This is the second major work on Kierkegaard to appear in recent years; Alastair Hannay's intellectual portrait Kierkegaard: A Biography
approaches the religious philosopher's life and work in a thematic fashion, discerning behind the veils of Kierkegaard's pseudonymous writings his anxieties and hopes, failures and successes. Garff, associate professor at the Søren Kierkegaard Research Center at the University of Copenhagen, proceeds very differently in this biography, portraying a philosopher whose daily life formed the crucible in which his landmark works were written. Drawing not simply on Kierkegaard's most famous writings, Garff also examines in microscopic fashion the minute details of the Dane's life year-by-year from his birth to his death. Garff uses journals, letters, gossip and family conversations to present the portrait of an intense young man whose study of the philosophy and literature of his day turned him into both a romantic and an anti-romantic, a Christian and a rebel against Christendom. For example, Garff points out that Goethe's Faust
heavily influenced the young Kierkegaard, as did his participation in a circle of friends who discussed romantic literature. Although some will accuse Garff of revealing salacious details of the philosopher's life—as in the chapters on Kierkegaard's relationship with his fiancée Regine Olsen—this monumental and magisterial biography offers fresh glimpses into the sometimes-tortured life and work of this true philosophical genius. (Feb.)
