Poul Martin Møller: Kierkegaard and the Confidant of Socrates

Kierkegaard and his danish Contemporaries tome i: philosophy, politics and social theory Edited by Jon stewart © Jon stewart and the contributors 2009 all rights reserved. no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher. Jon stewart has asserted his right under the Copyright, designs and patents act, 1988, to be identified as the editor of this work. published by ashgate publishing limited wey Court east union road Farnham surrey, gu9 7pt england ashgate publishing Company suite 420 101 Cherry street Burlington vt 05401-4405 usa www.ashgate.com British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Kierkegaard and his danish contemporaries. tome 1, philosophy, politics and social theory. – (Kierkegaard research : sources, reception and resources v. 7) 1. Kierkegaard, soren, 1813–1855. 2. Kierkegaard, soren, 1813–1855–Friends and associates. 3. philosophy, danish– 19th century. i. series ii. stewart, Jon (Jon Bartley) 198.9-dc22 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Kierkegaard and his danish contemporaries / [edited by] Jon stewart. p. cm. — (Kierkegaard research: sources, reception, and resources ; v. 7) includes bibliographical references and indexes. isBn 978-0-7546-6872-5 (hardcover : t. 1 : alk. paper) 1. Kierkegaard, sxren, 1813–1855—sources. 2. denmark—intellectual life— 19th century. i. stewart, Jon (Jon Bartley) B4377 .K512 198’.9—dc22 2009014986 isBn 978-0-7546-6872-5 Cover design by Katalin nun. poul martin møller: Kierkegaard and the Confidant of Socrates Finn gredal Jensen according to one of the epithets in søren Kierkegaard’s dedication to The Concept of Anxiety, Poul Martin Møller was “the confidant of Socrates.” With the title of the present article, i wish to imply not only that møller, of course, knew plato as well as other socratic sources by heart—he even considered plato’s dialogues as a topic for a dissertation1—but more importantly that as a Socratic figure himself, by his very personality, he had a special maieutic impact on the young Kierkegaard; their relationship is, however, also surrounded by several undocumented assumptions or myths which i will try to sort out. the article is divided into three principal sections: (i) an overview of the life and works of poul martin møller; (ii) a discussion of the testimonies concerning møller’s and søren Kierkegaard’s personal relation; and (iii) a discussion of the references and possible allusions to møller’s writings in the Kierkegaardian corpus. Finally, in a brief concluding section (iv), i will focus on some relevant aspects of møller’s portrait of socrates. I. An Overview of the Life and Works of P.M. Møller poul martin møller was born in uldum vicarage near vejle in Jutland on march 21, 1794 and died in Copenhagen on march 13, 1838, not yet 44 years of age.2 i would like to thank Jon stewart for good suggestions and for helping me translate several of the quotations. i am also grateful to david d. possen for his careful reading of the manuscript. 1 this is evident from a letter from møller to his father from 1823 (Poul Møller og hans Familie i Breve, vols. 1–3, ed. by morten Borup, society for danish language and literature, Copenhagen: C.a. reitzel 1976, vol. 1, no. 52; below i will refer to this edition as “Borup” followed by the letter number). he planned to write the dissertation as soon as he had finished his Homer translations, but the following year, in another letter to his father, dated July 1, 1824 (Borup, letter no. 56), he mentions the possibility of skipping over it: “i have myself often thought of skipping over the master’s dissertation (not for the sake of indolence [Magelighed] but for the sake of my finances).” 2 Møller’s first biographer was Frederik Christian Olsen (1802–74), whose Poul Martin Møllers Levnet, med Breve fra hans Haand was both published separately and included in møller’s Efterladte Skrifter, 1st ed., vol. 3, Copenhagen: C.a. reitzel 1843 (separate pagination pp. 1–116). the major monograph on møller remains vilhelm andersen, Poul Møller. Hans 102 Finn Gredal Jensen his parents were rasmus møller (1763–1842) and Bodil maria thaulow (1765– 1810). From 1802 rasmus møller was pastor in the village Købelev on the island of lolland and, as an aged man, became bishop in maribo in 1831. however, he was not only a theologian but also a keen philologist, who translated and published, among other things, sallust, parts of livy (Books 1–7), and a number of Cicero’s speeches.3 poul together with his younger brother hans ulrik (in contrast to their four younger sisters) received tutoring from their father, and here his later thorough skills in classical languages and literature were founded. during the years 1807–09 he went to school in nakskov and in 1810, together with his brother, was sent to the grammar school of nykøbing Falster, where he met and became friends with his later stepbrother, the poet Christian winther (1796–1876); after the death of his wife, rasmus møller remarried in 1811, and his new wife was winther’s mother Johanna dorothea Borchsenius (1769–1830). in 1812 poul martin møller began his studies in theology at the university of Copenhagen, and in less than three-and-a-half years he completed them in January 1816 with the best grades, although while studying he was also teaching religion at the Borgerdyd school of Copenhagen and latin at the other Borgerdyd school in Christianshavn.4 Far more important than theology, however, was his participation in student life and founding of stimulating friendships with notable personalities Liv og Skrifter efter trykte og utrykte Kilder i Hundredaaret for hans Fødsel, Copenhagen: g.e.C. gad 1894 (2nd ed., vols. 1–2, 1904; 3rd ed., 1944). For further literature on møller (and Kierkegaard), see the footnotes and the bibliography of the present article. in general, see also henrik denman, Poul Martin Møller. En kommenteret bibliografi, roskilde: denmans Forlag 1986. 3 søren Kierkegaard owned rasmus møller’s translations of sallust, Sallusts Catilinariske Krig oversat fra det Latinske. Et Forsøg, Copenhagen: Fr. Brummer 1811 (two copies, ASKB 1273 and ASKB a i 184); Sallusts Jugurthinske Krig oversat fra det Latinske. Et Forsøg, Copenhagen: Fr. Brummer 1812 (ASKB a i 184), and his latin edition of livy, Books 1–10, based on editions by F.a. stroth and F.w. döring, Titi Livii Operum omnium volumen I [Books 1–5], Copenhagen: gyldendal 1815 (ASKB a ii 31), Titi Livii Patavini Historiarum libri I–X…volumen II, libros VI–X continens, Copenhagen: gyldendal 1819 (ASKB a ii 32), and the 2nd ed. of vol. 1, 1831, ed. by C.F. ingerslev (ASKB 1256). rasmus møller also published a number of theological works; of these Kierkegaard owned his Veiledning til en andægtig og forstandig Læsning af det Nye Testamente, især for ulærde Læsere, 1st ed., Copenhagen: andreas seidelin 1820 (ASKB a i 18), and 2nd ed., 1824 (ASKB 83), cf. also the journal entry nB:123, SKS 20, 88 / JP 2, 1997; furthermore, his Veiledning til en andægtig og forstandig Læsning af det Gamle Testamente, især for ulærde Læsere, vols. 1–2, Copenhagen: andreas seidelin 1826 (ASKB 81–82), and his translations of the prophets in Det Gamle Testamentes poetiske og prophetiske Skrifter, efter Grundtexten paa ny oversatte og med Indholdsfortegnelse samt Anmærkninger forsynede, published together with Jens møller (who was not his brother, as stated in SKS K22, explanatory note to 179.8), Copenhagen: andreas seidelin 1828–30 (two copies, ASKB 86–88, 89–91). 4 Cf. holger lund, Borgerdydsskolen i Kjøbenhavn 1787–1887. Et Mindeskrift i Anledning af Skolens Hundredaarsfest, Copenhagen: otto B. wroblewskys Forlag 1887, p. 238; t.h. erslew, Almindeligt Forfatter-Lexicon for Kongeriget Danmark med tilhørende Bilande, fra 1814–1840, vols. 1–3, Copenhagen: Forlagsforeningens Forlag 1843–53; vol. 2, 1847, p. 407. Poul Martin Møller: Kierkegaard and the Confidant of Socrates 103 such as Bernhard severin ingemann (1789–1862), Carsten hauch (1790–1872), Johan ludvig heiberg (1791–1860), niels Bygom Krarup (1792–1842), peder hjort (1793–1871), Just mathias thiele (1795–1874), nicolai Christian møhl (1798– 1830), and of the older generation he saw, for instance, heiberg’s mother, thomasine gyllembourg-ehrensvärd (1773–1856) and the rahbeks at “Bakkehuset,” Knud lyne rahbek (1760–1830) and Kamma rahbek (1775–1829). in 1815 møller published his first poem in a newspaper—in the following years he would publish several more poems, although he always wrote more than he published—and he proposed in vain to margrethe Bloch, a daughter of his former headmaster from nykøbing. theology never interested him much, but philology did; his major publication in 1816 was a translation of the Odyssey, Book 9.5 after an intermezzo as tutor of two young counts at the estate espe near Korsør, he was back in Copenhagen where he participated in the literary controversy surrounding Jens Baggesen (1764–1826) in 1818; here he also composed a satire on Baggesen’s supporter n.F.s. grundtvig (1783–1872), “draft of a letter from heaven.”6 at the same time he began serious studies in classical philology. the following year, when the aforementioned miss Bloch got married, møller, five months later, embarked as ship pastor on the frigate “Christianshavn” heading for China.7 the ship raised anchor on november 1, 1819 and did not return until July 14, 1821. on this long voyage møller hoped to study while on board. among other things he seems to have read all of Cicero. he also wrote quite a lot, for instance, his famous poem “Joy over denmark,”8 but first and foremost he began collecting his ideas by means of aphorisms, the so-called “Strøtanker” (scattered thoughts). on his return to Copenhagen he resumed his participation in student life, but as a more mature person than before; he saw his old friends, and now also, among others, the philologist Christen thaarup (1795–1849), one of the later editors of his posthumous writings. he took part in the student association (“studenterforeningen”), where, in 1824, he recited parts of his unfinished novel Adventures of a Danish Student. his writings from these years include the poem “a leaf from the diary of death” and an excellent translation into danish of lord Byron’s “the dream,” and he published poems such as “april song” (“aprilsvise”) and parts of “scenes in rosenborg garden.” he also continued his philological studies and now translated the Odyssey, Books 1–6, which would be published in 1825 as what, strange as it may sound, would turn out to be his 5 “Forsøg til en metrisk oversættelse af odysseus eventyr i Kyklopens hule, ved P. M. Møller, Candid. theol.,” published in the Christianshavn Borgerdyd school’s Indbydelsesskrift til den offentlige Examen i Borgerdydskolen i September 1816, Copenhagen: Johan Frederik schultz 1816, pp. 3–20. 6 on this see section iii, a below. 7 on this voyage see, for instance, lone Klem, “rejoicing over denmark: poul martin Møller’s Voyage to China on the Frigate ‘Christianshavn’ 1819–21,” in The Golden Age Revisited: Art and Culture in Denmark 1800–1850, ed. by Bente scavenius, Copenhagen: gyldendal 1996, pp. 84–91. 8 The Kierkegaardian significance of this poem will be discussed below in Sections II (note 49) and iii, B. 104 Finn Gredal Jensen only book.9 after his return from abroad in 1821, he had continued his work at the Borgerdyd school, now teaching greek, the same year as søren Kierkegaard started there;10 but already from november 12 of the following year he was employed as adjunct at the metropolitan school, teaching greek and latin.11 one of møller’s pupils at this school was the later Bishop hans lassen martensen (1808–84), who in his memoirs says, “among the teachers, i will mention the genial, unforgettable poul møller, whom we pupils looked up to with admiration, and who, without trying, exerted such fruitful influence on us.”12 in the school’s “indbydelsesskrift” or work of invitation, møller in 1823 published a latin treatise on nemesis, “De invidia diis ab Herodoto et æqualibus attributa pauca.”13 in 1826 he passed the written part of 9 Homers Odyssees sex förste Sange metrisk oversatte af Poul Möller, Adjunct ved Metropolitanskolen, Copenhagen: gyldendal 1825, 99 pages (an earlier version of the translation of the Odyssey, Book 5, he had published in 1822). in the above-mentioned letter, dated July 1, 1824 (Borup, letter no. 56), from “Bakkehuset,” where he sometimes stayed, møller writes to his father that “in due course” (“med Tiden”) he would like to translate all of the Odyssey, but he realizes how troublesome this would be—with the first six books he had much difficulty finishing the proofs, since he could never stop correcting the text—and adds, “when you know for how many years i have been engaged in translating homer, then you will realize the truth that I cannot finish anything.” This self-knowledge is even more evident in a letter from earlier that summer (Borup, letter no. 55), also to his father, in which he says, “if one would conduct the matter properly, then a man could do nothing else for his whole lifetime than translate the Odyssey, but such a man i would not like to be.” 10 Cf. holger lund, Borgerdydsskolen, p. 238. søren Kierkegaard started at the school in 1821, but per Krarup states that he “certainly could not have had him [møller] as instructor at the school. their acquaintance dates from his time as a university student.” per Krarup, Søren Kierkegaard og Borgerdydskolen, Copenhagen: gyldendal 1977, pp. 61–2. there can be no doubt about this, since Møller was only teaching in the first form, i.e., the oldest pupils. vilhelm andersen’s suggestion (Poul Møller, pp. 151–3) that the absentminded latin teacher appearing in Stages on Life’s Way (SKS 6, 191–2 / SLW, 204–5) might be a portrait of møller was withdrawn in the second edition of his biography (the teacher Kierkegaard had in mind was ernst Bojesen). at any rate, as a schoolboy Kierkegaard must have seen møller on a daily basis at the school when he came there to teach. By the way, at this time møller was a busy man also giving private tutoring, as usual due to financial reasons. 11 Cf. Metropolitanskolen gennem 700 Aar, ed. by C.a.s. dalberg and p.m. plum, Copenhagen: gyldendal 1916, p. 116, and appendix, “hundrede aars metropolitanere,” ed. by P.M. Plum, p. 11. Møller’s first biographer and one of the editors of his posthumous writings, his friend Frederik Christian olsen also taught greek and latin at the school, but not until 1828 after møller had left (later, olsen had an intermezzo teaching at the grammar school of elsinore 1830–37, then again at the metropolitan school, and in 1844 he moved to Jutland to become headmaster of the grammar school viborg Katedralskole). 12 h.l. martensen, Af mit Levnet. Meddelelser, vols. 1–3, Copenhagen: gyldendal 1882–83, vol. 1, p. 16. 13 “de invidia diis ab herodoto et æqualibus attributa pauca commentatus est Paulus Möller, scholæ adjunctus” [“on the envy attributed to the gods by herodotus and his Contemporaries: some Considerations by poul møller, adjunct at the school”], in Examen publicum anniversarium in Schola Metropolitana X Calendarum Octobris A. MDCCCXXIII habendum indicit Rector Scholæ Nicolaus Lang Nissen, doctor philosophiæ et magister artium atque professor, havniae mdCCCXXiii: typis schultzianis, pp. 1–32. this treatise, Poul Martin Møller: Kierkegaard and the Confidant of Socrates 105 the university examination in philology, and the same year he proposed successfully to Betty Berg (1804–34). “one should not attempt to seduce or persuade someone into philosophy,” Friedrich schlegel says in Athenäums-Fragmente, no. 417.14 however, this is what professor Frederik Christian sibbern (1785–1872) seems to have done in relation to møller. he persuaded him to become a professional philosopher, later always advising him, giving him lists of books to read, etc. But however hardworking and interested møller was, he never became an original philosopher; in truth, as a “happy lover of greek culture”—to use Kierkegaard’s wording—he probably should have stuck to poetry and philology, where his great talents were. in the summer of 1826, Sibbern approached him as an intermediary with an offer of a professorship—first møller was appointed lecturer, and then, in 1828 professor—in philosophy at the Frederiks-University of Christiania, today Oslo. Møller dropped his final, oral examination in philology and in october 1826 went to norway. the next summer he got married in denmark and brought his wife back north, and in 1828 and 1830 they had two sons (with two more to come later); but since he was busy during these years with philosophical reading and teaching, his literary production was modest. he and his family felt isolated and unsuited for life abroad, and undoubtedly møller’s job in norway was always only intended as a springboard for a better post in Copenhagen. eventually, this became possible when on october 12, 1830 he was appointed professor in philosophy at the university of Copenhagen,15 where his first lecture, in moral philosophy, took place on may 28, 1831.16 in the years to come he would give lectures, in public or private, in several different disciplines; according to the course catalogues, the lectures announced were the following: moral philosophy (all summer semesters 1831–37); logic (summer semesters 1831, 1832, 1833, which is the longest work extant in the latin language from møller’s hand, was not included in the Posthumous Writings, but it was praised as “interesting” by J.l. heiberg, who refers to it twice in his essay “nemesis: a popular-philosophical investigation” (“nemesis. et populair-philosophisk Forsøg”), in Kjøbenhavns flyvende Post, 1827, nos. 41, 43, 44, and 45; cf. Heiberg’s Contingency Regarded from the Point of View of Logic and Other Texts, trans. and ed. by Jon stewart, Copenhagen: museum tusculanum press 2008 (Texts from Golden Age Denmark, vol. 4), pp. 101–25; p. 109 and p. 120. 14 “Man soll niemanden zur Philosophie verführen oder bereden wollen.” Athenaeum. Eine Zeitschrift. Ersten Bandes Zweytes Stück, ed. by a.w. schlegel and F. schlegel, Berlin: bey Friedrich vieweg dem älteren 1798, p. 304; Kritische Friedrich-Schlegel-Ausgabe, ed. by e. Behler, et al., vol. 2, Charakteristiken und Kritiken I (1796–1801), ed. by h. eichner, munich, paderborn, vienna: verlag Ferdinand schöningh/zürich: thomas-verlag 1967, p. 244. 15 Cf. Akademiske Tidender, vol. 1, ed. by h.p. selmer, Copenhagen: gyldendal 1833, p. 165. 16 this appears from a letter to sibbern (Borup, letter no. 122); in the course catalogue, Index lectionum in Universitate Regia Hauniensi per semestre æstivum a Kalendis Maiis A. MDCCCXXXI habendarum, Copenhagen: J.h. schultz 1831, p. 7, one only reads the following: “P. M. Möller, Philosophiæ P. P. E. [professor publicus extraordinarius], quum advenerit, lectiones e valvis publicis indicabit.” 106 Finn Gredal Jensen 1834); the history of modern philosophy (winter semester 1831–32); metaphysics (winter semesters 1832–33, 1835–36, 1836–37); the history of ancient philosophy (winter semesters 1833–34, 1834–35); psychology (winter 1834–35, summer 1835, winter 1836–37, summer 1837); aristotle’s De anima (winter semester 1835–36); philosophical propaedeutics (summer 1836).17 due to illness, møller in the winter semester 1837–38 was unable to give his announced lectures on “ontology or the system of Categories”—on which he also began writing a textbook—and a planned privatissime course of lectures on ancient philosophy.18 It would be difficult to imagine that the young søren Kierkegaard participated in nothing of all this, but unfortunately, only in a few cases are the lists of auditors extant, and there are no other sources that could shed light on the matter. in just a single case Kierkegaard’s name appears on an extant list for møller’s lectures, namely, the lectures in metaphysics, which were given in “three meetings a week,” in the winter semester 1836–37.19 in some cases we know the number of auditors, but not their identity.20 to all appearances, møller 17 the winter semester ran from november 1 the one year until the end of march of the following year; summer semester ran from may 1 until the end of september. 18 Kjøbenhavns Universitets Aarbog for 1838, ed. by h.p. selmer, Copenhagen: gyldendal 1839, p. 87; cf. Kjøbenhavns Universitets Aarbog for 1837, ed. by h.p. selmer, Copenhagen: gyldendal 1838, p. 86. it appears from a letter from rasmus møller to Bishop mynster (Borup, letter no. 179) that møller before his death “had thrown a large amount of his manuscripts on the fire,” including the textbook on Ontologien eller Kategoriernes System [Ontology or the System of Categories], which he was about to finish, but of which only an extant, minor part (introduction and beginning of Chapter 1) was published in the Posthumous Writings, vol. 3, pp. 331–60 (the ms is at the royal library of Copenhagen, Collinske samling 378, 4o; at the royal library, nKs 4000, 4o, there is also a larger ms, a fair copy not in møller’s hand, however, of the notes for the planned lectures). in a letter to F.C. olsen (Borup, letter no. 177), h.u. møller quotes parts of a letter from his brother, before destroying it as he had been told to; p.m. møller in that letter, from early 1837, writes that he is working on the last part, sections viii–Xi, of his treatise on immortality, expecting to have it published in the april issue of the Maanedsskrift for Litteratur, but that later the same year he intends to publish a book on metaphysics (i.e., Ontology or the System of Categories), “which, while i am lecturing [on metaphysics 1836–37] i am revising, that is, rewriting completely for the third time….when i have published this strictly methodological work, which is so dry that not many people will read it (except for the young students, who without regard to the examinations, to my great surprise attend my lectures on this subject in large numbers), i believe that i have won the right to write aphoristically, desultorily and fragmentarily for a long time. hereafter, namely, i will begin to write. until now i have just been reading for so many years.” with the expression “in large numbers” (“i Mængde”) one should have in mind that for the lectures in metaphysics in the winter semester 1836–37 the number of auditors was 26, and the year before 24; cf. note 20. 19 peter tudvad, Kierkegaards København, Copenhagen: politikens Forlag 2004, p. 181. From møller’s years as professor at the philosophical faculty, the lists of participants exist only for the winter semester 1832–33, the summer semester 1833, the winter semester 1833– 34, and then, some years later, for the winter semester 1836–37 and the summer semester 1837; see tudvad, ibid., pp. 177–81, with references to rigsarkivet, Copenhagen. 20 according to h.p. selmer, there were 160 auditors for møller’s lectures in moral philosophy and logic in the summer semester 1834, cf. Akademiske Tidender, vol. 2, ed. by h.p. selmer, Copenhagen: gyldendal 1834, p. 382; 21 auditors for the lectures in ancient Poul Martin Møller: Kierkegaard and the Confidant of Socrates 107 was a popular teacher; his friendly and natural disposition made an impression on his surroundings, but he was also known for his sudden spells of distraction. in these years møller did not have time for much more than reading and preparing himself for educational purposes. Furthermore, for financial reasons, since 1832 he was also teaching greek and danish composition at the other Borgerdyd school in Christianshavn, where his friend, the philologist n.B. Krarup was headmaster. his poetic veins had almost dried out; important, though, is his late masterpiece, “the artist among the rebels” (“Kunstneren mellem oprørerne”), which appeared in december 1837 in h.p. holst’s and Christian winther’s New Year’s Gift from Danish Poets (Nytaarsgave fra danske Digtere). he also wrote a number of reviews, most important his lengthy review of thomasine gyllembourg’s The Extremes, published in 1836.21 in the philosophical genre, except for a small review of a book by F.L.B. Zeuthen (1805–74) and his fine reviews of P.C. Kierkegaard’s (1805– 88) dissertation on the concept of the lie and sibbern’s On Poetry and Art, he only published the great treatise on immortality, “thoughts on the possibility of proofs of human immortality,”22 which appeared in 1837 in the prestigeous Maanedsskrift for Litteratur, of whose editorial board he was a member. he had many plans for projects that he wanted to do; for example, he had a preoccupation with the nihilistic figure of Ahasverus23 and with the concept of affectation,24 which he reflected upon for several years in his scattered thoughts, but eventually he was too ill to realize any of these plans. after the return from norway, his wife had become still weaker and died in 1834, and this was a hard blow for him; earlier also one of their children had died. a few years later, in december 1836, he married his late wife’s friend eline von Bülow (1804–76), with whom he had a daughter. however, he soon became ill himself, apparently from liver cancer, and his condition worsened, accompanied by asthma. he died on march 13, 1838. In 1839, the year after Møller’s death, the first volume of his Posthumous Writings appeared, which were published in three volumes, 1839–43, edited by his stepbrother Christian winther and his two friends Frederik Christian olsen and Christen thaarup.25 winther, to the best of his ability, took care of the poetical writings, philosophy and 168 auditors in psychology in the winter semester 1834–35, cf. Akademiske Tidender, vol. 3, ed. by h.p. selmer, Copenhagen: gyldendal 1835, p. 151; 174 auditors for the lectures in moral philosophy and psychology in the summer semester 1835; 10 auditors in the lectures on De anima and 24 auditors in metaphysics in the winter semester 1835–36, and 111 auditors in moral philosophy in the summer semester 1836, cf. Akademiske Tidender, vol. 4, ed. by h.p. selmer, Copenhagen: gyldendal 1841, p. 420. For møller’s last two semesters as a lecturer, the lists of participants are extant, and according to these there were 26 auditors in metaphysics in the winter semester 1836–37 (one of which is proved to be Kierkegaard) and 143 in psychology in the summer semester 1837, cf. Kjøbenhavns Universitets Aarbog for 1837, ed. by h.p. selmer, Copenhagen: gyldendal 1838, p. 81. 21 this will be treated below, section iii, d. 22 Below, section iii, g. 23 Below, section iii, C. 24 Below, section iii, F. 25 Efterladte Skrifter af Poul M. Møller, vols. 1–3, ed. by C. winther, F.C. olsen, and C. thaarup, 1st ed., Copenhagen: C.a. reitzel 1839–43 (vol. 1, 1839; vol. 2, 1842; vol. 3, 1843) 108 Finn Gredal Jensen including the homer translations; thaarup’s main effort was his reconstruction of Adventures of a Danish Student; and Olsen first and foremost was the executor of the philosophical writings, and he also included a vita, the first biography of Møller, “life of poul martin møller, with letters from his hand.”26 the second edition in six volumes, 1848–50, included a number of additions (e.g., the Batrachomyomachia translation), whereas the third, published 1855–56, was almost identical to the second, except for the new editor l.v. petersen’s inclusion of the one-act drama “the made-up stories.”27 what has been lacking in the møller editions has especially been the philosophical lectures, of which only a minor part has ever been published.28 nevertheless, for the (ASKB 1574–1576). in the following, in the notes, i will refer to the 1st ed. of the Posthumous Writings as ES1. 26 it was in accordance with møller’s wishes that winther and olsen edited his posthumous writings, cf. winther’s preface to ES1, vol. 1: “when my brother, Poul Møller, felt death approaching, he said to me: ‘I can imagine that, as is usually the case, also after my death, someone is going to collect and publish what i have written. i therefore would like to confer upon you, in the present case, to attend to the publication of the aesthetical part [of the writings], and to leave out what you, with your knowledge of me, would presume that i myself would have omitted.—ask Olsen to do the same with the philosophical part.’ ” according to F.C. olsen’s preface to ES1, vol. 2, møller in his last days had also expressed the wish that olsen, for the publication of the scholarly part of the writings, should seek advice and help from professor sibbern—and so olsen did when deciding what to publish and what to leave out. the third editor Christen thaarup got involved in the edition later, as it became clear that a third volume was necessary. 27 Efterladte Skrifter af Poul M. Møller, vols. 1–6, ed. by C. winther, F.C. olsen, C. thaarup, and l.v. petersen, 2nd ed. (ES2), Copenhagen: C.a. reitzel 1848–50; Efterladte Skrifter af Poul M. Møller, vols. 1–6, ed. by l.v. petersen, 3rd ed., (ES3), Copenhagen: C.a. reitzel 1855–56. (the new editor, lauritz vilhelm petersen (1817–79), theologian and an old pupil of møller, is also known as the danish translator of h.l. martensen’s dissertation, De autonomia conscientiae sui humanae in theologiam dogmaticam nostri temporis introducta, Copenhagen: J.d. Quist 1837 (ASKB 648); Den menneskelige Selvbevidstheds Autonomie, Copenhagen: C.a. reitzel 1841 (ASKB 651)). the most important editions since then have been Christian winther’s selections of møller’s writings, Poul M. Møllers Efterladte Skrifter, vols. 1–2, Copenhagen: C.a. reitzel 1873, and vilhelm andersen’s edition, also selections, Udvalgte Skrifter af Poul Møller, vols. 1–2, Copenhagen: g.e.C. gad 1895 (2nd ed., Skrifter i Udvalg, 1930); Johannes Brøndum-nielsen in his Poul Møller Studier, Copenhagen: gyldendal 1940, published some hitherto unknown poems (along with a facsimile of the satire Smørialis’s Digtervandringer (1823), which he, in all probability wrongly, considered as genuine møller). the letters of møller have been edited and annotated by morten Borup in Poul Møller og hans Familie i Breve. a modern annotated, historical-critical edition of p.m. møller’s collected writings, ed. by Finn gredal Jensen, Kim ravn, and niels stengaard, is being prepared at the society for danish language and literature, Copenhagen; the new edition will include material not published before. 28 in agreement with sibbern’s estimation, only the lecture manuscripts on the history of ancient philosophy (ES1, vol. 2, pp. 273–527, “udkast til Forelæsninger over den ældre philosophies historie”) and on moral philosophy (ES1, vol. 3, pp. 351–69, “Forelæsningsparagrapher over moral-philosophien”) were published. møller’s notes for his lectures in formal logic had earlier been included in a textbook by Carl Berg, Grundtrækkene af en Poul Martin Møller: Kierkegaard and the Confidant of Socrates 109 public, who until then had only had access to a minimal part of møller’s authorship, with the first edition of the Posthumous Writings the full scope of his genius for the first time became visible. Møller was indeed highly creative, so when Carsten hauch, with a reference to Jean paul’s Aesthetics, calls him a “passive” genius, he only seems to mean that by nature møller was a fragmentist and that consequently he never published much (mainly because he had no special ambitions of doing so).29 however, the claim is perhaps accurate in the sense that møller conceived ideas and Kierkegaard could gather and realize them. his possible maieutic impact on Kierkegaard will be discussed in the following sections. II. Kierkegaard—the Confidant of Møller? it has often been stated that søren Kierkegaard and poul martin møller were “friends,” but the sources supporting this supposition are very few. nevertheless, it is obvious, even from the little we know, that in various respects møller appeared as a Socratic figure, a mentor, for Kierkegaard, and that they were on a familiar footing. as will appear below from section iii, several traces of møller’s writings can be demonstrated in Kierkegaard’s authorship. But for Kierkegaard, undoubtedly møller’s personality was more important than his thought, be it through his writings or through oral communication. troels-lund, who in his Bakkehus og Solbjerg not surprisingly underlines the importance of møller’s personality, has a good point in also emphasizing the major importance of his death: “in accordance with his [Kierkegaard’s] characteristic nature, the death itself [of møller], by which the relation was transformed into memory, brought them even closer together.”30 in the present section, i will treat Kierkegaard’s remarks on møller and the surviving testimonies concerning Kierkegaard’s and møller’s relationship. the best attestation of their personal relation is, of course, the printed dedication to The Concept of Anxiety (1844). this may well be seen as a précis of how Kierkegaard regarded møller. it reads as follows: “to the late professor poul martin Møller, the happy lover of Greek culture, the admirer of Homer, the confidant of Socrates, the interpreter of Aristotle—Denmark’s joy in ‘Joy over Denmark,’ though philosophisk Propædeutik eller Erkjendelseslære, tilligemed Poul Møllers kortfattede formelle Logik. Trykt som Manuskript til Brug for Elever af det kongl. Landcadetacademie, Copenhagen: C.a. reitzel 1839 (ASKB 426, bought by Kierkegaard in 1844). as already mentioned, for the winter semester 1837–38 møller had planned a series of lectures on “ontology or the system of Categories,” which was cancelled when he became ill, but parts of his manuscript for a planned book on the subject were published in ES1, vol. 3, pp. 331–60. 29 Carsten hauch, Minder fra min Barndom og min Ungdom, Copenhagen: C.a. reitzel 1867, pp. 297–8; cf. Jean paul [Johann paul Friedrich richter], Vorschule der Aesthetik, nebst einigen Vorlesungen in Leipzig über die Parteien der Zeit, vols. 1–3, hamburg: Friedrich perthes 1804; 2nd ed., stuttgart and tübingen: Cotta 1813 (ASKB 1381–1383); see, in general, the 2nd program, “stufenfolge poetischer Kräfte,” and 3rd program, “ueber das genie.” the passive (receptive, feminine) geniuses are treated in § 10. 30 troels Frederik troels-lund, Bakkehus og Solbjerg. Træk af et nyt Livssyns Udvikling i Norden, vols. 1–3, Copenhagen: gyldendal 1920–22, vol. 3, p. 200. 110 Finn Gredal Jensen ‘widely traveled’ always ‘remembered in the Danish summer’—the object of my admiration, my profound loss, this work is dedicated.”31 a dedication of this kind is anything but formal; it is as personal as it can be in a public forum and in a public form. the universal genius of møller is encircled with a number of epithets, not surprisingly with the primary focus being on his preoccupation with hellenic culture, then on his poetry,32 and concluding with the very personal statements, “the object of my admiration, my profound loss.” with some caution, a few things might be deduced from the dedication: Kierkegaard is well aware of møller’s homer translations and acquainted with his familiarity with plato’s dialogues and other sources relating to socrates;33 the element “the interpreter of aristotle” presumably refers to the treatment of aristotle in møller’s lectures on ancient philosophy,34 but undoubtedly in particular to his lectures regarding aristotle’s On the Soul (De anima).35 as mentioned before, there is no evidence of Kierkegaard’s participation in these or any other of møller’s lectures, with the sole exception of the lectures on metaphysics in the winter semester 1836–37, which is the only case where his name appears on one of the few extant lists of auditors in møller’s lectures.36 unfortunately, no such lists are extant for the five semesters from summer 1834 to summer 1836, and therefore we 31 SKS 4, 311 / CA, 5. the danish wording is the following: “Afdøde Professor Poul Martin Møller, Græcitetens lykkelige Elsker, Homers Beundrer, Socrates’s Medvider, Aristoteles’s Fortolker—Danmarks Glæde i Glæden over Danmark, skjøndt ‘vidt forreist’ altid ‘mindet i den danske Sommer’—min Beundring, mit Savn, helliges dette Skrift.” 32 see later below in section iii, B on “Joy over denmark,” which is the poem referred to in the dedication. see also note 49 in the present section on h.p. rohde’s theory of the influence of Hostrup’s The Opposite Neighbors. 33 møller treats socrates in many different places in his writings, directly or indirectly, for instance in his scattered thoughts, but the first place to mention is his portrait of Socrates in the lecture notes on ancient philosophy—which is indeed personal, and more than just an excerpt of the sources he drew from when teaching, mainly heinrich ritter, Geschichte der Philosophie alter Zeit, vols. 1–4, hamburg: Friedrich perthes 1829–34 (of which Kierkegaard owned the 2nd ed. of vol. 1, hamburg: Friedrich perthes 1836 (ASKB 735) and the 1st ed. of vols. 2–4, hamburg: Friedrich perthes 1830–34 (ASKB 736–738)); this portrait of socrates is found in ES1, vol. 2, pp. 357–75, and I will briefly discuss some central passages from it in the concluding section iv of the present article. 34 in the lecture notes, printed in ES1, vol. 2, aristotle is treated on pp. 455–505. 35 unfortunately, the lecture notes on De anima, presumably very interesting, are lost. at the same time, møller also translated De anima, however only Book 1, Chapters 1–3. this fragment, “Om Sjælen,” was first published in ES2, vol. 3, 1848, pp. 213–28, and not in ES1 owned by Kierkegaard. 36 on the lists of participants and in general on the extent of møller’s lectures see in detail above section i. søren Kierkegaard’s name is not found on the extant lists for møller’s lectures in the winter semester 1832–33 (metaphysics), the summer semester 1833 (logic and moral philosophy), or the winter semester 1833–34 (the history of ancient philosophy); nor is it found on the lists for møller’s lectures in psychology in the winter semester 1836–37 or in moral philosophy and psychology in the summer semester 1837. however, on the basis of the extant lists we cannot necessarily deduce that Kierkegaard did not attend; he could have been present without being officially enrolled. Poul Martin Møller: Kierkegaard and the Confidant of Socrates 111 cannot be sure if Kierkegaard attended any of møller’s lectures in these years, but the natural presumption is that he did—even if he was a lazy student. there are no other sources to document this, and nowhere in Kierkegaard’s writings is it possible to trace unambiguously identifiable elements of Møller’s lectures.37 of course, we must assume that he read the selections of lecture notes which were published in the first edition of Møller’s Posthumous Writings.38 the draft of the dedication, however, is more extensive and far more interesting since it contains some rather intimate personal elements that were left out in the book: to the late professor Poul Martin Møller the happy lover of Greek culture, the admirer of Homer, the confidant of Socrates, the interpreter of aristotle—denmark’s joy in “Joy over denmark” though “widely traveled yet always remembered in the danish summer”—the enthusiasm of my youth; the mighty trumpet of my awakening; the desired object of my feelings; the confidant of my beginnings; my lost friend; my sadly missed reader this work is dedicated.39 The elements “though ‘widely…Danish summer’ ” and “the mighty trumpet…my feelings,” are inserted later (in the english translation CA these are marked with asterisks). another thing worth noticing is the detail that in front of “sadly missed” (“savnede”) Kierkegaard deleted the intensifying “always” (“altid”). then in the fair copy he deleted the whole passage “the enthusiasm of my youth…my sadly missed reader” and replaced it with the modest final wording, “the object of my admiration, my profound loss.”40 37 when, for instance, Kierkegaard in nB4:29 (SKS 20, 301.18ff. / JP 3, 3352) refers to the conception that socrates was a “practical” philosopher, this is not necessarily a reference to møller calling socrates “the founder of practical philosophy,” ES1, vol. 2, p. 366, since this thought is not original. to take another example, not from the lectures, however, but from the fragment of møller’s Ontology or the System of Categories: when in Pap. vi C 1 / JP 5, 5798 Kierkegaard mentions a hegelian confusion of τὸ ὄν and τὸ εἶναι, he credits rasmus nielsen, Den propædeutiske Logik, Copenhagen: p.g. philipsen 1845 (ASKB 699), and not the relevant passage of møller’s work, cf. ES1, vol. 3, p. 350. 38 Kierkegaard also read møller’s notes on formal logic included in Berg’s textbook, Grundtrækkene af en philosophisk Propædeutik eller Erkjendelseslære, which he bought in 1844. on the limited extent of publication of lecture notes in ES1 see above in section i. 39 Pap. v B 46 / CA, supplement, p. 178. in danish the draft reads thus: “Afdøde Profs. Poul Martin Møller, Græcitetens lykkelige Elsker, Homers Beundrer, Socrates Medvider, Aristoteless Fortolker—Danmarks Glæde i Glæden over Danmark, skjøndt ‘vidt forreist, altid mindet i den danske Sommer’—min Ungdoms Begeistring; min Opvaagnens mægtige Basune; min Stemnings forønskede Gjenstand; min Begyndens Fortrolige; min tabte Ven; min savnede Læser helliges dette Skrift.” Quoted from SKS K4, p. 344. the draft of the dedication is located in the Kierkegaard archive, B, fasc. 15, quire 1, at the royal library of Copenhagen; ms 1.1, fol. 1v, in SKS K4, p. 310. 40 Pap. v B 72,3 / SKS K4, pp. 314–15, ms 3.1, fol. 2r. it is not certain when this correction took place; according to the editors of SKS, the dedication was changed in the last 112 Finn Gredal Jensen the translators of The Concept of Anxiety, reidar thomte and albert B. anderson, are right in assuming that “the dedication to møller is in itself evidence that The Concept of Anxiety is not strictly pseudonymous. By means of the pseudonym and the abbreviations in the dedication, Kierkegaard concealed the privacy of his relationship to møller.”41 the abbreviations they refer to, however, are not in the dedication; they are presumably thinking of the fact that, in the draft, the initials “S. K.” originally appeared under the epigraph or motto.42 in the fair copy, the title page, too, was changed. the pseudonym “Vigilius Haufniensis” was inserted, but the lower part of the page was cut off; presumably, it contained Kierkegaard’s name and—since the book is an “academic” work—his academic degree.43 this is evident from the draft of the title, “Concerning / The Concept of Anxiety / a plain and simple psychological deliberation on the dogmatic issue of Hereditary Sin / by / s. Kierkegaard / m. a.”44 the fact that the pseudonym was introduced so late might explain the peculiarity that the book as a pseudonymous work contains a dedication.45 regarding the question as to why among all his books Kierkegaard chose to dedicate The Concept of Anxiety to møller there have been different theories of which I will briefly mention a few. Gregor Malantschuk suggests that this book is a realization of møller’s idea of a new world-view or “Verdensanskuelse” as developed in his treatise on the proofs of immortality.46 there is also a strongly hypothetical explanation offered by Frithiof Brandt which has nothing to do with immortality in a strict sense, but rather with youth and the borders of mortality. in his Den unge Søren Kierkegaard, he develops a complex theory, based on ideas of p.a. heiberg and eduard geismar, of a very personal background for The Concept of Anxiety: he argues that møller helped Kierkegaard through his crisis in 1836. Brandt concludes: minute (“ændret i sidste øjeblik”), SKS K4, p. 323. CA, notes, p. 223. 42 SKS 4, 310 / CA, 3. 43 Cf. SKS K4, p. 323. 44 Pap. v B 42 / CA, supplement, p. 177; cf. SKS K4, p. 310 (ms 1.1, fol. 1r): “Om / Begrebet Angest. / en slet og ret psychologisk overveielse i retning af / det dogmatiske problem om Arvesynden. / af s. Kierkegaard / m: a:” 45 in a journal entry JJ:227, SKS 18, 213 / KJN 2, 196, Kierkegaard refers to the pseudonym in this way: “the sketch of an observer [vigilius, i.e., watchman] that i dashed off in The Concept of Anxiety will probably upset some people. however, it does belong there and is a kind of watermark in the work. in general i always stand in a poetic relationship to my works, which is why i am a pseudonym. simultaneously with the book’s development of some theme, the corresponding individuality is drawn. now vigilius hauf. draws several, but in the book i have dashed off a sketch of him in addition.” this “sketch” is found in Caput ii, cf. SKS 4, 359–60 / CA, 54–6. 46 on this, see further gregor malantschuk, “søren Kierkegaard og poul m. møller,” Kierkegaardiana, vol. 3, 1959, pp. 7–20 (reprinted in Frihed og Eksistens. Studier i Søren Kierkegaards tænkning, ed. by niels Jørgen Cappelørn and paul müller, Copenhagen: C.a. reitzel 1980, pp. 101–13). on the treatise on immortality see below section iii, g. møller’s concept of “alternating [vexlende] affectation” could have inspired Kierkegaard’s concept of the demonic in The Concept of Anxiety. generally, this book is what møller would have called a “moral description of nature” which is the expression he uses of his theory of affectation; on this, see below section iii, F. 41 Poul Martin Møller: Kierkegaard and the Confidant of Socrates 113 “the explanation for the dedication then becomes obvious. The Concept of Anxiety is dedicated to the memory of the man who, with his powerful trumpet, tore Kierkegaard out of his reprobate period, and who in the subsequent difficult time was the desired object of his feelings.”47 this seems to be the upshot of Brandt’s thorough analysis of the elements of the dedication. As a mighty apocalyptic father figure, a trumpet of awakening, møller made the young Kierkegaard come to his senses, concentrate, and later reflect upon sin. Although there is no evidence whatsoever for how this awakening came about, there must be some truth to it. in the Journal EE, in an entry from July 28, 1839, Kierkegaard compares his “youthful excesses” with the sirens’ song.48 møller, by contrast, led him in the right direction.49 møller is described as “the enthusiasm of my youth.” what does this mean? the other elements of the draft also indicate a very strong personal relation and confidentiality: “the desired object of my feelings; the confidant of my beginnings; my lost friend; my sadly missed reader.” as to the last point, møller as a reader of Kierkegaard, this must be rather limited. From the Papers of One Still Living, originally planned for J.l. heiberg’s Perseus, was published as a book on september 7, 1838, half a year after møller’s death on march 13, and Kierkegaard had possibly begun writing it in late april.50 however, as regards the polemical articles published earlier in heiberg’s Kjøbenhavns flyvende Post, we can be certain that møller read at least one of these, which is evident from the Journal AA: something i can say which, when i noted this down, i would like to have added but omitted from a laughable vanity—since i was afraid of being regarded as vain by doing so—is what a hit the articles, as well as the address, made. i will simply refer to the fact that a paper (Statsvennen no. 3) came out which, under the impression that the first article (the one in no. 76) was by heiberg, said: “that he had written many witty things 47 Frithiof Brandt, Den unge Søren Kierkegaard. En række nye bidrag, Copenhagen: levin & munksgaard 1929, p. 415. (the chapter on Kierkegaard and møller is on pp. 336–446.) 48 SKS 18, 52, ee:148 / KJN 2, 47. 49 to mention a more dubious theory, h.p. rohde points to the fact that in the preface of The Concept of Anxiety (SKS 4, 314 / CA, 8) vigilius haufniensis says that he would gladly assume the name “Christen Madsen”; this figure appears as a character in J.C. Hostrup’s (1818–92) play Gjenboerne [The Opposite Neighbors], which premiered at the Court theater on February 20, 1844, in which both Kierkegaard and møller are made the object of laughter, Kierkegaard as the caricature “søren Kirk” (in the book version changed to søren torp), and møller with the character lieutenant Buddinge making rough fun of the poem “Joy over denmark.” to include this poem in the dedication to The Concept of Anxiety appearing in the same year would then be a natural way for Kierkegaard to show his reverence and make up for this sacrilege toward the late møller. see h.p. rohde, “poul møller,” in Kierkegaard’s Teachers, ed. by niels thulstrup and marie mikulová thulstrup, Copenhagen: C.a. reitzel 1982 (Bibliotheca Kierkegaardiana, vol. 10), pp. 89–109, especially pp. 102–8; cf. also h.p. rohde, “poul møller og søren Kierkegaard,” in Afhandlingerne på originalsproget i ‘Søren Kierkegaard—Tænkning og sprogbrug i Danmark.’ Festskrift i anledning af prof. dr. Masaru Otanis 70 års fødselsdag, Copenhagen: privately printed [1983], pp. 1–22 (separate pagination; the original book appeared in Japanese in 1982). 50 Johnny Kondrup, “tekstredegørelse til Af en endnu Levendes Papirer,” SKS K1, p. 70. 114 Finn Gredal Jensen but never anything as witty, and that old rahbek, were he still alive, would have said it was priceless.” then that p. møller, also thinking it was by heiberg, ran off after him in the street to thank him for it, “since it was the best there had been since Flyveposten became political,”—but didn’t catch up with him and met e. Boesen, who told him it was by me.51 undoubtedly, this great recognition meant a lot to Kierkegaard, as is also clear from the beginning of the entry itself.52 The “first article” referred to is “The Morning observations in Kjøbenhavnsposten no. 43,” in Kjøbenhavns flyvende Post, no. 76, on February 18, 1836, columns 1–6, signed with the pseudonym “B.”53 there is no evidence that møller read the other articles, “on the polemic of Fædrelandet” and “to mr. orla lehmann,”54 nor can we know whether he heard Kierkegaard’s successful paper given to the student association on november 28, 1835, “our Journalistic literature: a study from nature in noonday light.”55 what is essential here, however, is not whether møller read one or more of these perhaps insignificant articles, but the fact that he was well acquainted with the young Kierkegaard’s polemical nature, not only from reading him but primarily from speaking to him. an entry from January 20, 1847 in the Journal NB concludes with the observation, humanly speaking, from now on i must be said not only to be running without a clear goal before me but going headlong toward certain ruin—trusting in god, precisely. this is the victory. this is how i understood life when i was ten years old, therefore, the prodigious polemic in my soul; this is how I understood it when I was twenty-five years old; so, too, now when i am thirty-four. this is why poul møller called me the most thoroughly polemical of men.56 51 SKS 17, 37.5–17, aa:19 / KJN 1, 31. as would later be the case with his preferral of “how” for “what” in a more complex manner, the style at this point in Kierkegaard’s early authorship seemed more important than, or at least veiled, the contents, and this obscuritas was quite “latin” with an extremely intricate syntax, which is also obvious in his first books, From the Papers of One Still Living and The Concept of Irony. møller’s enthusiasm in regard to the undergraduate article in question might appear a bit strange, but he must have sensed the genius that was behind the form, and recognized that it was well-written and humorous. Kierkegaard’s article was also recognized by heiberg, the editor, who wrote to him: “once more, my thanks for your essay! it pleased me even more on this new reading.” B&A, vol. 1, p. 40 / LD, letter 6, p. 51. 53 “Kjøbenhavnspostens morgenbetragtninger i nr. 43”; cf. Bl.art., 3–8 / EPW, 6–11. 54 “om Fædrelandets polemik,” in two parts, Kjøbenhavns flyvende Post, no. 82, columns 1–8, and no. 83, columns 1–4, march 12 and 15, 1836, was also signed with the pseudonym “B.”; “til hr. orla lehmann,” Kjøbenhavns flyvende Post, no. 87, columns 1–8, april 10, 1836, was signed “s. Kierkegaard.” Cf. Bl.art., 9–31 / EPW, 12–34. it is not documented whether møller read Kierkegaard’s earliest article, “ogsaa et Forsvar for Qvindens høie anlæg” [“another defense of woman’s great abilities”], signed “a.,” in Kjøbenhavns flyvende Post, no. 34, december 17, 1834, columns 4–6; cf. EPW, 3–5. 55 “vor Journal-litteratur. studium efter naturen i middagsbelysning”; Pap. i B 2 / JP 5, 5116; EPW, 35–52. 56 SKS 20, 83.17–23, nB:107 / JP 5, 5961. 52 Poul Martin Møller: Kierkegaard and the Confidant of Socrates 115 this observation is repeated in an important entry from the summer of 1854 to be found in the Journal NB30, where one reads the following retrospective remark about Kierkegaard’s life-long predisposition for opposition, a quality or vice which at this late point in his life is unfolded even more strongly in service of “the extraordinary.” But he remembers well how originally this predisposition of his was often rebuked by møller—and afterwards by sibbern as møller’s “successor” in relation to the young man: The Extraordinary in one sense it is dreadful, almost fatal, to be the extraordinary under the polemical conditions of the Christian extraordinary. not merely that it is the greatest possible, an almost superhuman, strain, but this relation of opposition to others and the dimensions of that opposition are almost fatal to all merely human sympathy. that is why i have steadfastly—sympathy is my passion—desired only to point out the extraordinary. i recall the words of the dying poul møller, which he often said to me while he lived and which, if i remember correctly, he enjoined sibbern to repeat to me (and in addition the words: tell the little Kierkegaard that he should be careful not to lay out too big a plan of study, for that has been very detrimental to me): you are so thoroughly polemical that it is quite appalling. although i am so thoroughly polemical and was so even in my youth, still Christianity is almost too polemical for me.57 too big a plan of study, says møller, has been very detrimental to himself, and he wanted young Kierkegaard to be spared that. without doubt møller is primarily thinking of his personal torments with reading hegel and others, carefully instructed by his friend sibbern, and the large amount of knowledge he had to obtain when becoming (and being) a professor of philosophy. that was hard work. as to young Kierkegaard, the word “study” rather refers to the very broad reading he undertook in those years: his preferred aesthetic studies of romanticism, Faust, don Juan, ahasverus, and all kinds of things. For instance, in the journal entry BB:51 he uses the wording, “my studies” (“mit Studium”) in reference to his grand project, and in not3:16 “my project” (“mit Forehavende”) refers to the same.58 henning Fenger says of this whole phenomenon: “there is no purpose in trying to enforce some plan or model upon such an incoherent body of material. it shows us Kierkegaard in his Sturm und Drang period, when his genius seeks to find itself in many different ways, via religion, philosophy, aesthetics, and, last but not least, literature.”59 57 SKS 25, 459–61, nB30:93 (with facsimile of the journal page on p. 460) / JP 6, 6888. 58 Cf. Finn gredal Jensen and Kim ravn, “tekstredegørelse til journalen BB,” SKS K17, p. 139, note (“Critical account of the text,” in KJN 1, p. 365, note 2), and niels w. Bruun and Finn gredal Jensen, “tekstredegørelse til notesbog 3,” SKS K19, pp. 145–6. 59 henning Fenger, Kierkegaard, the Myths and Their Origins: Studies in the Kierkegaardian Papers and Letters, trans. by George C. Schoolfield, New Haven and london: yale university press 1980, p. 87 (in danish, Kierkegaard-Myter og KierkegaardKilder. 9 kildekritiske studier i de Kierkegaardske papirer, breve og aktstykker, odense: 116 Finn Gredal Jensen In the margin Kierkegaard added a short clarification. As far as his purported polemical nature is concerned, he is not sure exactly whether those were møller’s words to sibbern to repeat to him—“you are so thoroughly polemical that it is quite appalling”—but he is certain that this is what møller “always said to me while he was living,” and it seems, from this and many other sources, that later sibbern had taken over the role as intellectual counselor: i cannot remember exactly whether the dying p. m. enjoined sibbern to say those words to me (you are so thoroughly polemical, etc.), and i am almost inclined to doubt it. But i remember very well the other words he asked s. to tell me the last time he spoke with him before his death. As for the first words (You are so thoroughly polemical), that is what he always said to me while he was living, and s., too, has used them against me several times afterward.60 in any case, an extremely talkative Kierkegaard is what sibbern later experienced.61 sibbern’s daughter, augusta sibbern møller, wrote to harald høffding: “one of my childhood memories is of walking and holding my father’s hand while s. Kierkegaard was on the other side of us, talking eagerly and stopping now and again in order to speak clearly about things that were important to him.”62 sibbern himself writes that Kierkegaard “was continually preoccupied with himself...with what stirred inside him and with expressing it [udgyde det].”63 whether this was much different with the relationship to møller is not easy to say. the fact that Kierkegaard might have talked most does not imply, however, that his genius was the greater of the two but, rather, that they were equal but their roles quite different: møller as a socratic deliverer of odense universitetsforlag 1976 (Odense University Studies in Scandinavian Languages and Literatures, vol. 7), p. 75). 60 SKS 25, 461, nB30:93.a / JP 6, 6889. it is not known when was the last time sibbern spoke to møller. a short letter without date is preserved; it reads as follows: “dear sibbern! / Have the inconvenience of coming here to me if your affairs allow it, but stay here only five minutes. my blood is somewhat agitated: i cannot speak for very long at a time. / your / p. møller.” Quoted from sejer Kühle, Søren Kierkegaard. Barndom og ungdom, Copenhagen: aschehoug 1950, p. 108, with a note referring to the ms at the royal library (additamenta 274, 8o). the letter is found neither in Borup’s edition nor in Breve til og fra Sibbern, vols. 1–2, ed. by C.l.n. mynster, Copenhagen: gyldendal 1866. 61 Cf. Kühle, Søren Kierkegaard. Barndom og ungdom, pp. 109–10. 62 letter from augusta sibbern møller to harald høffding, dated december 7, 1912, royal library, nKs 4620, 4o, translation from Encounters with Kierkegaard, p. 19; cf. Jens himmelstrup, Sibbern. En Monografi, Copenhagen: J.h. schultz 1934, p. 262. 63 letter from sibbern to h.p. Barfod, cf. Encounters with Kierkegaard, pp. 216–17. as to the role of sibbern after møller’s death, one should also have in mind Kierkegaard’s letter from Berlin to sibbern from december 15, 1841. in this one reads: “even now when i cannot personally ascertain it for myself every day, i have never doubted that you would maintain some of that interest with which you have always honored me, especially after poul møller’s death.” B&A, vol. 1, p. 83 / LD, letter 55, p. 106; Breve til og fra Sibbern, vol. 1, p. 196. it appears from the same letter that sibbern, in vain, had advised Kierkegaard to translate The Concept of Irony into german; at Kierkegaard’s defense of his thesis a few months earlier, on september 29, 1841, sibbern was opponens ex officio. Poul Martin Møller: Kierkegaard and the Confidant of Socrates 117 ideas that seemed perhaps to be there already, and Kierkegaard developing them further. there is only a single testimony from Kierkegaard about a conversation he had with møller, namely, an entry from July 6, 1837 found in the Journal DD (cited in full in section iii, C below). this “most interesting conversation,” which took place on the evening of June 30, concerned irony and humor; according to Kierkegaard’s account, møller compared Christ’s relation to his disciples to the love with which “socrates encompassed his disciples.”64 For this reason, when speaking of møller, “the desired object of my feelings,” it seems natural to Kierkegaard in the next place to think of socrates, the deliverer, and of the nature of the love for his “disciples.”65 From møller himself there are no traces left of his disciple søren Kierkegaard. nevertheless, a dialectical relation to a “Kierkegaard” is evidenced by a letter from 1837 to his younger brother hans ulrik møller (1796–1862), with whom he discusses the treatise on immortality, which had just been published. in this letter one reads the following: “i especially enjoy debates in conversation when people can tolerate being refuted by the utmost ability and also in haste understand what the interlocutor means. thus, i once last year carried on a long dispute with the Kierkegaard whom you know, and it interested me greatly.”66 the Kierkegaard referred to here, however, is most probably not søren Kierkegaard, as assumed by some,67 but his brother peter Christian Kierkegaard, with whom møller was also well acquainted.68 64 SKS 17, 225, dd:18 / KJN 1, 216. one should also pay attention to the journal entry JJ:54 from 1843 with the heading “My Judgment on ‘Either/Or’ ”: “there was a young man, happily gifted as an alcibiades. he lost his way in the world. in his need he looked about for a socrates but among his contemporaries found none. he then begged the gods to transform him himself into one. But look! He who had been so proud of being an Alcibiades became so humbled and mortified by the grace of the gods that when he received just what could make him proud, he felt humbler than all.” SKS 18, 157, JJ:54 / KJN 2, 146. take note of the wording, he “found none among his contemporaries”—since møller, his socrates, was dead and therefore no longer among the contemporaries. Georg Brandes, Kierkegaard’s first biographer, discusses this entry, however in a context where he does not mention møller, cf. Søren Kierkegaard. En kritisk Fremstilling i Grundrids, Copenhagen: gyldendal 1877, pp. 44–5. 66 Borup, Letter no. 151; first published by Morten Borup in “F.C. Olsens brevarkiv på det kgl. Bibliotek,” Fund og Forskning i Det Kongelige Biblioteks Samlinger, vol. 3, 1956, pp. 103–16; pp. 113–14. 67 Cf. uffe andreasen, Poul Møller og romantismen – den filosofiske idealisme i Poul Møllers senere forfatterskab, Copenhagen: gyldendal 1973, p. 86; cf. pp. 67–8. 68 i agree with morten Borup, who, in his explanatory note to the letter, says that “poul møller knew both peter Christian and søren K., but in all probability the person in question here is the elder of the two, p.C.K.” Poul Møller og hans Familie i Breve, vol. 3, p. 120. in an earlier letter, in a very friendly tone, dated october 17, 1830, in which møller answers p.C. Kierkegaard’s inquiry about his position in Christiania (oslo), which peter Christian considered applying for (Borup, letter no. 116), møller thanks him for his doctoral dissertation on the concept of the lie (which møller lated reviewed thoroughly in the Maanedsskrift for Litteratur) and also “for the friendly disposition with which you have preserved the memory of our social life in Copenhagen.” 65 118 Finn Gredal Jensen From second-hand sources, however, it is obvious that søren Kierkegaard and møller spent much time together, and for a person like Kierkegaard, time is synonymous with words. in his møller biography, vilhelm andersen writes that the two were often seen in the street together, and also in other public places.69 we read in the poet henrik hertz’s (1797/8–1870) diary of June 4, 1836, “evening at hb’s [heibergs] and said farewell before their trip to paris. Kierkegaard, poul møller, etc., were there.”70 this does not say much, indicating only that they visited the same circles. likewise, even the fact that in møller’s last years 1836–38 he lived at nytorv, the same square where Kierkegaard lived in his paternal home until september 1, 1837, does not provide evidence that the two saw each other privately.71 more important is the testimony of hans Brøchner (1820–75). in his “recollections of søren Kierkegaard,” he tells of an episode that is very typical in the way it depicts møller’s personality. it took place on october 25, 1836 during the doctoral defence of F.o. lange, at which occasion møller and madvig were the opponents.72 Brøchner recalls what Kierkegaard told him: 69 vilhelm andersen, Poul Møller, p. 394. as is often the case, andersen does not list any sources to support this statement. 70 Encounters with Kierkegaard, p. 218, with reference on p. 328 to the ms. 71 møller lived at nytorv no. 117, today no. 17; cf. tudvad, Kierkegaards København, p. 29. Kierkegaard lived in his paternal home, nytorv no. 2, apparently until september 1, 1837, when he moved to løvstræde, cf. tudvad, Kierkegaards København, p. 31.—For the sake of completeness i will mention a further testimony: in the summer of 1851 Kierkegaard received a letter from petronella ross, the former housekeeper of rasmus møller; she writes, “i know your brother in Sjælland, and in my youth I was a friend of his first wife, Marie B.; for many years I lived in the late Bishop møller’s house (you knew poul martin, his dear son). Bishop Boisen’s wife placed me there.” B&A, vol. 1, p. 304 / LD, letter 280, p. 387. however, it is not very useful information that Kierkegaard “knew” møller, since this can imply almost anything. 72 Frederik olaus lange (1798–1862) had been one of Kierkegaard’s teachers at the Borgerdyd school, and møller knew him personally. in his library Kierkegaard had lange’s dissertation, De casuum universis causis et rationibus commentatio grammatica, Copenhagen: popp 1836 (ASKB 610), and lange is obviously the greek teacher portrayed in Johannes Climacus, or De omnibus dubitandum est, Pap. iv B 1, p. 107 / JC, 121. at an earlier time, møller had reviewed lange’s greek grammar, Det græske Sprogs Grammatik til Skolernes Brug, in Dansk Litteratur-Tidende, 1827, no. 5, pp. 65–74 (not reprinted in the Posthumous Writings). møller and his wife saw the langes until 1833 when they moved to vordingborg where lange taught at the grammar school, while working on his dissertation, and 1841 became its headmaster; when the school was closed in 1846 they moved back to Copenhagen, and he was employed at the university. From one of lange’s sons, the art historian Julius lange (1838–96) we have the amusing evidence, in a letter to vilhelm andersen, dated december 27, 1894, that møller reminded his mother, louise paludan-müller (1803–62), of “a butcher” and that she did not approve of his perpetual habit of constantly giving a psychological analysis of his surroundings (“hans idelige...Hang til psykologiske Iagttagelser over sine Omgivelser”). Julius lange presumes that her own nature possibly did not please møller either, since “with her strong and bold ability of reflection she was occupied with everything in heaven and on earth and everything in between, and significantly surpassed the limits for femininity which he—somewhat narrow-minded [bornert]—had wanted to define….It is more provable that he must have hurt her somewhat with his critical statements about the first works of her younger Poul Martin Møller: Kierkegaard and the Confidant of Socrates 119 s. K. often mentioned poul møller, and always with the most profound devotion. Far more than his writings, it was poul møller’s character that had made an impression on him. he regretted that the time would soon come when—after the vivid memory of his personality had faded, and judgments of him would be based on his works—his significance would no longer be understood. He once told me of an amusing little episode regarding p. møller. he [møller] was to speak as an ex officio opponent at a doctoral defense and had jotted down his remarks on several loose sheets that were placed in the dissertation. he introduced each objection with the phrase graviter vituperandum est [“it must be seriously criticized (that)”], but as soon as Præses had given an answer to his objection, he said good-naturedly, Concedo [“i yield, i give way to (your argument, your words)”], and moved on to the next objection. after a rather short opposition he closed by expressing his sincere regrets that the time allotted him did not allow him to continue this interesting conversation. as he left he passed s. K., who was standing in the audience, and said in an undertone to him: “shall we go down to pleisch?” this was the tearoom he usually frequented. while he was acting as an opponent all his loose sheets of paper had fallen out of the book at once and had floated down onto the floor. seeing the great man crawling around picking up the scattered sheets had contributed not a little to lifting the mood in the auditorium.73 As already mentioned, Møller’s first biographer was his friend F.C. Olsen, the co-editor of the Posthumous Writings, who included his “life of poul martin møller” in the edition. Kierkegaard, of course, read this when it appeared in 1843, and this gave him something to complain about which he expresses at the end of a large footnote in the Concluding Unscientific Postscript in 1846. it has to do with møller and hegelianism— namely, that towards the end of his life he was moving away from it (or rather from heiberg), on the threshold of something entirely new, and was only stopped by an early death—but towards the end of the note it also gives Kierkegaard the opportunity to deliver a very personal description of møller’s character. Characteristically, he writes earlier in the same note of hegel, and of how socrates, the master, might have had something to laugh at, just as møller so often would do: perhaps this note is an appropriate place for something i have to complain about. in Poul Møllers Levnet there is only a single reference that conveys any idea of how he in his last years viewed hegel. in this restraint, the distinguished editor has presumably permitted himself to be guided by partiality and reverence for the deceased, by an uneasy regard for what certain people would say, what a speculative and almost hegelian public might judge. nevertheless, precisely when he thought he was acting out of partiality for the deceased, the editor perhaps damaged the impression of him. it is more noteworthy than many an aphorism included in the printed collection, and just as noteworthy as many a youthful episode preserved by the careful and tasteful biographer in his lovely and noble presentation, that p. m., when everything here at home was hegelian, judged quite differently, that for some time he first spoke of Hegel almost with indignation, until his and much beloved brother Frederik paludan-müller [1809–76].” Breve fra Julius Lange, ed. by p. Købke, Copenhagen: det nordiske Forlag 1902, pp. 315–16. 73 Encounters with Kierkegaard, p. 241; Kirmmse’s translation (slightly modified) is from the ms at the royal library, Copenhagen, additamenta 415 d, 4o. Brøchner’s memoirs were written in December 1871 and January 1872 and first published posthumously in 1877 (Brøchner died in 1875) in Det nittende Aarhundrede, vol. 5, pp. 337–74. 120 Finn Gredal Jensen wholesome, humorous nature made him smile, especially at hegelianism, or, to recall p. m. even more clearly, made him laugh at it heartily. who has been enamoured of p. m. and forgotten his humor; who has admired him and forgotten his wholesomeness; who has known him and forgotten his laughter, which did one good even when it was not entirely clear what he was laughing at, because his absentmindedness occasionally left one perplexed.74 the “single reference” that Kierkegaard mentions, but avoids spelling out, is found in a context where olsen explains møller’s relation to hegel with respect to metaphysics. møller was moving away from hegel, olsen says, “and followed with lively interest the opposition against this philosopher and his followers; indeed he even became irritated, albeit only with the latter.”75 In a footnote he exemplifies the last point: here is an example of one of these surprising, indeed, almost frightening judgments that one could now and then hear from him. a friend once asked him to try to see if he could give, in a brief sentence, the key point in the hegelian philosophy. poul møller was silent for a moment, rubbing his chin as he lay on his sofa, and then said: “yes—hegel is really mad. he suffers from a monomania and believes that the Concept can extend itself like this”—here he made some wide motions with his hands and said no more.76 the verdict “mad” might have been too strong for Kierkegaard, after all, so he left it out, but nevertheless considered including it in another Postscript context. in part two, section two, Chapter 3, § 2, there is a passage that reads thus: “if the system otherwise lacks an ethics, it is in return completely moral with the aid of the category of the spurious infinity, and so exaggeratedly moral that it uses it even in logic.”77 This replaced the following reflection on skepticism and madness, which is found in the draft: Self-reflection was a skepticism; it is overcome in pure thinking. But pure thinking is a still more extreme skepticism. Despite all the inwardness of self-reflection, it nevertheless could not forget its relation to actuality in the sense of actuality, its relation to the an sich that pursues it. pure thinking, however, is positive through having taken the whole matter imaginatively into a sphere where there is no relation to actuality at all. pure thinking does not even dream that it is skepticism—but this itself is the most extreme skepticism. if, without pressing the comparison, one were to compare skepticism with insanity, a person who has a notion of being insane and whose life goes on amid this conflict is less mad, however, than one who jubilatingly triumphs as the cleverest of all.78 on a level with the word “insanity” Kierkegaard has inserted the following in the margin, “and danish readers will not forget that poul møller regarded hegel as 74 SKS 7, 40.31–36 and 41.6–18 / CUP1, 34, note. F.C. olsen (in ES1), p. 109. 76 ibid., footnote. (partly translated in CUP2, p. 189, note 40, but the hongs render “Begrebet kan udbrede sig saadan” wrongly as “the concept as such can extend itself).” 77 SKS 7, 309.20–23 / CUP1, 338. 78 ms 10.1 in SKS K7, pp. 19–20, Pap. vi B 54,19 / CUP2, 75. 75 Poul Martin Møller: Kierkegaard and the Confidant of Socrates 121 mad.”79 However, none of this was in the final edition of the Postscript, in which only the above-mentioned hint in the footnote appeared. poul martin møller died on march 13, 1838, not yet 44 years of age. in the month of april, Kierkegaard wrote in his journal, “Poul Møller is dead.”80 the brevity of this report—although underlined in the manuscript—may be surprising, but before this he writes of his sorrow, “again such a long time has passed in which i have been unable to collect myself for the least thing—i must now make another little shot at it.”81 Apparently, he lets his sad thoughts fly away and escapes in a romantic and highly poetic marginal note, dated April 1: “This morning I saw half a score of wild geese fly away in the crisp cool air; they were right overhead at first and then farther and farther away, and at last they separated into two flocks, like two eyebrows over my eyes, which now gazed into the land of poetry.”82 the land of poetry is the land of departure from this world, the anticipation of eternal life, which is also reflected in another entry, possibly from the same day: “when the world grows dark for a real Christian in his hour of death, it is because the sunlight of eternal bliss shines too strongly in his eyes.”83 at least, the land of poetry was strongly unfolded when on the evening of april 1 the young Kierkegaard heard an actor recite møller’s poem “Joy over denmark” and “was so strangely moved by the words: do you remember the far-traveled man? yes, now he has traveled far—but i for one shall certainly remember him.”84 III. References to the Writings of P.M. Møller Søren Kierkegaard of course bought the first edition of Møller’s Posthumous Writings, 1839–43 (ASKB 1574–1576). strangely, he does not seem to refer or allude anywhere to Møller’s main fictional prose work, the unfinished novel Adventures of a Danish Student, parts of which møller read aloud in the student association in 1824; the fragments were first published in 1843 in volume 3 of the Posthumous Writings.85 however, it goes without saying that he must have known the novel soon after its appearance, just as he knew all the other texts that became publicly accessible in this edition.86 this is clear from his reaction when, for her 13th birthday, he gives his 79 ibid. / CUP2, 76. SKS 17, 252, dd:96 / KJN 1, 243. 81 ibid. 82 SKS 17, 252, dd:96.a / KJN 1, 243. 83 SKS 17, 252, dd:99 / KJN 1, 243. 84 SKS 17, 253, dd:101 / KJN 1, 244. i will return to “Joy over denmark” below in section iii, B. 85 a characteristic comparison of two important publications in 1843, volume 3 of møller’s Posthumous Writings and Kierkegaard’s Either/Or, is found in a letter from signe læssøe to hans Christian andersen, dated april 7, 1843: “another book has appeared here— you see, we are productive, even though it is not the literary season—which is just as lovable as Either/Or is unlovable, namely, the third part of poul møller’s Works.” Cf. Encounters with Kierkegaard, p. 58. 86 there is no evidence that møller recited the novel in public any later than 1824. he might have done so privately, but in all probability Kierkegaard did not know it before its appearance in print in 1843. 80 122 Finn Gredal Jensen niece henriette lund (1829–1909) a copy of møller’s writings and learns that she had already amused herself with the story of “the frizzy Frits.”87 it is important to emphasize that, as noted, one can sense that Kierkegaard had read and was familiar with any text by møller he had access to, but naturally he could not and did not find it worthwhile to mention or reflect upon each and every one of them. this should be remembered when in the following i will discuss the references and allusions to møller’s writings that are found in Kierkegaard. note well that what is found in møller’s posthumous writings is sometimes treated by Kierkegaard at a point before they appeared, for example, irony, but in such cases one has to consider the possible influence from oral statements, that is, what Kierkegaard can remember from their conversations. in the following treatment of Kierkegaard’s use, or possible use, of møller’s writings, the order will as far as possible be chronological. i will begin with the early satire on grundtvig, “draft of a letter from heaven” (section iii, a). as an author, møller’s primary means of communication in his earlier years was poetry; i will discuss the two poems to which Kierkegaard pays special attention (section iii, B). Then I will turn to philosophy, first Møller’s fragments on irony and nihilism, including his preoccupation with the figure of Ahasverus (Section III, C). The 87 in her memoirs, issued after her death in 1909, one reads that “the trusty anders [Kierkegaard’s servant] returned with a new letter with quite different contents, accompanied by a package that on closer inspection turned out to be poul møller’s posthumous works. Just a few days earlier, at my cousins’, i had got hold of a book that quickly reduced me to the same state as the man of whom the Spanish king had remarked, ‘Either he must be mad, or he is reading Don Quixote!’ The story of ‘the frizzy Frits’ had sent me reeling with laughter and hilarity. now that i had that treasure in my hands as my own rightful property, I was so overwhelmed with ecstasy that I could hardly find words with which to express this to uncle søren. even so, he was somewhat disappointed that chance had placed a book by poul møller in my hands before he had managed to do so.” henriette lund, Erindringer fra Hjemmet, Copenhagen: gyldendal 1909, pp. 119–20; trans. by Kirmmse in Encounters with Kierkegaard, p. 166. when she reports that it was on her twelfth birthday (Encounters, p. 165), that is, 1842 (she was born in 1829), she must have been in error, since Adventures of a Danish Student was contained in volume 3 of ES1 of 1843.—i will also mention a curiosity, of which Kierkegaard would not have known the existence: henrik hertz’s planned but never completed satirical play, The Fifth Monarchy, in which Kierkegaard was meant to be a character, see Encounters with Kierkegaard, pp. 221–4. Inter alia, Kierkegaard would seduce a girl in a tent, “but under one of his assumed authorial pseudonyms,” and would say “that he is not responsible for what has been done by that firm.” (Encounters, p. 222). as far as møller is concerned, the character Kierkegaard “can also refer to the scene in poul møller’s Adventures of a Danish Student, in which thirteen-year-old Frits on his romantic escapade wants to earn his bread with his violin, and at a poor peasant farm is addressed prosaically and gruffly by a peasant woman. Now the latter would have been made even coarser by the author of A Story of Everyday Life and left at that. he would have sought an antithesis in two personalities: Frits with poetic, free tendencies—and the peasant woman, sunk utterly in the prose of life. But how different is the poetic, radiant clarity that p. møller sheds upon the situation! the woman discovers that she was Frits’ wet nurse, and now the full strength of the poetry of her existence (which every existence has) breaks through from beneath her hard crust. Frits is far from being utterly absorbed into the poetic” (Encounters, p. 224). Poul Martin Møller: Kierkegaard and the Confidant of Socrates 123 review of thomasine gyllembourg’s novel The Extremes will then be regarded from Kierkegaard’s point of view (section iii, d). the essay “on telling Children Fairy tales” will be compared to Kierkegaard’s treatment of the subject (section iii, e). møller’s characteristic feature as a fragmentary writer is unfolded especially in his scattered thoughts, a few of which Kierkegaard refers to, including an aphorism on the concept of affectation, which was very central to møller’s philosophy (section iii, F). eventually, i will discuss Kierkegaard’s references to møller’s philosophical treatise of 1837, “thoughts on the possibility of proofs of human immortality, with regard to the latest literature on the subject,” considered in the light of the contemporary debate on the immortality of the soul (section iii, g). A. “Draft of a Letter from Heaven” the small satirical piece, “draft of a letter from heaven, in accordance with grundtvig’s new historical taste, Found by poul møller,” was published in Nyeste Skilderie af Kjøbenhavn on december 19, 1818.88 it is a parody of n.F.s. grundtvig’s peculiar style in his various contributions to the literary controversy between adam oehlenschläger (1779–1850) and Jens Baggesen, in which møller participated as a member of “Tylvten” (“the twelve”), a group of admiring students who came to the support of the laureate poet oehlenschläger when Baggesen attacked him.89 the twelve students challenged Baggesen publicly by asking him to defend his criticism and comportment in latin (several of the students, including møller, were accomplished latinists and debated in latin at the reading club called “lyceum”).90 88 “Forsøg til et himmelbrev i grundtvigs nye, historiske smag, fundet af poul møller,” Nyeste Skilderie af Kjøbenhavn, vol. 15, ed. by s. soldin, Copenhagen 1818, no. 101, columns 1696–9; reprinted in ES1, vol. 1, pp. 195–200. 89 on this controversy, see, for instance, in detail Kristian arentzen, Baggesen og Oehlenschläger. Literaturhistorisk Studie, vols. 1–8, Copenhagen: otto B. wroblewsky 1870–78, especially vol. 7. the aesthetic dichotomy grundtvig–oehlenschläger is also touched upon by møller later in his life when in one of his scattered thoughts he writes the following: “there is a way of producing ideas which is characteristic for the Christian age and which is completely in conflict with ancient taste. The author is not brooding over the idea for a classic work until it is ripe in him and does not constantly apply criticism and work for the production of the idea. By contrast, his entire life constitutes a continuous literary activity; his concepts are developed during the work so that his entire life as an author should only be regarded as a public course of thought, a kind of uninterrupted confession. one sees his striving in all the stages which he has run through, as a continuous stream, but one sees no finished products with independent organic life. Jean Paul’s literary Nachlass is a fitting example of this unlimited productivity, which has its principle only in the author himself, and, to take an example which is closer to hand, grundtvig. goethe’s and oehlenschläger’s works, by contrast, have value as classic art.” ES1, vol. 3, p. 233. 90 the challenge to Baggesen was afterwards printed, of course in latin, in the newspaper Dagen, no. 236, october 3, 1818, signed by “the twelve”: a.g. rudelbach, p.m. møller, C. hauch, C. lütken, C. Flor, w.r. dichman, n.B. Krarup, h. Brøchner (a theologian not identical with the philosopher, who was not born yet!), g.a. dichman, l. abrahams, n.C. møhl, and l.C. westergaard. more contributions, from both sides, to the controversy followed throughout the rest of the year in Dagen. 124 Finn Gredal Jensen møller played a leading role in this by bringing the challenge to Baggesen, and when Baggesen declined this, made the threat that three-quarters of the students living in the dormitory regensen (where møller also lived at times) would come and hiss off stage a piece which was written by one of Baggesen’s friends, namely, heiberg’s The Prophecy of Tycho Brahe.91 møller wrote a splendid parody, “on the smallness of Jens,” of a Baggesen poem from 1786, “there was a time when i was very small.”92 and he wrote the “draft of a letter from heaven,” to which Kierkegaard presumably alludes when in the Journal DD in an entry dated July 13, 1837 he uses the formulation, “made in our study.”93 similarly, he concludes a letter to regine olsen in the autumn of 1840 and mentions møller: “in testimony whereof i permit my eternalized p. møller to stand as witness. / granted in our study.”94 although the equivalent latin wording “e museo meo/nostro (dabam/datum)” is a common letter formula, it is obvious that here Kierkegaard had møller’s parody in mind, which he undoubtedly had enjoyed reading; as is well known, his own verdict of grundtvig might be summarized in the closing words of the journal entry nB23:67 from 1851: “i think grundtvig is nonsense.”95 it is in the same entry that Kierkegaard writes ironically of the mighty prophet grundtvig stepping in and out of the State Church and defining it by his very presence along with his followers, “for as poul møller once pointed out that history and grundtvig and grundtvig and history are one, so also must denmark and grundtvig, and grundtvig and denmark be one—provided it is historical truth with the ‘listening thousands.’ ”96 this is also an allusion to møller’s “draft of a letter from heaven,” in which, for instance, the following closing words are ascribed to grundtvig: “at the end i will cry out once more, woe! indeed, three times, woe to the puppies who have opposed the chronicle and me, and me and the chronicle and the chronicle and me. amen.”97 in the Concluding Unscientific Postscript, part one, Chapter 1, “the historical point of view,” we read at the end of § 2, “the Church,” a few statements about the 91 Cf. hauch, Minder om min Barndom og min Ungdom, pp. 317–19. in his memoirs hauch, who was one of “the twelve,” does not say directly that the play in question was in fact J.l. heiberg’s Tycho Brahes Spaadom [The Prophecy of Tycho Brahe], which premiered on the King’s birthday on January 28, 1819. his reasons for not mentioning this might be that as an old man he had forgotten it, or rather that the fact was perhaps somewhat too delicate or unflattering for an ideal portrait of Møller, since Heiberg was a close friend. 92 p.m. møller, “om Jenses lidenhed,” in Hermes. Nytaarsgave for 1820, ed. by Carsten hauch et al., Copenhagen 1819, pp. 1–2; reprinted in ES1, vol. 1, pp. 17–18. in his memoirs hauch writes of this poem: “the perfect execution and the virtuosity with which he turned Baggesen’s own words against him have kept this poem above the river of oblivion, in which so much has sunk of what was written at the time with cleverness and power.” hauch, Minder om min Barndom og min Ungdom, p. 299. 93 “resolution of July 13, 1837, made in our study [givet paa vort Studerekammer] at 6 o’clock in the evening.” SKS 17, 229, dd:28.a / KJN 1, 221. 94 B&A, vol. 1, p. 50. / LD, letter 17, p. 63. 95 “mig synes g. er et vrøvl.” SKS 24, 242.36, nB23:67. 96 SKS 24, 242.19–22, nB23:67. 97 ES1, vol. 1, p. 200. on grundtvig’s “chronicles” (“Krøniker”), see, for instance, the explanatory note to SKS 7, 52.4. Poul Martin Møller: Kierkegaard and the Confidant of Socrates 125 figures J.C. Lindberg and Grundtvig: the former “has a good head on his shoulders; however, what in truth all this is that is said about grundtvig is highly dubious, that he is a seer, bard, skald, prophet, with an almost matchless [mageløst] outlook upon world history and with one eye for the profound.”98 this is quite modest when compared to the manuscripts, from which it appears that Kierkegaard planned to include a longer reflection on the whole Grundtvig phenomenon, in which he also touches upon his style and møller’s “draft of a letter from heaven.” this piece, however, was not included in the book. among other things, we read in the draft that grundtvig is his own caricature, so absolute is he. his absoluteness changes into parody just as does his style, which requires only a careful reproduction, be it polemical, as formerly by poul møller, or admiring, as by siegfried ley. then it is parody, so that as a consequence friend and foe, by doing the same, produce the same effect. indeed, even if these innocent and insignificant remarks should move Pastor Grundtvig and prompt him to put on his asa-strength, i am certain that he will slay me so absolutely that i will come out of it completely unscathed.…99 B. “The Old Lover” and “Joy over Denmark” Kierkegaard only refers to møller as a translator of the Odyssey very indirectly as “the admirer of homer” in the dedication to The Concept of Anxiety.100 as regards Møller’s original poetry, we find several references in the writings, but only to some specific lines in two of his poems.101 98 SKS 7, 52.2–5 / CUP1, 46. Jacob Christian lindberg (1797–1857) was an energetic supporter of grundtvig. 99 Pap. vi B 29, p. 104 / CUP2, 18–19. the “siegfried ley” referred to here is Christian Sigfred Ley (1806–74), who never finished his studies in theology but worked as a tutor; he was a strong supporter of Grundtvig. Still in the fair copy we find the following version, which, however, was deleted: “his [i.e., grundtvig’s] life is so parodically patterned that one needs only to tell it quite simply and thereby write a satire, just as his style is so parodical that just a careful reproduction of it, for example, polemically by møller in the past, or admiringly by siegfried ley, is a parody. this is a good demonstration that it is in itself parodical, that friend and foe by doing the same thing produce the same effect.” Pap. vi B 98,17 / CUP2, 30–1. 100 Kierkegaard knew møller’s Odyssey translations at least after their reprint in 1839 in ES1, vol. 1. in the Auctioneer’s Sales Record none of the original prints (1816, 1822, 1825) of the translations appear. there is no evidence that Kierkegaard knew of the existence of møller’s translation of the pseudo-homeric Batrachomyomachia, “the Battle of Frogs and Mice,” presumably written in the winter of 1816–17, but first printed in 1848 in ES2 (not in ASKB), vol. 1, pp. 254–61, where thaarup had completed the fragment; but that Kierkegaard has known the greek poem, is clear from Either/Or in the passage where he compares homer to mozart’s Don Giovanni and declares that homer does not deserve immortality for the Batrachomyomachia; SKS 2, 58.13–20 / EO1, 50. on the “odyssean” line of “Joy over denmark,” see below. 101 apart from the two poems i will treat below, there is also an indirect reference to møller’s poem or small dramatic scene “hans and trine” (ES1, vol. 1, pp. 83–8, by the editors included in the suite of poems “scenes in rosenborg garden”; originally, the poem, which was written on the journey to China, was published in Gefion. Nytaarsgave for 1826, ed. by elisa 126 Finn Gredal Jensen when visiting Constantin Constantius, the young man in love in Repetition (1843) despairingly keeps on repeating the sixth stanza of “the old lover” (“den gamle elsker”): Just as lovers frequently resort to the poet’s words to let the sweet distress of love break forth in blissful joy, so also did he. as he paced back and forth, he repeated again and again a verse from poul møller: then comes a dream from my youth to my easy-chair. a heartfelt longing comes over me for you, thou sun of women!102 His eyes filled with tears, he threw himself down on a chair, he repeated the verse again and again. i was shaken by the scene.103 Beyer, Copenhagen: Forlagt af udgiverinden 1825, pp. 154–9). however, this is only in the sense that J.l. heiberg, in his vaudeville Aprilsnarrene eller Intriguen i Skolen [April Fools, or Intrigue at School], Copenhagen: F.a.C. printzlau 1826; which premiered on april 22, 1826), heavily refers to it, not only by using the same characters and names of the two young lovers, but also by letting trine, in scene 23, refer to møller’s work as a “Pasquil” about them that has recently appeared and has also been performed, with hans’ part recited by the actor C.n. rosenkilde (1786–1861). it is this spoiled illusion Kierkegaard refers to when, in Pap. i a 23 / JP 2, 2241, he quotes trine’s words freely, “there is an old man, named rosenkilde, who copies you.” heiberg’s original wording here is, “Just think that the actor who played you [sc. hans] is really an old geezer, named rosenkilde; he was decked out in such a way that he looked like a schoolboy.” heiberg, Aprilsnarrene, p. 79 (Poetiske Skrifter, vols. i–ii, Copenhagen: C.a. reitzel 1862, vol. 6, pp. 92–3). the declamation took place at the Court theater in February 1826, and rosenkilde, at the time, was an aged man, at least compared to trine, who was performed by the 13-year-old Johanne luise pätges, the later mrs. heiberg (1812–90). 102 in danish the quoted lines of the love poem read: “Da kommer en Drøm fra min Ungdomsvaar / Til min Lænestol, / Efter dig jeg en inderlig Længsel faaer, / Du Qvindernes Sol.” ES1, vol. 1, p. 12. the poem was originally published in Iris. En Samling af Poesie og Prosa, ed. by Carsten hauch, Copenhagen: B. Brünnich 1819, pp. 112–5. 103 SKS 4, 13.21–31 / R, 135–6. (Translation of the stanza slightly modified.) Constantin Constantius was not able to forget this incident: “with the reader’s permission, i shall once again consider the time he came to my room intoxicated with recollection, when his heart continuously ging ihm über in that verse by Poul Møller, when he confided that he had to deny himself lest he spend the whole day with the girl he loved. he repeated the same verse that evening when we parted. it will never be possible for me to forget that verse; indeed, i can more easily obliterate the recollection of his disappearance than the memory of that moment, just as the news of his disappearance disturbed me far less than his situation that first day.” SKS 4, 23.2–11 / R, 146. vilhelm andersen, in his Poul Møller, p. 91, writes the following on the poem: “there are certainly many more young men than the young man in Kierkegaard’s Repetition who have taken refuge in these verses by poul møller in order to let the sweet anxiety of love break out in blessed joy.” Poul Martin Møller: Kierkegaard and the Confidant of Socrates 127 This poem, first published in 1819, but written in 1817 or early in 1818, when Møller was a private tutor at the estate Espe, seems to reflect his earlier, unhappy love for Margrethe Bloch. Since now the “old fixed idea” had “dissolved into a wholly pure elegy,” as he wrote in a letter to his friend B.s. ingemann,104 he imagines himself as an old man who recalls his love of youth, but with a longing, so that once more he goes to seek her. in the present context, the unhappy old lover might well be regarded as Kierkegaard’s own alter ego—although this is a somewhat strange identification—since a few years before, he had used the very same stanza in several letters to his fiancée, Regine Olsen. In one of these letters he compares her to the sun: “whenever you catch a breath of that heliotrope at home, which is still fresh, please think of me, for truly my mind and my soul are turned toward this sun, and a heartfelt longing comes over me for you, thou sun of women.”105 another letter begins with the wording, “My Regine! Am I dreaming, or ‘comes a dream from my youth to my easy-chair?’ ”106 miss olsen presumably knew the poem already and understood these quotations or allusions perfectly well.107 also in Notebook 7 from 1840–41, written in the same period as his engagement, Kierkegaard quoted the very same “dreamy” stanza and interpreted it in the following way: dreaming rises to ever higher powers; thus a dream within a dream-existence (whereby it becomes transformed into a kind of actuality) has an infinitely volatilizing effect. With what infinite ardor a youth can read the words of P. Møller’s poem: “The Old Lover”: then comes a dream from my youth to my easy-chair. a heartfelt longing comes over me for you, thou sun of women! Here the dream is in the second power for the youth; he first of all dreams that he is old in order to suck in through the funnel of a whole life the most aromatic moment of his earliest youth.108 the second møller poem that Kierkegaard refers to is “Joy over denmark” (“glæde over danmark”), with the well-known opening line “Rosen blusser alt i Danas Have” 104 Borup, letter no. 13. B&A, vol. 1, pp. 51–2 / LD, Letter 19, p. 66. (Translation slightly modified.) See also letter 18, in which he quotes the words “fra min Ungdomsvaar.” 106 B&A, vol. 1, p. 57 / LD, Letter 27, p. 72. (Translation slightly modified.) 107 maybe Kierkegaard read it aloud to her, or she had read it herself. niels thulstrup claims in B&A, vol. 2, p. 33, commentary on p. 50.5, that Kierkegaard gave her the first volume (1839) of ES1 (“S.K. gave Regine Olsen what had appeared of the first edition of p.m.’s Posthumous Writings”), but this has not been able to be verified; it seems that Thulstrup confused regine olsen with henriette lund, who tells that uncle søren gave her møller’s posthumous works (cf. Encounters with Kierkegaard, p. 166, and see the introduction to the present section iii); however, that took place not in 1839, but in 1843 after the appearance of ES1, vol. 3. 108 SKS 19, 208–9, not7:9 / JP 1, 804. (Translation of the stanza slightly modified.) 105 128 Finn Gredal Jensen (“The rose already flushes in Dana’s garden”). In the dedication to The Concept of Anxiety, the elements “Denmark’s joy in ‘Joy over Denmark,’ though ‘widely traveled’ always ‘remembered in the Danish summer’ ” allude to this poem.109 it was written during the long voyage—or one might say odyssey—to China (1819–21) and expresses the longing for denmark and the friends at home.110 the third stanza goes like this: Friends of mine in the danish summer! do you remember the widely traveled man Who, afar from Dana’s fairest flowers, where the southern wind beats the sail, wanders from his dearest native land?111 The poem was first published back in 1823 and appeared in the first volume of the Posthumous Writings in 1839; but Kierkegaard knew it long before 1839 and had a very emotional relation to it, since its “odyssean” line reminded him of møller, who travelled in his youth—and had now left for good.112 this is evident from the fact that he quotes this line in the Journal DD in the entry from april 2, 1838, written not long after møller’s death on march 13 of the same year. the actor n.p. nielsen had recited the poem at the royal theater, which, as already mentioned, made a thorough impression.113 C. Fragments on Irony and Nihilism møller had a humorous nature, which Kierkegaard himself witnesses in the footnote quoted above from the Postscript where he says, “who has known him and forgotten his laughter, which did one good even when it was not entirely clear 109 110 SKS 4, 311.4–6 / CA, 5. on the dedication see above in section ii. according to vilhelm andersen, it was written in manila in July 1820; Poul Møller, p. 107. 111 my translation. the danish wording is the following: “Mine Venner i den danske Sommer! / Mindes I den vidtforreiste Mand? / Som, saa langt fra Danas favre Blommer, / Her hvor Sydens Blæst paa Seilet trommer, / Flakker fra sit elskte Fødeland.” ES1, vol. 1, p. 47. The poem was first published in K.L. Rahbek’s Tilskuerne. Et Ugeskrift, no. 47, 1823, pp. 374–6. 112 the allusion to the opening lines of homer’s Odyssey is obvious. however, møller does not use the word “vidtforreist” (far-traveled, widely traveled) in his translation of homer’s Odyssey, where he renders the opening lines thus: “Manden besynge du, Musa! den heel forslagne, der flakked’ / Vidt om Land, da forstyrret han havde det hellige Troja.” 113 SKS 17, 253, dd:101 / KJN 1, 244. the actor nicolai peter nielsen (1795–1860) recited the poem at the royal theater on the evening of april 1, 1838. it seems that it was part of his repertoire; he had recited it several times following a debut performance of it at the theater on January 1, 1830. Kierkegaard later saw the actor couple n.p. nielsen and anna nielsen (1803–56); cf. the extant draft of a letter from 1847, B&A, vol. 1, pp. 189–90 / LD, letter 170, pp. 238–40. Poul Martin Møller: Kierkegaard and the Confidant of Socrates 129 what he was laughing at….”114 moreover, although in his writings he preferred direct communication—in the review of The Extremes he mentions the ideal that the author, “without tiring the reader with all too many pranks and beating around the bush [Spilopper og Omsvøb], should keep to the matter at hand and say straightforwardly what he has to say”115—møller was himself an ironist in the socratic sense (not in the romantic).116 one might even say that his sparse or fragmented authorship is a negation or in itself a manifestation of irony. in his writings, he treats the subject of irony non-ironically. if one wishes to explore this, one should pay special attention to the fragment “on the Concept of irony,” to a number of scattered thoughts, and to passages in the review of The Extremes.117 møller’s fragment “on the Concept of irony,” with the same title that Kierkegaard would later use for his dissertation, was meant for the Maanedsskrift for Litteratur as a response to eggert Christopher tryde’s (1781–1860) review of sibbern’s book on aesthetics.118 However, the study was never finished—what was completed, was an introduction concerning moral irony; møller stopped short of treating poetical irony—and the fragment was not published until 1848 in the second edition of the Posthumous Writings, volume 3.119 tryde, in his review, had included some concluding remarks on irony in the context of german romanticism. according to tryde, the romantics’ modus vivendi points in the wrong direction away from god and toward the ideal in nature.120 114 SKS 7, 41 / CUP1, 34, note. møller’s humor is visible in many different contexts, and also on a smaller scale; as an example of this take the funny rhyme just quoted from “the old lover,” Lænestol/Sol (easy-chair, sun); a more “serious” poet would hardly do this. 115 p.m. møller, “nye Fortællinger af Forfatteren til en hverdagshistorie. udgivne af Johan Ludvig Heiberg. andet Bind: extremerne. Kjøbenhavn. paa universitets-Boghandler Reitzels Forlag, trykt hos J. D. Qvist, Bog- og nodetrykker. 1835. 223 s. 8,” Maanedsskrift for Litteratur, vol. 15, Copenhagen: C.a. reitzel 1836, pp. 135–63; p. 139; ES1, vol. 2, p. 131. 116 Cf. vilhelm andersen, Poul Møller, p. 396. 117 on this review see below section iii, d. 118 e.C. tryde, “om poesie og Konst i almindelighed, med hensyn til alle arter deraf, dog især digte-, maler-, Billedhugger- og skuespiller-Konst; eller: Foredrag over almindelig Æsthetik og poetik. af Dr. Frederik Christian Sibbern, professor i philosophie. Første deel. Kbhvn. 1834. 392 sider. Forfatterens Forlag,” Maanedsskrift for Litteratur, vol. 13, Copenhagen: C.a. reitzel 1835, pp. 177–202; particularly pp. 200–2. 119 p.m. møller, “om Begrebet ironie,” in ES2, vol. 3, pp. 152–8. 120 tryde, “om poesie og Konst i almindelighed,” pp. 200–1: “it seems characteristic in the more recent poetic products that one does not so much aim to emphasize that inward ideal, dwelling in the objects…in and for itself, as to know every form, every figure and shape of life, that is, the bad and the good, the base and the elevated, as a necessary condition for the ideal appearing and coming into existence.” the negative, or immoral, character trait of such poetry is that it “seeks to detect something interesting even in what is the most mistaken, and that even when it feels happy about the objects, yet does not hold back a certain mockery about them, indeed, often openly mocks its own products as such.” in a similar vein, sibbern, in his On Poetry and Art, wrote of poetical irony “that in order to portray things with true objectivity, the poet must look to life and its figures, as to a game that he regards with a merely contemplative pleasure, without any mixture of sympathetic participation, indeed, with a contemplative smile, that is, with a mood like that which is found in real irony.” F.C. sibbern, 130 Finn Gredal Jensen in his fragment, møller never reaches a broader discussion of this profound nihilism of german romantic irony, but he only introduces the concept “such as it has formed itself in the aesthetic linguistic usage of the present.”121 as seen also in his review of The Extremes, his method is that of the licentiate in Adventures of a Danish Student (who studies mineralogy in order to identify the correct whetstone with which to sharpen his knife in order to get a good pen), beginning, so to speak, ab ovo, in this case with greek morality, that is, the old dichotomy between desire and reason, and the question as to what should be the right means to moral good. moral idealism was identical to subjectivity, as when later Fichte posited “the highest authority [Fuldmagt] in the individual’s consciousness, so that he [the individual], according to his own moral conviction in the individual case, should decide what his duty was….the subjective conviction is then regarded as the highest since the will of the individual is identified with the moral law.”122 the necessary consequence of this autonomy is moral nihilism, møller says, and then points out the universal danger this subjectivity implies, exemplified by Friedrich Schlegel’s notorious novel Lucinde (1799), which was seen, also in Kierkegaard’s dissertation, as a gospel of irony and in which one character says, “nothing could be more insane…than the moralists reproaching you with being egoistic. they’re completely wrong: for what god can possibly deserve a man’s respect who isn’t his own god?”123 pleasure and vegetation then become life proper and the true religion. møller refers to hegel who sees irony as identical with this empty attitude to life and defines it as “subjectivity which knows itself as the highest.”124 according to hegel, it is one of “the moral forms of evil.”125 the romantic ironist distances himself from an empty world and Om Poesie og Konst i Almindelighed, med Hensyn til alle Arter deraf, dog især Digte-, Maler-, Billedhugger- og Skuespillerkonst; eller: Foredrag over almindelig Æsthetik og Poetik, part one, Copenhagen: paa Forfatterens Forlag 1834, pp. 387–8; quoted by tryde, p. 200. 121 ES2, vol. 3, p. 152. 122 ibid., p. 154. 123 trans. by peter Firchow (Friedrich Schlegel’s lucinde and the Fragments, translated with an introduction by peter Firchow, minneapolis: university of minneapolis press 1971, p. 67). the passage, which is translated into danish and quoted in ES2, vol. 3, p. 155, is found in the section “idylle über den müssiggang” [“an idyll of idleness”]. schlegel’s Lucinde is also treated in møller’s review of The Extremes, and of course in Kierkegaard’s The Concept of Irony. 124 ES2, vol. 3, p. 155. in his Elements of the Philosophy of Right, § 140, hegel uses this formulation in his account of solger’s use of irony in relation to that of schlegel, who extended the meaning of the expression to include “that subjectivity which knows itself as supreme” (“jene sich selbst als das Höchste wissende Subjektivität”). g.w.F. hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right, ed. by allen w. wood, trans. by h.B. nisbet, Cambridge: Cambridge university press 1991, p. 170, note; Sämtliche Werke. Jubiläumsausgabe in 20 Bänden, ed. by hermann glockner, stuttgart: Friedrich Frommann verlag 1928–41, vol. 7, p. 217, note. 125 ES2, vol. 3, p. 158. this view of romantic irony as moral evil and emptiness is developed by hegel in Elements of the Philosophy of Right, § 140, in fine, where one reads: “in this shape, subjectivity is not only empty of all ethical content in the way of rights, duties, and laws, and is accordingly evil (evil, in fact, in an inherently wholly universal kind); in addition, its form is that of subjective emptiness, in that it knows itself as this emptiness of all Poul Martin Møller: Kierkegaard and the Confidant of Socrates 131 feels superior to it.126 the concept of irony in the german romantic movement is an “aberration,” which has only had a weak echo in danish literature, but is met also in everyday conversation as a wish for a “thinking free from prejudice” and generally as a “mistrust of the concept of morality.”127 not to be confused with irony, but akin to it, is sentimentality, which is a resignation towards outer life and a yielding to “an inward life, which is filled with longings and presentiments of what is to come, as the only things that are real.”128 these thoughts were, of course, familiar to Kierkegaard, and were later treated thoroughly in his dissertation. møller also treated irony and nihilism in a number of scattered thoughts and in his review of The Extremes, to which i will soon return. But as mentioned already, Møller’s unfinished study on irony did not appear in the first edition of the Posthumous Writings, which Kierkegaard owned; so in any case he could not have read it prior to the publication of his own dissertation on irony. what is more important in regard to Kierkegaard is their personal relation and møller’s “ironic” or socratic impact in their colloquies: the fact that the ideas sketched above and the contents of møller’s study was very probably imparted to Kierkegaard in one or more of their conversations. unfortunately, there is not much evidence concerning this, but, as already pointed out above in section ii, we learn from the journal entry dd:18 of their “most interesting conversation” on the evening of June 30, 1837 concerning irony and humor. this journal entry is important evidence that they discussed the matter thoroughly (and presumably did so more than once). i will allow myself to quote the main text of the entry in extenso, since the distinctions made in it concerning irony and humor might be considered Kierkegaard’s summary of their discussion and, of course, also his own further reflections on the subject: irony can no doubt also produce a certain calm (which may then correspond to the peace that follows a humorous development), which, however, is a long way from being Christian reconciliation (brothers in Christ, where every other distinction vanishes content and, in this knowledge, knows itself as the absolute.” Elements of the Philosophy of Right, p. 182; Jubiläumsausgabe, vol. 7, p. 219. 126 Cf. K. Brian soderquist, The Isolated Self: Truth and Untruth in Søren Kierkegaard’s on the Concept of irony, Copenhagen: C.a. reitzel 2007 (Danish Golden Age Studies, vol. 1), p. 152. soderquist writes, inter alia, “At first glance, Møller’s characterization of romanticism seems to be in keeping with his own sensitivity to the rights of the subjective, inner life. But importantly, for møller the kind of subjectivity celebrated by the romantics is closed off not only from bourgeois culture but also from a deeper moral order through which the self is formed and cultivated.” 127 ES2, vol. 3, p. 156. 128 ibid., p. 157. in his review of The Extremes (see below section iii, d), møller has the following to say on the relationship between sentimental poetry and irony: “irony was actually a natural continuation of this [of sentimental poetry], since sentimentality, when treated as art and driven to the extreme, is very closely related to heartlessness. a dim consciousness of this relation is presumably the reason for the fact that the sentimentalist who makes a career of his sympathy more than other people loathes an ironist. since his [the ironist’s] behavior appears to him as a parody of his own nature, he becomes agitated by the sight of it, just like a horse at the sight of a camel.” Maanedsskrift for Litteratur, vol. 15, 1836, pp. 147–8; ES1, vol. 2, pp. 140–1. 132 Finn Gredal Jensen absolutely, a nothing in proportion to being brothers in Christ—yet didn’t Christ make distinctions? didn’t he love John more than the others (poul møller in a most interesting conversation on the evening of June 30)? it can produce a certain love, the kind which e.g. socrates encompassed his disciples (spiritual pederasty, as hamann says), but it is still egoistic, because he stood as their deliverer, expanded their anxious expressions and views in his higher consciousness, in his point of view [Overskuen]; yet the movement’s diameter is not as great as the humorist (heaven—hell—the Christian must have scorned everything—the ironist’s highest polemical movement is nil admirari). irony is egoistic (it combats the bourgeois mentality yet persists with it, even though in the individual it ascends into the air like a songbird, jettisoning its ballast little by little, thus running the risk of ending with an “egoistic to-hell-with-it”; for irony has not yet slain itself by seeing itself, since the individual sees himself in irony’s light). humor is lyrical (it is the deepest earnestness about life—profound poetry, which cannot form itself as such and therefore crystallizes in the most baroque forms—it is the hemorrhoid non fluens—the molimina of the higher life). the whole attitude in the greek nature (harmony—the beautiful) was such that, even if the individual disengaged himself and the battle began, the fight still bore the stamp of arising from this harmonious view of life, and so it soon came to an end without having gone full circle (socrates). But then a view of life appeared which taught that all nature was corrupt (the deepest polemic, the widest stretch of wings); but nature took revenge—and now i get humor in the individual and irony in nature, and they meet, in that humor wants to be a fool in the world and the irony in the world assumes that is what they [men of humor] really are. some will say that irony and humor are basically the same, with only a difference of degree. i will answer with paul, where he talks of the relationship of Christianity to Judaism: everything is new in Christ. [2 Cor 5:17] the Christian humorist is like a plant only the root of which is visible, whose bloom unfolds to a loftier sun.129 that Kierkegaard returned to this entry later is evident from several marginal additions. one of these is dated october 30, 1837 and reads: “socrates has a purely awakening effect—midwife that he was—not delivering except in an inauthentic sense.”130 in all of this it is impossible to say where møller stops and Kierkegaard begins. given these facts, all we can say is that møller may well, socratically, have delivered the subject for Kierkegaard’s dissertation—but only the subject.131 therefore, it would not be completely fair to agree with vilhelm andersen that in Kierkegaard’s treatment of romantic irony “one can certainly say without 129 SKS 17, 225–6, dd:18 / KJN 1, 216–17. on the reference to hamann, see SKS K17, 396 / KJN 1, 503 (explanatory note to 216.35). 130 SKS 17, 225, dd:18.a / KJN 1, 216. 131 i will refain here from discussing the contents of Kierkegaard’s The Concept of Irony, since this has been done often enough. i refer especially to the thorough treatment by soderquist, The Isolated Self. it is also worth noting that there seems to have been an ongoing debate about irony, which was discussed by many at the time, also in Copenhagen, cf. soderquist, p. 151, note 3, with a reference to F.C. olsen’s footnote (ES2, vol. 3, p. 152), which, however, only says that møller’s essay “deserves publication more so because it makes a contribution to the history of the concept in question [irony] in our literature.” Poul Martin Møller: Kierkegaard and the Confidant of Socrates 133 exaggeration that while the hand is Kierkegaard’s, the spirit is poul møller’s.”132 møller was an inspiration; but he was no “ghostwriter.” in the same context, vilhelm andersen pays attention to møller’s portrait of socrates, including his irony, in the lectures on ancient philosophy (which were not published before 1842 in volume 2 of the Posthumous Writings, but which Kierkegaard might have followed), and he states that a possible inspiration from this source is not important, seeing that it was Kierkegaard’s knowledge of møller’s personality that inspired him to his own somewhat peculiar understanding of socrates’ personality.133 a poet at heart, møller did not limit himself to mere abstractions on the subject of nihilism; he went further than that in terms of fiction and used the figure of ahasverus, the wandering Jew (or, in german and danish, “the eternal Jew”). Such a personification or embodiment was indeed also a personal project, a way out of a crisis or mood of (aesthetic) despair that møller himself had been stuck in; this involved the doubts about the values of human life, truth, science, and arts, presumably because of his liberating himself from hegelianism.134 this negation or nihilism was to be expressed and treated through the figure of Ahasverus, and the purpose would be to cure this negative or pessimistic view of life by exposing it and demonstrating its inadequacy—just as Kierkegaard would do later with the aesthete a in Either/Or.135 vilhelm andersen suggests that if this great poetic plan 132 vilhelm andersen, Poul Møller, pp. 396–7. ibid., p. 396. Compare to this, for instance, h.p. rohde’s emphasis on a passage of møller regarding the relation between plato and Xenophon as sources to the historical socrates: “plato may be the main source, but he is not historically trustworthy in his description of socrates’ philosophy: he was himself a more speculative thinker and gives an idealized picture of him in his dialogues. Xenophon certainly is a far more reliable reporter, but his lack of philosophical talent may often have led him to misunderstand socrates. they must therefore somehow be suited for correcting each other, and what they have in common may belong to the historical socrates.” (rohde’s trans. of ES1, vol. 2, p. 365, in h.p. rohde, “poul møller,” in Kierkegaard’s Teachers, ed. by niels thulstrup and marie mikulová thulstrup, Copenhagen: C.a. reitzel 1982 (Bibliotheca Kierkegaardiana, vol. 10), pp. 89–109; p. 95). rohde then compares this passage to the third latin thesis of The Concept of Irony: “Si quis comparationem inter Xenophontem et Platonem instituerit, inveniet, alterum nimium de Socrate detraxisse, alterum nimium eum evexisse, neutrum verum invenisse.” SKS 1, 65.6–8. one cannot exclude that in such a case møller’s considerations might have been an inspiration, but the idea that the truth is in between, however, is not original. 134 Jørgen K. Bukdahl sees it as a general critical analysis of pantheism, cf. “poul martin Møllers opgør med ‘nihilismen,’ ” Dansk Udsyn, vol. 45, ed. by richard andersen et al., vejen: askov højskole 1965, pp. 266–90; p. 267. an apparent symptom of a personal crisis or spleen is the Wanderlust motif also present in ahasverus, but clearer in the younger møller: his oriental travel, the presence of the motif in Adventures of a Danish Student, etc., cf. vilhelm andersen, Poul Møller, pp. 228ff. 135 the Kierkegaardian theme of seduction was another feature of ahasverus; two of the fragments read: “his eyes look like a window-pane which is lightly bedewed by a young girl’s sighs of love” (ES1, vol. 3, p. 329) and “his experiments with women whom he makes fall in love with him. he then surrounds himself with a lustre which stands at his service, since his cleverness is infinite, and he sees how true love can arise from it.” (Not in ES, but in vilhelm andersen’s selection, Udvalgte Skrifter af Poul Møller, vol. 2, p. 129). 133 134 Finn Gredal Jensen from møller’s last years had ever been realized, it would probably have been of the same importance to his production as Faust had been to goethe’s.136 it is not clear what form møller’s Ahasverus might have taken, maybe a diary, a monologue or dramatic scenes. most of the small number of fragments or sketches that were meant for Ahasverus were first published in 1843 in volume 3 of the Posthumous Writings.137 here Kierkegaard read them when they appeared. it is not possible to say whether Møller had told Kierkegaard of his reflections on Ahasverus in one of their conversations, but Kierkegaard’s own preoccupation with the subject is well documented in Notebook 2 and Journal BB.138 these entries date from 1835–37, that is, long before møller’s fragments were published posthumously. yet, of course, the old legend of the wandering Jew had earlier inspired numerous poets, especially in romanticism, and this was also the case with the young Kierkegaard when, as a part of his personal project, he researched the three “representative” figures Don Juan, Faust, and the wandering Jew. the subject of ahasverus was also treated by other danish poets at the time, for instance, by B.s. ingemann in Leaves from the Notebook of Jerusalem’s Shoemaker in 1833,139 and later by J.C. hostrup in The Opposite Neighbors in 1844,140 and by hans Christian andersen in 1848.141 whereas don Juan and Faust are discussed in various contexts by Kierkegaard, perhaps 136 vilhelm andersen, Poul Møller, p. 341. By the way, Kierkegaard notes in the entry BB:18, SKS 17, 107 / KJN 1, 100, that in goethe’s Aus meinem Leben (Dichtung und Wahrheit) “there is also his idea for an adaption of the wandering Jew, in which, true to form, he tries to motivate the wandering Jew’s despair.” 137 ES1, vol. 3, pp. 328–30. in the ms (Collinske samling 365, 4o, royal library, Copenhagen) the sketches appear as two small series of scattered thoughts, but all marked with “Ahasverus.” 138 SKS 19, 94–6, not2:9–14 / JP 5, 5109–12; JP 5, 5087; JP 2, 2206, and BB:16–20, SKS 17, 107–9 / KJN 1, 100–2. on Kierkegaard’s preoccupation with ahasverus see, for instance, Knud Jensenius, Nogle Kierkegaardstudier. “De tre store Ideer”, Copenhagen: nyt nordisk Forlag arnold Busck 1932, pp. 64ff. troels-lund, in Bakkehus og Solbjerg, vol. 3, p. 204, says, “there can hardly be any doubt that these different statements [by møller on Ahasverus] were discussed orally by them and had an influence on Søren Kierkegaard.” 139 B.s. ingemann, Blade af Jerusalems Skomagers Lommebog, Copenhagen: andreas seidelin 1833 (ASKB 1571). this is one of the books listed by Kierkegaard in BB:16, SKS 17, 107.15–16 / KJN 1, 100.15–16. 140 J.C. hostrup, Gjenboerne. Vaudeville-Komedie, Copenhagen: F. h. eibe 1847 (the songs were published separately earlier, Sange af Gjenboerne, Copenhagen [1844]); first performed on February 20, 1844 at the Court theater. in The Opposite Neighbors the wandering Jew lends the student Klint the shoes of fortune which make him invisible. Another figure in this play is søren Kirk, a caricature of Kierkegaard, see above section ii, note 49. 141 hans Christian andersen’s dramatical poem Ahasverus (Copenhagen: C.a. reitzel 1848) was published on december 16, 1847. andersen had earlier used ahasverus in his Fodreise fra Holmens Canal til Østpynten af Amager i Aarene 1828 og 1829 (1829). the shoes of fortune, known from hostrup’s The Opposite Neighbors, also appear in andersen’s fairy tale “the galoshes of Fortune” (1838), in which, by the way, we meet a parrot, probably alias Kierkegaard, insistingly repeating the words, “Come now, let us be men!” For a brief overview of ahasverus and generally of Jewish elements in danish literature, see mogens Brøndsted’s introduction to his anthology, Ahasverus. Jødiske elementer i dansk litteratur, Poul Martin Møller: Kierkegaard and the Confidant of Socrates 135 surprisingly he never developed to any larger extent the wandering Jew, which was seen as the archetypal representative of the present age.142 it is true that ahasverus occurs now and then, but only in passing. a shorter passage in “the unhappiest one” in Either/Or is especially worth noting: indeed, if there were a human being who could not die, if what the legend tells of the wandering Jew is true, why should we have scruples about pronouncing him the unhappiest one? then why the grave was empty could be explained—namely, to indicate that the unhappiest one was the person who could not die, who could not slip down into a grave. that would settle the matter, the answer would be easy, for the unhappiest one of all would be the person who could not die, the happy one the person who could. happy is the one who died in old age; happier is the one who died in youth; happiest is the one who died at birth; happiest of all the one who was never born. But this is not the way it is; death is the common fate of all human beings, and inasmuch as the unhappiest one has not been found, he must be sought within these confines.143 the idea of Frithiof Brandt is that the inspiration was the other way around, that is, from Kierkegaard to møller, and that møller’s ahasverus is a portrait of the young Kierkegaard.144 this theory, however, is highly speculative. there is no evidence that young Kierkegaard is equivalent to møller’s description: “ahasverus wants nothing. He regards himself as infinitely raised up above those people who want something,” and, like schopenhauer, ahasverus does not recognize “an absolute difference between good and evil.”145 this kind of moral nihilism is identical with the moral irony which is found also in Fichte and in schlegel’s Lucinde and which is later criticized by Kierkegaard in The Concept of Irony. odense: syddansk universitetsforlag 2007 (University of Southern Denmark Studies in Scandinavian Language and Literature, vol. 78), pp. 9–54. 142 george pattison suggests that ahasverus is still present after all, “masked by the ‘cosmopolitan face’ of contemporary nihilism,” George Pattison, Kierkegaard, Religion and the Nineteenth-Century Crisis of Culture, Cambridge: Cambridge university press, 2002, p. 74; on ahasverus see in general Chapter 4 (pp. 72–95). i do not agree that any “anti-semitism” is to be found here, but, sad to say, this is definitely to be found in Kierkegaard elsewhere; in a scattered thought we read the following joke which is maybe not as amusing to a modern reader: “those who write in the manner of Jews (heine, Börne, menzel) seem to be cheerful, but their gaiety recalls the apparent smile of newborn children which comes from them having a stomachache.” ES1, vol. 3, p. 284. in his review of The Extremes, møller speaks of the vain and tasteless schools of young France and young germany; on this, see below, section iii, d. Kierkegaard’s relation to the Jews of “young germany,” that is, heine, Börne, and others, is complex, but in a certain way respectful: for him they stand as exemplars of offense; in opposition to the titulary Christians, they have at least understood what true Christianity is and have said no thanks to it. it is not clear what he meant when in the Journal NB32 Kierkegaard wrote of møller that he “was well aware” that “Jews are especially suited to be publicists.” SKS 26, 196, nB32:108 / JP 3, 2985. he cannot be thinking of The Corsair, which began in 1840 long after møller’s death. 143 SKS 2, 214.24–35 / EO1, 220–1. 144 see further Brandt, Den unge Søren Kierkegaard, pp. 336–446 and pp. 454–9. 145 ES1, vol. 2, p. 329. 136 Finn Gredal Jensen D. The Review of the extremes in his travel diary søren Kierkegaard’s elder brother peter Christian Kierkegaard notes on June 28, 1829 that he, in Berlin where he was staying at the time, has met professor h.n. Clausen, with whom he has spoken, among other things, “about the new literary monthly, whose 14 members constitute a council, which judges all received reviews and writes most of them itself.”146 this characterization is quite fitting and gives a brief picture of how the Maanedsskrift for Litteratur functioned as an institution.147 møller became a member of the editorial board at the beginning of 1835 and published here in 1836 his lengthy review, written in december 1835, of thomasine gyllembourg’s novel The Extremes.148 as usual, she had used the pseudonym, “The Author of ‘A Story from Everyday Life,’ ” but most people knew, and so also did møller and Kierkegaard, that it was the mother of the editor, J.l. heiberg—although the author is constantly referred to as “he.” it can seem surprising that leading cultural figures such as Møller and Kierkegaard reviewed Gyllembourg so thoroughly (The Extremes and Two Ages, respectively), since her novels are by no means great literature.149 however, as Klaus p. mortensen points out, it was “a great art to be able to expand the ideal from the everyday,” which was an until then uncovered area, although, despite their fascination with this art of reality, the reviewers did not have an eye for the feminine dimension.150 the limits of the tolerance towards 146 p.C. Kierkegaard’s diary for 1829–30, royal library, nKs 907, 8o, p. 64. see, for instance, vilhelm andersen, Poul Møller, p. 327, on how the editorial board was organized and its work was carried out. 148 p.m. møller, “nye Fortællinger af Forfatteren til en hverdagshistorie. udgivne af Johan Ludvig Heiberg. andet Bind: extremerne. Kjøbenhavn. paa universitets-Boghandler Reitzels Forlag, trykt hos J.D. Qvist, Bog- og nodetrykker. 1835. 223 s. 8,” Maanedsskrift for Litteratur, vol. 15, Copenhagen: C.a. reitzel 1836, pp. 135–63; reprinted in ES1, vol. 2, 1842, pp. 126–58. earlier møller had published two other reviews in the Maanedsskrift for Litteratur: of F.l.B. zeuthen’s Noget om Philosophien og dens Dyrkelse, tildeels med Hensyn paa Danmark (Maanedsskrift, vol. 6, 1831, pp. 266–70) and of p.C. Kierkegaard’s doctoral dissertation, De notione atque turpitudine mendacii commentatio (Maanedsskrift, vol. 7, 1832, pp. 65–85). the review of zeuthen gave rise to a small polemic; on this, see Jon stewart, “poul martin møller. et nyt fund,” Fund og Forskning i Det Kongelige Biblioteks Samlinger, vol. 44, 2005, pp. 415–23. møller’s other reviews were published in Dansk Litteratur-Tidende, the first one in 1824, and the last, of Sibbern’s On Poetry and Art, in 1835. 149 They were not the first ones to review Gyllembourg, and two of the predecessors are mentioned by Møller, first, Carsten Hauch, “Noveller, gamle og nye, af Forfatteren til en hverdags-historie. udgivet af J. L. Heiberg, to Bind. Kbhvn. 1833,” Prometheus. Maanedskrift for Poesie, Æsthetik og Kritik, vol. 3, ed. by adam oehlenschläger, Copenhagen: udgiverens Forlag 1833, pp. 289–329, and second, J.n. madvig (using the pseudonym “.(”), “noveller, gamle og nye, af Forfatteren til ‘En Hverdagshistorie.’ Udgivne af J. L. Heiberg. 1ste, 2det og 3die Bind. Kjøbenhavn 1833–34. reitzels Forlag,” Maanedsskrift for Litteratur, vol. 11, Copenhagen: C.a. reitzel 1834, pp. 363–92. 150 Klaus p. mortensen, Thomasines oprør – en familiehistorisk biografi om køn og kærlighed i forrige århundrede, Copenhagen: g.e.C. gad 1986, p. 151. Compare to this the following statement in møller’s review: “a few times one has seen the remark that in the author’s poetical works [sc. novels] a one-sided emphasis was placed on a beautiful and cosy 147 Poul Martin Møller: Kierkegaard and the Confidant of Socrates 137 women’s aesthetic activities are obvious in, for example, Kierkegaard’s draft of a sarcastic review of Clara Raphael: Twelve Letters,151 or in møller’s sketches on “Femininity,” in which one reads that “it is unbecoming, indeed, detestable that a woman be a poet by profession.”152 their reviews of gyllembourg might easily, on the surface, be seen as just a natural approach to, or a veneration for the heibergian circle (møller was a friend of heiberg and gyllembourg), but more importantly, they are points of departure for something that goes far beyond the mostly trivial contents of the novels, which in The Extremes is a somewhat banal love story, with the title referring to the conflicts or collisions arising on different levels, socially, politically, religiously, and in terms of age and sexes.153 in the case of The Extremes, møller takes the opportunity to develop his own view of art thoroughly in what might be seen as a critical discussion with both hegelianism and with the romantic spleen practiced by himself in his earlier years. i will not develop this in detail here but only treat briefly what seems necessary in regard to Kierkegaard. In a phenomenological introduction of massive proportions Møller reflects upon the art of reviewing and distinguishes three methods. The first type of review is a strictly scientific or systematic approach; he gives no examples of such “Hegelianism,” but, as pointed out by vilhelm andersen, he might have in mind heiberg’s method as exercised in On Vaudeville as a Dramatic Form of Poetry (1826).154 a second type of critique is what is named the ridiculing (“persiflerende”) or new French review, where a random poetic work is used as “a motivation for a stream of witticisms” and sheer subjectivistic notions; this is found in “the vain and tasteless schools of young France and young germany,” particularly heinrich heine. the atomistic character causes “the thread of thought to be hidden almost wholly by the artificial pearls of the witticisms.”155 Møller employs a fine metaphor to describe such “conversational” or often political misuse of literary works of art: “the reviewer pregnant with witticisms organization of the forms of social and domestic life. that he is also able to treat higher subject matter is seen from this novel in which religion and art are such essential moments in the harmony of the entire literary work.” Maanedsskrift for Litteratur, vol. 15, p. 153; ES1, vol. 2, pp. 146–7. 151 SKS 24, 136–8, nB22:63 / JP 6, 6709. mathilde Fibiger’s (1830–72) anonymous work, Clara Raphael. Tolv Breve, Copenhagen: C.a. reitzel 1851 (ASKB 1531), appeared in december 1850, edited by J.l. heiberg, and shocked others in addition to Kierkegaard with its thoughts of emancipation. For an overview of the Clara raphael Controversy, see, for instance, Katalin Nun, “ ‘A Passionflower Planted in a Cabbage Garden’: Heiberg, Mathilde Fibiger and the emancipation of women,” in Johan Ludvig Heiberg: Philosopher, Littérateur, Dramaturge, and Political Thinker, ed. by Jon stewart, Copenhagen: museum tusculanum press 2008 (Danish Golden Age Studies, vol. 5), pp. 493–516; see pp. 500–5. 152 p.m. møller, “Qvindelighed,” in ES1, vol. 3, pp. 314–21; see p. 318. the quotation is from the third study, by vilhelm andersen later entitled “letter to a lady,” which is the draft of a letter to vilhelmine grüner (identical with Borup, letter no. 50). in a letter to heiberg, møller says he is aware “that there is in your mother much that is unusual for women.” Borup, letter no. 113. 153 i will not here discuss the contents of the novel further. 154 Udvalgte Skrifter af Poul Møller, vol. 2, p. 163. 155 Maanedsskrift for Litteratur, vol. 15, pp. 135–7; ES1, vol. 2, pp. 127–9. 138 Finn Gredal Jensen satisfies his own accidental drive with an unpleasant means, more or less as a cuckoo finds room for its egg in the nest of the robin.”156 Both of these approaches will easily be seen as nihilism, although this point is not expressed clearly in the review. to møller, personal subjectivity or “personality” is the truth, and this is the third or middle path: as far as literary criticism is concerned, he calls it “the elementary review”; the reviewer’s task is to weigh the poetic work with his own personality, “so that the reviewer from subjective reasons regards the relation of a poetic work to certain specific aesthetic demands, without being concerned with other respects.”157 in Either/Or, among the papers of “A,” we find the review of “The First Love: a Comedy in one act by scribe, translated by J.l. heiberg,” which is not a review, but rather a personal story of how a review was written. the author emphasizes his presentation’s accidental character: yet it was on the occasion of the occasion of this little review that i wanted to say something rather general about the occasion or about the occasion in general….he [the reader] might perhaps think that i ought to have thought the whole thing through before i started to write, and then i ought not to have begun to say something that later turned out to be nothing. nevertheless, i do believe that he ought to give my method its due, insofar as he has convinced himself in a more satisfying manner that the occasion in general is something that is nothing….What is said here, then, must be regarded as a superfluity, like a superfluous title page that is not included when the work is bound. Therefore, I know no other way to conclude than in the incomparable laconic manner in which i see that professor poul møller concluded the introduction of his excellent review of The Extremes: with this the introduction is concluded.158 with this concluding remark, Kierkegaard hardly thinks that møller’s long introduction to his review is superfluous; he only admires his manner of conclusion. But one cannot escape another observation in the passage quoted above: that the style itself is just what møller, had he had the opportunity, might have considered indifferent and even “new French,” much talk and little substance, as is so often the case with Kierkegaard, and maybe especially as a young person. From another source it is clear that Kierkegaard read møller’s review of The Extremes as soon as it appeared in early 1836.159 in Notebook 3 we find a short excerpt of schleiermacher’s Vertraute Briefe über die Lucinde.160 Kierkegaard had read the second edition of this book, which originally appeared anonymously in 1800 as Vertraute Briefe über Friedrich Schlegels Lucinde and was meant as a defense 156 ibid., p. 136; ES1, vol. 2, p. 127. ibid., p. 144; ES1, vol. 2, p. 137. 158 SKS 2, 233.14–36 / EO1, 239–40. 159 Maanedsskrift for Litteratur does not appear explicitly in The Auctioneer’s Sales Record, and Kierkegaard is not found on the list of subscribers, but he probably read it in a public library or reading society, for instance, the athenæum or the student association. 160 SKS 19, 99, not3:2 / JP 4, 3846. this entry is discussed by richard e. Crouter, “schleiermacher: revisiting Kierkegaard’s relationship to him,” in Kierkegaard and His German Contemporaries, tome ii, Theology, ed. by Jon stewart, aldershot: ashgate 2007 (Kierkegaard Research: Sources, Reception and Resources, vol. 6), pp. 197–231; see pp. 204–6. 157 Poul Martin Møller: Kierkegaard and the Confidant of Socrates 139 for schlegel’s novel Lucinde (1799), which was only seen as immoral, a “gospel of the flesh,” which piquantly advocated a most free physical relation between the sexes. in the second edition from 1835, the editor Karl gutzkov in the preface sees the two writings by schlegel and schleiermacher generally as part of the social and political endeavors which are characteristic features of “young germany,” and more specifically as a criticism of the age’s bourgeois and religious surpression of love. In his notebook entry from october 1835 Kierkegaard praises schleiermacher’s book as “a true work of art,” which “ought to be a model review and also an example of how such a thing can be most productive, in that he constructs a host of personalities out of the book itself and through them illuminates the work and also illuminates their individuality.” this might well be one of Kierkegaard’s inspirations for his use of pseudonyms. after the appearance of møller’s review of The Extremes, he added the following in the margin at the end of the entry: “see Maanedsskrift for Litteratur, eighth year, p. 140. an essay by p. møller.—February 1836.”161 on p. 140 which is referred to—this is also in the review’s introduction—møller discusses whether a review can be a free art in the sense that the reviewer can choose any procedure he pleases, since in that case, according to schlegel, a review of poems would be a new poem.162 it was important for møller that poetry not give up its “connection with the rest of life.”163 later in the review of The Extremes his points regarding the relationship between poetry and reality are unfolded further, that is, his concept of poetic realism. He says, for instance, “Poetry is a flower of social life, and what a people and its 161 SKS 19, 99, not3:2.a / JP 4, 3847. “Whether the series should be regarded as finished with such a poem to the second degree, which in this case would be a special kind of poetic work that could not be the object of any review, or whether the series could be continued indefinitely, he [Schlegel] has left undecided. in the latter case, poetry could wholly give up its connection with the rest of life; it would come to such an independence and autonomy that it could continually reproduce itself merely from itself, just as the snake, which is the symbol of eternity, maintains life by eating its own tail. german poetry presents an approach to this extreme in the many novels, novellas and lyric poems which are concerned almost solely with art and the works and endeavors of the artists. if one keeps to this extreme, the aesthetic review loses its scholarly character, and poetry swallows up aesthetics.” Maanedsskrift for Litteratur, vol. 15, p. 140; ES1, vol. 2, p. 132. 163 much earlier, in his topographical satire, “statistisk skildring af lægdsgaarden i Ølseby-magle. af en ung geograph” (ES1, vol. 1, pp. 201–23), written on his journey to China, his point was the same. it says in the “Prolegomena” that “it is not without reason that in the more recent times people complain a lot about the disproportionately large number of students who occupy themselves with philosophy, art theory, total views, observations on the spirit of the age and such things which demand no small amount of learning. let’s assume that it is true that philosophy is the soul of the sciences, then a soul cannot, however, subsist on its own apart from the body. already by now there is almost no body left. soon the writers will have nothing else to make observations about than each other’s observations; just like the german poets are already brought to the extreme that their poetry concerns virtually nothing but poetry. In the learned republic a strange inverted emanation prevails. All fields of study become every day more incorporeal, diluted and transfigured, so that one can highly fear that eventually they will dissolve completely into spirit and air.” ES1, vol. 1, p. 203. 162 140 Finn Gredal Jensen individuals have experienced provides in a certain sense the material for its higher life in poetry.” Communicated by means of the mimesis of the genius, poetry should “with freshness and originality” proceed from actual life.164 in german romanticism, however, he sees the danger that art poetry has been regarded “as the sole form of revelation of the divine life in the human race.”165 to get to the core of this, the danger is of course romantic irony and its consequences: “indifference to the life conditions of other people, and as a result a consistent selfishness.”166 in schlegel’s Lucinde—which Kierkegaard was later to treat in The Concept of Irony—møller sees the essence of this nihilistic philosophy of life in the maxim that “he has no god who is not himself his own god.”167 møller concludes, “if the artist has come so far with such a complete irony that everything outside himself and his art, or his art and he himself are fully indifferent to him, then it is certainly all over with his art; the true poet must first and foremost be a true human being.”168 When it comes to this conflict between, on the one hand, idealism or poetic freedom of spirit and, on the other hand, poetic sympathy for the human condition, he sees thomasine gyllembourg’s “genuine poetic disposition” as an expression of beautiful harmony between the two extremes: “here is a warm and deep sympathy for the most heterogeneous directions of spirit [Aandsretninger], combined with a freedom of spirit which makes them all objects for a calming contemplation.”169 unfortunately, such perfect harmony is seldom in contemporary poetry and can “be compared to the solitary fresh apples which can be seen here and there on the trees when the defoliation has begun.”170 i will not embark here on a comparison of Kierkegaard’s review of Two Ages and what, later in his life, he had to say about gyllembourg; but there is no doubt after all that both møller and Kierkegaard admired the writer, even if she was a woman.171 164 Maanedsskrift for Litteratur, vol. 15, p. 145; ES1, vol. 2, p. 138. ibid., p. 146; ES1, vol. 2, p. 139. this had earlier led peder hjort to point to the fact that, in møller’s words, “art was not the absolute and eternal self, but one of its forms of revelation.” peder hjort, “om digteren Ingemann og hans værker,” Athene. Et Maanedsskrift, vol. 5, ed. by Christian molbech, Copenhagen: gyldendal 1815, pp. 73–111 and pp. 388–428; the subject is treated in the theoretical introduction, pp. 74–90. (hjort’s review of ingemann’s juvenilia continued in Athene, vol. 6, 1816, pp. 158–98, pp. 366–83, and pp. 544–66.) 166 Maanedsskrift for Litteratur, vol. 15, p. 146; ES1, vol. 2, p. 139. 167 ibid., p. 147; ES1, vol. 2, pp. 139–40; møller here wrongly ascribes this maxim to the book’s main character, and in schlegel’s work the true words are, “welcher Gott kann dem Menschen ehrwürdig sein, der nicht sein eigner Gott ist?” see also above, section iii, C, on møller’s “on the Concept of irony.” 168 ibid., p. 147; ES1, vol. 2, p. 140. 169 ibid., p. 149; ES1, vol. 2, p. 142. on this passage see also elisabeth hude, Thomasine Gyllembourg og Hverdagshistorierne, Copenhagen: rosenkilde og Bagger 1951, p. 67. 170 Maanedsskrift for Litteratur, vol. 15, p. 157; ES1, vol. 2, p. 151. 171 in the review of The Extremes, møller also anticipates what would be the theme of his great treatise on immortality the following year; on this, see below, section iii, g. 165 Poul Martin Møller: Kierkegaard and the Confidant of Socrates 141 E. “On Telling Children Fairy Tales” Among Møller’s posthumous papers there is a short unfinished essay entitled “On telling Children Fairy tales.”172 Given that it was first published in 1843, Kierkegaard could not have read it when in 1837, in late January or early February, he wrote his rather similar long entry, BB:37, in the Journal BB.173 however, since, according to the editor F.C. olsen, the time of composition of møller’s essay is 1836 or 1837,174 it is not unlikely that møller’s preoccupation with the subject was Kierkegaard’s main inspiration and the occasion of his journal entry (which is actually a draft for a treatise). probably, they had discussed this particular subject on the basis of the contemporary debate on children’s literature and its effect upon the imagination of children.175 in any case, there can be no doubt that childhood interested Kierkegaard a lot, since he recognized its fundamental importance for forming the personality, or, to use his language of favorite metaphors collected from grammar, in an entry from 1837, “Childhood is life’s paradigmatic part; manhood its syntax.”176 møller, too, himself a father, was of course well aware of the fact that “when one considers how firmly the sphere of imagination which is formed in a person’s childhood remains during the entire rest of his life, it is then natural to be somewhat cautious in the choice of the fantasies with which one intentionally fills their [the children’s] heads.”177 what, then, are the points of similarity? in his essay, møller expresses the opinion that it is damaging to fill children’s minds with imaginary stories—which, by the way, is also evident from the way he generally regarded hans Christian andersen: he does not say so expressly, since he nowhere refers to andersen’s fairy tales, of which the first collection appeared in 1835, but in a letter to Sibbern, dated May 5, 1829 and written from norway, møller highly praises his old friend hauch’s tragedies Bajazet and Tiberius—he even says, “for my part, i place Tiberius above shakespeare’s Julius Caesar without hesitation”!—and he is terribly sorry that undeservedly Tiberius is not popular compared to the contemporary enthusiasm for young andersen’s fabulous, hoffmannesque Journey on Foot. møller, however, had read some excerpts of this novel in Kjøbenhavns flyvende Post: “i have read it on some loose pages, which have been brought near to dissolution due to people’s zealous contrectation. I have been able to find nothing in them without strong reminiscences of light reading executed with a swift tongue or more correctly a self-indulgent chatter.”178 although andersen later changed his style, møller would undoubtedly 172 p.m. møller, “om at fortælle Børn eventyr,” ms in Collinske samling, 365, 4o, royal Library, Copenhagen; first published in ES1, vol. 3, 1843, pp. 322–5. 173 SKS 17, 122–33, BB:37 / KJN 1, 116–25. unfortunately, the ms is not extant, as far as this entry is concerned; the text source is EP, vol. 1, pp. 126–45. 174 ES1, vol. 3, p. 322, note. 175 on this debate, in which, among others, Christian molbech participated, see the explanatory note to 122.23 in SKS K17, p. 241 / KJN 1, pp. 413–14. 176 SKS 17, 46.27–8, aa:30 / KJN 1, 40. 177 ES1, vol. 3, p. 323. 178 Borup, letter no. 102. møller wrote a review for the Maanedsskrift for Litteratur of hauch’s two tragedies Bajazet and Tiberius, but it was never published since he refused 142 Finn Gredal Jensen have enjoyed Kierkegaard’s similar critique in From the Papers of One Still Living, had he lived to read it. later, long after he had returned from norway in 1831 to the literary environment of Copenhagen, which apparently had now become more “artistic” than before, møller expresses the same views in his review of sibbern’s book on aesthetics, On Poetry and Art (1834), in which one reads, inter alia: another erring direction which the author [sibbern] has occasion to discuss, he has also himself recently criticized zealously in one of our journals, namely, the rampant epicureanism which brings both the artists as well as their public to regard art and poetry as merely a means to refined pleasure. This false taste, in several countries, leads even talented poets to avail themselves of coquette means, for example, metric rattles, in order to make their work quite ingratiating for the covetous reading world. But it is true here as in other spheres that the one-sided striving for pleasure prevents the true pleasure. the public will soon feel such a loathing toward the obsequious poetry that it will look back with regret to its fathers’ masculine hardness.179 in like manner, møller states in his essay on fairy tales as “a completely clear fact” that “an exaggerated reading of novels has given a number of our contemporaries a distorted mental disposition [Aandsretning], warped their emotions, placed them in an uninterrupted state of somnambulism, given them a distaste for hard work, and taught them a loathing of life’s actual forms.”180 this aesthetic criticism is expressed en miniature in the essay on fairy tales. according to vilhelm andersen, møller had, among others, hans Christian andersen in mind in a fragment of a poem, which is possibly from 1834, and which begins with the words: “a species will be born without a strength, / a race that nothing can and nothing will….”181 this goes particularly for the new generation of poets, but similarly, møller’s essay on fairy tales is a work in practical pedagogy where he warns precisely against the mistaken upbringing of the new generation, understood as the children, and the harmful effect on their imagination. the editorial board’s demand that passages be changed, especially where he emphasized the realism of the plays. apparently, the passage which had evoked criticism was the following: “as we make the claim about hauch’s poetic works that they are of equal psychological and aesthetic interest, and that it is more the idea of truth than of beauty that animates them, we believe that we have not thereby diminished their value, but have contributed to a correct picture of their quality....this kind of thoroughness in the representation of human spiritual life, especially in its extreme aberrations, is also found in our author, who in his works shows us that he is just as much a philosophical researcher of nature as a poet.” (ES1, vol. 2, pp. 55–6). This refers to the fact that Hauch was also a natural scientist. The review, “ ‘Bajazet og Tiber.’ to sørgespil af C. hauch. Kjøbenhavn. trykt paa C. a. reitzels Forlag, i Fabritius de Tengnagels Officin. 1828,” was first published in 1842 in ES1, vol. 2, pp. 54–68. 179 p.m. møller, “om poesie og Konst i almindelighed, med hensyn til alle arter deraf, dog især digte-, maler-, Billedhugger- og skuespillerkonst; eller: Foredrag over almindelig Æsthetik og poetik. af Dr. Frederik Christian sibbern, professor i philosophien. Første deel. Kiøbenhavn. paa Forfatterens Forlag, trykt hos Fabritius de tengnagel. 1834,” in Dansk Litteratur-Tidende, 1835, no. 12, pp. 181–92, and no. 13, pp. 205–9; see p. 209; reprinted in ES1, vol. 2, pp. 105–26; see pp. 125–6. 180 ES1, vol. 3, p. 322. 181 “Der fødes skal en Art foruden Kræfter, / En Slægt, som Intet kan og Intet vil...” the fragment is found in ES1, vol. 3, pp. 16–17. Cf. vilhelm andersen, Poul Møller, p. 352. Poul Martin Møller: Kierkegaard and the Confidant of Socrates 143 as a “new citizen of the world,” møller says, every child strives for knowledge when its consciousness awakens, that is, when the child “has a strong presentiment that his life is connected to the life of all of existence….one then commits a great injustice in interrupting his zealous striving to become familiar with the real world in order to entice him into a fairy world.”182 however, this does not entirely exclude the use of fantastic tales, but only to a modest extent; otherwise, “one then accustoms children to pursue the same occupation in smaller things as is pursued by the adults in larger things when they, as one says, pursue light reading as a pass-time.”183 the approach of Kierkegaard, on the other hand, is not as negative. initially, he underlines that the purpose of his treatise is only to inveigh about abuse.184 of the two ways of telling stories, he says, the method of nannies—the “nursery stories” that møller also speaks of—is damaging, since when the child gets a clue of the narrator’s insincerity, then a lack of confidence and a suspicion develops. The other kind of narrator is a person who is not like a child himself, but who basically knows what it is to be a child, “and from his higher standpoint offers the children a spiritual sustenance that suits them.”185 this is the frame of storytelling, and Kierkegaard then develops in detail how the storyteller ought to be: in short, a socrates. like the “uncle Frands” he should engage the children and nurture “a constant mental mobility…a permanent attentiveness to whatever they hear and see.”186 however, like møller, Kierkegaard gives some serious warnings about possible “false paths.” sentimentality might be one such path, and the idea that children only need entertainment another. in what Kierkegaard calls the “first stage,” the narrator “fall[s] into ‘being a child,’ ” tragicomically speaks like children, etc. the alternative is to attempt to put play and 182 ES1, vol. 3, p. 323. in his treatise on immortality, which i will discuss below in section iii, g, møller writes the following, “in the poetical works which nowadays present a fairy world for the imagination it is often the opinion of the infidel author and reader that temporarily one should be enchanted into a supersensuous world and yet keep the belief that no higher world exists. the consequence of this, however, is that the enchantment will be as might be expected. this attempted self-deception is more childish than that of a child for whom footstool and yardstick serve as throne and scepter, although the child is quite conscious that they actually are footstool and yardstick, since the child knows that footstools and scepters actually exist while the adult believes that what his fairy world means is altogether nothing. there is a level of art where the poet presents mythological traditions in which he himself believes; there is a second level where the poet’s fantasies, even when borrowing motifs from such legends, are regarded by himself as a meaningless play; and a third level where the poet contemplates his artistic production as an image of a higher existence.” Maanedsskrift for Litteratur, vol. 17, p. 56; ES1, vol. 2, pp. 219–20. 183 ES1, vol. 3, p. 324. in his introduction to “on telling Children Fairy tales,” vilhelm andersen says that møller wrote the essay on the basis of personal experiences and mentions that among his papers “there are excerpts of a treatise on the life of the indians in north america, which he presumably familiarized himself with so that he could check it before exposing his sons to the cheap romanticism of the indian stories.” Udvalgte Skrifter af Poul Møller, vol. 2, p. 117. the ms containing these excerpts is found at the royal library, nKs 4783, 4o. 184 SKS 17, 122, BB:37 / KJN 1, 116. 185 SKS 17, 123 / KJN 1, 117. 186 SKS 17, 125 / KJN 1, 119. 144 Finn Gredal Jensen stories to a useful purpose; this results in two paths: “either educating them, as one says, morally, or conveying to them some useful knowledge.”187 the practical output has been picture-books on natural history, but from all of this, Kierkegaard says, there developed only an atomistic knowledge “which did not enter into any deeper relation to children and their existence, and was not appropriated in their souls in any way.”188 in other words, the socratic impact in such a case is absent. on the contrary, the children should ask questions, and as was stated earlier in the essay: “what matters is to bring the poetic to bear on their lives in every way, to exert a magical influence.”189 Kierkegaard himself read fairy tales and folk tales190 and was confident about their positive and refreshing nature: “What does the soul find so invigorating about reading folk tales? When I am tired of everything and ‘full of days,’ fairy-tales are for me always the revitalizing bath that proves so refreshing.”191 møller, himself a poet, felt the same way. But they both warn that with children these means should be used with special care. F. Scattered Thoughts and the Concept of Affectation one of møller’s main characteristics was his inability to complete much of what he started, for which reason aphorisms were a perfect means of expression. on his journey to China 1819–21, in his intellectual solitude, he began writing down his thoughts in the form of aphorisms, or as he preferred to call them, “Strøtanker” (scattered thoughts). they covered a wide range of themes—from everyday life, aesthetics, psychology, religion, philology, philosophy, etc.—and he continued this practice for virtually the rest of his life.192 paul v. rubow suggests as an inspiration the Maximes (1665) of François de la rochefoucauld (1613–80), since in general these maxims treat affectation and cast light on the thought that human virtues are hidden vices.193 However, Uffe Andreasen rightly points out that a French influence is not very likely, and that an acquaintance with la rochefoucauld would only be indirect through møller’s reading of arthur schopenhauer’s (1788–1860) Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, in which the Frenchman is quoted.194 moreover, according 187 SKS 17, 130 / KJN 1, 124. ibid. 189 SKS 17, 124 / KJN 1, 118. 190 Cf. ASKB 1407–1471. 191 SKS 17, 251.2–5, dd:94 / KJN 1, 241. Cf. grethe Kjær, Barndommens ulykkelige elsker. Kierkegaard om barnet og barndommen, Copenhagen: C.a. reitzel 1986, pp. 127ff.; in general, see her analysis on pp. 118ff. 192 vilhelm andersen suggests that he stopped in 1836: “as far as can be judged, no aphorisms are preserved from a time later than 1836.” Udvalgte Skrifter af Poul Møller, vol. 2, p. 380. 193 paul v. rubow, Kunsten at skrive—Kunsten at læse, Copenhagen: ejnar munksgaard 1942, p. 45. 194 uffe andreasen, Poul Møller og romantismen, pp. 60–1. Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung first appeared in 1819; Kierkegaard owned the 2nd ed. of 1844 (leipzig: F.a. Brockhaus 1844; ASKB 773–773a). 188 Poul Martin Møller: Kierkegaard and the Confidant of Socrates 145 to a letter to sibbern, møller read this work (whose overall pessimistic tendency he would later, in the treatise on immortality, describe as nihilistic) for the first time possibly in January 1828, which is several years after he began writing aphorisms on the journey to China.195 as rubow calls attention to elsewhere, a better candidate is possibly the german aphorist georg Christoph lichtenberg (1742–99).196 the name of Friedrich schlegel and his fragments might also be suggested in this context. however, nothing certain can be said about this, and maybe it is wiser only to note that møller was simply a fragmentist by nature. it would be natural to assume that Kierkegaard’s “diapsalmata” in Either/Or were inspired by møller, but one must bear in mind that his scattered thoughts were not published until 1843 in volume 3 of the Posthumous Writings.197 apart from this, it is clear that several of the “diapsalmata” date from much earlier since some of them are found as entries in his early journals (indeed, Kierkegaard’s journal entries as such are often obiter dicta very similar to møller’s aphorisms, although with an aphorism one expects a certain finish and sharp point).198 they are not necessarily identical with later “diapsalmata,” but the scheme is the same. to take an example, in the Journal CC there is an entry that reads “i prefer to talk with old ladies who retail family nonsense; next with the insane—and last of all with very reasonable people.”199 in Either/Or this has changed to the well-known “i prefer to talk with children, for one may still dare to hope that they may become rational beings; but those who have become that—good lord!”200 it is funny, then, when among Møller’s scattered thoughts we find the following: “In a certain sense children are more rational than old people: the former regard those people who stand above them in terms of insight as the most insightful, the latter those who stand below them.”201 however, that a common thought like this is expressed by both thinkers, can be nothing but a coincidence. nevertheless, there is no reason to doubt that Kierkegaard read all of møller’s scattered thoughts that were published—in the footnote earlier quoted from Concluding Unscientific Postscript he refers to them in general when speaking of møller’s anti-hegelianism as “more noteworthy than many an aphorism 195 Borup, letter no. 91, in which møller says that he has just read two books of schopenhauer, whom he had never heard of before; one of these books was Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung. 196 paul v. rubow in a review of olle holmberg, Tankar vid en kopp te, stockholm: Bonniers 1958, in Berlingske Aftenavis, november 25, 1958; cf. andreasen, Poul Møller og romantismen, p. 61. 197 ES1, vol. 3, pp. 171–291 and pp. 303–13 (on affectation). another thing is, of course, that “scattered thoughts” might have come to Kierkegaard orally from møller himself, but this possibility does not concern the aphorisms as literary genre. 198 on Kierkegaard’s use of earlier notes as “diapsalmata,” cf., for instance, Frithiof Brandt’s introduction to Kierkegaard-Manuskripter. Diapsalmata, published by the society for danish language and literature (Danske Digtere ved Arbejdet, vol. 3), Copenhagen: levin & munksgaard 1935, and Brandes, Søren Kierkegaard, pp. 124–9. 199 SKS 17, 208, CC:24 / KJN 1, 199. 200 SKS 2, 27.23–4 / EO1, 19. 201 ES1, vol. 3, 275. 146 Finn Gredal Jensen included in the printed edition”202—but only in a few cases it is possible to determine with absolute certainty that he was directly inspired by them. in the Concluding Unscientific Postscript one reads, “poul møller has correctly pointed out that a court fool uses more wit in one year than many a witty author in his whole life.”203 this statement is typical for møller, and indeed very socratic. what matters is practical activity among people; what matters is existence. however, the aphorism in question is a bit more complex and reads like this in extenso: the humorous improvisor and the other oral poets have more genius than the poets who write, but less consciousness of it.204 they are rich men, who amuse themselves by throwing gold out to the rabble, without themselves knowing its value. the poetic writers are not so often filled with inspiring thoughts as they are knowers of their genuineness. every fortunate idea that they hit upon is noted and used in an appropriate manner. But even among the most voluminous comic authors there is not found as much wit as an outstanding court fool needs in one year.205 Kierkegaard uses this aphorism in the Postscript, part 2, section two, Chapter 3, § 4, where Climacus treats the task and style of the subjective thinker. he explains the thought of møller thus: “and why is that if it is not because the former [the court fool] is an existing person who every moment of the day must have wittiness at his disposal, whereas the other is witty only momentarily.”206 in The Book on Adler, Chapter 4, “psychological Conception of adler as a phenomenon, and as a satire on the hegelian philosophy and the present,” Kierkegaard writes: “what poul møller says somewhere is so true and so mature, that one can certainly tolerate not doing anything, indeed, that it can even be entertaining for someone, when one is aware that there is something that one should do; the entertaining element lies in the consciousness that one has neglected something.”207 in a footnote to this he refers to the Posthumous Writings, volume 3, p. 217 medio, and then in the margin quotes one of møller’s scattered thoughts: during fairly complete idleness, one can still avoid boredom as long as an obligatory task is being neglected through the idleness, because one is then somewhat occupied by the continual struggle one is in with oneself. But as soon as the duty ceases, or one no longer feels any reminder of it at all, boredom sets in. the private tutor who from moment to moment postpones a working hour enjoys himself as long as he is on the point of going to his pupil, but when he has decided to skip the hour his enjoyment ceases. the reminder by conscience in that example was something unpleasant that served as a stimulation for something pleasant. a poet who is writing a tragedy, although it was part 202 SKS 7, 41.8 / CUP1, 34, note. SKS 7, 321.30–32 / CUP1, 351. 204 Compare to this Jean paul’s “passive geniuses” touched upon in section i, in fine. 205 ES1, vol. 3, pp. 176–7. 206 SKS 7, 321.32–4 / CUP1, 352. 207 Pap. vii–2 B 235, p. 214 / BA, 128; the hongs have left out the passage “at man godt kan holde ud...forsømmer Noget,” since they have published a later version of The Book on Adler in which this passage was deleted. 203 Poul Martin Møller: Kierkegaard and the Confidant of Socrates 147 of his plan of life to study for a degree, will do it with greater enthusiasm than he will do it later if he gives up that plan.208 Kierkegaard uses this perhaps banal experience of postponing and pushing forward duties in his “psychological view” of adler and in this case of the extent of his productivity: “in the same way it may also be the dim consciousness that instead of being productive he ought to be doing something else that makes magister adler so productive and makes his productivity so interesting to him, since he, rather than becoming clear to himself through his productivity, instead defends himself against what ethical simplicity would bid him to do.”209 it is not possible to say whether maybe at the same time Kierkegaard has also had in mind møller’s early, partly autobiographical essay on ingenious idlers, “some observations on the development of popular ideas,”210 which was originally given as a paper at the Student Association on February 19, 1825 under the title, “On the Influence of Idlers on their Contemporary age.” in his last years møller projected a treatise on the concept of affectation, a psychological and social theory of his own, developed over the years in numerous scattered thoughts on the subject and in a fragment that should be an introduction to the treatise. this fragment was begun in 1837, according to F.C. olsen, who supplied it with the title “introductory observations for a treatise on affectation.”211 this “moral description of nature,” as møller calls it, might be considered his only original contribution to a philosophical anthropology, or one should perhaps say pathology. earlier the concept of affectation was used in reference to function, to extraverted actions, but møller uses it primarily of existence. For the same reason he had to give up a hegelian concept of morality (Sittlichkeit), since for hegel morality is reason’s highest reality. But as møller points out, a “previously formed speculative system” is useless for his purpose. he has in mind any deception of and falsehood to oneself, to one’s individuality, and this cannot be defined in absolute terms, since truth in life is a personal matter, and it is more than morality.212 untruth is self208 Pap. vii–2 B 235, pp. 214–15 / BA, 128–9; ES1, vol. 3, p. 217. Pap. vii–2 B 235, p. 215 / BA, 129. 210 p.m. møller, “nogle Betragtninger over populaire ideers udvikling,” Nyt Aftenblad, no. 18, 1825, pp. 153–60; reprinted in ES1, vol. 2, pp. 3–19. 211 p.m. møller, “Forberedelser til en afhandling om affectation,” in ES1, vol. 3, pp. 291–302 and pp. 303–13 (“strøtanker; om affectation”); compare olsen’s footnote pp. 291– 2. on this subject see, for instance, peter thielst, “poul martin møller (1794–1838): scattered thoughts, analysis of affectation, Combat with nihilism,” Danish Yearbook of Philosophy, vol. 13, 1976, pp. 66–83; reprinted as “poul martin møller: scattered thoughts, analysis of affectation, struggle with nihilism,” in Kierkegaard and His Contemporaries: The Culture of Golden Age Denmark, ed. by Jon stewart, Berlin and new york: walter de gruyter 2003 (Kierkegaard Studies Monograph Series, vol. 10), pp. 45–61. 212 the general, or hegelian, understanding of truth møller describes thus: “the life of the person who unfeignedly follows his natural desires has a kind of truth. there is a higher truth in the life of the person who has attained virtue (in the sense of the term employed by antiquity), so that even while still taking the content of his actions from his natural instincts, he has nonetheless achieved sufficient mastery over them to observe a certain moderation in satisfying them. a still higher level of personal truth is in the life of the person who determines 209 148 Finn Gredal Jensen deception and lack of freedom. however, certain kinds of manifestations of life cannot be considered affectation, for instance, a lie or a conscious simulation, and this is neither the case with different types of abnormal behavior or “overwrought” conditions, also treated by møller in his lectures on psychology.213 in his introduction, møller distinguishes between three degrees of affectation: momentary, permanent, and alternating. in short, the momentary deceit or corruption of the self is when a person’s virtue has not become stable and strong, and when at times one is not true to one’s own character, for instance, when socializing with others and becoming one with their “circle of consciousness”; however, paradoxically, often such affectation might prove necessary in existence. the permanent affectation is when a person has lost control of himself and “has taken up the habit of a determinate kind of false statements, in that he imagines that he has certain opinions, interests or inclinations, because he wishes to have them for one outward reason or another.”214 Finally, the worst affectation is the alternating one (“vexlende Affectation”) where there is no longer a “permanent core in the person’s thoughts and will, but at every moment of his life he creates a temporary personality which can be annulled in the following moment.”215 this seldom sort of culmination is total untruth in one’s personal life. møller had collected material for many years on the concept of affectation, including all kinds of observations and reflections which are found especially among his scattered thoughts. Kierkegaard nowhere offers a sustained treatment of møller’s concept of affectation.216 But at least in one case he refers to one of the scattered thoughts on affectation when in January 1847 he writes the following in the Journal NB: that even poul møller was tried in all sorts of doubt is at times apparent in some quite accidental expression. in an aphorism he speaks of fanatical pastors who speak glowingly and do not detect that all their religiosity is accelerated [potenseret] circulation of the blood. alas, this is just where the knot binds. how many men live so transparently that they really know what’s what? they think in entirely different categories from those in which they live. they speak in religious categories and live in categories of sensuousness, the categories of immediate well-being.217 all his intentions by means of pure rational autonomy....to the extent, then, that the human being’s pure self-determination is the will that has been sanctified by religiosity, it acts in complete harmony with the entire world of reason. the human being is what it is supposed to be, and its life cannot attain any higher truth. But this truth is nothing other than morality, and all deviation from it is immorality.” ES1, vol. 3, pp. 293–4. Quoted from an unpublished translation by Bruce h. Kirmmse. 213 the ms with møller’s lecture notes on psychology is not published, but will be so in the new critical edition. it is found at the royal library in Copenhagen, Collinske samling 379, 4o. 214 ES1, vol. 3, p. 298. 215 ES1, vol. 3, p. 299; trans. by soderquist, The Isolated Self, p. 151. 216 although the editors of SKS would apparently like him to do so, for instance, when he mentions “affecterede Dyder” in the journal entry JJ:313, cf. the extended explanatory note to SKS 18, 238.8 / KJN 2, 539, note to 219.4. 217 SKS 20, 80, nB:103 / JP 1, 1044. to this there is also a marginal addition reading, “if it is to become apparent that a sufferer has faith, then faith must appear simultaneously along Poul Martin Møller: Kierkegaard and the Confidant of Socrates 149 it appears from this journal entry that Kierkegaard was well aware of møller’s religious doubts over the years. The affectation of the servants of God, reflected upon in several scattered thoughts, had certainly not helped him to a stronger faith, if any, and, unlike Kierkegaard, he never seriously thought about becoming a pastor again after his journey to China. The aphorism referred to by Kierkegaard exemplifies momentary affectation and reads like this: the momentary exaltation is sometimes of a low sensual nature with dominant organic movement. The strong organic change necessarily awakens reflection (for every severe affection must do so), and the affect is preserved then as joy at its own activity and being lost in the idea. such a half-mad delight over the raising of the functions of vegetative life, for example, of the circulation of the blood, often shines from the eyes of fanatical priests, who sometimes even clench their teeth and contort their face in their rapture. this is regarded by the lower part of the rabble, especially by uneducated women, as enthusiasm.218 as far as immortality is concerned, which will be treated in the next section, it seems—apart from intellectual reflections on the basis of a general debate on the subject at the time—to have been a personal experience that brought møller to a religious clarification. After the death of his wife Betty in 1834, he wrote the following in a letter to his mother-in-law, elisabeth Berg: the sorrowful divorce which we have experienced has made my thought of another and higher life much more alive and present than it has ever been before….i am wholly convinced that death and life on a larger scale are repetitions of the same alternation which lies in sleeping and awakening.…i think, however, that an idea about whose validity one is assured can at certain times in one’s life obtain an unusual clarity and strength, and present itself for one in such a light that it seems as if it were completely new.219 with the suffering. But what happens—as pain, misfortune, and opposition are gradually taken away, his life as interpreted by the secular mind becomes healthier and happier—and he thinks this is due to faith; whereas, on the contrary, it takes place through the restored vitality of immediacy.” SKS 20, 80, nB:103.a / JP 1, 1045. 218 ES1, vol. 3, p. 241. 219 Borup, letter no. 140. Just for the sake of comparison: in the treatise on immortality møller says, “in general it is also the drive to know determinate human individuals as imperishable objects of their love which leads doubting or infidel thinkers back to the Christian world-view,” and of certain natural scientists who have given up abstract pantheism it reads “that the death of individuals to whom they have been tied by strong sympathetic bonds has opened their eyes to the emptiness of their world-view.” Maanedskrift for Litteratur, vol. 17, p. 52; ES1, vol. 2, p. 215. Kierkegaard might be thinking of this in a draft for victor eremita’s speech in Stages on Life’s Way, Pap. v B 178.8, p. 308 / SLW, supplement, p. 548: “in olden days, one believed that immortality was proved by erotic love, somewhat like this: these two love each other for all eternity, ergo, there ought to be an eternity; nowadays one proves it by having loved very frequently, for is not a perfection such as this proof of an immortal spirit!” 150 Finn Gredal Jensen G. The Treatise on Immortality In Chapter 2 of Møller’s unfinished novel Adventures of a Danish Student, the main character, the frizzy Frits, tells his friends how he reflected upon the serious consequences of hanging himself in a blooming apple tree as a result of his unhappy love for the miller’s daughter: “But then i constantly realized that the imperishable part of me, at my departure from this temporal sphere, would perhaps move to such distant regions that i could neither hear nor see anything of the sensation which, in particular, i had intended with my despairing decision.”220 the question about the existence of “distant regions” was central in the contemporary debate about immortality which møller also participated in and which is the theme of his most extensive philosophical work, the treatise “thoughts on the possibility of proofs of human immortality, with regard to the latest literature on the subject,” which was printed in two installments in the Maanedsskrift for Litteratur in 1837.221 the complex content of this large treatise has been treated thoroughly before, and i will refer to such treatments for a more detailed discussion.222 apart from some general remarks, I will here confine myself to focusing on Kierkegaard’s references or allusions to the treatise, particularly in the Concluding Unscientific Postscript. møller says in one of his scattered thoughts: “that faith in immortality is an essential moment in knowledge is first seen quite clearly when one decides to 220 ES1, vol. 3, p. 80. p.m. møller, “tanker over muligheden af Beviser for menneskets udødelighed, med hensyn til den nyeste derhen hørende literatur,” Maanedsskrift for Litteratur, vol. 17, Copenhagen: C.a. reitzel 1837, pp. 1–72 (January issue) and 422–53 (may issue); reprinted in ES1, vol. 2, 1842, pp. 158–272. the title might allude to ludwig Feuerbach’s anonymous work, Gedanken über Tod und Unsterblichkeit, aus den Papieren eines Denkers, nebst einem Anhang theologisch-satyrischer Xenien, herausgegeben von einem seiner Freunde, Nürnberg: J.A. Stein 1830. Møller’s treatise has been translated into French, “Réflexions sur la possibilité de prouver l’immortalité de l’homme en rapport avec la littérature récent sur le sujet,” in Lectures philosophiques de Søren Kierkegaard. Kierkegaard chez ses contemporains danois, ed. and trans. by henri-Bernard vergote, paris: presses universitaires de France 1993, pp. 149–213. an english translation will later appear in the series Texts from Golden Age Denmark, vol. 9. 222 more recently, the subject has been discussed in Jon stewart, A History of Hegelianism in Golden Age Denmark, tome ii, The Martensen Period: 1837–1842, Copenhagen: C.a. reitzel 2007 (Danish Golden Age Studies, vol. 3), pp. 37–53, and in lasse horne Kjældgaard, Sjælen efter døden. Guldalderens moderne gennembrud, Copenhagen: gyldendal 2007, especially pp. 83–112 on møller; see also Kjældgaard’s article, “what it means to Be immortal: afterlife and aesthetic Communication in Kierkegaard’s Concluding Unscientific Postscript,” Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook, 2005, pp. 90–112. For a general overview of the debate on immortality, see also, for instance, the two articles of istván Czakó, “unsterblichkeitsfurcht. Ein christlicher Beitrag zu einer zeitgenössischen Debatte in Søren Kierkegaards ‘Gedanken, die hinterrücks verwunden—zur erbauung,’ ” Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook, 2007, pp. 227– 254, and “heiberg and the immortality debate: a historical overview,” in Johan Ludvig Heiberg: Philosopher, Littérateur, Dramaturge, and Political Thinker, ed. by Jon stewart, Copenhagen: museum, tusculanum press 2008 (Danish Golden Age Studies, vol. 5), pp. 95–138. 221 Poul Martin Møller: Kierkegaard and the Confidant of Socrates 151 completely eliminate this concept from one’s system; only then it will become clear that it is an indispensable moment in a consistent and harmonious world-view.”223 so it appears, then, that in order to come to terms with the truth of immortality, one has to eliminate it altogether, and then consider the proofs of its possible reality. in a way this is once more a struggle with nihilism and now the negation of eternal life. “For it is quite possible that the negation has not as yet completed the full measure it must reach before it becomes entirely evident that the desolation to which it leads is not a sphere in which the human spirit is supposed to move,” møller states at the beginning of the treatise.224 Furthermore, in his own age he saw the dying-out of a goethe-like classicism, or maybe rather of a greek idealistic approach—his late poem “the artist among the rebels” was a bitter protest against this development— only to be superseded by nihilism, conflict and disharmony in all aspects of human existence. the arts, an anticipation of eternal life, ought to lead the way. after the death of hegel (1831) there had been an ongoing debate on the immortality of the soul, initiated by Friedrich richter’s (1807–56) work Die Lehre von den letzten Dingen in 1833.225 hegel himself never treated the subject specifically; as Møller says, it is not evident anywhere that Hegel denies immortality, but nonetheless, “whoever is somewhat able to read between the lines in hegel’s writings will easily reach the inevitable conclusion that this philosopher holds the concept of personal immortality to be a notion with no reality at all.”226 In the first part of the treatise (sections i–vii), which is the most important, møller develops his own view of the matter, and in the second (sections viii–Xi) gives a critical account of recent speculative literature on the proofs of immortality, especially Christian hermann weiße (1801–66),227 the younger Fichte (1797–1879),228 and Carl Friedrich göschel (1781–1861).229 But he is not satisfied with any of these, although generally he states—once more, as in the aphorism quoted above—that “it is true of every isolated proof of human immortality that it has the possibility of opening the prospect of a profound and exhaustive world-view.”230 however, this is not possible within the frames of a philosophical system, and indeed the treatise on immortality must be seen as Møller’s definitive break with Hegelianism as such, and 223 this aphorism is not found in the Posthumous Writings, but was published by vilhelm andersen in Udvalgte Skrifter af Poul Møller, vol. 2, p. 397. 224 Maanedsskrift for Litteratur, vol. 17, p. 4; ES1, vol. 2, p. 162. 225 Friedrich richter, Die Lehre von den letzten Dingen, vol. 1, Eine wissenschaftliche Kritik, aus dem Standpunct der Religion unternommen, Breslau: in Joh. Friedr. Korn des älteren Buchhandlung 1833; a second volume, Die Lehre vom jüngsten Tage. Dogma und Kritik, appeared in Berlin: richter’sche Buchhandlung 1844. 226 Maanedsskrift for Litteratur, vol. 17, p. 25; ES1, vol. 2, p. 185. 227 C.h. weiße, Die philosophische Geheimlehre von der Unsterblichkeit des menschlichen Individuums, dresden: Ch.F. grimmer’sche Buchhandlung 1834. 228 i.h. Fichte, Die Idee der Persönlichkeit und der individuellen Fortdauer, elberfeld: Büschler’schen verlagsbuchhandlung und Buchdruckerei 1834 (ASKB 505). 229 C.F. göschel, Von den Beweisen für die Unsterblichkeit der menschlichen Seele im Lichte der speculativen Philosophie, Berlin: duncker und humblot 1835. 230 Maanedsskrift for Litteratur, vol. 17, p. 453; ES1, vol. 2, p. 271. 152 Finn Gredal Jensen not only a critique of right hegelians who, in his view, wrongly attribute a doctrine of immortality to hegel. møller points to two different conceptions of the divine in modern philosophy: the theistic and the pantheistic, which derive from leibniz and spinoza, respectively. in recent times raw pantheism prevails (in theology apparent as “omnipresence,” “omnipotence,” etc.), and so it is obvious that “the doctrine of the souls as independent things or substances has disappeared for everyone who has even a little tinge of the age’s philosophical culture; but thereby the doctrine of immortality has also lost its old foundation.”231 most people asking for strict proofs of immortality have no conditions of doing so: “only one who in passing moments is capable of feeling a true freedom from all mundane interests is receptive to the conviction of an actually existing supersensible world. i do not mean the freedom of irony, but the very freedom that leads to a true life in the world.”232 møller then uses an anecdote of a bookkeeper and a theologian in order to illustrate the general selfdeception. afterwards he shows that immortality cannot be proved mathematically or ontologically (a priori). with the lack of any logical proof, what is necessary is a concrete, complete world-view (“fuldstændig Verdensanskuelse”) that has to be accounted for completely, both empirically regarding the phenomena from the world of sense, and in terms of the Christian tradition of the supersensible. hegelians who have tried to present a world-view without the doctrine of immortality have never succeeded with this, be it by means of logical pantheism or otherwise, and hegelianism has outlived itself: “a life-view that outrages humanity’s feeling of truth has refuted itself temporarily by its explicit and decisive statements, and thereby an endeavor is brought about to present the Christian tradition in a new scientific system that eventually succeeds the old in which the inadequacies are commonly felt.”233 møller recognizes that he will not himself be able to supply a new true, universal world-view; that will be a task for the future to develop.234 all of this might seem very abstract, but at least one visible consequence of the negation of immortality, according to møller, is a growing number of suicides, which is just a symptom of an overall nihilistic world-view consistent with the negation: “in accordance with the annihilation doctrine [Tilintetgjørelseslæren], the conduct of individuals toward one another will, for those who are aware of the brevity of life, be about as unimportant as a long dream. a life-view that leads to practical nihilism easily passes over to a positive striving for self-annihilation.”235 also the love for 231 ibid., p. 10; ES1, vol. 2, p. 168. ibid., p. 17; ES1, vol. 2, pp. 176–7. 233 ibid., pp. 45-6; ES1, vol. 2, p. 208. 234 Carl Henrik Koch argues that Møller’s treatise is an affiliation with I.H. Fichte’s speculative theism, and that this was Møller’s final philosophical position; for this, see further C.h. Koch, Den danske idealisme 1800–1880, Copenhagen: gyldendal 2004 (Den danske filosofis historie, vol. 4, ed. by sten ebbesen and C.h. Koch), pp. 261–4. 235 Maanedsskrift for Litteratur, vol. 17, p. 51; ES1, vol. 2, p. 214. on what according to h.p. Barfod was a loose sheet of paper (B-fort. 405b, cf. EP, vol. 3, p. 317) Kierkegaard wrote: “a funeral speech?—the pattern which is interwoven should be poul møller.” Pap. vii–1 B 224. it is not clear what he meant, but one of the other sheets it was found together with said, “at the grave of a suicide.” Pap. vii–1 B 227. 232 Poul Martin Møller: Kierkegaard and the Confidant of Socrates 153 one’s fellow man becomes an illusion and loses its value: “the love that views its object as perishable is by necessity of a different nature than the love that knows its object to belong to what eternally exists.”236 third, the ideal and contemplative drive loses its meaning, that is to say, science, art and religion lose their interest. as what one might call an “indirect proof,” møller argues that the creation of art necessarily implies a belief in immortality: in order that a human being may have enough centrifugal force to move in the regions of higher imagination, it must either, with a sort of reflection-free immortality, use life as an eternity, with no clear notion of its shortness, or it must be convinced of the reality of the concept of immortality. here i set forth the claim without any hesitation that doubt of the immortality of individuals is the cancer of art, and the conviction of their destructibility is the grave of art...what i have to say here is meant literally: “true art is an anticipation of the blessed life.”237 in his review in Perseus of v.h. rothe’s Doctrine of the Trinity and Reconciliation, heiberg alluded bitterly to møller as a deserter of hegelianism.238 although møller 236 Maanedsskrift for Litteratur, vol. 17, p. 52; ES1, vol. 2, p. 215. it seems strange, then, that many people appear happy, but this may easily be explained as self-deception: “that a great number of people who do not believe in immortality nevertheless display a great zest for life can generally be explained as a kind of thoughtlessness that accounts for their mediocre orientation in their own realm of ideas. But now the human race has acquired a melancholy direction that neither will allow its self-contradictions to remain unnoticed nor permit it to constantly forget itself in meaningless busyness.” Maanedsskrift for Litteratur, vol. 17, p. 64; ES1, vol. 2, p. 228. the theme of busyness is also treated by Kierkegaard in many places, for instance, in the well-known diapsalma, SKS 2, 33 / EO1, 25. 237 Maanedsskrift for Litteratur, vol. 17, pp. 53–4; ES1, vol. 2, pp. 216–17. møller’s famous thesis that true art is an anticipation of the eternal or blessed life (“Den sande Kunst er en Anticipation af det salige Liv”) might well be inspired by one of the works he discusses in his treatise, C.h. weiße’s Die philosophische Geheimlehre, in which one reads, inter alia (pp. 46–7): “Daß in dem Schönen, in den Werken des Genius sich ein Ewiges und geistig Absolutes, daß in ihm sich der Weltgeist selbst nach einer der unendlich vielen Gestalten, in die er, der unerschöpfliche Proteus, sich zu verwandeln weiß, offenbart: dieß ist eine Wahrnehmung, eine Gewißheit, die man mit Recht die Grundlage aller höhern Geistesbildung unsers Zeitalters nennen kann….Wir erwähnen dieß hier…nur, um in dem gemeinschaftlichen Boden eben derjenigen Bildungskreise unseres Zeitalters, von denen der Zweifel an persönlicher Unsterblichkelt vornehmlich auszugehen pflegt, die Stelle aufzuzeigen, von der eine wissenschaftliche Widerlegung dieses Zweifels zu beginnen hat.” Cf. Jon stewart, A History of Hegelianism in Golden Age Denmark, tome ii, p. 49, note 3. 238 valdemar henrik rothe, Læren om Treenighed og Forsoning. Et speculativt Forsøg i Anledning af Reformationsfesten, Copenhagen: J.d. Quist 1836. in his review, “recension over hr. dr. rothes treenigheds- og Forsoningslære,” in Perseus, Journal for den speculative Idee, no. 1, ed. by J.l. heiberg, Copenhagen: C.a. reitzel 1837 (ASKB 569), p. 33, heiberg asks if the attempts of certain philosophers “for progress beyond the present scope of philosophy, are not unwittingly a regress. it remains to be seen whether the system, which they just left, does not contain what they now are looking for outside it, in which case they would have gone over the stream after water [taken unnecessary trouble]. yet it seems unlikely that these deserters will ever constitute their own corps, since their goal is too indeterminate. even if 154 Finn Gredal Jensen respected his old friend, at this time they had drifted away from each other, at least this was definitely true in Møller’s last year when, in a letter to Hauch, after expressing his dissatisfaction with the idea that poetry could be “speculative” or philosophical— as was allegedly the case with heiberg’s play Fata Morgana (which premiered on January 29, 1838) and would later be the case with his “apocalyptic comedy,” “a soul after death” (1841)—møller wrote that he and heiberg “had long since ceased to understand each other.”239 sibbern, on the other hand, later warmly defended the then departed Møller in his review of the first issue of Perseus in the Maanedsskrift of 1838, and saw him as a thinker for whom hegelianism could be nothing but a temporary stage: “he could not have avoided passing through hegelianism as a phase. But a thinker like poul møller could not allow himself to remain in it forever. it does not belong to his character to let himself be recruited into a philosophy like hegel’s for a lifetime or let himself be made into a Hegelianismo adscriptus.”240 sibbern was right: a free genius, møller was now heading in another direction, however unfortunately stopped by an early death. above in section ii, i have already treated the passages in Kierkegaard which also reflect this movement: for example, Møller’s strong verdict on hegelian madness—and his hearty laughter at it. they could specify what it is that they are seeking, for example, a future world-view, they nevertheless could say nothing about the way which leads there, but this is exactly what is at issue in philosophy, which cannot be served by having its properties on the moon.” heiberg’s strong reaction should be seen in the light that møller’s treatise was also a critical response to heiberg’s negative statements regarding religion in his analysis of the crisis of the age, On the Significance of Philosophy for the Present Age (in Heiberg’s On the Significance of Philosophy for the Present Age and Other Texts, trans. and ed. by Jon stewart, Copenhagen: C.a. reitzel 2005 (Texts from Golden Age Denmark, vol. 1), pp. 83–121 (originally as Om Philosophiens Betydning for den nuværende Tid. Et Indbydelses-Skrift til en Række af philosophiske Forelæsninger, Copenhagen: C.a. reitzel 1833), cf. Kjældgaard, Sjælen efter døden, p. 86. 239 Borup, letter no. 168. that this eventual lack of understanding was only on an intellectual level, is evidenced by the personal elements of heiberg’s beautiful, although also traditional, song for møller’s funeral, printed in ES1 just after F.C. olsen’s Poul Martin Møllers Levnet (p. 116); cf. Johan Ludvig Heibergs Poetiske Skrifter, vols. 1–11, Copenhagen: C.a. reitzel 1862; vol. 8, pp. 386–7. 240 F.C. sibbern, “Perseus, Journal for den speculative Idee. udgiven af Johan ludvig heiberg. nr. 1, Juni 1837. Kjøbenhavn. reitzels Forlag. Xiv og 264 s. 8. priis 1 rbd. 84 skill.—(med stadigt hensyn til dr. rothes: Læren om Treenighed og Forsoning. Et speculativt Forsøg i Anledning af Reformationsfesten.),” Maanedsskrift for Litteratur, vols. 19 and 20, 1838, a series of eight articles, of which the first three were also published separately as a book, Bemærkninger og Undersøgelser, fornemmelig betreffende Hegels Philosophie, betragtet i Forhold til vor Tid, Copenhagen: C.a. reitzel 1838; the quotation is from article i, “angaaende det hegelske Begreb om philosophie med hensyn til dens udgangspunct og dens hele grundlag,” Maanedsskrift for Litteratur, vol. 19, pp. 315–60; see p. 336; Bemærkninger og Undersøgelser, p. 54. trans. by Jon stewart in his A History of Hegelianism in Golden Age Denmark, tome ii, p. 198. Poul Martin Møller: Kierkegaard and the Confidant of Socrates 155 The young Søren Kierkegaard had read the first part of Møller’s treatise soon after its appearance in the January issue of Maanedsskrift for Litteratur, 1837.241 this is evident from the Journal BB, in which he wrote the following entry on February 4, 1837. What struck him first and foremost at this time was the inserted story of the bookkeeper and the theologian: the episode poul møller has included in his treatise on the immortality of the soul in the latest issue of the Maanedsskrift is very interesting. perhaps relieving the strict scholarly tone in this way with lighter passages, in which life nevertheless emerges much more fully, will become the usual thing, and will in scholarly domain compare somewhat to the chorus, to the comic parts of romantic dramas.242 with this “episode”—also Kierkegaard’s danish wording—or “Fortælling,” to use møller’s own term, in which a bookkeeper, in vain, asks a theologian for quick, popular proofs of immortality while he is shaving and getting dressed (indirectly also a critique of heiberg’s popularizing philosophy), møller livens up an otherwise heavy presentation in such an unusual manner that he even has to excuse himself to the reader for doing so. Kierkegaard compares it to the chorus of ancient dramas— not surprising, with møller as a “happy lover of greek culture”—or comic parts of romantic dramas. But one might also compare møller’s way of transcending to another method of communication to plato’s similes, or at least i believe that møller’s inspiration is clearly that of socratic dialogues.243 true, it is a “lighter passage” in most scholarly surroundings. Kierkegaard seems to have taken over this technique of anecdotal insertions from møller, especially in the Concluding 241 Maanedsskrift for Litteratur does not appear in the ASKB and Kierkegaard is not found on the list of subscribers, but as already mentioned Kierkegaard possibly read it in a public library or reading society, e.g., the athenæum. that he read the Maanedsskrift regularly is clear also, for instance, from his reference to møller’s review of The Extremes (cf. SKS 19, 99, not3:2.a / JP 4, 3847), see above section iii, d, or from BB:32 (SKS 17, 121 / KJN 1, 115), in which he mentions martensen’s review of heiberg’s Introductory Lecture to the Logic Course (1835) in the Maanedsskrift for Litteratur, vol. 16, 1836, pp. 515–28. 242 SKS 17, 134, BB:41 / KJN 1, 127–8. there is a facsimile of the journal page 110 with the entry in SKS 17, 132 / KJN 1, 126. 243 the nature of the story has been explained differently; for instance, John Chr. Jørgensen calls it a “short story” (“novelle”); Den sande kunst. Studier i dansk 1800-tals realisme. Poul Møller, Hans Egede Schack, Georg Brandes, Herman Bang, Copenhagen: Borgen 1980, pp. 55–60. in the earlier-mentioned letter to his brother hans ulrik (Borup, letter no. 151), møller says the following, comparing the inserted story to his aphorisms: “i have deliberately written the piece which appears in the Maanedsskrift in a desultory style [desultorisk Foredrag] or in aphorisms, not just because i am proceeding so methodically in my lectures that, for a change, i feel the need to break free when i am my own master, but also because i believe that this kind of style will win a number of readers which the former style will miss out on; moreover, because i know that it is understood by many people who do not understand the more rigorous presentation. But the aphorisms are written haphazardly, just as hats are made for sale without any measurements being taken. it is only by chance if they happen to fit someone’s head or not. They are more prone to both understanding and misunderstanding than the more rigorous presentation.” 156 Finn Gredal Jensen Unscientific Postscript with Johannes Climacus’ scenes in Frederiksberg garden and on the churchyard.244 Kierkegaard also seized upon a pregnant expression from møller’s story: “À propos, since we now have brought up the subject, could you not as a theologian briefly recount to me the best proofs of the immortality of the soul? please do it while i sharpen my razor and take a shave.”245 he later uses this in the Postscript and replaces the bookkeeper with “a serious man” in search of the truth: But one of the gentlemen wishers, a “serious man” who really wants to do something for his eternal happiness, may say, “Is it not possible to find out for certain, clearly and briefly, what an eternal happiness is? Can’t you describe it to me ‘while I shave,’ just as one describes the loveliness of a woman, the royal purple, or distant regions?”246 the thorough information that Kierkegaard received from møller’s treatise was undoubtedly useful to him, although, as a subscriber to the Tidsskrift for udenlandsk 244 SKS 7, 170–2 and 213–19 / CUP1, 185–8 and 234–40. other examples of inserted pieces, although not in a strictly philosophical context, are the six episodes in “ ‘Guilty?’/ ‘Not-Guilty?’ ” in Stages on Life’s Way. possibly inspired by møller, Kierkegaard, in one of these pieces, entitled “a possibility” (“en mulighed”), also uses a bookkeeper (SKS 6, 257–68 / SLW, 276–88). Kierkegaard, or Frater taciturnus, lets this bookkeeper talk “dirty” with an old sea captain (SKS 6, 267 / SLW, 287–8), exactly as Kierkegaard himself is reported to have done according to the journal entry JJ:113 about his conversations with an old “China sea captain,” who tells him, among other things, “how in manila everyone has a wench, or about the fun he had in his youth with wenches (it is his favorite expression) in london” (SKS 18, 176 / KJN 2, 163–4). in this entry, which Kierkegaard made use of in Stages on Life’s Way, it is perhaps also worth noticing his special mention of the location manila, capital of the philippines, where møller had been on his voyage to China. one of the texts møller was working on, but did not complete, during his voyage, was a diary or description of the voyage, “entries on the voyage to China” (“optegnelser paa reisen til China”), ES1, vol. 3, pp. 131– 68, in which we find another “naughty” incident, not from Manila, however, but from Anyer on Java, on June 9, 1820: “in their trading the malayans would often afterwards cancel their transactions. i had bought some canes for a dress coat, but the savage came back and wanted to redo the deal. in another case a malayan came to a sailor bringing back his payment saying: Trada mau (i don’t want it), to which the sailor said K— my a—, and the malayan had to leave again with unfinished business.” ES1, vol. 3, p. 159. this episode Kierkegaard refers to in his small unpublished study from 1848, “phister as Captain scipio” (Pap. iX B 67–73 / C, Supplement, pp. 329–44): “To say, in regard to reflection and a reflective performance, neither more nor less than ‘Bravo’ or ‘Bravissimo’ is completely meaningless, is something that can only bore and weary the reflection that is the object of admiration and something that easily becomes a conversation like the one between a Japanese [sic] and a danish sailor that poul møller has preserved. the Japanese said: Tanko–Panko, to which the sailor very appropriately responded: Kiss my a—.” Pap. iX B 68, p. 386 / C, supplement, p. 331. 245 Maanedsskrift for Litteratur, vol. 17, p. 20; ES1, vol. 2, p. 179. 246 SKS 7, 357.28–33 / CUP1, 392. it is also found in The Book on Adler: “such things cannot be presented in a newspaper and be read ‘while one shaves.’ ” Pap. vii–2 B 235, p. 83 / BA, 43. apropos shaving, Kierkegaard is inspired by the picture of Caligula used by møller in regard to suicide (Maanedsskrift, vol. 17, pp. 51–2; ES1, vol. 2, p. 214) when in the Journal EE, in an entry dated may 4, 1839, he writes, “Caligula’s idea of wanting to have all heads put on one neck is nothing but an attempted, cowardly suicide.” SKS 18, 24.32–3, ee:55 / KJN 2, 20. Poul Martin Møller: Kierkegaard and the Confidant of Socrates 157 theologisk Litteratur, that is, Journal for Foreign Theological Literature, he had earlier been able to follow the german debate on the subject, reported by the editors h.n. Clausen and m.h. hohlenberg.247 in his treatise, møller also discusses the nihilism of schopenhauer, who was apparently not very familiar to danish readers, including Kierkegaard.248 regardless of what Kierkegaard read, there can be no doubt whatsoever that he truly believed in the immortality of the human soul. From all of the numerous places he discusses immortality, this is evident, for instance, from one of his Christian Discourses (1848), “there will be the resurrection of the dead, of the righteous—and of the unrighteous,” part iv of “thoughts that wound from Behind.”249 however, with the religious doubts he knew that møller had had, he was also well aware how difficult his preoccupation with immortality must have been. he has his pseudonym write in the Postscript: i know that the late professor poul møller, who certainly was familiar with the newest philosophy, did not until late in life become really aware of the infinite difficulty of the question of immortality when it is made simple, and when the question is not about a new demonstration and about the opinions, strung on a thread, of tom, dick, and harry or about the best way of stringing opinions on a thread. i also know that in a treatise he tried to give an account and that this monograph clearly reflects his aversion to modern speculative thought. The difficulty in the question arises precisely when it is made simple, not in the way a well-trained assistant professor inquires about the immortality of human beings, abstractly understood as humankind in general, and thus about the immortality of human beings in general, fantastically understood as the race, and thus about the immortality of the human race.250 247 see, for instance, nB11:74, the commentary on SKS 22, 44.13. later he also read, for instance, K.l. michelet, Vorlesungen über die Persönlichkeit Gottes und Unsterblichkeit der Seele oder die ewige Persönlichkeit des Geistes, Berlin: Ferdinand dümmler 1841 (ASKB 680), and d.F. strauß, Fremstilling af den christelige Troeslære i dens historiske Udvikling og i dens Kamp med den moderne Videnskab, vols. 1–2, trans. by hans Brøchner, Copenhagen: h.C. Klein 1842–43 (ASKB 803–804); vol. 2, pp. 582–601 (originally, Die christliche Glaubenslehre in ihrer geschichtlichen Entwicklung und im Kampfe mit der modernen Wissenschaft dargestellt, vols. 1–2, tübingen and stuttgart: osiander 1840–41). one of the diapsalmata in Either/Or refers to the writing of treatises on immortality, but we cannot be sure if he has also møller in mind; cf. SKS 2, 43–4 / EO1, 34–5. 248 To all appearances, Kierkegaard did not read Schopenhauer before 1854; the first time he mentions him is in the journal entry nB29:26 (SKS 25, 314–15). see, in general, simonella davini, “schopenhauer: Kierkegaard’s late encounter with his opposite,” in Kierkegaard and His German Contemporaries, tome i, Philosophy, ed. by Jon stewart, aldershot: ashgate 2007 (Kierkegaard Research: Sources, Reception and Resources, vol. 6), pp. 277–91. 249 SKS 10, 211–21 / CD, 202–13. on this, see for instance, Kjældgaard, Sjælen efter døden, pp. 217–22, and istván Czakó, “unsterblichkeitsfurcht.” 250 SKS 7, 159 / CUP1, 172. as regards “the opinions of Creti and pleti,” Kierkegaard makes fun of this for instance in a journal entry on “The Faith of the Thousands and Millions”: “this is how it all hangs together. one impresses upon the child: you are immortal—and then says: never pay attention to it any more; never think about it, now get on with the busy activity of life (which, frivolously, is called being earnest), get married, have children, make something of yourself, be active early and late, but for heaven’s sake see to it that you never give immortality another thought, for you are immortal, this is absolutely certain—this is called 158 Finn Gredal Jensen he seizes upon one of the main points of the treatise on immortality—and makes it even more difficult, as is the custom of Climacus: I am thinking of another pregnant, but more substantial expression, of course, than the one about the bookkeeper shaving, namely, møller’s statement that true art is an anticipation of the blessed life. this is repeated by Kierkegaard in a couple of places: in the very book he dedicated to møller, The Concept of Anxiety, in which he also notes that “what poul møller said is true, that immortality must be present everywhere,”251 and in the Postscript, where it is extended to the following emphasis of immortality presupposing that a having faith.” SKS 25, 442, nB30:70 / JP 4, 5045. on the “making-a-living demonstration” cf. the words of Judge william in Either/Or: “But if he makes a good living, then he has achieved his destiny, but the destiny of making a good living cannot be that he is supposed to die but, on the contrary, that he is supposed to live well on his good living—ergo, man is immortal. this demonstration could be called the popular demonstration or the makinga-living demonstration. if this demonstration is added to the previous demonstrations, then every reasonable doubt about immortality must be regarded as conquered. this demonstration lends itself splendidly to being placed in conjunction with the other demonstrations—indeed, it shows up here in its full glory since as a conclusion it implies the others and substantiates them.” SKS 3, 265.28–266.1 / EO2, 279–80. 251 SKS 4, 452.19 and 452.32–3 / CA, 153. in the draft, Pap. v B 66 / CA, supplement, p. 210, the text reads, “therefore, poul møller was right that immortality must be present throughout and not brought in as an appendix to the system.” as regards the statement that “true art is an anticipation of the blessed life,” the editors of SKS suggest (in the explanatory note to 452.19 in SKS K4, p. 520) that Kierkegaard, in this case, has h.l. martensen in mind, since on the same page of the draft (Pap. v B 60, p. 137 / CA, supplement, p. 207), where he added the statement on art in the margin, he also discusses Martensen. In the final text of The Concept of Anxiety one reads, “art is an anticipation of eternal life, because poetry and art are the reconciliation only of the imagination, and they may well have the Sinnigkeit [thoughtfulness] of intuition but by no means the Innigkeit [inwardness] of earnestness. some paint eternity elaborately with the tinsel of the imagination and yearn for it. some envision eternity apocalyptically, pretend to be dante, while dante, no matter how much he conceded to the view of the imagination, did not suspend the effect of ethical judgment.” SKS 4, 452.19– 24 / CA, 153. In the draft, this reflection appears in the margin after the statement on the nature of art: “that art is an anticipation of eternal life. the apocalyptic, in which, not as in dante, judgment ethically conceived is suspended. in every case merely a fantasy-view.” Pap. v B 60, p. 127 / CA, supplement, p. 207. with his remarks on the apocalyptic, Kierkegaard is alluding to heiberg’s “apocalyptic comedy,” a soul after death (in New Poems, 1841), which martensen reviewed—and compared to dante’s Divine Comedy—in the journal Fædrelandet, January 10, 11, and 12, 1841. much earlier, in his essay, “observations on the idea of Faust with reference to lenau’s Faust” (“Betragtninger over ideen af Faust. med hensyn paa Lenaus Faust”), in Perseus, Journal for den speculative Idee, no. 1, ed. by J.l. heiberg, Copenhagen: C.a. reitzel 1837, pp. 91–164, martensen had written about “apocalyptic poetry” as “an anticipation of the day of Judgment” (p. 98). (in the forerunner, Ueber Lenau’s Faust, stuttgart: verlag der J.g. Cotta’schen Buchhandlung 1836, there is no trace of anything resembling a treatment of apocalyptic poetry.) However, one should bear in mind that the first issue of Perseus appeared in June 1837, whereas the first part of Møller’s treatise, in which he discusses art as an anticipation, was published earlier, in January 1837, and so martensen, in his essay, might be thinking of møller. in the present context, The Concept of Anxiety, i see no reason to doubt that Kierkegaard also had møller in mind. Poul Martin Møller: Kierkegaard and the Confidant of Socrates 159 human becomes a self: “all idealizing passion is an anticipation of the eternal in existence in order for an existing person to exist.”252 IV. Some Words of Conclusion poul martin møller’s impact on søren Kierkegaard was manifold, but personal more than philosophical. it has become something of a myth that they were close “friends” and that møller was Kierkegaard’s “teacher,” but the sources of their relationship are very few and uncertain. what the sources show, however, notably the draft of the dedication to The Concept of Anxiety, is Kierkegaard’s very special feelings towards møller, and maybe even more so after his death. he admired møller’s strong personality and especially his humor. in his lectures on the history of ancient philosophy, møller says the following of socrates, and these words would probably fit himself from Kierkegaard’s point of view: “Especially his constant good humor and fine wit, which was spread over his conversations, had to make interaction with him attractive for his young friends.”253 it is certain that they had deep conversations which were very inspiring to Kierkegaard, and undoubtedly also to møller, who realized the genius of the young verbose man, even though he was “thoroughly polemical.” of the maieutic method møller writes: But the point was actually that he would go into their individual circle of thought, for which he had a truly extraordinary gift. he assimilated himself for a moment completely with the other person’s entire view and knew to the satisfaction of the other person how to develop his circle of thought so that he would have to completely ascribe to it….By going completely into the circle of thought of the other person, he obliged the other person to follow along since his own thoughts were developed to consequences which he had not dreamed of, and to completely unexpected results.254 if we assume an inspiration from møller on Kierkegaard’s thought—which, as shown, we have many reasons to do in the case of, for instance, mutual motifs such as ahasverus, various thoughts on aesthetic despair, nihilism, irony and psychology, and the general focus on subjectivity—we will also have to assume an extensive degree of oral communication between the two, since many of møller’s ideas seem to show up in Kierkegaard’s writings before the appearance of the Posthumous Writings. what counts will be quality rather than quantity, which might explain why Kierkegaard himself only recorded one single nightly conversation; it appears from other sources, however, that they spent much time together. i will quote another passage possibly more important for the understanding of Møller as a “confidant 252 SKS 7, 285.1–3 / CUP1, 312–13. in the footnote to this, SKS 7, 285 / CUP1, 313, it reads, “poetry and art have been called an anticipation of the eternal. if one wants to call them that, one must nevertheless be aware that poetry and art are not essentially related to an existing person, since the contemplation of poetry and art, ‘joy over the beautiful,’ is disinterested, and the observer is contemplatively outside himself qua existing person.” 253 ES1, vol. 2, p. 361. 254 ES1, vol. 2, pp. 363–4. 160 Finn Gredal Jensen of socrates” since it illustrates well his socratic impact on Kierkegaard. møller specifies Socrates’ importance in the history of philosophy in the way that he strove to assert subjective reason and lead his fellow citizens out of their unconscious submission to objective reason; he brought his followers to go into themselves and form a subjective realm of thought which should be the norm for the determination of humanity. he certainly knew the good as the absolute, but when it was to be determined from the subjective standpoint, thinking, which was supposed to determine it, had to first turn in doubt against what counted as valid with divine authority.255 likewise, møller supplied Kierkegaard with the understanding that in human existence, knowledge of an individual personal truth is decisive, and Kierkegaard later developed and expanded this concept of subjectivity to the fullest especially in the Concluding Unscientific Postscript. this is møller’s most important area of influence, even if it is frequently overshadowed by Kierkegaard’s polemical focus on religion. as Kierkegaard himself admitted, “although i am so thoroughly polemical and was so even in my youth, still Christianity is almost too polemical for me.”256 in the broader contours of his thought, however, Kierkegaard was deeply inspired by møller—though not so much by møller’s thought as by his being who and how he was, and by his showing the way to truth. 255 256 ES1, vol. 2, p. 374. SKS 25, 461, nB30:93 / JP 6, 6888. Bibliography I. Møller’s Works in the auction Catalogue of Kierkegaard’s Library Efterladte Skrifter af Poul M. Møller, vols. 1–3, ed. by Christian winther, F.C. olsen, and Christen thaarup, 1st ed., Copenhagen: C.a. reitzel 1839–43 (ASKB 1574–1576). II. Works in the auction Catalogue of Kierkegaard’s Library that Discuss Møller adler, adolph peter, Theologiske Studier, Copenhagen: trykt paa Forfatterens Forlag hos louis Klein i Commission hos universitets-Boghandler C.a. reitzel 1846, p. 27, note (ASKB u 12). Berg, Carl, Grundtrækkene af en philosophisk Propædeutik eller Erkjendelseslære, tilligemed Poul Møllers kortfattede formelle Logik. Trykt som Manuskript til Brug for Elever af det kongl. Landcadetacademie, Copenhagen: C.a. reitzel 1839 (ASKB 426). hebbel, Friedrich, Mein Wort über das Drama! 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