Poesia apocalittica e morte dell'arte: Martensen, Heiberg e Kierkegaard

In an article from 1837, Martensen introduces the concept of apocalyptic poetry as a genre of speculative poetry. Apocalyptic poetry has two features: (I) it reveals the nothingness of the world, being an anticipation of the Day of Judgment; (II) it depicts human life in relation to religion’s absolute idea. Apocalyptic poetry is also the culmination of poetry, the form that marks the end of art. Four years later, J.L. Heiberg published the apocalyptic comedy A Soul after Death that can be defined as an example of a post-theatre work, no longer art, not yet philosophy. My thesis is that most of the essays of the first part of Either/Or (1843) can be interpreted as apocalyptic writings both in Martensen’s first and second senses. Moreover, Kierkegaard’s attempt to imagine a new Antigone is a post-theatre work, understood as the art of writing plots for unwritten tragedies.