| No Sērena Kirkegora dienasgrāmatām |
[Jun. 23rd, 2007|04:10 pm] |
Nov. 5. Perhaps I do not say more, for I know how difficult it is to judge oneself in abstracto if one is to judge truthfully perhaps I should have succeeded in breaking off my literary work so as to concentrate upon taking an official position, if everything had been as it should have been and it had been clear that I was free when I made my decision. Now that is no longer possible. There is a great difficulty in the way of my becoming a priest. If I undertook it I should certainly run the danger of coming to grief as I did over my engagement. On the other hand it has been made difficult for me to live entirely and peacefully withdrawn in the country, for I am all the same somewhat embittered and as a result I need the enchantment of literary composition in order to be able to forget all the crude trivialities of life.
It becomes more and more clear to me that, constituted as I am, I am never successful in fulfilling my ideals whilst in another sense I become, humanly speaking, more than those ideals. Most people's ideals are great and extraordinary things which they never achieve. I am altogether too melancholy to have such ideals. Other people would laugh at my ideals. For example it is perfectly true to say that my ideal was to marry and simply live for marriage. Then, by despairing of being able to achieve so much, I became an author, and perhaps an author of importance. My other ideal is to be a country parson, to live quietly
in the country and devote my life to the little circle of those around me and then, because I despair of success, It is quite possible that I shall achieve something which seems much greater.
When Bishop Mynster advises me to be a country parson he evidently does not understand me. It is perfectly true that that is what I desire, but our premisses are completely at variance. He imagines that, in some way or other, I want to go further along that road, that I want to be something, and that is the whole point, I want to be as little as possible; that is precisely the idea of my melancholy.
For that very reason it has pleased me to be looked upon as half mad, though that is only a negative way of being something unusual. Yet it is still possible that that should really be my form of existence, in which case I shall never achieve the lovely quiet and calm existence of being something quite little, what I have always known within myself, and the reason why I have never spoken with any other man about my real
concerns, has proved true again in my conversation with Mynster : it leads to nothing, for since I cannot and dare not speak of what entirely and essentially constitutes my inmost life, my conversations with others are almost a deceit on my part. In relation to Mynster I feel the real sadness of it all because I honour him so highly. |
|
|