Soren Kierkegaard

martyrdom of ridicule is the most unbearable because, as a “long-term mar-
tyrdom,” it is just like “that slow death, being trampled to death by a flock of
geese,” and therefore Kierkegaard would definitely prefer “to be executed.”
Hans Brøchner had a clear sense of the increasingly disproportionate na-
ture of Kierkegaard’s reactions: “In relation to a particular phenomenon,
Kierkegaard did not possess a sense of reality—if I may use this expression—
that was capable of counterbalancing his immensely well-developed powers
of reflection. He could reflect on a trifle until it assumed world-historical
significance, as it were. This is evidently what happened to him withThe
Corsair.” In a letter to Hans Christian Andersen dating from February 1846,
Henriette Collin discussed “The Corsair’s sustained attack on Søren Kierke-
gaard,” reporting that “the poor victim is not enough of a philosopher to
ignore this annoyance, but is preoccupied with it day and night and talks
about it with everyone.”
So it is hardly too much to say that Kierkegaard hadThe Corsairon the
brain. And if he already had certain paranoid tendencies,The Corsairgave
him something to be paranoid about: “They have all laughed at me, some
good-naturedly, some maliciously—in brief, in the most various ways, but
all have laughed,” he wrote in 1854. When he had been at Mini’s cafe ́a
few years earlier and had asked for a copy ofThe Corsair, he discovered to
his surprise and chagrin that they had wanted to hide the paper from him.
Something similar had happened at Pa ̈thau’s bar, but at both places Kierke-
gaard hadinsistedon havingThe Corsairand had then read it “in the presence
of others, had spoken with them—and I succeeded as always in managing
a light conversational tone.” So he was all the more surprised by people’s
reaction: “What happens? Giødwad comes by one day and tells me that
people are saying that this is the only thing I talk about, et cetera—that is,
that this is supposed to prove that I have been affected by it.” And he
hadn’t been, he hadn’t been affected by it, of course. “I have never been a
Diogenes, I have never bordered upon cynicism. I have been properly and
respectably dressed—so it is not my fault that an entire country is a mad-
house,” he wrote in the summer of 1848. And he went on: “Oh, if there
is a time and a place for jokes in Eternity, I am convinced that the idea of
my thin legs and my trousers, which have been the object of ridicule, will
be my most blessed amusement.” In eternity—but, mind you, not a second
before. His nephew Troels Frederik Lund [who subsequently had his name
legally changed to Frederik Troels-Lund] remembered how he had once
seen his Uncle Søren on Gammeltor vand had wanted to run after him to
say hello: “But just at that moment I heard some passersby say something
mocking about him and saw a couple of people on the other side of the
street stop, turn around to look at him, and laugh. His one trouser leg really