The Point of View of My Work as an Author

The Point of View For my Work as an Author (subtitle: A Direct Communication, Report to History) is an autobiographical account of the 19th century Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard's use of his pseudonyms. It was written in 1848, published in part in 1851 (as On my Work as an Author), and published in full posthumously in 1859. This work explains his pseudonymous writings and his personal attachment to those writings. Walter Lowrie, a Kierkegaardian translator and scholar called this an autobiography "so unique that it has no parallel in the whole literature of the world."

I will allow someone else to speak, my poet, who, when he comes, will usher me to the place among those who have suffered for an idea and say: "The martyrdom this author suffered can be described quite briefly in this way: He suffered being a genius in a market town. ... Yet also here in the world he found what he sought: "that single individual"; if no one else was that, he himself was and became that more and more.

However, Kierkegaard did make the following remarks in The Point of View that cast doubt on whether he regarded the pseudonymous writings as highly as he did his Christian writings. He published Either/Or under the pseudonym, Victor Eremita, February 20, 1843 and Two Edifying Discourses, May 16, 1843 under his own name. The Point of View is his own interpretation of his work up to 1848. He had just published Works of Love in 1847, where he attempted to explain how to love your neighbor as yourself.

Although Either/Or attracted all the attention, and nobody noticed the Two Edifying Discourses, this book betokened, nevertheless, that the edifying was precisely what must come to the fore, that the author was a religious author, who for this reason has never written anything aesthetic, but has employed pseudonyms for all the aesthetic works, whereas the Two Edifying Discourses were by Magister Kierkegaard.”

The first group of writings represents aesthetic productivity, the last group is exclusively religious: between them, as the turning-point, lies, the Concluding Postscript. This work concerns itself with and sets ‘the Problem’, which is the problem of the whole authorship, how to become a Christian. So it takes cognizance of the pseudonymous work, and of the eighteen edifying discourses as well, showing that all of this serves to illuminate the Problem-without, however, affirming that this was the aim of the foregoing production, which indeed could not have been affirmed by a pseudonym, a third person, incapable of knowing anything about the aim of a work that was not his own. The Concluding Postscript is not an aesthetic work, but neither is it in the strictest sense religious. Hence it is by a pseudonym, though I add my name as editor-a thing I did not do in the case of any purely aesthetic work.

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