Soren Kierkegaard

of literature and permit ourselves to express the hope that the book will sell
many copies and have many readers.” This mention was slightly subdued
in tone, but Kierkegaard smelled a rat and immediately took stock of the
situation: “[The Corsair] did not want to abuse me, because it does, after all,
have a notion of what is unseemly. It did not want to utter high praise
because, after all, it has the notion that in my view this would in fact be
an insult. So it has chosen a third alternative: an appreciative, businesslike
approach. But it won’t work, I want to be on bad terms with it.”
Shortly after this Kierkegaard and Goldschmidt ran into one another in
Møntergade where, according to Goldschmidt, Kierkegaard “walked past
me with an intense and extremely embittered look, without wanting either
to greet me or to be greeted....Ifelt accused and oppressed:The Corsair
had triumphed in the battle, yet I myself had acquired a false number one.
But my spirit felt yet another protest arise at that burden-filled moment: I
was not the sort of person to be looked down upon, and I could prove it.
Walking through the streets, and before I reached home, I arrived at a firm
decision to give upThe Corsair. When I announced it at home they said,
‘Thank God!’—so happy, but only a little surprised, as if they had known
about the matter before I did.”
Even though the conflict with Kierkegaard obviously contributed to
Goldschmidt’s decision to get rid ofThe Corsair, it did not take place until
half a year later, probably sometime in October, when he transferred the
satanic enterprise to the xylographer Flinch for fifteen hundred rixdollars.
On March 6, under the heading “The Great Philosopher,” one could read
an apology to the aforementioned Nathanson, whom the editors had erron-
eously assumed to be the man behind the pseudonymous works. With tire-
some relentlessness the article ironizes about Kierkegaard’s refusal to be ei-
ther criticized or praised by anyone—with the exception of Bishop
Mynster, who on the other hand had been granted “a monopoly on praising
him.” The text is accompanied by two caricatures. One of these shows
Kierkegaard in the act of presenting a book to a thankful, kneeling man.
The other caricature depicts him as a round-shouldered yet rather upright
figure, situated on a cloud and surrounded by a heavenly nimbus; he is
located at the center of the universe and around him orbit the Round
Tower, the Church of Our Lady, boots, bottles, pipes, books, the sun,
moon, stars, and many other things. The April 3 issue included a couple of
comic drawings of a dogged reader, who is attempting in vain to read the
Postscript, plus a catalog of “ornamental dahlias,” in which the third of the
nine flowers described offers “ ‘Beauty of Kierkegaard,’ biscuit-colored, ex-
cellent structure with two unequal stems beneath, brilliant and impressive