ABSTRACT
The thought of Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) has frequently been linked to the literature of the absurd, not least due to his key role in the development of existentialist philosophy. In this chapter, I seek to justify and expand this connection by honing in on specific ideas in Kierkegaard’s writings that resonate with two competing conceptions of the Theatre of the Absurd. The first is the one canonized by Martin Esslin, according to which the dramatic form gives voice to “metaphysical anguish at the absurdity of the human condition.” As I will show, we find an early and important theory of modern drama that bears a striking resemblance to this view in Kierkegaard’s essay “The Tragic in Ancient Drama Reflected in the Tragic in Modern Drama,” from volume one of Either/Or. The second understanding of the Theatre of the Absurd has been proposed more recently by Michael Bennett. For Bennett, what characterizes the playwrights in question is not an attitude of defeat but a more generative pursuit of new forms of meaning, the creation of order out of chaos. This notion of the absurd is also aptly theorized by Kierkegaard’s philosophy, this time in his account of faith articulated most forcefully in Fear and Trembling.
