tion, seeing as, after all, history has sort of gained some knowledge and has
sort of heard so much to the effect that he had sort of been something sort
of great—this veneration is not worth a hill of beans; it is thoughtlessness,
sanctimoniousness, and thus blasphemous, for it is blasphemous to have
thoughtless veneration for someone one must either believe in or take of-
fense at.”
There was an implicit dig at Grundtvigianism contained in this critique
of world-historical habits. And indeed, Peter Christian was also among
those who were unhappy with the work and believed that Søren Aabye
had gonemuchtoo far by including remarks such as those cited here, and
that he ought merely to have hinted at them. “Good Lord, that is supposed
to be so wise,” replied Søren Aabye, whohadattempted to employ artful
hinting inWorks of Love, and had thus learned from experience that this sort
of thing did not work. If Peter Christian was unhappy, it was only because
he preferred to ignore all searching questions: “Peter always sticks to the
insignificant things with which he has frittered away his life. And so, as
always, there is no difficulty at all in writing big books like those I write—
that’s something anyone can do....Mediocrity can really have a merry old
time, since Denmark has no standards whatever.” So Kierkegaard had to
state his case yet again: “The various representations of what the sensible
people, the statesman, et cetera, say in passing judgment on Christ in a
contemporary setting are merely renditions of the judgment passed by fini-
tude on the Absolute. Most of them contain something prophetically crazy,
inasmuch as the absolute maddest of them speak of Christ in terms express-
ing exactly what Christ himself wants—for example, when the shrewd fel-
low says ‘unless he intends to get himself put to death.’ But in a certain
sense that was precisely Christ’s intention. And so on, at quite of number
of points.”
Kierkegaard had the blase ́bourgeoisie speak their lines as demonstrations
of their scandalized reactions to the idiot God. Later, when Kierkegaard
addressed his own contemporaries, his readers, these remarks would recur
as strangely delayed echoes; they should almost have been included as a
postscript to the second edition ofPracticewhen it was published in May
- Merely the titles of these respectable personages would have done
the trick: “the editor,” “the archdeacon,” “the philosopher,” “the physi-
cian,” “the reviewer,” and “the rural curate.”
Thus “the editor”—Giødwad, that is—said that Kierkegaard, “by pre-
senting the ideal so powerfully, had probably scared off a few theological
graduates from becoming pastors.” Then people should probably not read
my works at all, Kierkegaard replied, because if a person had such a violent
reaction to ideal presentations, how would things go when Kierkegaard