that God has approved of it and has helped me in every way. I thank him
again and again for having done infinitely more for me than I had ex-
pected. ”Thus Kierkegaard first examined himself from a solely psychologi-
cal point of view: By means of his writing he had succeeded in keeping the
suffering at some remove from his life. To produce was to divert oneself,
to lose oneself, to have infinitely muchunderoneself, and the writings were
an impressive act of repression, a diversionary tactic, displacement on a
grand scale. God had approved of it by protecting the melancholia. “But
now God wants things otherwise, ”Kierkegaard’s entry continues, “some-
thing is stirring within me that indicates a metamorphosis....Therefore I
must now remain quiet, by no means work too strenuously, indeed, hardly
strenuously at all, not begin any new book but try to come to myself and
truly think the idea of my melancholia together with God, right here and now.In
this way my melancholia may be abolished andChristianity may come closer
to me. Until now I have protected myself against my melancholia with intel-
lectual labor that keeps it at bay. Now I must try to... forget it myself,
though not through distraction, not by distancing myself from it, but in
God,... and in that way I myself must learn to dare forget it in forgiveness.”
Here Kierkegaard indicated his position (or rather heabdicatedhis defen-
sive position) and came close to living up to the great challenge contained
inThe Sickness unto Death: becoming transparent to oneself. Melancholia
was without doubt a suffering, but it was not merely a psychosomatic abnor-
mality, it was despair, which he must abandon. Kierkegaard had to die away
from the dearest thing he possessed. And then he had to believe that his
melancholia and his despair had been forgiven.
Truly.
“The Poetry of Eternity”
“I don’t know if at this moment I could manage to get one of my books to
sell out, but surely I could have done so before I began to embitter people.”
These lines are the beginning of a lengthy journal entry about the unfortu-
nate lack of fit between a book’s quality and its sales prospects: The better
a book is, the fewer readers it will have. And Kierkegaard knew just what
was needed: “A couple of flattering words to this person and to that one,
just one-half or one-tenth of the other things an author must do to get his
books to sell, and they would have sold out. ”If it had been J. L. Heiberg,
the elegant head of the Royal Theater, who lived out in Christianshavn—
ifhehad published some edifying discourses, they would moved very
quickly. The book would have been an exclusive, gilt-edged edition, com-