Kierkegaard (11 page)

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.

It is evident from the examiners' comments that they either did not recognise, or at least did not appreciate, that with his tortured prose about irony, Søren was himself making an ironic comment on bloviating academics. The verbosity of the book was part of the point. In light of their inability to take a joke it is a good thing, then, that Søren did not include this idea, found in his jottings from 1838:

For a dedication copy
of my treatise:
Since I know that you probably will not read it, and if you did would not understand it, and if you understood it would take exception to it, may I direct your attention only to the externals: gilt-edges and Morocco binding.

Perhaps the rest of the committee would have had a better chance of understanding the joke if they had known that Søren was currently living out another ironic campaign of his own. As it is, while the committee decides Søren's academic fate, only Sibbern has an inkling as to what is going on in Søren's private life.

On August 11, 1841, Regine receives a small parcel wrapped in paper. It is the ring she had given Søren on their engagement. For Regine the world goes silent as she reads the accompanying note (a note that would one day be reproduced word-for-word in
Stages on Life's Way
):

Above all, forget
the one who writes this; forgive a man who, even if he was capable of something, was nevertheless incapable of making a girl happy. In the Orient to send a silken cord is a death penalty to the recipient; in this case to send a ring is very likely a death penalty to the person who sends it.

They had been engaged for thirteen months. Søren would later claim that he knew the engagement was a mistake from the first day, but in any case, he had not hidden his ambivalence about his suitability for marriage from Regine. This parcel is unwelcome, but it is not a surprise.

The irony of Søren's breach with Regine is that he never stops loving her, even while he pushes to break the engagement. Søren's reasoning is typically convoluted, hinging as it does on his ideas that marriage is good, but not for him, and that his serious, melancholic life is unsuited to Regine's well-being. To make her happy, he needs to break her heart. Regine has heard something of this tortured logic before on their long drives into the country, while Søren wept and Sibbern pretended not to listen. She is no stranger to the odd combination of self-doubt, principled conviction, and true love in her beloved's breast, so, when she receives the note, she does not take the hit as Søren intends. Instead Regine fights back.

Regine immediately goes round to Søren's apartments and bangs on the door, only to be informed by Anders that the master is out. Regine
asks for paper and a pen and produces what Søren will later describe as a note filled with “
feminine despair
.” With tears and prayers Regine stakes her claim. Søren's moods, his convictions, his isolating campaigns are irrelevant. He can do anything, absolutely anything, and she would still love him, being thankful all her life for the greatest of blessings.
“
In the name of Jesus Christ
and in the memory of your dead father, I implore you not to abandon me!”