Soren Kierkegaard

the triumph of externality in the theater—Goethe had resigned his post as
director of the Weimar Theater when adogwas permitted on stage!
Heiberg’s campaign against bad taste—which, as is well-known, is the
most prevalent sort of taste—was soon extended to every level, even to the
more popular circles that he hoped to refine. This can be seen in his article
“On Our National Pastimes,” which were singled out for the special atten-
tions of his elegantly accusatory finger. The mere thought of the means of
transportation preferred by the common people for their Sunday outings
awakened his aesthetic revulsion: “What could be more tasteless than the
sight of these huge, lumbering, four-seater Holstein coaches with three or
four people sitting on each side, many of whom also have small children
on their laps? The coach with its heavy load can be moved only with great
effort, pulled along a dusty country road by a couple of emaciated
horses....Andwhat is the objective of all these exertions? To reach the
much sought after amusement place, the Deer Park, where they encounter
all over again the Copenhagen that one might think they had wanted to
escape; where they get caught up in a crush worse than anything in the
capital; where they practically run one another over, swallowing vast quan-
tities of dust and dirt, staring stupidly at one another and making insipid
remarks about each other’s clothing and finery.” Kierkegaard took these
lines to heart, and as we saw in the previous chapter, the scene is nearly
identical to the conclusion of his letter to P. W. Lund, where he depicted
the chaotic state of the theological disciplines.
To avoid such “tastelessness and platitudes,” Heiberg recommended re-
stricting oneself to a limited social set with a more or less homogeneous
level ofBildung, which was also the precondition of proper “conversation.”
Since children are poor at conversation, they naturally ought not be in-
cluded in the carriage tour, and an outing in the Royal Gardens with their
governess might be a more appropriate way for them to pass the time. If a
trip is to be a pleasure trip, it must not be repeated too frequently, and when
you do take such a tri pthe im portant thing is not merely reaching your
objective, but in particular the enjoyment of the trip itself, which is why it
ought to be endowed with the requisite elegance: “Gentlemen may travel
on foot, on horseback, or in small, light carriages of every sort. Parties that
include ladies ought only make use of Offenbach-style or other light but
roomy carriages which are equipped with a hood that can provide protec-
tion from wind and rain when necessary.” Heiberg appears to have been
an adherent of a sort of knightly romanticism, adapted to urban circum-
stances. He was entirely up-to-date, on the other hand, when it came to
the modern Hegelian philosophical formula in which the whole matter was