AWord of Thanks to Professor Heiberg
A WORD OF THANKS TO PROFESSOR HEIBERG38 [XII 411]
That a “one”39 so numerous that the only contrary term is “some” could actually behave as irresponsibly as you describe in your most recent number of Intelligensblade with respect to the reading of Either/Or—I would not believe if it were not you, Professor, who said it! If it were someone else, anyone else, I would have argued on the basis of my own personal experience, I would have risked a dispute with one who thus attacked a public that no doubt would have witnessed with approval that an editor, although distantly related to the author, was the calm one, not the irritated one. But it is you who say it. I believe you, I do not risk a dispute; if there is to be any mention of a dispute, it must come from “one” himself, a “one” who, indeed, by your own statement, has manly vigor.
But is it actually true that, without even having sniffed [XIII 412] around in the first part, “one” judges a work and its several parts, judges with the stridency echoed in Intelligensblade? Alas, yes, God keep us, the times are evil! Now you, Professor, have worked for some years at educating the public, and yet you have to experience something like this. Just to read about it so broke my heart that it could not be consoled even though consolation was offered, for, strange to say, in another part of the city this supposedly is not the case. There, when one sees such a big book come out, one smiles for a moment, at the same time reflecting that one is not smiling at the book but at the order of things that makes a big book a monster.40 There, when one sees that an editor risks what perhaps no publisher would risk, one smiles, at the same time reflecting: No doubt there are plenty who try to make money by writing; it is beautiful of the editor not to want to peddle his book. Neither does one immediately ponder some peculiar means by which an editor can make money, because one has no time for it since one is kind enough to realize with pleasure that the editor is more than protected in a simple and ingenuous manner—namely, that one has bought the book. There, when one is amazed at the sudden appearance of such a large book, one thinks, “It is like a stroke of lightning in a clear sky,” at the same time saying: But it is a change—subscription plans and promises of big books are no longer surprising. There, when one sees that the sheets are “closely printed,” one praises the editor’s courtesy and integrity for not presuming to use lapidary style or disgracing himself by printing for the market. There, when one, like your “one,” finds “unusual brilliance, learning, and stylistic facility” in the first part of a book, one thinks: But it is always something, especially in our meager times; it is always sufficient to move on steadily and suppress one’s urge to go in leaps, as one is accustomed to do when reading a newspaper. There, when one finds a [XIII 413] preface to a work, one reads it. When in it one reads, “A.’s papers contain a variety of approaches to an esthetic view of life” (see p. xviii),41 one does not become self-important by discovering that the various portions of the first part are fragmentary; neither does one sense by paging through the second part a capacity for organization, for one does not forget that the preface has modestly and decorously and adequately said it. There, when one sees an epigraph in the first volume, one reads it. When one reads these words, “Is reason then alone baptized, are the passions pagans?”42 one does not promptly forget them but sees depicted a passion that is not supposed to captivate but to vex and incite. And although one has infinitely much more time than the hastening “one” in Intelligensblade, one still does not have time to fantasize about the author’s individuality. There, when one, just like the “one” in Intelligensblade, “encounters many intriguing reflections and does not know whether some of them are perhaps profound,”43 one suspends judgment, for, after all, there is no haste. When one sees how the particular passion in particular portions of the first part is always brought to the point where it seems about to make a leap and become something else, then one has a sense of the machinery. In short, when one gets a book there, one is in a hurry to read it and slow to judge.44—And yet, what good is it that this is the case, that it actually is the case? I dare not believe it; my heart is crushed, my soul full of doubt. It is you, Professor Heiberg, who have said that “one” behaves altogether differently; it is you who have robbed me of my faith, but it is also you who heal my sick mind—it is Professor Heiberg who has undertaken to put “one” right.
That you would be the only man in the kingdom one could think of to do this, if anything like this should be necessary, I do not need to tell you. I do not need to tell anyone at all, for in this respect every man in the kingdom knows what you know. How mighty your influence is, I have already learned from experience. I made an experiment [Forsøg] with an ex-reader who had completed his rash and precipitous judgment on Either/Or with the greatest haste. I simply looked at him and said: “You no doubt belong to the ‘one’ Professor [XIII 414] Heiberg speaks about.” I myself on this occasion learned the truth of what I always have known, that it is an incalculable advantage to dare to quote you, since one can assume that everyone has read what you write, has read it all the way through, word for word, without your needing to admonish the reader by an either/or, for example, a preface, etc. not to be too hasty. Now, then, the ex-reader, what did he do? He was put to shame, went away, and was converted. Soon no one will be “one” any longer. Some have never been so inclined, because they assume that to be “one” is in a sense much more than being one single person, in another sense much less. Yet this does not concern me—but what I venture to be certain about is that, with respect to Either/Or, no one will ever again be “one” after you have so suggestively explained what one is to understand by “one,” that one is thereby to understand everyone who does not prove to be “a careful and conscientious reader,” does not distinguish oneself as the “some” in Intelligensblade, but everyone who conducts oneself—well, I do not feel like saying more—conducts oneself as “one” in Intelligensblade.
How much, then, do I not have to thank you for? I thank you that I found out how “one” treats Either/Or, found out that A. was almost a prophet when, without concerning himself about B.’s papers, only his own, he said in the preface: “Read them or do not read them, you will regret both.”45 I thank you that it probably will be fulfilled, the modest wish B. made in the preface about the whole book, “that it may visit an individual reader in a sympathetic hour,”46 a reader who will have sufficient patience and indulgence to read the whole book, enough good will to accommodate his pace somewhat to the author’s. I thank you that, according to the advice of Intelligensblade, an individual may possibly judge as [XIII 415] favorably of “Or” as the individual who in Intelligensblade is depicted as an ordinarily conscientious reader, all the more so since it is inexplicable to me that by reading only “Or” anyone can grasp the contrast as completely as he will after reading the first volume. I by no means think that every careful and conscientious reader will judge the book as favorably, indeed not; even less do I believe that if an individual judged just as favorably he then would be able to make his judgment in such choice phrases, or if he used exactly the same words that his judgment then could in any way have the meaning, the weight, the fascination, the seductive sweetness as that which, for me at least, simply through being attributed to Prof. Heiberg is just as absolute for me as a royal command for a civil servant, just as reliable as a check on a bank for a financier. I thank you for presumably having prevented the arousing of tumult and uproar and hullabaloo and gossip, not even in the ambiguous form of “one,” so that “one” does not get vapeurs, nausea, etc., because no one wants to be “one.”
For all this I thank you, Professor! I rejoice that learning is so swiftly imitated. I thank you for wanting to communicate it so quickly. If I were to choose the person in literature whom I would thank first of all, I would choose you, Professor! And if I were to choose what I would thank him for first of all, I would choose what you have done for me in Intelligensblade, what one word is too little and two words are too much to express, that you through “the category of winter grain”47 have helped Either/Or to a happy sprouting and flourishing in literature.
In conclusion, just one wish, that my expression of gratitude may stand in the proper concordant relation to and with the magnanimity with which you came to the assistance of a stranger, for only in this way can both you, Professor, and I have the joy of your magnanimity.
VICTOR EREMITA