Soren Kierkegaard

other, we cast it into the water.” The suggestion generates great interest,
so the next time he speaks Kirk continues in an edifying tone: “If we want
to make others happy, what is it we want to create in them? Happiness, and
not sadness. But in whom could we create happiness, in those who are
happy or in the sorrowful? Only in the sorrowful, not in the happy. We
cannot create happiness in the Swedes who have been burned, for they
cannot be happy because they have been burned. We cannot create happi-
ness in the Swedes who have not been burned, for they are all happy because
they have not been burned. We cannot create happiness in the Jutlanders
who have been drowned, for they cannot be happy because they have been
drowned. We cannot create happiness in the Jutlanders who have not been
drowned, for they are all happy because they have not been drowned. But
if we cannot create happiness in them, then we cannot make them happy,
and if we do not make them happy with our gift, then we make them sad.
Therefore, if we are noble-spirited and make others happy, we make them
sad. But we do not want to make them sad because we want to make them
happy. Therefore, we do not want to be noble-spirited and make others
happy; rather, we want to be ignoble-spirited and make ourselves happy.”
The 1840s were not only characterized by Hegelian jargon, but as time
went on, by Kierkegaardian jargon as well. As Hostrup later readily admit-
ted, he had amused himself by parodying the so-called ecstatic discourse in
the first part ofEither/Or—which famously begins “Marry, and you will
regret it. Do not marry, and you will also regret it”—on which everyone,
according to his or her temperament and ideas, can play variations by substi-
tuting different elements in the pseudological mechanism, making every-
thing equally (in)significant. Hostrup was parodying a parody, as it were.
In the final scene Søren Kirk again attempts to speak, but is pulled off the
chair on which he had assumed an oratorical posture.
It surely ought to be forgivable to parody a parody, but Kierkegaard was
by no means so unaffected by it as Brøchner had assumed: “Someone writes
a comedy for university students. Someone exploits the freedom that exists
among comrades in order to present actual persons on stage. Well, of course,
it would be uncomradely if anyone objected to it. But then the play prowls
around in the provinces, where it is certainly not being performed for uni-
versity students.”
The play prowled around in the provinces quite notoriously. In Odense
it was presented a number of times between December 1845 and March
1846, and at about the same time it was presented at the Sorø Academy,
where Carsten Hauch thus had a chance to have a cheap laugh. What was
done was done, but on June 27, 1846, a couple of years after it had been
performed for university students,The Neighbors across the Waywas re-