Soren Kierkegaard

with “my”! And then the confessions came fast and furious, in an avalanche:
“Unlike me, you are not—I trust you will agree with me and not be of-
fended that I say so—you are not accustomed to holding your life poetically
in your hand....Soyousee, it provides an occasion for misunderstanding
when you bring up the story of your own love life in this connection. I
know nothing of these pathetic palpitations—my relationship with her has
a completely different sort of reality....Youareapparently a novice. You
have feeling. I have passion. But my understanding is enthroned over my
passion. Yet my understanding is itself a passion....MyEmil, learn at least
a little from my example.”
One could not blame Boesen at all if he felt hurt at seeing himself por-
trayed as a depressive amateur whose immediate passions prompted him to
flutter this way and that in every little erotic breeze. In his next letter Kier-
kegaard granted that he may have been too hasty in his choice of words,
but he continued to assert that Boesen simply had not grasped “the point
of the matter.” This was certainly understandable because Kierkegaard’s
motives could be difficult to discern: “I am born for intrigue, for complica-
tions, for peculiar relationships, et cetera, all of which would perhaps not
be so peculiar if I were not so peculiarly constituted, especially if I did not
possess what I would call the passionate coolness with which I control my
moods....Thismatter, which has been dealt with often enough by now,
has two sides, an ethical and an aesthetic. If she had been able to refrain
from taking the situation so personally, or if it could have served as an
impulse for her to climb higher than she otherwise would have done, then
theethicalfactorwouldbeabolished—andIwouldbeleftwiththeaesthetic
alone....Theaesthetic is above all my element. As soon as the ethical
asserts itself, it easily gains too much power over me. I become a quite
different person, I know no bounds for what my duties might be, et cetera.”
Later on, Kierkegaard would expend a great deal of rhetorical energy
trying to get his readers to distance themselves from what he says here: The
aestheticishiselement;thelusttowriteisanungovernablepassion.Andthis
came to be Regine’s fate. Significantly, a letter in which he asked Boesen to
send him a copy ofThe First Lovewas signed “Farinelli.” True, he crossed
out that name, but it is there anyway. Farinelli was the most famous of the
Italian castrati singers. He had a stellar career in Europe and spent twenty-
five years in Spain, where he dispelled the melancholia of the mad monarch
PhilipVbysingingthesamefoursongseveryevening.Sobysigninghimself
“Farinelli” Kierkegaard was admitting that he, too, had sacrificed his erotic
passion for the sake of art.
In many respects it was this Farinelli who wrote in Kierkegaard’s journals
during this period, a castrated lover whohadused the knife but who was