Page:Selections from the writings of Kierkegaard.djvu/24

 of motives had lit an inner conflagration which did not die down for years. "My becoming an author is due chiefly to her, my melancholy, and my money."

About a year afterwards (1843) there appeared his first great work, "Either—Or," which at once established his fame. As in the case of most of his works it will be impossible to give here more than the barest outline of its plan and contents. In substance, it is a grand debate between the æsthetic and the ethic views of life. In his dissertation Kierkegaard had already characterized the æsthetic point of view. Now, in a brilliant series of articles, he proceeds to  it with exuberant detail.

The fundamental chord of the first part is struck in the Diapsalmata — aphorisms which, like so many flashes of a lantern, illuminate the æsthetic life, its pleasures and its despair. The æsthetic individual — this is brought out in the article entitled "The Art of Rotation" — wishes to be the exception in human society, shirking its common, humble duties and claiming special privileges. He has no fixed principle except that he means not to be bound to anything or anybody. He has but one desire which is, to enjoy the sweets of life — whether its purely sensual pleasures or the more refined Epicureanism of the finer things in life and art, and the ironic enjoyment of one's own superiority over the rest of humanity; and he has no fear except that he may succumb to boredom.

As a comment on this text there follow a number of essays in "experimental psychology," supposed to be the fruit of the æsthete's (A's) leisure. In them the æsthetic life is exhibited in its various manifestations, in "terms of existence," especially as to its "erotic stages," from the indefinite longings of the Page to the fully conscious "sensual genius" of Don Juan — the examples are taken from Mozart's opera of this name, which was Kierkegaard's favorite — until the whole culminates in the famous "Diary of the Seducer," containing elements of the author's own engagement, poetically disguised — a seducer, by the way, of an infinitely reflective kind.

Following this climax of unrestrained æstheticism we