Penguin Classics: A Literary Review

Ostensibly a critique of a contemporary novel, 'A Literary Review' is seen by many as remarkably prophetic for our times, and its apocalyptic final sections inspired the central ideas in Heidegger's 'Being And Time'.

'Two Ages', the novel under review, tells the story of a family whose fortunes span the immediate post-Revolutionary Age, a period characterised by honour, loyalty and passion, and the advent of Modernity, where a rational dull conformity prevails. Kierkegaard used the review to present a devastating analyses of his own society, in which identities were being lost and ideals displaced by an all-consuming envy. He foresaw that the outcome of this process would be to confront people with a stark choice between an empty existence and devotion to God.