Soren Kierkegaard

presented the ideal human state? Wouldn’t this then “scare him away from
being a human being, so that it might end in suicide?” Kierkegaard went
to explain that “this sort of sickliness was rooted in the fact that a person
egotistically loved himself instead of loving the ideal.”
Tryde, “the archdeacon,” also had a comment. In his opinion, Kierke-
gaard was exaggerating when he maintained that Christianity had been
abolished through the making of “observations.” Tryde was furthermore
sure that the remark about “observations” had been directed at himself,
which he found utterly without justification, because “Søren Kierkegaard
could not be more subjective than he [Tryde] was”—indeed, Tryde had
even looked at Kierkegaard’sEdifying Discoursesin order “to satisfy himself
that this was so.” We might think that Kierkegaard would have found this
sort of competition about who could be more subjective to be totally ab-
surd, but no, he in fact picked up the gauntlet: “The Right Reverend did
not see that there must always be this great difference: He holds an official
post and draws a very considerable salary, and I have done it gratis. I have
amounted to nothing, I have exposed myself to the persecution of the mob,
I have lived on the street—all in accordance with the rules of subjectivity.”
“The philosopher” was Sibbern, and according to Kierkegaard he had
come forth with the following “little oddity”: “The other day Sibbern told
me thatsomeone hadread theremarks includedin thefirst sectionofPractice
in Christianityin a purely comic sense and was of the opinion that the matter
was so serious that the clergy ought to intervene.” It had thus escaped this
person’s notice that the presentation contained a deepertheologicalpoint.
“Sibbern could not keep himself from laughing when he related this to
me,” Kierkegaard wrote—most likely while laughing himself.
“The reviewer” was a Swede, the literary scholar and aesthetician Albert
Lysander, to whom H. P. Kofoed-Hansen, pastor at the Church of Our
Lady in the southern Jutland town of Haderslev, directed Kierkegaard’s
attention. Lysander’s review had appeared in the Swedish periodical,Journal
for Literature; Kofoed-Hansen had read it “without edification,” and, he
assumed, Kierkegaard had done likewise.
On August 25, 1850, Kierkegaard’s “physician,” Oluf Lundt Bang, was
much more—and quite volubly—delighted, and he wrote to thank Kier-
kegaard for the book by sending a rhymed epistle in 150 kindly verses,
which out of kindness to Bang we will consign to oblivion.
And on December 20 of that year, when the “curate,” Emil Boesen,
finally got around to writing a thank-you letter acknowledging receipt of
Practice, he expressed great regret at his tardiness but also consoled both
himself and Kierkegaard by pointing out that he was more delighted with
this book than with the previous works of the same sort, “I suppose because