Soren Kierkegaard

exchange is to take placeorally, then I stipulate that you be present during
every conversation.”
It is not unreasonable to ask what Kierkegaard really had in mind. Did
he really, seriously think that the office director was going to sit down and
censor his letters and also put his signature on the letters Regine might write
to Kierkegaard? And the idea that Schlegel would witness conversations
between his former rival and his present wife is if anything even more ab-
surd. For what would they talk about? Nothing in the world. They would
have to talk in circumlocutions the whole time, and in the quiet rooms it
would soon have been possible to hear one pin dropping after another. In
short, it is not the least bit puzzling that Schlegel said “No, thank you” to
the suggestion that he open his door to Kierkegaard as a platonic friend of
the family.
But Kierkegaard was more than puzzled, and when the sealed letter was
returned to him two days later, on November 21, he caustically noted that
the “Esteemed Sir” had enclosed an “indignant, moralizing note.” Kierke-
gaardscarcelyfinishedreadingitbeforehefedittoanearbyflickeringflame.
He later wrote that Schlegel had “become infuriated and would in no way
‘tolerate any interference by someone else in the relationship between him-
self and his wife.’ ”
Thus we do not know the contents of Schlegel’s letter. Nor do we know
what “information” Kierkegaard had intended for Regine, information she
would now be spared—or perhaps cheated out of. But here, once again,
there are quite a number of surviving drafts, the last of which is probably
not so different from what was in the sealed letter, which in turn was proba-
bly not so different from the intimate confidences Kierkegaard generally
removed from his journals. If we expected to find an unambiguous elucida-
tion of their relationship, however, we are disappointed, because the draft
of letter reads: “Cruel was I, that is true. Why? Well, that is somethingyou
don’t know. Silent I have been, that is certain. Only God knows what I
have suffered—may God grant that when I speak, even now, it is not too
soon! Marry I could not. Even if you were still free, I could not. You have
loved me, however, as I have loved you. I owe a great deal to you—and
now you are married. Well then, for the second time I offer you what I can
and dare and ought offer you: reconciliation.” At this point Kierkegaard
hadatfirst written“mylove,that is,aloveoffriendship,” implicitly“recon-
ciliation”; this had apparently been too vehement, so he then shortened the
formulation simply to “my friendship”; but this was still too emotional and
was therefore changed to the rather contractual-sounding term “reconcilia-
tion.” Kierkegaard continued: “I am doing this in writing in order not to
surprise or overwhelm you. At one time my personality did perhaps have
too strong an effect; that must not happen again. But for the sake of God