in Heaven, consider carefully whether you dare become involved in this,
and if so, whether you wish to speak with me at once or prefer to exchange
some letters first. If your answer is no—well then, for Heaven’s sake, bear
in mind that I have at any rate taken this step.
In any case, I remain your—
as in the beginning until this final point—
sincere and entirely devoted
S.K.”This rather long, drawn-out conclusion practically appears to be petrified
prose, frozen in formality, but in reality it is almost the opposite of this: It
is intimate, and the words have been chosen with extreme care, for with a
fewvariantsitisarepetitionoftheconclusionwithwhichMichaelPedersen
Kierkegaard ended his letter to Søren Aabye, who in the summer of 1835
had stayed at Gilleleje in order, if possible, to find himself. Now, many
years later, Kierkegaard unsealed his lips and composed a sealed letter in
order, if possible, to find himself with respect to a married woman from
whom he could not wrest himself free. By looking at the sequence of drafts
we can see how he systematically tried to rid the letter of the sensuality that
almost physically dripped from his pen whenever he thought of Regine.
Thus in the first draft, several pages in length, he wrote: “Thank you, oh,
thank you!Thank you for everything I owe to you; thank you for the time you
were mine; thank you for your childlike qualities, from which I learned so
much—you my charming teacher, you my lovely teacher. You lovely lily,
you, my teacher. You ethereal bird, you, my teacher.” When we bear in
mind that Kierkegaard elsewhere insisted that he only had two teachers,
Christ and Socrates, Regine had no reason to feel shortchanged.
The episode with the sealed letter makes it clear that even eight years
after the end of the engagement, Kierkegaard was still almost obsessed with
Regine, but that he also feared her nature, her passion, her body. Again
and again, even if in slightly concealed fashion, we find formulations in
Kierkegaard’s journals that depict Regine as a being full of erotic energy.
Here is an example from one of the drafts of the sealed letter intended for
Regine: “You were the beloved, the only beloved. You were most beloved
when I had to leave you, even if you saddened me somewhat with your
vehemence, which was neither able nor willing to understand anything.”
And later, in yet another draft: “For this reason as well, if you wish to speak
with me, I intend to give you a serious dressing-down because in your
passion you once went beyond a certain boundary.”
What boundary, weare tempted to ask. And whatexperiences lay behind
a statement like this: “With respect to ‘her,’ I am, as always, ready and
willing—only, even more fervently, if possible—to do everything that