Page:Selections from the writings of Kierkegaard.djvu/110

 108 University of Texas Bulletin

and made woman out of the one half â€” at any rate it was man who was partitioned. Hence she is the equal of man only after this partition. She is a delusion and a snaref^ but is so only afterwards, and for him who is deluded. She is finiteness incarnate; but in her first stage she is finiteness raised to the highest degree in the deceptive infinitude of all divine and human illusions. Now, the deception does not exist â€” one instant longer, and one is deceived.

She is finiteness, and as such she is a collective : one woman represents all women. Only the erotic nature com- prehends this and therefore knows how to love many with- out ever being deceived, sipping the while all the delights the cunning gods were able to prepare. For this reason, as I said, woman cannot be fully expressed by one formula, but is, rather, an infinitude of finalities. He who wishes to think her "idea" will have the same experience as he who gazes on a sea of nebulous shapes which ever form anew, or as he who is dazed by looking over the waves whose foamy crests ever mock one's vision ; for her "idea" is but the work- shop of possibilities. And to the erotic nature these possi- bilities are the everlasting reason for his worship.

So the gods created her delicate and ethereal as if out of the mists of the summer night, yet goodly like ripe fruit; light like a bird, though the repository of what attracts all the world â€” light because the play of the forces is harmo- niously balanced in the invisible center of a negative rela- tion;'^* slender in growth, with definite lines, yet her body sinuous with beautiful curves; perfect, yet ever appearing as if completed but now ; cool, delicious, and refreshing like new-fallen snow, yet blushing in coy transparency; happy like some pleasantry which makes one forget all one's sor- row ; soothing as being the end of desire, and satisfying in herself being the stimulus of desire. And the gods had calculated that man, when first beholding her, would be amazed, as one who sees himself, though familiar with that sight â€” would stand in amaze as one who sees himself in the

â– 'â€¢^I.e., evidently, she does not exist because of herself; hence she \f. in a "negative" relation to herself. The center of this relation is "what attracts all the world."