Metaphor

I have been reading "A Kierkegaard Anthology" edited by Robert Bretall.  It's just bits and pieces of stuff SK wrote, put more or less in chronological order, but it is an easy way for me to get a feel for what SK thought.

One selection in the anthology is titled 'Purity of Heart' and in it SK writes: 

"When a man meets his death by drowning, as he sinks, without being quite dead he comes to the surface again.  At last a bubble comes out of his mouth.  When this has happened, then he sinks, dead.  That bubble was the last breath, the last supply of air that could make him lighter than the sea.  So with that remark.  In that remark the last hope of salvation expired.  In that last remark he gave himself up."  

And in the next paragraph he continues:

"But this coolness is still more horrible: that, in the anxiety of death, a man should not cry out for help, "I am going under, save me"; but that he should quietly choose to be a witness to his own destruction!"

I was struck both by how SK described death without salvation and his amazement that it happens.  It seems to haunt him.

I hope you enjoyed my selection.