What a varied and strange universe!? What a week of surprises! I have no commentary to contextualize those statements; it wouldn't belong on a company blog anyhow. And though I risk sounding like I'm high on mushrooms, when do I not?
In this spirit of high-minded enthusiasm, I recently began reading The Present Age by Søren Kierkegaard (Harper Torchbooks, 1962) which includes the essays "The Present Age" (the latter part of the book A Literary Review) and "Of the Difference Between a Genius and an Apostle." Without going on about Kierkegaard's ideas contained therein, I thought I'd be more qualified to comment on the effect of its introduction. I can't remember the last time I've been so freely batted around by preliminary material. Walter Kaufmann, the American philosopher, begins his introduction so:
It is one of the characteristics of the present age that books of the previous century are reissued with more or less--usually less--learned prefaces. The point is partly that the new edition should have something new in it; partly that the reader should be told what a great classic will confront him when he is done with the preface. The reader wants to be reassured that he is not going to waste his time. And he is also supposed to be anxious to know what he should think of the book--which is another way of saying that he is supposed to be afraid of having to think for himself, though this is after all the only kind of thinking there is. In Kierkegaard's words, in The Present Age, the reader must be reassured that 'something is going to happen,' for 'ours is the age of advertisement and publicity.' Indeed, the preface is expected to say what is going to happen --or, more precisely, which parts of what is about to happen may be safely forgotten, which points are memorable, and what observations about them should be remembered for use in conversation.
And he goes on. An editor could graph this first paragraph onto almost any introduction, so long as the author being introduced is one of the celebrated dead (and, to temper that statement, so long as the intro continues in that vein (I'm not really going out on a limb here)), but it remains poignant where it is. He strikes solid ground between competence and enthusiasm when others of us can only try. If anyone wants a copy of this book, I'm going to order some and send one to you. My e-mail address is on this website, so do whatever's necessary.
Have a blessed weekend!
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