IDEE FIXE:The Journals of Kierkegaard(1834-1854)
This subject interests me and I post it with the hope that it is of some value here...this is my firstpost in this part of the Hubpages.com
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In his introduction to The Journals of Kierkegaard(1834-1854) Alexander Dru writes that at the age of 33, from 1846 on, the whole significance of what Kierkegaard had written “suddenly dawned on him.” “His gifts and talents,” Dru went on, were to be his vocation. He had understood his mission.” It was a mission implicit in the work he had written. In 1846 he began a series of what he called his “proper” Note-books a continuation of his previously haphazard ones. Dru says that the reader can see Kierkegaard’s extraordinary destiny taking shape in these Notebooks, a destiny in the service of an idea, an idee fixe, a destiny linked to an “idea for which he could live and die.”-Ron Price with thanks to Alexander Dru, “Introduction to The Journals of Kierkegaard,” Fontana, 4th impression 1967, (Oxford UP, 1938), pp.7-10.
Your posterity your confidant
by means of your journal,
your most trusted confidant:
"The thing is to find a truth
which is true for me, to find
the idea for which I can live
and for which I can die......1
My posterity my confidant
as I leave behind all these
words--after I found a truth
which was true for me and
for which I have lived, found
a mission, a destiny, a service
to an idea, an idee fixe whose
time had come in this dark
heart of an age of transition
and gradually unfolded by
stages to array my life with
the fruits of consecrated joy.
1 This was written in Kierkegaard’s Journal on August 1, 1835. The entire collection of his Danish journals has been edited and published in 13 volumes which consist of 25 separate bindings including indices. The first English edition of his Journals was edited by Alexander Dru in 1938. A third official translation will contain 55 volumes and is expected to be completed by 2009.
2 “Were I to die now the effect of my life would be exceptional,” Kierkegaard wrote, “much of what I have simply jotted down carelessly in the Journals would become of great importance and have a great effect.” --Journals, December 1849.
Ron Price
4 July 2007
