Soren Kierkegaard

covers that a certain coherence can be seen among the works....Itisour
quite definite opinion not merely that it is not entirely true that the aesthetic
works were written with religious intent—it is entirely untrue. ”Nor was
Eline Boisen (to whom Kierkegaard was related by his brother’s first mar-
riage) convinced, and she snorted tersely: “In his autobiography... he
wishes to present himself as ifallof his endeavors had the intention of sur-
reptitiously confronting people with the Gospel. Thiscannotbe true with
respect to the first part of his life, however. He didnothonor his father and
mother, and therefore things did not go well for him in the land.”
When we consider the amount of work accomplished, 1848 was one of
the years of plenty; but when we consider at how much was published, it
was among the very leanest of years. OnlyChristian DiscoursesandThe Crisis
managed to wrench themselves free of Kierkegaard’s indecisiveness. At
year-end, Kierkegaard had no fewer than four manuscripts that were ready
for publication:Two Ethical-Religious Essays, which had been gathering dust
since December 1847 and was subsequently included inA Cycle of Ethical-
Religious Essays, for which Kierkegaard had written a preface and a postscript
in October 1848;The Sickness unto Death, which had been finished in mid-
May 1848;The Point of View for My Work as an Author, completed toward
the end of November 1848; andPractice in Christianity, completed in De-
cember 1848. Taken together, the manuscripts total more than five hundred
printed pages.
In the middle of December, Kierkegaard contemplated publishing some
of this material in a single volume under the titleThe Collected Works of
Fulfillment, but after a period of torturous reflection he abandoned the idea.
He seized on death as a pretext in coming to terms with his own indeci-
siveness: “My powers—my physical powers, that is—are in decline. My
health falters frightfully. I have completed some material that is of truly
decisive significance, but I will hardly live long enough to publish it myself.”
In addition to all this material are drafts of the discourses “The Chief
Priest ”and “The Pharisee and the Tax Collector, ”which were ready in
early September of 1848, and a theater review, “Mr. Phister as Captain
Scipio, ”that was signed “Procul ”and was in fair copy by December. And
on top of all this, he had plans of writing “a pair of discourses ”under the
common title “Let Not the Heart in Sorrow Sin, ”dealing with what are,
humanly speaking, “the noblest and most beautiful forms of despair,”
namely “unhappy love or grief over the death of someone beloved, [and]
sorrow over not having found one’s proper place in the world. ”These are
all forms of despair that “the poet ”loves but that “Christianity ”calls sin.
And besides all this there was also the essay “Armed Neutrality ”plus, lest
we forget, Kierkegaard’s journals: He had finished journal NB 4 on May