SOURCE: Pattison, George. “The Initial Reception of Either/Or.” In International Kierkegaard Commentary: Either/Or, Part II, edited by Robert L. Perkins, pp. 291-305. Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 1995.

[In the following essay, Pattison discusses the contemporary reception of Either/Or, suggesting that although some readers were apparently overwhelmed by its complexity, others produced thoughtful, relevant commentary on the work.]

Either/Or was made available to the Danish reading public on 20 February 1843 by C. A. Reitzel, University bookseller and publisher in Copenhagen, at a cost of four dollars, four marks and eight shillings, per copy. Within two years the entire edition of 525 copies had been sold, making it (by the standards of the day) a literary success.¹ A second edition followed in 1849, and since then it has been translated into a wide variety of languages, riding the fame of its now acknowledged author, Søren Kierkegaard. In the beginning, of course, it had appeared under the name of its pseudonymous editor Victor Eremita, and although there were some of Kierkegaard's contemporaries who had a good idea as to the identity of the “real” author, those first readers were not influenced (for better or for worse) by their preconceptions as to the significance of Kierkegaard's life and work. This does not, of course, mean that they were without preconceptions: simply that, inevitably, they were not the preconceptions of all subsequent readers.

An examination of the book's contemporary reception and of Kierkegaard's response to contemporary criticism is, however, of interest and even importance for later readers for a number of reasons. First, it throws considerable light on Kierkegaard's own attitude to his contemporaries and on his standing among them; second, it thereby serves to dispel some of the myths that surround the image of Kierkegaard as the writer and genius who had the misfortune to live in a provincial market town; and, third, it serves to highlight the major themes of the book itself, themes which were to be of continuing importance in Kierkegaard's authorship as a whole. This last point gains in significance for us today insofar as it relates to the vexed issue regarding the religious intentions of that authorship. Kierkegaard himself was, famously, to claim in The Point of View that the authorship had been religious from the beginning; present-day readers, however, are too much students of suspicion with regard to the authority of authors to take such claims at face value. I do not claim that the contemporary reception of Either/Or puts an end to such debates: I do, however, argue that it gives more weight than Kierkegaard himself would seem to have allowed to reading Either/Or as a distinctively religious book.

There is, of course, a widely held view that Kierkegaard's writings went completely beyond the intellectual horizons of his Danish contemporaries. This view was undoubtedly held and fostered by Kierkegaard himself and subsequent scholarship has tended to accept his views on the subject. Patrick Gardiner, for instance, states that these Danish contemporaries “either … did not read what he wrote or else, if they did, they misunderstood his underlying intent.”² With regard to Either/Or itself Vincent McCarthy has written that “as contemporary reviews and Kierkegaard's own annoyance indicate, the effect of Either/Or upon the Danish readers of 1843 was overwhelming rather than thought provoking as Kierkegaard had hoped … the Danish literary public was bewildered by its size and format, and even further distracted by the seemingly endless series of ‘Chinese puzzles’ in which the author enclosed the work.”³ The evidence of the sales suggests that the literary public did at least buy it but, if McCarthy (who here represents a wide consensus) is to be believed, they probably bought it for the more titillating sections of “The Seducer's Diary” or to puzzle over the real identity of Victor Eremita rather than to grapple with its deeper philosophical and religious themes. But is this so? If we actually read those first reviews, a different picture starts to emerge. For there, alongside those reviews and notices that were indeed superficial and uncomprehending, there were others that devoted considerable time and care to the text, honoring it with substantial, intelligent and relevant comment. Of course, these reviews did not deliver the final word on Either/Or, but it is simply unfair to describe their authors as “overwhelmed,” “bewildered,” or “distracted” by the book's superficial novelty. Indeed, Kierkegaard himself could well be accused of doing as much as anyone to encourage the discussion of the more trivial aspects of Either/Or in articles he himself published on it.⁴

Perversely, perhaps, I shall begin with the less perceptive reviews and Kierkegaard's reaction to them.

First in the field was the Day (Dagen) which (only two days after publication) announced that “In recent days a phenomenon has appeared in our literary sky whose reappearance we have every reason to desire.”⁵ The anonymous journalist ponders the implications of the financial cost of producing such a book and wonders whether there might not be more than one author. Whether or not this is so, he believes that “Every lover of serious reading will find many engaging hours [reading] in this book, which in no way requires any philosophical education, but only presupposes the desire for self-understanding. We draw special attention to the splendid sermon with which the work ends.” The final verdict (vindicated, we may remark, by history) is that “a work such as this … is a true adornment to our literature.” Whether two days is sufficient time to read, let alone form a deliberate opinion of Either/Or, must be a moot point—but it can scarcely be said that, in a looser sense, the reviewer has been unappreciative, still less that his interest was salacious.

The following day the new literary phenomenon was greeted in the Free Spirit (Den Frisindede) by one Claud Rosenhoff. “In recent days a book has been published which is remarkable in many respects … the language is rich, brimming with humour and gaiety; but suddenly the most profound seriousness once more emerges. It is piquant in the highest degree, and testifies to a well read writer who also knows how to use what he has read.”⁶ Most of the (rather skimpy) broadsheet spread of Den Frisindede for that day was in fact given over to excerpts from Either/Or, most space being given to an episode from “The Seducer's Diary” recounting Johannes' adventures with the servant girls, in addition to a selection of aphorisms from “Diapsalmata.” With regard to “The Seducer's Diary” Rosenhoff comments that “One might be tempted to call upon the moral watchmen of the society for the freedom of the press to anathematize the author, or to beg the moral police force to confiscate the work and burn the unknown [author] in effigy; but in the next moment one will completely grant that those who read this book will hardly take any harm from it.”⁷

This is not to say that the book escapes criticism altogether, exception being taken to the excessive use of Germanic terminology. Rosenhoff concludes by deferring the decision as to whether or not the author has misused his undoubtedly great talent until a more opportune occasion!

J. L. Heiberg was arguably the leading man of letters of his day, and he was someone whom Kierkegaard greatly admired as a writer and critic.⁸ On 1 March 1843, in an article entitled “Literary Winter Seed” and published in his own periodical Intelligensblade⁹, Heiberg devotes considerable attention to Either/Or. As in the Day and the Free Spirit, the new work is greeted in portentous phrases: “in recent days a monster of a book has, like lightning from a clear sky, suddenly struck our reading world” (IB [Intelligensblade] 2, 288). The sheer bulk of the book may, Heiberg fears, deter potential readers: “One thinks, ‘Have I the time to read such a book,’ and ‘What guarantee do I have that the sacrifice will be worth it?’” (IB 2, 288). Nor does he go to any great lengths to encourage such hesitant readers. “One becomes impatient at the way in which the author's exceptional brilliance, learning and stylistic accomplishments are not united with an organizing capacity that would enable the ideas to leap out in plastic form. It all seems dreamy, indeterminate and evanescent” (IB 2, 290). He rejects altogether the interpretation of Scribe's First Love (which he had himself translated) in Either/Or 1, saying that “He [the author] has sought to make a masterpiece out of a pretty little bagatelle and has ascribed to it a motive which is virtually the opposite of that which Scribe openly acknowledges” (IB 2, 290). As for the Seducer: “one is disgusted, one is sickened, one is enraged, and one asks oneself, not if it is possible for a man to be like this Seducer, but if it is possible that a writer can be so formed as to find pleasure in studying such a character and working at perfecting him in his quiet thoughts” (IB 2, 290).

All these reactions, we note, are those of the reader whom Heiberg refers to as “one.” This “one” he describes as a true child of the railway age, “whose task is to master the greatest distance in the shortest time” (IB 2, 289). But the negative reaction of such a “one” is not the only possibility. There will, he says, be other individuals (Enkelte) who will not be content with an idle stroll through “Either” but will press on to the “Or.” Here, he believes, they will encounter quite different experiences.

[N]ow, at every point to which chance leads them, they will stumble on such lightning thoughts, that suddenly light up whole spheres of existence, that they sense that there must be an organizing power here which makes everything into a genuine whole. And now they begin, like orderly and conscientious readers, once more with this “Or” and read the whole volume from first to last, word by word. Through the whole of this reading they are so entranced by the book, that they can scarcely put it down, they feel themselves continually under the influence of a rare and highly gifted spirit, which brings forth before their eyes the most beautiful aesthetic sight as from a deep speculative spring, and which seasons its presentation with a stream of the most piquant wit and humour.

(IB 2, 291).

Such a reader, Heiberg suggests, will then be able to return to the “Either”—and perhaps be able to deliver the results of his reading to the public.

Within a fortnight of its publication, then, Either/Or had received a good many compliments, ranging from references to the author's stylistic virtuosity to comments on his speculative depth. But had there been any real engagement with the content of the book? And what did the author himself think?

For the Free Spirit he had nothing but contempt. “It is rather well known that on occasion, when it sees its chance, it tries to jump on the bandwagon every time a phenomenon in literature makes it possible, and thus the editor of Either/Or must be prepared to have that newspaper intrude upon this work also and if possible hold fast to it for a moment” (see EO, 2:393). As for Rosenhoff's conclusion that no one will take any harm from the book and that he will defer his final judgement on it till a later occasion, Kierkegaard adds the wish that “Den Frisindede, which, when it has not had time to read the work, nevertheless has found time to review it, may never find time to read it, in order to remove the only conceivable possibility that anyone at all would be harmed by reading it” (EO, 2:393). He is moreover incensed that the review was entitled An Episode from the Seducer's Diary thereby giving a totally distorted view of the work as a whole. Such a procedure, especially when it dares to display itself in print, is no more than literary prostitution, “a rush job that without a doubt is completely unwarranted,” and he goes on to warn readers against the “pirated version” of Either/Or offered by the paper (EO, 2:394).

As for Heiberg's review, it threw Kierkegaard into what can only be described as a literary frenzy. Suddenly the pages of the journals are crowded with jibes at Heiberg, jibes aimed above all at what Kierkegaard (probably quite accurately) perceives as Heiberg's pose of literary authority. “Prof. Heiberg is also in the habit of ‘holding judgement day in literature.’ Have you forgotten what happened to Xerxes? He had even taken scribes along to describe his victory over little Greece” (EO, 2:402). Above all, he objects to the fact that Heiberg should give so much space to and even appear to take the part of the reader he calls “one”: “He [Heiberg] is not alone, has muses and graces—and for safety's sake he has acquired a new coworker: ‘one’, an energetic coworker who demands no fee and accepts any treatment” (EO, 2:402). By doing this Heiberg has reduced his perspective to that of the lowest common denominator.

Some of these bitter reflections found their way into print in an article published in the Fatherland (Fædrelandet) on 5th March 1843 by Victor Eremita. The article is entitled A “Thank You” to Herr Professor Heiberg, but the “thanks” are, inevitably, loaded with sarcasm, especially when the Professor is “thanked” “for letting me know how ‘one’ deals with Either/Or.”¹⁰ Indeed the draft of the article in the journal had been headed How Does “One” Treat Either/Or (EO, 2:403).

It is probable that Heiberg's lack of appreciation of Either/Or (as Kierkegaard saw it) marked a watershed in the relationship between the two men, opening the way for the bitter polemics that were to come in Prefaces.¹¹ It must be said, however, that Kierkegaard's reaction is not entirely justified, since Heiberg does not in fact take the part of the “one” and, indeed, makes it quite clear that the book should not be read as “one” reads it. His argument is that only a serious engagement with the “Or” will enable the reader to discover the real message of the book. On the other hand, it is certainly true to say that Heiberg himself does little to suggest what this real message is.

Kierkegaard was, however, to acquire readers who were prepared to do more than merely take a stroll through the text. On 11 March 1843 the newspaper the Outpost (Forposten) began a four-part review entitled Fragments of a Correspondence which is, in epistolary form, an extended discussion of Either/Or.¹²

The anonymous reviewer does not claim to be doing more than giving a subjective response, “an expression of the impact which the book has had on me as a reader” (FP [Forposten 11, 41). He sees the struggle for a proper lifeview that he finds in the text typical of the ferment of the present age, an age that, in his view, has its quint-essential expression in France, where “everything is in a state of dissolution, everything is negation” (FP 11, 42-43). There is little doubt that these remarks indicate a recognition of what was to be one of the fundamental themes of Kierkegaard's authorship, a theme which was already present in his early journalism and in From the Papers of One Still Living, which ran through much of the pseudonymous writing, found its most concentrated expression in Two Ages and is implied in the final attack on State Protestantism. It is the theme of an empty, nihilistic society that has lost itself in reflection, is incapable of decisive action and deaf to the requirements of authentic faith. It is moreover a theme that contributes significantly to Kierkegaard's critique of “the aesthetic” as representing the typical mode of consciousness of contemporary European humanity.¹³

The Outpost's reviewer frankly admits that (unlike Heiberg) he particularly enjoys the expression of the aesthetic lifeview in the first half of the book, in which he finds a true record of “what doubt, what despair, a gifted, genial spirit must undergo in order to reach a positive lifeview in an age when everything shakes and is dissolved” (FP 11, 41). He assumes that the mood of despair portrayed in it will be familiar both to his and to the book's readers. Speaking of the imaginary society of the Symparanekromenoi who embody the spirit of nihilistic pessimism of Either/Or 1 he ventures the statement that “I do not believe that any of us will lack sympathy for the idea which lies at the basis of this society” (FP 13, 49). He is also attentive to the significance of the definite article in “The Seducer's Diary”: “we are already guided by this to the fact that the whole novel is a problem, a thought experiment. … It is evident that this idea is particularly appropriate to our time, just as the musical idea of Don Juan originated in the Middle Ages” (FP 13, 51). He recognises that whereas Don Juan is characterized by an immediate sensuous passion, the Seducer is thoroughly permeated by the spirit of nihilistic reflection that is symptomatic of the age.

He is less pleased by the portrayal of the ethical life view in the second half of the book, because he suspects that it will appeal in the wrong way to the Danish philistines. He suggests that the basis of the Assessor's ethical lifeview presupposes a view of the state that is not made explicit in the text itself which could have been made more of. Nonetheless, he is adamant that his criticism of Part Two is inseparable from his admiration for the work as a whole: he is simply unwilling to see any stone left unturned by the author. It does not mean that he wants to see the aesthetic triumph over the expression of faith toward which he sees the book moving, but this goal should not be confused with bourgeois compromise. In the beginning of his review he had drawn an analogy between the present cultural situation and the biblical story of Samson: just as the philistines of old thought they had successfully bound Samson once and for all, only to have him bring their temple crashing down about their head as soon as his strength returned, so the latter-day philistines have bound the spirit of the age in its sleep—but when its strength returns, then their edifice too will be laid low. Either/Or is in his view a sign of just such a return of strength, one that can rebut both the negative spirit of unbridled reflection and the philistinism of the bourgeoisie alike. He is encouraged to see “such a clear and powerful spirit as that of the present writer, permeated by conviction and faith” (FP 15, 58).

It is this same conflict between nihilistic reflection and faith that is highlighted in a three-part review by J. F. Hagen in the Fatherland (Fædrelandet), a paper in which Kierkegaard himself had a number of articles published. “Who,” Hagen asks, “has not perceived the rending and dissolution, which, like a stream of screaming dissonances is heard from our age's most gifted children.”¹⁴ Although the summons to acquire a more positive lifeview is heard frequently enough, he adds, it all too often sounds like the cry of a drowning man. He sees this contemporary nihilism manifested in such movements as “Young Germany” and in writers such as Karl Gutzkow, whose novel Wally—Die Verzweiflerin dealt with themes of suicide and despair, or Theodor Mundt and his apotheosis of Casanova. The relevance of Either/Or to all this, he asserts, will be clearly seen by anyone “who has followed the many branchings of modern literature, not so much in the realm of pure academic study, but in the sphere of belle lettres. In this sphere there has, over many years, been a busy attempt to throw doubt on the absolute validity of the ethical lifeview and to rob it of its former credit by setting it in opposition to the requirements of a free spirit” (F [Fædrelandet], 9848). This conflict, that we see mirrored in Either/Or is nothing less than the ancient conflict between faith and scepticism: “It concerns nothing less than life itself: ‘To be or not to be’” (F, 9846).

Again, we may say that the reviewer has caught the pulse of Kierkegaard's work. His reference to “Young Germany” is particularly apt, since this was very much the focus of Kierkegaard's own critique of the present age;¹⁵ indeed, it can be plausibly argued that his attack on Hegelianism is largely motivated by his conviction that it is the left-wing Hegelians such as Feuerbach and Strauss who have correctly drawn out the materialistic and immanentist implications of Hegel's system. On the literary front, we may add, it was precisely Gutzkow's re-edition of Schleiermacher's Confidential letters on Schlegel's Lucinde which made Lucinde itself of such relevance to Kierkegaard, as is reflected in The Concept of Irony. Moreover, Hagen's perception that the work concerns the conflict between faith and scepticism indicates that he has identified an element in Either/Or that would be expanded in Kierkegaard's more directly philosophical works.

The fullest review of all was to appear in the Odense quarterly For Literature and Criticism (For Literatur og Kritik). It was signed K-H, a fairly transparent nom de plume for the young theologian H. P. Koefoed-Hansen.

Here too the reviewer drew attention to the timeliness of the theme of the struggle for a lifeview, and observed that there had been a massive decline in the force of authority, such that the truly modern individual had to construct his lifeview for himself rather than receive it on the authority of others. The Church, he said, was regarded by an increasing number of those in the educated classes “as a half-superfluous leftover from an earlier time, to which one can attach oneself if one wants to, or let it alone if one does not.”¹⁶ Without the support of objective authority the individual is left to choose for himself between two opposing lifeviews: “the aesthetic and the ethical—that of egotism and that of humanity, that of self-love and that of love for humanity” (FLK [Fyenske Tidsskrift] 378). It is, of course, this very conflict which he finds represented in Either/Or. However, he argues that there are in fact two forms of the aesthetic lifeview shown in Either/Or, 1, embodied in “A” and the Seducer respectively. “A” represents a “failed” attempt to live out such an aesthetic point of view, while the Seducer shows us how such a view might be consistently carried out in existence. By his portrayal of the aesthetic point of view in all its nuances and consequences the author “has won for himself a greater standing in literature and in cultured life than the majority of those who have sought to portray aspects of this point of view in concrete form in novels and stories, not to mention the wealth of philosophical, psychological and aesthetic observations and expositions which this part of the work contains” (FLK 398).

Much as he admires the “Either,” and recognizing that this is what most interests many of the public, Koefoed-Hansen believes that coming to the “Or” is like coming to an oasis after a long journey through the desert. Indeed, the general preference of the public for Part 1 reveals that this same public has much more in common with the aesthetic point of view than it cares to think. The author however has laid bare the truth of this aesthetic stance “in all its brilliant and deceptive pride and in all its pitiable hollowness and comfortless emptiness” (FLK 404).

Either/Or certainly makes demands on its readers, but this is scarcely a fault, “for one journeys through a novel by Bulwer or Eugene Sue more easily and far more comfortably than through a work like Either/Or, but precisely on this account it yields a quite different result and offers a quite different content than such works” (FLK 405).

The argument of the Assessor against the aesthetic point of view is well thought out, he adds, since the mere statement that an ethical attitude is morally better would not go far with an aesthetically minded reader. The Assessor's technique is far more subtle, in that he shows the aesthetic point of view to be essentially unaesthetic. Similarly, with another implied comment on the performance of the contemporary Church, he remarks that the closing sermon “will make a much deeper impression on an aesthetic personality than most of those we have heard up till now” (FLK 403-404).

Koefoed-Hansen's aspersions on the failure of the Church did not go unnoticed. Bishop Mynster himself, writing under the pseudonym Kts, took up the gauntlet in Heiberg's Intelligensblade on 1 January 1844. He objects to the reviewer's belief that only a reformulated Christianity will be able to appeal to the educated classes and accuses him of trivializing the issues. He cites an array of Christian preachers who have combined faith with the highest intellectual standards: Chrysostom, Luther, Fénélon, Schleiermacher and Marheineke. Indeed, he asserts, many of Copenhagen's Churches are full to overflowing and many of those attending them belong to the educated classes. It is therefore wrong, he suggests, to concede intellectual superiority to the aesthetic point of view. Such ironic aesthetes, he claims, are merely “the half-educated, the one-sidedly educated, the miseducated” (IB 4, 102). He adds that the preacher must address his words to those who are actually there, in Church, and not to such misfits. He is also suspicious of what he sees as Koefoed-Hansen's implication that there is one gospel for the intellectual élite and another for the uneducated cobbler. Such a view he regards as pandering to the aesthetic cult of genius.

As a counterexample to all this he appeals to the recently published work Fear and Trembling, which, he says, has nothing in common with the self-flattery of the moral “genius.” He also alludes to the dedication of Søren Kierkegaard's Upbuilding Discourses to the memory of his late father. Here, says Mynster, is an example of someone of outstanding intellectual brilliance who is nonetheless able to acknowledge that the last things of faith do not depend on intellect, since the father to whom these works are dedicated was himself a man without formal education.

Several days later an article by “A Priest” appeared in the Copenhagen Post (Københavnsposten) entitled “Boorish Lies” accusing Kts of intemperance and vanity. The author denied that the Churches were overflowing on Sundays and, more seriously, suggested that Kts had completely failed to come to terms with the significance of such writers as Heine, Feuerbach and Bruno Bauer.¹⁷

The Fatherland stepped in to give the last word to Koefoed-Hansen, who stated that he did not himself subscribe to the modern atheistic philosophy, but that it was not sufficient simply to dismiss it in the way that Kts had done. The Protestant Church, he said, was too closely identified with worldly authority and its message was therefore too easily confused with the maintenance of such authority. He does not want, as Kts had accused him of wanting, to have philosophy from the pulpit, but he does want to see the Church taking a “philosophical bath” so that it can show signs of having taken the significance of contemporary thought seriously. All this, he adds, is not just a problem for big cities like Copenhagen: the new ideas have already reached small provincial towns as well. It is no good burying our heads in the sand.¹⁸

But what of Kierkegaard's own reaction to these more serious reviewers?

He was at least willing to grant them the status of reviews. In the persona of Victor Eremita he drafted an unpublished article in which he acknowledged that “To have even one well-disposed reviewer is a rarity, but such a trinity among reviewers, at least well disposed towards the whole if not in judgement of the parts, is a rarity that surely will please the book's unknown authors” (EO, 2:418). But Heiberg is not forgotten in this expression of delight: “I dare not call Professor Heiberg a reviewer; his advertisement or, more accurately, his mixed notice in Intelligensblade, was probably intended only ‘to orient,’ and I can only thank him for the courtesy and service shown” (EO, 2:418-19). Nonetheless, he feels that the trinity of genuine reviewers have all missed something essential. For there is a movement in Either/Or “that cannot be made or at least not in this way. The Judge has unquestionably perceived this himself, I cannot believe otherwise. Since his task was only to circumscribe an ethical view, an irregularity of that sort was unavoidable, and I rather believe that on behalf of his view he has tried to hide it” (EO, 2:418).

What is this movement? It is, it seems, a movement toward the more radical religious dimension that cannot accommodate itself to the world in the manner of the Judge. Such a form of religious existence perhaps cannot be encompassed within the scope of a literary work such as Either/Or, lying outside the perimeter, beyond the no man's land of angst, the nemesis of all aesthetic communication.¹⁹

Nonetheless it is equally clear that all three reviewers were able to see, with Kierkegaard, that the problematic nature of faith in the situation of modernity was not being taken seriously enough by the Church itself, and that the avant garde of contemporary thought, nihilistic, reflective, dissolute as it was, could not be simply brushed aside. In their eyes Either/Or did speak to the age, from the very depths of the age. Moreover, the ecclesiastical polemics of Kts, arising from Koefoed-Hansen's review, further underlined the point at issue in Either/Or itself: what is it to have faith in an age of reflection?

How do these contemporary responses to Either/Or help our reading of Kierkegaard?

They must, in the first place, weaken the self-propagated image of Kierkegaard as having been absolutely unique among his contemporaries in his understanding of the crisis of Christianity. This crisis was already on the public agenda when Either/Or was published (after all, Schleiermacher's Speeches had been published more than forty years previously) and Kierkegaard's reviewers make it plain that, for them, the issue of faith versus modernity lies at the heart of Either/Or, which is, for this very reason, a timely book in their eyes. In this context the intervention by Mynster and the responses to that intervention have an eerie prophetic significance, anticipating the final polemics of Kierkegaard's own Attack upon ‘Christendom.’ What the reviews and the Kts controversy show is that this debate is already latent in Either/Or itself. This would certainly count against the view that the Attack is radically discontinuous with the rest of Kierkegaard's authorship and suggests that we should see it more in terms of the direct statement of what, in Either/Or, is already stated indirectly and obliquely. Moreover, these contemporary responses lend support to Kierkegaard's own claims in The Point of View regarding the essential unity of his authorship and its fundamental religious intentions. On the other hand, the very fact that Either/Or was recognized in its own time as an essentially religious book does spoil the picture painted in The Point of View of Kierkegaard's contemporaries' complete inability to see it.

Lastly, it may be noted that whilst Victor Eremita chides the three reviewers for overlooking the decisively religious movement of the “Ultimatum,” Kierkegaard's later characterization of a radically individualized and radically interiorized kind of faith is precisely contextualized in relation to a perception of the “mass” nature of the modern world and the impersonality of an age of reflection.

The three reviewers did, therefore, correctly identify the arena in which, for Kierkegaard, the trial of faith was to be held. It is important to acknowledge this historical situatedness of the questions raised by Either/Or. Nor should we fear the implication that our own reception of it will be influenced by the extent to which the nihilism of the 1840's is comparable to the nihilism of a postmetaphysical and postmodern world. If we are indeed still living within the same cultural, intellectual and spiritual paradigm as that which saw the birth of Kierkegaard's authorship, then Either/Or will continue to have for us as for the best of its contemporary readers an impact that is not reducible to the verve of its stylistic virtuosity or the fascination of its intellectual intrigue. Whether this is so or not and whether Either/Or is in this regard still a timely book is, of course, a question that goes far beyond the scope of this essay. I merely note in conclusion that an answer to that question cannot be attained without the reading and rereading of Either/Or itself.

Notes

1. On the significance of sale figures see Uffe Andreasen, Romantismen (Gyldendal: Copenhagen, 1974) 16.

2. Patrick Gardiner, Kierkegaard (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988) 1. To be fair to Gardiner he does seem to acknowledge that this was “at least” Kierkegaard's view of things.

3. Vincent McCarthy, The Phenomenology of Moods in Kierkegaard (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1978) 56.

4. See the articles reprinted in vol. 18 of the 3rd ed. of the Samlede Værker (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1962) and originally published in Fædrelandet (27 Feb 1843 and 16 May 1843).

5. All references are to Dagen 41/52 (22 Feb 1843).

6. All references are to Den Frisindede 9/23 (23 Feb 1843).

7. Ibid.

8. See George Pattison, ‘“Søren Kierkegaard: A Theatre Critic of the Heiberg School” in The British Journal of Aesthetics 23/1 (1983). See also Bruce Kirmmse, Kierkegaard in Golden Age Denmark (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1990) esp. chap 11, “Johan Ludvig Heiberg.” References to Heiberg in Kierkegaard's Early Polemical Writings give a good idea of the kind of significance Heiberg could have had for the young Kierkegaard. Particularly provocative is Henning Fenger's thesis that, having aspired to membership of the “Heiberg Circle,” Kierkegaard's later polemics (in, e.g., Prefaces) reflect “his love-hate for the inner circle which had not wanted to sanction him.” H. Fenger, Kierkegaard, the Myths and their Origins (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980) 135.

9. I despair of happily translating this title. “Intelligence Sheets” perhaps, but this has too military a ring: the point is, of course, that the journal gives intelligence of what is going on in the cultural world rather than that it is just for and by intelligent people in the sense of those having high IQs! References in the text to IB 2 are to Intelligensblade 2/24 (1843).

10. S. Kierkegaard, Samlede Værker, 3rd ed. (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1962) 18:24.

11. See above, n. 8.

12. The review is to be found in Forposten 1/11-15 (12 and 19 March, and 2 and 19 April 1843). References are given to FP in the text.

13. See G. Pattison, “Nihilism and the Novel: Kierkegaard's Literary Reviews” in British Journal of Aesthetics 26/2 (1986).

14. Fædrelandet (7 May 1843): 9846. The review continued in the issues for 14 and 21 May 1843. Further references are given in the text as F, followed by page number. Hagen's question anticipates Allen Ginsberg's Howl: “I have seen the best minds of my generation destroyed.”

15. See, e.g., Richard M. Summers, “A Study of Kierkegaard's Philosophical Development up to Om Begrebet Ironi” (Ph.D. diss., London, 1980) 170.

16. All references are to Fyenske Tidsskrift For Literatur og Kritik 1/4 (1843). Further references are given as FLK in the text, with page number.

17. “Plump Usandhed” in Københavnsposten (4 Jan 1844).

18. “Replik til Kts,” in Fædrelandet (19 Jan 1844).

19. See G. Pattison, Kierkegaard: The Aesthetic and the Religious (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1992) 56-62.

Abbreviations

EO,1; EO,2: Either/Or. Two volumes. Kierkegaard's Writings 3 and 4. Trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1987. (Enten/Eller I-II, ed. Victor Eremita, 1843.)