DANIEL BELL
543
The essay on Kierkegaard is entitled, significantly , "The Foun–
dering of Form Against Life ," and subtitled
"S~ren
Kierkegaard and
Regine Olsen." The essay deals less with any of Kierkegaard's theo–
logical arguments than with his renunciation of Regine Olsen as a
necessary step in becoming the ascetic hero and the quest for the
absolute life undertaken absolutely: "The world of human com–
munion, the ethical world whose typical form is marriage, stands
between the two worlds of Kierkegaard's soul: the world of pure
poetry and the world of pure faith." His gesture of renunciation was
"a way towards the great , the only absolute love , the love of God."
Kierkegaard, wrote Lukacs, "built his whole life upon a
gesture." His "heroism was that he wanted to create forms from life .
His honesty was that he saw a crossroads and walked to the end of
the road he had chosen. His tragedy was that he wanted to live what
cannot be lived ."
Written in 1909, these words would become a gesture ten years
later and the statement itself could well serve, as we shall see, as an
epitaph for Lukacs's own life.
From 1912 to 1915, Lukacs was a member of the Weber circle,
particularly at the regular Sunday afternoon open house, where
Weber's presence dominated the scene though, as his wife wrote:
"Only a few of the guests like Gundolf or Lukacs were able to express
their ideas well enough to become independent points of interest."
Weber became absorbed in Lukacs's work in aesthetics, but he was
most taken by a story Lukacs wrote in 1912,
"Von der Armut am Geiste"
(Of the Poor in Spirit), about the self-reproach of a young man after
the suicide of a girl he had loved - a thinly veiled autobiographical
event. The core of the discussion is the idea of "goodness" which, like
Weber's idea of charisma, means "being graced with the power to
break through the forms. "
A Dostoevskian tenor runs through the story. As in
Notes from
the Underground,
there is the derision of "goal-oriented," "responsible,"
or "useful" - in short bourgeois - behavior:
What does goodness care for consequences . . .. Goodness is without
use as it is without reason .. .. Goodness is divine, metapsychological .
When goodness appears in us, paradise has become reality and the
divinity is awakened in us . ... Do you recall Sonya, Prince Myschkin,
Alexei Karamasoff in Dostoevsky? You have asked me whether there
are any good men : here they are .
