fall of the auctioneer’s hammer”; no, in this case what matters is “being
honest about the past.” And then he continues in the first-person singular:
“Had I not honored her, as my future wife, more than I honored myself;
had I not been more zealous for her honor than for my own; then I would
have held my tongue and fulfilled her wish and mine, and would have
permitted myself to marry her. There are so many marriages which conceal
little tales. I did not want this to be the case with me, for then she would
have become my concubine. I would rather have murdered her.”
This entry, which recurs in a jumble of variants, is typical of the way in
which Kierkegaard explained the conflict to himself as time went by: His
father, as the enforcer of the law, is contrasted sharply with Regine, whose
sensuality itself is a painful reminder of his father’s frightful flaw, his sexual
fall. Piety toward his father and love for Regine became so incompatible
that Kierkegaard had to turn to a metaphysical explanation in order to avoid
bein gtorn in two: “It sometimes happens that a child while still in the
cradle is engaged to the person who will one day become his wife or her
husband. I was engaged [Danish:for-lovet, “already promised”], in the reli-
gious sense, as a very young child. Alas, I have paid dearly because I once
misunderstood my life and forgot—that I was engaged!”
Kierkegaard was already wedded to God. The image approaches blas-
phemy and, indeed, does not do much to cover up the human sense of
powerlessness out of which it grew. As a visible reminder of his fatal misun-
derstanding, Kierkegaard had his engagement ring reconstructed so that the
stones formed a cross. For her part, Regine reacted in more straightforward
fashion: Her hair very soon turned gray.
“To her and to my late father,” Kierkegaard wrote in 1849, “will all the
books be dedicated: my teachers, an old man’s noble wisdom and a woman’s
lovable lack of understanding.” In the year of his death he turned back to
these words, makin gthem even more beautiful. Thus, under the headin g
“My Foundations,” he named “the two people whom I love most, to whom
I owe whatever I have become as an author: an old man—the errors of his
melancholy love; a very youn g girl, almost a mere child—the lovable tears
of her misunderstanding.”
romina
(Romina)
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