Stages on Life’s Way

by Søren Kierkegaard

  If yesterday I became ten years older, today I became ten years younger—no, younger than I have ever been. Is this a crisis? Is this the wavering of decision? Estne adhuc sub judice lis [Is the case perhaps still before the court]?39 Have I really become ten years older, I who was almost an old man—the poor girl, who has to nurse one who is dead; or have I become young as I never was young—what an enviable fate to be able to be so much to a person.

  January 12. Midnight.

  Everything is asleep; at this hour only the dead emerge from the grave and live their lives over again. And I am not doing even that, for since I am not dead I cannot live my life over again, and if I were dead, I could not relive it either, for, after all, I have never lived.

  In order to keep my nocturnal pursuits as hidden as possible, I take the precaution of going to bed at nine o’clock. At twelve o’clock I get up again. No one imagines that, not even the sympathetic who have enough sympathy to take exception to my going to bed so early.

  Was it chance that brought us so close, or what power is pursuing me with her, from whom I am fleeing and yet do not wish to escape. To see her is as horrible as it must be for the sinner to hear the death sentence read aloud, and yet I do not dare to avoid this sight any more than I dare to seek it, which could very well be disturbing to her. If I were convinced that in order to avoid her I had gone a step out of my usual way, in order to avoid her had stayed away from some place where I am in the habit of going, I believe I would go out of my mind. Only by enduring and suffering, by deferring to every argument against my shattered soul, do I maintain any meaning in my existence. If I were to walk the street, take one step, to look for her, I think I would go out of my mind out of [VI 201] worrying that I had prevented her from helping herself. I dare not do a thing, dare not refrain from doing anything; my situation is like the everlasting torment of the condemned.

  And today it was our engagement day! She was crossing the street diagonally to the sidewalk; I was on the sidewalk and had the right of way. She could not set her foot on the curb before I had passed; a carriage driving by made it impossible for her to have recourse to the street. If I had wanted to talk to her, the situation was as favorable as possible. But no, not a word, not a sound, not a movement of the lips, not a problematic hint in the eyes, nothing, nothing on my part. Good God, if she were sick with a fever, if this word from me were the glass of cold water she wanted, would I deny it? So I am a brute, then! No, my little lady, no, we have talked together enough! Oh, that I can talk this way about her in my thoughts, her for whose sake I will risk everything if only I understood that it is beneficial to her. But why does she pursue me? I am wrong, it is true, very true—scandalously wrong. But am I not being punished, do I not have a murder on my conscience? Have I no rights at all? Will she not be able to understand at all what I am suffering? Is it a loving girl who behaves this way? And why does she look at me that way? Because she believes that it makes an impression on me deep within. So she does believe there is something good about me. And then to want to wound someone who is tortured to death!

  I made the moment last as long as possible. In this kind of encounter there is always a halt, because the one has to wait until the other has passed. I used my advantage to judge how she looked and if possible her state of mind. I had taken out my handkerchief and, just as one quite leisurely holds it out to see what part one wants to use, I stood there impassive as if I did not know her, although I was looking at her and with the exactitude of despair. But not a word, my whole expression as meaningless as nothing. Yes, just boil inside, for I, too, have warm blood, perhaps only too warm; burst, my heart, and then I shall topple over dead. That is more like it; one can put up with that. Palpitate in the fingertips if you must, beat upon the brain with the blow of terror, but not visibly in the temples, not on the lips, not in the eyes—that I do not want, I do not want that. Why did I get so worked up; why was I compelled to discover my capacity to dissimulate when it serves a good cause!

  She was less pale, but perhaps that was due to the fresh air; perhaps she had been walking more. Her glance ventured to [VI 202] judge me, but then she dropped her eyes, and she looked almost imploring. A woman’s pleas! Who inexcusably put this weapon into her hands, who gives the madman a sword, and how powerless he is compared with the pleading of the powerless!

  When I turned the corner, I had to lean against the building. Now if there were an intimate acquaintance to whom I would say, “So it is,” I would be able to look quite calm and collected, but when I turn the corner I am almost fainting, and if this acquaintance were an inquisitive fellow who wanted to spy on me, what then? Then I would become aware of it, for just as Kaspar Hauser40 could feel metal through countless layers of clothing, so I feel deception and cunning through any covering. What then? Then I would not become faint as I turned the corner, but when I had gone down the street and the inquisitive acquaintance had perceived nothing, then I would find the nearest cross street in order to fall in a heap.

  Sleep, my beloved, sleep well! Would to God that she might sleep all her pain away and sleep herself happy and rosy for tomorrow! Do tightrope dancers who are parents have no father love and mother love, have they none when they place their child on that thin rope and walk beneath it in deathly anxiety? If the verdict that I am a murderer has not yet been pronounced, what worse can happen than that she dies, and yet there is no likelihood of that now. Either she is the rarity among girls, and then my procedure contributes something so that she is not disturbed in becoming the outstanding one, a girl whose deification did not begin with death but with grief—or she is, indeed, I would rather not say it, or she has fancied etc., and thereupon she becomes commonsensical etc.—that is, she fancies herself to have become commonsensical etc. —Stop! I have no factual information that justifies me in any conclusion. Therefore, I remain in my misery and hold her in honor. But my understanding, my understanding, it tells me this, indeed, it tells me this in order to insult me, for it certainly was not my wish that she should appear to be less than what she seemed, and neither for her sake nor my own could I wish to be saved in this manner, that is, to become the butt of ridicule.41

  But there is nothing, nothing at all, that can help me with a little information. I impatiently and to no avail throw myself [VI 203] from one side to the other; when one is stretched on the torture rack, it pains all over. She can despise me—good God, that is what I want, that is what I am working for, and yet I shudder at the thought of such a lifelong martyrdom. Whether I shall be able to stick it out, whether I shall not utterly despair, I do not know; but I do know, and the power knows who by his very nature shares the most hidden thoughts, he knows that I pulled the cord of the shower bath. Whether it will crush me I do not know. —She can prepare her soul for patience, can take the veil of sorrow with an unscathed conscience—what can I do? Where shall I hide from myself, where is the resting place where the weary one can gather new strength, where is the bed on which I can slumber quietly and recuperate? In the grave? No, Scripture is not true when it says that there is no recollection in the grave,42 for I shall recollect her. In eternity! Is there time to sleep? In eternity! In what way shall I see her again? Will she come toward me accusingly and condemningly? How terrible! Or will she perhaps have passed the whole thing off as if it were a childish prank? 43How revolting! And yet not revolting but something worse, for was not her becoming such a one perhaps due to my silence. And I, who feared precisely that a word from me might make her a chatterbox and set her mind at rest in gossip!

  January 15. Morning.

  A year ago today. Is this how it is to be engaged? I knew what it is to be in love, that I knew—but this new thing, to be convinced that the object of love is secured, that she is mine, mine forever.

  Is this the way it is to be a mother? wailed Rachel when the twins’ struggle began in her womb,44 and many a person presumably has said this to himself when he obtained what he craved: Is this the way it is?

  And is
it not as if there were two natures struggling within me: have I become ten years older or have I become ten years younger?

  Yet how strange it must be to be a young girl, to enter into life so briskly. I believed that I would be released, that I would be changed, that I would have seen myself in love and by [VI 204] looking in love at her I would see myself saved—then I would have become like her, a bird on a branch, a song of joy in youth. I believed that we would have grown up together, that our life would be happy for us in our union and in its happiness understandable to others, like a happy person’s greeting as he hurries by and throws us a kiss.

  I understand a great deal; every reflection I hear or read is as familiar to me as if it belonged to me. But this life I do not understand. To think about nothing and yet be so lovable, to live a mixture of wisdom and folly and not rightly know which is which. If a jeweler who had become such an expert in genuine precious stones that distinguishing them was his life—if he saw a child who was playing with various stones, genuine and imitation, which the child mixed together, and had equal joy from both kinds—I think the jeweler would shudder to see the absolute distinction canceled; but if he saw the child’s happiness, his happy mood in his play, he perhaps would humble himself under it and be fascinated by this appalling sight. Similarly, for the immediate person there is no absolute distinction between the idea that bursts into thought and language, as does the precious stone in its radiance, and the idea in which this is lacking. There is no absolute distinction that makes the one into the most precious of all and the other into nothing, the one into that which defines everything and the other into what cannot even be defined in relation to this.

  Lovers ought to have no differences [Mellemværende] between them. Alas, alas, we have been united too briefly to have any differences. We have nothing between us, and yet we have a world between us, exactly a world.

  At particular moments I am happy, perfectly happy, happier than I have ever dreamed of being; to me this is rich compensation for my pain; if only she has no intimation of it, then all is well.

  She is silent, at least quieter than she usually is, but only when we are alone. Might she be thinking? If only she does not begin to reflect!

  January 17. Morning.

  A year ago today. What is this? What does it mean? I am as agitated as the forest’s anxious quivering before the storm. [VI 205] What kind of presentiment oppresses me? I do not recognize myself. Is this love? Oh, no! This much I certainly do realize—that it is not with her, it is not with Eros that I must struggle.45 It is religious crises that are gathering over me. My life-view has become ambiguous—how, I cannot as yet say. And my life belongs to her, but she suspects nothing.

  January 17. Midnight.

  What I write in the morning is from the past and belongs to the past year; what I am writing now, these “night thoughts”46 of mine, are my diary for the current year. The current year! What a terrible mockery of me there is in that phrase! If a human being had invented language, I would believe that he had invented this phrase to ridicule me. In former days, the army used a very cruel punishment—riding the wooden horse. The poor wretch was forced by weights down on the horse, which had a very sharp back. Once when this punishment was being executed and the culprit was groaning with pain, a peasant came walking along the embankment and stopped to look down at the parade ground where the culprit was suffering his punishment. Desperate with pain and incensed at the sight of such a callous clod, the poor wretch shouted to him: What are you gawking at? But the peasant answered: If you can’t stand to have anyone look at you, then you can ride around to another street. And just as that riding wretch was riding, so the current year is running for me.

  Something must be done for her. My brain spins nothing but schemes from morning till night. If my conduct prior to her becoming mine in all sincerity anxiously avoided anything that could be regarded as cunning, then I have now become all the more scheming. Who would not think me a fool if I told him that now in this current year she preoccupies me more than ever. But the difficulty is that I do not dare do anything, for the slightest intimation of how she preoccupies me would be the absolutely most dangerous thing; it might lead her in false hope out into the indeterminable and let her be saved—that is, perish, be lost in half measures.

  To be willing to pay for every bit of information, every word, with gold and not to dare to do it because it is perilous, since it could arouse her suspicion and hinder her in helping [VI 206] herself! To be forced into a thousand circuitous ways to beg for a remark en passant when one could have communication in overabundance, but not to dare, for her sake not to dare to have it! If I were to observe absolute silence toward my so-called nearest ones, that, too, could easily arouse a suspicion. Therefore, I have devised a formula that I say to them. Only I do not say it as a formula but say it in such a way that one does not notice that it is a formula. One can learn this from a clergyman. He is well aware that it is an old cast-off sermon he is delivering, but if he declaims it and wipes away the sweat the listener thinks that it is a real speech. In the same way, the persons concerned believe that I am conversing, although I am only reciting a formula that is decidedly stereotyped and every word chosen after lengthy premeditation. The opposite method is also usable—to speak about it ad modum [according to custom]: Your highly esteemed of the 25th inst. styli novi [according to the new calendar]47 duly received. There is nothing that makes passion less transparent than the style of the office, of the bookkeeper, and of the business. 48The latter method is better. I have studied it in my own dealings with an inclosingly reserved person, and thus I know it. One should never attempt to press in upon a reserved person; then one loses. But just as a rheumatic is worried about drafts, so one can reach him by a casual reference one does not pursue at all.49 Or one waylays him once he has let a little something slip. One can immediately form an estimate of his inclosing reserve by the difficulty he has in stopping. He regrets having said something, wants to dispel the impression. One is silent—now he is dubious about himself, that he has not succeeded, wants to make a conversational transition, and this fails. One is silent—he is annoyed at the lull, betrays more and more, if not by anything else, then by his eagerness to conceal. But when one knows this, then one performs one’s exercises in time. And the art is to speak about it a little (for complete silence is unwise) and thus deftly to keep a consuming passion in firm control of the conversation so that, just like an equestrian, one can guide it with a sewing thread and, just like a driver, swing around in a figure eight.

  To scheme is a distraction, nevertheless; to examine witnesses and receive information, to confer and verify, to run around the world, to be on the watch for the moment is indeed doing something even if nothing is gained; but it is un-bearable [VI 207] to sit and bring forth wind,50 to conceive one plan more ingenious than the other and not dare to use it because it is still more sagacious to desist lest one be betrayed; to see these tantalizing, inviting fruits that tempt sympathy by promising everything! To have passion as a gambler has, and not dare to move from the spot and to be tied only by oneself! To have the soul full of reckless courage and the mind of plans and the words available—and then to have a pen that cannot write or with great toil write one letter of the alphabet every other hour! To have passion as a fisherman has, to know where the fish will bite and not dare to cast out, or to see the float jerk and not dare to pull on the line lest the movement betray something! To have in your power the one who could tell everything, 51to have the knife at his throat if he betrayed something, and yet not dare to use him because for me, after all, there is no relation between revenge on him and the harm he could do her. Instead of this kind of information, to have to be satisfied with a chance word from a maidservant, a man-servant, a cabdriver, a passerby, and to have to make something out of that because it is a matter of one’s salvation. To have to make soup from a sausage peg52 and have to do so because one regards it as the most important thing of all! To have to sit
here at night and imitate different ones to see if the voice has not betrayed something, to see that the conversational tone was maintained! Not to dare to trust anyone! Indeed, what does it mean if a person wanted to trust someone but had not dared to trust a girl he loved and whom he could encompass with a hundred spying observations! If a person were going to confide in someone and then dared to choose only the one whom he could not trust—that is, to confide in him in the form of a deception.

  The only person I actually manage to learn anything from is a long way from being in my service. Yet we have a secret understanding. He knows everything; he is perhaps the most dependable of all. Fortunately he hates me. If possible, he will torture me—indeed, that I understand. He never says anything directly, never mentions any names, but he tells me such strange stories. At first I did not understand him at all, but now I know that he is talking about her but using fictitious names. He believes I have sufficient imagination to understand every allusion, and that I do, but I also have enough sense to pass it off as nothing. Yet I must count on his being malevolent.

  53Would that she were dead; would that she had died immediately, [VI 208] that she had fallen dead before my eyes in that crucial moment; would that the family had come running; would that I had been arrested; would that there had been a criminal trial! If only that had happened! I would have immediately petitioned to be executed and be freed from all these empty complications. Human justice, after all, is just nonsense, and three authorities only make the joke boring. The prosecuting attorney and the defense attorney are like Harlequin and Pierrot,54 and justice is like Jeronymus or Cassandra,55 who are led by the nose. Everything here is ludicrous, including the guards who parade at the execution. The executioner is the only acceptable character. Then if my petition was not rejected, provided that I myself would pay all the costs, then along with my confidant I would have looked for a setting appropriate to my state of mind. There I would have demanded of him what the knight ordinarily demands of his faithful squire—to run a sword through my breast; indeed, it makes no difference whether it is a squire or an executioner—on the contrary, the latter has the advantage of not needing to have it on his conscience. —Then there would have been meaning in the whole affair.