Soren Kierkegaard

Kierkegaard was not satisfied with these lines, however, and therefore
wrote another draft that was more sympathetic and gentler in tone. He
regretted that in his last letter Nielsen had deprived him of “the opportunity
to be what I am, burdening me with seeming to be what I am not.” But
Kierkegaard did admit plainly that in their last conversation, when he had
introduced the matter that concerned him “a little clumsily, perhaps offen-
sively,” he had done so with the expectation that they would see each other
the following Thursday and pick up where they had left off. But if there
was a little opening here, Kierkegaard quickly closed it by labeling Nielsen’s
most recent note bizarre and then going on to explain in detail how it could
have been done more felicitously.
Nor did this draft suffice. Kierkegaard made change after change, and
then—in the last and shortest of the seven drafts—he regretted the sudden
interruption of their Thursday walks, which was now, in more diplomatic
fashion, attributed to a “misunderstanding.”Kierkegaard noted that he, too,
did not want their meetings to be forced into a rigid framework: “Let it
depend upon chance and inclination; after all, I am not so difficult to find.”
And, amazingly enough, this draft—the last of the series—concluded with
these words: “My proposal is...that we meet tomorrow at the usual time
and place in order to see where we stand.” On the upper margin of the
letter, Kierkegaard noted that it had actually been sent, though it is not
certain exactly when, apart from the fact that it was on a “Tuesday.” Niel-
sen’s reply was also undated, but had the heading “Thursday”: “Dear Mr.
Magister! Let me thank you. Oh, let me thank you, for having been willing
to call upon me. I will arrive soon—in silence—for I have noticed that with
you a person must be very quiet in order to be able truly to hear what you
say. Yours, R. Nielsen.”
Thereissomethingapproachingthesweetnessofinfatuationinthisfeeble
reconciliation, but when the two men met at the agreed place on Wednes-
day, April 30, the intimacy had vanished. “I told him that I wanted a freer
relationship,” the journal reports drily. And that was that: “It is a good thing
that it happened. I bear no grudge against him, not in the least, and I am
very willing to involve myself with him again, though it would scarcely be
of any service to me, because his sensual robustness is a poor match for
my scrupulosity. He has grown, but there is still something of the assistant
professor about him.” In his journals during the years that followed, Kier-
kegaard often reverted to “the Nielsen business,” as he called the problem,
but as time passed, his accounts of the relationship’s development and de-
cline became no more nuanced. Again and again, he wrote that he had
established the connection with Nielsen because he had believed it his reli-
gious duty to do so, but that Nielsen had been a disappointment and had