Kierkegaard: Poet of the Religious

Kierkegaard was a religious thinker who possessed to a considerable degree the touch of a poet. The poetic character of his writings is readily apparent in their lyrical style and imaginative construction using a variety of literary genres and techniques, but the poetic temper in Kierkegaard ran deeper than a flair for words and deeper than a genius for artistic forms and figures. A poet, above all, must have pathos or intense passion. As one of Kierkegaard’s pseudonyms succinctly puts it: ‘Without pathos, no poet’ ( SLW , p. 404). Underlying the aesthetic features of Kierkegaard’s writings is a poetic passion founded upon an understanding of the poetic or artistic imagination as a mode for depicting and relating human life to existential ideals. It is primarily in this sense that Kierkegaard was a poet, more specifically a religious poet, and it is with this aspect of his aesthetics that this essay is chiefly concerned. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.