Poetry and Heroism: An Encounter with Kierkegaard

Kierkegaard lamented that many people find life distressingly empty, devoid of consolation, and a cause for despair; and set out to provide a remedy to this malaise. As a "singular kind of poet and thinker," he employed a holistic approach, which he strikingly called "dialectical lyric," to the all-important question of how we should live. His poetic task is to praise ideals, and heroes who represent them, in order to make readers profoundly appreciate the worth of the ideals, to help them ...