| "Living
Poetically addresses the debate over Kierkegaard and aesthetics with
impressive authority. Walsh demonstrates that contemporary post-modern
efforts to idealize the aesthetic in abstraction from the ethical
and the religious are no more responsible than older voices that viewed
the aesthetic with little more than suspicion. She argues that Kierkegaard
embraces all three, for life is really complete only when paradoxical
faith and ethical freedom are both infused with poetic richness."—Stephen
Dunning, University of Pennsylvania
"Living Poetically is a magnificent piece of work on a
very important theme. The concepts of the aesthetic and the poetic
in Kierkegaard have been much neglected, so this is a book that
will make a real contribution; it will immediately become the standard
work on this subject and will probably remain so for a long time
to come. Walsh has an absolute mastery of the Kierkegaardian corpus
and a truly impressive command of the secondary literature, yet
she wears this learning lightly. In addition to the intrinsic interest
of the themes treated, the contemporary relevance of the book is
greatly enhanced by the running polemic with some French feminists
who have allied feminism with postmodernism. Though Walsh is certainly
a feminist herself, and though she clearly scores Kierkegaard for
sexist claims, she argues that there is a deep affinity between
this kind of postmodernist feminism and the romantic ironists who
are the main targets of Kierkegaard's criticisms. The claim that
Kierkegaard's criticisms of romantic ironists apply with force to
some versions of contemporary postmodernism is certain to be controversial,
but so far as I can see, the case Walsh makes is well done, and
this is exactly the kind of critical discussion that postmodern
thinkers need."—C. Stephen Evans, St. Olaf College
Living Poetically is the first book to focus primarily on
Kierkegaard's existential aesthetics as opposed to traditional aesthetic
features of his writings such as the use of pseudonyms, literary
techniques and figures, and literary criticism. Living Poetically traces the development of the concept of the poetic in Kierkegaard's
writings as that concept is worked out in an ethical-religious perspective
in contrast to the aesthetics of early German romanticism and Hegelian
idealism. Sylvia Walsh seeks to elucidate what it means, in Kierkegaard's
view, to be an authentic poet in the form of a poetic writer and
to clarify his own role as a Christian poet and writer as he understood
it. Walsh shows that, in spite of strong criticisms made of the
poetic in some of his writings, Kierkegaard maintained a fundamentally
positive understanding of the poetic as an essential ingredient
in ethical and religious forms of life. Walsh thus reclaims Kierkegaard
as a poetic thinker and writer from those who would interpret him
as an ironic practitioner of an aestheticism devoid of and detached
from the ethical-religious as well as from those who view him as
rejecting the poetic and aesthetic on ethical or religious grounds.
Viewing contemporary postmodern feminism and deconstruction as
advocating a romantic mode of living poetically, Walsh concludes
with a feminist reading of Kierkegaard that affirms both individuality
and relatedness, commonalities and differences between the self
and others, men and women, for the fashioning of an authentic mode
of living poetically in the present age. |
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