this with a judicious selection of quotations from his own articles: “I said:
chea pbeer. I said: moral creamed kale. I said: ditto buckwheat porridge. I
said: parsley. I said: beef consomme ́. I said: Niagara Falls. And I said: any
port in a storm.” Kierkegaard has now written a new article, which he
hands to Heiberg, who enthusiastically scans it and then inquires how in
the world such a “cloudburst of ideas” can be contained in a single person.
To this Kierkegaard responds: “Indeed, I suffer from them a great deal as
long as they remain inside me. If I did not expel them every now and then
with a sweat bath—this is how I metaphorically describe my activity as a
writer—they would undoubtedly attack the nobler inner parts.”
Here—quite literally—the bottom has been reached. And aside from a
little parting remark Kierkegaard is given no additional lines. But this was
more than enough, for with this Freudian jab below the belt his literary
activity during these spring months had been explained as a sublimation of
inner—implicitly sexual—energy which ought to have found a more direct,
biological discharge. It is not surprising that his rejoinder—which he never
published—was marked by a rather ashen indignation. No one knows the
identity of the person who hid behind this heartless X, nor did Kierkegaard,
but he assumed that it must have been one of “the poets from the aesthetic
period ofKjøbenhavnsposten.” Various earmarks, especially in matters of
style, point in a slightly different direction, however, namely toward none
other than P. L. Møller. Indeed, he was perhaps the only person who pos-
sessed the imitative talent needed to take the wind out of Kierkegaard’s
inflated style, thus harnessing hisownirony in order to puncturesomeone
else’sironic balloon.
Approximately a decade later, when Møller’s path again crosses Kierke-
gaard’s, it is precisely this talent he will put to use—and to such great effect
that it would completely alter the direction of Kierkegaard’s life.
Within the Heibergs’ Charmed Circle
Even though Kierkegaard’s journalistic polemics were succeeded by a comi-
cal coda he had not exactly welcomed, he was viewed as the victor in the
battle. Only a few days after Kierkegaard’s first article appeared, Peter
Rørdam wrote that “there has been a change in the Student Association;
their chief and leader, Lehmann, has fallen, totally defeated.... and with
him has fallenKjøbenhavns-Posten.... The victor is the younger Kierkegaard,
who now writes inFlyvepostenunder the symbol B.” And on May 17 Pastor
Johan Hahn wrote to Peter Christian, “I hear from many quarters that your
brother Søren has made a witty and powerful appearance inFlyveposten.”