Soren Kierkegaard

become ten people—now that would be something in Denmark. Then
there would be the requisite variety, one author today, another tomorrow,
none of them amounting to very much. Even the brief pieces I toss off
would be sufficient to establish a brilliant career in Denmark—and a career
that would make me a great deal of money....Oneword in print about
the clothes I wear, and thousands upon thousands lap it up; it is remembered
for ages.” Or, this especially emphatic remark from 1851: “I was nothing
and amounted to nothing, but I devoted myself to the costly amusement—
costly also in the financial sense—of being an author in Denmark.”
It would be easy to supplement what has been cited here with a welter
of variations on this same theme, but there are also journal entries that
correct, or at least moderate, the overall impression, as this one from 1850:
“I have held out year after year, at my own expense. Sometimes I have laid
out money; on balance I have covered my expenses; hence I have earned
nothing.” This balance between expenses and income corresponds roughly
to what Sibbern, who was generally well-informed, reported concerning
the matter: “The publication of his voluminous writings must have cost
him something for quite a period of time. Toward the end, on the other
hand, he must have earned considerable royalties.”
But Kierkegaard’s earnings never covered his cost of living, so when he
asserted that he “paid out money as an author,” he was not completely off
the mark—if, that is, we accept the peculiar premises on which he based
his argument: If he earned 500 rixdollars in royalties in a given year but
spent 2,000 on his living expenses, then that year it cost him 1,500 rixdollars
to publish books.
Though this accounting may lack something when we look at it from an
economic point of view, it nonetheless makes sense psychologically. Kier-
kegaard began as a wealthy young man. He worked, quite literally, like a
madman. He deprived himself in order to devote himself entirely to his
work as an author. And year by year he saw his fortune disappear. So had
the money not been used on the writings? Had he not “kept up an existence
as an author free of charge”? Had he not “given Denmark an author virtu-
ally at his own expense”? And finally, had he not “diligently and strenuously
worked himself into poverty”? It would have been difficult for it to have
seemed otherwise to him, and it would not have made much difference if
the direct economic costs of his being an author had only just covered his
outlays or if they had produced a surplus of a bit under 5,000 rixdollars. For
that amount of money Kierkegaard could not have supported himself for
more than two or three years! And since he worked as an author for all of
seventeen years, the books on average only brought in about 300 rixdollars
a year—which at times would not even have been enough to cover his rent.