On Kierkegaard
“One does not feel in his writings the sense that, whatever sorrows and sufferings a man may have to endure, it is nevertheless a miraculous blessing to be alive. Like all heretics, conscious or unconscious, he is a monodist, who can hear with particular acuteness one theme in the new Testament—in his case, the theme of suffering and self-sacrifice—but is deaf to its rich polyphony.”
[but]
“Kierkegaard had, and always will have, an audience for whom it is imperative that they listen to him.” That audience, says Auden, is “the individual endowed with an exceptional talent for art or science or philosophy”: At identifying the “spiritual dangers” for such a person, “Kierkegaard is better than anyone else; here, indeed, he is a prophet, calling the talented to repentance.”
—W. H. Auden, via A Theology of Reading
