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Loading... The Seducer's Diaryby Søren Kierkegaard
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book.  TakeItOrLeaveIt | Jun 10, 2009 |  How sincere was K? I think he was very! (  ) xinyi | Sep 18, 2007 |  no reviews | add a review
Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0691017379, Paperback)"In the vast literature of love, The Seducer's Diary is an intricate curiosity--a feverishly intellectual attempt to reconstruct an erotic failure as a pedagogic success, a wound masked as a boast," observes John Updike in his foreword to Søren Kierkegaard's narrative. This work, a chapter from Kierkegaard's first major volume, Either/Or, springs from his relationship with his fiancée, Regine Olsen. Kierkegaard fell in love with the young woman, ten years his junior, proposed to her, but then broke off their engagement a year later. This event affected Kierkegaard profoundly. Olsen became a muse for him, and a flood of volumes resulted. His attempt to set right, in writing, what he feels was a mistake in his relationship with Olsen taught him the secret of "indirect communication." The Seducer's Diary, then, becomes Kierkegaard's attempt to portray himself as a scoundrel and thus make their break easier for her. Matters of marriage, the ethical versus the aesthetic, dread, and, increasingly, the severities of Christianity are pondered by Kierkegaard in this intense work. (retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:57:53 -0400) The first test round has been closed. Visit the Open Shelves Classification group for details. |
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Wikipedia in English (2)
It truly is a masterpiece on aesthetics and the true follies of a passionate relationship between a young man and a younger girl. Love is fleeting, as much as Søren Kierkegaard's clever character named: 'Johannes' hates to admit, he wrote an entire diary about it but with a cunnilingus, I mean cunning yet charming style that could only be pulled off in the 19th century yet so many of the affairs of the heart presented are still very true to this day. Brilliant, absolute classic. thank you penguin, yet again. If only I had met your GreatIdeas/GreatLoves series earlier in my life. Still...I've managed with the American canon quite well............
Kierkegaard, the witty devil he is, sneaks in his own synposis on the book he just wrote for the final sentence:
"Nevertheless, it would really be wothwhile knowing whether one couldn't poetize oneself out of a girl, whether one couldn't make her so proud that she imagined it was she who had wearied of the relationship. It could become a quite interesting epilogue, which in its own right might be of psychological interest, and besides that, enrich one with many erotic observations."
PS if you read it without the intense edge of knowing that it's based on a true story just purposely made with a more evil edge, than you may not enjoy it as much. (