Historical one-night stand
The works of Soeren Kierkegaard are hardcore philosophy dressed up as literature. This is also true of his first literary work, Either/Or, which he published under a different name. The content was supposed to be a ream of documents found in a secret compartment of an old bureau. Half of it is written by a man that the publisher calls A. The rest are letters sent to him from someone who, by the same token, is simply called B. They are two very different men. A thinks of nothing but enjoying life to the full, whereas B thinks a lot about how a responsible person should live. Much of the book makes for awfully dry reading. Soeren Kierkegaard probably chose this style deliberately, for what really makes Either/Or work, is a very naughty story about how one of the men seduces a young girl, only to dump her the next day in order to hurry on to new seductions.
Guide to picking up girls and existential masterpiece
Either/Or caused quite a scandal when it was published. The chapter called The Seducer's Diary (Forfoererens Dagbog) seemed downright pornographic at the time. Even so, it didn't take people long to guess the identity of the real writer, because Soeren Kierkegaard himself had done something similar, i.e. become engaged to a young girl and then left her shortly after. As if that wasn't bad enough, he now added insult to injury by revealing the most intimate details of that nasty story in print.
Soeren Kierkegaard's first book does not seem to be pornography today, but that doesn't mean his seduction technique no longer works. Male readers can still learn a trick or two about sweet-talking a girl into bed. Female readers can test Soeren Kierkegaard's tactics on themselves. And blush at the thought that the little weakling of a book nerd might not have been such a bad lover.
Dorthe Sondrup Andersen is a Master of Arts of Comparative Literature and an author and writer on cultural affairs. Her books include "The Golden Age without the Gilt" ("Guldalder uden forgyldning") (People's Press, 2004).
Woodcut by Povl Christensen, 1949.