Soren Kierkegaard

soon revealed his kleptomaniac tendencies both with respect to the pseud-
onymous writings and to the conversations they had on their Thursday
strolls, during which, incidentally, he would merely put Kierkegaard off
with small talk. Thus, Kierkegaard had not had any benefit from the philos-
ophy professor, who was “too ponderous, too thick-skinned, too corrupted
by the age of Christian VIII.” Contact between the two was not broken
off definitively, however, as can been seen from various bits of evidence,
including a couple of short notes from February and June 1852, in which
Nielsen expressed his regrets that he was unable to go for a walk; signifi-
cantly, in the second of these two notes, Nielsen did not sign himself
“Yours, R. Nielsen,” as previously, but merely “In friendship, R. Nielsen.”
Kierkegaard wrote a sketch containing an official declaration of hostility
toward Nielsen, a lengthy article titled “Public Legal Case” in which “Joh.
Climacus, on behalfof himself and of several otherpseudonyms,” was called
as a witness to testify against “Mr. Lic. Theol. R. Nielsen, Professor of
Philosophy and Knight of the Dannebrog.” We must hope that the heading
was written ironically, with tongue in cheek, and we must be especially
thankful that the article remained in Kierkegaard’s desk drawer. No less
embarrassing is the article titled “Prof. R. Nielsen Stands Alone!—” cryp-
ticallysubtitled “AThree-Quarter-LengthPortrait”—whichentails arather
weird allegory: “When one makes a drawing in which a one-eyed person
is depicted from the side on which his eye is located, it would never occur
to anyone to think that he had anything other than two eyes. And when
the person portrayed is depicted only down to his knees—when the person
who provides support is concealed—then it does look as if Prof. Nielsen
stood alone.” But no, he was not standing alone; he was standing on the
shoulders ofKierkegaard andthe pseudonyms, whichmeant that his“stand-
ing alone is a fraud.” In the second version of a “Literary Revision Article”
from early 1853, Kierkegaard ruled out any future relationship: “Now the
point has been reached that if, for example, I were to die now, Prof. N.
would be the person I would least of all wish to be regarded as having the
true understanding of my efforts.”
Being Kierkegaard’s disciple was no easy business. Or, rather, it was no-
body’s business. Kierkegaard was so punctilious about being Kierkegaard
that he was absolutely unable to endure the thought of being reproduced
by any disciple, who merely by being a disciple was of course a potential
thief, as had been the case with his “little secretary Mr. Christensen,” who
had snuck about and scribbled in the newspapers with illegally borrowed
Kierkegaardian expressions. And a couple of years later, when Grı ́mur
Thorgrimsson Thomsen defended a dissertationOn Lord Byron, the literary
pilfering was repeated: “My, but Grimur Thomsen must be a very learned