ever converse like that—as though beneath sun-dappled grape leaves by the
shore of the Ionian Sea.” The gathering, in every other respect so pleasant,
was disturbed only momentarily by a single little reservation on Møller’s
part. For it was Møller’s view that whileEither/Orwas certainly an excellent
work, it nonetheless consisted more of “the gossamer of thought than of
flesh and blood.” At the time, this objection appeared to be little more than
a negligible bagatelle, however, and Møller stood up and made the follow-
ing proclamation: “Now I will make a pact with you: We must both remain
in the service of literary truth, and if it is ever necessary, we will blindly
oppose anyone whomever, including each other,... and as a reward we
will remain imperishably young.” Goldschmidt continues, “We shook
hands on this pact, both of us apparently in full seriousness, and I, at any
rate, was deeply moved.” Møller, the ironist, was perhaps deeply moved as
well, but if so, it was for completely different reasons than those that moved
Goldschmidt, who did not have the imaginative capacity to guess what was
on Møller’s mind when he spoke of total war in the service of literature.
Three years later, in 1846, Goldschmidt felt obliged to rid himself of
The Corsair. The reason was Kierkegaard. That same year, Kierkegaard also
became the reason, if somewhat more indirectly, that Møller was defini-
tively expelled from the literary elite. Deeply disappointed, Møller left Den-
mark a couple of years later and moved to France, where he subsequently
died in Dieppe. Kierkegaard noted his tactical victory with satisfaction, but
at the same time he acknowledged with great bitterness what the pair,
Goldschmidt and Møller, had accomplished together: They had altered his
life so radically that it could be divided into pre-Corsairand post-Corsair
periods. Goldschmidt was not in doubt about the matter, either. In his
memoirs, written more than thirty years later, he called the events “a drama
and a catastrophe for three people, of whom I am the only survivor.”
We hardly have to be Sherlock Holmes to sense that this involves events
more complex than what Watson would consider elementary, and we may
certainly ask how it was that things got to a point so unintended.
The Corsair—“A Devil of a Paper”
On October 8, 1840, exactly one month after Kierkegaard proposed to Miss
Olsen, the first issue ofThe Corsairappeared. It was founded by Gold-
schmidt, who wrote most of the material, displaying great diligence, much
bravery, and excellent spirits. As a young man he was an enthusiastic sup-
porter of the French Revolution, and in Copenhagen he found four like-
minded souls, the writers Poul Chievitz and Arboe Mahler, a clerk named