Soren Kierkegaard

flyvende Post[commonly known asFlyveposten, published by J. L. Heiberg,
1827–37; not to be confused withFlyve-Posten, an unrelated newspaper
published 1845–70] on December 4, 1834. A couple of weeks later, on
December 17, Kierkegaard, writing in the same newspaper under the
pseudonym “A,” continued the debate on this question with “Another De-
fense of Women’s Great Abilities,” in which he took exception to the cheap
irony that had characterized P. E. Lind’s attack on women’s intellectual
limitations. Kierkegaard’s piece thus elevated ironizing about the excellence
of women to a higher power. “Hardly was man created before we find Eve
as an auditor of the serpent’s philosophical lectures,” he wrote, pouncing
with a special panache that was typical of the style of the times—typical,
that is, of Heiberg’s style. But in other respects Kierkegaard’s piece was not
much more than a silly literary exercise by a young university student who
wanted to make merry and, not least, to make a name for himself. This
bagatelle is worthy of interest only because it was Kierkegaard’s literary
debut—and also because it was published while Petrea Severine lay in child-
bed with only a couple of weeks left to live.
Whether it was attributable to the cynicism that always accompanies great
self-absorption, or whether it should be chalked up to a devil-may-care
repression mechanism, it is in any case striking that Søren Aabye did not
seem to permit himself to be moved noticeably by the tragedies that were
playing themselves out in his immediate vicinity. Thus, on September 12,
1834, a bit more than a month after his mother’s death, he made an interim
report on the results of a rather unusual study that had apparently been in
progress for quite some time: “I am surprised that no one (as far as I know)
has ever treatedthe idea of the master thief, an idea that is certainly very well
suited for dramatic treatment.” His study is not about “one or another actual
thief,” he explains; living next door to the courthouse apparently had its
effect on Søren Aabye, and we learn that he familiarized himself with such
obscure reading matter as theArchives of Danish and Norwegian Crime Stories
and an article quite strikingly titled “Psychological Observations concerning
the Murderer Søren Andersen Kagerup, Executed with a Poleax.” His li-
brary also included all seven volumes of F. M. Lange’sSelected Danish and
Foreign Criminal Cases and Noteworthy Legal Proceedings concerning Criminal
Cases. However, these reports of petty larceny committed by deaf-mutes
and murders by poisoning carried out by millers ’widows were less interest-
ing than the question of a criminal’s psychological makeup, and it is clear
from half a score of journal entries containing sketches related to the idea
of the “master thief ” that such a thief would be compelled to use all his
ingenuity and savoir faire in order to strike a nice balance between criminal
activity and large-scale generosity, all the while living for an “idea.” The