Soren Kierkegaard

which, however, true to form, he quickly abandoned. A couple of years
earlier Kierkegaard had participated in some similar exercises, and to
Clausen’s speechless indignation he had refused to write an essay on a re-
quired topic and instead had turned in an analysis of the wording of the
essay question itself, which he found simply meaningless. Now he had the
means to hire the tutors who provided the best private instruction, and an
undatedfragmentfromtheperiodpresentsabizarreimpressionofthesitua-
tion:“IstudyHebrewwithoneofthemintheafternoon.Iwillhireanother
one for the morning and yet another one to take walks with me, thereby
manufacturing knowledge of Hebrew within sealed machines, as Deich-
mann’s produces chocolates.” The study of Hebrew grammar gave rise to
reflections about the hard-pressed status of thesubject: “The trouble with
me,”hewroteinmid-January1839,“isthatmylife—theconditionofmy
soul—alwaysfollowsdeclensionsinwhichnotonlytheendingsaredifferent
but the entire word is changed.” And later in the year he declared that he
“feltlike aletter thathas beenprinted backwardsin theline.” Kierkegaard
had demanded that Andersen possess a “life view” that would serve as
“Providence in the novel” and thus be ubiquitously “present in the work
ofart,”andnow hehimselfcouldnotevendiscern hisownsubjectonthe
level of the sentence! It was not surprising that L. C. Mu ̈ller, who served
for a time as his tutor in Hebrew, bluntly asked: “But what in the world
are we going to do with that Søren?”
The isolation was close to driving him mad, and he recalled Cornelius
Nepos’s story of the general, besieged in a fortress with a large troop of
cavalry, who had the horses whipped every day so that they would not
becomesickfromsomuchstandingstill:“I,too,liveinmyroomasthough
Iwereundersiege.Idon’twanttoseeanyone,andIamcontinuallyafraid
thatenemieswilltrytoattack—thatis,thatsomeonewillcomebyandcall
on me. I would rather not go out, so in order to avoid injury from such a
sedentarylife,IweepuntilIamwornout.”Atonepointintheearlyspring,
stillbesetwiththispain,heexclaimed:“Allofexistencemakesmeanxious,
from the least little fly to the mysteries of the Incarnation.”
That he survived the ordeal was attributable not only to the fact that he
couldnolongerputofftheoldmanwithtalk,butalsobecauseayounggirl
hadbeguntobecomeentwinedinhisthoughtsinaquitepromisingfashion.
Thus, in a journal entry, dated February 2, 1839, written in praise of this
younglady(whoselastnamewas justplain“Olsen,”butwho,thankGod,
had an unusually poetic given name) we have a paean that has since been
translated into virtually all the world’s major languages: “O, you, the mis-
tress of my heart—‘Regina’—concealed in the most profound recesses of
my breast, in my most luxuriant notion of life, in a place equidistant from