Kierkegaard (20 page)

Armed Neutrality.
If my relation were to pagans, I could not be neutral; then in opposition to them I would have to say that I am a Christian. But I am living in Christendom, among Christians, or among people who all say they are Christians. . . . This is why I keep neutral with regard to my being a Christian. . . . The task, then, is to present the ideal of a Christian, and here I intend to do battle.

Two foundational books in Søren's neutrally offensive arsenal are
Sickness unto Death
and
Practice in Christianity
, both substantially written in 1848 but published separately in the ensuing years. Before it was printed, Søren referred to
Sickness unto Death
as an “
attack upon Christendom
” and Christendom an “altogether un-Christian concept.” Early plans for the book included publishing it together with another essay titled “
An Attempt
to Introduce Christianity into Christendom.” The book deals primarily with different forms of despair, original sin, and becoming an authentic self. It was published in the summer of 1849, but not before Søren indulged in yet another extended round of to-ing and fro-ing over what name it should be ascribed to.

Søren's journals and his posthumously published
Point of View
relate the awkward relationship to the pseudonyms the
Corsair
and the collision with Christendom had put him in. Before, Søren had been able to stand above his characters, writing books the content of which he personally may or may not have agreed with. In any case, the point was for readers to weigh and decide for themselves, not look directly to the author for guidance. The signed religious works and the constant presence on the streets was a way of distancing himself from these books. Now, all eyes were on Søren, and the distance between his person and his writing collapsed. What is more, his writing scheme had come up to the point where the highest Christian categories needed to be elucidated, a stage higher than Søren himself felt he occupied. It must not look like he himself was the Christian he was describing in his new books.

Thus a new character, Anti-Climacus, was born with a position and relationship to Søren hitherto unseen in the literature. Although there is a clear connection to Johannes Climacus,
Anti
does not simply mean “against.” Instead, the
anti
(as in “anticipate”) connotes something greater or prior. Much as a great house will have an anteroom from which all the other doors and corridors lead, so too Anti-Climacus is invested with thoughts and positions higher and more central than that of the other pseudonyms. Anti-Climacus is not intended to hide Søren's
involvement (he lists his name as the editor) but it does provide the necessary distance Søren felt he needed between the work and himself. If the readers of Christendom felt weighed and found wanting by this ideal Christian, then so too did Søren. “
I would place myself
higher than Johannes Climacus, lower than Anti-Climacus.”

Days before Anti-Climacus was due to hit the stage with the publication of
Sickness unto Death
, Regine's father, Counsellor Terkild Olsen, passed away. Søren had enjoyed a good rapport with Olsen and the year before had rashly attempted a reunion with him and the family as a first step to seeking an understanding with Regine. Søren had spontaneously taken himself to where he knew the Olsens holidayed. “
I was so happy
and almost sure of meeting the family there—and that an attempt must be made.” Lo and behold, who should pass by but Counsellor Olsen. “The only one,” Søren wrote, who “
I safely dare
become reconciled with, for here there is no danger as with the girl.” Søren affected a cheery greeting and offer of friendship, but it was too much for the father, who, with tears in his eyes, said, “
I do not wish
to speak with you!” and ran away faster than Søren could follow. Søren shouted after him that the responsibility for healing the rift was now on Olsen's shoulders, but it was to no avail. Søren mused later on the event: “
We all weep
when the pastor preaches about being reconciled with our enemies. Actually to seek reconciliation is regarded as effrontery. Thus Councillor Olsen . . . was furiously incensed over it.”

Now he was dead. Rightly or wrongly, Søren had suspected that Olsen was the main barrier to any future friendship with his daughter. With this obstacle out of the way, Søren wondered whether now would be a good opportunity to test the possibility of rapprochement with Regine. They saw each other often on the streets or in church but had not exchanged a word. After many, many drafts and false starts, Søren eventually found the words for his letter, dated November 19, 1849. The draft read in part:

. . . Marry I could not
. Even if you were still free, I could not. However, you have loved me, as I have you. I owe you much—and now you are married. All right, I offer you for the second time what I can and dare and ought to offer you: reconciliation. I do this in writing in order not to surprise or overwhelm you. Perhaps my personality did once have too strong an effect; that must not happen again. But for the sake of God in Heaven, please give serious consideration to whether you dare become involved in this, and if so, whether you prefer to speak with me at once or would rather exchange some letters first. If your answer is “No”—would you then please remember for the sake of a better world that I took this step as well.

In any case, as in the beginning so until now,

S.K.

What Regine would have made of this letter, we will never know. She never saw it. Søren, keenly aware that his unusual approach had more than a whiff of the clandestine about it, had enclosed the note in an envelope attached to a cover letter to Fritz Schlegel.

The enclosed letter
is from me (S. Kierkegaard) to—your wife. You yourself must now decide whether or not to give it to her. I cannot, after all, very well defend approaching her . . . If you disagree, may I ask you to return the letter to me unopened . . .

I have the honour to remain, etc.

S.K.

This is exactly what Fritz duly did. Søren recorded in his diary, “
I then received
a moralizing and indignant epistle from the esteemed gentleman and the letter to her unopened.” Elsewhere he commented on the need to avoid even the appearance of impropriety with Regine, and he refused to try to enlist her help in persuading Fritz of the possibility that
they might talk again. “
Now the matter
is finished. One thing is sure—without Schlegel's consent not one word. And he has declared himself as definitively as possible.”

The door closed to a real-life friendship, all that remained was for Søren to return to conversing with his imaginary Regine. He continued to allude to her in his books and sent her copies of his
Discourses
as they were published. Unbeknownst to him, Fritz and Regine were well aware of the full extent of the one-sided literary conversation. They had read Søren's works out loud to each other during their engagement and continued to purchase his books throughout their married life, following his career with interest.

Around the same time as receiving Schlegel's note and the unopened letter, Søren sustained another unpleasant blow from a source equally close to home. A month before, Peter had delivered a talk in which he unfavourably compared Søren to none other than Martensen. To add insult to the injury, the lecture was published in the
Danish Church Gazette
, a Grundtvigian paper. Søren fired off a letter of protest, complaining of Peter's misrepresentation of the pseudonyms and pointing out that people will wrongly assume that because he is the older brother, readers will be fooled into thinking Peter has reliable access to Søren's mind, which he most certainly does not. Søren was annoyed intellectually but also personally hurt. “Dear Peter,” he wrote, “I have now read your article . . . To be honest, it has affected me painfully in more ways than one.” He begs his brother that if he is to be compared to Martensen, then “it does seem to me that the essential difference ought to have been indicated, namely this, that I have sacrificed to an extraordinary extent and that he has profited to an extraordinary extent.” Finally, “it seems to me that both for your own sake and for mine you should modify your statements about me.” Peter's comments only just about applied to a handful of pseudonyms, not to Søren, and he again reiterates his wish and prayer. “
I myself have
asked in print that this distinction be observed. It is important to me, and the last thing I would have wished is
that you of all people should in any way have joined in lending credence to a carelessness from which I must suffer often enough as it is.”

Any comparison with Martensen was always going to rankle, but the timing of this spat was particularly frustrating. Martensen's star was rising fast. He had been appointed a full professor of theology at the university and had recently published his
Christian Dogmatics
to international acclaim. Søren had a copy and his marginal notes are, unsurprisingly, disdainful. “
All existence is disintegrating
,” he scribbles on the book. “While anyone with eyes must see that all this about millions of Christians is a sham. . . . Martensen sits and organizes a dogmatic system. . . . Since everything else is as it should be, the most important matter confronting us now is to determine where the angels are to be placed in the system, and things like that.” One observation in particular stands out. “Strangely enough, Mynster is frequently quoted . . . And at one time it was Mynster whom ‘the system' was going to overthrow.” This growing rapport between Martensen and Mynster did not bode well. Ostensibly, the two were theological opponents. Mynster was as opposed to Martensen's Hegelian systematising as was Søren. Yet of late the two churchmen were aligning themselves on the side of exactly the sort of cultured, established, and numerically populous Christendom Søren was warning against. Martensen might be philosophically obtuse, but he was also sophisticated and urbane. In short, he was Bishop Mynster's kind of man, Hegel or no.

Søren had been trying and failing to become Mynster's man for some time.
Practice in Christianity
was his final application for the post. The bulk of the book was written in 1848, but it was published on September 25, 1850, under the name Anti-Climacus.
Practice
sold well (better than most of his other books) but was largely ignored by reviewers. As with
Works of Love
, Søren did not mind, saying of the book, “
Without a doub
t it is the most perfect and the truest thing I have written.” However, he was quick to add, “It must not be interpreted as if I am supposed to be the one who almost censoriously bursts in upon
everybody else—no, I must first be disciplined myself by the same thing; there perhaps is no one who is permitted to humble himself as deeply under it as I . . . for the work is itself a judgment.”

In retrospect, Søren and others would come to see the book as the beginning of his overt published attack on Christendom. Yet originally Søren had intended
Practice in Christianity
to be an aid to Mynster and a last-ditch defence for the establishment. The book offers extended reflections on various biblical passages where Jesus bids people directly to follow him without taking offence. The language is mild, exhorting, and Christ-centred. It is not fiery or angry. What it is, however, is a clear presentation of the need for the Single Individual to come out of the crowd and stand before Jesus without recourse to hiding behind the distractions of so-called Christian civilisation, either populist
or
cultured. The book includes a stirring “Moral,” offering the pastors and leaders of the church to confess their inability to preserve authentic Christianity and to throw themselves upon the grace of God. The primary person who needed to do the admission was the primate of the Danish Church, Bishop Mynster.

Only if the church confesses its guilt can it continue to be the official representative of Christianity in the land, hence the book is a “defence.” However, Søren was under no illusions that the book could easily be read as an “attack.” Its call to reintroduce Christianity back into Christendom was clearly a bitter pill to swallow for Christendom's existing army of teachers and preachers. He had private conversations with Mynster about the text and its “Moral.” The bishop was clearly unhappy with the Moral and with
Practice
's repeated use of the word “observations,” which was an allusion to his own set of popular devotionals published under that name. However, rather than
either
admitting the book was correct,
or
attacking it as blasphemous, Mynster decided to publicly ignore it altogether. The silence was the last straw for Søren who had expected so much and was fast losing all veneration for his father's pastor. “
To me it became clear
he was powerless.”

Regine was never far from Søren's thoughts even while his complaint with Mynster was ramping up. In May 1851 he had been invited to preach at the Church of Our Lady, where his chosen text was his favourite verse from James 1:17: “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.” The verse was important to Regine too and featured in the
Discourses
, which Søren had dedicated to her. Søren confesses in his diary of the day that he had picked the passage with her in mind and had half-hoped she would be in attendance during the sermon. Evidently she was not to be seen that day, but Søren would soon see her very often.

In April, for financial reasons, he moved to a house outside of the city walls. From there Søren would make the half-hour walk into the city every morning, where he would regularly pass Regine on the street. They never exchanged a word during these moments, but in his journals Søren would recount every look and detail. Eventually, the daily meetings became a source of concern to Søren, for fear of impropriety. Was Regine arranging to run into him on purpose? Later in the year Søren resolved to alter his walk. “
So I was obliged
to make a change. I also believed that it would be best for her, for this constant dailiness is trying, especially if she is thinking of reconciliation with me, for which I of course would have to ask her husband's consent.” The change worked for a time, but soon Søren reported seeing her again and was obliged to randomize his route. (The run-ins would more or less continue until Søren moved back into the city in October of 1852, this time in cramped apartments behind the Church of Our Lady.) The fresh memories of Regine are undoubtedly on Søren's mind when he publishes more
Discourses
and an explanation of
My Work as an Author
in August 1851. The final two
Discourses
were timed to appear at the same time as Søren's public discussion of the Christian direction of his project. They bore the significant dedication: “To One Unnamed, Whose Name Will One Day Be Named, is dedicated with this little work, the entire authorship as it was from the beginning.”