Soren Kierkegaard

and therefore somewhat inflexible Boesen failed to get the point: He had
loved madly and sadly and therefore would neither poetize nor forget his
beloved. So Kierkegaard had to take a more pedagogical tack in his next
letter: “If you cannot forget her, cannot poetize her, well then, hoist all sail.
Be sheer attentiveness. Let no opportunity to meet her pass you by. One
always encounters coincidences: Make use of them....Death and pesti-
lence, what a fuss to make for the sake of a girl.”
Even though Kierkegaard of course knew what he was talking about,
and to this extent Boesen had turned to the right person, there is every
reason to suspect that Kierkegaard was parodying the difficulties in which
he himself was immersed right up to his neck. Indeed it took Boesenso long
to reply to this letter that Kierkegaard, out of sheer impatience, subjected a
poor shoeshine boy to a painful cross-examination in order to determine
whether he had actually posted the letter entrusted to him or had mislaid it
at some stupid place or other in Berlin. But about a month later Boesen
was heard from, and by inspecting Kierkegaard’s reply we learn that his
friend had indeed begun a bit of espionage in Copenhagen. Kierkegaard,
however, could never have enough, and he asked Boesen to pump the
portrait painter Bærentzen, who was Regine’s neighbor and thus “a good
source.” Kierkegaard continued: “It is good that the [Olsen] family hates
me. That is what I intended, just as I have also intended that she, if possible,
be capable of hating me. She does not know how much she owes me in
this respect....Noteven here in Berlin has my, alas, all-too-inventive
brain been able to refrain from scheming something or other. She must
either love me or hate me, she knows no third possibility. Nor is there
anything more harmful to a young girl than half-way situations.” Later in
the letter he wrote, with a peculiarly considerate cynicism: “You lack one
thingwhichIpossess.Youhavenotlearnedtohavecontemptfortheworld,
to see how petty everything is. You break your back for the world’s copper
shillings....Ifpeople think, then, that I am a deceiver, so what? I will still
be just as able to study philosophy, write, smoke cigars, and thumb my nose
at the whole world. Anyway, I have always made a fool of people, so why
should I not do so right up to the end?”
Kierkegaard is certainly speaking plainly here. He may or may not be
putting his money where his mouth is, but in any case what he says in the
letter is worth more than a mere four shillings. Still, Kierkegaard would not
be Kierkegaard if he did not understand how to earn indirect revenues from
his plainspokenness, so the following information was written on a separate
sheet of paper he enclosed with his letter: “I have no time to marry. Here
in Berlin, however, there is a singer from Vienna, a Mademoiselle Schulze.
She plays the role of Elvira and bears a striking likeness to a certain young