Soren Kierkegaard

young theologian inThe Neighbors across the Way, Jens Christian Hostrup’s
wild comedy, originally written for university students, that Kierkegaard
had in mind. Hostrup had become a student at the university in 1837 and
was granted a three-year residency at Regensen College in May 1841. In
the autumn of 1843 the pale little undergraduate with the melancholy gaze
hid himself in his room to study for his final examinations, which he passed
laudabilison November 3 of that year. Since he still had the right to remain
resident at Regensen for another six months and had also been incautious
enough to have promised to write a comedy for the amusement of the
members of the Student Association, the recent graduate set to work on
The Neighbors across the Waywithout really knowing what the play would
be about. And in fact Hostrup was still writing the two final acts when the
first act was in rehearsal, but with “most gracious royal permission” the
piece had its premiere on Tuesday, February 20, 1844, at the Court Theater
(now the Theater Museum). The cast of characters included a Regensen
resident with the quite transparent name of Søren Kirk.
He was played by Hans Brøchner, who met the real Søren Kierkegaard
on Højbro Plads one evening as he was on his way to try out for the piece.
“Well, you are going to play me, then?” said Kierkegaard in a joking tone,
to which Brøchner, trying to smooth things over, replied that he of course
was not exactly going to playhim. According to Brøchner, with this charac-
ter Hostrup had “apparently had in mind principally the sort of dialectics
that flourished among young students after Martensen had stimulated a very
superficial interest in philosophy.” Brøchner had therefore found it com-
pletely defensible to accept the role, and when they parted on Højbro Plads
he had not had the impression that Kierkegaard had been particularly af-
fected by Hostrup’s “joke.” Brøchner would never have dreamt of copying
Kierkegaard or of “presenting him in a comic light”: “I was too devoted to
him for that—and much too poor an actor.”
Like the author of the play, the Søren Kirk inThe Neighbors across the
Waywas both a theology student and a Regensen resident. In the fifth scene
of the first act there is a general meeting in one of the rooms at Regensen,
where the young people discuss to what use they should put their large
cash balance, and Søren Kirk comes forward with the following suggestion:
“Gentlemen, there are two ways in which we could use our wealth. Either
we could be noble-spirited and make other people happy, or we could be
ignoble-spirited and make ourselves happy. If we want to be noble-spirited
and make others happy, we could either send money to the Swedes who
have been burned or to the Jutlanders who have been drowned. Here enters
an either/or; these two suggestions are really related to each other like fire
and water. With one alternative, we cast the money into the fire, with the