If the lover ventures out—that is, if his falling in love does not just remain a state of mind but he is actually united with the beloved, yet without having any other expression for falling in love than falling in love, if he ventures out, motivated and blissfully quickened only by the impetus that to him seems a trade wind that unchanged is bound to take him along the bright, cheerful way in the company of his beloved—this by no means signifies that a marriage is going to result in the next moment. In the next moment—for since he is just immediately qualified a next moment is bound to come sooner or later. Marriage is based on a resolution, but a resolution is not the direct result of the immediacy of erotic love. Either nothing more is needed at all than the prompting of erotic love, which then like the magnet steadily points without deviation toward the same point, or the resolution must be present from the beginning. If the resolution is supposed to come later, then something else may also happen. What safeguard is there against this? Falling in love, they say. Fine, but this is precisely the critical moment of falling in love, its moment of helplessness, for the fact that the light breeze of immediacy does not fill the sail of falling in love, that it fluctuates in the crisis, indicates precisely that there is bound to be a shift of wind, while immediacy is about to be, as it were, brought to a standstill in a dead calm. The second and equally likely consequence of immediate falling in love is—seduction. Who says that a seducer was a seducer at the very first moment? No, he became that at the second moment. When it is a matter of immediate falling in love, it is utterly impossible to determine whether it is a knight or a seducer who is speaking, for the next moment decides that. This is not the case with marriage, [VI 100] for resolution is present from the very beginning.
Consider Aladdin. What young man with wishes and aspiration in his soul, what maiden with longing in her heart, has not read Aladdin’s command to the jinni in the fourth act22 (where he gives orders concerning the wedding) without being kindled, indeed, almost set ablaze, by the passion of the poet and the fire of the words! Aladdin is a knight; to depict being in love like that is moral, it is said. My answer is: No, it is poetic, and by his happy thoughts and extreme richness of presentation the poet has proved for evermore that he is absolutely a poet. Aladdin is altogether immediate; therefore his wish is such that in the next moment he is able to be a poet. All that occupies him is that “cherished, long desired wedding night” that will assure him the possession of Gulnare, and thus the palace, the wedding hall, the wedding.
For me a lovely wedding make, night darkness turn to day,
With incense torches ’round the spacious hall.
Have sybil chor’sters lead a graceful dance,
While others sweetly sing and cithers play.
Aladdin himself is almost overwhelmed; he is about to faint in anticipated delight. Not without a certain tremor in his voice he asks the jinni whether he can do this; he beseeches him to answer honestly, and in this word “honestly” we hear, as it were, the anxiety of immediacy over its own happiness.
What makes Aladdin great is his wish, that his soul has the inner strength to desire. If in this respect I were to make any criticism of a masterpiece—which then would be only infatuated envy—it would be this, that it is never sufficiently clear and emphatic that Aladdin is a justified individuality, that to wish, to be able to wish, to dare to wish, to be rash in wishing, resolute in seizing the initiative, insatiable in aspiring, that this is a genius comparable to any other. We perhaps do not believe this, and yet in every generation there perhaps are not ten young men who have this blind courage, this vigor in the unlimited. Leave out the ten and give everyone else full [VI 101] authority to wish, and in his hand it will nevertheless become more or less a begging letter; he will grow pale around his nose; he will want to think about it. He wants to wish, all right, but now it is a matter of wishing for the right thing in other words, he is a bungler and not a genius like Aladdin, who is the jinni’s favorite because he is exorbitant. Therefore, the fulfillment must not appear as an accidental favor, lest it furnish the poor wretches with the pretext that if they only were sure of the fulfillment they surely would wish. Wrong, all wrong! Already here there is reflection. No, even if no wish were fulfilled for Aladdin, he assumes rank with his wish, with this mightiness of demand which ultimately is worth more than any fulfillment.
Great is Aladdin; he celebrates the wedding, quite true, but he does not marry. Truly, no one can wish him more happiness or be more sincerely happy for him than I, but if I were able, just as the poet gives him the jinni of the lamp, to give him something comparable, if by daily intercession I were able to provide him with the only thing I believe he lacks, a jinni of resolution that in vigor and concretion would correspond to what his wish is in immoderation and abstraction (for his aspiring is certainly unlimited and is burning like the desert sand)—oh, what a married man Aladdin could have become! Now there is nothing that can be said. My enemies, however, robbers who lie in wait for their prey, calmly and coolly make capital of Aladdin. The seducer reinforces himself with Aladdin’s immediacy, goes ahead and seduces, and then he says: Aladdin, too, was a seducer, that I know from a very reliable source; he became one the morning after the wedding. Whether it was not exactly the very next morning but not until a few years later is essentially irrelevant and only shows, if it was a few years later, that Aladdin has diminished. Here the seducer is right; if the immediate is to be done with, then the thing to do is break it off quickly (and therefore it is precisely a moral task to depict a seducer); if not, then resolution must already be there from the beginning, and then we have a married man. Only the resolution could vouch for Aladdin—the poet could not, poetry could not, for poetry cannot use a married man. The poet’s enthusiasm is for the immediate; the poet is great by virtue of his faith in immediacy and in its power to force its way through. The married man has permitted himself a doubt, an innocent, a well-meaning, a noble, a lovely doubt, for he really is far from wanting to offend erotic love or wanting to do without it. Just as surely as the immediate falling in love does not constitute a husband, [VI 102] so a match in which erotic love has been omitted, whatever the reason, is no marriage.
By venturing out, carried along only by the irresistible, blissful incitement of falling in love, the lover is certainly led into the embrace of his beloved, is perhaps led further with her, but he does not arrive at marriage, for if the lovers’ union is not a marriage from the beginning, it never becomes that. If the resolution has to tag along behind, the idea is not expressed. Presumably the lovers can live happily, and quite possibly they do not care about objections; yet in a way the enemies are still right. Everything hinges on the ideality. Marriage must not be a fragmentary something that comes along with time and opportunity, something that happens to the lovers after they have lived together for a while—then the enemies are still right. They uphold ideality, the ideality of evil, demonic ideality. Indeed, it is easy to see from the objections whether the one speaking is just a chicaneur [chicaner, trickster] or has demonic ideality. One can act altogether properly in not wanting to become involved with the objections, in not wanting to be disturbed by them, but one ought to have a good conscience and an unbroken pact with the idea. To be content with being comfortable, to be happy etc., is perdition if this happiness is based on thoughtlessness or cowardliness or a secular mentality’s miserable idolization of life. Compared with such wretchedness, to have kept one’s pact with the idea, even if one became unhappy thereby, is a paradise—this I do believe. This is why I dare to speak up; as a married man I do not stick my tail between my legs, I dare to talk with enemies, not only with friends. I know that as a married man I am τέλειος, but I also know what is required of such a person with regard to the idea. No haggling, no compromising, no commiseration between husbands and husband, as if husbands, like women in a seraglio, were prisoners for life who had something private that they dared not have the world know, as if erotic love were the gilded finery we let the
poet take and turn the better side out and marriage the threadbare side that is turned in. No, an open fight—marriage’s idea is bound to win. Humble before God, submissive to the divine majesty of love,23 I proudly hold my head high above all witticisms and do not bow my head to any objection.
[VI 103] We agree with the enemies in their posing of all the difficulty; we agree that the synthesis that constitutes marriage is difficult, but we do not agree with them in their posing this as an objection, and even less with the expedient they themselves grasp at. When an adversary triumphantly presents his objection in order to terrify with all the difficulty, the thing to do is to have the courage to say with Hamann: That is just the way it is.24 It is a good answer and in the proper place. The answer will be given here, too, but I ask that it be postponed just a few moments in order that I may give a little orientation with a few brief general comments about marriage as life’s highest τέλος.
In paganism, a penalty was imposed on bachelors, and those who produced many children were rewarded;25 in the Middle Ages it was a perfection not to be married. These are the extremes. As for the former, there is no need to impose a penalty, for life always asserts itself and knows how to punish anyone who wants to emancipate himself. Here the one who wants to emancipate himself is the one who does not will to marry. It must be emphasized that he does not will it. Just as marriage is a resolution, so also is its opposite, which can be a subject for discussion, a resolution that does not will. To fritter life away looking for the ideal (as if all such seeking were anything but stupidity and presumption) without understanding the meaning of either erotic love or marriage, without ever understanding the innocent enthusiasm that jestingly reminds youth that time is passing, that time is passing—this is an existence devoid of ideas. The same is true of prudishly rejecting and rejecting (as if all such rejecting expressed anything other than that the rejecter is not pure) and finding no one, which is the objective expression life gives to subjective rejecting.
That marriage, compared with such tomfoolery, has the absolute advantage is so definite that it is almost an insult to marriage to say it. No, to have any significance the objection must vindicate this by a negative resolution. The resolution of marriage is a positive resolution and essentially the most positive of all; its opposite is also a resolution that resolves not to will to actualize this task. Everyone who not only remains outside marriage but also remains outside it without resolution—his passage through life is a waste of time and trouble. Every human existence that does not want to be blather—and [VI 104] no one should want that—does not dare to give up something universal except by virtue of a resolution, whatever causes him to make the resolution, which with regard to not willing to marry can be very different, but it is unnecessary to go into detail here, lest it prove distracting.
The resolution not to marry does, of course, involve an ideality, but not the kind of ideality involved in making the positive resolution. Only in relation to time and circumstances can it become clearer to the single individual that he has made a resolution when he has made a negative one, inasmuch as according to a common opinion a positive resolution can be made easily enough. For example, it is certainly possible to marry, as the saying goes, without having made a resolution, although one has indeed made a resolution, but one resolution and another resolution are very different. A resolution speedily arrived at in line with others and resolved on the basis that the next-door neighbor and the neighbor across the street have also resolved is really no resolution, for whether there is poetry at second hand I do not know, but a resolution at third hand is no resolution. Compared with such marriages, which do not play the best suit either of falling in love or of resolution but pass and pass by, a negative resolution naturally has the advantage. But then marriages of that sort are not marriages, either, but are an aping.
A person’s total ideality lies first and last in resolution. Any other ideality is a trifle. To admire him for it is childish, and if the person involved understands himself properly, it is an insult. Consequently, it is a matter only of positive and negative resolutions. The positive resolution has the great advantage that it consolidates life and sets the individual at rest within himself; the negative resolution keeps him constantly in suspenso. A negative resolution is always far more exhausting than a positive one; it cannot become habitual, and yet it must be constantly maintained.
A positive resolution is sure in its happy outcome, for the universal, which is its positive element, assures happiness, assures that it will come and provides the happiness with security when it has come. A negative resolution is continually ambiguous, even with respect to a happy outcome. Just like happiness in paganism, it is an illusion, for happiness is only [VI 105] when it has been.26 That is to say, not until I am dead can I know whether I have been happy. So also with the negative resolution. The individual has initiated conflict with life; therefore at no moment can he be finished; he cannot, like someone who has made and is held by a positive resolution, immerse himself day after day in the original basis of his resolution. A negative resolution does not hold him; he must hold it, however long it takes. Even if fortune favors him, and even if something most significant results for him, he still does not dare to deny the possibility that everything can suddenly have another interpretation. Through his negative resolution he now actually exists hypothetically or subjunctively, and with respect to a hypothesis the rub is that it is never completed until it has explained every phenomenon, for even with an incorrect hypothesis one can for the time being make a lot of headway until the phenomenon comes along that invalidates it, and with respect to the subjunctive if, it holds true—yes, if. A positive resolution has only one risk—not to be true to itself; a negative resolution always has a double danger: not to be true to itself, which resembles the danger in the positive resolution with the one difference that all this faithfulness is without reward, is a faded glory and as barren as a bachelor’s life; and then the second risk—whether all this faithfulness whereby one is true to oneself in one’s negative resolution is not a deviation that for all its faithfulness is eventually rewarded with repentance. Whereas the positive resolution cheerfully refreshes itself with rest, cheerfully rises up with the sun, cheerfully begins where it left off, cheerfully surveys everything thriving around it, and, as does the married man, cheerfully sees with each new day a new demonstration of what needed no demonstration (for the positive is not a hypothesis that must be demonstrated), the person who has chosen the negative resolution sleeps uneasily at night, expects the nightmare that he chose wrongly will suddenly come upon him, wakes up exhausted to see the barren heath around him, and is never restored because he is continually in suspense.
The state really does not need to penalize bachelors; life itself punishes the person who deserves to be punished, for the person who does not make a resolution is a poor wretch of whom it must be said in the sad sense: He does not come under judgment.27 I do not speak this way because I am envious of those who do not will to marry; I am too happy to envy [VI 106] anyone, but I am zealous for life.
I return to what I said before, that resolution is a person’s ideality. I shall now attempt to develop how the resolution most formative of the individuality must be constituted, and I rejoice in thinking that marriage is precisely so constituted, which, as stated, I assume for the time being to be a synthesis of falling in love and resolution.
There is a phantom that frequently prowls around when the making of a resolution is at stake—it is probability—a spineless fellow, a dabbler, a Jewish peddler, with whom no freeborn soul becomes involved, a good-for-nothing fellow who ought to be jailed instead of quacks, male and female, since he tricks people out of what is more than money and more valuable than money. Anyone who with regard to resolution comes no further, never comes any further than to decide on the basis of probability, is lost for ideality, whatever he may become. If a person does not encounter God in the resolution, if he has never made a resolution in which he
had a transaction with God, he might just as well have never lived. But God always does business en gros [wholesale], and probability is a security that is not registered in heaven. Thus it is so very important that there be an element in the resolution that impresses officious probability and renders it speechless.
There is a phantasm that the person making a resolution chases after the way the dog chases its shadow in the water;28 it is the outcome, a symbol of finiteness, a mirage of perdition—woe to the person who looks for it, he is lost. Just as the person who, if bitten by serpents, looked at the cross in the desert and became healthy,29 so the person who fastens his gaze on the outcome is bitten by a serpent, wounded by the secular mentality, lost both for time and for eternity. If a person in the moment of resolution is not so glowingly surrounded by the brightness of the divine that all phantasms created by the fogs of drowsiness vanish, his resolution is but a greater or minor forgery—let him find consolation in the outcome. This is why it is so very important that the object of the resolution be of such a nature that no outcome dares to bid at the auction, because what is being purchased is being purchased à tout prix [at all costs].
[VI 107] All that is said here applies to every resolution in which the eternal is present and completes the purchase, not only to that resolution of marriage when for the first time it presses to its breast the infatuation of erotic love and clasps [slutte] it in the firm embrace of the resolution [Beslutning]. It is true of every resolution that has the eternal in it, to that extent also of the negative resolution, provided that it is negative only toward temporality but is oriented positively toward the eternal. But precisely therein is the basis for its state of suspense. In the resolution of marriage, on the other hand, falling in love is deposited as a trust fund, and love has precisely the power to draw down the resolution maker not exactly to earth, far from it, but down beside the beloved in time. The resolving is the ethical, is freedom; the negative resolution also has this, but the freedom, blank and bare, is as if tongue-tied, hard to express, and generally has something hard in its nature. Falling in love, however, promptly sets it to music, even if this composition contains a very difficult passage. For the bridal couple who in that sacred moment, or when they think about it later, do not find that in a certain sense it is nonsense for the pastor to say to the lovers that they shall love one another, and on the other hand do not find, if I dare say so, that it is very splendidly stated—such a bridal couple lack a marital ear. Just as it is delicious to discern the whispering of falling in love, this precious witness at the wedding, so that rash phrase is welcome that says: You shall love her. How dithyrambic a wedding ceremony is; how almost presumptuous that one is not satisfied with falling in love but calls it a duty. No wonder that a resolution that matches such a charge seems to some to be a hard saying: that erotic love, then, is not satisfied with being self-confident but in its daredevilry attempts that “You shall!” that marriage, then, has a resolution that is the one and only wish, an eternal duty that is the eye’s delight and the heart’s desire!
Stages on Life’s Way Page 13
