Historical Preface — Hertel’s 1923 Prospectus
*Prospectus for a Critical Edition of the Writings of Nicolaus Notabene*
by FREDE HERTEL
Originally circulated as a privately-printed pamphlet, Copenhagen, the spring of 1923. Reprinted at the head of the present Wroot Press edition as the first published statement of the project here at last brought to completion.
Editor's headnote to the reprinting — Frede Hertel (1873–1933), philologist and sometime lecturer in Danish literature at the University of Copenhagen, prepared the present prospectus in 1923 as the announcement of what he hoped would be the first critical edition of the writings of Nicolaus Notabene. The pamphlet, of which approximately one hundred copies were printed at his own expense, was distributed in the spring of that year to a small circle of Danish and German Kierkegaardian scholars and to several libraries. Hertel worked on the edition, sporadically and as his other duties permitted, for the remaining ten years of his life. At his death in November 1933 he had completed: a preliminary textual apparatus for Volume I ( Det logiske System ); a substantial portion of the bibliographical introduction; a manuscript transcription of the surviving fragments of the burnt Indlednings-Paragrapher of March 1843; and the present prospectus. The Volume I apparatus passed to his collaborator Aage Bertelsen, who incorporated portions of it into the 1934 Bertelsen-Hertel edition of the Philosophiske Overveielser, Andet Hefte; the remainder of Hertel's working papers were deposited at the Kongelige Bibliotek and have been consulted in the preparation of the present edition. The prospectus is reproduced here from the 1923 printing (Kgl. Bibl., 31,-104) with such silent correction of typographical errors as the Forskningscentret's editorial principles require. The original Danish appears in parallel on the facing page; the English translation is the present editor's. — M. F. H.
TIL DET CULTIVEREDE PUBLIKUM
Prospectus til en kritisk Udgave af Nicolaus Notabenes Skrifter
Der ere nu ni og halvfjerdsindstyve Aar forløbne, siden hiint lille Octav-Bind Forord, indeholdende Prøver til et nyt Tidsskrift første Gang udgik under Notabene-Pseudonymet — det Bind, som vor nuværende Slægt med nogen Føie er kommen til at betragte som Grunddocumentet for een af det forløbne Aarhundredes mere usædvanlige litterære Løbebaner. I de ni og halvfjerdsindstyve Aar, der ere hengaaede, ere de otte Skygge-Bind, som Notabene skulde lade udgaae i Forordets Kjølvand, mellem Nytaaret 1845 og det tidlige Foraar 1847, henfaldne, med een bemærkelsesværdig Undtagelse, til en Tilstand af næsten fuldstændig bibliographisk Dunkelhed. Undtagelsen — Urania, Aarbog for 1845, som alene af de otte i sin Tid nød en betydeligere boghandlerisk Omsætning — overlever i beskedne Exemplarer i de ældre kjøbenhavnske Huses Bogsamlinger. De øvrige syv Bind ere, paa nærværende Skrivts Datum, neppe at opdrive ved en privat Lærds beskedne Midler; det er kun ved Henvendelse til Reitzelske Boghandels Arkiver og til det Kongelige Bibliotheks Haandskriftafdeling, at nærværende Forfatter selv det er lykkedes at opspore Exemplarer af alle otte.
Denne Sagernes Tilstand er upassende. Notabene-Forfatterskabet er, efter nærværende Forfatters Skjøn, af en Vigtighed, som det cultiverede Publikum i Kongeriget endnu ikke til fulde har erkjendt; det er tillige af en Vigtighed, som det cultiverede Publikum ikke kan erkjende, saalænge Værkerne selv forblive utilgængelige. Nærværende Prospectus bebuder derfor det Foretagende, en kritisk Udgave af det hele Notabeniske Corpus — Forord (1844), de otte Skygge-Bind (1844–47), og saa meget af det haandskriftlige og biographiske Materiale, som det Kongelige Bibliothek og det Reitzelske Firma have tilstedet nærværende Forfatter at gjennemsee. Udgaven er bestemt for det cultiverede Publikum i videre Forstand, og ikke blot for hiin lille Kreds af Specialister, der i de sidste tvende Decennier ere begyndte at agte paa det Notabeniske Materiale i Kierkegaardiana og i de beslægtede danske og tyske Tidsskrifter.
Foretagendet bebudes nu, i Foraaret 1923, fordi nærværende Forfatter nu er i en Alder, hvori Bebudelsen af betydelige Foretagender maa gaae selve Foretagendet forud, paa det at Foretagendet ikke skal forhindres ved Bebuderens naturlige Omstændigheder. Nærværende Forfatter er halvtredsindstyve Aar gammel og i ingen umiddelbar Bekymring; han ønsker ikke desto mindre at fremstille, forud for Arbeidet selv, hvori Arbeidet skal bestaae og paa hvilke Grundsætninger det skal føres, paa det at Arbeidet, skulde det ikke forundes nærværende Forfatter at fuldende det, kan føres videre af en yngre Haand, som er bleven forskaanet for det Slid at maatte opfinde dets Plan.
I.
Det Notabeniske Corpus omfatter, saaledes som nærværende Forfatter forstaaer det, ti adskilte Stykker: Forordet af 1844; de otte Skygge-Bind af 1844–47; og det biographiske Companion, som nærværende Forfatter agter at sammenstille af det overlevende documentariske Materiale. Til disse ti Stykker bør Udgaven, i saadanne Tillæg som Materialet maatte hjemle, føie det Notabene-Arkivs Indhold (en liden Samling af personlige Papirer, bevarede af Reitzel efter Forfatterens Død i 1858, hvoraf nærværende Forfatter kun har formaaet at gjennemsee en Deel), den trykte Brevvexling mellem Notabene og hans Forlægger, og en kritisk Receptions-Historie, der sammenfører de fornemste Anmeldelser i Kongerigets periodiske Presse og de fornemste fremmede Henviisninger — fornemmelig det berlinske Vogelske Eftertryk af Fire og Tyve Prædikener fra 1849 og den linköpingske svenske Oversættelse af Tale for Total-Afholdenheds-Selskabet fra 1887.
Udgaven skal være i tolv Bind: eet for hvert af de ti Stykker, eet for et indledende Bind, hvori Corpussets bibliographiske Historie fremstilles, og eet for et Register. Det samlede Omfang skal, efter nærværende Overslag, andrage omtrent to Hundrede og fyrretyve Bogtryk-Ark — det vil sige nogle 3,800 Octav-Sider.
Nærværende Forfatters Midler ere ikke et Foretagende af dette Omfang voxne, naar han staaer ene. Prospectussen er derfor henvendt, i første Række, til de af hans Colleger, hvis Deeltagelse han haaber at sikkre sig: fornemmelig til Hr. Universitetsbibliothekar Andreasen, med hvem han har havt den Ære at samtale om disse Materier; til Kierkegaardianas Redaction, i hvis Spalter han haaber at offentliggjøre forberedende Studier i de Aar, der gaae Udgavens Fremkomst forud; og til saadanne yngre Lærde, som ved nærværende Bebudelse maatte bevæges til at tage fat paa det Notabeniske Materiale med den Alvor, det udkræver. Prospectussen er henvendt, i anden Række, til de private Samlere og antikvariske Boghandlere i Kongeriget, paa hvis Hænder Exemplarer af de sjeldnere Skygge-Bind tør formodes at hvile, med den Anmodning, at de ville meddele nærværende Forfatter Tilværelsen af ethvert saadant Exemplar i deres Besiddelse; Stedfæstelsen af yderligere Vidner vil væsentligen fremme det textkritiske Arbeide.
II.
De Grundsætninger, paa hvilke Udgaven skal føres, ere den moderne philologiske Skoles, modificerede ved saadanne Justeringer som det Notabeniske Materiale hjemler. Hovedpunkterne ere disse.
For det Første skal Texten i ethvert Tilfælde grundes paa det første Tryk af hvert Bind, med substantielle Varianter fra de senere Tryk anførte i Apparatet. Nærværende Forfatter er sig bevidst, at i Tilfældet med Bind III (Det logiske System, Anden Udgave) og i Tilfældet med Bind IV (Urania, hvor fire Tryk fra 1844–45 overlevere Texten med smaa men interessante Variationer), er Spørgsmaalet om, hvilket Tryk der bedst overleverer Forfatterens Intention, ikke i enhver Enkelthed afgjort; Apparatet skal anføre Varianterne og Udgiverens Grunde for sine Forkjærligheder uden at præjudicere Læserens egen Dom.
For det Andet skal Texten fremstilles i sit oprindelige Danske, med saadanne Tidens typographiske Conventioner (lang-s, dobbelt-aa for det moderne å, Fractur-Versaler hvor Originalerne saaledes anvendte dem), som Materialet udkræver til Bevarelsen af deres Tidspræg. En engelsk Oversættelse skal ydes paa modstaaende Side; Oversættelsens Grundsætninger skulle fremstilles i en særskilt Oversætter-Note i det indledende Bind. Nærværende Forfatter erkjender, at Frembringelsen af en bilingvisk Udgave med Parallel-Sider er et usædvanligt Foretagende i den danske Boghandel, men nærværende Forfatter troer, at den dobbelte Fremstilling vil tjene den Læserkreds, Udgaven er bestemt for — baade det dansklæsende cultiverede Publikum og de fremmede Lærde, hvis Opmærksomhed Udgaven vilde indbyde til et Corpus, de ellers ikke kunne raadspørge.
For det Tredie skal Apparatet være af en fyldigere Art, end Corpusset endnu har modtaget. Det Schubotheske Folkeudgave af Bind I fra 1888, som det cultiverede Publikum nu har havt henved fyrretyve Aars Leilighed til at raadspørge, undertrykte Anhanget angaaende de udeblevne §§ 5 og følgende — en Undertrykkelse, som hiin Udgaves Udgiver, afdøde F. P. J. Dahl, forsvarede paa Grunde, nærværende Forfatter finder utilstrækkelige. Det berlinske Eftertryk af Bind VI fra 1849 overleverede Texten i en saa germansk Dragt, at den speculativ-theologiske Satire ikke, i de tyske Seminarier, der benyttede Bogen, end ikke blev erkjendt som Satire. Den linköpingske Oversættelse af Bind V blev modtaget, af en heel Slægt af den svenske Afholdsbevægelse, som en oprigtig Homilie imod de spirituøse Drikke — en Reception, der, om end den paa sin Maade hædrer Bindet, ikke, efter nærværende Forfatters Læsning, er den Reception, dets Forfatter vilde have ønsket. Disse tre historiske Tilfælde nævnes ikke i nogen Bebreidelsens Aand imod de paagjældende Udgivere og Oversættere, der arbeidede med det Materiale, de havde, og med de Forstaaelser af den speculative Litteratur, der stode deres respective Decennier til Raadighed; nærværende Forfatter nævner dem alene for at antyde, at det foreslaaede Udgaves Apparat maa behandle saadanne Materier aabent, og maa gjengive Corpusset til en Fremstilling, hvori dets Charakteer ikke længere er omtvistelig.
For det Fjerde skal Udgaven indbefatte det biographiske Companion, hvortil nærværende Forfatter har henviist. Companionet skal øse af: Notabene-Arkivet, i saa meget af dets Indhold som det Kongelige Bibliothek vil tilstede; Kirkebøgerne for Sognene Frederiksborg-Slot (Notabenes Fødsel), Vor Frue (hans Vielse), Vor Frelser paa Christianshavn (hans Bopæl under Ægteskabet), og Frederiksværk (hans Død); det Reitzelske Firmas Brevvexling; og Sagaktivet for Vor Frelsers Sogn angaaende Skilsmissen af 1846. Det fornemste biographiske Spørgsmaal — Identiteten og Omstændighederne for Notabenes Hustru, der i ethvert Document, nærværende Forfatter staaer til Raadighed, alene nævnes ved sit Familienavn eller ved Fortielsens Formler — skal behandles i saadan Udførlighed, som Materialet tilsteder; nærværende Forfatter paatager sig ikke at løse Spørgsmaalet, men at fremstille, hvad der vides og hvad der ikke vides.
III.
Nærværende Forfatter maa slutte med en personlig Betragtning, som det cultiverede Publikum staaer frit for at afvise som Reflexionen hos en Mand, der, i Bebudelsen af nærværende Foretagende, maaskee har forpligtet sig udover sine rette Midler.
Det vil ikke være undgaaet det cultiverede Publikums Opmærksomhed, at det Notabeniske Corpus, i sin egen Argumentation, er et Forfatterskab-ved-Prospectus: et Legeme af Arbeide, hvori Bebudelsen af Værkerne har været, ved Forfatterens egen Bekjendelse, Værkernes egen fornemste Substants. Bind I's logiske System bebudedes i §§ 5 og følgende, som ikke fremkom; Bind VIII's Philosophiske Overveielser var et Tidsskrift, der bebudede fire Hefter og frembragte kun eet; den paatænkte Aarbog for 1846 i Bind IV bebudedes og fuldendtes ikke; de yderligere Bind af den Sophiensenske Prædiken-Række i Bind VI bebudedes, forud for deres Affattelse, som allerede overgaaede af Colleger, der i sin Tid skulde yde dem. Det Notabeniske Forfatterskab er, i denne Henseende, et Forfatterskab, hvis Værker stedse have været foregaaede af Bebudelser om sig selv.
At bebude en kritisk Udgave af et saadant Forfatterskab er, det er nærværende Forfatter vel bevidst, at indtræde i selvsamme Procedure: at forpligte sig, ved Bebudelse, til et Værk, hvis Affattelse endnu ikke er udført og maaskee ikke, af den bebudende Part, vil blive fuldendt. Nærværende Forfatter paatager sig ikke at undslippe sin Stillings Ironie. Han optegner alene, at han har valgt at bebude Udgaven snarere end at foretage den i Taushed, paa den Formodning, at en Bebudelse er, i værste Fald, en offentlig Optegnelse af en Forsæt, og at en offentlig Optegnelse af en Forsæt er, efter nærværende Forfatters Skjøn, det cultiverede Publikum til større Tjeneste end en privat Forsæt, der ikke saaledes er bleven optegnet. Det cultiverede Publikum staaer frit for at holde nærværende Forfatter til Bebudelsen, eller at modtage den med Overbærenhed, skulde Bebudelsen i Sagens Udfald vise sig at være Sagens Substants.
Jeg overgiver Prospectussen til det Kongelige Bibliothek og til saadanne af mine Colleger, som have været saa gode at modtage Exemplarer. Arbeidet selv skal tage sin Begyndelse i indeværende Aars Efteraar.
— FREDE HERTEL Kjøbenhavn, Paasken 1923
Prospectus for a Critical Edition of the Writings of Nicolaus Notabene
It is now seventy-nine years since the first publication, under the Notabene pseudonym, of the small octavo volume Forord, indeholdende Prøver til et nyt Tidsskrift — the volume which our present generation has come to regard, with some justice, as the foundational document of one of the more unusual literary careers of the past century. In the seventy-nine years that have elapsed, the eight phantom volumes which Notabene was to publish in the wake of the Forord, between the New Year of 1845 and the early spring of 1847, have lapsed, with one notable exception, into a state of nearly complete bibliographical obscurity. The exception — Urania, Aarbog for 1845, which alone of the eight enjoyed substantial commercial circulation in its day — survives in modest copies in the libraries of the older Copenhagen households. The remaining seven volumes are, at the date of the present writing, scarcely to be procured by the resources of a private scholar of modest means; the present writer has himself succeeded in tracing copies of all eight only by application to the Reitzel firm's archives and to the manuscript division of the Royal Library.
The state of affairs is unbecoming. The Notabene authorship is, in the present writer's view, of an importance not yet fully recognised by the cultivated public of the kingdom; it is also of an importance which the cultivated public cannot recognise so long as the works themselves remain unavailable. The present prospectus accordingly announces the project of a critical edition of the entire Notabene corpus — Forord (1844), the eight phantom volumes (1844–47), and such of the manuscript and biographical materials as the Royal Library and the Reitzel firm have permitted the present writer to inspect. The edition is intended for the cultivated public broadly conceived, and not merely for the small circle of specialists who have, in the past two decades, begun to attend to the Notabene materials in Kierkegaardiana and in the related Danish and German journals.
The project is announced now, in the spring of 1923, because the present writer is now of an age at which the announcement of substantial undertakings must precede the undertaking itself, lest the undertaking be precluded by the natural circumstances of the announcer. The present writer is fifty years of age and in no immediate apprehension; he wishes nevertheless to set forth, in advance of the work proper, what the work shall consist of and on what principles it shall be conducted, in order that the work, should the present writer not be permitted to complete it, may be carried forward by some younger hand who has been spared the labour of inventing its plan.
I.
The Notabene corpus, as the present writer understands it, comprises ten distinct items: the Forord of 1844; the eight phantom volumes of 1844–47; and the biographical companion which the present writer proposes to compile from the surviving documentary materials. To these ten items the edition should add, in such appendices as the materials shall warrant, the contents of the Notabene-arkivet (a small collection of personal papers preserved by Reitzel after the author's death in 1858, of which the present writer has been able to inspect only a portion), the published correspondence between Notabene and his publisher, and a critical reception-history bringing together the principal notices in the periodical press of the kingdom and the principal foreign references — chiefly the 1849 Berlin Vogel piracy of the Fire og Tyve Prædikener and the 1887 Linköping Swedish translation of the Tale for Total-Afholdenheds-Selskabet.
The edition shall be in twelve volumes: one for each of the ten items, one for an introductory volume in which the bibliographical history of the corpus is set forth, and one for an index. The total extent, on present estimates, shall be approximately two hundred and forty Bogtryk-Ark — that is, some 3,800 octavo pages.
The present writer's resources are not equal to a project of this scope unassisted. The prospectus is accordingly addressed, in the first instance, to those of his colleagues whose participation he hopes to secure: principally to Hr. Universitetsbibliothekar Andreasen, with whom he has had the privilege of conversation on these matters; to the editors of Kierkegaardiana, in whose pages he hopes to publish preliminary studies during the years preceding the edition's appearance; and to such younger scholars as shall be moved, by the present announcement, to address themselves to the Notabene materials with the seriousness they require. The prospectus is addressed, in the second instance, to those private collectors and antiquarian booksellers of the kingdom in whose hands copies of the rarer phantom volumes may be presumed to remain, with the request that they communicate to the present writer the existence of any such copies in their possession; the location of additional witnesses will materially advance the textual work.
II.
The principles upon which the edition shall be conducted are those of the modern philological school, modified by such adjustments as the Notabene materials warrant. The principal points are these.
First, the text shall in every case be based upon the first printing of each volume, with substantive variants from subsequent printings reported in the apparatus. The present writer is aware that, in the case of Volume III (Det logiske System, Anden Udgave) and in the case of Volume IV (Urania, where four printings of 1844–45 transmit the text with small but interesting variation), the question of which printing best transmits the author's intention is not in every particular settled; the apparatus shall report the variants and the editor's reasons for his preferences without prejudicing the reader's own judgement.
Second, the text shall be presented in its original Danish, with such typographical conventions of the period (long-s, double-aa for the modern å, Fraktur capitals where the originals so employed them) as the materials require for the preservation of their period character. An English translation shall be supplied on the facing page; the principles of the translation shall be set forth in a separate translator's note in the introductory volume. The present writer acknowledges that the production of a parallel-page bilingual edition is an unusual undertaking in the Danish book-trade, but the present writer believes that the dual presentation will serve the readership the edition is intended for — both the Danish-reading cultivated public and the foreign scholars whose attention the edition would invite to a corpus they cannot otherwise consult.
Third, the apparatus shall be of a fuller kind than the corpus has yet received. The 1888 Schubothe popular edition of Volume I, which the cultivated public has by now had nearly forty years' opportunity to consult, suppressed the Anhang concerning the absent §§ 5 and following — a suppression which the editor of that edition, the late F. P. J. Dahl, defended on grounds the present writer finds insufficient. The 1849 Berlin piracy of Volume VI transmitted the text in such Germanic dress that the speculative-theological satire was not, in the German seminaries that used the book, even recognised as satire. The Linköping translation of Volume V was received, by an entire generation of the Swedish temperance movement, as a sincere homiletic against the spirituous liquor — a reception that, while honouring of the volume in its own way, is not, by the present writer's reading, the reception its author would have wished. These three historical instances are mentioned not in any spirit of reproach against the editors and translators in question, who worked with the materials they had and with the understandings of the speculative literature available to their respective decades; the present writer mentions them only to indicate that the apparatus of the proposed edition must address such matters openly, and must restore the corpus to a presentation in which its character is no longer in dispute.
Fourth, the edition shall include the biographical companion to which the present writer has referred. The companion shall draw upon: the Notabene-arkivet, in such of its contents as the Royal Library shall permit; the parish records of the parishes of Frederiksborg-Slot (Notabene's birth), Vor Frue (his marriage), Vor Frelser at Christianshavn (his residence during the marriage), and Frederiksværk (his death); the Reitzel firm's correspondence; and the Sagaktiv of the parish of Vor Frelser concerning the divorce of 1846. The principal biographical question — the identity and circumstances of Notabene's wife, who is in every document available to the present writer named only by her family name or by formulae of suppression — shall be addressed in such detail as the materials permit; the present writer does not undertake to resolve the question, but to set forth what is known and what is not.
III.
The present writer must close with a personal observation, which the cultivated reader is at liberty to dismiss as the reflection of a man who has, in the announcement of the present project, perhaps engaged himself beyond his proper resources.
It will not have escaped the cultivated reader's notice that the Notabene corpus is, in its own argument, an authorship-by-prospectus: a body of work in which the announcement of the works has been, by the author's own confession, the principal substance of the works themselves. The Logical System of Volume I was announced in §§ 5 and following which did not appear; the Philosophiske Overveielser of Volume VIII was a journal that announced four issues and produced only one; the projected Aarbog for 1846 of Volume IV was announced and not completed; the further volumes of the Sophiensen sermon-series in Volume VI were announced, in advance of their composition, as already superseded by colleagues who would in due course supply them. The Notabene authorship is, in this respect, an authorship whose works have, throughout, been preceded by announcements of themselves.
To announce a critical edition of such an authorship is, the present writer is well aware, to enter into the same procedure: to commit, by announcement, to a work whose composition has not yet been performed and may not, by the announcing party, be completed. The present writer does not undertake to escape the irony of his position. He records only that he has chosen to announce the edition rather than to undertake it in silence, on the supposition that an announcement is, in the worst case, a public record of an intention, and that a public record of an intention is, in the present writer's view, of more service to the cultivated public than a private intention that has not been so recorded. The cultivated public is at liberty to hold the present writer to the announcement, or to receive it indulgently if the announcement should prove, in the event, the substance of the matter.
I commit the prospectus to the Royal Library and to such of my colleagues as have been so good as to receive copies. The work proper shall commence in the autumn of the present year.
— FREDE HERTEL Copenhagen, Easter 1923
A note on the present reprinting. — The 1923 prospectus is reproduced above without alteration save for the correction of typographical errors. Hertel's announced edition was not in the event completed; the bibliographical apparatus and the textual notes he was able to prepare during the decade 1923–33 have been incorporated, where their authority extends, into the apparatus of the present Wroot Press edition. The biographical companion is the present Volume IX. The edition's twelve-volume scope has, in the present edition, been reduced to nine: the eight phantom volumes plus the biographical companion. The Forord of 1844 itself is not re-edited in the Wroot Press series, the Søren Kierkegaards Skrifter having already supplied an authoritative critical text (SKS vol. 4, ed. Cappelørn et al., Gads Forlag, 1997). Hertel's prospectus closes with a reflection on the irony of announcing an authorship-by-prospectus by means of a prospectus; the present editor records, in turn, that the completion of the project, ninety-three years after Hertel's announcement of it, is not a refutation of Hertel's irony but a confirmation of it. The present edition has been preceded by its own announcement at a distance of nearly a century. The Notabene-author would, the present editor believes, have approved. — M. F. H.