Joakim Garff - Kierkegaard’s Muse: The Mystery of Regine Olsen

Kierkegaards Muse

Kierkegaards Muse

THE MYSTERY OF REGINE OLSEN

Joakim Garff

Translated by Alastair Hannay

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

Princeton and Oxford

First published in Denmark as Regines gde: Historien om Kierkegaards forlovede og Schlegels hustru. Copyright 2013 Joakim Garff and Gads Forlag

English translation copyright 2017 by Princeton University Press

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Jacket images courtesy of the Royal Library, Denmark

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Garff, Joakim, 1960 author.

Title: Kierkegaards muse : the mystery of Regine Olsen / Joakim Garff ; translated by Alastair Hannay.

Other titles: Regines gde. English

Description: Princeton : Princeton University Press, 2017. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2017014677 | ISBN 9780691171760 (hardcover : alk. paper)

Subjects: LCSH: Olsen, Regine, 18221904. | DenmarkBiography. | Kierkegaard, Sren, 18131855.

Classification: LCC DL204.O47 G3713 2017 | DDC 198/.9 [B]dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017014677

British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available

This book has been composed in Minion Pro

Printed on acid-free paper.

Printed in the United States of America

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Contents

Translators Acknowledgment

I WOULD LIKE HERE TO EXPRESS MY DEEP GRATITUDE TO JOAKIM GARFF FOR invaluable help in finalizing the text and for saving me from more than one serious blunder in translation. I thank my editors, Hannah Paul for initiating the project, and Natalie Baan for guiding it through the final stages. I owe special thanks to Eva Jaunzems for making and prompting innumerable improvements in word and style, and to Brit Berggreen, whose knowledge of Nordic language has been a constant aid throughout.

Preface

If you went out to Nrrebro, there was a house where one was welcome on the first floor. The master of the house was a quiet, slender man, whose appearance was always proper and dignified. He had served with honor in a high post in the government. His wife had, in her youth, been very captivating and had become white-haired while still young. Now, she was pretty with snow-white curls and a fresh face. To me it was as though she bore an invisible mark, for as a very young woman she had been loved by a great man. She showed true kindness and was genuinely friendly. But you didnt get much from her acquaintance; she was far too restless in company for that. When the house held an evening reception, she remained too briefly with any group properly to grasp what was being discussed. After a minute, she hurried over to the other corner of the room, said a few words there, half listened to the topic of conversation, and went off to take care of the tea.

SO WROTE THE WELL-KNOWN DANISH LITERARY CRITIC AND HISTORIAN Georg Brandes, in a retrospective glance at some unforgettable meetings with the Schlegels in their home at 8 Nrrebrogade. At the time, Brandes was only twenty-five, but his eyes ever wide open, he had, on that evening too, captured some characteristic traits of the host coupleseen from the outside. Johan Frederik Schlegel is the discreet, subdued, and correct host, keeping an eye on things, always calm. His wife, Regine Schlegel, is otherwise ambiguous; there is something sphinxlike about her but also fascinating, and even tempting. It is she who had been the object of Kierkegaards love, and it is the weight of this historic romance that Brandes can see in her face, and what moves him to describe her as invisibly marked.

The expression invisibly marked is well chosen, but in all its contradictoriness it also testifies that while expecting to meet Kierkegaards delightful young true love, Brandes was received instead by Schlegels lawfully wedded wife, who with her snow-white locks politely went round and served tea. No doubt, as so many before and since, Brandes had hoped that if only Regine would open the door even just a tiny crack into her spectacular past, he might be nearer to grasping the red thread in the Kierkegaardian labyrinth. But Brandes was let down, because that woman, who holds invaluable knowledge of the man behind the genius, is herself no less of a mystery, an enigmatic and elusive figure who denies herself the calm needed to listen or converse. Without warning, she breaks off from the group because, obviously, she wants to be anywhere but here, anywhere but standing in a room with Brandes, face to face with all the burning questions on the tip of his tongue.

It is not known what the inquisitive Brandes brought home from the meetings in the house on the corner out at Nrrebro; nor does one know whether he ever confided to Regine his long-standing preoccupation with Kierkegaards writings and his plan to write the most comprehensive biography of the man. One that would delve into his most private experiences with Regine, including the tense drama into which their mutual passion not only developed but, to properly focused eyes, seemed to continue long after the apparent end of their relationship.

Whereas young Brandes tried in vain to catch the attention of Mrs. Schlegel, a sequence of events brought me in touch with Regine in earnest. One summer evening in 1996 I found myself in the small Lolland town of Sllestad, where I gave a talk on Kierkegaard for high school pupils and interested locals. At the reception that followed, I was introduced to a well-preserved elderly couple, she with carefully arranged hair framing a pair of lively eyes, he unassuming and immaculate, with bowtie and a dark blue blazer, newly pressed, with shining brass buttons. The lady proved to be the grandchild of Regines elder sister Cornelia, and without warning she made me an offer that took my breath away. If interested, I was more than welcome to read the over one hundred letters that Regine had exchanged with Cornelia during her stay in the Danish West Indies, where her husband had occupied the position of governor for a five-year period. If interested!

A week later the man with the bowtie and the blue blazer arrived in my office and placed on the desk an unostentatious cardboard box that had once held wares which, according to the dark green type on its lid, were to be stored at minus eighteen degrees, but which now contained the letters that Regine had written to her favorite sister in blistering tropical heat on the other side the globe. The box confirmed in the oddest way the suspicion that Kierkegaard places before his reader in the preface to