Reviews
Prefacesis not, however, dominated by lyrical whispering, which in fact
ceases after the first of the eight pieces and is replaced by a very prosaic sort
of emotion that at some points seems to employ a megaphone .This can be
seen, for example, in the seventh preface (which, as mentioned, had origi-
nally been written forThe Concept of Anxiety) and in the fourth preface,
which contains charmingly malicious satire directed at the literary market-
ing gimmickry of the day, including a number of self-promoting hacks, not
least Heiberg and his never-completed version of Hegel’s absolute “Sys-
tem.” It is more than implied that Heiberg’s annual journalUraniafrom
1844 (in whichRepetitionhad in fact been the subject of a critical review!)
had only been published in order to meet the demand of the eager buying
public during the Christmas season, a public which, if it was capable of
nothing else, was at least able to take delight in the volume’s fancy trappings,
its front and back covers bound with glazed white paper, its borders richly
ornamented with a gilded pattern .Here Nicolaus Notabene undergoes a
metamorphosis so malicious that the reader is utterly unable to recognize
the unobtrusive married man encountered in the book’s first preface: “As
is well known, the month of December is the beginning of the literary New
Year’s rush among the writing class of business people .A good number of
extremely elegant and beautifully produced books destined for children and
Christmas trees, but particularly useful as tasteful gifts, jostle past one another
in theAdresseavisenand other newspapers... .By the great god of China, I
would not have thought it possible—is that Prof .Heiberg on the band-
wagon this year? Yes, indeed, it is Prof .Heiberg .Yes, when one is decked
out like that one can certainly exhibit oneself to the astonished multi-
tude... .I wonder what ‘one’ would now say about this book? My dear
reader, if you haven’t learned about it through some other means, our liter-
ary telegraph agent Prof .Heiberg will certainly be good enough to serve
once again as a municipal officer and tally all the ballots, just as he did earlier
withEither/Or.” Among other things, the wounded vanity with which
these last sentences throb makes it clear that Nicolaus Notabene has forgot-
ten for a moment that he was not the author ofEither/Or .But we know
that in the little community of pseudonymous authors this sort of forgetful-
ness runs in the family: Indeed, Vigilius Haufniensis, too, had forgotten that
he had never heard Schelling lecture in Berlin or known Poul Martin
Møller personally.
The second of the book’s prefaces, in particular, provides a masterly
sketch of the hectic publishing and reviewing scene in provincial Copenha-