certain Copenhagen magister who, as time passed, was not an utterl yob-
scure person.
In doing all this Kierkegaard went to extremes, but he broke none of the
rules of the literar ygame. The times practicall yteemed with false names.
Indeed, pseudonymity came close to being an unspoken aesthetic require-
ment, and this sort of literar ym ystification held great appeal for Kierke-
gaard. So, less than a week after the publication ofEither/Or, he felt the
need to sendFædrelandeta different length yarticle, a sort of whodunit titled
“Who Is the Author ofEither/Or?” Using various internal and external bits
of evidence, the piece shrewdl yattempts—though understandabl ywithout
success—to track down the author ofEither/Or. The article was signed
“A.F....,”which presumabl ystood forAf Forfatteren[Danish: “b ythe
author”].
Preposterousl yenough, Kierkegaard himself came to doubt who was re-
all ywriting with whose pen: “There is something odd about m ylittle secre-
tar yMr. Christensen. I bet he’s the one who in various wa ys is scribbling
in the newspapers and in little pamphlets; because not infrequentl yI en-
counter an echo of m yideas, not as I tend to write them, but as I let them fall
casuall yin conversation.” Kierkegaard presumabl yhad in mind the article
“Literar yQuicksilver, or a Venture in the Higher Madness, with Lucida
Intervalla,” which had been published anonymously inNy Portefeuilleon
Februar y12, 1843. Six months later Christensen repeated his dirt ytricks
when he anonymously published a piece entitledWith What Right Is Theol-
ogy Called a Lie?Kierkegaard felt himself a victim of theft and became de-
spondent: “And I, who treated him with such kindness, paid him so well,
conversed with him for hours at a time—for which I paid him so as not to
mortif yand humiliate him because his lack of mone ymade it necessar yfor
him to work as a copyist....Itreall ywasn’t ver ynice of him. After all, he
could have confided in me and told me that he had a desire to become an
author. But his writings do not have a clean conscience. He himself proba-
bl ynotices that I have changed a bit, even though I am still just as polite
and kind to him. On the other hand I have weaned him off his inquisitive
snooping around m yroom. He must be kept at arm’s length; I hate all
plagiarists.” Christensen left Kierkegaard’s emplo yshortl ythereafter.
Most people who took an interest in the matter knew the identit yof the
author ofEither/Or. On Februar y20, 1843, the ver yda yon which the
book was published, Henriette Wulff wrote to Hans Christian Andersen,
who was then in Germany: “Recently a book was published here with the
titleEither/Or! It is supposed to be quite strange, the first part full of Don
Juanism, skepticism, et cetera, and the second part toned down and concili-
ating, ending with a sermon that is said to be quite excellent. The whole
romina
(Romina)
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