Repetition

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

Repetition is an indestructible garment that fits closely and tenderly, neither binds nor sags. Hope is a lovely maiden who slips away between one’s fingers; recollection is a beautiful old woman with whom one is never satisfied at the moment; repetition is a beloved wife of whom one never wearies, for one only becomes weary of what is new. One never grows weary of the old, and when one has that, one is happy.

A philosophical novel of the philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, published in 1843, is a story of an unhappy love affair in which a young man struggles with his own conscious over a decision he made.

Short version: A young man wonders what it would've been like to marry a woman he once loved. His pondering gives rise to the philosophical concepts of recollection and repetition.


Tropes used in Repetition include: