Soren Kierkegaard

appendage nor my moral obligation .Only the play of freedom itself must
rule us.”
Soon after this, Johannes finds it opportune to make his entre ́e as a suitor,
even if, of course, “the whole business is only a pretense.” The lover of
strategy continues: “I have practiced various dance steps in order to deter-
mine the best direction from which to make my approach,” for Cordelia
must “be fixated” at the decisive “moment.” Even the scenery must there-
fore not be too erotic, because it “could easily come to foreshadow what is
to happen later”; nor ought the scenery be too “serious” or too “hearty,”
much less “witty and ironic.” It is best for it to be “as insignificant as possi-
ble, so that after she has said yes, she will be incapable of discovering the
least bit of what might be concealed within this relationship... .It is un-
thinkable that she should say yes because she loves me, because she doesn’t
love me at all.” It is preferable that the courtship be an “event” about which
Cordelia might subsequently—and thus too late—say: “God knows how it
really came about.” Scarcely has this reflection been concluded before Jo-
hannes mentally runs through the course of events: “The girl doesn’t know
whether she should say yes or no .The aunt says yes .The girl also says yes.
I take the girl .She takes me—and now the story begins .”
And indeed it does: With the engagement, Cordelia has been installed
in a bourgeois framework that Johannes must induce her to defy so that
conventional forms can be exploded by a formless and dangerous desire of
which Johannes is the object .While the pitiable Edvard rages, quite rightly,
against the intrigue of which he has been the victim, Johannes is standoffish
in his devotion, almost demonstratively unemotional in his relations with
Cordelia—“flexible, supple, impersonal”—and his behavior causes a new
erotic metamorphosis that he quickly detects: “I experience with her the
birth of her love .I myself am almost invisibly present when I sit visibly at
her side .As when a dance that is really supposed to be danced by two people
is only danced by one—that is how I relate to her .I am indeed the other
dancer, but invisible.”
As an inducement for Cordelia to view engagement as an imperfect form,
Johannes brings her to his uncle’s house, where engaged couples assemble
en masse and sit kissing each other tastelessly: “Incessantly, all evening long,
one hears a sound like that of someone walking about with a flyswatter—
it is the lovers kissing.” As a parallel development, Johannes launches “the
first war with Cordelia” during which he makes himself the object of her
longing but simultaneously takes care to elude her, so that the erotic energy
can accumulate in her until he emerges as the liberator and redeemer of the
thwarted desire .He sets about intensifying this passion by sending little
notes with smoldering hot contents, and immediately afterwards he freezes