pseudonymous,becausemypersonalitydoesnotmeasureuptoit.”Regard-
less of where one situates Kierkegaard along this stretch of the river, the
pseudonymity was motivated more by personal than by maieutic considera-
tions: Here it is not a question of the reader, but of Kierkegaard. This is
made more than clear in a commentary toPractice in Christianity, where he
formulated the relationship between the writing and the writer as follows:
“In the present work, the requirements of ideality are placed so high that
they include a judgment upon my own existence....Therefore it is a
pseudonym who speaks and who dares, with the freedom ofthe poetic,to
say everything—and to say everything as it is.”
Kierkegaard continually adjusted his writings so that they corresponded
as precisely as possible to his own position. Writings that were supposed to
have been published in his own name were changed at the last moment—
sometimes on the manuscript given to the printer—into pseudonymous
writings.Practice, which was originally subtitled “A Friendly Address to
These Times. By S. Kierkegaard,” thus ended up with Anti-Climacus on
the title page, because Kierkegaard’s own “existence” did not live up to the
radical Christian requirements in the work. When he revised the work with
the intention of publishing it pseudonymously, Kierkegaard quite charac-
teristically wrote: “N.B. Cannot be used, because the book is of course by
a pseudonym, and here it is as though I myself were the author.” And he
was and remained an author, despite the many de-authorizing protestations
oftutelageinsistedoninthecorrectionshemadeindeferencetotheauthor-
ity he very authoritatively told himself he did not possess: “N.B., N.B.,
N.B. What a hypochondriacal oddity I am! Today I took out my most
recent work to see if it was true that too much had been said. And there it
was, already written on it: Poetical, without authority.”
The Poet of Martyrdom: The Martyrdom of the Poet
Whenone strugglesthrough thehundreds ofjournal entriesin whichKierke-
gaard monomaniacally brooded on violence and victimhood, one sometimes
gets the feeling that his project was about to become seamlessly self-
enclosed, with no connection whatever to reality—not only to the much-
celebrated realityout there, but also to juridical reality. Since the ratification
of the Constitution of 1849, which was very latitudinarian in religious re-
spects, citizens were allowed to worship God in accordance with their con-
victions, as long as the latter did not conflict with propriety and public
order.