The Point of View
First sentence
. . . My dear child, the bromide of sodium (if that's what you call it) proved perfectly useless...
Description
As a spiritual autobiography, Kierkegaard's The Point of View for My Work as an Author stands with such great works as Augustine's Confessions and Newman's Apologia pro vita sua - but with a difference. It is neither a confessional autobiography nor a defense. It is an author's story of a lifetime of writing, his understanding of the common aim and comprehensive coherence of the maze of his greatly varied pseudonymous and signed works. Entries in the Supplement document the context and development of the writings on the authorship as a whole. In addition they disclose Kierkegaard's considerations as he wrestled with decisions about publishing the three works and other works that were "the fruit of the year 1848...the year of my richest productivity."