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Kierkegaard in America: an interview with Howard and Edna Hong. (Soren

Kierkegaard)(Interview).Bo Elbrond-Bek. Scandinavian Studies 68.n1 (Wntr
1996): pp76(22). (8183 words)

Abstract:

Howard V. and Edna Hong, philosophy scholars best known for their English translations of Soren
Kierkegaard's works, feel that the Danish philosopher is so appealing to non-philosophers
because of his ability to address grand issues on a human and universal level. They feel that their
translations are successful in part because of their understanding of Norwegian-Danish, a
language even some modern Danes have problems with.

Full Text:COPYRIGHT 1996 Society for the Advancement of Scandinavian Study

Howard V. Hong (B.1912) for forty years, until his retirement in 1978, was a professor of
philosophy at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota. He graduated from St. Olaf College in
1934 and received at Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota in 1938. That same year he went to
Denmark for the first time in order to study Soren Kierkegaard. Together with his wife, author
Edna H. Hong, he has edited and translated Kierkegaard's Journals and Papers I-VII (1967-78). In
1968 couple the received the National Book Award for Translation for volume I. Howard V Hong is
general editor of the monumental twenty-six volume Kierkegaard's Writings, which is being
published by Princeton University Press. Their highly extolled translations are distinguished by a
conscious attempt to convey Kierkegaard's special language and style in English. The couple has
also established a unique center for Kierkegaard research at St. Olaf College The Howard and
Edna Hong Kierkegaard Library with its associated Study and Publication Center. In 1978 they
were named Knights of Dannebrog. On several occasions, then, have both worked at the Royal
Library and the Soren Kierkegaard Library at the University of Copenhagen. Upon the
recommendation of Its theological faculty, an honorary, doctorate was bestowed upon Howard V
Hong in 1992 for his lifelong dedication to spreading knowledge of Soren Kierkegaard's
passionate thought in the English-speaking world. Besides their large-scale and lifelong
translation project, which has provided a new and solid foundation for all further Kierkegaard
research in English, they have been fully engaged in teaching and literary activity. Here their
creation of a positive, secure, and stimulating home that enriched the lives of their children, the
rest of their family, and friends must not least of all be mentioned. In life and vocation, they have
been an "up building" example. They have not only written but in truth lived "a complete human
life," and accomplished their life's work or destiny in the most beautiful way. "Purity of heart is to
will one thing."

BEB: Your interest in Kierkegaard began very early in life. How did it start?

HH: Well, it started simply with the reading of Ibsen's Peer Gynt and Brand. I still think they are
great plays, and I've reread them many times. But then in that same year -- this was 1932 -- the
place where I was living had a copy of Halvdan Koht's Life of Ibsen. In that work, he has a few
pages on Ibsen and Kierkegaard -- that is, the historical question: to what, if any, extent had Ibsen
been influenced by Kierkegaard? Koht points out various things. First of all, Ibsen's denial: I don't
read Kierkegaard; I haven't read Kierkegaard, but my wife reads Kierkegaard. He also mentions
Ibsen's mother-in-law, who taunts him, scolds him, saying: Why don't you write your own plays
instead of dramatizing that Danish philosopher? So Koht leaves the issue as an historical issue.

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But I thought there might be some substance related to Kierkegaard, maybe no historical
connection whatsoever, perhaps a kind of cultural dualism, that the same thing can appear
independently in different places. I pursued that -- which wasn't easy, however, because the only
thing in English by Kierkegaard was a little volume translated by Lee Hollander, at the University
of Texas at Austin. But there was that little paperback -- 25 cents - a volume of selections. That
was my first Kierkegaard reading.

But I do remember that there was an earlier time when I heard the name Kierkegaard. My father
had borrowed a book from a farmer at Norway Lake. When I asked him about the book, he said,
"Its by a Dane named Kierkegaard." I remembered that later, that name; at least it had a little
familiarity. That was the beginning.

So with me it was the same as with the Spanish philosopher Unamuno, who said, "I learned
Norwegian-Danish in order to read Ibsen and was rewarded by reading Kierkegaard."

BEB: How would you define the existential connection between Kierkegaard and you?

HH: Well, I could illustrate by reference to others. For instance, when I had classes in
Kierkegaard, it came to be known among the students as an utterly unique course; there was
nothing like it on the campus. In that class there were chemistry majors and language majors,
history majors, all sorts of majors -- and a few philosophy majors -- from all over the college. I
think that illustrates something about Kierkegaard that is true for me, too; that is, Kierkegaard
addresses his works to what might be called the "universal singular." That's part of the greatness
of Kierkegaard, that he does address den enkelte, the single individual. But that individual is also
universal, and therefore with all of one's individuality, whatever it may be - of age and background
and education and gender and interests of various kinds -- there is a universality in Kierkegaard's
thought as he addresses the individual.

That explains something that people have wondered about regarding Grundtvig and Kierkegaard.
For instance, in this country there have been many attempts to transplant the folkehojskole. And it
has taken somewhat. In Des Moines there,is Grandview College but it has not actually thrived as
hoped. At Tyler, Minnesota, they tried to have a folk high school, which they did for many years,
but now it has become a place primarily for annual celebrations and some summer gatherings.
Dana College, at Blair, Nebraska, can't be really credited to the Grundtvigian impulse -- rather, its
the other way. Grandview was really Grundtvigian. There have also been others, at Brasstown,
North Carolina, for example.

EH: Don't forget Askov.

HH: Askov, Minnesota, of course, that' the prime name for the folkehojskole. But there isn't a folk
high school there now, and I don't know that there ever was one.

EH: Yes, there was.

HH: There was? All right. But the idea did not take root. As long as the original Danes were
present, the various attempts did thrive. But contrast this with the twentieth century interest in
Kierkegaard in the non-English speaking world @ Japan, Spain, Portugal, Germany, France,
Eastern, Eastern Europe, South America, and elsewhere. It's rather strange that Grundtvig's
influence hasn't gone as far, especially with his more obvious social sense, and with the idea of
what can be called a "cultural nominalism" -- which is sound. He said, "Be a good German; be a
good Dane; cherish your heritage." You'd think this would be transportable, but the efforts have
not succeeded very well, although in the last few years there has been a resurgence of the
folkehosjskole idea in many countries. This, in contrast, says something about Kierkegaard and
the "universal singular." I recall one student, a chemistry major, summa cum laude, dux in the
class, who went to Harvard with a four-year full scholarship in the graduate school. He wrote back
to the department chairman, saying appreciative things about the chemistry teachers. And he

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added, "Be sure you tell all chemistry majors that they should take the Kierkegaard class. That's
the one that spoke to me." So there's nothing unusual in my case, at least with regard to
discovering Kierkegaard.

BEB: But there must be certain parts of Kierkegaard's authorship that you feel more strongly
about than other parts. To what does your heart belong?

HH: Well, I would say it centers in what I think is really the center of Kierkegaard's thought, the
easily overlooked little question: What does it mean to be, to become, a human being? He said:
We know so very much in this wonderful nineteenth century; and now we have railroads, the
telegraph, and so forth. And it's not much different today -- except that we have even more things,
including tape recorders [Hong chuckles]. But he said: We don't ask that little question@ we go
beyond that, we go further He said that there is a kind of pantheistic contempt for the individual; if
there are large numbers, that's great. But that simple little question is largely ignored: What does it
mean to exist as an individual -- but it really means to become, because one isn't automatically
fully human -- what is involved in becoming a human being in the full sense? There is nothing very
special in my interest. I think that is what most people find in Kierkegaard's writings, although
there arc some who accent what he says of himself: I am a poet. He is a great writer, an amazing
writer, and there are those who prefer to accent that and discuss what may be called his novels.
Yet for Kierkegaard that was, I think, a mode of expression, an instrument. What is the motto in
Det kongelige Teater?

BEB: Ei blot til Lyst.

HH: Yes. Not only for pleasure. Kierkegaard would agree with that. His writings are poetry in a
number of senses, but they are much more. Remember what he says in Postscript: There is
something sad about adults; they have not begun to achieve an ideality of the true, the good, and
the beautiful, but they've lost what poetry youth had and now have less, not even the vivacity and
immediacy of poetry.(1) This is part of Kierkegaard's understanding of the nature of the human
being. That's why I say it's primarily a matter of philosophical anthropology, and secondarily of
literary theory and also of psychology -- although psychology, in both Aristotle and Plato, meant
essentially the (??), the nature of man. Of course, Kierkegaard does have a lot to say about what
is of interest to psychologist in a narrow sense: anxiety, despair, love, envy, and so on. But for
Kierkegaard they are always considered in the context of the ontology of human nature and the
actualizing of that nature in existing.

I remember when Paul Tillich was here. He was here a couple of times, giving lectures on
existentialism. We actually had to move to the gymnasium to have enough room for the audience.
As we talked on the way back to the airport, he asked, "But is there an essentialism in
Kierkegaard, or is there only existence?" He was asking that question from the angle, I suppose,
of Sartre, who claimed that there is no essence, there is no human nature. But for Sartre that was
predicated on his atheism. He says that there is no human nature because there is no power that
could bestow or give that human nature; therefore existence precedes essence. For Kierkegaard,
however, there is a conception of essence -- that is, a universal human nature. He doesn't hold
with Sartre, even though Sartre says that all existentialists agree that human existence precedes
essence and that one chooses one's essence. But that is not Kierkegaard's position. Kierkegaard
maintains that the ethical task, is, as an individual, to realize the universal, the universally human,
det almenmenneskelige. So I would again say then that the center of this is his philosophical
anthropology, but with all kinds of radiating issues. From any point of departure, one comes back
to that point.

He does have a teleological view of human nature; namely, that there is a nature that is to be
fulfilled. If one does not reflect on it personally and decisively but is only shaped by external
influences, then one simply becomes et eksemplar menneske. Kierkegaard does concern himself
with the age-old philosophical issue regarding the status of universals. Later came the
nominalists, who held that there are no universals, that common nouns are only names that do not

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refer to any reality. Kierkegaard is a classical thinker in a sense, but with a different thrust. That is,
he came at it from the angle of the existing individual.

BEB: It is one thing for you to write some articles or a book about Kierkegaard's philosophical
anthropology. But it is another thing for both of you to decide to dedicate your whole lives to
translating his papers and his works. Why did you do it? HH: Well, at one time, I intended to write
on the theme of Kierkegaard's philosophical anthropology. And we had very good conditions for it.
That was when we lived in Glumso. The whole family was there. We had a wonderful place; it was
quiet, and everything was conducive to doing this. I started going through and did go through all of
the Papirer in preparation for this. Not much from twenty volumes of the Papirer was in English at
that time. Then I realized that hundreds of articles and dozens of books were being printed in
English by people who didn't have access to all of this. It seemed to be almost futile, or at least
unprofitable, to add to all of those books and articles -- some of them good, some of them
mediocre, some of them wrong because the writers didn't have adequate access to the journals
and papers. It seemed better to turn to the slow, long task of translating the major part (about
seventy-eight percent, omitting most of category B, drafts, etc., now included in Kierkegaard's
Writings) of the Papirer so that other English readers could have wide access to them, rather than
ending up with yet another book or two. But Edna has her own story about this.

EH: Well, when I married Howard Hong in June of 1938, I had no idea I was marrying two men
[chuckling]. And it wasn't Howard's idea, either, I'm sure, that I was to get involved in the
translating. But the first time we went to Denmark we didn't have children. and he was working
with Dr. Gregor Malantschuk, who, after Edward Geismar died in 1939, was the world's leading
Kierkegaard scholar. Howard and Gregor became very involved, and I could type -- but neither of
them could! So they gave me the material to type. And at times -- I've said this to you, Howard --
at times I became a little suspicious, or, more specifically, I questioned not the authenticity of the
translation, but the quality of the translation. Then I would go to Kierkegaard, to the Danish, and I
would change some things. I would say that I improved them, [to Howard] would you say,
sometimes?

HH: I can't remember [chuckling].

EH: [Laughing] And I would bring it to Howard and show, it to him. Then after a while I began to do
the first translating. And Howard agreed to that, because he thinks that I do have a way with
words. So I did the first translating, but he went through it completely, meticulously, and would
Improve what needed improvement, would correct what needed correcting, which of course it
seldom did [laughing]. But anyway it became a partnership in which I did the first translating and
he did everything else, not only the final translating but the notes and all that. It became a very
good working partnership.

HH: We went together on our bicycles every day to Det kongelige Bibliotek.

EH: Well, what else should I have done?

HH: Yes. In Demnark, what did you do?

EH: In Copenhagen he began to go to Det kongeliqe Bibliotek, and we lived in a miserable little
room, with a more than miserable landlady. And....

HH: Well, that was at the beginning. That was on St. Kongensgade. EH: And I would have had to
sit there all day, long. So then I just trailed along with him to the library and did what he did. We
started out by, having a tutor, but the tutor was too simple in her approach. We started out with
things like "I see the cat ... the cat sees me ... see Alice run ... oh, oh, Alice can run fast." It was
that kind of teaching of Danish. Furthermore, we didn't have money enough to pay a tutor; so we
just went to the library and took the Kierkegaard text and dictionaries and plunged in. It was tough,
it was really tough. But....

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HH: But she did add something -- talk about tychic concatenation, how things just happen that one
doesn't know about or certainly hasn't planned. Well, there we were, these two young people in
Copenhagen, and then the tutor invited some student friends to her place one evening....

EH: To have tea with us.

HH: ... Yes, to have tea with us. They were Birgit Michelsen, eventually, a tutor of the Kaj Munk
children, William Michelsen, an embryonic Grundtvig scholar, Henrik Michelsen, a law student,
and their younger sister Elna.

EH: And you know what astounded them? Then, told us this much later -- it was Howard's argyle
socks!

HH: You know what they, are, Scotch plaid socks.

EH: Because at that time, Danish men wore only black socks. And there was Howard with his
colorful argyle socks. A little later the Michelsens invited us to live with them, and we gladly
accepted on the condition that they would speak only Danish to us.

HH: Only, Danish. That was our best Danish language year.

EH: And we became very close friends.

BEB: For a modern Dane the distance between Kierkegaard's language and the philosophical
tradition in which he wrote is, in my experience, perhaps greater than the distance between
Danish and English. Even in my own Kierkegaard reading, I have often used your translation
when I have wanted to solve a problem with the meaning of the text. How was it possible for you
to get into Kierkegaards universe, his way of thinking, his philosophical tradition?

EH: First of all, I have to tell a wonderful story about Kierkegaard's language. At dinner one
evening, one of the Michelsens asked something -- had we done this or that, or were we going to
do something -- and I said, "[Angstrom] nej det er formasteligt." And they laughed heartily, and
said, "Oh, we never use that word anymore, that's like talking Shakespearean English" [laughing].
And so I'm amused to remember that: formasteligt. Have you ever used it?

BEB: Yes.

EH: Oh, you have?

BEB: [laughing] But perhaps I'm also a little bit old-fashioned.

HH: I've heard Danes speak about this in different ways (but it's the same idea). Sometimes they
go so far as to say, "I can't read Kierkegaard's Danish; I just cannot read it. Not because I haven't
tried; I just can't do it." I've never quite been able to understand that. It's like saying that one in this
century can't read Shakespeare's English. But perhaps there is an inherent difficulty. Part of it is
due to the richness of the text. And one's own limitations may stand in the way. Kierkegaards'
writings are rich in the use of words, in the formation of expressions, and in the development of
ideas. But for us -- I've never really thought this seriously -- it may have been a good thing that we
didn't know modern Danish, that we started with Kierkegaard's Danish, and....

EH: ... I can't read a Danish newspaper as web as I can read Kierkegaard.

HH: ... So maybe the disadvantage was, in a slight way at least, an advantage. I don't know if one
could demonstrate this in some way that could be convincing, but it might have been the case that
-- by immersing ourselves in the text as given, just by settling down into that nineteenth century
Danish, and into Kierkegaards Danish, which is not wholly typical of nineteeth century Danish -- it
was a little better for us that it happened that way. It's hard to say.

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BEB: What about the philosophical tradition? Were you familiar with Kierkegaard's way of
thinking?

HH: Well, Kierkegaard has a certain uniqueness, but it isn't total. He holds to the principle of
contradiction, for example [chuckling]; and he thinks that a poet also should be logical and is not
entirely free to do anything, at least as a poet-thinker. And, of course, I had read Hegel and Kant.
There is also the classical tradition, Plato and Aristotle, which was not new to me. But
Kierkegaard's own way of going at things was quite different. That, however, was part of the
appeal.

EH: The appeal to me was his theology. I am not a philosopher. I do not understand philosophy....

HH: ... You do too....

EH: ... No, I don't. No. But I love theology. So it was to Kierkegaard as theologian, an eminent
theologian, that I was attracted.

BEB: How would you describe the principles for your translations? Do you have specific principles
to which you adhere as you translate?

EH: Well, if I have, they are very unconscious. I'm not a principled person [chuckling]. I just dive
in; it's the task, and one just dives in and does it. Then also, of course, I love words. Ever since I
was nine years old I wrote stories. I love words, I love to play with words; and translating is a
creative sort of thing. I'm sorry that I'm through with the first translating, because now it's all
proofreading, and there's nothing creative in proofreading.

HH: But we do have two obvious standard principles to which some translators may not hold, but
to which we think one should. They are: faithfullness and felicity.

Faithfullness in the sense of correctness, in so far as a translation into a second language can be
accurate. There are those who say, it is impossible. We don't believe that. At least we believe it is
quite possible to make terrible errors; that already presupposes that there is some connection. If
one can make a terrible error, one is in the area of faithfulness -- at the far end. One can come
close or less close to the text. Therefore, the possibility of making mistakes -- if one denies that
possibility, the translator is utterly free, and then what is one translating? -- It means that one is
bound to something. There is a given, put it that way, just as there is in the matter of the ontology
of the human being. There is a given; there isn't just zero or total open possibility with no given.
Certainly the text is given, and one is bound by that. That's faithfulness -- faithfulness to the text.
The other side of the issue is felicity, rendering the text in the second language so that in this case
Kierkegaard speaks English, not Anglicized Danish.

But there are many, traps on both sides. On the side of faithfulness or correctness one of these
traps is simply one's own ignorance. For Instance, in Kierkegaard there are expressions that even
some contemporary Danes find difficult to understand. One of the worst traps on the side of
faithfulness is the trap of thc obvious word -- Danish that looks like English. For instance, triviel --
it looks like an English word spelled differently. One can easily err because it seems so obvious;
anyone can see that its the same root md the same word -- but the meaning might not be the
same. I recall Niels Thulstrup's telling a story about the Swede who came to Copenhagen and
asked the taxi driver to take him to a roligt sted, and the taxi driver took him to a graveyard; but
apparently in Swedish this means a hot-spot [Hong chuckles]. That's typical of this kind of mistake
-- a word looks like something one already knows in another language, and one can be wrong.

On the other side, on the side of felicity, the worst trap is the trap of the sentence pattern, the
syntax. Therefore the better one knows the first language, the more easily It may be a trap in the
second language, and one simply falls into it -- because the pattern corresponds to the original. I
told you earlier about a translation of a Danish work that was rejected primarily on that ground --

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that it really was not quite English; It was Danified English or Anglicized Danish in pattern. In that
connection I mentioned that Kierkegaard said that the signed works were offered with "the right
hand" and the pseudonymous works with "the left hand."(2)

Edna does her own writing with her right hand and the Kierkegaard work with her left hand. That is
advantageous, because she stays closer to a fresh English translation. And that is why I said she
is the best syntax-smasher in Minnesota as well as the best bread-maker in Bridgewater
Township. That takes -- with Kierkegaard, particularly his long sentences -- that really takes some
doing. To keep some of the complex pattern and yet to make it speak English, that is a problem of
syntax, part of the requirement of felicity.

BEB: You, Edna, have undertaken your own authorship with your right hand, while you translated
Kierkegaard with your left hand at your kitchen table. Has your authorship been influenced by,
Kierkegaard?

EH: Oh, very much so, I'm sure. I've somewhat forgotten what I've written [chuckling]. But The
Gayety of Grace, which Howard says he can't find up here, is the one that is most influenced by
Kierkegaard. I'll see if we can find a copy at home and show it too you. In fact, that is the one in
which I have a dialogue between Luther and Kierkegaard. Luther scholar friends of ours say it's
right on [chuckling]. But Kierkegaard comes out in almost everything, even in Bright Valley of
Love, which I wrote about Bethel bei Bielefeld. The most recent book, Box 66 Sumac Lane, is a
dialogue in the form of letters between a publisher's editor, a Luther scholar, and Molly, a writer
who knows a little bit of Kierkegaard. She flings quotations at him and he flings back Luther
quotations at her. So, yes, Kierkegaard has influenced what I write.

HH: Oh, and The Downward Ascent.

EH: Yes.

HH: So without even trying -- these two arms are connected somewhere. They are
complementary.

BEB: If you look at your recent translations and compare them with the way that you translated in
the beginning, would you like, if possible, to change your translations in order to improve them?

EH: Howard does not have anyone's translation beside him when he works on Kierkegaard, but I
sometimes like to compare another translation. Maybe it's just a matter of silly pride, to show just
how much better I can do it [chuckling]. But we did For Self-Examination again. That was our first
book translation. Howard asked Dr. Geismar what we should translate first, and he thought it
should be For Self-examination; so that's what we did, after being in Denmark only one year. Now,
that was formasteligt.

HH: Well, that's what we worked on first, that was really, our introduction to Danish.

EH: But it was a little formasteligt to do something for publication after one year.

HH: But we were invited to submit it, although it had been a language exercise.

EH: Yes, so it was published. And then just a few years ago we worked on it again. I was doing
the first translation, and I shouted to Howard, "I have now encountered the worst translation of
Kierkegaard yet." "Whose is that?" I said, "Edna and Howard Hong's." It was correct, but we
weren't imbued with the wonderful Kierkegaard way. He's an artist with words, and he has his own
special way. But we weren't imbued with that. But Howard maintains now that it wasn't that bad.

HH: It really wasn't. In one way it makes me wish that we were better now than we were -- and
very much better now in comparison with what we were. I think it's not a bad little thing. We did,
however, consciously massacre the paragraphs and the sentences -- which some people
appreciate [chucklingl, since it resulted in shorter sentences and shorter paragraphs. But in one

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way, I'm a little surprised at how good it was, Edna; it really shouldn't have been that good. I wish
we were ten times better now, but we're not.

We translated another work later, over a longer period, Kjelighedens Gjerninger, and we thought
-- rather, the editorial committee thought -- that there would be certain works that would not be
retranslated, but just revised in a modest way. We thought there would be two things that could
just be revised: Om Begrebet Ironi and our own translation of Kjerlighedens Gjerninger. In the first
case someone else was to make a minor revision of the translation. He finally said, "When I got
into it, I realized that we were too friendly to the translator, an old acquaintance; we may have
been influenced somewhat there. It must be redone." But he had to give it up because he wasn't
able to take on such a big job. The same thing occurred with Works of Love. We did that over
again.

EH: Once we found a negative statement that in Kierkegaard was a positive statement....

HH: Well, that was just a plain mistake. That falls on that first side of faithfullness -- or being
unfaithful. But that kind of thing can be corrected. That's an easy obvious kind of revision. But it
had, again, primarily to do with sentence structurce and some key terminology that we didn't have
in mind in the context of Kierkegaard's whole authorship.

EH: And then there's his artistry. Remember when I was translating Gregor Malantschuk's
excellcnt book on Kierkegaard? Gregor Malantschuk was Ukrainian; Danish was not his mother
tongue, and therefore Danish was a second language. As I was translating, all of a sudden the
Danish changed: it was beautiful, it was elegant. Then I realized -- now I'm doing a quotation from
Kierkegaard. That's part of the merit of the book -- that three-fourths of it is Kierkegaard
quotations. And, oh, the difference between the prose of Kierkegaard and of that dear man; the
two are quite different. Did Howard ever talk to you about him? He was a wonderfull man; we just
loved him. In his modesty, he perhaps intended a difference in language.

HH: One thing must be said -- and here I would agree, to an extent, with those who say, that
there's no such thing as a translation. At least I would agree that there's no such thing as a perfect
translation. I don't know how one can do that. There are those who claim -- you must have heard
this -- that the Schlegel-Tieck Shakespeare is better than the original. Well, maybe to some
Germans it is! But that's saying too much. Or if somebody says of his own translation, "This is
Impeccable" -- well, in principle that just isn't possible. A translator never has precisely, that
one-to-one relationship. But this primarily difficulty, is increased because of the complexity of the
task. Sometimes we are working on a manuscript on one level and something else on another
level, and then on something that is to be sent to the press and a little later on page-proofs. There
may also be quotations by Kierkegaard from his own writing. Incidentaly he doesn't always quote
accurately. He often quotes from memory. He's accurate in substance, but not always in the very
words. But in translating, we do not have that freedom -- if it's a quotation in a note or in the text, it
has to be the same. A quotation may be from another work that we have not yet translated, and
then it turns out that there is a difference in the Danish but not in substance. Such similarities and
differences make translating even more peccable

I was asked to revise the English translation of Philosophical Fragments, which I did, but only in
connection with some key terminology. A critic thought that what I had done was basically correct,
but he said, "You have to match out for a kind of `linguistic-monomania,'" that is, that a Danish
word must always be translated as the same English word. There are those who do take that
approach to translating and think it's inconsistent to use another term. But we're convinced that
there is the matter of context, which requires more than just a word-for-word correlation.

EH: Well, English has many more words than Danish.

HH: Yes, yet there are exceptions; sometimes it is the English that is impoverished.

EH: For example, there is one Danish word that we don't have in English, and literally it is such a

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wonderful word: opelske -- a wonderful concept -- to love forth. We don't have it as a single word.

HH: Wait, now that's an interesting one, though, because that isn't what it usually means in
Danish. One can opelske a flower. A farmer is an opelsker, isn't he? You see, even the Danish
has lost the root.

EH: But Kierkegaard uses it.

HH: He uses it in its root meaning. He's interested in the roots of words, and he's interested in
common usage also. For instance, how do we translate the words opbyggeliq and opelske? In
such cases we think we must use the elemental root when translating -- for Kierkegaard's sake --
even though it might not even look right to a Dane. But when he uses opelske in Kjerliqhedens
Gjerninger, he emphasizes the root. There one cannot translate it as "cultivate" or "raise," and if it
is translated figuratively as "foster" or "encourage" the play of opelske on elske is lost. He uses
the root and makes a lot of it. The same applies to opbygge. That's perhaps the one particular
translation that sonic English readers have not liked. Early translations used the word "edifying" --
Opbyggele Taler -- "edifying discourses." The Latin root means "to build."

EH: But "edify" is a spoiled word.

HH: Right. It's a spoiled word, and one will scarcely ever hear it used. I've heard it used in
conversation only once in my life, and that was by a linguist who spoke with a sense of roots. He
said, "Thank you for the edifying talk." Now, from almost anyone else that would be ironical. An
English writer said, "The word `edifying' -- that's enough to stop ann Englishman." One usually
doesn't say "edifying" -- unless one wants to depreciate something. Then it's ironical or deadly.

Therefore in our translating we have used the root, just as with the word opelske, and used "up
building". And this proved to be justified, because later in Kjerlighedens Gjerninger Kierkegaard
has two pages in which he deals simply with the word itself: What does it mean to "opbygge" --
he's talking about construction -- to build, to build up. One can't say it properly in any other way.
One can't say "edify" -- it means nothing there. Then we had the further happy confirmation in
some modern New Testament translations; where the King James version has "Edify one
another," these others say, "Build up one another." You see, it's a good, strong expression.

BEB: If you think about Kierkegaard's way of living, you could say that he lived a very protected
life in Copenhagen as a free author, without any social obligations, because he had enough
money. But if you think about your own lifestyle, as a teacher, as a scholar, building up this center,
raising a big family....

HH: You can add something here. We built our own house.

BEB: Isn't there a contradiction? You have been able to do what Kierkegaard is writing about. He
was not able to commit himself to raise a family, and he nevcr got a job. But you fit into the
community, and you have been doing aU these things. So, in one way, you have accomplished
what he is writing about.

HH: Well, you could push that if you want to. We started on Kjerlighedens Gjerninger, and we set
it aside in order to do that. That's what the book represents.

EH: You mean the two years in Germany after the war.

HH: Five years, including three years of work with prisoners of war. Yes. So that was what we did.
In a given situation we tried to do what the book said.

BEB: What was that?

HH: Work with displaced persons, refugees, and prisoners of war. But I would say two things
about the issue you raised. One, what a loss if that had not been Kierkegaard's accidental

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condition. I mean by "accidental" that his father was a shrewd, jysk businessman who came to
Copenhagen, saved his money, retire early, and left an estate. Just think if Kierkegaard had kept
on teaching -- he did teach Latin for a while at Borgerdydskolen -- just think if he had eventually
taken over the principalship of Borgerdydskolen, which he perhaps could have done. Perhaps he
would have done some writing, just as Chaucer was a customs controller etc. and also wrote. But
Kierkegaard did spend considerable time on the streets -- talking with people, spending much time
there. Andrew Hamilton, in his two-volume work Sixteen Months in the Danish Isles (1852), has a
couple pages on Kierkegaard of whom he said, "The fact is he walks about town all day, and
generally in some person's company.... When walking he is very communicative, Kierkegaard was
frequently out on the streets of Copenhagen. In a sense that was his visible occupation.

EH: That ceased, however, during the Corsair affair. And that was a real blow to him. He missed it
very much.

HH: He had considered himself to be finished with his authorship, as you know. But a result of the
Corsair affair was that he turned to what can be called his "second authorship." But he couldn't
walk the streets any more. Children -- boys -- would follow him and shout tauntingly, "Enten-Eller."

I'm glad that Kierkegaard had enough money to do all that he did. By the way, he took out his last
money -- Henrik Lund kept it for him in later years and doled it out periodically -- in the summer of
1855. On the streets he actually did -- and he didn't mind it at all -- give the appearance of being a
loafer, especially in the early years It was part of his scheme. But he must have had enormous
discipline. And I'm sure he always had some writing in process at the high desk and something
else at another desk.

EH: He was a genius. And he had so much to write that he had to, he simply had to have time and
solitude and privacy.

BEB: But you have raised eight children! And...

EH: Yes, well, we're not geniuses, though, and....

BEB: And sitting at your kitchen table, translating, and also writing your own books.

EH: Yes, but that's not number one, you see. That's not the passion, the number one passion, in
our lives -- at least not in mine anyway. But seriously, and I have said this before, I would go mad
if I did Kierkegaard all day I would go mad if I did housework all day. So, it's a good blending.

HH: But I did something that speaks to this matter. After teaching about twenty years, I formally
resigned here -- even you weren't quite aware of it, Edna. I formally resigned and took leave that
year. That's when I started working intensively on Kierkegaard, picking up Kjerlighedens
Gjerninger again. I informed the chairman of the department and the dean of the college. The
dean said to him, "Well, how's he going to live?" The chairman couldn't answer him, but he didn't
ask me.

EH: But how did we live? Didn't you get a salary?

HH: Not that year. And I didn't have a grant, either. We just lived on your savings and your good
whole wheat bread.

EH: [laughs]

HH: Then the chairman said, "But you will teach if we need you?" Well, it turned out that they did
need me, and I did continue teaching. But I had retired inwardly -- that's the important point. And it
has to do with philosophy. We have a very bad philosophy of work in this country, perhaps in
Denmark, too, maybe throughout Europe, where even the telephone book it lists that one is a
baker or whatever. Of course, with a name like yours, Bo, it does not have to say anything, but
when it comes to the Larsens and the Nielsens it has to have something after the names. But the

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point was that I retired inwardly.

This is a linguistic matter, too, a grammatical matter regarding transitive and Intransitive verbs.
"You can "retire" that's intransitive. Someone else can "retire" you, that's a transitive verb
someone does something to you. Well, they could not do that to me, because I did it myself. And
at that point I also Invoked what I call the "Copenhagen Principle."

BEB: What is that?

HH: At one time earlier I had a half-time grant; I wanted to work up a course in the philosophy of
science. I needed time and I received help, a grant from the American Council of Learned
Societies. But I found that my, half-time of teaching was taking all of my time -- like air in a
balloon, no matter what size the balloon is, the air simply fills up all the available space. It was
very difficult to save the half-time for my other work. So I decided never do that again. But then
another opportunity came up that involved half-time, and I wondered if it could be done. Then I
formulated the "Copenhagen Principle."

When I go to Copenhagen, I go for one thing, and the logic of it is this: if I say yes to something, I
must say no to some other things. So when I go to Copenhagen it is for one thing; any other thing,
taking a walk or doing this or that, is incidental, has no direct claim on me. It is a purely voluntary
act. The idea is to do one thing -- a kind of purity of heart, hjertets renched. Therefore on the
second occasion,I applied the Copenhagen Principle, and it worked. It was simply like saying, for
instance, if one has an office job one is there from eight until twelve -- but after that, one is not
there. So it worked, and I did this in principle after retiring. I kept on teaching -- a full load -- but I
simply specified the time for that, and the other time left over was mine. So from about 1959 we
kept on with the Papirer and the Vorker. Then, of course, after I formally retired the second time,
the translating has been full time, although I also did a little teaching.

Maybe we needed this full and varied life of actuality -- perhaps even to understand Kierkegaard,
who in his way understood many things better than most of us do. For instance, who has written
about love and marriage in a richer, more penetrating way than Kierkegaard? His philosophy of
writing or of creativity comes into play here. For instance, in Two Ages he says some insightful
things about the writer. He thinks that a writer must -- no matter what he writes about must
penetrate and, passionately, imaginatively, and thinkingly, understand the entire spectrum of the
theme on which he is writing. If he is writing about the good, he should penetrate thinkingly the
range of good and evil. For example, Baudelaire should have known about the good -- and
perhaps he didn't! But for Kierkegaard, it is part of his genius that he didn't have to -- at least in a
palpable way -- experience everything, because his imagination and his comprehension were so
penetrating that he understood the range of things better than most people who actually do them.
And that's why, I mention marriage. He really understood more about marriage than most married
people do by the end of their lives. It has been different with us, but perhaps it isn't a total
contrast. I think that we may have needed that kind of life of actuality to be able to approach
Kierkegaard's thought better.

BEB: You have lived a simple life so that you could put all your money into this great protect of
building up the Kierkegaard Library. And, perhaps just as importantly you have succeeded in
reconstructing Kierkegaard's own library. Was it planned from the beginning?

HH: Not from the very beginning.

EH: I was quite unaware of it. Howard would come back home in Denmark, and he would hold up
a book and say, "Look what I found today in a sub-basement!" In ... what do they call it?

HH: Grubbs. Did you know the Grubb brothers, antikvatiat? Its a tragedy, very sad@ their
bookstore no longer exists.

EH: And then eventually we had too much to carry back; so we had to ship the books. Finally

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there wasn't room in our library at home to contain all these books. That's why this happened.

HH: But the extensive connection was not planned.

EH: When he'd sax, "Look what I found," I'd ask, "What did you pay for it?"

HH: And I would never tell her! -- unless it was a good price. But I did happen to find the first copy
of Til Selvprovelse that we used, and in it is written "Rosenvaengets Alle, 1938-39." It's a first
edition in splendid condition. It's a good as one can ever expect -- better than nine times out often.
I paid 2.25 crowns for it. At that time a crown was worth a quarter. It's a splendid first edition. It
might even have been one of the five copies from Kierkegaard's own little supply. But I didn't know
about such things at the time; I just wanted the cheapest volume I could find. We simply gathered
things we needed first of all -- like the Papirer and Samlede Vorker.

There were some other things. In reading Kierkegaard -- way back -- there were many references.
So, if in Copenhagen I happened upon certain books of that period and could afford them, I would
buy them. But then we started work on the Papirer With the hundreds and hundreds of references
and quotations by Kierkegaard, with detailed information -- author, tide, volume, page, and also
bibliographical information -- it became necessary for us either to move to Denmark or to have
those books here. In that way they became a working collection in connection with the job at
hand. And then it did, in a sense, take on it's own life, too.

I mentioned to you earlier that Gregor Malantschuk had the idea that there are very rich resources
m Copenhagen -- but who knows what may happen in Europe? He was there during the war, and
Denmark got out of it fairly well -- if one dares to say that kind of thing -- one of the "benefits" of
being occupied was that Copenhagen was not bombed. But it could have happened, and that's
why the Royal Library, I suppose, took preventive measures, as putting all the Kierkegaard
material on film and depositing it in some remote spot. Therefore there should be good collections
elsewhere. This idea reinforced our effort to reconstruct Kierkegaards own library as a working
collection; and then we thought that we should make it grow and fill it out as best we can.

You put the word "succeed" in the past tense. We haven't succeeded yet in filling out a
reconstruction of Kierkegaards library -- many titles are still needed. But having taken on its own
life, it is worthy of being continued, and that's the setting now. The arrangements are -- and that is
part of the agreement in giving the collection to the college -- that the college will maintain the
collection for the use of others and also keep it growing.

BEB: The collection that you have here represents what you have collected during your whole
lifetime. I know it's foolish to reduce it to a matter of money, but you had to get insurance for the
whole collection. How valuable is it?

HH: Well, the whole collection has just been appraised by a professional, and the original
collection is appraised now at over a million dollars. There are other things that we have not yet
given, that we have lent -- all these books [volumes from Kierkegaard's own library], for example --
and some other things that are not counted in that appraisal. But since that time books have been
added by the college, and that amounts to about another third of a million. And if account is made
of things that have been lent, the total is closer to i. ri million. But Its essential value is the contents
and in the assembling of the collection here for immediately available use by scholars who
continue to come from countries throughout the world.

(1.) Kierkegaard's Writings, XII.I (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), p. 348. [Soren
Kierkegaards samlede Verker, VII edited by a.b. Drachmann, J. L. Heiberg, and H. O. Lange (r
ed., Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1901-06), p. 302].

(2) Soren Kierkegaards samlede Verker, XI, p. 5.

Source Citation:Elbrond-Bek, Bo. "Kierkegaard in America: an interview with Howard and Edna

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Hong." Scandinavian Studies 68.n1 (Wntr 1996): 76(22). Expanded Academic ASAP. Gale. McMaster
University Library. 31 Oct. 2007
<http://find.galegroup.com.libaccess.lib.mcmaster.ca/itx/start.do?prodId=EAIM>.

Gale Document Number:A18262625

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