Kierkegaard and Romanticism

Abstract

Kierkegaard has an ambivalent attitude toward the Romantics. On the one hand, in his master's dissertation, he savages the concept of irony in the work of the early German Romantics Friedrich Schlegel, Ludwig Tieck, and Karl Solger. In 'Either/Or' he satirizes Friedrich Schlegel's novel 'Lucinde', and in his pseudonymous authorship he relegates the aesthetic, which he takes to be almost synonymous with Romantic (Söderquist 2008: 222), to the lowest stage on life's way. On the other hand, in his literary reviews Kierkegaard borrows some of his key critical tools from Schlegel. He also models the structure of 'Either/Or' partly on Friedrich Schleiermacher's 'Confidential Letters On Lucinde' (Crouter 2005: 110-17), and he borrows other elements from the late German Romantic Joseph Freiherr von Eichendorff (Purver 2008: 42-3). But most importantly, Kierkegaard engages vigorously with Romantic aesthetics, analysing, playing with, and critically transforming some of its central concepts, such as irony, the interesting, reflection, the individual and love, as well as some of the early Romantics' key questions.