Soren Kierkegaard

mother and celebrated her. And that was annoying, inasmuch as the coterie
is a pillar of society. And now his wife—and for safety’s sake a little wizardry
against Martensen, in order that the coterie not be too pleased with all this.”
The journal entry goes on, but a couple of explanations are needed at
this point. When Kierkegaard wrote that he had celebrated Heiberg’s
mother, he had in mind his flattering remarks about Mrs. Gyllembourg in
A Literary Review. By Heiberg’s “wife ”Kierkegaard naturally meant Jo-
hanne Luise (who would hardly have been delighted with that label), whom
he had praised to the skies inThe Crisis and a Crisis in the Life of an Actress,
which went down well with the house of Heiberg. And finally, the words
about “a little wizardry against Martensen ”refer to a quite slanderous little
passage in that same article—that is,The Crisis—in which Kierkegaard had
engaged in rough (word)play with respect to a “Senior Court Chaplain”
who was also the “City Chaplain ”or perhaps more correctly the “magnifi-
cent Senior Court Chaplain, ”all of which, according to Kierkegaard, was
a “little allusion to Martensen.”
As part of his efforts to destabilize the entire Copenhagen “coterie, ”Kier-
kegaard engaged in a tactical relationship with Grundtvig, whom neither
Mynster, Heiberg, nor Martensen could stand: “I have been successful in
maintaining a sort of high-spirited relationship with him [Grundtvig],
which very much embitters the party. ”Kierkegaard believed that he could
continue this account of his teasing little maneuvers at some length, but he
checked himself: “But it would be an unending task to catalog all these
complexities. It is true that I was born for intrigue, and it is certain that
there is a power that joins in this game and that has helped me in a very
curious way. ”The tactical triumph would have been complete if the two
captains on boardThe Corsaircould have been forced to walk the plank arm-
in-arm, but here Kierkegaard had to be cautious in celebrating his victories.
Kierkegaard did claim that “with respect the coterie of P. L. Møller and
Goldschmidt, there, too, it was my calculation to lump them together, ”but
in the margin he added a line that modified the “calculation ”so much that
one can have no doubt about the way things had actually gone: “And after
all, it is not impossible that this was to some extent successful.”
Kierkegaard—who had been stricken from “the Guard’s roll ”in 1830—
could probably have become an extraordinary military strategist, but with
respect to “the coteries ”his planning was a waste of time and trouble be-
cause no one ever noticed his cunningly conceived campaign. None of the
members of the clan mention him during the latter half of the 1840s. We
search in vain for Kierkegaard’s name in Grundtvig’s correspondence just
as in Mynster’s. Neither did Martensen give any sign that he knew Kierke-
gaard was alive; he did so only later on. Nor did the Heiberg couple indicate