that obviously were of sentimental value to their owner, but in themselves
were totally worthless. Nonetheless, Frater Taciturnus tried to locate “the
person who is the owner of a case found in Søborg Lake in the summer of
’44,” who could contact him “through Reitzel’s Bookshop.” When there
was no response he decided to publish the manuscript he had found. With
the assistance of a table calculated by “Mr. Bonfils, M.A.” he was able to
determine that the year in which the story of the engagement had taken
place must have been 1751. In his preface he requests, in conclusion, that
the book not be made “the subject of any critical mention.”
This mystification concerning the circumstances of publication might
resemble the maneuvers Victor Eremita had carried out in the preface to
Either/Orin his effort to forge compositional unity out of Kierkegaard’s
quite heterogeneous writings. Kierkegaard had also considered publishing
“‘Guilty?’/‘Not Guilty?’ ” separately and gave the manuscript its own pagi-
nation. It had its origins in an unfinished draft of a story that he had earlier
considered inserting inEither/Or. Similarly, “In vino veritas” and “Several
Things about Marriage in Response to Objections” were to have been pub-
lished in a separate volume entitledThe Wrong Side and the Right Side. Kier-
kegaard also wrote a preface to this work as well. But quite late in the
process, almost at the last moment, he put the two books together, after
which he had to invent Hilarius Bookbinder, so that he could counterfeit
a firm connection among the individual pieces.
The Inserted Passages
“‘Guilty?’/‘Not Guilty?’ ” recounts the story of an engagement that just
might be Kierkegaard’s own. The story is parceled out into a series of diary
entries by a young writer named Quidam, who became engaged to a cheer-
ful woman, Quaedam, but who shortly thereafter realized that they did not
understand each other: He was full of melancholia and fantasies, and she was
the opposite. The engagement lasted seven dissimulation-filled months, but
the real problems arose only after the relationship was over. There are a
multitude of these problems, but Kierkegaard provides a brief summary of
them in a terse stage direction: “The girl became far greater to him after
he left her.” In her absence not only did she become a sort of obsession,
but Quidam was also haunted by unending musings concerning the guilt
which he has (perhaps) incurred, first by getting involved with the girl,
then by leaving her. In its theme “‘Guilty?’/‘Not Guilty?’ ” is thus a repeti-
tion ofRepetitionbut with greater range in its oscillations and is furthermore
completely nonparodic. In keeping with this, Quidam is a more tightly