Selectio-ns from the Writings of Kierkegaard 67
her I love ; which, though, is plainly the only assurance to be had.
When Cockatoo" all at once begins to plume himself like a duck which is gorged with food, and then emits the word "Marian," everybody will laugh, and so will I. I suppose the spectator finds it comical that Cockatoo, who doesn't love Marian at all, should be on such intimate terms with her. But suppose, now, that Cockatoo does love Marian. Would that be comical still? To me it would; and the comical would seem to me to lie in love's having become capable of being expressed in such fashion. Whether now this has been the custom since the beginning of the world makes no difference whatsoever, for the comical has the prescrip- tive right from all eternity to be present in contradictions — and here is a contradiction. There is really nothing com- ical in the antics of a manikin since we see some one pulling the strings. But to be a manikin at the beck of something inexplicable is indeed comical, for the contradiction lies in our not seeing any sensible reason why one should have to twitch now this leg and now that. Hence, if I cannot explain what I am doing, I do not care to do it; and if I cannot understand the power into whose sphere I am ven- turing, I do not care to surrender myself to that power. And if love is so mysterious a law which binds together the ex- tremest contradictions, then who will guarantee that I might not, one day, become altogether confused ? Still, that does not concern me so much.
Again, I have heard that some lovers consider the be- havior of other lovers ridiculous. I cannot conceive how this ridicule is justified, for if this law of love be a natural law, then all lovers are subject to it; but if it be the law of their own choice, then those laughing lovers ought to be able to explain all about love ; which, however, they are un- able to do. But in this respect I understand this matter better as it seems a convention for one lover to laugh at the other because he always finds the other lover ridiculous,
i^A character in the Danish playwright Overskou's vaudeville of 'Capriciosa" (Comedies III, 184).
