Product Description

Johannes is an aesthete, dedicated to creating the possibility of seduction through the careful manipulation of young women. He stealthily pursues the innocent Cordelia until she becomes increasingly drawn to him. But when she is ready to give herself completely, she realizes she may have got everything wrong. United by the theme of love, the writings in the Great Loves series span over two thousand years and vastly different worlds. Readers will be introduced to love’s endlessly fascinating possibilities and extremities: romantic love, platonic love, erotic love, gay love, virginal love, adulterous love, parental love, filial love, nostalgic love, unrequited love, illicit love, not to mention lost love, twisted and obsessional love….

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #81115 in Books
• Published on: 2007-08-02
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 144 pages

About the Author
Soren Aabye Kierkegaard (1813-1855) was a 19th century Danish philosopher and theologian, generally recognized as the first existentialist philosopher.

Customer Reviews

A "war of conquest"...,
According to Kierkegaard, there are three stages or spheres of existence: the aesthetic, the ethical and the religious one. In "The seducer's diary", the author depicts the life of someone who has made a conscious choice for the aesthetic way of life, with all the consequences that implies.

The plot is simple, and the book is very short, but all the same the reader will become easily and quickly involved with the characters, and won't be able to forget the lessons learned through them. Johannes is a seducer for vocation and profession: being a seducer isn't really his job, but that is undoubtedly what gives meaning to his life. He likes women only until they have given him everything: it is then that he leaves them, and searches for a new "love". Johannes isn't capable of a big love that will last forever, but rather of many fleeting little "loves", with a definite time limit ("I am an aesthete, an eroticist, who has grasped the nature and the point of love, who believes in love and knows it from the ground up, and I reserve for myself only the private opinion that no love affair should last more that a half a year at most and that any relationship is over as soon as one has enjoyed the ultimate.").

"The seducer's diary" is a transcription of part of Johannes diary. Here the reader will be able to follow the different stages of Johannes seduction (and ultimate betrayal) of Cordelia, his prey. The way in which Johannes plans the above mentioned seduction is rather astonishing, due to the fact that he thinks about it as a "war of conquest" that he has to win little by little, through many well-conceived strategies. Not matter how passionate he might seem at times, we are remembered again and again that he is cold-bloodedly constant to his primal purpose.

On the whole, I really liked "The seducer's diary", and can recommend it to you. To tell the truth, I cannot say that I loved the ending, but I can see that it illustrates Kierkegaard point of view perfectly, bringing home the idea that a purely aesthetic way of life isn't an intelligent choice. Of course, we already knew that, but it is all the same a good idea to read why, expressed in such a conspicuously clear way as this.

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