Soren Kierkegaard

it with icy indifference: “When she has received an epistle, when its sweet
venom has entered her bloodstream, then a word is sufficient to cause love
to burst forth .At the next instant, irony and frostiness cause her some mis-
givings, though not so much as to keep her from continuing to feel her
victory, which she feels even more when she receives the next epistle.”
There is reason to suppose that the seducer’s creator knows what he is
talking about.
Even while continually intensifying the erotic imagery in these letters—
which are supposed to induce Cordelia to “discover the infinite and to
experience that this [the infinite] is what lies closest to a person”—Johannes
persists in compelling her to attend the vulgar osculatory get-togethers at
his uncle’s house, as exercises in indignation: “So when she becomes famil-
iar with this tumult, I will add the erotic; then she will be what I want and
desire .Then my service, my work, is completed .Then I will take in all my
sails; then I will sit by her side .It is with her sails that we will journey
onward .And truly, when this girl has become erotically intoxicated, I will
have enough to do in sitting at the helm to moderate the speed, so that
nothing happens too soon or in an unseemly manner .Once in a while I
make a little hole in the sail, and the next instant we are once again surging
forward.”
The time has come to initiate the “war of conquest,” in which Cordelia
and Johannes exchange roles .Johannes provides a technical explanation:
“Now when the reversal has taken place and I begin seriously retreating,
then she will use every means in order truly to captivate me .She has no
other means for this than the erotic itself, but this will now reveal itself on a
completely new scale... .Then her passion will become definite, energetic,
conclusive, dialectical; her kiss will be total, her embrace non-hiatal.” Not
long after this, Cordelia appears, radiant with “energy as if she were a Val-
kyrie,” and Johannes follows his psychological experiment carefully, making
the following sober notation: “She must not be held too long at this pinna-
cle, where only anxiety and unrest can keep her on her feet.” For Cordelia
is in fact in the immediate vicinity of the abyss into which she must plunge
as soon as her diffuse erotic state focuses itself sexually.
On September 16 Cordelia dissolves the engagement and travels alone
to the country .Johannes maintains a feeble epistolary communication with
her .When she leaves her rural retreat some time later, she is escorted by
his trusted servant to a desolate house north of Copenhagen .The locale is
termed “the destination.” Only the physical act remains.
As a reflective seducer it is incumbent on Johannes to undergo a regres-
sive metamorphosis in order to become yearning, sexual desire .And it is
toward the conclusion of this process that he pens his next-to-last entry