Premium
Poets, Cynics and Thieves: Vicious Love and Divine Protection in Kierkegaard's Works of Love and Repetition
Author(s) -
Hall Amy Laura
Publication year - 2000
Publication title -
modern theology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.144
H-Index - 19
eISSN - 1468-0025
pISSN - 0266-7177
DOI - 10.1111/1468-0025.00123
Subject(s) - repetition (rhetorical device) , philosophy , poetry , perspective (graphical) , ideal (ethics) , girl , literature , psychoanalysis , theology , psychology , art , epistemology , developmental psychology , linguistics , visual arts
In Kierkegaard's Repetition , “the girl” on whom a young man focuses his esteem becomes an encumbrance from which a cynic must rescue him. Using Works of Love as the time through which we judge these men allows us to consider false love's perfidious perception of the (here female) other. Kierkegaard's sobering rendition of the love commandment in Works of Love , wherein the beloved is more than the beholder's vision of her, exposes that there is indeed a “girl” in the story and two men who would idolize, trick or banish her. In Works of Love , Kierkegaard distinguishes true love from the poetic perspective, which distorts the other to fit the lover's ideal; from the vampiric gaze, which devours her; and from the sage's inspection, which deems her disposable. Love unguarded by God's command endangers the beheld as well as the overlooked, and Kierkegaard skillfully depicts each of these three distortions in Repetition .