Diary of a Seducer
By (Author) Sren Kierkegaard
Translated by Gerd Gillhoff
Continuum Publishing Corporation
Continuum Publishing Corporation
1st May 2006
United States
Professional and Scholarly
Fiction
FIC
Paperback
168
Width 129mm, Height 198mm
192g
Diary of a Seducer records Johannes's discovery of a girl with the Shakespearean name Cordelia, whom he sets out to control. Intricately, meticulously, cunningly, the seduction proceeds. No detail is too small to escape Johannes. "She sits on the sofa by the tea table and I sit on a chair at her side. This position has an intimate quality and at the same time a detaching dignity." Less erotic than an intellectual depiction of seduction, Diary of a Seducer shows the casuist Kierkegaard in what he characterized as the aesthetic mode. A new introduction by Michael Dirda puts this influential novella into high relief.
Sren Kierkegaard (1813-55) was a Danish philosopher and theologian whose name is inextricably linked with existentialism and deconstruction. His philosophic writings, which are characterized by a more accessible style than his German counterparts, include Fear and Trembling, The Sickness unto Death, and Either-Or, the last from which the present fictionalized account of an episode form Kierkegaards own life is drawn.