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, was known in his homeland (Denmark) for his many religious and psychological books. This translation is by Walter Lowrie. Kierkegaard has been achieving more vogue in recent years. In the present volume he emerges as something of an essayist with the mystification tendencies of a De Quincey and some of the gentleness of Lamb. At times he overspins his thought and at other times he shows rather lucid perceptive powers. The three main divisions in this volume are first the Banquet, clever but lacking, wherein the speakers declaim on woman and marriage after having imbibed freely of wine; the second part, quite long, gives various subtle but limited observations about marriage. The Epistle to the Reader from Frater Taciturnus (the third part), is most interesting. Kierkegaard indicates that he hardly expects the reader to have reached this point. The conclusion contains this portentous sentence, “But ye who are alive and are the children of the age, do ye not observe that existence trembles, hear ye not the martial music which beckons, are ye not sensible of the haste of the instant such as the hand of the clock is unable to follow? Why this roaring, unless something is seething in the depths? Why this dreadful anguish, unless it is a sign of pregnancy”
Kierkegaard must be read at leisure and not in haste and this volume is well worth the reading.