bearing; unexcelled in every respect; the play of colors on the stem is partic-
ularly fine.”
Even thoughThe Corsairsporadically directed barbed words and images
at Kierkegaard until as late as 1855, the most offensive material culminated
in 1846. The wit (or perhaps the lack of same) petered out that summer,
with Kierkegaard mentioned in an article entitled “Hercules” that appeared
in the issue of July 17. The wheel had come full circle. In 1845 it had
of course been that very title, “Hercules,” under which Kierkegaard had
imagined that Grundtvig might be portrayed—ironically enough.
Møller’s Postscript to Kierkegaard’sPostscript
Another, slightly smaller, though no less significant wheel had also come
full circle. Just as the fracas began with Møller’s review of “ ‘Guilty?’/‘Not
Guilty?,’ ” it ended with yet another review, also by Møller. In two issues
ofKjøbenhavnspostenthat came out in the latter part of March 1846, Møller,
under the pseudonym “Prosper naturalis de molinasky,” reviewed thePost-
script, which had been published a month earlier. If his first review had been
suicidal overkill, this review is best seen as a broken man’s farewell not
merely to Kierkegaard, but also to any hope of academic respectability. It
is no wonder that hatred practically oozes from his pen.
The review consists of more or less parodic paraphrases and bizarrely
juxtaposed passages from thePostscript, which Møller misreads shamelessly,
producing a version that bears the marks of his masterful talent for imitation.
Just when he seems to be trying hard to produce an objective exposition of
the book’s presentation of the dialectic between the historical and nonhis-
torical elements in Christianity, Møller can suddenly rush to the reader’s
rescue with an overly pedagogical explanation that includes a vile allusion
to Kierkegaard’s rather notorious style of walking: “For the person who
does not understand the words ‘dialectical’ and ‘dialectic,’ the meaning can
be specified as a zigzag movement—what sailors call ‘tacking’—toward an
end point that undialectical people could reach by following a straight line.”
Møller was vile, but he was more than that. He was also an expert critic
whose ability to caricature was attributable to an ear perfectly attuned to the
text and to any false notes the text might contain. He was the first to notice
Kierkegaard’s unfortunate tendency to lump together the most impossibly
varied sorts of things under the label “aesthetic”: “The person who aspires
to dialectical bliss must be concerned only for himself, must emancipate
himself from all so-called civic and human obligations, all personal feelings,
et cetera, which are nothing but the ‘aesthetic.’ ” Møller was perhaps only