Soren Kierkegaard

suddenly extinguished. This, the librarian explains, is because the master of
the house is an extraordinarily punctilious man who is of the opinion that
a “genuine and capable personality always has light within himself.” After
all these hindrances, Martensen finally gets down to his religious task, his
sermon, but it eludes him. He really believes that everything has already
been said in the excellent “funeral oration,” from his own funeral, and he
thumbs frantically through the New Testament without finding anything
appropriate for himself, because the whole book is too subjective. Tucking
his unfinished sermon, his image of Christ, and hisDogmaticsunder his arm,
he wanders out into the garden, which appears to be a moonlit wilderness,
blanketed in fog: “It continually seemed to me as though there were some-
one walking behind me, but when I looked back, there was no one
there....Itisunpleasant enough to be afraid of something, but to be afraid
of nothing is terrifying.” Martensen argues with himself and with his dam-
nable surroundings, which do not at all measure up to his notions of proper
proportion: “Everything is baroque, ornate, twisted, curved, convoluted,
contorted....I’mbeing made a fool of; I’m being deceived.” He takes
refuge in hisDogmaticsand its definitions of the Devil, but he comes to the
desperate conclusion that the present case is more a matter of deviltry:
“After all, the Devil as such is something one can get away from, but sheer
deviltry is so cunning that it scoffs at all dogmatic speculation. This makes
it clear, furthermore, that sheer deviltry is worse than the sheer Devil.”
Martensen is forced to fall to his knees, and in this kneeling position he
offers a repentant confession: “What I am, and what I have done for the
sake of Christ is something I cannot say in words, neither in a few words
nor in a sermon. But this much I can say, that the main thing is that I was
born objectively, baptized objectively, and died objectively, and therefore
I humbly pray that you save me from all subjective verbosity!” He leaves
the mysterious house through an open wrought-iron gate. “I did not want
to look back. I had the definite feeling that the shadow was right at my
back, that he stood at the gate—and bowed.”
A tempestuous sequence follows. Martensen puts out to sea and falls into
the clutches of a “ragged, spiritless, coarse, unimaginative crab, a dilettante
of a monster,” who in fact has the nerve to gobble up hisDogmatics. Next,
he is compelled to endure the company of a number of Hottentots who,
to his absolute disgust, are positivelysteamingwith carnality. Finally, he is
subjected to a most agonizing cross-examination by an elegant “catechist”
who justmightbe Mynster. After all this and quite a bit more, the sorely
tested Martensen suddenly finds himself on a barren moor, where he meets
amanwhoissearchingforabillfromatailor,whichhasfallenoutofhiscoat
pocket. The man claims that he is a “rag” and is (according to Martensen’s