Søren Kierkegaard to Regine Olsen – no date (translated by Henric Rosenmeier) - 3

My Regine!

This is Knippelsbro. I am that person with the spyglass. As you know, figure appearing in a landscape are apt to look somewhat curious. You may take comfort, therefore, in the fact that I do not look quite that ugly that every artistic conception always retains something of the ideal, even in caricature. Several art experts have disagreed as to why the painter has not provided any background whatsoever. Some have thought this an allusion to a folk tale about a man who so completely lost himself in the enjoyment of the view from Knippelsbro that at last he saw nothing but the picture produced by his own soul, which he could just as well have been looking at in a dark room. Others have thought that it was because he lacked the perspective necessary for drawing - houses. But the spyglass itself has the unique characteristic about which tradition tells us the following: the outermost lens is of mirror glass so that when one trains it on Trekroner and stands on the left side of the bridge at an angle of 5 degree off Copenhagen, one sees something quite different from what is seen by all the other people about one; thus, in the midst of a friendly chat about the view of the ships, one sees or thinks that one sees, or hopes to see, or wishes to see, or despairs of seeing that which the secret genie of the spyglass reveals to him who understands how to use it correctly. Only in the proper hands and for the proper eye is it a divine telegraph; for everybody else it is a useless contrivance. Yesterday your brother scolded me for always speaking of my cobbler,my fruit dealer, my grocer , my coachman etc., etc., etc. By this means he seems to have accused me of a predominant use of the first-person possessive pronoun. Only you know of your faithful friend that I am not extensively but intensively much more given to the use of the second-person possessive pronoun. Indeed, how could he know that, how could any person at all - as I am only yours

Yours eternally.

In testimony whereof I permit my eternalized P.Moller to stand as witness.

Granted in our study.