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The Essay by Sören Kierkegaard the Dane (1813-55) on music is, to my mind, a notable piece of work. Mr. Turner shows irritation at it, but he clearly has not understood it. Kierkegaard writes in Danish, which few read; he is translated badly into German; and far from excellently, as regards this Essay, into American; and his philosophy is cast in the Hegelian mode, one of the most difficult in the world. He is fluent, even prolix; and musical interpretation, as Professor Dent says, is a dangerous amusement to a fluent pen. Yet Kierkegaard avoids all pitfalls, and if we approach him sympathetically he can teach us much. He is seeking in Either/Or, to portray the æsthetic life so he impersonates an “æsthete” (the pseudonym “A”) and purposely makes him extravagantly exuberant. We must allow for this, or we may be put off.
1 Either/Or, Vol. I.Google Scholar
2 Mozart, Appendix.Google Scholar
3 Mozart's Operas, p. 266.Google Scholar
4 Throughout this paper Don Giovanni indicates the opera, Don Juan its hero.Google Scholar
5 Mozart passim.Google Scholar
6 “Vous voulez connaītre celui de mes ouvrages que j'aime le mieux eh bien, c'est Don Giovanni,“ quoted Jahn, Mozart III, 144.Google Scholar
7 He calls it “the opera of Operas.”Google Scholar
8 H.M.V. booklet on Don Giovanni.Google Scholar
9 Man and Superman, p. x.Google Scholar
10 Cf. Poetics I, §. 2. πασαι [τέχναι] τυγχάνουσιν οὐσαι µιµασϵιςGoogle Scholar
11 These sub-dividings are my own, but I think they clarify Kierkegaard's dialectic.Google Scholar
12 Encyclopädie I, § 133 Zusatz.Google Scholar
13 Mr. Turner, Mozart (appendix) is wrong in saying that Kierkegaard does not explain these terms.Google Scholar
14 This is the real meaning of Den sandselige Genialitet, not “sensuous (or sensual) genius,” as Mrs. Swenson's American translation gives it.Google Scholar
15 Which means can never be superseded, even if another Don Giovanni was written.Google Scholar
16 See Stanford on Composition.Google Scholar
17 “Stage” does not imply succession however. Perhaps “metamorphosis” would be a better word, as Kierkegaard suggests.Google Scholar
18 I don't know what I am, what I do … etc.Google Scholar
19 Allgemeines Handbuch der Freimauerei, quoted by Dent, Magic Flute.Google Scholar
20 Trevelyan, English Social History, p. 203.Google Scholar
21 Molière, Don Juan I, Sc. 2.Google Scholar
22 Loc. cit.Google Scholar
23 See Dent's strictures, Mozart's Operas, p. 267.Google Scholar
24 That Mozart begins and ends his operas in the same key, suggests that he thought of them as each a totality.Google Scholar
25 The Danish word Sanselig can mean both “sensuous” and “sensual.” It is a pity the translator did not stick to the former, because the latter raises, by implication, a moral issue which is not here in question.Google Scholar
26 Mozart's Operas, p. 194.Google Scholar
27 Rape of Lucretia, Act II, Scene 2.Google Scholar
28 Man and Superman, Introduction, p. 13.Google Scholar
29 German art-historian 1802–73, known to Kierkegaard.Google Scholar
30 Shelley's Prometheus Unbound is a good example of exquisite lyricism but bad drama.Google Scholar
31 Dent, op. cit., p. 229.Google Scholar
32 Op. cit.Google Scholar
33 Kierkegaard probably heard the opera without the final sextet. But anyway it is but a conventional ending, and the opera is essentially over.Google Scholar
34 Georg Brandes, in S. Kierkegaard, ein literarisches Characterbild, by which S. Kierkegaard was first known outside Scandinavia, dissents from Kierkegaard here. But Kierkegaard is right.Google Scholar
35 Kierkegaard compares Molière's corresponding monologue, where the cataloguing alone matters.Google Scholar
36 I disagree with the way Professor Dent belittles the tragic element. When it comes, reflection is beginning, and with this comes a sense of moral tragedy. In “explaining” the trombones and tragedy. Dent, I think, explains them away, making the facts fit his theory that Don Giovanni, as only opera comique, can admit no tragedy.Google Scholar
37 Kierkegaard deprecates this translation (probably Rochlitz's) as Jahn and Dent do later. He describes it “foolishly decent, and a total failure.”Google Scholar
38 Man and Superman, p. xii.Google Scholar
39 Legge, H.M.V. booklet on Don Giovanni, vol. III, p. 18.Google Scholar
40 W. A. Mozart II, p. 107.Google Scholar
41 Dent, The Magic Flute, p. 92.Google Scholar