CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 7
‘alas, I would rather write a folio than publish a page’: Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Volume 5: Journals NB6–NB10, ed. and trans. Niels Jørgen Cappelørn, Alastair Hannay, David Kangas, Bruce H. Kirmmse, George Pattison, Joel D. S. Rasmussen, Vanessa Rumble and K. Brian Söderquist (Princeton University Press, 2012), p. 19: NB6, 24 (July or August 1848).
this ‘idolized’ actress learned that her fame was ‘empty’: S. Kierkegaard, Christian Discourses / The Crisis and a Crisis in the Life of an Actress, ed. trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton University Press, 2009), pp. 304–5.
‘When it comes to the feminine’: ibid.
When Luise Pätges gave her first performance as Juliet: on the life of Johanne Luise Heiberg and her connection to Kierkegaard, see Katalin Nun, Women of the Danish Golden Age: Literature, Theater and the Emancipation of Women (Museum Tusculanum Press, 2013), pp. 62–84.
He became a familiar figure in Reitzel’s bookshop: see Niels Thulstrup, The Copenhagen of Kierkegaard, ed. Marie Mikulová Thulstrup, trans. Ruth Mach-Zagal (Reitzel, 1986), pp. 41–60; Encounters with Kierkegaard, ed. Bruce Kirmmse, trans. Bruce Kirmmse and Virginia Laursen (Princeton University Press, 1998), p. 110–11: a translated extract from Otto B. Wroblewski’s Ti Aar i C. A. Reitzels Boglade [Ten Years in C. A. Reitzel’s Bookshop] (1889). Wroblewski, a bookseller at Reitzel’s shop from 1843 to 1853, recalled that ‘The peculiar figure of Søren Kierkegaard is the sort one does not forget even if one has seen it only once – even more unlikely that we would, we who saw him so regularly in the bookshop. He wasn’t very forthcoming. With Reitzel, of course, he spoke only about press business, and with us at the bookshop only about buying books. But I, at any rate, was strangely moved by a friendly smile from the deep blue, melancholy eyes with which he could look at you, a look that occasionally was coupled with a satirical line near his mouth when a remark amused him.’
he took his new books, in their plain paper covers: many of the books Kierkegaard owned are now in the Kierkegaard Archive at the Royal Danish Library in Copenhagen. A beautifully illustrated account of Kierkegaard as a lover and collector of books is presented in Niels Jørgen Cappelørn, Gert Posselt and Bent Rohde, Tekstspejle: Om Søren Kierkegaard som bogtilrettelægger, boggiver og bogsamler (Rosendahls Forlag, 2002), pp. 105–219. On Kierkegaard’s preference for Møller’s bookbinding, see Niels Jørgen Cappleørn, Joakim Garff and Johnny Kondrup, Written Images: Søren Kierkegaard’s Journals, Notebooks, Booklets, Sheets, Scraps, and Slips of Paper, trans. Bruce H. Kirmmse (Princeton University Press, 2003), pp. 163–4.
‘the demon debater from the north’: see Thorkild C. Lyby, ‘Peter Christian Kierkegaard: A Man with a Difficult Family Heritage’, in Kierkegaard and His Danish Contemporaries, Tome II: Theology, ed. Jon Stewart (Ashgate, 2009), pp. 189–209.
every man, the poet Novalis urged in 1798, ‘should become an artist’: Novalis, Glauben und Liebe [Faith and Love] (1798), in Novalis Schriften, ed. Paul Kluckhohn and Richard Samuel, vol. 2 (Kohlhammer, 1981), p. 497. Novalis was the pseudonym of Friedrich von Hardenberg.
Modern life had become ‘prosaic’ and ‘irreligious’: Henrik Steffens, Indledning til philosophiske Forelæsninger [Introduction to Philosophical Lectures] (Gyldendals Trane-Klassikere, 1968), pp. 6, 134–5, 143; quoted in Bruce H. Kirmmse, Kierkegaard in Golden Age Denmark (Indiana University Press, 1990), pp. 82–4.
‘the development of man’s capacity for feeling’: Friedrich Schiller, Essays, ed. Walter Hinderer and Daniel O. Dahlstrom (Continuum, 1993), pp. 107, 131–2.
‘a feeling that is not sensual but spiritual’: Friedrich von Schlegel, Dialogue on Poetry and Literary Aphorisms, trans. Ernst Behler and Roman Struc (Pennsylvania State University Press, 1968), p. 99.
the ‘unconscious poetry that moves in the plant’: ibid, p. 54.
a ‘feeling for that eternal and holy being’: Friedrich Schleiermacher, On Religion: Speeches to its Cultured Despisers, trans. Richard Crouter (Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 3.
‘the quiet disappearance of one’s whole existence in the immeasurable’: ibid, p. 23
‘strive to awaken the slumbering kernel of a better humanity’: ibid, p. 7.
everything ‘is in God’: see The Collected Works of Spinoza, vol. I, trans. Edwin Curley (Princeton University Press, 1985), pp. 420–24 (Ethics, Part I, Proposition 15). Spinoza is more properly described as a panentheist (everything is in God) than as a pantheist (everything is God) – but pantheism is the version of Spinozism that the Romantics seized upon.
H. C. Ørsted pursued research into ‘the Spirit in Nature’: Aanden i Naturen [The Spirit in Nature] was the title of the collection of papers H. C. Ørsted published just before his death in 1851. He discovered electro-magnetism in 1820. On Kierkegaard’s relationship to H. C. Ørsted, see Bjarne Troelsen, ‘Hans Christian Ørsted: Søren Kierkegaard and The Spirit in Nature,’ in Kierkegaard and His Danish Contemporaries, Tome I: Philosophy, Politics and Social Theory, ed. Jon Stewart (Ashgate, 2009), pp. 215–27.
in 1833 Heiberg set out his own manifesto: see Heiberg’s On the Significance of Philosophy for the Present Age and Other Texts, trans. and ed. Jon Stewart (Reitzel, 2005), which follows the scholarly debate prompted by Heiberg’s essay.
his philosophy professors Poul Møller and Frederik Christian Sibbern: on Kierkegaard’s relationships with these two important philosophy teachers, see Finn Gredal Jensen, ‘Poul Martin Møller: Kierkegaard and the Confidant of Socrates’, and Carl Henrik Koch, ‘Frederik Christian Sibbern: “the lovable, remarkable thinker, Councilor Sibbern” and “the political Simple-Peter Sibbern”’ – both in Kierkegaard and His Danish Contemporaries, Tome I, pp. 101–67 and 229–60.
an ‘unforgettable’ teacher: in his memoirs, Hans Lassen Martensen remembers ‘the genial, unforgettable Poul Møller, to whom we looked up with admiration, and who, without trying, exerted such a fruitful influence on us’, in Af mit Levnet [From My Life], vol. 1 (Gyldendal, 1882), p. 16.
When she confided her ‘deep indignation’ at how Kierkegaard had ‘mistreated her soul’: see Encounters with Kierkegaard, ed. Bruce Kirmmse, trans. Bruce Kirmmse and Virginia Laursen (Princeton University Press, 1998), pp. 213–16.
‘the enthusiasm of my youth’: S. Kierkegaard, The Concept of Anxiety, trans. Reidar Thomte (Princeton University Press, 1981), p. 178.
He wrote to Regine of the ‘genie of the ring’ within him: see S. Kierkegaard, Letters and Documents, ed. and trans. Henrik Rosenmeier (Princeton University Press, 2009), p. 66 – letter to Regine Olsen, 28 October 1840. On Kierkegaard’s connection to Oehlenschläger, see Bjarne Troelsen, ‘Adam Oehlenschläger: Kierkegaard and the Treasure Hunter of Immediacy’, in Kierkegaard and his Danish Contemporaries, Tome III: Literature, Drama and Aesthetics, ed. Jon Stewart (Ashgate, 2009), pp. 255–71. On the figure of Aladdin in Kierkegaard’s own writing, see Jennifer Veninga, ‘Aladdin: The Audacity of Wildest Wishes’, in Katalin Nun and Jon Stewart (eds.), Kierkegaard’s Literary Figures and Motifs, Tome I: Agamemnon to Guadalquiver (Ashgate, 2014), pp. 31–40.
‘Never in her life had she seen a human being so deeply distressed’: Encounters with Kierkegaard, p. 196: from Martensen’s autobiography Af mit Levnet, vol. I, p. 79.
His first literary journal entries were on the master-thief: on Kierkegaard’s interest in the master-thief, see F. Nassim Bravo Jordan, ‘The Master-Thief: A One-Man Army against the Established Order’, in Katalin Nun and Jon Stewart (eds.), Kierkegaard’s Literary Figures and Motifs, Tome II: Gulliver to Zerlina (Ashgate, 2015), pp. 111–20.
One day Kierkegaard tried out this ‘youthful, romantic enthusiasm’: Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Volume 1: Journals AA–DD, ed. and trans. Niels Jørgen Cappelørn, Alastair Hannay, David Kangas, Bruce H. Kirmmse, George Pattison, Vanessa Rumble and K. Brian Söderquist (Princeton University Press, 2007), pp. 128–30: BB 42 (1837).
‘I have seen the sea turn blue-grey’: ibid, pp. 7–8: AA 4 (1835).
‘for I could spare it, and she needed it’: ibid, p. 9: AA 5 (1835).
‘the church bells call to prayer’: ibid, p. 12: AA 7 (25 July 1835).
Still in character as a Romantic poet, Kierkegaard took an evening walk: see ibid, p. 9: AA 6 (July 29, 1835).
‘I have often stood there and pondered my past life’: ibid, pp. 9–10: AA 6 (29 July 1835); citation abridged.
‘What I really need is to get clear about what I must do’: ibid, pp. 19–20: AA 12 (1835); citation abridged.
Kierkegaard explored themes from the old legend of Faust: on Kierkegaard’s interest in Faust, see Leonardo F. Lisi, ‘Faust: The Seduction of Doubt’, in Nun and Stewart (eds.), Kierkegaard’s Literary Figures and Motifs, Tome I, pp. 209–28.
‘the unhappy relativity in everything’: Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Volume 1: Journals AA–DD, p. 223: DD 30 (14 July 1837).
‘Søren these days is perhaps more than ever weighed down by brooding’: see Encounters with Kierkegaard, pp. 142–3 – from P. C. Kierkegaard’s journal, August 1837.
‘If an author who neither has a considerable fund of ideas nor is very industrious’: Christian Discourses / The Crisis and a Crisis in the Life of an Actress, p. 316.