Tuesday, May 13, 2014

Kierkegaard-Crop Rotation and the Aesthetic Life


Phil 333
James Sellers
09/26/13

Writing Assignment#01

The aesthetic life is lived in pursuit of the interesting and the rejection of boredom. As such, it is no simple matter to be an effective aesthete capable of generating interest from mundane subjects. Certain mental acrobatics must be involved. In “Crop Rotation,” the outline of a strategy to ward off boredom is proposed, in which Author A (who is possibly Johannes himself) prescribes a life infused with change and guided by a method. This method is crop rotation, the rotating of one's aesthetic crops, the varying of the soil in which amusement and interest may grow. This method is utilized in “Diary of the Seducer” by Johannes in his relationship with Cordelia. He manipulates, strains and elongates the affair in order to extract as much interest from it as possible, all in accordance with the strategies defined in “Crop Rotation.”

There are correct and incorrect ways to rotate crops. Traveling abroad because one's homeland has become familiar to the point of being boring does not solve the issue, and the boredom of country life is not effectively combated by simply moving to the city. This change is extensive, a changing of fields through which one hopes the soil will yield better crops. But changing the soil in an immediate sense will not accomplish much; reflectively varying one's methods of grain cultivation from this soil will. Through an intensive pursuit of change, interest can be grown in mundane soil, if one is resourceful enough. Limiting oneself to a single field, while restrictive, prompts resourcefulness that can give rise to interest.

“The more inventive one can be in changing the mode of cultivation, the better; but every particular change comes under the general rule of the relation between remembering and forgetting. The whole of life moves in these two currents, so it is essential to have control over them” (233).

If remembering and forgetting are principles by which change can be used to combat boredom, then the interpretation of one's own life and experiences are the key to crop rotation. Remembering the past selectively in a poetic sense means recalling experiences strictly in an interesting light, censuring the past to make it interesting instead of boring; the aesthete turns her life into an entertaining spectacle. Thus she can sow seeds in the soil of her experience and forget unpleasantness, which is an obstruction to the generation of interest. This art of forgetting through how one remembers is the standpoint towards reality which is most conducive to the rotation of crops, and thus the preferred mode of living for the reflective aesthete. However, this stance also means that the moment must be enjoyed with restraint, never pursued to the point of completion. The longer and more drawn out an interesting affair is, the more effectively boredom can be avoided. This is how Author A believes one can have a cake and eat it too (234).

This art of remembering through forgetfulness mentally seals the aesthete off from influences of boredom, but only if she can avoid the hindrances of the boring status quo. This means that anything which could distract one from the rotation of crops must be cut out, including friendship, marriage, and vocation. Being trapped in any of these relationships imposes a sense of obligation, which is restrictive and therefore boring. However, friendship, marriage and vocation can be enjoyed as long as they are not pursued to their fullest. For example, an acquaintance you are on good terms with can be useful in generating new possibilities of interest. And while a married couple have climbed so high in their relationship that they have nowhere to go but down, an engaged couple can enjoy a degree of eroticism before it grows stale (238), though the relationship should ideally last no longer than six months. Just as the moment can be suspended and enjoyed with restraint, a relationship can be drawn out with similar effect. In this sense, relationships have utility and represent potentially fertile soil for the growth of crops.

But just as she varies her soil, the aesthete herself must be varied (239). In order to extract as many possibilities of interest from her experiences as possible, the aesthete must be in control of her mood, able to foresee which mask will benefit her most for any given occasion. Summoning any feeling at will is impossible, but with practice, the aesthete can use moods to manipulate people, situations and even herself, toward desired ends.

This will help her to see the accidental in the arbitrary, to derive enjoyment from normally uninteresting situations. In engaging the arbitrary, it is possible to extract satisfying, accidental meaning. Going to the same church every week may be arbitrary, but counting the tiles in the stain glass windows can be entertaining and therefore gives the whole experience an accidental value. The aesthete should therefore always be on the lookout for the accidental (240).

These strategies for the preservation of interest and the avoidance of boredom are adopted by Johannes in the “Diary of the Seducer.” His relationship with Cordelia, as well as his entire sense of perception, is governed by these rules. In his April 20th entry, Johannes writes that “One has to restrict oneself, that is a main condition of all enjoyment” (267). This restriction he speaks of is the principle of limitation that is necessary for the intensive pursuit of interest, as well as the restraint vital to the art of forgetting through selective remembrance. In the previous April 14th entry, he describes the state of his soul as a ship about to plunge into the ocean. But despite the power of the waves, he sits above in the crow's nest, observing the tension below as a grand spectacle. This represents the reflective aesthetic state of mind during the process of crop rotation, in which one's own experiences become sources of entertainment.

Before his engagement to Cordelia, Johannes injects himself into her life indirectly through the presence of Edvard, a young man infatuated with the girl. “We are firm friends now, Edvard and I” (287). Johannes' friendship with Edvard is the kind of friendship endorsed by the method of crop rotation; Johannes is befriending Edvard strictly because the boy is of use to him in his manipulation of Cordelia, and the depth of their relationship ends there. Johannes does as crop rotation prescribes and avoids friendship as a genuine obligation, because that would be boring. Likewise when considering the prospect of his intended engagement with Cordelia, he dismisses marriage upon the basis of its ethicality. “The damnable thing with an engagement is always the ethical side. The ethical is just as boring in life as it is in learning” (305). Johannes never intends to marry because it is ethical, and ethics are restricting, and anything restricting is boring. His standards for relationships, both in terms of friendship and marriage, are those espoused in “Crop Rotation.”

His manipulations of Cordelia are an excellent example of controlling moods. During the engagement, it becomes a priority to draw out the tension of the relationship for as long as possible to yield the maximum amount of interest. For this reason, Johannes attempts to balance Cordelia's disposition between two extremes, her cool of disillusionment with the relationship and her warm erotic desire for him. “In this wrestling, her womanliness is matured. I could use conversation to inflame and letters to cool, or conversely. The latter alternative is in every way preferable” (322). When he fears that she is drawing too far away, he draws her in with eroticism, and when she is too near, he pushes her away with distant behavior. The aim is to keep Cordelia in suspense until she breaks off the engagement herself (which happens six months into the relationship, in accordance with the policy on engagements in “Crop Rotation”), all the while engendering in her a sense of her own power over him. In keeping the relationship alive within this field of tension for as long as possible, Johannes generates interest, rotating his crops intensively in a single field.

Johannes is also adept at finding the accidental within the arbitrary. Before Cordelia breaks the engagement, there is an entry where Johannes is sitting on a fence with a cigar, observing the movements of a fisher-girl as she carries firewood. There is nothing that makes this scene special except for Johannes' internal comments, which attempt to paint the situation as more colorful than it likely is. “Maybe you are not a real fisher-girl but an enchanted princess; you are the servant of a troll; he is cruel enough to make you fetch firewood in the forest. That's how it always is in fairy stories” (337). Johannes is highly attuned to the potential interest of every moment, even when not contemplating his larger projects. Instead of a boring fisher-girl, an enchanted princess, and the firewood in her arms is the demand of a cruel troll; all accidental things yielded from an arbitrary situation, demonstrating that Johannes' state of mind is constantly engaged in the act of crop rotation.

If “Crop Rotation” is the proposed method of combating boredom, then “Diary of the Seducer” is the application of that method. Everything Johannes does is motivated by a pursuit of the interesting. He is so dedicated in his practice of the art of remembering and forgetting that he has lost himself within that mental framework, to the degree that the success of his own project leaves him feeling lost and melancholic. At the end, the only thing left to him is to reflect (375). It is ironic that for all the work and manipulation Johannes does to increase the longevity of interest, he cannot control moods in a way that yields lasting interest. No matter how hard he fights reality for every scrap of amusement, he has no underlying source of happiness or contentment. Since Johannes' life is the life of crop rotation in practice, the result of his project with Cordelia is a demonstration of the aesthetic life's ultimate failure to provide the satisfaction that it promises.



Works Cited:
Kierkegaard, Søren. Either/Or. Penguin ed. London: Penguin Books, 1843. Print.

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