extremists

Wilbur in The Undead:

Secret, unfriendly, pale, possessed
Of the one wish, the thirst for mere survival,
They came, as all extremists do
In time, to a sort of grandeur

The critique of the likes of Kierkegaard and Weil and others like them.

Secret, unfriendly, pale, possessed of one wish. Not of course, “mere survival”, but one wish nonetheless. There is no denying their grandeur, nor (I think) their extremism. The similarity to vampires is.. provocative.

But monsters speak their own language, and have.. good pedigree.

Auden:

Like all heretics, conscious or unconscious, he [Kierkegaard] is a monodist, who can hear with particular acuteness one theme in the New Testament—in his case, the theme of suffering and self-sacrifice—but is deaf to its rich polyphony.. The Passion of Christ was to Kierkegaard’s taste, the Nativity and Epiphany were not.