Of course, one mustn't start reading too soon, W. is adamant about that. One mustn't simply devour an oeuvre, tempting as it may seem, the many-coloured spines of Kierkegaard's works in the Hong and Hong edition, lined up on my windowsill, as inviting as boiled sweets.
One cannot just begin at page one, and then read one's way to the end. There must be a kind of pause before reading, a dwelling in the clearing opened by the fact of Kierkegaard, by the fact of his writing, by the fact that he lived.
That Kierkegaard wrote: we should pause before that fact, mulling it over. That Kierkegaard was at all: we should mull that over, too. And that we exist, too: ah, that's what's unbearable, W. says. The fact that, despite our best intentions, we'll never be able to understand a word of Kierkegaard.
Lars Iyer's Blog 