Soren Kierkegaard

script into print—and to this extent it was indeed “of him.” The manuscript
is titled “Several Things about Marriage in Response to Objections,” and it
constitutes a mature counterweight to the drinking companions’ shameless
treatment of the female sex and their covert insinuations concerning same.
We must assume that it is not very likely that this piece, any more than
Judge William’s previous essays, will convince very many people of the joys
of marriage, even though this time William appears to be in somewhat
better form than in his earlier writings—though at one point he does admit
that even after eight (!) years of marriage he himself “still does not know
definitely, in a critical sense, what my wife looks like.” In fact, he admits
quite lovably that “indeed, even today” he does not know whether his wife
is “slim” or “buxom.” Perhaps the judge should investigate the matter the
next time he is in the arbor with his wife.
So much for the titles of the manuscripts that constitute the first part of
Stages on Life’s Way. The second part consists of “‘Guilty?’/‘Not Guilty?’”
subtitled “A Story of Suffering. Psychological Experiment by Frater Taci-
turnus.” In the preface to the book, Frater Taciturnus recounts how the
manuscript had come into his possession: He had gone to Søborg Lake in
northern Zealand with a naturalist who wanted to conduct “observations
of marine plants.” He had boarded a skiff, gone down a narrow channel,
and come out into the middle of the lake. The scene calls to mind the
virtually identical description of Kierkegaard’s 1835 expedition with Pastor
Lyngbye. While the naturalist immersed himself in his marine plants, Frater
Taciturnus lowered a telescopic sort of instrument to the bottom of the
lake, where it soon became lodged almost inextricably fast: “I pulled, and
a bubble ascended from the depths. It lingered for a moment, then burst,
and then came success. I had quite a strange feeling in my breast, though I
didn’t have the least dream of what my find might be. When I think of it
now, now that I know the whole business, I understand it, I understand
that it was a sigh from below, a sighde profundis[Latin: ‘from the depths’],
a sigh because I had wrested from the waters their deposit.” When the
submersible instrument came back into the little boat it was accompanied
by a mahogany case wrapped in oilcloth and secured with a number of seals.
The case was locked, and when Frater Taciturnus finally opened it, the key
was inside—“that which is self-enclosed is always introverted like this.” In
addition to an “especially carefully and elegantly written booklet of very
fine stationery,” the case contained jewelry and precious stones, a plain gold
ring with an engraved date, a necklace consisting of a diamond cross fastened
to a light blue silk ribbon, plus a “fragment of a poster advertising a comic
play, a page torn from the New Testament, each in its own neat vellum
envelope, a withered rose in a silver-gilt locket, and other similar things”