aside in passages that emphasize that his father was the best and most loving
offathers—asinthisjournalentryfromJune9,1847,wheretheparentheses
are quite literally present: “(Merciful God, alas, how my father, in his mel-
ancholia,haswrongedmequiteterribly—anoldmanplacestheentirebur-
den of his melancholia on a poor child, to say nothing of what was even
moredreadful,and yet,forallthat, hewasthebestof fathers.)”Anundated
entry a bit later in the same journal: “Here is the difficulty of my own life.
I was raised by an old man in an enormously strict Christianity; therefore
my life seems terribly confused to me; therefore I have been brought into
collisions that no one thinks about, much less talks about.” The following
year, when the son composed the manuscript ofThe Point of View for My
Work as an Author, the relationship was given its official literary form: “As
achildIwasstrictlyandseriouslyraisedinChristianity—humanlyspeaking,
raised insanely. Even in earliest childhood I overtaxed myself with notions
placed upon me by the melancholy old man, himself already crushed by
them—a child quite insanely disguised as a melancholy old man. Frightful!
No wonder, then, that there were times when Christianity seemed to me
the most inhuman sort of cruelty, although I never abandoned my venera-
tion for it, even when I was furthest fro mit. I was fir mly convinced—
especiallyifImyselfdidnotchoosetobecomeaChristian—nevertoinitiate
anyone into the difficulties with which I was familiar and which I never
saw discussed, either in conversation or in writing.” The following year
the journals contain this anticipation of Freud: “It is frightful to see the
thoughtlessness, indifference, and self-confidence with which children are
brought up. Andyet every person isessentially what he willbecome by the
time he is ten years old. And yet you will find that almost all bear damage
fromtheirchildhoodthattheycannot overcomeevenwhentheyattainthe
ageofseventy.Andeveryunfortunateidiosyncrasytendstostemfromsome
erroneous impression received in childhood. O, what a sad joke on the
human race—Governance has equipped almost every child so generously
because Governance could foresee what was in store for the child: to be
brought up by ‘parents,’ that is, to be warped and bungled to the greatest
extent humanly possible.”
Kierkegaard certainly knew what he was talking about, but for the time
beinghe didn’ttalk aboutwhat heknew.We searchhis journalsin vainfor
concrete details of his father’s overweening assaults, but this does not mean
that they have simply disappeared from the story. Indeed, the contrary is
true: Through his traumatic assaults, the father endowed the boy with a
fund of artistic capital that the son managed brilliantly, investing it in his
pseudonymous writings.Soifwewanthimtosurrenderhissecrets—thegrue-16 {1813–1834}