ABSTRACT
Enthusiasm (Enthusiasme-noun; Begeistring-noun; begeistre-verb; Sværmerinoun; sværme-verb)
There are three Danish terms frequently translated into English as “enthusiasm.” Sværmeri (sometimes spelled Sværmerie in Kierkegaard’s authorship) comes from the concrete noun sværm (swarm), which derives from the Old Norse svarmr (turmoil, tumult). In Kierkegaard’s time, Sværmeri referred to a state of mind given to fanaticism and an overactive imagination that participates in flights of fancy which then guide one’s behaviors and thoughts.1 It was sometimes thought to be the result of a nervous condition and was often linked to melancholia.2 In its verbal form, when used of human beings rather than of swarming insects, it means acting with overwrought emotion, particularly in the religious, political, and erotic spheres.3 Historically, Sværmeri’s German cognate, Schwärmerei, functioned rhetorically to designate who or what would be perceived as falling outside the disputed bounds of religious and philosophical orthodoxy. It was used liberally during the German Enlightenment as a negative epithet denoting dogmaticism, fanaticism, overlyimagistic thought, and what were perceived to be anomalous political positions, but its pejorative use in religious polemic can be seen as early as Luther, who ridiculed as Schwärmer certain religious sects for their emphasis on strong emotions and their tendency to “swarm” in mobs against established authorities. With the rise of Romanticism, Schwärmerei’s negative connotations began to shift as enthusiasm came to be seen as necessary for living poetically. Much the same can be said for the roughly synonymous Danish word Begeistring. This term was borrowed in the latter half of the eighteenth century from the German Begeisterung,4 which was often used interchangeably with Schwärmerei and Enthusiasmus, which is the German cognate of our third term: Enthusiasme (from the Greek ἐνθουσιασμός). In contrast to Sværmeri and Begeistring, and despite the rough synonymity of all three
Romanticism.
