Journal Entries
SELECTED ENTRIES FROM KIERKEGAARD’S JOURNALS AND PAPERS PERTAINING TO ARTICLES, THE CORSAIR AFFAIR, AND “AN OPEN LETTER”
Articles
Summons255 [IV B 19 185]
That the police adjutant must be on the spot whenever the watchman whistles, that the fire chief must get up whenever the alarm goes off, that the censor has no quiet day or night as soon as it pleases an author to set him in motion by his mental activity—I, too, find it to be quite in order that these men receive therefore an appropriate wage, enjoy glory and honor in society, are loved and respected by the entire community. But that I, an unemployed man, who in my life unite what is rarely seen united, have neither business affairs nor wages, that I, without any compensation whatsoever, must be disturbed in my quiet inactivity every time it pleases a joker to attribute to me the authorship of things of which no one wants to be the author—this I do not find to be in order, no more than if someone for a joke were to hang on my door the sign of the police or of the fire chief or to persuade people to think that I am the censor in order to create for me the inconvenience of opening the door at every moment in the day in order to explain that I am neither the one nor the other.
What the majority of readers probably never knew and the others have long since forgotten, what I myself would have forgotten in a short time if the aftereffects did not still pain me, is at this moment still all too much alive in my memory: that six months ago, driven to extremities by the informing [IV B 19 186] voices that denounced me as the author of various articles, I disclaimed in a solemn declaration all association with these pieces, that in order to secure for myself a carefree and undisturbed future, I “begged every reader never to regard me as an author of anything that does not bear my name,”*256 that as a result of this step I have for a long time now met with sharp glances, derisive looks, mocking faces, which to me were inexplicable until spoken and written expressions made it clear beyond all doubt that people had seen through me, had seen that it was vanity that had led me to bring myself to attention in an unseemly way, that there was actually only one person who regarded me as capable of being the author of those remarkable articles. The mistake was unpleasant for me; the mortification that followed, I have sought to overcome, and I perhaps would have succeeded if the same story had not started all over again. During the past fortnight I have heard that an article in Ny Portefeuille257 has been fathered upon me, two letters in Berlingske Tidende258 (or just one), a letter in Fædrelandet,259 and the big work Either/Or.260 My situation is just as painful as formerly, is even more painful, since it is a repetition. It is just as difficult as before, is even more difficult, since by experience I have learned the distressing consequences that warn me against every step, although a step nevertheless seems necessary, a step that would be just as dangerous for me as it would be for the man Jean Paul261 tells about, [IV B 19 187] if he, standing on one leg, read a sign saying, “A fox-trap is set here,” put his other foot on the ground. If I declare that I have no part either in those articles or in that work, I run the risk of seeing later that people only wanted to get the best of me, that they will again mock me because I am so vain as to believe that anybody could seriously suppose that I, in one way or another, was capable of writing those articles, a book of around eight hundred pages, or to write half of it, if one assumes that there are two authors. If I remain silent, then the daily scene repeats itself, then in some way I must do the honors of an author, receive courtesies and lying-in visits appropriate to an author, endure an ironic smile that gives me a presentiment of what I can expect if I am so imprudent as to disclaim the authorship. In order to avoid, if possible, this difficult situation, I have decided to do what I hereby do: to call upon Victor Eremita to abandon his pseudonymity so that I can live in peace and at ease, to call upon him to do this as soon as possible, so that it will not be said later that I have pretended to be an author, although I myself know that in this respect I am as innocent as a child born yesterday.
As far as the newspaper articles are concerned, I would wish that the writers would do the same, but since the matter seems almost forgotten because of Either/Or, I will not call upon them to do what I, if they did it, would always regard as a proof of the noble rectitude that has sympathy for the calamities of others.
Copenhagen, Feb. 22, 1843
S. KIERKEGAARD
Magister Artium
P.S. I have placed my summons in this paper262 so that Victor Eremita, if he does not live here in the city, will receive it as quickly as possible, and in conclusion I request that he not delay longer than is absolutely necessary.—Pap. IV B 19 February 22, 1843
There is something curious about my little secretary, Mr. Christensen.263 I wager that he is the one who in various ways is scribbling pamphlets and things in the newspapers, for I often hear the echo of my own ideas, not in the way I am accustomed to writing them but in the way I casually toss them out orally. And I who was so kind to him, paid him well, conversed with him for hours, for which I also paid, for the simple reason that he should not feel mortified and humiliated because his poverty made it necessary for him to be a copyist. I made him an initiate in the whole affair, cast a veil of mystery over the whole thing, made the time as pleasant as possible in every way. —The little article in Portefeuille264 a few days before Either/Or was published is certainly by him. It really was not very nice of him. After all, he could have confided in me and told me that he hankered to be an author, but his authorship does not have a good conscience. He no doubt notices that I have changed a little toward him, although I was just as polite and considerate as before. On the other hand, I have stopped his inquisitive snooping around my room; he must be kept at arm’s length; I hate all plagiarizing pirates.—JP V 5688 (Pap. IV A 141) n.d., 1843
[VI B 185 258] A Literary Unpleasantness in Berlingske Tidende, no.
In Berlingske T., no.,265 under the rubric “Literature,”* I find my name brought in such close association with the authorship [VI B 185 259] of various pseudonymous works that the article, which also touches upon a little book of mine, is headed by my name. The fictional opening (what a curious effect is produced by a prosaic colon) is continued in a fictional way in that the reviewer of those books and the exhibiter of my person, with an ingenious allusion to oriental tales (with which the article, given the absence of any other similarity, has a certain similarity because of its ahistorical character), assumes that I must be in the possession of a magic wand—if I, as rumor says, have written so many pseudonymous books. Yes—if! But, now, if not! Oh, so I have no magic wand. Lacking it, I can be of service to that reviewer only by way of a cordial and sincere wish: that all clumsy reviewers be kept on Blocksberg.266
It is indeed true that a rumor says, or, more correctly, has said (because after a while one does grow weary of talking about such things), that I am the author. But from this it does not follow that what the rumor says is true. To print a rumor does not make it more true, and if an attempt is made to deceive a little by means of the form, this simply shows the uncertainty—that the report is indeed a rumor. What, then, is the purpose of it all, and what are the consequences for me? I have always regarded pseudonymity as a bill of divorcement between an author and his work and therefore do not regard myself as justified, any more than I regard the reviewer as justified, in making any attempt to join what is to be separated. Neither could it occur to me to want to make a concession to that reviewer, on the occasion of his writing and his colon, by wanting to disclaim the authorship—that would be making too much of too little—yes, it would also be an impossibility, since he speaks indefinitely of many pseudonymous books, and consequently I cannot know which ones he means. Nor could it occur to me to summon the pseudonymous authors to give their names in order to save me, for I regard such a summons as a literary attack. Nor could it occur to me to disclaim authorship of that article in the Berlingske Tidende, even though in a certain sense it might be necessary, for that kind [VI B 185 260] reviewer does not seem to be dialectically aware of the confusion he produces by wanting to betray something about the name of a pseudonym while he himself remains unnamed.—Pap. VI B 185 n.d., 1845
The Corsair Affair
DRAFTS OF WRITINGS FOR POSSIBLE PUBLICATION
A Request to The Corsair267
Sing sang resches Tubalcain—which translated means: Cruel and bloodthirsty Corsair, high and mighty Sultan, you who hold the lives of men like a plaything in your mighty hand and as a whim in the fury of your invective, Oh, let me move you to compassion, curtail these sufferings—slay me, but do not make me immortal! High and mighty Sultan, in your quick wisdom consider what it would not take long for the paltriest of all those you have slain to see, consider what it means to become immortal, and particularly to become that through the testimonial of The Corsair. Oh, what cruel grace and mercy to be forever pointed to as an inhuman monster because The Corsair inhumanly had spared him! But, above all, not this—that I shall never die! Uh, such a death penalty is unheard of.* I get weary of life just to read it. What a cruel honor and distinction to have no one be moved by my womanly wailing: This will kill me, this will be the death of me—but everybody laughs and says: He cannot die. Oh, let me move you to compassion; stop your lofty, cruel mercy; slay me like all the others.
VICTOR EREMITA
(Here perhaps could be added the words at the end of the postscript to Either/Or,268 which is in the tall cupboard closest to the window.)
In margin: * Slay me so I may live with all the others you have slain, but do not slay me by making me immortal.—JP V 5853 (Pap. VI B 192) n.d., 1845
Addition to Pap. VI B 192:
Have no fear—why spare me, I have no wife to sigh for me, perhaps to grieve . . . . . over the husband you slay, no beloved to feel the drubbing more devastatingly, no children whose tenderness makes the blow heavier for them than for the father—I have no legitimately acquired distinction in society that can be temporarily embittering to see wasted, I have no famous family name so that an entire family will suffer by the attack upon one single member—spare instead everyone who has anyone who perhaps cannot help but feel violated even though the one who is wounded disdains the attack . . . . . —JP V 5854 (Pap. VI B 193) n.d., 1845
Deleted from draft of “The Activity of a Traveling Esthetician and How He Still Happened to Pay for the Dinner,” 46:1-18:
Finally, a wish: [text: would that I might only get into The Corsair soon. It is really hard for a poor author to be so singled out in Danish literature . . . he is the only one who is not abused there]. Yes, Victor Eremita has even had to experience the hitherto unheard-of disgrace—of being attacked?*—no, of being immortalized—by The Corsair.269 No doubt it would be highly desirable that this disgrace to literature did not exist at all, that there be no literary publication making money by prostitution, for what is a woman’s loveliness if it is for sale for money,** and what is a bit of talent when it is in the service of vile profit†; but if it does exist, then it is more desirable to be in the company of or in agreement with what one respects, even though one disapproves of some particulars, than to sit in the place of honor among the despicable.
In margin: * it is an honor.
In margin: ** without such an author’s talent.
In margin: † without a whore’s beauty—JP V 5860 (Pap. VII1 B 1) n.d., 1845
Penciled addition to draft of “The Activity of a Traveling Esthetician . . . ,” 46:8-10:
ubi spiritus ibi ecclesia
ubi P.L.M. [Møller] ibi The Corsair
—JP V 5861 (Pap. VII1 B 5) n.d., 1845
Addition to draft of “The Activity of a Traveling Esthetician . . . ,” 46:4-5, 20-22:
Hilarius Bookbinder,270 my superior, has been flattered in The Corsair.
FRATER TACITURNUS
Chief of Part Three in
Stages on Life’s Way.
—JP V 5862 (Pap. VII1 B 6) n.d., 1845
The Dialectic of Contemptibleness271 [VII1 B 9 170]
To have to acquire the principle for one’s action in the moment of urgency and action is too late: the end result is neither principle nor action. This is why a youth is dedicated to much beautiful reflecting on life for which he as yet has no use; he is practiced in using, purely ideally, much advice about venturing and in suffering many a mitigating solution* for which he** still has no use. And it is the desire and hope of the [VII1 B 9 171] teacher and well-intentioned adults that he eventually will use this counsel in the right way, as coolly and calmly as in the beautiful contemplative time when youth enthusiastically understands what is noble and sublime.
Thus I, too, will now think about or think through the dialectic of contemptibleness, for, after all, I am a young man and have not even remotely experienced anything like being the object of persecution by what is contemptible, I who live happily in my father’s house, enthralled by beautiful recollections, resenting no one, and scarcely the object of anyone’s slander. But I have been told by my elders that contemptibleness nevertheless exists in the world and that it is in fact possible (even if I shudder at having to go out into such a world) that sometime, many years hence, I may be subjected to considerable whispered slander, the annoyance of offensive gossip, or even the concentrated cowardly persecution of raucous contemptibleness—for I have heard about this from one of my elders. And it is indeed possible, even if it is almost impossible for me to believe it, which I dare say is why this older person said to me: My young friend, it is only all too certain—thereby wanting to tell me that he did not wish to believe it, either. But he told me that there were men who had to live on, year after year, knowing how much evil was being said about them, how their character was being attacked and their capabilities envied; and this, he said, was minor and, however reprehensible, yet sometimes excusable, but sometimes contemptibleness could ex professo [intentionally] outright choose a person as its victim. You see, I ought to think all this through so that sometime in the persistent daily gossip over the years, sometime in the urgency of danger, I can consider the dialectic of contemptibleness as coolly and calmly as I do now, I, a young person who, like a young maiden, has no acquaintance with the actual world.
When a man says: It is shameful to have to put up with abuse by a contemptible person, and he says this in anger, he very likely believes he is saying something very reasonable, and many who hear it will perhaps think the same. And yet he [VII1 B 9 172] actually is stating a tautology, actually nothing. To be abused by a contemptible person is really not shameful; for the person abused there can be no shame, and in his contemptibleness the abuser is without shame—thus it cannot be called shame on his part, since it is only a further manifestation and actualization of his contemptibleness. However, it would be shameful of an estimable person, and this is what the man would say: It is shameful that such a worthy person abuses me this way, since I am innocent. It is shameful for me simply because he generally is a good man, and it is shameful for him because he generally is a good man. — Many grieved at Socrates’ death sentence, but Xantippe was strident and said: How can it be that an innocent man should suffer this. Socrates answered: Would you rather have me guilty?272 So also in this matter of being abused by a contemptible person or by a generally good man.
If contemptibleness is unable to insult by abusing, is it then unable to insult at all? No, it cannot—that is, if there is no opposite to abusing. But if there is such a thing, then, quite consistently, it will be able to insult by it. What is its opposite? It is to commend, to praise,273 to admire.
So if a man said: It is shameful that I have to put up with being praised by a contemptible person, and said this calmly and coolly, many would find this strange talk. Perhaps it would also seem so if I imagined it happening in the confusion and busy urgency of actuality. But whether or not I will be able to think and talk this way in an actual situation—and I have often heard from my elders that actuality changes a person, that what looks so easy for the young man in contemplation or the young girl in her enthusiasm is not so easy in actuality—as I see it now, this is the only consistent conclusion, and I will once again convince myself by thinking the matter through in a hypothetical situation, and I am positive that I will convince everyone of it, as convinced as I am now when nothing* disturbs the proper movement of the dialectic.
* no actuality
—Pap. VII1 B 9 n.d., 1846
The dialectic of contemptibleness, a household remedy for internal use as a mild discutient.—Pap. VII1 B 10 n.d., 1846
Continuation of Pap. VII1 B 10:
[VII1 B 11 173] I will suppose that there was a city where the prostitutes made a practice of abusing all the decent girls once a week, but there was one young girl who was never abused; on the contrary, she was acclaimed and praised.274 As young girls do, she would throw herself in tears on her mother’s neck and say: Oh, Mother, why can’t I be abused, too? All my friends look at me suspiciously because I am praised. But then, as mothers do, her mother would admonish patience and say, “Dear child, one does not always get what one wishes. The good often fails to be appreciated in the world, as you are now finding out here in the city where we live by not being abused by those women.” But, finally, as mothers do, the mother would heed the girl’s wish and request of the persons involved that her daughter might also be abused.275 For in the ordinary world it* is not good to be censured, and also in that city it was not good to be censured by everybody, either. Oh, no, and there, where the respectable matrons judged the behavior of the young girls, there it was not good, not good at all, to be censured—how should respectable matrons demean themselves that way—no, it was dreadful merely to be the object of the slightest criticism. Where the prostitutes were concerned, however, it was desirable to be abused. But it would be inconsistent of those prostitutes to get angry at the teenage girl, for they certainly must see that it was they themselves who had reversed matters and that the young girl, far from crediting herself with the power to force them to abdicate, was trying to identify herself with the prescribed practice in [VII1 B 11 174] such matters in that city where, as was said, it was not an honor to be censured or even to merit rebuke, but it most certainly was in this situation involving the prostitutes and the young girl.
So also here. But, in actuality, might it not appear different to the serene mind of a young person who does not know the world and has not been upset by any humiliation or insult? No, impossible. But could there not be something plausible in it? Yes, that is certainly possible.
If, for example, contemptibleness had talent. Indeed, I have heard an elder say that it is inconceivable* that an appreciable talent could sink so low as to be in the service of what is contemptible, inconceivable also because the contemptibleness would have to live in a grand illusion, one that only spite and impotence and darkened understanding could sustain: that its attack actually was an insult. Contemptibleness would have to want to be abusive and then be the only one sufficiently stupid to believe that it was being insulting. A curious kind of madness, unlike the kind in which an insane man fancies that he is the Emperor Napoleon, for the madness of contemptibleness is twofold: it also believes that everybody else agrees with its illusion. Yet let us assume that the talent is the greatest possible, the greatest possible in terms of being capable of entering the service of what is contemptible. What then? Would this change the dialectic of contemptibleness? By no means. It would simply make the contemptible even more loathsome. To be sure, worthiness cannot invest a man with talent, but contemptibleness can and ought to let one forget that the contemptible one has talent, for contemptibleness is related to the essential, talent to the accidental.276 Modesty and chastity certainly cannot make a girl beautiful, but beauty cannot make a harlot beautiful, simply because she is essentially unbeautiful, whereas the chaste and modest girl lacks beauty only accidentally. And whereas they who are fond of the chaste girl say: It is almost a shame that she did not become [VII1 B 11 175] beautiful,** one says of the other woman: Would that she had not become beautiful.
What if contemptibleness had money? This, the elder has said, was often the case—what then? Could wealth and fine clothes and great banquets, could all these alter the dialectic of contemptibleness? By no means. They could only accentuate it all the more forcefully, for in poverty contemptibleness wears a mask, so to speak, and has the protection of an excuse, but wealthy contemptibleness is stark naked.[†]
What if contemptibleness is feared and has power? To be sure, the elder has said that it has never reached that point in the world. But I may, after all, imagine the worst without in the remotest manner worrying about any actual situation that might keep me from thinking the thought through and even though I am glad that such a thing can never happen. Would power in the remotest way alter the dialectic of contemptibleness? By no means, for when suppressed and downtrodden, contemptibleness is in a way almost defended; when it has power, it is completely defenseless.[*]
These are my thoughts on the matter. Of course, I am well aware, as the elder says, that it looks simple to an idealistic, inexperienced young man sitting and thinking about such things but that it is quite different in the confusion of life when the passions mount. Therefore, it is good for me to think about this in time, before having to be tested by experiencing [VII1 B 11 176] it** year after year, or before insurgent contemptibleness makes it completely necessary, for then I would scarcely have the tranquillity I have at present in my ignorance of the world, the tranquillity to sit this way and think and write down my thoughts. No, then I shall have to consult what I have written. It makes me sad to think that sometime, perhaps many years from now, I shall take out this piece of paper and read what I then would be incapable not only of writing but even of understanding. But, away with negative fears of the distant future. I am still a young man, happy in the peacefulness of my paternal home, happy in never having been insulted by anyone—as far as I know.
But what if it happened? Would I join in the laughter at the cheap witticisms of contemptibleness? No, one shows that honor only to pure, innocent, essential wit, even if it touches oneself. Would I be essentially aware of it, as if I were privy to it? No. I shall ponder the Socratic principle:279 “What difference does it make if people slander a person in his absence; they are quite welcome to beat me up—in my absence.” As for being affected, Holberg280 teaches me that there is always a way out for an intelligent man, a way of wisdom that the defiant fool who just stands there does not know: to get out of the way. As for someone who is worse than a fool, I know that no one is so sure of having the sidewalk to herself as a prostitute281—that recognition she enjoys. But if I were extolled as was that young girl in that city, would I put up with it? No, I would regard it as treason against each and every good person who had been abused that anyone who respects the honor of the good should permit this confusion.
Yes, it is easy for a young man to have a tranquil mind; he does not know the world. But that is why he is initiated into many beautiful reflections and much learned counsel. That is what I have done now—oh, everything is so clear to me. I shall now put the date on this paper—January 7, 1846—so that [VII1 B 11 177] sometime years hence, when it is my turn to be maligned,* accused by this one and that of this and of that, or even if loud-mouthed contemptibleness wants to finish me off, I may then be able to remember this.
A YOUNG MAN
Yesterday I found this manuscript on the street. Perhaps it may be of interest to someone to read it. If later in his life the young man is obliged to practice the dialectic of contemptibleness in the service of actuality, I only wish that he may be able to do it Then it will make no difference if he is unable to think it through calmly and coolly and with youth’s beautiful detached view of the dialectical—something he had regarded as quite difficult—to sit like Archimedes, lost in dialectical contemplation, but not, like Archimedes,282 amid peril to his life to sit there lost in dialectical reflection, quietly sitting there absorbed in the dialectical, for the latter the young man cannot do, he cannot sit in the kettle on which the coppersmith is hammering, sit quietly absorbed in dialectical reflection.
—Pap. VII1 B 11 January 7, 1846
[VII1 B 37 207] Some Instructive Comments on The Corsair’s Drastic Errors
No. 1
Since I am in the process just now of reading the proofs of a large work283 that finally will be annexed to the whole project that began and continued through the pseudonymous works, although the book is more closely related to Philosophical Fragments, edited by me, and since I am not in the habit of taking on any new work while reading proof, I think it would betray myself and my position as a Danish author not to use this free time to protest what ought to have been protested long ago.
In everyday life, protest is promptly made and rules and regulations and preventive measures are immediately devised when the drinking water in the city is polluted or the baker uses contaminated flour, or even when the streetlights do not burn. But when polluted and contaminated food is offered for sale in the world of the spirit, when there seems to be an enormous customer demand, when, unfortunately, cheating in a sale does not involve getting too little for the money but much too much—then this goes on year after year unprotested, and unprotested it reaches such a peak that there is no [VII1 B 37 208] transaction in the world of spirit comparable to its size in any way. In everyday life, when suddenly there is too much fresh fish* on the market, the police ban it;284 but when tainted wit is offered for sale in such a mass that even the rare good witticism is spoiled by the encompassing mass, when it is offered for sale in such quantity that it is like everyday bread, then nothing happens. In civil life, a poor woman is severely punished for seeming to be begging from a passerby by making a gesture that really and truly cannot be intrusive. But when a private citizen is assaulted in print, at times regularly every week, by a maligner setting the dog, so to speak, of irresponsibility, coarse brutality, and passion on him, nothing happens. No, nothing happens; the only thing that happens is that the business flourishes, that few civil employees, even in the higher positions, and no artists and scholars in Denmark are paid on the same scale.
While even our celebrated authors find only a small market for their books, while even the newspapers, which always need to have a rather large circulation, are declining, with the exception of the Berlingske Tidende, an institution flourishes and thrives that has made a business of invective and is proud and lofty over having more subscribers than any other paper, yes, proud and lofty as a cliff for being unquestionably the most widely read paper in the entire country, read by all classes from the highest to the lowest, read by all ages, even by schoolchildren. Without any intimation of or depth enough for the comprehension of the difference between Paris and Copenhagen—that what in Paris, as one phenomenon among countless others, may have its significance as witty, but good-natured, envy of men with Continental influence and who in their distance from the attack remain ignorant or [VII1 B 37 209] virtually ignorant of it—here personal attacks are made on private individuals. They are abused by turn and thereupon thrown to the attentions of the curious, if they are so inclined. Thus in a little city, in a limited context, in ordinary social contacts, in a limited literary scene that does not even have one single critical journal, there flourishes triumphantly a paper with an almost unheard-of number of subscribers,285 a paper that lives on daring to say and do anything, a paper devoid of ideas, that caters to the passions and is out for profit—and benefits splendidly from the license of contemptibleness to be completely unconstrained.
Not only that, this paper has an office that receives the most private information by way of anonymous letters.286 Here the question is raised not about the misuse of this information but of the danger in the existence of such a thing. The working class and the ordinary middle class regard The Corsair as a servant of a higher justice, as a spiritual counselor, in whom they may find consolation or seek it. It really is a strangely inverted situation. An employer, for example, treats his domestic servant too harshly. Oh, who does not have sympathy for the working class. I know that I do to the best of my ability. But now the servant turns for help to The Corsair office. Here no mitigating words of admonition[*] are heard, here the injured party is not initiated into any uplifting view of life that could teach him to bear a wrong with true human pride in humility before God. No, revenge, revenge. Then comes the attack by innuendo—and the injured party is revenged! Which, then, is worse—the sickness or the remedy! And what is the relation between the alleged protest of a misuse of power and the irreparable harm done by the misuse of impotence.
[VII1 B 37 210] Yes, to top it all off they go even further and dare to announce in the paper that the invective is revenge. Just as the authorities at regular intervals examine and pass judgment on water and bread, so the paper at regular intervals subjects individuals to scrutiny and abuse. In disquieting transmissions attached to the text, we are informed of the reason why this or that person is being persecuted. Besides this, we hear that the rabble-champion will be lenient with this one and that one. Well, let us bow down, then, to this mighty power, let us hold banquets for him, let us offer him** the government. In Denmark one dares to speak freely about the king and the authorities, but beware of speaking freely about The Corsair!
And all this is answered with—silent contempt! Truly a curious answer, utterly unrelated to the charge and to the fact that everyone reads the paper! After all, this is not a matter of scholars and scientists fighting each other in big books that few read; it is not a paper eking out a miserable existence in a hole in the wall; nor is it a paper that in its dedication to the service of honor and responsibility insists on knowing what it writes and does. No, it is a paper that without comparison is absolutely the most widely read paper in the country—and that without comparison writes with unparalleled unconstraint—yes, without comparison, because using it for comparison would already be an insult to everything else written in Denmark. Civil authorities are scandalously kept at bay by means of street-corner loafers whom the executive agent by the letter of the law has to arrest and the solemn court has to judge. And while the authorities are thus shamelessly compelled to fool around jabbing at straw men,287 The Corsair wheels and deals in people, holds their honor and serene private lives in its hands as if they were trifles. For all the rest of us are tied hand and foot, and the authorities have to put up with being made to look like fools lest they abuse their power, because in that case the voice of accusation would become strident. If anyone manifests opposition to The Corsair in writing, he must scrupulously observe the obligation of honor, responsibility, and decorum, or the voice of accusation [VII1 B 37 211] will cry out against him in an appalling way. Give the most skillful fencer his sword, which he wields deftly, clearly winning every competition—but instead of a competitor set ferocious dogs on him, sic them on, but threaten him if he dares to use anything but legitimate fencing strokes, high strokes—criticize him if he tries to protect his legs288—and yet this is what the dogs grab at.[*]289
As a climax to all this, they go on saying the same thing they said when The Corsair was an insignificant, little-read paper:290 It’s a small matter not worth talking about—this after The Corsair has become, if not the only paper, at least beyond question the one most talked about. No journalist raises his voice—it is not worth the effort. Let us rather say: The effort does not pay, for its reward is to be abused to death, its reward is to be misunderstood until men come to their senses, for then they will readily perceive what I perceive.
If I paid no attention, in some odd, chance way I would have to be regarded by some as a detached observer, I would have to be completely devoid of sympathy for my fellow men, for the beautiful aspects of private life, for the quiet intimacy of marriage, for the shielding of children’s upbringing, and for many other relations that have been injured specifically by this paper; I would have to be completely forgetful of what I owe and what everyone owes to anyone who has been [VII1 B 37 212] injured and insulted. Yet many a layman who cannot express himself in writing perhaps has regarded it as disloyalty on the part of writers that no one has spoken up on this matter, where it is not a question of defending the individual, for as Frater Taciturnus291 has said: No reply is to be made unless the phenomenon itself is made the subject under discussion.
But precisely because this paper has turned all relations upside down, it is difficult to do anything of this kind. It takes a little systematic planning. First of all, I must find a man whose external appearance has an abundance of ludicrous idiosyncrasies, because that is what The Corsair looks for in particular; I would have to make sure* that I would dare to talk about these things as freely as The Corsair speaks brazenly. For here, too, the relations are upside down. The Corsair dares to attack anyone, and if someone protests on behalf of the one attacked, he is told: You are simply prolonging the attack, so just be quiet! A really strange remark after the whole country has read the attack and when the situation is such that whatever paper printed the defense would have hardly a tenth as many readers as the attack and The Corsair have. Or someone will say that the defense prolongs the period during which the affair is the subject of discussion. A strange remark after The Corsair has persecuted one particular man for a whole year. But that is the way the comedy goes. But they say: Do not defend the person being attacked; keep quiet in order not to create a disturbance with this affair. What a choice expression, “to create a disturbance with this affair,” when the affair that must not be disturbed is that the person under attack has been mistreated before everyone’s eyes.[*]
Meanwhile, lest someone weak in the head take the opportunity to be superclever, the person who wants to do something has to obtain the consent of the person under attack. This I have done, and the person is: I myself. If The Corsair has the right to discuss my thin legs and my ridiculous appearance292—and there is indeed limelight for me from the [VII1 B 37 213] wonder-stool game293 of contemptibleness—well, then I have the same right and fortunately can do it with perhaps somewhat more calmness than The Corsair. Here again the difference will readily be seen to be crucial, for I am well aware of what I look like, and I am sure that few men have been the object of a good-humored jest or a little pleasantry or a little teasing or a smile in passing as I have been. I frankly am not bothered by such things: they express the immediate impression that the people concerned cannot help having, and therein lies the redeeming factor. Many a person who may have overrated my capabilities has gotten some joy out of my legs in compensation; many a maiden who may have overestimated my intelligence has become reconciled to me on the basis of my legs. All this I find extremely innocent and excusable, in fact, amusing. But it is something else when a maligner takes the liberty to fasten, as it were, the eyes of the crowd on them, when he also takes away the excuse of immediacy and instead makes them the object of attention. No doubt I shall resign myself to it; it does more harm to those who are misled than to me. And precisely because I know I can resign myself to it, I am positive that I can have some effect on The Corsair as a** phenomenon. Later I shall give a specific example of how even a person’s accidental physical ludicrousness can be construed in such a way that the comic gets its due and a good-natured envy gets a little revenge as well, and the whole thing ends in an innocent, elevating reconciliation, with which everything ends when the idea is present and sheds its benediction on the action. But, alas, when passion and commercial interest determine the issue, when there is no ear for the harmony of the spheres of category relations but only for the rattle of money in the cash box, and when passion is propelled to the extreme by the consciousness that every subscriber buys along with the paper the right contemptibly to dispatch what is being written—this is another matter. —Pap. VII1 B 37 n.d., 1846
[VII1 B 38 214] Some Instructive Comments on The Corsair’s Drastic Errors
by
S. Kierkegaard
No. 1
Since I am in the process just now [essentially the same as VII1 B 37, para. 1-7].
Yet it is a difficult matter to do something. First[*] I must . . . [essentially the same as VII1 B 37, 170:16–171:10] and, fortunately, I perhaps can do it somewhat more calmly than The Corsair.
Next it must be clear that the one who speaks is not a person who has been directly attacked—for the immediate response to that will be: It is irritability. Everything connected with resentment and indignation is eliminated immediately. This I have made sure of by having a pseudonymous author, with whom I am usually confused, demand to be abused although he has been praised,295 and it did happen—and now I am involved. Indeed, everyone must have wondered why I had not been in The Corsair before.
So everything was arranged, as anyone with an overview of the situation perhaps will see. He will easily see that the contender [VII1 B 38 215] here is not a hot-tempered youth but someone previously known for his ability to wield a pen and who also can devise a plan. If no one else is willing, then I shall make an extremely corruptive literary phenomenon the object of an indictment. There will be no mention here of persons or of their character—no, only of the phenomenon itself. And the one who, even though he bears a heavy responsibility personally for what he has done, and who for that very reason always has made his appearance as one without authority,296 but who really, qua author, has the purest and lightest conscience, this person who, despite financial loss297 year after year and increased application day after day, asked only to be left alone and dared to deposit his books in Danish literature—this person does indeed have the special substance to accentuate the ethical in being an author.
So much for my literary credentials. If it were a question only of a purely esthetic controversy, about who is the wittiest and such things, the matter would indeed be easily decided by getting The Corsair’s dreaded geniuses, man for man and each signing his name, to write in another paper under the same conditions governing every other author who does not profit from the license and privilege of contemptibleness by daring to do anything, since that privilege has already been lost by being held in contempt. If one only would reflect on this calmly, one would readily see how much this phenomenon is based on false alarm. But that is not the nature of the conflict, and just as I as author proudly decline recognition as being wittier than The Corsair, inasmuch as I do not care to be witty at all, so also is the controversy itself not very pleasant. Or, more correctly, it is not a controversy; it is an attempt to put a stop, if possible, to the confusing deterioration going on all around. Here it is not a matter of controversy but only a matter of describing, calmly and with the power of persuasion, this whole odious practice, doing it calmly and coolly while that paper will presumably be showering invective and in every way holding one up to the laughter of all the silly fools. Calmly and coolly and not detached from the world to devote myself to contemplation, to keep on thinking in the middle of the disturbance, to be quietly reflective while sitting, [VII1 B 38 216] as it were, in a kettle on which the coppersmiths are hammering.
As for myself, I believe that I have specific qualifications for this. I am single, I have no wife to grieve even though her husband proudly raises himself above insults, I have no other “myself” forced to wait apprehensively to see what the next week brings, who has to stand anxiously alongside her husband and see what the anxious see, perhaps on a magnified scale,[*] while the husband proudly disregards it. I have no child who might get hold of The Corsair in school if he could not find it in his father’s house and either is led into the sad error of laughing at his father or becomes indignant at an early age about the world in which he lives where such a thing happens to his father. I am not a schoolteacher the children can greet with laughter, nor a teacher of adults.[**] I have no position or office, am not a clergyman who, in his official position, reluctantly will perhaps become involved in a declaration such as this, for how many readers of the Bible and the hymnbook are there in comparison with the readers of The Corsair, which is reading for all, especially for the weaker brethren who have no view of life, and yet anyone who does certainly knows that nothing is more difficult to deal with in fear and trembling than a sense of the comic.
So I stand alone, and it is my desire to stand alone, accustomed to other dismays than the dismay of being caricatured298 in a childish way; calmly aware of my appearance, I no doubt will take the blows. Accustomed as I am to calling my mind and my thoughts back from other inner consternations [VII1 B 38 217] to cheerfulness and jest, I will manage all right. But I do know very well where jesting belongs. I wish to stand alone; not even the editors of the paper299 have the remotest part in the action I am taking. Therefore, if possible, let the whole Corsair deal with me, giving private citizens an interval of immunity. No one has asked me to take this step, no one. I am counting on no human support. Although it is routine to say, “Oh, well, it’s only The Corsair,” I know very well that there is nothing people fear so much as to be made to look ridiculous! So I stand alone, and yet there is one who has asked me—no, he is not in the habit of asking, he commands and one obeys, one has no peace until one does. And there is one who is the solitary’s support in his solitariness, who is far away from life and in solitariness is in the midst of the tribulation.
No witty polemic will be carried on here; there will be no shrill laughter, and, praise God, I do not enjoy the privilege of daring to allow myself to use cartoons and crudeness as my instruments. I want my comments to be instructive, if possible, then calming and mitigating and not devoid of a certain interesting quality. Occasionally there will be place for a good-natured jest as well, simply to show how such a thing can be done.
To that end I ask the patience of my readers. I remind anyone quick to laugh to be a little slow, not just for my sake but for his own; indeed, it is even possible that I can bear his laughter better than he himself. And if I happen to have enemies or the like who may have cause to feel negatively toward me, I ask them—again not just for my sake but for theirs—to consider one thing: insofar as they wanted me to be chastised in some way, is it becoming of them to wish it to happen by way of The Corsair’s crudity, do they not think more highly of themselves than to want The Corsair as their knight errant. No, then let it be an ennobled person, an authoritative person, so that all will be built up when he chastises [VII1 B 38 218] me. Every attack by The Corsair, whether it attacks the guilty or the innocent, does irreparable harm, because the cure is far more pernicious than the sickness. —Pap. VII1 B 38 n.d., 1846
The Corsair’s credentials.
It has never established its identity; it has sprung into existence out of filth.
Everything centers on the totally
egotistical personality of an
unknown person.
—Pap. VII1 B 40 n.d., 1846
The Corsair becomes more and more brazen—no one replies—no one dares to reply. Goldschmidt, editor of a book.300—Pap. VII1 B 41 n.d., 1846
Addition to Pap. VII1 B 40:
School life intimidated (Høedt).301
A man has said something about Goldschmidt in a public place (Rosenkrantz).302
Actors—clergy—
—Pap. VII1 B 42 n.d., 1846
Addition to Pap. VII1 B 40:
(a)
The Corsair’s position
Leveling303
good-natured envy (its elevating quality)
contemptible envy304
A desire to tear down the great—with the help of a contemptible person so that there is nothing left.—Pap. VII1 B 43 n.d., 1846
Addition to Pap. VII1 B 40:
(b)
The Corsair’s attack, how it works.
Analogies with presentations in the theater, with being booed or abused in a meeting.
Both these analogies still nothing. A person has neither the recourse of contemporaneity against the abuser nor the suffering of just the moment—it lasts longer, sometimes a year.305
And this punishment that the executor presumably thinks no one can endure, and God knows whether they flatteringly think they are able to force me to leave the country—who executes it? The authorities? No, lawlessness.—Pap. VII1 B 44 n.d., 1846
Addition to Pap. VII1 B 40:
(c)
The wittiness of The Corsair—not essential wit.
Read The Corsair’s witticisms in a book or in another paper, and you will be disgusted, because you then apply criteria.
Cartoons drawn from life.
For example, depicting me giving a speech306 to the housemaids in my house (since I am a householder) or riding a hobbyhorse.307
Such things anyone can do.—Pap. VII1 B 45 n.d., 1846
Addition to Pap. VII1 B 40:
(d)
No recourse against The Corsair’s attacks
(1) not in court
(2) not with a witty polemic—for there is no honor to win this way
(3) not by showing that it is a contemptible paper—for then everybody will say: We knew that.
The false alarm of witchcraft308 consists in this.—Pap. VII1 B 47 n.d., 1846
Addition to Pap. VII1 B 40:
(e)
The ethical309 and the immoral.—Pap. VII1 B 48 n.d., 1846
Literary Contemptibleness
It could open with an Athenian street scene in the time
of Socrates (but historical and only slightly idealized).
(1) In antiquity, a person (the abuser) had to appear in person310 in the square, and if he lost, he had to take the consequences. Furthermore, anyone who repeated it was immediately equally responsible for what he said.
Anonymity has changed the situation: the person involved remains concealed, and those who read have the defense that they merely read—“for to write such stuff is contemptible.” In that way, a secret wretch makes a whole mass of men accomplices in his crime, and everything is confusion, because all this is set in motion at a secret level.
(2) In antiquity, one got to see who it was; one grew weary of seeing the same old abuser etc. There were no fantasies about a Mr. X, which always foster panic and dread.
Through anonymity, these fantasies are produced. And although we generally are sensible, it cannot be denied that the propensity to fantasize in the presence of anonymity betrays great superstitiousness—as does belief in elves and a stupendously great giant in the mountain cave.
(3) In antiquity, the attack was open, and therefore social life, especially for one who had to associate with many people and in public places, was not made precarious by all these strange mystifications and allusions, which amount to nothing.
(4) In antiquity, when the attack itself was over, it was forgotten. By means of the press, these things drag on a long time, and not until a man travels to the provinces two weeks later is the gossip fully under way.—Pap. VII1 B 54 n.d., 1846
[VII1 B 55 226] N.B. Not to be printed but completed
in optima forma only as a study.
A Personal Statement in Costume[*]
Until now, I definitely was of the opinion that I knew what the most difficult task311 is, namely, to deal with the comic in fear and trembling, to maintain the conception of responsibility rooted in ethical and religious earnestness together with the delight of jest, to bind oneself forever to the charter of duty and at the same time be able to go on adventures as a young soldier of fortune does in legends, to put on the full gear of actuality and at the same time be able to dance lightly and with abandonment, to honor one’s father, admire men of excellence, bow to one’s superiors, and at the same time be able to care about nothing, be able to frolic in a way that would make eternity itself empty if one lost the impress of its pathos, in a way that would make one’s future inconsolable if one lost even the slightest recollection of the pathos. Until now, I indeed thought that since few are born in any generation who actually have a talent for the comic, even fewer develop the maturity that balances the two (earnestness and jest) in a union that for each is equidistant from a mésalliance, in a union that is even more difficult to enter into than it is for an old man to marry a young girl. It seems, however, that from these times I have to learn, if not to change my views (I dare say I am too plodding for that; perhaps my willingness to learn is also a bit doubtful), then at least that I am rather alone in my thinking and perhaps the only one who herewith renounces any reputation for having a sense of the comic. But if I learn that, I actually do not learn anything I have not already learned, and I thus learn that there is no external hindrance to the rightness of my thinking simply because I am so alone in [VII1 B 55 227] it. This comes close to the question Socrates312 asked in a similar situation with respect to horses: Does everybody know how to ride them and only one does not, or is it the opposite, instead, that a few individuals who are called riding masters know this art, while the others know nothing about it.
Now my view (in line with my sense of the comic, of course) is that in a small country like Denmark a disproportionate and immoral phenomenon such as The Corsair does great harm and is of no benefit whatsoever, of no benefit because it counterfeits and taints the comic and thereby silences the authentic comic, just as a naughty child’s impertinence can cause the more sensible person not to come and visit or express himself in a family where such things go on, even if he otherwise loves the family very much, does great harm because it seduces the unstable, the irresponsible, the sensate, those who are lost in earthly passions, seduces them by means of ambiguity, lack of character, and the concealment of brash contempt under the pursuit of the comic.
I can even prove this to be so, but the proof, of course, is valid only on the basis of my understanding of the comic and thus only for the individuals who Socratically assume that the comic is like riding, that only a few know how but the majority do not. The proof is that there is unanimous agreement that the phenomenon (the nature of the paper and its extraordinary circulation) is a mere nothing; this in itself proves that the harm is far from insignificant. If there actually were unanimous agreement that it is nothing at all, this might mean that people do not read the paper, do not subscribe to it, do not discuss its contents; but to fight to get to read it, to read it as no other paper is read, to talk about it and thereby make oneself practically a messenger boy for the paper with a circulation [VII1 B 55 228] no other paper can even remotely boast of—all this adequately proves, according to my understanding, of course, the unreality in the view that regards it as nothing at all. The unreality of the view demonstrates that the harm is far from insignificant, for even if the situation were the same with respect to the nature of the paper and its circulation, the harm would already be diminished if everybody nevertheless agreed that it is harmful. Franklin313 advises young managers to pay particular attention to small expenses, believing that they will indeed keep an eye on the large ones, precisely because the large ones, after all, keep an eye on the individual, for the difference is that what is significant keeps an eye on him, keeps him alert, teaches him caution and economy, makes him wise by experience, but he himself has to keep an eye on what is insignificant. In the same vein, perhaps the most dangerous temptations are those that come under the modest label of “nothing at all.” The very fact that everybody says it is nothing at all may make it so harmful that the clergy could be better used here than to prepare a new hymnal,314 which everyone considers to be the demand of the times. The line of development proceeds from reflection through the comic to the religious; that is why the misuse of the comic spreads so rapidly in our day, while everybody believes it is nothing at all—although they still read it and subscribe to it and talk about it as about no other paper.
Now this is my view, and yet it perhaps is right; if so, this again is new proof that the world has the equilibrium and balanced distribution that make it the best of all worlds that the liberals and optimists assume it to be, which, in fact, everyone in our liberal era assumes it to be. You see, to my mind this paper does not have the true conception of the comic, but, on the other hand, it makes a lot of money with its warped conception of the comic—is this not equilibrium in the best of all worlds! There are others who, according to my view, do not properly understand the comic, either, yet are honored, esteemed, and highly regarded. What a balanced distribution in [VII1 B 55 229] this best of worlds! Now if I, disregarded and spurned by all as one who has no sense of the comic, if I actually did not have it, then I would in fact be the stepchild and the injured party in this best of worlds. On the other hand, if I actually had the proper understanding of the comic and were the only one who had it, but also were held in high esteem by everyone, then the balance would be upset in this best of worlds. But if it is assumed that I have the proper understanding and then at the same time am scorned by everybody and lose money by it, then balance is established in this best of worlds. Therefore, on the one side: honor, prestige, financial gain—and the unsound view. On the other side: dishonor, exclusion, financial loss—and the correct view. If one were not an optimist already, who would not become an optimist with this outlook! Why should one person have everything, why should one person be excluded from everything? No, praise be to the balanced distribution of the good things of life: everyone gets his own, individual effort is favored according to desire. He who aspires to honor, status, and money acquires these goods with the help of his unsound views; he who aspires to a sound point of view must purchase it with financial loss and the disdain of all. This upbuilding observation has frequently inspired me, for it is indeed beautiful that there is balance if one only knows how to evaluate properly the goods of life, how to evaluate money, honor, and prestige, and how to evaluate the possession of a sound view and outlook. The only unfortunate ones are those who hesitate in between, no doubt fearing up to a point to be in error, but also fearing up to a point to be destitute of money* and status with men.
But enough of this, especially if it is understood, but there is one person in particular I wish could and would understand it. One of the editors of that paper is Mr. Goldschmidt,315 a student, whom I consider to be intelligent and not without a [VII1 B 55 230] certain talent.** However contemptible the paper may be, it still may be wrong to shove everything onto him,316 even if he rakes in the money as his own and also the admiration of all those who look up to this phenomenon. Since I am well aware that the eventual end will be terrible and that, in taking their revenge on this editor, the same crowd of unstable, irresponsible, sensate, and erring people will justify themselves and wash their hands without becoming one whit better, I would like to say a simple word to him as a single individual before I can decide to identify him with the paper. I am well aware that the majority will again consider it fatuous confusion for me, who as the one attacked should be quick to scorn, to be so slow, while it is usually so easy to laugh at his witticisms—and then in another way to dispose of the joker. But it was still possible that Goldschmidt in particular was capable of understanding that I, far from fearing The Corsair’s wretched abuse, am in the very opposite situation and that I, with a perhaps rather rare fortitude and also a more than ordinary sympathy for a human being, take the great risk of being abused and insulted by the rabble and misunderstood by the better class—simply to keep a human being from being destroyed. Never in my life until now have I actually despised any man. I do not enjoy philandering with emotions; I have respect for my own feeling, which teaches me in my association with a wide variety of men to use far milder and, on the whole, probably far more pertinent categories. But it must not happen, The Corsair must not be a phantom that does great harm and on which revenge is taken by holding in contempt—a street-corner loafer who is legally responsible, or a nonentity, which a paper in fact is if it is made the object of personal judgment. No, Goldschmidt will not escape; he, too, will be held in contempt for all the meanness, for every shilling that gives consolation for lost honor.
Even if the most vivid imagination were to think up the [VII1 B 55 231] most diverse kinds of literary contemptibleness, whether brash lies, or mean persecution of someone who has been unsuccessful, or barefaced blasphemy of the good, or a besmirching meddling in the intimate lives of private individuals, or mean and cowardly spite—in short, whatever it may be, one thing is positive, there will be examples of it in abundance in The Corsair. My unqualified judgment of the paper is the same as that of Frater Taciturnus:317 I want to be abused, I refuse to endure the disgrace of being recommended, praised, and invited in by literary contemptibleness. If the paper had a small circulation, then my judgment would be that it makes no difference whether it praised or abused—this is a judgment on its nature—but the extensiveness of its circulation requires that the judgment be expressed differently. And the judgment, the paper’s credit rating, is this: to be abused by it is an honor, to be commended an assault, to write in it utterly contemptible. Therefore, I fear The Corsair’s abuse no more than the physician fears the patient’s abusive language during an amputation; I am not fighting The Corsair any more than the physician is fighting the patient who is resisting the operation.
But Goldschmidt has also published a novel: En Jøde.318 So he has two alternatives: the perchance poor and narrow path that leads one as a publisher of books to close kinship with what must be held in honor—to be a Danish author—and the contemptible path of earning money by being the editor of The Corsair. There is no mediation, and there must not be any. The contemptibleness of The Corsair must not make for itself a friendly setting by secretly aligning itself with a sympathetic interest for what can be moving and sad in that novel. Precisely that is the danger, and that in turn makes it necessary to treat The Corsair at this time in another way and with a decisively ethical assurance. It may already be difficult for unstable people to distinguish between talent and misuse of talent, to champion ethical judgment against mercenary prostitution [VII1 B 55 232] of talent, but if sympathy is to be gained, then it almost takes ethical elevation to see which is which, and this cannot be presupposed at all in the average individual.
My demand to Mr. Goldschmidt, then, is that in another paper and, as befits a man of honor, under his own signature he explain the basic idea of The Corsair, what the paper wants, what justification it has for existence. To reply in The Corsair is eo ipso to sign the verdict upon oneself. Then I am through; up to the very last I have done everything in my power, and I have nothing to fear, for the only thing I feared momentarily was whether perchance I had judged too harshly—not The Corsair, but its editor, or at least had given him occasion to think so. I do not read The Corsair; I would not even direct my servant to read it, for I do not presume that a master has the authority to order his servant to go to a place of disrepute. But even if The Corsair continued year after year and even if its contents were ever so good, it has existed for six years and stigmatized its name in such a way that it will never be the name of a respectable paper. If it is sad to see a splendid name gradually degenerate, it is an extremely pernicious duplicity when contemptibleness undergoes a change, gradual perhaps, but retains the same name, so that ethical judgment never becomes decisive.
I realize that everyone will think it strange, even foolish, for me to give this appearance of having some power, I who have been demolished. And the proof of this is indeed difficult for me, for although everyone reads The Corsair, part of the game is that no one wants it known, and thus I dare mention no names without offending someone. But there is one man I may mention without offense as a reader of that paper and whose judgment I dare quote. He is the watchman on my street, a good man, alert and personally attached to me for several reasons. As I said, he reads The Corsair. He believes that that paper has completely destroyed me, and precisely [VII1 B 55 233] because he is a good and gentle soul and likes me, this belief troubles him. He considers me to be a quiet, industrious student-type who comes home every night at a respectable hour; without really understanding what I am doing, he nevertheless respects this domestic pattern—but that I am supposed to be witty, to say nothing of having a standard of wit that could even remotely be compared with The Corsair’s, this he certainly realizes is not the case, for this Goldschmidt must be ein ungeheuer Witzkopf [a colossal wit], as my barber also says. You see, if I were to drop a hint to my watchman about going and beating up this newspaper writer, I believe that he would do it free, simply because the whole affair makes him sorry for me. Strange, the watchman is a big, hefty fellow, and I am anything but that, and I actually find it necessary to treat him very delicately with regard to the truth, for if I let one single word fall about still having one or another advantage of the stronger, he would regard me as mad. So it goes with the watchman, who still likes me, but not so with an alehouse keeper here in the city whom I know from earlier days when he was a servant in a family of my acquaintance. He reads The Corsair and is proud of the fact. It was extraordinary to note the change that took place in him after he began reading about me in that paper, for when I was immortalized,319 he did not notice that it was I. In the past, when we met on the street, he was visibly pleased to greet me, his not unhandsome face took on the most friendly expression, and it genuinely pleased him when I responded to his almost too deferential greeting with friendly attention. Ah, but then came the change; his greeting did not, so to speak, hasten to meet me as soon as he caught sight of me. No, the precipitousness of the past was curbed; he acted as if he did not see me and let me get very close before he greeted me. Nor did he snatch off his hat—no, his arm movement was slow and grudging and finally became so deliberate that he almost kept [VII1 B 55 234] his hat on, and it ended with his ceasing to greet me at all. As stated, the alehouse keeper reads The Corsair. He believes that what appears in the newspapers is public opinion, the voice of the people and of truth. Since he cannot manage to read all the papers, he has limited himself to The Corsair, which he takes together with another alehouse keeper. He gets it on Sunday morning and reads it aloud to his whole family. He saves each number in order to have them all bound later, which will be done if the maid, who sneaks in later to read it, does not, deplorably, throw some away. Our alehouse keeper assumes that people can make mistakes, even alehouse keepers, a king, a court, even the supreme court, but anything that appears in print he regards as infallible. He says, “Is it possible that anything can be a lie which is printed in countless copies, is read all over the country, and, from what I hear, no one yet has ventured to refute!” This explains his altered opinion of me, so altered that he who once would have felt highly flattered to converse with me is supposed to have said, “No alehouse keeper can in decency be in the room or in association with a man whom public truth has branded that way.” What a curious contrast: the very same thing has been said in higher places about The Corsair writer—and yet all agree about reading it. How fortunate for me that I never go to parties, how fortunate that even if I did go to parties I would hardly seek the company of alehouse keepers in particular.
My watchman’s judgment of the esthetic attack is consistently the same: “If worse comes to worst, he could more easily put up with having his trousers stolen than with having them cartooned320—that he could not survive.” Here again I have to treat the strong man delicately, for to me his judgment seems odd. If my trousers were stolen and I had no others to put on, I very likely would not survive it, assuming [VII1 B 55 235] that I had to go out just the same, for I probably would catch a cold. It is another matter if I am allowed to keep them on, for then I shall derive a benefit and pleasure from my trousers such as no one else in the whole kingdom has: I have them on—this I have in common with all who wear trousers—and at the same time the whole city has the pleasure of seeing me wearing them—pleasure, yes, perhaps even benefit. Now it is true that once upon a time I thought I would be able to do a little bit for a single human being321 through my literary efforts. Illusion, vanity! Could it be that I merely mistook the medium and may still prove to be beneficial? The medium of being beneficial has been discovered; I carry it around with me all the time: it is my trousers. Not even the biggest book has created such a big sensation. It almost makes one think that what the times demand is my trousers; I wish that every one of its demands would be as innocent, for the demand is that I wear them and, at most, perhaps will bequeath them some day to the city. Petrarch believed that his Latin writings would make him immortal, and his erotic poetry did just that. Fate is even more ironic toward me. Despite all my diligence and efforts, I have not been able to fathom what the times demanded, and yet it was so very close to me; how incredible that it did not occur to me, that someone else had to say that it was my trousers. What rare luck, for my life acquires exceptional significance; to my contemporaries I acquire significance by means of my trousers, but for a later generation perhaps my writings will help a little.
Ironically, the whole affair suits me, because, as I have said elsewhere,322 my literary work is dialectical in double-reflection; for that reason, it would be completely frustrating, yes, even high treason against the idea, if, for example, I allowed my portrait or picture to be published. On the other hand, it may be asked whether I am not even responsible for creating for my work all the support that in complete consistency with the idea may result from the dissemination of my caricature, my trousers sketched with me in them. Only the idea, the thought, the true consistency of the thought, engages me; I [VII1 B 55 236] follow it into whatever external situation it leads me—to being admired or to being abused—I follow it confidently. Just as a child holding its mother’s hand walks in danger without recognizing it, so I hold the hand of consistency and walk in danger, because I know that in the idea the danger has been surmounted.
In one respect, I shall have an advantage in taking this particular step, one that I value rather highly, although most people would consider it anything but that, would think it much more as a loss, an injury I bring upon myself. To be specific, just about everybody has read that paper (although it dare not be said that anyone except my watchman and that alehouse keeper does it—this is part of the game); innumerable people, ladies and gentlemen, have assured themselves by a personal appraisal that I wear trousers and that they correspond to the description. In deference to the demand of the times, I have candidly replied to everyone who has asked if these “really” were the famous trousers that they could positively say that they actually had seen them with their own eyes. Furthermore, compared with that paper which has brought up the whole affair, the paper in which I write has but few readers.323 Finally, whatever anyone says, I certainly am the one who has first priority to my trousers—and yet I know that because I write about this everybody will say, “Good lord, how dull of Kierkegaard to be concerned about something like that.” But I wonder whether all these people have a clear idea of what the something is that I am concerned about, that it is not the trousers, which I am even willing to give to the city, that it is not people’s nosey interest in reading about them and seeing them, but it is the fact that this is the way it is and that they then deny it, that they do not regard this as being a trifling matter and cease to read and to look, but that they do both and say: It is a trifling matter, and it all begins all over again. I am not disturbed, therefore, by the humiliating judgment that what I say is dull, especially dull compared with the witticisms in that paper; the only thing that concerns me here is that the phenomenon be disclosed with all its implications, no matter whether it is my trousers or someone else’s trousers that come to be so very popular. [VII1 B 55 237] As a matter of fact, everybody in Copenhagen but me properly understands the comic.324 Fine, so be it. But what do they mean when they say my comments are dull? It means that they are playing a game of hide-and-seek, and now my dullness comes along and interferes somewhat with the game. The game is this: they pretend that just a few people read that paper, as if it endured a miserable life in a despised little out-of-the-way corner of existence, as if it had the support of an insignificant number of subscribers—and so it is dull to pay any attention to it, foolish to propagate it more by talking about it. But this mystification is precisely the game, because, see, it is just the opposite, and to make it even more so they play this game that no one reads it and therefore no one should get excited about it. And everybody plays this game, and for that very reason everyone agrees that what I am doing is dull, because I am stupid enough to disclose the nature of this mystification in its self-contradiction.
For anyone to criticize and protest this matter disturbs the game, and therefore any protest is dull, for the whole affair is indeed nothing at all; what everybody is so keen on is called nothing at all simply so that it can continue. Very strange. That most widely read paper writes about it, everybody talks about it, and yet it must not be mentioned—lest it be circulated. According to my understanding of the comic, this whole situation is highly comic, in the same way that it would be comic, for example, if a very crippled person were to confide this fact very secretively to another, since he himself believes that no one can see it by looking at him. In the same vein, it is comic that everybody knows it and that it then must be kept secret, and therefore the person who is trying to do a little merely to impede it must not talk about it—in order not to circulate it. Consequently, the difference is that it is acceptable to talk about it in order to circulate it, but it is unacceptable to talk about it with the intention of halting the circulation, and the reason is that this talking contributes to its being circulated. If the category of the comic is usually contradiction,325 then this situation is essentially comic. With respect to something that has limited circulation, it is altogether true that protest contributes to its circulation, but this cannot possibly be true of something that has extraordinary circulation, and therefore the protest will scarcely reach half of those who [VII1 B 55 238] know all about it.
Suppose a child comes home from playing with other children and has learned a bad word—what will happen? Well, if the mother is a silly woman who chatters with other women about bringing up children, she probably will scold and slap and in her zeal perhaps teach the child even more bad words. If, however, she is a woman who has preserved her maidenly purity, ennobled by the beautiful concern of mothering love, she would think that just because the child heard such a word once, it did not necessarily follow that it would stick with him so that he would never forget it; if he never heard it again, it would disappear without a trace as if he had never heard it—and for that very reason she would not admonish or censure him. All honor to the loving mother’s quiet solicitude that daily, alertly watched over her child, although externally it looked as if she were doing nothing, because she neither slapped nor scolded, nor did she nag. But if a child came home after several years in a boarding school and his mother learned to her dismay that he was brashly using such bad words again and again and in a way that seemed to betray that he knew that they were bad and was so corrupted by his comrades that he almost took delight in it, would it not be ridiculous of his mother to say to herself: No use to admonish and advise and punish him lest his attention be drawn to them—then he no doubt will forget the bad words. Or if a man came to the mother’s house and found occasion to protest, and the mother would shush him and say: Just don’t speak about those bad words to the boy lest he learn them—would that not be ludicrous?
The fact that the only contemptible and the most widely circulated paper in Denmark is read by everyone, although it is supposed to be a secret, sheds new light on it and reveals that its apparent courage is nothing but cowardice and that it enjoys vile, cowardly protection against the law by means of [VII1 B 55 239] street-corner loafers326 and against protest by hiding under the skirts of the public. This dreadful paper, which with an emblem of a pirate ship327 to stimulate terror cries for revenge, really ought to have these explanatory words on its title page: Printed for private circulation among friends. One does not discuss in writing something that is privately printed for friends.328 Thus it is incidental that it is printed; it could just as well be circulated in manuscript form, which would produce the queer inverse situation that the most widely circulated paper would not even have the character of being in print. The slogans that bakeries put into cookies are also printed, to be sure, but this is quite incidental and is done simply because it would be too much work to write so many. Menus, too, are sometimes printed. But this situation reaches a ridiculous climax with The Corsair. It has all the appearance of being a newspaper—it has an editorial staff, contributors such as P. L. Møller, who even specifies in the lexicon of authors329 that he is a contributor, both lyric and satiric—and yet The Corsair actually is a facilitating and expediting agent that town gossip and rumor and scandal have invented and publish themselves—privately, in manuscript form, for friends.
But the queerest and most comic aspect of this situation is that it prompts that paper itself to regard itself as terrifying. Incidentally, cowardice and the vilest cravenness often confuse themselves with courage. This paper, the most timid of all, as newspapers go, which finds the path of contemptibleness up the back steps until, finally, modesty so prevails that workhouse inmates are permitted to subscribe lest the domestics become offended by being named as subscribers, this timid paper is itself probably aware of the connection, but from that it does not follow that it should not be able to devote its cowardice to continuing the game, which in fact is suggested by the pirate ship, the game of playing pirate, the game of being feared and of being brave.
A game such as this is very tempting to cowardice; cowardice [VII1 B 55 240] is always eager to be confused with its opposite, bravery, courage, to say nothing of a terrible pirate. In various countries, Jews are generally regarded as cowards, and yet it is a fact that there is a strong propensity in young Jewish men to go around dressed as officers330 and wanting to look like officers. Goldschmidt’s novel En Jøde331 emphasizes this point with psychological mastery, which always indicates experience and familiarity with life, something for which the author of this novel must always be commended. The hero, as the main character in a novel is called, therefore the hero, Jacob Bendixen, does indeed have this very same military and warlike propensity. He even rises to lieutenant in the Polish army, and when he comes home again, he is continually being taken for an officer,[*] even by people who knew him fairly well. This military quality must be included in an understanding of Jacob Bendixen’s development, which in the third part of the book is interesting in a way that the first two parts are not. In one place the author has even sketched for us with a few strokes Jacob Bendixen’s interesting face: the oriental face refined by intelligence to the point where the dominant intelligence almost makes his nationality unrecognizable. If one were to complete this picture in his imagination, it would be impossible to picture him in anything [VII1 B 55 241] but a bold braid-trimmed officer’s coat. If it were not against police ordinances, it would even be fitting to imagine him carrying a sword, at least a concealed weapon, on his person. Just to walk around carrying a dagger332 takes a little courage, even to take to one’s heels carrying a dagger takes courage; moreover, there is also the danger that he could fall and be stabbed by the dagger. In fact, the real coward can be spotted by his being so afraid that he does not even dare to stand close to a gun. Bold is he, however, who even dares go around carrying the murderous weapon on his person. But to go around carrying such a weapon does not always mean that one is going to use it. It is common knowledge that Jean Paul333 proposes that the National Guard in a certain city carry sticks, as well as rifles, swords, and bayonets—in order to have something for their protection.
What I have written may indeed be dull; everyone may think it dull; everyone may be a connoisseur of the comic. Good lord, by way of my trousers my importance is almost on the point of becoming dangerous to my fellow citizens. It almost looks as if I—that is, my trousers—am about to rise to the position of tyrant in Copenhagen, despite all the men of distinction. I am sorry about this, but it actually is the case. Young girls, who in all innocence might wish that some equally innocent and proper person would appreciate their finery and loveliness, are defrauded. The king himself, driving through the streets and desiring and enjoying the greetings of his subjects, is defrauded. All I need to do is put on my trousers, and all eyes are on me—that is, on my trousers. But since this is the case, since my trousers are so potent, it is good for me to do something dull to mitigate, if possible, the great influence of my trousers. And strange to say, I conclude with this so that the game may have an element of witchcraft. Just as Aladdin’s lamp was altogether unimpressive, likewise my trousers are as unimpressive and inconspicuous as possible—even if they were red with a green stripe or green with a red [VII1 B 55 242] stripe! But again, how ungracious of me to have regarded these trousers as a trivial matter and merely to have asked the tailor to make them of ordinary mixed gray wool cloth, and then to have these very trousers help to make me almost important, for when it rains on the preacher, it drips on the sexton, and when the trousers gain supremacy, I, too, advance a little—I, a poor solitary wretch with no sense of the comic, one to whom life therefore shows pity and gives that pair of trousers.
You see, the poet does, after all, exaggerate a little so that the pathos and the comic may stand out. For example, to depict the topsy-turvy situation in Athens, Aristophanes335 had a sausage dealer become the supreme power in the country. So it was in the play; in actuality it was not quite that bad. But in Copenhagen a pair of trousers has actually attained the position of highest standing and importance. I wonder what Aristophanes would think of that? Certainly he would be envious of this comedy I am writing herewith, but that contemptible paper and the curious are so muddled that they do not grasp the comedy of this, which is comic only according to my view of the comic.
Far be it from me, then, to complain over the upside-downness of things; after all, I derive both use and importance by wearing the trousers, and then, too, it is just possible that I have an inner spiritual resource, an inner life that is superior to all else, a life that I enthusiastically know can belong just as fully to any man as to me, even to the poorest pauper, if he will turn inward, but certainly not if he turns outward and makes a habit of fixing his attention on my trousers or on anything equally insignificant.
Most of those who have read this far perhaps will concede that my style has a composure that obviously does not indicate agitation or irritation, which, however, could almost be [VII1 B 55 243] excusable, if one considers how loathsome it must be to be reminded continually of human triviality this way. It is an easy matter to fritter oneself away on trifles; it is an easy matter to take a single person by storm in order to tempt him, if possible, to abandon what inspires him, the conception of what infinite significance there still is in being human and that every single individual can attain the highest if he wills it. It might be said that I could, after all, avoid this whole affair by withdrawing. If I were weak, I might do that. But in an age as devoid of character and full of ferment as this one, anyone who has any character ought to remain at his post. And my orders read not to retreat a hairbreadth. My task is to expose the phenomena, not directly but indirectly, and it is my duty in this respect to put up with everything without retreating. For some time now, I have been aware of that paper and its insinuating misuse of the comic.336 It is not at all true that I got into all this by a rash step;337 in time, when people have settled down sufficiently to have the tranquillity to read, I would like to report in detail on a plan338 I have made. I never speak of my plans before I have done what I want to do or must do. If it can be done, it will make interesting reading. I know very well who I am, I know very well that something can be learned from me, that if I were to put into print my total view of life as I existentially express it one level lower, I would be esteemed by many, but that I will not and dare not do it without becoming false to my idea.—Pap. VII1 B 55 n.d., 1846
In conclusion, let us test the correctness of what was said at [VII1 B 56 243] the very beginning. When this article is read, everybody, the public, the crowd, will say: It is rather dull, peculiar, imprudent, shameless. And that is exactly right, for the day when everyone says of any statement of mine: That is right, then I will say to myself, as that man did when the people applauded [VII1 B 56 244] him: Did I say something stupid?339 Or, more accurately, I will say to myself: Obviously you must have said something stupid. That is the way all the people, the public, the crowd, talk. But then there will be a young man who still has the flourishing vigor of childhood or early youth in his cheeks, in whose blush the idea dwells with feminine modesty. His heart will pound mightily when he reads it, and he will understand that this is still worth living for, this: to be consistent to the uttermost, humble before God, proud toward men, which, God be praised, God has granted to every human being if he wills it. See, to me this is enough, enough beyond all measure. And this preference for a young man I learned, yes, it is true, I learned it from a seducer, alas, from him who, praise God, seduced me when I was a young man. But this seducer was no lascivious fellow nor a man grown old in excesses—no, he was an old man, and he had grown old in wisdom. Socrates340 knew very well why he loved young men. He understood very well how much men lose in the course of the years through association and traffic and comparison, learning little by little, little by little, little by little to take the way of compromise, to bargain, to make a deal, how they, little by little, little by little, little by little (most dreadful of all sophisms) lose the inwardness of the hidden man, the blushing modesty of the young man. Therefore, my reader will be a young person, or he will be an old person who sadly smiles during the reading because he is reminded sadly of youth, an old person who in the evening of life renews his youth. What lies in between is difficult, my reader, but easy for one who despises, mocks, and derides me. But to me the youth is the most cherished, whether he walks alone on the beach and longs for the ideals or whether he walks alone in the swarming crowd, which jeers at him because he refuses it and longs for the ideals. This youth is enough for me, I ask no more. Yes, just as a girl desires only one adornment, to lie in her grave with a [VII1 B 56 245] myrtle wreath on her brow, so I ask only for this consciousness: he was laughed to scorn by all the people, by the crowd, by the public, but he could make a young man’s heart beat.—Pap. VII1 B 56 n.d., 1846
An Action-response in Personal Costume
Goldschmidt is not without passion but is also led astray by passion; he is not without the power of esthetic despair but also fortifies himself with ethical delusion.
I fear The Corsair’s abuse no more than the physician fears the patient’s abusive language during an operation.—Pap. VII1 B 57 n.d., 1846
Addition to Pap. VII1 B 57:
Postscript. Perhaps within three days after reading this, Mr. Goldschmidt will reply, agreeing or disagreeing, in another paper;341 then he can always demand time to prepare. If not, then my judgment is set. It will please me if he does that, but I am equally at ease if he does not. I cannot do more for one who with deference but also with confidence perhaps has seen in me more than was there, but nevertheless something of what was there. Then comes my turn to be abused. Of such things I am ignorant, but when he praises me342 and I accidentally come to know about it, I must do something. I am at ease, even more so than before, because I was still somewhat hesitant to come to the final conclusion about him.—Pap. VII1 B 58 n.d., 1846
Addition to Pap. VII1 B 57:
Note. Now I hear that the new book, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, is supposed to have been commended in The Corsair,343 but in a moderated way. I am not so dense that I do not see that from its own point of view The Corsair has wanted to make it as good as possible. It has not wanted to abuse, because even it has a notion of what is unseemly; it has not wanted to give high praise, because it does have the notion that from my point of view it would in fact be an insult. So it has chosen a third way: an acknowledging trade announcement. But that cannot be done; I will not agree to that.—Pap. VII1 B 59 n.d., 1846
Some Good-natured Gossipy Remarks [VII1 B 69 251]
It is a matter of common knowledge that a trifle, a nothing, creates the biggest sensation and especially gossip. I have been pleased to corroborate this by having an insignificant pseudonymous little article in Fædrelandet344 create much more of a sensation, because it dealt with Mr. P. L. Møller,345 than all my writing put together. I am positive that my whole life will never achieve the importance that my trousers346 have come to have. Yes, one might almost think that my trousers have become what the age demanded, and, if so, I sincerely hope that the demand of every age may be as moderate for the person concerned, for, good lord, it does not demand trousers from me; after all, it merely demands that I wear them, and this demand really does not embarrass me, inasmuch as I have made a practice of wearing trousers since I [VII1 B 69 252] was four years old, but it never really occurred to me that this would become so extraordinarily important to others. But since my literary efforts have never been so fortunate as to satisfy the demands of the age, I thought to myself: If you can do it in such an easy way by means of your trousers, then everything is fine again. I always make a little self-sacrifice, but what is that compared with the significance. Just yesterday my servant reminded me to put on a new pair, but I thought to myself: That won’t do; perhaps the new ones will not satisfy the demand of the age. But the old ones certainly do. Innumerable ladies and gentlemen have personally made sure that I am wearing them, and, according to what I could discern from their facial expressions, those trousers completely satisfied the demand of the age. To accommodate the demand of the age, I have candidly and freely replied to anyone who asked if they actually were the trousers—presumably so that he could relate that he personally had actually seen them—I have answered him solemnly, as is seemly in this important matter: Yes. —Whether they are my trousers or someone else’s makes no difference to me, but for someone ardently trying to hold to a concept of the greatness in or potential for every man, there is something sad about having an abundance of observations that seem to bear witness only to irresponsibility, silliness, crudity, and the like.
But to move on. I now go from my trousers to something just as unimportant: Literatus P. L. Møller. The manuscript of my latest book347 was ready by the middle of December 1845, and a few days before Christmas I delivered the manuscript in its entirety, as I am in the habit of doing, to the printer. Thus I was finished and at leisure, had the time and opportunity to do what I otherwise could not do, and in my joy and gratitude over being finished, I felt like doing somebody a little service. [VII1 B 69 253] Then came P. L. Møller’s brilliant Gæa.348 Among other things, it contained a little attack (after praising the pseudonyms) on one of the pseudonyms. Usually I pay no attention to such things, but this was different. Mr. P. L. Møller is sufficiently well known in Danish literature, and for that reason I knew very well that I would make some people happy by challenging him; therefore the article in Fædrelandet included the lines: “obtrusive as he (P.L.M.) is and known to many, I really believed I would be doing some people a service by challenging him for once.”349 It is so seldom that P.L.M. comes out so openly that I could not let the opportunity pass. Therefore, far from being an article responding in self-defense to an attack, it was a service I wanted to do for others. The main point of the article was to get Mr. P.L.M. out of literature and the respectable company of famous Danish authors and into the dance hall of The Corsair, to which, according to an article he himself revised in the lexicon of authors,350 he had already contributed both poetry and satire. What a real psychological satisfaction it was for me to see how quickly* Mr. P.L.M. took the hint. He came right out and bowed very deferentially in Fædrelandet351—and then off he went, that is, he disappeared.352 Where he went, I do not know, but he vanished like a sneeze—and from that time on, according to my barber, things have been very busy in The Corsair’s dance hall.
Further, for now I go on to something just as unimportant as Mr. P.L.M.—to The Corsair. They are all trivialities—my trousers, Mr. P.L.M., and The Corsair—and thus are subjects only for gossip, which goes against my grain, for although I have a Greek enthusiasm and love for conversation, gossip has always been repugnant to me. But in saying this, I do not want to wrong anyone for the sake of a whim by lumping three paltry things together in order to round off a phrase, for [VII1 B 69 254] I feel that I must make an exception: I owe my trousers the apology that they are altogether innocent in all this gossip.
I shall write more briefly about The Corsair. It is my private opinion that such a disproportionate and immoral phenomenon does great harm by inveigling the unstable and tempting the semieducated; to me it is a national disgrace that such a phenomenon flourishes on such a scale. But, you see, The Corsair had immortalized and flattered me.353 Occasionally I do take notice of such things, for, looking at it polemically, I believe that one cannot be done with the incompetent criticaster who wants to assert himself everywhere if one does not go to the bottom of things and set a precedent when one is praised by the incompetent.** I wanted to do something, and just today I find among some old papers a little offhand piece354 written in my days of immortality, even if I did not have the time and opportunity then, since I was fully occupied as an author with my own ideas. Add to that the fact that it was a difficult thing to do effectually. Since that paper, according to my barber, is supposed to be ironic and extremely witty, I was afraid it would manage to make a joke of the matter, even capitalize on it, as if it were my intention to say something witty at its expense and thereby prompt it to be witty also. As I see it, that would have been the most dreadful responsibility to assume. So time went on, and my leisure commenced, during which the matter presumably would come up again. And what happens—along comes Mr. P.L.M., most opportunely for me. Precisely because I now could start from a kind of attack, I would be [VII1 B 69 255] able to prevent the dreadful falsification of regarding my little inserat [insertion] as a compliment; I could make it so emphatic that that paper would have to abandon every hope of maintaining a kind of relationship to me as a high-ranking ally by continuing to pamper me and my immortality, for I, too, am supposed to be ironic and witty—how close lies the loathsome copula of misunderstanding! And I succeeded, all right, for, according to my barber, no one should be abused as I have been.
That is the whole story. It is not simply a rash step356 on my part; I knew very well what I was doing and why. I find everything that has happened quite in order, but it would pain me if a first-rate person did not quickly perceive this; it would pain me if he, out of misunderstanding, condemned me for what I deliberately did out of sympathy for others,357 did what the majority of the better individuals were prevented from doing for professional reasons, because of circumstances, by not being an author, etc. This step has satisfied me so much that I would not wish it undone at any price. I leave it to anyone in a position to do something to consider whether it is defensible to let a paper go on under the guise of being nothing at all when it is circulated all over, is read even by schoolchildren, yes, even has the brass to meddle with teacher-pupil relationships, when it broadcasts lies and slander on the greatest possible scale, persecutes men whose wives perhaps also feel violated by it. Therefore, I repeat my Catonian praeterea censeo [furthermore, I am of the opinion],358 it is necessary that it be done. As everyone knows, after first begging very obsequiously, insolent beggars, when refused, pursue a person up and down the street with their begging for alms. Literary contemptibleness, which in the literary world stands au niveau [on the same level] as such a pack of beggars does in civic life, has tried to employ the same [VII1 B 69 256] tactic: when no one deems it worthy of reply, it follows behind a man incessantly and continuously, bullying him until he quite likely grows tired of hearing it.—Pap. VII1 B 69 n.d., 1846
A Polite Suggestion [VII1 B 70 256]
From the very beginning, neither the pseudonymous writers nor I have asked for a public but, polemically opposed to any kind of phantasmic nonentity, have always been satisfied with a few individual readers, or, indeed, with that single individual.359
In all consistency, therefore, this suggestion is to the few, among whom those individuals or the single individual may be sought, the few who could and would be more interested in a consistent point of view, diligently, competently, and sacrificially worked out, than in my trousers,360 the binding of my books, or what printed pieces of impertinence the naughty boy of literature happens to think up. It is almost too much that I, who only wished indirectly to become slightly important to a single individual by editing or writing books, suddenly became important to everybody—because of my old gray trousers. Consequently, anyone who is anything of a dialectician and is willing to spend some time in practicing [indøve] double-reflection361 will readily perceive that it was the consistency of my life-view as an author that made me do everything negative, and precisely thereby consistently, to support the books, even though I also hoped to contribute indirectly to exposing a contemptible literary phenomenon in all its baseness. If my books become popular, then I have been misunderstood, and if I prompt it myself, then I have been guilty of high treason against my idea and my life-view, although few are sufficiently dialectical to understand how. But if it gets to be a questionable good to read or to have read them, if a person becomes almost ashamed or almost [VII1 B 70 257] fears to be laughed at for having read a big book362 all the way through, then the opportune time has come—for my readers—then a single individual will go away in solitude and read, he will read and be pleased or displeased. But if it pleases him, as a reader he is still not my adherent in a herd sense, in an external and ridiculous sense—he is himself a man. Just as I have been sufficiently dialectical to perceive this in all its consistency, so too I also have had the courage to act363 accordingly. I am no fool who believes that the world becomes better because it praises me or, worse, because it censures me—no, the issue is simply one of preventing faddish opinions. This is the hint to that single individual, who will understand that I am utterly and completely in the service of my idea precisely at the point where the crowd interested in my trousers believes that I am trapped. In my opinion, to be victorious in the world does not mean that I conquer but that I persevere in everything, do everything the idea commands so that it can be victorious.
I do not believe it actually can be said that I have been a disgrace to the nation to which I have the honor to belong, to the mother tongue364 that, next to thinking, is my love, to the literature I dare say I have served unselfishly. On the other hand, I am not settling the question of whether the friendly city in which I live and the inhabitants of the same are honored by having rabble-barbarism rise up against me. It is certainly true that I myself challenged it to do so by way of a pseudonym365—absolutely right, and for two reasons. In the first place, because it was in pursuance of my idea—only that single individual will understand this—and, in the second place, because I hoped thereby to give the naughty boy of literature occasion really to exercise his brazenness or, if this is putting it too mildly, since, of course, even a naughty child does not insist on making money from his contemptible behavior, consequently to give the contemptible, avaricious prostitute of literature occasion to be exposed properly in his brazenness. More and more people will gradually come to understand this, even though at the moment I am subject to the most varied misinterpretations, and also by some of the better people, which personally pains me, even though in the idea I am more than at ease. Gradually it will be understood [VII1 B 70 258] that when rabble-barbarism has achieved wide circulation and flourishes prosperously, it does no good to remain silent, but neither does it do any good to get into conflict with it; one must only help it to make itself even more lunatic and ask to be abused—then it will be exposed, and it will burst. When this is understood, it will also be understood that what kept others from doing what I have done was not so much a higher wisdom or an especially calculating wisdom but rather a slight timidity.*
In margin: * for to oppose the government, especially when one is part of a group, now that is really something, but when this involves just a little danger, a little inconvenience, and there is nothing to gain, neither honor nor status—then courage is not readily at hand.—Pap. VII1 B 70 n.d., 1846
A Bit of Factual Information [VII1 B 71 258]
From much that has been written the last three months, according to my barber, in that organ of literary contemptibleness in this country, together with something that just now came to my attention in a more respectable paper (Kjøbenhavnsposten),366 I must conclude that there are a few people who curiously connect everything I write or edit, big or small books, with a little article in Fædrelandet367 written three months ago by Frater Taciturnus against Mr. P. L. Møller. It created a sensation368 at the time, for, needless to say, the biggest sensations are created by nothing at all, and this article, after all, dealt with Mr. P.L.M. Anyone who thinks but a moment of this strange connecting-together will quickly perceive that it completely turns everything upside down. As a rule, it would hardly occur to me to say anything, but since I can factually prove in a few words the impossibility [VII1 B 71 259] of this connection, I will do it. The manuscript of Concluding Unscientific Postscript369 was completely finished in the middle of December and delivered complete to the printer a few days before Christmas, as the records of book printer Luno370 can prove. That little review of En Hverdags Historie371 was begun in the middle of December, which Giødwad372 must be able to corroborate. Not until then, consequently after that time, did Mr. P.L.M.’s Gæa come out containing the piece373 that prompted that little article. Thus it was after I was finished with what I had regarded as my task for four and one-half years, a task that claimed all my time and attention. I wrote that little article with the stated intention of doing a few people a service.374 Rarely does one see Mr. P.L.M.’s name, and what I stated in the article is true: “obtrusive as he (P. L. Møller) is and known to many, I really believed I would be doing some people a service by challenging him.”375
Of course, I consider the article in Fædrelandet376 to be insignificant, at most something that one writes to do someone a service. If there can be one person here in the country who considers it anything else, who regards that little article as far more important than all the pseudonymous books,377 who believes that everything I do focuses on that little article and thereby even less on the one on whom the article focuses—this must be considered an optical illusion. If that same one has a friend who for friendship’s sake abandons himself to the same illusion, this must be regarded as a matter of friendship.—Pap. VII1 B 71 n.d., 1846
[VII1 B 72 259] A Literary Signal Shot
In a limited setting, where the sediment has difficulty in settling, in a limited setting, where neither a great confluence nor the powerful wind of momentous events is the daily pattern, [VII1 B 72 260] in a limited setting, it is at times necessary in the interests of truth and the good to use precautionary procedures that are utterly superfluous in a larger setting. In small rooms, care must be taken to air out once in a while; care must be taken to keep the water clean in a small reservoir, a precaution not at all necessary if the reservoir is the sea. In the same vein, it is common knowledge that the great urban centers of Europe, Paris and London, conceal a great mass of demoralization, but the contexts are so vast that the sediment can actually become sediment, the wind so strong that the noxious gases still cannot reach the point of polluting the atmospheric air. One thousand prostitutes in Paris are of no great importance. There is literally a great class of inhabitants who literally and veritably can go on unaware of them.
In a small town, however, one prostitute would be intolerable, because it would be impossible to overlook her in a town where a settling of the sediment is out of the question, since the whole life of the town is in a goldfish bowl. If the inhabitants of a small town were to overlook the presence of such a creature, there would be something false about it that in an immoral way would essentially make such a prostituted creature interesting, because everyone could check on everyone else and know it was a lie if someone said he did not know about it.
But so it is also in a limited literary setting. When the context is so small that, for better or for worse, we all simply have to put up with rubbing elbows, then overlooking must be used with great circumspection. In a limited literary setting, it is, regrettably, impossible to express in an ordinary way that sediment is sediment, because we live so close to one another. The individual cannot be reproached for this any more than the small-town resident can be reproached for living in a town where the urban principle “to overlook” must be exchanged for the principle of riddance, or at least that of labeling sediment for what it is. Therefore, in a limited literary setting, literary rabble-barbarism,* irrespective of its having talent or not, simply and solely by having attained a kind [VII1 B 72 261] of range and scope, makes overlooking a wrong tactic for those of quality, because, for better or for worse, it is no secret that this overlooking is a lie, and, in any case, it is not believed. Therefore, this overlooking, instead of repressing, works as a stimulating ingredient in favor of propagating rabble-barbarism more widely, until, finally, this overlooking, which supposedly expressed distinction and superiority, can take on the appearance of fear when the rabble-barbarism attains greater and greater circulation. And again it is the case, simply because of the limited setting and the scope and range of circulation, that more and more people will become confused about what is what, all the more since rabble-barbarism, encouraged by its extensiveness, will become more and more rash and brazen. When that is the case, other rules of procedure must be adopted. In a limited setting, it is never wise to want to live in the delusion that one is living in a large setting; it is better to know the circumstances and then to act according to them.
It certainly has not escaped my attention, nor am I ignorant of the potential consequences in a small setting, that over the last few years literary prostitution has attained such alarming circulation that, however much it is generally considered to be and remains sediment, it is so far from factually being sediment that instead it is the most conspicuous of all, and by having practically the largest subscription list378 of forty-three papers and other organs, it is assured of being read as no other paper is. Therefore, it both amazes and alarms me that those who really must be considered to be called—not to engage in conflict with the prostituted (for one should not engage in conflict with them) but to label them[*]—have been silent, have wanted to delude us into thinking that our setting is large and thereby have helped rabble-barbarism to gain more and more headway.
As far as I am concerned—for I, too, am an author in Danish literature and therefore am interested in this situation—since I have thought that just as a singer should watch his diet before a concert and just as a pregnant woman should [VII1 B 72 262] follow every precautionary measure, so, too, an author who has been concentrating his effort uninterruptedly on one coherent work, regardless of what others think of this work, must consider it to be of such importance that he must maintain the strictest dietetic regimen with respect to everything else and observe every precautionary rule. This I have done and for that reason have remained silent.
But in the middle of 1845 I was finished with Concluding Unscientific Postscript, the entire manuscript, which, according to my invariable practice, I delivered to the printer.*379 Simultaneously, I decided to take action against the literary rabble-barbarism and its tyranny among us. I was prompted both by my grateful joy over having finished my book in so short a time and by a well-intentioned consideration for others, and, since I was finished, I dared to expose myself to any unpleasantness without concern. Perhaps someone will perceive, if he reads this, that what has been construed in so many ways by the hasty and foolish as a rash and hasty step380 on my part was carefully calculated and thoughtfully considered.
As I said previously, this was the situation in the last days of December 1845. Then even Governance381 came to my aid with a little hint. Mr. P. L. Møller,382 who, according to an article he himself revised in the lexicon of authors,383 had contributed both poetry and satire to The Corsair,** helped me by [VII1 B 72 263] providing the occasion in a signed article in Gæa.384 I could not let such a fortunate opportunity go by unused (for Mr. P. L. Møller rarely signs his name, and although his name does not add much, it is still something compared with an anonym).
The article did in fact have an effect. Mr. P.L.M. himself unquestionably has realized that it was damnably unfortunate that he signed his name. In a polite, almost obsequious—especially in consideration of my indictment—signed little notice,385 he retracted, and then where he went,386 I do not know, but, according to what my barber told me, from that time on there was in The Corsair a lot of hustle and bustle in the dance hall of literary contemptibleness. But in other papers as well.—Pap. VII1 B 72 n.d., 1846
JOURNAL ENTRIES
[VII1 A 98 41] March 1846
the ninth
The Concluding Postscript is out; the pseudonymity has been acknowledged;388 one of these days the printing of the “Literary Review”389 will begin. Everything is in order; all I have to do now is to keep calm, be silent, depending on The Corsair to support the whole enterprise negatively, just as I wish. From the standpoint of the idea, I am at present as correctly situated in literature as possible, and also in such a way that to be an author becomes a deed.390 In itself, it was a most capital idea to make a break with The Corsair in order to prevent any direct advances[*] at the very moment I was through with the authorship391 and, by assuming all the pseudonyms, ran the [VII1 A 98 42] risk of becoming an authority of sorts. This is why right now, when I am advancing polemically against the age, I owe it to the idea and to irony to prevent any confusion with the ironical bad brandy The Corsair serves in the dance halls of contemptibleness. Incidentally, it has happened here, as it frequently does, that despite all my deliberation a something more eventuates that is due not to me but to Governance. It always happens this way: that to which I give the most thought I always understand far better afterwards, both its ideal significance and the fact that it was precisely what I should have done.392
But this existence is exhausting; I am convinced that not a single person understands me. The most that anyone, even an admirer, would concede is that I bear all this unpleasantness with a certain poise, but that I want it—of course, no one dreams of that. But then, on the other hand, it would again be hasty human thoughtlessness to conclude, if it were understood why I, by virtue of the idea of double reflection,394 must wish it, that ergo he is not suffering at all, is insensitive to all this vulgarity and the brazen lies. Just as if one could not voluntary decide to take upon oneself all tribulations if the idea enjoins it. The article395 against P. L. Møller was written in great fear and trembling; I did it during the holidays, but for the sake of a regulating resistance I did not neglect going to church or reading my sermon. So also with the article396 against The Corsair. On the other hand, they were properly written, for if I had evinced passion, someone along the way would have found occasion for a direct relation to me. It was amusing and psychologically superb to see the haste with which P. L. Møller397 got the hint given about withdrawing into The Corsair. He came forward, bowed politely, and then withdrew to the place where he is at home.
What pains me most, however, is not the vulgarity of the rabble but the secret participation in it by the better people.398 I, too, would like to make myself comprehensible to one single person, to my reader. But I dare not, for then I defraud [VII1 A 98 43] the idea. It is precisely when I am succeeding most, when brutality is at its most shameless peak, that I dare not speak. Finally, it is my responsibility to be consistently unyielding so that I shall not be responsible for several people going completely astray. So be it. I must be silent.
The last two months have been very rewarding for my observations. What I said in my dissertation399 about irony making phenomena stand revealed is so true. First of all, my ironic leap into The Corsair goes a long way toward making it perfectly clear that The Corsair is devoid of idea. Seen from the point of view of idea, it is dead, even if it finds a few thousand more subscribers. It wants to be ironical and does not even understand irony. Generally speaking, it would have been an epigram over my whole life if it might ever be said: Contemporary with him there existed a bungling ironic journal that sang his praises;400 no, hold on—he was abused, and he himself asked for it.401 —Second, my ironic leap into The Corsair shows up the self-contradiction of the environing world. Everyone has been going around saying: It is nothing, who cares about The Corsair, etc. What happens when one does it is that one is charged with being rash; they say one has deserved all this (now, you see, it is “all this”) because one prompted it; they hardly dare walk in the street402 with me, fearing that they too will be in The Corsair. The self-contradiction, however, has a deeper basis; in their Christian envy they half wish that the paper may go on, each one hoping that he will not be attacked. They now say that the paper is despicable and nothing; they enjoin the persons under attack not to dare to become angry or make any protest, ergo, the paper must flourish. And the public has first the stimulation of envy and then the shameless pleasure of watching the victim of the attack—whether it affects him.* And this phenomenon [VII1 A 98 44] in such a little country as Denmark, this phenomenon as the one and only prevailing—and this is supposed to be nothing! How well cowardice and contemptibility suit each other in the bond of shabbiness! And when the whole thing bursts some day, Goldschmidt will be the one who suffers; and it is absolutely the same public—and then the world has become such a splendid world!
Furthermore, my observations abundantly strengthen my conviction that when a man consistently expresses one idea, every objection to him contains a self-contradiction of the one who makes it.** They say I am the one who cares about The Corsair. What happens? The “Concluding Postscript” was delivered bag and baggage to Luno403 before I wrote against P. L. Møller. Now in the preface404 to it (which, incidentally, was written in May of 1845) there was something that seems to suggest the latter (this shows, among other things, how early I was aware of it). Now if I had cared about The Corsair, I would have made some changes in it simply to avoid the appearance of being so. I know how I fought down the temptation to do it because it pained me to think of Bishop Mynster, for example, saying: And Kierkegaard refers to such a thing even in a book. But I was true to myself in not caring about The Corsair—and then what happens? Well, just as expected—allusions to The Corsair are found in everything I write. Here is the dead giveaway, for it must be “they” themselves who had The Corsair in mente [in mind], since they find it even in something written prior to that time.
Two things in particular occupy me: (1) that whatever the cost I remain intellectually true in the Greek sense405 to my existence-idea; (2) that in the religious sense it becomes as elevating and ennobling to me as possible. I pray God for the latter. Solitary I have always been; now I really have the opportunity again to practice. My solitary secret is not my grief but is precisely that I have the upper hand, that I transform what is hostile into something that serves my idea without its having any intimation of this itself. Yes, this life is certainly [VII1 A 98 45] satisfying, but it is also terribly strenuous. From what a tragic side one learns to know men, and how sad that what will look so good at a distance is always misunderstood by contemporaries. But again it is the religious that redeems; here there is sympathy for all, not the garrulous fellow feeling of cliques and henchmen, but infinite sympathy for each and all—in silence.
But without a doubt it is educational to be placed as I am in so small a city as Copenhagen. To work almost to despair with all one’s capacities, with deep agony of soul and much inner suffering, to put money into publishing books406—and then literally not to have ten men who read them through properly, while on the other hand students and other authors find it almost ridiculously easy to write a big book; and then to have a paper that everyone reads, which has the license of contemptibleness to dare say anything, the most lying distortions (and it is nothing, but everybody reads it); and then the whole pack of envious people who lend a hand by saying just the opposite in order to minimize in that way. Day after day to be the object of everybody’s conversation and attention, and then the business of defending me against an attack in order to attack me more viciously themselves. Every kitchen boy feels justified in almost insulting me in accordance with The Corsair’s orders; young students titter and grin and are happy to see a prominent person trampled on; professors are jealous and secretly sympathize with the attacks, and spread them, too, with the appendage, of course, that it is a shame. The slightest thing I do, if it is merely to pay a visit, is twisted and distorted into lies and told everywhere; if The Corsair finds out, it is printed and read by everybody, the man I visit is embarrassed, gets almost angry with me, for which he cannot be blamed. Eventually I will have to withdraw and associate only with people I do not like, for it is, after all, almost a wrong against the others. And so it continues, and sometime [VII1 A 98 46] when I am dead, men’s eyes will be opened; then they will admire what I wanted to do and will simultaneously treat in the same way a contemporary who probably is the only one who understands me. God in heaven, who could endure this if there were not an interior place in a man where all this can be forgotten in communion with you.
But my activity as an author is finished407—God be praised. It has been granted to me to conclude it myself, to understand myself when it ought to stop, and next to publishing Either/Or408 I thank God for that. I know very well and find it quite in order that people will not see it this way and that it would in fact take but two words from me to prove it so. This has hurt; it seems that I still could have desired that recognition, but let it be.
If I only could make myself become a pastor.409 Out there in quiet activity, permitting myself a little productivity in my free time, I shall breathe easier, however much my present life has gratified me.—JP V 5887 (Pap. VII1 A 98) March 9, 1846
[VII1 A 99 46] But nothing must be written, not one word; I dare not. Were I to write, I would give the reader a hint and throw the whole thing out of gear. He must not find out anything secretly. I have tossed off a few things during this time that are not bad but that can be used only in a completely different situation.
I have thought of the last version as being like this:
Short and Sweet
In my opinion, an editor is literarily responsible when there is no author. The editor of The Corsair is Mr. Goldschmidt,410 university student, a bright fellow, without an idea, without scholarship, without a point of view, without self-control, but not without a certain talent and a desperate esthetic power. At a critical moment in his life he approached me.411 I [VII1 A 99 47] tried indirectly to help him negatively. I praise him for his self-assurance in getting himself established. I believe he has succeeded in what he wanted to do. I had hoped that he would have chosen an honorable way to earn a name for himself; to be honest, it pains me that as the editor of The Corsair he continues to choose the way of contemptibility to earn money. It was my desire to snatch, if possible, a talented man from being an instrument of rabble-barbarism, but I certainly had no wish to be shamefully rewarded by being immortalized412 by a paper of contemptibility that ought never to have existed and by which I can only wish to be abused. It is expedient for my life as an author to be abused, and that is why I wished it and asked for it as soon as I was finished, for by the time Frater Taciturnus413 wrote, Johannes Climacus414 had already been delivered to the printer a few days before. I had also hoped to benefit others by this step; they do not want it—well, I shall go on asking for abuse because it suits my idea and in order to get some good, after all, out of the existence of a paper like that. It is sad to see the pack of fools and the fatuous who laugh, and yet, at least in this case, they do not know what they are laughing at. God alone knows whether or not I am playing for too high stakes with respect to my contemporaries. My idea requires it; its consistency satisfies me beyond measure—I cannot do otherwise. I beg forgiveness of all the better people who are undialectical or do not have the presuppositions to understand that I must do as I am doing—and then forward: would that I might be abused.415 However important or unimportant my life as an author, this much is certain: because of my dialectical relation, I am the only Danish author who is so situated that it can serve the idea to have every possible lie and distortion and nonsense and gossip come out, confusing the reader and thus helping him to self-activity and preventing a direct relationship. No other Danish author, when he addresses himself to one hundred, can possibly benefit from the reading of lies and distortions by one [VII1 A 99 48] thousand readers.* But he benefits me, he benefits me every time he abuses me, and that he will certainly do; he cannot get away from me, and his inability to pursue the good expresses itself in the defiance of an unhappy infatuation and a self-stifling through abusive words, all of which I regret, inasmuch as I meant him well.416 But his abuse is irrelevant; I could just as well be absent.
If Mr. Goldschmidt will reply in a decent paper and sign his name to it, I will read it; I no longer read The Corsair, I would not even direct my servant to read it, for I do not believe it lies within a master’s authority to be able to order his servant to go to a place of disrepute.
S.K.
In margin: * No other Dane can benefit from rabble-barbarism’s having a widely read organ that has him in its power, when it so pleases a literary tramp.—JP V 5888 (Pap. VII1 A 99) n.d., 1846
What really distresses me in the whole affair is to see the mass of the conceited who want to play the loftiest game of intellectuality, and then I am practically the only one who has the Greek mentality417 and the education of independence for it, and then I am the very one who wanted to work toward something like that, which is directly related to my whole task.—JP V 5889 (Pap. VII1 A 101) n.d., 1846
March 16
[VII1 A 104 49] Given the conditions in the world as it is, to be an author should be the extraordinary employment in life, an employment that escapes the dialectic of the universal (office and whatever pertains to that; a living and whatever pertains to that). Therefore, not only should the author’s production be a testimony to the idea, but the author’s life should also correspond to the idea. But, alas, of all categories, the category of actuality is the most mediocre. To be an author is to be in a fraternity and is just as cluttered up with finiteness as anything else. Authors are supposed to be of mutual help to one another, criticize one another’s writings, talk about what one is going to do, etc. Your intimate friends in particular are supposed to profit from the relationship and have little scraps [VII1 A 104 50] of news to run around with: “that they personally saw the manuscript, heard part of it, talked with the author, etc.”
By taking advantage of my pseudonymity, I have stayed completely clear of this. In the finite sense, I have thereby done irreparable damage to myself, have offended people, have shirked the salutary tradition of small talk, and have given my whole enterprise the appearance of chance and caprice; and even if I were now to show how everything hangs together, what exceedingly rigorous ordering formed the basis, no one would believe it—for it would be inconceivable that anyone should have such a plan and keep quiet about it. Fools, only the person who can keep quiet has such a plan.
When I had finished,418 I tried to do a little for others. I wrote the two articles against P.L.M. and The Corsair.419 After that, I was happy to review Hverdags Historien.420 The end result will be, I am sure, that people will be led to believe that I am doing it in order to gain favor. Ah, if I wanted to have power and prestige in Danish literature—which I easily could—I would have done just the opposite. I would not have broken so emphatically with The Corsair, for its continual nonsense still exerts an influence on mass opinion, and to be commended by it421 would still be a titillating ingredient. Very quickly I should have put myself at the front as the awaited one, deigned to recognize one or two of the younger ones, taken a negative position toward the older ones—this is how to get ahead in Danish literature, and this is what the younger ones want, and anyone who wants to have power must always line up with the younger ones. But I did exactly the opposite instead—precisely because I do not wish and am too melancholy to want to have status and recognition in the world. I irritate the younger ones, for none of them stands so high that he can slip past me and what I do—I bow to the older writers. The minute I stop, I will be happy to leave everything unchanged in Danish literature, to get Professor Heiberg422 esteemed as in the past, Bishop Mynster423 venerated as absolutely as possible—then everything will again be in order. And then I am accused of ambitious vanity. Would that he who accuses might first reflect for a moment. For [VII1 A 104 51] example, The Corsair no doubt fancies that it has enormous power—how then can a person who breaks with it be seeking power?
How fundamentally polemic I am by nature I can best see in the fact that the only path by which the attacks of men can affect me is the sadness I feel on their behalf. As long as I am embattled, I am imperturbable, but when I have supremacy, then I become sad at seeing human folly and contemptibleness. My author-existence is truly as pure as new-fallen snow, removed from all worldly avidity, is in the service of the idea; therefore, the masses, who actually do not understand me, still ought to have a gratifying impression of it. But that is not to be. Well, let them tell lies, let them slander and misrepresent. But certainly every older generation of authors, insofar as they have the innocent and admissible desire to enjoy recognition, must always wish for a successor like me, who, like a woman, desires nothing himself but desires only to elevate the elders.
Meanwhile, everyone has a special license to taunt and attack me in all sorts of ways. They profit in a strange way from my supposed intelligence. They say what they like, and if it is refuted by the facts, then they say: Well, one can’t figure it out, for he is so intelligent and cunning and clever. They maintain that I do this and that out of vanity; the facts contradict this, and so they say: Yes, he is so intelligent—that is, he is intelligent enough to do the opposite, but just the same he is vain. A curious argument! If I do the opposite of what vanity bids me do, then either I must be stupid or, if I am intelligent, then I must not be vain. Now if I am conceded to be intelligent—ergo, I am not vain. But see, they arrive at the opposite conclusion. Ultimately, it all comes down to this, that men are not able to conceive of an intelligent man not coveting status and power. They assume this (for the good and stupidity are identical) and consequently draw the conclusion: Even if we cannot prove it, he must be vain because he is so intelligent—intelligent enough to do the opposite of what vanity bids him do. But their presupposition contains a veritable confession.
But how many lives are wasted in this confounded garrulousness [VII1 A 104 52] about others.—JP V 5891 (Pap. VII1 A 104) March 16, 1846
And yet my ironic powers of observation and my soul derived [VII1 A 107 54] such extraordinary satisfaction from gadding about on the streets424 and being a nobody in this way while thoughts [VII1 A 107 55] and ideas were working within me, from being a loafer this way while I was clearly the most industrious of the younger set and appearing irresponsible this way and “lacking in earnestness” while the earnestness of the others could easily become a jest alongside my inner concerns. Now this is all upset; the rabble, the apprentices, the butcher boys, the schoolboys, and all such are egged on. But I will not play to such a public. I have nothing to do with it; it lacks the requisite condition for manifesting my irony or its significance for the idea. It was in the encounter with people who, because of their education, I might say, were able to grasp something more profound in me or to have some conception of it—it was in the encounter with such people that my irony was gratified by posing the enigmatic problem, and my wrath found satisfaction in seeing how they disparaged me. But the completely uneducated class, the schoolboys and the butcher boys, of course, have no requisite conditions; this terrain is unsuitable, irony cannot be used here. It is sad to see that there actually are papers written for schoolboys, that already at such an early age they are plunged into the confusion of ambiguity. I will give only one situation, yet it is typical. It was with Lieutenant Barth,425 adjutant of the Hussars. He came walking along with his little son. The father greeted me with his usual, almost excessive attention, stepped aside to allow me the flagstones. If the lad had not known who I was, he might have gotten a notion that I was somewhat extraordinary, but the boy obviously knew me—he was a reader of The Corsair. What a combination! Must it not be harmful to children at one moment to read about a man being mistreated in this way, practically inviting the whole bunch of schoolboys to whistle at him on the streets—and then the next moment [VII1 A 107 56] to see him treated in this manner by his father, or read samples of his writing in Danish school readers.426
And now that I have remodeled my external life, am more withdrawn, keep to myself more, have a more momentous look about me, then in certain quarters it will be said that I have changed for the better. Alas, but my idea is not being served as it was then. But then, after all, my writing days are over.427—JP V 5894 (Pap. VII1 A 107) n.d., 1846
It was a Greek principle428 that I existentially expressed; now it is disarranged. And what has disarranged it? The fact that the press is used on such a great scale. It is the press that actually destroys all personality. That a cowardly wretch can sit in hiding and write and print for the thousands! All personal conduct and all personal power must run aground on this. It would be most interesting to talk with Socrates about the matter.—JP V 5899 (Pap. VII1 A 112) n.d., 1846
[VII1 A 214 140] January 1847
What I take exception to in all this trouble with literary contemptibleness is, of course, not their attack and insults (I invited them myself)429 nor their conduct, which, after all, [VII1 A 214 141] patronizes this contemptibleness; no, it is their meanness, which, because they do not know how to grasp a situation, wants to be ingenious and pass judgment on me, that it was a rash step430 etc.
But the time will surely come when all these cowards will think it no longer necessary to lie. As soon as the danger is over, they will most likely dare say that I was right. What paltriness we live in! It is so characteristic that right now when Goldschmidt431 has gone abroad and P. L. Møller432 has apparently lost his nerve, they are beginning to appreciate my action. And there are those brave, bold journalists who, when it comes to criticizing a poor policeman for losing his temper, use frank, bold, outspoken language: Fie on the hypocrites! It is these loyal supporters of the government, these outspoken journalists, who attack the liberals for every little trifle—where no danger is involved! But where there is a bit of danger (somewhat like firemen being the only ones tried and tested in dangers during times of peace), there has not been one single hint of a word.
But this is why those who should have maintained the pathos with respect to my action are in difficulties with me. Now that the danger is over, they perhaps even want to say what they did not dare say before; but they have a bad conscience about me, they feel that I see right through them, and they are almost afraid that if the opportunity comes, I will, with new recklessness and probably very good reasons, let them pay the penalty for this meanness.—JP V 5957 (Pap. VII1 A 214) January 1847
Jan. 24
God be praised that all the assaults of rabble-barbarism have come upon me. Now I have gained time to learn inwardly and to convince myself that it was indeed a gloomy thought to want to live out in a rural parish433 and do penance in seclusion and oblivion. Now I stand resolved and rooted to the spot in a way I have never been. If I had not been put through the mill of insults, this gloomy idea would have continued to pester me, for a certain kind of prosperity fosters gloomy ideas; if, for example, I had not had private means,434 I would never, with my disposition to melancholy, have reached the point I have sometimes reached.—JP V 5966 (Pap. VII1 A 229) January 24, 1847
To be trampled to death by geese is a lingering death, and to be torn to death by envy is also a slow way to die. While rabble-barbarism insults me (for what comes out in a newspaper once would not mean much if it did not give the vulgar the mandate to insult one day after day, abuse one on the public street, schoolboys, brash students, store clerks, and all the scum yellow journalism stirs up), upper-class envy looks on with approval. It does not grudge me that. And does one want to live or does one choose to live under such conditions. No, but I am nevertheless happy that I know I have acted.435 Incidentally, nibbling mistreatment like that is among the most distressing. Everything else has an end, but this does not cease. To sit in church where a couple of louts have the impudence to sit down beside one in order to gawk at one’s trousers and insult one so loudly that every word is audible. But this is what I am used to. The fact that brazenness has a mandate in the newspapers makes the smart alecks think they are justified, yes, that they are agents of public opinion. And I realize this, but in a certain sense I have been in error about Denmark, for I did not believe that rabble-barbarism actually was public opinion in Denmark, but I shall gladly testify that this is the case, something that can be factually demonstrated very easily.—JP V 5998 (Pap. VIII1 A 99) n.d., 1847
[VIII1 A 133 65] With the press as degenerate as it is, human beings eventually will surely be transformed into clods. A newspaper’s first concern has to be circulation; from then on, the rule for what it publishes can be: the wittiness and entertainment of printing something without any relation to communication through the press. How significant! How easy to be witty when misuse of the press has become the newly invented kind of witticism.
For example, they write that a certain well-known person (mentioned by name) wears an embroidered shirt. This is [VIII1 A 133 66] written and then read by the whole market town where the lunatic press thrives. The man is cartooned with an embroidered shirt, and this treatment goes on for half a year—and naturally is the most widely read of everything read in the market town. If this is not either lunacy or idiocy, then I know of no other alternative. People are simply too immediate and momentary, but on this scale it is the non plus ultra [unsurpassable]—to use the circulation of the press to discuss for half a year something which, after all, the most addlebrained person ought to be sufficiently human not to talk about for more than five minutes—it can only lead to idiocy.—JP V 6007 (Pap. VIII1 A 133) n.d., 1847
After a laborious process of study and development and after painstaking effort continued over a long period, the most gifted intellects of a country eventually become authors—and authors of books. But books are seldom read in this country. The daily newspaper, however, has wide circulation and is read by everybody. Here, then, seen from the point of view of the idea, are all those hollow and bandy-legged, clumsy and flat-footed as well as clumsy-fingered, half-witted but sly, reprehensible fellows called journalists, busily operating, and their cogitations are read by all. Pro dii immortales [ye gods]! Suppose there is only one megaphone on a ship and the cook’s mate has appropriated it, an act that all regarded as appropriate. Everything the cook’s mate has to communicate (“Some butter on the spinach” or “Fine weather today” or “God knows if there’s something wrong below in the ship” etc.) is communicated through the megaphone, but the captain has to give his commands solely by means of his voice, for what the captain has to say is not so important. Yes, the captain finally has to ask the cook’s mate to help him so that he can be heard, if the cook’s mate would be so good as to “report” the order, which, it must be admitted, sometimes gets completely garbled in going through the cook’s mate and his megaphone, in which case the captain strains his little voice in vain, for the cook and his megaphone are heard. Finally the cook’s mate gets control, because he has the megaphone. Pro dii immortales!—JP V 6008 (Pap. VIII1 A 135) n.d., 1847
[VIII1 A 163 81] In a way, I am living like a fish in water to which a disagreeable ingredient has been added, making it impossible for fish [VIII1 A 163 82] to breathe in it. My atmosphere has been tainted for me. Because of my melancholy and my enormous work, I needed a situation of solitude in the crowd in order to rest. So I despair. I can no longer find it. Curiosity surrounds me everywhere. I drive thirty-five miles to my beloved forest looking for simple solitude.436 Alas, curiosity everywhere. These tiresome people are like flies, living off others.
I know very well that Heiberg437 and his kind Christianly explain my walking the street438 as so much vanity—that I do it to be seen. I wonder if it is also to be seen that I walk about even more, if possible, in Berlin,439 where not a soul knows me?—JP V 6013 (Pap. VIII1 A 163) n.d., 1847
[VIII1 A 175 87] My life as an author is as shabby and shameful as possible. In a quite different sense, I may be said to have deserved it—and to that extent I suffer for my guilt—that is, in understanding with God. In relation to men, I am as author not only right but also infinitely much more.
But my life is also the most interesting lived by any author in Denmark. For that very reason, I will assuredly be read and studied in the future. All Europe is working toward demoralization—but [VIII1 A 175 88] in Copenhagen things are on such a small scale that my observations and calculations can comprehend them completely. This will come to be extremely interesting. I am like a physician with a detailed anatomical model, but one not so large that it cannot be surveyed.
No one can dream of the slinking meanness that prevails here. Even my tailor was almost afraid440—naturally, that he would be dragged into it and written about so that he would lose his customers. This could very well happen, for to whom could one turn to explain such contemptibleness. After all, there is no one, only accomplices—who consequently would find it all even more of a lark.
Even eminent and prominent people are taking part in it. How many people have modesty of idea; most of them must be pressured by considerations, and when this is completely taken away, yes, when it is almost dangerous to reveal decent feelings—well, then coarseness and brutality are just as glaring in prominent people as they are in the rudest man.
The whole thing is a conspiracy, and therefore, ultimately, there is no one to talk to—about how paltry the whole thing is. And the Danish language does not reach much beyond Copenhagen: consequently, anyone chosen as a sacrifice to envy is eo ipso trapped.
Just try to tell the petty meanness of Copenhagen in another language—it would be revolting. But this is impossible. For to write about it in Danish is useless, since there is no one to write for except those sworn conspirators, who once again would regale themselves with this new fun.—Pap. VIII1 A 175 n.d., 1847
In order to give a true picture of the bourgeois mentality here [VIII1 A 290 136] in Denmark, it could be amusing to write a little book entitled:
The Story of the Country Called Denmark
Among the “unknown countries” there is also this one—but there are several especially curious things about it that ought to be mentioned.
There is only one city in the country; although it is only a market town, the whole country is as pleased as punch over it. It is called Copenhagen.
Of course, this city has newspapers, several excellent newspapers. [VIII1 A 290 137] But unlike newspapers in other places, they do not discuss political affairs etc. No, here they print news only about what individuals wear, what they eat, where they eat, etc. In no other country is the public mind as strongly developed as in Denmark. If a man does not wear suspenders with his trousers, this is immediately announced in the newspapers and read by the whole nation. Yes, this is done so conscientiously that a debate was carried on in print for more than a year about a particular man’s trousers,441 whether, very strictly considered, they were not an inch too short. The affair dragged on, because it was not clear whether the public mind could allow him to continue walking around with them as they were or whether the public mind needed to take drastic action. —The public mind is prodigiously developed in Denmark. Murder, prostitution, violence, in short, every crime is forgiven except the crime of having different buttons on one’s coat than other men have. That is the crimen læsæ [criminal offense] against the public mind. As soon as a man stumbles in the street, his full name is immediately announced in the paper, and the public mind judges whether or not it was injudicious. —Denmark is different from other countries in that it does not have one or two ironists. No, here the whole nation is ironical. That is, as soon as it is discovered that someone does not have black buttons on his coat as the others do, then all the other men laugh at him, and in Denmark this laughter is called irony. . . .—Pap. VIII1 A 290 n.d., 1847
. . . it was also one of my remarks,442 dialectically thrown out and misunderstood,* that had led Goldschmidt in the past to take a new direction, to attack everybody, while in another sense I did everything to save Goldschmidt from the whole stinking mess, but always dialectically, in order to give him the chance to become open.—Pap. VIII1 A 420 n.d., 1847
Addition to Pap. VIII1 A 420:
*The expression was that it was nonsense to be ironical and also a party man who merely attacked the government; irony must make a clean sweep—the very point of which was to indicate to him how cowardly he was toward the public. A total irony such as this may be considered as characteristic of the modern age. But the one who should take on this task must (1) first of all have great personal courage, (2) be very good-natured, (3) have a pure motive and heroic character. I did not dare to assume this enormous task and enormous responsibility.—Pap. VIII1 A 421 n.d., 1847
Contemptible Lack of Character
Mr. Hostrup writes a student comedy,443 naturally as harebrained and inconsiderate as possible, using no restraints whatsoever—after all, it would be unsporting for someone to have anything against it! Fine. But then should it not keep on being a student comedy—that is, for students. But what happens. The play travels around the whole country, is finally performed in the Royal Theater—and now, as I see today in Flyve-Posten,444 in Norway, and in Rigstidenden, the character who supposedly represents me is named outright: Søren Kierkegaard. No doubt the billboards have already carried my name openly in order to attract interest in the play.
And this is supposed to be a student comedy! And consequently the Danish stage has been demeaned to being The Corsair!
How cowardly the whole thing is. Either my name should have been on the billboard outside the Student Union from the very first or the whole character should have been removed.
It is loathsome to see how the Danes disgrace themselves and eagerly do their best to exhibit our shame to neighboring countries.—JP V 6088 (Pap. VIII1 A 458) n.d., 1847
This is the difference. If persecution comes from the government, [VIII1 A 544 249] one shows up well; a vain person could be tempted for the sake of the cause to go too far because it looks so good to be the object of persecution by such a power. But when one suffers persecution by the mob, the people, the public, in short, the scum that the daily press is able to dredge up, at best by an anonymous dredger—then one has to use nine-tenths of one’s energy in minimizing the persecution itself, one cannot very well be celebrated for talking about such things etc. This is the difference: when one is persecuted by the government, by the powers that be, there is a focus on decisions that time and again will make an impact (a fine, a sentence, etc.), but mob persecution or persecution by the public is sheer dailiness, day in and day out, every day the same, every moment a new arrival knowing nothing about a person except that people grin at him in the most impudent way. They know that they are supposed to do it, it is their duty, for the press has ordered it. Here there is no question of modesty and bashfulness—they are doing a good deed authorized by the public mind when they ridicule a person, abuse him, shout after him, etc., when they even insult his driver so that he almost becomes afraid because he cannot understand what it all means.
What I do lack is physical strength. My mind is calm. I have always thought of myself as having to be sacrificed; now I have received my orders and I will abide by the command I have been given. Ordinarily I can take it. But when, for example, seeking recreation, I take a drive445 of 15-20 miles and sit in the carriage in the happy ferment of thought, my body gradually becomes somewhat weak, partly from the riding, partly from the purely mental exertion, and then when I get out and it so happens I am received by a smirking, grinning [VIII1 A 544 250] crowd, and some of those present are even nice enough to call me names, then my physical state is powerfully affected. Or when I have taken a long walk out on some solitary path,446 lost in my own thoughts, and then suddenly meet three or four louts way out there where I am all alone and they start to call me names, my physical state is powerfully affected. I do not have the physical strength for a fight—and I know nothing that makes me more depressed than such a scene. I have the ability to make any man listen to reason, except the raw boor—to say nothing of three of them who have orders from the press—there can be no discussion with him.
Yet my faith is unshaken that I will remain standing on the spot. There must be an awakening if coarse brutality is not to prevail altogether in Denmark. For me it has had a good side. I really would not have been able to illuminate Christianity the way I have been allowed to do if all this had not happened to me.—JP V 6105 (Pap. VIII1 A 544) n.d., 1848
[IX A 64 36] I feel no bitterness at all at the thought of all the indignities I have suffered and all the times I have been betrayed; I never think of escaping all of this all at once, so to speak, by death. If there is time and place for jest in eternity, I am sure that the thought of my thin legs and my ridiculed trousers447 will be a source of salutary amusement to me. It is a blessed thing to dare say: What I have suffered in that respect I have suffered in God’s name for a good cause and because, humanly speaking, I did a good deed in a truly unselfish sacrifice. This I dare to say—directly to God. I am more sure of this than I am sure that I live, more sure than of everything, for I already feel that he will answer: Yes, my dear child, you are right; and he will add: Everything negative, when you sinned, when you were wrong, has been forgiven you in Christ.
I have never been a Diogenes, have never bordered on cynicism; I have dressed properly and decently. I am not responsible [IX A 64 37] for a whole country’s being a madhouse. I have been able to crack jokes with an individual over my thin legs. But when it is the rabble, the utterly brutish humanity, the rowdies, silly women, schoolchildren, and apprentices who abuse me—that is the meanness and lack of character of a people directed against one who truly merits something from his people. The most tiresome aspect is that I am the only one who has the right to jest, but on those terms I cannot and will not jest. And yet I need the refreshment of laughter so often. But then, alas, the one who is clearly the wittiest in a little country is the only one who is not witty—but the riffraff and the fools are all witty and ironic.—JP VI 6160 (Pap. IX A 64) n.d., 1848
I could in the past have joined up with a number of people and [IX A 92 48] then perhaps have demolished that whole literary barbarism. I chose another method; it will surely stand the test. At the moment, it is true, it seems as if I had lost. But until now, this has been the rule for my victories: I always lose in the first lap, but I win in the end. This is rooted deeply in my nature, for I have no immediacy. This shows itself in trifling matters in my life. My personal appearance has no aplomb. Someone looking at me thinks: Look at that one! But he does not notice that I am reflective.
The crowd can always be assisted to victory but, please [IX A 92 49] note, in such a way that it gains a wrong kind of victory. Goldschmidt’s victory was complete: everybody laughed, all the thousands and thousands. And yet that victory will be costly to him; he has me stuck in his throat.
This is how it had to go and must go. Either all this rabble-barbarism will succeed in destroying me—but in that event the reaction will be very serious, for I am too important to Denmark for that, and, basically, I have the respect of many, yes, am really esteemed, especially if this happens to me—or, if this does not succeed and I go unscathed, then its force is spent. As I gradually work deeper and deeper into presenting the enormous pathos of Christianity,448 that event will acquire ever new modifications. And what then? Then little by little I shall succeed in converting all this gossip and vulgarity from an apparent matter of indifference to an entirely different qualification: a matter of earnestness.
The point is that I understood Goldschmidt and his consorts down to their most tenuous nerve; they understood me not at all. I knew every line of their position; they knew not one of mine.—Pap. IX A 92 n.d., 1848
What is destroying Denmark is neither the new nor the old government but the fact that the country, small as it is, even smaller through demoralization, has become a market town where every government is an impossibility, because envy keeps a watch on anything that is something, so that only contemptibility can have a kind of power, or only an approximation of a martyr can rule, not to mention a martyr.
What brought in a new government449 was not wisdom, patriotism, and the like but an expression of this demoralization. And what will overthrow the new government will again be envy, caprice, pettiness, and the like; it is not the noble, the good, that triumphs—no, it is the same demoralization, which has given itself a new shape.
In this respect, Goldschmidt is not undistinguished. He is like a cholera fly to cholera; it cannot be said that it is he who produces the demoralization (and everybody else is good) but that he makes manifest that there must be demoralization. He is and remains the characterless instrument of envy and demoralization. He has nothing to lose, cannot be attacked, or envied, either; he is safeguarded by means of contemptibility—and then he gnaws and gnaws. And a good many representatives of the old regime think this is fine—because the new government is the victim. How tragic that there is no character at all, no reflection, no consistent point of view anywhere in Denmark, but everything is momentary passion.—JP IV 4149 (Pap. IX A 303) n.d., 1848
And so I am wasted on Denmark; and everybody pretends [IX A 370 213] that it is nothing, as if they did not know it, because I, if I am not to become an object of sympathy, remain upright. My first name is now a nickname every schoolboy knows.450 The same name is more frequently used by authors; it appears in comedies451 all the time now, and everyone knows it is I.
And what was my crime? Was it a bad book I wrote? In that case, persecution such as this would be insanely out of proportion. But that was not the case. Was it because I brazenly attacked something good, decent, beneficial. No, just the opposite. It was demented literary infamy on a scale all out of proportion to the country. Among highly esteemed people, there was and could be but one opinion, but this, of course, was expressed only in private, for each one feared the tyranny of the rabble, but it is definitely true that there is scarcely a reputable man in the country who in indignation has not said repeatedly: It is infamy without comparison. But no one dared to do anything publicly. In various ways they prodded me, at times by imputing to me a kind of secret connection with this ironizing, at times by reminding me that, being independent, I was the only one who could do it.
So I do it—and at once the envy of the exclusive ones uses the opportunity to say that he is mad to do it. Here is the [IX A 370 214] tragedy. The rabble-barbarism would have been powerless against me, but this meanness of being too cowardly to meet me head on polemically, no matter how much it wanted to because it felt my superiority, and then using this situation to give vent to its envy—this is and remains the tragedy.
And yet all this I could have endured easily and cheerfully. But I am much more threatened by another danger that is destroying my urge to write. It is my financial state and the confused financial world of which one can make neither head nor tail. For my kind of writing, time and tranquillity are required. The further I push ahead, the more violent will become the opposition to me from without; already it has gone so far that I am in the hands of the rabble. If, then, I must be occupied with my finances, too, my writing cannot go on. My writing has always been sacrificial, and that is really why I am regarded as mad. But if my private means452 run out, then my writing automatically ceases.
And if I am toppled, it will be said: He was the extraordinary, he truly did want the truth. Good God! If I were to judge, I would say: He did have a slight understanding of the truth and did do a little to express the true. But what kind of world is it where after I have been demolished I become so extraordinary that no one can match me—what kind of world is it, that is, what does it mean to speak about truth in relation to such a world. If every man were like me and then there were a few extraordinaries, it would mean something, but the present situation is nothing but baseness.—Pap. IX A 370 n.d., 1848
[IX A 432 250] How strange, after all, are the outlook of the moment and the outlook of history. In a way, it was just plain cowardice for men to speak about The Corsair as nothing at all, but although that is not the case, the majority honestly believe that The Corsair will be forgotten quickly; all the other papers look down on it in this respect and console themselves that they belong to history. But if I were to express my opinion to the contrary, this would be interpreted as my supposed instability. And yet sie irren [they err]. It is the history of the disintegration of Denmark that we are living—and The Corsair is the normal phenomenon of one sort and the March ministry453 another, but The Corsair has a longer life and covers an enormous area. In a certain sense, it was important, that is, in the realm of evil—and to history it is in a certain sense indifferent whether it is good or evil if only it is important, carried through with talent, consistency, and boldness. Up to a point, The Corsair has understood this, hence its attempt at being a sort of moral enterprise in which ethical satire would be beneficial to the good (à la Aristophanes). I regard it as very important to have gotten this lie exposed, and I was successful in doing it. But, on the other hand, Goldschmidt was in one sense right over against most of his contemporaries, for their [IX A 432 251] supposed disregard was an untruth, insofar as the issue was one about talent, an attempt to ascribe falsely to themselves the ability to overlook his talent because he misused it. I consider it important to my whole historical position that it be scrupulously maintained that I regard the two articles454 as belonging unconditionally to my total literary activity. Therefore, I must also see about doing what I thought of earlier, publishing in a separate little book455 the newspaper articles I have written.—Pap. IX A 432 n.d., 1848
The thing that has made my situation difficult in the attack of [X1 A 40 26] rabble-barbarism upon me is that no one knows how to dance with me. If I had been directly and straightforwardly attacked by them, then I would have done what anyone else under attack does—then the tactic is to get away from it and forget it as quickly as possible. But this is not the case with me. I have an outstanding account against my contemporaries, for the truth is, was, and remains that I did them a good deed,456 I was altogether magnanimous; in fact, I myself provoked the attack. But of course this means that my tactic cannot be the same. Yet the trouble is that this, like my whole effort, is much too magnificent and elevated for a low tavern like Denmark. The actual reason for my difficulties was that everything is done to submerge such a bold step in the old apathy, making me just another one who is being attacked. All my contemporaries continue to explain everything on the basis of the little multiplication table and therefore misunderstand me. When I took that step, I counted on having the personal strength—and this I do in fact have—to defy all Copenhagen if necessary; I would not shirk from anything but show myself even more than usual—and I knew I was capable of doing it. It was my intention (after seeing what it led to, how one after the other of those attacked got out of the way) to just stand there and calmly make the attack on me a subject of my conversation. I went to Mini’s,457 asked for his [X1 A 40 27] copy of The Corsair, which they wanted to hide from me (the same thing happened at Pethau’s);458 I read it in the presence of others, talked with them—and I always managed to maintain a light conversational tone. But what happens. Then Gjødvad459 comes along one day and tells me that people are saying that this is the only thing I talk about etc.—that is, this is supposed to prove that it did affect me. So there it is. I, that is, my tactic, am interpreted in terms of the formerly usable tactic, and Gjødvad, Ploug,460 and all the rest actually did not know anything but that old device of trying to forget it.—Pap. X1 A 40 n.d., 1849
Goldschmidt461 wants to win over the public again. Well, in one sense, I do not blame him for that. After all, he is who he is, made to order for exploiting a time of disintegration such as this, to some extent despising himself, desperate, greedy, without character. I have always said that he is not such a rare phenomenon—he goes with moral disintegration just as a cholera fly goes with cholera. In some ways I find it tedious to be obliged to press this point, for I would prefer to concede his talent its due. But I must accentuate the ethical. I shall have small reward for that, for it will no doubt be misinterpreted as irritability.—Pap. X1 A 69 n.d., 1849
[X1 A 98 74] Perhaps This Does Merit Being Recorded
Goldschmidt (quite apart from his total lack of character and contemptibleness) certainly had talent but never an idea. During the time he edited it, The Corsair never lacked talent; neither will it be forgotten because of that.
Now he says—as I by chance saw somewhere in Nord og Syd,462 where he defends his actions—that, considering the contemptibleness of the parties, he took an ironic position toward them.
The fact of the matter is this. Whether The Corsair had ideas [X1 A 98 75] and, if so, the extent to which it had them depended upon and was proved by the extent to which it had sufficient dialectic to maintain and the personal courage to express absolute negativity.
Goldschmidt had no inkling of this. The Corsair was liberal, belabored Christian VIII, public officials, etc.; The Corsair was an offspring of the opposition. Goldschmidt never had an idea.
Then some time ago I dropped a hint to Goldschmidt that, apart from the immorality of the enterprise, if there ever was to be any question of an idea in it or in any similar undertaking, it must attack everything equally and not be so stupid as to attack the government463 in our day. This hint was imparted en passant, with all the dignity I maintained toward him. But I knew my man, and later I had only the little unpleasantness of his telling Professor Nielsen464 explicitly (in Aarhus at the Secondary School) that I had said it. It changed him to the extent that a bit of idea did creep into The Corsair.[*]
Then he once again took a totally wrong course, stooped to the most contemptible personal remarks, attacked private personalities, etc.—and he immortalized me.465
The time had come for me to have a new existential illumination; furthermore, I felt that I owed it to the country of my birth, and it was the result of negativity. For I have considered negativity as the educational means toward the positive I wanted to advance: religiousness. But that I was justified, the only one here at home, was proved by the very step I took [X1 A 98 76] when I changed my course, perfected my idea by directing the negativity against myself, something that would have happened whether P. L. Møller’s attack466 had come or not. Among my papers there is also a little article that is older and was most immediately prompted by the immortalizing, all the more so since Goldschmidt became even dangerous when with En Jøde467 he became the object of a kind of sentimental sympathy—“that as a child he had suffered so much etc.”
In taking this step, I had these points in mind with respect to Goldschmidt.
(1) From the standpoint of eternity, he eventually must condemn himself forever, judge that there is no substance at all in him, even come to despise himself. That is what happened.
(2) Or he answers: No, I cannot go around insulting a body of writing I have admired and said I admire, since it has not changed; I shall concentrate only on the little article in Fædrelandet.468
(3) Or he could have said: No, I will not attack Magister Kierkegaard.
In the last case, it was my intention to deliver a little judgment. To make men aware of the abyss over which they had been hovering, I intended to show (but by attacking fictitious names, thus completely without venom, purely esthetically) how a thing like this ought to be done and also how dangerous it could be if actual persons were involved.
It was my thought to pull Goldschmidt out of all this, locate him as an esthetic journalist in some respectable position on a respectable paper. He was intelligent, the only young man I actually have paid any attention to. He could then have been very serviceable to me in connection with esthetic writings.
This would have been very advantageous to him. He needs such an influence. It is now evident that he can get along very well, once again attract many subscribers, etc., but his life never acquires an idea.
[X1 A 98 77] The test to which he was put was administered rigorously. On the day or the day after the article469 about P. L. Møller came out, he caught me in the street,470 obviously intending that I should tell him privately what he should do. This I did not do, treated him even somewhat coolly.
A day after the full load of abuse had been poured on me, I met him on the street.471 He walked past me, I called to him and said: Goldschmidt. He came over. I asked him to walk along with me. I told him that he perhaps had misunderstood all that I previously had pointed out to him, admonished him to give up the Corsair enterprise, and said that he even may have imagined that I was putting on a good face with him in order not to be exposed to his attack myself. Now he surely could see that the opposite was the case. I wanted earnestly to repeat what I had said to him. This I did. I urged upon him very earnestly that he must leave The Corsair. It was tragicomic when with tears in his eyes (that kind of person is moved to tears easily) he said: You can criticize everything I do in this manner and not say a word about my having any talent.
Having spoken, I bowed, said farewell with the cordiality I had always shown him, but also with the distance I always had observed toward him.
Since that time, I have never spoken with him. That has not been for my sake, because of what he has done to me; I not only forgive him but am not at all angry about it—I am not that inconsistent. No, I wanted to charge it to the situation. I still continued to be regarded as “the ironist”; if I continued putting on a good face after that event, I would have given him support—how appalling—and sanctioned the view that his Treiben [activity] was irony. Easygoing as I am, it really has been a burden for me to have to play the angry man.
Meanwhile, he has continued to copy me in a minor way. [X1 A 98 78] As mentioned, he now explains that The Corsair was the negative above the parties472—and now he once again wants to stand above the parties—positively. He reads (and I perhaps do not have many such ardent readers) that the negative is the transition passage. Thus he is putting on the same comedy. For him, then, The Corsair becomes the negative, which practically amounts to saying that it was a developmental factor in his life, that he had been in a house of correction. The public cannot understand me, but in this it nevertheless hears rumored that there is something deep—and so Goldschmidt plays the comedy over again and becomes popular.
As in everything, in this there has been weftlike filling in the fabric of my life, a bonus from Governance: I have learned indescribably much, perhaps have been further rescued from my hypochondria and influenced in a more definitely Christian way.—Pap. X1 A 98 n.d., 1849
[X1 A 120 91] A martyrdom of laughter is what I really have suffered. Anything more than this and more profound than this I dare not say of myself: I am a martyr of laughter. But not everyone who suffers being laughed at, even for an idea, is therefore a martyr of laughter in the strict sense. For example, when a thoroughly earnest man suffers it in a good cause, he does not have the deeper relationship to the martyrdom he suffers. But I am a martyr of laughter, and my life has been designed for that; I understand myself so completely as such that it is as if I now understand myself for the first time—on the other hand, [X1 A 120 92] I would find it difficult to understand myself becoming successful in the world. No, in the martyrdom of laughter I recognize myself again. To be able to become just that, I am the wittiest of all, possessing a superlative sense of comedy, could myself have represented laughter on an unsurpassed scale, could also deceptively have lured men out upon thin ice by doing that, thereby becoming what the age required—this superiority, this self-determination is the criterion of the more ideal martyrdom. Quite rightly, I had to direct the laughter upon myself473 (as Ney474 directed the soldiers who shot him). And the one who must carry out the order would gladly have been my lieutenant, and it certainly never occurred to him to do otherwise than give me place no. 1.—JP VI 6348 (Pap. X1 A 120) n.d., 1849.
[X1 A 123 93] My Last Word About Goldschmidt475
If I were to speak, I would say something like this. I have nothing to reproach him for. I must reproach myself for wronging myself out of perhaps exaggerated good nature and kindness, for having too much faith in him and hoping for some hidden good in him,476 for doing him the wrong of putting him to the test so that this had to come out in the open in a decisive way.
Everyone regarded him with contempt; none of those with whom I had any connection associated with him. That was the judgment passed on him, and I thought that it possibly was an injustice to him. He wished to become an author and with that in mind turned to me. I honestly and sympathetically did everything to encourage him and to tear him away if possible from the aberration and perdition of The Corsair.
I laid myself open to the possibility (so, in fact, several have told me) that many would take exception to my greeting or accompanying that man on the streets. I laid myself open to the circulation by certain envious circles of the opinion that I secretly humored rabble-irony.
I had entertained the thought of becoming more involved [X1 A 123 94] with him. But before that happened there had to be a test. Would he, in connection with the only object of his admiration477 and with what he himself had said in print, have the courage and self-respect to say: No, I will not attack him or I will attack the little article478 he has written but not the earlier books I personally have admired and immortalized and to which I really am deeply indebted.
He did not stand the test. For me it became—if it must be called punishment—a punishment for being the only person here at home who did Goldschmidt the wrong of having too much faith in him and of hoping that there was something good hidden deep down in the man.
An Eastern proverb says: He who first praises and then berates someone lies two times.479 That was the snare I stretched for him—an exaggeration. Ach, ja, I could have been satisfied with the positive assurance of all the others that he was contemptible.—JP VI 6351 (Pap. X1 A 123) n.d., 1849
The way I am being treated is also part and parcel of the infamy. [X1 A 177 126] With the aid of the organ of rabble-barbarism, the signal was given to the rabble to call me by my first name480 only, making it a nickname to be shouted at me. Now a new subtlety is being employed. It is very rare these days to see a new Danish play481 without a character in it named Søren. Hostrup has one in every one of his plays; Carit Etlar,482 too, has gotten himself a similar character; so also—Professor Heiberg.483 There is nothing to say about it; the person concerned would only answer: How unreasonable; after all, it is a [X1 A 177 127] common name. But for one thing this is not the case, for otherwise a list of characters from another period would certainly show a similarity; and, finally, it is not quite the case with Heiberg, either, for the name is used in a singular way. The character Søren represents the younger generation, and one of his lines is: You should have followed the advice of the younger generation (or something like that). And later there is a shout of “Hurrah for Søren.” The gallery and the rabble find it great to have a subtlety of that sort in the pleasures of the theater—and the authors, after all, are on the outside, without remorse. If I publicized my name, it would become new subject for laughter.—Pap. X1 A 177 n.d., 1849
[X1 A 224 151] In the more profound sense of the word, no author or the like actually can have fellow feeling for me. They feel all too well my great superiority and that here any kind of association and the like is unthinkable. In short, I am a phenomenon in the [X1 A 224 152] most disastrous situation possible—a phenomenon in a low dive such as Denmark. The law for the persecution I am suffering is quite simple: the rabble are the ones who do it, while the elite are silent out of envy.
And Heiberg,484 for whom I openly did the greatest service possible by throwing myself at P. L. Møller and The Corsair485—he not only remains silent, no, secretly he also literally joins in with the rabble.—Pap. X1 A 224 n.d., 1849
Somewhere in one of my journals [i.e., Pap. VIII1 A 139] I have written something that is so true:
My Last Words to my Contemporaries:
Will you who have been my contemporaries please decorate my grave and say: If we had been his contemporaries, he would not have been treated as he was.—Pap. X1 A 240 n.d., 1849
It is true that rabble-barbarism has grown to be a much more serious matter than I anticipated at the time, even though I considered very seriously the step486 I took and was religiously resolved; that is, I have discovered the baseness and demoralization to be far greater than I had imagined it to be, but of course it has also served to point out that I remain standing.
But for that very reason I must say that it was good that I got involved, for the more earnest the affair grows, the greater is my obligation and my call.—Pap. X1 A 244 n.d., 1849
But it was weak and cowardly and perfidious and in a way [X1 A 254 166] contemptible of the elite487 (for example, Heiberg and his whole gang; on the other side, the more respectable journals) to behave as they did at the time. I was the proudest junior [X1 A 254 167] name in literature; it is quite literally true that the literary elite were provoked, but they were careful not to risk a battle; I was an unqualified force, and there was not one who dared to say one single evil or merely critical word about me, and it was sufficiently significant that Goldschmidt knew how to accentuate it.
Then I decide to turn all the rabble-barbarism upon myself488 in order to put a stop to it if possible. Beyond a doubt, it is the most unselfish act during the period I have been in public life. And what happens? The envious elite think something like this: “Aha, he has trapped himself. We were incapable of weakening him, but now it will happen for sure. The step he took is foolhardy, the battle as unequal as possible: one single man, known by all, against the rabble, who in addition are consolidated by having their organ and a talented man as editor. That he may accomplish something is not impossible, for he is very capable and seems to have a great faith. Well, well, if he does it, so much the better, it will be to our advantage; but in any case—and this will also be to our advantage—he of course will weaken himself.” So the envious elite kept quiet, spread the rumor that I was made to expose myself to such a thing. Pfui!
Yet I did accomplish something. Yes, when I think of it, I am amazed. Goldschmidt489 is obviously paralyzed; the point in The Corsair was lost, he goes abroad—returns home and becomes respectable. P. L. Møller490 is as good as inaudible since then—and goes abroad.
In a certain sense, elite envy has formed an even greater impression of me, but the important thing for it continues to be that I am weakened, and therefore it is important to continue to cling to the notion that it was mad of me to do what I did—and also (strangely enough, for, if this is so, then where is the madness!) that it is nothing, nothing at all to become a sacrificial victim to the rabble.
Incidentally, there was a strain in the novel En nat ved [X1 A 254 168] Bullar-Søe491 that actually tempted me to think that it had me in mind (just as the whole novel had a curious relationship to everything I have written, almost a combination of “The Seducer’s Diary”492 and the imaginary psychological construction “ ‘Guilty?’/‘Not Guilty?’ ”493 which would be very odd to me if the novel were older); it was a mad crusade that the hero undertook to convert the Finns—it was practically a counterpart to my campaign against the rabble.494—Pap. X1 A 254 n.d., 1849
What an accomplishment the Concluding Postscript is; there is more than enough for three professors. But of course the author was a someone who did not have a career position and did not seem to want to have one; there was nothing worthy of becoming a paragraph in the system—well, then, it is nothing at all.
The book came out in Denmark. It was not mentioned anywhere at all. Perhaps fifty copies were sold, thus the publishing costs for me, including the proofreader’s fee (one hundred rix-dollars), came to about four or five hundred rix-dollars, plus my time and work.495 And in the meantime, I was caricatured by a scandal sheet that in the same little country had three thousand subscribers, and another paper (also with wide circulation, Flyveposten) continued the discussion about my trousers.496—JP VI 6458 (Pap. X1 A 584) n.d., 1849