Soren Kierkegaard

that accompanied his younger brother’s efforts to find “that single individ-
ual”: “He indeed seems to be on the point of gaining adherents who admire
his instructions about sticking to life and not to theory, and who out of
sheer admiration clearly do notdowhat is required, butwriteabout it. And
even now we can detect the harbingers of these strange views, held by
people who make life’s protest against theory into a new theory.” These
wordssentafriendlyshotacrossthebows toRasmusNielsen,P.M.Stilling,
Magnus Eiriksson, and H. H.—and the first and the last of these were even
mentioned by name!
Søren Aabye suspected nothing of this attack, which only came to his
attention when Peter Christian paid him a visit in early December 1849.
Peter Christian furthermore led him to believe that he had fired his salvos
at Rasmus Nielsen and at a strange little book—by “a certain H. H.”—
whose actual author was unknown to him. Søren Aabye was then com-
pelled to remark soberly, “H. H. is myself.” Peter Christian was naturally
somewhat taken aback by this, but after a painful interval the two brothers
did manage to talk a little about the book. “Then Peter said, ‘Well, there
isn’t much point in our talking about it any more now, because first I have
to write up the talk.’ So he wrote up the talk.”
So he wrote up the talk, or rather, a summary of it. And he had to hurry
if it was to appear, as scheduled, in the next issue of theDanish Church Times,
which was published on December 16. Søren Aabye immediately read his
brother’s account of the talk; he was deeply pained by it and said as much
in a letter to Peter Christian. He did not want to go into details, but merely
to insist in a general way that if he absolutelyhad to becompared with Mar-
tensen, such a comparison ought to note that while Kierkegaard, in being
an author, “had sacrificed to an extraordinary degree,” Martensen, on the
other hand, had “profited to an extraordinary degree.” Next, it should have
been pointed out that Martensen “has nothing primal or original, but per-
mits himself simply to appropriate the whole of German scholarship as his
own.” Finally, the notorious comment about “the ecstatic” either ought to
havebeenomittedentirelyormodifiedsothatitappliedatmostto“acouple
of my pseudonyms”—but under no circumstances to Kierkegaard asan “au-
thor of edifying discourses.” The letter is undated, presumably because it
was never mailed. Nor was the “Protest” he intended to send to theDanish
Church Times. In this latter note Kierkegaard requested that he not be con-
fused with his pseudonyms, which was exactly what the reviewer—“the
Grundtvigian known for his unusual competence, Pastor, Lic. Theol.Kier-
kegaard”—had done. The tone is muted, academic, almost subdued.
It would be difficult, however, to apply those same adjectives to a larger
sketch done at about this time, titled “Dr. Kierkegaard’s Half-Hour Lecture