I discovered to my dismay several voluminous and expensive Kierkegaard volumes coming to press from
Princeton University Press. I saw them while browsing on sites like Amazon - a truly bad habit. (
See link Here
for amazon search).
So much of Kierkegaard's perspective centers on his breaking off his engagement. He is no doubt subjective and inward in the extreme.
Sometimes this vast, endless array of knowledge to be gained seems like an undo burden, a stress, the placing of a claim or a burden on existence. Almost a hamster wheel, but not quite circular - instead like following an infinite string all over the earth. So when you read someone like Kierkegaard, or for that matter, Henry Miller, the ultimate aesthete, you travel everywhere, and the writing never seems to end. You never have enough, always one more page to read, just one more book.
One can tolerate only so much
possibility, potential - take your education from it as you can, but actuality
beckons. But the mind has a hunger of its own and tires much more slowly than the feet, and occasionally refuses to be turned off. Even in dreams the mind walks countless miles.
Following the string, at least it is a pathway, restricted to the linear, even if infinite. It is more reassuring than the forever expanding, the dissipated. But it can lack the mystery, the condensation of narrative, of
profluence. Stop to smell the roses, for Pete's sake. The simpler structure of fiction and possibly of life with a smaller axis to revolve around. When life was simpler.
Hang a sign on the door that says "Gone fishing," and listen to some
Howlin' Wolf.
