Soren Kierkegaard

this Hilarius Bookbinder discovered a package containing several manu-
scripts; he wrapped them in colored paper and stored them in an appropriate
place in the bindery. Toward the end of the year, when he was whiling
away the long winter evenings, the manuscripts re-emerged. Hilarius Book-
binder was an ordinary fellow and he did not understand much of the whole
business, but since the handwriting was so elegant he had his children copy
off a page now and then, so that they could “get some practice in penman-
ship.” One day the manuscripts caught the eye of a philosophically inclined
schoolteacher who was giving a bit of private instruction to Hilarius Book-
binder’s youngest son. In his view there was money to be made in publish-
ing them, because they in fact consisted of several books, authored by several
writers—indeed, he assumed, there had probably existed a “brotherhood,
a society, an association,” whose chairman had been the late man of letters.
Hilarius Bookbinder did not really know what to think of all this, but he
approved of the suggestion and published these papers, which appeared to
be of such importance.
The schoolteacher was right. The papers consisted of several books stem-
ming from different authors. The first manuscript contains “In vino veritas,”
an account of a nocturnal drinking bout during which woman is alternately
elevated and denigrated. Here the reader who is familiar with Kierkegaard’s
works can recognize figures such as Johannes the Seducer, Victor Eremita,
Constantin Constantius, and the Young Man, but we can also encounter
the Fashion Designer, whose discourse came close to driving both Kierke-
gaard and Levin to distraction. When the drinking bout was over and the
guests departed into the night, they came upon a little country estate that
had an arbor. From within the arbor Victor Eremita could hear voices, not
loud with passion, but speaking in hushed tones. He peered cautiously in-
side, took a step back, and exclaimed with the joy of recognition, “Oh, my
God! It’s Judge William and his wife.” The two, the gentleman and the
lady, were drinking tea and conversing with one another in a proper married
fashion about the continuing validity of marriage, but when the judge fin-
ished smoking his cigar the conversation was over and, arm in arm, they
left the scene of their nocturnal conversation to retire for the night. Victor
Eremita followed them stealthily, sprang through a window, and emerged
again, bearing a “manuscript by His Honor the Judge.” And it did not take
him long to decide that “If I have published his other manuscripts, it is no
more than my duty to publish this one as well.” His delight was short-lived,
however, for just as he was about to put the manuscript in his pocket, it
was filched, quite without his noticing it, by one William Afham [Danish,
literally: “of him”]. Who he is, this William Afham, no one knows, but it
was he who, duly assisted by Hilarius Bookbinder, guided the stolen manu-