Reading notes (2020, week 52) — On the uncanny allure of our unlived lives, images of the future, and how to avoid living in the past
By: Mark Storm
Tags: Purpose, Future, Art, Søren Kierkegaard, Philosophy

[Ferguson continues…]

The first disappointing departure from the script is that his landlord has now married and is using the room he formerly rented, obliging him to make do with a different room. In order to heighten the chance of repetition displaying itself to him he goes to the theatre to attend the performance of a play with which he is already familiar. This looks promising. And yet, as he discovers, sometimes the repetition you get is not the one you wanted:

“Der Talismann was to be performed at the Königstädter Theatre. The memory of it awoke in my soul and I saw it all so clearly, just as it had been on that former occasion. I hurried off to the theatre. This time there were no individual boxes to be had . . . and I found myself among a group of people who were uncertain whether to be entertained or bored — the kind one can with complete certainty dismiss as boring . . . I stood it for half an hour and then left the theatre, saying to myself: naturally, there is no such thing as repetition . . . I headed off to the cafe which I had frequented each day on my previous visit . . . Perhaps the coffee would be as good as it was last time. One might almost assume it would be. And yet it wasn’t to my taste. In the evening I went out to the restaurant I had frequented on my previous visit, and where, presumably from force of habit, I had even enjoyed myself. Having gone there each evening I was familiar with every detail of the place. I knew when the early visitors left, the particular fashion in which they said goodbye to those remaining behind, whether they put their hats on in the inner room or the outer room, or not until they’d opened the door, or not until they were outside. No one escaped my notice; like Proserpine I plucked a hair from every head, even from the bald. It was the same in every respect. Same jokes, same little courtesies, same mild inebriation, the whole place just the same — in short, a sameness within a sameness. Solomon says that the quarrelling of a woman is like a dripping from the roof — who knows how he would have reacted to this still life! Appalling thought, but repetition was indeed possible here. I was at the Königstädter Theatre again the next evening. The only thing that repeated itself was the impossibility of a repetition. No matter which way I turned, all was in vain. The little dancer who had enchanted me on the previous occasion with a grace that seemed poised to leap had now done her leap; the blind man in front of the Brandenburg Gate, my harpist — I was probably the only one who was concerned about him — was now wearing a greyish coat instead of the light green one that I longed to see in my melancholy, the one that made him look like a weeping willow. He was lost to me. . . . When all this had repeated itself for several days I became so embittered and bored with repetition that I decided to go back home. What I had learned was remarkable, although not significant. I had discovered that there is no repetition, and I had made absolutely certain of the truth of this by having it repeated to me many times, in numerous different ways. I vested all my hopes in home. Justinus Kerner tells a story somewhere about a man who grew bored with his home and had his horse saddled up with the intention of riding off into the wide world. After he had ridden a short distance the horse threw him. It turned out to be a decisive moment for him, for as he turned to remount his gaze once more fell on the home that he was so keen to leave. He looked and he saw that it was so lovely that he at once returned. In my own home I felt tolerably certain I would find everything poised for repetition. I have always been deeply suspicious of all upheaval, even to the extent of hating every form of cleaning, and above all the scrubbing of floors. I had accordingly given the strictest instructions that my conservative principles be respected also during my absence. But what happens? My faithful servant was of another opinion. He presumed that in beginning a ferocious cleaning very shortly after my departure all would be over by the time I returned, confident in his own ability to put everything neatly back just the way it had been. I arrive, I ring on my own doorbell, my servant opens the door. It was a remarkable moment. My servant turned as pale as a corpse as, through the half-opened door, I beheld the appalling sight: everything was upside down. I was stunned. In his bewilderment he had no idea what to do and as his guilty conscience overcame him he slammed the door in my face. This was too much. With my need now at its greatest height my principles wilted and I feared the worst . . . I understood that there really is no repetition, and that my former understanding of life had triumphed . . . Time passed, my servant made amends for his earlier wrong, and a monotonous uniformity once more descended upon my affairs. Whatever couldn’t move stood in its ordained place, and whatever could, moved in its predictable course: my clock, my servant — and myself, pacing up and down across the floor. For even though I had ascertained that there is no repetition, it will always be the case that inflexibility and a sort of wilful dulling of one’s powers of observation will produce a uniformity that is far more stupefying than the most whimsical of diversions, and that in the course of a lifetime will grow ever stronger, like an enchantment.” (Repetition, 1843)

Kierkegaard often reminds us of the dangers of trying to control life too much, to escape its vagaries and surprises by turning it into a trustworthy and unchanging routine. With an eye to the theatricality of the Danish postal service he offers a personal and beguilingly surreal solution to the whole problem:

“Hail the post horn! For many reasons, that is the instrument for me. And most particularly for this reason, that one can never be completely sure of coaxing the same note from it twice. There are endless possibilities in a post horn, and whoever puts it to his lips and applies his wisdom to it will never find himself guilty of a repetition, and whoever instead of answering a friend presents him with a post horn for his pleasurable convenience says nothing but explains everything. Praise be to the post horn! That is my crest. As the ascetics of old placed a skull on the desk and devoted their lives to meditating upon it, so shall the post horn on my desk always remind me of what the meaning of life is. Hail the post horn! But the journey is not worth the inconvenience suffered, for one scarcely need move from the spot to be persuaded that there is no repetition. No, one sits quietly in one’s room, when all is vanity and has passed away, and yet journeys more swiftly than one does on a train, despite the fact that one is sitting quite still. Everything shall remind me of this. My servant shall wear the livery of the postal service, and when dining out my only conveyance shall be the post-chaise. Farewell, farewell, rich hope of youth! Why all this haste? That which you chase does not exist, no more than you yourself do! Farewell, manly strength! Why do you tramp so hard on the ground? That which you tread upon is an illusion! Farewell, triumphant resolve, you will not reach your goal, for you cannot take your deed with you unless you turn back, and that you cannot do. Farewell, beauties of the forest, already faded by the time I wanted to see you! Roll on, you fleeting river, the only thing that really knows what it wants, that wants only to run and lose itself in the sea, which will never be filled! Play on, you drama of life, which none call a comedy and none a tragedy, because none have seen how it ends! Hurry along, you drama of existence, where life does not come back any more than money spent does. Why has no one ever returned from the dead? Because life does not know how to fascinate as death does, because life cannot persuade the way death does. Yes, death is a matchless persuader, provided one does not attempt to contradict it but lets it talk on. Its persuasion is instantaneous, so that none have ever raised a word in objection, nor longed to hear the persuasion of life.” (Repetition, 1843)’

Kierkegaard’s idea of ‘repetition’ is actually more than a simple rejection of the desire to live in the past, either by indulging an addiction to memory or by the actual physical recreation of a set of once-familiar circumstances. He uses the term in a special philosophical sense to mean that if we simply put our trust in the unfolding moment of life (or in God’s infinite repertoire of possibilities), then there is no need ever to prefer the past; the most unexpected things may well happen to us just a few seconds from now.”