Israel Levin
During the spring of 1844, the ink practically leapt from Kierkegaard’s pen,
but in addition to his writing, he took his examination in homiletics, the
art of preaching, delivering a trial sermon in Trinity Church on Saturday,
February 24, and receiving the gradelaudabilis .During that month he had
also composed most of a twenty-odd-page polemical piece directed primar-
ily at J .L .Heiberg .Entitled “Postscript toEither/Or,” the piece gave that
book the intelligent review it had not received at the time it was published.
In addition to all this there were countless journal entries in which scattered
storms of new ideas were brewing .The exterior circumstances of Kierke-
gaard’s life were also slightly altered: On October 16, 1844 he moved back
from 38 Nørregade to 2 Nytorv, where for the next three years he occupied
half of the second floor of the house, the side closest to the city hall and
courthouse .“When he was going to move,” Hans Brøchner relates with a
touch of envy, “he drove out in the morning, and in the evening proceeded
to his new rooms, where everything had been put in perfect order by the
servant—even the library was in order.”
But not everything went according to plan .Since January 1844, Kierke-
gaard had been working hard on the various manuscripts from whichStages
on Life’s Wayemerged, and on August 27 he presented a “report” on the
work in progress: “ ‘In vino veritas’ is not working out .I constantly rewrite
its various parts, but it does not satisfy me.... The Fashion Designer is a
very good character, but the question is whether all this sort of thing isn’t
keeping me from attending to more important matters .In any case, it must
be written quickly .If such a moment does not come, then I won’t do it at
all .Recently the productivity has taken a wrong turn and has continually
made me writeaboutwhat I want to produce.” The summer heat outside also
helped make Kierkegaard sluggish or, as he labeled his condition, “indolent.”
During that same year, Kierkegaard had also engaged Israel Levin, who
was not merely to serve as a copyist in the manner of his “little secretary
Mr .Christensen,” but was also to take dictation .That was no small task,
however, as Levin later recounted, because when Kierkegaard warmed to
his subject and began to enliven his verbal torrent with “strange gestures,”
it was almost impossible to keep up with him even though the paper lay
ready, cut to size, with the pages numbered .Levin also experienced the
opposite sort of thing, however—times when words simply would not be-
have as the magister wanted them to .“This depiction of situations and the
pointedness of phrasing,” Levin relates, “cost an enormous amount of labor.
What with all the corrections, and yet more corrections, we almost never