Lovelyville, next door to Terribletown

I have started, for the third time, Or, having read Either something like three years ago, having picked them up, in two volumes (which is only reasonable), something like a little more than three years ago, having seen them at Myopic Books in the out of print edition recommended (in, I understand, somewhat strong terms) when Conant and Lear (or Lear alone? but I don't think so) taught a class on them, which I didn't take for logistical reasons, though it would have been better had I.  This would be the edition that had different translators for each volume, David Swenson for Either and Walter Lowrie for Or.  I can't judge the translation, obviously, but the Lowrie Or has at least two things to recommend it of which I doubt the Hong and Hong translation with which Princeton UP has replaced it can boast.  First, footnote thirteen, which reads in its entirety "As a cloud upon Semele, as rain upon Danae".  (Oddly I had remembered it as "As a cloud upon Semele; as a rain upon Danae", which is, I think, superior, but the way it actually runs is not to be sneezed at.)  Unfortunately one cannot be certain whether to credit Lowrie for the note, or the reviser, Howard Johnson, or the Danish editors of Kierkegaard's Samlede Værker. There is, however, little doubt but that Lowrie can be credited for the Translator's Preface under which, after all, his name stands, and which is thoroughly delightful. First, in both the Preface and the Introduction Lowrie refers to Kierkegaard solely by "S.K.". Second, he is rather less enthusiastic about the material than one is accustomed to hearing about from translators (in both the Preface and the Introduction we are told, in the exact same words, that Either/Or "is undoubtedly a work of genius", but qualifications are quick to come; for instance, Lowrie begs us remember that "if in some instances the translation appears stupid or even incomprehensible, the original is no better. Inasmuch as I have been regarded by supercilious critics as an undiscriminating eulogist of S.K., I am not sorry to have an opportunity of saying this here"). Finally, the third paragraph of the admittedly short Preface begins thus:

This is all I need to say by way of a preface. But I confess to a special liking for prefaces—at least for writing them.

Follows a page and a half encompassing the practice of preface-writing and their relation to, for instance, jacket blurbs, a typology of prefaces, and, coming at the end, the observation that "[i]ndeed there is no end to the prefaces which might appropriately accompany every book. Since I am only a translator it would not be seemly for me to try out this experiment here", even though in the very next sentence he acknowledges that the it's the Introduction, and not the Preface, that's really specific to the book we're holding.

(Enough of this fiddle-faddle! What of the text itself? Early in his first letter, Judge William writes of novels and plays dealing with marriage that "by these prodigious efforts very little has been accomplished for the glorification of marriage, and I doubt very much if by the reading of such works any man has been made capable of performing the task he set himself or has felt oriented in life" (pp 17–8).  One wonders exactly how the good Judge—who "may have been a prosy person", Lowrie suggests in his introduction, "as moralists commonly are"—expects to get anyone oriented, or to glorify marriage, by dint of his rather stultifying letter, or even why A would read it through to the end.  Who gets oriented in life by the argumentative force of philosophical arguments?  This may, of course, be an ironical point of S.K.'s, but one will still be led to wonder about the character—what does he think he's up to, anyway?)

Comments

[michelle]

Aren't we all oriented in life by the argumentative, however subliminal, force of philosophical arguments? There's some story about Kierkegaard, in some biography, about how, before offering them tea, he would stand his guests in front of a china cabinet and make them select a tea cup from the great variety of designs available, and then force them to explain why that choice and no other. Of course SK may have just been harassing his guests pointlessly. But if you had to choose, would you go to the Academy or to the Lyceum?

[ben wolfson]

The Lyceum.

[michelle]

And why is that?

[ben wolfson]

Because I like Aristotle?

[michelle]

Yes. He was cute.

[Irene]

hahaha. you have no idea how this entry made me laugh for like 5 minutes. a friend and I have had extensive (and quite sober) conversations about how the '/' in "either/or" means "or" again. So wouldn't it be "either or or"?

Also, I know pretty much nothing about Kierkegaard.

[rob helpy-chalk]

I think more exciting work in mathematics was done at the Academy, what with all the Pythagoreans there. Also, there were at least two chics at the Academy, and I don't know if there were any at the Lyceum.