Without Authority
First sentence
But you perhaps say with "the poet," and you like to hear the poet talk this way, "Oh, I wish I were a bird, or I wish I were like a bird, like the free bird that, delighting in travel, flies far, far away over land and sea, high in the sky, to lands far, far off-I, alas, who only feel bound and fettered and nailed to the spot, where daily worries and sufferings and adversities manifest to me that I live there-and for all my life!...
Description
"Without authority," a phrase Kierkegaard repeatedly applied to himself and his writings, is an appropriate common title for this volume of five short works that in various ways deal with the concept and practice of authority. The Lily in the Field and the Bird of the Air presupposes the teaching authority of the lily and the bird, derived from the authoritative Gospel injunction to learn from them. Two Ethical-Religious Essays deal with the limits of authorization for a witness to the truth and with the contrast between the authority of the genius and that of the apostle. The reaming works - Three Discourses at the Communion on Fridays, An Upbuilding Discourse, and Two Discourses at the Communion on Fridays - presuppose Gospel authority in mediations on forgiveness and the power of love.