Written Images: Søren Kierkegaard's Journals, Notebooks, Booklets, Sheets, Scraps, and Slips of Paper

niels jørgen cappelørn joakim garff johnny kondrup søren kierkegaard bruce h. kirmmse

Søren Kierkegaard (1813-55) was an almost unbelievably prolific writer. At his death he left not only a massive body of published work (25 volumes in the recently completed Princeton University Press edition), but also a sprawling mass of unpublished writings that rivaled the size of the published corpus. This book tells the story of the peculiar fate of this portion of Kierkegaard's literary remains, which flowed ceaselessly from his steel pen from his late teens to a week before his death. It is the story of packets and sacks of paper covered with words and images that, after a vagabond existence in various homes, finally landed at the Royal Danish Library, where they are today guarded with great care.

Readers are also introduced to a selection of this enormous body of material, including drawings and doodlings (often human profiles with high foreheads) that escaped from Kierkegaard's pen in unguarded moments and complement the allure of the philosopher's strikingly variable, elusive handwriting. The authors of this book are among the editors of a modern critical edition of Kierkegaard's oeuvre currently being produced in Copenhagen.

By the end of his life Kierkegaard had become a controversial figure, engaged in a furious assault upon "Christendom." From the very moment of their discovery in the days following his death, the unpublished words and images constituted a highly problematic bonanza, an intellectual and religious hot potato (or sack of potatoes) that was passed from hand to hand, suppressed, selectively and tendentiously published and republished. Written Images offers readers a fascinating tour of the misadventures of these written images that will, finally, soon be published in their entirety.

Genres philosophy

184 pages, Hardcover

First published August 4,2003

This edition

Format: 184 pages, Hardcover
Published: August 24, 2003 by Princeton University Press
ISBN: 9780691115559
ASIN: 0691115559
Language: English

About the author

niels jørgen cappelørn

Niels Jørgen Cappelørn (born 1945) is a Danish theologian, Søren Kierkegaard scholar and former director of Søren Kierkegaard Research Center at the University of Copenhagen. He has written and edited a number of books on Kierkegaard, and was editor of Index til Søren Kierkegaards Papirer, bind XIV-XVI (1975–78). He was Director of the Danish Bible Society from 1980 to 1993.

Professor Cappelørn is a member of the Danish Council of Ethics, a body which provides advice to the Danish Parliament and raises public debate about ethical problems in the field of biomedicine, and a member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters. He was made a Knight of the Order of the Dannebrog in 1992. A festschrift in his honor, At Være Sig Selv Nærværende (To Be Present to Oneself) was published in 2010, on the occasion of Professor Cappelørn's 65th birthday.