Soren Kierkegaard

events of recent months that overturned everything,” and in this context
he emphasized the following: “During this catastrophe I sat reading the
page proofs of a book that had of course been written earlier....Iexperi-
enced the triumph of not having had to modify or change the least little bit
of it. Indeed, the triumph was that what I had written earlier, were it to be
read now, would be much, much better understood than when it had been
written.” The reader might ask, just what is he getting at here?
What Kierkegaard had in mind was abiographicalreading of hisChristian
Discourses, a reading that linked the written words to Kierkegaard himself.
This was the thought that gave rise to his feelings of triumph and thus to
his unending worries. For the intimate connection between life and writ-
ings—to publish is to make the public assertion that one isoneselfwhat has
been written—is what forced him to consider whether he was to write
leniently or strictly. At first he saw it as his task “to be as lenient as possible,”
but in the very next journal entry he put forward precisely the opposite
point of view: “But no, no, no, no. I had almost failed to appreciate how
Governance had added what I needed to the third part. But the thing is, I
wanted to be a little clever, I wanted to arrange something myself....
Without the third part,Christian Discoursesis much too lenient, untrue to
my character; it is lenient enough anyway.”
Thus it was the third part ofChristian Discoursesthat had been the particu-
lar focus of concern, and within this part, consisting of seven finely sculpted
discourses, some still bearing visible traces of pietism, it was surely the sec-
ond discourse that was the cause of greatest concern, because it was there
that Kierkegaard had emphasized that a Christian must turn his back on the
world so definitively that even matters of importance to the nation must
give way. This is illustrated by the case of Saint Peter, who is held up as an
example for every Christian to follow: “He abandonedthe faith of his fathers,
and thusthe people to whom he belonged, the land of his birth, whose love binds
with the strongest bonds. Because now he no longer belonged to any people,
he belonged only to the Lord Jesus.... Inlove of Christ or in hatred of
the world he left everything, his station in life, his livelihood, family, friends,
human language, love of mother and father, love of fatherland.”
The danger was right here, for in this negative definition of the national
cause the discourse risked placing its author on the front line. Thus Kierke-
gaard did indeed fear that the book’s publication would have catastrophic
consequences. Many things hinted at this possibility. Just under a month
beforeChristian Discourseswas published, Kierkegaard interpreted it as a
meaningful portent that he had “chanced” to read a sermon by Mynster,
“and look, it was about Nicodemus.” Nicodemus was the Pharisee who
did not dare to visit Christ in the daytime but went to him by night so that