Soren Kierkegaard

Kierkegaard provides a series of colorful descriptions of this sort of au-
thor—“the premise author”—and gradually it becomes clear that his inter-
est in Adler is deeply rooted in a complex of psychosomatic problems. One
of the descriptions is a little demonstration of Kierkegaard’s mastery as a
presenter of fully rounded figures, and it is fascinatingly wicked in its par-
ody: “As a person living in a rural district gives himself over completely to
himself and to the indefinite destinations of his ramblings, now infatuated
with one impression, then with another; now making a little hop of delight,
then a long jump for the sake of amusement; now he stands still, pondering,
then he is really profound; and next he is rather tasteless and insipid: This
is how Adler saunters about in reading the Bible.” Soon after this the scene
shifts from a rural idyll to an apartment that justmightbe Kierkegaard’s
own place. Even though he conceals his personal knowledge of Adler for
technical reasons—“utterly renouncing any private view of Magister Adler,
concerning whom I indeed have no information”—the following account
clearly draws on the incident in which Adler varied his tone of voice when
he had been foolish enough to call upon Kierkegaard at home: “For that
matter, it would be quite in keeping if Adler, like magicians and sorcerers,
were to recommend and prescribe certain ceremonies: that one should get
up at the stroke of midnight; then walk around the parlor three times; then
take out the book and open it up;...then read the particular passage, first
in a soft voice, then let one’s voice rise to its highest volume, and then again
downward... until the voice becomes quite soft; then walk around the
room making a figure eight seven times—and then see if there is not some-
thing in the passage.” The same situation recurs in a more expanded form
in which Kierkegaard abandons his description of the fantastic in order to
open a more pathological perspective: “One cannot help but think of Adler,
pacing the floor and continually repeating the same single sentence, perhaps
encouraging the fantasy effect by gesticulating and changing his voice, until
he has bewitched himself into a sort of intoxication, so that he senses a
strange, solemn whispering in his ears. But this is not thinking. If a man
wanted to put himself in a solemn mood and then pace the floor while
saying: 7–14–21; 7–14–21; 7–14–21, this monotonous repetition would
function as a magic formula; it would function the way strong drink does
on the neurasthenic. It would seem to him as if he had come into contact
with something extraordinary. And if someone else to whom he communi-
cated his wisdom were to say to him: ‘But what is it about this 7–14–21?’—
he would probably reply, ‘It depends on the voice in which you say it, that
you continue saying it for a whole hour, and that you gesticulate while
doing so—then you will certainly find that there is something to it.’ ”