Soren Kierkegaard

vived—on top of it all in a fund-raising performance for charity!—at the
Royal Theater, where, however, the role of Søren Kirk had been changed
to “Søren Torp, theologian,” as it said in the program.The Neighbors across
the Waynow became a smash hit, with a number of performances in June
and July, and all summer long no one spoke of anything else. Everyone was
amused, with the single exception of Kierkegaard, who thought the play
sacrilege, not only because his personal vanity was wounded but also be-
cause Poul Martin Møller was held up to ridicule. The comic climax of the
piece was indeed a merciless deconstruction of Møller’s splendid patriotic
poem “Roses Already Blush in Denmark’s Garden,” which the flustered
Lieutenant von Pudding attempts to quote during a party game, but instead
becomes entangled in world-class gibberish and spoonerisms.
The situation was not improved whenThe Neighbors across the Wayleft
the Danish stage and traveled north, up to Kristiania in Norway. On De-
cember 6, 1847 Kierkegaard read about the play inFlyve-Posten, which cited
Norsk Rigstidenden, giving the following account: “Mr. Smith was somewhat
absent-minded yesterday and got totally mixed up in Søren Kierkegaardian
syllogisms.” The real Kierkegaard became furious, called Hostrup “a coward
of a poet,” and, seizing hold of the newspaper, he produced an irate sum-
mary of the course of events under the heading “Despicable Lack of Charac-
ter”: “Mr. Hostrup writes a comedy for university students....Theplay
tours all over the country, is finally presented at the Royal Theater—and
now, as I see today inFlyve-Posten—in Norway, where someone inRigs-
Tidendenas a matter of course simply calls the character who is supposed to
be me ‘Søren Kierkegaard.’ I have no doubt that in order to make the play
more interesting they even put my name right on the posters. Now, that’s
a university student comedy! And the Danish stage has thus been degraded
into beingThe Corsair!... It is really disgusting how the Danes dishonor
themselves, bending every effort so that neighboring peoples might witness
our scandal.” Despite the fact that the Norwegian “Mr. Smith” apparently
“got totally mixed up in Søren Kierkegaardian syllogisms,” he was nonethe-
less “greeted with acclamation.” Kierkegaard detected a certain inconsis-
tency in this, “for had it been myself, I would hardly have been greeted
with acclamation, but probably with a littlepereat.”
Kierkegaard’s largesse in this matter was rather small. Thin-skinned as he
was, he viewed this ignominious exposure to ridicule as the latest addition
to his series of humiliations, drawing a mental line directly fromThe Corsair
toThe Neighbors across the Way. It never occurred to him that his great
exemplar, Socrates, had stood up when Aristophanes’The Cloudswas being
performed in the theater in Athens so that the public could make sure that
it really was him, Socrates, who was being parodied on the stage. Nor did