attheRecentConvention.”Itisasavageparodyofthejovialitythattypified
Grundtvigianism: There had been an extra half-hour at the convention,
which Dr. Kierkegaard had filled with some diverse observations; he gazed
on church history and discovered that there are two paths, that of ecstasy
and thatof sober-mindedness.Søren Aabye continued:“Actually, however,
there is a third path: the path of garrulousness, which is far more traveled—
itisreallythemainhighwaythatleads,frombeginningtoend,throughboth
the history of the Church and the history of the world.” Peter Christian had
set out on this broad highway of garrulousness, and the unanswered ques-
tion was whether he “had been impaired by the social delights at the con-
vention and at other places, and also whether he had not become spoiled
by occupying himself with those easy, rewarding little tasks that are so be-
loved and appreciated in our times, which lust after candy and goodies, are
envious of genuine competence, and hate seriousness and rigor.”
Other people might perhaps have called all this a tempest in a teapot, but
during the weeks that followed, Kierkegaard whipped it up into a veritable
typhoonthatthreatenedtoswampeverything,includingsober-mindedness.
“Fuddy-duddy,” “clumsy oaf,” “nonsense messenger,” and “slobberer” are
merely a modest selection of the abusive names that rained down on Peter
Christian, who was accused of “whining,” “pusillanimity,” “superficiality,”
“triviality,” “cowardice,” “criminality,” “garrulousness,” “carelessness,”
“literary larceny,” and “sham heartiness.” In connection with this last accu-
sation Søren Aabye noted: “I, too, have a heart. And I have tried to keep
on having a heart and have therefore tried to keep it in the right place—so
that I do not have it on my lips at one moment, in my trousers the next,
but never in the right place—so that I do not confuse heartiness with chatti-
ness and nonsense.” Perhaps that was where the trouble was, right down
there in Peter Christian’s trousers—after all, his wife was sick or crippled
or whatever it was, but in any case not really available. So, Søren Aabye
began to think, maybe all Peter Christian needed was a little diversion: “He
has always been something of a fuddy-duddy. Recently he has been rather
devoid of ideas. But now it seems almost as though he has seen the light—
he will find success as a cheerleader for mediocrity, triviality, and heartiness.
It is true that he has needed diversion. I can understand that he is tired of
living out there in the country with a sick wife—but what a diversion!
.. .—He is intelligent and many-talented, but he is disintegrating into a
vapid gadabout, taking part in everything.”
In the middle of his fury, Søren Aabye deftly turned the criticism to his
own advantage, because it suddenly occurred to him what he had been
accusedof waspreciselywhat thetimes needed:“Themisfortuneandfunda-
mental defect of the times was—reasonableness. What was needed was in-