Soren Kierkegaard

member the smile with which Kierkegaard told me that he had replied to
Adler that he was completely satisfied with the position that Adler had as-
signed him: He found it a very respectable function to be a John the Baptist
and had no aspirations to be a Messiah. During this same visit, Adler read
aloud a large portion of his work to Kierkegaard; some of it he read in his
ordinary voice, the rest in a strange whisper. Kierkegaard permitted himself
to remark that he could not find any new revelation in Adler’s work, to
which Adler replied: ‘Then I will come to you again this evening and read
all of it to you inthisvoice (the whisper), and then you shall see, it will
become clear to you.’ When he told me the story, Kierkegaard was much
amused by this conviction of Adler’s that the variation in his voice could
give the writings greater significance.”
Others were less amused. Because of a number of heretical (and in places
very eccentric) pronouncements inSome Sermonsand inStudies, which also
appeared in 1843, Adler had in fact incurred the disapprobation of the eccle-
siastical authorities. Bishop Mynster was drawn into the matter quite early
on, and on August 12, 1843, he was compelled to report to the government:
“As for the aforementioned sermons, it becomes clear as early as the preface
that the author is at present mentally ill, and unfortunately the entire book
supports this judgment. From the remnants of several philosophical studies
and some loose theological reading the author has compounded several sen-
tences that he repeats again and again.” Mynster wished to proceed le-
niently, however, emphasizing that the mental illness was perhaps only of
a temporary nature: “Magister Adler is still only in a state of so-calledide ́es
fixes, and in every other respect he speaks and acts entirely reasonably. Sev-
eral days before the book came out I myself had a lengthy conversation
with him on a variety of subjects without noticing any confusion.” Dean
F. L. Steenberg of Bornholm adopted a similar, relatively tolerant attitude,
and in a letter to Bishop Mynster dated September 8, 1843, he reported
that Adler’s “mental state is completely unchanged,” which meant that in
his daily routine he did not show “the least trace of mental illness.” When
he preached, on the other hand, he did display such symptoms, with his
“delivery” generally “quite intense and his gaze as wild as a madman’s; but
the moment he leaves the pulpit he becomes entirely calm, appearing gentle
and friendly to everyone and speaking entirely reasonably.”
Dean Steenberg asked Adler to answer four questions. First, he asked him
if he could acknowledge that he had been in “an unbalanced and confused
mental state” when he wrote the works in question. Second, whether he
could comprehend that it was “fanatical and wrong to expect and to follow
such supposedly external revelations.” Third, whether he would admit that
his works contained “many false propositions that deviated from Christian