"This libation is to the gods of the underworld": From Miltonic Pandemonium to the Blissful Bower in Kierkegaard's "In vino veritas"

John S. Tanner's monograph Anxiety in Eden: A Kierkegaardian Reading of "Paradise Lost" was published in 1992 to the boon of both Kierkegaard scholars and Miltonists. Yet, as Tanner states in his introduction, he has not found any evidence to suggest that Kierkegaard read the works of Milton. The affinities he discovers between Milton's epic Paradise Lost (1667) and Kierkegaard's psychological treatise Begrebet Angest (1844; The Concept of Anxiety [1980a]) are probably not, he claims, the result of an immediate influence, but rather the outcome of the biographical and ideological commonalities of the two authors (Tanner 1992, 4). Tanner remarks in a note to the introduction that Kierkegaard deleted a passage from Begrebet Angest in which he confessed that he could not read English (Tanner 1992, 12n2), but this statement is in reference to Edward Young, not Milton.² At the time of his death, Kierkegaard had in his personal library German or Danish editions of Byron, Benjamin Franklin, Ossian, Shakespeare, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Swift, Samuel Warren, and Young (Rohde 1967, 99–100), as well as, possibly, books in Danish and French translation by Horace Smith (Rohde 1967, 130) and Scott (Rohde 1967, 135), respectively. Sales receipts also indicate that he owned a play by Sheridan in Danish (Rohde 1967, 152). Tanner concludes the aforementioned note by stating that he has not found a single reference to Milton in the gargantuan Kierkegaardian corpus (Tanner 1992, 12n2).

Indeed, there is no mention of Milton in the translations that Tanner used in composing Anxiety in Eden (Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong's English translation of Søren Kierkegaard's Journals and Papers [1967–1978] and the Kierkegaard's Writings series [1978–1998])—except for a note in the critical apparatus of Repetition, the translation of Gjentagelsen (1843; [1983]), in which the editors quote at length Johan Ludvig Heiberg's criticism of Kierkegaard's philosophical novella (Hong and Hong 1983, 379–83). This article, entitled "Det astronomiske Aar" (1843; The Astronomical Year), appeared in Heiberg's literary yearbook Urania, and in it the author takes issue with the Kierkegaardian concept of repetition, which he contrasts unfavorably with that of Goethe. According to Heiberg, in Dichtung und Wahrheit (1811–1833; The Autobiography [1969]), Goethe describes the "hypochondre Stemning, nemlig det Bekjendtskab, som Tydskland just havde gjort med den tungsindige engelske Litteratur, og han nævner i den Henseende fornemmelig Young (i Nattetankerne), Gray, Milton og Ossian, hvilken Sidste derfor ogsaa spiller en saa betydelig Rolle i 'Werther'" (Heiberg 1861a, 79) [hypochondriacal atmosphere, namely the acquaintance which Germany had just made with melancholy English literature, and he names in that respect Young (in Night Thoughts), Gray, Milton, and Ossian, the last of whom also plays such an important role in Werther]. There can be no doubt that Kierkegaard read this review, since he published a tart reply to it in the newspaper Fædrelandet (The Fatherland) on March 5, 1843 (Kierkegaard 2014h), entitled "Taksigelse til Hr. Professor Heiberg" ("A Word of Thanks to Professor Heiberg" [1982]).

Heiberg not only found English literature morbid (if we can assume that he is in agreement with Goethe, which he usually was); he also thought it vacuous, having claimed earlier in his Om Philosophiens Betydning for den nuværende Tid (1833; On the Significance of Philosophy for the Present Age [2005]) that England's "Litterærhistorie ikke har et eneste speculativt Hoved at nævne" (Heiberg 1861b, 423) [literary history does not have a single speculative mind of note], speculativt being here a buzzword for the proto-Hegelian. Kierkegaard, eager to distance himself from Heiberg's speculative coterie, found himself as attracted to English literature as Heiberg was repelled. Kierkegaard's love for Shakespeare, "Digternes Digter" (Kierkegaard 2014f, 154) [the Poets' Poet], as he would later call him in Sygdommen til Døden (1849; The Sickness unto Death [1980b]), is just one example of this phenomenon. As I will argue, Kierkegaard, after pushing off from Heiberg, was unable to resist Paradise Lost...