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Søren Kierkegaard: A Biography

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With its 800 pages of text, Garff's life of Kierkegaard will no doubt inspire fear and trembling (sorry, couldn't resist) in even the most diehard fan of SK. Fear not, however, as Garff has written the best Kierkegaard biography that one can find in English (though it would be nice if Walter Lowrie's and Josiah Thompson's excellent full-length biographies were also in print). It's an impressive piece of scholarship, and it is a rewarding experience to read it. Unfortunately for those of us on this side of the pond, perhaps only a Dane could have written such a book. Perhaps only someone who has walked the streets that SK did and who knows his Mother Tongue could put us in Kierkegaard's little world so well. We not only come to know SK inside and out after reading this large tome, we also get a feel for the sights, smells, and color of nineteenth century Copenhagen. If you have never read Kierkegaard, you will probably not want to read this book. Yet, those that have never read him, or even those who have, will profit from Garff making SK's milieu come alive. We not only get a lot about Kierkegaard, we also are treated to details about cholera epidemics, wars, and the Danish crown--all of which SK couldn't be bothered much with, but I liked reading about anyway.

Kierkegaard, first and foremost, was a writer, and Garff never lets us lose sight of how impressive his subject's achievements were (the amount he produced in the 1840s boggles the mind). All of SK's major works are discussed as well as his lesser known writings. The major events of SK's life are also dealt with in detail--his dour father and difficult brother, the relationship with Regine, and the disastrous sparring he did with "The Corsair." At some points, Garff must speculate on his subject's private world. For example, what was SK's sex life like? Did he visit prostitutes? Were there STDs in the Kierkegaard household? Yet, Garff never descends into sensationalism, nor does he induce eye-rolling. The fact that he dwells little on SK's life in the bedroom suggests that very little ever happened there (if anything). Although I was not convinced that SK was an epileptic, which Garff suggests at one point, I commend the author for exploring the possibility.

The book makes for enjoyable reading, yet, it is not without some flaws. At times it contains too much detail. A certain amount of context is good--even essential--in understanding SK, but some material could have been trimmed. For example, I thought the author gave a bit too much space to Nielsen's "A Life in the Underworld." He could have summarized this non-SK book more succinctly. I also think Garff focuses much more on SK the writer and man while giving less weight to the importance that his thought had in shaping later philosophy/theology. At times, Garff works too much on the assumption that we all know how significant SK was in affecting Christian thought. It is probably unfair to ask Garff to boil down SK's contributions to religion/philosophy in one simple sound bite (such as "subjectivity is truth" or that a believer must be a "knight of faith"). But perhaps he could have included an introduction or epilogue in which he explores how SK's ideas have gained popularity since his death and are almost universally taught in religion/philosophy departments today. The fact that a farm boy at a state university in Alabama is required to read SK in philosophy 101 begs some explanation.

In short, the book is stronger in its descriptiveness and comprehensiveness than its analysis of the theological and philosophical ideas with which Kierkegaard occupied himself. To show greatness without simply stating it is a task that many biographers of great artists have problems with. At times, though, I felt that Garff was not giving SK's major works (such as monstrous Works of Love and Concluding Unscientific Postscript) the space they deserved. Even so, he is writing a biography, not a literary analysis. SK often considered himself a poet, and it is the poet/writer/existentialist, not the theologian, that comes across most strongly here.

Any caveats I have are outweighed by this book's strengths. It is beautifully written, engaging, and thoughtful. SK's life may not have been as eventful as, say, Hemingway's. He certainly was not a man of action. Yet, SK's life seems ill-suited to short biography (such as Walter Lowrie's brief work on him). Garff, and his excellent translator Bruce Kirmmse, have done great work. "Soren Kierkegaard: A Biography" is a splendid piece of writing that is worthy of one of history's greatest authors. It is also a major scholarly achievement. Garff has done his homework, and what we have here is a labor of love. It will be hard for anyone writing a life of SK to top this one. We owe a great debt to Joakim Garff.

It may seem astonishing to many that a nearly-900 page biography of Soren Kierkegaard would ever be described as riveting, or as a page-turner, but that is exactly what this book by Joakim Garff, translated by Bruce Kirmmse from the original Danish, turns out to be. I first noticed it at the bookstore of my seminary, and, intended only to read through a few pages at the beginning to be somewhat familiar with the text (having a friend who is very into Kierkegaard), I noticed when I next looked up that I was 60 pages into the book, and half an hour late for my next appointment.

As Garff states in his preface, biographies of Kierkegaard are few and far between. Even in his native Danish language, 'biographies of Kierkegaard that have appeared since Georg Brandes' critical portrait was published in 1877 can easily be counted on the fingers of one hand.' Part of this was Kierkegaard's own stated desire that readers read his works, not into his person, and he often published under pseudonyms. However, this is an ironic situation, Garff writes, because Kierkegaard puts so much of himself into his writing that there are definite autobiographical elements. Israel Levin, Kierkegaard's secretary for many years, also recognised the paradoxical situation in dealing with a Kierkegaard biography - 'this is a life so full of contradictions that it will be difficult to get to the bottom of his character.'

One of the things Garff should be credited for is not trying to force a particular paradigm or interpretation on Kierkegaard. We don't discover 'Kierkegaard the existentialist' or 'Kierkegaard the religious rebel' or other such personas here - rather, these elements and more are all interwoven into Garff's text to show a complex and not always comprehensible figure. Garff is neither a true-believer nor an official apologist from any set place - he instead set out 'not only to tell the great stories in Kierkegaard's life but also to scrutinse the minor details and incidental circumstances, the cracks in the granite of genius....'

Kierkegaard was a troubled and troubling figure. His life was very brief for someone with such a prodigious output - he lived only 42 years, and his productive time as an intellectual was really only half that time. Garff organises the biography chronologically, taking a year-by-year approach (after putting Kierkegaard's childhood and adolescence together into one chapter, 1813-1834), each year being devoted to its own chapter. In this fashion, Garff looks much more closely at the events and relationship in Kierkegaard's life (both personal and institutional relationships) rather than systematically looking at themes and ideas in his works.

Garff seems to assume some familiarity with Kierkegaard's works at various points - this is not a critical analysis of Kierkegaard's thinking, nor is it even necessarily descriptive of his work in many cases. However, the biography is accessible to those who do not have much experience with Kierkegaard (and I must count myself among those; I have read a few of Kierkegaard's works, and a few analyses, but would never consider myself an expert on the subject).

As translator Bruce Kirmmse states, the book is done in a rather conversational style with an informal sense about it - it is not a dry and dusty historical tome. Not being familiar with Danish, I cannot but take his word that this is true of the original text by Garff, but given the reading here, one cannot imagine that Garff or the editors would have been happy with it done in any other way had this not been faithful to the original. In keeping with this more informal style, there are endnotes rather than footnotes. There are nearly three dozen illustrations (paintings, photographs, other line-art and maps), an extensive bibliography.

I will dare to say, as ironic as it may be both to the subject of reading the biography of a philosopher as well as to the subject of this particular figure, this was a fun book to read.

A very well written, and readable book. The author does a good job of fleshing out the context in each time period of SK's life. The reader comes to know the people who were important to SK both personally and professionally. And, SK's important writings are put within the context of his life and culture. Garff has a sense of humor, and temperance in his editorializing. You don't have to be a fan of Kierkegaard to enjoy this book.

No matter what readers think about the philosophy of Soren Kierkegaard, they will no doubt have a different opinion of the man after reading this book. Written in a spirit that is critical but always respectful, the author has presented a view of Soren Kierkegaard that is more "grounded" in that it puts him in the context of his times and his geography. The usual portrayal of Kierkegaard is one of a detached, self-absorbed acetic, but this author reminds the reader of his frequent foot excursions on the streets of Copenhagen, and his intense and sadistic word salad when confronting the criticisms of Jakob Mynster, Hans Martensen, and Nikolai Grundtvig.

How Kierkegaard dealt with these individuals comes off as incredibly juvenile, and given his frequent imputed genius, he would have been better off to completely ignore them. But Kierkegaard's emotional sensitivities and insecurities in this context should not be too surprising if one takes cognizance of his penchant for writing under a pseudonym. Such cowardice on his part is matched by the anonymous reviewers of today's world, but it is doubtful Kierkegaard would find kinship with these individuals. He was too serious about himself and the literary doctrinaire that he put on paper, and as this book reveals in great detail, he scolded the careerists and reputation-seeking sycophants of his time. He referred to educators as being the "shallowest of people" who possess nothing but "fragmentary knowledge." And assistant professors are doing nothing but "wagging their fingers" and who are unwilling to take their teachings seriously and "deal with every danger." And along these same lines, a concentrated reading of his works, coupled with a study of this biography, will reveal a continuity in his thinking, and not just the ramblings of an intellectual recluse who at times found himself in the limelight due to the superficial ridicule of the periodical "The Corsair".

Kierkegaard's politics is more difficult to decipher from a study of this book, and seems at times contradictory and confused. On the one hand he is taking the "common people" as his own, and on the other he is deploring the person who "wants the approval of the crowd", lest he succumb to creating sensational "half-hour" performances. One section of the book is devoted to Kierkegaard's view of "a people's government is the true image of hell." Democracy is referred to as "leveling" and the author submits to the reader the proposition that Kierkegaard upheld the belief in "enlightened absolutism." This is all shocking of course to those readers who insist on believing that true intellectuals must always be antithetic to the state.

From a reading of the book one can get the impression that Kierkegaard was very wealthy, but the author reminds us that his actual financial position cannot be ascertained with any certainty because of the lack of surviving records. Kierkegaard definitely did not want to create the impression that he was living extravagantly. Indeed his harsh criticisms of the leaders of Christendom frequently revolved around their excesses in consumption. But apparently a few around Kierkegaard thought that he was living close to or beyond his means, one remarking of the "astounding sums" he spent maintaining his lifestyle. Indeed, there are many places in the book that disrupt one's view of Kierkegaard living a tortured existence, a description that one frequently finds in the philosophy textbooks of today. At any rate, Kierkegaard, like any author who publishes for a public audience, has to face up to the plastic faces, fakeries, and "high culture" of the marketing profession, and deal with the frequent exaggerations and heavy "weight of the advertisement."

Kierkegaard was not compatible with university life in his time nor would he be today. Today's universities, prone as they are to organized and dry scholarship, would, like Poul Moller, characterize Kierkegaard's writings as "chaotic literature" and would endeavor to strip it of any "academic respectability." Even the modern French school of deconstruction, who might find a slight intersection with Kierkegaard's literary musings, would be irritated at his Christian faith, and would not let him inhabit the logospheres of twisted logic that it has constructed. Contemporary neuroscientists would be very interested in Kierkegaard however, and the author is aware of this, devoting some space in the book to the neuronal origins of "hypergraphia," with the attending speculations on whether indeed Kierkegaard suffered from this. Kierkegaard spoke of the "sensual pleasure of (literary) productivity" and in this regard cognitive neuroscience is well equipped to interpret Kierkegaard, not from the standpoint of the quality of his writings, but from the standpoint of his brain.

Brought out with great skill by the author, it is Kierkegaard's relationship with Regine that is the most heartbreaking of all the personal perturbations throughout his lifetime. Readers will want to insist on their marriage, or at least a torrential and long-lasting horizontal indulgence in Kierkegaard's apartment. But such connections did not happen, and Kierkegaard's sexual silence, despite his meanderings in "The Seducer's Diary," is a source of speculation on what kind of person he would have been if would have conspired with the Serpent, however difficult he viewed the intentions of this mythical animal, to paraphrase the author. One wonders what his progeny would have been like.

First published in Denmark in 2000, Joakim Garff's massive and monumental biography of the "melancholy Dane" makes its English debut just in time to commemorate Kierkegaard's death exactly 150 years ago ( November 11, 1855). Anyone who has taken a college freshman class in western civilization or philosophy has a vague familiarity with the name, if not his thought, and some have even dared to tackle his complicated and brilliant work of "indirect" communication via pseudonyms and his later "direct" (and was it ever direct!) communication under his own name. In grad school I took a turn at Kierkegaard, and even now in my office there hangs a poem by him thanks to my wife's calligraphy:

Herr! gieb uns blöde Augen (Lord, give us weak eyes)
für Dinge, die nichts taugen, (for things that do not matter)
und Augen voller Klarheit (and eyes full of clarity)
in alle deine Wahrheit! (in all your truth!)

Kierkegaard prefaced his work The Sickness Unto Death with this prayer-poem.

Although a wild diversity of interpreters from existentialism to deconstructionism has claimed Kierkegaard as their own, and although SK's personality and complex oeuvre present any biographer with an extraordinarily difficult task, Garff shows that he is rightly understood as an artist-poet whose focus was distinctly and deliberately religious. He treats the reader to large doses of SK himself, and reviews all his major writings and journals, focusing on Kierkegaard's life and not really his thought. In this sense he treats Kierkegaard personally rather than intellectually or theologically. He starts with his early years, and proceeds year by year. I would have enjoyed an epilogue that took a stab at Kierkegaard's ecclesiastical, pastoral, and theological legacy. How did a writer in backwater Denmark whose books had print runs of 500 copies (only one of which sold out), whose grave remained unmarked for twenty years after his death, and who barely traveled, emerge as one of the most seminal thinkers of Christian history?

Throughout his short life (1813-1855) Kierkegaard battled a pronounced and chronic melancholia that resulted from a number of factors--his pietistic and stern father, his public humiliation in Copenhagen's rollicking newspaper the Corsair, his sense of victimization, his scathing denunciation of the Church of Denmark's chief bishop (Mynster), and his broken engagement with Regina Olsen. His hypochondria did not help, nor did his estrangement from his lone surviving sibling (his five siblings and mother all died by the time Kierkegaard was about 20). For much of his life, he tells us, through a monumental effort of repression, diversion, and displacement, Kierkegaard distracted and protected himself from his melancholia through his prodigious writing. And there is no doubt that his melancholia served as a fund for enormous artistic creativity and interior reflection (a fact not lost on psychiatrist Peter Kramer in his recent book Against Depression). Writing was his therapy, he once observed: "I saved my life by telling stories." Like Mozart, he just might have been the artistic genius whose sickly body could hardly contain its pulsating brilliance.

What infuriated Kierkegaard was pious pretense, intellectual sophistry, the evisceration of the radical Gospel, and a bourgeois religiosity that tamed Christianity of what he called its "terror." The state-paid clergy, he sneered, derived social and financial gain from the Gospel: "In the splendid cathedral, the high, well-born, highly honored, and worthy Geheime-General-Ober-Hof-Preacher, the chosen darling of the important people, steps before a select circle of the select, and movingly sermonizes on a text chosen by himself, namely, 'God has chosen the lowly and despised of the earth'--and no one laughs" (p. 773). Since no one laughed at the discrepancy between genuine Christianity and the pale imitation of cultural Christendom, Kierkegaard intended to provoke a collision or catastrophe between the two. This was train wreck by design. He was an agitator and pyromaniac who employed his literary brilliance to utilize satire as an act of arson: "I am the one who has set the fire in order to smoke out illusions and trickery" (p. 774).

Garff honors his subject but does not ignore his faults. Kierkegaard could be unctuous, petty, shrill, cynical, inaccessible to anyone he did not care to see, and vindictive. One subject of his lethal pen lamented, "he could make you feel small." His father was one of the wealthiest people in Denmark, and it was not lost on his critics that Kierkegaard never worked while he enjoyed an extravagant lifestyle. But he had little money at his death, and financed most of his own publications. One observer complained that while Jesus cried over Jerusalem, Kierkegaard employed dripping sarcasm to laugh at the church.

There is something like a scorched-earth smell in Kierkegaard. It is hardly news that the church "swarms with many faults" (John Calvin). I rather like the choice of the feminist Catholic writer Joan Chittister who describes herself as a "loyal member of a dysfunctional family." Still, we can thank Kierkegaard for never letting us forget the ideal, how far and so self-servingly we fail it, and forcing us to consider what it might mean for each one of us as a "single individual" whom he addressed.

I have read a number of reviews of this book. They are unanimous in acclaiming it the definitive Kierkegaard biography, both in its comprehensiveness and its readability. It tells the story of Kierkegaard's life year by year, with special emphasis on what happens from 1835 when he was twenty- two to his death in 1855. The biography places special emphasis on the literary poetic Kierkegaard. It does not interpret in depth his varied and paradoxical philosophical and religious works. It does however provide the valuable biographical information which can enable us to better understand those works.
Mankind has few geniuses and when they come along they shock us into a new awareness. It is possible to argue that where Kierkegaard most shocked was in his emphasis on the 'lived life' the 'real experience' the 'authentic encounter with God' .And this as opposed to the false, formal and protected encounter.
This of course is the major reason why the Existensialists, including the atheist Sartre could find a true predecessor in him.
Kierkegaard 's labors in decrowning Hegel, and in showing the official Church to be at odds with the true experiencing of Christianity were couched in a language, ironic, paradoxical, parabolic and witty. The pseudonymous authors who spoke for various sides of his personality enabled him to express sides of a personality which always wished to remain somewhat hidden, secret and mysterious.
I have read only a small part of this work and am very eager to read more. And this because Kierkegaard like Kafka is one of those thinker- poets one of those supreme individual masters of their own way of writing in the world as to to seem to me as for so many others, a true spiritual forbearer.

Given the nature of the subject, it would have been surprising if Garff's biography were not incredibly interesting. Even so, Garff goes above and beyond in his treatment of the Dane and his works, making this volume a must-read for anyone interested in Kierkegaard, whether a hardened scholar or amateur enthusiast.

This is not a book for beginners. Garff presupposes a basic familiarity with Kierkegaard's life and works--which is reasonable, for I find it hard to believe that anyone would pick up an 800-page biography of an author they've never read. Even more importantly, I don't think someone can really appreciate the value of Garff's work without being familiar with the numerous Kierkegaard myths and legends. Garff's account has been called by many reviewers "demythologizing," and I think that is an apt description. Kierkegaard deliberately falsified his journals by removing anything that said more about Kierkegaard the man than Kierkegaard the legend. Early Kierkegaard scholars took his bait and made things worse by destroying original manuscripts, and sometimes even perpetuated unsubstantiated conjectures of their own. Garff's account does much to set these tales straight. He shows that Regine was not the only girl ever to pique Kierkegaard's interest, that there is no evidence that Kierkegaard visited a brothel and caught syphilis, and that Kierkegaard's characterizations of his relationship with his father are, whatever their existential-literary merit, mostly fabrications.

Thus, if one has never read a basic overview of Kierkegaard's life before, I would suggest reading some of the bad ones first: Walter Lowrie's A Short Life of Kierkegaard (any university library should have it, since Lowrie was one of the few early English-speaking Kierkegaard enthusiasts), or the comic-style Kierkegaard For Beginners by Donald D. Palmer.

Garff's analyses of Kierkegaard's works, when present, are rather insightful. Garff tends to focus on the unparalleled literary qualities of Kierkegaard's work, an aspect often passed over in most philosophy classrooms or other Kierkegaardian secondary literature. Thus, he was able to open my eyes to elements I had missed in Fear and Trembling, even after I had read it several times. I also found his analysis of "The Seducer's Diary" in connection with The Concept of Anxiety especially illuminating. Garff sometimes shifts the emphasis away from Kierkegaard's major "philosophical" works in favor of some of his minor works--he does not have much to say about Philosophical Fragments, for example--but I found this to be a judicious decision. We have all either read Kierkegaard's major works, or at least read synopses of them; Garff would have done us no special service by including his own synopses. On the other hand, the summaries of works like Prefaces: Writing Sampler and From the Papers of One Still Living were greatly appreciated.

The picture of Kierkegaard presented here is neither Kierkegaard the cantankerous moralist, or Kierkegaard the hopeless romantic, or even Kierkegaard the philosopher. Garff's account moves past the stereotypes to give us an account of Kierkegaard the human being. The man was unquestionably a genius, but he was first, and foremost, a man, just like any of us. And it is to his fellow men and women that Kierkegaard speaks--not just the philosopher, not just the Christian, and not just the writer. Søren is presented with all his tragic flaws, making for a compelling--and ultimately upbuilding--read.

My husband is reading this aloud to me. Although it is taking us a long time, we are close to the end now. It has been an incredible read and is written in a very accessible style.
It has been a really great book to read aloud as the translation is beautifully done and the humor, both of the subject (Kierkegaard) and the biographer (Garff) shines through in every chapter. The translator (Kirmmse) must be very gifted.
I would recommend this book to any student of history, theology, or modern thought and literature. Kierkegaard was a remarkable thinker and his humanity, genius, and foibles as a human being are evident in his own writings and in this beautiful and mesmerizing biography.

this is a perfect book. i can only imagine how wonderfully garff's danish version reads--and even moreso, fantasize what kierkegaard's original danish prose reads like--but kirmmse's translation is masterful.

and what is most impressive is soren kierkegaard and his existence, and the meticulous attention paid by garff in his compelling presentation.

it is hardly conceivable to imagine a more accomplished biography of a singular, complex and fascinating thinker---"author" "poet"

i'm sure all the other reviews are just as glowing. on the book jacket a reviewer simply concludes: "Read, read, read." it's that good. and edifying.

K fans-and in this day of badly needed freely speaking Danes, who is not one?-can at last rejoice. Here finally is a book about SK that makes clear the Corsair magazine affair, the matter of K's trousers and thin legs and curved back and how he took his coffee (strong with lots of sugar), the unending engagement to Regine, and oh yes K's attack upon Christendom.


Garff is learned, witty and a master prose stylist. Under a photo of K's elder brother Peter Christian we read...'Irresolution seems almost to shine forth from the eyes...' A self-promoting K enthusiast named Sommer is described as having the 'zeal of a plagiarist.' One could go on and on, and Garff's observations always seem to hit the mark.

Also wonderfully, there is nothing here about 'the father of existentialism.' Garff tells the life, and leaves the impact on the future to others.