Soren Kierkegaard

woman, and many other delights. After hesitating for a moment—he ex-
plained—“I addressed the gods like this: ‘Esteemed contemporaries! I
choose one thing, that I might always have laughter on my side.’ Not one
of the gods replied with so much as a single word; instead, they all began
to laugh. From this I concluded that my wish had been granted.”
It is impossible to know whether Aesthete A was correct in his conclu-
sion, but what seems beyond doubt is that Kierkegaard, during hisown
campaign, did all he could to make a similar wish come true. People simply
could not keep from laughing—even Bishop Martensen may have felt a bit
of a smile on his episcopal countenance. But this very circumstance begins
to engender a bit of doubt as to whether the campaign lived up to the
requirements that had been set for it. Was it possible that Kierkegaard and
his laugh-inducing remediesnot onlyhelped expose the discrepancy be-
tween Christianity and Christendom, but that he and his laughteralso
helped make that discrepancy more tolerable, precisely because we can rec-
oncile ourselves to it in laughter? That, in any case, is how history has
reconciled itself with Kierkegaard’s denunciation. Or do we perhaps laugh
at the wrong thing and at the wrong time? Is ours a misunderstood and
misplaced jollity? In that case Kierkegaard would suffer the same fate as the
clown he himself once had Aesthete A tell about: “In a theater, it happened
that a fire broke out backstage. A clown came out to inform the audience
about it. People thought it was a joke, and they applauded. He repeated it;
they cheered even more. This, I think, is how the world will come to an
end, amid the universal jubilation of clever people who think it is a joke.”
We are amused by the episode, because we tacitly assume it is fiction.
But it is not. For Aesthete A in fact based his diapsalm on an actual event
that had taken place in Saint Petersburg on February 14, 1836. The accident
had cost a good many human lives, because no one had taken the clown
seriously when he had rushed forward shouting “Fire! Fire!” We suddenly
feel sorry for the panic-stricken clown. He had made an appalling discovery
at which the public had merely laughed. But then, what if the clown himself
had lit the fire, what if it had been his fault—then our sympathy would
instantly be transformed into contempt; we would abominate him.
On April 4, 1855, prompted by an anonymous suggestion that he “stop
ringing the alarm bell,” Kierkegaard replied that it would be indefensible
to stop ringing the alarm as long as the fire was burning, because under such
circumstances a person is required to raise an outcry. Kierkegaard’s reply
continued as follows: “But strictly speaking, I am not the one who is ringing
the alarm. I am the one who has set the fire in order to smoke out illusions
and trickery.” Thus Kierkegaard was a pyromaniac—a Christian one, of
course—and was therefore justified in what he did, “for according to the