form of fiction, to distance himself from the humiliating fact thatin realitya
woman had for once succeeded in seducing a man? In short: Is Heiberg
insinuating that Kierkegaard had to write “The Seducer’s Diary” to get his
readers to believe that it had beenhewho had done the seducing, while in
reality it had been Regine?
In any case there was a hidden and obscure connection between Hei-
berg’s judgment and Kierkegaard’s subsequent hesitation when, in the mid-
dle of his manuscript forThe Concept of Anxiety, he began to speculate about
why—“directly counter to all subsequent analogy”—it had been Eve who
seduced Adam .On August 26, 1849, when he reminisced about his days
with Regine and speculated about the “power she really possesses,” he
wrote plainly: “Truly, when Providence gave the man strength and the
woman weakness, whom did He make the stronger? This is what is terrible
when one gets involved with a woman: Because of her weakness she sub-
mits, and then—then a person struggles with himself, with his own power.”
Here the interplay between power and powerlessness is presented in its
reciprocal inscrutability and comes close to being assigned an independent
existence .But a person struggles not only with his “own power,” he also
struggles with what the manuscript ofThe Concept of Anxietycalled the
“third power,” indicating thealienpower that first seduced Eve and then
caused her to seduce Adam.
In his journal entry Kierkegaard was therefore quite close to an explana-
tion of the real function of the serpent in the myth .Indeed, he had even
personallyexperiencedthe explanation: The serpent is the emblem of the
actual play of seduction; it represents seduction as an independent and alien
power that chooses its agents and possesses them.
Adam and Eve .Johannes and Cordelia .And probably many others.
Oh, to Write a Preface
A person reading the June 17, 1844, issue ofAdresseavisenwould learn that
a certain Vigilius Haufniensis was offeringThe Concept of Anxiety: A Simple
Psychologically Indicative Consideration of the Dogmatic Problem of Inherited Sin,
192 pages, for an even rixdollar .In the same issue was advertised another
newly published work with a slightly cryptic title,Prefaces, though fortunately
it was provided with a subtitle that was rather more enlightening to the
consumer:Light Reading for Various Classes as Time and Occasion Permit .It was
written by Nicolaus Notabene, totaled 112 pages, and cost fifty-six shillings.
Although this wasn’t enough to ruin a person financially, the limit of
one’s book budget for June 1844 had perhaps been reached, because three