Soren Kierkegaard

since everyone who had eyes to read with ran out and bought the work in
order to be properl ynauseated b yits disgusting and revolting portions,
which people viewed in the context of the offensive business of the magis-
ter’s engagement, alread ythe subject of much talk. Despite the fact that a
succe`s de scandale is perhaps a good bit better than no success at all, Kierke-
gaard was quite rightl yconvinced that he and his work deserved a nobler
fate, and at one point in March 1843 he wrote proudly: “Even if I did not
prove anything else by writingEither/Or, I have in an ycase proved that one
can write a work in Danish literature, that one can work without needing
the warm cloak of sympathy, without needing the incentive of expectations;
that one can work when the current is against one; that one can be diligent
without seeming to be so; that one can concentrate in private while almost
ever ypoor wretch of a student presumes to regard one as an idler. Even if
the book itself were meaningless, its genesis would nonetheless be the pithi-
est epigram I have written over the philosophical drivel of this age.”
If Kierkegaard raged at Heiberg, however, it was not merel ybecause of
wounded literary vanity; it was also because, despite all the pseudonymity,
his works were profoundl ypersonal. “If people were to discover the real
motive,” Kierkegaard wrote with respect toEither/Or, the ywould probabl y
imagine a “profoundl ydeep reason... and yet it is entirely a matter of my
private life. And the intention? Indeed, if people discovered this, I would
be declared raving mad.” Thus, though it is naive simpl yto identif yKier-
kegaard with Johannes the Seducer, it would be equall ysimple-minded to
suppose that Kierkegaard could have produced such a figure without having
had his amorous experiences with Regine. Nor is it likel ythat the extensive
reflections on marriage would have occurred to Kierkegaard if the engage-
ment had not collapsed. Still, it is hard to disagree with Troels-Lund, who
was on the verge of declaring his uncle “raving mad”: “It was quite a pecu-
liar activit yfor the runawa yvillain, who had broken up with his sweetheart
in Copenhagen, to sit in a hotel in Berlin, despite winter cold, arthritis, and
insomnia, so that he could labor strenuousl yand restlessl yon a work—in
praise of marriage.” This wonderment is entirel yjustified and demonstrates
in exemplar yfashion how inseparable the work was from its author. Thus
Henriette Hanck wrote to Hans Christian Andersen in mid-Ma y1843, “I’d
like to see Kierkegaard; I bet he is Either—or—Or, hardl yboth of them.
He himself probabl ystands (if this admits of being thought) halfwa ybe-
tween the light and the shadow.”
Oddl yenough, even though Kierkegaard had just returned from abroad,
Heiberg’s critique ofEither/Or, a work which had been written in exile,
had the effect of transforming Kierkegaard into a sort of literar yexile in his
own country. Still, Heiberg’s thumbs-down also had the effect of making
Kierkegaard want to be Kierkegaard, an immortal writer, a literature within