Soren Kierkegaard

a thin man, whose shoulders hunched forward a bit. His face had a healthy
color and his eyes had a superior look, reflecting equal portions of good
nature and malice. Goldschmidt and Kierkegaard both had to walk back to
town, and as they strolled together along Gammel Kongevej, Kierkegaard
asked Goldschmidt whether he had read his bookFrom the Papers of One
Still Living, which had just been published. Goldschmidt had indeed read
the book, but without having caught the finer nuances, and in fact the only
thing he could remember was that the book had been rather harsh on Hans
Christian Andersen. This was not nearly enough for Kierkegaard, who dis-
coursed on the book as they walked toward town, and to Goldschmidt’s
amazement he seemed to grow larger and larger as he talked. And Gold-
schmidt remembered: “There was a long pause, and he suddenly took a
little hop and struck himself on the leg with his thin cane. There was some-
thing jaunty about it, although it was completely different from the sort of
jauntiness one usually sees in the world. The movement was peculiar and
seemed almost painful. I am very much aware that I am in danger of remem-
bering that scene with an admixture of knowledge from a later period, but
I am sure that there was something painful in it, something of the following
sort: It was the fact that this learned, thin man wanted to be a part of the
joys of life, but felt himself either unable or not permitted to do so.”
Goldschmidt is being overly modest, for he was in fact an excellent observer,
and his mental photograph is the best picture we have of the young Kierke-
gaard. As with all good descriptions, weseeit right in front of us.
For Goldschmidt, who according to his own testimony had the “instinc-
tive need to be number one” and who never overcame his grief at not
having done particularly well on his university entrance examinations, the
encounter with Kierkegaard (who was no less ambitious, notably more tal-
ented, and seven years his senior) naturally summoned up equal parts of
admiration and envy. These mixed feelings were also expressed in Septem-
ber 1841 when Kierkegaard publishedOn the Concept of Irony, which was
reviewed by a staff reviewer atThe Corsairwhose assessment was generally
positive but who ironized a bit at Kierkegaard’s stilted language. Gold-
schmidt, however, felt that the reviewer had treated the contents of the
dissertation a little superficially, so he added the following postscript: “If we
go on to acknowledge that, despite this surprising language, Mr. Kierke-
gaard’s dissertation is of interest to those who have the patience to read it,
this admission—of course, when it is put in the context of what has been
said above—presumably grants Mr. Kierkegaard the justice that is his due.”
Shortly after this, the satanic editor and the ironic magister met on the
street. Kierkegaard noted that he had now appeared inThe Corsair, concern-
ing which he had no objections. On the other hand, he complained that