Soren Kierkegaard

gen .Nicolaus Notabene needles the reviewers of the day who supply the
public with random aesthetic assessments of the countless books that no one
ever manages to read and of which they have only second-hand, third-
hand, et cetera, knowledge .Kierkegaard cannot of course be said to have
stationed himself entirely on neutral territory at the Copenhagen book fair,
and to some extent the criticism was also directed at Kierkegaard himself,
who not only had accounted for the lion’s share of the spring book season
but had also had his books reviewed and praised to the skies .In the July 30,
1844, issue ofNy Portefeuille, for example, under the the heading of “The-
ater, Music, Literature, and Art,” there was an eight-page review ofPrefaces,
which was singled out for its “excellent and penetrating language, which
disdains to use these expressions of philosophical bombast, disdains to lard
its speech with Hegelian terminology.” Nicolaus Notabene is not a “sullen
polemicist who is dissatisfied with everything”; on the contrary, he possesses
a “sparkling wit” and is praised for the “lightness with which language prac-
tically dances when subjected to his dialectical treatment.” The reviewer,
who signs himself “3–7,” is quite concerned about Nicolaus Notabene’s
purported marital crisis, and in a display of dialectical politeness he therefore
worries aloud that by subjecting these clandestinely written little texts to
excessively rapturous praise he might worsen the situation .Consequently
he is aware of his difficult position as a reviewer, inasmuch as Nicolaus
Notabene “does not like reviewers at all; indeed, he has such a powerful
distaste for the entire race [of reviewers] that—to use his own typical expres-
sion—to submit to being reviewed is just as unpleasant as ‘letting a barber
fumble about my face with his clammy fingers.’ ” Therefore, instead of
writing a review, 3–7 chooses to devote an entire column to citing and
paraphrasing “the humorous presentation” contained in the second preface,
after which he proceeds to discuss “the author’s view of Prof.Heibergand
his activities.” Now, 3–7, who has suddenly taken on quite a moral tone,
would prefer to have passed by this critique in silence .Not only is Heiberg
a “brilliant and productive intellect,” but on his own initiative, having con-
ducted a brief poll, 3–7 has also learned that a person who wallows in these
harshly critical remarks on Heibergto this extentnever gets around to reading
such writings asThe Concept of Anxiety,Philosophical Fragments, and Søren
Kierkegaard’sEdifying Discourses.
Thus 3–7 smelled a rat, and so, quite clearly, did the anonymous reviewer
inDen Frisindede, who linkedPrefacesto “the very sensational workEither/
Or.” They knew very well thatPrefaceshad been written by Kierkgaard, so
Kierkegaard could have spared himself the clandestine communication he
had thought the matter required: When the manuscripts of his pseudony-
mous writings were to be conveyed from his lodgings to the printer’s, the