Books: Great Dane

STAGES ON LIFE'S WAY — Søren Kierkegaard—Princeton ($6).

Søren Kierkegaard, who died in 1855, is slowly being excavated from the Danish. Had this philosopher and mystic not written in a minor language, his fame would have resounded with that of Carlyle, Nietzsche, Dostoevski. It was upon Kierkegaard's assertion of romantic individualism that Scandinavian literature in the last century rose to world-famed greatness and influence. He was the prototype of Ibsen's gloomy cleric, Brand. Profound also was his influence on Spain's late, great Catholic scholar, Miguel de Unamuno. Yet only in the last five years...