between the repetition that had originall ybeen intended and the one that
actuall ytook place, and Constantin Constantius attempts to minimize the
problem b yappealing to the reader’s goodwill and dedicating his work to
the “dear reader,” as well as b yappending a postscript in which he rehabili-
tates the Young Man in both moral and religious respects. The passage
preceding Constantin Constantius’s epistle to the reader also shows signs of
having been radicall yreworked, and the manuscript is a veritable tornado
of clashing intentions, with additions and deletions layered one upon the
other. This was the onl ywa ythat Kierkegaard could be sure thatRepetition
recalled what had been its message to Regine.
1:50
No one knows when or from whom Kierkegaard received the news of
Regine’s engagement, but it hurt. The misogynistic tendencies that we
sense in Constantin Constantius’s interpolation between the next-to-last
and last letters in the final version of the work fairl yleap out at a reader of
Kierkegaard’s draft, where he used a great deal of ink to render indecipher-
able the vile suggestion that a young woman who employs religious means
in the service of erotic beguilement “not onl y[ought] to be recognizable
b ya black tooth—no, her entire face ought to be green. Though that is
probabl ytoo much to ask, for in that case there would be an awful lot of
green girls.” That was intended for Regine, right between the eyes, and the
journal fairl yoverflows with spleen: “Dialogue: An individual with a sense
of humor meets a girl who had once assured him that she would die if he
left her. When he now meets her she is engaged. He greets her and says,
‘May I thank you for the kindness you have shown me. Perhaps you will
permit me to show m yappreciation.’ (He takes two marks and eight shil-
lings out of his vest pocket and hands it to her. She is speechless with rage,
but remains standing there, hoping to intimidate him with her gaze. He
continues): ‘It’s nothing. It’s to help out with your trousseau, and on the
day you get married and put the finishing touches on your act of kindness,
I promise b yall that is hol y—b yGod and b y your eternal salvation—to
send you another two marks and eight shillings.” One cannot deny that
these lines radiate a desire for vengeance, and indeed, in her memoirs Eline
Boisen made a perfect slip of the pen, givingRepetition[Danish:Gjentagelsen]
the wrong title,Revenge[Danish:Gjengjældelsen].
If the repetition had actuall ytaken place and Kierkegaard had become a
married man,Repetitionwould certainl ynever have been written. Now it
was written, and it served as a sort of compensation for the absence of