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Paris Books & Co 1999 96 pages in-8. 1999. cartonné. 96 pages. In-8 étroit (286x107 mm) 96 pages. Cartonnage illustré. Illustrations en noir et en couleurs. Très bon état. Poids : 320 gr
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ISBN : 9782845090576
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5 book(s) with the same title
Danske Romanzer, hundrede og fem. Samlede og Udgivne. [Danish Romances, One Hundred and Five. Collected and Issued]. - [A PRESENT FOR REGINE OLSEN AT THE TIME SHE WAS ENGAGED TO KIERKEGAARD]
Kjøbenhavn, H.C. Klein, 1839. 8vo. Bound in a magnificent, contemporary full mottled calf binding with exquisitely gilt spine, Gothic gilt lettering to spine (author in Latin lettering, title in Gothic lettering) and boards with a lovely, romantic border of gilt leaves. Lovely blue end-papers. Very light wear to spine and slight wear to corners. A small, almost unnoticeable restoration to lower front hinge. An absolutely exquisite copy in wonderful condition. Internally some brownspotting. (6), 386 pp.Jørgen Bertelsen’s book-plate to inside of front board.
First edition of Christian Winther’s lovely collection of Danish romantic poems, with the very neat and meticulously written ownership signature of the young Regine Olsen (""Regina Olsen"") - Søren Kierkegaard's fiance and lifelong muse - to front free end-paper. The name that has gone down in history as one of the most important muses in philosophy, Regine, is also frequently known – perhaps even more significantly so – in the variation Regina. From February 2nd, 1839, e.g., we have the now so famous Kierkegaardian praise of the woman: “You, my heart’s sovereign mistress stored in the deepest recesses of my heart, in my most brimmingly vital thoughts, there where it is equally far to heaven as to hell–unknown divinity! Oh, can I really believe what the poets say: that when a man sees the beloved object for the first time he believes he has seen her long before, that all love, as all knowledge, is recollection, that love in the single individual also has its prophecies, its types, its myths, its Old Testament? Everywhere, in every girl’s face, I see features of your beauty, yet I think I’d need all the girls in the world to extract, as it were, your beauty from theirs, that I’d have to criss-cross the whole world to find the continent I lack yet that which the deepest secret of my whole ‘I’ magnetically points to – and the next moment you are so near me, so present, so richly supplementing my spirit that I am transfigured and feel how good it is to be here…” (EE :7 1839, SKS 18, 8). Here, Kierkegaard plays with the name of his beloved, his “mistress”, whose name in Latin (with an “a”) means queen. The entry originally merely had “my heart’s sovereign mistress”, but afterwards, Kierkegaard inserted the name of her – the one –, Regina, the queen of his heart. This has been the source of much interpretation. Some see in this the onset of the transformation of the actual, physical girl into the poetically spiritual figure, who is doomed to never becoming anything but that of which immortal writing is made. (See e.g. Garff, Regines Gåde, p. 46). Kierkegaard also elsewhere alludes to Regina (see NB3 :43 1847, SKS 20, 268) and in a draft of a letter to Schlegel from 1849, where he wishes to rekindle contact with Regine, of course with the approval of her husband (who did not accept), he refers to her as “a girl, who poetically deserves to be called Regina”, ending the passus with telling Schlegel that he makes her happy in life, whereas Kierkegaard will secure her immortality. (SKS 28, 255). Regine herself, perhaps prompted by Søren’s use of it, would also later sign herself Regina (see letters to her sister Cornelia sent from the West Indies). It is evident from the ca. 30 letters we have from Kierkegaard to Regine, covering the engagement period (September 1840-October 1841), that during that period, Søren would occasionally send Regine presents along with his letters. These presents include flowers, perfume, a scarf, a copy of the New Testament, candle sticks, a music rest, and a “painting apparatus”. But we know little of what could have come before. Could there have been an actual engagement present? Kierkegaard does not mention it in his diaries nor in any letter still known or preserved. What would he have given her? It is pure speculation, but it does not seem unreasonable that he would have given her a book – a recently published one – that contains some of his favourite romantic poems from some of his favourite Danish poets, poets that he quoted in his love letters to Regine, a book compiled by the poet he treasured more than anyone else, Christian Winther, and which also contained poems by one of the people he treasured the most as a person, a near father figure for him and one of the finest poets (and philosophers) in Denmark, Poul Martin Møller … Had he given her one such book, it would have been beautifully, exquisitely, and possibly slightly romantically bound. And she would have written her name in it – with all probability, seeing that it came from him, the name that he gave her in 1839 – Regina Olsen. This lovely publication by Christian Winther of Danish romantic poems contains extracts of the loveliest of Danish golden age romantic poetry. Apart from Winther’s own six contributions, the collection contains romances by all the greatest Danish poets of the period, among them Hans Christian Andersen, Baggesen, Grundtvig, Hauch, Heiberg, Ingemann, Poul Martin Møller, Paludan Müller, Oehlenschläger, and others.In his love letters to Regine, Kierkegaard will occasionally quote Danish romantic poems. These are often by either Christian Winther or Poul Martin Møller, arguably the two poets he treasured the most, but he will also quote Baggesen and Grundtvig. During the year of the engagement – from 1840 to 1841 –, in the letters to Regine that are preserved (as noted above), Kierkegaard quotes the following Danish poems:Brev 130: Poul Martin Møller, Den Gamle Elsker (SKS 28, 217,6)Brev 131: Winther, Violinspilleren ved Kilden (SKS 28, 217,22)Brev 131: Poul Martin Møller, Den gamle Elsker (SKS 28, 218,30)Brev 138: Baggesen, Agnete fra Holmegaard (SKS 28, 224,24)Brev 139: Poul Martin Møller, Den gamle Elsker (SKS 28, 225,24)Brev 145: Winther, Henrik og Else (SKS 28, 232,12)Brev 150: Grundtvig, Vilhelm Bisp og Kong Svend (SKS 28, 239,21) In the present work of Danish romantic poems gathered by Winther we find all but 2), which was only published the year after, in 1840. Added to that is another lovely detail, namely that Regine at the end of letter 139 to her from Kierkegaard has written a little quotation herself, namely part of a poem from Johannes Ewald’s Fiskerne (see SKS 28, 226,27). That exact part of the larger work Fiskerne, entitled Liden Gunver, from which Regine here quotes, is also to be found in the present work of Danish romances.This all might be pure coincidence. But we find it speaks to more than that. Even though nothing can be concluded as to exactly who gave Regine the present book, there is no doubt that she treasured this beautifully, romantically bound volume with some of the loveliest Danish poems, in which she wrote her name so beautifully in her youth, presumably right around her first engagement. As is evident from the auction record, Kierkegaard too owned a copy of the present book, albeit not in a dainty binding.Provenance: From the Thielst-family. REGINE OLSEN It is safe to say that Regine Olsen occupies a place like none other in Kierkegaard’s life. Their love story is one of the most intriguing in the history of intellectual thought and has always been an inevitable source of fascination for anyone interested in understanding Kierkegaard. It is not so much the love story itself, the engagement, and the rupture of the engagement that is responsible for the lasting importance that Regine has come to have upon Kierkegaard-reception and -scholarship, as it is Kierkegaard’s own, endless reflections upon it and his constant insistence that she – the one – is the reason he became the writer that he did. Regine is inextricably linked to Kierkegaard’s authorship, and in his own eyes, she became the outer, historical cause of it. It is not only in his journals and in letters to his confidantes that Kierkegaard keeps returning to Regine, their story, and the ongoing importance she holds for him, her unique position in his authorship is evident both directly (as in the preface to his Two Upbuilding Discourses from 1843, where he imagines how the book reaches the one) and more indirectly, albeit still clearly alluding to her in e.g. Repetition, Either-Or, Fear and Trembling, Philosophical Fragments, etc. “Even though Regine is not mentioned by her legal name one single time in the authorship, she twines through it as an erotic arabesque. In poetical form she appears before the reader in works such as Repetition, Fear and Trembling and Guilty? – Not Guilty [i.e. in Stages on Life’s Way], which in each their way thematizes different love conflicts, but she can also show herself quite unexpectedly, e.g. deep inside philosophical Fragments, where it is said about the relationship between god and man that “The unhappy lies not in the fact that the lovers could not have each other, but in the fact that they could not understand each other.” (Gert Posselt, in Lex, translated from Danish). One of the most striking passages is from Repetition, where Constantin Constantius explains the paradox of loving the only one, but still having to end the relationship and how the loved one became the cause of his writing career: “The young girl whom he adored had become almost a burden to him" and yet she was his darling, the only woman he had ever loved, the only one he would ever love. On the other hand, nevertheless, he did not love her, he merely longed for her. For all this, a striking change was wrought in him. There was awakened in him a poetical productivity upon a scale which I had never thought possible. Then I easily comprehended the situation. The young girl was not his love, she was the occasion of awakening the primitive poetic talent within him and making him a poet. Therefore he could love only her, could never forget her, never wish to love anyone else and yet he was forever only longing for her. She was drawn into his very nature as a part of it, the remembrance of her was ever fresh. (Lowrie, 1946, p. 140). It is no wonder that anyone interested in understanding Kierkegaard is also interested in understanding the relationship with Regine. According to Kierkegaard himself, there would not be the Kierkegaardian opus we have today, were it not for Regine Olsen – “the importance of my entire authorial existence shall fully and absolutely fall upon her” (draft of a letter, see: Mit Forhold til Hende, p. 116). Due to numerous letters and a wealth of journal entries, we have a very vivid picture of how Kierkegaard got engaged and what happened afterwards. Kierkegaard wanted us to know. He wanted posterity to know the significance that Regine and the relationship with her had upon his life and work. A few of Kierkegard’s journal entries about Regine are redacted – some things have perhaps become too personal for prosperity to read, or Kierkegaard had later wished to put the story in a slightly different light –, but the rest gives a very clear picture of both the engagement and Kierkegaard’s afterthoughts. And about the continuous role of both her and the rupture of the engagement in his authorship and personal life. Added to that, we also have many of the letters that Kierkegaard sent to Regine during their engagement period. A few years after the engagement ended, Regine got engaged to and later married the Government officer Fritz Schlegel, who got stationed in the Danish West Indies, where they lived from 1855 to 1860. Kierkegaard died the very same year that Regine left Denmark, and after his death, Regine received in the post the bundle of letters that Kierkegaard had written to her, along with the letters he wrote to his friend Emil Boesen concerning Regine as well as Kierkegaard’s Notebook 15, entitled My Relationship with “her”. When Søren and Regine’s engagement ended, it seems that they each gave back to the other the letters that they had written. Regine says that she burnt hers (see Raphael Meyer) – some speculate, however, that maybe she did not after all and that they might be out there in the world somewhere, but none of them have ever surfaced –, and Kierkegaard kept his, for Regine later to do with as she wanted. Regine kept the letters and the Notebook 15 and for years did nothing with them. But she did not destroy them. As she got older, she decided to pass them on to someone she trusted, and in 1893, she visited Henriette Lund (Kierkegaard’s favourite niece) and told her that she wished for her to be entrusted with the notebook and the letters. According to Henriette Lund, by the following year, Regine had given the matter some more thought and had decided that Henritte Lund should publish the letters, also parts of those to Boesen and parts of Notebook 15. The publication was to also include conversations she had with Regine about the engagement. The fruit of this is the book entitled Mit Forhold til Hende (My Relationship with Her) by Henriette Lund, which was finished in 1896 and published after Regine’s death, as agreed, in 1904. We do not know exactly what happened, but it seems that Regine was not completely satisfied with the collaboration, and in 1896 she turned to Raphael Meyer and asked him to “listen to what “an old lady” could have to tell”, write down everything about the engagement period, along with the publication of the letters, the letters to Boesen, and the contents of Notebook 15. This work too appeared in 1904, after Regine’s death, and is more complete than Henriette Lund’s publication. Thus, although this enormously important relationship seems to be somehow still shrouded in mystery and Kierkegaard followers still hunt for Regine’s diary from the period and the allegedly burnt letters that may contain groundbreaking new information that will let us understand the great existentialist philosopher and somehow solve the “mystery”, the Søren-Regine relationship is very well documented, from both sides. This does not make it any less interesting. There is a reason why it occupies Kierkegaard so deeply throughout his life. And why it continues to occupy the rest of us. It all begins in 1837, when Kierkegaard meets the lovely young girl Regine Olsen when paying a call to the widowed Cathrine Rørdam. Three years later, in September 1840, after having corresponded frequently with her and visited her on numerous occasions, Kierkegaard decides to ask for her hand in marriage. She and her family accept, but already the following day, Kierkegaard regrets his decision and agonizes endlessly over it, until finally, in October 1841, he breaks off the engagement. Or at least intentionally behaved in such a manner that Regine had no other choice but to break it off. Disregarding the scandal, the heartbreak (his own included), and the numerous pleas from family members and friends alike, Kierkegaard’s tortured soul, still searching for God and for the meaning of faith, cannot continue living with the promise of marriage. Once again, he says in his journals from 1848, looking back, he had been flung back to the abyss of his melancholy, because he did not dare believe that God would take away the underlying misery of his personality and rid him of his almost maddening melancholy, which is what he wished for with the entire passion of his soul, both for Regine’s and thus also for his own sake. (See Pap. 1848, p. 61). Later the same month, he flees Copenhagen and the scandal surrounding the broken engagement. He leaves for Berlin, the first of his four stays there, clearly tortured by his decision, but also intent on not being able to go through with the engagement. As is evident from his posthumously published Papers, Kierkegaard’s only way out of the relationship was to play a charming, but cold, villain, a charlatan, not betraying his inner thoughts and feelings – the relationship had to be broken and Kierkegaard had to be gruesome to help her – “see that is “Fear and Trembling” “ (Not 15:15 1849, SKS 19, 444). Despite the brevity of the engagement, it has gone down in history as one of the most significant in the entire history of modern thought. It is a real-life Werther-story with the father of Existentialism as the main character, thus with the dumbfounding existentialist outcome that no-one could have foreseen. This exceedingly famous and difficult engagement became the introduction to one of the most influential authorships in the last two centuries. It is during his stay in Berlin, right after the rupture of the engagement, that he begins writing Either Or, parts of which, like Repetition, as we have noted above, can be read as an almost autobiographical rendering of his failed engagement. Several of Kierkegaard’s most significant works are born out of the relationship with Regine – and its ending. And she is constantly at the back of his head, the backdrop to all of his writings. She was the reason for my authorship”, Kierkegaard writes, “Her name shall belong to my writing, remembered for as long as I am remembered”, “Her life had enormous importance”, “Neither history nor I shall forget you”, “In history she will walk by my side”, “She shall belong to history”, and so we could go on establishing the enormous importance of Regine through quotes from Kierkegaard’s diaries and letters. “– she has and must have first and only priority in my life – but God has first priority. My engagement to her and the break is in fact my relationship to God, is, if I dare say so, divinely my engagement to God.” (NB27 :21, SKS 25, 139). With good reason, many view Regine as the key to Kierkegaard’s authorship. Without Regine, not only none of Kierkegaard’s writings, but also no absolute relationship to God.
Atten opbyggelige Taler af S. Kierkegaard. - [EXCEEDINGLY SCARCE IN THE ORIGINAL BINDING, WITH THE ORIGINAL TITLE-LABEL]
Kjøbenhavn, Philipsen, 1843-45. 8vo. (4), 52 + 62 (+ 1 blank leaf) + 84 + 59 (including the blank leaf between the title-page and the preface!) + 70 (+ 1 blank leaf) + 111 pp. Completely uncut in the original brownish grey boards with original printed title-label to spine (fully intact). Boards a bit brownspotted and a larger damp stain to top of front board. A couple of smaller stains (lacquer or wax) to spine. A few horizontal creases to spine with paper almost invisibly glued back on to hold tight. Occasional brownspotting, mostly to the first and last leaves. But overall splendidly preserved.
A truly magnificent copy of the first edition of this very scarce Kierkegaard-title, in completely original condition with all of the original printed title-label preserved, and fully complete with the joint title-page, contents, all the half-titles, dedications, blanks, etc. This Kierkegaard-title is rare in itself, with much less than 278 copies printed in all, but it is utterly amazing to find this exceedingly rare book in original state like here. Only very few copies are left in the original binding, which we have only seen once before. The spines of the original Kierkegaard cardboard bindings are always just thin paper directly glued on the block, making them extremely fragile. If one finds these original bindings, the spines are almost always more or less disintegrated. The present copy is a rare exception that furthermore has the original title-label, which is of the utmost scarcity. To our knowledge, only one other copy in the original binding has been located. Apart from the other copy we have seen of this work in the original binding, the present copy is also the only original Kierkegaard-binding we have seen that is not in the usual blue “hollanderet” cardboard binding, but plain brown. No other such copy has been registered for sale, and no other such copy, to our knowledge, is registered in any institution. Furthermore, this seems to be the only copy to have surfaced so far, which has preserved the original printed title-label in its entirety. As far as we know, it has been recorded no-where, due to its extreme scarcity. Kierkegaard’s Upbuilding (or Edifying) Discourses were published over the course of two years, in 1843 and 1844. In all, 18 Upbuilding Discourses were published, divided over six publications, namely: Two Upbuilding Discourses from 1843 Three Upbuilding Discourses from 1843 Four Upbuilding Discourses from 1843 Two Upbuilding Discourses from 1844 Three Upbuilding Discourses from 1844 Four Upbuilding Discourses from 1844 Each of these publications accompanied one of the main pseudonymous works, beginning with Either-Or in 1843. As opposed to his major philosophical works, the religious upbuilding discourses actually bear the name of the author on the title-page. Of course, this was by no means incidental. While the pseudonymous works could raise the question of the religiousness of the author, the parallelly written religious discourses stress the fact that we are dealing with an author, who was religious from the very beginning – an essential fact that Kierkegaard wished to stress for those interested in his authorship. In his journals, Kierkegaard clearly states that the religious discourses are as significant in his oeuvre as a whole as are the larger pseudonymous works, “I began with “Either-Or” and two upbuilding discourses...” he says, and explains that he intended the upbuilding, the religious, to advance, and that he wanted to show “that the writer was not an aesthetic author who in the course of time grew older and for that reason became religious”. (Journals, IX A 227). He was religious all along, also during all of the major philosophical publications that were not written in his name. The fact that every major pseudonymous work – up until Concluding Unscientific Postscript appeared and revealed the identity of the real author – was accompanied by one of these small Upbuilding Discourses, bears testament to the pivotal role they play in Kierkegaard’s philosophical development. Furthermore, while Kierkegaard could not present anyone with copies of his pseudonymous works (as explained above), he could indeed give away presentation-copies of his accompanying Upbuilding Discourses, which he then did. The Upbuilding Discourses are particularly interesting in several regards, one being that it is in the course of the printing of these that Kierkegaard changes his publisher. Ever since Kierkegaard had chosen to publish his first book himself, he had had his books on commission with the leading Copenhagen publisher Reitzel (the sole exception being his thesis, the Irony). That was also the case with Two Upbuilding Discourses from 1843. But for some reason, the following five publications of Upbuilding Discourses did not appear with Reitzel, but with P.G. Philipsen instead. We do not know the exact reason for this change in publishers, as the commission was exactly the same for the two. Whereas Two Upbuilding Discourses from 1843 had sold relatively well, the Three and Four Upbuilding Discourses from 1843 did not sell well. A mere 102 and 104 copies respectively out of a commission issue of 300 were sold. In an attempt at making money on these discourses in spite of the poor sales numbers, Philipsen offers to buy the unsold copies of Two Upbuilding Discourses from 1843, buys a sales issue of 300 copies of the Two Upbuilding Discourses from 1844, and makes the same agreement with Kierkegaard for the following two Discourse-publications. Sales numbers are still poor, however, and in the spring of 1845, only ca 100 copies of each of the 1844 Discourse publications have been sold. The printing issue of each was about 500, and Philipsen’s sales issue 300 thus, both Philipsen and Kierkegaard had large numbers of each Discourse-publication left, and in May 1845, they make a new deal. Philipsen buys the remainder issues of all six Discourse-publications, including the 278 copies of Two Upbuilding Discourses from 1843 from Reitzel. Philipsen has a joint title-page printed, along with a contents-leaf, and now issues the seminal Kierkegaard-publication that is no. 85 in the bibliography (Himmelstrup), namely Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses – all six publications, constituting all eighteen Upbuilding Discourses collected in one book. Seeing that there were 278 copies left of the Two Upbuilding Discourses from 1843, a maximum of 278 copies of Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses can have been made, making it one of the scarcest Kierkegaard-books. The actual number is certainly lower than 278, though, probably quite a bit lower, seeing that Philipsen continued to sell the separate publications, all copies of which he then evidently did not include in the Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses. The individual pamphlets, of course, are even scarcer, with a maximum of 232 copies of Two Upbuilding Discourses from 1843 and somewhere between 100 and 150 copies of the others. We know from the Erindringsbog fra Bianco Luno 1844 that Kierkegaard had 506 copies of Four Upbuilding Discourses 1844 printed, six of them on fine paper for presentation. Seeing that we have already established the clear thread of identity throughout all six publications, we must assume that the other pamphlets were printed in the same numbers. And we have the record of the remainder issues that Philipsen buys in 1845, which lets us conclude of the Upbuilding Discourses, that, by that time, 222 copies of Two 1843 139 copies of Three 1843 130 copies of Four 1843 120 copies of Two 1844 92 copies of Three 1844 96 copies of Four 1844 were sold out of the total number of original issues. In other words, these are extremely scarce. Not least in the original wrappers or bindings. The scarcest Kierkegaard-title that exists, however, will be found in the continuation of the printing history of the Upbuilding Discourses. It is the mythically rare title of Sixteen Upbuilding Discourses, which Philipsen issued in 1852, when the Two Upbuilding Discourses had been sold out and it was no longer possible to collect Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses. Thus, Philipsen had yet another title-page printed, this time with Sixteen Upbuilding Discourses as the title and the year 1843-45 on it, along with a new index-leaf he issued this, the scarcest of all Kierkegaard-titles, in March 1852. “It is not known how large the issue was, but it cannot have been more than 83, seeing that that was what was left of Three Upbuilding Discourses from 1843.” (Tekstspejle p. 54, translated from Danish). The idea of the Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses (let alone the Sixteen) was not Kierkegaard’s. He had agreed to the Eighteen, but it was not his intended project with the Upbuilding Discourses. Therefore, he wished for the book not to be reviewed, and he naturally did not give away any copies of the Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses, and of course not the Sixteen either, only the individual pamphlets. In all, seven presentation-copies of the different Upbuilding Discourses are registered, all being for either Heiberg or Nielsen. Curiously, neither Eighteen nor Sixteen Upbuilding Discourses were to be found in Kierkegaard’s book collection after his death. All the individual pamphlets were, however, along with a copy of the first nine Upbuilding Discourses – i.e. the three publications from 1843 – bound together. For more on the conundrum of the actual number of copies of the Upbuilding Discourses, see the Preface by Flemming Chr. Nielsen in Girsel’s Kierkegaard-catalogue, p. 19. Himmelstrup 85
1) Møller, P. L. Et Besøg i Soræ [in: Gæa. Æsthetisk Aarbog]. + 2) [Goldschmidt, Meïr Aaron, edt.]. Corsaren. Nr. 1-315. + 3) Frater Taciturnus: En omreisende Æsthetikers Virksomhed, og hvorledes han dog kom til at betale Gjæstebudet. [Printed in: F... - [THE CORSAIR AFFAIR]
Kjøbenhavn, 1845-47. 1) 8vo. (IV), 372 (VIII),330 (VI),314 pp. Three volumes, all uncut and all in the original glitted paper bindings with gilding to boards. Rebacked and with restored tears to edges of boards. Inner hinges re-enforced. Gilding to boards rubbed and vague. Some brownspotting throughout. Illustrated. 2) All that was issued of The Corsair during Goldschmidt’s ownership, including those of the seized issued that were not also destroyed: 36, 64, 70, 81, 293 as well as no. 215b, the addenda-issues to 75, 194, 215, 215b, 227, 259, 262, 208 as well as the extra numbers of 86 and 259 (with different dates and contents, i.e. just errors in the consecutive numbering), and “Følgeblad” after no. 204]. [The seized and destroyed issues are, as expected, not present: 3, 11, 21, 22, 26, 63, 65, 67, 68, 73, 77, 79, 80, 136, 149, 151, 176, 192, 194, 199, 208, 226, 242, 243, 261, 265, 270, 281, 294, 305, 307, 313]. Nos. 1-16: Andet Oplag (i.e. second issue). (Copenhagen), 1841-1846. Lex 8vo. Bound in three contemporary uniform black full cloth bindings with gilt lettering and numbering to spines. Extremities a bit worn and hinges a bit weak. Some brownspotting. Overall a very good set. Richly illustrated throughout, both in the text and with plates. 3) 6te Aarg. Nr. 2078. Løverdagen den 27. December 1845. 2 pp. Columns 16653-1660. Kierkegaard’s article: Columns 16653-16658 4) 6te Aarg. Nr. 2079. Mandagen den 29. December 1845. 2 pp. Columns 16661-16668. Møller’s article: Column 16665 5) 7de Aarg. Nr. 9. Løverdagen den 10. Januar. 1846. 2 pp. Columns 65-72. Kierkegaard’s article: Columns 65-68 (København), 1845 & 1846. All three articles in large 4to (33 x 24,7 and 33 x 24,5 cm). 2 columns to a page.
A magnificent set of all the original articles that cover the seminal Corsair Affair, which came to radically impact Kierkegaard's life - exceedingly scarce. To our knowledge, such a complete set of all the articles has never previously been for sale. The five numbers above together constitute all the seminal papers of the entire Corsair affair. As D. Anthony also puts it: “The summary of the affair is as follows. Other, lesser articles exist from this period, including some of unknown authorship… P.L. Møller’s article in Gæa entitled «A Visit in Søro» Kierkegaard responds in this article, “The Activity Of A Traveling Esthetician” P.L. Møller’s reply in The Fatherland Goldschmidt’s first Corsair article Kierkegaard’s second and final reply, “The Dialectical Result of a Literary Police Action” A string of articles published in The Corsair” This set includes 1) The first edition of all three volumes of Gæa (all that was published), the aesthetical magazine by P.L. Møller, in which he published his review of Kierkegaard’s Stages on Life’s Way, which is the paper that begins the entire Corsair Affair, the paper, which Kierkegaard responds to in The Fatherland, at the same time attacking The Corsair. Apart from Møller’s fateful review of Stages on Life’s Way, which in turn came to have such a profound influence upon Kierkegaard’s life, the literary periodical also contains numerous original contributions by Kierkegaard’s most famous contemporaries, providing an excellent picture of Danish literature at this exact moment in time. There are numerous contributions by Hans Christian Andersen: Stoppenaalen (BFN 482), three poems for Jenny Lind, Melbye, and Gertner respectively (BFN 483, 484, 485), To Billeder fra Kjøbenhavn (BFN 515, 513), and Hvad den lille Hund siger (BFN 514) Blicher: Pilen (Bertelsen s. 42), Halv Spansk og halv Dansk (Bertelsen s. 42), and Ungdom og Løndom (Bertelsen s. 42) and many more first printings by Aarestup, H.C. Ørsted, Oehlenschläger, Christian Winther, Hauch, Høegh-Guldberg, P. L. Møller himself, and many others. 2) A complete collection of all rightful issues of Goldschmidt’s Corsaren, the seminal periodical that took Copenhagen by storm and is now famous world-wide for its harsh ridicule of Søren Kierkegaard, with the iconic caricature of him that now constitutes the most famous “portrait” of the founder of Existentialism. The seized numbers account for the lacunae in the numbering of the issues in the present set. Most of these were destroyed and never reached the public, to the great disappointment of the many loyal readers. A few of the seized issues were later released by the chancellery, and the subscribers would receive them, albeit several months later. This accounts for the five issues that are present here, although they were seized – the few seized issues that were not also destroyed. 3)-5) The exceedingly scarce original printing of the three issues of Fædrelandet that contain the three articles in this paper pertaining to The Corsair Affair – Kierkegaard’s two only published contributions to the Corsair Affair as well as Møller’s important reply published merely two days after Kierkegaard’s first. As we know, a defining moment in Kierkegaard’s life was his engagement – and not least the termination of it – to Regine Olsen. This would affect him, his writings, and his thoughts for the rest of his life. The next defining moment that would also leave deep traces in Kierkegaard’s work, mental state, and thought, was that of the so-called Corsair Affair, which evolved into the greatest literary battle in Danish history. It had enormous consequences for everyone involved, not least Kierkegaard, who would never really recover from it. The Corsair was one of the most important periodicals in the history of Denmark. With its witty disposition, lack of respect for everyone and everything, and its founder’s awe of the French Revolution and republican ideas, The Corsair became the first periodical of its kind in Denmark. It invoked an entirely new genre, founded Danish political satire, and would prove groundbreaking in several respects. It was not only political and meant to be an “Organ for and sculpting of the mass opinion”, but it also viewed as its goal “to assert and cherish the purity and dignity of literature” (Bredsdorff p. 28). The first issue of The Corsair saw the light of day on October 8, 1840. The periodical was founded and owned by Meïr Aaron Goldschmidt who was also the actual editor and the author of the greater part of the writings in it. In 1846, Goldschmidt sold the periodical, and although it continued its existence until 1855, it almost immediately lost the significance it had when Goldschmidt owned it. The essence of the periodical thus counts the numbers 1 (from October 8, 1840) to 315 (October 2, 1846). Apart from its political stance and the great effect The Corsair came to have upon the shaping of Danish politics during the years that Goldschmidt ran it, the periodical is now primarily associated with one towering “event” known as the “Corsair Affair” – the strife that emerged between the widest read and most influential periodical of the time and the person that would prove to be the greatest thinker that emerged from Danish soil, Søren Kierkegaard. Goldschmidt and Kierkegaard had met each other for the first time right after the appearance of Kierkegaard’s first book, in 1838 and were not ill disposed towards each other. As we know, Goldschmidt had founded The Corsair in 1840, and Kierkegaard published his dissertation, On the Concept of Irony, in 1840. On October 8, 1841 (no. 49), the contents of the dissertation were briefly mentioned in The Corsair, and the actual review followed in no. 51 (October 22). The review was not bad, there was no real mockery, and Goldschmidt even deemed it “interesting”. Like everyone else in Copenhagen at the time, Kierkegaard by now also knew the identity of the true editor of The Corsair, and when he met Goldschmidt again, coincidentally this time, he mentioned to him that he had no reason to be dissatisfied with the review, but that it lacked “composition”, and that Goldschmidt ought to generally “pursue comical composition”. In February 1843, Kierkegaard’s magnum opus, Either-Or, appeared. Goldschmidt read it and was immediately infatuated by it. There was no end to his appreciation of this masterpiece. He reviews it in The Corsair, no. 129, March 10, 1843, where he states “This author is a mighty intellectual, he is an intellectual aristocrat, he mocks the entire human race, portrays its wretchedness but he is entitled thereto, he is an unusual intellect.” And this is not the only time that Goldschmidt praises Kierkegaard. One would think that Kierkegaard would have been thrilled with this. Usually, he is portrayed as a misunderstood, struggling author, who no-one really believed in and who was only vindicated after his death. But here, he is so highly praised, for his early works no less, by one of the most influential men in the country at the time. But Kierkegaard was not pleased. He might have felt left out for not being made fun of like everyone else in The Corsair, and he was definitely not in agreement with Goldschmidt politically. Kierkegaard was a true conservative and did not appreciate the horrible liberal radicalism of The Corsair. It clearly bothered him to be lauded by this “gossip rag”. When The Corsair once again highlighted the immortality of Victor Eremita (Kierkegaard’s pseudonym) in a review of a novel by Carsten Hauch, the praise seems to have become too much for the conservative Kierkegaard. In a letter (that he never sent, though), he writes to The Corsair, in the satirical manner of the periodical itself “kill me, but do not make me immortal!”... “Oh! This gruesome mercy and to be spared, forever designated a non-human, because The Corsair inhumanely spared him!... Oh! Let you be moved to pity, stop with your sublime gruesome mercy, kill me like everyone else!”, asking to be ridiculed by The Corsair like everyone else. The defining moment came, when at the end of December 1845, Kierkegaard writes an article in the paper The Fatherland, under the pseudonym of Frater Taciturnus. This paper is Kierkegaard’s first of two written contributions to the Corsair Affair and the one that set it off. The paper entitled “The Activity of a Traveling Esthetician and How He Still Happened to Pay for the Dinner” was written as a reaction to P.L. Møller’s essay “A Visit in Sorø”, which Møller had published in his aesthetic yearbook Gæa on December 22nd, 1845 (Gæa for the year 1846). Here, Møller criticizes Kierkegaard’s Stages on Life’s Way. It is also implied in the title that the “Visit in Sorø”, during which the conversation about Stages on Life’s Way took place, was at the home of Hauch, who lived in Sorø. Kierkegaard replies with this fateful paper, written in five days, over Christmas, and published in The Fatherland on December 27, 1845. Here, Kierkegaard not only reacts to the implication that Hauch was present in the critique of his Stages on Life’s Way and to Møller’s general critique of it, he also publicly regrets not being ridiculed in The Corsair, and he implies that P.L. Møller (whom he despised) is the true editor of The Corsair. There is no doubt that Kierkegaard wished to discredit Møller, who he considered opportunistic (Møller was seeking a chair at the university while secretly publishing his articles in The Corsair), and he succeeded. Kierkegaard’s paper was devastating for Møller and effectually meant the end of his career. Møller had stood in for Goldschmidt during Goldschmidt’s impeachment (accused of being the editor of The Corsair), which he had done as a favour to Goldschmidt, but he was not otherwise truly involved with the “dangerous” periodical. Møller replies a mere two days later, with a small article For Mr. Frater Taciturnus in The Fatherland on December 29th, 1845. Here, he thanks Kierkegaard for having responded so swiftly to his article in Gæa, but immediately objecting that Kierkegaard must accept being criticized and that the only way of avoiding criticism altogether would be not to publish anything. He does not engage in further discussion of Kierkegaard’s critique, but he denies Kierkegaard’s assumption that the conversation about Stages on Life’s Way that took place in Sorø took place at Hauch’s house and claims that the mentioned dinner party was purely f ictitious. Møller refrains from commenting on the assumptions about Møller’s involvement in The Corsair. The Corsair does not, however. As of 1846, everything changed. Goldschmidt began ridiculing Kierkegaard in The Corsair, and he did not tread lightly. The first polemic against him is to be found in no. 276 (January 2), where Kierkegaard’s “unveiling” of Møller is ridiculed. The following issue, no. 277 (January 9) contains the first of many caricature drawings of Kierkegaard, defining the way that Kierkegaard came to be viewed ever after. The drawing was done by the house illustrator of The Corsair, Klæstrup, and has gone down in history as THE most important depiction of Søren Kierkegaard ever. The moment it appeared – January 9, 1846 – became a defining moment in the life of the founder of Existentialism. Not only was he depicted in a ridiculous way, caricatured so that everyone knew who it was, a devastating polemical description of his appearance – for instance mentioning one trouser leg being shorter than the other – also followed. This one issue of The Corsair began the Copenhagen “trend” of discussing the trousers of Kierkegaard – a “trend” that became so bothersome for Kierkegaard that he never really recovered from general ridicule. The Corsair had thus begun the momentous ridicule of Kierkegaard’s outer appearance that came to hurt him so deeply. The Corsair continued mocking Kierkegaard in no. 277, pointing also to the fact that he was not the keeper of secrets Kierkegaard now replied through The Fatherland, again under the name Frater Taciturnus, with a paper entitled Det dialektiske resultat af en literair Politi-Forretning, published on January 10th, 1846. In this paper, Kierkegaard’s second and final published contribution to the Corsair Affair, he exposes The Corsair as a gossip rag and points to the fact that he had “ordered” the ridicule of him, poking fun at the unserious magazine. Again, he asks to be abused in the pages of The Corsair and says that he will not suffer being praised by such a paper. “As it turned out, The Corsair was all too happy to oblige and sustained his request for months to such an extent that Kierkegaard refrained himself from further public response in the matter. We do, however, get a glimpse of his reaction and mood from the numerous journal entries during this time.” (D. Anthony). The Corsair continued to retaliate, continued to mock and ridicule Kierkegaard, and continued bringing caricatures of him – in numbers 278, 279, 280. In no. 284, Goldschmidt once again praises Kierkegaard, reviewing his brilliant philosophical magnum opus Concluding Unscientific Postscript, and although the following months of The Corsair contain several harsh polemics against Kierkegaard, which were devastating to the selfconscious philosopher, Goldschmidt says that the defining moment that made him give up the magazine and sell it, came when, after the publication of Concluding Unscientific Postscript, he met Kierkegaard on the street, which he had done so often, and Kierkegaard refused to greet him. In Concluding Unscientific Postscript, Kierkegaard admits to being the author of all the pseudonymous writings, which is another defining moment in his career. This prompted another caricature in The Corsair – in no. 285 from March 6 1846, Kierkegaard is famously depicted as the centre of the universe. Also in numbers 297, 299, 300, and 304, The Corsair polemicizes against Kierkegaard. The caricatures were devastating to Kierkegaard, who keeps mentioning the polemics in his diaries. He so wishes that The Corsair would now stop the mocking and let him be. The extent to which his trousers and his appearance in general had become a subject of gossip for the inhabitants of Copenhagen was almost unbearable to him. “I need only put on my trousers, and all eyes are on me, on my trousers”, he writes, and elsewhere, after talking about the vast general ridicule from the Copenhagen public, “such knowing mistreatment is one of the most painful things. Everything else comes to an end, but not this. To sit in a church and then a couple of ruffians have the audacity to sit next to one only to constantly ogle one’s trousers and mock one in a conversation that is so loud that one hears every single word.” (Pap. VIII: 1A, 99). The mocking would take no end, and Kierkegaard’s private papers are full of examples of how he was made fun of and how everyone in Copenhagen would laugh at him and his trousers. “What Goldschmidt and P.L. Møller practice in the large, every individual practices in the small.” (Ibid., 218). The effect of the caricatures was grueling, and Kierkegaard never really recovered from it. With its political stance and its provocative manner, it is no wonder that many issues of the groundbreaking periodical were seized, forbidden, and destroyed by the police censure, which accounts for lacunae in the numbering of the issues. This also accounts for the long list of fictional names of editors. Goldschmidt is never actually mentioned as the editor anywhere in the periodical, and, in the beginning, every time a number is seized, a new fictional editor-name appears on the following issues. Already issue no. 3 was confiscated, and during Goldschmidt’s ownership, 40 issues were seized and forbidden. Within the first 26 weeks of its existence, The Corsair had officially had no less than six different editors in chief. In the six years that Goldschmidt owned it, 14 different editor-names appear. The first issue of The Corsair took Copenhagen by storm it was eagerly read and discussed, and there were countless rumors as to who the real editor/editors was/were. Issue no. 1 was sold out so quickly that a second issue of it followed almost immediately. Thus, often in the rare sets one encounters of The Corsair, the early issues will be in second issue, as it was only later on that the editor realized the need to print in larger numbers. Himmelstrup: 81, 88 & 89.
Om Begrebet Ironi med stadigt hensyn til Socrates. Af S. A. Kierkegaard. - [ARGUABLY THE BEST POSSIBLE COPY ONE CAN EVER HOPE TO ACQUIRE OF KIERKEGAARD’S DISSERTATION – ONE OF TWO COPIES ON THICK VELLUM PAPER]
Kjøbenhavn, P.G. Philipsens Forlag, 1841. 8vo. (8), 350 pp. Gift binding of elaborately blindpatterned full cloth with single gilt lines to spine. All edges gilt and printed on thick vellum paper. A splendid copy in completely unrestored state with minimal edge wear. Slight sunning to upper 1 cm of front board and slight bumping to corners and capitals. Leaves completely fresh and clean. Pencil-annotation from the Kierkegaard archive of the Royal Library (nr. 83) and discreet stamp from the Royal Library of Copenhagen to inside of front board (with a deaccession-inscription) and to verso of title-page. With ownership signatures of P.S. Lund and Troels Lund to title-page. Inside of back board with previous owner’s pencil-annotations listing the entire provenance of the copy and explaining that this is one of two copies printed on thick vellum paper. Laid in is the original agreement for the exchange of real property between the previous owner and the Royal Library of Denmark, from which is evident that in 2003, The Royal Library and the previous owner legally agreed to exchange their respective copies of Om Begrebet Ironie – the present one for Ørsted, being one of two copies on thick vellum paper, and the copy on normal paper for Heiberg, which is now in the holdings of the Royal Library of Denmark.
Arguably the best possible copy one can ever hope to acquire of Kierkegaard’s dissertation – one of two copies on thick vellum paper, being a presentation-copy from Kierkegaard to the discoverer of electromagnetism H.C. Ørsted. Inscribed to verso of front fly-leaf: “Til / Hans Magnificens / Universitetets Rector / Hr. Conferentsraad Ørsted. / C og D.M.” (For / His Magnificence / Principle of the University / Mr. [a high Danish title, now obsolete] Ørsted. / C (ommandør) (i.e. Commander) and DM (short for Dannebrogsmand, another honourable title) ). The copy is with the Thesis, and both the day and the time has been filled in by hand. As mentioned in the introduction to the Irony, Kierkegaard had two copies made on thick vellum paper –one for himself (which is in the Royal Library of Denmark), and one for H. C. Ørsted, a towering figure of the Danish Golden Age, one of the most important scientists that Denmark has produced, then principle of the University of Copenhagen. This copy is unique among the 11 registered presentation-copies of Kierkegaard’s dissertation and is without doubt the most desirable. It is approximately twice as thick as the other copies and stand out completely. THIS IS KIERKEGAARD’S dissertation, which constitutes the culmination of three years’ intensive studies of Socrates and “the true point of departure for Kierkegaard’s authorship” (Brandes). The work is of the utmost importance in Kierkegaard’s production, not only as his first academic treatise, but also because he here introduces several themes that will be addressed in his later works. Among these we find the question of defining the subject of cognition and self-knowledge of the subject. The maxim of “know thyself” will be a constant throughout his oeuvre, as is the theory of knowledge acquisition that he deals with here. The dissertation is also noteworthy in referencing many of Hegel’s theses in a not negative context, something that Kierkegaard himself would later note with disappointment and characterize as an early, uncritical use of Hegel. Another noteworthy feature is the fact that the thesis is written in Danish, which was unheard of at the time. Kierkegaard felt that Danish was a more suitable language for the thesis and hadto petition the King to be granted permission to submit it in Danish rather than Latin. This in itself poses as certain irony, as the young Kierkegaard was known to express himself poorly and very long-winded in written Danish. One of Kierkegaard’s only true friends, his school friend H.P. Holst recounts (in 1869) how the two had a special school friendship and working relationship, in which Kierkegaard wrote Latin compositions for Holst, while Holst wrote Danish compositions for Kierkegaard, who “expressed himself in a hopelessly Latin Danish crawling with participial phrases and extraordinarily complicatedsentences” (Garff, p. 139). When Kierkegaard, in 1838, was ready to publish his famous piece on Hans Christian Andersen (see nr. 1 & 2 above), which was to appear in Heiberg’s journal Perseus, Heiberg had agreed to publish the piece, although he had some severe critical comments about the way and the form in which it was written – if it were to appear in Perseus, Heiberg demanded, at the very least, the young Kierkegaard would have to submit it in a reasonably readable Danish. “Kierkegaard therefore turned to his old schoolmate H. P. Holst and asked him to do something with the language…” (Garff, p. 139). From their school days, Holst was well aware of the problem with Kierkegaard’s Danish, and he recounts that over the summer, he actually “translated” Kierkegaard’s article on Andersen into proper Danish. The oral defense was conducted in Latin, however. The judges all agreed that the work submitted was both intelligent and noteworthy. But they were concerned about its style, which was found to be both tasteless, long-winded, and idiosyncratic. We already here witness Kierkegaard’s idiosyncratic approach to content and style that is so characteristic for all of his greatest works. Both stylistically and thematically, Kierkegaard’s and especially a clear precursor for his magnum opus Either-Or that is to be his next publication. The year 1841 is a momentous one in Kierkegaard’s life. It is the year that he completes his dissertation and commences his sojourn in Berlin, but it is also the defining year in his personal life, namely the year that he breaks off his engagement with Regine Olsen. And finally, it is the year that he begins writing Either-Or. In many ways, Either-Or is born directly out of The Concept of Irony and is the work that brings the theory of Irony to life. Part One of the dissertation concentrates on Socrates as interpreted by Xenophon, Plato, and Aristophanes, with a word on Hegel and Hegelian categories. Part Two is a more synoptic discussion of the concept of irony in Kierkegaard’s categories, with examples from other philosophers. The work constitutes Kierkegaard’s attempt at understanding the role of irony in disrupting society, and with Socrates understood through Kierkegaard, we witness a whole new way of interpreting the world before us. Wisdom is not necessarily fixed, and we ought to use Socratic ignorance to approach the world without the inherited bias of our cultures. With irony, we will be able to embrace the not knowing. We need to question the world knowing we may not find an answer. The moment we stop questioning and just accept the easy answers, we succumb to ignorance. We must use irony to laugh at ourselves in order to improve ourselves and to laugh at society in order to improve the world. The work was submitted to the Philosophical Faculty at the University of Copenhagen on June 3rd 1841. Kierkegaard had asked for his dissertation to be ready from the printer’s in ample time for him to defend it before the new semester commenced. This presumably because he had already planned his sojourn to Berlin to hear the master philosopher Schelling. On September 16th, the book was issued, and on September 29th, the defense would take place. The entire defense, including a two hour long lunch break, took seven hours, during which ”an unusually full auditorium” would listen to the official opponents F.C. Sibbern and P.O. Brøndsted as well as the seven “ex auditorio” opponents F.C. Petersen, J.L. Heiberg, P.C. Kierkegaard, Fr. Beck, F.P.J. Dahl, H .J.Thue og C.F. Christens, not to mention Kierkegaard himself. Two weeks later, on October 12th, Kierkegaard broke off his engagement with Regine Olsen (for the implications of this event, see the section about Regine in vol. II). The work appeared in two states – one with the four pages of “Theses”, for academics of the university, whereas the copies without the theses were intended for ordinary sale. These sales copies also do not have “Udgivet for Magistergraden” and “theologisk Candidat” on the title-page. The first page of the theses always contains the day “XXIX” of September written in hand, and sometimes the time “hora X” is also written in hand, but not always. In all, 11 presentation-copies of the dissertation are known, and of these only one is signed (that for Holst), all the others merely state the title and name of the recipient. As is evident from the auction catalogue of his collection, Kierkegaard had a number of copies of his dissertation in his possession when he died. Five of them were bound, and two of them were “nit. M. Guldsnit” (i.e. daintily bound and with gilt edges). These two copies were obviously meant as presentation-copies that he then never gave away. The gift copies of the dissertation were given two types of bindings, both brownish cloth, one type patterned, the other one plain, and some of them have gilt edges, but most of the plain ones do not. There exist two copies on thick vellum paper – one being Kierkegaard’s own copy, the other being the copy for H.C. Ørsted, discoverer of electromagnetism and then principle of the University of Copenhagen. “As already implied, two works of the authorship stand out in the sense that Kierkegaard sent his presentation-copies to a special circle of people: The dissertation from 1841...” (Posselt, Textspejle, p. 91, translated from Danish). Most of the copies were given to former teachers and especially to people who, due to leading positions, personified the university. “For this circle of initiated we can now, due to registered copies, confirm that Kierkegaard gave copies with handwritten dedications to the headmaster of the University H.C. Ørsted (printed on thick paper), Kolderup-Rosenvinge and to J.L. Heiberg. It is granted that Sibbern, Madvig and F.C. Petersen were also given the dissertation as a gift,... but these copies are not known (yet).” (Posselt, Textspejle, pp. 93-94, translated fromDanish). (N.b. We have since handled the copy given to Petersen and can thus confirm that it exists). The presentation-inscriptions in the 11 registered copies of the Irony all follow a certain, strict pattern. “The wording could not be briefer. In the donation of his academic treatise, the otherwise prolific Kierkegaard sticks to name, titles, and the modes of address that goes with the titles.” (Tekstspejle p. 96, translated from Danish). When presenting his later books, he always signs himself “from the author”, sometimes abbreviated (i.e. “Forf.” In stead of “Forfatteren”), unless he is mentioned by name on the title-page as the publisher, not the author, as is the case with some of the pseudonymous works. In that case he signs his inscriptions “From the publisher”, always accompanied by “in deep reverence”, “with reverence”, “with friendship” or the like, adapted to the rank of the recipient and his place on Kierkegaard’s personal scale. An academic treatise, however, published before the oral defense took place – in the mind of Kierkegaard – required certain demands in relation to the donation of it. Thus, the brevity and rigidity in the following inscriptions. With the exception of Kierkegaard Hans Christian Ørsted (1777-1851) is arguably the most famous and influential Dane ever to have lived, universally known for his discovery of Electro-magnetism in 1820, which led to new theories and discoveries that constituted the foundation of all later electro-technology. After this milestone of scientific discovery, Ørsted went on to write a number of important philosophical works on natural philosophy and empiricism, of which The Spirit in Nature is the most famous and the work he himself considered his main work. Both H.C. Andersen and Søren Kierkegaard admit to having been influenced by the writings of Ørsted. “He was an enthusiastic follower of the “Naturphilosophie” school in Germany, whose main object was the unification of physical forces, thus producing a monistic theory of the universe. It was to further this purpose that Oersted sought in actual phenomena the electro-magnetic identity of which he had already convinced himself on metaphysical grounds” (Percy H. Muir in Printing and The Mind of Man). “The natural scientist Hans Christian Ørsted was one of the most significant and influential personalities of his age and together with the sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen, the poet Hans Christian Andersen, and the thinker Søren Kierkegaard, constituted the small handful of figures from “The Danish Golden Age” who achieved international and even world fame.” (Troelsen in Kierkegaard and his Danish Contemporaries I: p. (215) ). In intellectual circles in Denmark at the time of Kierkegaard, Ørsted was inevitable. He influenced not only natural sciences profoundly, but also philosophy, literature, and Danish languages (coining more than 2.000 neologisms). He was furthermore rector of the university of Copenhagen, when Kierkegaard in 1841 submitted his master’s thesis On the Concept of Irony. Being the rector, Ørsted was the one who needed to pass the treatise, but having read it, he was simply not sure whether to do so or not and needed to consult other experts, before making his decision. He ended up allowing it to pass, but not without having first famously said about it (in a letter to Sibbern) that it “makes a generally unpleasant impression on me, particularly because of two things both of which I detest: verbosity and affectation.” (Kirmmmse (edt.): Encounters with Kierkegaard, p. 32). Kierkegaard makes several references to Ørsted’s Spirit in Nature and mentions him several times in his journals and notebooks. Although being of different generations and not particularly close on a personal level, the two intellectual giants would naturally be unavoidably connected in one way or the other. Ørsted was simply so centrally placed and so influential that there was no way around him for someone like Kierkegaard. Himmelstrup 8 The present copy is no. 9 in Girsel's ""Kierkegaard"" (The Catalogue) which can be found here.
Forord. Morskabslæsning for enkelte Stænder efter Tid og Leilighed af Nicoilaus Notabene. - [KIERKEGAARD’S OWN COPY - ONE OF THE TWO COPIES HE HAD MADE FOR REGINE AND FOR HIMSELF]
Kjøbenhavn, Reitzel, 1844. Small 8vo. 110, (1) pp. Splendidly bound in beautiful ornamental mint green patterned paper over boards with branches, flowers, birds, squirrels, and dogs in a relief-pattern. Green end-papers and all edges gilt. Printed on fine vellum-paper. Slight soiling to spine and a bit of wear to paper on spine and over boards, where the relief is high. But a splendid, tight copy with no restorations and absolutely minimal brownspotting.Back pasted-down end-paper with a later, neat pencil-inscription from the previous owner stating that this is Kierkegaard’s own copy, bought by Høedt at the auction after Kierkegaard’s death and stating where the previous owner found the copy in 1995.Housed in a beautiful marbled paper box with richly gilt greenish morocco spine in ornamental pastichestyle with a red gilt leather title-label with Gothic gilt lettering. Gilt super ex-libris to front board (Anker Kysters Eftf., gilt by Hagel Olsen).
The most splendid copy of the first edition possible, namely Kierkegaard’s own copy, one of the two copies he had printed on special paper and specially bound, one for Regine, one for himself. This is Kierkegaard’s own copy that he kept himself, from the love-set of the two copies of Prefaces he had made, where the other was for Regine. One of the two copies of the book that he had made on special paper and bound in this particularly beautiful and romantic binding. Kierkegaard had his eight pseudonymous works made like this, one for Regine, one for himself. So far, only four of these have surfaced, Regine’s copies of Repetition, Prefaces, and Either-Or (all sold at auction in 2002), and Kierkegaard’s own copy of Either-Or (in the Danish Royal Library). The other copies are unregistered, and the whereabouts unknown. The present copy is presumably that described merely as “dainty w. gilt edges”, nr. 2133 from the auction catalogue of Kierkegaard's books sold after his death. Published simultaneously with The Concept of Anxiety, Prefaces can be viewed as its companion piece. It represents an altogether different genre and is the most humorous of all of Kierkegaard’s works, but the two fictional authors of the works interestingly contrast each other. Although having been eclipsed by the now notoriously famous Concept of Anxiety, Prefaces was in fact more popular when it appeared and sold many more copies. Written under the pseudonym of Nicolaus Notabene, the “author” name indicates that despite its humorous approach, Prefaces is still something serious – something to be noted. And it certainly is. It is here that we find Kierkegaard’s sarcastic roasting of the Hegelian system and of the Danish Hegelians with Johan Ludvig Heiberg as the main representant. Through Notabene, he makes fun of Heiberg and Hegel, who both want to explain everything and want to be mediators of understanding. Just as Hafniensis in The Concept on Anxiety poses that “how sin came into the world each man understands solely by himself. If he would learn it from another, he would misunderstand it” (p. 51), so Notabene in Prefaces states that “My frame, my health, my entire constitution do not lend themselves to mediation” (p. 45). In Prefaces we also find Kierkegaard’s thoughts about the relationship between the reading public and the author and his fierce criticism of literary critics and reviewers, among these also Heiberg as well as Martensen, who famously reviewed Either-Or and Repetition respectively. And in the very amusing preface to the Prefaces, we are given another glimpse into Kierkegaard’s thoughts on marriage and the dilemma he found himself in with Regine – the inner struggle between he, who is the husband, and he, who is the author can one be both? With its challenging notions on the idea of the book and the interaction of the book with its readers, his little ironic masterpiece is a clear forerunner of Postmodernism. “Kierkegaard’s ‘Prefaces’ is a brief though not unimportant work. Themes he develops elsewhere at greater length here are presented with characteristic insight and wit. This richly suggestive text has never received the attention it deserves. William McDonald’s fine translation now makes it possible to assess the importance of ‘Prefaces’ for Kierkegaard’s œuvre and to appreciate its significance for philosophical, literary, and theological issues that are still with us.” (From the review of William McDonald’s 1989 edition of Prefaces in English in the Kierkegaard and Postmodernism-series). Written under a pseudonym and without Kierkegaard’s name appearing as publisher or indeed as anything else, he was unable to give away presentation-copies of the work (due to his own strict set of rules for this). Thus, not a single presentation copy of the work exists. A single copy of the book was in the auction catalogue of his book collection after his death – described as in a dainty binding and with all edges gilt. Like Repetition and his other seven pseudonymous works, Prefaces, was printed in two copies both on vellum-paper and bound in special bindings, one for Regine, one for Kierkegaard himself. 24 years ago, three of these books surfaced, at an auction in 2002, namely Either-Or, Repetiton, and Prefaces, all being the copies Kierkegaard had bound for Regine. Before that, only one single copy of one of these eight titles for Kierkegaard himself or for Regine were known (namely Kierkegaard’s own copy of Either-Or, which is in the Danish Royal Library). Seven of the books, Kierkegaard’s own copies, were listed in the auction catalogue after his death, but apart from the mentioned copy of Either-Or in the Royal Library, the others had not been found. Kierkegaard’s wildly famous love story and failed engagement to Regine Olsen plays a pivotal role throughout Kierkegaard’s entire life and work. It all begins in 1837, when Kierkegaard meets the lovely young girl Regine Olsen at a visit to the widowed Cathrine Rørdam. Three years later, in September 1840, after having corresponded frequently with her and visited her on numerous occasions, Kierkegaard decides to ask for her hand in marriage. She and her family accept, but the following day, Kierkegaard regrets his decision and ends up finally breaking off the engagement in October 1841. Disregarding the scandal, the heartbreak (his own included), and the numerous pleas from family members and friends alike, Kierkegaard’s tortured soul, still searching for God and for the meaning of faith, cannot continue living with the promise of marriage. Later the same month, he flees Copenhagen and the scandal surrounding the broken engagement. He leaves for Berlin, the first of his four stays there, clearly tortured by his decision, but also intent on not being able to go through with the engagement. As is evident from his posthumously published Papers, Kierkegaard’s only way out of the relationship was to play a charming, but cold, villain, a charlatan, not betraying his inner thoughts and feelings. Despite the brevity of the engagement, it has gone down in history as one of the most significant in the entire history of modern thought. It is a real-life Werther-story with the father of Existentialism as the main character, thus with the dumbfounding existentialist outcome that no-one could have foreseen. This exceedingly famous and difficult engagement became the introduction to one of the most influential authorships in the last two centuries. “She was the reason for my authorship”, Kierkegaard writes in his Papers, and there is no doubt that several of his most significant works are born out of the relationship with Regine – and its ending. It is during his stay in Berlin, his first of four altogether, right after the rupture of the engagement, that he begins writing Either-Or, parts of which can be read as an almost autobiographical rendering of his failed engagement. After a couple of years, Regine got engaged to someone else, whom she married in 1847. But as is well known, Kierkegaard never married, and the impact of his engagement to Regine and what it made him understand – about himself, about religion, faith, the inner workings of the philosopher and the poet –, never lost its significance. It is evident from the many drafts of a letter that he sent to Regine, through her husband, in 1849 (which was returned to him, unopened) that he had never lain the matter to rest and that the relationship with Regine was still very much alive. He also states in his Notebook 15 from 1849 “By the way, it is certainly the case that my relationship with her has been a very close, present study for me of what faith is. For I know better in this relationship how it is apparently the exact opposite of the foundational. That I have lasted in this relationship has been useful for me in relating to God as a believer.” In his Notebook 15, also known as My Relationship with Her, from 1849, Kierkegaard describes how, when he finally broke off the engagement and she tried to get him to stay, she had told him “that she would thank me her entire life for being allowed to stay with me, even if she were to live in a little cupboard” (SKS No. 16: 6). Thus, Kierkegaard had a little cupboard made, with no shelves in it. Here, he kept “everything that reminds me of her and will remind me of her. There is also a copy of the pseudonyms (i.e. the works that he wrote under a pseudonym)" of these, there were always only two copies on vellum-paper, one for her and one for me.” (SKS: Not. 15:6.). In all, Kierkegaard wrote eight pseudonymous books, Prefaces being one of them, all of which were evidently printed in two copies each on vellum-paper and bound in special bindings, one for Regine, one for Kierkegaard himself. Himmelstrup 70 The present copy is no. 27 in Girsel's ""Kierkegaard"" (The Catalogue) which can be found here.
