could make her happy or cheer her up. But I always fear her passion. I am
the guarantor of her marriage. If she understands my true situation, perhaps
she will suddenly lose her taste for marriage. Alas, I know her all too well.”
What was it that Kierkegaard knew all too well—indeed, so well that he
shrank from telling the reader what it was? And why did he fear that Regine
could “lose her taste for marriage”? Might not the truth in fact be that
Kierkegaard had had to write Judge William’s lengthy defenses of the aes-
thetic validity of marriage in order to convince an unbelieving and furious
Regine that the institution of marriage made sensedespite everything?
In any case, the unfathomable quality of her passion is such a recurrent
theme in Kierkegaard’s journals that there must be profoundly frightening
experiences behind it. In 1849, for example, he wrote: “Perhaps even the
entire marriage is a mask, and she is more passionately attached to me than
before. In that case, all would be lost. I know well what she is capable of
when she gets hold of me.” It was not a seducer who spoke like this. It was
more likely someone seduced, who was afraid that the seduction would be
repeated and would be even more tempestuous the second time than it had
been the first: “So assume that the passion is ignited once more and that we
have the old story, raised to a higher intensity. Assume that she bursts the
bonds of marriage, that she kicks over the traces and casts herself upon me
in desperation, that she wants a separation, wants me to marry her—not to
mention that which is even more frightful.”
We dare assume that here, once again, Kierkegaard was wallowing in
cares that might better have been saved for worse times and better purposes.
Only in an overwrought fantasy would it have been possible to imagine
that Regine could suddenly demand a separation from her considerate Fritz,
who had rescued her reputation and provided her with financial security.
On the other hand, the thoughts Kierkegaard had about the possible conse-
quences are noteworthy because they appear to confirm—quite genu-
inely—that the classical codes of sexual conduct had been reversed: Regine
wasfulloferoticenergylikesomesortofDonGiovanni,whileSørenAabye
shrank away and felt himself pursued. Like some sort of Zerlina, who wants
and yet doesn’t want “that which is even more frightful.”
“Come Again Another Time”
He had been sitting in the anteroom for quite a while, but Bishop Mynster
kept him waiting. It was not the first time. Three weeks earlier—in the
beginning of June 1849—he had sat and waited just like this, and when he
had finally been permitted to enter, Bishop Mynster had paced nervously