and diaries. Plath was not
afraid of confrontation with many of the social and political questions of the post-World War II period: the Cold War, nuclear
weapons, McCarthy’s witch hunt, the execution of the Rosenbergs,
the development of American suburbs which corresponded with
the trend of retreat from the (risky) political to the private sphere
etc. In her essay Context, published in a selection of her short prose,
Plath reflects on the implicit link between literature, politics and history. The text also brings us a precious insight into why we are so
willing to think, mistakenly, that her writings express only the particular and never the universal (though the poet was well aware she
was conveying an experience that was universal to at least some
extent), only the intimate and not the public. Plath herself explains
with great subtlety and extreme lucidity how the public, the historical and the political enter her work: “I was not gifted with the tongue
of Jeremiah, though I may be sleepless enough before my vision of
apocalypse. My poems do not turn out to be about Hiroshima, but
about a child forming itself finger by finger in the dark. They are not
about the terrors of mass extinction, but about the bleakness of the
moon over a yew tree in a neighbor graveyard. Not about the testaments of tortured Algerians, but about the night thoughts of a tired
surgeon.” (Plath, “Context” 92)
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purely by the fact that Sylvia’s letters home were published at all:
Hughes consented to it only with great reluctance, in reality in
exchange for the American publication of The Bell Jar, immediately
a great success on both sides of the Atlantic, which depicted persons
from the author’s personal life mercilessly (it was thought she had
not even tried to shape her narrative in such a way that the public
would perceive it as a work of fiction). Receiving the novel in terms
of the autobiographical genre, the readers recognised in her portraits descriptions of her acquaintances, neighbours, friends, hospital patients etc. It was not merely that Aurelia was hurt by her daughter’s faux-pas in presenting characters whom people recognised as
based on actual figures, in some cases themselves. (Considering the
sarcastic, cynical, colloquial tone of her narrative, the description of
the people in The Bell Jar could only convey irony, scorn and distance towards her social surroundings and (especially outrageous)
towards her benefactors). Aurelia’s motive for the publication of the
letters home can be understood on three levels: first of all, there is
unquestionably a desire to maintain her daughter’s reputation and
remind the world that she was an essentially sociable, amiable,
agreeable person: the morbid alter ego, which shocked her so much
in Ariel and The Bell Jar (and later on in the diaries) is indeed nothing more than an alter ego, the dark amalgam of everything Sylvia
never was. A second incentive for the publication of the letters
derived from the need to prove to those who recognized themselves
in the novel (and among whom Aurelia had to live long after Sylvia’s
death) how sunny, respectful, grateful and loving Sylvia truly was.
The third motive was of particular sensitivity: Amelia was trying to
protect herself from her daughter’s sharp, unforgiving eye and spiteful tone in some of the diaries, the novel and Ariel. She wanted to
show to world that her daughter, who had analysed the relationship
with her mother so cruelly in her last works, loved her immensely,
strove to please her, yearned for her approval, and turned to her
with gratitude and respect.
The relationship with the mother, a neuralgic spot in many
women, which Sylvia was trying to overcome for the greater part of
her adult life, from the very beginning contained all the elements
that can complicate such a relationship still further. They can also
make impossible the solution which both sides hope will come
from cool, analytic reflection. The numerous ambivalent and high-
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ly-charged intertwining emotions, the mosaic pieces of a relationship which, in Sylvia’s case especially, was pathological, proved
intractable. The integral parts of this mosaic were fitted too closely
together for even a few of them to be removed so as to loosen the
bonding. Sylvia’s father died and Aurelia was left alone with two
children. In order to develop their potential to their fullest, though
by no means well-off as a stenography teacher, she worked long
and hard, constantly putting her own needs to the side so that her
children could fulfil their own. Here we can probably trace the origin of Sylvia’s anxiety about her decision to dedicate herself entirely to writing and odd jobs. Being all her life aware of her mother’s
sacrifice, she was beset by a strong sense of guilt when making a
very important decision (one that her mother and conservative
American society would not approve of). And sometimes, as the
psychotherapy she began before leaving America shows us, she felt
a suppressed rage and extreme scorn.
It is symptomatic for the relationship between mother and
daughter, as revealed in the letters home, that Sylvia, each time she
reports an achievement or a publication, also mentions the sum
earned and thereby somehow “excuses” of her work in categories
that Aurelia would understand and appreciate, rather than the bare
fact that her daughter had made her way into an important magazine. Perloff says that those letters are written with the clear intention of satisfying Sylvia’s mother.
In 1958, after some critical months when both she and Ted decided to waive any possibility of finding steady work and to live exclusively on writing, Sylvia (probably also because of the guilt feelings
roused, implicitly or explicitly, by the image of a worried, anxious
mother), began therapy with the psychiatrist Ruth Beuscher. This
had a relieving effect. Plath was adjusting to a life that would not be
dictated by her mother’s blaming look, convincing herself she was
not in her mother’s debt, and that she could be grateful and at the
same time aware that Aurelia was not without her own agenda: she
had hidden for long enough behind the success of her two children,
fulfilling her ambitions through them. Although the cutting of the
umbilical cord was not yet achievable, Sylvia was becoming aware
of this tie and starting to find it restrictive.
Among the letters home, the most bizarre (or not) is the one in
which Sylvia reports to her mother about her abortion. Sylvia’s
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prime concern seems to be that the loss of a baby would disappoint
her mother. We may find it hard to understand the motivation
behind this, but considering the dynamics of the relationship
between Sylvia and her mother, it is not entirely surprising: abortion
signifies failure to fulfil the maternal role, one of the crucial roles in
which the value of a woman is established in the eyes of society
(embodied in Aurelia). In this context, a child is an offering, a proof
that Sylvia is “just like her mother”, a dedicated parent, a loyal wife,
a creative person that can offer her benefactor everything that
comes from her heart (her prose and poetry) or from under it.
But soon Ariel and The Bell Jar followed. Sweet Sivvy at the end
of her letters began to give way to a self-confident Sylvia, as noted
by Marjorie Perloff. After Hughes’s departure Sylvia was not only
reliving her feeling at the loss of her father: she infiltrated the role
of her mother, who, just like her, had been left abandoned, alone
with two children, a girl and a boy. She countered this duplication
(not without irony) of her mother’s experience, which she had
tried to avoid all her life, with courage and the “woman’s wisdom”
of other women who surrounded her: young mothers, her midwife… Sylvia Plath decided not to reflect her mother’s self-sacrifice
and self-pity. “In terms that are remarkably similar to Beauvoir’s
central insight, Rich defines matriphobia as “the fear not of one’s
mother or of motherhood but of becoming one’s mother”. What we
dread in our mother’s example is the very process of becoming a
poetry that Beauvoir identifies the transformation from the subject
we imagine ourselves to be into the devalued, objectified other our
mothers have become. Daughters see in their mothers, according
to Rich, not only the source of their bodily inadequacy and sexual
defilement but a social betrayal of their own possibilities: “A mother’s victimization does not merely humiliate her, in mutilates the
daughter who watches her for clues as to what it means to be a
woman.” (Van Dyne, Revising 77)
X. Father (Electra on the Grave)
Although the memories of her father, Otto Plath, were very dim,
his death occupied a special place in his daughter’s life; because he
had “failed” his family by succumbing to his illness, Plath was looking all her life for a solid, powerful, fatherly figure that would correspond to the figure of the father, built partly from her earliest mem-
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ories and partly from fantasies taking the place of his actual presence. The poems dedicated to “daddy”, for instance The Colossus,
Daddy, and the so-called “bee songs” (Sylvia’s father was an enthusiastic bee-keeper, famous in his circles for an extremely popular
book on the life of bumble-bees), are today considered classic texts
not only within Plath’s work but also in the modern western poetic
heritage. Her letters (if we take the risk of an uncertain speculation)
are rather silent on the matter (especially those sent to her mother).
However, the question is often brought up in the diaries, particularly in those entries where Sylvia regards her mother as a destructive
force trying to destroy the ideal image of the father, maintained by
the daughter. As depicted in Birthday Letters, Hughes perceived his
role in the economy of his wife’s unconscious as, above all, an
image taking Otto Plath’s place. Hughes thought that the psychic,
imaginative Plath’s life was based on a fairly simple mother-fatherdaughter constellation. The dynamics of Sylvia’s mentality (as also
of her poetry) are activated mainly in the relationships between
those key elements. The place of one member of the three can be
taken momentarily by a different person, in most cases because the
relationship with this person is more gratifying than that with the
mother or the father. In accordance with this principle, in April
1956 Otto Plath’s place was supposed to be taken by Ted Hughes.
But the desire to fit the mould perfectly brings considerable pain to
Sylvia as well as Ted: the torment of Cinderella’s evil half-sisters,
when they try to put on the fatal shoe at any cost.
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As far as we know, Sylvia wrote her last letter on the 4th of
February 1963, a week before death.
The fate of her last diary entries is less certain. On the 14th of
September 1998, only weeks before his death, Hughes unsealed the
fragments from his wife’s diaries, which he had originally planned
to keep hidden until 2013, or as long as Sylvia’s mother and brother
lived (those fragments have since appeared in the version of the
diaries published in 2000). About the final and, until now not only
unpublished but also unseen diaries, Hughes gave some contradictory accounts. Originally he spoke about “two notebooks with
brown covers”, supposedly covering the period since the end of
1959 to some weeks before her death. Soon after Plath’s death, he
Legacy
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explained that he had destroyed one of those notebooks to protect
his children, while the second notebook had simply “disappeared”.
In 1982 he maintained to the contrary that he had destroyed the
second book himself, while the first was supposed to have vanished “not long ago” and might reappear. In April 2000 The Emory
University opened the archive of Hughes’s personal documents.
Among them is a sealed box which is to be opened, according to
the poet’s instructions, only 25 years after his death. Scholars, readers and admirers of Sylvia Plath all hope that the diaries, depicting
the last weeks before her death, when her creative drive was at its
peak and she was undergoing an intellectually creative and personally intimate metamorphosis, will one day be revealed to the public.
But if they do appear, will they make it easier to understand the
genesis of Plath’s last works and the mental atmosphere in which
they were produced? Probably not.
Bibliography
Gill, Jo. The Cambridge Companion to Sylvia Plath. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2008.
Middlebrook, Diane. Her Husband. Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath –
A Marriage. London: Penguin Books, 2004.
——. “The poetry of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes: call and response”.
The Cambridge Companion to Sylvia Plath. Jo Gill (ur.).
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. 156-171.
Plath, Sylvia. “Context.” Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams.
Sylvia Plath. London: Faber and Faber, 1979. 92-93.
——. Letters home. Correspondence 1950–1963. Selected and Edited
with Commentary by Aurelia Schober Plath. New York:
HarperPerennial, 1992.
——. The Journals of Sylvia Plath 1950–1962. London: Faber and
Faber Limited, 2001.
Rose, Jacqueline. The Haunting of Sylvia Plath. London: Virago
Press, 1992.
Van Dyne, Susan R. Revising Life. Sylvia Plath’s Ariel Poems. Chapel
Hill & London: The University of North Carolina Press, 1993.
Wagner-Martin, Linda. “Plath and contemporary American poetry.”
The Cambridge Companion to Sylvia Plath. Jo Gill (ed.).
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. 52-62.
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Ana Makuc
A Voice of Her Own: Dramatic Monologues
by Augusta Webster and Carol Ann Duffy
[…] I took an axe to the wolf
as he slept, one chop scrotum to throat, and saw
the glistening, virgin white of my grandmother’s bones.
I filled his old belly with stones. I stitched him up.
Out of the forest I come with my flowers, singing, all alone.1
139
Strong women of all places and times, races and social positions,
ages and ‘dis’/abilities, have always kept looking for ways for their
voices to be heard. The subgenre of poetry called dramatic monologues is one of the media in which two sensitive, talented and able
women, living at two different historical moments in Britain,
expressed themselves. It is widely acknowledged that Augusta
Webster and Carol Ann Duffy, in the Victorian era and in the ongoing
period respectively, have made a most substantial contribution to the
development of the dramatic monologue. Webster devoted the whole
of her two collections, Dramatic Studies (1866) and Portraits (1870,
1893), to this form, whereas Duffy has used the form extensively in all
her mature collections, especially in Standing Female Nude (1985),
Selling Manhattan (1987), Mean Time (1993), and The World’s Wife
(1999), which is entirely written in the dramatic monologue form.
Augusta Webster held a respectable place as a poet in Victorian
society. Her contemporary, a widely acknowledged poet herself,
Christina Rossetti, wrote: ‘Given the impressive technical and imaginative strength of her work, there can be no doubt that Augusta
Webster ranks as one of the great Victorian poets.’2 One of the
1999), p. 4. All subsequent references to these poems will be given parenthetically.
2 Quoted in Augusta Webster: Portraits and other poems, ed. by Christine Sutphin
(Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 2000), p. 37. All subsequent references to
this text will be given parenthetically.
gender
1 Carol Ann Duffy, ‘Little Red-Cap’, in The World’s Wife (Basingstoke and Oxford: Picador,
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reviews of her Dramatic Studies (in Noncomformist – included in
Webster’s selected poems, edited by Christine Sutphin) praises her
‘original productions. These, we say it with confidence, display true
poetic power’ (p. 403). The same collection is described by
Contemporary Review as showing ‘dramatic and poetic powers of
no common order’ (p. 407). Noncomformist, however, seems to
criticise Webster’s next collection Portraits, although mildly, for its
simplicity of language:
We have wondered whether Mrs. Webster composes too rapidly;
many of the lines appear to run too easily […] Concentration might
give her dramatic genius a nobler range than it has taken; and the
purity and tenderness of her thought makes us wish she would
attempt it. (p.418)
Still, the Examiner and London Review claims that ‘with this volume before us, it would be hard to deny her the proud position of
the first living English poetess’ (p. 418).
Nonetheless, according to Sutphin, with the decline of the
Victorian era Webster’s name and poetry also disappeared from literary anthologies and critical studies. Her last mention is in the
Dictionary of National Biography in 1917:
gender • ana makuc
Mrs Webster’s verse entitles her to a high place among English
poets. She used with success the form of the dramatic monologue.
She often sacrificed beauty to strength, but she possessed much
metrical skill and an ear for melody. Some of her lyrics deserve
a place in every anthology of modern English poetry. (p. 33)
Sutphin gives two possible reasons for the subsequent exclusion
of Webster from the canon: the considerable length of her best
poems, whereas anthologies usually prefer shorter pieces; and the
politically and socially critical tendency of her poems, which did not
come within the ‘art for art’s sake’ agenda of nineteenth-century aesthetes or twentieth-century Modernists. However, the 1990s saw a
revival of Webster’s poetry, due to the strongly politicised nature of
contemporary poetry, which, according to Byron Glennis, perceives
the dramatic monologue as a useful tool for social critique. 3
3 Glennis Byron, Dramatic Monologue: The New Critical Idiom (London: Routledge,
2003). All subsequent references to this text will be given parenthetically.
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Carol Ann Duffy is, like Webster, a highly praised poet in her
own time. According to Angelica Michelis and Deryn Rees-Jones,
she is ‘a poet who is now a mainstay of several GSCE and A-level syllabuses’ and who ‘has influenced a whole generation of poets writing or beginning to write in the 1980s’ respectively.4 Some of her
critics, quoted in Michelis, attack her for ‘simplistic language’, ‘journalistic poetics’ and ‘preponderance of slang’ (p. 1), but, according
to Michelis, they ‘mistake the dramatic monologue for lyric poetry
[…,while] monologues require verbal tics in order to initiate characterisation’ (p. 2). Moreover, Michelis quotes Mark Reid, according to
whom ‘Duffy typifies the seductive dangers of so much contemporary poetry […, such as] the easy pay off […] poems that can be
gulped in one go […] and quickly forgotten’ (p. 2). Yet, as Michelis
argues and as will be shown in the course of this article, ‘it is hard
to see how such poems as “Small Female Skull” can be charged with
an “easy pay off”’ (p. 3). Rees-Jones similarly believes that ‘the snappy sentences, and apparent simplicity of her work, however, do not
prevent Duffy from addressing complex philosophical issues about
the function of language and the construction of self, or from dealing with a wide range of issues’ (p. 1).
For their favourite poetic form both Duffy and Webster are
indebted to Robert Browning and Alfred Tennyson, now generally
believed, according to Glennis, to be simultaneous but independent inventors of the dramatic monologue. As Glennis explains, this
monologue is considered a Victorian response to the Romantic theory of poetry with its autonomous, self-assured and universal lyric
subject. The new discoveries in science, evolutionary theories, and
schools of psychological thought created a world of uncertainties,
which resulted in the loss of absolute values and a coherent position from which to speak.
The paradigmatic form of the dramatic monologue, by general
consent, is Browning’s ‘My Last Duchess’ (1842), which inherently
reveals seven characteristics defined by Beth Session in The
Dramatic Monologue (1947). These characteristics are cited by Byron
as ‘speaker, [silent] audience, occasion, revelation of character, inter4 The Poetry of Carol Ann Duff: ‘Choosing tough words’, ed. by Angelica Michelis and
Antony Rowland (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2003), p.
1. Deryn Rees-Jones, Carol Ann Duffy (Devon: Northcote House Publishers, 2001), p.
1. All subsequent references to these texts will be given parenthetically.
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play between speaker and audience, dramatic action, and action
which takes place in the present’ (p. 8), which locate the speaking
subject by putting him or her in a context. Accordingly, the speaker
of ‘My Last Duchess’ is a duke, his audience is an envoy, the occasion
is the discussion with the envoy about the duke’s marriage with his
count’s daughter, the dramatic action evolves around the painting of
the duke’s last wife, the interplay between the duke and the envoy is
made obvious by the duke’s seeming responses to the envoy’s questions, while the duke’s character is revealed through his egoism and
madness. Another important characteristic (agreed on by all theorists, according to Byron) which differentiates the dramatic monologue from lyric poetry is that the speaker of the monologue is a fictional character and thus clearly distinguished from the poet.
However, since the dramatic monologue puts the speaker in a
context, it also enables the poetrying of the speaking subject. A
number of critics (Byron tells us) have therefore suggested that it
was invented in the 1820s by such Victorian female poets as Letitia
Landon and Felicia Hemans, so as to circumvent the traditional
male poet/female muse or subject/object dichotomy by assuming a
speaking subject position. Moreover, the use of a fictional speaker
in the dramatic monologue enabled Victorian women poets to
challenge the universalising understandings of the Victorian poetess, whose sentimental poetry was equated with her essential emotionalism. Consequently, use of the mask allows the female poet to
be ‘in control of her objectification and at the same time anticipates
the strategy of objectifying women by being beforehand with it
and circumventing masculine representations’ (Isobel Armstrong,
quoted by Byron, p. 47).
Nevertheless, as Byron explains in ‘Rethinking the Dramatic
Monologue: Victorian Women Poets and Social Critique’, the
authors in question seem to confirm rather than challenge such
poetry ideology of ‘depersonalized types of heroic wife and lover’,
‘universal womanhood’, and ‘the dominant model of femininity’ as
they identify with their speakers, which is reflected in the same
stance in their lyrical poetry.5
5 Glennis Byron, ‘Rethinking the Dramatic Monologue: Victorian Women Poets and
Social Critique’ in Victorian Women Poets: A Critical Reader, ed. by Angela Leighton
(Blackwell: Oxford, 1996), pp. 82&84. All subsequent references to this text will be
given parenthetically.
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In her reassessment of the dramatic monologue, Byron therefore argues that, although women poets, in her opinion, did not
invent the form of the dramatic monologue, they have played a pivotal role in the line of development that has turned out to be most
long-lasting and influential in the present day, namely its political
use for social critique.
While Browning can be regarded as the inventor of the form, in
Byron’s reassessment Webster is thought to have contributed most
to the variation that is still in use today, especially by Duffy. The
innovations Webster has made and Duffy has adopted pertain to
the shift from the female object in the poem to its subject, the
replacement of sensibility with materialism, and social criticism
from behind a mask. This has resulted in a blurring of the boundaries between the poet and the speaker, absence of the silent auditor, a questioning of the unified and autonomous self, a giving of
voice to the marginal, and the employment of colloquial language.
These characteristics take two forms, namely a sympathetic form, in
which the poet creates empathy for the speaking subject, and a revisionist form, in which the poet offers a different perspective on stories from history, literature, fable and myth. Even though Duffy
draws on Webster’s conventions, she both abandons Victorian
blank verse or unrhymed iambic pentameter and develops the
form of the dramatic monologue further by questioning the representation of a speaking subject in the language itself, as she is writing within the context of the new feminist discourse.
According to Kate Flint, cited in Byron’s reassessment, the sympathetic dramatic monologue evolved because of women poets’
‘readiness to inhabit the voices, the subject positions of others’ (p.
79). In her primary study Byron quotes Dorothy Martin, who similarly claims that ‘women seem usually to sympathise with their protagonists’ (p. 57). In the same study Byron explains that women feel
empathy for their speakers in such a way that ‘their ultimate target
is more the system which produces the speakers than the speakers
themselves’ (59).
A paradigmatic poem for the sympathetic dramatic monologue,
which creates empathy for the speaker by critiquing the system the
speaker is a product of instead of the speaker herself, is Webster’s
‘A Castaway’, published in Portraits (1870). The poem gives voice to
a Victorian prostitute, who seems to be completely satisfied with
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her vocation, ‘I accept myself’ (l. 137), and with her way of living,
‘Well, mine’s a short one and a merry one’ (l. 147). Instead, the critique of the social circumstances that caused and perpetuated prostitution, such as the shortage of the work, poor education, and the
imbalance of women and men, is highlighted:
144
And I find society to blame, or law,
The church, the men, the women, too few schools,
Too many schools, too much, too little taught:
Somewhere or somehow someone is to blame:
But I say all the fault’s with God himself
Who puts too many women in the world.
We ought to die off reasonably and leave
As many as the men want, none to waste.
Here’s cause; the woman’s superfluity. (ll. 291 –299)6
Duffy’s title-poem poem ‘Standing Female Nude’, reminiscent of
Webster, gives voice to a woman, apparently a prostitute (‘you’ve not
the money for the arts I sell’; ‘[…] At night I fill myself / with wine and
dance around the bars’)7, who is posing naked for an artist. Duffy,
rather than judging the speaker for participating in the objectification of women in art and getting money as an exchange for this participation (‘Six hours like this for few francs’; ‘I shall be represented
analytically and hung / in great museums […]’), like Webster criticizes the society that forces individuals into that: ‘I ask him Why do
you do this? Because / I have to. There’s no choice. Don’t talk.’8
Indeed, as Byron suggests in her principal study, the easiest way
to allude to the truth behind the reality in a sympathetic dramatic
monologue is through ‘inhabiting the conventional in order to
expose it […] As the speaker gives a subjective account of his/her
situation, that account is simultaneously offered for an objective
analysis, demonstrating and critiquing the cultural conditions
which produce it. (p. 61) To explain the point, Byron interprets
6 See footnote 2.
7 Carol Ann Duffy, Standing Female Nude (London: Anvil Press Poetry, 2006), p. 46.
All subsequent references to these poems will be given parenthetically.
8 See Zoe Ann Bolton, ‘Rest assured that I’d rather speak for myself’: poetic form,
poetry and feminism in Carol Ann Duffy’s dramatic monologues, Lancaster
Dissertation. All subsequent references to this text will be given parenthetically.
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Webster’s poem ‘The Happiest Girl in The World’ from Portraits,
which gives voice to a young Victorian woman, freshly married. At
first glance, the girl appears to adopt the ideological Victorian submission of a wife to a husband:
My love, my love, my love! And I shall be
So much to him, so almost everything:
And I shall be the friend whom he will trust,
And I shall be the child whom he will teach,
And I shall be the servant he will praise,
And I shall be the mistress he will love,
And I shall be his wife […] (ll. 195–201)
145
[…] I have no wedding ring, no handbag, nothing.
[…] I have either lost my ring or I am
a loose woman. No someone has loved me. Someone
is looking for me even now […] (p. 50)
Another variation on the form developed by Webster, also used
as a tool for social critique, is the revisionist dramatic monologue.
Alicia Ostriker defines ‘revisionist mythmaking’ as following:
Whenever a poet employs a figure or story previously accepted
and defined by a culture, the poet is using myth, and the potential
However, to use Byron’s words, ‘the persistent anaphora of the
lines produces a speaker who sounds suspiciously as if she were
reciting a lesson’ (p. 60). This becomes obvious in the following
lines which reveal the feeling of imprisonment: ‘The prisoned seed
that never more shall float […] / The prisoned seed that prisoned
finds its life’ (ll. 175&178). Duffy employs a similar strategy in the
poem ‘Woman Seated in the Underground, 1941’, published in
Standing Female Nude, which is spoken by a pregnant women in
the underground after a bomb attack in London. According to Zoe
Ann Bolton, the poet makes use of the speaker’s amnesia after the
attack to question what is traditionally understood as a woman, or,
in other words, to interrogate the symbols which together form the
cultural sign Woman. Thereby she exposes the fact that traditional
femininity in World War II England was determined by a wife’s
dependency on a husband:
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is always present that the use will be revisionist: that is, the figure or
tale will be appropriated for altered ends […] ultimately making cultural change possible.9
Consequently, according to Byron’s principal study on the dramatic monologue, by giving voice to a marginal or silent female
character from history, literature, fable or myth, the revisionist dramatic monologue demonstrates the fixity of cultural conventions
and simultaneously subverts the patriarchal representations of
women. Webster’s ‘Medea in Athens’ from Portraits, for instance,
gives a voice to a cruel woman from Greek mythology who murdered her children to take revenge on her husband Jason’s infidelity. Webster’s character reveals the motive behind her cruelty: the
need to punish her husband’s ambitiousness, which makes him
abuse his family members for his egoistical goals:
Wilt thou accuse my guilt? Whose is my guilt?
Mine or thine, Jason? Oh, soul of my crimes,
How shall I pardon thee for what I am?
[…]
For thou wouldst still have said ‘I have two sons’
And dreamed perchance they’d bring thee use at last
And build thy greatness higher: but, now, now,
Thou hast died shamed and childless, none to keep
Thy name and memory fresh upon the earth. (ll. 217–219&250–254)
All dramatic monologues in Duffy’s collection The World’s Wife
are revisionist and present a female version of a mythologized
story.10 According to Avril Horner,
we see here not the heroism or importance of men as documented in the archives or in myth […], but the human impact and
cost of their choices and their lives on others. We see them not in
high and public profile but through the eyes of their wives within
the perspective offered by the bedroom and by the kitchen. Thus
we are made fully aware of the true sources of their fame.11
9 Alicia Ostriker, ‘The Thieves of Language: Women Poets and Revisionist Mythmaking’
in The New Feminist Criticism: Essays on Women, Literature and Theory, ed. by Elaine
Showalter (New York: Pantheon Books, 1985), pp. 314–38 (p. 317).
10 See footnote 1.
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Accordingly, for example, Mrs Midas, the wife of a character
from Greek mythology who had the power to change everything
he touched into gold, reveals his egoism (‘What gets me now is not
the idiocy or greed / but lack of thought for me. Pure selfishness’
(p. 13)); the wife of Pilate, a historical figure who presided over the
trial of the Christ and ordered his crucifixion, reveals his lack of
self-confidence (‘Was he God? Of course not. Pilate believed he
was’ (p. 18)); and the wife of the literary character Faust, well
known from Goethe’s closet drama, reveals his deviousness (‘the
clever, cunning, callous bastard / didn’t have a soul to sell’ (p. 27)).
Just as Webster in ‘Medea in Athens’, Duffy in ‘Queen Herod’ tries
to explain the cruelty of Herod’s wife, who ordered his husband,
the ruler of ancient Palestine, to kill innocent male infants to protect her new-born daughter from a prophesied suitor: ‘No man,
I swore, / will make her shed one tear’ (p. 8).
Revisionist dramatic monologues show the unreliability of historical accounts also by means of the structure and the use of language. Webster’s ‘Sister Annunciata’ from Dramatic Studies, for
instance, includes two monologues with different perspectives on
the same story: Sister Annunciata’s forced entry into the convent to
forget her lover, and Abbes Ursula’s misunderstanding of her piety.
Moreover, according to Bolton, Duffy’s monologue ‘Frau Freud’
changes the famous psychoanalytic saying ‘penis envy’ into a punning variant ‘envious penis’ or ‘penis pity’ to signify how unfixed
the cultural establishments are.
Another specific feature of the revisionist dramatic monologue,
according to Byron, is that by employing a character from myth the
poet admits that the speaker is only her construct. This consequently draws attention to the poet’s own culture and enables a social critique of that very culture. In that way, Webster’s mythical
enchantress who captures Ulysses on her island in The Odyssey,
‘Circe’, from Portraits strongly reminds us of a bored middle-class
Victorian woman, trapped in monotony:
11 Avril Horner, “Small Female Skull”: patriarchy and philosophy in the poetry of
Carol Ann Duffy’ in The Poetry of Carol Ann Duffy: ‘Choosing tough words’, ed. by
Angelica Michelis and Antony Rowland (Manchester and New York: Manchester
University Press, 2003), pp. 99–120 (p. 108). All subsequent references to this text
will be given parenthetically.
147
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Always the same blue sky, always the sea
[…]
To-morrow’s dawn the twin of yesterday’s
[…]
Give me some change. (ll. 34, 37&48)
148
Similarly, ‘Salome’ from The World’s Wife gives voice to the
daughter of the Biblical Herodias, who asked for the head of St.
John the Baptist as a reward for erotic dancing in front of her stepfather Herod, and thereby Duffy alludes to the sexual permissiveness and decadence of contemporary (Western) society:
Simon? Andrew? John? […]
I needed to clean up my act,
[…]
cut out the booze and the fags and the sex.
[…]
I flung back the sticky red sheets,
and there, like I said – and ain’t life a bitch –
was his head on a platter. (pp. 56–7)
Both sympathetic and revisionist variants of the dramatic monologue widely employed by Webster and Duffy therefore function as
a useful tool for social critique. According to Angela Leighton,
Webster is ‘the most ruthlessly materialist of all Victorian women
poets’ because of the ‘socio-political sharpness of her poetry’ that
‘reduces every shining myth or idealism of her time to the social
facts of class, money and power’.12 Elsewhere Leighton explains
that Webster’s poetry represents a ‘decisive shift from the model of
sensibility’ in Victorian women’s poetry. In her opinion, Webster is
more interested in the materiality of women’s social lives than in
the elite figure of the poetess who has to choose between poetry
and love.13 Jennifer Maureen Garrett quotes Armstrong, according
to whom Webster uses the dramatic monologue as a method of
12 Victorian Women Poets: An Anthology, ed. by Angela Leighton and Margaret
Reynolds (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995), p. 419.
13 Angela Leighton, Victorian Women Poets: Writing Against the Heart (Hemel
Hempstead : Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1992), p. 164. All subsequent references to this
text will be given parenthetically.
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‘masked critique’, which gives her a licence to expose social
taboos.14 According to Leighton’s study, Webster’s ‘Circe’, for
instance, changes Homer’s cup with a drink for enchanting men,
changing them into pigs, into a mirror she holds against society:
Oh my rare cup! My pure and crystal cup,
With not one speck of colour to make false
The entering lights, or flaw to make them swerve!
My cup of Truth! […]
[…]
But any draught, pure water, natural wine,
Out of my cup, revealed to themselves
And to each other. Change? There was no change;
Only disguise gone from them unawares. (ll. 169–172&186–189)
149
Poor little diary, with its simple thoughts,
[…]
And did I write it? Was I this good girl,
This budding colourless young rose of home? (ll. 1, 7&8)
In a similar way Duffy’s poem ‘Whoever She Was’, published in
Standing Female Nude, portrays a woman who is remembering her
14 Jennifer Maureen Garrett, Reconceptualizing the dramatic monologue: the inter-
locutory dynamics of Carol Ann Duffy’s poetry, Lancaster Dissertation, p. 103.
Something similar could be claimed for Duffy, especially in
terms of the previous comparison between Webster’s ‘A Castaway’
and Duffy’s ‘Standing Female Nude’. By the use of the dramatic
monologue as a ‘masked critique’, the poet’s voice comes through
the speaker’s voice in their judgement of society, which could be
termed, in Rader’s words quoted in Bolton, as ‘the poet’s presence
behind the speaker’ (p. 17).
The blurring of boundaries between poet and speaker in
Webster’s and Duffy’s sympathetic and revisionist dramatic monologues results, according to Byron, in the complex and fragmented
representation of the speaking subject. Webster’s ‘A Castaway’, for
example, is reading her old diary and talking to another version of
herself, younger, more innocent and inexperienced:
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young motherhood by watching old photographs of herself with
her children:
Whoever she was, forever their wide eyes watch her
as she shapes a church and steeple in the air.
She cannot be myself and yet I have a box
Of dusty presents to confirm that she was here. (p. 35)
150
This splitting of the speaking subject can also be symbolically
signified by the employment of the speaker’s mirror image, which
functions as a substitute for the silent auditor. The speaker’s physical self and her reflection in the mirror show the discrepancy
between the speaker’s inner self and the self imposed by the society. Webster’s sympathetic dramatic monologue, ‘Faded’, published
in Portraits (1893), according to Byron, for instance, gives voice to
an ageing woman, who is talking to her younger image in the mirror. The woman is lamenting the loss of her youth, which is intrinsically connected with her subjectivity in the society: ‘Myself has
faded from me; I am old’ (l. 36); ‘but what am I? / A shadow and an
echo – one that was’ (ll. 136–7); ‘being old, be nothing’ (l. 54); ‘Tis
pity for a woman to be old’ (l. 38). Another Webster’s sympathetic
monologue, ‘By the Looking Glass’, published in Dramatic Studies,
gives voice to an ‘ugly’ girl, who is sadly observing her image in the
mirror after a ball. The girl feels estranged from her outside appearance (and we feel her pain) because she does not conform to the
cultural conventions that link femininity strongly to beauty:
A girl, and so plain a face!
Once more, as I learn by heart every line
In the pitiless mirror, night by night,
Let me try to think it’s not my own.
[…]
Alas! It is I, I, I,
Ungainly common […]
[…]
On beauty, till beauty itself must seem
Me, my own, a part and essence of me. (ll. 17–20, 25–6, 34–5)
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According to Maureen Garrett, Duffy’s ‘Recognition’ (in Selling
Manhattan), like Webster’s ‘Faded’, portrays a depressed middleaged woman whose loss of youthful self results in her psychic splitting. While shopping, the speaker runs into her reflected image at
the glass exit doors and realizes she no longer conforms to the society’s ideals of feminine beauty:
[…] I had to rush out,
blind in a hot blush, and bumped
151
In the context of feminist discourse, which began to develop
after the Women’s Liberation Movement in the 1960s, Duffy’s problematising of the speaking ‘I’ (as Byron argues) foregrounds the
process of the representation of that ‘I’ in language. This is reflected in her monologue ‘Small Female Skull’. Mean Time, where the
voice is given to a girl sitting in the lavatory, talking to her skull
clasped in her hands: ‘See, I hold her face in trembling, passionate
/ hands’.16 Moreover, by the use of colloquial language in her revisionist dramatic monologues, Duffy self-consciously draws attention to the fact that the speaker in a monologue is only her construction, which, in turn, enables her to speak for others. As Bolton
suggests, it is highly unlikely that Mrs Sisyphus from the poem with
the same title in The World’s Wife would use such a phrase as ‘A
load of old bollocks’ (p. 2).
In Bolton’s opinion, the emphasis on the process of the representation of the female speaking subject points to the inadequacy
of the male discourse to construct the sign woman. Although,
according to the Lacanian analogy phallus-penis, the female voice
cannot exist outside the male discourse, nonetheless female speakers can take control of their subjectivity in the language. Duffy’s
character Eurydice from the poem with the same title (The World’s
15 Carol Ann Duffy, Selling Manhattan (London: Anvil Press Poetry, 2001), pp. 24–5.
16 Carol Ann Duffy, Mean Time (London: Anvil Press Poetry, 1993), p. 25.
into an anxious, dowdy matron
who touched the cold mirror
and stared at me. Stared
and said I’m sorry sorry sorry.15
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Wife), which draws parallels between a mythological Orpheus
(whose beautiful flute-playing convinced the gods to bring his wife
Eurydice back to life after a snake-bite) and male sonneteers, refuses to be a muse or an object for a male poet, but wants to write herself and be a subject:
152
Rest assured that I’d rather speak for myself
than be Dearest, Beloved, Dark Lady, White Goddess
[…]
to be trapped in his images, metaphors, similes,
[…]
histories, myths…(pp. 58–60)
According to Montefiore, quoted in Rees-Jones, ‘if women are to
find their own identity and meaning, it is necessary first to repossess our primitive love for the mother’ (p. 24). In other words,
women can gain subjectivity in language by drawing upon female
literary tradition. Duffy’s last dramatic monologue in The World’s
Wife, ‘Demeter’, celebrates this community of women through the
mythological mother-daughter relationship between Demeter, the
corn goddess, and her daughter Persephone, queen of the
Underworld. Since each and every spring Demeter cyclically visits
her mother Persephone on earth, she, literally and literarily, symbolizes women’s mutual bond:
She came from a long, long way,
but I saw her at last, walking,
my daughter, my girl, across the fields,
in bare feet, bringing all spring’s flowers
to her mother’s house […]
[…] the small shy mouth of a new moon. (p. 76)
Bibliography
Bolton, Zoe Ann, ‘Rest assured that I’d rather speak for myself’: poetic form, poetry and feminism in Carol Ann Duffy’s dramatic
monologues, Lancaster Dissertation.
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Byron, Glennis, Dramatic Monologue: The New Critical Idiom
(London: Routledge, 2003).
Byron, Glennis, ‘Rethinking the Dramatic Monologue: Victorian
Women Poets and Social Critique’ in Victorian Women Poets: A
Critical Reader, ed. by Angela Leighton (Blackwell: Oxford,
1996), pp. 79–98.
Duffy, Carol Ann, Mean Time (London: Anvil Press Poetry, 1993).
Duffy, Carol Ann, The World’s Wife (Basingstoke and Oxford:
Picador, 1999).
Duffy, Carol Ann, Selling Manhattan (London: Anvil Press Poetry,
2001).
Duffy, Carol Ann, Standing Female Nude (London: Anvil Press
Poetry, 2006).
Horner, Avril, “Small Female Skull”: patriarchy and philosophy in
the poetry of Carol Ann Duffy’ in The Poetry of Carol Ann Duffy:
‘Choosing tough words’, ed. by Angelica Michelis and Antony
Rowland (Manchester and New York: Manchester University
Press, 2003), pp. 99–120.
Leighton, Angela, Victorian Women Poets: Writing Against the
Heart (Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1992).
Leighton, Angela and Reynolds, Margaret, eds., Victorian Women
Poets: An Anthology (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995).
Maureen Garrett, Jennifer, Reconceptualizing the dramatic monologue: the interlocutory dynamics of Carol Ann Duffy’s poetry,
Lancaster Dissertation.
Michelis, Angelica and Rowland, Antony, eds., The Poetry of Carol
Ann Duffy: ‘Choosing tough words’ (Manchester and New York:
Manchester University Press, 2003).
Ostriker, Alicia, ‘The Thieves of Language: Women Poets and
Revisionist Mythmaking’ in The New Feminist Criticism: Essays
on Women, Literature and Theory, ed. by Elaine Showalter (New
York: Pantheon Books, 1985), pp. 314–338.
Rees-Jones, Deryn, Carol Ann Duffy (Tavistock: Northcote House
Publishers, 2001).
Sutphin, Christine, ed., Augusta Webster: Portraits and other poems
(Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 2000).
153
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Ana M. Sobočan
Orlando inside Orlando’s
Orlando: ‘The Oak Tree’
More Years of the Life of Body-More Writing!
154
Orlando was unaccountably disappointed. She had thought of
literature all these years (her seclusion, her rank, her sex must be
her excuse) as something wild as the wind, hot as fire, swift as lightning; something errant, incalculable, abrupt, and behold, literature
was an elderly gentleman in a grey suit talking about duchesses.
The violence of her disillusionment was such that some hook or the
button fastening the upper part of her dress burst open, and out
upon the table fell ‘The Oak Tree’, a poem.
gender
(Woolf [1928]1998: 197-198).
In Virginia Woolf’s delightful fantasy biography Orlando,
Orlando is a complex character who begins the story as a man and
ends as a woman, and whose life spans three centuries. Orlando is
(or wants to be) all along above all, a writer, and asks herself this fundamental question: what is literature? Or, we might infer from
Orlando’s disappointing realization: what is literature asscribed to be
and who is the arbiter of this question? From the starting point of this
difficulty, we may develop an issue more based within the scope of
gender theory: what is woman’s writing or what should it be?
Hélène Cixous attempted to create l’écriture feminine, because
as she claimed, before her “there has not yet been any writing that
inscribes femininity” (Showalter 1981: 181). In this essay, I will examine how closely Orlando, published in 1928, approaches the concept of écriture féminine created in the 1980s by comparing and
contrasting Hélène Cixous and Virginia Woolf as well as by briefly
presenting Woolf’s theoretical work. In doing so I will claim that
analyzing particular characteristics of phallogocentric language in
Orlando may be comparable to particular demands of l’écriture
féminine. In argument I will consider to what extent Woolf’s writing
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of Orlando applies to Cixous’ theory produced half a century later:
I will investigate each author’s concept of (woman’s) literature and
in that frame discuss their conceptions of bisexuality. As the centrepoint, I will attempt to consolidate both issues, literature and bisexuality in an idea of vital importance to Cixous’ theory: what a
(woman’s) body is.
The body, notably the body of Orlando in Orlando, has been
discussed in numerous articles and studies due to its immortality
and, more importantly, its ability to metamorphosize from one biological sex to another. “Many people, taking this into account, and
holding that such a change is against nature, have been at great
pains to prove (1) that Orlando had always been a woman, (2) that
Orlando is at this moment a man. Let biologists and psychologists
determine. It is enough for us to state the simple fact; Orlando was
a man till the age of thirty; when he became a woman and has
remained so ever since. But let other pens treat sex and sexuality;
we quit such odious subjects as soon as we can.” (Woolf 1998: 98)
The ‘simple fact’1 of Orlando’s sex and sexuality, has, as Virginia
Woolf has foreseen, when writing the novel, raised numerous questions and issues, but the most important are connected with the
perception of what is sex and gender, what is female and male,
what is femininity and masculinity in Woolf’s writing. A more significant question this essay raises is: can we talk about Orlando in
terms of bisexuality or androgyny: he/she is not either/or, but
both/and. He/she ‘is’, or he/she ‘practices’? To the narrator of
Orlando, the business of sex and sexuality is a repellent subject,
and should be discarded immediately because it supposedly does
not hold any relevance. But it is, actually a matter of both sex and
sexuality, and it is important that the narrator emphasises both. The
first one, sex, is in connection with Woolf’s feminism – and we
could argue that Orlando is a feminist text in many ways. The second, sexuality, is in line with the fact that Orlando was dedicated to
and supposed to be, a fantasy biography of Vita Sackville West.
The concept of sex in Orlando is closer to androgyny: it intersects with Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own, published one year after
1 Notice the use of the article in ‘the simple fact’: not ‘a’ and not for example ‘this’.
See following quotation. And, notice the use of words: ‘let other pen(ise)s treat sex
and sexulity’ : this is a male preocuppation!
155
gender •Ana m. sobočan
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156
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Orlando. In this (more) theoretical text, Woolf expresses a tendency
to achieve a balance between ‘male’ self-realization and ‘female’ selfobliteration. Here, Woolf is in a way rejecting her ‘feminist’ consciousness, wishing for her femininity to be unconscious, so that
she might “escape the confrontation between femininity and masculinity.” (Woolf [1929]1994: 24) She recognizes the best writers to
be androgine, and so, according to her theory, the fictive Orlando
should fit perfectly into this category. Woolf’s ideal of androgyny is
Shakespeare, and interestingly, here Cixous intersects with her, recognizing Shakespeare as a model of her concept of bisexuality:
“there was that being-of-a-thousand-beings called Shakespeare.”
(Cixous 2001: 98) The androgyny of Orlando reinforces the ambivalence of Orlando that switches between different literary genres
(novel, fantasy novel, biography, parody of biography…), styles
(Ruskin, Shakespeare, Raleigh, Donne, the Brontës’, Dickens, and at
the end, Virginia Woolf’s…), historic eras (from Elizabethan to early
20th century) etc. Androgyny in Orlando does not mean freedom
from biology or from one’s biological sex that changes at a particular moment, but rather it indicates becoming free, subverting the
attributes assigned to a certain pre-ordained sex by society - gender.
“Orlando had now washed, and dressed herself in those Turkish
coats and trousers that can be worn indifferently by either sex; and
was forced to consider her position.” (Woolf 1998: 98) Sex is just a
sign and what is important is its position and function inside a certain discourse. Orlando subverts sex: this happens when sex is univocally recognized – Orlando comes to London dressed as a man,
and a prostitute convinced of Orlando’s sex, takes her into her quarters. Furthermore, the narrator constantly plays with sex: it is not certain, whether Sasha, Orlando’s beloved, is a man or a woman; and
archduchess Harriet, who is in love with Orlando, is a man, a transvestite. Orlando himself questions his/her own sex and the sex of
others, not being sure if her lover Shel is really a man or a woman,
and if she is a woman or a man: at the end they accuse each other of
being the opposite sex (Woolf 1998: 176).
After all, Orlando is also about sexuality, actually, it is about sexuality all the way through - and we could call this bisexuality. But
what kind of bisexuality is it? Built on Woolf’s notion of androgyny,
it can only be a ‘neutral’ bisexuality, which wants it all melted
together. This is why Orlando can shift sexes, identities, positions,
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even time: “For she had a great variety of selves to call upon, far
more than we have been able to find room for, since a biography is
considered complete if it merely accounts for six or seven selves,
whereas a person may well have as many as thousand.” (Woolf
1998: 218) Orlando is abundant, in places, characters, seasons,
sexes, styles and language - and so is Orlando.
“A woman’s body”, writes Hélène Cixous, “with its thousand and
one threshold of ardour… will make the old, single-grooved mother
tongue reverberate with more than one language.” (Cixous 1996:
69) Cixous also talked about abundance, but what kind of abundance? How is her notion of woman’s language different from
Orlando’s numerous languages? Hélène Cixous is talking about
‘jouissance’, the pleasure of the text that abolishes all repressions
and reaches a climax that is also the death of Meaning. ‘Jouissance’
is a direct re-experience of the physical pleasures of infancy and of
later sexuality, which has been repressed by the Law of the Father
that converts women into sexual objects for men (virgins or prostitutes, wives or mothers), and prevents women from expressing
their own sexuality. Hence, women must speak of their sexuality in
new languages, in écriture féminine. Cixous connects the expressiveness of écriture féminine with Jacques Lacan’s pre-Oedipal
‘Imaginary’, in which all difference is nullified in a pre-linguistic
unity of the child and the mother’s body. What Cixous suggests, is
that “woman must write her body, must take up the unimpeded
tongue that bursts partitions, classes, and rhetorics, orders and
codes, must inundate, run through, go beyond the discourse […].”
(Cixous 1996: 79) For the first time in her manifesto of l’écriture
féminine, The Laugh of the Medusa (1976), Hélène Cixous calls for
women to put their bodies into their writing.
Virginia Woolf discusses, in another essay on women’s writing,
Professions for Women, two constraints that hindered her own writing: the dominant ideologies, conceptions, prescriptions of womanhood, and the taboo of expressing female sexuality, “telling the truth
about her own experiences as a body.” (Woolf 1942: 236) Woolf thus
abandoned the task of speaking of (her) female body, and, in
Orlando, tries to annul difference: bisexuality, conceptualized as
‘neutral’, can aim at avoiding castration. This is precisely the aspiration of Woolf’s feminism: a castrated woman holds an inferior position to the man in society, and Woolf would like to mend this with
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her ‘equality politics.’ “A woman’s writing is always feminine, it cannot help being feminine; at its best it is most feminine; the only difficulty lies in defining what we mean by feminine,” (Woolf 1942:
238) writes Woolf, and at the same time argues2 that woman’s writing should explore female experience on its own and not in a comparative assessment of woman’s experience in relation to men’s. We
could read this statement as a possibility of a distinctive tradition of
women’s writing, but Woolf’s main objective is to show that woman
and woman’s writing is not inferior to man or man’s writing.
Cixous, in contrast, claims that there is almost no woman’s writing as yet, because “she [the woman] has not been able to live in her
‘own’ house, her very body.” (Cixous 1996: 68) Still woman’s writing
does exist, “defining a feminine practice of writing is impossible
with an impossibility that will continue; for this practice will never
be able to be theorized, enclosed, coded, which does not mean it
does not exist. But it will always exceed the discourse governing the
phallocentric system.” (Cixous 2001: 92) At the heart of Cixous’ theory is her rejection of theory, because theory itself is imbued with
phallogocentric language that has succeeded in repressing a
woman’s sexuality, notion and love of her body as well as suppressing her voice. Women, who are always the ‘Other’ or negative in any
hierarchies that society may construct, must, in écriture féminine,
subvert the ‘masculine’ symbolic language and create new identities
for themselves, which, in turn, will lead to new social institutions.
Woolf does, in Orlando, with her narrative technique, try to
escape the standard phallocentic logic of writing and concepts
associated with sex, time, space, literary canon… she rejects,
explodes issues that the reader may take for granted, and raises,
with playing with/on words, false associations and presumptions.
She re-sets, questions the real nature of things, of literature, history,
time, nature, gender… and the reader has no difficulty identifying
first with the male sex of Orlando and then, instantly with the
female sex. But we must notice that Orlando’s bisexuality is notably
different from that of Cixous’ theory, which is not ‘neuter’: “To this
bisexuality that melts together and effaces, wishing to avert castration, I oppose the other bisexuality, the one with which every subject, who is not shut up inside a spurious Phallocentric Performing
2 Cf. A room of one’s own.
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Theatre, sets up his or her erotic universe.” (Cixous 1996: 84) Cixous
refuses to annul differences, but would rather stir them up, not
allowing the woman – writer and/or character, to be a medium of
different times, histories, stories, sexes as passive as Orlando who is
taken up by different identities is, but to take on these differences
by herself, feeding her confidence and crossing boundaries.
As we have seen, Woolf does challenge the phallocentric language, but her idea, even her sense of bisexuality is quite different
from Cixous’. But, may I just note, Cixous’ theory itself contains
some theoretical contradiction: her concern for the free play of discourse rejects biology, as does Woolf in a way, but her privileging
and emphasising the female body seems to embrace it. Cixous
writes: “then the day comes – rather late for that matter – when I
leave childhood. […] No longer can I identify myself simply and
directly with Samson or inhabit my glorious characters. My body is
no longer innocently useful to my plans. (breasts) I am a woman.”
(Cixous 1996: 74) Cixous too, has identified with different identities,
but leaving her childhood, entering the language, a woman must
surpass the boundaries of language, must take on an active role.
Orlando ‘activates’ literature at the end of Orlando. Returning to
the introductory quotation from Orlando, upon the meeting with
literature, with language – a Man, a dull, grey-suit man, Orlando is
disappointed. When he was young he admired male writers – for
there could not be any female writers at that time – and aspired to
be like them: and what is more, Orlando had to be a man if she
wanted to be a writer. Now, Orlando is a woman: her illusion of literature is thus broken, and she gives up on it. Her body violently
reacts: from her breasts [sic!] – Cixous calls mother milk white ink
of women’s writing (Cixous 1996: 99) –falls her work of literature:
The Oak Tree. The Oak Tree is an oeuvre into which Orlando has
inscribed her life, him/herself throughout his/her entire history:
adventures, thoughts, mind and body. It is a work of Literature that
is a metaphor of Life, that wants to live –wants to be read. When The
Oak Tree falls from Orlando’s breasts, it is born, finished and published – read. At this moment, Orlando emancipates herself and
starts living: living in real, present time (time of actual publication
of Orlando). She buries (returns to Nature) The Oak Tree under a
big oak tree she sat under in 1586, and with this act gains her own
mortality, body-ness. The Oak Tree is actually the missing element
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in Woolf’s novel: it is a motif, a metaphor and a symbol of Orlando
– we never read about its content, because its content, its very body
is Orlando. The Oak Tree is Orlando, and Orlando is thus the author
and the subject of Orlando.
But even if Orlando gives up on literature because it is truly different from her (feminine) notions of writing, there is a shade of
upcoming Cixous’ theory in Woolf’s narration. The Oak Tree – a history of Orlando’s body and the body of Orlando – is both Life and
Literature that doesn’t conform and is born from Orlando’s breast.
160
Bibliography
Cixous, Hélène (1976), The Laugh of the Medusa. Signs. 1,4: 875-893.
Cixous, Hélène (1996), Sorties. Out and Out: Attacks / Ways Out /
Forays. In: Cixous, Hélène,
Clément, Catherine, The Newly Born Woman. Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press. 63-134.
Showalter, Elaine (1981), Feminist Criticism in the Wilderness.
Critical Inquiry. 8,2: 179-205.
Woolf, Virginia (1998), Orlando. London: Penguin Books.
Woolf, Virginia (1994), A room of one’s own. London: Flamingo.
Woolf, Virginia (1967), Collected Essays. New York: Harcourt, Brace
& World.
Woolf, Virginia (1942), The Death of the Moth and other essays. New
York: Harcourt Brace & Company.
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“My Vanishing Point” or Transcribing
Oneself to Poetry
161
gender
As one may gather from the very concept or purpose of this
seminar, there is no such thing as the ‘deadlock’ in gender questions. Always one can find male and female authors, male and
female thinkers, for whom the problem of gender conditioning in
literature is disquieting and urgent and who feel to be addressed by
it. [...] In my paper, firstly, I will speak for myself, and, secondly, on
the great theme I will say a little. The first has to do with the heterogeneity and incommensurability of individual life stories and writing stories (besides putting a question mark over the so-called ‘collective feminine’ in literature, here I am thinking also of the diverse
representation of modes and ‘politics’ of authorship, personified
by this seminar’s participants). The second was ensured by the limits on space and time, which I immediately resolved to breach, if
not to circumvent entirely: women, womanhood in general, have
been silenced for whole millennia, and now we propose to dole
them out 5 minutes and 2000 characters, to speak out and convey
their baffling story?! A story which besides will always have its
reverse side and its outer edges... an illuminated, manifest aspect
and an aspect which is dark or hidden?!
On the other hand, the longer I occupy myself with ‘women’s
writing’, or more precisely – the relationship of feminist theory to
women’s writing... and still more precisely – the longer I am a poet,
a writer, an author, who transcribes herself to literature and who is
transcribed by literature, the less inclined I feel to explain my position in culture – to clarify what I consider self-evident. Every freedom, including gender freedom, including creative freedom (freedom of utterance, freedom of expression) is indivisible and unconditional, or, to put it differently and more personally: I write excusively by myself, through my individualised femininity, through the
(mainly) feminine human being in me, and the language in which
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gender • stanislava chroba´kova´repar
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I am moving is a language of life ambivalences and contradictory
meanings. On the one hand apophatic, sometimes even escapist (I
lose myself in language and find myself again), on the other hand
creative (self-affirming and self-surpassing) – both simultaneously
and mutually conditioning.
I feel an ever more pronounced unwillingness to involve myself
in such discussions on our given theme, and the reason is mainly
this, that for whole decades I have found an old familiar truth
unfolding before my eyes: the ‘culprit’ (the suspected, socially delegitimised, condemned or ostracised) is commonly the one who
points to a certain (social) failure or problem and not one of those
who have caused it, who have nurtured it by attitude and action or
glossed it over with their own (let us say psycho-social or culturalsymbolic) ‘body’, whether consciously or unconsciously. Patriarchal
society (in an ever-closer alliance with global neo-liberalism, as we
experience it today), which for half a century has ignored the socalled second wave of feminism and its present-day continuation in
postfeminism, is now attempting something like a subversion of
feminism: the most feeble-witted performances and concoctions of
some of my (let’s admit) more pragmatic gender (!) colleagues are
to be subsumed under the category of ‘women’s writing’. Women –
and men too, writing under ‘gynonyms’ or without them –, who in
writing that sometimes verges on the mechanical (it’s difficult to
speak of an autonomous creative gesture), assiduously copy the
grossest gender stereotypes, and who by their sentimentality or
scandalous provocation manage to heighten the polarisation of the
gender roles – from within gender identities on the one hand, and
on the other hand between them. For such people deconstruction
of gender stereotypes, aesthetic subversion, political correctness,
remain unknown and superflous concepts. I find it not only demotivating but also amusing to watch how our shallow and superficial
society, including its intellectual, literary and media circles, rewards
them for this, and how their names sometimes sparkle in places
where the decent woman writer, that is to say the writer who puts
the status quo in question, is scarcely ever admitted. [...]
Let me be clear, then: I consider it of first-rate importance to separate myself from suchlike ‘star’ authors in the literary field and
firmly reject any attempt to associate my own work with their serial
production. However, I consider it no less crucial to draw attention
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to the identification, more through ill-intent than through ignorance, of pulp fiction (so-called women’s novels, or poems
drowned in flowery lyricism) with women’s writing or literature
written by women. We frequently witness this in those places, and
among those people, where and by whom gender hatred is cultivated, and with it a profound incomprehension of the current paradigm of culture and civilisation in all its aspects – those which fortify us and those which cripple us, indeed threaten the very survival
of the human species. Therefore we – the men and women who are
more enlightened about gender, who are conscious of the traps of
the patriarchal heritage – are commonly compelled to make use of
the French form of this concept, i.e. écriture féminine, which –
being associated with the post-Lacanian feminism of the 1970s –
inherently implies a feminist interpretation of the concept
‘women’s writing’, thus making impossible a displacement of its
meaning or an ideologically motivated abuse.
The chronic problem with female identity, or with its patriarchally
marked perception, is reflected also in the fact (confirmed by many
surveys) that the female producers of literary kitsch commonly make
their way into general surveys and encyclopaedias as relevant ‘literary creators’, while the male producers of kitsch are excluded. It is
not only that a double standard is here imposed upon the public,
with the indefensible tolerance extended to authors of modern bestsellers, but the conviction that women writers are of lower literary
quality and more conformist is further recycled, directly and subliminally. Furthermore, genuinely remarkable women writers and their
works are not to be found in such general surveys, and sometimes
the case is argued precisely in terms of the ‘success’ of woman writers in the book market and the response to their work among the
reading public. (To put it in a Gothic metaphor, the corpse is stabbed
to death twice.) On the other hand, even this ‘successfulness’ does
not guarantee these authors easy access to the literary canon or to
the history of the relevant national literature.
[...] Discrimination has many forms; an alibistic silence regarding
the life interests of those others is one of them. I do not have time to
draw up accounts of the numerous instances when for our dear colleagues we have been ‘invisible’ and ‘non-existent’. Alas, I am convinced that none of us will need to worry about a so-called high reference quotient or citation index for a long time to come. Men (for
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the most part) exclude us from the horizon of their perception, and
masculine culture encourages and confirms them in this purposeful
gender selectivity. [...] Not long ago the Croatian writer Dubravka
Ugrešić in a press interview declared that she is a feminist – among
other reasons, because where feminism is concerned she has (and
we have) no choice [...] Contributions to universal history, also to
the history of philosophy, literature, science, political and public
life... written by feministically orientated researchers, male and
female, say this much loud and clear: structural gender asymmetries
are an indispensable constituent part of Western civilisation as it has
evolved historically, indeed (according to the available evidence of
myths and religious legends) they go back into its prehistory. Today
that is a scientifically proven fact, which fully legitimises the efforts
of feminism and gender theory to establish more just and equal relationships between the sexes/genders in private life as well as in the
public sphere. Indeed, there is even more at issue; abolition of the
polarisations themselves that are included in the categorical
dualisms male/female, private/public, dominating/dominated, and
also object/subject, nature/culture, and so on.
My five ‘historic’ minutes are up, it seems. To conclude, however, I would like to emphasise this: to speak about poetry written by
women, without taking these few premises of thought as fundamental, is to my mind impossible and a waste of time. It is somewhere here that (my own) individual sensitivity to the poetic meanings of speech/silence, my transcription to text/life, and with it
something which we might call literary confession, all find utterance. Granted, always only conditionally, since it exists somewhere
outside all the criteria and norms and is indefinable. And this even
in defiance of reflection, which opens up, articulates, the problem
of ‘women’s writing’, but cannot define or resolve it.
(A paper from the seminar “Poetry written by women”,
Bratislava 2011; from Slovak translated by John Minahane.)
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Alenka Koželj
To Be Heard Everywhere!
A Megaphone. Juliana Spahr and Stephanie Young (eds.) –
with the help of Zsófia Bán, Ana Božičević, Dubravka Djurić,
Simone Fattal, Tatiana G. Rapatzikou, Stanislava Chrobáková
Repar, Liana Sakelliou, Jennifer Scappettone, Simone Schneider,
Pramila Venkateswaran, Phillippa Yaa de Villiers, Brian Whitener,
Lila Zemborain.
165
A Megaphone, an anthology of texts, may be regarded as an
attempt at a modern approach to women’s studies and questions,
not afraid to take a global view of the position of feminism and
post-feminism and thus invigorate and enrich its stock of ideas. An
effort is made (later we will see how successfully) to gather information about feminist issues and currents and the state of feminist
and post-feminist studies all over the world.
The book has an ideological and formal advantage in being liberated from a rigid methodological framework. All that is expected
from the authors is the revelation of their own personal experience, to the extent they find comfortable, or a more theoretical and
cultural view of the state of women’s rights in their local community (city, state, wider geographical area etc.). The work does not aim
to attain a methodological unity and does not follow particular
rules regarding style or a more intimately confessional tone. It is
more concerned with a certain directness and with non-appropriation of themes and contents. There is an effort to give a hearing to
each individual voice and to create a perfect democracy that deems
all opinions equally relevant and makes every experience count, so
that all the stories told are intimate and universal at the same time.
gender
ChainLinks, Oakland + Philadelphia, 2011.
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What are the Topical Accents of A Megaphone?
166
Firstly, there are the general questions, put forward by generations of feminist artists and intellectuals: how to save feminism from
desiccated flowery phrases, how to reveal the wolf under the lamb’s
skin, how to avoid the traps, concealed in the empty enumerations of
the gains of feminist struggle and the self-congratulation of established (and mostly patriarchal) institutions for making concessions
on the territory that should not be exclusively theirs in the first place?
And there are questions, raised by the arrival of the new millennium. How to revive feminism and introduce it into a modern globalized society? What metamorphosis has feminism undergone in its
history and what evolution awaits it in the future? Is it governed by
the same paradigms as the feminism that erupted mainly in the 60’s
and 70’s? How to ensure its freshness and avoid the self-complacency and the resting on our (possibly fictional, proclaimed by others
while in reality non-existent) laurels? How to preserve the essence
of feminism, with all its revolutionary eros, from sinking in the sea
of general activism in the quickly evolving modern world? Which
changes should be accepted, the questionable nature of which
unvailed? What is the role of feminism, how can it be distinguished
from the general sum of avantgarde, progressive political movements? How to prevent its specificity from dissolving, in a moment
of weakness, into premises that address similar social and political
goals, but threaten to take from feminism its autonomy and identity?
The fact, that “at least something” was achieved shouldn’t satisfy
us at this point. Making compromises on the basis that “much has
been accomplished” can prove fatal. The position of feminist activists
in the West (and one of the great merits of the anthology is its insistence on this assumption) is in its way just as fragile as the suppressed fight for women’s rights in the “third world” countries. On
the one hand, feminists in the “developed world” cannot help but
congratulate themselves for the substantial progress attained by their
sacrifice. On the other hand, they should not stop here. Has the
activist, progressive, maybe even avantgardist feminism lost its edge?
The Megaphone anthology strives to show how important the
cooperation between different feminist incentives is in the global
world, where cultural realities travel from one side of the planet to
the other almost in real time. Modern technology can be a great ally:
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ideas are available very easily and very quickly to an ever-wider audience. Ideas and incentives are spreading at an enormous speed,
reaching cultures that were to this moment perhaps neglected not
only by the political elite (domestic and foreign) but also by the feminist movement. The main thought brought to us by A Megaphone is
therefore the need for communication, for a rapid exchange of ideas,
for contact and sharing of experiences (the book itself testifies to the
fact that cooperation and linkage on different levels are often
achieved through blogs, online newspapers, and more and more
through social networks). What are the common traits of feminism in
different cultural environments? Which are the divergences?
In the introduction we find three different explanations of the
title: firstly, Megaphone is a sort of tribute to a group of Mexican
artists, and at the same time (secondly) to a group that organises
weekly literary readings under the same name. The third option is
of a more symbolic nature. The publication is supposed to be an
aid, an instrument for dispersion of ideas, considered as tools that
empower the weaker voices and put them side by side with the
stronger, so that they can prevail over the numerically larger opponent: assistance which enables even those on the margins to fight
out their existential space.
On the level of form and contents the book is divided into three
thematic segments: the first presents a “Foulipo” project (with reference, of course, to the famous Oulipo), a second bears the title
Numbers Trouble and the third combines two streams of thought –
A Word on Each and Can We Do Together? How to listen to the
other? How to accept his experience, how to stay open and tolerant
when receiving his ideological agenda? It is about the most fundamental, the most genuine interest in the mysterious other as a conveyer of a certain historical and political reality, in which we should
not look for our reflected image: rather we should know how to
accept the specificity of his life experience without slipping into
generalisations and presumptions built on prejudice.
Numbers Trouble
This section may prove to be the most problematic and disputable part of the entire book, and the arguments of its opponents
resemble the second thoughts of those who reject a women’s quota
in politics. There is no reason for a critical observer of this approach
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not to feel some sort of internal split. On the one hand, the only
rational solution would seem to be to base the representation of
women in various anthologies and literary prizes solely on the quality of the author, and not on how many places should be conceded
to women in order to be politically correct. On the other hand, we
cannot overlook the fact that the norms by which we define the
artistic value of a creation are “polluted” by a long history of men as
the only players in all forms of public life, to the extent where it is
virtually impossible to refer to any objective criteria on which the
contribution of women artists and intellectuals could be founded.
According to the authors of the project, due to its methodological insufficiencies it should not serve as an unchallengeable foundation for hypotheses and specific action. But we should certainly
not overlook the fact that an intelligent, reflective woman can be
horrified by the results of the investigation: anthologies (except for
those dedicated exclusively to women) are created by men. They
present mostly men. The prizes mostly go to men (with some
prizes the discrepancy between men and women is especially striking, and we should not ignore the fact that women more often win
the prizes with lower financial value, while larger sums are reserved
for men). Men publish more often.
Substantial progress has been made in all fields in the last
decades (at least in the developed world). This may have lulled us
into a false sense of security and promoted the idea that equality
works, that we do not need to further encourage and support it,
because most of the goals have been achieved and evolution itself
will bring pure equality, with no help needed from any external
intervention. This conviction is not entirely unconnected with the
capitalist-liberal concept of the “invisible hand”, which is supposed
to govern the market and thereby perpetuate the existence of “the
best of all possible (economic and financial) worlds”.
Numbers Trouble, in spite of all its deficiencies (acknowledged
by the project’s participants), shows us that the fight for the rights
of women should continue, in accordance with new philosophical
and sociological guidelines characteristic of the third millennium.
Furthermore, numerical representation is not for its own sake, but
serves as a specific point of departure from which discussion about
the role and the meaning of modern feminist activism can spread.
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A Word on Each
Can We Do Together?
Can we do together? represents a counterpart to the above-mentioned section. Here the editors ask participants to present their
suggestions on how to improve the position of women and mod-
169
The next section of the book commences with a new, topically
possibly more interesting and more fertile part: the project called A
Word on Each. Here the editors, with the help of authors from all over
the world, seek answers to some suggested inquiries, mostly regarding the social status of women writers in their home environment.
Their dialogue is fluent, lively, and very open, allowing for every
response that the questions may evoke from interviewees. Writers
can explain the state of the culture in their country, the political and
sociological framework and its effect on literary production; some
interviewees have very elaborate views and suggest very specific
solutions, others expose their personal views and speak about the
role of women and feminism on the basis of their experience.
From what has been said so far, we can see that the problems
which feminism encounters diverge from state to state (maintaining nevertheless some affinities). In African and Arabic countries
the situation of women, and feminist activists even more so, is highly problematic. Feminism in those parts of the world is not only a
non-conformist decision but also a life-threatening one, while in
the West discrimination is often covered and carried out with very
sophisticated devices, barely seen with the naked eye. The financial
undernourishment of the culture sector allows very few authors to
live from their writing, and those who do must earn most of their
income by working in various fields far from their artistic aspirations (writing reviews and scenarios, copy editing, translating etc.).
This situation is especially difficult for women. Because the burden
of housework and child-rearing is still mostly on their shoulders, it
is harder for them (particularly if they have a regular employment
that has nothing to do with the world of art) to produce some time
for their own needs and creation. To summarize the status of a creative woman in the new millennium we could reformulate the
problem posed by Virginia Woolf: nowadays it is much easier to
find one’s room, but there is no time or inner capacity to sit in it.
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ern feminism. This may be the weakest point of the anthology. The
suggestions are mostly vague, not concrete and elaborate enough:
just about every contribution talks about the urgency of cooperation, connecting and common action, but there is very little preparedness for immediate realisation and engagement. Sadly, in this
section the determination which the participants call for disperses
and the activist charge evaporates. At a moment when the space is
open and sensitive enough to permit any ideological contribution
to flourish, A Megaphone (with a few honourable exceptions)
timidly slips into theories and un-thought-out enumerations of
intentions to be realised someday, somewhere, somehow.
Conclusion
How to evaluate the work reviewed? First of all, it presents a certain field of possibilities on how to approach the question of feminism in modern days. An indisputable quality of the anthology is its
openness and fluidity; freedom of expression, limited only by selfcensorship, is one of the great allies of women’s studies. The formal
inconsistency (some contributions are longer, others shorter, some
resemble real professional papers, others are closer to a sporadic
diary entry) is not at all disturbing; what is more, because the register in most cases does not range beyond the very ordinary verbal
domain, even readers with weaker theoretical grounding can see
that the articulation of political facts is not only a matter of an educated elite. Anyone can form their own thought about politics and
about their life under its influence, based only on their knowledge
and their own inner impulse.
We should not omit to mention that the anthology includes also
contributions from Slovenia. One of the editors is the SlovakianSlovene poet and feminist theoretician Stanislava Chrobáková
Repar, while the other interviewees include Iva Jevtić, Jana Kolarič,
Barbara Korun, Meta Kušar, Vida Mokrin Pauer and Breda
Smolnikar. Their suggestions and statements show a resemblance
with the countries of Central Europe and partly also Southern
Europe. The general problem is the meagre number of women in
the cultural space (at least in comparison to men), illustrated by the
fact that the most highly-regarded prizes normally end up in male
hands. But possibly a worse and more pressing problem is the current “crisis system” of values, which imposes a ceaseless and unin-
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terrupted production that must prove itself “economically founded” in the shortest time possible. In this new constellation of priorities, in the mentality of profit, market flow, competition and neverending enhancement and maintenance of the economy, all of the
artists and humanists as a social group are branded with the stigma
of non-profitability and considered parasites living off “honest taxpayers”. For the present they are successful only on a verbal level,
they are not manifestly advantageous, and so they draw the short
straw. Which is particularly short for women.
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Stanislava Chrobá ková Repar (ed.)
A Megaphone
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These interviews were conducted at the end of the previous
decade, firstly published (in a more extended mode) in Slovenia
and Slovakia in 2008 and 2010. The current selection responds to
the 2011 (USA) book version. This is why certain information might
be outdated, or, better to say, it could be a little bit different, respectively refreshed.
(the questionnaire: Slovenia, Slovakia, Czech Republic (25
respondents together); edited by Stanislava Repar)
What does it mean to be a woman writer, poet, playwright in
Slovakia? In general, what are the working and living conditions of women authors in your country?
gender
Etela Farkašová
I believe that the material circumstances of women writers in
Slovakia are comparable to those of their male colleagues. There is
a lack of adequate institutional support on the part of the state
(subsidies are restricted). We have no tradition of financial sponsorship for the publication of original fiction. All of this is further
aggravated by the prevailing attitude towards books and cultural
production in general as commodities, even though the number of
copies sold rarely coincides with the quality of the book on sale.
Unfortunately, social circumstances offer few incentives for the
possibility of men or women to work as freelancers so that they
could devote themselves to creative work. However, women
authors are de-privileged in other ways, such as with their double
or even triple workload. Women work, take care of the family, are
socially committed. They have less “free” time in comparison to
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their male colleagues. Furthermore, there are fewer informal (literary) “women’s networks.” The lack of awareness about gender
among critics and writers (usually men in places of power, different
committees, etc.) affects, for instance, the creation of anthologies
(there tends to be an over-representation of male authors in relation to women authors, which – at least in my opinion – bears no
relation to any criteria of quality), the distribution of awards, the
creation of various comprehensive overviews of the literary scene,
and also the writing of school textbooks and scholarly monographs
that deal with Slovak literature. In comparison to their male colleagues, women get less attention (regardless of the quality or
extent of their work) and the evaluating criteria tend to be often
implicitly masculine, based on male experience and world-view.
This leads to certain themes being prized as more literary than others. I find it absurd that among the ten works chosen to be translated within the international project “One hundred Slavic novels,”
not a single one was written by a woman. This is bound to be an
infamous Slovak peculiarity within the international context of the
project. However, despite everything I have written above, there
has been some progress made, both on individual – a move
towards more gender sensitive criticism – as well as institutional
levels. I find the foundation of the Biblioteka book fair award for
best female author a positive achievement. Even though it is questioned by those who understand it as positive discrimination, I
believe it is, seen in a larger context, a definite move towards a
greater equilibrium between the sexes and a contribution towards
greater equality/justice in our literary scene.
Anna Grusková
I am primarily a playwright and have been trying to do art as a
“full-time job” for the past four years. My background is in theater
studies and I also have some practical experience in theater, so apart
from my own writing I also translate academic texts and foreign
plays, write for newspapers and journals, and I have also begun to
direct. All of these are non-commercial activities. On top of this, I
also share household responsibilities with my nearly grown-up son
and a rather busy husband, which I also count as work. I am currently waiting for the reply to my application for a year-long writing
stipend. If I get it, I will be able to write a novel that I have been
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working on and whose fragments I have been sporadically writing
into my computer over a long period of time; if not, I will have to
stop “freelancing” since I cannot make a living this way. Many
authors, both male and female, are in a similar situation, probably
not only in Slovakia but also in those countries with bigger markets,
unless, of course, they decide to write commercial literature.
Derek Rebro
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I am not a woman author and therefore not directly addressed by
this question, but because I have been researching this topic for a
long time and have an interest in women’s writing (and art in general), I will try and answer these questions. (I shall limit my answers
particularly to the field of literature.) There is an abundance of
women poets in Slovakia. However, on the surface, there are few
authors (not only poets), who reflect the issue of their gender in their
work. It might seem that this is not needed. I believe the opposite to
be true, since those few texts that do address the cliché of the “feminine” (i.e. “feminine” as sentimental, emotional) are regularly labeled
as “pre-intellectual” at best. At the same time, there is a general feeling
that women have always been (adequately) represented in the history of literature. Thus, new readings that would place women authors
in different (more “precise”) contexts are still waiting for a change in
the social climate, in which those of us who refuse androcentric readings would not be considered “stinkers.” The working and living conditions of our authors, both male and female, are such that a person
simply cannot make a living as an author. As far as the academic
milieu is concerned, there is a “glass ceiling” still in effect. Of course,
a restructuring of the family would also help, in the sense of sharing
household responsibilities between men and women, as well as in
the sense of loosening strict gender polarizations. We could show
our children early on that life can also be different from the one that
we ourselves are living. Education and personal influence can gently
(and in this way more effectively) establish new conditions for men
and women of the future.
Being a woman writer is a continuous act of balancing on the
edge. At least it is for me. Balancing between the need to make a liv-
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ing, to be independent, and the need to create, read, and write.
Balancing between certainty and uncertainty, responsibility and
pleasure. Because I chose science and editorial work as my field of
activity (especially in the existential sense), it is also a balancing
between research, writing of academic texts (essays, reviews), editorial work, translation, and finally, literary creation itself. I have
learned to live with that, and through the combination of my interests and needs, I have in many ways enriched myself – but I am also
aware of the other side of the story. I am aware that our energy is not
limitless, that the authorial impulses limited to the level of intent
reveal a certain weakness. At the beginning of my professional and
life path, I was naturally engaged, but also gender blind. This, unfortunately, also meant that I let myself be used for other people’s goals
and intentions, and I never even noticed it. It was only my life experience that prepared me for feminism. Sensitivity to gender issues is,
to me, a test of social intelligence, for men and women alike. I do not
see feminism as the domain of dissatisfied women. However, even
if life were kind to me, there’d still be so many cruel fates out there
that it would be impossible to remain untouched. The true cause of
such suffering often remains hidden, since we do not understand
the structures of gender dependence and asymmetries. We could
say that in a patriarchal world women still merely “save their own
skins,” forming more or less resourceful communities on the basis
of solidarity. We are faced with a paradoxical situation: the antidiscrimination legislation in Slovakia and Slovenia is, in many ways, far
ahead of our social consciousness – by this I mean the awareness of
gender issues. It is usually the other way around: the legislation trying to catch up with an already established societal need.
Jana Kolarič
I work as a freelance poet, writer, and playwright. Based on my
experience, I can say that in our country (probably due to a small
market) it is impossible to make a living by writing books. As an
author who, together with her husband, supports a family, I have to
do a lot more on top of my basic work for us to survive. So I proofread, translate, write essays, do editorial work, every now and then
I direct (I am a theater director by education). I depend on authors’
fees, but here they are not paid regularly. Sometimes they are
months late, if they come at all. This is why my female writing col-
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leagues are generally not independent, but hold on to regular jobs
(mostly in education) and create alongside their day jobs, when
time permits. There are more freelancers among men.
Breda Smolnikar
176
I cannot say that I am not a well recognized and respected author
among readers, experts, and literary connoisseurs in Slovenia, but
ever since my book, Ko se tam gori olistajo breze, was a subject of a
court trial, I have noticed that I have become interesting mainly as an
example of a shocking miscarriage of justice. I have been both
awarded prizes and persecuted for my books. In the eighties, during
the previous regime, I was given a three-month suspended sentence
for books that described the war. And then, in 1999, in a newly independent Slovenia, I was sued by five women I had never before met
(two from the US and three from Slovenia). In a trial closed to the
public, they accused me of describing their parents’ romance in my
work Ko se tam gori olistajo breze. Consequently, I had to pull all
copies of my book from the market and settle all legal fees. The publication of my book was banned forever (in perpetuity) and I was
sentenced to pay a huge fine for any copies of the book that might
have been left in the stores (on one copy I would have owed 160,000
Euros). I was about to declare bankruptcy, since, because of these
women, my assets were frozen. I fought my sentence for eight years
in many ways: I burned my books publicly; I locked them; I translated
them; I made CDs instead of the books I was forbidden to produce;
I published stuttering and coded works. After eight years, the Slovene
Constitutional Court declared all of the previous sentences void.
Now anyone who wishes to do so is free to read my book, which has
been described as a “masterpiece” by the experts (Slovene
Comparative Literature Association). I’m used to presenting my work
autonomously, and there responding fore confidently, and throughout these years I have reached my readers and lovers of literature by
publishing my books privately, at my own expense. And, of course,
this takes money. I can only publish a book once I finish my day job,
the difficult manual labor of a cleaning woman. I write during the
weekends, at night, during holidays. Over the past few years, it has
been a little less difficult: I was invited to Switzerland, where I am
supported by some Swiss authors to write and create at the local convent in Ittingen. The Slovene Ministry of Culture refused to subsidize
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my new book, since I had not published five new books during the
previous two years. Of course, I did have five books, but reprints and
translations published privately do not count. Even the previous
regime wanted independent publishing to disappear – an impossible task if your opponent is implacable, even with the measures currently imposed by the current regime. In the end, there is always the
manuscript, and if nothing else works, you can still distribute it. No
system can quash a person’s dream. Of course, I make no distinctions
here between men’s and women’s writing; as far as I can see, the men
authors have it equally hard.
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I started working as a freelancer after the publication of my first
work; I have the status of a person “self-employed in the field of culture,” a status that brings some benefits when it comes to taxes; however, I have to pay for everything else (insurance, pension) myself.
On the level of everyday life, this means I have to survive by working
on various projects and get by the best I can. I write in the evenings
or on my days off. In this way, writing literature is a sort of privilege
which I can only afford when I steal myself from other work.
Another comment on the status of a “self-employed [freelancer] in
the field of culture”: I would like to remind here of the problems that
two of our best authors had obtaining a similar status (the only difference being that their insurance would be paid for by the state).
For Nataša Velikonja and Suzana Tratnik, some of their more established male colleagues and the Ministry of Culture itself were put off
by the fact that they both write socalled women’s literature.
Iva Jevtić
Dear Stanka, I find it difficult to answer your first question, probably because it is difficult for me to identify with the label writer,
poet, etc. I dedicate most of my time to my academic work, even
though, at best, academic work and writing co-exist with and enrich
each other. I cannot, therefore, write about the “working conditions” of authors, since I believe there is a great difference between
those of us not primarily dependent on our writing for our living
and other women authors who work as freelance artists. The livelihood of freelancers is indecently precarious. I imagine that the
Nataša Sukić
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decision of many not to become freelancers is, to a great extent,
based on the unfreedom of the “free life,” since, at least judging by
the experience of some of my colleagues, most of the freelancer’s
time is spent in anything else but writing (securing basic livelihood,
demanding fees). Given space limitations, I would like to conclude
by saying that the situation of women is somewhat different from
that of their male colleagues, since I am familiar with cases in which
women get paid less for the same work, etc. Of course, male
authors and, to a slightly lesser degree, with women authors, much
depends on where they publish and what social and cultural networks they choose to move in.
What is the role of the relevant institutions in this field (societies, organizations, civil initiative, media etc.)?
Etela Farkašová
Due to limited space, I would just like to mention the role of special interest groups and societies. We have two such feminist societies: the feminist cultural society, Aspekt, that, among other things,
provides support for women authors, and the club of Slovak
women writers, Femina, which I co-founded, and whose main goal
it is to organize readings and stimulate discussion of the work of
Slovak women writers and the publication of anthologies of their
work (so far we have managed to successfully publish two AustrianSlovak anthologies, one Norwegian-Slovak anthology, and five
Slovak anthologies).
Anna Grusková
Literature produced by women has been supported by the
strong publishing activities of the women’s interest group Aspekt.
Contemporary Slovak playwrights have been taken active care of
by the Theater Institute of the Slovak Academy of Sciences. It organizes an open competition for best play, publishes texts, organizes
the festival New Drama, theatre workshops, and readings.
Compared to the past, this has been a huge step forward. However,
there is no adequate system of support for original Slovak produc-
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tions; there are very few stipends and they are meager and often
awarded in a non-transparent way.
Derek Rebro
In Slovakia, we have greatly benefited from the feminist educational and publishing project Aspekt which has distributed a wide
spectrum of feminist ideas and has enriched Slovak ideas of
“women’s” art, “women’s” thought, and feminism. Of course, it only
enriched those who wanted to be enriched. Another hub of positive activity is the Centre for Gender Studies at the Faculty of Arts in
the UK which has succeeded in bringing new perspectives into academic thought, especially with the help of its pedagogues and visiting professors. They are challenging the still prevailing stereotype
of what it means to be a “woman.”
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Minimal. The media barely even reflect on the gender issues or
dimensions of life—in Slovakia and in Slovenia. It is the same with
writers’ associations, with ministries of culture, academies of science. They all support and groom the literary canon as a gender
monolith, i.e. an almost exclusively male category. This affects the
distribution of literary prizes and awards, the presentations of work
abroad, the creation of anthologies and textbooks and so forth. The
Tatarka Prize (awarded in Slovakia since 1994) has never been – at
least the one in literature – awarded to a woman author, which
means that the winners are exclusively male authors or theoreticians. The Prešern Prize and the Prešern Prize Fund (awarded in
Slovenia, the former from 1946, the latter from 1962) have only broken with this trend 5 times and with 4 women authors (one of them
was awarded the Prize twice). The system of distribution of stipends
(in Slovenia) is equally discriminatory. Under the aegis of formal
equality (with ostensibly strict criteria in place) the incomparable is
being compared – disregarding the double, almost triple workload
of women, the system is patriarchal and rigid and primarily a good
alibi – basing its criteria, for instance, on the awards of national significance (see above) or the publication of texts in anthologies (!!!).
This situation is duplicated on other levels also, for instance, on the
level of authorial language or national identity. Personally, as an
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author living in Slovenia since 2001 and a Slovene citizen but also as
an author who has so far written all of her works in Slovak, I am
being (even without the gender aspect) discriminated against and
marginalized precisely on the basis of my national and language
identity, of course, in formal accordance with the rules. However,
what infuriates me most is the coalition of rigid institutions and
chauvinist individuals that legitimize each other’s conservative tendencies and limitations—in editorial boards, various committees and
panels, organizations and boards, etc. Since similar gender chauvinists also exist among publishers and translators, this helps create and
determine both Slovak and Slovene literary production and the publication of translations for years ahead. As you can imagine this does
not benefit women and their creative achievements (I do not mention literary quality here, since I take this to be a given, something
already present). This can only be changed by enlightened individuals. And there are a few; however, not nearly enough to tip the balance or reach the necessary critical mass.
Jana Kolarič
I believe (and this, of course, is my personal opinion not based
on any research) that the media has been going too far over the
past few years in the glorification of the ideal of a fully active
woman, a super-woman capable and perfect in anything she does.
For instance, an artist who is also an ideal housekeeper, mother,
wife, daughter (helping her elderly parents), and at the same time
financially successful, while all of her life (from her apartment to
her cooking) is adequately designed, above reproach, not to mention her looks. On top of everything, such a woman author should
also be versed in the art of promotion and book sales. No wonder,
then, that she is left with no creative energy for her basic work.
Women artists who do not wish to succumb to such pressure and
move away from the mainstream are marginalized and overlooked,
as if they did not exist. They do not have a media existence, no matter how much or how well they write.
Breda Smolnikar
I have always been walking a path of my own and almost never
deal with institutions that would only try to manipulate me. The
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media has been on my side throughout, especially during the years
of the trial. It is true, though, that many books get published these
days, and even the media have problems keeping up with this production and figuring out what is good and excellent. The state institutions, on the other hand, are far behind, not only in terms of literature but other arts also. They have no interest in real art. They function as power does and are only interested in distributing and
dividing, instead of adoring art.
Nataša Sukić
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My book appeared as part of the Vizibilija series at ŠKUC publishing house (an NGO), which publishes works in feminist and lesbian studies and lesbian-themed fiction; this series struggles against
mainstream production of books that are too expensive and generally do not deal with “marginal” topics. As far as the media is concerned: there’s the interesting example of a literary journal with the
ostensible aim of promoting new Slovene titles; they rejected the
proposal of the Vizibilija editor to feature new ŠKUC-Vizibilija titles
in their journal. Their argument was that these books are of no interest to the general public. One of the more beloved arguments of
homophobe literary experts is that homoerotic literature is too hermetic. An implausible argument not worthy of serious discussion.
Both the state and media (with a few bright exceptions) ostensibly support art and the work of women, but in reality women’s
work within art is devalued and only tolerated if it limits itself to
providing service. The situation is more varied on the level of
NGOs and civil initiatives, since we do have organizations that continuously strive for the promotion of a “different,” more inclusive
image of culture. What they all have in common is, I believe, their
firm theoretical groundedness and the fact that they cannot be separated from relevant social movements and activism (as an example, I would like to mention the yearly LGBT reading that succeeded in forming a readership/ public of its own and has grown from
a relatively small event to an almost carnivalesque celebration of
“alternative” literature). The problem is that organizations of this
kind cannot always count on the support of the state and, in this
Iva Jevtić
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way, are often subject to control (for example, the journal Lesbo
published quality articles in the field of queer studies, but was
denied additional funds some years ago).
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What, in your opinion, is the relation among the writing of
women, women’s writing, and feminism (or feminisms)?
Does feminism have an influence on the situation in your
country? If so, please define this influence and the level on
which it manifests (in theory, in practice)?
Etela Farkašová
I do not think that writing done by women is the equivalent of
feminist writing. There are many women authors that reproduce
faithfully the “gender neutral” literary canon (along with its stereotypes). Moreover, in Slovakia, there are many women writers who
adamantly refuse to be characterized as feminist, even as they write
mainly about female experience and even critically address the issue
of gender inequality. I suppose they are worried about being excluded from the literary community, which refuses to see feminism as a
serious political and reflective activity. And yet the influence of feminism continues to grow both on theoretical and practical levels,
which affects the understanding and the possible resolution of the
already mentioned problematic (just by addressing it). I am convinced that initiatives such as these will change things for the better.
Anna Grusková
Many good women authors have gravitated towards the interest
group Aspekt in the years since its establishment. By providing a
clear and respected space for publication, Aspekt encourages their
contributors’ growth, opens up new subjects and literary methods,
and has both a theoretical and practical influence on women’s
lives. Aspekt’s press, which has been active for over a decade, is well
respected and recognized. I cannot think of a single female Slovak
author of interest who is not in one way or another connected to
Aspekt, and this is also true of those authors living abroad. All of
them, however, do not declare themselves feminist, especially
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because, in Slovakia, feminists are still seen as problematic women
who dislike men.
Derek Rebro
This is a complicated question that should be given more space.
I believe that feminism proved itself to be an incredible incentive to
women’s writing, and it has definitely encouraged the writing of a
liberated “women’s writing” [écriture féminine], as defined by the
French feminists in the seventies and then further developed by
American theorists working in the fields of gender, intercultural,
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To be a woman author in our country fundamentally implies not
wanting to reflect on one’s own gender. Many authors, even those
who do address gender issues (subconsciously?) in their works are
treated as gender neutral “authors.” Much of this has to do with the
ignorance and fear of being labeled a “woman’s author” – the term
“women’s writing” has so far been generally applied to the sentimental work of authors like T. K. Vasilková. Another effective deterrent is the fear of the label “feminist,” since it is associated with a
vulgar and distorted view of feminism. There are exceptions both
on the side of authors (E. Farkašová, U. Kovalyk, I. Hrubaničová,
and S. Repar) as well as theoreticians (S. Repar, E. Farkašová). As
seen from the examples above, those not afraid of being “women”
are those who have already looked beyond the “stale curtain” of
our intellectual and cultural milieu and have dared to reveal the
head of the Medusa, which we have all – needlessly – feared for all
these years. Despite gynocritics, feminist critique, and gender studies being established for decades abroad, in Slovakia there remains
a fear of re-evaluating traditional thought patterns. I experienced
this first hand when I applied for my PhD. Despite being familiar
with feminism and holding an interest in poetry written by women,
I was forced to turn my attention to a different field – in case I
wished to pursue my studies not only personally but also institutionally. Our book market is positively influenced by the presence
of Aspekt, which is publishing academic and fictional work, and is
widening the horizons of women’s production and our ideas of
what it means to be a woman.
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and queer studies. Those who still believe today that women’s writing equals the writing of sentimental soaps (whether they reject
them or not) are hurting their own cause and reveal their lack of
education. But, of course, there should always be space for discussion. Aspekt—a publishing house, web-zine, and a women’s interest
group—played one of the key roles in this area in Slovakia; however,
even with Aspekt, I find certain problems, i.e. various kinds of
hegemonist tendencies. Personally, I would like Aspekt to be more
open to projects of a similar or compatible nature; I would like its
self-defense mechanisms to loosen a bit. However, I might be misreading the social status of Aspekt and its initiatives, and may be
expecting the impossible: a greater openness and lesser degree of
competitiveness in our own ranks. In Slovenia, feminist initiatives
remain cemented either in academic exclusivity or in pragmatic
(European) operationalism. I greatly value the contributions of the
City of Women festival and the LGBT community in this area, but I
still notice a lack of willingness to connect and join efforts – at least
I see it that way. In our publishing house and our journal,
Apokalipsa, we try to map the terrain, to distribute feminist knowledge as widely as possible within the social space, and also to cover
the field of literature. All this from pure conviction and enthusiasm,
without adequate financial backing or the necessary infrastructure.
However, these remain only morsels of what is actually needed,
more so because of their unsystematic and sporadic nature. And
here we come full circle to our balancing act on the edge, the practical capacities of individuals—their energy capacity, the economy
of life, and their priorities.
Breda Smolnikar
As you can imagine, my work days are spent far away from art,
and the system in which we live obliges me, first and foremost, to
support my family. There is barely time for discussions of art, for
seeing a play, presenting a book. I have to do it all alone. Given this,
women’s literature and feminism are not significant questions for
me. I do not separate art into male and female; there is only one art.
And come to think of it, art has always had a hard time. There are
many male authors in Slovenia who seldom, if ever, make it into the
newspapers or TV , no matter how much they deserve it. They are
not recognized, given awards or reviews.
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Nataša Sukić
Iva Jevtić
I have partly addressed this question above. First, we should try to
define what women’s writing is, since the basic meaning of women’s
writing, or écriture féminine, differs in many ways from the writing
of or by women. I believe most initiatives in Slovenia aim primarily at
the latter, at writing by women, which is a good indicator of the social
185
In relation to women’s writing, I have to agree with Hélène
Cixous, who claims that writing is a bodily process. I believe
women should write about sexuality, about these infinite dynamics
within us, about our eroticization. I see the need for women to
oppose different forms of censorship through their writing, the
need to write through our bodies and invent always new nuances
of language. The more that we are bodies, the more we wish to
break the silence about our bodies, the more we become writing.
This is how we break the monolithic discourse of men and leave
behind us a public trace. In this lies liberation. However, a woman’s
body is not a single body. It is not homogenous. The body of a lesbian is different from a body of a heterosexual woman. And yet
there are many crossing points. Just as there are crossing points
with other bodies: male, female, and transgender. I cannot truly
define what women’s writing is. I only know that it is important for
women to write. I leave it to others to try and categorize it away into
the narrow confines of a definition. One needs to be careful when
forming this type of definition, since many questions arise here:
Can we also speak of women’s writing when talking about the writing of woman caught in the body of a man? Is this still women’s
writing? We should ask ourselves what “femininity” and “masculinity” mean in the first place. In what way is the sexual subject represented in contemporary literature? I find all of these questions very
relevant to our situation. Anyway to me, all writing is bodily. And in
the liberation of women’s bodies, feminism plays a key role. This is
why it is also important for the development of women’s writing. It
is important that there should be both feminist theory and practice
that analyze and deconstruct the self-evident givens rooted in the
heteronormative matrix and that also boost women’s self-confidence and, in this way, nurture their creativity.
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devaluation of feminism in our country. We still mostly limit ourselves to a species of cultural feminism: the emphasis on the relative
differences between women and men, the emphasis on the positive
aspects of femininity. This is also a sign of the depoliticization of feminism, since, in Slovenia, feminism prospers in theory but not in practice. The term écriture féminine originally refers to a specific use of
language that breaks away from phallocentric discourse; we do not
necessarily have in mind writing by women, since Cixous, for
instance, sees Joyce’s work as feminine writing. Joyce, of course, was
an egomaniacal self-promoter, for most of his life serviced precisely
by women (Harriet Weaver as his patron, Sylvia Beach as his publisher). This does not in the least diminish the legitimacy of écriture féminine as a feminist literary theory; it does point towards its political
limitations, though. I believe the contribution of queer studies to be
more fruitful, since they set out by examining the way in which concepts of “femininity” or “masculinity” get formed in the first place.
One of the more productive segments of Slovene culture is the LGBT
community, in part because of the close interrelation between theory, literature, and activism. I find there is no feminist “counter-sphere”
(to borrow Rita Felski’s term) of this kind in Slovenia, and we are
fated to an unbridgeable gap between theory and practice, and the
relative powerlessness of theory. But it is definitely high time, as is
already evident in the question, for us to begin to speak about feminisms in the plural.
(A Megaphone, CHAIN LINKS Oakland + Philadelphia, 2011;
the chapter A word on Each, pp. 111-133)
“Where do you think the hidden reserves or the potential to
improve the situation are located? Do you believe a joint
action is called for, either at home or internationally? Do you
have any specific suggestions?”
Jana Kolarič
To tell you the truth, I have no idea how to overcome this state of
affairs. As long as everything remains on the level of principle and
verbal endorsement, all is fine. It is different when one enters the
world of material concreteness. When you become active with the
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intent of changing the situation, you are accused of only looking
after your own interests. I tried, for instance, to change some of the
ways in which stipends are awarded by the Slovene Writers’
Association, of which I am a member. Statistics do not lie: even
though the membership of the Association is divided equally in
terms of gender, only a fifth of the stipends, sometimes even less,
are given to women. When you demand a reason, an explanation,
you are told that women have less to show: fewer articles, reviews,
prizes, quotations... This is how the committees protect themselves
from charges of prejudice and bias. And why do women have less to
show? Well, we return here to the original cause: it is said that it is the
inferiority of women’s writing itself that is to blame.
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Breda Smolnikar
The only solution is individual work. Sooner or later, the results
will show. That is, if you are a true artist. And there are few of those,
so very few of those. It has always been that way. But it makes me
sad to see a young name disappear or drown, just because it was
not nurtured at the right time, if only by a letter or a kind word.
When I was young I had the luxury of being noticed, recognized.
Then, later, I had to find strength inside me to persevere. And the
strength to fall.
I believe that some sort of joint action or projects that would aim
at the promotion of women’s literature are necessary. The promotion of women’s literature is important, since it opens up social
spaces and breaks stereotypes. At the same time, it encourages
women to finally send off “all those letters that have remained hidden in their drawers for so long.”
Iva Jevtić
A lot has been done. As far as literature is concerned, I see future
potential in the shaping of a new generation of critics and theoreticians who would be capable of placing unrecognized work, contemporary work, and the works of the Slovene canon into new theoretical frameworks. However, we should be aware that our possibilities remain severely limited as long as there is no wider consen-
Nataša Sukić
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sus on the role and value of both feminism and women in Slovenia.
Considering the many excesses and imbecilities that we have witnessed over the past few years, the future does not seem bright at
the moment.
Barbara Korun
188
The general state of culture is worsening each day, in all aspects:
there is neither glory nor money to be found here. In our postwar
society, culture does not matter, politicians pretend it does not exist
(except as scenery for symbolic state events, such as our cultural
holiday, Prešern Day) and very few political parties even mention
it. As an artist you cannot live off your work (the situation is the best
for some theater people and museum curators); the fact that Simon
Gregorčič could buy a house and a small vineyard with his fees or
that Lojze Kovačič and his family could live for three months with
the money he got for a short story is now a distant dream... Oh, but
I am sorry, all I do is complain. The solution is to persist, on your
own and with others. The solution is to help, encourage each other.
Every literary word is important, priceless. We witness and that is
what matters: the story of mankind and womankind should continue to be written.
Meta Kušar
If I understand correctly, this is a question about a call for political action, but such action cannot work unless we are truly aware
that we all, each and every one of us, only see around us that which
is already inside us. I imagine such a movement should confirm
women in their uniqueness and in this way encourage other
women, bystanders and potential co-workers, to join. I would be
very sad to engage in something that would negate the deep femininity of men around me.
Vida Mokrin-Pauer
I do not know what advice to give to us, the community of
women poets. I am terribly tired of calls to action, of being called
upon to find a way to help myself and other women... Through
quantum mechanics and Transcendental Meditation, I discover
within me and everything an infinite field of possibilities. I am
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directed at its humorous and animist-cosmic-playful wave-lengths...
And in-between, I rest! As a feminist, I urge you to have a look at
these two films, at least!: Tom & Viv: a biographic movie about T.S.
Eliot and his wife Viv; and What the Bleep?! (subtitle: Down the
Rabbit Hole), a film on quantum theory. There are two versions of
the movie, the one with the subtitles is better. Apart from my books
and translations of my poems in various journals – it would be
downright stupid and self-denying to propagate the books and
thoughts of other writers, but not my own – I also advise women to
read the great books of my friend Andrej Detela and the book by
Urban Kordeš, From Truth to Trust. Hahahaha, but truly, this is one
of the most feminist, scientifically philosophical books that I have
ever read. And it does not even mention feminism. And there are
many more books and movies...
189
I am becoming increasingly skeptical and strive to set goals only
on a personal level, since they seem more reachable that way. I
notice, even with those closest to me, this incredible complexity of
everything, even change. I am still fighting the idea that weariness
(death?) resolves everything, and yet my path inward is growing
shorter and shorter. How well I understand a younger colleague of
mine who once said: “I am so fanatically feminist I even find the
idea of feminism insulting!” And yet, is there any other avenue of
addressing gender injustice? I seriously doubt it. I believe an important condition of improvement is the recognition of our feminist
colleagues from the West, who have travelled a road much longer
and have more experience. They should not forget their colleagues
from the East, i.e. the countries of the former Eastern Bloc. And we
should not be used to satisfy the ambition and goals of others, as
we usually are (even within the space of, for instance, research projects funded by the EU). Another, and equally important, condition
is for feminists from Central, Eastern, and Southeast Europe not to
forget themselves, both on a political and a personal level. Without
the necessary, wider social consensus, gender equality and justice
remain a utopia of the few, cultural and intellectual if not political
and economic elites. A propos (to be more specific): I publicly propose JJ and JC from Aspekt, for the second time already, to be
awarded the Dominik Tatarka Prize – for their feminist work and
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achievements. I believe Mila Haugová to be the next favorite – for
her poetry. I do not think Dominik would mind. He respected
women – in his own (dis)loyal way, of course. I cannot say this is
reflected in the award bearing his name.
Etela Farkašová
190
I often think about how to create more opportunities for the
publication and distribution of women’s literary works. The organization of joint projects could be one of the ways, so I support the
organization of joint, internationally coordinated projects that
would contribute to the distribution of literature by women authors,
as well as enable the development of international contacts among
authors from different countries. In September, I attended a conference of Central European women writers and poets in Budapest,
and there was common agreement between the twenty participants
about the need for such association. I believe that the organization
of similar international seminars is useful; only in this way can there
be an exchange among writers that can lead to the discussion of
potential strategies for the future. I believe that the creation of joint
research projects would be useful, aimed at, for instance, the comparative analysis of the representation of male and female characters in one or the other literature, the relations between the sexes
not only in the private but also in the public sphere, intergenerational relations of men as well as of women, and so on. Such
research projects could also entail the analysis of sexual stereotypes
in texts by men and women or the analysis of the subversive possibilities of texts based on the presentation of stereotypes. The findings of these projects should be presented within universities of different countries and in this way instill a developed sense of gender
issues in our future intellectuals. It is only then that the special
organizations or women’s associations would prove unnecessary
and the understanding of women’s literature or women writers (in
itself not a result of female but male critique) would lose the
grounds necessary for its existence. Women authors would gladly
discuss literature only in terms of its being “good” or “bad,” as our
male colleagues never fail to do. This is just one of the reasons why
it is necessary to create conditions of true equality (but I do not
mean equality in terms of uniformity) of genders in the literary
field. I hope this survey will also play a small part in this endeavor.
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Anna Grusková
The question implies that there is a universally bad situation in
need of improvement, and this may be true. I am sure there is need
for joint action. First, it would be best to meet and get to know each
other, and out of this, ideas and cooperation would arise. Or maybe
there should be an international literary competition for women
that awards a local woman (Slovak, Slovene, Czech, German, etc.).
The results of such a competition could also be presented in the
European parliament.
191
The more I am familiar with our academic world the less I am
inclined to engage with it. I see a way forward mostly on an individual level in the sense of continuing my work as a literary critic
and in the dissemination of a different view on the work of
women authors. This also concerns our feminist activism: its
agents, both male and female, are gradually losing the will to
progress both mentally and as individuals (sometimes this is also
due to a mind-numbing amount of paperwork that allows them to
survive, but at the same time drains their energy). Of course, the
younger generation of feminists could help here but I sometimes
get the feeling that it is precisely these feminist youth who our
“mother feminists” are ashamed of. The activism and enthusiasm
of the young is not enough unless fed on the widening of our
intellectual horizons, a sense of distance, and humor. Carefree
laughter, not cynicism. I sometimes get the sense that the younger
feminists have taken over from their predecessors their strictness,
intractability, and sharpness, if not paranoia, and this, in my opinion, is not the way to bring feminism to the people – and not only
to those already in the know. There is a lack of a creative dialogue
between groups with different viewpoints (it is not enough to
declare: feminism means feminisms! – it would help to live this
diversity) as well as a lack of an honest self-reflection that feminist
circles in the West have been practicing for a long time. I see the
future in more people taking seriously the demands of feminism,
but at the same time not forgetting to dance.
Derek Rebro
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Jana Bodnárová
192
Women writers definitely express, sometimes even define the
lives of other women, no matter what country they live in. This is
why it would be adequate – at least from my view as a woman
author – to publish international anthologies of women’s writing.
There is a blank here, at least in Slovakia. This is equally true of theoretical reflections on the state of feminism. It would be useful to
have more publications of an international nature (the journal
Aspekt cannot cover everything). Outside the capital of Bratislava
there is a definite lack of talks by theoreticians from abroad despite
interested, enthusiastic women living all over this country.
Mária Ferenčuhová
I believe there remains a lot to be done on many levels in the area
of gender issues. I certainly believe that any community of writing
women could benefit from group action (the publication of thematic
issues, public readings, etc.) especially with adequate media support:
this is the only way to stop the discussion of gender issues from
being explained away as a form of minority cultural phenomenon.
Uršuľa Kovalyk
The situation is going to improve once we, women writers,
show more solidarity with each other and are no longer afraid of
being labelled as feminists. Also, it will get better as soon as there
are more women’s presses and more sympathetic women in high
places and committees that distribute funds. Maybe someday there
is going to be a sort of international organization with, for instance,
open competitions for women authors on various gender or feminist issues. Or maybe we’ll have a female version of the Pulitzer or
Nobel Prize. I think all this would help.
Eva Maliti
Writing is a very personal, intimate thing. I am not a fan of big
group actions, even though they are sometimes necessary... When
writing, a person is alone, with paper, or these days more likely a
computer, and in this way one develops and forms thoughts that
need to be communicated. However, it is obvious that with the help
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of feminism many things have changed and moved forward;
women all over the world are gradually coming into their own.
Personally, I am more a witness of these processes around me, but
I welcome all positive endeavors. I believe it is important that
women continue to work from the standpoint of humanism, which
I believe is an essential part of being a woman.
Zuzana Mojžišová
The struggle to help women has the character of Sisyphus’s work
or Don Quixote’s fight against windmills. For people of my kind,
who feel an inborn (and maybe adequate – but here I go boasting)
responsibility towards others, and who try to be socially engaged,
even if not in the field of feminism but in other arenas (with me this
is ethnic xenophobia and violence against children), it is good to
have around us people irritated enough by the situation of women
to fight it. To raise the awareness of a society takes a long time. But
I am sure that each step on this path, unless completely stupid, is a
step in the right direction. I feel deep respect towards women
authors who are advocates of women’s rights. In books and texts by
women that I am reading, I am discovering more or less clear vindications of the daughters of Eve. Could it be that all of us women
authors are feminists, since it cannot be any other way? Or alternately, because literature talks about the world around us?
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I do not see any possibilities for the improvement of the given
situation and, as a skeptic, I do not have a more concrete idea of
what such a solution could entail, either individually or in cooperation with others.
Dana Podracká
I see potential for improvement only in the raising the awareness about women and the quality of women’s writing. This should
be based on a spiritual foundation and not declarations or theoretical proclamations that disregard male emotions and thought.
Women have to write about who they are and always write analysis
that goes deeper and deeper. When I read male autobiographies,
memoirs, or traditions, these are always traditions passed on by
Jana Pácalová
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men to other men; women act as companions in parts of their lives
and then gradually disappear, change into icons or Pandoras.
Ivica Ruttkayová
194
To me feminisms are a way of life or, to be more precise, a way
of questioning myself, life, culture, and, inevitably, feminisms. I try
to get at the root of this mode of critical thought. It is an inner need
of mine. In case there are more of us who feel this need, and I
believe this questionnaire to be proof of this, the number of challenges ahead should prove enough of an incentive for each and
every one of us. And then, hopefully, some issues might be taken
for granted; hopefully, we will not have this constant feeling that we
are beginning from scratch... an incentive to create space and connections, since this is how literature works: as an organism.
Jakuba Katalpa
Since I do not have an intimate knowledge of the feminist movement in the Czech Republic, it is difficult for me to say where there
is scope for improvement.
Lenka Daňhelová
My standpoint in this matter, both my ignorance of these issues
and my personal contentedness, is based on my relationship with a
wonderful man who takes utmost care not to limit me in any way.
And I try to do the same with him. We can work on any issue that
we come across in our relationship. Maybe it is easier for us
because we do not have a large family. But I do not think this would
significantly affect matters.
Daniela Fischerová
I love meeting my colleagues; I would like to see more of my
Slovak colleagues. Rather than group actions and institutional
manipulation, I believe in interpersonal relations. Experience tells
me that small groups work better than mass action. What if we
organized a meeting of Slovak and Czech women writers, twenty
people or so, where we talked informally about the ups and downs
of our profession?
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Pavla Frýdlová
Czech women are mostly unfamiliar with the concept of
female solidarity, so there remains a wide field of possibilities for
joint action, either at home or in connection with women from
abroad: the exchange of experiences, study stays, seminars, colloquia, getting to know each other, creative residencies, translations, reviews, readings...
Tereza Riedlbauchová
In the Czech Republic a writers’ association should be established, maybe more than one, a group that would have the necessary funds to support the writing and publication of fiction, the publication of literary journals, and the organization of literary festivals
and readings. It should no longer be expected that an author will
read their work for free. We authors should be able to make a living
from our readings, like so many of our colleagues in the West.
195
What do you mean by to improve the situation? The situation is
not at all bad, at least here in Europe it is not. I would not even consider improving some aspects of it. I like it when a man opens the
door for me or greets me first. I am always wary of news about “sexual harassment” coming from America or women’s quotas. I wish
for the world to finally come to grips with the fact that men are men
and women are women and that no sex should hanker for the
advantages of the other one. The only thing truly worth improving
is labor laws. At the moment I have no plans for political action in
the name of women’s rights.
(A Megaphone, CHAIN LINKS Oakland + Philadelphia, 2011; the
chapter Can We Do Together, pp. 260-271)
Responding to Stanislava Chrobáková Repar;
translated from Slovak and Czech into Slovene by Stanislava
Chrobáková Repar;
Translated from Slovene into English by Iva Jevtić.
Božena Správcová
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Amanda Montei
Crotchless-Pants-and-a-MachineGun Feminism
196
What is “crotchless-pants-and-a-machine-gun” feminism?
The term is inaugurated in Juliana Spahr ans Stephanie Young‘s
new book, A Megaphone, which is a collection of three works by
the avant-garde poetic duo.
A Megaphone highlights the work Spahr and Young have done
recently in the avant-garde poetry world – which the authors
describe as “weirdly aggressive towards anything that even suggests a contemporary feminism” – and reprints several essays
which seek to describe how women writers are to proceed in literary communities that favor male writing.
The book’s central thrust is a wonderfully dizzying collection of
75 responses to Spahr and Young’s call for international woman
poets to share their personal and professional experiences – an
attempt to fill the gap where women poets belong.
The authors describe the collection, “… as a shout-out to the feminist work that writers are already doing and to work that they might
do in the future. Maybe work that they do together, even if they do
it at separate desks. It desires a big sticky, messy feminist web”.
I spoke with Spahr and Young about their relationship to
“crotchless-pants-and-a-machine-gun” feminism:
gender
How do you see the “playful dogmatism” and “enactments of listening” of the crotchless-pants-and-a-machinegun tradition functioning outside of the poetry world?
In many ways, the “playful dogmatism” of a sort of crotchlesspants-and-a-machine-gun feminism is used more frequently outside of the experimental/avant-garde/etc poetry world. Two quick
shout outs: Related to literature, VIDA [an organization promoting
women in the arts] has done some important work in the last year
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tracking [the number of literary women reviewing and being
reviewed] in mainstream publications, and has gotten coverage in
large media outlets that probably reach far more readers than our
poetry puddle ever will. And there is that blog Being a Woman in
Philosophy. These are both interesting, even if somewhat limited
attempts to gather information or to expose [attitudes toward
women in the field]. And yet, at the same time, we always feel it is
important to remember that nothing short of a total transformation
of economic and political conditions is going to result in the more
equitable world we hope for–something more meaningful than the
representation of women in magazines or in philosophy departments at 50 percent.
We’re not sure listening is a crucial tool. But we did it anyway.
Maybe a better way to phrase this would be to say that listening
might be one tool among many. And, like all tools, it might have its
moments. And it might have its limitations. Or what we mean is that
if feminism ended with listening, or was mainly about listening, it
would be–as many feminists have pointed out–somewhat limited
to stories of women’s personal experience. And perhaps might lack
a more structural analysis.
When we started the project of asking writers in other locations,
we were, we confess, hoping for more structural analysis. We sent
[the authors] a version of “Numbers Trouble,” [an essay on the
paucity of women poets included in A Megaphone] and one thing
we hoped to get were some numbers on how many women show
up in the anthologies and [win] the prizes and stuff like that in their
area. What we got back was a mixture of this sort of information,
and a lot of personal stories about negotiating, with varying
degrees of success, the structures and distribution networks that
support literary production. Our first reaction was, I don’t know,
disappointment? But our next reaction was to begin to question
our endless desire for more structural analysis.
I too often hear friends and colleagues advocating a
kind of post-feminism as a means of actually getting to a
post-feminist world, wherein the solution to all this
“numbers trouble” is to just live as though the trouble
really is over. What problems do you see with this kind
of let’s just think it away solution?
197
gender • Amanda montei
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Stephanie was just having a conversation with [poet] Eileen
Myles about this very question, around some writing Eileen did in
response to VIDA’s count, and then also in an interview with
Brandon Brown. While acknowledging some ways in which the current moment is not actually post-feminist, Eileen also writes “I think
the poetry world you’re describing in so many ways is women. It’s
women-driven. Increasingly we’re actually seeing women including
men in their things.” This felt so far from Stephanie’s experience of
a shared poetry world that she thought perhaps Eileen was doing
something performative, like Yoko Ono and John Lennon’s WAR IS
OVER. In their conversation it became clear that poetry puddle conditions are probably slightly different, or feel differently, in New
York as compared to the Bay Area where we live.
And how crucial the active presence of an organization like
[feminist avant-garde collective] Belladonna is in constructing the
values or focus of the scene differently. Maybe there is some value
to living in a kind of healthy delusion where one focuses one’s
attention on the writing one finds most dynamic, where one sees,
and writes and talks about all the exciting work being done by
women, [as opposed to caring] that magazine x or blog y has once
again issued a totally homogenous list of “best of” books by mostly
white guys that ignores this exciting work, or valorizes one woman
out of 10. For whatever reasons, we find it hard to live in that
healthy delusion. This is where it continues to feel incredibly
important that we create and support organizations and publications and locations where a more various scene of literature is consistently visible and valued. And, again, it’s impossible to talk about
this without also talking, as Stephanie and Eileen did, about
activism in a much wider context, about defending Planned
Parenthood, about transforming the economic conditions that
impact women’s lives in such destructive ways.
I was particularly struck by [the artists-and-activists’ collaborative] Ultra-red quote in the book, regarding the
need to channel “affective responses other than rage…”
What sort of responses do you think we might all aim
for as crotchless-pants-and-a-machine-gun feminists?
Artists could do much worse than to take up [Ultra-red’s] methods as a model. They are among our personal heroes. While there
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is no crotchless pants club, oh how lovely it would be if there was.
What we like about that Valie Export piece [which inspired the
crotchless-pants-and-a-machine gun philosophy] is how it combines being crotchless in public (exposing what it is often kept covered) with a machine gun. A reminder of how important it is to
have both. So we guess we would say something here about wanting to have an art that is meaningful because of its complication,
and yet at the same time doesn’t back down, is provocative, even a
little scary, if also irreverent and funny.
Ms. Magazine (blog); April 26, 2011
199
Lines:
http://msmagazine.com/blog/blog/2011/04/26/crotchless-pantsand-a-machine-gun-feminism/
http://beingawomaninphilosophy.wordpress.com
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Tea Hvala
Grassroots Media in Europe (Survey)1
Interview with Stanislava Repar, editor of the
Gender-Apokalipsa review, Slovenia
200
Could you introduce yourself, please?
I am a middle-aged woman with a PhD in Literary Theory from
the Slovak Academy of Sciences, and recently I was awarded my
second doctorate at the University of Nova Gorica, Slovenia. I have
double citizenship (Slovak and Slovene), I am the author of 91
books and (co)translator of 112 books, a poet, fiction writer, literary
critic and researcher, editor, publisher, organizer, still curious and
in motion, a person who not only migrates between different countries but also between cultures, languages (can you imagine this in
my profession?!), scientific fields (interdisciplinarism!) and intellectual circles. I have been married, divorced, married again. I am a lecturer at the university (this is quite recent, after a 20-year break), former academic researcher and currently, an alternative de-constructor and “guerrilla” activist, a feminist without feminist education
but with solid motivation… A daughter, mother, wife and sister, a
good friend and admirer of open-minded people.
gender
How did you come to feminism?
First, my own (personal and professional) life has shown me the
right way. Second, the Slovak magazine and publishing house Aspekt
offered me excellent feminist “food” at a time which was right – both
subjectively (with the slow destruction of my first marriage) and
objectively (after the sudden Velvet Revolution in 1989, preceded, of
course, by my “sunny” years under communism). Third, because I
was re-reading and re-thinking the world (life?); because I occasionally compared and linked its patterns to feminist issues, questions,
1 The interview was conducted in May 2011. As of December 2012 the total is 12.
2 (Dec. 2012): 15
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and provocations. Fourth, through my own literary work, understood as a form of anti-dogmatic, anti-stereotyping and anti-neoliberal engagement in contemporary society, as well as by my intense,
non-instrumental use and sensitisation of human (and, I hope my
own) language. Generally speaking, my life-troubles and relevant
books were the key factors, together with my open-minded way of
living. Some of my feminist interests and activities went beyond my
preferred territory (feminism linked to literature/arts) – to activism,
applied sociology, politics. Through Slovak NGOs and my friends
and colleagues who work there, I was able to stay in touch with the
more pragmatic or, more precisely, political line of feminist engagement – it would be difficult to call it a movement. I benefited from
these insights and connections in 2007-08 when I was invited to collaborate in the “Gender Quality + Equality Politics” (QUING) project
as a researcher from, and focused on, Slovakia.
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As regards writing, the story is quite a long one. It began in my
childhood. At the moment, my work is finding its way into Slovak
writers’ lexicons and facing slowly decreasing discrimination in
Slovene literary circles. As for my (feminist) publishing activities –
after my second marriage, I moved from Slovakia to Slovenia and left
my academic career in Bratislava behind, so I was forced to find new
fields of self-realization. The latter depended on the opportunities
and challenges in my new environment. I began to collaborate with
the Apokalipsa publishing house and magazine from Ljubljana. My
husband was engaged with both as their director, 25 hours a day. It
was a very natural component of the whole migration process and
adaptation to new circumstances. The solution I found did have
some negative sides, but it meant I was able to stay in contact with literature in all of my former roles (writing, translating, editing, organizing, exploring). Moreover, I helped to profile Apokalipsa’s publishing program: a rapidly developing project with large potential, brief
tradition and absolutely insufficient financial support. To employ my
previous experience and use all of my skills (I had worked as an editor for several Slovak magazines), and, in addition, to continue with
my self-improvement, I offered Apokalipsa some feminist contents
and my engagement within the magazine, its book label program,
gender • tea hvala
How did you become involved in writing and
publishing / media production?
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promotions and so on. (KUD Apokalipsa is an association or NGO
focused on publishing books, making and publishing the Apokalipsa
review, and running the Review within Review international project,
as well as other smaller projects.). Since the editorial board consisted
primarily of men and since the review’s initial orientation was close
to Christianity, it was not so simple to begin with such work.
Fortunately, there was a certain amount of “heresy” and a systematic
orientation against “invisible totalitarianism”, both of which were an
organic part of Apokalipsa’s concept, advocated by the large majority of its members and collaborators. The possibility to engage with
feminism and the subsequent realization of our Gender subproject
within the already existing Apokalipsa review has widened the contributors’ background, attracting many women writers and intellectuals, including members of the LGBT community. On the other hand,
it has enabled us to open, compare, rethink and evaluate new “hot”
issues or vice versa, “frozen” topics within our publishing space and
Slovene society generally. Even if Apokalipsa as a whole does not
have a feminist profile only, I appreciate the pluralism and rich variety of creative approaches that were merged under the one roof. In
this differentiated context, feminism itself found the opportunity to
break out of its ghetto and perhaps persuade others besides the
already converted.
Where did you learn the skills for producing literary
reviews / magazines?
In Slovakia I was employed at Kultúrny život weekly and later at
Meridian weekly (in both departments, of culture and literature).
After that I worked as responsible editor of Romboid, a literary
monthly review published by the Association of Slovak Writers´
Organizations. I continued with this work even after I moved to
Slovenia, until 2003. Since 2003 I have been the magazine’s external
editor. All my life, I have been publishing my work in many local and
foreign magazines. I am the editor or main editor of several books,
anthologies, publications, review selections and thematic sections.
By the way, I made my first step towards this lifelong engagement
(and self-expression) by starting a literary magazine at my grammar
school – Mladá cesta / Young Road was the title. Then and now, it
was and remains of high importance to me (as a creative and conceptual person) that I do not have to take care of the magazine’s
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financial or economic affairs, its production. My territory was and
remains the intellectual “know how”, my role of advisor, communication with authors and collecting and editing contents, in
Apokalipsa also. I can say that this is the more pleasant side of working in publishing. However, fund-raising gradually became part of
my everyday life as well. Promotion on the internet (editing our
website) is another skill I will have to learn in the very near future.
Do you use feminist media (print, internet, TV,
radio etc.)? If yes, how often? Which feminist media
do you use?
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Are there any examples of feminist media that inspired
you in your work?
Yes, in my own mind my project was absolutely connected with
Aspekt, a feminist project from Slovakia, even though Aspekt´s and
my own conditions of work were radically different. This “mental”
3 But now it has newly sprung to life as the Phoenix.
Not as much as I wish to. By the way, what media is there in our
part of Europe? The problem is my lack of free time and moreover,
the fact that feminist media is relatively hard to access. Feminist issues
do not simply “leap out at me” from the media I use daily (newspapers, TV, radio, other literary magazines). So, it’s a rather happy coincidence if I can read something fresh and interesting in the field of
feminisms in the media I have access to (mostly interviews, critiques
and reviews). The only regular source I have is the Aspekt webzine,
edited and made in Bratislava (the printed version of Aspekt stopped
coming out a few years ago). Sometimes I read older issues of Delta
review (published in Ljubljana), but not often. I’ve been following the
ProFemina review from Belgrade, which has been falling to ruin for a
long time already.3 I had very sporadic contacts with One Eye
Opened, a Czech feminist review edited in Prague by the main editor
of One Woman Press publishing house, but that too is over now.
Books and monographs are my main source of information. And, for
sure, the internet. Again, though, it is a question of time to be able to
surf and enrich my own feminist consciousness. But sometimes I do
that. Besides, the Gender issues of Apokalipsa are my media: I can run
them according to my own interests or needs.
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closeness or proximity originated from the “identical” orientation
of early Aspekt and our Gender issues, since both were basically
concerned with the links between feminisms and literature, also literary theory. The practical effects of this inspiration (and potential
cooperation) were soon limited by the capacities and priorities of
all of the involved. Romboid, the literary monthly review, was my
second “inspiration”, even though it is not feminist. As its responsible editor and later its external editor, I edited and published some
special issues, columns and contributions for Romboid about outstanding female authors and figures, in an attempt to create a more
provocative atmosphere in the literary review and in Slovak literature in general (both are heavily dominated by men). That attempt
(partly) succeeded, even though it remained unnoticed by the official evaluators of literary life in Slovakia.
Formation process of your media
Could you tell us, please, about the formation process
of Gender? What was the initial idea / motivation when
you started the review?
As I mentioned earlier, our feminist/gender publishing project
has become a regular subproject of the Apokalipsa review, which
was established in 1994. The magazines’ subtitle is Break through
Culture Live. Apokalipsa is focused on literature and humanities or,
more precisely, philosophy and social sciences. It has become one
of the most important reviews in that field, and it’s still the only
monthly established since 1991 (in independent Slovenia). The
KUD Apokalipsa association was established by students and university graduates who were dissatisfied with the existing cultural
scene. In 1995 they decided to start a publishing house also. My
(future) husband, Primož Repar, was the movement’s motor from
the very beginning and still continues to be, except that now we
work in tandem. I came to Slovenia in 2001, and the international
project Review within Review was established the following year. In
2003 we started the Gender project and also a new book series
called Fraktal… Since then, a lot more work has been done.
Special feminist issues of the review (the Gender issues of
Apokalipsa) have been published annually from 2003, mostly as
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double or even triple issues. As of now, all the Gender issues
amount to approximately 20004 pages of published writing. At the
outset, I decided to feature a questionnaire that would map the state
of the art in the field of feminist writing. I included both feminist
and non-feminist writers, critics and intellectuals. In 2008 the replies
of 28 respondents were published: 1 male and 27 female writers
from Slovakia, Czech Republic and Slovenia. In 2009 the survey was
also published in a Slovak biweekly book review called Knižná
revue. The English version (a selection of the survey responses) is
due to appear this year in Megaphone, a book published in the
USA.5 The surveys should be read as an attempt to increase the feminist consciousness of women writers and (not only) female readers. It showed which gender-based stereotypes are still active. My
intention was to open gender and feminist issues to a wider circle of
interested people, to mediate relevant texts, and to gain an audience
for female creativity and its many voices, including writing. The concept was to create an international medium, and the Gender issues
tried to restore communication within Central and South-Eastern
Europe. Many authors from those countries were presented there,
from issue to issue, alongside feminist “icons” or important female
authors from Western Europe, Canada and the USA.
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I have tried to attract a more permanent group of collaborators
and editors to Gender. After all these years and experience, I can say
that many (female) authors are prepared to collaborate with me
from issue to issue, because they are really interested in it. However,
their other obligations do not allow them to undertake new ones, so
that they would engage more with the project, systematically intervene in it and take it under conceptual control. There is a lack of
capacity, energy and time, but this problem is definitely related to
the lack of money, too. Even my position is financially underestimated and unclear (KUD Apokalipsa employs nobody on a regular
basis), due to the social and political “games” in the wider context of
Slovenian culture and media. But I would not like to burden you
4 (Dec. 2012): 2,500
5 (Dec. 2012): It was published in 2011 by Chain Links, USA.
How has the review progressed or changed since the
beginning?
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with the details. On the practical side, it means that Gender is
released irregularly, that it is large and “overdosed” (triple issues)
and insufficiently promoted. On the bright side, the effects of
Gender (published since 2003) and my decade-long presence in
Slovenia (since 2001) are that many feminists’ and women writers’
books were published by our publishing house, especially authors
from Slovenia and Central and South-Eastern Europe. One could say
that the gender aspect has become the natural criterion of our decision-making in general, and gender equality in literature has
become a more interesting topic for the more democratic parts of
the literary and cultural scene in Slovenia. If we are feminist activists,
we are activists in the sense of putting pressure on people’s prejudices and “stone-hard” decision-making institutions through our
intellectual, creative, and perhaps educational work. The readers,
the authors, the dailies and electronic media – they also have work
to do, just like the shapers of “canons” and the decision-makers: to
use their experience, intelligence and sense and continue with their
“mental action” in their field of activity, whatever it is.
Process of making media
Can you describe the process of making Gender? How
many people are involved in the process?
I am the only editor and therefore editor-in-chief of Gender
issues. Other invited female authors or researchers help me collect
interesting material or forward invitations for contributions to individual issues of the review. Three of them could be regarded as my
close “advisory” board or, let’s say, permanent individual supporters: Iva Jevtić, Barbara Korun and Suzana Tratnik. Some contributions are also discussed at the meetings of Apokalipsa´s editorial
board. I do the editing and luckily, I can rely on Apokalipsa’s translators, proofreaders, etc. Sometimes I consult my friends and
acquaintances from foreign review journals; I rely on my female
colleagues from literary practice and universities, and so on. Some
issues have a main feature, such as féminine écriture (several
times), women in literature/culture dominated by men (several
times), a motherhood issue, a feminist epistemology issue, an issue
about auto-biography in relation to feminist/women’s literature
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and critique. The next issue will be focused on the question of gender construction. Well-known writers (for example, Ingeborg
Bachmann, Doris Lessing, Herta Müller, Ferida Duraković and others in the last issue) are presented mainly thanks to the translators’
and other contributors’ initiatives.
Are you working in a collective in flux or in a stable
group? Who are the people involved (age, education,
occupation, background)?
I am working in a collective in flux and have my own responsibilities. The review is produced by educated women, mostly
writers/poets and researchers/university lecturers, some of them
PhD students or graduates, especially the younger ones, who have
studied outside Slovenia and are fluent in English or German.
Women in literature, literary theory, gender studies, queer studies,
the arts, pedagogy and so forth. Then there are my literary colleagues
and friends from creative practice, middle aged women like me, who
reflect on their disadvantaged position in the Slovene literary scene.
They are looking for media where they feel free to publish, for media
where they are not patronised by male editors or decision-making
male colleagues, women with a critical or intuitive reception of structural gender-based anomalies within society, or just with the need for
sisterhood and tolerance… The social status of many of those women
is in astonishing contrast to their excellent education and skills
(unemployed, perpetual fellowship holders, freelancers without sufficient income, divorced mothers…). Men, even those from
Apokalipsa’s circle (philosophers, teachers, architects, freelancers…)
have played the role of observers and discussion partners for most of
the time; they have asked questions and expressed doubts.
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At the beginning, I contacted almost all relevant feminist institutions in Slovenia and their representatives – Delta review was
the only Slovene feminist medium I contacted – but there was no
interest in regular cooperation. Our contacts were limited to the
exchange of review-copies of relevant publications and some
polite responses. They ignored my invitations to participate in the
survey. Later, I realized that these people do not even communi-
Do you co-operate with other feminist media?
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cate between themselves. But the main problem is that there is no
feminist partner here that would share our interest. We tried to
cooperate with the City of Women festival, but our position was
not equal or at least not clear. Since we were always the ones to
initiate the contact, we gave up in the end. Radio shows at the
Slovene national radio and Radio Študent invited me to promote
the “Gender” project and its achievements. But those were onceoff interviews, not systematic cooperation between feminist
media. Those experiences are quite recent, in the future perhaps
they should be more regular occurrences. As I mentioned, I tried
to collaborate more intensely with the Aspekt webzine and feminist project in Bratislava – to use their experience in different circumstances. Again, it comes down to “one-way traffic”, but we are
still in contact as friends (i.e. discussing, consulting) rather than
professionals.
Are you part of a feminist network?
No. I think I don’t have the means to contextualize myself there.
My working conditions are very poor and the project lives thanks
to my idealism and persistency. Things should be inverted, which
means that, in my opinion, the network ought to reach me and
Apokalipsa review; we are publicly accessible. By the way, your
questionnaire confirms my opinion.
How do you position Gender in relation to the wider
feminist or political movements?
As I’ve said, the isolation of every feminist centre or point is a
crucial fact in Slovenia. Occasional networking or linking is made
possible by individual enlightening initiatives. Only one exception
can be cited: the queer community is very open to our collaboration
and this has been fully realized from the beginning until now. Also,
the existence of a “feminist establishment” in the country is a fact.
Moreover, I cannot understand their enciphered (coded) speech,
contaminated by the speech of official state administration which is
trying to occupy all fields, even the NGO’s and civic associations.
Fortunately, I don’t have any desire to come too close to the feminist
agenda in “high politics”. I want to create a free feminist vision and
place for discussion (which is entirely absent), I want to encourage
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feminist practice among writers and others, including literary
researchers and critics. This is not very attractive to some of them.
They see no advantage in supporting us or putting us in the headlines. There are many who deal with women’s subjects simply to
give themselves an alibi: the ones who do not want to make any
basic change in “the state of Denmark”. The Ministry of Culture, the
Slovenian Book Agency, the Municipality of Ljubljana and their cultural politics are fortresses rather than democratic institutions. The
other side of our financial misery and being permanently thrown
on our own resources is our “spiritual” independence and the
friendly atmosphere among contributors and editors. Strictly speaking, they are contradictory sides of the same coin.
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Which skills are important to produce your media?
In the role that I and my husband find ourselves in as editors, we
need to be: visionaries, pragmatists, managers, financial specialists,
book-keepers, administrators, intellectuals, creators, translators, correctors, proof-readers, diplomats, psychologists preventing conflict,
designers, printing specialists, riders, travellers, distributors, specialists in digital media, fans of technology, promoters, sponsors, housekeepers, heretics and enchanters – all that in addition to our knowledge of and feeling for literature, contemporary philosophy, gender
studies, theory of identity or other theories, social studies, and so on.
The main content is about the links between feminism and literature: so then, feminism and creativity (fine arts), feminism and language (speech acts), the literary canon, untraditional literary genres, feminist literary self-expression, transgender characters in literature, gender-based stories in culture and literature, women’s writing, discrimination of women writers, féminine écriture, feminist
epistemology, (re)construction of gender, feminist cultural anthropology, theory of deconstruction, politics of identity, feminist politics, and history of feminisms. I basically choose the content
according to my knowledge, interests, motivation, offers, possibilities and skills – and “in line” with the main orientation of
Apokalipsa review which is to map, explore and stimulate marginal
What would you describe as the main content of Gender?
How do you choose the content?
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and alternative identities and reveal invisible totalitarianism (hidden by neoliberal practices and philosophy of consumption).
Where do you produce the media? Do you have an office or do you work at home?
I/we have an office at home. We tried to move to a rented studio
twice but it was too expensive, it burdened our budget too much.
Do you get funding for your media?
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To publish Apokalipsa and its Gender issues we had to reduce
the costs of our infrastructure. The review is mainly supported by
the state administration (Ministry of Culture, later on the
Slovenian Book Agency), but their representatives and commissions underestimate our needs, even compared to the budget of
other reviews. This is a chronic problem and the reason why we
are in a permanent “paper-war” with the state administration,
which swallows too much of our energy. In spite of the low payment and the difficult circumstances in which we work, we collaborate with excellent writers and researchers from Slovenia and
abroad. To realise our vision, to achieve our potential and the
potential of our environment, we are forced to deal with fundraising, so we keep in touch with a number of funders, institutions, agencies, cultural institutes, embassies and so on. Their
grants are meant for production (not infrastructure), and they are
very helpful. However, the sums are mostly not so big and we
spend a great deal of time on administrative work. If you take into
consideration the size of our staff (three people, none of whom
are regularly employed), it becomes clear that our ability to help
ourselves is a double-edged sword, like a negative “perpetuum
mobile” which helps us and enslaves us at the same time.
How do you promote and disseminate the review?
We present all new releases at press conferences where each
medium gets a review copy. Our production is regularly presented
by some radios and dailies; we distribute our releases to libraries
and book-stores via a private distribution business. This year, we
made a presentation page on Facebook (http://www.faceb-
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ook.com/#!/kud.apokalipsa?ref=search) and then there is our website (http://www2.arnes.si/~ljapokal1/), which has to be updated,
or actually reconstructed. Occasionally we participate in events
organized by other associations where we promote our work and
publications. We always go to book fairs (the Spring and Winter
Book Fair in Ljubljana) where we present our books at various
events (readings, round-tables, etc.). Sometimes we organize these
events by ourselves or in relation to our international project
Review within Review (which includes festivals, meetings, and presentations in Slovenia and abroad, mostly where our project partners live). We publish and disseminate news about all these activities through Apokalipsa’s mailing list.
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What are the challenges of producing your own media?
First of all, we have to make a new website and update it regularly. This is the most effective way to promote our work and
address a wider audience, not only feminists. Second, it would be
nice to organize more public readings and discussions, not only to
promote our work but to enable more direct contact between writers, other contributors and editors. Third, it would be necessary to
improve our working conditions, to increase our finances, so that
we could continue doing our work in a more dignified way and
concentrate our creative forces and energy, instead of atomising
ourselves into too many fields.
Our budget should be comparable with our actual output, but
that’s not the case. Improvisation and voluntary work are good;
however, not when you want to do things more systematically and
professionally. This is related to state policies on culture and literature which do not recognize the gender aspect as a priority; in
fact, it is rarely taken into consideration. Also, with the continual
monopolization of the literary scene (thanks to the large contribution of daily media and their writing about culture), there
won’t be the changes many of us had expected to see. My position (editor) as well as my husband’s editorial position would be
really improved if we could afford to pay another editor (that is,
beside us). The other obstacle is the copyrights, especially the
What obstacles do you face?
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deals with Western writers. It takes a lot of effort, time and money
to arrange them so that we can publish their texts in our review.
To be honest, sometimes we simply give up. Our other problem is
that, since we collaborate with many academic workers, we would
like to be officially positioned higher, in the sense of the reference-making expert review, to guarantee them (and us, of course)
a higher evaluation within academic circles. But the criteria for
that are not within our reach (regular publishing, abstracts in foreign languages, expert reviewing of single contributions, and so
forth). Also, some other obstacles which I have mentioned above.
Feminism
What is the feminist self understanding of your media?
How are you dealing with all these different feminisms?
Could you describe the kind of feminism that is represented in your media? Is there any feminism which is
very important for your media?
Basically, the studies, essays, reviews and other contributions
we publish are there to inform people about all of these feminisms. However, the perspectives we mostly rely on are poststructuralist or, in other words, postmodern feminist ones (postfeminism?) which stipulate so-called fluent (gender) identities in relation to deconstruction and contemporary feminist literary theory.
Queer feminism is also included in our project, since many contributors and collaborators come from the LGBT community in
Slovenia. To speak about feminisms and their coexistence does
not mean that we have to speak in terms of the categories or
“branches” implied in your question. For us, the important question is which feminist approaches are relevant to literature, to the
interpretation and understanding of the literary text, so we treat it
mostly as a question of methodology. To a certain extent, one that
depends on the writers’ interest and consciousness, we simultaneously deal with liberal feminism, feminism of difference, psychoanalytic feminism and poststructuralist feminism, and their
impact on feminist thought in the 20th (21st) century.
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Media Production and media careers
Can you make your living from working as an editor
and from writing? How did this evolve?
Absolutely not, in spite of my high education and extensive
experience in the field. As I mentioned, I am not regularly
employed, so I need to work in a number of fields at once in order
to receive an income statistically comparable to the average income
in Slovenia. And, paradoxically, I use one part of my income to
sponsor Apokalipsa´s activities. I lecture at the university, I edit, I
translate other authors and publish my own literary works, organize events (international festivals, readings, and symposiums) …
From a financial point of view, that is, as far as my salary is concerned, my gender-related activities are negligible. Moreover, my
way of living – or surviving? – is possible only because of my status.
I am a self-employed cultural worker and the status is approved by
the Slovene Ministry of Culture. Thus, my retirement and health
contributions (very low) are paid directly from the state budget. In
order to achieve and keep this status, you have to work really hard,
as the rules and criteria of evaluation (by the relevant commission)
are literally cruel. I finally received this status in 2009. Before that, I
was a hopeless case, a migrant (including my migration between
two literatures) with a PhD and several published books – in the
Slovak language, unfortunately.
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It helped me in many ways; career is only one of them. It helped
me from a psychological and social perspective, especially due to
my migrant position. I had the chance to meet and collaborate with
many excellent writers, researchers and representatives of other
professions. Many of them became my friends. I was able to continue working on my interests and research themes, and to develop
them. As a poet and fiction writer, I was able to try out “gendered
writing”. All of this proved to be very helpful; I was able to preserve
my personal dignity, which has been exposed to many tests in the
past ten years; to educate myself about new issues, to intensify my
international contacts, and so forth. My background, at least in
some circles, gives my career a more interesting dimension. I am
In what ways has making these media projects helped
in your career?
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sure that my fresh university career in Slovenia (lecturing as a contract worker) is possible because of my previous publishing,
research and editorial work, and my engagement as a writer.
In what ways does your media project intersect with
activism or broader political engagements in your life?
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The intersections are clear and visible in many ways. They are
connected with my engagement for freedom of speech and thought,
for freedom of publishing, for gender equality, pluralistic culture,
diversity of opinions, and democracy; also, in a sense, for respect of
minorities. All these issues – and human rights – are contained in our
review and book publishing practice. Furthermore, we organize
meetings and panel discussions in support of those whose rights
have been violated. Finally, we are engaged in a permanent and critical dialogue with those in power, the institutions and their representatives, in order to achieve a better and more just distribution of
funds within the literary and media market. Our main purpose is to
stop this unbelievable discrepancy between the self-promoted
“establishment” within culture (cultural business, commercial activities) and the oppressed and discriminated identities on the other.
Our feminist engagement is an indispensable part of this effort.
Recommendations: who else should we interview about
feminist/women’s media production in Europe? (Please
provide names and contact information). May we refer
to you if we contact these persons?
Aspekt webzine, Slovak Republic: aspekt@aspekt.sk One Eye
Opened (published by One Woman Press), Czech Republic:
owp@volny.cz ProFemina (if it still exists), Serbia: Dubravka Djurić,
ddjms@EUnet.yu
Thank you for the interview!
(Interviewer and translation from Slovene into English: Tea
Hvala; the interview was conducted as part of the project
“Grassroots Feminism: Transnational archives, resources and communities (www.grassrootsfeminism.net)”.)
06_165-166-167_kierkegaard_ENG_11_osebnosti
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New Oikonomy of Relationships:
The Neighbour and the Existential Turn.
How to Philosophize after Kierkegaard?
(Address)
I’ve been thinking long and hard how to start this
address, intended to encourage a deep consideration of
our common subject, proposed by this symposium. It is
a subject, not only dedicated to the memory of
Kierkegaard, but also to the challenge and relevance of
his thought in itself that should encourage each and
every one of us not just as experts and researchers, as
philosophers, theologians, writers or merely intellectuals, but as living breathing individuals who care for the
future of the world. It seems that on the unfolding world
fell a heavy curtain soullessness without recourse. It is as
if life would freeze, as if it would cave into the (social)
recklessness that opposes each individual existence. It is
as if a corrupt existence prevails at every turn, at every
angle of reality. And one man among the masses,
despairing over such circumstances, of course can not
turn this around – he can merely become a tool in the
hands of equalizing fundamentalisms of all kinds.
The living world is in flux, its life is always becoming. Here Kierkegaard accepts Aristotle’s definition of
kinesis as the defining point of movement and change,
change continually emerging that defines the motion
of existence. This existence is always in crisis, which
allows for discourses of modern thought. If we accept
Kierkegaard’s suggestion that this transition is as much
individual as it is universal – that it is, in fact, doubled
– then it is precisely this trans-historicity that makes
real freedom possible. The gift of freedom, given to us
through transcendence, wouldn’t be possible if it didn’t mean a qualitative transformation of existence, and
215
kierkegaard
kierkegaard
Primož Repar
kierkegaard • primož repar
216
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if it didn’t remain foreign to logics, anahron. The universal beginning of this phenomena is a unique and individual call that speaks
to “every-man” reflecting on “humanity’s interiority”, if “every-man”
possesses the courage and capability of listening to it.
We can’t suppose this movement, this historical existence as
always being an unfinished activity. Hence the fundamental role of
self-reflection drives us constantly as unique and at the same time
communal beings into decision making. However, are we still capable of perceiving the challenge of rejecting the “invisible totalitarianism” of the ones in power? Are we even able to define such totalitarianism, providing that there is such a thing as “invisible totalitarianism”? Do we know how to challenge our own times? And what is
the value brought forward by such discourse as the gesture of skandalon? Is this the only possibility of change, a leap into “new
dwelling”, where the friction between kinesis and krisis is at work?
How to sustain love as a totally unselfish goodness and at the
same time maintain the intensity of the fight against the homogenizing logics of such a “system”? At this point, we are left to our
own devices where there is no help and where we must continue
“to go against the grain” of the general expectations under the condition that we don’t let up on the struggle and that we continue to
shed light on what is veiled, thus making communication possible.
Therefore, nothing is really wrong with such an existence in crisis and the world in crisis unless we surrender to irresponsibility,
thus forming our living space until there is nothing left but confinement and the stuffiness of the environment that moulds us and
to which we contribute, even if only by the passively mimicking the
“others”. In this case we renounce communication and shun personal and social, fundamental and authentic relationships.
This happens when I allow myself to become an abstraction,
when I accept social patterns uncritically. In this case, I elude a relationship with the transcendent and ignore the responsibility I have
towards myself and an other (as different). I become an anonymous individual made of atoms, a man of the masses, easy to control and manipulate. We have to ask ourselves: what is the role of
personal responsibility of each individual nowadays?
That is why Kierkegaard’s definition of a “single individual” (as
one who questions and rebelling against the masses and the will to
overpower and rule) is so important for personal and social univer-
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sality, in spite of the unspeakability and incommunicability that
make such a concept paradoxical. However, it is precisely this
incommunicable concreteness that can provide the basis for the
new oikonomy of relationships. In other words, the “single individual” nevertheless can’t ignore the public sphere and, paradoxically,
demands the turn of knowledge and behaviour, demands radical
changes of personal and social nature. These changes are only possible through disjunction, an existential turning, and the courage to
decide for one’s self. It requires the path of radical self-choice as
individually responsible conduct, and this represents a way to be a
role model for others to honor their own uniqueness. In such a way
the individual contributes to the original humanum of the humanity’s original state, a common community, common home, oikos.
But how can we encourage personal decision for everyone? For
this to happen, we need to create the conditions for a new oikonomy of relationships. To develop a relationship with the transcendent, we have to develop a relationship with our neighbour.
Philosophically speaking, this would be the (authentic) Other. If
we venture into the field of consciousness as the defining space
where the establishment of the identity takes place, we are already
acknowledging the freedom of another being, the fact that the
uniqueness of a person can not be confined, the self-affirmation of
human dignity as the ethical primacy of “you”. Consciousness
therefore represents the place of origin, the original grounding of
the dialectics between self and otherness. For true rebellion against
the predominating pseudo-existence to take place on a personal
and social level, we must imbue the original site of “the abandoned
world” with a new trust among people and with self-confidence. As
the Anti-Climacus put it: “dare to be completely yourself”.
But the modern man lives “on the front” (Patočka) and can only
avoid destruction through a radical change in thinking, by taking a
course of instant galvanization in accordance with it. The Man-onthe-front is the man of the masses, the man who lets the other (the
great Other of capital ideas and capital logics of power) dictate the
“living space”, that is or becomes one way or another the space of
the camp, where people as individuals are stripped of their freedom and judgment, and of the dignitiy of humanity. In this way, we
can be deprived of our freedom despite declarations of human
rights, for we are governed by a nameless apparatus. However,
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218
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every person partakes of the generosity of a unrepeatable and
unique existence. This compels us who are aware of this fact, to
take a clear stance, without avoiding anxiety or eventual despair
over our conceptual impotence in face of reality. We can not
define existential communication in any other way than with the
belief (with a fundamental yet mature decision), which can’t succumb to the conceptual apparatus. Novum of the oikonomy in our
case, inspired by Kierkegaard, consists of the obligation to love
your neighbour – of the obligation, that is at the same time always
a debt, the always renewed “new action” of a passionate eagerness.
Love for one’s neighbour is love towards the community, towards
its authentic social milieu, towards oikos. Its foundations consist of
active, critical uncalculability, of creating the warmth of mutual selfgiving. We can only give love to our neighbour if we accept it from
the other. This act not from our own power but from the transcendence of existential communication. Is this utopia, atopia or both?
Maybe this evokes a transformation, the metanoia into the original course of existence that doesn’t falter in the face of fear, that
isn’t afraid of revealing itself. Maybe we can compare the oikonomy of this transformation to the heteronomy of every relationshipwith-the-other (it is a fragile and vulnerable relationship with the
undefinably different from oneself)… Are we capable of criticizing
both our contemporaries and ourselves?
The architecture of recuperation is, according to Kierkegaard’s
existential dialectics, a fruit of the doubling of the restored self
after repetition. I am in an unbridgeable relationship with the
other and it is only the other who restores me each time as the
other self in relation to the future, in the openess of structure,
demanding self-confidence and great sacrifices. But when we
expect nothing, we owe everything. Maybe it’s just the right way to
open the space of concession and forgiveness, the space for dialogue and for the communication of existence. To permit the realness of other here and now.
The answer to the question of the existential turn will be given
by every one of us and maybe by all of us together in everyone’s
unique way at the 4th International Philosophical Symposium of
Miklavž Ocepek, dedicated to the bicentennial of the birth of Søren
Kierkegaard, that will take place in the small village of Škocjan in
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Karst region, in the hinterland of Trieste, and in the Slovenian capital city Ljubljana between the 12th – 19th of June 2013.
***
219
The texts, following this introductory speech for the participants
of the symposium that will take place in June 2013, introduce
Kierkegaard’s year. Poetry will segue into the essayistic and specialist rubric, in the spirit of intimacy at first, then through criticism and
discourse. For the publication of the most of the articles we are sincerely grateful to Dr. Roman Králik and to the Central European
Research Institute of Søren Kierkegaard, which Dr. Kralik directs.
The Institute is stationed at the Constantine the Philosopher
University in Nitra (Slovakia) and leads, in cooperation with the
Kierkegaard Circle (Trinity College, University of Toronto, Canada),
a research project producing rich journals in Slovak/Czech and
English in the edition Acta Kierkegaardiana. The articles, presented
at the symposium taking place in June in Slovenia will be published
in a philosophical journal (in a special edition of the Apokalipsa
magazine and the Review within Review book collection) and the
selections of articles will be published in some other languages,
including English and Slovak in Acta Kierkegaardiana.
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Pavle Goranović
A Dizzy Spell of Søren Kierkegaard
220
I
I was born of those who have the courage
to come to terms with their own ignorance.
A man of virtues and too many
obvious faults, I'm an unfinished cosmos.
I, Victor Eremita, dare think that in time
I will be called when skills are discussed.
I preach. I claim I'm revealing nothing new,
but they watch me with disbelief.
I tell them that epochs are finished,
that everything has been named a long time ago.
Still, they reproach me with some sort of originality.
In my really worthless thinking, I merely
copy forms, dealing in
apparent understanding. All I can do
is wait for a movement that will pass judgement.
kierkegaard
VI
I know of the sound of carriages in summer evenings.
And I know the meaning of their movement. Man's
destiny and sin I also know. This is the legacy
I have been left, which denies my species
the privilege of a new beginning, new way. To some documents
– perhaps unjustly – I attribute meaning.
I think of unwritten poems, of what has not been created.
And so, from the atmosphere, I gather doleful lyrical gleanings:
I am a poet who doesn't write verse!
I also know of the serenity of Socrates,
and I know that I shall never manifest it myself.
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Our languages are too small to enable us to self-realise,
and yet some of us dare ascribe to the world
our personal trifles. I, too, keep a diary about marginal things,
paradox prepares me for life.
Too little or too much – it's not up to me to judge.
Mosty I have written about homeland and woman
– look on that as my only legacy.
P.S. It is high time for us to grow older in order to understand
Greek, and
understand it in a way the Greeks themselves would have understood it if
they had Christian suppositions.
221
Regina Olsen
A man never suffers from spiritual vertigo when he thinks of only
one thing – and I think only of you – nor of physical vertigo when
he fixes his eyes on only one object, and all I look at is you...
I entrusted mvself to you, on nights like this one,
never having an explanation. And this parting,
(which tears you apart, I see) is as though it were happening
to someone else. I don't really know why you've been left.
For months I have guarded your image,
like some kind of memory of life. But now, when I should be
beyond my senses, I know that my thoughts
have mastered your gentle being. I don't understand
your sorrow. You don't understand my intention
– everything else is a played-out love. You have remained a living statue,
which from behind the garden gate slowly changes idleness
to death. And I, I am the knight of perfect flight,
whose painful reason won't allow him to love.
And here the kingdom crumbles. My rather wretched kingdom!
kierkegaard • pavle goranović
K. Konstantinus
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Lost Manuscripts
I don't deny it: I write untruthful,
deceitful lines. The method
is the same from text to text.
However, here and there it's possible to find
a line or two with a worrying degree of truth.
Not long ago, looking for completely different
texts, I found among rare
manuscripts the following words:
222
The most important cities are those
already buried – new ones are not
worth founding. The best languages
have died out – there is no point in inventing better ones.
The most respected schools were situated
in gardens now abandoned.
The most interesting manuscripts are lost...
It is worth discovering them. For us,
surviving members of the Babylonian library.
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Great Preparations
Unquestionable are the holes in the ozone layer.
Tomorow's day, too, is, to a good extent, unquestionable.
The printing of this poem, weekly results
of matches of the Primera division, a handful of small
and large events – the're for sure unquestionable. At least as much
as the smell of coffee and the colour of my jacket.
Profane things possess a special certaintv,
the kind we usually don't pay attention to.
Here I have always especially respected a number
of side-certainties. It is unquestionable that little George
had skilfuly grappled with English.
Rotation of the Earth is, probably, unquestionable.
And then, many place names, our names
and driving along dusty roads. We need to talk
only of unquestionable things. Things not praised
by poets. Fear of happiness is certain,
death - most certain. Lonely people know this
- at receptions, in cold hotel rooms
and automobiles. Contemporaries of Martin Heidegger.
223
Translated by Evald Flisar
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Primož Repar
Cross and Hammer
224
“Luther, you had ninety five theses: the horror! – And yet in a
deeper sense it is self evident:the more the theses, the lesser the
horror. Reality is much more horrible: there is but a single thesis.
A single thesis: the Christianity of the New Testament does not
exist at all. There is nothing to reform.”
Søren Kierkegaard
kierkegaard
God the Father
Christ…
Cain was reaped by twisted eternal idealists.
Abel was slaughtered by the white guard, blossomed into pink.
Christ...
In the temple they lived the party.
The righteous threw themselves out of thewindows.
Christ...
A darkness shone into light.
The masses forgot the birth.
Christ...
Starsshowing the way to victory.
Burnt villages.The sad wail of a dog.
Christ...
A drunk tumbled into a ditch.
No one asked him his name.
Christ...
Nero joyously watches Rome burn.
He is blessed by the apostles of faith.
Christ...
They kill brothers with love in their hearts.
The golden cross shines and proclaims spring.
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Christ...
An unborn child smiles in bliss.
It was buried in unconsecrated earth.
Christ...
The yeast is getting more indigestible.
The bread was pecked by crows.
Christ...
The soldiers of death kiss your image.
New land and new sky have come closer.
Christ...
They nail you to the cross in your name.
The love toward enemies won.
Christ...
May each partisan die for the five wounds of Christ.
Page 225
225
God the Son
In church they nailed him to the cross officially.
He vomited all over the Altar.
He was drugged and sleepy
He was led away...
Forced labor in the world beyond.
The people had a party.
The streets were stinking.
The city shining with joy.
Justice has prevailed.
God shall be in heaven.
God the holy spirit
In the name of god they cried in front of their TVs.
They showed the Christmas procession around hell.
The blooming of spring stopped.
The world sank into a quiet absence…
All the church dignitaries were there.
The government sent a delegation too.
The police were thankful.
The family free of torment.
Little Angels sang of Glory.
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God’s priests buried –
all in the name of God.
Births.Sufferings.Deaths.
They have stolen all their bodies...
226
The sons of heaven toadied to the Lord.
God’s children forgot the catechism.
The holy spirit died in blissful oblivion.
The coffins are closed for eternity...
God has escaped and committed suicide.
He got scared of the hatred of priests.
Christianity died in a fire.
And Christians were left on the earth...
The priest says:
Sell all and give unto me,
God has bequeathed me the Earth...
Epilogue or the Riders of the Apocalypse
They forgot him on the pyre, so he died of happiness.
In hell, all the tribes of men shall praise us.
We have washed the blood and wiped the spittle.And then again
and once more...
The sad evildoers have
wept over their boldness.
You are still not lost cases they scream
from speakers.
Christ was devoured by the cannibals of Europe.
You will look upon the hangmen and smile; it’s good to change the air.
Do, what justice demands of you –
annihilate the world and life shall bloom.
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Martin Beck Matuštík
Singular Existence
and Critical Theory
Abstract: Two questions were addressed to my existential biography of Habermas: Is my use of existential categories to discuss
his theory compatible with his recovery of the publicity of facts and
norms? Can I concede a secular reading of anamnestic solidarity
to Habermas and retain this conception to sustain a
Benjaminian-Kierkegaardian openness of history? The best
answer would be to reprint Habermas’s astonishing autobiography from Kyoto (his thank you speech on the occasion of the Koyto
Award on 11 November 2004). The second best is first to situate it
and then take up the two questions in light of his self-presentation.
227
1 See Jürgen Habermas, “Fundamentalism and Terror,” in Philosophy in a Time of
Terror: Dialogues with Jürgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida, by Giovanna
Borradori (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2003), 43. See also Martin Beck
Matuštík, “Between Hope and Terror: Derrida and Habermas Plead for the
Im/Possible,” to Jacques Derrida in memoriam (1930-2004), Epoche 9/1 (Fall 2004):
1-18, especially 12.
kierkegaard
I do not believe in heroism. Echoing Bertold Brecht, Tina
Turner, and Jürgen Habermas, I pity the land that is in need of
heroes.1 I esteem greatness. Writing a biography of Habermas as
“an existential hero” would stage a comedy of errors. His lifework
inspires not by some superhuman qualities, but because of its aspiration to greatness despite setbacks, failures, and dead-ends that
every human being undergoes in time, thought, and action.
Greatness of lifetime achievement does not render human existence immune to finitude and even blindness. Heroism serves
politicians who need to march nations to wars, greatness belongs
to courageous singularity in the face of trials and even opposition.
´
kierkegaard • martin beck matuštik
228
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Habermas delivered a very singular address on November 11,
2004, on the occasion of receiving the Kyoto Award for his lifetime
achievement. Georg Blume wrote about the speech: “For the first
time he presented himself as a person, and for the first time he
reflected on his philosophy in biography.”2 On the road to Purdue
where he was to speak on the critical ideal of cosmopolitan law,3
Professor Habermas told me that he had been reluctant to delve seriously into my biography of him for two years after it was published,
but now he was writing an autobiographical essay for the Kyoto ceremony. He was glad the essay would be delivered in a far away corner of the world. When European media published the speech,
Habermas’s musings during our ride to Purdue impressed me even
more, as his Kyoto self-disclosure provided an affirmation of and a
fitting afterword to my philosophical-political profile of him.
Two key questions have been addressed to my existential biography of Habermas: Is my use of existential categories to discuss his
theory compatible with his recovery of the publicity of facts and
norms? Can I concede a secular reading of anamnestic solidarity to
Habermas and retain this very conception to sustain a BenjaminianKierkegaardian openness of history?4 The best answer would be to
reprint Habermas’s astonishing autobiography,5 the second best
will be first to situate it and then take up the two questions in light
of his self-presentation.
2 Blume, Georg, “Der widerwillige Meister,” Die Zeit, No. 48, Feuilleton (November
11, 2004).
3 Jürgen Habermas, “The Kantian Project of Cosmopolitan Law,” lecture at Purdue
University (October 15, 2004); on-line video-stream of the lecture and question-andanswers period at http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~mmatustk/ [accessed September 5,
2005]. Blume notes that Habermas gave this “polemical lecture” at Northwestern
University after the reelection of Bush, but the more dynamic and politically charged
presentation was given to more than 500 people at Purdue on October 15, 2004.
4 My response is in part with reference to Max Pensky’s “Jürgen Habermas, Existential
Hero?” Radical Philosophy Review 8, no. 2 (2005) and David Owens’s “Critical Theory
as History,” Radical Philosophy Review 8, no. 2 (2005), both in this issue. The discussion took place in Atlanta on December 27, 2001, during the APA panel on my book.
5 Jürgen Habermas, “Öffentlicher Raum und politische Öffentlichkeit:
Lebensgeschichtliche Wurzeln zweier Gedankenmotive,” a “thank you” speech on
the occasion of the Kyoto Award on November 11, 2004, Neue Zürcher Zeitung
(December 11, 2004).
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I. Habermas’s Autobiography:
An Afterword to A Philosophical Political Profile
6 Habermas, “Öffentlicher Raum und politische Öffentlichkeit.” The quotations that
follow are also from this speech.
229
´
Habermas distinguishes two types of public sphere: the one
intrudes into the private life of celebrities; the other allows for an
open exchange of views. The focus on topics replaces in the latter
one’s personal narrative. The public is no longer a passive hearer
and onlooker but rather transforms into speakers and addressees
in a conversation. The private sphere moves to the background of
the public sphere, as speakers “need not speak about themselves.”6
Habermas has a view about the relationship of philosophy and
biography that is not so different from Heidegger’s: “as philosophy
professors we limit ourselves in our lectures about Aristotle or St.
Thomas or Kant to bare life dates: when they were born, lived, and
died.” The events from the life of philosophers fall behind the work
and do not of themselves make it into a classic.
Yet “every obsession has autobiographical roots,” he declares
openly and as a proof introduces his reflections about “the relationship between theory and biography.” Habermas distinguishes
four relevant autobiographical situations that provide the contexts
for the emergence of his thought. First, after birth and in early
childhood he underwent a traumatic palate surgery. He intimates
that this medical intervention impacted his natural trust in the environment. “But this intervention could have woken up the feeling of
dependence on and the sense of relevance of the relationship with
others.” His theoretical starting point comprises an insight into the
social nature of humans. Humans are “animals existing in a public
space.” The palate surgery was repeated at age 5, and this sharpened his sense of human inter-dependence. Habermas locates in
these formative experiences the experiential roots of his interest in
Humboldt, hermeneutics, American pragmatism, and late
Wittgenstein’s philosophy of language. “The intuition of deepreaching reciprocal dependence of one on another” defines the
core of his later communication theory. As his corrective to vintage
textbook existentialism, Habermas describes human interiority as
“an inner center of the person” that is always already built on the
´
230
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basis of achieved communicative and interpersonal competencies.
One is capable of uttering the “I” of the first person singular
because one was addressed by an originary “You” first.
Secondly, in the early schooling, Habermas suffered difficulties
in communicating with his peers on account of his disability. He
recalls two experiences: not being understood by others due to his
speech disability and the characteristic nasal articulation that made
comprehending his spoken words difficult without some attention
and adjustment by the hearers. And there was a subsequent and
repeated rejection by his peers. Not without insignificance, the
school experiences of discrimination of Habermas “as the other”
occurred during the Nazi period and thus among the cohorts who
comprised the age group during Habermas’s entry at age 10, in
1939, into the Hitler Youth. Given the Nazi penchant for physical
fitness, the birth defect and speech handicap must have had a pronounced effect on Habermas’s alienation from others in his immediate surroundings. He writes, “only those who speak can be silent.
Only because we are from the beginning connected with others,
we can become individuated.” The trauma of speech hindrance
provided the seeds for his later reflection on the communicative
medium as the ground of individuation. “Language does not mirror
the world,” he says, “but opens our entry into it.”
Habermas notes two further effects of his struggle with the
speech impediment: He developed a marked preference for the
written word and its precise discursive form. It is in discourse that
we exchange grounds and require examination of problematic
claims to validity in order to reach a better argument. He grades
students on the basis of their written work and to this day prefers
a written interview form. Furthermore, globalization comes to
mean that we can imagine what it is to be a stranger or excluded
from the human community. The need for reciprocal recognition
is inscribed into our interiority as that fragility to which we are
introduced through empathy. Moral sensibility offers protection
against the injury of those who have been communicatively socialized and individualized; and hospitality and solidarity emerge as
moral protections against marginalization.
Thirdly, in adolescence Habermas confronted the break of 1945.
While I was not free to write about his first two experiences in my
biography before Habermas had the courage to speak about them
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openly in his own voice, I did begin his profile with the phenomenological figure of his existential philosophical-political birthday at
age 15. May 1945 was the time of Germany’s defeat and liberation,
Habermas’s death and rebirth. From here Habermas’s self-presentation basically parallels the structure of my biography of him. When
Habermas acknowledges his “luck of late birth,” he ascribes to himself an inter-generational position: Too late to commit the crimes of
his parental and teachers’ generation, but old enough to suffer the
trauma of the Hitler Youth time and the national breach.
I brought Habermas’s core intuitions and motives under these
generational umbrellas. The postwar generation lived through
Germany’s Nazi dictatorship and its defeat. As a teen, Habermas witnessed Germany at once freed by the allies and with its daily normality overnight lying in ruins. As a mature thinker, he affirms the first
core motive of his lifework in an uncanny intuition that reason, even
with the lifeworld catastrophically injured, is able to act against its failures from within its own resources. I say this is uncanny because after
Auschwitz the warrants of hope and reason are for him a “double
ground” of normality and civilizational breakdown. Habermas takes
a secular recourse to the modern pietistic and Kabbalistic notion of
the absentee God brought to life through human co-creation. Nihil
contra Deum, nisi Deus ipse. The contemporary relevance of
Habermas’s work is that he turns the defining aspiration of the generation of 1945 into a life-long search for the non-ideological foundations for a democratic, constitutional, and lawful state. “Democracy,”
not the Anglo-Saxon liberalism, was for him the postwar “magic
word.” In his view, only a democratic polity can survive in today’s pluralist, multicultural, and multireligious societies.
All the greater was his disappointment with the preceding generation of parental and teacher authorities. With Heidegger, ironically, political biography and philosophy come together for
Habermas for the first time. If the link between existence and theory matters in Heidegger’s case, since he also theorized it, that link is
pronounced in Habermas’s surprising autobiographical reconstruction of the sources of his own thinking. Among the chief objections
to Heidegger’s generation is its heroic call to creative power, the
cult of German mandarins, the anti-modern attitude, and the failure
of responsibility for and distancing from the Nazi ideology.
Habermas absorbed early Heidegger “through Kierkegaardian lens-
231
´
´
232
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es,” but for this same reason he neither espoused the heroic ideal
nor became an existential hero. National, religious, or even personal heroism would be in any event alien to Kierkegaard’s notion of
greatness. As a budding philosopher of communication, at age 24
risking his Ph.D. and career, Habermas confronted in Heidegger’s
unexplainably unrepentant republication in 1953 of his 1935 Naziflavored lectures the incomprehensible if not guilty silence of the
German elite. Habermas’s act was not some romantic heroism, but
a seed of singularity, what I called his signature event.
Fourthly, his adulthood was marred by the slow and endangered process of Germany’s postwar democratization. Against the
horizon of Germany’s disaster, the second core motive of his lifework was inspired by the generation of Habermas’s students. In
1968 they were protesting against the fascist continuities that had
survived in the values of their parents, teachers, political authorities, and in general culture. From the student revolt, Habermas
adopts the intuition that no human culture or tradition can claim
for itself an original innocence. His reflection on the past and
future of national founding myths is marked by a profound
ambivalence towards nationalism that impacted his youth and by
the fresh need to engage in public discussions concerning those
bankrupt traditions, which we must jettison, and those life-giving
traditions we need to affirm. This existential either/or projected
into the public sphere as the question for both I and we – How to
safeguard democratic institutions today? – highlights the second
aspect of contemporary relevance of Habermas’s lifework: He
envisions political culture maturing into a postnational attitude that
sheds raw, emotive, sectarian nationalism for the civic virtues of
constitutional patriotism. Kierkegaard’s existential distancing from
bankrupt traditions, be it Christendom or nationalism, offers
Habermas the category, existential and social at once, of singular
existence that is rooted in the attitude diametrically opposed to
both religious and secular heroism.
While I was only age 11 in 1968 when the Soviet Empire under
the pretense of brotherly help and liberation invaded my native
Czechoslovakia, I was privileged to study with Habermas as a
Fulbrighter in 1989 just as the Berlin Wall crumbled and the Velvet
Revolution in my native country symbolized new beginnings. In
those historical months, I discovered in Habermas not only a bold
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thinker, but also a great teacher and passionately engaged intellectual. Habermas’s third motive arose from this most recent world constellation in which the fall of the Iron Curtain, Germany’s unification,
the European Union’s expansion, and the global impact of the state
of international relations all test anew the generational aspirations:
The ’45ers founded the democratic state on a patriotism that rallied
around constitution and law, while the ’68ers resisted cultural
restoration of authoritarian regimes at the heart of democracy.
Habermas’s third core intuition comes to life in the hope now that
against all odds we may rescue ethical communities by rooting them
in our solidarity with the victims of history. Enter the third aspect of
contemporary relevance of his lifework: It consists in guiding our
learning how to sustain global institutions in a more robust democracy of world cosmopolitan citizenship and international law.
Habermas’s theoretical articulation of the first core motive and
intuition points us to his philosophical-political origins – integrating the securing generational sensibilities of the ’45ers. In the articulation of the second motive and intuition, he learns from the student rebellion against the fear of open society. His third articulation comes from a post-1989, future-projected ideal that completes
this entire equation: Habermas’s lifework integrates the constitutional-democratic needs of the securing ’45ers and the revolutionary core of the protesting ’68ers. He inhabits a soberly critical
ground between the conserving and progressive interests. To say
this most succinctly, the contemporary relevance of Habermas’s
lifework is a thorough articulation of what must be at once conserved institutionally and protected by nonviolent forms of civil
dissent when endangered – the deliberative democratic check-andbalances on the strategic dominance of power and money.
II. Should Critical Theory Be Afraid of Inwardness?
Two things become indisputably clear from Habermas’s autobiography: Firstly, Heidegger’s momentary lapse into national-heroism as a form of authentic resolve is the case brought as a key political argument against existential categories such as inwardness.
Thanks to his existential confrontation with Heidegger, Habermas
does not conflate singularity with heroism. Greatness is a category
distinct from heroism, as the latter alone can be celebrated en masse
and thus foster abusive power. For this reason I wrote of
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Habermas’s greatness, but never of him as “an existentialist hero.”7
Habermas underscores this difference in a key distinction between
the divided roles of the intellectual as a critical professional and a
public figure.8 The critical role of influence should never have truck
with political power. He writes about this because he feels the need
to learn from his own failures as much as from those of his predecessors. “In the public office the intellectuals cease to be intellectuals.” The possibility of failures or mistaken influence should turn the
intellectuals neither to mandarins nor to “cynics.” Secondly,
Habermas’s autobiography puts at rest the truncated view of him as
aloof formal theorist bereft of singular and robust motives and intuitions. If anything, his Kyoto self-disclosure confirms my view of his
normative theorizing arising from his existential singularity.
Academic thinkers on the left often hide behind cases such as
Heidegger’s to mask their own pronounced propensity to misconceive the category of singular greatness. With that confusion
between heroism and inwardness, critical theory grows alltooweary to resist religious as well as secular forms of modern fundamentalism. But it is those very forms, and the religious or secular
veneer plays here no difference, that fall into the category of the
heroic. Pity the lands that need heroes, pity the critical theory that
robs itself of resources to critique them!
Pensky examines the question from Habermas’s 1987
Copenhagen lecture, the very question on which I based my earlier book: “What would group identities have to be like to be capable of complementing and stabilizing the improbable and endangered type of ego-identity that Kierkegaard outlines?”9 I addressed
the issue of compatibility between and even mutual requirement
of communicative ethics and radically honest existential attitude, a
requirement Habermas acknowledged in my first conversation
with him on this topic.10 The fear that existential categories are
7 See Pensky, “Jürgen Habermas: Existential Hero?”
8 Habermas, “Öffentlicher Raum und politische Öffentlichkeit.”
9 Pensky, “Jürgen Habermas: Existential Hero?”; Jürgen Habermas, The New
Conservatism: Cultural Criticism and the Historians’ Debate, trans. Shierry Weber
Nicholsen (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989), 261; Martin J. Beck Matuštík,
Postnational Identity: Critical Theory and Existential Philosophy in Habermas,
Kierkegaard, and Havel. (New York: Guilford, 1993), 5-20.
10 Matuštík, Postnational Identity, 250-264.
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incompatible with the recovery of the publicity of facts and norms
rests on mistakes typical among social theorists.
The first is the equivocation between ’existential’ and ’existentialist’ viewed either as the same category11 or used equivocally as
in “existential hero” or “existentialist hero.”12 ’Existentialist’ refers
to the twentieth-century, mostly textbook readings of radical selfchoice as a validity domain divorced from social situations. This is
how the ascriptions of unsituated freedom often become the container for the acosmic readings of inwardness. The second mistake
is made by almost all critical theorists following in this regard
Habermas who identifies existential self-choice with the clinical or
narrative questions of the good life (eudaimonia). Habermas and
his commentators distinguish the latter from moral autonomy and
self-determination. Besides pragmatic questions, there only are ethical and moral types of practical questions, and inwardness is subsumed by the Habermasian architectonic under the ethical, understood as the Aristotelian or Hegelian good. Pensky’s description of
inwardness is a vintage example: “’ethical discourse’ in its existentialist reading – in which the isolated individual, alone in her conscience and her life-history, must confront herself honestly and
ruthlessly is the derivative, secondary form of an ongoing ethical
discourse, in which we are always already involved.”13 Pensky concedes that there is a dialectic between the first-person singular
(inward self-choice) and the first-person plural (publicity of
norms), yet he corrects the perceived ambiguity of this relation in
Habermas by insisting, “this primacy of inwardness is only relative,
perhaps even deceptive.”14
The bugbear of asocial inwardness comes from all-too-common
superficial reading of Kierkegaard, minimally, for whom this category neither describes psychological states nor the philosophy of
mind, nor is it some validity claim in competition with the publicity of the ethical, moral, and legal discourses. In order for inwardness to function as “a mediating moment between an unreflective
and a self-reflective form of publicity,”15 it would have to become
11 See Owen, “Critical Theory as History,” n. 1.
12 See Pensky, “Jürgen Habermas: Existential Hero,” 59, 60, 61.
13 Pensky, “Jürgen Habermas: Existential Hero,” 64.
14 Pensky, “Jürgen Habermas: Existential Hero,” 61-62.
15 Pensky, “Jürgen Habermas: Existential Hero,” 63.
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a mode of inwardness that is capable of critical distance on the
received practices, institutions, and cultural ethos. But if all distancing is derivative from one’s being born, socialized, and individualized as a German or American, that is if all terms of self-reflectivity are preset by received individualization through socialization,
then no such distance from one-dimensional thinking could occur.
Kierkegaard begins where Hegel, Mead, Peirce, late Wittgenstein,
and Habermas end: with well socialized citizens, in his case the
Christened Danes, who are no Robinson Crusoes, but rather cultured and sagacious offsprings of the nationalist-cum-esthetic religiosity of their, not unlike our, times. Kierkegaard’s requirements
of becoming subjective and becoming sober call for a mode of radically honest and open inwardness requisite of the demand for the
critical publicity of facts and norms. His combined requirement
attacks the false religious publicity of Christendom in ways that
unmask its ideology and strip its socialized hold on the self-deceptive mode of one’s self-relation.
My argument has been all along that critical theory needs the
category of existence or inwardness as a mode. This is the missing
third member that accounts for the ability of socialized adults to
take distance on bankrupt religious and secular traditions, and this
modal category is thus distinct from the ethical-clinical questions of
the good life and the moral-normative questions of self-determination. Habermas’s lifework and his self-reflection open up this
access to the mode of sober inwardness in creative ways that my
biography of him explored without adulation, reductionism, or
vain suggestion that he succeeded in carrying it through. It is by
witnessing Habermas’s singular struggles for truthfulness, as a critical theorist of his in-between generation, that we also meet his
existential greatness. We do best to unmask heroism in those who
remain blind sighted by unrepentant “military philosophers.”16
III. Should Critical Theory Be Afraid of the
Postsecular Turn?
Is there a postsecular turn in Habermas’s profane architectonic?
I did not encounter this term in Habermas prior to 2001, though I
16 See Perry Anderson, “Arms and Rights: Rawls, Habermas and Bobbio in an Age of
War,” The New Left Review, No. 31 (Jan/Feb 2005): 5-40.
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applied it in the biography.17 But it emerges suddenly in his now
voluminous writings on tolerance and religion, to be exact, after
9/11.18 Should critical theorists be afraid that the great thinker has
gone ’soft’ or even neo-religious? (Pensky worries so for me.19) The
meaning of witnessing must be located in what I named the countermonumental quality of Habermas’s uncanny hope that propels
his active critical work. But, please, in the face of unforgivable and
radically evil deeds, any such hope, however much it profanes itself,
is always already postsecular. Following the announced death of
God, our hope-tocome, expected after our unforgivable deeds,
denotes what Jacques Derrida and others called a religion without
religion.20 The uncanny here names our waiting that our historical
present can rescue its future from the past of the victims of history –
whether or not we can bring dead back to life.21 That such hope ever
can be in our sole power is neither a true meaning of the Buddhist
awakening, nor of Ezekiel’s prophesy that the dry bones shall rise.
237
17 Martin J. Beck Matuštík, Jürgen Habermas: A Philosophical-Political Profile
(Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2001), 142, 146f., 149, 223, 226f., 265-274.
Eduardo Mendieta, trans. Jeffrey Craig Miller, Logos 3, no. 3 (Summer 2004),
http://www.logosjournal.com/habermas_america.htm [accessed September 5, 2005];
“Equal Treatment of Cultures and the Limits of Postmodern Liberalism,” trans. Jeffrey
Flynn (Ms., 2004), 1-44; “Zum Friedenspreis des deutschen Buchhandels: Eine
Dankrede,” Süddeutsche Zeitung (October 15, 2001) and “Faith and Knowledge,” lecture delivered October 14, 2001, at Frankfurt’s Paulskirche on the occasion of receiving the Peace Award of the German Publishers, each printed in The Future of Human
Nature, trans. Hella Beister and Max Pensky (Cambridge, MA: Polity Press, 2003), 101115 and 126-127; “Fundamentalism and Terror”; Der gespaltene Westen (Frankfurt
a/M: Suhrkamp Verlag, 2004); “Intolerance and Discrimination,” International Journal
of Constitutional Law 1/1 (January, 2003): 2-12; “Religious Tolerance – The Pacemaker
for Cultural Rights,” Philosophy 79 (2004): 5-18 (text is roughly identical to
“Intolerance and Discrimination”); “Ein letzter Gruss,” obituary for Jacques Derrida,
The Frankfurter Rundschau (October 10, 2004); “On the Relation between the Secular
Liberal State and Religion,” trans. by Matthias Fritch, in Eduardo Mendieta. ed., The
Frankfurt School on Religion (New York: Routledge, 2004), 337-346; Religion and
Rationality: Essays on Reason, God, and Modernity, ed. and with an introduction by
Eduardo Mendieta (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002), especially the final interview.
19 See Pensky, “Jürgen Habermas: Existential Hero,” 69.
20 See Matuštík, “Between Hope and Terror”; Martin Beck Matuštík, “Habermas’s
Turn?” Philosophy and Social Criticism 32, no. 1 (2006); Habermas, “America and the
World”; Habermas, “Ein letzter Gruss.”
21 See Pensky, “Jürgen Habermas: Existential Hero,” 71.
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18 For instance, in the following texts: “America and the World,” interview with
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The notion of redemption holds for Habermas a Janus-faced
ethico-religious status of redeeming rational claims to validity in
public discourse and hoping that things do get better where disasters destroyed the human capacity to forgive and repair. I do not
dispute Pensky’s claim that Habermas avoids all strictly theological
implications found in Benjamin’s rescue for the victims of history.
But by rendering human solidarity in political rather than spiritual
terms, our hope that after Auschwitz we can speak and write again
with joy becomes no less uncanny. Critical theory’s disconsolate
and countermonumental hope, and this sobriety I never denied to
Habermas, arrogates to itself a robust postsecular expectation. By
hoping against hope, critical theory assigns to itself a dual task of
existential responsibility and waiting for or redemptive witnessing
of hope-to-come. We might be just waiting for Godot, that possibility one need not deny to secular thinkers, but if hope comes, is that
just because of our doing? It is not so much my articulation of the
notion of redemption that reintroduces religious consciousness
into critical theory,22 it is reason’s faith in its recovery of reasonableness, hope that hope is to be given even where it became utterly disconsolate, that turns performatively postsecular.
These questions are addressed by Habermas’s Frankfurt
Paulskirche speech and his lectures on secularization.23 Perhaps
under the impact of 9/11, he speaks for the first time in his work
about the ’postsecular’ constellation complementing his ’postnational’ constellation.24 The ’postsecular’ adjective appears in his
Frankfurt speech three times at crucial junctures.25 After admitting
that “the boundaries between secular and religious reasons are
fluid,” and even “mined ground,” he calls not only for the transla22 See Pensky, 70.
23 Habermas’s Frankfurt Paulskirche speech, entitled “Faith and Knowledge”; the
lectures on secularization include Dialektik der Sääkularisierung (Frankfurt a/M:
Suhrkamp Verlag, 2005); “Intolerance and Discrimination”; “On the Relation between the Secular Liberal State and Religion”; and “Religious Tolerance – The
Pacemaker for Cultural Rights.” See also Religion and Rationality: Essays on Reason,
God, and Modernity; and Zwischen Naturalismus und Religion (Frankfurt a/M:
Suhrkamp Verlag, 2005).
24 See his presentation at the World Congress of Philosophy in Istanbul, “Dispute on
the past and future of international law. Transition from a national to a postnational
constellation,” August 10, 2003.
25 Habermas, “Faith and Knowledge,” 103f.
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tion of the religious into the secular discourses, but also admits the
need for their mutual cooperation.26 Translation and cooperation
are two contrarian moves reinforcing the new postsecular sensibility. He revisits the dispute between Benjamin and Horkheimer and,
contrary to Pensky’s unnuanced reading, he stakes out his place
(with a typical Habermasian ambivalence) between the open and
irreversible senses of history, between the “true impulse and its
impotence” of our coming to terms with the past.27 To bypass this
ambivalence is to neutralize the hidden intuitions that underwrite
the uncanny status of hope itself; indeed, without the at once critical and redemptive role of hope, critical theory makes itself irrelevant to the aspirations of the age.
Rather than plugging what he self-mockingly terms his religiously “tone-deaf” ears, Habermas affirms against the genetic engineers
“the absolute difference that exists between the creator and the
creature”28 – and this not so veiled warning against the idolatry of
human reason is hardly a secular claim. So when he concedes that
“the unbelieving sons and daughters of modernity seem to believe
that they owe more to one another, and need more for themselves,
than what is accessible to them, in translation, of religious tradition...”; one must read in-between the lines his indirect acknowledgment of a loss of that redemptive hope that secular social theory, like the inarticulate Godot, expects to arise where disasters
struck, yet may not supply from its own “exhausted” sources.29
That acknowledgment is most indicative of his reading of Kant
against Kant on radical evil: While Kant attempted a “critical
assimilation of religious content” of evil into his rationally bound
moral religion, this “may seem less convincing” in the face of the
modern forms of annihilation. Deliberate cruelty is not simply
something “morally wrong” but rather something “profoundly
evil.” And something was lost, Habermas concedes once more, in
the translation of radical evil into the secular moral-legal categories. Neither ethical discourses nor normative moral and legal
discourses can grant forgiveness, for the publicity of facts and
26 Habermas, “Faith and Knowledge,” 109, 113.
27 Habermas, “Faith and Knowledge,” 111.
28 Habermas, “Faith and Knowledge,” 114, 115.
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norms can at best present moral culpability and punish. As one
social worker explained this nuance to me, modern social theory
with its talk of tolerance and deliberative democracy is entirely
intellectually useless and existentially helpless in the face of
Rwanda or Dafur.
We need to ask here, what is gained by critical theory becoming so flatfooted that it cannot unmask the heroic-esthetic religiosity underpinning sectarian hatred? It has no resources to
name, and so render powerless, the religious-demonic cruelty, for
it had translated away all religiosity as a critical resource. Yet we
need this resource to be able to grasp the upsurge of willed
unreasonableness (and this phenomenon is more than intolerance) in human affairs. Without such a resource critical theory has
at its disposal no religious critique of the demonic – the trope for
every fanaticism and religious ideology. Can critical theory thus
impoverished point us to the sources of hope or, minimally, to
what after dastardly deeds grants human affairs their reasonableness? Jim Wallis’s book, God’s Politics, provides a fitting subtitle to
answer my rhetorical questions: “Why the Right Gets it Wrong and
the Left Doesn’t Get It.”30 Michael Lerner’s Tikkun call for critical
religiosity to be at least seriously considered by progressives steps
in to fill this lacuna. In the absence of redemptive critical theory,
progressives vacated the space to the bigoted forms of religiosity,
the new Grand Inquisitors, and their hate-filled holy wars. Social
theory begins with the background condition of reasonableness,
yet this assumption is at best unwarranted and at worst idolatrous.
Adorno was an intellectually honest atheist in prohibiting positive
images of hope and voicing doubts about doing philosophy and
writing poetry after Auschwitz. Social theory justifies in vain its
rational hope in the face of deliberately evil, hence I call them
demonic or diabolical, acts such as genocide.
Many often ask, what are the sources of Habermas’s unwavering, to the twentyfirst-century tone-deaf ears more and more
uncanny, optimism that a margin of reason may prevail in the
midst of human destruction and insanity? His own remarkable
journey through the twentieth century bears witness to the fact
that things did get better in postwar Europe. Habermas’s theory
30 Jim Wallis, God’s Politics: Why the Right Gets it Wrong and the Left Doesn’t Get It
(San Francisco: Harper Collins, 2005).
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of communicative action expresses this fact by locating the
resources for learning on this side of the world – in human linguistic competencies – that is, in our ability and willingness to rise
up from the ashes of our dastardly deeds and rebuild the fragments of fragile social bonds. As long as we do not go entirely
mad or cease to communicate with one another as humans about
something in the world, what other options do we have (thus he
would question his skeptics as often as they question him, and so
he would also confront his own unbelief), than take recourse in
hope lodged in our very speech, communicative action, and want
of mutual recognition?
I recognize in Habermas’s hope, vested in the power of mutual understanding, a voice crying in the wilderness. In 2003
Habermas joined with Derrida, who passed away on October 8,
2004, on the side of world-wide antiwar protests.31 The two of
them crossing the modern/postmodern divide strove to resurrect
Kant’s dream from 200 years ago of perpetual peace and the
league of nations. Habermas does not pretend to deliver us from
death or offer his theory as redemption. Yet his very sobriety is a
recognizable religious act proscribing the carved images of
redemptive hope. In that nuance of Habermasian ambivalence
and self-limitation, I situate my philosophical-political profile of
him. Nowadays his hope is perhaps even more sober than that of
many a secular politician or religious leader alike. In a
Camusesque atheistic declaration of the postsecular phenomena
of the unforgivable, a good centurion, Habermas, writes: “There
is no devil, but the fallen archangel still wreaks havoc – in the perverted good of the monstrous deed, but also in the unrestrained
urge for retaliation that promptly follows.”32 Perhaps in this selflimitation, questioning radical evil in the postsecular sensibility
31 Jürgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida, “Plädoyer zu einer Wiedergeburt
Europas,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (May 31, 2003); and “February 15, or,
What Binds Europeans Together: A Plea for a Common Foreign Policy, Beginning in
Core Europe,” in Globalizing Critical Theory, trans. and ed. by Max Pensky (Lanham,
Md.: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2005). See also Habermas, “Letter to
America,” interview by Danny Postel, The Nation (December 16, 2002); “Was bedeutet das Denkmalsturz?” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (April 17, 2003), translated
as “Interpreting the Fall of a Monument,” in Globalizing Critical Theory; and “Neue
Welt Europa” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (January 24, 2003).
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still available to our wit, huddled in solidarity under the earthly
sun, a new redemptive critical theory may become a placeholder
where genuinely non-ideological questions of how or to whom
hope is granted can still be asked.
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Jon Stewart
Hegel’s Treatment of the Development of
Religion after Christianity: Islam
In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries there was in Europe a
growing awareness of the importance of Islam. In the German tradition, with which Kierkegaard was intimately familiar, leading figures
such as Leibniz, Kant, Herder, Goethe, Friedrich Schlegel and Hegel all
treated different aspects of this religion.1 Despite his intensive reading
and frequent use of these authors, Kierkegaard seems entirely indifferent to the issues surrounding Islam that exercised these German
thinkers. One looks in vain in his published authorship and extensive
journals for treatments of Islam.2 There might be many possible explanations for this. Despite his famous distinction between religiousness
A and B, Kierkegaard was a thinker profoundly exercised by
Christianity, virtually to the exclusion of all other religions. Moreover,
he differs from some of the German thinkers listed here in his general rejection of any historical approach to religion, as is evidenced by
his rabid polemic against Grundtvig. This rejection explains his fundamental disagreement with Hegel’s understanding of religion as a
single, developing historical phenomenon. But precisely here there is
a complex problem concerning Hegel’s treatment of Islam.3
243
(New York: Routledge, 2010).
2 Having said this, there are a few scattered references: CUP1, 47, 434. See al so the
journal entries on Mohammed: JP, 1: 124; JP, 1: 412; JP, 1: 413; JP, 2: 1709; JP, 3: 2738;
JP, 5: 5212; JP, 5: 5410; JP, 6: 6353; and on Mohammedanism: JP, 1: 447; JP, 3: 2734;
JP, 3: 2736; JP, 5: 5071.
3 I quote Hegel’s primary texts using the following abbreviations: Aesthetics = Hegel’s
Aesthetics. Lectures on Fine Art, vols. 1-2, trans. T. M. Knox (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1975, 1998); EL = The Encyclopaedia Logic. Part One of the Encyclopaedia of the
Philosophical Sciences, trans. T. F. Gerats, W. A. Suchting, H. S. Harris (Indianapol is:
Hackett, 1991); Hist. of Phil. = Lectures on the History of Philosophy, vols. 1-3, trans. E.
S. H al dane (London: K. Paul, Trench, Trübner, 1892-96/ Lincoln and London:
University of Nebraska Press, 1995); Jub. = Sämtliche Werke. Jubiläumsausgabe in 20
kierkegaard • jon stewart
1 See Ian Almond, History of Islam in German Thought from Leibniz to Nietzsche
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According to the standard reading, Hegel’s philosophy of religion ends with Christianity as the pinnacle of religious development. This is true if one confines one’s interpretation to the
Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion. As has been seen, these lectures work their way through the different world religions and culminate in Christianity. However, if one looks at Hegel’s other lectures, the story is somewhat different. There Hegel cannot very
well stop with early Christianity since he has a much larger story to
tell about the development of culture and spirit as it traverses several centuries and leads up to his own time. The history of religion
likewise continues to develop, and new religions arise after
Christianity, the most important of which is Islam.
Hegel treats different aspects of Islam in his Lectures on the
History of Philosophy4 and his Lectures on Aesthetics,5 but his most
extensive treatment comes in his Lectures on the Philosophy of
History.6 Here, in his account of the Middle Ages, Hegel devotes a
short section to the rise of Islam as a religion and the Arab world as
an important political power. What is surprising for some readers
is the ambiguously sympathetic treatment that he gives. Despite his
many references and treatments of Islam, this has been a neglected
topic in the secondary literature.7
Bänden, ed. Hermann Glockner (Stuttgart: Friedrich Frommann Verlag, 1928-41);
Phil. of Hist = The Philosophy of History, trans. J. Sibree (New York: Willey Book Co.,
1944); Phil. of Mind = Hegel’s Philosophy of Mind, trans. William Wallace and A. V.
Miller (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971); Phil. of Religion = Lectures on the Philosophy
of Religion, vols. 1-3, trans. E. B. Speirs and J. Burdon Sanderson (London: Routledge
and Kegan Paul / New York: The Humanities Press 1962, 1968, 1972).
4 Hegel, Hist of Phil., vol. 3, 26-35 / Jub., vol. 19, 121-131.
5 Instead of a single continuous treatment of Arabic art, Hegel gives numerous sporadic remarks about it throughout his Lectures on Aesthetics. See especially
Aesthetics, vol. 2, 1096-1098 / Jub., vol. 14, 401-403. Aesthetics, vol. 1, 368-371 / Jub.,
vol. 12, 489-492. Other references can be readily located with the help of Hermann
Glockner’s Hegel-Lexikon, vols. 25-26 of Sämtliche Werke. Jubiläumsausgabe, ed.
Hermann Glockner, Stuttgart: Friedrich Frommann Verlag, 1928-41) or the index to
the English translation, Hegel’s Aesthetics. Lectures on Fine Art, vols. 1-2, trans. T. M.
Knox (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975, 1998).
6 Hegel, Phil. of Hist., 355-360 / Jub., vol. 11, 453-459.
7 Notable exceptions are Ian Almond, Chapter 6, “Hegel and the Disappearance of
Islam,” in his History of Islam in German Thought from Leibniz to Nietzsche (New
York: Routledge, 2010), 108-134. Ernst Schulin, “Der Mohammedanismus” in his
Die weltgeschichtliche Erfassung des Orients bei Hegel und Ranke (Göttingen: Van
denhoeck und Ruprecht, 1958), 115-124.
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While his treatment of Islam might seem homogeneous or even
onesided, in fact under this rubric he treats at least three distinct
historical peoples: the Turks, the Persians and the Arabs. This fact
explains what some commentators have regarded as inconsistencies in his accounts.8 Since he is more favorably disposed towards
the Turks and the Persians than the Arabs, his accounts of the former seem more positive than those of the latter.9
In the context of his Lectures on the Philosophy of History, it is
obvious and reasonable to expect that religion will continue to
develop beyond the account of early Christianity that Hegel provided in the Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion. Thus, Islam represents a part of the story that he wants to tell about the continued
development of religion and culture. As has been seen, Hegel
believes that the historical movement of the different world religions represents a developmental process, with more adequate
conceptions of the divine replacing less adequate ones. Thus, just
as human culture in general progresses through time, so also there
is a progression in the different world religions. Given this internal
logic of Hegel’s lectures, it is not counterintuitive or problematic
that he in some ways gives Islam a favorable treatment since it does
appear chronologically after Christianity. Indeed, one might even
expect him to describe it as a higher form of religion due to the
place that it occupies in the historical development.
While Hegel does not go this far, he nonetheless clearly has great
respect for Arabic culture at its high point. He states quite clearly that
the Arabs in the Middle Ages quickly passed through the various
stages of culture and very soon “advanced in culture much farther
than the West.”10 His respect for Arabic culture extends from, for
example, his appreciation for its poetry and its philosophy. In his
Lectures on Aesthetics Hegel also speaks highly of Arabic epic poetry, which he admires for its ability to focus on its object with a singleminded passion.11 With regard to philosophy, he regards Arabic phi8 This is particularly underscored in Ian Almond’s account. See his History of Islam
in German Thought from Leibniz to Nietzsche, 108-134.
9 See Ian Almond, History of Islam in German Thought from Leibniz to Nietzsche, 117:
“Hegel’s writings may well have been largely Turk-free, but the specter of an established, sophisticated and distinctly unbarbaric Muslim culture next door to Europe
would forever cause problems for the Christian and European bias of his teleology.”
10 Hegel, Hist of Phil., vol. 3, 27 / Jub., vol. 19, 121.
11 Hegel, Aesthetics, vol. 2, 1096f. / Jub., vol. 14, 401.
245
246
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losophy, which was profoundly shaped by the religious investments
of Islam, as following a continuous line that began in the Greek
world: “In the Arabic philosophy, which shows a free, brilliant and
profound power of imagination, philosophy and the sciences took
the same bent that they had taken earlier among the Greeks.”12
Although Hegel claims that Arabic philosophy does not represent its own independent stage in the history of philosophy and
did not develop its own particular principle,13 he does nonetheless
have laudatory words for some parts of it: “in Mohammedanism…
philosophy, along with all the other arts and sciences, flourished to
an extraordinary degree.”14
With regard to its historical origins, Hegel understands the rise of
Islam as the natural result of the rise of its opposite principle.
According to his dialectic of opposites, when one principle appears,
its opposite necessarily follows. In the wake of the fall of the Roman
Empire, the West, during the Middle Ages, was breaking up into a
series of small units and contingent alliances. Daily affairs were regulated in a myriad of accidental ways. Its principle was that of particularity. Hegel explains that one saw the West “bringing all social
relations under the form of particularity – with dull and narrow
intelligence splitting that which in its nature is generic and normal,
into a multitude of chance contingencies; rendering that which
ought to be simple principle and law, a tangled web of convention.”15 In a different account he gives an even more positive assessment of the origins of the Arab world as a world-historical force in
contrast to what appeared to be the declining state of Europe:
In the West the Germanic tribes had obtained possession of
what had hitherto formed a section of the Roman Empire, and their
conquests were attaining to shape and solidity, when another religion dawned in the East, namely the Mohammedan. The East purified itself of all that was individual and definite, while the West
descended into the depths and actual presence of spirit.16
The derogatory mention of the Germanic tribes is particularly
significant here since Hegel is often reproached for a latent pro12
13
14
15
16
Hegel, Hist of Phil., vol. 3, 29 / Jub., vol. 19, 124.
Hegel, Hist of Phil., vol. 3, 29f. / Jub., vol. 19, 125.
Hegel, Phil. of Hist., 355 / Jub., vol. 11, 453.
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Germanic nationalism in both his political philosophy and his philosophy of history. In any case, this principle of particularity that
came to dominate the West at this time necessarily produced its
opposite: universality. This is the principle of Islam.
In his portrayal of this historical development, Hegel uses dramatic terms, referring to the rise of Islam as “the revolution of the
East.”17 This was a movement that “destroyed all particularity and
dependence, and perfectly cleared up and purified the soul and
disposition; making the abstract One the absolute obj ect of attention and devotion, and to the same extent, pure subjective consciousness – knowledge of this One alone – the only aim of reality;
making the unconditioned the condition of existence.”18 In short,
Islam is the principle of universality arising as the opposing principle to the chaotic manifold of particularity that existed in Europe.
247
The basic conception of the divine in Islam is the unitary God.
Given this, it is understandable that Hegel is at pains to distinguish
Islam conceptually from the two other great monotheistic religions:
Judaism and Christianity. Thus, a significant part of his analysis is contrastive, whereby he attempts to demonstrate the concept of the divine
in Islam by opposing it to the concept in the other two religions.
With regard to Judaism, Hegel sees a certain family resemblance
between the conception of the God of the Jews and Allah. He
explains, “It was first in the Jewish and then later in the Mohammedan
religions that God was interpreted as the Lord and essentially only as
the Lord.”19 Both religions take their God to be one and absolute, and
this constitutes an important point of similarity.
However, Hegel understands Islam as a further development
and specifically as a movement away from what he perceives as a
form of particularity found in Judaism: “Jehovah was only the God
of that one people – the God of Abraham, of Isaac and Jacob; only
with the Jews had this God made a covenant; only to this people
17 Hegel, Phil. of Hist., 356 / Jub., vol. 11, 453.
19 Hegel, EL, § 112, Addition, 177 / Jub., vol. 8, 265. See also EL, § 151, Addition, 226 / Jub.,
vol. 8, 340.
1. The Concept of Islam
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had he revealed himself. That speciality of religion was done away
with in Mohammedanism.”20
While Judaism is fundamentally a national religion reserved for
the chosen people, Islam eliminates this element and makes a claim
to people of all nations. In the Encyclopedia, this is put in very general terms: “In Mohammedanism the limited principle of the Jews is
expanded into universality and thereby overcome.”21 He explains
this in more detail in the Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion:
This religion has the same obj ective content as the Jewish religion, but the relation in which men stand to one another is broadened; there is no particularity left in it, the Jewish idea of national
value which establishes the relation in which man stands to the
One, is wanting here. Here there is no limitation, man is related to
this One as a purely abstract self-consciousness.22
248
In contrast to Jehovah, Allah is an inclusive, universal God who
has a relation to all human beings not just a specific group. In Islam,
“all limits, all national and caste distinctions vanish; no particular
race, political claim of birth or possession is regarded – only man
as a believer.”23 This can be regarded as a socially progressive
movement in that it undermines repressive institutions such as
slavery or rigid class distinctions. Further, it overcomes a degree of
the alienation that is found in Judaism. He writes,
There is no recognition of the existence of any wall of partition between believers themselves or between them and God.
Before God all specific distinction of the subject according to his
standing or rank is done away with; rank may exist, there may
be slaves, but this is to be regarded as merely accidental.24
Islam thus overcomes the differences of nationality, and this is,
for Hegel, clearly a positive movement.
20
21
22
23
24
Hegel, Phil. of Mind, § 393, Addition, 44 / Jub., vol. 10, 76.
Hegel, Phil. of Religion, vol. 3, 142 / Jub., vol. 16, 347.
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Islam also represents a contrastive concept to Christianity. As
with its conceptual relation to Judaism, here too there is a dialectic
of identity and difference at work. Islam shares some important
common features with Christianity, for example, its conception of
one absolute God. In the Encyclopedia, we read, “Here, God is no
longer, as with the Asiatics, contemplated as existent in an immediately sensuous mode but is apprehended as the one infinite sublime power beyond all the multiplicity of the world.”25 Hegel thus
distinguishes Islam from, for example, Hinduism, since the latter is
focused on the particular empirical incarnations of the divine.
According to his developmental conception, Islam and Christianity
clearly represent a higher conception of the divine based on
thought and not the senses. Second, like Christianity, Islam makes
a universal claim to all people, regardless of nationality. It “occupies a like sphere with the Christian religion. It is, as it were, the
Jewish spiritual religion, but this God exists for self-consciousness
in Spirit which has merely abstract knowledge, and occupies a
stage which is one with that occupied by the Christian religion,
inasmuch as in it no kind of particularity is retained.”26
This feature was important for Islam having a wide international appeal during the time of the expansion of the Arab peoples in
the 7th and 8th centuries.
But, according to Hegel’s speculative logic, since Christianity
and Islam are similar, they are also different. Since they share certain key features, so-me key differences between these two forms
of monotheism inevitably emer-ge. In its insistence on the unity of
the divine, Islam radically rejects the empirical realm of particularity. The key difference between Christianity and Islam, according to
Hegel, lies in the fact that the former recognizes the validity of the
particular, without this impinging on or compromising the universal; specifically, through the person of Christ, the truth of the particular is accorded its due. This becomes incorporated into the
dogma of the Trinity, which contains a particular element. Hegel
explains this as follows: “The contrast between the Christian and
the Mohammedan religions consists in the fact that in Christ the
25 Hegel, Phil. of Mind, § 393, Addition, 44 / Jub., vol. 10, 76.
26 Hegel, Phil. of Religion, vol. 3, 142f. / Jub., vol. 16, 347f.
249
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spiritual element is developed in a concrete way, and is known as
Trinity, i.e., as Spirit.”27
The key to the difference between Islam and Christianity thus
lies in their varying interpretations of the role and status of Christ.
According to Hegel, what is essential is that Islam denies any form
of particularity for the divine and thus must interpret Christ not as
divine but merely as a prophet:
250
Thus the manifestation of God in the flesh, the exaltation of
Christ to the position of Son of the God, the transfiguration of the
finitude of the world and of self-consciousness until they appear
as the infinite self-determination of God, have no place here.
Christianity is held to be a system of teaching or set of doctrines,
and Christ as ambassador from God, a divine teacher, and so a
teacher like Socrates, only a still more distinguished teacher
since he was without sin.28
Islam cannot grasp the speculative identity of universal and particular that is found in the Christian Trinity. It is thus left to understand Christ as a mere particular, albeit a special one.
The other key difference between Islam and Christianity lies in
the fact that in the latter “the history of man, the relation in which he
stands to the One, is a concrete history.”29 The history that Hegel
refers to is the Christian account of how individuals are born in sin
but through Christ can achieve reconciliation and salvation.
Essentially, human beings can have a concrete positive goal that can
be realized in history. According to Hegel, this is precisely what Islam
denies: “The Mohammedan hates and proscribes everything concrete, God is the absolute One, and as against Him man retains for
27 Hegel, Phil. of Religion, vol. 3, 143 / Jub., vol. 16, 348.
29 Hegel, Phil. of Religion, vol. 3, 143 / Jub., vol. 16, 348. See also Hegel, Phil. of Religion,
vol. 3, 144 / Jub., vol. 16, 349: “This, however, is to go only half way; it is a compromise. Christ was either merely a man, or he was the ’Son of man.’ There would thus be
nothing left of the divine history, and Christ would be spoken of as he is in the Koran.
the difference between this standpoint and Mohammedanism consists merely in the
fact that the latter, the conceptions of which are bathed in the ether of illimitableness,
and which represents this in finite in dependence, directly gives up all particular interests, enjoyment, position, individual knowledge, all ’vanty’ in short.”
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himself no end, no particularity, no interest of his own.”30 Humans
as individuals can have no meaningful concrete goals or pursuits
since these are always tainted by the realm of particularity and are
condemned ahead of time as vain and useless.
2. The Shortcoming of the Concept
Man as actually existing does undoubtedly particularize himself in his natural inclinations and interest, and these are here all
30
31
32
33
34
251
According to Hegel, the problem with Islam lies in its abstraction. This has a double effect: the deity remains indeterminate, and
the empirical world becomes a matter of arbitrariness. With regard
to the first of these, Hegel explains, in Islam “God is in Himself the
perfectly undefined.”31 Islam’s insistence on God as one results in
pure universality. Allah is not internally differentiated in a speculative manner; instead, he is pure abstraction. Hegel explains, “… this
One is deprived of every concrete predicate; so that neither does
subj ectivity become on its part spiritually free, nor on the other
hand is the object of veneration concrete.”32
The view that God is absolute and one leads to a disdain for the
transitory world that we all live in. In Islam, God’s “activity is altogether abstract, and hence the particulars produced thereby are
perfectly contingent; if we speak of the necessity of things, the
term is meaningless and incomprehensible, and no attempt should
be made to comprehend it. The activity of God is thus perfectly
devoid of reason.”33 All human activities and projects are conceived as vain in comparison with the divine. Hegel thus claims
that the work of the Muslims “is rather the dissolution of all that is
definite in this substance, with which is associated mere changeableness as the abstract moment of negativity.”34
But despite this disdain for the empirical world, the individual
cannot help but live and act in it. This then leads to the negative
consequence that those actions quickly become arbitrary:
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the more savage and unrestrained that reflection is wanting in
connection with them, but this again involves something which is
the complete opposite, namely, the tendency to let everything take
its course, an indifference in respect to every kind of end,
absolute fatalism, indifference in respect of life, while no practical end is regarded as having any essential worth.35
252
This is, according to Hegel, a dangerous constellation since it
invariably leads to the undifferentiated destruction of the existing
world. An abstraction can be interpreted in a manifold of ways and
can be used and applied in a manifold of contexts.
This abstract universality is thus accompanied by a negative and
critical conception of the existing secular world. According to
Hegel’s view, this in turn leads to a form of fanaticism:
Abstraction swayed the minds of the Mohammedans. Their
object was to establish an abstract worship, and they struggled
for its accomplishment with the greatest enthusiasm. This enthusiasm was fanaticism, that is, an enthusiasm for something
abstract – for an abstract thought which sustains a negative
position towards the established order of things.36
Hegel frequently repeats this claim that the conception of the
divine in Islam leads to fanaticism. He explains elsewhere, “Since,
however, man is as a matter of fact practical and active, the end to
be pursued can only be to bring about the worship of the One
amongst all men, and accordingly the Mohammedan religion is
essentially fanatical.”37 Hegel distinguishes Judaism from Islam on
this point: the Jews “ought to glorify the Lord, but that they should
come to do this is not a real end. The obligation is only ideal and
not practical. This real end appears first in Mohammedanism,
where the particular end is raised to the rank of a general one, and
thus becomes fanatical.”38 The problem is that, according to this
38 Hegel, Phil. of Religion, vol. 2, 198 / Jub., vol. 16, 71. See also Phil. of Religion, vol.
2, 212f. / Jub., vol. 16, 85: “Closel y connected with the representation of God as the
Lord is the fact that the Jewish people gave themselves wholly up to His service. It
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account, Islam can recognize no other human goal or action as
essential or meaningful since it despises all particularity.
This recalls Hegel’s criticism of the abstract ideals of the French
Revolution and the Reign of Terror, which he refers to explicitly
here.39 Thus, Allah oddly resembles the abstract god of reason of
deism. Hegel points out that the real world has real problems and
issues that need to be resolved in practical ways. These cannot be
addressed adequately by a view that simply dismisses the world as
corrupt, transitory and meaningless. Some recognition must be
given to the realm of the finite as well. In the Lectures on the
Philosophy of History we read this described as follows:
253
Hegel portrays the follower of Islam as being driven by a single
passion. But since this passion is not guided by any concrete or
determinate content, it can be both positive and negative: the follower of Islam “is superlatively cruel, cunning, bold, or generous.”41
According to Hegel, we find this same feature in Arabic literature:
there arises the more inflexible independence of personal character, and objects too are allowed to possess their circumscribed
and definitely fixed immediate reality. With these beginnings of the
independence of individuality there are then bound up at the same
time true friendship, hospitality, sublime generosity, but all the
same an infinite thirst for revenge, an inextinguishable memory of
a hatred which makes room and satisfaction for itself by pitiless
is this which explains, too, that marvelous steadfastness which was not a fanaticism
of conversion like Mohammedanism, which is already purified from the idea of
nationality and recognizes believers only, but a fanaticism of stubbornness.”
40 Hegel, Hist of Phil., vol. 3, 33 / Jub., vol. 19, 129.
The activity of God is thus represented as perfectly devoid of
reason. This abstract negativity, combined with the permanent
unity, is thus a fundamental conception in the Oriental way of
looking at things….Thus the Arabians developed the sciences and
philosophy, without further defining the concrete Idea; their
work is rather the dissolution of all that is definite in this substance, with which is associated mere changeableness as the
abstract moment of negativity.40
254
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passion and absolute unfeeling cruelty. But what happens on this
soil appears as human, within the sphere of human affairs; there
are deeds of revenge, relations of love, traits of self-sacrificing generosity from which the fantastic and wonderful have vanished, so
that everything is presented fixedly and definitely in accordance
with the necessary connection of things.42
With this arbitrariness Islam is able to reach both the heights
and the depths of the human spirit.43 This universal passion for the
indeterminate one is, according to Hegel, the reason that the Arab
political power could not sustain itself for long. “Never has enthusiasm, as such, performed greater deeds. Individuals may be enthusiastic for what is noble and exalted in various particular forms. The
enthusiasm of a people for its independence has also a definite
aim. But abstract and therefore all-comprehensive enthusiasm –
restrained by nothing, finding its limits nowhere, and absolutely
indifferent to all beside – is that of the Mohammedan East.”44 Hegel
sums up the problem as follows: “The defect of [Islam] consists
generally in [its] not giving the finite its due.”45
3. The Positive Role of Islam in History
Nevertheless Islam has an important role to play in the development of history, according to Hegel’s understanding. Together
with Judaism and Christianity, Islam defeats the Eastern religions,
which base their conceptions of the divine on the senses. Islam is a
religion for thought and not for picture-thinking. For this reason
Islam forbids the portrayal of the God or the prophet.46 The point
is that one should not see them but think them.
… the Divine, explicitly regarded as unity and universality, is
essentially only present to thinking and, as in itself imageless, is not
42 Hegel, Aesthetics, vol. 1, 430 / Jub., vol. 13, 7.
43 Hegel, Phil. of Hist., 358 / Jub., vol. 11, 456: “I t is the essence of fanaticism to bear
only a desolating destructive relation to the concrete; but that of Mohammedism
was, at the same time, capable of the greatest elevation–an elevation free from all
petty interests, and united with all the virtues that appertain to magnanimity and
valor.”
45 Hegel, EL, § 112, Addition, 176 / Jub., vol. 8, 265. See also EL, § 151, Addition, 226
/ Jub., vol. 8,
46 Hegel, Phil. of Hist., 357 / Jub., vol. 11, 454: “The object of Mohammed an worsh
ip is purely intellectual ; no image, no representation of Allah is tolerated.”
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susceptible to being imaged and shaped by imagination; for which
reason, after all, the Jews and Mohammedans are forbidden to
sketch a picture of God in order to bring him nearer to the vision
which looks around in the sensuous field. For visual art, which
always requires the most concrete vitality of form, there is therefore no room here.47
This is to prevent God from becoming anthropomorphic. God
is beyond our ability to imagine. This squares well with Hegel’s
idea that philosophical cognition is higher than sense experience.
Both Islam and Judaism are conceptually higher than the religions
of the East that are fixated on the empirical particulars.
Hegel sees in Islam a movement toward the modern principle
of subj ective freedom, something which one usually associates
with his treatment of Western history and culture:
255
Hegel clearly regards Islam as an advance over the other religions
of the East, which remain caught in the empirical and have not worked
their way forward to grasping the divine in terms of a concept.
While Islam represents an advance over, for example, Hinduism,
it has still not yet attained the level of Christianity. While it has successfully defeated the cult of empirical idolatry and replaced it with
an abstract concept, it has not advanced to give its abstract concept
any determinate content. In the Encyclopedia, we read,
47 Hegel, Aesthetics, vol. 1, 175 / Jub., vol. 12, 241. See also Aesthetics, vol. 1, 103 /
Jub., vol. 12, 150. Aesthetics, vol. 1, 42 / Jub., vol. 12, 72.
48 Hegel, Aesthetics, vol. 1, 557 / Jub., vol. 13, 171f.
In the Orient it is in general the Mohammedan religion
which has as it were cleared the ground by expelling all the idolatry of a finite and imaginative outlook, but has given to the
heart the subj ective freedom which entirely fills it. The result is
that worldly things do not constitute a merely different province,
but blossom into a realm of universal freedom where heart and
spirit, without framing for themselves an objective embodiment
of their god, live cheerfully at peace with themselves; they are like
beggars, happy in eating and loving, satisfied and blissful in contemplating and glorifying their objects.48
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But the western Asiatic mind which clings to the abstract One
does not get as far as the determination, the particularization, of
the universal and consequently does not attain to a concrete formation. Here, it is true, this mind destroys the caste system and
all its works which prevail in India, and every Mohammedan is
free; despotism in the strict meaning of the word does not exist
among them. Political life, however, does not yet achieve the
form of a rationally organized whole, of a differentiation into
special governmental powers.49
256
Islam thus brings with it certain important political advances
since it celebrated the equality of all human beings before God.
Hegel celebrates the egalitarian nature of Muslim society:
At first the Caliphs still maintained entire that simplicity and
plainness which characterized the Arabs of the desert… and
which acknowledged no distinction of station and culture. The
meanest Saracen, the most insignificant old woman approached
the Caliph as his equals. Unreflecting naiveté does not stand in
need of culture; and in virtue of the freedom of Spirit, each one
sustains a relation of equality to the ruler.50
His praise here is especially striking when one recalls his sharp
criticisms of the tyranny and despotism of China and India.
But although it serves the negative function of destroying certain repressive institutions such as slavery or the caste system,
Islam is not able to construct anything positive since it does not
have the conceptual content to do so. There is nothing determinate
with which something new can be constructed. The political problem of the lack of internal differentiation is also the problem in the
conception of the divine:
The Christian God is not merely the differenceless One, but
the triune God who contains difference within himself, who has
become man and who reveals himself. In this religious conception the opposition of universal and particular, of thought and
being, is present in its most developed form and yet has been
49 Hegel, Phil. of Mind, § 393, Addition, 44 / Jub., vol. 10, 76f.
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brought back again to unity. Here, then, the particular is not left
so quiescent in its immediacy as in Mohammedanism.51
Unlike Islam, Christianity recognizes the importance and value
of the individual and individual action. It is thus able to go on to
produce customs, institutions and social structures that reflect this.
What is particularly intriguing about Hegel’s treatment of Islam is
that he associates its concept with what he regards as the confused
and overly zealous views about religion that one finds in the
Enlightenment. In his Lectures on the Philosophy of History, the only
two religions that he treats after Christianity are Islam and
Enlightenment deism. Similarly, at the end of his Lectures on the
Philosophy of Religion, he mentions only very briefly the continued
development of the concept of religion,52 and here too he discusses
both of these as confused concepts. In the Encyclopedia, immediately after giving a thumbnail description of the notion of the divine in
Islam, Hegel sketches the related notion from the Enlightenment:
“Another position that has frequently been maintained is that there
can be no cognition of God as the ’highest essence.’ This is the general statement of the modern Enlightenment, which is content to say,
’Il y a un être suprême,’ and lets the matter rest there.”53 This is truly
astonishing since these represent two radically different movements,
which are separated by several centuries.
257
The importance of this topic for what we have designated here as
the “crisis of religion then and now” should be obvious. Hegel’s analysis takes on particular relevance in our world today when tensions
between Jews, Muslims and Christians are running high. The ongoing
conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians, the constant threat
of terrorism against Western targets by the religious fundamentalists,
the invasion and occupation of Islamic countries by the United States
and other Western forces, the establishment of permanent Western
military installations in Irak, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, the printing
and reprinting of the Mohammed cartoons, the divisive political
51 Hegel, Phil. of Mind, § 393, Addition, 44f. / Jub., vol. 10, 77.
52 Hegel, Phil. of Religion, vol. 3, 134-151 / Jub., vol. 16, 340-356.
53 Hegel, EL, § 112, Addition, 177 / Jub., vol. 8, 265.
4. The Crisis of Religion Then and Now
258
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struggle between secular and religious forces in countries such as
Iran and Turkey, the quite repressive secular governments of many of
the Arabic countries bent on crushing any form of political reform –
all this can lead one to despair of these religious and political tensions
ever being resolved in any positive or satisfying manner.
What does Hegel have to add to the understanding and assessment of this problem in its many forms or indeed its solution? Much
of what Hegel has to say about Islam would be regarded as politically incorrect today. Only the far-right parties would argue that there is
something fundamentally wrong with Islam per se that necessarily
leads its believers to acts of religious fanaticism. The mainstream for
the most part rightly perceives that by far the vast majority of Muslims
in the world are not disposed to acts of violence in the name of their
religion. Indeed, they repudiate such acts, have suffered terribly from
them, and are active in the struggle against them. This is, I submit, one
of the reasons that the Mohammed cartoons were perceived as so
offensive; the portrayal of the prophet the Mohammed with a bomb
in his turban coarsely implies that all of the followers of Islam, without exception, are violent terrorists and that there is something about
the nature of the religion itself that inevitably leads to this.
Far-right populists like to indulge in an unqualified celebration
of the greatness of Western culture and values (that is, always with
the implied contrast of what they perceive as the barbarism of nonwestern cultures). They like to remind us that the West is nothing
but peace, beauty and sublimity with representative figures such as
Goethe, Voltaire, Shakespeare, Raphael and Beethoven. But what
they forget to mention while they paint this idyllic picture is that
Europe and the West are also the Holocaust, the Inquisition, the
Crusades, the brutal conquests of the New World, centuries of slavery, torture, religious persecution, witch burnings, and on and on.
History teaches us that one does not need to be Muslim to commit
terrible acts of violence in the name of religion. Christians are every
bit as guilty of such acts as Muslims. Indeed, Hegel himself seems
to recognize this when he associates the problem of Islam’s insistence on universality at the expense of the particularity of the real
world with the Deism of the French Enlightenment. Deism also
knew only an abstract God, a supreme being, and, according to
Hegel’s analysis, this too led to a disdain for the actual world and
acts of arbitrary terror in the name of an abstraction.
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Abrahim H. Khan
Muhammad Iqbal and Kierkegaard’s
“Judge William”
1 I wish to thank the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard University
for its support of the research for this study during 1997, while I studied there as a
Senior Fellow.
259
kierkegaard
Bringing two major religious thinkers together conceptually is a
perilous task, especially when the figures were as unfamiliar with each
other as Muhammad Iqbal (1873-1938) and Søren Kierkegaard (18131855). They lived worlds apart; each was a significant religious thinker,
but from a different faith tradition, culture, and age. One was a twentieth century Muslim in colonial India, and the other a nineteenth century Christian in Denmark; and there is a span of sixty years between
the dates they were born. Like Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948), Iqbal
worked tirelessly for India to achieve political independence from
Britain, and in 1930 he proposed the formation of a Muslim state from
out of the territory of colonial India. His political efforts made him a
national hero, but he died before he could see the fulfillment of his
dream. Kierkegaard, on the other hand, preferred to appeal to individuals, rather than to make use of contemporary political or religious
movements, and it was not until the twentieth century that his writings
earned the worldwide recognition they receive today.
These differences, however, may obscure similarities between the
two “poet-philosophers,” as they are sometimes called. For example,
both of the men passionately share a common mission: they want, first
and foremost, to challenge their readers to become ethically responsible selves. Moreover, although each of them also develops distinctive
and important epistemological and metaphysical viewpoints, their
philosophies remain fundamentally oriented to their own religious traditions. Since their Muslim and Christian theologies differ on key
points, the positions at which they end up differ widely, but those differences do not prevent similarities from arising along the way as well.
This study1 sets out to begin a conversation between the two men by
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examining a couple of their earliest works that deal with the concept
of the responsible self. Whether it might be possible to continue this
conversation throughout their full authorships is another question,
perhaps for another investigation, but in the conclusion to this study I
will suggest an approach that might be tried.
Preliminary Considerations
260
In order to open such a conversation between Iqbal and
Kierkegaard, I propose to draw from some of their most important
early works, each of which deals with aspects of the concepts of the
self. For Iqbal the choice of texts is simple: his first two essays, which
are philosophical in content but which do not theorize, since they
are poetical essays.2 Their original Persian titles are Asrár-i-Khúdí
(1915) 3 and its sequel Rumúz-i-Békhúdí (1918).4 In English translation they are The Secrets of the Self and The Mysteries of Selflessness
respectively. Asrár-i-Khúdí is Iqbal’s presentation of the nature of
the self, and Rumúz-i-Békhúdí of the nature of the Islamic community, so that together they sketch out his thoughts about what would
be the ideal self in the ideal society. In addition, a third work, which
is a collection of lectures on different occasions in India, issued
under the title The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam
(1934),5 from late in his literary career, sometimes helps to clarify
differences between the two first poetic essays.6
kierkegaard • abrahim h. khan
2 The two Persian titles are issued in one volume. See: Muhammad Iqbal, Asrár-i-
Khúdí va Rumúz-i-Békhúdí (Teheran: Institute of Cultural Studies and Research,
1370/1992). The first is from pages 8-78, the second from pages 81-152.
3 Mohammed Iqbal, Secrets of the Self, trans. R. A. Nicholson (New Delhi: ArnoldHeinemann, 1978). This poem has a prologue and sixteen chapters. Hereafter cited
as “Iqbal, Asrár,” followed by the line number(s).
4 Muhammad Iqbal, The Mysteries of Selflessness, trans. A. J. Arberry (London: John
Murray, Ltd., 1953); hereafter cited as “Iqbal, Rumúz,” followed by the page number(s).
5 Allama Muhammad Iqbal, The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam
(Lahore: Sh. Muhammad Ashraf, 1965); hereafter cited as “Iqbal, Reconstruction.”
6 On Iqbal see, for example, K. G. Saiyidan, Iqbal’s Educational Philosophy (Lahore:
Sh. Muhammad Ashraf, 1945), 13-67; Dr. Ishrat Hasan Enver, The Metaphysics of
Iqbal (Lahore: Sh. Muhammad Ashraf, 1944), 31-49; and, in Iqbal as a Thinker
(Lahore: Sh. Muhammad Ashraf, 1960), the following essays: M. M. Sharif, “Iqbal’s
Conception of God,” 107-129; Dr. Kalifa Abdul Hakim, “Rumi, Nietzsche and Iqbal,”
130-205; and Dr. M. Aziz Ahmad, “Iqbal’s Political Theory,” 231-268.
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Unlike the situation with Iqbal, however, selecting an appropriate Kierkegaard text presents a problem, because Kierkegaard published many of his best-known books under pseudonyms, making
it hard to select one to represent his own viewpoint fully. These
pseudonymous authors are representative of human types, and
they often disagree with each other; and the same is sometimes
true for various works under Kierkegaard’s own name. Sometimes
the pseudonymous authors write letters to each other or converse
with each other, and one of them even conducts an elaborate
seduction of another. In turn, their compositions may be edited
and published by pseudonymous editors, who have their own life
stories to tell. The result is that much of Kierkegaard’s authorship
reads like an immense drama, in which a host of pseudonymous
authors and editors play their assigned roles.7
Of course, for some careless readers, who pay no attention to
the authorship of the writings, Kierkegaard’s use of pseudonyms
may be confusing. Such readers are like people who memorize
famous lines from various characters in Shakespeare’s plays, all the
time imagining that Shakespeare personally held such wildly contradictory views and must, therefore, have been a badly mixed-up
playwright. For attentive readers, however, Kierkegaard’s practice
has advantages, since it allows Kierkegaard to present in detail
many alternative viewpoints and put them into conversation with
each other as live options. If Kierkegaard had written two poems as
different as Iqbal’s first two philosophical poems, for example, he
might well have ascribed their authorship to separate pseudonyms,
each with a short biography, and then perhaps later written another work in which he brought the two together over dinner in order
to discuss their differences.
Clearly the best choice of Kierkegaard text with which to begin a
Kierkegaard-Iqbal conversation is the second volume of Either/Or
(1843), the work that introduced Kierkegaard to the public and
made him famous. Still, that Kierkegaard writes Either/Or pseudonymously is important, because the book does not represent
Kierkegaard’s own views very well, even at that time. He underscores the book’s pseudonymity by inventing a pseudonymous editor, “Victor Eremita,” who accidentally finds the two collections of
7 See SKS, 7: 569-73 / CUP1, 625-30.
261
262
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papers that make up Either/Or and labels their unknown authors
“A” and “B.” Volume two is made up of two long essays. Since Victor
Eremita identifies the author of that second volume as a judge
named “William,” the name that fits him best is “Judge William,”
while the young, anonymous author of the first volume can only be
called “A” or “Mr. A.” In his letters Judge William writes earnestly to
Mr. A, urging him to take responsibility for his life, especially with
respect to love and marriage.
The early works of Iqbal and Kierkegaard emerge out of distinctive intellectual backgrounds, and, whereas with regard to
authorship it is Kierkegaard whose pseudonymity introduces the
greater complexity, here, with regard to background, it is Iqbal
who has the more complex story to tell, in that Iqbal participated in
two different cultures, first the European, and later that of the
Middle East and South Asia. On the one hand, before beginning his
authorship Iqbal had been influenced by modern European philosophy, having studied at Cambridge, Heidelberg, and Munich;
and from Munich he had received a doctoral degree for a dissertation on the development of metaphysics in Persia. On the other
hand, much of his philosophical inspiration derived from masters
of Urdu and of Persian poetry too, such as Gali, Halib, Akbar, Dagh
and Hafiz, and especially Rumi; along with such philosophical writers as al-Jili and al-Ghazzali within the Sufi tradition.
In his personal notebook Iqbal acknowledges an intellectual
debt to the following five figures: Hegel, Goethe, Mirza Ghalib,
Mirza Abdul Qadir Bedil, and Wordsworth. The first two, he
reports, “led me into the ’inside’ of things; the third and fourth
taught me how to remain oriental in spirit and expression after having assimilated foreign ideals of poetry, and the last saved me from
atheism in my student days.”8 The list is illuminating in the way it
separates European from Middle Eastern sources. Of the three
European sources, Hegel is the most significant for the present
study of the concept of the self, because Iqbal could have learned
from Hegel (or Hegelians) to understand the self as a set of relations, as opposed to the earlier, Cartesian view of the self as a substance. Yet Wordsworth also should not be overlooked, especially
8 Muhammad Iqbal, Stray Reflections, ed. Javid Iqbal (Lahore: Sh. Ghulum Ali and
Sons, 1961), 54.
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when Iqbal credits him, rather than a Muslim source, with rescuing
his belief in God; and there is a definite Romantic coloring in the
imagery of some of Iqbal’s early philosophical poetry.
Hegel was a major part of Iqbal’s philosophical training. During
the three years Iqbal was at Cambridge he studied under the English
Hegelians J. M. E. McTaggart and James Ward, and he also read
widely in F. H. Bradley. McTaggart and Ward were in some respects
critics as well as students of Hegel, so that a full understanding of
Iqbal’s metaphysics would require taking account of much complex
background. Later, when Iqbal did his doctoral work at Munich, he
felt he found some of the same themes as he had discussed at
Cambridge already expressed in classical Persian metaphysics.
By the time Iqbal returned to India in 1908, he had rejected
much of the European and Persian philosophical traditions, viewing them as pantheistic or atheistic; and in later life he especially
turned away from European traditions, and in no uncertain terms.
As he wrote: “Believe me, Europe today is the greatest hindrance in
the way of man’s ethical achievement. The Muslim, on the other
hand, is in possession of these ultimate ideas on the basis of a revelation, which, speaking from the inmost depths of life, internalizes
its own apparent externality.”9 It is therefore to the cause of Islam,
and not to any Hegelian vision of historical progress, that Iqbal
dedicated his philosophical and political writings.
Kierkegaard’s own relation to Hegel has been so thoroughly
studied that it would be superfluous to discuss it here.10 The most
important point for the present study is that, like Iqbal,
Kierkegaard partially follows Hegel with regard to the relationality
of the self. In a famous passage in The Sickness unto Death, for
example, his pseudonym Anti-Climacus writes: “But what is the
self? The self is a relation that relates itself to itself or is the relation’s
relating itself to itself in the relation; the self is not the relation but
is the relation’s relating itself to itself.”11 A more thoroughly relational concept of the self is hard to imagine.
9 Cited by Arthur J. Arberry, introd. to Iqbal, Rumúz, xv.
10 See esp. Niels Thulstrup, Kierkegaard’s Relation to Hegel, trans. George L.
Stengren (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980) and Jon Stewart,
Kierkegaard’s Relations to Hegel Reconsidered (New York: Cambridge University
Press, 2003.
11 SKS, 11: 129 / SUD, 13.
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264
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With regard to intellectual assumptions in general, the major differences and similarities between Iqbal and Kierkegaard arise from
what each takes to be bedrock. On the one hand, each assumes that
it is the scripture of his own tradition, and not any other scripture,
that is the proper guide for becoming a fully human self, and that his
own scripture has the capacity to arouse human responses that can
meet the ethico-religious challenges of the age. On the other hand,
both Iqbal and Kierkegaard share the conviction that nationalist fervor and academic ideologies are hastening the decline that is already
underway as a result of negligence by the religious institutions. In
short, although the two historical-cultural contexts are different, and
their scriptures are different, the diagnoses that Iqbal and
Kierkegaard make regarding the sickness of their respective ages are
much the same: spiritual indifference. Accordingly, part of the challenge for both thinkers is the same as well. They want to reintroduce
those dimensions of selfhood that will enable an individual to regain
dignity, that is, to become an ethically responsible self.
Iqbal’s Analysis of the Self in Asrár-i-Khúdí
When Iqbal returned from doctoral study, at age thirty five, he
had already “found himself a position from where he could look at
life without being confused by its vastness or being carried away by
its enveloping current, a position from where he could look beyond
life towards the absolute,”12 as one commentator points out. The
publication of Asrár-i-Khúdí seven years later, in 1915, reflected this
confidence and maturity. Still, although the poem created an international sensation, the initial reaction included suspicion and even
alarm. What was one to make of this hybrid philosophy, coming
from a scholar so recently returned from graduate study in Europe?
One reason for puzzlement may have been Iqbal’s use of Persian
love poetry, following the model of the great Sufi master Jalal al-Din
Rumi (1207-1273), rather than established philosophical genres; but
the reasons ran deeper than that. For Rumi was not only Iqbal’s stylistic but also his spiritual guide, and at the time Iqbal felt that Rumi
had anticipated ideas of Nietzsche, Bergson, and James Ward –
ideas significant for his understanding of becoming a self. In fact,
Iqbal saw Rumi, along with Shakespeare and Jesus, as probably the
12 M. Mujeeb, The Indian Muslims (London : George Allen & Unwin Ltd, 1967), 486.
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only illustrations of a rare type of genius that explains the deepest
truths of life through the use of parables.13
Part of the initial public concern may have arisen because of the
complexity, even deliberate ambiguity, of the poem, since its message seems, by turns, Romantic, Hegelian, and even mystical:
(1) Romantic. The terminological confusion over the word
khúdí centers on how Iqbal’s poem applies the word for the concept of self.14 The dictionary meaning of that Persian word has a
distinct negative or pejorative connotation: selfishness, egotism.
Also in its Urdu usage the word functions negatively, suggesting
pride or arrogance. Iqbal acknowledges this negative sense of the
word in his Urdu introduction to the poem, but he stipulates that
for him the word connotes self-affirmation.15 That is, using poetic
license he ascribes a different meaning to this word khúdí from the
way it is normally understood, and then he adopts it as a key term
for his thinking.16 However, because of his references to Nietzsche,
and to the idea of the perfect human – someone strong in affirming life – his term was at first sometimes misunderstood to focus
solely on self-preservation and will-to-power.17 Indeed, even in the
last year of his life Iqbal still found it necessary to explain why he
made such a controversial term a keystone of his thought. In a letter, he explains: “In my writings the word khúdí is used in two
meanings, ethical and metaphysical... If you have found any of my
poems in which the concept of khúdí is used in the meaning of
pride or haughtiness, then please inform me about it... I have
shown only that side of the problem of the knowledge of which
13 Iqbal, Stray Reflections, 55.
14 Because of the ambiguity in Iqbal ’s usage, some translators opt for the word
“self” to translate Iqbal ’s term khúdí (and occasionally related terms as well), while
others prefer the word “ego.” The present essay will use the word “self” or “ego,”
depending upon which word the translator of the passage being discussed choses.
In effect, these two words will be treated as synonymous.
15 See the translation of Iqbal’s Urdu “Introduction” to the poem, as translated by
Pyarelal Rattan in Living Tradition (Khanna: Raja Publications, 1983), 112.
16 In the preface to an other English translation of Asrár, called Secrets of Ego
(Lahore: Islamic Book Service, 1977), the translator, A. R. Tariq discusses the concept of khúdí, along with other key concepts in the poem, and he also relates these
concepts to their treatment in other Persian and Urdu poetry from Iqbal.
17 Annemarie Schimmel comments on this issue in Gabriel’s Wing (Leiden : E. J.Brill,
1963), 42 and 104.
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was, according to my ideas, necessary for the Indian Muslims of
this age, and which everybody can understand.”18 Yet why does
Iqbal think he has to show “only that side of the problem of knowledge”? Why does he consider a term with such ambiguous connotations “necessary for the Indian Muslims of this age”? Why does he
prescribe this European set of concepts, so alien to his own
approach, so alien to his native India? No wonder that in the prologue to the poem he describes himself as “the voice of the poet of
Tomorrow,” while granting that his own age may not understand
his “deep meanings.”19
The Romantic call to self-expression and self-assertion, rings
clear throughout the poem, as it does in the following lines:
When the Self awoke to consciousness,
It revealed the universe of Thought...
By the Self the seed of opposition is sown in the world!
It imagines itself to be other than itself
It makes from itself the forms of others
In order to multiply the pleasure of strife.
It is slaying by strength of its arm
That it may become conscious of its own strength.20
The response to Iqbal’s vividly Romantic, almost Nietzschean,
imagery was electric. As his translator writes, the poem took by
“storm the younger generation of Moslems,” one of whom wrote
that Iqbal “has come among us as a Messiah and has stirred the
dead with life.”21
(2) Hegelian. If the reader adopts Iqbal’s redefinition of the
term khúdí, however, the apparently Romantic passage can be
taken as a poetic account of the dialectic of self-consciousness.
That is, on this reading the phrase “seed of opposition” will refer to
18 Shaik Muhammad Ata, Iqbálnáme [Collection of Iqbal’s letters in Urdu], 2 vols.
(Lahore, s.d.), 2: 238ff. The translation of the passage is from Schimmel, Gabriel’s
Wing, 104.
19 Mohammed Iqbal, Secrets of the Self, trans. R. A. Nicholson (New Delhi: ArnoldHeinemann, 1978), lines 34-35 (Prologue). This poem has a prologue and sixteen
chapters.
20 Iqbal, Asrár, lines 189-198.
21 R. A. Nicholson, introduction to his translation of Asrár, 25.
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the tension that emerges when the self becomes awakened to itself.
The self creates a division within itself by taking on different forms
as it becomes more conscious of its environment, or non-self, and,
in this way, it “imagines itself to be other than itself.” Finally, by
interaction with, or opposition to, the non-self, the self intensifies
its consciousness, and it moves towards realizing its own plenitude. Later the poem reinforces the point when it goes on: “The Self
rises, kindles, falls, glows, breathes / Burns, shines, walks, and
flies.”22 In order that the point about the self’s need for self-expression would not be missed, it then reminds the reader: “Tis the
nature of the Self to manifest itself.”23 The dialectic stages here are:
self / other than itself / manifested, strengthened self – a dialectic
with an unmistakably Hegelian shape.
The poem cannot simply be identified with all Hegelianism,
however, any more than with Romanticism. Although Iqbal freely
acknowledges his debt to Hegel, 24 he departs from some
Hegelianism at crucial points. For example, responding to the
English Idealistic philosopher F. H. Bradley. Iqbal says in his 1934
lectures, “Whatever may be our view of the self – feeling, self-identity, soul, will – it can only be examined by a canon of thought that
in its nature is relational, and all ’relations involve contradictions’.”25 Here Iqbal is responding to Bradley’s contention, shared
by some other Idealists in that day, who held that the self is illusory. Althou-gh Iqbal considers Bradley to furnish, in one of his
books, the “best evidence for the reality of the ego,”26 he also faults
Bradley for claiming in another book that the ego’s reality is confused because it is “infected with irreconcilable oppositions of
change and permanence”27; and that the ego thereby fails the ultimate test of reality, which is freedom from “contradiction”(in an
Hegelian sense). According to Bradley, the self must be illusory,
because it fails that test. Iqbal argues, to the contrary, that the ego
cannot be illusory: since “the self must be ’in some sense real’,”28
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
Iqbal, Asrár, lines 217-218.
Iqbal, Asrár, line 229.
Iqbal, Stray Reflections, 54.
Iqbal, Reconstruction, 98.
Iqbal is here apparently using “self” and “ego” as synonymous terms.
Ibid.
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the so-called “irre-concilable oppositions” Bradley cites are simply
the way life is. It is Bradley’s misleading test for reality that ought to
be rejected, not the full reality of the self.
(3) Mystical interpretation of Islam. Particularly within certain
parts of the poem, Iqbal develops mystical themes, describing
Islam in terms of divine love and even outlining a set of stages by
which the seeker draws ever nearer to God. The poem lays the
foundation for this interpretation by tying the concept of love to
that of becoming a self. This tie between love and becoming a self
is not a new addition to the concept of self, he writes; instead, it is
a development of ideas that have already been introduced. The
point is that, for the self to emerge, the ego must have a motive, and
that motive is “love/ìshq.” Iqbal introduces the concept of motive
in his poetry by means of the term “desire/árzu,” in a few lines
expressing that life is hidden in desire and seeking, and he then
explains that, if we are not to turn to dust, desire has to be kept
alive in the heart.29 Desire, in turn, has to be strengthened by
“love/ìshq.” He declares that the luminous point which is self (and
life spark) in us can become enhanced and lasting only by the spirit of love.30 The lines continue:
From Love proceeds the radiance of its being
And the development of its unknown possibilities.
Its nature gathers fire from Love,
Love instructs it to illumine the world...
Love is the Fountain of Life...
The hardest rocks are shivered by Love’s glance:
Love of God at last becomes wholly God.31
Together with the surrounding passages, these lines suggest
that love (ìshq) is a dynamic cosmic energy (life spark) that regenerates or strengthens the self, but that it requires a conscious participation of the ego. That is, self has to become active, to learn to
seek the beloved; and then, through its seeking of love for the
29
30
31
32
The quotation is from the title of a verse in Asrár, line 482 (chapter 5).
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belved, it becomes regenerated to the point of gaining “dominion
over the outward and inward forces of the universe.”32
Altogether, the passage’s context conveys a picture of love
(ìshq) as a dynamic, vital, regenerative power, by which the self
becomes a concrete personality. For example, ìshq is daring; it proceeds despite risks and difficulties, fearing neither sword nor death.
In a sense, it is also a form of intellect, since it instructs the self, and
by it one acquires a vision and heart for life. Moreover, it is prior to
human consciousness, unbounded by space and time, for it is born
neither of water, air, nor earth.33 At times such love seems almost
divine, since it is transformative, eternal, and infinite, and in fact it is
the passageway to divinizing the finite self, making the self “wholly
God,” in a sense.
Within some later lines the poem incorporates traditional
Islamic themes into a threefold mystical path through which the
self realizes its moral and religious ideal, getting nearer and nearer
to God, in order to become divinized. The self, however, never
becomes entirely absorbed into God, as happens in pantheism.
Iqbal notes that the Sufis make an important distinction: to be
absorbed, as the Sufi strives to be, in divine love is “majdhúb”; it is
neither madness nor pantheism.34 That is, for the idea of divinization to preserve the dignity of the self consistently, the self must be
understood to be seeking to come near God by its own strength.
Each of the three stages of divinization exhibits new desires and
ideals through which the self actualizes itself as it struggles to
achieve plenitude. In the first stage the self is determined, or
formed, by obedience to the Law as prescribed by the Prophet
Muhammad.35 Here the ideals worked on by the self, as it interacts
with other selves (or egos), are the ideals offered by an Islamic society, based upon the principles of unity of God and of the finality of
the Prophet Muhammad. The quality of the life of the Muslim community, in turn, depends upon the life of the individual, as this is
shaped through obedience to the Law that was observed by the
33 In the sequel poem from 1918, Rumúz-i-Békhúdí, p. 26, Iqbal describes this
power of love (ìshq) as “born of inward grace.”
34 For more on this distinction, see Dr. Kalifa Abdul Hakim, “Rumi, Nietzsche, and
Iqbal,” in Iqbal as a Thinker, 180-181, 204.
36 Iqbal, Rumúz, 5, 6.
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Prophet Muhammad and as encompassed by the social structure.36
Clearly, there is here a dialectical constraint – an interaction
between self and society – involved in becoming a self.
The remaining two stages have different goals: in the second
stage, gaining control of desires, and, in the third, becoming a
means of divine grace or mercy to the world. The second stage is
that which schools a person’s desires in order to impart character.
In this connection Islam’s five pillars are strategies for the self to
draw near to God (the “Absolute Self” or “Ultimate Ego”) and in
that way to strengthen itself. In the second stage there is also a
heightened form of self-consciousness.37 The third stage brings
about the complete self, or ego, of whom the Prophet as God’s viceregent on earth is an instance. At this stage the self overcomes the
discord between mental and physical life, so that the self achieves
harmony, perfecting itself and gaining uniqueness.38
Iqbal’s Rumúz-i-Békhúdí and His Late Lectures
Although the companion poem to Asrár-i-Khúdí, entitled
Rumúz-i-Békhúdí (“Mysteries of Selflessness,” 1918), three years
later, takes a somewhat different tack from Asrár-i-Khúdí, Iqbal’s
published lectures of 1934 confirm many of the earlier poem’s basic
ideas again. Part of the difference between the overall early and late
viewpoints may come from the difference between popular poetry
and academic prose, but part may reflect changes in the intellectual
and social climates of India during the intervening years.
Except that both poems were written in Persian, Rumúz-iBékhúdí differs from Asrár-i-Khúdí in many ways. Their titles provide one reason for the differences. Whereas much of the earlier
poem, on the secrets of the “self,” glorifies the self-assertiveness of
the individual, and draws extensively from concepts out of British
Hegelianism and/or Persian metaphysics, the later poem, on the
mysteries of “selflessness,” warns repeatedly that the individual can
only reach fulfillment within the community, and specifically only
in the Muslim community. “The link that binds the Individual/ To
39 Iqbal, Rumúz, 5.
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the Society a Mercy is,” begins the Preface of Rumúz-i-Békhúdí;
“His truest Self in the Community / Alone achieves fulfillment.”39
In genre the poem resembles a catechism, and it is designed especially for Muslims who are wayward or disheartened. “Why are you
fallen now so far astray / From Mecca’s holy Kaaba, all bemused / By
the strange beauty of the Christian way?” the Dedication asks.40 The
topics of the poem itself are arranged according to two “Pillars” of
the faith: “the Unity of God” and “Apostleship.” The part on “the
Unity of God” brings out the function of this pillar for strengthening
the unity of the community, while the much longer part on
“Apostleship” surveys a wide range of key events in Muslim history
as well as Muslim practices and ideals. The poem concludes with a
meditation upon the lines of Surah 111 (“Unity”) and a memorial to
the Prophet Muhammad.
Particularly striking in the poem is the rarity with which specifically Sufi themes are mentioned and, indeed, the hostility toward
Sufism the poem displays. One possible exception is a passage
about the battle of Kerbala, which extols love’s marvelous power,
finding it capable of making all things possible; but in this context
the “Love” that is praised is that which is in contrast to crafty
“Reason,” which remains “lost in the maze of cause and effect”41 –
not the kind of love couched in erotic imagery that fills Sufi poetry. In fact, in the section on the Quran and the basis of the
Shariah, the poem explicitly condemns Sufism: “O thou, whose
faith by custom is enslaved, / Imprisoned by the charms of heathendom... If thou wouldst live the Muslim life anew / This cannot
be, except by the Koran / Thou livest. See the Sufi in his garb / Of
coarse-cut wool... Little do his wild ecstasies accord / With the austere Koran...” one passage begins, and then goes on to condemn
the Sufi’s greed and the slyness by which he interprets the Quran
to his own advantage.42 Also unexpected, for a poem written in
Persian, is the condemnation of Persian ideas. The poem cites a
passage from the mystic Shaikh Ahmad (died 1182), who “[t] hus
spoke to a disciple: ’O thou life / Of thy dear father, it behooves us
all / That we beware of Persia’s fantasies; /Though Persia’s thoughts
40
41
42
43
Iqbal, Rumúz, 1.
Iqbal, Rumúz, 26.
Iqbal, Rumúz, 39.
Iqbal, Rumúz, 45.
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the heavens have surpassed / They equally transgress the boundaries / Set by the Prophet’s faith’.”43
In his 1934 lectures, entitled The Reconstruction of Religious
Thought in Islam, Iqbal revisits much of his earlier poetic production, clarifying it and in some cases grounding it more explicitly
than before in Muslim tradition. Of particular interest here is his
discussion of the topic of the emergence of the self that he had
treated poetically in Asrár-i-Khúdí in 1915, since this is a theme
with some possible parallels in the second volume of Kierkegaard’s
book Either/Or.
One of the main sources from which Iqbal draws his teaching
about the self in the 1934 lectures is the Quranic narrative of the
Fall. He iterprets the Fall as the emergence of human self-consciousness and, with that, also the emergence of freedom. Adam’s
disobedience is the first act of free choice, a “transition from simple consciousness to the first flash of self-consciousness, a kind of
waking from the dream of nature with a throb of personal causality on one’s own being.”44 Consciousness of self thus has an organizing function, providing “a luminous point in order to enlighten
the forward rush of life.”45
By “self” Iqbal explains that he intends an ego that is open to
possibilities.46 The self’s possibilities are many, but the ones that
really count in the emergence of self are those that concretize or
focus the ego to a luminous point. The multitude of possibilities is
occasioned by the self being in relation to its environment over
which it must gain mastery to maintain its life. But the self consolidates itself or its consciousness only by those possibilities that
require it to act purposively. At the same time, to achieve success in
reaching goals set is also to acquire sense of oneself as a free agent,
or personal causality. Iqbal proceeds to say that, in mastering its
environment, the ego “acquires and amplifies its freedom.”47
Although Iqbal’s interpretation of the Quranic narrative of the
Fall, in terms of the emergence of self-consciousness, differs significantly from Jewish and Christian interpretations within the
Genesis account of the Fall as a fall into sin, this difference certain44
45
46
47
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ly does not mean that Iqbal understands human freedom to be the
ability to do whatever one pleases. On the contrary, Iqbal takes
freedom to be “a condition of goodness.” Goodness is understood
not as compulsion but as “the self’s free surrender to the moral
ideal and arises out of a willing cooperation of free egos.”48 This
definition of freedom, which is oriented to choosing good, also
implies the possibility of choosing evil. Accordingly, Iqbal puts the
matter this way: “to permit the emergence of a finite ego who has
the power to choose, after considering the relative values of several courses of action open to him, is really to take great risk; for the
freedom to choose good involves also the freedom to choose the
opposite of good.”49 This view of good and evil, as opposite within a whole, is one he ascribes to the Quran.50
Finally, the Quranic narratives about the Fall of humanity
(Surahs 7, and 20) enable Iqbal to tie together the ideas of freedom
and morality with that of God, the “Ultimate Ego” or “Absolute
Self.” By experiencing freedom through purposive act, the finite
ego also shares in the life of freedom of the Ultimate Ego. The latter, manifesting itself also in nature, acts on the finite ego, allowing
it to build up “a systematic unity of experience,”51 and impregnating it with sentience and mental life. In order to stave off mechanistic or deterministic explanations of how self emerges, moreover, Iqbal writes: “The Ultimate Ego that makes the emergent
emerge is immanent in nature, and is described by the Quran as
’the First and the Last, the visible and the invisible’.”52
In summary, for The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in
Islam, Iqbal draws upon the Quranic narrative of the Fall to describe
the emergence of self-consciousness and of freedom, through
which the self, when it freely surrenders to the ideal of goodness,
participates in the free activity of the Absolute Self that is immanent
in the world process. Such a self, then, is ready for the three stages
Asrár-i-Khúdí outlines for the ascent of the “finite” soul or self.
48
49
50
51
52
Ibid.
Surah 21: 36.
Iqbal, Reconstruction, 106-107.
273
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Iqbal, Kierkegaard’s “Judge William,” and the Choice of
the Self in Either/Or, Part Two
274
Like Iqbal, Kierkegaard is a philosopher deeply concerned
about the deterioration of the moral and religious character of his
times and his country, and like Iqbal again, that concern leads him
to preoccupation with the question of the nature of the individual
self. While Kierkegaard does not lose sight of the community,53 he
feels that the loss of individual integrity has been a major cause of
the inner decay of the Christian community at large.
Moreover, Iqbal’s portrayal of the self in Asrár-i-Khúdí and in his
1934 lectures shows some surprising parallels with the views Judge
William puts forward in the second volume of Either/Or. Still, the
apparent parallels have to be approached with caution. For one
thing, whereas Iqbal emphasizes the purposive act that unifies one’s
mental states, Judge William stresses the choise of oneself. The two
emphases are similar, in that they both find the self to be a finite center of experience, defined by its being in mutual tension with its
environment. Still, they are not quite the same, not at least if one is
considering the choice Judge William discusses in the second volume of Either/Or. What Judge William means by “choice” turns out
to be three distinguishable kinds of choices, none of which is entirely what Iqbal has in mind with his notion of “purposive act.”
(1) Choose despair. The first step Judge William recommends to
his friend Mr. A is that he choose to despair.54 Despair is certainly
not a choice Iqbal is apt to recommend to anyone, since he
describes it as “the Mother of Abominations, destroying Life” and
one of the “Foul Diseases.”55 For Judge William, on the other hand,
such despair is “an act that takes all the power and earnestness and
concentration of the soul,” and “any human being that has not tasted the bitterness of despair has fallen short of the meaning of life.”56
With his account of “purposive act,” moreover, Iqbal delineates
a metaphysics of selfhood that lies on a much more abstract level
than the personal appeal Judge William makes to Mr. A. Iqbal lays
53 See e.g. Foundations of Kierkegaard’s View of Community: Religion, Ethics, and
Politics in Kierkegaard, ed. George B. Connell and C. Stephen Evans (Atlantic
Highlands N J: Humanities Press, 1992).
54 SKS, 3: 200 / EO2, 208.
56 EO2, 208.
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out metaphysical structures that all human beings (and many animals too) experience at the very beginning of life: the “transition
from simple consciousness to the first flash of self-consciousness,”
and the ensuing “throb of personal causality.”57 Iqbal takes his cue
from the Quran (17:87) to make several metaphysical claims: that
the soul is essentially directive, that it proceeds from the directive
energy of God, that it must be something individual with a range of
variations to be unified, and that such unity is effected by the ego
acquiring directive purpose.
On the contrary, Judge William is simply writing from one friend
to another. He has no interest in making big metaphysical claims as
such.58 His letters describe Mr. A as someone who, although well
past youth, has never taken charge of his life but instead has drifted,
playing with possible courses of action but not following them up,
and amusing himself by observing the foibles of others.
Accordingly, the expression “choose despair” would differ in
sense depending on whether it were understood metaphysically
(as Iqbal does) or ethically (as Judge William does). On the one
hand, one could without too much dif iculty fit the example of
Judge William’s appeal to Mr. A into some categories Iqbal lays out
for his metaphysics of selfhood, if that metaphysics were nothing
but a purely descriptive account of selfhood. On the other hand,
insofar as Iqbal’s metaphysics is also making an ethical proposal,
his proposal points in quite the opposite direction from Judge William’s advice to Mr. A. Iqbal calls for the self to continue and to
intensify its ef orts upon a path it has been taking since soon after
birth, while by asking Mr. A to “despair” Judge William requires
from him a radical break with, even a reversal of, the kind of life he
has been leading so far.
(2) Choose oneself “absolutely,” and in one’s “eternal validity.”
The main prescription Judge William offers to his friend Mr. A is to
“choose oneself.” That prescription, in turn, Judge William divides
into two steps, first, choosing oneself absolutely, in terms of one’s
57 Iqbal, Reconstruction, 85.
58 Although Judge Williams’ letters are full of Hegelian terminology and ideas
drawn from the popular Hegelianism of the times, he protests from the start that
subjecting his letters to a philosopher’s “critical analysis” would be a “gross and
uncongenial misunderstanding.” SKS, 3: 15-16 / EO2, 6.
275
276
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eternal validity, and, second, choosing oneself as the universal
human being.59
This first step, choosing oneselfabsolutely, in terms of one’s eternal validity, Judge William ties conceptually to choosing despair.
“When I choose absolutely, I choose despair,” Judge William writes;
“and in despair I choose the absolute, for I myself am the
absolute...But in other words with exactly the same meaning I may
say: I choose the absolute that chooses me; I posit the absolute that
posits me...”60 In fact, by choosing absolutely I am choosing myself:
“But what is it, then, that I choose – is it this or that? No, for I choose
absolutely, and I choose absolutely precisely by having chosen not
to choose this or that. I choose the absolute, and what is the
absolute? It is myself in my absolute validity.”61 What the ethical
person chooses is to have one’s sole purpose, one’s whole “teleology,” self-determined. With Judge William, therefore, God plays
only a supportive role within the ethical life. “In short,” as Mark C.
Taylor points out, for Judge William “God functions to certify, to
justify, or to legitimate felt obligation.”62
Another key aspect of choosing oneself absolutely is choosing
oneself concretely. Abstractly considered, a person might have the
possibility of becoming almost anything, but the person who
chooses oneself absolutely has to choose oneself concretely, that
is, with all one’s specific limited talents and all one’s limited possibilities, including the limitations of one’s specific place in society
and in history. Such a choice is open to anyone who wills to
become concrete.63 Further, the self chosen in this way is not just
concrete, but “is infinitely concrete...This self has not existed
before, because it came into existence through the choice, and yet
it has existed, for it was indeed ’himself’.”64 Moreover, choosing
oneself concretely implies choosing oneself with all one’s imperfections and faults – that is to say, taking responsibility for them –
59 In his chapter on “The Ethical Stage of Existence” Mark C. Taylor lays out this
distinction between the two steps by which one becomes an ethical self. See
Kierkegaard’s Pseudonymous Authorship: A Study of Time and the Self (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1975), 185-217, esp. 186.
60 SKS, 3: 204 / EO2, 213.
61 SKS, 3: 205 / EO2, 214.
62 Taylor, Kierkegaard’s Pseudonymous Authorship, 226.
63 SKS, 239 / EO2, 251.
64 SKS, 3: 206-207 / EO2, 215.
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and not only choosing one’s own faults, but also those of one’s
forefathers and of one’s history. The one who chooses himself in
this way “repents himself back into himself, back into the family,
back into the [human] race, until he finds himself in God.”65
Some of these ideas find parallels in Iqbal’s formulations, while
others do not. In his 1934 lectures, for example, Iqbal explains that
“to live is to possess a definite outline, concrete individuality.” He
continues in the same paragraph: “In the case of man in whom individuality deepens into personality, opening up possibilities of
wrong doing, the sense of tragedy of life becomes much more
acute. But the acceptance as a form of life involves the acceptance
of all imperfections that flow from the finitude of self-hood.”66
Moreover, Iqbal writes that, through the purposive act by which the
self emerges, the ego comes in touch with its very ground, Ultimate
Ego. That act gives the ego life and makes it aware of its own possibilities and of its struggles and conflicts with opposing finite egos
or individualities.67
What Judge William might make of such statements by Iqbal is
unclear. Judge William is unlikely to call God the “Ultimate Ego,”
since such an epithet might ascribe to the deity more independence and personality than Judge William’s overall account allows
for. Moreover, Judge William would almost certainly question the
mystical language in some parts of Asrár-i-Khúdí, because he is suspicious of mysticism in any form. He thinks that a mystic, instead of
choosing concretely, chooses abstractly and thereby tends to withdraw from the world.68 The mystic has “fallen in love with God,”
and by doing so the mystic has loosened the ties that bind a person
to the human community.69 Yes, the mystic makes a choice, but
only “metaphysically” rather than “ethically”; which is to say, the
mystic depends upon metaphysical reasons for adopting an “ethic”
that does not express fully the concreteness of a truly ethical life.70
Whether Judge William’s critique of mysticism applies to Iqbal is
65 SKS, 3: 207 / EO2, 216. The word “human” has been added to the translation, since
that is the sense of the word “race” in this passage.
Ibid.
SKS, 3: 229-238 / EO2, 241-249.
SKS, 3: 231-233 / EO2, 242-244.
EO2, 248.
66
67
68
69
70
277
278
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questionable, however; the answer depends partly on what part of
Iqbal’s authorship one is reading. Even though some passages in
Asrár-i-Khúdí might be read as approaching mysticism in this
sense, Rumúz-i-Békhúdí cannot.
(3) The other half of “choosing oneself” that Judge William urges
upon Mr. A is choosing oneselfas the universal human being. This
is where Judge William clarifies just what he means by becoming
ethical. Judge William’s reasoning is as follows: “The ethical is the
universal and thus the abstract... Thus the ethical takes the form of
law... When the ethical becomes more concrete, it crosses over into
the category of morals. But in this respect the reality lies in the reality of a national individuality...”71 Instead, Judge William is looking
for an ethics in which, while the ethical person understands oneself
concretely, at the same time that person understands the law
abstractly. If the ethical law were fully concrete, Judge William
writes, it would be merely a list of prohibitions and required duties;
and that would mean that it would come from outside and be
imposed from outside. The only solution Judge William sees is that
the individual should take on the universal principles internally
and “express the universal in his life. He makes himself the universal human being.”72
Then could not a Muslim spokesperson, such as Iqbal, take that
same line of reasoning, only adapting it to Islamic law? That is to
say, could not Iqbal argue that the detailed prohibitions and duties
set down in the Quran, as interpreted in the Shariah, are law in just
this “abstract” sense, since Islam requires them universally, and the
devout Muslim is expected to impose them from within? Judge
William would surely rej ect such an argument, since, from his
standpoint, the Muslim community would be in exactly the same
relationship to the individual as would a “national individuality.” In
any case, Iqbal seems not to care for adopting Judge William’s
approach, since, especially in Rumúz-i-Békhúdí, he rejects any
attempt to found his case upon “Crafty Reason” rather than upon
divine revelation.73
71 SKS, 3: 243 / EO2, 255.
72 SKS, 3: 243-244 / EO2, 256.
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Although some similarities appear in the comparison of Iqbal’s
early poems with Judge William’s two letters in the second volume
of Kierkegaard’s Either/Or, they highlight, rather than diminish, the
importance of the differences between them. Their common
ground is a certain metaphysics of selfhood they share as remote
inheritors of the Hegelian tradition, even while they are both
heretics from that tradition too. At the same time there are also
important differences between the two accounts, such as Judge
William’s call for Mr. A to begin with despair, Judge William’s
requirement that Mr. A should repent of the deeds of his forefathers, and especially Judge William’s requirement that one understand the ethical strictly in universal terms. Such differences hint at
deep religious disagreements that may be difficult or even impossible to overcome, at least on a philosophical level.
279
So far the conversation here between Iqbal and Kierkegaard has
proceeded merely on the basis of a few early works. How, then,
might this conversation continue and bring together not only these
early works, but also the two authorships? The most serious obstacle to such a continuation might be the diversity of Kierkegaard’s
pseudonymous works, whose viewpoints often disagree with each
other as well as with the books written under Kierkegaard’s own
name. Which work, then, can represent Kierkegaard within the
proposed conversation with Iqbal?
The answer to that question is that Kierkegaard’s position cannot be represented by any one book but only by his authorship as
a whole. From the beginning Kierkegaard tries to make it impossible to read the works in any other way. After including his own two
essays in Either/Or part two, for example, Judge William forwards
to Mr. A a sermon by an anonymous country parson who, Judge
William confides, “has grasped what I have said and what I would
like to have said to you; he has expressed it better than I am able
to.”74 The theme of the sermon is “the upbuilding that lies in the
thought that in relation to God we are always in the wrong.”
Despite Judge William’s confidence that he has understood the ser74 SKS, 3: 314 / EO2, 338.
Conversation as Conclusion:
Toward A Further Conversation Among “Kierkegaards”
and “Iqbals”
280
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mon, however, its theme fits uneasily with the ethical optimism in
Judge William’s own letters. After all, how could such a thought
ever build someone up? It seems more likely to drive a person to
despair. Undaunted, another pseudonym, Johannes Climacus,
pushes the parson’s thought even further, arguing on the basis of
Judge William’s absolute ethical standards that we are always in the
wrong, as long as we bear even the smallest guilt.75 Climacus also
questions Judge William’s key premise that by despairing absolutely one will ever reach the absolute without special divine assistance.76 Another pseudonym, Vigilius Haufniensis, concludes that
Judge William’s universalizing ethics is untenable, and he calls for
a new, “second ethics.”77 Still another pseudonym, Anti-Climacus,
however, does not see that new ethics in quite the same way as
Haufniensis; nor do other pseudonyms. The result is that, by the
end of Kierkegaard’s authorship, very little remains unchallenged
from Judge William’s original positions; yet the other pseudonyms
often do not agree with each other either.
Under the circumstances, the best strategy for continuing an
Iqbal-Kierkegaard conversation may be to adopt the same strategy
Kierkegaard uses with his pseudonyms, that is, to make all of the
pseudonyms sit at the same table and serve on a panel, along with
Iqbal and Kierkegaard themselves. Of course, to keep Iqbal from
being drowned out among so many Kierkegaardian voices, the
authorial voices of the two early Persian poems, Asrár-i-Khúdí and
Rumúz-i-Békhúdí, will need to sit at the table too. For that matter, it
might be well to reserve a place for Iqbal’s 1934 lectures,
Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam, since so creative a
thinker as Iqbal must surely have changed his views significantly
during his most productive years.
Then let the conversation begin! Both Iqbal’s Reconstruction
and the works Kierkegaard wrote under his own name will be
there at the same table, as well as Judge William, the country parson, Climacus, Anti-Climacus, Haufniensis, Asrár, and Rumúz; and
everyone will be pitching in with objections and rejoinders. One of
the advantages of such a format is that it will permit more precise
distinctions between Kierkegaardian and Iqbalian viewpoints than
75 SKS 7: 484 / CUP1, 533.
76 SKS, 7: 234 / CUP1, 258.
77 SKS, 4: 330 / CA, 23.
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are possible if the various works are homogenized. Another advantage, no less important, is that a conversation with several equally
valued participants is less apt to become confrontational. The audience might, for example, find Climacus cheering on Iqbal regarding the necessity for revelation, or Anti-Climacus admiring Rumúz
when he speaks movingly about the martyrdom of Husain.78
What could one hope to achieve through such a dialogue? A little more knowledge about each other? Perhaps some mutual understanding? Either would be welcome in today’s world. At a deeper
level, the conversation might even bring the participants to the
unspoken word or silence of Tathagata,79 where silence becomes a
response. That is, for silence to become a response there has to be
at the least a silent query, as the lines from “Respuetas” by Ricardo
Molina, a contemporary Spanish poet, intimate:
281
78 Iqbal, Rumúz, 27-28. A good example of such a multi-sided dialogue is Ninian
Smarts’ World Religions: A Dialogue (Baltimore: Penguin, 1960). The tradition,
however, goes much further back, at least to Cicero, and possibly even to Aristotle’s
lost dialogues.
79 This direction and problematics are explored by Raimundo Panikkar in The
Silence of God: The Answer of the Buddha, trans. Robert R. Barr (Maryknoll: Orbis
Books, 1989), 3-16, 148-177.
80 Panikkar cites this poem, which he came upon ten years after his own thoughts
on the matter had been formed. As cited, the poem is quoted by Gerardio Diego,
ABC, Madrid, January, 1968, in Pan ikkar, Silence, 177.
What if
in the very question the answer hid?
What if
in the divine science were heavenly acquiescence?
What if
the inquiry itself were our salvation?80
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Merigala Gabriel
The Concept of Love
in Kierkegaard and Gandhi1
kierkegaard
282
Although Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) and Mahatma Gandhi
(1869-1948) come from worlds apart in many respects – in century,
culture, and religion, for example – they share a common concern
with the concept of love, and, more specifically, with the “works” of
love. That is to say, they set out to look at love concretely as the foundation both for individual re-lationships and for human society.
Kierkegaard was a Danish religious thinker, theologian, and philosopher, who authored more than thirty significant books during
the short span of his life. He was a philosopher with a difference, an
“existentialist” thinker whose concerns often lay outside the mainstream of the Western philosophical traditions. Unlike some philosophers, Kierkegaard was just as devoted to finding solutions in everyday life as he was with the analysis of arguments. In his seminal
book, Works of Love, he pointed out that a human being’s need to
love and to be loved lies in the inward depths of one’s being and
is grounded mysteriously in divine love.
As a social and political reformer who had a maj or role in transforming modern India, and as a world-famous religious visionary,
Gandhi, too, was passionately devoted to promoting the works of
love. He was what some have described as a karmayogi, concerned
above all with the way of “works,” and he struggled tirelessly for unity
and religious harmony. He was also well acquainted with the world
religions. To understand Gandhi, then, one must study his spiritual
ideals, in the light of which he had to face practical situations and find
solutions to problems that confronted him throughout his life.
1 I wish to express my thanks, for their helpful comments, to the participants at the
National Seminar on Relgion and Social Transformation, organized in fall 2010 by the
Department of Dravidian Literature and Philosophy at the Dravidian University,
Kuppam. I am also indebted to Andrew Burgess for his kind help in reading and editing this essay and for supplementing it at some points. I thank him profusely.
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Since their understandings of love are complex, the analysis will
start by distinguishing four kinds of love, before it goes on to delineate the conceptions of divine love held by Kierkegaard and
Gandhi. After that, these kinds of love will be compared, paying
attention to differences and similarities in the ways Gandhi and
Kierkegaard understand them.
The four kinds of love to be treated are erotic love, romantic
love, moral love, and divine love:
Erotic love is egoistic love, characterized primarily by self-interest rather a genuine concern for the other person in the relationship. Although self-love is an important aspect of human love, it is
also the source of many of its difficulties.
Romantic love is the kind of love popularized in modern ballads
and novels. In Europe the medieval troubadours developed a theory
of romantic love that still dominates the way many people think about
love today. Such love is a remarkable, though unstable, synthesis of
self-love (for example, erotic love) and divine love. In romantic love,
absolute devotion (self-giving) combines with erotic longing (selfinterest). As a result the lives of two people in love are unforgettably
transformed, but romantic lovers find themselves caught in a collision
between self-interest and self-giving.
Moral love can maintain stability and faithfulness, because it is
committed to duty. However, it can also degenerate into sheer
moralism, if it is cut off from its source in divine love.
Divine love is love grounded upon a prior relationship to that
which is “wholly other”: God. While Gandhi and Kierkegaard
sometimes offer differing interpretations of divine love, they tend
to agree in the ways in which they describe the “works” of love.
Divine Love as the Source of Love
In one way or another, both Kierkegaard and Gandhi placed
divine love at the center of their personal and social ethics. Both of
them realized the shortcomings of human (erotic or romantic) love
in itself and concluded that moral love cannot be genuine unless it
is embraced by divine love. Drawing upon their respective scriptures, the New Testament and the Bhagavad-Gita, they identified
this divine love in different ways, Kierkegaard with the God revealed in Jesus Christ, and Gandhi with the basic unity of the cosmos.
283
kierkegaard • merigala gabriel
284
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In his book Works of Love, Kierkegaard deliberates mainly upon
two passages from the New Testament: the saying of Jesus that
“you should love your neighbor as yourself,”2 and the verses of
Paul’s famous “love chapter,” I Corinthians 13. Ultimately, however, he maintains that divine love itself is “hidden.” After all, who
could probe the mind and heart of God? He writes that God’s love
is like a hidden spring: “There is a place in a person’s innermost
being; from this place flows the life of love... But you cannot see
this place... Just as the quiet lake originates deep down in hidden
springs no eye has seen, so also does a person’s love originate
even more deeply in God’s love.”3 Thus divine love has priority in
God as creator, who intends human love to be “God’s eternal –
though veiled – witness of Himself as Creator.”4
Kierkegaard maintains that one “should love God unconditionally in obedience and love him in adoration.”5 Divine love has
priority, and it is irreducible to human relations. As the prior
ground of Christian love, divine love is manifested in Christ’s atoning love. “It is indeed God in heaven who through the apostle
says, ’Be reconciled’; it is not human beings who say to God:
’Forgive us.’ No, God loved us first.”6
The opening words of Works of Love state that God in Christ is
the deepest source of love. Addressing Christ, Kierkegaard writes,
“How could love properly be discussed if You were forgotten, You
who made manifest what love is, You, our Savior and Redeemer
who gave Yourself to save all! ”7 Kierkegaard’s understanding of
divine love is based upon the concrete realization of love in the life
of Christ. Christ’s life gives material content to the pattern of
Christian love.
Although Gandhi was familiar with Christian scriptures and
admired some Christian thinkers, such as Tolstoy, his primary
scriptures were the Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita. The Gita
was his special favorite, and he not only meditated on its teachings
2 Matt. 22: 39 / Mark 12: 31 / Luke 10: 27; cf. Lev. 19: 18.
3 SKS, 19: 17 / WL, 8-9.
4 Paul Müller, Kristendom, Etik og Majeutik i Søren Kierkegaard’s “Kjerlighedens
Gjerninger,” (København : C. A. Reitzel, 1976), 83 (English “Summary”).
5 SKS, 9: 27 / WL, 19. Italics in original.
6 SKS, 9: 332 / WL, 336.
7 SKS, 9: 12 / WL, 3.
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but also worked constantly to mold his life in accordance to its
teachings. During 1926 he even conducted sessions in his ashram
commenting upon verses of the Gita, comments that were later
published by his students as a separate book in 1955.8 In difficult
times he had recourse to the Gita, and it was the solace of his life.
Besides the Gita Gandhi also accepted what he took to be the basic
teachings of all the great religions of the world. “In his Ashram
there were Muslims and Christians and pandits, but he never tried
to convert them to Hinduism or even to his own brand of
Hinduism.” In his opinion it “was not necessary for a person to
change his religion but to act according to the basic principles of
his or her own religion.”9
The central teaching Gandhi found in the Gita, as in all scriptures,
is non-violence (ahimsa). To those who obj ected that, in the second
chapter of the Gita, Krishna told Arjuna to fight, Gandhi argued that
such an interpretation misunderstands the book, since its characters
are not so much historical figures as representatives of forces within
the human soul. “Only he can interpret the Gita correctly who tries to
follow its teachings in practice,” he wrote; “and the correctness of the
interpretation will be in proportion to his success in living according
to the teaching.... We can only guess what reply Krishna would have
given if Arjuna had protested and said that he did not want to kill at all,
whether his opponents were kinsmen or others. It is my humble view,
however, that the Gita was not written to give a direct answer to that
question.”10
For Gandhi, moreover, non-violence is not merely a goal for
human relationships but a fundamental cosmic principle. In a 1918
speech Gandhi said: “Truth and non-violence are our goal. Nonviolence is the supreme dharma, there is no discovery of greater
import than this.” Later he goes on: “Love is a rare herb that makes
a friend even of a sworn enemy and this herb grows out of non-violence. What in a dormant state is non-violence becomes love in the
8 Mahatma Gandhi, The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, vol. 32 (New Delhi:
Publications Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of
India, 1969), 94 (note 2).
9 J. B. Kripalani, Gandhi: His Life and Thought (New Delhi: Publications Division,
Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India, 1970), 340.
10 Gandhi, “Letter to Shri Santoji Maharaj, Bangalore, July 2, 1927,” Collected Works,
vol. 34; 89-90.
285
286
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waking state. Love destroys ill-will. We should love all – whether
Englishmen or Muslims. No doubt we should protect the cow. But
we cannot do so by fighting with Muslims. We cannot save the cow
by killing Muslims. We should act only through love; thus alone
shall we succeed.”11 Love is thereby the active counterpart of nonviolence, and, since it grows out of non-violence, it also is, in a
sense, a source of the true actions performed. In an act of love a
person identifies oneself with the object of one’s love. This cannot
be done unless there is first a sincere effort toward non-violence,
in order to free the mind from every disposition, such as anger or
jealousy, that might prevent the spontaneous outflow of love.
Gandhi found this message not only in Hindu scriptures but, in
various ways, in those of all religions. “All religions proclaim that
the world is held together by the chain of love, and learned students of Shastras tell us that, without this chain, the atoms would
fall apart, that water would lack the property of existing as liquid
and each drop would exist by itself. If the same chain, likewise, did
not bind human beings to one another, we would all be dead.”12
Thus, while Kierkegaard considers the supreme sacrifice of the
person Jesus Christ to be the ultimate source of love and of faith in
God, Gandhi considers some fundamental principles, such as nonviolence, which are manifested in all world religions – for him, personally, especially some principles found in Hindu scriptures – to be
the final source of love and faith in God. To both men, the love of
God should lead a person to faith in God, which in turn will motivate one to share it with other persons, in sincerity and with sacrifice.
The Conflict Between Human and Divine Love
Both for Kierkegaard and Gandhi, the standard of purely divine
love stands over against the ambiguities in human relationships,
judging humans but also calling forth human effort to reach the
ideal. The basis for this effort, however, differs significantly between the two men.
11 Mahatma Gandhi, “Speech on Indian Civilization, March 30, 1918,” Collected
Works, vol. 14; 299-300.
12 Gandhi, “Speech in Reply to Welcome Address, Porbunder, February 19,
1925,”Collected Works, vol. 26; 173.
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Kierkegaard finds purely human love – that is, erotic love, with
its selfinterest, preferences, and finally self-assertion and acquisitiveness – and the purely divine love – that is, God’s grace in Christ –
that typifies selfgiving Christian love, to be largely antithetical. At
the same time, purely divine love is also the foundation for human
love. Certainly, according to Kierkegaard, divine love cannot overcome selfish human nature apart from God’s grace. Truly loving
human actions flow out of the love of God, as the quiet lake flows
out of the hidden springs.
The distinction between purely human, natural love (for example, erotic love) and truly Christian love is crucial for understanding how divine love can overcome human inequality and help
transform human society. Natural love includes all worldly attachments, and it is based upon aesthetic principles, such as attraction,
inclination, and pleasure. Such “poetic” love is enchanted with the
object of love as desirable, but it is also discriminatory; it distinguishes between the desirable and the undesirable. At bottom,
Kierkegaard argues, these loves are self-love, a disguised form of
self-afirmation in which the beloved is desired merely as a projection of oneself. In other words, acquisitiveness is at the heart of all
worldly loves.
Through divine love, on the other hand, all “works of love” are
grounded in God’s love, and the discriminatory distinctions people make fade in the light of eternity. In Kierkegaard’s view, God is
seen as the middle person relating two persons who love each
other. He writes: “Worldly wisdom is ofthe opinion that love is a
relationship between persons; Christianity teaches that love is a
relationship between: a person – God – a person, that is, that God
is the middle term.” He goes on to apply this idea in practical terms:
“To love God is to love oneself truly; to help another person to love
God is to love another person; to be helped by another person to
love God is to be loved.”13 Accordingly, through divine love friends
and lovers see one another, not just as people with individual
needs and preferences, but also as neighbors, embraced by God
and destined to return their love to God. By keeping the focus on
how one rightly loves, erotic love is not dismissed, nor does divine
love replace erotic love.
13 SKS, 9: 111 / WL, 106-107. Italics in original.
287
288
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Kierkegaard’s vision of love is thus open to a holistic interpretation. Divine love is the source of, and embraces, human love. The
central theological vision underlying Kierkegaard’s thought on
Christian love is that all people are created by God and are invited
to be on the way toward love of God and neighbor, in which natural loves are transformed but not eliminated. Before God all people are equal, so that, whenever human love is transformed by divine love, it can no longer be discriminatory.
As is well-known, Gandhi also held a deep concern for human
equality, and he struggled valiantly for decades to overcome differences of class and caste. Sometimes he appealed to the BhagavadGita, pointing to the way the Gita works to overcome differences
between peoples. He writes: “In the very first chapter we find
Arjuna facing the troublesome question of one’s own people and
others. In every chapter the Gita brings out how such a distinction
is false and harmful.”14 Gandhi then goes on to urge the reader to
learn from the Gita, as he has, what “non-attachment” is, and how it
is to be cultivated, since when we perform all of our actions in the
spirit of “non-attachment” we will be able to overcome such
distinctions in our daily lives. In this way, through work done as
sacrifice, without attachment and with equanimity, a person could
get the summum bonum of one’s life, salvation or self-realization.
Gandhi held that good works must be performed by humanity in
the spirit of sacrifice to God, especially through serving the
Daridranarayana, the God of the poor and the oppressed. The
ultimate human goal is the realization of God. All one’s activities –
political, social and religious – have to be guided by the ultimate
aim of becoming one with God. For Gandhi, service to humanity is
thereby the only way to find God in His creation.
Gandhi’s social ethics has distinctive roots within Hindu metaphysics, especially within the specific interpretation of “non-dualistic” (advaita) metaphysics he attributed to the Upanishads. As he
wrote, “I am endeavoring to see God through service of humanity,
for I know that God is neither in heaven nor down below, but in
everyone.”15 At another time he put this point explicitly: “Love is
not love which asks for a return. If one were overflowing with love
14 Gandhi, “’Bhagavad Gita’ or ’Anasaktiyoga’ ” (March 16, 1930), Collected Works,
vol. 43; 84.
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oneself, where could one store the love others might give? This is
the hidden significance of seeing that all as one. When Mira felt the
stab of love, she was one with God. This is the principle of advaita
in actual practice.”16
Accordingly, while Kierkegaard and Gandhi often describe the
“works” of this divine love in surprisingly similar terms, the bases
for their views may dif er. For Kierkegaard, divine love is ultimately a person, who not only once lived historically but who also lives
and acts contemporaneously among his disciples today. Thus,
Kierkegaard’s picture of divine love (as love going from one person, through God, to another person17) portrays divine love as
transforming human loves daily, acting through the boundless love
of the suf ering, crucified God. Although Kierkegaard welcomed
testimonials to God’s workings that he found in any religious (or
non-religious) sources, wherever they were found, he took his mission to be the clarification and ethical implementation of his own
faith in Christ, whom he knew personally as Love incarnate. For
Gandhi, on the other hand, divine love is first and foremost a
metaphysical principle, discovered through intense, lifelong,
prayerful meditation upon the scriptures (particularly the Gita but
also others) and continuously tested for truth by applying it to the
issues that come up in personal and social contexts.
Imagine, then, what it would have been like for these two men
to work together for social justice within the same ashram in India.
Just think of the philosophical discussions they might have had!
Conclusion: Love’s Struggle for Truth
For Gandhi, as for Kierkegaard, his mission in life was a struggle, not only against discriminatory erotic loves that undermined
society, but also against inadequate and self-serving, superficial
moralistic kinds of love. Both therefore made it their mission to
challenge the cultural, religious, and political authorities of the
countries in which they lived, in the name of a love that went
beyond such limitations.
15 Kripalani, Gandhi, 338.
16 Gandhi, Collected Works, vol. 14; 402-403.
17 SKS, 9: 111 / WL, 106-107. See above.
289
290
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For this struggle, Kierkegaard summons the help of duty, which
has the power to transform erotic love into moral love. As the title
of the first chapter in Works of Love dealing with the love commandment says: “You shall Love” [your neighbor].18 Only duty can
supply the continuity through time that love for the neighbor
requires. Yet following moral requirements, by itself, is not
enough. The duty to love avails nothing unless that love is performed genuinely, from the heart. One’s love for God and one’s religious piety can be deceptive and make one’s actions hypocritical.
Kierkegaard writes, “There is no work, not one single one, not
even the best, about which we unconditionally dare to say: The
one who does this unconditionally demonstrates love by it. It
depends on how the deed is done,” because “one can do works of
love in an unloving, yes, even in a self-loving way, and if this is so
the work of love is no work of love at all.”19
The struggle to maintain love is strenuous and unending, both
on an individual and on a social level. Soon after Kierkegaard composed Works ofLove, he began assembling materials in his notebooks to use in his climactic attack upon the hypocrisy of the established political, cultural, and religious authorities of his country,
Denmark. One concept especially grew more and more important
for him: discipleship. The individual who would show love must
learn a strict discipline, both within one’s own life and within one’s
relation to others, that will include active participation in the society as a whole. By this term discipleship Kierkegaard meant neither
a mere adoption of some intellectual program, nor of a self-imposed psychological regimen, however; instead, it implied taking on
an obedient, lifelong relationship to his master, Jesus Christ. The
Danish word here translated as “discipleship” (Efterfølgelse) means
literally “follow-after-ship.” Just as the disciple “follows after” the
master, and shares with the master the sufferings that go along
with the master’s mission even if that mission leads to a martyr’s
death, so also Kierkegaard gradually learned to “follow after” the
risen Christ, who for him became “the Way, and the Truth, and the
Life” (John 14:6).
Gandhi also came to understand love as a duty, a dharma, that
should be shown in a sacrificial way; and this sacrifice must be genui18 SKS 9: 25-50 / WL, 17-43. Italics in original.
19 SKS, 9: 21 / WL, 13. Italics in original.
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ne, a way of life, rather than mere isolated acts practiced by necessity. “To me God is Truth and Love; God is ethics and morality; God is
fearlessness. God is the source of Light and Life and yet he is beyond
all these,” he said; and “the Law is the Lawgiver, that is God.”20
Like Kierkegaard, Gandhi considered suffering to be an aspect
of love. Without suffering it is not possible to bring about change
in the individual and thereby attempt to transform the society. The
essence of love is not enj oyment but suffering. Love demands a
going beyond, a self transcendence. Only he can love who is selfless, who only believes in “giving” and not in taking.
Gandhi was deeply aware that the laws he was trying to institute for the reform and liberation of India were not Law in its true,
highest sense. In 1922 he wrote, “The goal ever recedes before us.
The greater the progress, the greater the recognition of our
unworthiness... Therefore, though I realize more than ever how far
I am from that goal, for me the Law of complete Love is the law of
my being... But I am not preaching this final law through the
Congress or the Khilafat organization. I know my own limitations
only too well. I know that any such attempt is foredoomed to failure.”21 What he could attempt as an individual was much more
than he could as a reformer of society.
Nonetheless, Gandhi did put forward an ethical ideal that was
both individual and social, and this ideal soon made his name familiar in every corner of the world. That ideal was satyagraha, a concept that explains the significance he attributed to love of truth.
Etymologically the word satya means “truth” and satyagraha means
“holding fast to truth.” The composite word designates complete
sincerity and vigorous love for truth. Truth is the first principle that
is needed for moral action, and it represents the will and the ways
of God. From that principle comes a second, non-violence, since it
is only the violent person, not the non-violent, who has to use
deceit; and also a third principle, purity of means, since there is no
practical difference between pursuing evil ends and employing evil
means.22 Satyagraha requires courage and strength; violence may
have the appearance of strength, but it is born out of fear and is, the20 Kripalani, Gandhi, 340-341.
21 Gandhi, “Non -Violence,” Young India, March 9, 1922; in Gandhi, Collected Works,
vol. 23; 24. Italics in original.
22 Kripalani, Gandhi, 347-349.
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refore, a sign of weakness. Gandhi writes, “Only he can be truly
non-violent who has conquered fear.”23 Sometimes Gandhi translated the term satyagraha with the much more general expression
“passive resistance”24; but the concept is actually far richer in meaning than that, since it calls for a radical, inner, spiritual transformation of the individual, the family, and the nation.
Postscript: Kierkegaard, Gandhi, and Bonhoeffer
292
During the late 1920s and early 1930s, when Gandhi’s social and
political movements in India were already far advanced, a young
Christian theologian, who was by then a great admirer of
Kierkegaard’s writings, was also attracted to Gandhi’s principles of
satyagraha. He hoped to draw upon them as a way of combating
non-violently the disintegration and increasing militarization of
German society. That theologian was Dietrich Bonhoeffer (19061944), who later became a hero of the German resistance to Hitler.
What is not widely known, however, is that during the early 1930s
Bonhoeffer repeatedly tried to travel to India in order to study, if
possible, in Gandhi’s ashram. In fact, by the spring of 1934
Bonhoeffer had gone so far as to obtain a letter of introduction to
Gandhi, refit some used tropical clothes, and take the required
medical tests. At about this time, he also came across a new translation of a selection of Kierkegaard’s late papers, which included
many remarks about the concept of discipleship that Bonhoeffer
marked in his copy of the translation.25
To Bonhoeffer’s dismay, the rise of Hitler’s racist program so
threatened the spiritual life of the German church by that time that,
in early 1935, he felt he had to abandon the trip to India he longed
for, in order to serve the desperate religious and intellectual needs
23 B. K. Lal, Contemporary Indian Philosophy (New Delhi: Motilal, 1989), 111.
24 See, for example, the change in the title of chapter 17 of Gandhi’s early book
Hind Swaraj [Indian Home Rule], from the first English translation published in
1910 (International Printing Press, Phoenix, 1910), which uses the term Satyagraha,
to that in the text of the Revised New Edition (Ahmedabad : Navajivan Press, 1939),
which uses the blander English expression “passive resistance.” Gandhi, Collected
Works, vol. 10; 647 (note 2).
25 Geffrey Kelly, “Kierkegaard as ’Antidote’ and as Impact on Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s
Concept of Christian Discipleship,” Bonhoeffer’s Intellectual Formation, ed. Peter
Frick (Tübingen : Mohr Siebeck, 2008), 145-165, esp. 149-150.
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of his own country. Instead of leaving, he started a secret, remotely located, theological school, for whose class sessions he drew
ideas from Kierkegaard’s notebooks that later formed part of the
basis for Bonhoeffer’s most famous book, The Cost of
Discipleship.26
How well do the concepts of discipleship and satyagraha fit
together? Perhaps that question can only be approached on a personal, individual basis, by someone who shares passionately the
convictions of both Kierkegaard and Gandhi. If so, then the
Bonhoeffer of 1935 might have been just the right person to write
a book to relate those two men’s central themes, a book about
Jesus Christ, his Truth (Satya), and discipleship, his satyagraha.
26 Eberhard Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Biography, rev. ed. (Minnepolis: Fortress,
2000), 406-409. A new translation of Bonhoeffer’s book on discipleship has recently
been published, edited by Geffrey Kelly and John D. Godsey (Minneapolis: Fortress,
2003). The translation includes a scholarly apparatus indicating the indebtedness to
Kierkegaard, and it uses the original German title, Discipleship [German : Nachfolge].
293
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José Garcia Martin
The Ethical-Existential Demand
of Kierkegaard’s Single Individual
1
A Current Reading
kierkegaard
294
Veien til at gøre Livet let er at gøre det ubetydeligt.2
“The way to make life easy is to make it meaningless.”
Even though Søren Kierkegaard’s concept of “the single individual” [den Enkelte] is one of the most familiar parts of his thought,
it is also one of the most easily misunderstood. What is it that
makes a person a single individual, in Kierkegaard’s sense? Is it
simply one’s basic humanity? The relation to God? The spiritual
aspect of one’s personality? Sacrifice and martyrdom? Loneliness
and isolation? Is Kierkegaard an anarchist, with plans for nothing
but destroying all social structures? Or perhaps a recluse, who withdraws from the world in despair?
Kierkegaard’s notebooks offer many definitions of the concept
of the single individual, but each differs somewhat from the rest.
One late notebook entry, for example, describes the concept as follows: “’The single individual’ is a spiritual definition of being a
human being; the crowd, the many, the statistical or numerical is an
animal definition.”3 This definition brings out the single individual’s spiritual nature, lest someone try to understand individuality in physical terms alone. Other definitions, such as the relation to
God, could also claim priority, however, since without a relation to
God there might be no discipleship or martyrdom, with its attendant isolation.
1 I am very grateful to Prof. Andrew Burgess for his helpful suggestions and edito-
rial comments on this essay.
2 SKS, 26: 294, NB 33: 51 / Pap., XI 2 A 127 / JP 3: 2993.
3 SKS, 25: 317, NB 29: 32 / Pap., XI 1 A 81 / JP, 2: 2050. Cf. SKS, 24: 449-50, NB 25: 18
/ Pap., X 4 A 441 / JP, 2: 2044.
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So disconcerting are some of the descriptions of the “single
individual” in Kierkegaard’s 1851-54 notebooks, however, that readers during his own times,4 and even in ours, may be inclined to
brand him as a radical individualist who lacks any regard for other
people or for society at large. How can it be that the same author
who penned deeply ethically and religiously upbuilding discourses during most of his authorship would go on, at the end of his
life, and write in such an incendiary way?
To approach this question I propose to trace the development of
Kierkegaard’s understanding of the single individual through the
main currents of his writing, from the early notebooks and writings
up through 1851, then look at the two notes on “the single individual” he sketches out in 1846 and 1847 and later rewrites but does
not publish, before examining the problematic late notebooks in
which he prepares himself for attack upon the established church.
Only by surveying such a range of Kierkegaard’s treatments of the
concept of the single individual will it be possible to test how consistent the concept is throughout the years when he is writing.
295
Although Kierkegaard’s concern for the individual person is
present throughout his writings, it manifests itself within the early
writings in two distinguishable forms. On the one hand, within his
early notebooks and his early pseudonymous publications,
Kierkegaard often draws upon current philosophical terminology
(often though not always Hegelian) to delineate the role of the
individual. On the other hand, within the many volumes of upbuilding and occasional discourses, Kierkegaard normally addresses
his readers in a markedly personal voice, and it is in these writings
especially that he makes use of the expression with which I am here most concerned, “the single individual” [den Enkelte].
One of the factors that helps lead Kierkegaard to deal with the
concept of the single individual is the pervasive influence of the
4 Cf. e.g. H. L. Martensen, “Hans Lassen Martensen,” in Encounters with Kierkegaard:
A Life as Seen by His Contemporaries (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996),
203 [Trans. Bruce H. Kirmmse and Virginia R. Laursen, from Af mit Levnet, vols. 1-3
(Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1883), 3: 19].
kierkegaard • jose´garcia martin
1. The Single Individual’s Relation to God, in the Early
Notebooks and Major Writings
296
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late Romantic movement. The romantic thinkers are preoccupied
with the individual, which they often incorporate into a cult of personality and, in some cases, into a demand for a comprehensive
system of philosophy. As Jørgen Bukdahl writes, “This
Romanticism, with its insistence on internal self-definition and its
attacks from two different directions – employing subjectivism
and individualism on the one hand, and an objective system on the
other – constituted both the positive and (especially) the negative
impetus for the work of Søren Kierkegaard.”5 Whatever the extent
of that impetus may have been, Kierkegaard is clearly affected by
the Romantic climate of the times, and it is understandable that his
writings should show the marks of this influence.6
Within his early notebooks Kierkegaard not only mentions the
notion of the individual in passing but also reflects upon the nature of
the concept itself. In 1839, for example, he writes: “As happens in language, when one occasionally stumbles across a word which by nature (according to its derivation, ex radice) contains within itself a manifold of meanings, a disposition toward a life rich in content but which
has been more and more blunted in the course of time until it is finally determined as exclusively applicable to something bad, so that it is
only the linguist who, for a single moment, is struck by observing its
sorry fate...”7 The expression he is referring to, of course, is “the individual human being.” His obj ection is that, over time, this phrase from
the poets and the devotional writers has been taken over by the philosophers, especially the Hegelians, and turned into what sometimes
amounts to a term of reproach.
When Kierkegaard begins to publish his own writings, therefore, he enriches the poverty he finds in the contemporary philosophical concept of the individual with a vocabulary that is both
flexible and precise, as Gregor Malantschuk has shown. Among the
key terms Kierkegaard uses are “the specimen” [Exemplaret], “the
5 Jørgen Bukdahl, Søren Kierkegaard and the Common Man (Grand Rapids, MI:
William B. Eerdman, 2001), 2. [Translation by Bruce H. Kirmmse of Jørgen Bukdahl,
Søren Kierkegaard og den menige mand. Søren Kierkegaard Selskabets Populære
Skrifter, vol s. 9-10, 2nd ed. (Copenhagen: C. A. Reitzel, 1996), 7.]
6 Cf. Johannes Sløk, “Kierkegaard as Existentialist,” in Contemporary Philosophy in
Scandinavia, ed. Raymond E. Olsen and Anthony M. Paul (Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins Press, 1972), 457.
7 SKS, 17: 51, EE:146 / KJN, 2: 46 / Pap., II A 516 / JP, 2: 1982.
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individual” [Individet], “the self“ [Selvet], and “the single individual” [den Enkelte].” “Lowest in rank,” Malantschuk writes, “is the
term ’specimen,’ which actually should be used only when speaking of animal species...” Next comes the “most commonly used
term for a human being,” which is “individual,” since, unlike specimens, individuals have the potentiality for spiritual development,
although only in the temporal realm, as subordinated to the moral
development of their race. Still higher is the “self,” which reflects a
person’s “eternal nature” and “expresses particularly a person’s
freedom and independence from the temporal.” Properly speaking, only God is a “self” in the “eminent sense,” with full freedom
and independence; a human being can only become a “derived
self.” Highest of all, for human beings, is the category of the “single
individual,” which is the focus of consideration here.8
Kierkegaard’s early writings use this expanded terminology in
two different ways. On the one hand, in the early pseudonymous
writings (and also in his dissertation, The Concept of Irony) he
draws upon all these terms, and others besides, partly in order to
provide sketches of the human self – indeed, what someone might
call (though with many qualifications) “phenomenologies” of the
ethical and religious individual. The combinations of these terms
with other technical terminology can become highly complex.
On the other hand, within the volumes of upbuilding discourses
and occasional discourses that Kierkegaard published during 1843-45
under his own name, in tandem with the early pseudonymous works,
quite a different story is taking place, mainly featuring one of these
terms: “the single individual.” Each of these seven little volumes bears
a dedication to “that single individual,” and the discourses themselves,
while drawing upon a variety of related terms, are all addressed to that
unnamed “single individual” in a direct, personal way.9 Then, in the
very beginning of 1846, the massive Concluding Unscientific
Postscript combines the two streams of pseudonymous and upbuil8 Gregor Malantschuk, Kierkegaard’s Concept of Existence (Milwaukee WI:
Marquette University Press, 2003), 106-10 [Translation by Howard and Edna Hong
of Fra Individ til den Enkelte. Problemer omkring Friheden og det etiske hos Søren
Kierkegaard (Copenhagen: C. A. Reitzel, 1978)].
9 In fact, at least the first of these volumes was intended primarily for Kierkegaard’s
former fiancée, Regine. SKS, 19: 437, Not 15:4 / KJN, 3: 436 / Pap., X 5 A 149, 18 / JP,6:
6472, 18.
297
298
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ding works and thereby challenges each reader to take on subj ectively the task of becoming a truly existing self.
Shortly after the publication of Postscript, a pivotal event prompted
Kierkegaard to stress much more concrete and specific aspects of the
concept of the single individual than he had before. In January and
February, 1846, the satirical journal The Corsair attacked him in a
sustained, vicious campaign, with the result that brought home to him
personally what he had earlier been thinking theoretically regarding
the individual in relation to the anonymous “crowd.” Thus in a review
of the novel Two Ages he is writing at this time, he argued sharply
against claims that uniting in political or social movements can ever
cure the malaise of his day: “Not until the single individual has established an ethical stance despite the whole world, not until then can
there be any question of genuinely uniting [into a true society].”10 The
principle by which such a single individual will work, however, is “not
to rule, to guide, to lead, but in suf ering to serve, to help indirectly.”11
Still, the single individual ought not to withdraw from the world but,
by acting truthfully in the world and thereby suffering at the hands of
the “crowd,” serve as a truth-witness to the world.
Shortly after these works Kierkegaard began writing discourses
of a different kind from before, discourses that were often much
more specific about the responsibilities of the “single individual”
than the earlier series had been.12 The first of these discourses, called simply “An Occasional Discourse: On the Occasion of a
Confession,”13 includes an extensive passage addressing “the single individual” and urgently warning neither to give in to “the
crowd” nor to “withdraw from life.”14 In each of the following discourses the single individual has an important role, especially in
the two Anti-Climacus writings; in fact, within those books, The
Sickness unto Death and Practice in Christianity, one might be
10 SKS, 8: 100-101 / TA, 106.
11 SKS, 8: 103 / TA, 109.
12 Later, in his notebook from 1850, he comments that in the dedication for the first
volume of discourses, in 1843, he was “not so clear” about the meaning of the
phrase “that single individual,” but that in this new series of discourses, the meaning
was “intensified ” and “I was clear that I was acting purely in the idea.” SKS, 23: 419
/ NB 20:51 / Pap., X 3 A 308 / UDVS, 394-95.
13 This discourse is commonly known in English by the title “Purity of Heart is to
Will One Thing.”
14 SKS, 8: 227-250, esp. 227, 236 / UDVS, 127-51, esp. 127, 137.
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hard put to distinguish some of what they say from what
Kierkegaard says in his final attack on the established church.15
Beginning in 1846 and 1847 Kierkegaard sketches out his overall
view of the single individual, and he later revised that material for use
as two “notes” that he planned to add at the end of the book The Point
of View for My Work as an Author.16 In the second note he distinguishes between how he treats the concept of the single individual in
the pseudonymous works, as opposed to how he treats it in the
upbuilding works. In each of the pseudonymous works, he writes,
“the single individual is predominantly the single individual esthetically, defined in the eminent sense, the outstanding individual, etc.”
The concept of the single individual also appears in each of the
upbuilding works, “and as officially as possible, but there the single
individual is someone every human being is or can be.”17 Since the
single individual is above all an ethical and religious category,
however, and the ethical-religious is a task all human beings equally share, it is primarily in the upbuilding works that the category
has its home. “The single individual is the category of spirit, of spiritual awakening,” he writes, thereby locating the category as especially appropriate for the Anti-Climacus writings, which are explicitly “for upbuilding and awakening.” But then he goes on: “as diametrically opposite to politics as possible.”18 That is, the single
individual does not withdraw from the crowd; it would be more
accurate to say that the crowd rejects the single individual. “The
crowd is untruth. Therefore Christ was crucified, because he, even
though he directed his words to all, because... he in no way wanted
a crowd for support... This is why anyone who in truth wants to
serve the truth is eo ipso in some way a martyr.”19 Because it would
be so easy for Christians to make of their faith a purely intellectual
matter, it is not just desirable but essential for them to become single individuals. As Kierkegaard writes: “Therefore people must
15 Esp. SKS, 11 : 229-36 / SUD, 117-24; SKS, 12: 94-102 / PC, 85-94.
16 This book, however, was not published until after his death, in 1859.
17 SV1, 13: 601 / PV, 115. Cf. Arne Grøn, The Concept of Anxiety in Søren
Kierkegaard (Macon GA: Mercer University Press, 2008), 124 [Translation by
Jeanette B. L. Knox of Begrebet Angest hos Søren Kierkegaard (Copenhagen:
Gyldendal, 1994)].
18 SV1, 13: 607 / PV, 121.
19 SVI, 13: 595 / PV, 109.
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300
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become individuals in order to received Christianly a pathos-filled
impression of Christianity.”20
In summary, then, Kierkegaard’s notebooks and works written
before 1852 present a complex, stratified picture of the single individual. First, pseudonyms such as A in Either/Or present the individual on the purely aesthetic level, a “spiritless” existence, drifting
through life without taking responsibility for its direction. Even B
finds his spiritual purpose only by adopting without question the
social and cultural conventions of the “crowd.” The dedications of
the upbuilding discourses to “that single individual,” however,
open up the possibility of a further, eternal dimension to life, in
which the “self” is prepared to break from the “crowd” in obedience to God. Finally, after 1846 the later religious writings present the
“single individual” in a distinctively Christian sense, as one who follows Christ even when it may lead to a life of martyrdom.
Accordingly, by the time Kierkegaard was writing his religious
discourses from 1847 to 1849, he already had at his disposal a
powerful vocabulary for portraying the single individual in relation
to other people and to God. Kierkegaard’s personal battle against
The Corsair in 1846, together with the gathering political and cultural storm that finally broke out all over Europe in 1848, compelled
him to hone the concept of the single individual into just the sharp,
polemical weapon he would make use of in the years that followed.
2. The Concept of the Individual, in the 1851-54
Notebooks: Preparing for the Attack upon the
Established Danish Church
Already in 1848, while Kierkegaard was writing down some of
his greatest religious works, he became increasingly aware that he
was heading toward a confrontation with the practices of the established Danish church, led by the aged Bishop Primate, Jakob
Mynster, who had for many years been his family’s pastor.
Unwilling publicly to criticize Mynster, which would have led to
the action being perceived as a personal attack, he decided to wait
until Mynster was dead and his successor appointed. The result
was that there were several years, 1851-54, during which he wrote
little or nothing except for the ideas he entered into his notebooks
20 SV1, 13: 608 / PV, 122.
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as he worked to clarify his key concepts, such as that of the single
individual, which proved so controversial to some readers.
But do these late notebook entries during 1851-54 depart from
what he has written before? I contend they do not. Where the late
notebooks differ most from the published writings is, of course, their
terse and often fragmentary character, as befits notebook entries; but
also in their increasingly polemical tone. Since Kierkegaard evidently
wrote them in preparation for a possible public campaign, they often
lack the dialectical qualification of his ideas present in his earlier work.
For the most part, however, they develop concepts and viewpoints
Kierkegaard had expressed many times before.
a. Spirit. “’The single individual’ is the qualification of the spirit,”
Kierkegaard writes in 1851 ; “the collective is the animal qualification
which makes life easier, provides a comparative criterion, procures
earthly benefits, hides one in the crowd, etc.”21 In 1854, he repeats the
point, applying it directly to the target of the coming attack,
Christendom: “The category of the spirit is: the single individual. The
animal category is: numbers, the crowd. Christianity is spirit and consequently relates itself to the category of the single individual.”22 Here
Kierkegaard points to the lack of true “spirit” at every level, from the
animal all the way up to what (falsely) claims to be Christian. In truth,
he suggests, there is not really much difference between the purely
animal beings and those who parade themselves about as professional Christians. “The present human race is so devoid of spirit that men
no longer have any self-esteem oriented to being ’spirit’; the only selfesteem they have is more or less along the line of animal-creatures.”23
Kierkegaard here draws a distinction between spiritual existence and non-spiritual existence in terms of intensity. Spiritual existence is intensive, while non-spiritual or de-spiritualized existence
is extensive. Most people live, at least most of the time, in the
extensive way, inattentive to the spiritual and transcendent. Their
lives lack focus. Instead of aiming for the target, Kierkegaard says,
they merely aim somewhere of in that direction and thereby miss
altogether. Indeed, they miss out on life without knowing it. “Just
21 SKS, 24: 449-50, NB 25: 18 / Pap., X 4 A 441 / JP, 2: 2044.
22 SKS, 26: 30, NB 31 :41 / Pap., XI 1 A 370 / JP, 2065. Cf. Giorgio Agamben, The
Open: Man and Animal (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2004) [Translation
by Kevin Attell of L’aperto: l’uomo e l’animale (Torino : Bollati Boringhieri, 2002)].
23 SKS, 26: 371, NB 35:11 / Pap., XI 2 A 198 / JP, 4: 4357.
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as writing in sand or water leaves no trace, so all that existence
which does not become spirit disappears without a trace.”24 This is
a thoroughly volatile, ephemeral concept of human life, the way of
the mundanely busy extrovert, distracted and lost in the social
world with its hypocrisy.
b. Basic humanity. As opposed to the purely animal, drifting,
spiritless condition, an individual can also pursue a more intensive
form of existence, which perseveres through time, although merely toward an immanent ideal. Such an intensive existence, too, “is
related to being a single individual, and in this way relating to the
ideal. Naturally it can become more and more intensive, thereby
becoming more and more demanding. At any rate, one never truly
reaches the ideal, but one must have enough subjectivity to take on
the task, which means that one must be nothing less than self-sacrificing.” Being a spirit, just like being an individual, is not something
that one can take for granted; instead, it is a human possibility for
developing a quality that is innate in human beings through a road
of crisis and suffering. In fact, rather than speaking of “being a spirit” or “being an individual” one does better to speak of “becoming
a spirit” or “becoming an individual.”25 As with all such developmental processes, this one must be a progress toward maturity.
Kierkegaard describes this process of becoming spirit, or becoming an individual, in terms of a series of concepts, such as
despair, anxiety, solitude, and the like, some of which anticipate
topics that later arise in twentieth century movements such as
psychoanalysis and existentialism.
Insofar as the ideal of the individual is merely immanent (that is,
innate in the person and in the world, rather than transcendent),
such an individual cannot achieve its full potentiality. Unless the
individual has a transcendent ideal, it will be little better than the
“spiritless” animal, since, like the animal, such an individual will be
enslaved too, although to the race rather than to purely physical
24 SKS, 36: 121, NB 32:2 / Pap., XI 1 A 500 / JP, 2: 2103. Cf. my article “La espiriuali-
dad como determinación antropológica en los diarios de S. A. Kierkegaard,” Ars brevis, vol. 13 (Anuari de la Câtedra Ramon Llul l Blanquerna; Barcelona: Universidad
Ramon Llull, 2007), 82-92.
25 Cf. Arne Grøn, Subjektivitet og negativitet: Kierkegaard (Copenhagen: Gyldendal,
1997), 196-97; Grøn, Concept of Anxiety, 124-26. George Pattison, Kierkegaard and
the Crisis of Faith (London: SPCK, 1997), 88-112.
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conditions.26 The distinction between the human race (or, more
narrowly, the Danish “people” [Folk]), and the individual is crucial
for Kierkegaard during 1851-55, because in the established Danish
church at the time the popular presumption was that a person was
Christian simply by being a member of the Danish Folk. Already
when Kierkegaard is writing Postscript he sharply attacks the views
of Nikolai Grundtvig, whom he regards as confusing Christianity
with Danishness,27 and by 1849 Kierkegaard finds that confusion of
icially enshrined in the new national constitution, which sets up a
“Danish People’s Church.”28 In an 1854 notebook Kierkegaard
brands such a tie between church and race “an abominable lie,” and
he labels as “balderdash” the implicit claim that “Christ saves the
race.” “If I may say so,” he writes, “even if Christ had wanted this he
would not have achieved it. ’Race’ is a category of corruption and to
be saved means to be saved out of the race. Through the race I can
belong to the corrupted race, but neither can I be saved by virtue of
the race nor, if I am saved, can I be saved into the race.”29
c. Self. To be a self, in Kierkegaard’s terms, is to be an individual
before God, an individual who lives in the eternal as well as in the temporal dimension.30 Becoming a self implies a more strenuous form of
“spirit” and of human nature. “To be spirit is to be I,” Kierkegaard writes. “God desires to have I’s, for God desires to be loved. Mankind’s interest consists of alleging objectivities everywhere; this is the interest of
26 SKS, 29: 377-78, NB 29:117 / Pap., XI 1 A 168 / JP, 2: 2054. Cf. SKS, 25: 285, NB
28:96 / Pap., XI 1 A 42 / JP, 2: 2048; Malantschuk, Concept of Existence, 107, 279 (note
382).
27 Cf. e.g. Pap., VI B 29 / CUP1, 2: 26.
28 Bruce H. Kirmmse, Kierkegaard in Golden Age Denmark (Bloomington IN :
Indiana University Press, 1990), 70.
29 SKS, 25: 377-78, NB 29:117 / Pap., XI 1 A 168 / JP, 2: 2054.
30 As Jesús Antonio Collado puts it, “La constitución del hombre en espíritu determina el sentido trascendente de la existencia; toda existencia humana que no es
consciente de sí como espíritu, que no es personalmente consciente de sí como
espíritu delante de Dios, que no se funda transparente en Dios, sino que confusamente se disuelve en la niebla de cualquier idea abstracta, sea el Estado, la Nación o
lo que fuere, toda existencia humana de este tipo no es más que desesperación,
paganismo.” (“The constitution of man in spirit determines the transcendent sense
of existence; any human existence that is not conscious of itself as a spirit in front
of God, which is not founded transparently on God, but confusedly dissolves itself
in the fog of any abstract idea, whether State, or anything else, any human existence
of this type is nothing more than desperation, paganism.”) Kierkegaard y Unamuno
303
304
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the category of race.”31 Such a self also lives more “intensively” than
the person whose ideals are merely immanent. One could say that this
is the kind of intensive existence Augustine speaks of with his “interior man,” who discovers God in private meditation. For such a person
life is an examination taken “before God,” which all people need to
pass in an obedient and individual way.32
Becoming a self is an extremely demanding task, as
Kierkegaard had shown in his published writings. In the late notebooks, however, Kierkegaard demonstrates how the task becomes
even more daunting when it has to be performed, personally, before God. Kierkegaard writes: “And now I have to be I, face to face
with existence [Tilværelsen] itself, with all its weight – no thanks,
no one wants that. But it is impossible to be involved with God without enduring the weight of this pressure of being I, because God
has placed himself at a distance from man and yet in another sense
he is the closest of all, and to be a Christian without being involved
with God is surely quite impossible.”33
d. The single individual. According to Kierkegaard, Christianity
consists of the idea that every human being has the possibility of
becoming an individual.34 In fact, the formula for becoming a
Christian is to relate to God as a single individual.35
Often features that had earlier been identified with spirit or self
in earlier writings are subsumed under the concept of the single
individual in the late notebooks. This concept thus turns out to be
the culmination of all of Kierkegaard’s thoughts about being an
(Madrid: Gredos, 1962), 45.
31 SKS, 26: 111, NB 31:151 / Pap., XI 1 A 487 / JP, 4: 4350.
32 SKS, 25: 136, NB 27:18 / Pap., X 5 A 18, p. 22 / JP, 4: 4977, p. 566. Cf. Collado,
Kierkegaard y Unamuno, 1962, p. 52: “El ’sí mismo’ recibe una nueva cualidad y una
nueva cualificación por el hecho de ser ante Dios. Este yo no es el ` sí mismo` puramente humano, sino lo que yo llamaría “sí mismo” teológico, el ser ante Dios.” (“The
’yourself’ gets a new quality and a new qualification for the fact of being before
God. This ’I ’ is not the purely human yourself, but what I would call a ’theological
yourself,’ being before God.”)
33 SKS, 26: 139. NB 32:31 / Pap., XI 1 A 533 / JP, 2: 2075.
34 “From a spiritual point of view, an individual is more before God ; this is precisely what Christianity is and that any person can be this individual.” SKS, 26: 116,
NB 31:162 / Pap., XI 1 A 498 / JP, 4: 4351.
35 “As a single individual, quite literally as a single individual, to relate oneself to
God, to turn personally to God – this is the formula for being a Christian.” SKS, 26:
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individual in Christianity: more spirited, more intensive, and more
personal than any of the other concepts discussed above. What this
concept adds to the other related concepts is concreteness, and it
thereby makes the task of becoming an individual immeasurably
more difficult than it would otherwise be.
Kierkegaard’s analysis of the relation of the individual to God
differs greatly from a popular view that defines human beings solely by their social relationships.36 In that understanding, human
beings, instead of relating to God as single individuals, turn what
should be a concrete personal relationship into a social abstraction. Kierkegaard is quite blunt on that issue: one cannot have an
immediate relation to God from the standpoint of universal humanity.37 No human being can be an intermediary when addressing
God; “where grace is concerned each man must address himself to
God; he is alone with him; and no one should have the audacity to
want to be an intermediate authority between God and another
man.”38 Nor can there be intermediaries with respect to scripture:
“As for the question: What is Christianity? – it is God’s wish that
each man relate himself before God to Holy Scripture in this matter; and in particular God does not want all this chattering and
prattling between man and man. Such an individual who relates
himself to God in this way becomes an authentic individual.”39 In
another notebook entry Kierkegaard says that the Bible is meant
for the single individual, not for humankind in general.40
The real difficulty with Kierkegaard’s concept of the single individual lies not in grasping it as part of a social theory but in putting it
into practice. Indeed, Kierkegaard does work out an innovative theory of individual/social relations that is attracting increasing attention
within Kierkegaard scholarship.41 What makes Kierkegaard’s concept of the single individual so challenging, however, is its concrete
305, NB 33:57 / Pap., XI 2 A 135 / JP, 2: 2081.
36 Cf. Howard N. Tuttle, The Crowd is Untruth: The Existential Critique of Mass
Society in the Thought ofKierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Ortega y Gassett (New York:
Peter Lang, 1996), chapter one.
37 SKS, 25: 217-19, NB 28:6 / Pap., X 5 A 95 / JP, 4: 4479.
38 SKS, 25: 177, NB 27:63 / Pap., X 5 A 64 / JP, 2: 1492.
39 SKS, 24: 41, NB 21:55 / Pap., X 3 A 497 / JP, 3: 3019.
40 SKS, 23: 442-43, NB 20:88 / Pap., X 3 A 348 / JP, 2: 1851.
41 As Johannes Sløk long since pointed out, for example: “The point of departure
for Kierkegaard is that there exists an at once primary and dialectical relationship
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call for discipleship. The true disciple of Christ is expected to follow
wherever Christ leads, and that expectation implies that such a disciple should expect extreme isolation42 and even martyrdom. The relation of the single individual to God “is thus a ’daring venture’ in which
one must be willing to venture everything, to stake everything...”43
Not many would be willing to follow that path!
3. Conclusion
306
There is a remarkably consistent development of the concept of
the single individual within Kierkegaard’s published and unpublished writings. Again and again distinctive ideas that a reader recalls
from the 1851-54 notebooks surprise one by turning up in his
published works written after 1845 as well, sometimes in a more
nuanced formulation, but sometimes in very nearly the same terms,
as they have in the final attack upon the established church. Where
the late notebook entries, and the attack for which they prepare,
differ from the earlier writings is in focus and polemical bite. The
pamphlets for which these notebooks prepare are not meant as
armchair reflections but as incitements to action. Still, that, too, is
not something that should surprise anyone who has been reading
his earlier works.
between the individual and society... As formal concepts, individual and society
belong inextricably together... The point of departure for Kierkegaard’s thought is
in other words a primary, tension-filled reality to which we can well refer as individual /society.” Da Kierkegaard tav (Copenhagen: Hans Reitzel, 1980), 11.
Translated by C. Stephen Evans and George Connell in “Introduction” to
Foundations of Kierkegaard’s Vision of Society (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanies,
1992), ix-x.
42 SKS, 36: 39, NB 31:54 / Pap., XI 1 A 384 / JP, 2: 2066: “Therefore involve yourself
with God first; not with ’the others’ first.”
43 Sylvia Walsh, Kierkegaard: Thinking Christianly in an Existential Mode (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2009), 51.
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Tibor Máhrik and Roman Králik
Paradox as Prophecy: Kierkegaard
in Central Europe1
1 This essay was first presented during the International Kierkegaard Conference at
St. Olaf College, Northfield MN, USA, on June 29, 2010. We are grateful to Andrew
Burgess for suggestions that helped develop themes in the essay.
2 1 Kings 18:17 (RSV).
307
kierkegaard
What would happen if Søren Kierkegaard were to show up in
Central Europe today? Consternation, no doubt, with many voices
protesting that their countries already have troubles enough! Like
King Ahab in the Hebrew Bible when he saw the prophet Elijah coming during a long famine, they might cry out, “Is it you, you troubler
of Israel?”2
For Kierkegaard, too, is a kind of prophet, a prophet with paradoxes, and the recent history of Central Europe is full of just the sort
of paradoxes such a prophet would be sure to notice. The stories of
families who lived under totalitarian governments carry memories
of paradoxes that will not soon be forgotten. Some who profited
most from the economic system loudly proclaimed economic equality, while others were imprisoned for whispering what people knew
in their hearts to be true. Many who had not believed such a change
of regimes could happen later became eyewitnesses to the events.
Those of us who lived in what was then Czechoslovakia and had
imagined that paradigmatic change, if it ever happened, would be
agonizingly slow, were amazed at the dynamism and speed with
which events unfolded during 1988 and 1989. In fact, nearly everyone, here and abroad, had been doubtful about the outcome – even
the students clinking their keys in protest on the central squares in
Prague and Bratislava.
Although the reflections in this essay come out of an historically
Slovak perspective, we are persuaded that the interpretation of
Kierkegaard here is applicable also in a wider European context,
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and beyond that context as well. Kierkegaard’s paradoxes have the
capacity to challenge deep-seated assumptions and to leave people
restless until they deal with them. In this essay we take up some of
the paradoxes Kierkegaard presents in his 1848 writings, especially
within his drafts of “A Cycle of Ethical-Religious Essays”3 and his
book Christian Discourses, in the light of paradoxes that have arisen
with the transformation of the eastern, formerly communist, part of
Central Europe since 1988. While people often do not acknowledge
it, the truth is that these paradoxes still persist, in many respects just
as strongly as during the communist era: paradoxes of politics, prosperity, pleasure, commerce, mass media, and Christianity.
kierkegaard • tibor ma´hrik and roman kraílk
Paradoxes and Prophecy
What a strange prophet Kierkegaard is, and what strange paradoxes he propounds! Unlike Elijah, Kierkegaard performs no miracles, and he would be completely out of place in a contest with the
prophets of Ba’al on Mount Carmel. Nor would his demeanor fit in
any better with the later Hebrew prophets, who set the pattern for
what people think of as prophecy today.
Far from making a practice of predicting future events, as
prophets are popularly supposed to do, Kierkegaard prefers to analyze the social and ethical phenomena within his own period in
order to uncover hidden relations and unclear causes, only occasionally hinting at possible consequences that may become evident
in later times. Still, by itself that need not disqualify Kierkegaard as a
prophet, since prophecy in ancient Israel also did not focus only on
the future but also on the “directional structure” and “coherence and
significance” of events.4 In that respect at least Kierkegaard’s use of
paradoxes fits the category of prophecy well.
Kierkegaard is a prophet only in a very special sense. On the one
hand, unlike the traditional prophets, who typically appeal to the
authority of a message they have received from the Lord, he repeatedly asserts that he is “without authority.” That phrase stands at the
3 This manuscript was a revision of most of the essays in “The Book on Adler” in the
light of the revolutionary events of 1848. The text of “The Book on Adler” was never
published. See BA, vii-xix.
4 Martin J. Buss, “Prophecy in Ancient Israel,” The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible,
supplementary volume, ed. Keith Crim et al. (Nashville, TN : Abingdon, 1976), 694.
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beginning of each of his volumes of upbuilding discourses, and it is
often implied elsewhere. In an essay called “The Difference
Between a Genius and an Apostle,” one of Kierkegaard’s pseudonyms, N.N., says that the apostle delivers the Lord’s message
“absolutely paradoxically,”5 and that is the kind of authority the
prophets also claimed; but Kierkegaard denies he has any such
authority. On the other hand, while Kierkegaard shares the enthusiasm for strictly philosophical paradoxes with Johannes Climacus,
who holds that “the thinker without the paradox is like the lover
without passion,”6 the task of eliminating conceptual puzzles is by
itself not Kierkegaard’s central mission.
Still, Kierkegaard does have his own, distinctive concept of paradox, the “existential paradox,” and it is at once both philosophical
and prophetic. As Climacus describes this kind of paradox in his second book, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, such a paradox takes
place when “the eternal, essential truth” – for example, an ethical
ideal – is put into practice by an “existing person.” The paradox arises because the individual person, who lives temporally, sets out to
embody that which is eternal, the ethical ideal. In this case, of course,
“the eternal, essential truth is itself not at all a paradox, but it is a paradox by being related to an existing person.”7 Climacus’ example in
this passage of Postscript is Socrates, a philosopher who ironically
contrasts the eternal ethical ideal – the good, the just, or the pious, for
example – with the ways in which his listeners are putting it into
effect (or failing to do so) in their lives. Presenting such a paradox
does often involve the philosophical clarification of ethical concepts,
but Socrates’ main task, like Climacus’, is not eliminating the paradox
through a philosophical analysis but instead prodding his listeners to
enter into the existentially paradoxical situation themselves, in order
to become more ethical than they were before. Traditional prophets
also excel at forcing people to confront paradoxes of this sort.
5 SKS, 11 : 111 / WA, 108.
6 SKS, 4: 242-43 / PF, 37. Cf. “The paradox is the authentic pathos of the intellectual life,
and just as only great souls are susceptible to passions, so are only great thinkers susceptible to what I call paradoxes, which are nothing other than grandiose thoughts,
not yet fully developed.” SKS, 18: 104, FF:152 / Pap., II A 755 / KJN, 2: 95 / JP, 3: 3070.
(Trans. from KJN.)
7 SKS, 7: 186-87 / CUP1, 204-205.
309
310
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In our essay we propose to apply two kinds of existential paradoxes, which Kierkegaard distinguishes in the second and third parts of his
book Christian Discourses. The second part of that book, called “States
of Mind in the Strife of Suf ering,” reflects on the joys that surprisingly,
because paradoxically, can emerge from a person’s struggle in suffering. Then the third part of the book, called “Thoughts that Wound from
Behind – for Upbuilding” follows, and it is even more sharply paradoxical than the second. For these latter discourses Kierkegaard likes
to begin the title with a somewhat conventional statement and then,
after a dash or some other decisive punctuation break, to end with a
paradoxical twist. Such a paradox, he says, “attacks from behind,”8
because it starts out simply enough but then, just as someone turns
away complacently, confident what Kierkegaard is going to say, the
paradox springs up and attacks from behind.
Both of these parts of Christian Discourses use the principle of
existential paradox, but they do so in opposite ways. On the one
hand, Kierkegaard addresses the discourses in part three to smugly
self-confident listeners. These discourses start out from ethical ideals
that are truly eternal, assuming all the while, with typically Socratic
irony, that the listeners understand and accept those ideals. Then,
however, as the paradoxical disparity between the ideals the listeners profess and the actions they perform emerges, they find themselves unexpectedly attacked from behind. The discourses in part
two, on the other hand, Kierkegaard writes in order to encourage
those who are suffering ethical despair. For such listeners he shows
that the popular societal ideals by which they feel so cruelly
oppressed are, paradoxically, not the eternal ideals but merely conventional standards cunningly imposed upon them by worldly wisdom and worldly power; but that, if they continue striving toward
the divinely established ideals that are their true goal, they may yet
prevail, with God’s help.
Our presentation alternates the two kinds of existential paradoxes, beginning with the “Cycle of Ethical-Religious Essays,” which were
drafted toward the end of 1848 which refers explicitly to the revolutions erupting across Europe, and then alternating with discourses
from Christian Discourses, which was published in April of that year.
8 SKS, 10: 172 / CD, 162.
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1948, 1968, 1988, 2008 – and 1848: Revolutionary Times,
in Contemporary Central Europe – and in Kierkegaard’s
Denmark
9 The “Visegrád 4” countries formed an all iance in 1991, first as three countries and
then, after the split between Czech Republic and Slovakia in 1993, as four. The
expression derives from the Hungarian castle town of Visegrád, at which the
Bohemian, Polish, and Hungarian kings met in 1335 and 1339.
10 András Nagy, “Hungary: The Hungarian Patient,” in Southern, Central and Eastern
Europe, Tome I I of Kierkegaard’s International Reception, in vol. 8 of Kierkegaard
Research, ed. Jon Stewart (Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2009), 157-68.
311
One of the reasons for the current receptivity to Kierkegaard’s
works in Central Europe may be the similarities in the political and
social revolutions that shook Europe in the middle of the nineteenth
century and the turmoil in Central Europe since the middle of the
twentieth. There were even a few thinkers who played a role in the
changes since 1948 and who were also directly influenced, at one
time or another, by Kierkegaard’s works and their paradoxes.
By the expression “Central Europe” this essay refers primarily to the
so-called Visegrád 4 (“V4”) countries9 – Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Hungary – although other countries occupied by the Soviet
Union after the second world war also experienced many of the same
tendencies. Unlike countries further east, these four share the Roman
rite and the Roman alphabet, and they have thus tended to orient themselves culturally toward the western part of Europe. Over the centuries,
moreover, endless wars, occupations by foreign powers, and realignments of boundaries have blurred some of the differences among
them, at the same time as these same factors have helped to strengthen
a common passion for freedom and political independence, along
with a common willingness to tolerate dissident views.
Each of these four countries has played a part in the story of
Kierkegaard studies. Hungary made an early contribution through
the work of the noted philosopher György Lukács (1885-1971), who
already in 1906 wrote an essay strongly praising Kierkegaard. After
the first world war, however, Lukács abandoned Kierkegaard and
converted to Marxism and he later wholeheartedly backed the
Stalinization policy that took hold of Eastern and Central Europe in
1948, although he softened his stand somewhat during the short
period when Stalinism had to relax its grip during the Hungarian
Revolution in 1956.10 After his death Ágnes Heller (b. 1929), a for-
312
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mer student of Lukács, discovered in Lukács’ old suitcases many
diaries and papers written before he became a Marxist, during the
time when he was an avid Kierkegaardian. Heller’s pioneering
research thereby laid the basis for much of later Hungarian
Kierkegaard interpretation.11 In 1968 Czechoslovakia helped to
show the way, with its “Prague Spring,” after which the playwright
and essayist Václav Havel (b. 1936) became active in the resistance.
Ultimately he was elected as first president of the Czech and Slovak
Federal Republic, after the 1989 “Velvet Revolution.” His thinking
shows many affinities with Kierkegaard’s.12 During the 1980s it was
especially Poland’s turn, when the Solidarity movement began to
take hold, first as a labor union and then as a national social and
political movement. Although repressed in 1981, Solidarity finally
overcame all obstacles and, by unifying Poland, helped to inspire the
transformation of the whole economic and political order in Central
and Eastern Europe during 1988 and 1989. One of the leading commentators and philosophical essayists of the Solidarity movement
was Joseph Tischner (1931-2000), a Roman Catholic priest, who
often quoted from such works as The Sickness unto Death, and who
was deeply impressed by Kierkegaard’s literary style and aesthetic
theory, especially as represented in the first part of Either/Or.13
As Kierkegaard would have predicted, however, the fall of communism did not usher in a social utopia. The proof came in 2008,
when the worldwide economic collapse only mirrored a moral collapse that had been long underway. In Slovakia, for example, people
began to look at the continuing social disparities and to ask: How is
it possible, if indeed it is possible, to establish an ethos of truth, justice, and transparency in a new society? What kind of power could
prevent corruption by mayors, members of parliament, teachers,
police, and all other officials, so that a hidden agenda would not be
11 Nagy, “Hungary,” 171. See Ágnes Heller’s postscript, “A szerencsétl en tudat
fenomenológiája” [The Phenomenology of the Unhappy Consciousness], to Vagyvagy [Either/Or], trans. Tivadar Dani (Budapest: Gondolat, 1978), 1017-79.
12 See Martin Matuštik, Postnational Identity: Critical Theory and Existential
Philosophy in Habermas, Kierkegaard, and Havel (New York: Guilford Press, 1993),
esp. 203-28.
13 Antoni Szwed, “Poland: A Short History of the Reception of Kierkegaard ’s
Thought,” in South, Central, and Eastern Europe, Tome II of Kierkegaard’s
International Reception, in Vol ume 8, Kierkegaard Research: Sources, Reception
and Resources, ed. Jon Stewart (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2009), 228-29.
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the decisive factor in their activities? These problems are of course
by no means unique to Slovakia. Corruption and inadequate law
enforcement have become endemic in all the V4 countries.
In 1848 Kierkegaard’s Denmark, too, faced many of these same
political, social, and moral issues. The revolutionary pressures for representative government within the kingdom persisted, even after a
constitution providing for elections was finally adopted on June 5,
1849. They were exacerbated by the onset of civil war, starting in 1 849,
between the Danish kingdom itself and its German-speaking duchies
of Slesvig and Holstein (aided by Prussia), since the duchies feared that
the new constitution might make them into little more than Danish
colonies.14 All across Europe expectations were rising for political freedom and democracy, much like across the Middle East today.
Thus it was that in April, 1848, while the revolutionary movements
in Denmark were still gathering force, Kierkegaard published
Christian Discourses, and later that year he drafted the preface and
some passages for the proposed “Cycle of Ethical-Religious Essays.”
Both writings were to prove prophetic for Denmark in the months
ahead, and they also highlight existential paradoxes present in
Central Europe during our own time. As the preface for the first of the
four sets of discourses in Christian Discourses indicates, the sets have
alternating styles. The third set, for example, includes the kind of discourses that show how “on top of Mount Sinai the Law was given” to
disturb the complacent, while the second set works in the opposite
way, to proclaim “the Gospel, which is: the heavenly down to earth,”
for those who are ethically distressed.15 Because we are focusing primarily upon Kierkegaard as social and religious critic, and because in
Kierkegaard’s Lutheran theology Law precedes Gospel, we of course
begin with one of his paradoxes that moves out on the attack.
1. The Paradox of Politics – without Authority
After 1988 the newly democratic V4 countries faced a widespread problem as they set up their democratic institutions: how will
people be able to vote in the next elections if they have repeatedly
experienced deception and disillusionment, not only within the pre14 Bruce H. Kirmmse, Kierkegaard in Golden Age Denmark (Bloomington IN:
Indiana University Press, 1990), 65-68.
15 SKS, 10: 21 / CD, 9.
313
314
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vious totalitarian regime, but also within the present democratic
political scene? This question, in turn, raised deeper issues about the
relation between political freedom and the reality of evil, issues for
which commentators have failed to provide a solution.
The problem clearly does not lie in democracy itself, since even a
temporary lack of democratic institutions only made things worse.
The historical creation of Slovakia, for example, happened in a highly specific way. Splitting up Czechoslovakia into two separate countries took place in 1993 on the political stage, but without any public
referendum, without even any election, beforehand. Such a situation
was only possible at that time, two years after the fall of the communist regime, when its democratic institutions were still at an infantile
stage, so that the leading politicians could turn the course of events
whatever way they wished. If that had not been the political situation
at the time, many political observers believe, Czechoslovakia would
still exist as one country.16
Near the end of his life, Kierkegaard draws attention to something
like this kind of situation in a notebook entry: “In Denmark, and no
doubt in just about all Europe, everything is politics. Politics is all that
occupies people, politics is all that people understand; and it is the
case not only with the prominent political leaders but it is the case
with actually every or at least almost every person in our age that he
very sagaciously understands how a cause can be served politically.”17
Freedom and democracy require leaders who have genuine
authority, and that situation may happen to be lacking in any century. As Kierkegaard’s pseudonym “A” whimsically remarks in the
first part of Either/Or, “everyone wants to rule, no one wants to
have responsibility. It is still fresh in our memory that a French
statesman, when offered a portfolio the second time, declared that
he would accept it on the condition that the secretary of state be
16 A French philosopher, André Glucksmann expressed a thought in Prague in 2007 that
resonates with Kierkegaard in the way it dives into the dynamics of the notion of freedom: “Freedom is something that is not a matter of course, it’s something that isn’t all
good within us, but also the bad.” André Glucksmann, “Freedom and Responsibility in
Business,” Freedom and Responsibility: 11th Annual Forum 2000 Conference (Prague:
Forum 2000 Foundation, 2007), 109. http://www.forum2000.cz/files/200001897bbd7cbcc8c/Conferen ce_Report_Freed om _and _Respon sibil ity.pd f (accessed 15/1
/2011).
17 Pap., XI 2 A 41 3, p. 402 (June 9, 1855) / M, 536-37.
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made responsible... It is well known that the king in France is not
responsible... ultimately it ends, of course, with the watchmen or
street commissioners becoming responsible.”18
Looking back at how the revolution had unfolded in November,
1 848, Kierkegaard elaborates on this theme of taking authority in a
draft for “Cycle of Ethical-Religious Essays.” “Now in 1848,” he writes,
“it has been made radically obvious, something that the few who
could see and assess also saw, that the error of the previous age was
truly not that the government misused power, but exactly the opposite, that it did not dare to use power; in short, the error is that there
was no governing.”19
But what then does Kierkegaard recommend? There have already
been enough people who have ambition and claim to have the
authority to be reformers, he says, but who really do nothing more
than try to mobilize the crowd. Such false reformers avoid dealing
with the eternal and have “nothing to do with God, no inconvenience from having to be involved; the point of departure is from
below, from that which is lower than the established order, since
even the most mediocre ’established order’ is still preferable and
superior to the flabbiest of everything flabby – the crowd.”20
No, Kierkegaard argues, “the point of departure is from above,
from God, and the formula is this paradox, that an individual is
used. Humanly speaking, an individual, in comparison with the
established order (the universal), is obviously infinitesimal, nothing;
therefore it is a paradox that an individual is the stronger one. The
explanation of this paradox can only be that it is God who uses him,
God who hides behind him; but in turn God is seen for this very reason, just because the relation is a paradox.”21 Thus what Kierkegaard
describes here is an existential paradox. The paradox lies, Christianly
speaking, in the relation between the politically responsible individual and God’s eternal ethical standard. This is a paradox many politicians prefer to ignore.
18
19
20
21
SKS, 2: 142 / EO1, 142.
“A Cycle of Ethical-Religious Essays,” Pap., I X B 8 (Oct. 8, 1 848) / BA, 315.
“A Cycle of Ethical-Religious Essays,” Pap., I X B 8 (Oct. 8, 1 848) / BA, 317.
Ibid.
315
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2. The Paradox of Prosperity – without Faith
316
The policy of privatization during the early 1990s created a new
paradox for the countries of Central Europe. On the one hand, this
movement sought to respond to the injustices since 1948, when private property was forcibly expropriated by the state. On the other
hand, privatization gave rise to new injustices too, in that it provoked conflicts within social and economic units and even within
families. These countries, which for decades had known only work,
with little chance for comfort and making a fortune, now found the
pendulum swinging in the opposite direction, yet essentially carrying out one’s job was often no more satisfying than it had been
under the earlier regime. Many perceptive writers and thinkers were
profoundly disturbed by what they saw happening. They noticed
that the same ruthlessness and greed of the old order characterized
the new as well; only the costumes of the actors were different from
before. The economic success of the capitalist successors to the commissars merely exposed the emptiness of any strictly materialist
value system and betrayed the lack of a deeper ethical code.
Kierkegaard’s 1848 understanding of work stands directly opposite such a value system. As he writes then, “In the worldly sense a
man works – and then he gets his wages, and if he does not get them,
he still needs them; for in the worldly sense work is enervating and
wages are nourishing. But to work Christianly is nourishing; as Christ
says: My food is to do my father’s will. Thus it is not: The more I do
my father’s will, the more exhausted I become and, as it were, hungry for wages – no, the more satisfied I am.”22 These are hard words
to understand, apparently standing common sense on its head.
Moreover, Kierkegaard’s whole approach defies the norm. Instead
of addressing the wealthy and denouncing them directly, as social
critics often do, he prefers to address the poor, as did the classical
Hebrew prophets.
Still, perhaps he has a point. After all, why direct a discourse
about the evils of poverty to the wealthy? Doing that would be like
preaching about lax church attendance; those who really need the
message are not present at the sermon. Even if the wealthy were
physically present to hear a discourse on poverty they would not be
truly listening, in the sense of being willing to act decisively upon
22 SKS, 21: 155, NB 8:24 / Pap., I X A 399 / JP, 4: 5012.
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what they hear.23 Instead, such a discourse is best delivered to those
oppressed by grinding poverty – a message, therefore, not so much
of condemnation as of consolation, a message like that found in
“The Joy of It: That Adversity is Prosperity,” which he includes in the
second, “Gospel,” part of Christian Discourses.24
Adversity [Modgang] is Prosperity [Medgang]. Now, there is a
paradox that looks likely to cause head-scratching – much more likely than joy! What can the discourse possibly mean? Certainly not that
the prosperity will come as a consolation in some future world. Nor
will the discourse accept the merely “human grounds of comfort” for
the sorrowing one, since these at best “undertake to comfort him
somewhat” and “even then do quite badly.” For the discourse nothing less than eternity’s “true joy” will do.25 Merely “human grounds,”
it insists, are like the situation when a physician prescribes “a new,
perhaps more comfortable crutch... But when eternity is brought in,
the crutches are thrown away; then he can not only walk – oh no, in
another sense we must say that he no longer walks – so lightly does
he walk. Eternity provides feet to walk on.”26
The problem is that human beings do not naturally know what
such a prosperity could possibly be and how it could be obtained,
nor how eternity exists in the present as well as the future. The discourse gives no details, but simply calls for faith and advises the sufferer “gently, sympathetically, ’Oh, just turn around’.” Instead of trying to make the radical about-face seem easy, the discourse uncompromisingly lays out the contrast between the usual version of life’s
goals, including wealth and fame, on the one hand, and eternity’s,
including poverty and rejection, on the other. Then it just says:
choose! One highly popular ethical ideal it rejects, and another, just
as unpopular, ideal it affirms. In this way the discourse confronts the
listener with an absolute either/or, but it does not justify its basis for
taking the alternative it does.
This approach should not be surprising. After all, if the choice
could be justified in terms of the popular view of prosperity, how
23 Kierkegaard’s Christian Discourses does sometimes take up the paradox of wealth
in attack mode. For example, in “The Care of Poverty,” the first discourse in the first
part of the book. SKS, 10: 25-34 / CD, 1 3-22.
24 SKS, 10: 1 58-66 / CD, 1 50-59.
25 SKS, 10: 1 66 / CD, 1 58-59.
26 Ibid.
317
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could it be faith? Yet there is a clue in the discourse’s short, last
paragraph, which reiterates a formula that also appeared in the
conclusions to each of the five previous discourses: “In all adversity there is only one danger: if the suffering one refuses to have
faith that adversity is prosperity. This is perdition; only sin is a
human being’s corruption.”27 That is to say (at the very least), the
true adversity lies, not in what people commonly think of as adversity, but rather in losing a right relation to the eternal, which
grounds the meaning of human lives.
318
3. The Paradox of Pleasure – without Hope
People everywhere lead double lives, public and private, but for
the people of Central Europe the nature of that doubleness changed
during the last half century. Before the second world war there was
already a great deal of hypocrisy within the formal roles prescribed
for public life, but people learned to discount it, because in their private lives they could act much more spontaneously and sincerely
than in public; although of course hypocrisy flourished in private
too, both at the dinner tables and in the bedrooms.
During the second world war and, even more, during the
Stalinization period, the hypocrisy increased exponentially. Every
first of May, for example, the people attending parades were shouting, “With the Soviet Union forever and ever, and never otherwise!”
After the parades parents sometimes privately explained to their
children the truth about this political game and – at least if they
dared risk the chance that some of their neighbors or their children’s
teachers might be informers and that the secret police might learn
what they had said – honestly communicated their feelings about
the Russian troops and the local communist oficials. Still, everyone
had to pretend a loyalty to the occupying powers and to vote for the
communist party in the elections. This went on for forty long years.
Although in Czechoslovakia the 1968 Prague Spring temporarily
interrupted this charade and exposed some of the people’s true feelings, afterwards things there continued on much as before. The
result was a deep chasm between the public and private spheres
with respect to religious and cultural values, so that many people in
the generations who grew up under totalitarianism acquired a deep
27 SKS, 10: 166 / CD, 159. Italics added.
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cynicism toward traditional moral authorities.
The power of this moral erosion is portrayed in the great Czech
author Milan Kundera’s novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being, first
published in France in 1984. Although the book’s setting includes the
period of the Prague Spring, the central characters are not confined by
the Russian occupation as much as by their own compulsions. Of
them all, this is most obviously true of the character who attracts most
of the narrator’s attention, Tomáš. Tomáš is caught up in a drive for
pleasure that impels him, night after night, year after year, to seek
exploits that mean little for him beyond sexual satisfaction. Even his
slowly emerging love for Tereza, and even his political ideals and convictions, are as nothing compared to that relentless power.
Although critics who comment on the novel have sometimes
compared Tomáš to the character “A” who writes the first part of
Either/Or, or else to Don Juan,28 another character in Kundera’s
novel, Sabina (Tomáš’ favorite mistress), comes closer than Tomáš to
what the omnipresent narrator of the novel calls “the unbearable
lightness of being.” Unlike Tomáš, who eventually succumbs to conventional love, Sabina sees through the illusion in her every passing
ideal and betrays each personal relationship, sexual or otherwise.29
By the “lightness of being” the novel’s narrator means, among
other things, a release from the burden of eternal meaning, including moral responsibility and all its dreary conventionality. Such lightness “causes man to be lighter than air, to soar the heights, take leave
of the earth and his earthly being, and become only half real, his
movements as free as they are insignificant. What then shall we
choose? Weight or lightness?”30
On the basis of the narrator’s own definitions, one can rephrase that
question as: What then shall we choose? Significance or freedom? For
anyone who takes freedom to be an ultimate human value, this exclusive disjunction seems to deprive the novel’s characters of all hope.
Like any good novelist, however, Kundera declines to answer
this question directly. He lets the novel answer it for him; or rather,
28 E.g. Niels Nyman Eriksen in Kierkegaard’s Category of Repetition (Berlin : Walter de
Gruyter, 2000), 26 note. Cf. “The Immediate Stages of the Erotic,” SKS, 2: 92-107 / EO1,
88-103.
29 Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being (New York/London: Harper,
1984), 115, 248-50, 256, 273.
30 Kundera, Lightness of Being, 5.
319
320
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he lets the readers find their answers in the novel for themselves.
Thus although the novel’s narrator tends to side with Sabina, the
narrator also includes toward the end of the book a hopeful comment, at the point where Tomáš and his wife Tereza are trying to
console their dying dog Karenin: “True human goodness, in all its
purity and freedom, can come to the fore only when its recipient
has no power. Mankind’s true moral test, its fundamental test
(which lies deeply buried from view), consists of its attitude toward
those who are at its mercy: animals.”31
Who could disagree with such an obvious sentiment? Sabina, for
one; and not merely because she is against sentiment as a matter of
principle. Taken in isolation, the passage seems to make devoted
pet lovers everywhere into the final exemplars for moral virtue,
and that would set the minimum score for passing Kundera’s test
far too low. Sabina, at any rate, would judge such a comment to be
sheer sentimentalism – what she calls “kitsch” – and, in this particular case, if Kundera were merely urging the supreme moral value
of loving animals, she would be right.
4. The Paradox of Commerce, without Love
The changes that came about in Central Europe during 1988 and
1989 helped focus all attention upon the world of commerce.
Should the economy be governed by a planned economy or left to
a free market? Will the quantity and quality of goods increase if they
are exchanged in a competitive arena? Today people are no longer
as sure as they were before. After experiencing an open society and
a competitive marketplace, people now sometimes reminisce about
the times of the former totalitarian regimes they once hated, as if
those were the good old days. At heart nothing seems to have
changed. An upheaval in economic policies has only shifted the
same selfishness into a different channel.
Is there another, alternative form of commerce? In one of the
consoling discourses in the second part of Christian Discourses,32
Kierkegaard lays out a plan for a kind of commerce which is neither communistic nor capitalistic, because it deals, not with “earth31 Kundera, Lightness of Being, 289.
32 “The Joy of It: That the Poorer You Become the Richer You Are Able to Make
Others.” SKS, 1 0: 1 25-34 / CD, 114-23.
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ly goods,” as they do, but in terms of what he calls “goods of the
spirit.” “Every earthly or worldly good is in itself selfish [misundelig]; it is begrudging or is envy [Misundelse] and in one way or
another must make others poorer –what I have someone else cannot have; the more I have, the less someone else must have,”33 he
writes. “Not so with the goods of the spirit,” however. “If a person
has faith,” for example, “he truly has not thereby taken anything
away from others; on the contrary – it is strange but true – he has
worked for all others (even apart from what he does directly to
communicate to others); during the time he was working to
acquire faith for himself, he was working for all others.”34 The same
is true for hope, and most obviously for love, which is essentially a
sharing of love. Indeed, each of these three is essentially a sharing
of those goods of the spirit that every human being can possess
simply by virtue of becoming truly human. Therefore, when someone imparts faith, hope, or love to someone else, that good is thereby shared, and both the one who imparts and the one who receives
has more faith, hope, and love than before.35
Even though Kierkegaard explicitly identifies the purpose for this
discourse as consolation for those who have been deprived of their
wealth, reputation, or place in society,36 and not as a theory of commercial relationships or a political platform, what he says may still
have some political and economic implications. “How, then, can one
person make another rich?” he asks. Not by first a becoming a
wealthy person and then giving away the riches to others, since, “in
all the hours and days in which he is occupied with acquiring, accumulating, preserving the earthly goods he is selfish... No, the true
33 SKS, 10: 126 / CD, 115. Italics in original. Danish words inserted by the translators,
to show Kierkegaard ’s literary technique.
34 Ibid. Italics in original.
35 SKS, 10: 1 27-29 / CD, 116-18. We have chosen the English word sharing to trans-
late the Danish Meddelelse, rather than the word communication that the Hongs use
here, because it seems the more precise sense for this context. Alastair Hannay
prefers the word impart for translating Meddelelse within his translation of
Concluding Unscientific Postscript, since he finds the word there indicates a oneway rather than a two-way relationship between the communicator and what is
communicated (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009, xxxix). In this CD
discourse, however, Kierkegaard emphasizes that faith, hope, and love, at least, are
two-way relation ships.
36 SKS, 10: 1 32-33 / CD, 121.
321
322
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way, the way of perfection, to make others truly rich, must be: to
communicate the goods of the spirit.”37 Paradoxically, the only way
to make others rich (with the goods of the spirit) is to become even
poorer (in earthly goods) yourself.38 The rich benefactor has started
from the wrong point altogether, from wealth and power rather than
from poverty, disgrace, and rej ection by society. The potential for
the goods of the spirit is what human beings have in common, part
of their fundamental equality, and this potential can only be actualized through acknowledging one’s own poverty and weakness.
Instead of proposing a theory of commerce to be implemented
for a national economy, Kierkegaard’s discourse suggests something deeper, something on a personal level. Basically the discourse agrees with the narrator’s remark near the conclusion of
Kundera’s novel, where Tereza is stroking the head of the dying
dog Karenin. Among human beings, she reflects, there are always
struggles for power because we need each other. The narrator’s
comment follows: “True human goodness, in all its purity and freedom, can only come to the fore when its recipient has no power.”39
In fact, Tereza and Karenin do need each other; it is just that, unlike
in Tereza’s human-to-human relationships, neither exerts power
over the other. As a dog Karenin is incapable of understanding
much at all about Tereza’s life; Karenin simply loves her. Later, in a
moving scene, after Karenin seems to have lost her will to live, it is
Tomáš who surprises Tereza by getting down on all fours beside
Karenin and yelping like the dog. Tomáš even puts his teeth near
the dog’s muzzle and pretends to fight for a bakery roll, before he
weakly gives up that prize and lets Karenin claim an apparent victory.40 True human goodness – that is, all “the goods of the spirit” –
means giving up power over others, the narrator suggests; and to
do that may require giving up the attempt to understand others and
just accepting them as they are.
37
38
39
40
SKS, 10: 131 / CD, 120.
SKS, 10: 132 / CD, 122.
Kundera, Lightness of Being, 297.
Kundera, Lightness of Being, 291-92.
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5. The Paradox of the Mass Media, without Integrity
41 Adam Michnik, “Freedom and Responsibility in Media,” Freedom and Responsibiliy:
11th Annual Forum 2000 Conference, October 7-9, 2007 (Prague: Forum 2000
Foundation), 109. http://www.forum2000.cz/files/200001897-bbd 7cbcc8c/Confe rence_Report_Freedom_and_Responsibility.pdf (accessed 15/1 /2011).
42 Jeffrey Gedmin, “Freedom and Responsibil ity in Media,” Freedom and
Responsibiliy: 11th Annual Forum 2000 Conference, October 7-9, 2007 (Prague:
Forum 2000 Foundation), 120. http://www.forum2000.cz/files/200001897bbd7cbcc8c/Conference_Report_Freedom_and_Responsibility.pdf (accessed 15/1
/2011).
43 Kundera, Lightness of Being, 220.
323
As in so many other cultural and political respects, the mass media
in Central Europe changed after the events of 1989. During the communist era after 1948 the press had been strictly regulated and
checked, and the tabloid press did not exist at all. People distrusted
the media because it was ultimately directed by Moscow. After the fall
of communism people fell into a similar distrust of the media to what
they had held during the communist regime, but for a different reason. Truth had become a commodity to be created and sold according to market-driven lobbies and hidden political agendas.
Ironically, many personalities in the media world now confirm
this judgment about the present commodification of truth. For
example, Adam Michnik, editor of the magazine Gazeta Wyborcza,
comments: “What we have today is too much information. In other
words, there is such noise, such information noise, that an ordinary
person is not capable of distinguishing the truth from manipulation.”41 Similarly, Jeffrey Gedmin, president of radio Slobodná
Európa (Free Europe) and radio Sloboda (Freedom), says about
the loss of individual integrity: “I don’t believe you can do good
journalism if you are not rooted in values and if you don’t have
some kind of reasonable moral compass.”42
The roots of the present disagreements about what integrity
means within the mass media go back to the occupation time. The
Prague Spring marked a turning point for the media in
Czechoslovakia, because it gave hope for change, but the return of
the Russian occupation that fall divided the ranks of those who had
earlier championed the cause of the free press. Kundera, for example, much like the character Tomáš in his novel,43 argued against
Havel in late 1968 and then again in 1969 that within a totalitarian
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system any attempts to fight for human rights were pointless and
counterproductive. Such ef orts, he felt, merely displayed the dissidents’ “moral exhibitionism.”44 Reflecting back in 1985 and 1986
upon this controversy, Havel is still “quite familiar with Kundera’s (a
priori) skepticism regarding civic actions that have no immediate
hope of being effective, and which therefore may appear to be no
more than an attempt by their authors to show how wonderful they
are.”45 He even recalls the actual event during late 1968 that evidently formed the basis for that episode in the novel, when a group
of dissident writers circulated a petition asking the authorities to
grant amnesty to some political prisoners, and then Kundera said
that those who were submitting the petitions were “exhibitionist”
and that their actions would only worsen the prisoners’ situation.46
“But was that really the case?” Havel then asks. “I would say not.”
From his own years in prison he testifies that such petitions are just
what encourages prisoners of conscience, by showing them that their
protests are being heard. Moreover, in the long term the protests did
have a great deal of effect on the events leading up to 1989.47
Havel’s arguments echo Kierkegaard’s reflections regarding the
long range significance of principled individual action within the
public sphere. The occasion for Kierkegaard’s reflections was the
emergence in 1840 of a satirical journal called The Corsair that
began publication in Copenhagen and, partly by printing blatant
falsehoods about leading personalities, soon gained the largest
number of subscriptions of any journal in Denmark. The young
editor, Meïr Goldschmidt (1819-1887), was a great admirer of
Kierkegaard as a writer, and Kierkegaard had encouraged
Goldschmidt to start the journal. Still, after several years during
which no one else dared to criticize the journal’s actions, for fear of
drawing its attention to themselves, Kierkegaard finally felt that he
44 Milan Kundera, Český úděl, vol. 1, n os. 7-8 (Dec. 19, 1968), 1, 5; Milan Kundera,
“Radikalismus a exihibicionismus,” Host do domu, vol. 15, no. 15 (1969), 24-29.
45 Václav Havel, “The Politics of Hope,” section V in Disturbing the Peace [Dálkový
výslech]: A Conversation with Karel Hvísdala, trans. Paul Wil son (New York: Alfred
A. Knopf, 1990), 173. Cf. Martin Matuštik, Postnational Identity: Critical Theory and
Existential Philosophy in Habermas, Kierkegaard, and Havel (New York: Guilford
Press, 1993), 193.
46 Havel, Disturbing the Peace, 174.
47 Havel, Disturbing the Peace, 174-77.
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had to take up the task, and at the beginning of 1846 he wrote an
essay in another journal calling The Corsair a “public prostitute”
and ironically inviting it to attack him too.48 The journal responded enthusiastically, pouring out a torrent of vilification and
ridicule that lasted for weeks. Despite the fact that Kierkegaard had
expected a harsh response, this was far more than he had anticipated. As Howard Hong remarks, “Least of all had he expected that
those who had urged him to engage The Corsair would give him
the silent treatment publicly (although many thanked him privately) and regard the whole thing as a trifle.”49 The only positive effect
was on Goldschmidt himself. As he reports in his memoirs, he
eventually became so disgusted with what he was doing that he
decided to quit editing the journal; and, he reports, “when I told
them at home that I was going to do it, they said Praise God – so
happy but so little surprised that they had known it before I did.”50
This Pyrrhic victory left an indelible impression upon
Kierkegaard, and during the following years he expressed an
extremely low estimation of the politically connected leaders of
society, because he had found they were unwilling to take individual risks for the public good – and he had an even lower opinion of
j ournalism as it is usually practiced. “It is really impossible to do battle with a journalist,” he wrote in 1848. “He keeps himself hidden;
one cannot get hold of him, and then in the twinkling of an eye he
incites those thousands of people against one person, who is actually no concern of theirs, who ridiculously and tragically is both
guilty and innocent.”51 Therefore: “Woe to the daily press! If Christ
came to the world today, as sure as I live, he would not attack the
high priests, etc. – he would attack the journalists.”52 The reason
journalistic attacks are so effective is that “journalistic villainy... can
be used only against those who in one way or another are somebody, are prominent, for only they can be sniped at... Therefore to
these thousands and thousands the press seems a great good – in
48 SKS, 14: 85-89; 88 / COR, 47-50; 49.
49 COR, “Historical Introduction,” xxx.
50 Meïr Goldschmidt, Livs Erindringer og Resultater (København: Gyldendal, 1877),
vol. 1, 430. Cited from COR, 150.
51 SKS, 21:347, NB 6:49 / Pap., IX A 200 / JP, 2: 2153. Cf. SKS, 21 :347, NB 10: 177 /
Pap. X 1 A 258 / JP, 6: 6384.
52 SKS, 21 :347, NB 10:177 / Pap., X 1 A 258 / JP, 6: 6384.
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fact, it is designed to serve their envy without any likelihood of their
suffering from it or becoming victimized themselves. That is why
journalistic villainy will always have a sufficient audience.”53 Note
that Kierkegaard is here not criticizing journalism on specifically
Christian grounds but on the basis of common human decency and
honesty. Such behavior is simply vile, and nothing can justify it.
The evils of journalism he experienced for himself did not, however, blind Kierkegaard to the importance of the profession of journalism itself nor to its value if it were practiced with courage and
integrity, and in 1854-55 he mounted a public journalistic campaign against the apostasy of the state church. Indeed, he said (citing Martin Luther) that “preaching should be done not in churches
but in the street, right in the middle of life, the actuality of ordinary,
daily life,” but since he did not feel physically strong enough at that
point in his life to preach out on the street, the next best thing was
to use the newspaper.54
In the short term, Kierkegaard and Havel were failures. Havel’s
petitions for freedom of expression were rejected by the authorities and his plays banned as subversive, and he spent years in
prison; while Kierkegaard’s final newspaper attack upon the state
church of Denmark aroused nothing but misunderstanding and
ridicule from the country’s leaders. Havel lived on to see many of
his dreams fulfilled and to receive international recognition, while
Kierkegaard survived for only a few months after that last press
campaign. Nonetheless, Denmark, Czech Republic, and Slovakia
would not be what they are today without the apparently Quixotic
efforts by these two men.
6. The Paradox of Christianity, without Martyrdom
“Watch your step when you go to the house of the Lord,” runs
the theme of one of the meditations in Christian Discourses.”55
This is the sort of warning Kierkegaard regularly issues in his religious writings.
53 SKS, 25: 438, NB 30:61 / Pap., XI 1 A 242 / JP, 6:6886.
54 Pap., XI 3 B 120 / COR, 535.
55 SKS, 10: 175-86 / CD, 167-75. This is the first of the discourses in the third part of
the book, the discourses that set out to “wound from behind.” Kierkegaard ’s original idea for this discourse was as follows: “Ecclesiastes 5: 1: ’Watch your step when
you go to the house of the Lord ’ could very well be used in a sermon as a contrast
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In many ways Kierkegaard’s warning fits well with the experiences of the Christian church in Central Europe during the past
sixty years. After the second world war, when the communist
regime derided the church and even proposed to eliminate
Christianity, the church prospered, even though its prospects
seemed grim. Priests, pastors, and their families were persecuted.
The KGB monitored who attended church, so that many people
were often afraid to join a visible church body. Many books have
been written by those who were tortured or who spent the best
part of their lives in uranium mines during that period because of
their beliefs. Through all of this, however, some people traveled
long distances to attend church services, and many others made
greater sacrifices than that. Often such services had to be held
secretly, but that merely caused their message to be heard more
clearly. What Kierkegaard calls “Christendom,” that is, officially
established Christianity, was virtually non-existent, whereas, despite the prohibitions on evangelism, true Christianity grew.
The fall of communism dramatically transformed the religious
scene in Central Europe. On the one hand, with the reestablishment of the traditional institutions of Christendom arose the potential for their abuse – for example, whenever religious chaplains
were appointed as quasi-state oficials, such as within the army, the
fire brigade, or the hospitals. On the other hand, the growing popularity of some of the so-called “free” churches increased the danger that people would join them simply because of the crowds.
More than a century earlier than Havel, Kierkegaard, when facing a similar situation, is skeptical of the prospects for either alternative for religious institutions, because neither alternative seems to
be altogether aboveboard about what it is doing. Like Havel,
Kierkegaard is suspicious of the power of slogans and of slippery
terminology to move popular opinion. Havel even deliberately
avoids such popular but worn-out words as “socialism” whenever
possible, in favor of a call to the individual to discover “a deeper
to the nondescript mode of preaching concerned primarily with getting people into
church. Take care when entering there. It is your responsibility if you don’t act
according to what is preached. And if the preaching is as it should be, you might perhaps get an impression that you can never live down, an impression of what God
requires of you – self-denial – therefore take care. SKS, 20: 198, NB 2:142 / Pap., VII
I 1 A 256 / JP, 1: 640 / CD, 379. Trans. from CD.
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sense of responsibility toward the world, which means responsibility to something higher than himself.”56 Similarly, Kierkegaard, finding his country in 1848 caught up in an ideological whirlpool, challenges the common catchwords “communism” and “pietism,” partly because in practice they tend to act as abstractions that distract
individuals from their particular individual and social tasks.57 That
may also be one reason why Kierkegaard in 1850 responds so negatively to the learned Andreas Gottlob Rudelbach (1792-1862),
when Rudelbach, after warmly praising him, publicly seeks to interpret Kierkegaard’s well-known criticism of the state church as
implicit support for Rudelbach’s own political view that church and
state ought to be legally separated with respect to civil marriage.
Kierkegaard sees Rudelbach’s proposal as creating a conceptual
muddle, a “disastrous confusion of politics and Christianity,” whose
public defense would only distract Kierkegaard from his prophetic
mission, which is to further “the inward deepening of Christianity in
myself and in others insofar as they are willing to be influenced.”58
When he is engaged in this distinctively Christian mission of
“inward deepening,” Kierkegaard finds he has to become doubly
paradoxical, using paradoxes that are not only “existential” but also
“absolute.” The distinction between these two kinds of paradoxes
is frequently misunderstood. As we discussed in an earlier section,59 Kierkegaard’s writing often features “existential paradoxes”
in order to leave personal decisions up to the individual readers.
An existential paradox is paradoxical only because, although a person can more or less understand what the absolute ideal is, one can
never come close to fulfilling it completely. Socrates, for example,
Kierkegaard calls a master of existential paradox, and no doubt, if
Havel had been born a century or so earlier, Kierkegaard might
56 Havel, Disturbing the Peace, 9-1; 11.
57 Pap., IX B 22 / BA, 236, “A Cycle...” The inclusion of the term “pietism” in this
critical way here is significant, because Kierkegaard often writes favorably about
pietism, and the particular tradition of pietism he refers to here, the Moravian
Brethren, is also a tradition in which he had been raised, along with his upbringing in the Danish state church. In this passage Kierkegaard need not, therefore, be
judging that either communism or pietism is mistaken as such, but only its doctrinaire form.
58 SKS, 14: 111-16; 112 / COR, 51-59; 53.
59 See esp. above, “Paradoxes and Prophecy.”
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have said the same about him60; but neither Socrates nor Havel
thinks he faces an absolute paradox.
According to Kierkegaard Christianity includes not only an existential paradox but also an absolute paradox: the paradox of the
incarnation. What makes the incarnation an “absolute” paradox is
that human beings, being finite, are not at all in a position to understand what it would mean for God to become a human being just
as they are.61 Such an absolute paradox might be regarded as an
adaptation of what Kundera’s novel proposes, when it argues that
human beings should learn true goodness from animals. The dog
Karenin has no comprehension of what Tomáš is doing when he
pretends to be a dog, nor the meaning of the words of comfort
Tereza utters later.62 Still, the dog trusts and loves both of them
without reservation and therefore rests confidently in hope.
Kundera sets up the relationship of this dog to its masters as a prototype for how human beings might relate to each other too. His
premise is that the true goods – trust, love, and hope – may be
found among such animals at least as well as among human beings,
who have superior intellectual powers. In Kierkegaard’s adaptation
of Kundera’s story, then, human beings would be cast in the role of
Karenin, lacking comprehension, while Christ, who is the designer
and sustainer of the universe, would take on the roles of Tomáš
and Tereza in order to show humans trust, love, and hope – except
that Christ would not merely pretend to be human but would
become human in every way, so that his words would also be
humanly intelligible. Human beings would be unable to understand how Christ could possibly become human (that would be an
absolute paradox to them); but, if Christ did become human for this
reason and also if Kundera’s premise is correct, their attitudes
toward Christ should still be trust, love, and hope.63
60
61
62
63
Cf. Havel, Disturbing the Peace, 181, 189.
SKS, 7: 189-99 / CUP, 1: 207-19.
Kundera, Lightness of Being, 300, 302.
Kierkegaard would not to dispute that models can be found also in the natural
world, if one views it rightly, and in fact he writes six sets of discourses on the theme
of what we can learn from the lilies of the field and the birds of the air. Still, as
Kierkegaard writes in “A Cycle...,” the absolute standard, the prototype, ultimately
has to come from above. “A Cycle of Ethical-Religious Essays.” Pap., IX B 8 (Oct. 8,
1848) / BA, 317.
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That the incarnation is an absolute paradox means that it sets up
an even more intense level of “existential” paradox than otherwise
(more intense than the kind we just looked at with respect to media
ethics, for example), since becoming a disciple of the incarnate Christ
demands a level of ethical commitment far beyond what universal
moral codes generally require. The standard, in fact, is far higher than
Christian preachers like to admit. In the draft for the 1848 “Cycle of
Ethical-Religious Essays,” for example, Kierkegaard concludes that
the only one who will be able to rule in this time of conflict is “the
divine... assisted by those unconditionally obedient to him, those who
are willing to suffer, but they are indeed the martyrs.”64
Furthermore, the existential paradox of becoming a disciple, to
the person who is the absolute paradox, Christ, may itself occur in
two different but related ways. One of them is mild, and the other
harsh. In the second section of Christian Discourses, for example,
he presents the mild view and the joy of discipleship, and that is also
what we presented in the second and fourth sections of this essay;
whereas in the third section of Christian Discourses, he “wounds
from behind” with the harsh cost of such discipleship, as we also
presented it in the first, third, and fifth sections of this paper.
The two forms of existential paradox start from different points
of view. On the one hand, Kierkegaard intends those readers who
begin from poverty of spirit, weighed down with despair over their
condition, to learn from the gospel message that the oppressive
societal standards that they have been using (the popular standard,
for example, that judges people merely according to their wealth
and material success) is not the true standard after all, so that his
text aims to bring them joy in their suffering. On the other hand,
those readers who have been comfortably relying on a false standard, or none at all, Kierkegaard reminds of the absolute moral
standard they have been trying to ignore or evade. The two kinds
of existential paradox are thus complementary, and both are
implicit whenever he uses either of them. If the discourses work as
they are intended to do, how the individual reader reacts to the
absolute paradox should be the decisive factor in determining
which sort of existential paradox emerges, not just the words in the
64 Pap., IX, B 20, p. 317 / BA, 235.
65 SKS, 10: 1 85-86; 186 / CD, 173-75; 175.
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text. Accordingly, for a given person, at a particular point in life,
reading a specific text may require only a slight change in the
moral and emotional attitude to transform either sort of existential
paradox into the other.
As an astute observer of human behavior, including his own,
Kierkegaard is well aware that the people who are poor in spirit may
still be as much in danger of slipping into the horrible sin of taking
God’s grace for granted as anyone else. Accordingly Kierkegaard
pays them extra attention and, in his sets of Christian discourses that
“wound from behind,” he addresses not just the person who has
committed some particularly flagrant public sin but the regular pewsitters. They may come to the church service smugly confident that
God will dole out consolation, forgetting that they, like all human
beings, have been guilty of the terrible sin of crucifying Christ.
“Watch your step,” he warns such listeners, since in the church you
will find the condemnation you and all the human race deserve.
Preachers, too, sin by sugar-coating the message, Kierkegaard thinks.
His advice to them is: “Use all the ability granted to you, ready for
every sacrifice and compliance in self-denial; use it to win people –
but woe to you if you leave out the terror.”65
Conclusion. If Kierkegaard came to prophesy to Central Europe
today, he would first be sure to check the stock markets, the bread
lines, the slick election posters and TV ads, and the sleezy tabloids.
He would find little to surprise him, little he had not seen already.
Last of all he would check out the churches, which had always been
his special concern. To them he might say the same thing as he said
before: “Watch your step when you go to the house of the Lord! ”
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Primož Repar
Choice and Decision: Kierkegaard's New Ethics
kierkegaard
332
The Question of Anxiety as the Source of Existence
What is it that makes Kierkegaard’s examination of anxiety vital
not only for the understanding of his thought but, more comprehensively – for the confrontation with contemporary thought, the
confrontation with idea in its modern sense? Kierkegaard is the
first to fully develop the idea of anxiety, clearing it of objectivity
and in this way making it less tangible to thought itself. By separating anxiety from fear of something, Kierkegaard returns anxiety to
itself and its specific dialectic of “fear of nothingness and freedom”.
This relation has to be seen within the scope of doubling, duality,
and ambiguity. Anxiety formulates itself in relation both to nothingness and transcendence, emptiness and fullness, and thus constitutes the existing individual as an authentically living being.
Defining thought can only arise from the dissatisfaction of the
existing individual with his experience, whose foundational
motive is the understanding of specific, i.e. concrete existential situation. Sartre confirms Kierkegaard’s conception by approaching
the problem of nothingness in the sense of juxtaposition between
the singular and universal; this creates a dialectical contradiction
which partakes in being.1 According to Sartre, nothingness is the
phenomenon of primordial anxiety but also of freedom. It is the
self-revealing aspect of anxiety that guarantees the authenticity of
the existence of the existing individual. The primary indebtedness
of existence to itself is therefore impossible without anxiety, which
brings forth this very existence as specific, unique, and singular;
and thus gives rise to thought of equal quality. Thinking turns itself
1 Cf. David K. Coe, Angst and Philosophy, University of Hawaii, 1981, p. 272.
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towards un-thematized, decentred, splintered and even discontinuous thought, thought which is paradoxical and contradictory, and
begins its questioning as the self-questioning of own conditions of
existence and their un-conditionality. – And it does so rationally.
Kierkegaard’s tri-partite definition of the existential situation as
being aesthetic, ethical and religious is well known. The aesthetic is
vital here, since its immediacy guarantees “substantial passion”, i.e.
a definite existential pathos that nourishes life, as well as literary and
philosophical expression. Each thought that attempts to express
something new, innovative and at the same time necessary, stems
from the critique of its own time, from an epochal break. The 19th
century is a time of transformation that subverted tradition: everyday life is suddenly left with no definite orientation. Insofar as it
begins to adapt to a flurry of trends it loses its autonomy and begins
to work in the name of outside interests, as subtle as these may be.
Identity thinking, which could be traced back to Parmenides
already, also transforms itself with the advent of modern,
Enlightenment thought. We are no longer speaking of an idea
shaped within a specific situation but rather by an autonomous subjectivity, an idea closed in terms of identity and methodology, perhaps even mechanistic. Rio Preisner2 sees this as the “marionette
principle”, which finds expression in the abstract “as if” and looks
back to the very beginnings of the “humanization of humanity”. This
results in a distorted identity. Preisner believes that the thought of a
mechanist, “marionette” person is simultaneous with the development of experimental sciences. In the eschatologically guided
experiment, there is a foundational shift from transcendence to
immanence, which makes even last things accessible to experiment.
Doubt, which is beyond doubt, thus creates a perfect mechanism:
“The gnoseological basis of the marionette principle was first conceived by Descartes. His thought arises from the worldview crisis of
the late Middle Ages and is marked by the dissolution of the previous
unity of mind and world, mind and matter, mind and body; it is
established against the backdrop of the loss of knowledge about the
unity of personhood and of the commitment to human understanding of the world of phenomena.”3 Descartes attempted to unite these
2 Rio Preisner, Člověk v loutku proměněný, Praha: Torst, 2003, p. 64.
3 Ibid., p.66
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antinomies but did so at the expense of the world. Pure mind was
once again turned into the abstraction of the doctrine of method.
Descartes is thus the originator of the modern antagonism between
“philosophy and sciences, since res extensa, the material world, now
became the domain of sciences, to which Descartes was necessarily
opposed. The dualism between philosophy and science now gives
rise to the hypocrisy of experiment.”4 The old, “created” human is
replaced by “an abstract model of a new, more elevated, spiritual and
infallible human.” The identity of thought and being within this context is not concerned with the thinking of things but merely of their
foundations. Cogito is consequently relevant to philosophy solely in
the sense of “the metaphysical security of the undeniable question.”5
It is no longer preoccupied with the dynamical category of the
unfolding phenomenon. To approach things in order to gradually
understand them and their meaning and also progressively reveal
the meaning of the world, was inconceivable to the impatient
Descartes. His impatient ontological rigidity which claimed, in spirit,
the a priori right to all world phenomena – before any experience –
necessarily led to premature intellectual absolutizations. This resulted in the questioning of the appearance of things. Something,
heretofore perceived through wonder, may no longer be present
and is merely seemingly present, delegated to the subconscious. The
world exists only through my representation, precisely as my representation. The culmination of this strain of thought is in the Hegelian
thinking of identity. “Pure spirit” is devoid of “anything sensuous”.
This is the point of contention for Schopenhauer, as well as
Nietzsche and Kierkegaard. They rebel against system, as well as
the exclusion of the sensuous from spiritual, or in other words,
from philosophical self-reflection. Schopenhauer, already, begins
by re-uniting notion and experience, he proceeds “from reality
itself, both exterior and interior, attempting to explain both as an
organic whole.”6 Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and Kierkegaard thus
emphasise the importance of sensuality, will, as well as representation, which can no longer be avoided but places special emphasis
on imagination by giving a central place to art.
4 Ibid., p.67
5 René Descartes, Razprava o metodi, Ljubljana: Slovenska matica, 1957, p. 60.
6 Cvetka Tóth, Med metafiziko in etiko, Ljubljana: Pomurska založba in ZI FF, 2002,
p. 26.
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Kierkegaard’s most extensive critique of his age is primarily literary or artistic. The aesthetical as sensuous is therefore also ethical. In
the most systematic of his “anti-systematic” works, Concluding
Unscientific Postscript to the Philosophical Fragments, Kierkegaard
goes a step further and confronts the collision between the imaginary and existential. Such collision delineates the problem of choice.
Collision is suspended as soon as there is choice. The indefinite,
open possibilities transform into the capacity for interpersonal communication, in which the solution is only gleaned through the dialogical process, which is never complete or finite. Thus artistic
expression is supremely important also in the philosophical sense –
as the development of a fabula that leads towards meaning.
In Nietzsche, also, the religious issue is propelled by the aesthetical one with a previously unseen intensity. Existential claims
are now in the open, subject to elements. Otherwise one loses not
only the sense of eternity, but also of the finite and earthly. Without
this all-encompassing dimension of human existence, it is impossible to evaluate human responsibility. Sartre, again, seems to be the
only one among his contemporaries that understood the ethical
possibility opened up by Kierkegaard. Namely, it is anxiety that
facilitates the conditions of action. Because of this “the phenomenon of anxiety reveals to us that each individual is the source of
their own values.”7 This is the foundation of Kierkegaard’s demand
for a philosophical practice, in other words, for ethics. Self-demand
is its foundation and not a mere propaganda slogan. The singularity and specificity of the existing individual call for a clear definition, not methodological but honest and existentially open. The
power of creation on the basis of configuration and reconfiguration of meaning allows for the expression of irreducible experience. Its direct medium is anxiety, the authenticity of experience.
2. Choice and Decision as the Movement of the
Epistemological Turn (from Identity to Otherness)
What does this turn entail? There are no finite truths or truth,
neither in the sense of metaphysical fullness of being nor in the
7 Jean Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, New New York: Pocket Books, p. 302.
8 Cf. Martin J. Matušik, Kierkegaard a existenciálna revolúcia, Bratislava: Kultúrni
život, y. XXV, no. 26, 1991, pp. 6–7.
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security of methodological doubt. While Cartesian doubt turned
from the being of the material world to absolute idea, in other
words, to abstract “disinterestedness” of notion, Kierkegaard’s
despair returns doubt to the authentic thinking of “last things”, i.e.
to the collision between the material and the spiritual world.
Kierkegaard aims his critique against abstract communicative theory and practice (and in this way against society that legitimised
such theory and practice). We should evaluate this critique within
the context of the revolutionary year 1848; Martin J Matušik8 recognizes it as being parallel to the critique of modernism and postmodernism in contemporary times, that is, after the year 1989 and
the fall of the Berlin Wall. Social conflict is grounded in the conflict
between absolutist forces and the spontaneous power of revolt.
Insofar as Descartes’ res cogitans is triumphant in the establishment of a supra-historical (but static) ideal society of “mind”, violence is being exerted over the social; this, in turn, strengthens
totalitarianism. Res extensa, the world, and the living individual
turn into an empty support of this “chimera”.9 But truth is hidden
within the existence of the existing person.
It is no coincidence that Kierkegaard was working on his manifesto of The Single Individual at the same time Marx was writing his
Communist Manifesto. Revolt, including social revolt, should not be
a mere surface revolt, not only exterior but also interior: it has to
express the totality of its existential collision. If not, tyranny is merely replaced by another terror, possibly even more terrible. Cartesian
gnoseology primarily attempted to “make indifferent and mechanise
the act of free will.”10 It is because of this that it insisted on the dualist, binary logic of oppositions, the division on “for” and “against”,
polarity and antithesis, good and evil, law and justice (nowadays
present in Levinas’ ethics of ethics). Faced with such choice, free will
has to renounce the wholeness of its inner drive towards existential
fulfilment – in case one can rightly consider this a choice.
It is often the case that most common matters, which seem barely worth the effort and are extraordinarily insignificant, are at the
same time the most difficult to realise. Questions which appear trivial but are based in existential experience drive to despair even the
9 Rio Preisner, Člověk v loutku proměněný, p. 69.
10 Ibid., p.71.
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most precisely formulated philosophy, since we do not know what
they are driving towards and have no appropriate tools to answer
them. An abyss opens before us and we are overcome by vertigo;
by something menacing, but also limitless and groundless, an inexplicable and inexpressible longing. Thought falls into despair. In it
an atopos of pathos comes forth which causes limitless passion, the
friction of the disharmony of collision, an intensity that effects a
different, intuitive relation towards truth. Such truth is always the
truth of seeking, always mercilessly open. Reason and practice are
part of the same dialectical relation.
The individual as a sensuous existence yearns, of course, but his
desire cannot sufficiently attract choice, since it is more a result of
momentary feeling that fluctuates constantly between one thing
and another and is therefore non-deliberating. Existential choice is
based on decision. There can be no resolution of collision until a
decision is made. In Either/Or, Kierkegaard thus writes: “The two
positions touched on here could be regarded as attempts to actualize an ethical life view. The reason that they do not succeed is that
the individual has chosen himself in his isolation or has chosen himself abstractly. To say it in other words, the individual has not chosen himself ethically. He therefore has no connection with actuality,
and when that is the case no ethical view can be put into practice.
But the person who chooses himself ethically chooses himself concretely as this specific individual, and he achieves this concretion
because this choice is identical with the repentance, which ratifies
the choice. The individual, then, becomes conscious as this specific
individual with these capacities, these inclinations, these drives,
these passions, influenced by this specific social milieu, as this specific product of a specific environment. But as he becomes aware of
all this, he takes upon himself responsibility for it all. He does not
hesitate over whether he will take this particular thing or not, for he
knows that if he does not do it something much more important
will be lost. In the moment of choice, he is in complete isolation, for
he withdraws from his social milieu, and yet at the same moment he
is in absolute continuity, for he chooses himself as a product. And
this choice is freedom’s choice in such a way that in choosing himself as product he can just as well be said to produce himself. At the
moment of choice, he is at the point of consummation, for his personality is consummating itself, and yet at the same moment he is at
337
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the very beginning, because he is choosing himself according to his
freedom. As a product he is squeezed into the forms of actuality; in
the choice he makes himself elastic, transforms everything exterior
into interiority. He has his place in the world; in freedom he himself
chooses his place – that is, he chooses this place. He is a specific
individual; in the choice he makes himself into specific individual:
namely, into the same one, because he chooses himself.”11
What does the choice of self as eternal meaning entail? Where
does the question of choice shift? Where is the turn? – Kierkegaard
devoted himself to these questions at the very outset of his philosophical engagement. His first extensive work, Either/Or, includes a
motto which speaks of the turn from “doubt” to “despair”, from
methodology to existential questioning, from the “cause and effect”
model to “substantial passion”. How does one keep passion, intensity of feeling, thought, and action alive within the ethical – the basic
concern of his philosophy – which is primarily a duty? How does
this dichotomy between the physical and the intellectual even allow
for the individual’s relation to theself, the world and others? That an
individual is a questioning being, for whom the capacity to question
is vital, falls short as an answer. No matter how great the role of anxiety in Kierkegaard’s thinking, his philosophy never accords to it the
status of architectonic priority (unlike, for instance, Sartre’s ontological phenomenology12), despite recognising, in On The Concept
of Anxiety, its potential as the capacity for freedom in a specific
existing individual. Anxiety is thus not the fear of being in the world
but the fear of one’s own self. The individual is afraid of throwing
himself “into the act of deliberate choice.”13 But why is anxiety primary, in other words, what is the difference between fear and anxiety? An individual understands a threatening or imminent situation
from the perspective of his intended actions. If the individual fails,
if he loses control over the situation, this will affect his self negatively, i.e. he will be subject to fear. There is no threat of repetition.
What threatens is therefore the transcendental. When faced with a
threatening situation, the existing individual usually questions himself about what needs to be done. By doing so, he enters into a
11 Søren Kierkegaard, Either/Or 2, Kierkegaard Writings, IV, Princeton, New Jersey:
Princenton University Press, 1990, p. 250–251.
12 Cf. Jean Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, pp. 33–85.
13 David K. Coe, Angst and Philosophy, University of Hawaii, 1981, p. 284.
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reflective relationship with his own self and is consequently immediately faced with dread. The gathering of this reflective moment
transforms fear into dread. The aesthetic, that which forms the individual directly as what he is, is always coextensive with anxiety;
when the existing individual chooses himself in his aloneness, he is
overcome by dread – anxiety finds itself in the vertigo of freedom,
in a liminal existential situation.14 At that point delay is no longer
possible, fear needs to be overcome by a choice of real possibility.
Before coming to a decision, one may seek temporary refuge from
fear in reflection, which is one of Kierkegaard’s maincomplaints
against philosophy. An individual develops his own capacities by
being a being of freedom. No-one and nothing can force him into
adopting a specific possibility as his capacity, not even encouragement, his background or upbringing. In this anthropological analysis, Kierkegaard employs the dialectic of openness and closedness,
an idea fully developed in the final part of On The Concept of
Anxiety. The self is always the becoming self, always a future task
conceived in a choice that has already been made. The individual
chooses the not yet existing, he opts for becoming.
It is difficult to maintain value as self-value, since this exposes
doctrines or theories not supported by action. The situation of
choosing entails a relentless persistence, a tolerance of all potential
failure. In case the choice does lead to failure, it brings inexpressible suffering. Authentic choice is beyond the interests of economy; self-interest is foreign to it. Interest, as we know, eventually
always fails. It is only this that allows for the suspension of ontoteleology, i.e. reasonableness as a priori security or even guarantee of
truth. The ethical is formed from the specific existence. Any guarantee of truth kills it instantly.
So what does the turn entail? A turn from identity to Otherness?
From self-referentiality to relation?
To open oneself to a relation constitutes choice. If this is an
authentic relation, it is a relation of otherness, transcendence. At the
core of humanity is this making of a decisive step with the highest
intensity of subjective passion, with the fullness of unconditional
responsibility.15 Our contemporary age is headed towards the loss
14 Expressed in Edvard Kocbek’s title of the collection of his stories: Fear and
Courage.
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of this inner decisiveness, resulting in non-choice, an amorphous
cycle of abstraction and automatism of doing. Impersonality, callousness, and irresponsibility are “deep sources of modern demoralisation”.16 Ethical living is differentiated from the aesthetic not by
“intellectual vigour” but “spiritual seriousness”. It is ethical that
“makes the choice a choice”.17 And “it is every human being’s duty
to become open”.18
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3. The Question of Despair as Existential
Communication
Despair is a state of woundedness in our existence. It points
towards our split, ambivalence, the loss of unity of existence. It
reveals a break that is a historical expression of the arising difference between the individual and universal. That which intervenes
into this break is the instant. Kierkegaard first thematizes the instant
within the concept of the sensuous. Speaking of specific figures of
the existing individual, two important characters come to mind:
Don Juan and Faust. Don Juan chooses moment or instant over and
over again, with anxiety always propelling him towards a new
moment: he represents the mechanistic repetition of the aesthetic
choice. Faust is Don Juan’s counterpart in the sphere of the mind.
He is interested in one moment only. Infinite passion, realised
beforehand through the succession of moments, now wishes to
extend a single instant over all others. Faust’s passion is the result of
reflection that despairs of the eternal (the structure of yearning),
however, at the same time wishing “to keep itself in this despair”.19
Under no condition does it want to open itself to another; it clings
to its aloneness. This is a form of anxiety about the good20, which is
characterised by this defiant insistence on closedness in oneself.
Anxiety brings forth strength which turns to despair.
Without the relation to the eternal, time cannot express reality.
Because Greek philosophy did not differentiate between knowl15 Søren Kierkegaard, SV 9, Samlede Værker, 3th ed., København: Gyldendal, 1991,
p. 291.
16 Søren Kierkegaard, SV 18, p. 107.
17 Søren Kierkegaard, Either/Or 2, p. 168.
18 Ibid., p. 322.
19Søren Kierkegaard, The Sickness Unto Death, Kierkegaard’s Writings, XIX, p. 67.
20 Søren Kierkegaard, The Concept of Anxiety, Kierkegaard’s Writings, VIII, pp. 113-137.
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edge and wanting and was immanently optimistic, the measuring
of time was a purely intellectual endeavour. With the introduction
of will, the measuring of time becomes an act of will. Change
always occurs in the instant of movement. The instant is therefore
the point of transition. Kierkegaard understands it as the state of
infinite oscillation which can move in any direction. An instant is
thus possibility entailed in freedom. A decision has to materialise,
become flesh, otherwise the moment of decision is not a choice
which could introduce the eternal as the task of completion; one
returns to a vulgar understanding of time. The eternal has to enter
existence as singularity, as the measure of time. This is not so much
a matter of choice, but has more to do with energy, seriousness and
pathos21 (existential pathos is everyman’s pathos – poor, human
pathos) with which the choice is made. It demands a decisive
stance of the whole interior of the living individual, which again
brings us to despair as theprimary existential state, since despair is
personality’s doubt. When an individual hides this doubt to conceal
his turmoil from another, he destroys personality and in this way
sacrifices himself, becoming inauthentic. He refuses to choose
unconditionally but “wants and remains to be proof against life,
alone in his misery, alone with his terrible protest.”22 He persists in
collision with himself and others. Freedom does not ensue, since
by choosing the unconditional, freedom overcomes collision. The
carefree existential callousness is replaced by preoccupation, by
worry which is not identity-related.
The idea of despair is the situation of singularity. The seeker’s
path towards the incarnation of self or aloneness is constantly
accompanied by despair. One could almost speak of despair as the
consciousness of one’s own spiritual conditionality, which is the
synthesis of the transitory and the eternal, a relation which relates
to itself. Aloneness is the demand of the innermost, spiritual quality: “The awareness of sin is unconditional aloneness.”23
In Being and Nothingness, Sartre defines anxiety, understood as
torment, as the reflective understanding of freedom itself, the inexplicable freedom which suddenly crosses the path of any given,
imaginary self-certainty. This is where we confront the infinite
21 Søren Kierkegaard, SV 10, p. 50
22 Søren Kierkegaard, The Sickness Unto Death, p. 71.
23 Søren Kierkegaard, Papirer XI, 2, A 14
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abyss, the horror of emptiness that opens above the chasm as we
make our fatal step. While acting, of course, we cannot be aware of
the real consequences of our action, reflection of action is subsequent to its doing. In front of us yawns a primordial chasm, which
Sartre24 names angoise. Without it we are deflected from the foundational and primary power of anxiety about the future. Ethical
pathos, however, is not a matter of words but actions. And yet we
come to a collision. – Without self-reflection of our actions and
their deepest metaphysical dimensions there can be neither ethics
nor utopia. The discussion of despair paradoxically transforms
itself into a discussion of encouragement and awakening. Without
smarting pain, without wound or hurt, there is no encouragement
or awakening. If we are troubled by bad consciousness and fail to
acknowledge this, things will end badly.
Perception of freedom, according to Sartre, is inextricably
bound with the specificity of our individual ontic selves, as if we
alone are in possession of metaphysical truth as metaphysical
value. The creation of truth produces an excess which is not anxiety but already despair, especially when this excess decides to cling
to truth (which, in truth, is ungraspable). – Let us further trace
Kierkegaard’s dialectic of despair.
The opposite of despair is faith. Faith is an existential communication, which makes existence paradoxical in each moment of
life25; it is the fall of immanence. Transcendence is the mark of irreducible otherness. The notion of “other” means something when
applied to a thing, to res extensa which gives meaning to the “reality of outside world.”26 We are faced with the incapacity of thematizing otherness in its concreteness (which makes it other in the
first place), with desire and wanting on (what is along) the trail of
the mysterious, inexplicable, inexpressible and incommensurate.
This something cannot be thought, we are notionally weak in the
face of reality. The notion of sinfulness describes givenness to the
world and is, as such, the delimitation of the individual in his specificity and a matter of ethics that runs counter to speculation. This is
where the human being comes to full expression as a tragic being.
24 Jean Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, p. 78.
25 Søren Kierkegaard, SV 10, p. 176.
26 Jacques Derrida, Násilí a metafyzika, Praha: AV ČR, 2002, p. 86.
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Even with feelings other than guilt, which is always singular, this
tragic collision is not exhausted, since wanting does not reside in
realisation but rather in will.
“When at times the noise of the struggling and laboring
thoughts, of the prodigious mental machinery you carry within
you, subsides, there come quiet moments that no doubt are at first
almost alarming because of their stillness but that also soon prove
to be truly refreshing.”27
Sartre describes the attempt to avoid and distance oneself from
anxiety as bad faith. He thus moves from ontology into ethics and
in this way, in Kierkegaard’s terms, belittles the ethical itself, as the
condition of the authenticity of the existing individual. For action
does not have an “action plan”, despite ethical action being “immediate action”. Responsibility for one’s own actions can never be convincing, i.e. subject to proof, since this would negate the plurality of
possibility.28 It can, however, represent the otherness of witnessing.
In order to let it speak, we must keep silent.
If the ontological source of traditional, normative ethics lies in the
strictures of metaphysics, then the ontological source of this, other
ethics is, as stated in the preface to On the Concept of Anxiety, in dogmatics, i.e. in the doctrine of religious reality. Philosophy has failed;
it is time to turn to theology.
The religious thought of this new ethics is part of what
Kierkegaard terms the vertigo or confusion of freedom. Paul Tillich
mirrors this idea in his belief that every meeting with a new person
is creation; creation in the sense of an anxious making that deepens despair. The consciousness of sin gives rise to anxiety all over
again. It is present in all authentic relation. This anxiousness is the
horror, the enormity of freedom. The concept of anxiety is such a
Non-System! It reaches into dimensions that are unconcerned with
28 In his essay, Existentialism Is Humanism, Sartre sees the choosing indvidual as
the one who confers meaning onto choice, which presupposes a plurality of possibilities. According to Nietzsche, also, the individual is self-value, whereas at this
point Kierkegaard introduces transcendence, where fredoom surpasses the “justness of possibilities”. (Cf. Jean Paul Sartre, Izbrani filozofski spisi, Ljubljana:
Cankarjeva založba, 1968)
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4. The Ontological Dimension of the Ethical
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the systematic thinking of totality. According to Tillich29, the ontology of anxiety is evident in its self-revelation. Both thinkers were
influenced by Schelling, who delineates the antinomy between philosophy and religion. The power of collision comes forth as the
will of self-contradiction. This power of formal freedom constitutes
a decisive metaphysical principle that can overcome antinomies.
That which is decisive is the ultimate, last thought, simultaneously
the most elemental and the highest thought, elevated into being
primordial, in other words – an inexpressible contradiction.
“Schelling, according to Tillich, saw the abyss opening perilously
before man, but averted his eyes from the terrifying view.
Kierkegaard looked into it fearlessly.”30
However, to complete one’s task, the philosopher needs to develop both existential passion as well as mental power. The philosopher’s ultimate concern or task is to uncover the structure of reality
as a whole, while the theologian seeks the meaning of a historical
event. The ecstatic mind supersedes ontological or technical reason.
Because the existential is as old as human self-questioning, it also
gives expression to ultimate notions not found in philosophy.
Ontology places the human into too eminent a position, since it is
the questioning of the finitude of existence which brings us to the
question of God.31
Anxiety is part of the structure of finality, in which the existing
individual is fundamentally temporally ecstatic, so that he can never
overcome anxiety; however, his action can overcome fear as the
inner apprehension of human exterior finality. Tillich therefore
speaks about the unity of being and non-being, anxiety and courage.
In The Courage To Be, we are witnessing a shift from ontology to
ethics. The expressions of anxiety are united in the ethical and ontological. Tillich’s definition of anxiety moves from human consciousness of finality to human consciousness of possible non-being,
experienced in his finality. Tillich says: “The first assertion about
the nature of anxiety is this: anxiety is the state in which a being is
aware of its possible nonbeing. The same statement, in a shorter
form, would read: anxiety is the existential awareness of nonbeing.
’Existential’ in this sentence means that it is not the abstract know29 Cf. David K. Coe, Angst and Philosophy, p. 330.
30 Bernard Martin, The Existencialist Theology of Paul Tillich, New York, 1963, p. 18.
31 Cf. David K. Coe, Angst and Philosophy, p. 330.
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ledge of nonbeing which produces anxiety but the awareness that
nonbeing is a part of one’s own being.”32
Anxiety is finality experienced as finality. When experienced as
threat in the absolute sense, it nears the final anxiety, known to us as
despair.33 This is the anxiety of non-being, the consciousness of
finality as finality, which appears on the face of death as an “absolute
threat” to human “self-affirmation”.34 In On the Concept of Anxiety,
Kierkegaard welcomes the mystery of the voice of transcendence
and in this way also tries to release himself from the matrix of
Cartesian cogito. The philosophical source of ethics can only follow
the specific, personal, and singular; it is only this that makes the task
of ethics universally binding. And Tillich claims: “Courage resists
despair by taking anxiety into itself.”35 The ethical is thus always
properly positioned when the existing individual expects everything
from oneself instead of the place where he finds himself. This is his
only inner certainty.
345
The irreducible contradiction of a lived life should not be obfuscated. Even more: it needs to maintain its mystery. Once left to
mediation, the irreducible mystery of ignorant knowledge is
destroyed by knowledge.36 The incisiveness of Kierkegaard’s
thought is evident especially on the aesthetic level, i.e. in the realm
of the sensuous. It is here that an individual can be identified as
what he is. On the level of corporeality, Merleau-Ponty’s dialectical
conceptions are comparable to Kierkegaard’s, especially in the
notion of the other being born through doubling37, in the sense of
self-identification of existence with what we “think and speak”.38
Kierkegaard’s definition of irony as the path of negativity that
already entails positivity speaks precisely about the slipperiness,
32 Paul Tillich, The Courage to be, New Haven and London: Yale University Press,
1952, p. 35.
Cf. Ibid., pp. 38–41.
Ibid., p. 43.
Ibid., p. 66
Cf. John D. Caputo, The more radical hermenevtics.
Cf. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Vidno in nevidno, Ljubljana: Nova revija, 2000, p. 54.
Nelly Vuallaneix, Kierkegaard, poet eksistence: zakon Gjentagelse, Ljubljana:
Apokalipsa, no. 26-27-28, 1999, p. 250.
33
34
35
36
37
38
5. Conception of a New Ethics
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the dialectical movement of thought that cannot be stopped, fixed,
deadened or destroyed. Irony as a method is, of course, a matter of
distance towards closeness; it is what Kierkegaard calls indirect,
convoluted communication. This allows for an ambiguous dynamic which can perceive a thing through two contradictions.
In thinking about creation or becoming, logic and its dialectical
method are of no help. A different dialectic is needed: a qualitative
dialectic of a leap: from non-being to being. We suddenly find ourselves in the sphere of religious as the new ethics.
Indecisiveness and principled openness allow us to confront that
which is unthinkable but what arises on the lonely path of “untraveled aspects of generalised notions and everyday metaphors”. The
sudden, not fully thought out leap of imagination leads us to the confrontation of thought with the impossible, the mimetic re-enactment
of “the torment of Abraham’s trial”.39 Through configuration and refiguration we become witness to a Biblical event; the remainder of
inexpressibility is given to thought. Epistemological tools are lacking, insufficient, and inappropriate. The re-creation of knowledge is
only possible through the ethical act that confronts us paradoxically
with the paradigmatic exile from the episteme. Why? – The split
between absolute and general fidelity is incommensurable, it is
asymmetrical. This is what Kierkegaard’s Abraham talks about (or
rather, what he is silent about – the writer speaks to the reader for
him). By relating to the Other in his specificity, I remove myself from
someone else and thereby hurt and smart him. This is inexplicable, a
chasm of identity that because of this very lack allows for the voice
of Other to call to you. A choice is always a choice of otherness. It is
an existential paradox that gives rise to the problem of the divesting
of the self. Namely, the change in paradigm represents an exile from
the epistemological paradigm. The collision between metaphysics
and ontology and theology on the other hand, is brought to the very
limit, since there is nothing in metaphysics that would correspond to
it; there is no secure authority able of supporting us. It is encouraging that this collision is revealed to us under question, not hidden by
closure. The figure of Abraham reveals this aspect. Dialectic balance
and carelessness are suspended as something which cannot be con39 Dorota Glowacka, Sacrificing the Text: The philosopher/poet at Mount Moriah,
p. 6.
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fronted by thought. The closure of fabula is the closure of the emerging collision which is facilitated precisely by fabula, understood here
as “the simultaneous thinking of opposites”.40
The opposite is manifested in the other through a qualitative
leap, an absolute change in being which pushes me from home into
exile. As witness to the secret which binds me to the Other, however, I have to keep silent, since it is the inexplicable mystery that
points toward the inexpressible. Ethics is a question of mystery,
according to Derrida.41 The figure of the “knight of faith” expresses
the singularity of anxiety. It is a surprising touch, which is both paradoxical and terrifying, since one is sworn to infinite responsibility,
to silence and secret.42 This is accompanied by the experience of
misunderstanding and intolerance, in other words, disdain for my
homelessness. Levinas recognises in these feelings of uprootedness
and peril extreme egotism and isolation. But this is precisely the
abjection of the existing individual who cannot bear witness, which
is the tragedy of secret and pain. If he were to speak, to bear witness, the collision would be gone, no longer “a thorn in his side”.
Faith is not the corollary of strong will, since the act of self-transcendence is heteronomous in relation to an outside entity.43
Levinas and Kierkegaard do meet on this issue, since my duty
towards the other is never complete, for I can never do enough for
the other. In this way the leap of faith is never concluded.
The paradox of new ethics is an impossible collision: the ambiguity of duty confronted with universal and unconditional ethics.
The moment of choice always requires self-renunciation. Sacrifice to
the other breaks the economy of the autonomy and self-legitimacy of
the subject. In this sense absolute duty involves a species of gift or
sacrifice which functions beyond debt and duty, beyond duty as
debt.44 In Kierkegaard’s story Abraham is faced with the absolute
contradiction of his feelings; absolute duty demands the betrayal of
everything revealed as universal in reality because of the singular call
40 This shows a closeness with Ricouer’s elliptical passage of time. Cf. Primož Repar,
Kierkegaard – Existential Communication (Kierkegaard – Eksistencialna komunikacija, Ljubljana, Društvo Apokalipsa, 2009).
41 Dorota Glowacka, Sacrificing the Text: The philosopher/poet at Mount Moriah,
www.mun.ca, p. 2.
42 Cf. Jacques Derrida, The Gift of Death, The University of Chicago Press, 1995, pp.
60, 62.
43 Dorota Glowacka, Sacrificing the Text: The philosopher/poet at Mount Moriah, p. 4.
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of the other, for whom I take responsibility in my absolute singularity. The aporia of responsibility lies in the paradox that the ethical
also calls for irresponsibility. There is no higher authority;45 my
responsibility is for and towards the other. The conception of this
new ethics is paradoxical in its persistence in the most common and
daily experience of responsibility.
The precondition of exile is nomadism that leaves everything
behind. Exile is an exile from the episteme. The ethical decision is
expressed in the paradoxical relation to knowledge that the existing
individual wishes to leave behind in exile: “The ethical teaches him
that the relationship is the absolute. The relationship is, namely, the
universal.”46 Nomadism precludes objectification of experience and
consequently protects the authenticity of the other. The solution to a
relation shows itself in “giving space for the other to speak”.47
The last thing speaks of righteousness and right and proves
them both wrong. Kierkegaard connects this idea to the absolute
otherness of Transcendence. The first outline of this idea can be
found in the final part of the first masterpiece in Kierkegaard’s
opus, Either/Or, where he warns us that the idea of being wrong
before God is an encouraging idea. It is encouraging that we are
wrong, it is encouraging that this is always so. The power of this
idea comes through in a double manner; partly by constraining
doubt and alleviating the worry of doubt; partly by motivating us
into active expression, to concrete action, which is fundamental to
the ethical that springs from existential choice leading to decision.
The ethical attitude of the existing individual maintains difference,
space unsullied by the abstract instant of mediation; it moves in
dynamic existential terms and inexplicable moments of ignorance. As
the Bible says: “I am a foreigner and stranger among you.”48
Translated by Iva Jevtić
44 Cf. Jacques Derrida, The Gift of Death, The university of Chicago Press, 1995, p. 63.
45 “That is, duty is not something laid upon but something that lies upon.”(Søren
Kierkegaard, Either/Or 2, p. 254.)
47 Cf. Gabriel Marcel, in: Živeči Kierkegaard, Ljubljana: Društvo Apokalipsa, 1999, p. 61.
48 Gen 23:4.
07_165-166-167_essay_ENG_4_uvodnik
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Reasons for Poetry
Almost every poetry book whose author is not a Nobel
Prize winner or celebrity is published with financial support from the outside since poetry book sales never cover
publishing costs. Print runs are very small: 300-500 copies,
sometimes up to 1000, and the number of readers for each
book is probably not much greater. Such print runs do not
create enough revenue to support poets and the situation
is more or less the same in all countries despite their markets’ differing sizes. Reading poetry is not easy entertainment; it requires effort and concentration, and the audiences are therefore small.
So what are the reasons for poetry, how and why does it
survive in the contemporary world? Why is poetry published in books, literary magazines, and even newspapers?
Why are poets invited to give readings and sometimes receive quite substantial fees? Any answers to these questions
would be inadequate because the notion of “poetry” includes different ways of expression – from ancient texts to contemporary writing from across the world and in many
forms. Almost all of us have our own idea of what “poetry”
is and these ideas are sometimes different even among
poets in the same language community and generation.
Poetry continues to exist for many different reasons,
when we consider its origin and when we concentrate on
the writings of our day. It has become an aesthetic object,
or just a special act of communication, or something similar, but in ancient times it must have been something
quite different. Let’s imagine what its beginning may have
been, and what early reasons for poetry may still be relevant for us now.
349
essay
essay
Kornelijus Platelis
essay • kornelijus platelis
350
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Imagine wandering around the dark (i.e. without evidence of
written language) history of tribal communities whose contemporary – but I dare think – analogous cultures were researched and
described by a team of renowned anthropologists in the 19th and
20th centuries. We might ask how tribal communities of recent
times can be similar to, let’s say, Sumerian communities before they
built cities and invented writing? The difference might be the same,
I suppose, as between a tribal community and contemporary society. I do not think, however, that tribes inhabiting territories of later
Egypt or Mesopotamia were using poetry in a different way. Poetry
for them was not an object of aesthetics or at least made of language alone as it is for us, yet it had to affect audiences the same way.
On one hand its function was utilitarian, on the other – magical or
even mystical.
Therefore I agree with those who relate the origins of poetry as
well the other arts with ritual. Field work by anthropologists show
that rituals were performed not for entertainment or play but to
organize the inner life of a tribe, harmonize it with the powers of
nature, and try to protect it from such destructive forces as thunderstorms, fires, floods and epidemics to ensure good luck in hunting, war, etc. The moment a tribe starting using language, even as
individual words in its rituals, we might consider the beginning of
poetry. This kind of poetry was not aimed at giving aesthetic satisfaction or entertainment; rather it was imagined as powerful
enough to make an impact on the forces that regulated the inner
and outer life of the tribe and the world in general. It had to be
powerful enough to make an impact on people; otherwise how
could they know that their ritual language was powerful at all? In
this way, pronounced texts or various sounds were organized in
some special way, mainly by the use of rhythm. Texts that accompanied rituals – from separate whoops through magic formulas –
transformed into songs with very sophisticated sets of meaning.
Poetry, from its very beginning, was concerned with oral performance and, in a certain sense, with music.
Narrative poetry is younger since it requires more elaborate language. The reason for such narrative poetry was mostly educational.
Almost all ancient and contemporary tribes have initiation rites that
convey the tribe’s knowledge to the younger generation and build
their identity. It is easier to remember or be affected by a rhythmi-
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cal text, so those stories developed rhythmical order. The rhythm
itself very possibly came from ritual since the stories of a tribe were
not only told but also performed. No doubt all kinds of art related
to performed language and sound – literature, music, theatre – derived from such rituals. Over time, rituals became more and more
complicated and concentrated with meaning. Their performers had
to develop many special skills and became professional poets, musicians, dancers, and actors. Gradually, their abilities acquired canonic
forms recognized as aesthetically valuable. Artistic values started to
overshadow the intention of performance. Rites became performances with a good deal of entertainment built in.
Of course an element of play was there from the very beginning.
Rituals were modeled on nature and social life. They were composed using the same principles that works of art rely on in our time
such as the principle of imitation or mimesis as the Ancient Greeks
called it. (Aristoteles ascribed poetry as mimetic arts in his Poetics.)
The only difference may be that mimesis of our ancestors was not
only playful but also magical. It was not only supposed to imitate
but also to influence the world in a sympathetic magical way as well.
Our ancestors were more pragmatic in their arts. Only after several
thousands of years did we forget the original purpose of artistic
expression and begin to view aesthetic perception as a completely
neutral activity.
All these ideas are perhaps only assumptions. The oldest poetical
texts that reached us in written form were created in 3000 B.C. in the
Early Kingdom of Egypt and the Sumerian State. We can find traces
of rituals in the so-called texts of the pyramids or clay tablets with
cuneiform characters but both are texts of quite developed civilizations with quite a variety of reasons for poetry. Therefore, our
attempts to prove the ritualistic theory with their help would not be
reliable enough. Texts conveyed orally from generation to generation existed in all times and still exist in some cultures of the contemporary world (even quite sophisticated ones like Vedic), but no
one can say how old they are since singers and storytellers in the
best sense can point only to their great-grandparents as a source of
their knowledge.
Can these imaginings help us understand something more in
contemporary poetry? Does contemporary poetry preserve any
rudiments of ancient rites and intentions that influence reality? I
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would answer yes, in some sense as that aspect of poetry still
engaged in essential questions of our existence and consciousness. It is very difficult to define what poetry is, as stated in the
beginning. Something always slips through the borders of our
definition. For me, in a broad sense poetry is the eye-blink of conception where senses, reason and emotion meet. So it can dwell
not only in spoken or written words but also in a special way of
perceiving the world.
We can say that all kinds of conceptions are accompanied by
emotion, and that even the conceptions of mathematical formulas
are emotional. Indeed they are, and a very large part of contemporary Western poetry is based on the quiet emotion of intellectual
perception. Some poets consider emotionally strong poetry as
something unfashionable, even barbaric. I do not share this attitude.
I do not like sentimentality, but for me it is not enough to understand what was meant by an author of a poem. I have to feel it, be
struck by it. On the other hand, emotions are very subjective phenomena and it is difficult to talk about them as if they were experienced in the same way by everyone.
At least five thousand years have passed since the period of the
first written texts. What has changed? Almost nothing if we talk
about the poetry of developed societies. The world is not synchronic, it is multi-diachronic. Its parts are developing at very different speeds, if “development” is the right word at all. We can talk
about changes in social order that determine changes of mentality. Tribal communities changed into societies of individuals. It is
easier to notice how this process of change was reflected in religion. Starting in 8000 BC and ending in 6000 BC a number of mythical or semi-mythical religious teachers came to preach and became founders of new religions: Krishna, Zarathusthra, Mani,
Brahmans, Buddha, Laozi, Jesus Christ, and Mahomet. Their common message was that not (or not only) a community but an individual can have a relationship with God, Dharma, Tao, etc. We
have individual souls, individual responsibilities, and follow our
own way in this and in all other worlds. Of course, we can find
societies of individuals with personal responsibility in some
ancient cultures like Egypt and Greece. But overall these teachings
reflected an enormous change in human consciousness. Even if
such understanding of the human’s place in the world was practi-
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ced somewhere before or if the changes appeared because tribes
were replaced by societies, we can say that these teachers gave
religious legitimacy to the individual.
I felt this difference in mentalities very vividly some years ago in
Senegal talking with a local animist. He told me, through an interpreter that a man can live only in a community because a community owns his soul and he has a soul only as a member of that community. If he is expelled from the community he is dead even if he
is moving on; he is like a walking corpse. I am not an anthropologist, and maybe this story was told to me as a tourist, but I believe
that such an attitude exists or existed there not long ago.
Changes in mentalities were reflected in all fields of human activity, including poetry and the other arts. Poetry became independent
of public rituals and religion. New reasons for its its continued existence appeared: to express feelings about family, nature, one’s
homeland or one’s beloved in order to gain favor; to sing the deeds
of kings and noblemen for payment in one way or another; to
express longing for freedom in times of oppression; to assert one’s
individuality to feel more significant in society. All such reasons have
nothing to do with poetry itself, athough they always work in conscious or subconscious ways and often motivate writing. And only a
true poet knows the value of words and wisdom. Approximately
four thousand years ago Ptahotep, a city governor and vizier in the
Early Middle Kingdom gave some instructions to his son:
Do not be arrogant because of your knowledge, but confer with
the ignorant man as with the learned, for the limit of skills has not
been attained, and there is no craftsman who has (fully) acquired
his mastery.
Good speech is more hidden than malachite, yet it is found in the
possession of women slaves at the millstones.
Dante Alighieri, one of the greatest poets of the Western world,
provides a different example of a complex reason for poetry. His
Divine Comedy, a synthesis of the heights of artistic imagination and
seamless language, is also an attempt to reckon with his contemporaries. Another example might be given by monks of different religions who sometimes burn the poems they’ve written in order not
to attach to them spiritually. This often happens among Zen monks.
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The latter example hints that not just the poetical text but the
very process of creation is important for a poet. It is a type of spiritual activity that helps put the inner and perhaps external life into
some order. Therefore, we can say that the process of creation is a
kind of ritual supposed to satisfy certain existential needs of the performer. And the ritual is no longer communal but personal. I dare
say that only poems created in this way are truly important because
they are more than maxims or the result of leisure activity. Only they
can grant to a reader the possibility of performing one’s own ritual
through the act of creating the poem.
It would be too speculative to talk about psychological processes
involved in the creation process. Educated as an engineer, I like to
say that a poem is a certain structure that changes energy. It is a
transformer, not a generator. It transforms the energy of emotions
and thought, first of the poet who creates its structure and checks it
by reading it himself, and then the reader who invests his energy
into the structure that transforms it into energy of a different quality that we recognize as higher, brighter and more harmonious.
Perhaps this is the main reason for poetry, the main reason for both
writer and reader to choose this kind of activity.
I believe that all critics who evaluate poems perceive them first
on an emotional, subconscious level. First they feel if a text is
giving off energy, and only then do they try to explain in other
words the impression the poem has made on them. There is no
other way. All methods of criticism are only the ways of wording.
They do not help us evaluate if a particular poem is good or bad.
A very average poet who has read a book about, let’s say, semiotics, can write a poor poem that might be a perfect text for extended semiotic analysis made by one who does not feel poetry at all.
On the other hand, sometimes one can deviate from this and write
a very good poem.
In the beginning, only poetry was recognized as “real” literature.
Prose texts may have been written as well, but they were regarded
as mere information (including religious) or as accounts of certain
events which did not require special skills or something that belonged only to the art of rhetoric. All famous epics like Gilgamesh,
Mahabharata, Iliad, and Odyssey, even up to medieval European
works, were composed in verse. Poetic texts were arranged according to metrical schemes including syllabo-tonic or the number of
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syllables or stressed syllables in lines. This organization of language
became the most distinctive feature between poetry and prose. Due
to vers libre practiced by many poets all over the world the distinction became more blurred, but we can still notice differences of
rhythm between poetry and prose as well as greater density and
fragmentation in poetry. Also poetry is more related to sound, spoken word and performance.
Once in Tokyo I noticed that Japanese poets read haiku in the
same way as Westerners read their poems. But if Japanese poets
read their poems written in a Western manner they feel that they
need some musical accompaniment. I’ve seen different kinds of
musical accompaniment and was accompanied myself by a jazz
pianist (which was not bad at all). I asked one haiku poet: why do
they behave like that; do they feel that there is not enough “poetry”
in Western style texts? He said, yes. Both of us agreed that the answer is not so simple. As far as I imagine, the tradition of singing
poems is very old and deep in Japan. Texts of Manyoshiu were for
singing, not for reciting. We can find all the old poetic metrics in
these texts. Haiku is much younger and too short for singing. If you
asked where I would put haiku in my ritualistic-narrative or in
other words lyric-epic scheme, I would say that it would be a narrative, with the only peculiarity being that haiku is not telling a
story but picturing it. It is like a piece of a graphic art or photography that captures streaming reality into a solid image, sometimes a very rich one. Therefore haiku appears also in the form of
haiga from its very beginning. Imagination is always the goal of a
narrative and telling is picturing. A storyteller tries to convey a certain sequence of images with the help of language that in itself has
not any image-making means. All such means are only in the consciousness or imagination of the listener. It would be a long story
as to how images of a storyteller and listener correspond but here,
in this process of re-imagination is the main value of literature, its
irreplaceability by any other media.
Therefore the main reason for poetry to appear in this world: as
an inner ritual that continues to guide the writer’s hand who seeks
to express his feelings in order to master them, and to acquire inner
balance; only then does the poet share them with the reader. The
same may be said of poems that aim to affect someone else, let’s say
the poet’s beloved or patron, but first poems must arise from the
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poet’s inner imperatives and from real feelings. The same may be
said of witty, easy, humorous play with language and ideas. Such
poetry is also related to the flow of consciousness, to the happy
playfulness of the mind.
I am certainly not the first to draw attention to the fact that the
majority of our cultural events – opera, drama performances, music
concerts, exhibitions, parades, various art festivals – preserve traces
of religious ceremonies. Poetry with its readings and festivals is no
exception. If even we assume that a poet’s wish to take part in such
rites come from the desire to become important in a society I believe that the habits of religious behavior echoing from the subconscious still stimulate our writing and performing.
Sometimes poetry – or, better, verse – is written for therapeutic
or social reasons in psychiatric hospitals, prisons, nursing homes,
and other similar settings. We do not take such texts as seriously
because “poetry” itself is not the main aim of these writers. Poetry is
used, in this case, as a tool for psychological health or socialization.
It may not be appropriate to talk about such texts or to publish
them, but I want to draw attention to the fact that, in all these cases,
the ritualistic quality of poetry is still employed. Like our remote
ancestors, these writers perform poetic rituals in order to reconcile
themselves to the world and their own thoughts.
Both intentions of writing and stylistics of poetry are thus interlaced like the Gordian Knot in the contemporary world, and I
would not like neither to cut nor to untangle it here. Lyricists tell
stories; narrative poets use lyric means to affect an audience. The
basic stories of tribes and nations have been told countless times
already, and we are left to tell only personal stories and to imagine our own inner landscapes, although the rudiments of ritual are
still imbedded in our collective memory proposing “new” intentions of writing and stylistics. Poetry of direct impact comes back
with the slam and the rap, and performing authors often addresses
audiences as limited in size as those ancient tribes. Society’s rituals
remain communal.
I previously mentioned other reasons for poetry: to express
feelings about family, nature, one’s homeland or one’s beloved in
order to gain favor, to celebrate the deeds of kings and noblemen
in order to get paid in one or another way, to express a longing for
freedom in times of oppression, to assert one’s individuality in
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order to feel more significant in society. All these were and still are
very important for millions of poetry writers and readers, but they
are derivative in my opinion and nothing more than attempts to
use poetry for different purposes in private and social life. I do not
want to say that all these attempts are wrong and that poetry cannot pursue any aims except those prescribed by me. I only want to
say that we have to make a distinction between the primary and
secondary reasons.
Beyong private secondary reasons there can be those created by
a political system. I was born in Lithuania and spent some forty
years of my life under the Soviet regime. During those years we all
lived in a closed zone, large but closed. People had no possibility of
having their own businesses; traveling abroad (if they were not
communist leaders); reading foreign books; watching TV, however
banal or entertaining, except for the boring propaganda television
of that time; or reading foreign newspapers and magazines (preInternet). Our only alternative was consuming the local arts (foreign
were not available) or spending time in nature. Therefore, literature
and the arts were very popular. Poetry was the freest form of literature because of its use of symbolic language like metaphor, metonymy, and other figurative elements. It was not like that from the
beginning of the Soviet occupation. It took long years of fighting
against censorship, but we managed to overcome it at the beginning of the eighties. In the fifties, sixties and seventies, our poets
were fighting for freedom of poetic form, not for freedom of ideas.
Fighters for freedom of expression and human rights were taken to
prison immediately.
Poetry always means more to societies in precarious historical
circumstances due to its concern for particular expression of complex feelings, ideals, forbidden ideas, and society’s memories and
thoughts. We were living during the occupation in the same sort of
political situation as that of the East European Romantics of the 19th
century: occupation by a foreign power, censorship, collaborators,
and resistance. So our poetry took on this additional meaning, this
additional burden, although it wasn’t Romantic in style. In a certain
sense, poetry had to speak, in its special way, for history, philosophy, sociology, and for literature in general. Poetry books, especially
those that paid no tribute to the regime, were sold in enormous
print runs. Their print runs could have been even larger, but the aut-
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horities set limits. I felt then that poetry gained such popularity not
because of its aesthetic value but because of this additional burden,
for the goods it was smuggling through the censors. And society
was waiting for our smuggled goods. My first book, for example,
appeared in 5000 copies and was sold immediately (books were
very cheap at that time). In contrast, my latest book had a printing
of 500 copies, and it has been on sale for three years already. It is
hard to believe that my writing has become ten times worse… Now,
people are free to do what they want, and they can read all the political stuff they want in daily newspapers. They no longer live in a
closed zone with just our poetry books, and they are very busy. I
consider this as a good thing, maybe not very pleasant for a writer,
especially if he considers the secondary reasons for poetry as the
primary one, but a good thing nonetheless. Our print runs have
diminished by ten fold. Some our poets who believed that they
were important to society because of their texts and not because of
the political system hated by them, by the way, were shocked when
their audience shrank so quickly after the country regained independence. Of course, market world is too noisy, too busy, and too
banal on its surface. I feel some lack of an ear for poetry in this
advertising noise. But we are free to choose what kind of life and
culture we want. This is how the secondary reasons can make
poetry very important in a society. I will not go on with the story
how symbolic communication becomes illusory in a censored
society and what a handy tool is made from it by public relations
people after censorship is gone. I want only to say that such importance of poetry not always deserves our admiration exclusively.
Therefore it is better to leave it alone and not to load it with the burden of secondary reasons.
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Where Do People Go?
Reflection on Vaclav Havel’s Leaving
When in Prague I enjoy drinking a draftpint of Pilsen
beer and listening to the organ music drifting through the
pub like incense from the gothic arches of St. Maryat the
Snow next door. Václav Havel’s Leaving expresses in a
humorously earnest tone this intrinsic relationship between art, life, politics and philosophy in Czech culture.
The church, the pub and the theater are interchangeably
essential to the Czech community.
Havel’s play tells the story of a politician who, having failed in the reform movements of Central and East Europe,
becomes powerful in a Kafkaesque self-ironic way. The
play wright-dissident becomes an absurdist actor writing
himself seriously into political life; he becomes a politician
acting in real – politics and directing his own life drama.
Nobody can be in control in this fashion, and so Havel fails
to achieve his political aims.
The play’s “villain” chancellor, Klein – successor to the
Havel-figure Rieger – dreams of a shopping mall and a brothel in place of a cherry orchard. After 1989, across the walkway from my favorite pub and St.Mary’s, new shops and a
two-story erotic salon joined the sacred agora.
Havel’s message is both singular and universal: We
have our comings, our goings, our being and our dying;
we are in part witnesses, actors, playwrights, ex-activists
and individuals.
Synagogue, Church, Pub
Czech theater has often been compared to a threatened
synagogue or black church community in the American
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South during the Civil Rights movement: The synagogue empowers
the persecuted; the black church worship harnesses a protest movement, and the Czech theater and pub foster human solidarity and
community renewal.
Havel wrote for, acted in, but most of all lived in such places and
times. His stage was like his lab but also the reality of a historical
and future present.
The absurdist stage of Leaving, as we already learned in Plato’s
Republic, is the psyche scripted in large letters. Havel’s trajectory
runs from the nonpolitical dissident-power of the powerless to the
disappointed (velvet) revolutionary power, to the Kafkaesque (not
very Platonic) power of a philosopher-poet-president, to the homeless power of an evicted global utopian thinker.
Havel once worked as a stagehand and prompter, but he became known as an existential thinker, author, choreographer, and
prompter of political roles. Some of the 16 characters in Leaving
mirror his various selves; others caricature his public roles; still
others mime his inward desires, and many reveal his anxiety and
fear of wearing forbidden masks.
The Unseen Voice
A 17th character, the Voice, constantly interrupts from beyond
the stage as the critical witness and conscience. The Voice’s objections wrest the very genre of the play from the authorial and censorial controls usually exercised by the dramaturge, prompter, choreographer, set designer,even the critics. The Voice demolishes the author and the play long before the play ends. We leave the theater with
Havel or follow him on Twitter. Havel does try to control beyond his
limits any more than do the actors who obey the director.
Kierkegaard called for a Socratic spice of irony to be added to
words to make them more affecting. (Kierkegaard characterized his
own writing as an invisible ink or spice added subversively into
Danish culture in order to cause spiritual indigestion.) Dostoyevsky’s
living dead, Chekhov’s life that is over before it is lived, Havel’s portrait
of an authoritarian politician who preaches about caring for the whole
person and his civic responsibility – their lines are spoken in hubbub
or in ptydepe, a dead language Havel invented in an earlier play.
Where is everyone going? The many doors in Klara Zieglerova’s
set designs produced for the Wlma Theater’s 2010 production of
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Leaving evoke so much more than the distinction between public
and private worlds, or the worlds of power and powerlessness.
“Leaving” is an active verb; it has no direct object. In a similar manner, these doors are singular but metaphysically have no object
behind or in front of their openings.
Dostoyevsky’s Inner Struggle
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“Leaving” is not a noun, such as leave, entrance, or exit. And leaving can always signify arriving. We can only opt for a door, a passage – we can dwell at the doorstep of possibilities.
Havel’s dramas never approach Dostoyevsky’s inner spiritual
struggle between faith and non-belief. And yet the spiritual, moral
and finite human questions parade on Havel’s stage in the character of the Voice. Who is this mask? The Voice comes from within as
much as from without; it interrupts and leads; it consoles and
disturbs, it speaks philosophically and falls prey to confusion.
Leaving is about everyone’s leaving – not just this or that politician. The Voice articulates the doubts and misgivings not only in
Havel’s conscience but in our own as well. These spontaneous interruptions of our lived drama, even in the darkest moments of our
real tragedies, suggest a margin of hope that our universe need not
be so empty and entropic as the one our folly must leave behind.
Apparently Havel was preparing for his death in the last weeks
before his actual death this month. I learned from Czech TV that
Havel invited the Dalai Lama for one last visit in Prague, just days
before he died on December 18.
Yet the empty and silent stage sets and Havel’s play itself, with
their Lazarus-like imagery, suggest that what is truly terrifying is not
death but living through empty time. Havel’s theater provokes us to
witness our own leaving and dying and our own birthing and
coming. We shouldn’t think of Havel’s Leaving as his last play or
word. Leaving is at the beginning.
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Where do people go? Reflections on Václav Havel’s Leaving,
December 25, 2011.
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Online publication on the occasion of President’s Havel’s death.
http://www.broadstreetreview.com/index.php/main/article/the_
meaning_of_havels_leaving
On the author: http://www.broadstreetreview.com/index.php/main/author/martin_beck_matustik#morearticles
http://www.wilmatheater.org/production/leaving/events
To read reviews of the Wilma Theater’s June 2010 production of
Leaving, click here. Leaving by VáclavHAVEL. Translated by
Paul Wilson. Directed by Jiri Zizka. Starring Oscar® nominee
David Strathairn May 19, 2010 – June 20, 2010.
SYMPOSIUM SERIES: VÁCLAV HAVEL: THE ART OF THE IMPOSSIBLE. Sunday, May 30, 2010-4:30 pm.
A distinguished panel will discuss Václav Havel’s legacy as playwright, politician, and philosopher. Participants will include
Martin Beck Matuštik, Lincoln Professor of Ethics and Religion
at Arizona State University and a signer of Charter 77; Paul
Wilson, translator of Leaving and other works by Vaclav Havel;
and Jiri Zizka(+), co-Artistic Director of The Wilma Theater and
director of Leaving.
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Havel and Habermas
on Identity and Revolution
1 VV: Jürgen Habermas, “Volkssouveränität als Verfahren: Ein normativer Begriff
von Öffentlichkeit,” Merkur 43/6 (June 1989) 465, 475-76; also in Forum für
Philosophie, Die Ideen von 1789 (Frankfurt a/M: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1989) 47-67. Cf.
VN: Jürgen Habermas, “Vorwort zur Neuauflage (1990),” Strukturwandel der
Öffentlichkeit (Leipzig: Reclam- Verlag, 1990).
2 DRS: Václav Havel, Do ruzných stran (Praha: Lidové noviny, 1990) 51, 67, 202-204.
3 NR: Jürgen Habermas, Die nachholende Revolution: Kleine politische Schriften VII
(Frankfurt a/M: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1990) 177-204. Cf. Helmut Dubiel,
“LinkeTrauerarbeit,” Merkur 44/6 (June 1990): 482-91 and Claus Offe, “Bindung,
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A few months before the November 1989 collapse of “real existing socialism” in Central and Eastern Europe, Habermas reflected
on the revolutionary ideas of 1789. How is one to think within plural and secular modernity about a radical democratic republic? He
notes the paradox of post-traditional ethical self-realization and
moral self-determination: social revolutions project contents and
forms that in a finite way transcend the revolutionary action, but
revolution shipwrecks before the project gets off the ground. He
proposes that to overcome the “sorrow” and the “melancholy” of
projected revolutionary possibility, one must form post- traditional
identities in those life-forms which are nurtured by a “permanent
and everyday-becoming revolution.”1
In a key essay that comes to terms with the ideas and revolutions of November 1989, Habermas reiterates his proposal. But
now he consoles the melancholy leftists who despair over the lost
meaning of socialism. Has “socialism” become an empty phrase
and “ritual oracle,” to use Havel’s characterizations?2 Does it designate merely the deposed mafia of the Communist nomenclature?
Why are some unorthodox and reformed Western Marxists in a
disenchanted condition of hopelessness? Has the utopia of nonauthoritarian life-forms and open identity-formation been lost?3
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Habermas stipulates that a “non-communist leftist” translates
the projected revolutionary possibility into a concrete, not concretistic, life-form based on the collective rational will-formation. This
formal expression of a life-form means that a radical democratic
republic provides that “placeless place” which cures revolutionary
melancholy, and which complements and stabilizes post-traditional identity. Such a republic constitutes the sovereignty of the people (their patriotism and pledge of allegiance belong solely to the
democratic constitution that allows for their rational will-formation) through its rationally motivated and fallible procedures.4
Havel doubts that radical self-choice can be replaced by the
group choice, that the modern and post-modern crises of identity
can be settled through social revolution alone. Havel picks up
Levinas’s motif of responsibility to the other in a view of “existential revolution”: while participants can maintain and stabilize social
revolution only through the retrieval of the vertical mode of their
identity, self-appropriation does not rest in some private interieur
but demands social responsibility. Havel would ask Habermas if a
permanent democratic revolution – apart from a permanent existential revolution – could heal that melancholy which results from
the paradox of every revolutionary project.5
Some misreadings depict Havel’s position as politically conservative, anti- democratic, elitist, and dogmatically religious. First,
Havel resolves the crisis of identity neither by returning to premodern communitarian models nor by finding refuge in a postFessel, Bremse,” in Axel Honneth, Thomas McCarthy, Claus Offe und Albrecht
Wellmer, eds., Zwischenbetrach- tungen: Im Prozeß der Aufklärung (Frankfurt/M:
Suhrkamp Verlag, 1989). Cf. my “Jürgen Habermas at 60,” Philosophy and Social
Criticism, 16/1 (1991): 61-80.
4 Habermas, NR 177 ff. The term, ‘non-communist leftist’ comes from Maurice
Merleau-Ponty (cf. the last chapter of Adventures of the Dialectic, trans. Joseph Bien
(Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973).
5 On “existential revolution”, which applies also to the November 89 “velvet-revolution” in Czechoslovakia, cf. VWL: Václav Havel, Versuch, in der Wahrheit zu leben,
trans. Gabriel Laub [Moc bezmocnych, 1978 in: Olidskou identitu (Praha: Rozmluvy,
1990)] (Hamburg: Rowohlt Verlag, 1990) chs. 20-21; BO: Havel, Briefe an Olga:
Betrachtungen aus dem Gefängnis, trans. Joachim Bruss [Dopisy Olze, 1983 publ. in:
Praha: Atlantis, 1990] (Hamburg: Rowohlt Verlag, 1990) letter 143; DV: Havel,
Dálkový výslech: rozhovor s Karlem Hvíždălou [Longdistance Interrogation: A
Conversation with Karel Huíždăla] (Praha: Melantrich, 1989) 15. On themes from
Emmanuel Lévinas, cf. Havel, BO letters 129-45 and part 2 below.
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modern oversight of the problem. Second, an existential revolution
can be identified neither with a myth-eliciting conservative revolution nor with a liberal possessive individualism and decisionism.
The “existential” in Havel is not opposed to the “social” and the
“political.” Third, mindful of Horkheimer’s view that both theism
and atheism have their tyrants and martyrs, we should seek an
insight into Havel’s concern with the vertical in its function as a critical “existential praxis.” Hope lies neither in theism nor in atheism
but in the dangerous memory of the victims of history, in an opposition to totalitarian power and to an ideology of empty words.6
To contrast Habermas’s and Havel’s beginnings: there is experience by the non-communist left of fighting against the Western
drive to systemic totality. There is also Habermas’s communicative
reinterpretation of “socialism” that explains this experience.
“Permanent democratic revolution” stands for a confrontation with
the systemic colonization of the life world. It seems that Eastern
and Central Europe has produced scarcely anything fresh in this
regard, both because they lacked Western experience of the real
existing capitalism and because their own struggles carry a particular bias against ‘socialist revolution.’
There is the experience of dissent against “real existing socialism” and of resistance to totalitarian systems of power. There is
also Havel’s existential reinterpretation of vertical transcendence
that explains this experience. “Existential revolution” stands for a
historically specific case not covered by Habermas: how can one
expose the totalitarian colonization of post- traditional identity at
the level of its very formation? It seems that the non- communist
left has had little to say on the possibility of “vertical transcendence” as a form of ideology critique, both because it lacked the communitarian experience of totality and because its own confrontation of fundamentalist religiosity and traditionalism carried a particular bias against existential identity.
Given the asymmetry of these experiences and the present
need to bring them together, what would an unbiased dialogic reci6 Cf. Max Horkheirner, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 7 (Frankfurt a/M: S. Fischer
Verlag, 1985) 182-86, 429-34 and essay “Theism-Atheism” and Havel, BO letter 139.
Havel depicts the source of ideologies in the gap between words and acts, not as
Habermas, in the rationality differential between the sacred and the profane. (Cf. n.
40 below.)
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procity mean here? Because identity in crisis represents a key
theme which enters both Havel’s literary and political writings and
his public life, I approach Havel and Habermas’s ideas on
November 1989 from the angle that relates post- traditional identity and revolution. I show two movements of revolution: (1)
Habermas stabilizes post-traditional identity against its modern pathologies and its post-modern death in radical democracy. (2) Havel
moves from responsible relation to others to socio-political dimensions of existential revolution.
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1. Habermas’s Permanent Democratic Revolution
In the following, I comment on two aspects of Habermas’s proposal of permanent democratic revolution: (i) his recent critique of
Marx, and (ii) his reformulation of “socialist revolution.”
(i) Habermas lists five problems in Marx that must be resolved
if a critical social theory is to play a permanently revolutionary role
in a radical democratic republic. First, Marx limits himself to the
paradigm of the working social class. He generates a concept of
praxis that is limited to industrial labour. Marx’s conceptual and
practical narrowness leads to a productivist bias. But is wage labor
the sole emancipatory force of the collective will-formation? One
explains by this force neither the ecology, peace, and feminist
movements, nor the revolutionary role of students and theatre in
Czechoslovakia prior to and during November of 1989.7
Second, Marx takes over from Hegel an holistic view of society.
Hegel wants to reconcile the dirempted modernity in the ethical
totality. While Marx critiques the conservative nature of Hegel’s
phenomenological achievement of the just life, he preserves his
idealistic hope for a system-free life world. Habermas argues that
society must be viewed under both systemic and social imperatives
and their two sociological models of integration. Wanting a complex modern society wholly freed from media of economic exchange and administrative power is romanticism. But it is a nonsolution to reduce the revolutionary resources of the life world to
the functions of anonymous systems.8
7 Habermas, NR 189. Three groupings were decisive in Czechoslovakia: students,
actors and writers, and workers.
8 Habermas, NR 189 f and TCA: The Theory of Communicative Action, two vols,
trans. by Thomas McCarthy (Boston: Beacon Press, Vol. 1, 1984; Vol. 2,
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Havel does not long for a system-free life world. First, one may
apply Habermas’s sociological distinction to the events of 1989 and
find in them the life world struggle of autonomous public spheres
– parallel polis – against their being colonized by a totally administered society. Second, one can depict these societies as laboratories that anticipate some of the conflicts with anonymous functionalist reason in Western democracies. Third, one may find in the
events of 1989 a falsification of the “dialectic of enlightenment,” on
the one hand, and the postmodern thesis about the ubiquity of
power and one-dimensionality on the other. Havel does not exchange the Stalinist utopia of paradise on earth for a postmodern
anti-utopia which cannot maintain and stabilize November revolutions. Rather than designing either positive or negative material
utopias or longing to transform the poetry of those revolutionary
days into a postmodern carnival, Havel is concerned with the concrete other and with the life world as the source of both the absurd
and the meaningful.9
Third, while Marx concretizes Hegel’s phenomenological healing of the social whole, his analysis of social conflicts is concretistic. Marx depicts the social macrosubject and the class struggle as
the sources of social reproduction. He corrects Hegel’s idealism
but preserves the Hegelian com- munitarianism: Marx privileges a
particular class within an historical form of life.10
Marx’s concretism can interpret properly neither the late capitalist societies nor the changes within the Communist regimes.
Habermas rejects both the communitarian standpoint of the totality and of a privileged – premodern, modern, postmodern – lifeform. The historical experience of totalitarianism provides the
main argument not only against the communitarian versions of
socialism but also against stylizing existential revolution in terms
of neo-Hegelian and neo-Aristotelian revivals. It is a mistake to
1987)/Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns (Frankfurt a/M: Suhrkamp Verlag,
Band 1, 1981, Band 2, 1985) vol. 2 develops this at length.
9 Cf. Havel, “Politika a svědomí” [Politics and conscience] in DRS 41-59; Václav
Benda, “Paralelní Polis,” and Petr Uhl, “Alternativni společenství jako revoluční
avantgarda” [Alternative community as a revolutionary avantgard], Charta 77: 19771989. Od morální k demokratické revoluci [From moral to democratic revolution]
(Bratislava: ARCHA, 1990), 43-51 and 81-88. On the reference to November 89 as
“carneval,” cf. Havel, (Salzburg speech, 26 July 1990).
10 Habermas, NR 190.
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read Havel’s opposition to real existing socialism either as a conservative or a liberal move. Some take Havel’s earlier term “antipolitical politics” (today bringing moral concerns into diplomacy)
as a return to pre-modern life- forms; others want to co-opt him for
a liberal individualist agenda or line him up with post-modernism;
leftists are offended by his concern for vertical transcendence and
find in it a dogmatic religious ploy; and still others legitimate by
Havel’s concern their own authoritarian religiosity. All of these
interpretations substitute concretism for an existential concretion.
But Havel’s existential praxis and Habermas’s concrete communicative transcendence meet one another. Habermas and Havel, in
different fashions, depict the concretely operative formal properties of that life-form which allows for a formation of post-traditional, non-authoritarian, and open identities.11
Fourth, Marx holds a functionalist understanding of the state.
The state is a vulgar democracy based on the instrumental rationality of its institutions. From this position comes his desire for a
system-free life-form and for the dissolution of the state as such.
In this move, Marx fails to articulate how the system-free life
world is institutionalized beyond the stage in which the proletariat is the dictator.12
Perhaps Marx was too much of a liberal who trusted the forces
of the economy at the expense of working out the transformation
of the public sphere. When Havel writes about “post-democracy”,
he has in mind the moral vacuum in both the totalitarian and the
liberal parliamentary societies. He finds in the dissident groups,
like Charta 77, the futurological experience of “inter-existential”
communication that has been freed up from the “weight of emp11 Cf. James de Candole, “Vaclav Havel as a Conservative Thinker,” The Salisbury
Review (December 1988). On ‘anti-political politics’ as existential, Havel, VWL chs.
19-20, as opposed to fundamentalism, ch. 18 and opposed to fanaticism and fetishism, Havel, BO, letter 141; Havel, DRS 58 f; also Havel’s speech upon receiving an
honorary doctorate from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, “Kafka and My
Presidency” in: P. Projevy [speeches] (Praha: Vyšehrad, 1990) 100-103 (26 April
1990) and the Salzburg speech. Czechoslovak foreign minister Jiří Dientsbier shares
with Havel a notion of “moral diplomacy without tricks” (PBS Television, 20 Feb
1990). NC: Jürgen Habermas, The New Conservatism: Cultural Criticism and the
Historians’ Debate, ed. and trans. by Shierry Weber Nicholsen, intro. Richard Wolin
(Cambridge MIT P, 1989), “Historical Consciousness and Post- Traditional Identity:
The Federal Republic’s Orientation to the West” 249-67 and NR 205 ff.
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tied traditions.” Havel’s post-traditional experience suggests that
the way of responsibility to the other is the necessary condition
of the possibility of an existentially reconstituted democracy.
There is no contradiction between the position of powerless dissent and Havel’s Presidency in a parliamentary democracy that
draws on this earlier experience.13
Fifth, in spite of concretizing Hegel’s dialectic, Marx remains
within non- fallibilist Hegelianism. Marx only transports the telos
of consciousness and being into historical evolution. Therein lie
the hidden origins of dogmatic Marxism: “socialism” is described
in terms of a concrete Sittlichkeit. Habermas finds in the lack of
fallible consciousness not a necessary but a possible receptivity
of Marxism to the Stalinist Führer principle of the Party.
Habermas redefines socialism under the formal conditions of
reaching an understanding.14
Existential revolution is a corrective to the Marx-Leninist revolutionary ethic. Both Havel and Habermas are aware of the fallible
character of revolutionary projects, but Havel attends also to a
vulnerability of revolution to deception by the totality within.
Havel provides in a vertical mode of identity the necessary check
on the colonization of the life-world in the very identity-formation. Thus, he would judge Habermas’s democratic revolution
insufficiently concrete.
(ii) Habermas’s “socialism” learns from the above critiques of
Marx. He does not mean by socialism a romantic resolution of the
riddle of history. Socialism is not a limit concept or a privatist regulative idea. Nor is it a concretistic notion that idealizes the past or
the future. “In this concretistic reading socialism is no longer a goal,
it was never realistically [such a] goal.”15
Habermas shifts from social macro-subject (class, self, people)
to intersubjectivity. This “placeless place” is Habermas’s permanent
democratic revolution based on anonymous sovereignty of the
people. Democratic revolution is permanent: it does not stop with
a particular form of life. It is democratic because its place lies in
13 On ‘post-democracy’, cf. Havel, VWL chaps. 21-22; on ‘inter-existential’ communication community, Havel, BO, letters 142-143. Cf. also Havel’s Jerusalem and
Salzburg speeches.
15 Habermas, NR 191-95.
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institutional life and cultural public spaces. It is a revolution because practical and political questions are not solved ontologically. A
revolution that is not driven metaphysically admits also of Havel’s
existential sense.16
What then, is socialist in Habermas’s non-substantially projected
revolutionary possibility? Habermas retrieves the meaning of this
term under a normative expectation of solidarities found concretely in the life world and applied to complex modern societies and
systemic relations. In experiences of the concrete other, there is a
possibility of concrete solidarity; normatively, there is an expectation of the structures of reciprocal and dialogic recognition. A radically democratic orientation is set against the demoralized public
spheres; it moralizes them and their conflicts, and it generalizes
interests under the moral point of view.17
Havel might still ask Habermas: how does this reformulation of
socialist revolution as a permanent and projected possibility console the melancholy revolutionary leftist, since she has no vertical
axis that functions as a corrective to the shipwrecking utopia?
Permanence and the fallible projection of possibilities do not form
that temporal mode of existence which can maintain and stabilize
post-traditional identity in complex societies. Havel might object
that Habermas’s communication turn is a necessary structural but
insufficient model condition of the possibility of the ideal communication community. Only an existential mode can sustain structures of democratic revolution.
Havel might find the existential impulse in Habermas’s radical
and permanent democratic revolution a kin of post-democracy.
While he might prefer not to use the word “socialism,” since it has
lost all semantic meaning, he would not be opposed to what
Habermas means by this word.
There are some misunderstandings of why Havel does not wish
to use the “s” word. Today “this word which [once] led to the zeal
of the masses is nothing more than a thoroughly deceptive cipher.”
The word has become an ideological symbol standing for the good
as opposed to the evil empire: “To criticize this or another cow is
not difficult, but to criticize that cow which proclaims itself for
16 Habermas, NR 195 f.
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decades as holy is more difficult: one is imputed a feeling that one
does not critique only the cow but the very divine principle which
has made it sacred.” Havel proposes to avoid such sacred words,
not the questions of solidarity and justice. He thinks that it would
be better to speak concretely about economy, decision-making
processes, ownership of enterprises, power-structures, dogmatism,
etc. and leave the ‘s’ word out of it. If someone wants to use this
word, “let him first clearly say what he means and with what economic and political system he links this word.”18
Havel speaks of existential revolution not because he barkens
back to either myth or a bourgeois life-form. He designates himself
twice as “left- leaning.” To exilic anti-communist pamphlets that call
dissidents “bolshevik- green gangs,” Havel replies: “I do not know
if I am left or right, but I admit that face to face with this branch of
right-wing spirituality, I am rapidly becoming left-leaning”. In his
radio address, he says again that face to face with the millionaire
estates on the island of Bahamas and the slums in Nicaragua, he is
becoming left-leaning. Both remarks show that although himself
from a millionaire family, after years of suffering in the regime that
made him pay both for his class origins and his activism, Havel has
not shielded himself from experience.19
Havel refuses to answer the interviewer’s questions that try to
box him in: one should say exactly what one means and not hide
behind such words as “socialism,” “capitalism,” “people,” and
“peace.” Havel finds this labelling to be an ideological concern.
Insofar as Habermas restores an existential meaning to the revolutionary project, Havel shares his attitude. When Havel argues that
‘socialism’ became an empty phrase, he appeals to his definite
experience of the disenchantment of socialism:
“I was always for democracy and I have considered myself for a
long time a socialist... I realized that this word no longer means
anything and that it can only confuse, not disclose my views... My
divorce from this word arose from my traditional disgust with too
inflexible (and therefore semantically rather empty) categories,
ideological phrases and oracles, by which thinking becomes a
structure of static terms which one cannot breath, and the more
18 Havel, “Šifra socialismus” [Cipher Socialism] (June 1988), DRS 202-04.
19 Havel, DV 147 and “Hovory v Lánech” (Czechoslovak Radio Broadcast, 19 Aug
1990).
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suffocating thinking is, the more distant it is from life... [E]ven
though I did not change my political views, I stopped presenting
myself as a socialist. Also in times when I considered myself a socialist, I did not identify with some concrete political and economic
doctrine, theory or ideology, with some wholesome project of the
better world order. Socialism was for me rather a human, moral,
and affective category. There were times when those who called
themselves socialists were on the side of the oppressed and downcast, not on the side of the masters, and resisted illegitimate advantages and inherited privileges, exploitation of the powerless, social
injustice and immoral barriers which condemned humans to servitude. I was such an ‘affective’ and ‘moral’ socialist – and I remain so
until today only with that difference that I do not use that word of
designate my posture.”20
The leftist offence at Havel misses what is here at stake.
Habermas gives the “s” word a new semantic, viz., communicative, grounding. The place for the non-communist leftist is the radical
democratic will-formation. The only “eye of the needle” for the way
of socialism leads now through the radical-reformist self-critique of
capitalist identity. This socialism passes into something else not with
the revolutions in 1989 but with the change of capitalist identity.21
I sum up Habermas’s conclusion on the backdrop of his analysis of the six interpretive meanings of revolution is 1989. He
depicts them in two symmetrical relations: the first group is positively oriented towards socialism, the second negatively. In the first
one, he critiques the Stalinist, Leninist, and reform-communist readings. The Stalinist has no resources to evaluate the destruction of
its secret service system. The Leninist designates 1989 as a “conservative revolution” that sets back the Communist orthodoxy. The
reformed-communist continues Dubcek’s “socialism with a human
face” of 1968 but is unable to revolutionize a state socialism into
democratic one before its shipwreck. The alternative of the socialist-market economy and the fallibilist reform-communism is bypassed by the events of 1989.22
20 Havel, DV 12-13. Havel situates himself in the generation of Beatles, the America
of the 60’s, protest and civil rights movements, their music and art (Havel, DV 23 f).
21 Habermas, NR 202 f.
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In the second group, first, the postmodernist co-opts 1989 for the
good news that proclaims the end of all revolutions and of modern
rationality, but he overlooks how modern revolutionary ideas and
classical schemes strip the totalitarian regimes of power. In place of
the claimed posthistoire, 1989 revives the sovereignty of the people,
human rights, and democratic institutions. Second, the anti-communist finds in 1989 the end-point of 1917 but then falsely generalizes
the Cold War era onto the whole epoch. Third, the liberal depicts
1989 as the end of the last totalitarian domination, the end of ideology, and a return to law, market, and pluralism. The liberal interpretation, while more accurate than others, overlooks its own unwillingness to move towards a radical democracy. Against the first
group and the anti-communist, Habermas raises his critique of
Marx. In the second group, Habermas rejects the postmodern and
corrects the liberal moves. His radical democratic reading of socialism is to cure the resulting leftist melancholy skepsis.23
373
When in his 1987 Copenhagen lecture Habermas translates
Kierkegaard’s existential either/or, characteristic of self-choice,
into a public choice of postnational identity, he could not have
anticipated that two years later many Germans would choose
themselves not post-traditionally but rather in a renewed nationstate. Habermas’s description of November 89 as die nachholende
or rückspulende Revolution does not pick up Havel’s projected
possibility. Habermas’s stylization of the events of 1989 as a
regression to “old national symbols” and to traditions of the era
between the two world wars – and to a desire to catch up with
Western bourgeois revolutions – expresses sentiments of many
people in the East, especially the former DDR, but is misleading as
an explanation of Havel’s reflections on revolution and identity.
Habermas neglects to place existential revolution among six interpretative portraits of 1989 and interpolates his own solution from
this narrow horizontal account. Neither these six groups nor
Habermas’s proposal include Havel’s vertical confrontation of
totality in the very identity-formation. Habermas’s oversight
23 Habermas, NR 184-87. Cf. my “Post/Moderní pokoušnení,” TVAR, 36 (Praha, 8
Nov 1990) 1, 4-5.
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2. Havel’s Existential Revolution
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expresses a general bias prevailing even among the sophisticated
non-communist leftists.24
In my rebuttal, I suggest that Havel replies to the crisis of identity neither in a communitarian nor postmodern fashion, that existential revolution neither reverts to myth nor adopts liberal individualism or decisionism, and that a vertical resistance to totality
draws hope neither from theism nor atheism but from the dangerous memory of suffering and an existential mode of living in truth.
I develop these points by discussing how existential revolution, by
fostering non-authoritarian and open identity-formation, provides
the sufficient modal conditions for the structural possibility of
democratic revolution. I do not turn to Havel as an heroic ideal,
since both he and the “velvet revolution” might fail, but rather to
the counter-factual projection in the ideal of 1989 which qualifies
Habermas’ reformulation of the ideas of 1789.
In his second Sunday radio reflection, Havel asks what happens
when after a long time one moves from prison to freedom. His
question is a repetition of his own journey, but now focused on the
national exodus from totality. In the prison everything is clear,
because here meaning and the hope of freedom are delimited by
the daily routine. After leaving the prison, one lacks this context.
The paradox of the world “without the prison walls” is the seeming
loss of identity.25
Havel voices the absurd, Kafkaesque anxiety of freedom; he
self-ironizes that power into which he was brought on the wings of
revolution:
It is the greatest paradox, but I must confess it: if I am a better
President than some other would be in my place, it is so because
somewhere in my relation to my work I discover ongoing doubts
about myself and the right to exercise my function. I am a person
who would not be at all surprised, if someone, in the middle of my
activities as a President, would bring me before an obscure tribu24 Habermas, NR 179 ff; NC 249-67 and n. 5 above.
25 Havel, “Hovory v Lánech” (Czechoslovak Radio, 18 March 1990). Havel appeals to
M. Foucault’s analysis of the prison as the place that does not punish the crime but
destroys human identity. He admits here that the differences between the
Communist totality and the destruction of identity in the Western Panopticon
approximate one another. This explains why the post-prison nihilism has a character of post-modern condition (DRS 15).
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nal... if I would now hear the word, “wake up!” and I would find
myself in my prison cell...26
He develops this theme face-to-face with Waldheim at the opening of the Salzburg music festival. Different fanaticisms and nationalisms in Central Europe originate from the renewed crisis of individual and group identities. “Anxiety of small souls about themselves and the world has led many times to violence, brutality, and
fanatical hatred.” But a fresh lie about our past and future cannot
save us from a repressed lie. One cannot make an exception for
oneself and somehow drift through history, even though this is the
most common temptation of Central European anxieties. “We are
like the prisoners who got used to the prison and, released under
the sky and into desired freedom, do not know how they should
deal with this freedom, and are in doubt because they alone must
decide.” This “social-existential situation” is the anxiety of the victorious Sisyphus who has succeeded in rolling the stone onto the
mountaintop and leaving it there, says Havel.27
In the paradox of exile in totality and the exodus to freedom,
which is always a paradox of identity-formation, Havel raises his
key political question: if the modern totality differs from the classical dictatorship by permeating every identity from within and without, and so makes us at the same time responsible and without
responsibility, how can one escape from its prison? The how-question implies that a vertically understood critical theory and practice must find that mode of human identity-formation which provi26 Havel, “Kafka and My Presidency,” in p. 102.
27 For the text, cf. Havel, (Praha: Lidová demokracie, 27 July 1990), and Süddeutsche
Zeitung, no 171 (July 27, 1990). Cf. two Jewish writers who analyze Havel’s performance in Salzburg, A. M. Rosenthal, “Hero Havel Should Stop and Think,”
International Herald Tribune (July 30, 1990) and Robert B. Goldmann, “Havel’s
Message Deserves Hearing,” International Herald Tribune (August 15, 1990).
Rosenthal takes an offence at Havel’s appearance with K. Waldheim who has falsified his Nazi past; Goldman points out that politicians have made it too easy for
themselves by simply making a no longer meaningful gesture of non-appearance.
Havel acted with a vertical type of ostracism against Waldheim, that is, not by being
absent but by making known the absence of truth and the presence of a lie.
Paradoxically, Havel seems to be a victorious Sisyphus, i.e., that intellectual about
whose success something remains suspicious (Havel, DV 144 f). This also explains
the autobiographical theme of the above address. Cf. “Havel über die Anatomie des
Hasses: Eine Konferenz der Stiftung Elie Wiesel in Oslo,” Neue Zürcher Zeitung (3
Sept. 1990).
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des a check on power within and power in one’s relation to the
other. Havel does not ask merely about the type of prison or about
structures to be built upon our deliverance. He searches for an enabling confrontation of anxiety, for the manner of resisting totality
by living in truth with our past and future no matter where we are.
He is inspired by the philosophy and courage of the Czech phenomenologist and co-founder of “Charta 77” Jan Patočka, and an existential, not postmodern, reading of Emmanuel Levinas. I focus on
the latter, less clear and unexplored influence of Levinas.28
In prison, Havel records three stages on a journey to freedom.
In the first, he agrees with Levinas about the primordial responsibility to the other that shapes our identity. In the second, he argues
that one must take an existential responsibility for that responsibility into which one is thrown, but he interprets the “existential”
socially, politically, and dramatically. In the third, he finds out that
the horizontally conceived responsibility that takes itself too
seriously shipwrecks. The journey through the stages is a repetition
of ever more radically formed identity with fluid ego-boundaries
and non- authoritarian autonomy: moral identity in crisis becomes
an unrepressed and open way.29
Let me sum up those features of Levinas’s position that are
found in Havel. In place of an exclusive entry into inwardness,
Levinas begins in a vertical transformation of horizontally conceived intersubjectivity. “Vertically” means that identity is shaped ethically, not egologically. The ethical is the naked openness of the face
to the nakedness of the other. Levinas critiques the horizontal
moral point of view – be it Buber’s existential or Habermas’s communicative ethics – based on the notion of dialogic symmetry. My
28 Through Patočka, Havel turns to moral and political implications of phenome-
nology; through reflections on Levinas’s vertical ethics rather than Sartre’s decisionist politics, Havel articulates social-existential concerns. Other philosophical influence is Václav Bělohradský, Krize eschatologie neosobnosti [The Crisis of the
Eschatology of Non-personality] (London: Rozmluvy, 1983). Cf. Jan Patoěka,
Ausgewählte Schriften, ed. Klaus Nellen and Jiří Němec, trans. Eliška and Ralph
Melville (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta Verlag, 1987-). Cf. my “Merleau-Ponty’s
Phenomenology of Sympathy,” Auslegung. 17/1 (1991) 41-65 and “Merleau-Ponty,
On Taking the Attitude of the Other,” The Journal of the British Society for
Phenomenology, 22/1 (1991) 44_52.
29 Havel, BO, letters 122-44. The three stages are marked by Havel in his letters by
numbers 1-3 (cf. letters 131-36, 138-39). One might contrast these stages with
Adorno and contemporary feminism.
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existence is subjected to the other, hence the essential asymmetry;
the other is above me, not reciprocally next to me, hence verticality. My “I” is where the face of the other is met. I am constituted in
responsibility to the other. I am thrown into the world asymmetrically because I am always severed from my private ownership of
myself. Asymmetry and verticality ground ethics.30
Vertically appropriated freedom is permanently uneasy because
its identity carries the demand of the other, not my personal will to
exist. Identity is an ongoing life in exile; freedom is a permanently
dangerous memory of exodus. In my desire to exist, I am always a
refugee from my ego; I am vertically robbed of my projected possession of identity. Every horizontal project of an ideal community
necessarily experiences exile and exodus, and this might explain
that leftist melancholy which Habermas hopes to heal with a permanent democratic revolution. Levinas’s vertical ethics is suspicious
towards totalitarian ambitions of liberal egological freedom;
towards historical projection of the ego on revolutionary identity;
towards conservative nostalgia for the ego of a nation, party, totem,
or the church; and towards the postmodern thesis about the end of
humanism and the ubiquity of power-asymmetries.
Levinas comes from the Judaic, socially-ethical inspiration. He
does not reject Athens but situates his phenomenology between
Jerusalem and Auschwitz. Just as Habermas’s horizontal communicative ethics and Havel’s vertical resistance to totality, so also
Levinas’s vertical ethics shows that the question about being in the
world does not have meaning apart from the ethical priority of the
other. Underailed, undecentered identity forgets its permanent
exile, and so also its ethical mandate of exodus. This twice forgetful
identity in the end divinizes the totality of itself or projects its own
unrealized possibility, its philosophical and activist melancholy, on
the intentionality of some Führer. To make this critique, Levinas
need not leave philosophy and go emphatically postmodern.
Rather, and this is the sense retrieved in Havel, he translates into the
vertical language of ethics in exile and exodus both intentional phenomenology and the question about the meaning of being.
30 Emmanuel Lévinas, “Dialogue with E. Lévinas,” in Richard A. Cohen, ed., Face to
Face with Lévinas (Albany: SUNY P, 1986) 26 f, 23 f, 31. Cf. Lévinas, “Humanism and
Anarchy,” and “No Identity,” in Collected Philosophical Papers of Emmanuel Lévinas,
trans. Alphonso Lingis (Dodrecht: Martinus Nijhoff, 1987) 127-40 and 141-52.
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For Levinas, meanings, such as “God” and “religion,” do not
entertain dogmatic theology but remain a philosophical hermeneutic of ethics in exile and exodus. The wholly other that calls me
from myself is not that face with which I am directly confronted.
Face to face, I am awakened with the question of responsibility. I
do not have a reply to this question, I do not know who asks. In the
question – neither decisively theistic nor atheistic – there is a relation, which precedes the beginning of my relation, is a possibility
of my relation, but does not allow me to own this relation. Holding
my identity open to this question exercises a form of ideology-critique: the relation between identity and the other which does not
create totality Levinas calls religion.31 Vertical ethics destroys the
natural political positions which we have taken on in the world and
prepares us for that meaning, which is otherwise than being.32
Levinas offers that non-authoritarian and receptive model of
identity which fulfills the conditions raised in Havel’s key political
question: vertical decentralization of the subject does not lead to its
postmodern death by asymmetries of power but rather to an identity as a critique of totality. Existence oriented to the wholly other
prevents one’s will from gravitating to itself repressively or to the
other oppressively.
Havel interprets Levinas’s primordial responsibility existentially: not every will to exist is egological and totalitarian. Only horizontally delimited ethics and the moral point of view are vulnerable in this sense. The problem is the lack of responsibility not
towards the other but towards oneself, towards one’s relation to
the other. Without an identity which is neither melancholy nor terroristic, it is of little help that I am primordially thrown into the
world as a responsibility to the other.
Havel’s existential mode problematizes Habermas’s beginnings:
how am I to participate in discourse? How can the moral appeal to
the symmetry conditions of discourse and its force of the better
argument be sustained against an entanglement of even the rational democratic will-formation in the disabling forms of power?
Would every post-traditional identity allow for actual moral dis-
31 Lévinas, Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority, trans. Alphonso Lingis
(Pittsburgh: Duquesne UP, 1969) 40.
32 Lévinas, “Dialogue” 21.
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courses? What type of ideally concrete identity is presupposed by
the idealized participant in the moral discourse?
Havel not only rejects the concept of the collective guilt,33 but
also depicts the nuance between the mode of existential revolution
and the necessity of creating democratic structures. In his radio dialogue with the nation, he explains his concept of the “second revolution”. He means neither the French Revolution that moved from
the storming of Bastille to the execution of the king to the universal
terror, nor the Bolshevik revolution that gave birth to Trotsky’s
notion of permanent revolution. He means a need to complement
ongoing democratic structures with the elimination of the new economic mafia made up from the deposed Communist nomenclature.
The “second revolution” should remove through local elections the
hidden Communist Party monopoly in business enterprises and
determine to whom, in the state where all own all and nobody nothing, which property is to belong. Still, he confronts the present
post-revolutionary melancholy and anxiety in Czechoslovakia by
appealing not to the collective but to the individual self-choice. That
Czechoslovakia can remember the Soviet August invasion of 1968
for the first time in truth is important not nostalgically but decisively: because the Soviet tanks did not come in November 1989, the
outcome of November 1989 events depends on autonomous selfchoice, and not outside force, concludes Havel.34
Havel undergoes such a decisive moment when he takes on
responsibility for his responsibility: in the passivity of prison, he
confronts the passivity of some of his activist friends: “If all is lost
or not depends upon whether I am lost or not...” Responsibility for
responsibility is an existential, not simply ascribed role. “I agree
with Levinas, one cannot preach responsibility, one can only bear
it. Thus, one cannot begin anywhere else but with oneself. It
sounds comical, but it is so: I must begin.”35
An existential appropriation of Levinas explains why Havel
does not go postmodern and why he differs from Milan Kundera.
He objects to Kundera’s “a priori skeptical attitude towards the
33 Cf. Havel’s welcoming speech for Richard von Weizsäcker, the President of BRD,
on the anniversary of Hitler’s occupation of Czechoslovakia (Prague, March 15,
1990) in: P 79-86.
34 Havel, “Hovory v Lánech” (Czechoslovak Radio, 19 August 1980).
35 Havel, BO, letter 142.
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civic acts which are without hope for an immediate success” and
which appear to be arrogant gestures. In his Unbearable
Lightness of Being, through the main character, Tomas, Kundera
voices his own position from the years after 1968 when Tomas
explains why it does not help the political prisoners if he signs
the petition for their release. Kundera ironizes self-importance of
the authors of such petitions: they believe that “the defeat of the
just thing will shine lightning on the whole misery of the world
and the whole glory of the author’s character.” Havel places different accents on solidarity with victims than Kundera’s postmodern death of the subject and the author. Havel’s self-irony does
not replace responsibility to the concrete other. In an early support of the imprisoned, Havel fostered a civic process towards
that existential praxis which gave rise to “Charta 77” and to the
“velvet revolution” of 1989. He agrees today that moral acts, even
in diplomacy, might offend because they seem “exhibitionistic...
gestures of the shipwrecked.” Such risky acts offer some ground
for Kundera’s laughter. But Kundera “programmatically refuses
to see... the hopeful” side of the absurd: “It seems to me as if he
were a bit the prisoner of his own skepticism which does not
allow him to admit that sometimes it makes sense to behave courageously as a citizen.
That it makes sense even though one can look comic.” Havel’s
pathos, by being existential, offends equally a fanatic activist and a
postmodern skeptic.36
Havel always interprets the “existential” as a co-terminus with the
social, political, and dramatic: he joins the social in Levinas with a radical self- choice. This double reflection rejects the decisionism and
monologism ascribed to the existentialism of the Sartrean confession.
One must differentiate political decisionism from what Havel calls
existential revolution. The shorthand for Havel’s model might read
as follows: self- appropriation implies ethico-moral intersubjectivity.
Havel’s dramatic work makes this point when it communicates
to the viewer that she carries the resolution to her crisis of identity.
Havel’s plays invariably remind us of our dilemma: “The only resolve [and] the only hope which have sense are those which we find
ourselves, in us, and on our own.” Drama communicates socially
36 Havel, DV 149-53 also 101-103.
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the “untransferable act of one’s own existential awakening.” There
is a continuity between Havel’s dramas and his civic posture: “Even
the most difficult truth, if pronounced publicly and before all,
becomes something emancipatory...”37
A continuity lies in the complementarity between absurdity
and hope. An experience of the absurd awakens a search for meaning. This inner desire for meaning that shapes one’s identity is
the very source of hope. Hope is a mode of one’s identity. Hope
provides a capacity to take responsibility for one’s responsibility.
Havel finds the Czech and Slovak specificum in an attitude between irony and self-irony, on the one hand, and the sense for the
absurd and black humour on the other. These dimensions allow
both for existential concretion and distance from oneself. They
empower one to take on tasks that seem unbearable. The capacity for the absurd and laughter in the midst of revolutionary zeal
or serious diplomatic effort testifies to the finitude of human acts,
of every revolution: “If one... is not to melt in one’s own seriousness, and so become comic to all, one must have, even though
one were engaged in the most important thing..., a healthy consciousness of one’s human laughability and smallness.” A social
revolution is in an “existential” mode when it grows from a realization of its own temporality and limit. “[O]nly this consciousness can breath possible greatness. The contours of real meaning
can be grasped only from the bottom of the absurd.” One can
understand here how an earnest non-utopian utopia of a moral
act can be engaged together with the sense of the absurd without
the temptation of traditionalism, the lyrical-romantic revolutionary melancholy or postmodern skepsis.38
Havel’s intense prison experience of the absurd and of hope
does not mark a conversion to a religion. “I did not become ‘participating Catholic’: I do not attend regularly the Church, I have not
‘institutionally’ confessed since my childhood, I do not pray, and
when I am in the Church, I do not cross myself.” When Havel
speaks of vertical transcendence, he refers to the non- utopian uto37 Havel, DV 172-74. Not all inscenations of Havel’s dramas respect this insight. One
of the best understood interpretations of Havel’s dramatic work is the performance
of Largo Desolato in his alma mater theater N A zábradlí, directed by Jan Grossman
(Praha opening on 9 April 1990).
38 Havel, DV 101-103.
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pia – the radical other “something” that gives meaning to one’s acts
in the world. “[T]he event called the world has a deeper meaning.”
When he speaks of “faith”, this does not carry a confessional pledge of allegiance:
I believe that... the universe and life [are] not “accidental.” I
believe, that nothing disappears without a trace, and still less our
actions, by which I explain my conviction that it makes sense to
strive for something in life, to strive for more than what comes visibly back or what pays off. In thus defined faith can be placed many
people, and it would not be responsible to call them all, automatically, believing Christians.39
An existential reading of Levinas was, together with Patočka’s
pheno- menologically articulated human rights, an inspiration of
the civic manifesto “Charta 77”. Both prepared Havel for creating in
November 1989 the Civic Forum and for giving a personal style to
his Presidency.
Havel dramatizes the conflict between words about responsibility and irresponsible action. He does so indirectly through a disclosure of self- deception and through a critique of ideology within
himself. For his reason his dramas and political performances are
equally autobiographical and universal, even though none of the
dramatic characters or political dramatizations preaches Havel’s
direct position and none of them offers a universal cook-book for
a successful revolution. Levinas’s thesis that one is responsible for
the world is critical towards totality in the existential and dramatic
senses given to it by Havel.40
39 Havel, DV 163 f. A Czech activist priest, Rev. Václav Malý, in his public talk (Bonn,
7 March 1990) explained Havel’s prison experience: while there Havel found
friendship with imprisoned priests, took part in secret liturgies, and grew tolerant
of the Christian churches, he kept his autonomy from a specific church affiliation.
Before offended, one should dramatically interpret why Havel took part in the Te
Deum after his first election to the Presidency (the communist Klement Gottwald
also attended Te Deum in 1948 and then started the hunt on the Church by imprisoning all religious in Czechoslovakia in the concentration monasteries) and why
he called Pope’s visit in April 90 a “miracle” (by allowing to speak publicly about
the reformer Jan Hus, the Communist liquidation of churches, the nationalist conflicts, etc. the painful Czechoslovak history began to heal).
40 Havel, Slovo o slovu [Word about Word], in Friedenspreis des Deutschen
Buchhandels 1989 (Frankfurt a/M: Buchhändler-Vereinigung, 1989) and BO, letters
142 and 122.
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For Havel, human life demands social-political and dramaticexistential responsibility. Vertical identity maintains a revolutionary mode that confronts totality within and, thus, it is a corrective to a social revolution based on horizontal identity. This corrective can be specified in the following theorem: vertical identity without ongoing democratic structures lacks a public sphere
for drama and communication by words; permanent democracy
without an existential mode is blind and impotent to form those
identities that can be a counterweight to totality. The condition of
the possibility of the ideal communication community lies in its
“inter- existentiality” – a life-form shaped by a mode of permanent revolution against lie, deception, and self-deception.41
In the third stage of his journey Havel meets the limits of his
horizontal moral will. Radical self-choice can become an imperceptibly self-deceptive intimate prison. Will to freedom can either
prevent one from leaving this prison within or become the terror
of moralizing universalism. This discovery is Havel’s main reason
for self-irony towards himself as a President and a leader of the
revolution. He hesitates to pledge allegiance to this church or that
national or political movement but clings to living at risk. He raises no sacred symbols – family, flag, market, and faith – in place of
the disenchanted promise of Communism. He communicates the
paradox of identity without fanaticism and terror.
Havel defines the fanatic as the person
who, without having a clue, exchanged the love of God for the
love of some one religion; the love of truth for the love of an ideology, doctrine or sect which promised him to guarantee their validity; and the love of people for the love of a project which he considers... to be a real service to the people. Fanaticism thus covers up
the existential nakedness... Fanaticism makes life easier for the
price of its hopeless destruction. The fanatic’s tragedy is that the
beautiful and highly authentic longing... to take on the pains of the
whole world imperceptibly changed into the creator of this suffering: into an organizer of the concentration camps, into inquisition,
into genocides and executions.42
41 Havel, BO letters 143 and 142, VWL, chs. 20-22.
42 Havel, BO letter 141.
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Verticality is neither resignation (it would not be a possibility)
nor fanaticism (it would not be a paradox of identity as an activity
and a way). The postmodern ethic of anarchy resigns self-responsibility and, thus, cannot claim to be receptive to the other.
Fanaticism disregards the permanent nakedness of its own traditionalism and, thus, cannot prevent its communitarian will from
violating the other. Fanaticism, not existential revolution, creates
from its given responsibility in the world a fetish. The fanatic escapes identity afraid of living in exile and exodus. The “real responsibility, and so real identity,” lies in one’s “dramatic self-confrontation” of oneself as a possibility.43
To conclude: Havel and Habermas represent two complementary, not exclusive, alternatives beyond the communitarian-liberal
controversy and post-modern deconstructions of identity and
revolution. Their complementarity lies in the relation of the horizontal and the vertical. “Existential revolution” is not a decisionist,
monological withdrawal into a bourgeois interieur. Havel builds
upon modern plurality, an intersubjective context for self-appropriation, and post-traditional resources of identity-formation. He
articulates vertical transcendence non-dualistically, i.e., on this side
of the world and identity-formation, within the horizontal. The existential implies the democratic: permanent risk and fallibilism cure
the revolutionary melancholy and terror.
A critique of Habermas’s project from Havel’s perspective is
the following: identity of the moral will to discourse shipwrecks
without the vertical corrective that confronts totality within.
Horizontal permanence of a revolution that does not attend to
the mode of its revolutionary project cannot heal the consequent temptation of every revolution: the activist’s anxiety in the
face of freedom, right and left fanaticism, and postmodern skepsis or abdication of responsibility. Without an existential mode,
dialogic reciprocity of the democratic will-formation cannot
protect its will against self-deception, thus, against another
Gulag and Auschwitz.
A critique of Havel’s dramatic irresolution of existential revolution from Habermas’s perspective of fallible but concrete
democratic structures raises a question which cuts across the
43 Havel, BO letter 141.
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asymmetrical experiences of the East and the West: how is one to
envision that vertical identity which would maintain and stabilize
open and non-authoritarian, autonomous and responsible forms
of life?44
385
connection with my topic by K. Günther, A. Honneth, S. Benhabib, D. Cornell, and
others: how is the concrete other maintained within the anonymous structures of radical democracy, and how is the ideal of communicative ethics qualified by a post-traditional, existential ethic of the concrete other? My questions assume the possibility of
answering the typical discourse- theoretical objections raised during my earlier presentation (Frankfurt a/M: Habermas’s Colloquium, 22 Oct 1990): Habermas identified the
vertical with prayer and, thus, he found my reading of Havel and Lévinas too theological. J. Bohman worried that while ‚existential revolution’ could be used descriptively, it
is dangerous to speak of it normatively. M. Low- Beer found it difficult to discourse within Lévinas’s metaphysics. Habermas’s point is best answered by Kierkegaard’s nuanced distinction between immanent (A) and transcendent- Christian (B) religiosity.
Neither (A) nor (B) assume the traditionalist authority of the sacred but require selfappropriation. Havel’s posture (A), while oriented to the wholly other, stands for existential passion; its communication depends neither on the domains of a/theism nor on
the posture of prayer. Bohman’s objection mistakenly blurs the Sartrean ungrounded
choice of values with Havel’s self-choice within the community of the shaken. But we
cannot judge the irresolution of the existential drama from a monological and decisionist stance of propaganda or catechism. Low-Beer’s difficulty should be cured by
Havel’s existentially communicative action which informs his reading of Lévinas.
´
44 My critical questions to Havel and Habermas reflect a concern variously raised in
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Cvetka Hedžet Tóth
386
The Ethics of Life
personality • cvetka hedžet to´th
Edvard Kocbek: His Creative Search
This article attempts to evaluate the thought of Edvard Kocbek
(1904-81) outside the purview of politics, considering him first and
foremost as a person whose decisions were primarily guided by
ethical choices. It is, of course, unreasonable to speak of him as an
apolitical person, but politics in his turbulent life was always merely a means, never a goal. Indeed, any assessment of Kocbek inevitably becomes an assessment of the political events that shaped his
life. It seems unlikely that members of his generation will ever
break free of the divisive thinking associated with the struggle that
Kocbek joined with his deep faith in the all-encompassing mission
of the revolution and the redemptive goal of politics. To some,
Kocbek will represent a test case of what it is to seek freedom in
the most trying of circumstances. He sought to give expression to
not easily articulated “romantic revolutionary” feelings at a time
when fascism, as he put it, “thrust a ruthless choice upon us: to live
or to die” (Kocbek 1972: 41).
If future generations judge Kocbek less through a political lens,
then what is likely to gain prominence will be his ethical stance. His
decision to stand on the side of the revolution (a popular decision
among members of his generation) was taken on ethical grounds.
In his book Tovarišija (Comradeship), he speaks of revolutionary
sentiments as being “an exceptional human capability,” for they are
akin to “divine sentiments.” Moreover, “a special inner bond has
begun to bind all healthy individuals of our generation, in our resistance we have become better and closer to each other. How blessed the Slovenians are then to have this opportunity to vent this
noble passion for a full and free humanity for the first time in our
history” (Kocbek 1972: 252-53). His words in praise of rebellion are
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motivated by his striving for freedom and justice. After the war he
expressed himself unambiguously: “The first sane and vital
thought: to tell the world that the Slovenian people have instigated
a nation-wide rebellion, have organized themselves into the
Osvobodilna fronta (OF, the Liberation Front) out of national leanings, that these dominated and had a majority, that they formed
the moral backdrop of the biggest turn in our history, that with the
most conscientious resistance fighters these considerations were
undoubtedly accompanied by social strivings...” (Kocbek 1991с:
177-78). Kocbek's oeuvre is a comprehensive document testifying
to the readiness of spirit to embrace politics, a readiness which is
present only because it is grounded in ethics.
Ethics is central to human life. Kocbek, whose approach to life
was preeminently ethical, believed in something enduring and
eternal. This made him highly sensitive to the world of nature and
to culture. After all, politics change how so is particularly visible
after the collapse of socialism of the Bolshevik type in 1989 and
economics are unpredictable.
The war generation deserves to be credited precisely for their
ethics, for their ability to develop and live according to a concept
of politics that has been without a parallel since. In June 1942, in
answer to the question, What is a Slovenian national revolution?,
Kocbek wrote with confidence in the journal for the Catholic segment of the OF entitled Slovenska revolucija [Slovenian
Revolution]: “Taking fate into your own hands and standing on the
side of national revolution is the only historically viable step, which
carries within itself a form of national self-affirmation and is the
highest moral and political act of every people” (Kocbek 1991 c:
103). Besides Kocbek, a number of other individuals were able to
act ethically or at least strove to act so to the point where the line
between the two becomes blurred, since politics to them was not a
goal, but a means. Politics, Kocbek was to stress in 1958, “is to ensure that the world is humanized and man made sovereign,” thus a
politician “must know that the highest goal is not earthly happiness
in the sense of material gratification, but rather a sense of balance
between the rationality of the world and irrationality of human
beings” (Kocbek 1989: 224).
As Kocbek's life works tell us, Christian socialists, or rather socialist Christians (Kocbek 1963: 184), as he himself refers to them,
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firmly believed that revolution is born out of moral intuition of
man's freedom and sovereignty on earth. “The fact that every political action means transcending the individual in the direction of
humanity and transcending the present in the direction of the future” deserves to be given “due recognition”; politics is “bringing
ethical demands to bear on the techniques of outer activity.”
Morality likewise is not something rigid but a “creative search”
(Kocbek 1989: 224). Subjecting the world to the world of ethics is
and remains the highest imperative of the practically oriented truth
that guided Kocbek and his like-minded colleagues; it was far more
decisive than the highest theoretical truth of any ideology that was
“fermenting” on the political scene at the time. In his Slovenska
revolucija, he explicitly states that there should be no discrepancy
between morality and politics. “Who wants to see political work as
creating moral good and who is determined to act morally in politics, he should know that there should be no distance between political events as expressions of nature and history on the one hand
and a moral evaluation as a principled stance on the other. Morality
should not be something external, or foreign, to political action,
something that would impose lifeless moral rules onto amoral life,
on the contrary it should be co-extensive with life as it is lived.
Amoral politics should never be saddled with rules of a-political
morality” (Kocbek 1991c: 222-23). At this point Kocbek discloses
his understanding of revolution and revolutionary mission as the
strictest convergence of ethics and politics, in which rests his explicit demand that “one of the very important aims of every true revolution is that it attains a harmony between moral evaluations and
political action” (Kocbek 1991c: 222-23). With Kocbek, ethics can
never be simply a private matter the well-known ideology of liberalism, which has already begun to take revenge upon our presentday liberalism.
Written words follow their own course, and many of Kocbek's
published works are tied up in this process; it is unlikely we will
ever stop reading him. Not least because his example encourages
us in the direction of creative re-evaluations – which he himself had
so thoroughly mastered in times of great historical upheavals, and
which as an intellectual he expected also from others – from those
who held some aspirations for the redemptive historical progress.
It is this trait in Kocbek that is exemplary. ]t would not have been
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possible if in his creative work he did not let himself be guided by
his rebellious ethos, which got him into trouble with countless
institutions, and which Catholic circles saw as protestant rather
than protesting (Kocbek 2000: 114). Trying to understand the
underlying meaning of this ethos or rather rebelliousness, I can see
that it derives from Kocbek's sense of justice and fairness. He
objects to determinism as well out of a keen sense of spontaneity.
Soon after the war, in the middle of a committee meeting, Kocbek
could suddenly deduce “a pleasant, creative, vibrant atmosphere”
(Kocbek 1991 : 51). He defended his creative thinking from the
reductive grasp of psychology, since he firmly believed in the
power of the spirit and spirituality, refusing to surrender it to mere
subconsciousness. Spirit has its own essence, he argued, which is
not a mere mechanical extension or transmission of the subconscious. “Modern psychology only defends itself with subconsciousness, while never bothering to ask what ’the subconscious' or
the bearer of the subconscious is” (Kocbek 1991b: 202). Kocbek
seems to be presenting us with a kind of regional ontology that
understands man as a multifaceted being, as a complex of instinct,
emotion, reason, spirit, with every aspect enjoying a measure of
autonomy. Kocbek sees these processes as co-extensive, running
on the basis of mutual autonomy. In fact he surmises the same
parallel in man and the world, so that his notes on the war and its
immediate aftermath can be read as a reflection on the parallel
autonomy of man's multifaceted being and the autonomy of the
world's being.
2. The Sacred Shrine of Slovenian History
When Kocbek is speaking of what he holds to be one of the
most sacred shrines of Slovenian history, he is effectively describing his own commitment to the partisan forces. When the first
partisan banner unfurled in the air he could feel, he says, an insurmountable force, his people in their unflinching resistance and
young men in their sacrificial fight and the decisive Slovenian
rebellion that was to take his people to their victorious end. With
utter clarity he fathomed what is not all that easily graspable, namely that the two seemingly irreconcilable opposites, freedom and
necessity, can be reconciled. He understood that time of war is also
a time of “historical ecstasy” (Kocbek 2000: 30), of this terrible faith
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which he wants to relate as fully as possible, and shed light on the
ecstatic, mighty and trusting radicalism of liberation years – something that cannot be conveyed through any historical factography
[the concept of factography might benefit from an explanatory
footnote]. He is striving for what is effectively unattainable, eager
to lend his ear to this passion for the new and the better, to understand the mind and soul of those in the grip of this passion and all
the attendant anxieties and joys, as fear and courage intersect, as
you are driven by the sense that you are in the grip of something
that can both destroy and save you. These were the moments when
Kocbek felt “that at times Marxism was closer to [him] than it was
to many a communist,” and how “earthiness was getting closer and
closer” (Kocbek 2000: 30).
All along he is experiencing nature, aware of its primeval qualities. As some kind of stoic, he is able to discuss life, justice, and the
solidarity of cosmic dimensions. He speaks of comradeship. His
diary entries are both essayistic and aphoristic in nature, divulging at
least two significant strains: his deep-felt need for authenticity/primordiality alongside just as intense a need for critical, engaged thinking. All along he is guided by spontaneity of being, elementariness,
and autonomous reflexivity and as hard as we may try to find popular reasons to show he succumbed to ideology, we cannot. In the
midst of fighting, Kocbek writes about his experience of nature and
analyzes his relationship with the forest. It is as though nature steals
its way into his experience, fills him initially with a sense of unease;
it is a nameless plea, in time, as the feeling of security grows, he
begins to experience the forest as a safe primordial place where different forms of life are in harmonious coexistence, and in spite of the
hierarchy, he can detect a community which accords a place and
recognition to everything. He derives a sense of homeliness from
knowing that a certain balance needs to be nurtured.
How do you preserve your individuality in the green magic created by the earth, trees and rock? To experience the world and its
activities first through one's inner self is to experience the world in
a pantheistic way, which helps Kocbek discover a great deal about
himself as well as the people around him. He is even led to discover
images of humanity hovering between life and death. He captures
such experience with the expression “cosmic sense.” Amidst the evident superiority of the occupational forces in the war, he discovers
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the hidden powers of silence. With his comrades he keeps almost
religiously mum, like “objects, trees, grass, earth, rocks, the invisible
world under the grass and in the earth. It is in the inner light that
gentle faces of objects are revealed. The world is the material for
inner life” (Kocbek 1972: 237). With his pantheism – that is, his
cosmic sense – he experiences the sun; his connection with the
cosmos is a precious source of active silence and solitude. The universe to him is both macrocosm and microcosm, and man is positioned between. Kocbek is convinced “that it is the lack of cosmic
sense that is the crucial deficiency in man” (Kocbek 1972: 237). It
enables him also to detect the existence of a tree, particularly in its
“relation to the surroundings with which it unites into an organic
whole” (Kocbek 1972: 85). Nothing is immovable and solitary, even
the wind, in blowing, it connects trees with the movement of space.
Such experience triggers in him a sense of homelessness.
Perhaps one of the most sincere, and moving, confessions related to the evolved cosmic sense can be found in Kocbek's descriptions of his experience of theism and atheism. To him, neither is
merely culture, they are still nature, in fact nature first. “I am constantly undecided between principled theism and practical
atheism. My theism runs deep and it is as ancient as mankind, it is
joined at the roots with who I am. Atheism on the other hand runs
just as deep and is just as familiar, going back as far as the first days
of creation. Both sensations are linked closely to the cosmic consciousness and are not merely an element of man as a historic and
social being. They do not stop at the common surface of human
consciousness where concepts and habits fight their quarrel, but
they gaze at each other in the depths of man's being” (Kocbek
1972: 238). How then is atheism possible as something utterly primordial and down to earth? Kocbek writes: “The crux of atheism
lies in man's genuine fear that the existence of God constrains him,
degrades him, annuls him even, that it brings him a false mental
and life comfort, that God in short is not the adversary to reckon
with. Atheism is therefore an expression of ontological unease.
This unease I can feel too, everyone can, even a saint. It is in our
nature to resist final fulfillment” (Kocbek 1972: 238-39). Was this
resistance of his or at least his attempt to resist, his personal and
idiosyncratic atheisation [move toward atheism] which had forever made him turn his back on institutionalized Catholicism, and
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his struggle for new Christianity, as the late bishop Vekoslav Grmič
has noted, a completely “de-clericalized Christianity of personal
faith”? (Grmič 2004: 6). Kocbek certainly had a strong fear of nihilism, for which his Christian faith can be seen as an attempt to
thwart nihilism, perhaps even is thwarted nihilism. Clear demarcations between what is cosmic, ethical and religious have disappeared, also between cosmos and logos, so that pantheistic Christianity
– an unfortunate conclusion for many, I realize becomes Kocbek's
mainstay.
Thus in relation to truth of human existence, Kocbek could never
assign supremacy to some abstract ideological truth, but turns
towards practically-oriented truth that is above all ethical and as such
can be a binding force even between ideologicallydiffering individuals, while confessional or rather religious truths are always divisive. He strove to gain command of concrete matters and almost intuitively he resented abstractness that would defy life, or go against it.
He expected generosity from people, but there can be none if life is
made subordinate to some universalism. Slovenes have unfortunately often been inclined to universalisms, and Kocbek in his 1969 essay
“Tujstvo” (Foreignness) with the subtitle “Odlomki iz nemškega
dnevnika” (Excerpts from the German diaries) noted:
Uncritically grasped and assumed universalisms have obscured
and obstructed fundamental and positional forms of humanisation,
because with their penchant for irrational passions they have fed
us with illusions of superiority that were to compensate for our
smallness, vulnerability and insecurity. All these hypotheses
brought about consequences of much greater proportions, because rational insecurity had been substituted by irrational uncertainty, dangers became indeterminate, and the struggle with what is
visible became fighting windmills. I repeat: the drama of Slovenian
consciousness is a matter of constant surrender of Slovenian specificity to various universalisms that at this stage of human evolution are inevitably in the hands of the more powerful, those who
had hitherto always been swayed by power into violence. In each
and every considered and sovereign decision, Slovenians have to
express, and demonstrate, our essential unity, for experience has
never stopped telling us: Slovenchood is no less than humanness.
(Kocbek 2004: 339 40).
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With a touch of noble melancholy, Kocbek relates the story of
his life as it is emerging out of the most concrete circumstances. He
strives to remain faithful, real and restrained, neither does he lack
mischief for that matter. He first lived his life, rather than reflected
on it like a closeted scholar, so that all learned wisdom, all dead
words had to be tested against life's living current. Kocbek is a clear
case for ethics, aesthetics, and politics harmonized to near perfection in what deserves to be called an utterable, clear trail of fullbloodied living. To be vigilant towards what life is in itself, in its elementariness and immediacy – that is Kocbek's starting point.
Ideological violence and life's current do not belong together. It is
life's prerogative to live out its primeval energy, which demands a
large measure of sincerity.
Kocbek's ethics of life is rounded off with a rejection of nihilism
and nihilization of the world; in fact his ethical stance stems precisely from him saying yes to the world and living in general, much
like the eminent author of the declaration of universal ethos
(1993), our contemporary Hans Kling. Similiarities between
Kocbek and Kong's outlooks are indeed remarkable. Kling too contends that it is only with an affirmative stance towards the world
and life, with fundamental trust, that we gain “a basis for fundamental ethos, life's ethos, globally speaking, a world's ethos” (Kong
2003: 39). Kocbek was able to hold on to this trust in the midst of
war, in the most difficult of circumstances when death was a daily
companion. He was able to comprehend life with tremendous
generosity, complemented with responsibility and optimism, refusing to equate man with all the horrors surrounding him. Already
in May 1942, when he began writing his diary Tovarišija, he discerned something deeply moral in partisanship, this Slovenian comradeship joined in resistance. Seeing Partisan youths, he wrote: “The
gun in their hands is not only a means of defence against the occupying forces, but also a symbol of new strength in the Slovenian
people. My heart was exhilarated: this is the end to Slovenian pessimism, the end to pettiness, the end to weepiness, the end to
moral slavishness” (Kocbek 1972: 32). Thus “partisan loyalty,”
Kocbek writes, “is a special kind of loyalty. The Partisan movement
is a phenomenon of great potential, that is what I see when I look
at these young men. You can tell that they have all gone through an
ordeal by fire” (Kocbek 1972: 33). It is primarily moral freedom,
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which does not mean only purity in principle, but also a concerted
effort for life's evidentiality within “organized hope for happiness”
(Kocbek 1972: 57). Being a Partisan together with others, he is
experiencing a tremendous feeling of happiness. The evidentiality,
according to him, is connected with three much needed values:
“loyalty, trust, and purity” (Kocbek 1991c: 443).
Staying true to life in all its immediacy poses a challenge to one's
ethical stance, which can only ever find its expression through
movement and activity an active life: “If we want to embrace life
with both hands, we need to ground our spiritual loyalty in earthly
loyalty, that is to say earth, nature, history, human community. That
is why in all our activities we need to start out from creation, from
our immediate surroundings, from what we call nature and history” (Kocbek 1991c: 443). When speaking of trust, he notes:
A person who stays true to the laws of nature and history, that
person trusts his or her being and everything around him. In their
relation to the world, people can be divided between those who in
principle do not trust the world and thus turn their back on its
human content, and those who are in principle trusting, affirming
thereby all creation and above all man. Indeed, it is impossible to
think of human life without a principled trust in life as such
(Kocbek 1991c: 445).
In 1943 he is aware too that “alongside principled trust, there
needs to an acknowledgment of moral trust, which is not merely an
outcome of reason, but of all our being, its every thread. It is to do
with that relaxed, genial relation one has with reality, which puts
one into a creative mood, dispelling all superfluity and misgivings”
(Kocbek 1991c: 445). As a Partisan he is immeasurably happy and
this happiness he can feel also in other Partisans, “primarily as a
psychological phenomenon. The struggle gives fighters a remarkable sense of human worth, it individualizes him, gives him a sense
of independence, it aggrandizes him. The stronger the opponent,
the more it aggrandizes and liberates him” (Kocbek 1972: 57).
Partisan happiness is also “a political phenomenon. Political in the
sense in which politics is science and a skill for creating potential
happiness. Partisanship is an organized hope for happiness, and
fighters harbour such authentic hope. Everyone else partakes in it
indirectly through them. Every partisan fighter is therefore in a specific sense happy. This feeling does not come simply from a sense
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of security derived from holding a gun, but comes just as much
from the moral meaning derived from resisting violence, a resistance which is inevitably a form of release, which liberates and
humanizes” (Kocbek 1972: 57-58). Partisanship as happiness is therefore something active and concrete, and Kocbek honored this
happiness in words worth quoting:
Everyone has a right to be happy, if only because he is laying the
ground for other people's happiness. Moreover, true happiness is
always direct; inscribed in human nature, this directness is essential
to happiness as such. It is there, in the present, so we do not know
anything of the blind, unconditional sacrifice practiced by the
fascists (Kocbek 1972: 58).
In static and motionless perseverance outside history, there cannot be any ethics; ethics exists only as purity of dynamic man.
Activity relaxes man, as it also purifies him, and as late as 1973, when
in many ways Kocbek had gone as far in his thinking as he could, he
said in an interview that his “political engagement was always based
on fundamental human inclinations” (Kocbek 1989: 268),3 so that
already during the war, in Comradeship, he commended pure decision, which consists of my An interview from 1973 was first published in Revija 2000, no. 6, pp. 3-6.willingness to sacrifice my life if
need be, and he resolutely opposed those who would eclipse the
basic truth of life, saying: “Purity does not mean that I never dirty my
hands with clay and dust. Purity lies in taking full and broad-hearted
responsibility for your life. The worst crime is not in the act, but in
giving up, remaining passive” (Kocbek 1972: 73).
After the war, Kocbek followed the changing times, recognizing
that the world, due to technological developments, was becoming
more and more one [unified], and that, in his words, “a planetary
age had begun,“ what in today's language we would call globalization, and that humanity was facing new challenges. A new, planetary ethics was thus needed, and hence his concrete demand:
It is in this age that responsibility needs to assume total and global proportions, and above all become concrete. The recognition of
the all-encompassing crisis of the world will lead to an appropriate
universal measure. Then the nihilistic outlook of the present times
will tread its final step, and at last become positive: it will force us to
acknowledge our true essence, to realize that our being in the world
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is only a part of an a much larger unknown whole. We will begin to
think and act ethically in a total way (Kocbek 1972: 73).
To the question what this new ethics will be, Kocbek gives the
following answer:
The ethics I have in mind are the ethics of interpersonal solidarity. Only joined humanity will be able to take up effective struggle
against entropy and bring about a balance between nature as our
biological reservoir and the creative powers of humankind. What I
envision, therefore, is solidarity as an ethics of humanity and not as
a socio-political creed. Solidarity not like a social sedative or a
counter-revolutionary measure but a cohesive bond on a planetary
scale. When I say “planetary,” I mean something fundamental, elementary, and concrete, something that has the potential of saving
humanity and not only individual classes. Humanity as one body
will emerge only if nations, states, peoples, classes, and individuals
come together. The only shield against a catastrophe is greater closeness among all living beings (Kocbek 1972: 73).
With ethics thus defined, we begin to see the absurdity of selfsufficiency. Recent history has, according to Kocbek, pronounced
a death sentence on collective egoisms. Whenever and wherever
people come together as people, there time congeals and history
gains meaning.
Ethics is therefore akin to congealing time, and for the first time
he felt this during the war.
The national liberation struggle has demonstrated an ethics of
more cosmic than social dimensions. Time, then, indeed had meaning and direction, the future was bringing cohesion between
various contemporaries. And whenever subsequently we would
slacken in this tension, we would regress into our old, dated, and
dubious mechanism of integration, where closeness is guided by
interest. Revolution of a much higher and wider scale is therefore
ahead of us, a transformation of relations, the creation of relational
man. Interests will encompass the whole planet and humanity. Man
will no longer pursue his own petty interests, but will constitute
integral man (Kocbek 1972: 274-75).
By relationality, Kocbek is undoubtedly speaking of our capacity for communication, capacity for nurturing as wide a relation
with the world as possible, a point noted also by the German philosopher Karl Jaspers (1883-1969) after the war, since “the mind
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itself is becoming a limitless desire for communication” (Kocbek
1972: 152), to be and become a citizen of the world when the maelstrom of war had only just subsided and many tragic consequences
of the great absurdity were becoming apparent. Jaspers himself
had only just escaped (American forces came only a few hours
before his wife and he would have been deported to a concentration camp). After the war, Jaspers is constantly asking himself how
to proceed from this bottomless nihilism and he sees the answer in
humanism, understood as a means of effecting humanity. “Our
capacity to communicate without inhibitions between ourselves” is
crucial in nurturing it; it is precisely “the limitless readiness to communicate” that constitutes “the decision to embark on the path of
humaneness” (Kocbek 1972: 274-75). These thoughts again resonate with what has emerged out of our own circumstances and unwittingly confirm our genuine cosmopolitan world-outlook, a capacity for the aforementioned universal communication that forms
such an important post-war motive in Kocbek and his wider ethics
of life; we are urged in other words to ask ourselves what indeed
are our capacities for communication, so as not to sell ourselves
short to the world and become mere chanters of universalisms. It is
precisely here that Kocbek's legacy deserves to be built upon.
Kocbek is aware that “our identification with people around us
will not automatically gain us access to the new stage in history, but
it will alleviate our pains with small and partial interests and broaden our interpersonal freedom. We will have to discover authentic
man and his authentic needs” (Kocbek 1989: 275). What does he
mean by authentic? Where lies the emphasis? When Kocbek is
speaking of “authentic man” again from an anthropological and
not psychological perspective he foregrounds man's authentic
needs. In our context, judging from Kocbek's entire oeuvre, it is
clear that one of the most authentic human needs is the need for
freedom. This need cannot be substituted by any other, no matter
how refined or technologically perfected it may be, such as for
example the phenomenon of today's consumerism. Modern democracies are highly adept at creating needs that are false, mere substitutes, which have driven out to the point of absurdity that which
Kocbek would consider truly authentic. Kocbek's ethics of life
warns us not to mistake unreal needs for authentic ones.
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The woes of our past that have left an indelible mark on our
psyche do not always allow us to see a way out of this past, but
Kocbek, with the help of Ernst Bloch Kocbek introduced Bloch's
thought in Slovenia and his notion of “all-redemptive hope”
(Kocbek 1962: 258) urges us to take the past from the future and not
the future from the past. Any confrontation with the past on the
level of political propaganda is misplaced since it will only perpetuate what should never have happened in the first place. The world
in which we live is also the world we create, and ethics is to do with
human essence, an inner principle, with which we embark on our
exodus into the world, into society, among other people, and when
we try to “capture” Kocbek's stance as an ethical image, we are
shown that nothing centers life more than ethics. In many ways past
examples are useless when faced with the overarching ethical question what is to be done. What is entailed in an ethical or unethical
act is not so much the goal as it is the means of reaching that goal.
The burden of the war generation has been passed onto us, and
it is more than clear that we should not stand in condemnation of
those who have opted for survival in the most terrible war conditions, for this was a generation who, faced with a decision, did after
all decide on its own perhaps more radically than ever before in
our history. That many, like Kocbek, have first and foremost tried
to act ethically, is as much a part of their greatness as it should be
of ours that in a post-revolutionary age which has condemned the
post-war terror on both sides (Premk 2005) we do not disavow the
ethical greatness of the National Liberation Struggle (NOB), the
revolution and their many precious achievements.
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Bibliography
399
Grmič, Vekoslav. 2004. Edvard Kocbek in njegova vera v svobodo:
Ob 100-letnici rojstva (Edvard Kocbek and his faith in freedom).
Znamenje, 34.3-4 (May – August): 5-11.
Kocbek, Edvard. 1962. Obrazi – Ernst Bloch (Faces – Ernst Bloch).
Naša sodobnost 10.3: 254-63.
1963. Polemika: “Problematični” Ernst Bloch (A polemic: The
“problematic” Ernst Bloch). Sodobnost, 1.1-2.
1972. Tovarišija (Comradeship). Ljubljana: Mladinska knjiga.
1989. Svodoba in nujnost (Liberty and neccesity). Celje:
Mohorjeva družba.
1991a. Dnevnik 1945. Ljubljana: Cankarjeva založba.
1991b. Dnevnik 1946 II (Diary 1946 II). Ljubljana: Cankarjeva
založba.
1991c. Osvobodilni spisi I (Essays on liberation I). Ljubljana:
Društvo 2000.
2004. Nezbrana potopisna proza, Tujstvo – odlomki iz nemškega dnevnika. (Uncollected travel prose – excerpts from the
German diary) VIII, 339-40. Maribor: Litera.
2008. Listina. In Zbrano delo VII/1, ed. Andrej Inkret. Ljubljana:
Državna založba Slovenije.
Küng, Hans. 2003. Vertrauen, das trägt. Eine Spiritualität für heute.
Freiburg: Herde.
Premk, Martin. 2005. Matjaževa vojska 1945-1950 (Matjaž's army
1945-50). Ljubljana: Društvo piscev zgodovine NOB Slovenije.
Tóth, Cvetka. 2000. Teonomna metafizika: Paul Tillich in njegova
filozofska teologija. Evangeličanski koledar 48: 108-20.
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09_165-166-167_artworkandreflection_ENG_7
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Mexico’s Cultural Diversity
When the Spanish conquered and colonized New
Spain, they imposed their own religion and culture,
demeaning the civilization of the conquered native peoples. For three centuries the Spanish succeeded in subjugating the Indians under their legal system. But since
Independence, which Mexico achieved in the early 19th
century, the native peoples have once again had the right
to revive at least a part of their cultural traditions. In theory, they have the same rights as the creoles, who descend
from the Spanish and the mestizos. Now they all form a
single nation: they all are Mexican. In many areas of everyday life, American traditions have blended with European
ways. In Mexican cuisine the native American influence is
quite pronounced, even decisive. In other areas the
Indians preserve a great deal of autonomy, as we can see
in their dress, their music and literature, their visual arts
and handcrafts. But there are other areas in which the
indigenous must submit to Spanish traditions: in matters
of religion, law and Mexico’s political structure.
In Catholicism we can find some vestiges of preHispanic religions, but the gods of the Aztecs, Mayans and
other peoples died centuries ago. Life in Mexico proceeds
according to the Western tradition. The judicial system
was handed down by Spain, although indigenous communities have kept their own legal traditions. Now the
challenge is to reconcile a variety of judicial systems.
Humberto Ortega-Villaseñor, a researcher from the
University of Guadalajara who specializes in the social sciences and humanities, looks closely at these issues in his
most recent book “Toward a Pluricultural Nation. A study
409
Wolfgang Vogt
art work and reflection • rerview by wolfgang vogt
410
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of socio-judicial interconnections aimed at preserving the cultural
wealth and diversity of ‘Deep Mexico’ for the future,” an extensive
investigation of 400 pages published in 2011 by the Editorial
Académica Española, based in Saarbrücken, Germany. OrtegaVillaseñor has a Ph.D. in law, as well as a special interest in indigenous cultures. Recently – on Wednesday, March 7th, to be precise –
we reviewed in this column his book “Chinese and Mayan: A study
of relation and creation” (2008).
In the introduction to his book the author points out that
“Mexico as a pluricultural and multi-ethnic nation needs a body of
ideas and legal criteria that will enable it to integrate, reconcile and
execute the logic of the federal system of the MexicanRepublic
together with the legal systems of the indigenous peoples who
inhabit the country.” In the prologue, the poet and scholar of
indigenous cultures Raúl Aceves tells us that “two hundred years
after achieving its Independence, Mexico still has not completely
extricated itself from the colonialism that imposes a singular model
of nationhood… and has not yet found a formula for Unity in
Diversity, a cultural model that harmoniously and respectfully integrates the varied cultures that make up the nation.”
Using legal sociology as his basis, Ortega carefully examines the
different paths that could lead to this Unity in Diversity in the legal
sphere. We do not wish to go into detail: the book is for readers who
are versed in legal issues. The author seeks a solution that will lead
to a legal and even constitutional reform, therefore he researches
the socio-legal interconnections in Mexico’s cultural diversity from
a wide-ranging – one might say exhaustive – perspective. He uses
the research tools of a lawyer, but also brings anthropological
approaches to bear. One particularly attractive feature of his book is
its interdisciplinary perspective, which invites lawyers and humanities researchers to dialogue. And in spite of its inquisitive spirit,
Ortega-Villaseñor never strays form the path of rigorous research.
We do not wish to give a systematic description of the author’s
research; a few examples should suffice to characterize his
approach. In chapter III we find a critical assessment of pluriculturality at the constitutional level; in chapter IV, at the level of federal
regulation. In chapter V Ortega-Villaseñor describes similarities
and differences between Mexican legislation and that of two other
American countries – Venezuela and Canada – which allows him to
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look beyond strictly national confines. For readers interested in the
culture of Western Mexico, chapter VIII, the last one, will spark special interest, as he writes about the legal systems of the Huicholes
of northern Jalisco and Nayarit, and the Nahuas of southern Jalisco.
Ortega’s research uncovers paths that could lead to a pluricultural Mexico. In the conclusion to his book he speaks of “promising
perspectives for envisioning some day a scenario of legal pluriculturalism operating harmoniously in Mexico, and leaving the country richer for it.” To a certain extent, the book is a utopia, or more
exactly, a proposal. Putting his ideas into practice and finding a
genuine solution is the task of politicians. In our view, this book
takes a decisive step from a stage of monocultural legal hegemony
toward a period of multicultural legal pluralism. The most noteworthy feature of this research is its interdisciplinary approach that
combines methods from legal sociology and anthropology. Thanks
to this innovative approach, the book takes on special importance
for both specialists in law and scholars of indigenous cultures.
Book:
Original title: Hacia una nación pluricultural. Un estudio de vinculación socio-jurídica para preservar a futuro la riqueza y diversidad cultural de México profundo
(Toward a Pluricultural Nation. A study of socio-judicial interconnections aimed at preserving the cultural wealth and diversity
of ‘Deep Mexico’ for the future)
Humberto Ortega-Villaseñor
Editorial Académica Española/LAP Lambert
Berlin, Germany
c2011
ISBN 978-3-8454-8356-6
400 p.
411
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Humberto Ortega Villaseñor
Metamorphosis in the Core
of the Word and Image1
412
Summary
The purpose of this study is to analyze the relationship between a
series of paintings made by the author long ago and poems written
about them by the Mexican poet and researcher Raul Aceves
Lozano. For this purpose, two different structures of Western thought
were used as a framework: Mesoamerican nagualism and tonalism.
Even though both approaches have been studied by anthropology,
ethnology and social psychology, the study raises the possibility of
supplementing their linking effectiveness with some contemporary
conceptual inputs, as well as principles derived from pre-Columbian
philosophy and aesthetics. Under these interdisciplinary guidelines,
we believe that the treatment may be innovative for similar relational studies of Literature and the Visual Arts confined to Mesoamerica,
and to certain content and themes.
Keywords: nagualism, tonalism, co-essence, co-creation, image, word.
1 A short version of the theoretical proposal developed below was presented as a
lecture at the First International Colloquium of Literature and the Visual Arts held
during the International Book Fair in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico (NovemberDecember 2011). This is a research product that can be attributed to a study of “Links
between Visual and Literary Creativity from the Perspective of Popper’s Thought”
(Humberto Ortega Villaseñor). It can further be said that the analysis is likewise the
fruit of the collective research project registered under the title “Literature, Genres
and Other Expressions of Art. A Relational, Comparative and Interdisciplinary View,”
since the researcher takes part in this project as a member of the Faculty in
Formation UDG-CA-419 Literary Studies.
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Background
Painting is mute poetry and poetry is blind painting, but both
seek to imitate nature as much as possible2.
Leonardo Da Vinci
It all began one day in 1993 when Humberto Ortega-Villaseñor
(painter) asked Raúl Aceves Lozano (poet) to write about his work
for an exhibit catalogue to be published abroad. Raúl then selected
14 paintings and wrote 14 poems, twelve of which are interspersed
throughout this essay for study purposes3.
413
The Birthplace
Where beams of light coalesce and blood
is tinged with dream-like blue,
cosmic memory begins its spiraling journey,
its millennial voyage through changing shapes
2 Leonardo Da Vinci, Tratado de pintura, (3rd ed., edition prepared by Ángel
González García, Editora Nacional, Madrid), 1980, p. 55.
3 The catalogue was never published. Not until very recently was the collection of
poems edited under the title “Fish in Transit toward the Light” in the Revista
Portuguesa Triplov in 2008.
˜
art work and reflection • humberto ortega villasenor
Why do we take these particular products as our object of study,
and not others? Because when I happened to re-read the poems a
few months back, and I looked again at the images and their seriation, I suddenly and instinctively realized that their intimate connection or interrelationship had to do, or was strongly suffused,
with nagualism and tonalism.
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to discover its true face,
its traces of conscience lingering in the many worlds of color,
where dream-tinted surfaces blend in memory of the light.
Some Mesoamerican Concepts
414
And what exactly are nagualism and tonalism? They are two profound visions of reality present in practically all the cultures that
flourished in Mesoamerica, starting with the mother culture itself –
the Olmecs, who lived over 4000 years ago.
˜
Tonalism and nagualism are two of the most ancient conceptions in the Mesoamerican civilizing tradition, manifested visually
in the sculptures of the so-called Olmec “mother culture,” dating
back over thirty centuries. For the Olmecs, and the same applies to
the cultures that continued and reproduced the Mesoamerican conceptions for millennia down to the present day, the most esteemed
entity for co-essence and for transformation was the jaguar4.
These concepts endured over time, and are still very much
alive among indigenous peoples and communities in Mexico and
Central America5.
Nagualism in Mesoamerican thought is the ability of certain
exceptional human beings to transform themselves into animal
spirits and natural forces. The idea of metamorphosis into multiple
beings, animals, natural forces and powers such as the mountain,
caves, lakes, the sky, water, the Earth, fire, wind (nagualism)6.
4 Michael D. Coe, The Jaguar’s Children: Pre-Classic Central Mexico, New York, 1965.
5 On the basis of the information set down by the chroniclers and certain ethno-
graphic sources, Charles E. Brasseur traced the dissemination of this practice
throughout the vast Mesoamerican region. His conclusions were interesting: he
underscored their pre-Hispanic origins, their persistence during the Colonial period
and up to the present day. He considered it a kind of ancient “lodge” or “fraternity”
of shapeshifters, dedicated to combating the presence of colonizers. Charles Etienne
Brasseur, Viaje por el istmo de Tehuantepec (1859-1860), Lecturas Méxicanas, México,
1984. (In 1854 he published the study of nagualism used by Brinton called Histoire
des nations civilisées du Mexique et de l’Amerique Central, in 2 Vol. France).
6 They did not turn into only jaguars, but also into snakes, pumas, birds and all manner
of animals, plus lightning, gusts of wind and other atmospheric phenomena that were
(and are) regarded as living beings endowed with animistic entities and free will.
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Shapeshifting, or the metamorphosis of human beings into animals or viceversa, is a notion that very likely occurs in all cultures
around the world, and that we can see visually represented in the
most ancient designs of Egypt or Babylonia. The same can be said
of most Amerindian traditions. Nagualism, however, is not equivalent to all types of shapeshifting: in the Mesoamerican tradition it
appears as a culturally and politically formalized conception that is
linked to positions of power, a cosmic principle corresponding to a
social counterpart. The gods themselves had doubles or alter egos7.
A container of concentrated light rests
on the mountain of our origins,
nascent spring water where the guardian
watches and awaits the end of darkness.
Inside the emerald flower’s corolla
the nectar of burning gold
waits for the proper moment
to flow over the believers.
The flower’s secret guardian
nestles in a vessel of silence
on the sacred egg of the yellow sky.
This structure is closely linked to tonalism, which posits that all
human beings have a tonal or alter ego that accompanies them
throughout their life, from the moment they are born. Nagualism
assumes a deep and powerful inner transformation. Tonalism, on the
other hand, refers to a connection between every human being and
his or her animistic entity called tonalli or alter ego8. The idea of oth7 Bartolomé, Miguel and Alicia Barabas, op. cit., p. 15.
8 George Foster was responsible for clarifying the meaning of tona, understood as
‘personal fate’ in pre-Colonial times (but also as a spiritual essence that can be lost,
causing disease), and that acquired the sense of companion animal between the
17th and 19th centuries, although in both periods the concept was linked to the
tonalamatl (calendar date of birth). He also helped to clear up the conceptual confusion between tona and nagual, even though both terms are used indiscriminately
today in popular speech, pointing out the distinction between tona as a person’s
companion animal and nagual as a specialist (sic, “sorcerer”) who turns into an animal. See George Foster, “Nagualism in Mexico and Guatemala”, Acta Americana,
Vol.II, N° 1 y 2, 1944 (quoted by Miguel Bartolomé and Alicia Barabas, op. cit., p.11).
415
˜
The Guardian of Our Origins
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erness, of the encounter with the alter ego, the double, the tonal, the
unfathomable animist vision of being in animal form, the simultaneous manifestation of that exceptional being in two different spaces9.
416
It should be pointed out that both nagualism and tonalism
evolved over time and ended up converging, so that sometimes
they cannot be distinguished. In both cases, the action of the animal or the forces implied by the tonal are necessarily produced in
a different space from that of the person invested with this capacity
or condition. Most of the time it is not possible for both to be present at the same time in the same space10.
˜
Federico Navarrete explains that the fusion or confusion of
nagualism and tonalism results from their similarity.
Both ideas can be traced back to a single cultural conception,
which is the possibility of relationship between beings that belong
to distinct cosmic planes, where “tonalism established a symbolic
matrix that serves as the basis for nagualism.” The tonalli as solar
energy allotted to each person under the guise of an animal, generally; and the nagualli, name given to the shaman and to the
forms he or she turned into, which could be many, not only animals but also wind, rainbow, comet, lightning, fire […] Through
9 The idea of nagualism and tonalism and their manifestations are not too far
removed from certain phenomena that have already been studied in frontier science, such as the phenomenon of synchronicity. For example, David Peat, a
Canadian researcher and close collaborator with the physicist David Bohm, states
the following: “Synchronicities in and of themselves are no longer singular, because
a similar complexity is folded into each element of matter, into each region of spacetime, and into the consciousness of each individual. A synchronicity can be considered a microcosmos that reflects the dynamic of the macrocosmos while it is
deployed simultaneously in the mental and material aspects of a person’s life.” F.
David Peat, Sincronicidad, puente entre mente y materia, tr. Darryl Clark and Mireia
Jardí, editorial Kairós, c.1989, 2001, pp. 214.
10 Gonzalo Aguirre Beltrán comes back to the distinction already made by George
Foster between tona and nagual, and adds an important observation that sets
Mesoamerica apart from the world’s other cultural regions: “every individual has a
tona…” In nagualism it is the priest who shifts his shape to that of an animal; in tonalism the animal and the individual co-exist separately, although they are joined by a
common destiny and animistic essence. Gonzalo Aguirre Beltrán, Medicina y magia.
El proceso de aculturación en la estructura colonial, Mexico, INI, 1963, pp. 106 y 104.
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naguals human beings could establish social relationships with
all the beings living on the different planes of the universe11.
Blossoming Water
The Term Co-essence
It is important now to take a look at the term co-essence, which
is a primordial and intimate relationship that a person maintains
with his or her nagual or tonal and that enables the latter to perform prodigious feats. In the case of the tonal, the relationship is
available to all members of society, enabling them to have a single
11 Federico Navarrete,” Nagualismo y poder: un viejo binomio mesoamericano”, in
El Héroe entre el Mito y la Historia, F. Navarrete y G. Olivier (coords.), UNAM,
México, 2000, p. 159 (quoted by Miguel Bartolomé and Alicia Barabas, op. cit., p.13).
417
˜
From a heavenly turquoise mansion
the blossoming water flows,
its fragrant spring like transparent birds
whose bejeweled plumage is awash
in the squawkings of jade frogs.
From divine gardens of light
through theforest-dwelling house of our origin,
the liquor of prolific vision
pours from the flowers’ corolla,
and one may float down the stairsof clouds
cascading down the mountains
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alter ego throughout their lifetime (which, in the case of tonalism,
is known as the tonal relation or link). The nagual co-essence, on
the other hand, provides an inner link between specially gifted
beings such as the shaman, priest or healer and whatever animal
species or natural phenomenon is his nagual12. This unbreakable
tie is affirmed and renewed by means of rituals and celebrations.
˜
418
Pre-Hispanic iconography is full of images of gods accompanied by their co-essences, as well as political and religious leaders
next to their doubles. It should be remembered that political or religious authorities, who were often the same person, were considered the representatives of the gods, since they followed the model
of behavior inherited from the cultural hero, in accordance with
the Mesoamerican tradition of the Man-God […] The naguals of
the leaders and high priests were defenders of their people, but at
the same time, a reminder of the superhuman capacities that
instilled fear into the those who were under their influence. The
defining condition of the nagual was shapeshifting, which
enabled him to venture into the alternative world, parallel spacetime, where he defended the animist entities of its community, or
attacked his people’s enemy alter egos. This was a typical dual
power: a benefactor to his wards, but a scourge to his enemies.13
Representations of human figures turning into animals are common in pre-Columbian art. Specific examples include the Olmec
altars or stelae in the La Venta Museum in Tabasco; Huastec statuary; Zapotec masks; the emblematic doorways, entrances and exits
of many Mayan temples; Xochicalco and Malinalco. The phenomenon can also be seen in the murals of Tetitla, Teotihuacan and in the
12 In both cases co-essence seems to take us away from a universe where an observer
observes the observed, and into a kind of mirror, a universe where, in a certain sense
(this part we can only see vaguely), the observer is the observed. Cfr. John P. Briggs
and F. David Peat, A través del maravilloso espejo del universo, (tr. Carlos Gardini, 2nd
ed. Gedisa, Barcelona), c1985, 2005, p. 35. Likewise, “Thomas Kuhn shows us that in
science the physical and the metaphysical, facts and ideas, matter and consciousness,
the person experiencing and the experience, somehow constitute a single movement.” Ibid., pp. 35-36.
13 Alfredo López Austin, Hombre Dios: religión y política en el mundo nahuatl,
UNAM, México DF, c1972, 1989.
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zoomorphic pottery of a number of cultures located in the Central
Highlands and Western Mexico, to mention just a few.
In fact, for analogous reasons, there seem to be no clearly
marked boundaries between expressive media. It is easy to point
out correspondences between dissimilar figurative or abstract cultural objects from a single site or different locations. For example,
it cannot be determined exactly where the architecture leaves off
and the sculpture begins with the figures of Tláloc and the feathered serpent carved into the sides of the Temple of Quetzalcóatl in
Teotihuacan. How is it that a person contemplating the slopes of
the Izapa pyramids in Chiapas can almost read different passages
from the Popol Vuh? How to explain the geometric fretwork on the
Mitla friezes that segues into the jewelry designs discovered by
Antonio Caso in Tomb Number 7 in Monte Albán?
419
He who dwells in the cold regions,
in the house of clouds and lightning
on a carpet of blue feathers,
on a carpet of yellow feathers.
He who dwells in the House of the Night,
in the mansion of tigers
behind the gate of the eagle.
Where the heart of the Giver of Life
shudders in his bursting dwelling place
and says: here is the place, where I come
to be born.
Validity of the Approach as an Interpretive Tool
Regardless of the fact that nagualism and tonalism are ancient
Mesoamerican cultural paradigms, they could, in our opinion,
address some of the concerns of contemporary philosophers of
science, such as John P. Briggs and F. David Peat:
Do the new technologies really imply that we understand
nature “better” than in the 14th century, or better than traditional cultures like the North American Indians did? Do technologies
˜
Birth of the New Sun
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even represent progress? It could be argued that in many senses
we are farther than ever from nature and that even our technological knowledge has produced not so much progress as new
levels of ignorance.14
420
For example, nagualism can bestow a being with powers and
the capacity to shift its shape even within a single space. Thus, in
the eyes of the indigenous peoples of Mesoamerica, humans are
vulnerable beings, with a compound or composite nature and a
fluid identity. Their existence is subject to different influences that
often restrict their freedom. Nevertheless, they have the hope of
obtaining the powers to transcend their precariousness.15
˜
Something similar happens to the work produced by these
beings. According to J. E. Cirlot,
When it comes to the relationship between the artistic medium
or form and its author, we must refer to the concept of endopathy
as anticipated by Dante in his Canzoniere: ‘He who paints an
artistic object and cannot turn himself into that figure, has no right
to bear it.’ This is a commonplace affirmation, like the previous
observation by Plotinus, in the sense that the eye cannot see the
sun unless it becomes a sun to a certain extent, and vice versa. In
symbolist doctrine, there is never a mere relation between cause
and effect; rather there is ‘mutual causality.’ In symbolic terms,
everything has a meaning, everything has a purpose that sometimes is obvious; other times, less so. Everything leaves a mark or a
signature that is susceptible to investigation and interpretation.16
On this basis we go so far as to propose as one of the premises
of this essay that the traditional dividing line that purports to distinguish between the word and the image as belonging to two distinct
14 John P. Briggs and F. David Peat, op. cit., p. 34.
15 As long as they are kept together in fusion, the dualities form a unit with its energy
amorphous and infinite. But when they are separated as pure polarities, this energy
is transformed into an active potential that is capable of bringing about the transformation and change. F. David Peat, Sincronicidad, puente entre mente y materia, tr.
Darryl Clark and Mireia Jardí, editorial Kairós, c. 1989, 2001, pp. 214.
16 J.E. Cirlot, A Dictionary of Symbols, 2nd ed., Philosophical Library Inc., New York,
1971, p. xliii.
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aesthetic expressions may, on occasion, be more apparent than
real, as is the case with the poems and pictures that we have exhibited and that represent our object of analysis.
House of the Night
These pictures offer an unusual affinity of substance and form
that would seem to exist somewhere outside of time and belong to a
mythic space whose symbolic depth and relationship with the natural world make sense only in terms of the two Mesoamerican notions
mentioned above. If this is true, the creative act could be seen as a
powerful ritual that opens a door to an unknown, parallel space-time.
In this way, even though each poem is unique and the visual
expressions of the works chosen by the poet lack any sort of unifying chromatic, thematic or technical thread (they belong to different figurative or abstract stages and were painted in different periods of the painter’s life and with different materials), it is undeniable that the two expressive media share a single co-essence. The
ontological condition of the poem activates the hidden potential in
each corner of the pictorial composition, its force, its power, as if it
were a magic key for opening a pristine unfolding linguistic structure that, when articulated, immediately evokes the pre-Columbian
world: the voices, reverberation and mystical words of Náhuatl rendered into Spanish. And the poem in turn unveils the chromatic
force beyond time and space, which would imply that there will be
moments when the power of written and oral expression can be
421
˜
On the mountain of sacrifices
the bell maker
is stringing together stars
to delight the hearts
of those taking refuge
in the house of fog.
On the mountain of blackness
moles cut from the skin
sharpen their vision
on obsidian knives.
Drinkers of the night
toast the bejeweled ocean.
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transformed into images, into its nagual/tonal and vice versa.
When? Precisely when the icon’s semantic and syntactic resolution
share the same co-essence. As Leonardo said:
422
Painting is poetry that can be seen and not heard, and poetry
is painting that can be heard and not seen. Inasmuch as these
two poetries or, if you prefer, these two paintings seem to have
disturbed the senses through those that have access to the intellect, then if one and the other are painting, they must make their
way to common sense through the most noble of the senses, that
is, the eye; but if one and the other are poetry, they must pass
through the less noble sense, that is, the ear17.
This duplication also seems to happen in the opposite direction:
the word as nagual/tonal of the image. Despite occupying different spaces, they usually have a combined or fluid nature due to the
ambiguous content of their aesthetic expressiveness.
˜
Venus’s Descent
A Star, the heart of the sea
where glowing fish rain down
on the round stone
on which Reality rests.
Hand of the form-giving water,
land of the newborns
in the house of duality.
Oh germinal light, oh precious flower,
turn my heart into
a book of chants.
Applicability
Thesedistinctive elements of Mesoamerican thought – nagualism
and tonalism (shapeshifting and alter ego) constitute symbolic representations of reality that live on in the present day and that make
it possible to undertake a relational analysis of the image and the
17 Leonardo Da Vinci, Tratado de pintura, (3rd ed. , edition prepared by Angel
González García, Editora Nacional, Madrid), 1980, p. 54.
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word from an innovative perspective that differs from the traditional
Western approach and offers new directions and possibilities:
On the one hand is the symbolic-figurative nature of images
themselves chosen by the poet, which correspond closely to natural animistic elements and animal power implicit in the binomial
nagualism and tonalism. A quick look at the images that are the
object of this study readily reveals the unifying thread that seems to
run through them or connect them in spite of their semantic or syntactic differences. One way or another, that unifying thread always
alludes to the different stages of transformation that a being and its
naguals or tonals can undergo (in constant communication with
different planes or dimensions).
The ethnographic record shows us a diversity of cultural and
regional contexts; in some of them naguals are guardians of the
people’s territorial borders; in others, such as the Oaxacan
Mixtec region, they are respected and valued as entities capable
of having an influence on rainfall, on the protection of the people; and in many others, they are assimilated into the Christian
image of witchcraft, and become an object of dread. […] For an
18 Miguel Bartolomé and Alicia Barabas, op. cit., p. 16. Moreover, from the vantagepoint of frontier science, “synchronicity has gradually folded into a totally new
dimension […] This leads to the proposition that mind and matter are not separate
and distinct substances, but rather are like light and radio waves: orders within a
common spectrum. A spectrum, furthermore, that can include new additional
orders with mental and material components of varying degrees of subtlety, and
possibly very original orders that go beyond these regions. These orders might very
well remain hidden to the researchers who have done science up to now.” F. David
Peat, Sincronicidad, puente entre mente y materia, tr. Darryl Clark and Mireia Jardí,
editorial Kairós, c.1989, 2001, pp. 212-213.
423
˜
Nagualism implies a series of collective representations revolving around the possession of a dual identity, at the same time
cosmic and social, which undergirds the beliefs that orient one
aspect of the ideologies that are behind the formation of
Mesoamerican states, in which the nomos and the cosmos are coextensive and together make up a single notion of reality, in
which the naguals have the ability to shift their shape in order to
travel throughout all of existence and communicate it.18
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outside observer it can be difficult to understand the social experience of nagualism, even though it is evident that animistic
entities are a recurrent motif for interpreting the events that
affect the collective, because their presence evokes a sense of either protection or fear, because it manifests a threatening aspect
of an alternative reality; but it is evident that indigenous peoples
consider this notion to be a key to profound knowledge of different aspects of reality, whose external manifestations are considered a mere shadow of the real forces underlying facts.19
424
To sum up, we are dealing with a cultural notion that takes on
great importance for us because it is shared by the peoples of the
Mesoamerican tradition and because, as we have seen, it can be
useful for explaining the enigmatic relationship between the image
and the word in this series of poems and pictures. The conception
should not be taken in a literal, straightforward way, as similar
notions can give rise to different sense configurations.
˜
Frogs
The place where
the jade drum echoes,
frogs rain down
from the dark mother
upon the patio of fog.
The place where
the heart’s emerald sings...
in the house of moss,
flutes raise
their aquatic stems.
Philosophical Inputs From the Náhuatl World
In Mexico we find different kinds of specialists in manipulating
the sacred (healers, shamans, marakamés, diviners, etc.), who are
able to wield cultural symbols endowed with a special quality of
power. As Bartolomé says, “the secular or everyday world does not
necessarily equal disorder, but it does equal uncertainty” […]
“Society cannot give up its longing for a primeval order as
19 Ibid., pp. 18 and 19.
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expressed in the cosmologies, which sets forth the original and
authoritative cosmic and social structure in which every concrete
culture lives. Thus the specialists in manipulating the sacred use
both their actions and their discourse to refresh society’s memory
by connecting it with the ancient formulations that have nurtured
their cosmovisions”20.
He makes the other faces wise,
he makes the others take a face [a personality],
he makes them develop it.
He opens their ears, he illuminates them.
He is the teacher of guides,
he shows them the way.
He can be relied upon.
He holds up a mirror to others,
he makes them sane, careful;
he makes a face [a personality] appear on them.
He notices things,
he sets their path,
he orders and organizes.
He puts his light to the world.
20 Bartolomé, Miguel and Alicia Barabas, op. cit., p. 24.
21 Informantes de Sahagún, Códice Matritense de la Real Academia, vol. VIII, fol.
118r (quoted by Miguel León-Portilla, Los antiguos mexicanos, a través de sus crónicas y cantares, Fondo de Cultura Económica, México, 1961, pp. 125-126).
425
˜
We therefore cannot help but wonder whether there are any historical documentary references that confirm the premises that we
have put together like the links of a chain, and supported on a basis
of strictly anthropological and idiosyncratic understandings of PreColumbian aesthetics. We think there are. The image of the Náhuatl
sage, for example, is very powerful, and in our opinion, serves to
renew the transformational power of this being as part of a preColumbian world vision. As Miguel León-Portilla points out, an old
edition of the Madrid Codex contains the texts of Sahagún’s informants, which express in a poetic way the tremendous strength of the
Náhuatl sage:21
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He knows the upper regions
[and] the region of the dead.
426
[He is a serious man].
Everyone is comforted by him,
corrected, taught.
Thanks to him, people humanize their desires
And receive firm teaching.
He soothes the heart,
he comforts people,
helps them, cures them,
heals one and all. (125-126)
In this case there is always tension, a tonal-nagual relationship
and a co-essence between the sage, faces and hearts to be transformed and the process of discovering the truth.22
˜
In the Navel of the Moon
Captivated by the flowers,
the rabbit of nocturnalwater
is enraptured.
Briefly those bearing a mournful heart
rejoice.
He has arrived!
The singer is here,
where time has already ceased,
and abandonment no longer exists.
22 Ms. Cantares Mexicanos, Biblioteca Nacional de México, fol. 13r (quoted by
Miguel León-Portilla, op. cit., p. 127).
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House of Dawn
In the house of yellow feathers
there is a clatter of golden kettledrums clatter,
and in the place encrusted with emeralds,
it rains on the surface of chants.
Surrounded by blossoming sunlight,
oh friends of the Iridescent Lord!
in chants we enclose the Community,
with feathers we intertwine the Brotherhood.
427
The idiom in xóchitl, in cuícatl, which literally means “flower
and song,” serves as a metaphor for poem, poetry, artistic expression, in a word, symbolism. Poetry and art in general, “flowers
and songs,” are for tlamatinime, a hidden, veiled expression that
flies on the wings of symbol and metaphor and can induce a person to babble, compelling him beyond himself, perhaps taking
him in a mysterious way closer to his roots. The idea would seem
to confirm that genuine poetry implies a unique kind of knowing, the fruit of authentic inner experience, or to be more precise, the result of intuition.23
Flower and song is a Náhuatl expression that manages to join in
a single category the visual, performing, and literary arts, which
suggests once again that it makes sense to look to nagualism and
tonalism as a framework for understanding. This in turn sheds light
on the co-essential link between word and image as the bridge that
joins a diversity of expressive media and different souls in the
23 Miguel León-Portilla, op. cit., p. 128.
˜
Furthermore, there is the expression “flower and song” (‘in
xóchitl in cuícatl’), a polysemic Náhuatl combination that by unveiling its own ambiguity, provides the keys for decoding symbolisms
and visualizing the presence of a harmonious nagual/tonalcoessence between the compositional resolution, materials, proportionality and chromatic intensity of each pictorial image, and the
content, musicality, metaphors, allegories, parables and personifications of the word’s being.
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process of self-discovery, transformation and perfecting, i.e., of the
Náhuatl sage, the teacher and the learners.
˜
428
Finally, there is also the inseparable relationship between the
creator and the work in the perspective of his rigorous formation
as an artist24. As Miguel León-Portilla says, “the Náhuatl artist
appears above all as the heir of the Toltec tradition. He strives to
become a new Toltec. It seems to be undeniable that socially he is
considered to be predestined by his birth, in accordance with the
Tonalámatl” or divining calendar”.25
Predestination as an artist “implied a certain innate capability”
that demanded strict preparation, practically an initiation in the
cuicacalli. At these educational centers an artist was essentially
transformed into a being that was aware of his culture and knew
the history of his people, in order to then learn how to “discuss
with his heart”: moyolnonotzani: calling again and again inside of
himself to his own “mobility,” to his heart (yóllotl). And “as a knower of the great doctrines of his religion and of the ancient philosophy, he will not rest until he discovers for himself the symbols and
metaphors, ‘the flowers and songs,’ that can set down the roots of
his life and that in the end will be incorporated into inert material
so that the people in general can also perceive the message”26.
In this stage, as León-Portilla explains, “the artist will begin his
transformation into a yoltéotl, “divine heart,” or to be more precise,
human mobility and dynamism oriented by a kind of divine inspi24 It is worth remembering that Náhuatl art seems to have received its original inspiration in Toltec times. The word toltécatl itself meant the same as artist. A number of
other words are derived from the same root, such as ten-toltécatl, orator or “lip
artist”; tlil-toltécatl, painter or “black ink artist”; ma-toltécatl, embroiderer or “hand
artist”; etc. And whenever the Nahuas spoke of their ideals of art and their greatest
artists, they never failed to call them Toltecs. The Nahuas attributed the origin of the
toltecáyotl or “Toltequity” to Quetzalcóatl. He had built his wonderful palaces pointing toward the four cardinal points of the universe in the Toltec metropolis. There
he had discovered useful arts for the benefit of his people: metals and precious
stones, the cultivation of cotton and many other invaluable plants. Miguel LeónPortilla, op. cit., p. 159.
25 Ibid., pp. 168-169.
26 Ibid., p. 170.
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ration.”27 In this case there is also constant tension, a tonal-nagual
relationship and a co-essence between true artists and the discovery
of the mastery that they have over matter: the word, in the case of
the poet, or the materials used by the painter.
Turquoise Shield
27 Ibid.
429
˜
In the midst of the blue fog,
turquoise shields dance,
and darts hail to the ground.
Who can move
the sky’s foundations?
In the midst of aquatic moss,
flowersof the tiger relinquish their petals
to the territory of the turtle.
Are we finally heading
where we are heading?
Red bird, half-enshrouded in smoke,
how you soar into light
like a shining macaw.
Are you the true You
on the battlefield?
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Black Flower
˜
430
Like a gold-veined black flower,
a sun-swallow, an arrow of the moment
shot by the bow of day,
comes to visit thethe house of the sky...
a yellow-feathered mansion...
Here, where the blooming tree stands straight.
It carries in its messenger beak
precious seed of the blue cactus
to comply with the laws of Time.
Conclusions
Tonalism and nagualism are structures of Mesoamerican
thought that have proven useful to us for characterizing and shedding light throughout this brief essay on the strange connection
produced when a dialogue is established between the artistic
28 Alessandro Lupo, “Transformación y alter ego. Nagualismo y tonalismo”, in
Arqueología mexicana, Vol. VI, Núm. 35, January-February, 1999, p. 17.
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works that have been the object of this analysis: the poems by Raúl
Aceves Lozano and the pictures by Humberto Ortega-Villaseñor.
While each poem and each picture retains its uniqueness, its aesthetic value and meaning, the astonishing transformation that both
undergo, allowing them to venture into a different medium, leads us
to confirm a nagual/tonal-like correlation between them, enabled
by a shared essence (a co-essence). This implies the emergence of a
power that is activated or released by a reader-observer who, at the
same time, is observed. This co-essence, viewed from a strictly scientific vantage-point, takes on meaning because it produces a mirror
effect in which the boundaries between mind and matter seem to be
banished and a synchronicity phenomenon is produced.
431
In both cases [nagualism and tonalism, SIC] we are dealing
with symbolic representations in animal (or natural) code of
human qualities, status and actions made possible by a conception of the world in which the continuity solution between the different components of reality (natural, human and extra-human
worlds) is much less pronounced than in Western, Christian
thought; consequently, contacts, blends and passages between the
different levels of being are not only possible, but even frequent.28
Nagualism and tonalism are present in pre-Columbian archeological and iconographic vestiges, as well as in the customs and traditions of indigenous communities of contemporary Mexico; thus we
turn to written philosophical texts in order to reinforce and complement our proposition. We analyze Mexican sources that discuss the
transformative power of the sage and the profound implications of
the phrase ‘flower and song’ (in xóchitl in cuícatl). We also refer to
the process of intellectual and spiritual refinement that the true artist
undergoes, which makes it clear to us that the co-essence between
paintings and poems is a case of nagual or tonal. In the final analysis,
the images and the words that have been set to paper evoke the initiation process of the true Mexica artist: his dialogue with his ancestry and with the legacy inherited from his own people, his dialogue
˜
As Alessandro Lupo explains,
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with his immediate surroundings and with his social commitment to
those surroundings, and his dialogue with his own heart.
˜
432
All of this serves to corroborate in each image-poem the materialization of the luminous spectrum of being in the projection of the
sound, and the music of the word elevated to frequencies that leave
no alternative but to capture light on paper. A symbiotic relationship and a monistic link between the artist and his nagual, as well
as the nagual-tonal link that determines and characterizes the two
media. The idea of the co-essential dimension with the indistinct,
positional doubles, fused between the creator of the image and the
word. Thus, we see how the link becomes a rite, a threshold, a jointly nurtured co-creation.
The simultaneous manifestation of this exceptional being,
which is the poet and his work, in two different spaces and times.
Could we conceive of a dialogue of the creator with his tonal (the
opposite medium) or a dialogue of listening between those two
different beings consummated in the work of visual and verbal art?
I think we could. As Briggs and Peat assert:
Do the new technologies really imply that we understand
nature “better” than in the 14th century, or better than traditional cultures like the North American Indians did? Do technologies even represent progress? It could be argued that in many
senses we are farther than ever from nature and that even our
technological knowledge has produced not so much progress as
new levels of ignorance.29
***
(We invite the readers to find the pictures in their original form in the Gallery segment, pages 401-408.)
29 John P. Briggs y F. David Peat, A través del maravilloso espejo del universo, (tr.
Carlos Gardini, 2nd ed. Gedisa, Barcelona), c1985, 2005, p. 34.
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Bibliography
433
˜
AGUIRRE BELTRÁN, GONZALO, Medicina y magia. El proceso de aculturación en la estructura colonial, Mexico, INI, 1963
BARTOLOMÉ, MIGUEL Y BARABAS, ALICIA 2011, “Los Sueños y Los Días:
chamanismo y nagua lismo en México” (essay in press). Available
on line: www.antropologia.ufsc.br/.../Nagualismo%20y%20Chamanismo.doc. (Consulted October 2, 2011).
BRASSEUR, CHARLES ETIENNE, Viaje por el istmo de Tehuantepec
(1859-1860), Lecturas Méxica nas, México, 1984.
BRIGGS, JOHN P. AND F. DAVID PEAT, A través del maravilloso espejo
del universo, (tr. Carlos Gardini, 2nd edition. Gedisa,
Barcelona), c1985, 2005.
BRODA, JOHANNA, 1995 “La historia y la etnografía”, in Reflexiones
sobre el oficio del historia dor, Instituto de Investigaciones
Históricas, UNAM, pp. 11-36.
CIRLOT, J.E., A Dictionary of Symbols, 2nd ed., Philosophical Library
Inc., New York, 1971.
COE, MICHAEL D., The Jaguar’s Children: Pre-Clsasic Central
Mexico, New York, 1965.
DA VINCI, LEONARDO, Tratado de pintura (3rd ed. , edition prepared
by Angel González García, Editora Nacional, Madrid), 1980.
FOSTER, GEORGE, “Nagualism in Mexico and Guatemala”, Acta
Americana, Vol. II, N° 1 y 2, 1944.
LEÓN-PORTILLA, MIGUEL, Los antiguos mexicanos, a través de sus crónicas y cantares, Fondo de Cultura Económica, México, 1961.
LÓPEZ AUSTIN, ALFREDO, Hombre Dios: religión y política en el
mundo nahuatl, UNAM, México DF, c1972, 1989.
LUPO, ALESSANDRO, “Transformación y alter ego. Nagualismo y tonalismo”, in Arqueología mexicana, Vol. VI, Núm. 35, JanuaryFebruary, 1999.
MARTÍNEZ SARASOLA, CARLOS, “El círculo de la conciencia. Una introducción a la cosmovisión indígena americana”, manuscript
published on line at:. (Consulted October 3, 2011)
NAVARRETE, FEDERICO, ”Nagualismo y poder: un viejo binomio
mesoamericano”, in ElHéroe entre el Mito y la Historia, F.
Navarrete y G. Olivier (coords.), UNAM, México, 2000.
PEAT, F. DAVID, Sincronicidad, puente entre mente y materia, tr.
Darryl Clark and Mireia Jardí, editorial Kairós,c.1989, 2001
PEÑAFIEL, ANTONIO (1904), Cantares Mexicanos, Museo de la
Biblioteca Nacional. Photo copy, México, D.F.
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10_165-166-167_RevieWithinReview_ENG_5
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27. 9. – 30. 9. 2012, Škocjan, Sežana, Trieste, Ljubljana
Program
Ljubljana, 20. 9. 2012 (Thursday):
435
Morning, Bookstore Mohorjeva družba,
Nazorjeva street
11.00/ Press conference
Škocjan, 27. 9. 2012 (Thursday):
Afternoon
Arrival and accommodation of participants
Evening, Pr’ Vncki
18.00/ Festival opening ceremony and dinner.
Evening, Museum
18.30/ 1st International Literary Reading.
With: Barbara Simoniti (SLO), Aleksander Peršolja
(SLO), Darka Mazi, Robert Šabec in Primož Repar
(all SLO). Music: Jiří Macháček + Krraakkk (CZ).
Anchors: Stanka and Primož Repar (SK/SLO).
Škocjan/ Sežana, 28. 9. 2012 (Friday):
8.00/ Breakfast
Morning, Škocjan Museum
9.00/ “Review within Review” – results, plans, fundraising. Workshop + presentation of new publications in the “Review within Review” project: Tema
(HR), Apokalipsa (SLO), Tekstualia (PL), Vlna (SK),
9th International Festival
“Review within Review” 2012
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Protimluv (CZ), Arca (RO). Anchors: Stanka and Primož
Repar (SK/SLO).
11.30/ Presentation of magazines Bukla (SLO)/Publishing
house UMco, Mentor (SLO), publishing house Nottetempo
(I: Rome), and ZZT (I: Trieste). Anchors: Stanka and
Primož Repar (SK/SLO).
13.00/ Lunch Afternoon, Kosovelov dom Sežana
436
15.00/ Review within Review: Green parrot / Zelený
papagáj. Bilingual Slovene-Slovak edition (Apokalipsa/
Vlna + Drewo a srd, SLO/SK). With: Primož Repar,
Stanislava Repar (SLO/SK), Maria Modrovich (SK).
review within review • 9th international festival
15.15/ Round Table: “Asymmetries in Europe – opportunity and challenge, or risk and danger?” With: Zoltán
Ágoston (H), Edward Kasperski (PL), Ivo Svetina (SLO),
Lajos Notaros (ROM), Janko Rožič (SLO), ), Kari Klemelä
(FIN) and others. Anchors: Barbara Korun (SLO) and
Žaneta Nalewajk (PL).
18.30/ Opening of the exhibition “Czech Karst”.
Speakers: Peter Kuhar and Aleks Peršolja (both SLO).
18.45/ 2nd International literary readings.
With: Andrei Mocuţa (RO), Maria Modrovich (SK), Lajos
Notaros (RO), Jaroslav Žila (CZ), Ljubomir Djurković
(MNE), Marina Bahovec, Zdenko Huzjan (both SLO).
Music: Krraakkk (CZ). Anchor: Aleks Peršolja (SLO).
20.00 Dinner Evening, Club Podlaga
21.00/ “Podlaga”: Anthology of the Serbian shortest prose
– “Zrnca”. With: Dušan Stojković, Dejan Bogojević (both
SRB), and Aleš Košuta (SLO). Anchor: Primož Repar (SLO).
21.30/ “Podlaga”
Underground. Club night. International musical and literary improvisations. With contributors – festival guests:
Dušan Stojković (SRB), Ioan Matiuţ (RO), Danijela
Bogojević, Dejan Bogojević (both SRB) and Mila Haugová
(SK). Anchors: Stanka and Primož Repar (SLO).
22.00/ Concert: Brencl banda (SLO).
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Trst/ Trieste, 29. 9. 2012 (Saturday):
8.00 Breakfast
Morning, San Marco Caffe
11.00/ Public magazine and book fair.
Presentations, exchange, sale, events (together with Italian
publishers and organizers of the Bobi Bazlen fair).
11.15/ Presentation of the books: Pasji dnevi
(Jasna Jurečič) and Lovro Žvab, Levstikov prijatelj
(Igor Vogrič).
437
Afternoon, San Marco Caffe
15.00/ Lunch
17.30/ Theater on the Border – A. P. Czechow:
“The Wedding” (Theater of Arad, Romania).
18.30/ “Brez kafiča ne gre!” and literary Trieste – cultural
heritage. Final literary reading in Caffe San Marco. With:
Luca Visentini (I), Miha Obit (I), Mila Haugová (SK), Ivo
Svetina (SLO), Barbara Korun (SLO), Stanislava Repar
(SLO), Ljubomir Djurković (MNE), Jasna Jurečič (I), Aldo
Žerjal (SLO), Cristina Micelli, Gabriella Valera Gruber,
Roberto Dedenaro, Maurizio Mattiuzza, Gabriella Musetti
(all IT) and Liliya Radoeva Destradi (BG) in cooperation
with Literary House of Trieste.
Music: Krraaakk
20.00/ Concert: Krraaakk (CZ).
Škocjan, Pr’ Vncki
21.30/ Final after-dinner party
16.15/ Srečko Kosovel in Italian. Presentation of edition
of ZTT publishing house in translation of Jolka Milič +
Slovak, Czech, Slovene editions of Kosovel’s poetry.
With: Jolka Milič, Stanislava Repar (both SLO), Peter Kuhar,
Jiří Macháček (both CZ) and Josip Osti (SLO). Anchors:
Barbara Korun (SLO) and Martina Kafol.
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Škocjan, 30. 9. 2012 (Sunday):
9.00/ Breakfast
10.00/ Visit of Škocjan Caves or Visit of Tomaj: Reading at
the Srečko Kosovel grave
Departure
Ljubljana, 30. 9. 2012 (Sunday)
438
Evening, Hostel Celica
17.00/ Award ceremony with results of the 14th
International Haiku Competition (KUD Apokalipsa)
feast
19.00/ Festival after Festival: The Authors in Focus.
With: Mila Haugová (SK) and Ljubomir Djurković (MNE).
Anchors: Alenka Koželj (SLO) and Jurij Hudolin (SLO) +
Literary readings of festival.
21.00/ Concert: Horda grdih (SLO).
Accompanying program:
– Publication exhibition Review within Review
(at all locations).
– DVD projection of photographs from international
meetings Dane 2004-2006 and Škocjan 2007-2012
(at all locations). (Contributors: Robo Bielik, Eva
Kovačevičová Fudala – Slovakia, Andraž Gregorič,
Zoran Triglav, Vesna Paradiž – Slovenia, Dejan Bogojević
– Serbia, Kari Klemelä – Finland, and others.)
– Projections of films Review within Review (Nadja
Production).
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List of guests invited
Review within Review – representatives of partners + guests:
439
SLO: Stanislava Repar (review Apokalipsa), Primož Repar (review
Apokalipsa) + Aleksander Peršolja (co-organiser), Tone
Škrjanec (KUD France Prešeren), Goran Janković (publishing
house KUD France Prešeren), Orlando Uršič (publishing house
Litera), Aljoša Harlamov (review Mentor), Samo Rugelj (magazine Bukla), Vesna Paradiž (magazine Bukla), Janko Rožič, Iva
Jevtić, Jure Novak, Andrej Božič, Alenka Koželj, Barbara Korun,
Samo Krušič, Jolka Milič, Esad Babačić, Ivo Svetina, Barbara
Simoniti, Alenka Jensterle – Doležal, Zdenko Huzjan, Robert
Šabec, Marina Bahovec, Andrej Medved, Gabriella Gaál, Jana
Unuk, David Terčon, Magdalena Svetina Terčon, Nadja Leban,
Paula Braga, Josip Osti, Aldo Žerjal, Ivan Vogrič, Ivan Dobnik,
translators to Slovene, other members of editorial board and
authors’ from NGO Apokalipsa, other representatives of
Slovenian reviews and publishing houses, etc.;
H: Zoltán Ágoston (review Jelenkor);
PL: Żaneta Nalewajk (review Tekstualia), Edward Kasperski;
CZ: Jiří Macháček (review Protimluv, “Krraakkk”), Petr Vágner (historian, diplomat), Jaroslav Žila (writer), Peter Kuhar (translator), Aleš Kozár (poet, translator), Jennifer de Felice, Beáta
Spáčilová (the band “Krraakkk”);
MNE: Ljubomir Djurković (poet, playwriter), Milorad Popović
(poet);
RO: Lajos Notaros (review Arka), Ioan Matiuţ (poet), Andrei
Mocuţa (poet), Florin Covalciuc (director, actor) + 2;
SK: Peter Šulej, Maria Modrovich (review Vlna), Mila Haugová
(poet), Dana Podracká (poet, LIC Publishing House), Radoslav
Matejov (editor-in-chief of Knižná revue magazine);
I: Luca Visentini (Palačinka Association, co-organiser), Loredana
Umek (literary critic), Martina Kafol (ZTT); Nadia Roncelli
(Mladika), Andrea Gessner (Nottetempo, Rome), Sara Passerini
(Keller, Torino); Michele Obit (project Topolovo), Manuel Orazi
(publisher), Gabriella Musetti, Roberto Dedenaro, Cristina
Micelli, Maurizio Mattiuzza and Gabriella Valera Gruber;
FIN: Kari Klemelä
BG: Liliya Radoeva Destradi (poet)
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GB: David Cobb (British Haiku Society, poet);
SRB: Dejan Bogojević (review Akt, review Cvet šljive), Daniela
Bogojević (review Akt), Dušan Stojković (editor, critic, writer).
Guests of honour:
Marianna Oravcova (Ambassador of Slovak republic), Veno Taufer
(president of Slovene Writers’ Association) and Vlasta Vičič (Acting
Director of Slovenian Book Agency).
440
Staff:
Martina Šuperger, Zoran Triglav, Aleš Košuta, Marko Nežič.
Concept:
Stanislava and Primož Repar, KUD Apokalipsa from Ljubljana.
The Festival is supported by:
KUD Apokalipsa, Javna agencija za knjigo RS, International Višegrad
Fund, KD Vilenica, Društvo Palačinka – Trieste, Slovenski klub,
Kosovelov dom Sežana, JZ Škocjanske jame, Hostel Celica, Literary
House from Trieste, Turistično društvo Škocjan, Vydavateľstvo
Michala Vaška v Prešovu, Veleposlaništvo Slovaške Republike v
Sloveniji, Mikrovar d.o.o., MC Podlaga, Vimo d.o.o., Produkcija Nadja,
Koščak d.o.o., Littera Picta, Bus transport Rižana
Special thanks to:
Pr’ Vncki, Sandi Žgajnar, Eva Kovačevičová Fudala, Aleksander
Peršolja and all others contributing to the execution of Festival
RwR 2012.
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List of Invited Guests
“Review within Review 2012 Festival”
441
1. DEJAN BOGOJEVIĆ (Serbia)
2. DANIJELA BOGOJEVIĆ (Serbia)
3. DAVID COBB (England)
4. BARBARA SIMONITI (Slovenia)
5. DUŠAN STOJKOVIĆ (Serbia)
6. ALEŠ KOŠUTA (Slovenia)
7. MICHELE (MIHA) OBIT (Italy)
8. MIROSLAV MIĆANOVIĆ (Croatia)
9. ALEKSANDER PERŠOLJA (Slovenia)
10. STANISLAVA REPAR
(Slovenia/Slovakia)
11. PRIMOŽ REPAR (Slovenia)
12. IVA JEVTIĆ (Slovenia)
13. MÁRIA MODROVICHOVÁ (Slovakia)
14. ANDREA GESSNER (Italy)
15. PETR VÁGNER (Czech Republic)
16. DANA PODRACKÁ (Slovakia)
17. PAVLE GORANOVIĆ (Montenegro)
18. DARKA MAZI (Slovenia)
19. ROBERT ŠABEC (Slovenia)
20. BARBARA KORUN (Slovenia)
21. MARE CESTNIK (Slovenia)
22. JAROSLAV ŽILA (Czech Republic)
23. LJUBOMIR DJURKOVIĆ (Montenegro)
24. MARINA BAHOVEC (Slovenia)
25. ZDENKO HUZJAN (Slovenia)
26. PETER KUHAR (Slovenia)
27. JURIJ HUDOLIN (Slovenia)
28. JOLKA MILIČ (Slovenia)
29. NADIA RONCELLI (Italy)
442
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30. JANKO ROŽIČ (Slovenia)
31. MILORAD POPOVIĆ (Montenegro)
32. JOSIP OSTI (Slovenia)
33. ALENKA KOŽELJ (Slovenia)
34. ALEŠ KOZÁR (Czech Republic)
35. FLORIN COVALCIUC (Romania)
36. LUCA VISENTINI (Italy)
37. SAMO RUGELJ (Slovenia)
38. ALDO ŽERJAL (Slovenia)
39. MARTINA KAFOL (Italy)
40. MILA HAUGOVÁ (Slovakia)
41. IVO SVETINA (Slovenia)
42. ANDREI MOCUŢA (Romania)
43. IOAN MATIUŢ (Romania)
44. JIŘÍ MACHÁČEK (Czech Republic)
45. ZOLTÁN ÁGOSTON (Hungary)
46. LAJOS NÓTÁROS (Romania)
47. RADOSLAV MATEJOV (Slovakia)
48. PETER ŠULEJ (Slovakia)
49. ŻANETA NALEWAJK (Poland)
50. SILVA TRSTENJAK (Croatia)
51. ALENKA ZORMAN (Slovenia)
52. EDIN SARAČEVIĆ (Slovenia)
53. ĐERMANO VITASOVIĆ (Croatia)
54. BETI MALINOVIČ (Slovenia)
55. BORIS NAZANSKY (Croatia)
56. JASNA JUREČIČ (Italy)
57. IGOR VOGRIČ (Slovenia)
58. MAURIZIO MATTIUZZA (Italy)
59. BRANE GRGUROVIĆ (Slovenia)
60. LILIYA RADOEVA DESTRADI (Bulgaria)
61. CRISTINA MICELLI (Italy)
62. GABRIELLA VALERA GRUBER (Italy)
63. ROBERTO DEDENARO (Italy)
64. GABRIELLA MUSETTI (Italy)
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Gallery for Review within Review
Festival Škocjan 2012
443
Rewiew within Review – results, plans, fund-raising (Museum, Matavun)
Surprised Đurković (Pr’ Vncki, Matavun)
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444
Green parrot on Czech Karst (Kosovelov dom, Sežana)
Green parrot on Czech Karst (Kosovelov dom, Sežana)
Page 444
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445
International literary readings (Kosovelv dom, Sežana)
Asymmetries in Europe (Kosovelov dom, Sežana)
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446
Anthology of the Serbian shortest prose – Zrnca (Podlaga, Sežana)
Brencl banda (Podlaga, Sežana)
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447
Kosovel international (San Marco Caffe, Trieste)
Magazine and book fair (San Marco Caffe, Trieste)
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448
Kosovel international (San Marco Caffe, Trieste)
Czechow’s Romanian Wedding (San Marco Caffe, Trieste)
Page 448
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449
Award ceremony with results of the 14th International Haiku Competition
(Hostel Celica, Ljubljana)
Award ceremony with results of the 14th International Haiku Competition (Hostel
Celica, Ljubljana)
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450
The authors in focus – Mila Haugová (Hostel Celica, Ljubljana)
11_165_166_167_review_ENG_7_uvodnik
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The Outher Edge of Centre
Primož Repar: Apokrif bitja
Ljubljana: KUD Apokalipsa, 2012
Apokrif bitja is a selection of articles, letters and diary
notes written and/or published between 1996 and 2012.
Among other topics are the formation of the cultural and
artistic association Apokalipsa, the birth of Apokalipsa
magazine, the development of projects such as The Review
within Review, memoirs of the late Miklavž Ocepek and
thoughts regarding our position in modern society as well
as on religion, violence and consumerism.
Of course this kind of summary does not do justice to
its author. We can only begin to understand how difficult
it is to talk about what Repar’s claims, conclusions or even
findings are if we pay attention to the concepts that frequently occur in pairs and form the foundation of his thinking. We cannot forget that he puts the individual before
the community, difference before equality and singularity
before totality; and his thinking reflects these distinctions.
We can, therefore, only summarize his thoughts and leading themes of his texts using great caution. We always
need to keep in mind that everything we say is already an
attempt to organize an elusive, lively understanding that
does not agree with any forcefulness. – Not even its own.
The content of this book is rather diverse, but we can
still focus on certain concepts that seem to be present
throughout. Some important and frequently discussed
questions arise from considering the relationship between
the individual and modern society. What exactly is modern
451
reviews
reviews
Eva Zakšek
reviews • eva zakšek
452
24.12.12
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society at its core? Basically it is a powerful unit that gathers and
retains its strength from individuals as consumers. Through generating numerous wishes and demands it keeps people passive in their
need to have, to own more and more. In this world everything, as
Repar says, is just around the corner, everything is for sale and anything can be bought. The spirit of consumption attempts to determine every aspect of human life. It commands us how to act, what to
say, what to like or dislike and how to relate to others and ourselves.
Whether we see it as a question of good manners, common sense,
or simply something that is determined by law and order, the goal
is similar – to form connections and then institutionalize most of
them. We can be good or do good towards others, but only within
the accepted code of conduct. If something does not conform to the
given standards and demands, it must be destroyed, punished or at
least ignored. Punishments can cover anything from mockery and
harrassment to ostracism. If something jeopardizes the leading
mindset, directly or indirectly, sometimes only by being different,
then it needs to be dealt with – the sooner the better.
This is a truly unorthodox contention, but it is also the only way
of getting closer to our true selves and others. Only by returning
what is pure and raw in our interactions and relationships can we
learn to understand how to live authentically and never expect or
demand from others that they obey or follow certain rules. We
must try not to judge then but respect and see them as they are –
the others. Any other relationship or attitude that does not restore
and maintain others in their otherness is violent and leads only to
more violence. Beginning an open dialogue with others leads us
down a path free from endless suspicions, hatred, bitterness and
aggression. Only through live dialogue, as Repar says, can we be
truly open to both others and ourselves. But underneath, we
should not forget that we cannot really expect the same of other
people. To put it another way, we can lead ourselves towards solidarity, kindness and humanity and actively work against totalitarism, but we cannot impose our actions onto someone else.
In a time when the greatest threat comes from our own inactivity and blind adherence to something we never really chose,
choosing seems to be a choice on its own. We can only hope for
more genuine relationships with one another by returning to our
innermost selves and facing our own anxieties and fears.
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Zoran Pevec
What is Our Time Made of?
In Lacan’s definition of a woman or, better yet, of the relationship between the sexes “La femme n’existe pas”, the Woman doesn’t
exist. There are only women, which means that the “place of a
woman”, which is empty in itself, doesn’t exist. But because we
conceal women, because we can’t discover a Woman, we have to
invent one. And that is just what Ivo Svetina attempts in his book of
poems Marijine pesmi (Mary’s Songs). The poet fabricates another
Self, a Duality more precisely, to become more complete – and he
tries to fulfill his Desire by introducing into the poetic discourse
“the woman complete within herself”. A man’s desire for pleasure
in his relationship to a woman demands a fantasy, and in Marijine
pesmi the “passant–poet’s” wish is (co)fulfilled by the goddess, the
guide of his dreams and reality.
Elements of meaning are associated with various symbols,
myths, biblical and other ancient references as starting – points.
The poetry is at once the language of the gods and that of the
Duality; it resides close to nature and certainly close to the woman
at all times. The latter is celebrated, god – like, high above the everyday world, but also erotically alluring, magically imaginary and,
as the collection moves towards the end, on the verge of hollowing
out the Man in a way that he may never be healed. Since the woman
wants a man – God by her side, the poet must first turn her into a
goddess. The woman is a sister, a lover, and love itself and, as it
seems, from time to time death as well. She is an evolutionary continuance of life in the real world and, as the poems express with
conviction, the one that already knows everything while the man is
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Ivo Svetina: Marijine pesmi
Ljubljana: KUD Apokalipsa, 2012
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only beginning to think. The often mentioned “mucosa”, which
evokes the ocean liquid from Solaris that is in constant motion
mimicking known shapes and causing hallucinations and fantasies,
is a symbol in which the bewitched and enchanted man is mesmerized by Her as well as the sole thought of her.
Svetina’s distinctively exalting language on the verge of sacral
comprises isotopic points of departure from flora such as “anise”,
the symbol of chasing away bad dreams and having “bride”’s luck;
“jasmine”, symbol of the king of flowers and Vishnu; and “orchid”,
symbol of love and success. Such hyponymical unities, for instance “burnt grasses”, evoke the thought of other poets and famous
literary works where we are disturbed merely by the somewhat
worn – out syntagm “east of eden”. Without knowing the poet’s
“Song of Songs” and his poetic language, which in effect scales
psalmic heights precisely through this poetic process, we might
point to the only other unfortunate characteristic, namely the
repeated use of hyperbaton.
As written before: it is a “Song of Songs” not only on the linguistic level but also through the use of special imagery, numerous
comparisons, inner constructions and repetitions, in the representation of the self and the other on an aesthetic level. The poet’s
intentionality is towards a free, but at the same time committed
love. Making love is simultaneously eros and logos, the love is anchored in Badiou’s “point of departure”; it is an image of the world
stemming from difference, from experiencing the other, an epiphanic revelation not only of the “jouissance”, of the pleasure, also
mentioned by Andrej Medved, the writer of the foreword, but also
of the ethical emotion of love, when Svetina’s poet exists by his
seductor “queen”, even when she’s leaving. If, “leaning on the
shoulders of the one he loves”, he is observing the houses in
“Molyvos” on Lesbos, if he is “circling the night sky” in her company, if he finds himself with her “on the bed at the gates of paradise”,
if he drinks Baudelaire’s “wine of lovers”, is united with her with
“saliva, sperm, mucous, menstrual blood”, if he compares her to the
Queen of Shebah, Eurydice, Lot’s wife, the Portinari sisters and
remains close to her even at the thought of life’s end, they are together incarnated in the “unique Subject of love”. If Badiou says that
love is a “obstinate adventure”, that it is a “renewed discovery of
life” and that “we have to love the thing we will never see twice”,
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then Mary’s songs are the ultimate signifying all of the following
three: first, as the written that persists in the poetic love imperative
from the beginning to the end; second, as a “voice” that will never
“die” and one that discovers within it new semantic fields of coexistence; and finally, as the awareness of the “remainig rapture, of
which I would like to write a poem”.
Ivo Svetina with this collection of poems remains bound to a
story in its wholeness, this time verbalized in Her as guardian and
keeper of the love tension, but also the “demarcation sign outside
the boundaries”, as written by J. A. Miller. Mary’s Songs are written
in the poet’s distinctive “exalting” language and with the help of an
image with which time is chiseled out, deriving from its meaning
from Duality where what matters is above all the truth of the construction of that Duality as it encounters what is contingent and surprising in the theater of the mysterious, if sometimes entirely ordinary, always present “morning that creeps into our bed”.
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Translated by Alenka Koželj
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Alenka Koželj
The Mistery of a Flower
reviews
456
Zdravko Kecman: Scabiosa trenta: (a mediaeval romance)
Ljubljana: KUD Apokalipsa, 2011, zbirka Apokalipsa (no. 50).
Let us begin not with an explanation and discussion about the
most obvious, suggested by the the title (namely, the phenomenology of the mysterious Scabiosa trenta), but rather first concentrate
on the subtitle which – due to the nature of the title – tends to be
overlooked and neglected, thus obscuring an extremely important
component of the narrative: that it is, in fact, a mediaeval romance.
With some further deduction we might even consider it a so–called
quest romance. In mediaeval literature the syntagme “quest romance” normally denotes an (usually desperately long) epic work that
describes the journey of one central hero who must overcome
many obstacles and reaffirm his heroic stance by constantly striving for new adventures and opportunities to demonstrate his courage and, since a true romance never lacks a love story, to capture
the heart of a maiden of perfect beauty and tenure. This typical
structure is represented by the Grail romances where the knights
of the famous Round Table search for the Holy Grail, an object
endowed with incredible power, one that disperses material and
spiritual wealth, richness, abundance and grace.
We could indeed consider Scabiosa trenta a somewhat perverted mediaeval romance: one where the quest doesn’t concentrate
on a religious revelation. Rather, it involves the search for a mystical object of pure beauty and artistic inspiration. Thus the flower
becomes a substitute, or furthermore, a representation of the highest aesthetic and ethical value revealed to man only in fragments,
the human mind being incapable of perceiving the whole in a single triumphant glance. The first–person narrator is tempted by the
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quest from the very beginning: having lost his beloved woman, his
Laura, his Beatrice, his Margaret (the allusion to the novel The
Master and Margarita), he witnesses a bizarre coven of sorcerers
and other supernatural creatures – it is the initiation that will enable him to make his dangerous and solitary journey. He is chosen
by a mysterious blind man, a beggar, a marginalized element of
society who embodies a fixed but precarious position in this world,
a yearning for something new, something exceptional – he is a
tempter, the devil’s agent, a demonic figure that sends a lost soul,
an equally marginalized, though seemingly well–integrated individual who needs a new sensation, a new sensibility, a new meaning
of life, a renewal of the spirit, a reason to go on living, a transcendent quest after the loss of his beloved. Apart from initiation, there
is also a formal invitation: a letter from the explorerer Kugy challenging its reader to participate in the search for the mysterious
Scabiosa trenta.
Strictly botanically speaking (although the scientific discourse
isn’t all–together legitimate, since there is no scientific evidence
of the existence of such a phenomenon), Scabiosa trenta is a species of a flower described in the 18th century by the explorer
Hacquet. He left no precise indications as to exactly where he
encountered it. In the 20th century the botanist Kugy, mesmerized by the prospect of finding this rare, unique and wonderous
plant, took on the challenge – but failed. Scabiosa trenta was
obviously never to be found. Not even the extreme devotion of a
man who pledged everything to attain his goal could help. Kugy
remained without his Holy Grail.
The new quest is begun by the narrator of the novel Scabiosa
trenta: following Kugy’s footsteps, he heads for the mountains,
where Scabiosa is supposed to grow, in a somnambulant–like
state, driven more by instinct and inexplicable desire than by
rational or conscious decision. The Scabiosa is calling him, and
Kugy’s memory compels him. Arriving at the place where
Scabiosa was seen for the first (and last) time by Hacquet, he
finds everything but is unable to achieve his objective. He
encounters the locals, joins the army of the Blinds (the Blind man
in the city is undoubtedly their representative) and suffers horrible hardships. It is not until his dismissal (and the desintegration
of the army itself) that he witnesses an important meeting of the
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reviews • alenka koželj
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greatest minds in literary history, a subversion of the coven of the
sorcerers, described at the beginning of the novel.
As stated earlier, Scabiosa trenta might therefore be formally
characterized as a typical quest novel at first sight, but it is more
than this: there is an aspect of the novel that only readers most
familiar with its factual background can fully appreciate, and which
remains hidden to the rest. It is, among other things, a “roman à
clé”, a novel depicting actual persons and events disguised as a literary form. For those who are aware of this fact, reading this work
reveals a totally new perception of the story–line and its dramatic
unfolding. Kecman produces a number of characters, events and
half–legends that come from the north–western region of Slovenia,
where the novel is situated. Apart from the characters that allude to
actual persons and events, there is of course, also a far more explicit appearance of famous figures from the worlds of art, philosophy and literature, as well as numerous allusions to aspects of art
history and its aesthetics.
Although the combinaton of a “roman à clé” with the structure
of a romance (or quest romance) seems to entice the reader with
its promise of a picturesque narrative in the style of Umberto Eco,
the novel leaves much to be desired. First of all, the story–line is
slowly reduced to a sequence of (symbolic or imaginary) events
without a more solid structure. The “symbolic” charge of the story
seems a little forced at times, as if the writer was trying to extract
from a sporadic listing of interesting events a “higher” meaning
that would endow the entire novel with a more obvious structure.
I find the entire novel is, sad to say, an attempt to create a long, partly philosophical, partly mystical, partly symbolic novel from
various fragments that at times don’t quite fit, and at other times are
quite “laboured” and feel unnatural in their scheme. The novel will
probably be most enjoyed by those familiar with places and people
depicted in it. But from a strictly literary stance, the narrative lacks
psychological credibililty and is sometimes reduced to a self–sufficient linkage of images, of reminiscences and occurences. The
“symbolic” or, if you will, “mystical” layer of the novel seems to provide too weak a foundation to invite the evolution of a ideologically, psychologically and aesthetically compelling text.
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Iva Jevtić
From Acts of Faith to Acts of Love
Primož Repar: Kierkegaard – eksistencialna komunikacija. I.
Ljubljana: Društvo Apokalipsa, 2009, Filozofska zbirka Aut
459
Primož Repar’s two–part monograph, Kierkegaard: Existential
Communication, is the first of its kind in Slovenia: both a comprehensive overview of Søren Kierkegaard’s (1813–1855) fundamental
philosophical figurations and an in–depth analysis of the ramifications of Kierkegaard’s thought for post/modern ethics, it looks
closely at the im–possibility of existential communication in relation to otherness of the Other. It does so by bringing Kierkegaard’s
work in critical interchange with the work of thinkers such as
Levinas, Derrida and Patočka, among others. As such, it is the culmination of Repar’s long–time preoccupation with the Danish philosopher’s opus, manifested not only in philosophical research, but also
in his work as the translator and editor of the Slovene translation of
Kierkegaard’s masterpiece Either/Or.
Repar sets out to, in his own words, “continue with innovative
philosophical searching, which gives ideas new, existential content
and thus brings them back into the collision between the material
and spiritual world” (Repar 2009 I, 21). It is this disparity that gives
the existential situation its singularity and uniqueness, that prevents abstract, systematic (in the sense of closed), and teleological
thought from being a viable philosophical alternative to the
predicament of the existing individual. “Questions which appear
trivial but are based in existential experience drive to despair even
the most precisely formulated philosophy, since we do not know
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Primož Repar: Kierkegaard – eksistencialna komunikacija. II.
Ljubljana: Društvo Apokalipsa, 2009, Filozofska zbirka Aut
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what they are driving towards and have no appropriate tools to
answer them. An abyss opens before us and we are overcome by
vertigo; by something menacing, but also limitless and groundless,
an inexplicable and inexpressible longing” (ibid., 171). The ensuing despair can only be resolved through choice and decision,
which is always the decision for oneself as a singularity.
Repar speaks of this as a paradigmatic exile from the episteme. To
exert conceptual mastery over experience violates its specificity, its
mystery and inexpressibility. The issue of inexpressibility, of silence
in the face of mystery, which is at the core of the absolute relation to
the absolute Other, the other as completely un–knowable, is taken
up again in relation to Abraham’s trial. Abraham’s pain is compounded by his silence, by his inability to speak of his terrible burden: his situation is incommensurable with the order of the universal (Repar 200 II, 216), it is a paradoxical ethics of non–responsibility or, in other words, absolute responsibility towards the Other
which rips and exiles one from all commonality and makes one subject to ridicule and misunderstanding. In this sense, this new paradoxical ethics demands self–sacrifice, a sacrifice to the other that
breaks the cycle of self–legitimacy of the subject; the ordinary economy of giving is surpassed into a non–economy, where the demands
of reciprocity and symmetry no longer apply. The decision for specificity and singularity is thus always a decision for the other too, the
never fully completed responsibility towards the other.
In the development of the figure of Abraham, Repar draws both
on the work of Derrida and Levinas, while referring to, of course,
Kierkegaard’s conceptualisation of Abraham as the “knight of faith”.
According to Kierkegaard, Abraham’s willingness to obey God’s
command testifies to the suspension of the “teleological” ethical, of
ethical acts circulating within the economy of the reward; his readiness to sacrifice Isaac, his son, is exemplary of the ultimate test of
faith; he is not afraid to break the bonds of everyday morality. It is
only such faith that allows one to enter into relation with the other,
which is the absolute relation. The significance of Kierkegaard’s figure of Abraham is further elucidated with reference to Derrida’s
notion of responsibility, which is only possible in the religious
sphere; one’s relation to the other is necessarily a sacrifice, the sacrifice of all other possible relations and duty to others in favour of
the singular and unavoidable duty to the specific and unique other
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before me. It is because of this that ethics as a necessary generalisation and universalization fails; the call of alterity places us in an
impossible impasse where all knowledge fails. It occurs at the limits
of conceptual thought, at the gateway into the religious.
It is precisely at this most daring point of Repar’s analysis, however, that we should look at the patriarchal indebtedness of the
story of Abraham, specifically, and more generally, of the “habitus
of violence”, which is always gendered violence, the deathly that
permeates traditional exegesis of Judaism and Christianity. As
Grace Jantzen pointed out in Violence to Eternity, the second part
of her sadly unfinished Foucaultian analysis of the role of violence
in the various conceptualisations of Western thought, the preoccupation with death and destruction still importantly shapes the intellectual and everyday landscapes of modernity and post–modernity. By applying the idea of “habitus” in its Bourdieuan sense, i.e.
habitus as history repeating itself on the basis of history (Jantzen
2009, 40), Jantzen points towards the possibly utopian flexibility of
such configurations of the past: by shifting our perspective from
the idea of death towards generativity or natality, the flourishing of
love, it is possible to arrive at new, more promising conceptualisation of the religious, and by extension, of our attitude towards alterity. How would such a double perspective, looking at both the historical indebtedness of Western thought to ideas of death and violence and the future oriented analysis of possible exegetical alternatives to these, apply in the case of our present review?
As Jantzen demonstrates in her analysis of Levinas and Derrida,
what is problematic is their relationship towards violence, i.e. the
possibility of violence in the face of alterity in Levinas, and the
notion of conceptual violence in Derrida, closely related to the previously mentioned ideas of the secret, secretiveness and the burden of silence. All of these issues intersect with Repar’s figurations
on the nature of existential communication. The further, compounding problematic is the theme of sacrifice (and self–sacrifice),
an act traditionally serving as the re–affirmation of the covenant
between the Divine and the community (Jantzen 2009, 126), or, in
our case, the individual. The idea of a special bond between the
Divine and the chosen ones, a bond which asserts the uniqueness
of those entering the covenant, a singularity which is defined
against and in difference from all others (ibid., 72–99) reverberates
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in the story of Abraham and his aloneness in the face of God’s command, his solitary singularity brought forth by the demand of sacrifice that is no other than self–sacrifice.
This aloneness in the face of the absolute other can be traced
back both to Levinas’ and Derrida’s idea of the violence of the conceptual; in Levinas, ethics is the first philosophy in order to defend
the particular against the universal, against the subsumption of the
specific in the general; the call of the Other breaks through the confines of knowledge and renders it useless. Derrida, however, has
shown that ethics cannot break free of conceptualization even within “ethical response”, since our response to the other is never a mere
“glance” (a look at the face of the other), but always also speech and
therefore already something that passes through “the violence of the
concept”; “violence appears with articulation” (Jantzen 2009, 24). In
other words, the only non–violent response we are left with is
silence (ibid.). Jantzen suggests that this is the point where the language of the violence of the concept loses its moorings and becomes
too generalized, disallowing precisely what Levinas sought to affirm,
i.e. active and “engaged” response to the other. “If everything is violent, if no reponse can escape the economy of war, then the language of violence has effectively been lost as a tool for discriminating between responses” (Jantzen 2009, 24). The idea of all conceptualisation and naming as grasping, as objectification of experience
of the other which is inherently violent, is, Jantzen argues, masculinist; it denies the creative, generative aspects of naming as being signs
of recognition and respect, as, for instance, in the Biblical account of
creation. There needs to be a distinction between naming and
killing, naming and hurting (ibid., 25).
There is no accounting for Abraham’s silence; the transition
from aporia of responsibility, of responsibility being necessarily
an act of faith, to Abraham’s secretiveness and silence is far from
clear–cut. If, as Repar claims, the breaking of this silence would
expose this paradoxical, absurd secret to “derision and misunderstanding” (Repar 2009 II, 217), in other words, would amount to
nothing as the burden of Abraham’s situation is precisely in the singularity of his situation which lies beyond the limits of common
universality, we need to question the direction of this act of faith. If
we have left the realm of the economy of reciprocity and reward, if
we are, by very nature of our situation, outside the sphere of sym-
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metry, such a justification of the necessity of silence (i.e. it is not
rational and will be subject to ridicule), fails to satisfy. We are faced
with a failed opportunity: in the desire to make invisible the secret
witnessing within me, to take on a burden of witnessing God within me, there occurs a grasping, a holding onto to the non–conceptual, if you wish, that prevents the paradox of responsibility from
fully unfolding from an act of faith into an act of love.
The problem of Abraham’s trial surely lies in the figure of Isaac
and not Abraham; it is telling that historically “the story of
Abraham’s (non)sacrifice of Isaac is taken as foundational not
because in the end Isaac was not killed but precisely because
Abraham was willing to kill his son” (Jantzen 2009, 123). In other
words, what is left out is the consideration of what gives Abraham
the right to sacrifice Isaac; what is left out is the patriarchal given of
father’s primacy over the son. God made an impossible demand of
Abraham not because it made him subject to moral revulsion, not
because it placed him, in his terrible singularity, against the bonds
of the universal, but because he asked of Abraham to give what was
not his. Seen in this light, it is questionable to what extent the story
of Abraham’s trial can serve as a viable exegetical model for the
development of ethical thought; even more questionable, as
Jantzen’s work aptly demonstrates, is the obsessive return of
Western religious thought to always the same figurations, obsessive
in the sense of trying to redeem the unredeemable.
The figure of Abraham can only be satisfactorily read as a figure
of failed singularity; of a singularity that chooses itself in its aloneness over the other, over the reaching towards the other. Abraham’s
tragedy truly lies, as Repar points out, in his inability to bear witness,
to speak of his witnessing (Repar 2009 I, 183); it is not clear, however, why the witnessing to the inexpressible that binds him to the
Other should necessarily demand secretiveness and silence, why
speaking out necessarily equals the suspension of collision (ibid.).
One only needs to look to the history of Western mysticism, particularly apophatic, to see that the shock of inexpressibility in no way
calls for silence, but rather, the opposite: it is fertile ground for naming, for calling and singing, for loving and building of a new sharedness. There is no guarantee that such a call, the wounded recognition
of his aloneness as the aloneness of the other and vice versa, will or
even can be answered; no guarantee that in calling out one will not
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be ridiculed and mistreated. This also is a dynamic, never fully completed process of communication, raw and open, which functions
outside the demands of reciprocity. It is a demand for a leap of faith,
an act of love: not of self–abnegation (as self–assertion) but of active
following: “Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you.
Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay” (Ruth 1:16).
Primož Repar’s monograph is a necessary and vital contribution
to contemporary philosophy, both as a comprehensive overview
of Kierkegaard’s thought and also as the development of his ideas
through the prism of some of most influential contemporary
thinkers; his productive analysis brings the ramifications of
Kierkegaard’s existential engagement to their very limits. As such it
opens more questions than it answers; it will undoubtedly prove a
fertile departure point for subsequent thematizations of the questions of ethics and existential communication in post/modernity.
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Špela Žakelj
New Foundations of Moral Philosophy:
Redefinition of the Subject
In the course of his long career Paul Ricœur (1913 – 2005) has
lectured at numerous universities in Europe and the United States.
On his travels he met and adopted different philosophical directions and disciplines which is probably the reason why his work is
rather eclectic, his usually very voluminous works being written on
a broad range of issues (for example theory of discourse, historical
and narrative temporality, subjectivity and identity etc.), but the
major theme that unites his writings is that of philosophical anthropology. The focus of his reflection is therefore to understand oneself as an actor, responsible for its own acting; the recognition being
possible only through experiencing the way we relate throughout
our lives to the world and among others in the world. Nevertheless,
the author comes to this self–knowledge gradually, through numerous discussions of which some major ones are also available in
Slovenian translations, published mostly by Apokalipsa. Broadly
speaking, a distinction in Ricœur’s work can be drawn between two
parts: if his writings prior to 1960 were in the tradition of existential
philosophy, he starts, after the 1960, to combine phenomenological
description with hermeneutic interpretation, to which he remains
faithful until the end. By applying hermeneutic phenomenology –
which presumes that whatever is intelligible is accessible to us in
and through language and all deployments of language calls for
interpretation –, he does not disavow his earlier investigations, as
they are only developed further this along the same lines.
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Paul Ricœur: Sebe kot drugega (Oneself as Another)
Translation Nastja Skrušny Babin, afterword Janez Vodičar, KUD
Apokalipsa, Ljubljana 2011, philosophy collection Aut
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In Oneself as Another Ricœur combines his reflections that
appeared sporadically in his previous works and involves numerous philosophical interlocutors from Antiquity (Aristotle, Saint
Augustine) to modern European (Gadamer, Heidegger, Husserl,
Levinas, Nietzsche etc.) and Anglo–American (Austin, Davidson,
Searle etc.). The discussion is divided into eleven parts: the foreword is followed by ten studies on self–understanding, subdivided
by Ricœur into four interrelated topics.
In the foreword Ricœur opens with a question of selfhood,
pointing out the problem of the glorified Cartesian Cogito, which
actually contributed to the transformation of scholastic philosophy
into a modern one. It later became, partly with Spinoza and Hume
and to the greatest extent with Nietzsche, “the shattered” (p. 11)1
alias deconstructed Cogito. The author rejects the dichotomy developed between the exalted and the humiliated subject, emphasizing “that the hermeneutic self is placed at an equidistance between the apology of the cogito and from its overthrow” (p. 4). In this
sense, Ricœur reveals himself as a philosopher of reconciliation
par excellence, exceeding the differences between his views.
In the first two studies the author treats the philosophy of language in terms of semantic and pragmatic. Stemming from the
curtailed sense of the term identification, he finds that oneself as
an identifying reference needs surpassing, but “in this sense, if a
purely referential approach where one person is treated as a
basic particular to be completed by another approach, it cannot
be thereby abolished but will be preserved in this very surpassing” (p. 39). Searching for selfhood therefore starts through language and is continued, in the third and fourth study, with the
action theory, arising from analytic philosophy which the author
connects with hermeneutics. The question of the action is therefore already shattered by the question of the selfhood, which also
opens the question of its temporality and confronts the reader
with multiple paradoxes of identity.
In the fifth and sixth study Ricœur continues the interconnection of analytic philosophy and hermeneutics, and introduces a
question of narrative identity, emancipating finally from his original framework, which was the phenomenology of the will. As
1 All quotations are from English translation: Paul Ricœur, Oneself as Another,
Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1992.
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Janez Vodičar, who recommends to the reader to skip the first
four studies of this work to implement them later, notes in the
preface, “the understanding of the transition to the ethical dimension where selfhood finally finds its place in relation to ego” (p.
510) is crucial. This is achieved in the next, the seventh, eighth
and ninth study where the author presents ethical and moral
dimensions of the subject and the fundamental contradiction between the same and the other. In the seventh study, entitled “Self
and the Ethical Aim”, Ricœur introduces Lévinas’ term of the
other. Although the Lévinas’ initiative of the other within the
interpersonal relationship “establishes no relation at all, to the
extent that the other represents the absolute exterior with respect
to an ego defined by the condition of the separation” (p. 189), the
term of the other in conjunction with Hegel’s term of the recognition emerges afterwards as inevitable for the definition of selfhood. Recognition or Gewissen, which is “the relation of the self
to itself” (p. 318) is detailed in the last study to which the reader
is addressed by the question title “What ontology in view?” (p.
240). The discussion therefore winds up by questioning the ontological dimension of the hermeneutics of selfhood.
To sum–up, Ricœur in his work Oneself as Another makes a
semantic distinction between ethical and moral, the difference
between idem–identity and ipse–identity, or between ego and self,
which leads to the transition from ethic to moral philosophy, probably the best described in Ricœur’s words: “To say self is not to
say myself” (p. 180). In Vodičar’s opinion this claim finally justifies
one self’s “separation of ethical will and moral obligation” (p. 510).
In the Oneself as Another Ricœur therefore creates a new, stable
foundation of moral philosophy starting from the redefinition of
the subject which, as oneself, is of a more modest nature, including the other, and presupposing a distance. At the same time the
spontaneous egoism, characteristic of independent and self–sufficient ego, apparently paradoxical, but entirely logical after reading
this work, turns out to be insufficient, and thus exceeded.
Like all Ricœur’s works, the discussion on the selfhood is marked
by directness of expression and clarity of thought. But if the reader
therefore begins flirting with the idea that this book would be an
interesting mental upgrade of his holiday reading, he will quickly
abandon it. All the discussions of the author that can stand up to
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those of other great hermeneutic phenomenologists, as for example
Ricœur’s favorite references Martin Heidegger and Hans–Georg
Gadamer, deserve one’s full attention. Reading Ricœur is like entering the gemstone mine as precious stones resemble the author’s
ideas that must be extracted from underground in order to shine in
the open. So before the reader gets to the Oneself as Another
(1990),2 which is in Vodičar’s opinion “a conclusion of a long hermeneutic itinerary” (p. 508), one should concentrate on other, previous Ricœur’s “pearls”, i.e. works as The Rule of Metaphor (1975) or
the three–volume Time and Narrative (1983–85).
2 In parenthesis, dates of first French edition are given.
12_165-166-167_authors_ENG_3_uvodnik
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Iva Jevtić (Ph.D), born in 1976 in Kranj, writer and
translator. Published a book of short prose in 2005
(Težnost, Ljubljana: KUD Apokalipsa) and a scientific
monograph on the subject of medieval mysticism in 2009
(The Mystical Image, Mistična podoba, Ljubljana: KUD
Apokalipsa). Her interests include medieval mysticism,
especially women’s critical and feminist theory.
Barbara Korun was born in 1963 in Ljubljana. Her
collection Ostrina miline (The Edge of Grace, 1999)
received the National Book Fair Award for a debut collection. Her other collections of poetry & prose poems are
Zapiski iz podmizja (Notes from under the Table, 2003),
and Razpoke (Fissures, 2004). Her selected poems in
English, Songs of Earth and Light, translated by Irish poet
Theo Dorgan, appeared from Southword Edition in 2005.
She was twice invited to participate in the project
“European Capital of Culture” (Cork 2005 and Ruhr 2010).
A leading figure in a generation of radical women poets,
her work has been published in many anthologies and
reviews (i.e. New European Poetry from Graywolf Press,
USA, 2008). For the last collection of poems Pridem takoj
(I’ll be right back, 2011) she received two awards: zlata
ptica (Golden Bird) for outstanding achievement and
Veronika’s Award for the annual best poetry book.
Esad Babačić is a freelance poetwho has published
nine books of poetry. He began his careerwriting for the
punk band Via Ofenziva and singing for them as the front
man. Soon after, his work was defined as “real poetry” by
469
about the authors
about the authors
About the Authors
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a prominent Slovene poet. In 1984 he went to Titograd,
Montenegro and served in the former Yugoslav Army for 13
months. In addition to poetry writing he has worked as a journalist
on national TV. He reveals that he once read his poetry with John
Ashbery at a literary eveining in Berlin. He received “The
Kultursalon Hörbiger Literary Award” of Austria for his poem “The
Danube”.
470
Stanislava Chrobáková Repar (1960, Bratislava) is a Slovak
and Slovene literary scientist, publisher, editor, translator and writer.
She has a degree in philosophy and aesthetics (Comenius University,
Bratislava, 1984) and a doctorate in literary science (Academy of
Science, Bratislava, 1995). In 2009 she received her second doctorate
at the University of Nova Gorica, Slovenia. She is the author of three
printed scientific monographs, five books of poetry, four books of
prose, and a number of studies and expert analyses (www.quing.eu),
as well as reviews and articles. She writes in both the Slovak and
Slovene languages. Her research interests are mostly focused on
intercultural topics, (feminist) literary theory and comparative literary issues. Repar is the translator and co-translator of sixteen books,
the co-establisher and coordinator of the international project
Review within Review, and an editor of the publishing house and
monthly Apokalipsa from Ljubljana.
about the authors
Jure Novak is a professional theatre director, author, performer
and translator. Between 2007 and 2010, he was the artistic director
of Ljubljana’s Glej Theatre. In recent years, he has also been leading
workshops and lectures. His most recent book of poetry Old Poems
was published in 2011. He lives and works in Ljubljana.
Primož Repar is a philosopher, poet, translator and editor
who obtained a doctorate in philosophy in 2009 at Ljubljana
University, Slovenia. He is one of the founding members of the
Cultural and Arts Society Apokalipsa (1993), director of the
Apokalipsa publishing house, editor in chief of the review “for
the breakthrough into living culture” Apokalipsa, co-establisher
and coordinator of the international project Review within
Review, which nowadays links together 18 reviews from 13 countries of Europe. In autumn 1993 he took an additional course of
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training in Denmark at the international school for connecting
and understanding different cultures and nations The
International People’s College of Elsinore/Helsingør near
Copenhagen. Until now he has published ten books and a scientific monograph in two volumes: Kierkegaard – Vprašanje izbire
(Kierkegaard – the Question of Choice) and Kierkegaard –
Eksistencialna komunikacija (Kierkegaard – Existential
Communication, both volumes in 2009). He is translating from
Danish and systematically publishing the work of one of the
founders of existentialism, the Danish philosopher Søren
Kierkegaard into Slovene. With his Eseji o apokalipsi (Essays on
the Apocalypse, 2000) he was nominated for Marjan Rožanc
Award, and with his last poetry collection Stanja darežljivosti
(Stanja/States of Generosity, 2008) for the Jenko Award.
471
Jurij Hudolin is a Slovene poet, writer, columnist and translator. He has published a number of poetry collections and novels
and is known for his richly textured language and rebellious rejectioniststance. His first collection of poetry Če je laž kralj (If Lies are
King) was published in 1991, and he has since published six morepoetry collections as well as three novels. His columns are regularly featured in Mladina, Delo, Dnevnik, Večer and other journals
and newspapers, and a selection titled Pusti ti to (You Leave That
Alone) was published in 2004. His poetry has appeared in numerous literary journals and anthologies both at home and abroad, and
his novels are well received amongst readers and critics alike.
Milan Dekleva (born Ljubljana) is a poet, essayist and novelist,
who graduated from the University of Ljubljana with a degree in
about the authors
Barbara Simoniti (1963) has studied Slovene and English languages and literatures and received her MA in English literature
and her Ph.D. in literary studies. A freelance writer and translator
since 1995, she has translated over 30 books in the humanities and
social sciences. She has published four books of poetry
(Windstillness 1997, Golden Rain 2000, Solstice 2011 and Water
2012), a book of short stories (Distances 1998), her dissertation in
book form (Nonsense 1997) and an animal tale for children
(Marshlanders: Tales from the Greenwood Forest 2012).
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Comparative Literature. He now works as journalist for several
papers and television. He has published seventeen books of poetry
and several plays, a book of short stories and three novels as well as
many children’s books and musicals. An accomplished jazz pianist
and a former rugby player, Dekleva, an award-winning author, rose
to prominence in the nineties. His poems and essays explore thehuman conditionin modern times in the absence of God.
472
Jure Detela (1951–1992), the most ethereal and ascetic of
Slovene poets. Jure Detela lived and wrote with great concern for all
forms of life and his gathered poems were published posthumously
in 1992 by Wieser publishing. Also posthumuosly, he was awarded
the most prestigious national award for poetry – the Jenko award.
Alenka Zorman, born in Ljubljana, currently living in Ljubljana;
University Graduated Jurist; Over 30 years experience with organizations in human resources; retired since 2004. She is president of
the Haicu Club of Slovenia and s member of its Editorial Committee
for Letini časi (Seasons) the Club’s journal; co-editor of Aozora (web
site of South-East Europe); a member of the World Haiku Association
(editor for Slovenia), Word Haiku Club and The Association of
Croatian Haiku Poets. She has prizes from Apokalipsa contests: 2000
(3th prize), 2001 (prize for the best cycle), 2003 (2nd prize); the
Courage Award 13th ITOEN 2002; the Special Prize 4th HIA 2002;and
several international honorable mentions.
about the authors
Darja Kocjančič was born in Ljubljana. She has commanded
attention as a haiku poet receiving two awards at an international competition for the best haiku organized by Apokalipsa. She has published
an e-book of haiku entitled Otroci orgazma / Children of orgasm.
Josip Osti (b. Sarajevo 1945) is the author of more then twenty
collections of poetry, fifteen books of essays, numerous literary
criticism articles and reviews as well as eight anthologies of poetry
and prose. He has translated from the Slovene eighty books and fifteen stage plays. More then thirty translations of his works have
appeared in other languages. In addition to his awards for translation, he has recieved several literary prizes, including: Zlata ptica
(Golden Bird), the Veronika, Župančičeva and Jenkova awards, the
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International Vilenica Award (1994), and a special recognition for
poetry “Scritture di Frontiere” (Trieste, 2005). He lives in the village
of Tomaj as a freelance writer.
Rade Krstić (b. Varaždin, 1960) graduated from the Ljubljana
Theatre Academy with a degree in theatre history He is a poet, playwright, literary critic and translator. His haiku, first published in the
collection Vremenar (1986), received an award for best debut and
the Zlata ptica award. He had also published several other books.
He lives in Ljubljana.
473
Jože Štucin (1955) is a music teacher in Tolmin, where he also
lives. He writes poetry, essays and reviews. He is a literary editor of
the Primorska srečanja magazine, member of the Slovene Writers’
Association and head of the Tolmin Literary Club. He has published eleven collections of poetry.
Dimitar Anakiev (1960), is one of the most prominent haiku
poets and editors in the world. He is the author of numerous collections of poems translated into many languages and is an international editor of several magazines and anthologies. Currently he
is making documentary films.
Ana M. Sobočan, (1980) is a researcher and lecturer at the
University of Ljubljana. Her academic merit has earned her prestigious grants: a Fulbright visiting researcher grant for two academic
terms in the USA (2011–2012), a junior researcher employment
funding of the Slovenian Research Agency (2007–2011), a George
Soros Foundation full scholarship for a Gender Studies master programme in Hungary (2004–2005), and a Zois stipend for talented
students (Slovenian Ministry for Education) for her degree in
Comparative Literature and Sociology of Culture (1999–2004). She
finished her master’s degree on Slovenian Female Novelists with
distinction (2005) and is currently waiting to defend her doctoral
thesis on Ethics. In her free time away from teaching and research
about the authors
Tone Škrjanec, poet and director of cultural association KUD
France Prešeren. Haiku translated by Joshua Beckman are from the
book Sun on a Knee.
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she does editorial work (special issues of a scientific journal, monographs), is a peer reviewer for two international journals, and translates scientific articles, and besides is always happy to respond to
invitations to write reviews and forewords to literary works.
474
Alenka Koželj was born in 1980 in Ljubljana. In 2005 she
obtained a degree in French language and comparative literature at
the Faculty of Arts of the of the University of Ljubljana. In 2011 she
completed her master studies in the field of French literature.
Currently she is pursuing a PhD in French literature. She is a writer,
translator and editor.
Ana Makuc (1982) is a literary theorist, linguist, and self-proclaimed proud feminist. She is currently completing her PhD in
feminist cyberpunk science fiction literature at the University of
Lancaster, United Kingdom. Her professional interests include
poetry, graphic novels, literary translation, feminist technoscience,
feminist literary criticism and feminist psychoanalysis.
about the authors
Tea Hvala is a writer, journalist and organiser with a BA in
Comparative Literature, BA in Sociology of Culture, and MA in
Gender Studies. She has been facilitating In Other Wor(l)ds, workshops in collaborative writing of feminist-queer science fiction since
2008. Her recent co-edited books include Svetovi drugih (2010) and
Rdečke razsajajo! (2011). Essays of hers on local feminist activism
and public space reclaiming have been published in several academic anthologies. She co-hosts Sektor Ž, a monthly feminist radio
show, and has been co-organising the International Feminist and
Queer Festival Rdeče zore (Red Dawns) since 2002. She lives and
works in Ljubljana, Slovenia. Blog: http://prepih.blogspot.com
Juliana Spahr (born in Chillicothe, Ohio in 1966) received a
BA from Bard College and PhD from SUNY Buffalo. She is the
author of Well Then There Now (2011); This Connection of
Everyone with Lungs (2005); Fuck You—Aloha—I Love You (2001);
and Response (1996), winner of the National Poetry Series Award.
Spahr is also the author of Everybody’s Autonomy: Connective
Reading and Collective Identity (, 2001).
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As editor, she has published a number of critical works, including A Megaphone. In 2009, she received the Hardison Poetry Prize
awarded by the Folger Shakespeare Library. She currently lives in .
Stephanie Young’s books of poetry include her lyric first collection, Telling the Future Off (Tougher Disguises, 2005) and
Picture Palace (2008), which brings together poetry, prose and performance texts constructed alongside scenes from film. Young has
performed her movietelling pieces at CalArts, and Yerba Buena
Center for the Arts, and she has written about the appearance of
this performance practice in contemporary poetry communities.
With , Young has worked on a number of projects considering
feminism and experimental poetry, including A Megaphone.
Young’s extensive editorial work also includes an anthology, Bay
Poetics (2006), which presents the work of 112 Bay Area writers.
She is founding and current editor of the interdisciplinary
arts/humanities project Deep Oakland. Young lives and works in ,
where she teaches poetry at Mills College.
475
Pavle Goranović, born in 1971 in Nikšič, Montenegro, graduated from the Faculty of Philosophy. He writes poetry, prose and
essays. He has published two books, Ornaments of the Night and
Reading the Silence. His poems have been translated into several
languages. He is Secretarv of the Independent Association of
Montenegrin Writers and on the editorial board of the renovvned
journal for literature, cnlture and social questions, ARS. He devotes
much of his time to literary criticism and the problems of contemporary aesthetic theories. Poems dedicated to Kierkegaard were
first published in the journal Sodobnost (no. 141, 2001).
about the authors
Amanda Montei is a writer and educator living in Los Angeles,
where she earned her MFA in Critical Studies & Writing from
California Institute of the Arts. She recently completed a memoir, and
is now working on book of poems, as well as a series of essays
exploring the dynamics of forgiveness, reconciliation and national
recoveries from mass atrocities. Her work has appeared in Ms.
Magazine, Explosion Proof Magazine, PAJ: A Journal of Performance
and Art (MIT Press), Delirious Hem, Nanofiction, Night Train and
others. She was a nominee for the 2010 Million Writer’s Award.
476
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Martin Beck Matuštík, Lincoln Professor of Ethics and
Religion and Co-Director of Center for Critical Theory and Cultural
Studies at Arizona State University, joined the New College of
Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences at ASUW in Fall 2008. After earning his Ph.D. from Fordham University in 1991, he has been on the
faculty in the Department of Philosophy at Purdue University.
Matustik has published six single author books, edited two collections, and co-edited New Critical Theory, a series at Rowman and
Littlefield Publishers.
about the authors
Jon Stewart (Ph.D., Dr. habil. theol. & phil.) is associate research
professor at Søren Kierkegaard Research Centre at the University of
Copenhagen, foreign member of the Royal Danish Academy of
Sciences and Letters and the president of International Kierkegaard
Society. He is one of the most important scholars in the field of the
international Kierkegaard research. His impressive work is based
on extensive knowledge of the texts of the Danish Golden Age and
those relevant for Hegel’s thought. Some monographs: Idealism
and Existentialism: Hegel and Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century
European Philosophy (2010), A History of Hegelianism in Golden
Age Denmark (Tome I, II, III; 2007), Kierkegaard’s Relations to Hegel
Reconsidered (2003), The Unity of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit:
A Systematic Interpretation (2000) ect.
Abrahim H. Khan (Ph.D, McGill) is professor at Trinity College
in the University of Toronto. He is Director of its Advanced Degree
Studies program in Divinity, and cross-appointed to the
Department of Religion. He is the convener of the Kierkegaard
Circle at Trinity College, a steering committee member of the
Kierkegaard, Religion and Culture program unit of the American
Academy of Religion, and editor of the Toronto Journal of Theology.
His recent publications include “Charles Taylor: Taylor’s Affinity to
Kierkegaard.” Kierkegaard’s Influence on Philosophy, ed. Jon
Stewart, Tome III. (Ashgate, 2012), pp. 219-230; and “Muhammad
Iqbal and Kierkegaard’s Judge William,” Kierkegaard, East and West
in Acta Kierkegaardiana, Vol. 5 (Slovakia, 2011), pp. 57-77.
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Merigala Gabriel is professor and department chair of
Philosophy at Madras Christian College, India. He earned a master
of Philosophy degree from Madras Christian College and a doctoral degree from the University of Madras, India. He received a theological diploma from the University of Geneva. Gabriel was visiting
professor at Georgia Southern University, USA and has done postdoctoral research at St. Olaf College, USA.
José Garcia Martin is a doctor of Philosophy and the chief of
the department of Philosophy at the I. E. S. “Puerto de la Torre” in
Málaga. He is an associate professor of Sociology at the Universitiy
of Granada and a researcher at the University of Málaga. He is the
president of the Spanish Society of the friend of Søren Kierkegaard
(S. H. A. K.) and the director of the digital magazine “La Mirada
Kierkegaardiana”.
477
Roman Králik (1973) studied pedagogy, philosophy and theology in Banska Bystrica and Nitra, Slovakia, and in Prague, Czech
Republic. He has twice obtained the Jonathan Stenseth – Stipendium
in the USA (2004, 2007) and took part in a research programme at St.
Olaf College in the Hong Kierkegaard Library. He has published a
number of articles dealing with the Danish thinker Søren
Kierkegaard. In 2005, he established the Kierkegaard Collection in
Slovakia in Šaľa, which is the only specialized library of this kind in
Slovakia. He is the founder and chairperson of the Kierkegaard
Society in Slovakia. He has a doctorate in theology from HTF UK in
Prague. He is the author of the published monographs Problém
about the authors
Tibor Máhrik was born in 1961. He graduated from the
Technical University in Bratislava. He completed his theological
studies in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and finished a three-month
study of religion in Israel. After 6 years of work in Chirana a.s.
Stara Turá he became a pastor. He has established and conducted
The Eben Ezer Choir (1986-2002). He is often invited as a guest to
various meetings to discuss drugs, problems in relationships,
communication, or the psychological manipulation of sects and
cults. He regularly prepares radio programs and publishes articles in the regional press.
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zvaný Kierkegaard (The Problem Called Kierkegaard) and Zápas
Sørena Kierkegaarda (The Fight of Søren Kierkegaard) in 2006.
478
Kornelijus Platelis, poet, essayist, translator, was born in 1951.
He was educated as a construction engineer and worked for 12
years in this field practicing literature at the same time. Now he
works as President of the Lithuanian Artists Association, Editor-inChief of culture weekly magazine Literatūra ir menas (Literature &
Art) in Vilnius, and he is Chairman of the Board of the international
annual literary festival “Druskininkai Poetic Fall.” He has published
8 collections of poetry in Lithuanian, three translated into English,
one into Italian, Bulgarian and Slovenian; two books of essays,
Selected Poems of T.S.Eliot, Seamus Heaney, Ezra Pound, Robert
Bringhurst, and “The History of Polish Literature” by Czesław Miłosz
into Lithuanian. In addition he has written commentary on The Old
Testament. His poetry has been translated into over 20 languages.
about the authors
Cvetka Hedžet Tóth, Professor of Ontology and Metaphisics
in the department of Philosophy at Faculty of Arts; University of
Ljubljana, Slovenia. The main interests of her research are onthology, metaphysics, ethics and axology. She published some monographs, the last one: Hermenevtika metafizike (Hermeneutics of
Metaphysics, 2008). She also collaborates in research programs
with Hebrew University in Israel, University of Regensburg and
University of München in Germany.
Humberto Ortega Villaseñor is a Mexican painter, researcher
and professor of the University of Guadalajara. He completed his
Master’s studies at the University of London and received his PhD in
Law at UNAM in Mexico (1982). He has published two books and
many articles in interdisciplinary fields dealing mainly with
Philosophy, Communication, Culture and Art since 1989. He has had
numerous individual exhibitions (fifteen shows in Mexico and eighteen in the United States and Europe since 1975). His works have
been selected by organizations and foreign museums and become
part of their permanent collections. Currently, he looks into the links
between visual and literary creativity as an artist and as a researcher.
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Knjige KUD Apokalipsa:
1.
2.
3.
4.
Primož Repar: Molitvenik (Zbirka Apokalipsa 1), 1995
Ivan Črnič: Posvečujoči žarek (Zbirka Apokalipsa 2), 1995
Miro Bregar: Lobo (Zbirka Aurora 1), 1995
Novica Novaković: Veličanstvo Užas i druge pesme strave
(Posebna izdaja 1), 1996
5. Zbornik mlade slovenske poezije in proze (posebna angleška izdaja):
At three and a half past midnight (Posebna izdaja revije), 1996
6. Romana Novak: Destrukcije (Zbirka Apokalipsa 3), 1996
7. Bojana Kunst: Višnje v čokoladi (Zbirka Aurora 2), 1997
8. Artur Štern: Metabiologija (Zbirka Aut 1), 1997
9. Sašo Gazdić: Nasilje in post (Zbirka Aut 2), 1997
10. Franko Bušić: Razneslo ti bo prekleto bučo (Zbirka Aurora 3), 1998
11. Dimitar Anakiev: Lastovke (Zbirka Apokalipsa 4), 1998
12. Søren Kierkegaard: Dnevnik zapeljivca (Zbirka Aut 3), 1998
13. Hannah Arendt: Kaj je filozofija eksistence? (Zbirka Aut 4), 1998
14. Emmanuel Levinas: Od sakralnega k svetemu (Zbirka Aut 5), 1998
15. Ivan Dobnik: Kaligrafija lire (Zbirka Aurora 4), 1999
16. Ciril Bergles: Z besedo in ognjem (Zbirka Apokalipsa 5), 1999
17. Živeči Kierkegaard (Zbirka Aut 6), 1999
18. Iztok Osojnik: Zgodba o Dušanu Pirjevcu in meni (Zbirka Aut 7), 1999
19. Martin Buber: Problem človeka (Zbirka Aut 8), 1999
20. Karl Jaspers: O pogojih in možnostih novega humanizma
(Zbirka Aut 9), 1999
21. HAIKU STRIP 1 (stripovska izdaja Revije), 1999
22. Jože Volarič: Odtisi bosih nog (Zbirka Haiku 1999/1), 1999
23. Rudi Stopar: Srčni veter (Zbirka Haiku 1999/2), 1999
24. Alma Anakiev: Polžja hiša (Zbirka Haiku 1999/3), 1999
25. Darjo Volarič: V ribniku neba (Zbirka Haiku 1999/4), 1999
26. Tone Škrjanec: Sonce na kolenu (Zbirka Haiku 1999/5), 1999
27. Ivo Volarič - Feo: Kratkice (Zbirka Apokalipsa 6), 2000
28. Peter Sloterdijk: Prihajati k svetu – prihajati k jeziku
29. Primož Repar: Spisi o apokalipsi (Zbirka Aut 11), 2000
30. Paul Ricoeur: Krog med pripovedjo in časovnostjo
31. Edmond Jabes: Prehojena pot (Zbirka Aut 13), 2000
32. Ban’ja Nacuiši: Romanje po Zemlji (Zbirka Haiku 2000/1), 2000
13_165-166-167_seznam_1
33.
34.
35.
36.
37.
38.
39.
40.
41.
42.
43.
44.
45.
46.
47.
48.
49.
50.
51.
52.
53.
54.
55.
56.
57.
58.
59.
60.
61.
62.
63.
64.
65.
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Jim Kacian: Iz kamna (Zbirka Haiku 2000/2), 2000
Nikolaj Kančev: Duša vodnjaka (Zbirka Haiku 2000/3), 2000
Ion Codrescu: Kapljice rose (Zbirka Haiku 2000/4), 2000
Zoran Doderović: Zastrupljena reka (Zbirka Haiku 2000/5), 2000
Paul Ricouer: Zgodovina in pripoved (Zbirka Aut 14), 2001
Tone Škrjanec: Pagode na veter (Zbirka Apokalipsa 7), 2001
HAIKU STRIP 2 (stripovska izdaja Revije), 2001
Vesna Milek: Kalipso (Zbirka Aurora 5), 2002
Ed. Andrej Skubic: Glas. Antologija sodobne škotske proze
(Zbirka Pretoki 1), 2002
Paul Ricoeur: Konfiguracija časa v fikcijski pripovedi
Hannah Arendt: Resnica in laž v politiki (Zbirka Aut 16), 2003
HAIKU STRIP 3 (stripovska izdaja Revije), 2003
Paul Ricoeur: Pripovedovani čas (Zbirka Aut 17), 2003
Roland Barthes: Učna ura / Miroslav Marcelli: Roland Barthes
(Zbirka Fraktal 1) 2003
Aleš Kermauner: Luknja v novcu (Zbirka Fraktal 2), 2003
Mila Haugová: Alfa (Zbirka Fraktal 3), 2003
Marián Milčák: Opus Her(m)eticum (Zbirka Fraktal 4), 2003
Stanislava Chrobáková Repar: Angelske utopije (Zbirka Fraktal 5), 2003
Barbara Korun: Zapiski iz podmizja (Zbirka Fraktal 6), 2003
Zlatko Krstevski: The Icons (stripovska izdaja Revije), 2003
Hrvaški strip (stripovska izdaja Revije), 2003
Odstiranja. Filozofski zbornik (Zbirka Aut 18), 2004
Ludwig Witgenstein: O gotovosti (Zbirka Aut 19), 2004
Novica Novaković: Biba, pridi v mojo dlan (Posebna izdaja 2), 2004
Vinko Ošlak: Mir in vojna (Zbirka Aut 20), 2004
Alan Badiou: Mali priročnik o inestetiki (Zbirka Aut 21), 2004
Martin Heidegger: Pogovori s poljske poti (Zbirka Aut 22), 2004
Jacques Derrida: Dar smrti (Zbirka Aut 23), 2004
Alexandra Berkova: Trpljenje vdanega Zmeneta
(Zbirka Apokalipsa 8), 2004
Zoran Pevec: Moški v sobi (Zbirka Apokalipsa 9), 2004
Marjan Rožanc: Prizori s hudičem, Lectio divina
Miroslav Petříček ml.: Znaki vsakdanjosti ali na kratko skoraj o ničemer
(Zbirka Fraktal 7), 2004
Jože Olaj: Argonavti (Zbirka Fraktal 8), 2004
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66. Petr Hruška: Meseci in druge pesmi (Zbirka Fraktal 9), 2004
67. Jan Balaban: Počitnice (Zbirka Fraktal 10), 2004
68. Roman Simić: Kraj, na katerem bova prenočila
69. Borivoj Radaković: Vse ob pravem času (Zbirka Fraktal 12), 2004
70. Andraž Polič: Arabeske (Zbirka Fraktal 13), 2004
71. Primož Repar: Gozdovi, ikone (Zbirka Haiku 2004/1), 2004
72. Jure Detela: Haiku (Zbirka Haiku 2004/2), 2004
73. Darja Kocjančič: Rezervirano za pilote (Zbirka Haiku 2004/3), 2004
74. Alenka Zorman: Metulj na rami (Zbirka Haiku 2004/4), 2004
75. Matjaž Bertoncelj: Eppur si muove (stripovski album), 2004
76. Ivan Črnič: Zmajev šah (Posebne izdaje 4), 2004
77. HAIKU STRIP 4 (stripovska izdaja), 2005
78. Hannah Arendt: Kaj je filozofija eksistence?
(2. izdaja, Zbirka Aut 24), 2005
79. Jean Baudrillard: Duh terorizma (Zbirka Aut 25), 2005
80. Tatjana Soldo: Jezik razžarjenih trav (Zbirka Apokalipsa 11), 2005
81. Balla: Dvosamljenost (Zbirka Apokalipsa 12), 2005
82. Ribnik tišine (slovenska haiku antologija v 12-ih jezikih,
Haiku Special), 2005
83. Ed. Jurij Hudolin, Nenad Rizvanović: Nori poštarji vstopajo v mesto
(sodobna hrvaška poezija, Pretoki 2), 2005
84. Aldo Žerjal: Smrtne razlike (Zbirka Apokalipsa 13), 2005
85. Bina Štampe Žmavc: Opoldnevi (Zbirka Apokalipsa 14), 2005
86. Robert Mlinarec: Vse o vetrnicah (Zbirka Apokalipsa 15), 2005
87. Hélène Cixous: Smeh Meduze (Zbirka Fraktal 14), 2005
88. Lili Novy: Črepinje in druge pesmi (Zbirka Fraktal 15), 2005
89. Wisława Szymborska: Trenutek (Zbirka Fraktal 16), 2005
90. Ottó Tolnai: Babica v rotterdamskem gangsterskem filmu
91. Margret Kreidl: Hitri streli, resnične povedi (Zbirka Fraktal 18), 2005
92. Iva Jevtić: Težnost (Zbirka Fraktal 19), 2005
93. Søren Kierkegaard: Strah in trepet (Zbirka Aut 26), 2005
94. Tamara Deu: Zapisovalec grehov: Diagnoza stanja
(Zbirka Aurora 6), 2005
95. Olga Tokarczuk: Dnevna hiša, nočna hiša (Zbirka Apokalipsa 16), 2005
96. Milan Dekleva: Muši muši (Zbirka Haiku 2005/1), 2005
97. Nikola Madžirov: Asfalt, toda nebo (Zbirka Haiku 2005/2), 2005
98. Lee Gurga: V vrhovih topola (Zbirka Haiku 2005/3), 2005
13_165-166-167_seznam_1
99.
100.
101.
102.
103.
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Dušan Vidaković: S prebolene obale (Zbirka Haiku 2005/4), 2005
Czesław Miłosz: Pričevanje poezije (Zbirka Aut 28), 2006
Vladimir Jankélévitch: Paradoks morale (Zbirka Aut 27), 2006
Alenka Jensterle - Doležal: Zapisi za S. G. (Zbirka Apokalipsa 17), 2006
Borut Kardelj: Lačne zarje/Velik temen val
104. Ivan Volarič Feo: Žalostna sova (Zbirka Apokalipsa 19), 2006
105. Primož Repar: Po žerjavici (Zbirka Apokalipsa 20), 2006
106. Derrida – Kant: O znova ubranem ... (Zbirka Aut 29), 2006
107. Zlati čoln: mednarodni prevajalski zbornik, 2006
108. Iztok Osojnik: Homo politicus (Zbirka Aut 30), 2006
109. Barbara Korun: Zapiski iz podmizja (2. izdaja, Zbirka Fraktal 20), 2006
110. Oscar Leonel Ruiz-Ramirez: Biografia /Biografija
111. Tatjana Soldo: Jezik razžarjenih trav (2. izdaja,
Zbirka Apokalipsa 22), 2006
112. Bernhard Waldenfels: Potujitev moderne (Zbirka Aut 31), 2006
113. Saša Vegri: Ofelija in trojni aksel & Zajtrkujem v urejenem naročju
114. Mladen Lompar: Senca na prizorišču (Zbirka Fraktal 22), 2006
115. Milorad Popović: Negotova dežela (Zbirka Fraktal 23), 2006
116. Risto Lazarov: Heraklej (Zbirka Fraktal 24), 2006
117. Iztok Osojnik: Pesmi niča (Zbirka Fraktal 25), 2006
118. Balša Brković: Privatna galerija (Zbirka Apokalipsa 23), 2006
119. Ivan Volarič Feo & The Schmidt’s: Eppur si rola. Ples podgan
(CD), 2006
120. Stanislava Chrobáková Repar: Iz skupne zime,
121. David Cobb: Veter se obrne (Zbirka Haiku 2007/1), 2007
122. Josip Osti: Med koprivo in križem (Zbirka Haiku 2007/2), 2007
123. Martin Berner: Cvet srobota (Zbirka Haiku 2007/3), 2007
124. Rade Krstić: Šepeti nesmrtnosti (Zbirka Haiku 2007/4), 2007
125. Vida Mokrin-Pauer: Upoštevaj kvante (Zbirka Apokalipsa 25), 2007
126. Miklavž Ocepek: Zapuščeni svet (Zbirka Aut 32), 2007
127. Péter Zilahy: Zadnje okno-žirafa (Posebne izdaje 5), 2007
128. Matjaž Kocbek: Tilt./Tilt. (Zbirka Apokalipsa 26), 2007
129. Dan Lungu: Kokošji raj (Zbirka Apokalipsa 27), 2007
130. John D. Caputo: Radikalnejša hermenevtika (Zbirka Aut 33), 2007
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131. Zlati čoln: mednarodni prevajalski zbornik,
(Posebna izdaja revije Apokalipsa) 2007
132. Mednarodni filozofski simpozij Miklavža Ocepka,
Globalizacija in solidarnost, zbornik, (Posebna izdaja revije Apokalipsa), 2007
133. Žarko Paić: Projekt svobode (Zbirka Aut 34), 2007
134. John Kennedy Toole: Zarota bebcev (Zbirka Apokalipsa 28), 2007
135. Ursula K. Le Guin: Ples na robu sveta (Zbirka Apokalipsa 29), 2007
136. Ed. Mia Dintinjana: Čudovita usta (Antologija sodobne irske poezije,
Pretoki 3), 2007
137. Vidosav Stevanović: Iskra (Zbirka Apokalipsa 30), 2008
138. Maja Vidmar: Sobe (Zbirka Apokalipsa 31), 2008
139. Zdravko Kecman: Pajek je slepa pega (Zbirka Apokalipsa 32), 2008
140. Meta Kušar: Jaspis (Zbirka Apokalipsa 33), 2008
141. Paul Ricœur: Živ vse do smrti in fragmenti (Zbirka Aut 35), 2008
142. Pavel Brycz: Patriarhata davno minula slava
143. Terézia Kvapilová: Nad Závody neni – rozpomínania
(Posebne izdaje), 2008
144. Andreja Kocjan: Mikser, stripi 2000–2006 (Zbirka Strip 2), 2008
145. Jasna Koteska: Intimist (Zbirka Fraktal 26), 2008
146. Eugenijus Ališanka: Iz nenapisanih zgodb (Zbirka Fraktal 27), 2008
147. István Örkény: Enominutne novele (Zbirka Fraktal 28), 2008
148. Aleksandar Prokopiev: Plovba na jug (Zbirka Fraktal 29), 2008
149. Franjo Frančič: Tu živijo srečni ljudje (Zbirka Fraktal 30), 2008
150. Jože Štucin: Tattoo trenutka (Zbirka Haiku 2008/1), 2008
151. Luko Paljetak: Frizer za krizanteme (Zbirka Haiku 2008/2), 2008
152. Santoka Taneda: Okus gora (Zbirka Haiku 2008/3), 2008
153. Dejan Bogojević: Iščem obraz vode (Zbirka Haiku 2008/4), 2008
154. HAIKU STRIP 5 (stripovska izdaja Revije), 2008
155. Arthur Schnitzler: Sanjska novela (Zbirka Apokalipsa 35), 2008
156. Tomáš Halík: Blizu pola: Molk na Antarktiki (Zbirka Aut 36), 2008
157. Ján Ondruš: Kretnja s cvetom & V stanju žolča
158. Josip Osti: Tek pod mavrico (Zbirka Aut 37), 2008
159. Primož Repar: Kierkegaard – Vprašanje izbire (Zbirka Aut 38), 2009
160. Primož Repar: Kierkegaard – Eksistencialna komunikacija
161. Iva Jevtić: Mistična podoba (Zbirka Aut 40), 2009
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162. Matjaž Bertoncelj: Enostranski (Zbirka Strip 3), 2009
163. Matjaž Bertoncelj: Večstranski (Zbirka Strip 4), 2009
164. Jurij Hudolin: Žival in lakaj najdeta ljubezen
165. Søren Kierkegaard: Etično-religiozni razpravici (Zbirka Aut 41), 2009
166. Josip Osti: Samo je smrt zimzelena (KUD Apokalipsa in Otvoreni
kulturni forum, Cetinje), 2009
167. Erik Jakub Groch: Druga naivnost (Zbirka Apokalisa 38) 2009
168. Stanislava Chrobáková Repar: Slovenka na kvadrat
(Posebne izdaje 7), 2009
169. Ed.: Zsolt Lukács: Pesniki, čakajoči na angela (Antologija transilvanske /
sedmograške poezije, Pretoki 4), 2009
170. Martina Soldo: Potapljač : pesmi v prozi (zbirka Apokalipsa 39), 2009
171. Paul Ricoeur: Kritika in prepričanje (Zbirka Aut 42), 2009
172. Pavel Barša: Gospostvo človeka in želja ženske (Zbirka Aut 43), 2009
173. Paul Ricoeur: Živa metafora (Zbirka Aut 44), 2009
174. Jean-Luc Marion: Malik in razdalja (Zbirka Aut 45), 2009
175. Dean Komel: Potikanja (Zbirka Aut 46), 2010
176. Dejan Aubreht: Nietzschejeva filozofija razlike (Zbirka Aut 47), 2010
177. Darka Mazi: Tango z možem ( Zbirka Aurora 7), 2010
178. Mile Stojić: Nebeški pension (Zbirka Apokalipsa 40), 2010
179. Lo Fu: Drobec iz naplavin in druge (Zbirka Apokalipsa 41), 2010
180. Milan Petek Levokov: Paris at night (Zbirka Apokalipsa 42). 2010
181. Andrej Medved: Razlagalec sanj (Zbirka Apokalipsa 43), 2010
182. Stanislava Chrobáková Repar: Dotakniti se prazne sredine
183. Zuvdija Hodžić: Davidova zvezda (Zbirka Apokalipsa 45), 2010
184. Fadila Nura Haver: Ko umrem, naj se smejem
(Zbirka Apokalipsa 46). 2010
185. Marko Hudnik: Skozme potuje gozd (Zbirka Haiku 2010), 2010
186. Desanka Maksimović: Najmanjši vrtiček sveta
(Zbirka Haiku 2010), 2010
187. Tone Škrjanec: Med drevesi (Zbirka Haiku 2010), 2010
188. Béla Hamvas: Patmos (Zbirka Aut 48), 2010
189. Tomáš Halík: Dotakni se ran (Zbirka Aut 49), 2010
190. Haiku strip 6 (Stripovska izdaja revije), 2010
191. Edvard Kocbek: Razumnik pred odločitvijo
(Zbirka Revija v reviji), 2010
192. Matjaž Bertoncelj: Eppur si muove Minimundus (Zbirka Strip 5), 2010
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193. Varja Velikonja: Vprašajte Alico (Posebne izdaje 8), 2010
194. Jean – Luc Marion: Malik in razdalja (Zbirka Aut 50), 2010
195. Terézia Kvapilová: O sící a žací, svátkoch aj pátkoch Závodzanú
(Posebne izdaje 9), 2010
196. Mednarodni filozofski simpozij Miklavža Ocepka, Filozofija v
zapuščenem svetu, zbornik (Posebna izdaja revije Apokalipsa), 2010
197. Peter Bieri: Rokodelstvo svobode (Zbirka Aut 50), 2011
198. Esad Babačić: Vsak otrok je lep, ko se rodi
199. Barbara Korun: Pridem takoj (Zbirka Apokalipsa 48), 2011
200. Razsipane jagode: Višegrajska haiku antologija
(Zbirka Revija v reviji 2), 2011
201. Marija Švajncer: Nisem se skrila (Zbirka Apokalipsa 49), 2011
202. Zdravko Kecman: Scabiosa trenta (Zbirka Apokalipsa 50), 2011
203. Carlo Michelstaedter: Prepričanje in retorika (Zbirka Aut 51), 2011
204. Goran Starčević: Volk v supermarket (Zbirka Aut 52), 2011
205. Belo lebdenje med nama (Zbirka Revija v reviji 3), 2011
206. Herta Müller: Vrag tiči v zrcalu (Zbirka Fraktal 31), 2011
207. Maja Novak: Zverjad (Zbirka Fraktal 32), 2011
208. Péter Esterházy: Ženska (Zbirka Fraktal 33), 2011
209. Kornelijus Platelis (Zbirka Fraktal 34), 2011
210. Miroslav Mićanović (Zbirka Fraktal 35), 2011
211. Igor Isakovski: Iz bliskov in ognja (Zbirka Fraktal 36), 2011
212. Jure Novak: Stare pesmi (Zbirka Fraktal 37), 2011
213. Esad Babačić: Sloni jočejo pošteno (Zbirka Apokalipsa 51), 2011
214. Paul Ricoeur: Sebe kot drugega (Zbirka Aut 53), 2011
215. Mednarodni filozofski simpozij Miklavža Ocepka, Udejanjanje
duhovnosti v sodobnem svetu, zbornik
(Posebna izdaja revije Apokalipsa), 2012
216. Barbara Simoniti: Voda (Zbirka Apokalipsa 52), 2012
217. Alenka Jensterle-Doležal: Pesmi v snegu (Zbirka Apokalipsa 53), 2012
218. Ivo Svetina: Marijine pesmi: 1975-2006 (Zbirka Apokalipsa 54), 2012
219. Robert Šabec: Rdeča pošat (Zbirka Aurora 8), 2012
220. Marina Bahovec: Zgodba leta (Zbirka Aurora 9), 2012
221. Zdenko Huzjan: Tišinasto (Zbirka Apokalipsa 55), 2012
222. Barbara Korun: Pridem takoj (2. Natis, Zbirka Apokalipsa 56), 2012
223. Janko M. Lozar: Fenomenologija razpoloženja (Zbirka Aut 54), 2012
224. Primož Repar: Apokrif bitja (Zbirka Aut 55), 2012
225. Zrnca: Antologija najkrajše srbske proze (Zbirka Pretoki 5), 2012
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226. Belá Hamvas: Patmos II (Zbirka Aut 56), 2012
227. Srečko Kosovel: Zeleni papagaj (Revija v reviji 4), 2012
228. Ljubomir Djurković: Vseeno, nekaj se spreminja
229. Jean-Luc Nancy: Singularna pluralna bit; Lepota
230. Søren Kierkegaard: Z vidika mojega pisateljstva (Zbirka Aut 58), 2012
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