S�ren Kierkegaard: A Biography: Amazon.co.uk: Joakim Garff, Bruce H. Kirmmse: Books

Review

Monumental. . . . Garff's informal voice enlists us in the village of gossip of Kierkegaard's time. . . . [H]is tone helps create a sense of excitement, of caring, of importance, of--locally and cosmically--scandal. -- John Updike, The New Yorker

For any reader of Kierkegaard, this book will have a theatrical effect. It is as though one has been listening to a long soliloquy: suddenly the curtain goes up and there is golden-age Denmark. The 'soliloquy' is now embedded in a vibrant and multi-faceted conversation. The book is written with confidence and verve; it has been beautifully translated into English by Bruce H. Kirmmse. If you are capable of being absorbed by the life of one who did little but think and suffer privately, this is an 816-page page-turner. -- Jonathan Lear, Times Literary Supplement

A superb portrait of the philosopher that offers drama, psychological insight and social history as well as a guide to his profound, if perplexing, ideas. . . . An assiduous researcher, Mr. Garff has been studying his subject for decades. Happily, he seems to possess something of Kierkegaard's divine ability to express deep insights into human nature with a subtle and aristocratic touch. His masterly biography is a page-turning story and a guide wire into the mind of a philosopher whose ideas, properly understood, will never lose their force or fall out of fashion. -- Gordon Marino, The Wall Street Journal

Although some will accuse Garff of revealing salacious details of the philosopher's life--as in the chapters on Kierkegaard's relationship with his fiancee Regine Olsen--this monumental and magisterial biography offers fresh glimpses into the sometimes-tortured life and work of this true philosophical genius. -- "Publishers Weekly

Praise for the orignial, Danish edition: "Seven hundred extraordinarily exciting pages. . . . Joakim Garff's book about Søren Kierkegaard is not just a biography. It is a well thought-out synthesis of Kierkegaard's life and writings so exceptional . . . so concrete and rich with perspectives, that it has no equal in literature. Read, read, read. -- "Weekendavisen

Praise for the orignial, Danish edition: "A masterpiece in the genre of biography. It makes history. It will be read as a popular book of the highest merit. . . . [Garff] makes it outrageously exciting to read every last detail. -- "Morgenavisen Jyllands-Posten

Praise for the orignial, Danish edition: "What rises from these pages is nothing less than a fully developed portrait of one of the most terrible and terribly fascinating beings in the history of Danish culture. . . . No more entertaining and enlightening novel will appear than Joakim Garff's grand biography of Søren Aabye Kierkegaard. -- "Information

Praise for the orignial, Danish edition: "Joakim Garff tells stories with the passion and artistic effects of a novelist. . . . [He] places Kierkegaard in Copenhagen's Golden Age with such a wealth of personalities, topography, and atmosphere that this might be one of the best books ever written about the Golden Age. . . . This publication . . . will be discussed all over the world. It is a great book, really great. -- "Politiken

Garff devotes much attention to what Kierkegaard's contemporaries thought of him and his writings. Kierkegaard was not the obscure, lonely writer that he himself would have one believe. This is a wonderful book for readers interested in Kierkegaard. It is very well written, well translated, and well organized. -- "Choice

This is an epic book, and truly a biography of the work as well as the man. . . . This book is a marvelous achievement. -- David Wheatley, The Irish Times

The royal road to Kierkegaard is still the oblique road--his own writings--but Garff's biography makes an excellent traveling companion. -- Richard Polt, Village Voice

Garff . . . obviously has been marinating in Kierkegaard for years. . . . His beautifully written and translated biography is scholarship at its best, filled with witty observations, felicitous turns of phrase, and sharp analyses. -- Heller McAlpin, The Christian Science Monitor

As this brilliant new biography by Joakim Garff makes clear, [Kierkegaard] never thought of himself as a philosopher. . . . The appearance of Garff's biography in English is a momentous occasion. . . . He provides a dazzling account of Kierkegaard's comings and goings, his anxieties and hopes, and, above all, his invention of himself as the Kierkegaard that both his time and ours have come to know. -- Henry Carrington, Washington Post Book World

Kierkegaard is an intellectual hero of the highest order, and Joakim Garff is his poet. Brilliantly translated from the Danish by Bruce Kirmmse, Søren Kierkegaard serves as a Baedeker to the Copenhagen that Kierkegaard both loved and cursed. -- Gordon Marino, Artforum International

In its historical scope and in the richness of its descriptions, Garff's Søren Kierkegaard sets a new standard for Kierkegaard scholarship. It has done more to help us understand Kierkegaard's social milieu than any other biography. -- Gregory R. Beabout, First Things

Garff aims [to challenge] those concerned with Kierkegaard's theological and philosophical views to think about the life that produced the teachings. -- Richard Crouter, The Christian Century

No one ever played the misunderstood genius with the grandiose abandon of Søren Kierkegaard. . . . In his well-documented, entertaining, sympathetic life, Professor Garff helps readers understand a man who was in many respects his own worst enemy. No wonder Kierkegaard preferred being misunderstood. -- Edward Short, Crisis

Garff has a novelist's ability to make great capital from small details, and as a biography in the most straightforward sense--the story of a life - the book is hard to beat. It is a real page-turner. -- John Lippitt, The Times Higher Education Supplement

There can be no doubt of [Joakim] Garff's success, and for once the adjective 'magisterial' seems fully appropriate. -- Frank Day, Magill's Literary Annual

This is a book worthy of its subject--artful, comprehensive, paradoxical, informative. . . . [A] host of . . . questions will be discussed with renewed enthusiasm as a result of this magnificent biography. -- Ralph McInerny, Theological Studies

Joakim Garff . . . has succeeded, not only in making Kierkegaard and his Copenhagen milieu live vigorously in this truly momentous book, but also in gripping the reader's attention. . . . A huge book about an eccentric philosopher turns out to be an enthralling and exciting read. -- Alison Ainley, The Philosophers' Magazine

I shall not hesitate to recommend this welcome book to my students as a textbook to help them acquire the necessary background for understanding Kierkegaard's multifarious, epoch-making authorship. -- Jacob Golomb, European Legacy

Product Description

"The day will come when not only my writings, but precisely my life--the intriguing secret of all the machinery--will be studied and studied." Søren Kierkegaard's remarkable combination of genius and peculiarity made this a fair if arrogant prediction. But Kierkegaard's life has been notoriously hard to study, so complex was the web of fact and fiction in his work. Joakim Garff's biography of Kierkegaard is thus a landmark achievement. A seamless blend of history, philosophy, and psychological insight, all conveyed with novelistic verve, this is the most comprehensive and penetrating account yet written of the life and works of the enigmatic Dane who changed the course of intellectual history.

Garff portrays Kierkegaard not as the all-controlling impresario behind some of the most important works of modern philosophy and religious thought--books credited with founding existentialism and prefiguring postmodernism--but rather as a man whose writings came to control him. Kierkegaard saw himself as a vessel for his writings, a tool in the hand of God, and eventually as a martyr singled out to call for the end of "Christendom." Garff explores the events and relationships that formed Kierkegaard, including his guilt-ridden relationship with his father, his rivalry with his brother, and his famously tortured relationship with his fiancée Regine Olsen. He recreates the squalor and splendor of Golden Age Copenhagen and the intellectual milieu in which Kierkegaard found himself increasingly embattled and mercilessly caricatured.

Acclaimed as a major cultural event on its publication in Denmark in 2000, this book, here presented in an exceptionally crisp and elegant translation, will be the definitive account of Kierkegaard's life for years to come.

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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful

Somewhat ironically, a fun book to read 1 Dec 2005

By Kurt Messick HALL OF FAME TOP 500 REVIEWER

Format:Hardcover

As Garff states in his preface, biographies of Kierkegaard are few and far between. Even in his native Danish language, 'biographies of Kierkegaard that have appeared since Georg Brandes' critical portrait was published in 1877 can easily be counted on the fingers of one hand.' Part of this was Kierkegaard's own stated desire that readers read his works, not into his person, and he often published under pseudonyms. However, this is an ironic situation, Garff writes, because Kierkegaard puts so much of himself into his writing that there are definite autobiographical elements. Israel Levin, Kierkegaard's secretary for many years, also recognised the paradoxical situation in dealing with a Kierkegaard biography - 'this is a life so full of contradictions that it will be difficult to get to the bottom of his character.'

One of the things Garff should be credited for is not trying to force a particular paradigm or interpretation on Kierkegaard. We don't discover 'Kierkegaard the existentialist' or 'Kierkegaard the religious rebel' or other such personas here - rather, these elements and more are all interwoven into Garff's text to show a complex and not always comprehensible figure. Garff is neither a true-believer nor an official apologist from any set place - he instead set out 'not only to tell the great stories in Kierkegaard's life but also to scrutinse the minor details and incidental circumstances, the cracks in the granite of genius....'

Kierkegaard was a troubled and troubling figure. His life was very brief for someone with such a prodigious output - he lived only 42 years, and his productive time as an intellectual was really only half that time. Garff organises the biography chronologically, taking a year-by-year approach (after putting Kierkegaard's childhood and adolescence together into one chapter, 1813-1834), each year being devoted to its own chapter. In this fashion, Garff looks much more closely at the events and relationship in Kierkegaard's life (both personal and institutional relationships) rather than systematically looking at themes and ideas in his works.

Garff seems to assume some familiarity with Kierkegaard's works at various points - this is not a critical analysis of Kierkegaard's thinking, nor is it even necessarily descriptive of his work in many cases. However, the biography is accessible to those who do not have much experience with Kierkegaard (and I must count myself among those; I have read a few of Kierkegaard's works, and a few analyses, but would never consider myself an expert on the subject).

As translator Bruce Kirmmse states, the book is done in a rather conversational style with an informal sense about it - it is not a dry and dusty historical tome. Not being familiar with Danish, I cannot but take his word that this is true of the original text by Garff, but given the reading here, one cannot imagine that Garff or the editors would have been happy with it done in any other way had this not been faithful to the original. In keeping with this more informal style, there are endnotes rather than footnotes. There are nearly three dozen illustrations (paintings, photographs, other line-art and maps), an extensive bibliography.

I will dare to say, as ironic as it may be both to the subject of reading the biography of a philosopher as well as to the subject of this particular figure, this was a fun book to read.

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32 of 33 people found the following review helpful

Kierkegaard Lives! 20 Jun 2005

By colinwoodward - Published on Amazon.com

With its 800 pages of text, Garff's life of Kierkegaard will no doubt inspire fear and trembling (sorry, couldn't resist) in even the most diehard fan of SK. Fear not, however, as Garff has written the best Kierkegaard biography that one can find in English (though it would be nice if Walter Lowrie's and Josiah Thompson's excellent full-length biographies were also in print). It's an impressive piece of scholarship, and it is a rewarding experience to read it. Unfortunately for those of us on this side of the pond, perhaps only a Dane could have written such a book. Perhaps only someone who has walked the streets that SK did and who knows his Mother Tongue could put us in Kierkegaard's little world so well. We not only come to know SK inside and out after reading this large tome, we also get a feel for the sights, smells, and color of nineteenth century Copenhagen. If you have never read Kierkegaard, you will probably not want to read this book. Yet, those that have never read him, or even those who have, will profit from Garff making SK's milieu come alive. We not only get a lot about Kierkegaard, we also are treated to details about cholera epidemics, wars, and the Danish crown--all of which SK couldn't be bothered much with, but I liked reading about anyway.

Kierkegaard, first and foremost, was a writer, and Garff never lets us lose sight of how impressive his subject's achievements were (the amount he produced in the 1840s boggles the mind). All of SK's major works are discussed as well as his lesser known writings. The major events of SK's life are also dealt with in detail--his dour father and difficult brother, the relationship with Regine, and the disastrous sparring he did with "The Corsair." At some points, Garff must speculate on his subject's private world. For example, what was SK's sex life like? Did he visit prostitutes? Were there STDs in the Kierkegaard household? Yet, Garff never descends into sensationalism, nor does he induce eye-rolling. The fact that he dwells little on SK's life in the bedroom suggests that very little ever happened there (if anything). Although I was not convinced that SK was an epileptic, which Garff suggests at one point, I commend the author for exploring the possibility.

The book makes for enjoyable reading, yet, it is not without some flaws. At times it contains too much detail. A certain amount of context is good--even essential--in understanding SK, but some material could have been trimmed. For example, I thought the author gave a bit too much space to Nielsen's "A Life in the Underworld." He could have summarized this non-SK book more succinctly. I also think Garff focuses much more on SK the writer and man while giving less weight to the importance that his thought had in shaping later philosophy/theology. At times, Garff works too much on the assumption that we all know how significant SK was in affecting Christian thought. It is probably unfair to ask Garff to boil down SK's contributions to religion/philosophy in one simple sound bite (such as "subjectivity is truth" or that a believer must be a "knight of faith"). But perhaps he could have included an introduction or epilogue in which he explores how SK's ideas have gained popularity since his death and are almost universally taught in religion/philosophy departments today. The fact that a farm boy at a state university in Alabama is required to read SK in philosophy 101 begs some explanation.

In short, the book is stronger in its descriptiveness and comprehensiveness than its analysis of the theological and philosophical ideas with which Kierkegaard occupied himself. To show greatness without simply stating it is a task that many biographers of great artists have problems with. At times, though, I felt that Garff was not giving SK's major works (such as monstrous Works of Love and Concluding Unscientific Postscript) the space they deserved. Even so, he is writing a biography, not a literary analysis. SK often considered himself a poet, and it is the poet/writer/existentialist, not the theologian, that comes across most strongly here.

Any caveats I have are outweighed by this book's strengths. It is beautifully written, engaging, and thoughtful. SK's life may not have been as eventful as, say, Hemingway's. He certainly was not a man of action. Yet, SK's life seems ill-suited to short biography (such as Walter Lowrie's brief work on him). Garff, and his excellent translator Bruce Kirmmse, have done great work. "Soren Kierkegaard: A Biography" is a splendid piece of writing that is worthy of one of history's greatest authors. It is also a major scholarly achievement. Garff has done his homework, and what we have here is a labor of love. It will be hard for anyone writing a life of SK to top this one. We owe a great debt to Joakim Garff.

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful

Somewhat ironically, a fun book to read 15 Oct 2005

By FrKurt Messick - Published on Amazon.com

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

It may seem astonishing to many that a nearly-900 page biography of Soren Kierkegaard would ever be described as riveting, or as a page-turner, but that is exactly what this book by Joakim Garff, translated by Bruce Kirmmse from the original Danish, turns out to be. I first noticed it at the bookstore of my seminary, and, intended only to read through a few pages at the beginning to be somewhat familiar with the text (having a friend who is very into Kierkegaard), I noticed when I next looked up that I was 60 pages into the book, and half an hour late for my next appointment.

As Garff states in his preface, biographies of Kierkegaard are few and far between. Even in his native Danish language, 'biographies of Kierkegaard that have appeared since Georg Brandes' critical portrait was published in 1877 can easily be counted on the fingers of one hand.' Part of this was Kierkegaard's own stated desire that readers read his works, not into his person, and he often published under pseudonyms. However, this is an ironic situation, Garff writes, because Kierkegaard puts so much of himself into his writing that there are definite autobiographical elements. Israel Levin, Kierkegaard's secretary for many years, also recognised the paradoxical situation in dealing with a Kierkegaard biography - 'this is a life so full of contradictions that it will be difficult to get to the bottom of his character.'

One of the things Garff should be credited for is not trying to force a particular paradigm or interpretation on Kierkegaard. We don't discover 'Kierkegaard the existentialist' or 'Kierkegaard the religious rebel' or other such personas here - rather, these elements and more are all interwoven into Garff's text to show a complex and not always comprehensible figure. Garff is neither a true-believer nor an official apologist from any set place - he instead set out 'not only to tell the great stories in Kierkegaard's life but also to scrutinse the minor details and incidental circumstances, the cracks in the granite of genius....'

Kierkegaard was a troubled and troubling figure. His life was very brief for someone with such a prodigious output - he lived only 42 years, and his productive time as an intellectual was really only half that time. Garff organises the biography chronologically, taking a year-by-year approach (after putting Kierkegaard's childhood and adolescence together into one chapter, 1813-1834), each year being devoted to its own chapter. In this fashion, Garff looks much more closely at the events and relationship in Kierkegaard's life (both personal and institutional relationships) rather than systematically looking at themes and ideas in his works.

Garff seems to assume some familiarity with Kierkegaard's works at various points - this is not a critical analysis of Kierkegaard's thinking, nor is it even necessarily descriptive of his work in many cases. However, the biography is accessible to those who do not have much experience with Kierkegaard (and I must count myself among those; I have read a few of Kierkegaard's works, and a few analyses, but would never consider myself an expert on the subject).

As translator Bruce Kirmmse states, the book is done in a rather conversational style with an informal sense about it - it is not a dry and dusty historical tome. Not being familiar with Danish, I cannot but take his word that this is true of the original text by Garff, but given the reading here, one cannot imagine that Garff or the editors would have been happy with it done in any other way had this not been faithful to the original. In keeping with this more informal style, there are endnotes rather than footnotes. There are nearly three dozen illustrations (paintings, photographs, other line-art and maps), an extensive bibliography.

I will dare to say, as ironic as it may be both to the subject of reading the biography of a philosopher as well as to the subject of this particular figure, this was a fun book to read.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful

Kierkegaard for Everyone 9 Oct 2005

By J. Burke - Published on Amazon.com

A very well written, and readable book. The author does a good job of fleshing out the context in each time period of SK's life. The reader comes to know the people who were important to SK both personally and professionally. And, SK's important writings are put within the context of his life and culture. Garff has a sense of humor, and temperance in his editorializing. You don't have to be a fan of Kierkegaard to enjoy this book.

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