Soren Kierkegaard

“Good night, sleep well,” while the Italians wish one “The happiest of
nights!” Southern nights possess more than—dreams.’ ”
Viewed with historical hindsight, the fact that the first bookbyKierke-
gaard and the first bookaboutAndersen should end up being one and the
same book seems a miraculous coincidence. But there are at least three good
reasonsnotto be too surprised that it was precisely Andersen whom Kierke-
gaard chose as the object for his debut as a critic. First of all, Andersen was
a gilt-edged popular success as a novelist, and not only in Denmark. Accom-
panied by a lengthy biography of the author (for which Andersen himself
had provided much of the material),Only a Fiddlerappeared in German
translation in 1838, followed in the autumn of that year by a Dutch transla-
tion, and just before Christmas the book came out in Swedish, retitled as
The Fiddler from Svendborg. So the man Kierkegaard set out to criticize was
far from being a literary nobody. On the contrary, he was a man in the midst
of a grandiose career, one who had been granted a place on the civil list with
an annual pension of four hundred rixdollars. When Bertel Thorvaldsen, the
legendary Danish-expatriate sculptor, returned to Denmark on September
17, 1838, he was granted the sort of reception normally reserved for deities
who return to earth. Along with Oehlenschla ̈ger, Heiberg, Grundt-
vig, Winter, Hertz, Holst, and Thomas Overskou, Andersen was in the
boat that sailed out to greet Thorvaldsen aboard the frigateRota, anchored
offshore, where the sculptor was welcomed with music, song, and shouts
of jubilation. For the second reason, Andersen was situated problematically
with respect to the establishment, in particular to the Heiberg circle. While
he had had a number of his poems published inFlyveposten, his attempts at
drama had never been to Heiberg’s taste, and Andersen himself was of
course so uncouth and eccentric that one of the innumerable treacherous
trapdoors installed (figuratively speaking) in the theatrical Heiberg home
had soon yawned under him and sent him on his way—down and out. “Any-
way, Andersen isn’t so dangerous,” Kierkegaard, ready for battle, wrote in
his journal, “from what I have been able to learn, his main strength consists
of an auxiliary chorus of volunteer undertakers, a few wandering aesthetici-
ans who continually give assurances of their honesty.” Finally,Only a Fiddler
broke with the period’s norms and expectations with respect to the novel
as a genre. People could not accept that it had a negative ending. It was the
author’s task to put forth a defense of the inherent harmony of existence,
and Andersen did not do this. His novel was full of conflict and to a great
extent it blamed society for the fact that its hero, Christian, comes to an
unhappy end.
Thus Kierkegaard’s criticism begins by emphasizing the positive life view
to be found in Mrs. Gyllembourg (who, with due respect for her self-im-