Kierkegaard on Art and Communication pp 64-77 | Cite as
Kierkegaard, the Aesthetic and Mozart’s Don Giovanni
Abstract
Kierkegaard’s writings reflect his great passion for and love of art, particularly the plays of Shakespeare and Mozart’s Don Giovanni.1 Although Kierkegaard ‘read’ works of art existentially from the religious perspective of ‘artful living’, he refrained from including even these beloved works within the category of the religious.2 This omission results from his desire to avoid the idolatrous pagan categories of philosophical aesthetics, which desire blinds him to the autonomous religious status of authentic art.3 The question which Kierkegaard does not address explicitly is: what are the attributes of privileged speech? This question is potent because his interpretative practices in reading Mozart are paradigmatic of his general approach to interpretation. The structure of his arguments is always brilliant and worth considering, but, although Kierkegaard is a strong and perceptive reader of texts, he none the less does not deem it necessary to account for aspects of the text which do not conform to his fundamental presuppositions.4 From the laconic comments on interpretation in Philosophical Fragments we note that Kierkegaard’s singular approach and purposeful omissions are a mode of instructing the reader in the proper relationship between authority, authoring and the tasks of re-authoring.
Keywords
Dramatic Action Authentic Work Interpretative Practice Philosophical Fragment Perceptive ReaderPreview
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Notes
- 2.Kierkegaard shares many assumptions about the nature of art with most thinkers and artists of the first half of the nineteenth century. He ‘reads’ art as a way of coming to grips with the ambiguities of existence. However, he departs radically from the prevailing contemporary judgement that art and especially the artist are the supreme symbols of the unalienated life. We find this notion expressed by individuals as disparate as Beethoven, Marx and John Stuart Mill. The issue of reconciliation and alienation is central to Kierkegaard’s passionate rejection of the autonomy and integrity of art. Cf. L. Braudy, The Frenzy of Renown: Fame and its History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986);Google Scholar
- 2a.L. Plantinga, Romantic Music: A History of Musical Style in Nineteenth Century Europe (New York: Norton, 1984); J. Mill, On Liberty (1859);Google Scholar
- 2b.Karl Marx, The German Ideology (New York: International Publishers, 1947).Google Scholar
- 4.S. Spiegel, The Last Trial (New York: Behrman House, 1979).Google Scholar
- 9.One of the best discussions of the function of archetypes in pagan culture is to be found in Page Smith’s analysis of the distinction between biblical and Greek narration: History and Historians (New York: Vintage Books, 1967).Google Scholar
- 15.For a fascinating account of the war against opera by the proponents of propositional language (the forerunners of the logical positivists) cf. Brigid Brophy, Mozart the Dramatist (London 1988).Google Scholar
- 18.The most provocative and powerful analysis of Mozart’s transfer of the sonata form from the piano sonata to the opera is found in Charles Rosen’s The Classical Style: Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven (New York: Norton, 1972). It is worth noting that the operatic extended ensemble, which is the glory of Mozart’s operas, begins in Mozart’s experiments with musical dialogue in the piano concertos.Google Scholar