Strange that it has been left to me to translate this Attack upon "Christendom," to me who as a "priest" am here attacked with the utmost scorn! Strange (and perhaps significant), as I have remarked in the Introduction, that no one else has shown any zeal to make this trenchant attack known to the English-speaking world! I was not eager to do it. I neither commend nor decry this attack. But perhaps it is well that, since it was written from within the Church, it should now be translated by a priest. In Germany it was translated a long while ago by two ex-pastors, and everywhere it has been hailed in an anticlerical, if not in an anti-Christian interest.
As this is Kierkegaard's last work, and almost the last to be translated into English, it is appropriate here to cast a glance backward upon the haphazard production of the past eight years. Many think it astonishing that the whole Kierkegaardian literature (twenty-four volumes in English) has been translated and published in so short a time as eight years. But there have been ten translators collaborating to this end — and S. K. alone produced all this literature in fourteen years! I can appreciate how great a labor that was, for I have translated half of it. It makes no difference now that these books were published in English without much regard either to the original order or to the order of importance, for I have good reason to believe that what S. K. called "my literature" will be available in English by the end of this year. This present work lies outside the limits of that literature, as does also The Concept of Irony at the other end, and that too is being translated. Mr. Dru's Selections from the Journals belongs to still another category. That book is invaluable to anyone who would understand the life of S. K. or the development of his thought. But there is more light yet to shine from the twenty big volumes of the Journals, and perhaps more than one scholar will feel prompted to develop this rich mine further. Not now, however, in a biographical interest (for Dru has adequately provided for that), but rather in a topical way. It is now very difficult to get a comprehensive view of S. K.'s reflections upon the subjects which chiefly concerned him, for there is as yet no index to the Journals as a whole. It is therefore all the more important that collections should be made of his more important utterances. I am delighted to hear from Mr. Dru that he has undertaken this agreeable and important task.
In itself this is a big book, and therefore I would not make it bigger by including the replies which were made to this attack. It is significant that there were few rejoinders made in print, and almost all are included in the German edition of Dorner and Schrempf — which can therefore be read by those who know no Danish.
I have included, however, fifteen passages from the Journals which illustrate the spirit in which S. K. carried on his attack. It happens that this book contains a prodigious number of title pages (perhaps more than any other book in the world), and that implies as many blank pages. This thought was distressing — until it occurred to me to use them (as S. K. often did) for these passages which the reader ought to know, and which otherwise I should have felt obliged to quote in the Introduction.
I take occasion to remark that, although as a translator of S. K. I have been scrupulous to conform to his style so far as I could, never yielding to the temptation of bettering it, and seldom resorting to the easy path of paraphrase, yet I have not felt bound to follow slavishly his punctuation, which in fact was in his own time regarded as peculiar and was not always consistent. Here I remark particularly upon his use of the dash, which he employed more frequently than any other author I can think of — for the most part appropriately, but sometimes where I have preferred to use a parenthesis, and more often where I have taken the liberty of introducing three closely printed dots (...), which are commonly seen in French, Italian and Spanish books, to indicate an unexpected conclusion. I was encouraged to use it by Henry James, who first made his discovery of it on a visit to Rome and expressed to me his regret that he had not discovered it early enough to make use of it in his books. If I had not used it till now, or if it had never before been used in the world, I should have felt compelled to invent something of the sort when I was translating the Instant. But indeed this device is so often appropriate that Northern Europe and North America might well borrow from Southern Europe and South America a custom which is so common that no patent protects it.
I owe it perhaps to Kierkegaard to admit that my use of the diagonal stroke / to indicate a marked disjunction (as in writing "either/or") was not his use. In this case he used a dash or a hyphen, just as he did for such conjunctive phrases as both-and; but I feel sure he would have liked to make this distinction, if it had been suggested to him. This is not my invention, for it is used significantly by the Jena publisher Diederichs, who happens to be the publisher of S. K.'s Complete Works in German; and it can appeal to a more remote tradition, namely, to the fact that it was used, though not significantly, in many of the earliest printed books...in place of every other mark of punctuation.
As usual, by the kind permission of Dr. Lange, the last surviving editor (who perhaps no longer survives), I have made use of the notes to the last Danish edition of the Complete Works. Not all of them will interest every reader, but they must be held in respect as the cumulative labor of many zealous students. I conceive, however, that I have done a service to the English reader by omitting more than half of them, and the notes which I have added are perhaps more important for the understanding of Kierkegaard.
WALTER LOWRIE
Princeton April 26, 1943