Soren Kierkegaard

has striven to remedy this consumptive weakening.” Invoking a retrospec-
tive and historical perspective, Nielsen attempted to show how Kierkegaard
had waited in vain for Mynster to make an admission: “Bishop Mynster
died. TheCommunicationswas published, but there was no final explanation,
not a word from the Church’s side that could have cleared up the misunder-
standing....Sothelimit had been reached.” Thus Nielsen, too, had stud-
ied Mynster’sCommunicationsand had apparently been amazed that they did
not mention Kierkegaard and his work with a single line. Nielsen therefore
found Kierkegaard’s attack entirely understandable. Nielsen believed that
Kierkegaard knew what he was doing, but he also believed that Kierkegaard
had done so “with unspeakable pain” and had put the matter in God’s
hands. And, finally, Nielsen let slip this brilliant little remark: “I believe this
because I cannot do otherwise; in this matter I am compelled to value this
man so highly in order not to value him—very little.”
After these well-intentioned efforts at the thankless task of bringing about
a reconciliation, Nielsen presented his actual “petition,” which made it clear
what an incredibly poor understanding of the entire matter he actually had:
Presupposing that Kierkegaard had been motivated neither by “self love”
nor by “vain imperiousness or intellectual arrogance,” he requested that
Bishop Martensen permit him, Nielsen, to offer Kierkegaard the admission
he demanded. “I do not require that Bishop Martensen alter his individual
views; I ask only that the Bishop—not for Kierkegaard’s sake, or for my sake,
but for the sake of the Church—will permit the admission, as I understand it,
to stand and to apply to himself as well.” This was a surprising suggestion,
and J. F. Giødwad, the gray eminence ofFædrelandet, discreetly took Kier-
kegaard aside to hear if he thought the newspaper should publish more of
this sort of thing, which in Kierkegaard’s decided opinion was not strictly
necessary. He would in fact prefer thatFædrelandetpublish articles thatat-
tackedhim, since this would help preserve his “separateness as an individual.”
The day following Nielsen’s good deed, Martensen wrote to his clerical
friend Gude, informing him that he had recently paid Nielsen a “return
visit” to make it clear that he did not “harbor any hatred, nor was he op-
posed to reconciliation.” The visit had been reasonably successful, inasmuch
as Nielsen apparently not only shared, but supported, Martensen’s views.
Nielsen would of course continue to defend Kierkegaard’s “works,” but
Martensen noted that he had spoken “with much greater disapproval con-
cerning Kierkegaard’s most recent scandalous episode. He would not quite
grant that it was diabolical, but granted that itcouldbe. He said that Kierke-
gaard was now standing at a perilous crossroads:Eitherhe would have to
prove that he was the greatest man of the eraorhe would be less than zero!”
According to Martensen, Nielsen then mentioned that he would write a