One of Søren Kierkegaard’s well-known quotes goes something like this: “Life is to be understood backwards, but it is to be lived forwards.” According to a website called Kierkegaard Quotations, even this seemingly original thought is derivative.
Kierkegaard is alluding to Carl Daub, 1765-1836, professor of theology at Heidelberg university. This is what Daub says … : ‘The act of looking backward is, just like that of looking into the future, an act of divination; and if the prophet is well called an historian of the future, the historian is just as well called, or even better so, a prophet of the past, of the historical’. Kierkegaard repeats this thought of Daub, putting it together with the thought that life is “lived forward”. Life can be interpreted only after it has been experienced, but the past informs one’s understanding and grasp of the future.
Freinsheim
I’m planning a trip to Germany, to my great-great grandfather’s hometown of Freinsheim. In preparation, I am writing letters in German to relatives there. I remember my grandmother Emma sitting at her kitchen table, the German dictionary set beside her, to write letters to the German relatives of her generation. She was so precise about it she kept a ruler handy to write in perfectly straight lines.
My great-great grandfather was inspired to emigrate to Cleveland based on letters written by his grandfather and uncles already there. Today’s correspondence between my family and the families in Germany is an echo of the past, derivative of what has gone before us for many generations. It is also lighting the way forward.