Soren Kierkegaard

entry, “this is my consolation: No one will be able to find in my papers one
single bit of information about what has really filled my life; they will not
find the inscription deep within me which explains everything, which often
makes what the world would call bagatelles into events of enormous impor-
tance to me, but which I, too, view as insignificant when I remove the
secret note that explains everything.”
This note, in which Kierkegaard wrote whatreallytook u phis life, would
be a wonderful thing to have. But it does not exist—not because Kierkegaard
has removed it, but because it is unlikely that he ever wrote it. And perhaps
this was the secret: that there was in actuality no secret at all, and thattherefore
literary invention was required. This journal entry looks like a miniature
example of the seducer’s art, because, as we read in “The Seducer’s Diary,”
there is “really nothing so steeped in seductiveness... as a secret.”
In the hunt for therealKierkegaard people frequently overlook the fact
that mystification, mummery, and fiction are constitutive features in Kier-
kegaard’s production of himself—and that this is precisely why these things
hel preveal the “real” Kierkegaard.