Soren Kierkegaard

piece explaining his views in more detail. “Naturally, I did not discuss it
any further, since these were delicate matters, and I prefer to let everyone
write what he wants to write, reserving for myself the right to do the same.
It will become unpleasant if he visits me more frequently.”
B. S. Ingemann, who was usually able to maintain friendly relations with
just about everyone, could no longer contain his indignation, and on Janu-
ary 15 he wrote to Jens Paludan-Mu ̈ller that his piece had been a much-
needed “defense of Mynster’s reputation against the master sophist of our
Athens.” Ingemann continued: “As far as Søren Sophist is concerned, I have
never believed that the truth was in him; with his brilliant dialectics, he has
always seemed to me to be a sleight-of-hand artist who plays hocus-pocus
with the truth and with Christianity, letting it appear and disappear under
his shells. Meanwhile, he plays first Simeon Stylites, then Mephistopheles,
and is himself fundamentally a hollow character, who has in a way sold
both his heart and his reason for a double portion of brilliant wit—without,
however, having had the sense to conceal the hollowness from which a
boundless vanity, pride, an unloving spirit, and great many other sorts of
wretchedness constantly peer forth.” That same day, January 15,Fædrelandet
carried an article by Archdeacon Tryde—“Has Dr. Søren Kierkegaard Per-
formed a Good Deed in Protesting against Calling Bishop Mynster a Wit-
ness to the Truth?”—which investigated the conflict in thoughtful theolog-
ical fashion, though it ended by taking Mynster’s side.
A little less than a week after his first contribution to the debate, Nielsen
published a second, quite brief article that he titled “To the Honorable
Right Reverend bishop Martensen: A Question.” Summoning up all his
diplomatic ingenuity, Nielsen asked that the bishop affirm that Kierke-
gaard’s protest had been a good deed: “On behalf of the Church, do you
find it appropriate that my view will remain standing, unopposed, as a coun-
terpart to your own, until further notice, or is it your judgment that my
view must immediately be rejected as unfounded, so that, for the sake of
the peace of the Church, your verdict can be confirmed as infallible and
irrevocable?” Nielsen never received a reply. But a couple of days later
Berlingske Tidenderan an announcement from an unknown “X,” who noted
with curt astringency that “Since, under the present circumstances,any sort
of reply to such an untimely and unwarranted question would merely seem
to pour oil on the flames, one probably ought to assume thatfor the sake of
peace and for the sake of the future, no reply will be forthcoming.”
It is not known whether Martensen was the person who concealed him-
self behind X, but in any case he was certainly far from happy about the
turn the matter had taken. “As for R. Nielsen,” he wrote to Gude on
January 19, “by now, you have certainly read his atrocious second article.