Soren Kierkegaard

to in his journals—because there he is writing in his own name—is pre-
sented much more directly in the pseudonymous writings. As has been sug-
gested, Kierkegaard’s indignant reaction to critical reviews was due not
merely to wounded vanity but also to the fact that his writings have, among
other things, a self-revelatory character. He wrote at incredibly close range
about what concerned him most intimately, and in so doing he also emptied
himself. Displaying a refreshing honesty, in 1847 he wrote: “For many years
my melancholia has had the effect of preventing me from being able to say
‘thou’ to myself in the deepest sense. An entire world of fantasy lay between
my melancholia and my ‘thou.’ This is what I have to some extent emptied
into the pseudonyms.”
From now on there were, so to speak, no longer any productive crises
about which he could write, and Kierkegaard had already had to repeat
himself a couple of times:Writing SamplesrepeatedPrefaces, and the theme
ofStages on Life’s Wayrepeated that ofRepetitionwhile its structure was like
that ofEither/Or—though perhaps not quite as successful. Another of the
“motifs” that Kierkegaard had plans to develop consisted of a sort of intensi-
fication of the aesthetic: “The sequel to ‘The Seducer’s Diary’ must be in
the realm of the piquant, his relationship to a young married woman.”
Kierkegaard in fact sketched a sort of title page: “The Seducer’s Diary /
No.2/AnEssay in the Demonic / by / Johannes Mephistopheles.” But
soon afterward, the theme presented itself from an entirely new angle: “I
might like to write a counterpart to ‘The Seducer’s Diary.’ It would have
a female character: ‘The Courtesan’s Diary.’ It would be worth the trouble
to depict such a figure.” It certainly would have been, but Kierkegaard
knew very well that he had used up his erotic quota, and he thus made this
emphatic note in the margin: “N.B. That is what the age wants, to swoon
before what is vile and then to imagine that it is superior. It won’t get that
from me.”
Kierkegaard had to look around for new material, await an impulse. And
he received both in abundance from an entirely unexpected quarter.