Soren Kierkegaard

another; that sort of camaraderie should be left to the sort of people who
go bowling. But if Møller’s attitude lacked “intimacy,” Goldschmidt, for
his part, felt “a sort of infatuation.” Nothing less. Describing this bold and
bantering dandy-cum-deliverer who had so suddenly appeared, Gold-
schmidt wrote that it was because of “his imagination and idealism, his
sensually firm grasp on existence, his sharp, ironic good sense, that [Møller]
was so convincing as well as so alluringly piquant.” It is therefore hardly
any wonder that something like one-fifth of Goldschmidt’s memoirs are
devoted almost exclusively to Møller.
Møller was not only the deliverer, he was also the seducer who had
mastered the coy arts of evasion and retreat, something Goldschmidt would
soon come to feel. Møller quite naturally took charge of Goldschmidt’s
literary and aesthetic upbringing. He literally showed him the way to the
university library, where the ignorant Goldschmidt had never set foot; he
did not even know where the library was located, up in the enormous loft
above Trinity Church, accessible from the spiral ramp of the Round Tower.
But all the while Møller held his inquisitive pupil at arm’s length and, like
Kierkegaard, gave him to understand that his destiny was to be “a creator
of comic composition,” while for Møller himself was reserved the much
more important work of speaking “the language of the gods in golden
verse.” And this had strange consequences: “When he employed ruthless
satire in rooting out every sign of ignorance, thereby helping to make me
more knowledgeable, he was also working against himself or against those
unique characteristics in me with which he enjoyed associating. In this way
our relationship took on a strange, somewhat self-contradictory aspect, inas-
much as he also tried to restrain my acquisition of knowledge. This should
not be understood to mean that he was predisposed to being jealous or
afraid of me as a possible rival, but like a gardener he wanted to see me
grow slowly, as slowly as possible.”
Møller himself was growing in wild and luxuriant fashion. He wanted to
set fruit in the form of a series of public lectures on aesthetic and literary
subjects that would fascinate the elite. No one was to know of his plan
before he put it into effect, not even Goldschmidt. Indeed, Møller actually
forbade Goldschmidt to read the articles he had published in various jour-
nals. Reluctantly, Goldschmidt obeyed the order and thus only became
acquainted with Møller as a literary critic when Møller published hisCritical
Sketchesin 1847.
Goldschmidt, however, was more than simply an obedient apprentice.
He was also the editor ofThe Corsairand far more influential than Møller.
And Goldschmidt was also a Jew. In the summer of 1844 he spoke up for
the Jewish cause quite vehemently at the Danish nationalist gathering at