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andreina's review against another edition
dark
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
voidbexx's review against another edition
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
0.25
megadirt's review against another edition
4.0
This book is about a man who finds a diary of a seducer, which in turn is a brilliant framing device for Kierkegaard's philosophy on love and seduction. The seducer comes across as a bit of a bastard but some of things he says, and his ability to represent and illustrate beauty of the same young girl over 130 odd pages is incredible. Cordelia seems like the most appealing woman in the world, but isn't every woman through the eyes of the man who loves her?
I personally have had an intense relationship that wouldn't have covered 130 pages in it's content with its brevity, but my reading of this book paralleled the evolution and dissolution of the relationship and may have something to do with my enjoyment. Both Cordelia and my recent experience grew to like, care for, forget and detest the hero of both situations in a remarkably small period of time.
I may read this again later on in life.
-D
I personally have had an intense relationship that wouldn't have covered 130 pages in it's content with its brevity, but my reading of this book paralleled the evolution and dissolution of the relationship and may have something to do with my enjoyment. Both Cordelia and my recent experience grew to like, care for, forget and detest the hero of both situations in a remarkably small period of time.
I may read this again later on in life.
-D
michellaberger's review against another edition
4.0
Jeg troede Søren Kierkegaard ville skræmme bukserne af mig, og at jeg ville ende med håret strittende ud til alle sider af den rene frustration over ikke at kunne gabe over værket, men jeg synes faktisk at det var vældig fint at komme igennem. Nu bliver jeg nødt til at anskaffe mig hele "Enten-Eller".
623crq's review against another edition
5.0
The world of love and seduction from the POV of a manipulative and despicable man. Hate to admit it, but I found myself relating to Johannes more than I thought. I was overly fascinated by his thought process and how his schemes would play out.
dvlavieri's review against another edition
4.0
Kierkegaard's The Seducer's Diary describes a man (Johannes)'s calculated scheme to seduce a young girl (Cordelia) into falling in love with him. Described by Updike as "a wound disguised as a boast" this novel/essay/diary is elegiac in its cold lack of apology. It is a book of opposites, of painful ironies.
I feel ashamed to say that I have been a seducer. It has felt normal to me, and I wondered (and still wonder) if it is not singularly a paradigm of romantic normalcy - is love a myth? Is everything wonderful in love simply the gestures of seduction, the play, the production? I am still not sure, myself. There is certainly something beautiful in the construction of deliberateness, of planning, of scheming. Seduction is methodical, thought-out, deliberate. Is all that is deliberate cold? There is an aesthetic wonder to a plan brought to completion: all things complete, coherent, symmetrical, have a specific kind of beauty, in the way that perfect randomness, unadulterated chaos, has beauty. Beauty and truth are comprised of perfect opposites: only consistent in their perfection, their wholeness. If fruition is beautiful, is not all seduction beautiful when it is realized in full? Does something need to be good to be beautiful? There are no ethics in art.
Every person around us is a riddle to us, a riddle with no discoverable answer. We can only guess at the solution, and this mystery drives us to madness when we feel that we are in love, or in lust. What is bewitching to us if not mystery? All beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but what about beauty, about the kind of beauty which enchants us into believing we are in love, is subjective? Why do I fall in love with a stranger on the train, and no with a model on a billboard? What deviance of taste dictates my infatuation with one person over another, of perhaps the same physical beauty (in an objective sense)? What can it be besides a specific strain of mystery? We cannot love what we know, only what we do not know, or only what we imagine we know, what we remember, what we have imagined. Our loves are not the people who touch, feel, see in life, but one million imagined things which we attach to that person, one million relics of our nostalgic past loves, acquaintences, beauties seen or dreamed, one millions constructions of our hopes, desires, imaginations: the irrefutable but intangible potentialities of the future, of the imagination. Giacomo Leopardi wrote in Zibaldone di pensieri:
Is Johannes a narcissist? Does he only love himself? That is a question sure to arise in any reader of this diary (and what is a greater sign of narcissism, anyway, than a diary?). It is important to remember the psychological significance of narcissism: it is not self-love, but rather self-loathing. Narcissism is a defense mechanism, it is an excessive mask over and insufficient ego. Narcissism is all surface: it is a love for the mask that is presented to the world. It is compensation for what is lacking inside. Why keep a diary of your feats of seduction, if you are interested only in the mortal and ephemeral conquest of the moment? Virginity, infatuation, are mortal: they die and are transformed. The diary is a memento mori, not a trophy. Words can only firm up one story of history: it is not true nor honest simply because it is written, but writing, recording, forces history to fit our preconceived notions of linearity, of cause and effect, of black and white: of motive and result. If Johannes wants only the fleeting thrill of seduction, the crystalized moment of victory, then his story is a triumph; but as a love story?
Why is Johannes drawn to the villainy of seducer, and not the romance of a lover? Commensurate with his narcissism is an inability to feel deserving of love, of a healthy relationship, a romantic kinship or oneness with another. He can conceive the object of his affection in only a cold and distant way because he is subconsciously afraid of exposing himself to the enterprise of failure. Battles are easily won and forgotten, wars are never fought. It is easier to be the villain than to assume the role of the loser. Better to inspire hate than pity. These are the burdens of Johannes, the terrible fate that he suffers. The Seducer's Diary is neither boast nor apology, it is a wound implicit in the character of Johannes, of Kierkegaard. It is a settling mist which occudes the possibility of endurance, happiness, transcendental beauty, and champions the ephemeral glory of art.
I feel ashamed to say that I have been a seducer. It has felt normal to me, and I wondered (and still wonder) if it is not singularly a paradigm of romantic normalcy - is love a myth? Is everything wonderful in love simply the gestures of seduction, the play, the production? I am still not sure, myself. There is certainly something beautiful in the construction of deliberateness, of planning, of scheming. Seduction is methodical, thought-out, deliberate. Is all that is deliberate cold? There is an aesthetic wonder to a plan brought to completion: all things complete, coherent, symmetrical, have a specific kind of beauty, in the way that perfect randomness, unadulterated chaos, has beauty. Beauty and truth are comprised of perfect opposites: only consistent in their perfection, their wholeness. If fruition is beautiful, is not all seduction beautiful when it is realized in full? Does something need to be good to be beautiful? There are no ethics in art.
She was a riddle, who mysteriously possessed her own solution, a secret, and what are all diplomats' secrets compared with this, an enigma, and what in all the world is so beautiful as the word that solves it?
Every person around us is a riddle to us, a riddle with no discoverable answer. We can only guess at the solution, and this mystery drives us to madness when we feel that we are in love, or in lust. What is bewitching to us if not mystery? All beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but what about beauty, about the kind of beauty which enchants us into believing we are in love, is subjective? Why do I fall in love with a stranger on the train, and no with a model on a billboard? What deviance of taste dictates my infatuation with one person over another, of perhaps the same physical beauty (in an objective sense)? What can it be besides a specific strain of mystery? We cannot love what we know, only what we do not know, or only what we imagine we know, what we remember, what we have imagined. Our loves are not the people who touch, feel, see in life, but one million imagined things which we attach to that person, one million relics of our nostalgic past loves, acquaintences, beauties seen or dreamed, one millions constructions of our hopes, desires, imaginations: the irrefutable but intangible potentialities of the future, of the imagination. Giacomo Leopardi wrote in Zibaldone di pensieri:
The past in memory, like the future in our imagination, is more beautiful than the present. Why? Because only the present has a true shape in our mind, it’s the only image of truth, and all truth is ugly.The art of seduction is a simultaneous art of alternating strokes of hope and reminiscence, never of present. It is the alternation between presence and absence: when the object is present, it is all hope, it is all future: the seducer does not see him/her as she is, but as a future conquest, a white flag capitulating to his will. When the object is absent, it is an act of nostalgia which keeps the seducer orbiting him/her in lust: aspects which sparked the initial attraction, archiving of the various and divergent evidence of the object's mystery, sorted and resorted in his/her dossier.
Is Johannes a narcissist? Does he only love himself? That is a question sure to arise in any reader of this diary (and what is a greater sign of narcissism, anyway, than a diary?). It is important to remember the psychological significance of narcissism: it is not self-love, but rather self-loathing. Narcissism is a defense mechanism, it is an excessive mask over and insufficient ego. Narcissism is all surface: it is a love for the mask that is presented to the world. It is compensation for what is lacking inside. Why keep a diary of your feats of seduction, if you are interested only in the mortal and ephemeral conquest of the moment? Virginity, infatuation, are mortal: they die and are transformed. The diary is a memento mori, not a trophy. Words can only firm up one story of history: it is not true nor honest simply because it is written, but writing, recording, forces history to fit our preconceived notions of linearity, of cause and effect, of black and white: of motive and result. If Johannes wants only the fleeting thrill of seduction, the crystalized moment of victory, then his story is a triumph; but as a love story?
Why is Johannes drawn to the villainy of seducer, and not the romance of a lover? Commensurate with his narcissism is an inability to feel deserving of love, of a healthy relationship, a romantic kinship or oneness with another. He can conceive the object of his affection in only a cold and distant way because he is subconsciously afraid of exposing himself to the enterprise of failure. Battles are easily won and forgotten, wars are never fought. It is easier to be the villain than to assume the role of the loser. Better to inspire hate than pity. These are the burdens of Johannes, the terrible fate that he suffers. The Seducer's Diary is neither boast nor apology, it is a wound implicit in the character of Johannes, of Kierkegaard. It is a settling mist which occudes the possibility of endurance, happiness, transcendental beauty, and champions the ephemeral glory of art.
heyangel01's review
mysterious
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
jamiereadthis's review against another edition
4.0
I picked this up in a little hole-in-the-wall shop three months ago, purely for aesthetic reasons-- the gorgeous, pressed cover. And I guess the lesson was, sometimes you can tell the book by it after all.
It was exquisite and haunting, and it's Kierkegaard that does the true seducing in the end; so wrapped up was I in the story that, much like Johann's innocent young muse, it was as if suddenly waking up, tangled in a web.
It was exquisite and haunting, and it's Kierkegaard that does the true seducing in the end; so wrapped up was I in the story that, much like Johann's innocent young muse, it was as if suddenly waking up, tangled in a web.
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