Soren Kierkegaard

have been carrying on a public conversation about the existential for some
time now, have not taken any notice of this truth, or, to use their own
expression, they have intentionally glossed over and de-emphasized it.”
Thus, Søren Kierkegaard’s writings had overlooked the truth of the Chris-
tian life, and they had done so either because of inattention or because of
conscious deception—no other interpretation seemed to be possible. Thus,
Søren Aabye’s “mystical-ascetic literature,” as Peter Christian labeled his
brother’s works, contained an invitation addressed to everyone who “wishes
to have a living experience of faith,” but what they were actually given was
a “swimming exercise without safety belts over seventy thousand fathoms
of water”; indeed, people were advised to “begin by leaping in headfirst.”
This remark about a beginner leaping headfirst was undoubtedly a source
of general mirth among the Grundtvigian delegates attending the conven-
tion, who had the pleasure of listening to a polemicist who was more
pointed than he had been in his previous lecture at the Roskilde Conven-
tion, back in October 1849. Peter Christian was really in high spirits. He
saw no reason to mince his words, and toward the end of his talk, he in fact
came out with an open declaration of hostility to his younger brother: “Yes,
to be sure, Christianity is not what the sniveling pastors say it is. But from
this it of course does not follow that it [Christianity] is more likely to be
what jesting or damning prophets seek to make it into.”
No one wrote down the talk at the time, but Søren Aabye must have
heard verbal accounts of what had transpired, and he did not ignore them.
On July 23 he finished work on a manuscript entitled “Pastor P. Chr. Kier-
kegaard, Lic. Theol., My Brother,” a comprehensive assault on Grundtvig
and all his facile disciples. Søren Aabye made the pretentious pastoral con-
ventions the object of his sarcasm, thus adopting the position of Mynster,
who had referred to them as “small beer.” This was perhaps what put him
in mind of a heady metaphor: “For, just as they say one should not get too
close to a heavy drinker because he is surrounded by a stench of alcohol, I
have always found it rather unpleasant [changed from ‘disgusting’] to get
too close to what the Grundtvigians write because it tends to be enveloped
in a stench of heartiness. And indeed, among the Grundtvigians, Pastor Lic.
Kierkegaard is one of those who exudes this stench most.” And once again,
the notion that Peter Christian, qua brother, might possess special knowl-
edge about Søren Aabye was labeled an obviously erroneous conclusion:
“This is extremely far from being the case. With respect to the entirety of
my inner religious life, my intentions, et cetera, Pastor Lic. Kierkegaard
knows only what anyone else can know on the basis of my writings. For
that matter, he knows neither more nor less than everyone else who knows
nothing.”