Customer Reviews

The Seducer's Diary (Penguin Great Loves)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

"The Seducer's Diary" is one of the most fascinating chapters of Kierkegaard's Either/Or. It is the culmination of Kierkegaard's portrayal of the "aesthetic" life, and reveals very clearly some of the horrific failings of "student A" and his world-view. Furthermore, the Hong translation is excellent, poetic, and fluid.

However, I'm really disturbed by the fact that this chapter would be pulled from its context in Either/Or and set up alone, as a short work by the author "Søren Kierkegaard". There are several problems with this.

First, "The Seducer's Diary" is written by Kierkegaard only in the sense that any of Macbeth's monologues in Shakespeare's play are written by Shakespeare. The Seducer expresses Kierkegaard's own views and feelings just as little as Macbeth expresses Shakespeare's. By attributing the piece directly to Kierkegaard, and suggesting (see the back cover) that the book is somehow a portrayal of his relationship to Regine Olsen, this volume does a huge disservice to the actual content and function of the book. Kierkegaard would be absolutely horrified by this volume. (For more, see "A First and Last Explanation" at the end of Concluding Unscientific Postscript 1 : Kierkegaard's Writings, Vol 12.1.)

This brings us to problem 2: "The Seducer's Diary" is the final chapter of Either/Or part 1. Either/Or is a presentation of two different approaches to life in the form of the collected papers of two unknown individuals: "Student A" and "Judge William". Part 1 contains the papers of "Student A", an aesthete and sensualist, and part 2 contains a series of letters to Student A from "Judge William" in defense of "the ethical". As the final chapter of Part 1, "The Seducer's Diary" offers a climactic portrait of the failures of the aesthetic life. Johannes the Seducer is the aesthete's ideal, and we sense that if Student A pursued his values to their ultimate end he would end up like the Seducer. The Seducer is an updated version of Don Juan, who, rather than leaping on one girl after another in quick succession, undertakes a spiritual as well as a physical seduction, until his prey can totally surrender to him (at which point he abandons her). The Seducer is meant to be horrifying and extremely perverse. To identify Kierkegaard with the Seducer is absolutely outrageous. This chapter, though excellent, cannot be properly understood outside of the context of Either/Or, so I suggest that, instead of this you purchase the Hong translation of Either/Or 1: Kierkegaard's Writings, Vol. 3.

This was truly, an amazing read! The words that will be written here, can never begin to tell the complexity of this story. Soren tells, of seductive love, and loss of, through Johannes and Cordelia. Was Kierkegaard a scheming madman, or simply a fool...

The story is told by Johannes, a man ten years Cordelias senior, who spins a web, to bring this young girl of seventeen, into womanhood through an erotic seduction of the mind. Johannes, a brilliant intellectual, I believe, uses the ripple effect of thought to determine the out come of each move that he plots. For instance, when you drop a stone into water, it sends out a ripple of rings, each one, a different path to take, each with it's own set of consequences. Constantly, he's questioning, thinking, and calculating.

Johannes, purposely studies everything about Cordelias' life. Her circle of friends, her family, her daily schedule. Then he makes sure to intervene un-noticed. For example, he knows that at 11am she will be walking down a particular street, he makes a point to walk past her. A day of shopping , to be in the store where she is at. But never approches her, always standing in the shadows. Subconsciously, he's placing his image in her mind. When he discovers that she lives with her Aunt, he sets out to court the Aunt, and befriends Edward, a shy, awkward boy, who's infatuated with Cordelia. But Johannes only uses Edward, to his own advantage of course, exposing Cordelia to the differences between Edward, the boy, and himself, the man. Eventually, Cordelia takes notice, and poor Edward is soon discarded. It's at that point when Johannes askes the Aunt for Cordelia's hand, in an engagement. The Aunt agrees, and Cordelia and Johannes begin their journey.

If you have ever been in love, truly in love, you will feel it written within the pages of this book. The kind we may only find once in our lives, if we are lucky enough for fate to expose it to us with open eyes. I believe that Johannes, found the truest, purest love, with Cordelia, but chose to play a game of the mind, instead of listening to the heart. Which in the end, haunted him the rest of his life!

This book is filled with visionary metaphors, which only adds to it's beauty. Once you attain the rhythm of the prose, it flows like sweet nectar on the palate.

This reader is torn between joy that this amazing text-within-a text is in print and available to an English-language audience and concern that it is taken out of the context of its intellectual "home," the monumental philosophical work Either/Or. Be that as it may, the Seducer's Diary alone is an entrancing read. The layers of metafiction and seduction are dizzying, the tone and pace wonderfully genteel, but with a hard and frightening core that is guaranteed to give most readers pause. The Diary was written as a supreme example of the concept of the asethetic in the "Either" section of Either/Or. "Or" takes up Kierkegaard's notion of the ethical. Both the aesthetic and the ethical turn out to be pathetic stages on life's way according to Kierkegaard, the only true path being the religious. But don't let the philosophy hamper your enjoyment of the ultimate reflective seducer. Kierkegaard's Johannes makes Don Juan look like a clod.

According to Kierkegaard, there are three stages or spheres of existence: the aesthetic, the ethical and the religious one. In "The seducer's diary", the author depicts the life of someone who has made a conscious choice for the aesthetic way of life, with all the consequences that implies.

The plot is simple, and the book is very short, but all the same the reader will become easily and quickly involved with the characters, and won't be able to forget the lessons learned through them. Johannes is a seducer for vocation and profession: being a seducer isn't really his job, but that is undoubtedly what gives meaning to his life. He likes women only until they have given him everything: it is then that he leaves them, and searches for a new "love". Johannes isn't capable of a big love that will last forever, but rather of many fleeting little "loves", with a definite time limit ("I am an aesthete, an eroticist, who has grasped the nature and the point of love, who believes in love and knows it from the ground up, and I reserve for myself only the private opinion that no love affair should last more that a half a year at most and that any relationship is over as soon as one has enjoyed the ultimate.").

"The seducer's diary" is a transcription of part of Johannes diary. Here the reader will be able to follow the different stages of Johannes seduction (and ultimate betrayal) of Cordelia, his prey. The way in which Johannes plans the above mentioned seduction is rather astonishing, due to the fact that he thinks about it as a "war of conquest" that he has to win little by little, through many well-conceived strategies. Not matter how passionate he might seem at times, we are remembered again and again that he is cold-bloodedly constant to his primal purpose.

On the whole, I really liked "The seducer's diary", and can recommend it to you. To tell the truth, I cannot say that I loved the ending, but I can see that it illustrates Kierkegaard point of view perfectly, bringing home the idea that a purely aesthetic way of life isn't an intelligent choice. Of course, we already knew that, but it is all the same a good idea to read why, expressed in such a conspicuously clear way as this.

Belen Alcat

it was awesome, it is full of emotion! i feel bad for edvard and especially cordelia. all the characters end up getting shafted at the end, except johannes which is shafted by his existence, the guy has mad people skills, but is a total dumb ass, (he is living the worst kind of existence according to kierkagard's 3 possible life choices; 1. aesthetic 2. ethical 3. religous) but you kind of feel sorry for him too.

The reviewer who says it should not be read in isolation is correct. It is atrociously boring, so boring, I could barely finish it and I am not a novice, but a literature professor.