Soren Kierkegaard

returned to her early in 1856 by the executors of Kierkegaard’s estate, and she
burned them, so we will have to make do with half of their correspondence.
On only three occasions did Kierkegaard put the date and the year on his
letters. In one letter he remarked, not uncharacteristically, that “this letter
has no date, nor should it have one, since its essential contents are the con-
sciousness of a feeling.” But various clues—references to seasons of the year
and to birthdays; the sendin gof newly published books; plus, of course, the
wanin gof erotic intensity—make it possible to place nearly a third of the
letters in their original sequence. For the remainder we must rely on other
criteria and indicators. In these cases we receive the unexpected assistance
ofWednesday, because the dated and easily datable letters were written on
that day in commemoration of an encounter in the outlyin gvilla ge of
Lyngby in July 1840, “when Iapproachedyou for the second time in my
life.”
As we read our way through the little stack of letters a curious doubleness
begins to emerge. From the standpoint of language, these letters are some
of the most splendid achievements Kierkegaard had managed thus far. His
pen no longer stands still, bleeding ink onto the paper. The creaking Latin
syntax, which until then had forced his language into lackluster construc-
tions, is here replaced by an enchantin gsuppleness that makes the lines take
win g. Displayin gdelicacy and rhythm, the letters brin ginspired adoration
to their subject matter, drawin gon ima ges and metaphors and poetic allu-
sions to writers such as Johannes Ewald, Jens Baggesen, Adam Oeh-
lenschla ̈ger, Christian Winther, and Poul Martin Møller. These letters are
not ordinary communication; they are art.
And in this consists the triumphandthe tragedy. For by virtue of their
indisputably aesthetic qualities, the letters make it clear that their author was
to become not a husband but a writer. So they were actually farewell letters,
grandiose exercises in the art of indirect communication: With enormous
discretion and employin gthe entire panoply of the most nuanced shades of
language, they try to make Regine realize that the person who sings her
praises in letter after letter has lon gsince disappeared from her life because
he has lost himself in recollection of her and is thus utterly unsuited for
married life. Indeed, recollection, from which fantasy draws its life, is also
the source of the death that divides the lovers. In lookin gback upon events,
Kierkegaard claimed that the very next day after Regine had said “Yes,” he
had already realized that he had “made a mistake.” This is corroborated by
Regine’s account of having “met him in the arched passageway of the palace
ridin grin gshortly after the en ga gement,” where it was as if he had been
“completely transformed—absent and cold!”