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Comparing The Seduction Of The Reader In The Seducer's Diary '

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Kierkegaard’s Seduction of the Reader in “The Seducer’s Diary” Kierkegaard’s novel “The Seducer’s Diary” follows the story of Johannes, a man who “lived much too intellectually to be considered a seducer in the ordinary sense” and his seduction of Cordelia Wahl (Kierkegaard 9). There is however, another seduction that takes place in “The Seducer’s Diary”, namely Kierkegaard’s seduction of the reader. The purpose of the seduction of the reader in this novel is to maintain the interest of the reader through interruption, affirmation of interpretive accuracy, and denial of that same presumed interpretive accuracy via denial. The language used in “The Seducer’s Diary” is utilized to confuse, negate, and entice the reader into following …show more content…

His utilization of the second-person pronoun “you” quickly catches the eye of the reader, who might assume that they are being addressed by the narrator. However, Kierkegaard muddles this addressing of the reader by having Johannes use the word “you” to address a variety of things, leading to confusion and curiosity on the part of the reader, to unravel the mystery of who is being addressed, if not the reader. In his diary, Johannes writes, “Take care, my beautiful stranger” (Kierkegaard 18). As a reader, the first interpretation that this likely leads to is the perception that the reader is being addressed by Johannes due to the use of “you”. However, the reader might be confused by the use of “beautiful stranger”. This addendum seems to make it less likely that Johannes is speaking to the reader, but the ambiguous second-person pronoun requires the curious reader to continue until they identify the true object of the sentence, which in this case appears to be Cordelia. This ambiguous use of “you” presents itself again on page 74, where Johannes starts a paragraph in his diary with the phrase: “Why can’t you just be quiet?” (Kierkegaard 74). Again, this reversal of narration leads to a moment of interpretive confusion for the reader, who may at this point wonder if Johannes is referring back to the other objects of his use of “you” or may wonder if …show more content…

However, I believe that the most important one is Kierkegaard’s use of interpretive confusion to both affirm and deny the interpretations of the reader. On page 102 in his diary, Johannes writes, “That is, a book has the remarkable characteristic that it can be interpreted as one pleases” (Kierkegaard 102). I believe that the intent of this insertion is to imply to the reader that there is ambiguity in every interpretation of the novel. This is not an invitation on the part of Kierkegaard to allow the reader complete freedom of interpretation, but rather a warning about the potential unreconcilable ambiguity and confusion that would occur if one were to interpret every book as one pleases. As an author, Kierkegaard does not let the reader freely interpret this text. Instead, he predicts the interpretations of the reader in order to deny these interpretations as he does with his ambiguous use of the “you”. Johannes writes on page 96, “My art is to use amphibolies so that the listeners can understand one thing from what is said and then suddenly perceive that the words can be interpreted another way” (Kierkegaard 96). I believe that this is representative of Kierkegaard’s style in this novel, in which sudden reversals of perception and interpretation are abundant. The use of amphibolies by Johannes leads the reader down many different potential interpretive pathways. One marked example of

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