[RJT]

My thoughts thus far – haven’t even deciphered the whole of the Prelude (I think I spoke in haste when I told chez, SK was easy).

In his preface SK (as J De Silentio) pokes fun of almost (or at least finds them not particularly relevant) philosophers of his day (or immediately prior to his own time) who seek to go beyond doubt and live only with what is empirical. “In our time nobody is content to stop with faith but wants to go further.” Or that they expect their empiricism to be able to take them further.

He says others can look to go beyond doubt. That for me (him) Faith is fine. I (RJT) might have said it this way “Hey, maybe it’s just me”. He uses self deprecation to disarm the reader. SK as De Silentio says the writer is not a philosopher – yeah right.

I like his wit:

“What those ancient Greeks (who also had some understanding of philosophy)…”

and

“… so that there were fifty words for a period and thirty-five for a semicolon.”

Trop – I take it Trop is a contemporary of Soren who wrote criticisms of works in their day?

Regarding the Prelude – without getting into the text yet, I think of some filmmakers who use this technique. I can’t recall anything specific, but I think Tarentino does this. I remember Costa-Gavras in his film “Missing” uses a similar technique to SK. CG repeats the same scene in flashbacks – he further tells what (might have) happened to the missing son until near the end of the film we see how the son was probably abducted and killed. The scene is repeated as does SK repeats the Abraham story each time with a new (different?) understanding. Reading the different versions of the Abraham story I imagine rewinding a video and then playing it again but, each time we are watching a new movie. Or perhaps like a recurring dream (perhaps, nightmare is a better word) that differ dramatically each night.

SK’s technique here seems very novel for his time. Without a keen sense of 19th century literature, I might be overstating.