Page:Selections from the writings of Kierkegaard.djvu/84

 82 University of Texas Bulletin

woman, in a trice one will have a cantankerous authoress, whilst wonderingly shading one's eyes with one's hand and duly admiring what the little black hen may yield besides.^^ It is altogether incomprehensible why Socrates did not choose this course of action instead of bickering with Xan- thippe â€” oh, well! to be sure he wished to acquire practice, like the riding master who, even though he has the best trained horse, yet knows how to tease him in such fashion that there is good reason for breaking him in again. ^^

Let me be a little more concrete, in order to illustrate a particular and highly interesting phenomenon. A great deal has been said about feminine fidelity, but rarely with any discretion.^* From a purely aesthetic point of view this fidelity is to be regarded as a piece of poetic fiction which steps on the stage to find her lover â€” a fiction which sits by the spinning wheel and waits for her lover to come; but when she has found him, or he has come, why, then aesthet- ics is at a loss. Her infidelity, on the other hand, as con- trasted with her previous fidelity, is to be judged chiefly with regard to its ethical import, when jealousy will appear as a tragic passion. There are three possibilities, so the case is favorable for woman; for there are two cases of fidelity, as against one of infidelity. Inconceivably great is her fidelity when she is not altogether sure of her cavalier ; and ever so inconceivably great is it when he repels her fidelity. The third case would be her infidelity. Now granted one has sufl^icient intellect and objectivity to make reflections, one will find sufficient justification, in what has been said, for my category of "the joke." Our young friend whose beginning in a manner deceived me seemed to be on the point of entering into this matter, but backed out again, dismayed at the difficulty. And yet the explanation is not difficult, providing one really sets about it seriously,

^'^Viz. besides the eggs she duly furnishes; Holberg, "The Busy- body," II, 1.

^''This figure is said by Diogenes Laertios II, 37 to have been used by Socrates himself about his relation to Xanthippe.

â€¢<*The following sentences are not as clear in meaning as is other- wise the case in Kierkegaard.