Irony and Appreciation

Tieck before Kierkegaard

Abstract

This article examines Søren Kierkegaard’s critique of the Romantic poet Ludwig Tieck. Its aim is to clarify the ambivalent relationship Kierkegaard develops with Tieck’s work, since, on the one hand, in The Concept of Irony, with Continual Reference to Socrates (1841), Tieck is criticized as a poet of Romanticism, while, on the other hand, Kierkegaard’s journals reveal a certain admiration for Tieck’s reflections on the art of storytelling. The analysis begins with Kierkegaard’s critique in The Concept of Irony, where he interprets the general features of Tieck’s poetics and his distinctive narrative construction, highlighting the fundamental differences between Tieck’s literary production and the philosophical Romanticism of Friedrich Schlegel. Although brief, Kierkegaard’s critique is dense and concentrated, and it proceeds by interpreting Tieck’s work as the expression of two distinct moments: first, as the product of a poetic animation indifferent to reality, marked by a certain innocence and by an only indirect attack on the real; second, as increasingly aligned with Friedrich Schlegel’s project, in which Tieck gradually yields to poetic arbitrariness and to the ironic play characteristic of Romanticism, ultimately turning against reality with the intention of destroying it. Finally, passages from Kierkegaard’s personal journals are examined in order to broaden and map the influence of Tieck’s thought on the author’s oeuvre as a whole.