who had petitioned for freedom of the press, and it earned Møller a stiff
reprimand. And several years later, when he applied for membership in a
newly established student group, the Academicum, his application was re-
jected by the association’s twelve-person executive committee. Møller had
been accused of shady economic transactions, abusive refutation of his op-
ponents, and dubious sexual morals. One of the twelve men on the commit-
tee that gave him the thumbs-down was Peter Christian Kierkegaard.
If Peder Ludvig and Søren Aabye did not know each other personally,
each was at any rate able to follow the other’s literary careers from quite
early on. And this was not always a pleasant business for Kierkegaard, be-
cause Møller was an elegant polemicist with a perfectly perfidious pen. As
previously noted, in 1836 Kierkegaard was able to read the following in the
Humoristiske Intelligensblade: “It goes without saying that an author’sliterary
physiognomy has nothing to do with his corporeal physiognomy, which is
of no interest to us in this context.” The article was anonymous, so that it
can only be a hunch that it was Møller who stabbed Kierkegaard in the
back. But the style is the man, of course, and the style was unmistakably
Møller’s. And the mere possibility that itmighthave been him was enough
to kindle Kierkegaard’s hatred. There were more kindly remarks of this
sort. In Møller’s 1840Lyric Poems, there is a section entitled “Moral Silhou-
ettes” that includes a poem called “A Mocker,” which draws a stark contrast
between straightforward zest for life and the self-tormenting reflections of
a loner. In 1847, when the poem was reprinted inImages and Songs, Møller
had changed the title to “A Wandering Philosopher,” which enabled even
the more slow-witted to recognize the peripatetic Kierkegaard.Lyric Poems
also included a “Nature Calendar” that had a poem for every month of the
year. Of these monthly poems, only “June” had a parenthetical subtitle—
“(Copenhagen’s Ramparts)”—which because of Lovers’ Lane, was one of
Kierkegaard’s favorite places to stroll. Møller’s poem reads as follows:
You, modest and chaste, who desire ideas only,
Trust me that here, under branches green,
Here you can walk alone and lonely,
Borne aloft by sprites unseen.You, of course, with no body of your own—
You see no lovely breasts, no saucy rumps,
No dainty ankles in patten pumps—
It’s merely grist for three more tomes!Møller’s poetry—most of it—is neither great art nor mere amateurism, but
in any case it is clear that here he is accusing Kierkegaard of slinking about
on Lovers’ Lane like some kind of castrated voyeur, transforming his sensu-