Kierkegaard
Page 8
Not at all insignificantly, the passing of the older Kierkegaard means the Kierkegaard boys are rich. The brothers inherit Michael’s wealth and Michael’s house. Peter moves into his father’s set of rooms, and Søren moves back to his old rooms, where he will stay for the coming year. He also inherits over 33,000 r.d., a tidy sum that means Søren will not have to earn a living from whatever it is he decides to put his hand to. In other words, he’s set for life.
It is a good thing that Søren did not need to rely on his writing to pay the bills, for this would never become a reliable source of income. Some books made a slight profit while others did not, but throughout it all it was Søren’s inherited wealth that subsidised his writing career, beginning with his first book, until he ran out of money at the end of his life. Søren had completed the manuscript of his critique of H. C. Andersen in July, before his father’s death, so its cryptic title From the Papers of One Still Living does not refer to Søren’s relationship to Michael. Instead, the title alludes to the content of the book, which substantially criticises Andersen for writing his novels without a committed “life view.” Andersen has not invested his characters with a clear point of view, thus they (and the author) cannot be said to be fully living. Søren presented the manuscript to Heiberg for publication, but it was rebuffed. Heiberg—the great arbiter of Danish literary taste—did not like Søren’s style.
So it is that on September 7, 1838, just shy of a month after Michael Pedersen was put into the ground, Søren’s first book is self-published, the dead man’s money paying to launch the career of the still-living son. The book sells fairly well, but it cannot be called a runaway success. It displeases Andersen and confuses most readers. By December, the piece is perhaps more discussed than actually read, but even so the mission is accomplished. Søren has made his literary mark and is beginning to be noticed as more than merely a sharp-tongued wag who is good at parties. As a nod of respect he is asked to be the president of the Student Union.
The short book is impressive, but a sophisticated take-down of a popular teller of fairy tales is hardly the sign of a serious man. In the months following Michael’s death, those familiar with the family fully expect that Søren, flush with cash and free from the heavy eye of his father, will now live the sort of indolent life that only a wealthy, foppish rake with a four-cigar-a-day habit can live. “Now you will never get your theological degree,” says Sibbern, resigned to losing his young friend and student.
Another of Søren’s tutors, Hans Brøchner, questions Søren’s dedication to completing his finals. The doubters will be confounded, for they’ve got Søren all wrong. Here is a lad, Søren “the Fork,” raised from childhood to debate, argue, and talk his way through everything. The relationship between father and son was constituted upon verbal sparring—combative conversation was both the punishment and the reward. With Michael gone, Søren has no one left to define himself against. To his journal he will later confide, “If Father had lived, I would never have gotten it.” To Brøchner he replies, “As long as Father was alive, I could defend my proposition that I ought not to take the degree. But after he died, and I also had to assume his side in the debate, I could no longer resist and had to make the decision to prepare for my degree.”
With the book published and the father buried, at long last it is time to buckle down. A year’s worth of university study has to be crammed into a handful of months. Søren employs Brøchner to prepare him for the finals. He dedicates himself to memorising lists of popes, Hebrew lexicons, Greek verbs, church history, and all the other paraphernalia of a nineteenth-century Danish theology exam. He dutifully attends the required lectures. It is dry and uninspiring and everything else has to be put on hold until it is over. Søren calls this time from autumn of 1838 through to the summer of 1840 “the longest parenthesis I have experienced.” By and large the journals and thought experiments are included in the parenthesis, and he writes to his diary,
I must bid farewell, and you, my thoughts, imprisoned in my head, I can no longer let you go strolling in the cool of the evening, but do not be discouraged, learn to know one another better, associate with one another, and I will no doubt be able to slip off occasionally and peek in on you—Au revoir!
By and large, the journals are thinned out but they do not cease altogether. One common theme running through the remaining entries is Søren’s continued winnowing of authentic Christianity from its debased forms and his frustration at poseur philosophers (like Martensen) who align Christianity with Hegelianism. Another theme is love.
Søren never forgets Regine, and he keeps up a sociable relation with her family during this time. “Even before my father died my mind was made up about her.” The father’s death and the son’s inheritance made the union even more feasible, and during his subsequent parenthetical phase, thoughts of Regine continue to grow. “During all that time I let her life become entwined in mine.” Yet accompanying all this is a continued reticence about marriage itself and what it implies for Søren’s future life. A study in theology is naturally a precursor to ordination, which for the established church in Denmark is akin to a comfortable life as a sort of clerical civil servant. Is the role of the husband, father, citizen, and clergyman the role Søren the witty, caustic writer is supposed to play?
On February 2, 1839, for the time being, the romantic poet wins out over the prophetic loner or the dutiful academic. Søren, using the Latin form of his beloved’s name, bursts into celebration:
You, sovereign queen of my heart, Regina, hidden in the deepest secrecy of my breast, in the fullness of my life-idea… . Everywhere, in the face of every girl, I see features of your beauty, but I think I would have to possess the beauty of all the girls in the world to extract your beauty, that I would have to sail around the world to find the portion of the world I want and toward which the deepest secret of my self polarically points—and in the next moment you are so close to me, so present, so overwhelmingly filling my spirit that I am transfigured to myself and feel that here it is good to be.
Still Søren does not directly approach the lady in question. She is young. He is conflicted. And that list of popes is not going to memorise itself.
July 3, 1840. At last the work is done. Søren passes his exams with a “commendable” grade, firmly in the middle of his cohort. His examiners praise Søren’s maturity of thought but note the paucity of acceptable theological material in his written answers. To mark the end of his studies, two weeks later, Søren takes himself north to Jutland. The trip is a holiday after the great parenthesis, but it is also a pilgrimage to Michael’s childhood home and to the infamous hill. (“Here on the heath, one must truly say, ‘Whither shall I flee from thy presence?’ ”) Søren is touched by the beauty of nature, bored by the company he meets along the way, and dogged by sadness over his father. “I am so listless and dismal that I not only have nothing which fills my soul, but I cannot conceive of anything that could possibly satisfy it—alas, not even the bliss of heaven,” he writes.
Through it all, Søren is also itching to get back to Copenhagen. Before his Jutland trip he had paid a friendly visit to the Olsen home, exchanging pleasantries and lending them a book or two and some sheet music. It is all part of the plan to break the ice with Regine, and now Søren is keen to follow up the next stage. Finally, late in the evening on August 6, Søren returns home. Two days later, Søren calls on the Olsens to enquire after his books and to see if they enjoyed the passages he had marked out for them. The scheme works. From August 9 until September he visits the family often and draws close to Regine. She is eighteen. He is twenty-seven.
September 8. Søren sets off from home, “determined to resolve the whole thing” once and for all. Sure enough, he comes across Regine on the street outside her house. He politely requests after her family, but she says there is no one at home. Now is the chance! Søren is rash enough to see this as the opportunity he needs. With heart hammering, he invites himself in.
Regine is a
well-brought-up girl, and added to that, she is no fool. She knows something is up, and that it is highly irregular to be in the house alone with a man. He can see she is flustered, so to calm her nerves, Søren asks her to play something on the piano. Regine gets through a piece, while her ungainly visitor, normally so talkative, manages not to say anything at all. The music ends, and still Søren sits and goggles, swallowing nervously. There is nothing for it but for Regine to begin a new piece. Suddenly Søren lurches forward, grabs the music book and dashes it onto the piano. “O, what do I care about music; it is you I seek, for two years I have been seeking you!” The floodgates are open and the rest pours out. Søren does not follow up his confession of love with praise for the beloved or even an eloquent defence of his merits as a suitor. Such actions are for normal citizens. Instead, true to form for one whose life was largely lived inwardly, Søren woos his Heart’s Sovereign by confessing his melancholia and warning her away from him. A strange proposal, but, in any case, the deed is done. Now it is Regine who must respond. She would later describe her young self as “struck completely speechless.” Fortunately, her upbringing and good sense kicks in. Without a single word or explanation she bundles her untimely visitor out of the house as quickly as possible.
Regine Olsen. This portrait, by Emil Bærentzen, was done in 1840 when Regine was eighteen years old.
On the street, Søren is left holding his hat and gaping at the slammed door. In a flash he sees the situation from Regine’s point of view. All the plotting, prayers, and rhapsodic journaling from the past two years have happened in his head. Neither Regine nor anyone else knew anything concretely of his intentions. If someone had come upon them in the house alone together it would be she, and not he, whose reputation would suffer. There had been no warning, no prior hints, no understanding with her family that would set the context for his visit. They would not see the culmination of a long-gestating romance with theological overtones, only an eighteen-year-old girl playing love songs to a twenty-seven-year-old rapscallion! No wonder Regine was so flustered. Søren immediately resolves to make matters right. He marches to Counsellor Terkild Olsen’s offices that very afternoon and tells him all that has transpired.
Regine’s father likes Søren and enjoys his company. Søren can tell that he is well disposed to the idea of acquiring a Kierkegaard for a son-in-law. Still, Terkild says neither yes nor no to the young man’s proposal. That is for Regine to do. But he does permit Søren to call on the house at an appointed time. On the afternoon of September 10, Søren calls again. This time the Olsen family is present and correct, and here, too, is Regine. “I did not say one single word to fascinate her—she said yes.”
Before the happy couple could embark on courtship, there was the little matter of a previous admirer. Fritz Schlegel was Regine’s former teacher. They were not engaged, but he was known to the Olsen family as a patiently waiting, hopeful suitor. With some awkwardness, that same day Regine tells Søren about the attachment. Søren bats the rival aside with a wave of his hand. Let the teacher be consigned to the brackets—he has first priority. “You could have talked about Fritz Schlegel until Doomsday,” Søren boasts. “It would not have helped you at all because I wanted you!”
What kind of woman is this who Søren thinks he wants? A mutual friend described her at this time as “a profound, powerful soul, as well as lovely and charming.” Regine is composed and self-aware. She would rather listen than speak if speaking meant sending more idle chatter into the air. She is an accomplished and intelligent young lady who takes her Christianity seriously. Of all the things with which to take issue in regard to Kierkegaard, in later years it would be the intimation that she was not a spiritually suitable match for Søren that would consistently attract her ire. Since childhood Regine has attended the Moravian prayer meetings (at the meeting house partly financed by Michael Pedersen). Currently she is guided by her reading of Thomas à Kempis’s The Imitation of Christ. Regine’s heroine is Joan of Arc. Like that prophetic warrior of old, Regine too fosters in her heart a desire to be called to a divinely appointed task. Like Søren, she too is the youngest of seven. Like Søren, she too knows what it is to live with a melancholic father. Even accounting for differences in their ages and stages in life, Regine’s and Søren’s temperaments, personalities, and experiences are well matched. It is no wonder they fall in love.
Their courtship develops over the ensuing months. Søren writes to Regine almost daily with notes of love, arch observations, and funny hand-drawn sketches. The letters are delivered in person, for Søren visits the Olsen home regularly, sometimes twice or even three times a day. They throw parties to introduce Søren’s army of nieces and nephews to the Olsen clan. Søren gets on famously with his future in-laws, and he especially strikes up a rapport with Counsellor Olsen, whose gruff businesslike exterior belies a kindred spirit. When the whole city turns out one day to witness the crown prince’s new consort, Søren and old father Olsen are content to slip away into the woods for a walk and a quiet smoke.
Søren and Regine also take walks and rides together into the countryside. In these excursions they are often accompanied by Søren’s friend and tutor, Frederik Sibbern, who chaperones the young couple and becomes a confidant to them both. He approves of Søren’s choice and likes Regine immensely. Indeed, Sibbern comes to suspect that Regine might be too good for Søren, or, at the very least, that Søren might be bad for her. It is Sibbern who first sees that all is not happy with the couple, and he will later reflect that even in these early trips “discord had already arisen in their relationship.”
The fact is Søren does not want to dupe Regine with a false bill of goods. He does not hide his conflicted nature from her, and in their walks and rides together, he often pours out his sadness over his father, his broken relations with Peter, and his self-doubt. If the confessions were meant to be a sort of test whereby Regine would freely choose to repel Søren, then the plan did not work. She is no stranger to living with mercurial men. Her father had the highs and lows of melancholy too. Regine is well placed to recognise the symptoms in her newly beloved. It seems the Danish Joan of Arc has found her mission. A passion for the fight is awoken in Regine’s heart. For his sake she decides not to give up on her man. Against Sibbern’s best instincts and Søren’s expectations, the confessions and discord only serve to bind her closer.
Meanwhile, Søren continues to follow the various rabbit trails of his vocation. As winter follows autumn and night follows day, so too do recently graduated theology students with fiancées seek positions in the established church. It is the natural course of things. Søren enrolls in the Royal Pastoral Seminary and, as part of his ordination training, preaches his first sermon on January 12, 1841. The assessors note that the sermon was delivered with a clear voice and a dignified tone. But they also express concern that the wealth of ideas is too rich and that Søren’s depiction of the soul’s struggle will not appeal to the average churchgoer. It is not hard to imagine Søren’s wry smile at receiving this feedback. It is not the average churchgoer’s soul whose struggle he is concerned with, but his own.
The journals and sample writing from this period of early engagement and ordination training reveal a man who remains highly alert to the problems inherent in the idea that he of all people is pursuing the married life of a clergyman. Many of these writings will make their appearance in polished form in future publications, such as the passages in Either/Or where the young pseudonymous author dithers over the value of marriage: Wed or not—you will regret it either way. Things do not bode well for Regine.
Work on the dissertation also continues apace at this time. Søren had been trying out ideas for some time in his journals. Now, for his master’s thesis (equivalent to a doctorate today) Søren decides to title his study On the Concept of Irony, a phrase and subject matter favoured by his deceased friend Poul Møller. Thus it is that in-between sermon preparation and daily visits to the Olsens, Søren puts his mind to “irony,” a study, in
fact, that amounted to a critique of the popular German Romantic movement and comment on Hegel, with, as its subtitle suggests, Constant Reference to Socrates.
Original 1841 title page for the first edition of The Concept of Irony, the published version of Søren’s master’s thesis (equivalent to a doctoral dissertation today).
On June 3, 1841, the work is done. Søren presents the manuscript to the university after receiving official dispensation to submit in Danish rather than the usual Latin. The assessing faculty members included Sibbern (who generally liked the thesis) and Martensen (who did not). In July the committee grudgingly recommends the dissertation’s undeniably erudite content while lodging serious issues with Søren’s style and mannerisms. “The exposition suffers from a self-satisfied pursuit of the piquant and the witty, which not infrequently lapses into the purely vulgar and tasteless,” writes one examiner, concluding that with any other student such elements could be forcibly edited out. Not so with Søren “the Fork” Kierkegaard. “Negations about this would be difficult and awkward. Given the particular nature of the author and his preference for these elements, it would be fruitless to express a wish about this.” The university rector (and celebrated natural scientist), Hans Christian Ørsted, concurs: “Despite the fact that I certainly see in it the expression of significant intellectual strengths, I nevertheless cannot deny that it makes a generally unpleasant impression on me, particularly because of two things, both of which I detest: verbosity and affectation.” Nevertheless, the work is passed and a date in September is set for Søren’s live defence of the thesis.