Lyriske Productioner for hiin Enkelte
LYRISKE PRODUCTIONER
for hiin Enkelte
efterladte af en Forfatter, der ikke mere ønsker at være Forfatter
udgivne med Forord af
NICOLAUS NOTABENE
KJØBENHAVN
FAAES HOS UNIVERSITETSBOGHANDLER C. A. REITZEL
TRYKT I BIANCO LUNOS BOGTRYKKERI
Foraaret 1846
Oplaget er sat til femtenhundrede Exemplarer, hvoraf intet er bestemt for Anmeldelse.
A small octavo, of the kind which fits without protrusion into the inner pocket of a coat. Paper covers of a soft grey-blue, the colour of a Sound morning before the wind has come up, the dye being the same as is used for the wrappers of the Society for the Promotion of Female Reading and chosen by the publisher for that reason, though the choice will be visible only to those few in the capital who have themselves received a wrapper from the Society. Front cover bears no title, no ornament, no author's name; only, at the lower right, a small printed numeral in Roman type, hand-inked from the publisher's chamber, indicating the copy's place in the edition. The reverse of the front cover bears, in a smaller roman, the words til hiin Enkelte — to that single reader — followed by a blank space the size of a name-card, into which the recipient is invited to enter, in his own hand, his own name, so that the copy, once received, may belong to no other. The pages are of an honest white paper, generously margined; the type is set with unusual leading, that the eye may rest. The volume contains, after the printed text, four blank leaves at the end, into which the reader may, if he is so moved, copy out such of the pieces as have particularly held him, that the printed text may at length be returned to the publisher and circulated, while the manuscript copy remains. The binding is sewn with a thread of the same soft grey-blue as the covers; no ribbon. The spine is unmarked. The volume, set down upon a table among other volumes, cannot be distinguished from a notebook, and is therefore not, in the proper sense, a book at all, but a small package addressed to a particular person.
Price: not fixed. The publisher will accept whatever the reader, having read, chooses to send.
NOTABENES FORORD
Udgiveren af nærværende Bind maa, i nærværende Tilfælde meer end i nogen forudgaaende Tilfælde, bede om Læserens Taalmod for en længere Forklaring end den sædvanlige, idet Bindet er af en Slags, der efter Udgiverens Kundskab ikke tidligere er bleven tilbudt i vor Litteratur, og de sædvanlige Former for Forklaring derfor ere uanvendelige.
Bindet indeholder et lille Antal lyriske og æsthetiske Productioner af forskjellig Længde og Form, af en Forfatter, der — og Udgiveren rapporterer dette paa sin Ære, med saadan Autoritet, som han er bleven betroet — har trukket sig tilbage fra Forfatterskab. Han er ikke død; han har, saa vidt Udgiveren har kunnet fastslaae, ikke lidt nogen Modgang; han har simpelthen besluttet ikke at være Forfatter længere, og har lagt nærværende Manuscript i Udgiverens Hænder paa det Vilkaar, at det udgives, om overhovedet, i den Form, nærværende Bind antager: anonymt, uden Indbydelse til Anmeldelse, uden Notice i Pressen, uden noget af de Ledsageforhold, hvorved en Bog i vor By sædvanligvis adskilles fra en blot Pakke trykt Papir.
Jeg tilstaaer, at jeg forsøgte at fraraade ham det. Jeg forestillede ham, at en anonym Udgivelse, hvor stille end, ikke vilde undgaae deres Bemærkning, hvis Forretning det er at bemærke; at selve Anonymiteten i vor By tiltrækker en kraftigere Eftersøgning end et signeret Værk; og at hvad han ønskede — at læses af de Faa i Stilhed og slet ikke af de Andre — i Kjøbenhavns Vilkaar ikke laae indenfor Udgiverens Magt at skaffe. Han svarede — og jeg optegner Svaret saa nær, som jeg kan erindre det, idet det er blevet hos mig — at hvad der ikke laae indenfor Udgiverens Magt, dog laae indenfor Læserens Magt; at de Faa, han ønskede at naae, vilde læse Bindet paa den Maade, hvorpaa han ønskede det læst, og at de Mange, der ikke vilde læse det saaledes, vilde gjøre med det, hvad det behagede dem; at dette altid havde været den lyriske Forfatters Stilling; at han omsider havde samtykket i at erkjende Stillingen; og at nærværende Bind var hans Maade at tage Afsked med Forfatterskabet med en Deel af sit Værk endnu ucompromitteret.
Jeg gav efter. Jeg gav efter, deels fordi jeg ikke har for Vane at afslaae en Forfatter, der veed, hvad han vil, og har Grunde til det. Jeg gav efter, i større Deel, fordi det Manuscript, han lagde foran mig, forekom mig at indeholde Stykker af en Delicatesse, der ikke vilde overleve den Slags Modtagelse, han ønskede at undgaae, og som, indrømmede Udgiveren, vilde lide ved at gjøres til Anledning for den sædvanlige Larm. Jeg samtykkede derfor i at udgive Bindet i den Form, Forfatteren specificerede, paa de Vilkaar, Forfatteren specificerede, og at skrive et Forlæggers Forord — det nærværende — hvori jeg skulde forklare Vilkaarene og rapportere, saa vidt jeg har Lov til at rapportere, de Omstændigheder, hvorunder Bindet er kommen til at existere.
Jeg skal føie til denne Forklaring alene følgende Iagttagelser.
For det første. Forfatteren har ikke tilladt mig at navngive ham, og jeg skal ikke navngive ham. Jeg skal end ikke angive hans Alder, hans Profession eller det Qvarteer i Byen, hvori han boer. Den Læser, der ved at læse Bindet formoder sig at gjenkjende Haanden, anmodes om at beholde Formodningen for sig selv; Gjenkjendelsen, om det er en Gjenkjendelse, er en privat Sag mellem ham og Forfatteren, og Udgiveren skal ikke være Part i den.
For det andet. Forfatteren har heller ikke tilladt mig at angive, i hvilken Orden Stykkerne ere blevne componerede, ved hvilke Anledninger, med hvilke Tilegnelser eller med hvilket Forhold til hans Livs Begivenheder. Stykkerne ere blevne trykte i den Orden, hvori Forfatteren overrakte dem til mig, hvilken, forsikrer han mig, hverken er Compositionens eller Forkjærlighedens Orden, men en Orden, der efter hans Dom har den Fordeel at fremtræde vilkaarlig, paa det Læseren ikke skal fristes til at construere en Udvikling af Materialer, der ikke vare bestemte til at understøtte een.
For det tredie. Forfatteren har udtrykkeligt forbudt mig at sende Bindet til noget af Hovedstadens periodiske Organer til Anmeldelse. Jeg har respekteret Forbudet. Den Læser, der trods Forbudet finder Bindet til Gjenstand for en Notits i Intelligensbladene eller i Fædrelandet, anmodes om at betragte Notitsen som den uautoriserede Handling af en Anmelder, der har erhvervet Bindet ad andre Veie end Udgiverens Forsendelses-Liste, og at tilskrive Notitsen den Vægt, en saadan Handling fortjener. Jeg paatager mig ikke, at ingen saadan Notits skal fremkomme; jeg paatager mig alene, at Udgiverens Haand ikke har været med i dens Placering.
For det fjerde. Stykkerne ere gjennem hele Bindet henvendte til hiin enkelte Læser, som Forfatteren kalder hiin Enkelte — den enkelte Læser, den skjulte Læser, den Læser, der lukker sin Dør og læser i Stilhed. Adressen er stadig og alvorlig, og Udgiveren beder Læseren, før han aabner Stykkerne, at spørge sig selv, om han er den Læser, hvortil de ere henvendte. Er han det, ere Stykkerne hans, og han vil vide det. Er han det ikke, trænger Udgiveren ikke paa Sagen; Bindet er trykt i femtenhundrede Exemplarer, og selv ved den meest beskedne Beregning af, hvor faa i vor By der ere Enkelte, kan Oplaget ikke andet end være større end sit rette Publikum.
For det femte og sidste. Udgiveren er bleven bemyndiget af Forfatteren til at modtage fra Læseren saadan Betaling for Bindet, som Læseren, havende læst, finder passende. Ingen Pris er fastsat. Udgiveren har paa Titelbladet alene nedfældet den Notice, at Prisen ikke er fastsat. Den Læser, der sender Udgiveren een Rigsdaler, vil modtage Udgiverens Erkjendelse; den Læser, der sender to, vil modtage samme Erkjendelse; den Læser, der intet sender, vil ligeledes modtage intet i Retning af Bebreidelse, idet Udgiveren ikke betragter sig selv som førende Regnskab i Henseende til nærværende Bind, og har aftalt med Forfatteren at betragte Udgivelsen som undertagen paa Udgiverens egen Risiko og til Udgiverens egen Tilfredshed.
Læseren vil nu vende Bladet og læse Stykkerne. Udgiveren træder til Side.
Nicolaus Notabene
The publisher of the present volume must, in the present case more than in any preceding case, ask the reader's patience for a longer explanation than is customary, the volume being of a kind which has not, to the publisher's knowledge, been previously offered in our literature, and the customary forms of explanation being therefore inapplicable.
The volume contains a small number of lyrical and aesthetic productions, of varying length and form, by an author who has — and the publisher reports this on his honour, with such authority as he has been entrusted with — withdrawn from authorship. He has not died; he has not, so far as the publisher is able to determine, suffered any reverse of fortune; he has, simply, decided not to be an author any longer, and has placed the present manuscript in the publisher's hands on the condition that it be brought out, if at all, in the form which the present volume adopts: anonymously, without invitation to review, without notice in the press, without any of the accompaniments by which a book in our city is customarily distinguished from a mere parcel of printed paper.
I confess I tried to dissuade him. I represented to him that an anonymous publication, however quiet, would not escape the notice of those whose business it is to take notice; that the very anonymity, in our city, attracts a more vigorous inspection than a signed work; and that what he wished — to be read by a few in quiet, and not at all by the rest — was, in the conditions of Copenhagen, not within the publisher's power to procure. He replied — and I record the reply as nearly as I can recall it, since it has remained with me — that what was not within the publisher's power was at least within the reader's power; that the few whom he wished to reach would read the volume in the manner in which he wished it read, and that the many who would not so read it would do whatever they pleased with it; that this had always been the situation of the lyric author; that he had at last consented to recognise the situation; and that the present volume was his way of taking leave of authorship with a part of his work still uncompromised.
I yielded. I yielded, in part, because I am not in the habit of refusing an author who knows what he wants and has reasons for it. I yielded, in greater part, because the manuscript he placed before me appeared to me to contain pieces of a delicacy which would not survive the kind of reception which he wished to avoid, and which would, the publisher conceded, suffer in being made the occasion of the customary noise. I therefore agreed to publish the volume in the form which the author specified, on the conditions which the author specified, and to write a publisher's preface — the present one — in which I should explain the conditions and report, so far as I am at liberty to report, the circumstances under which the volume has come to exist.
I shall add to this explanation only the following observations.
First. The author has not permitted me to name him, and I shall not name him. I shall not even indicate his age, his profession, or the quarter of the city in which he lives. The reader who, on reading the volume, supposes himself to recognise the hand is requested to keep the supposition to himself; the recognition, if it is a recognition, is a private matter between him and the author, and the publisher will not be a party to it.
Second. The author has also not permitted me to indicate in what order the pieces were composed, on what occasions, with what dedications, or with what relation to the events of his life. The pieces have been printed in the order in which the author handed them to me, which is, he assures me, neither the order of composition nor the order of preference, but an order which has, in his judgment, the merit of appearing arbitrary, so that the reader shall not be tempted to construct a development out of materials which were not intended to support one.
Third. The author has expressly forbidden me to send the volume to any of the periodical organs of the capital for review. I have respected the prohibition. The reader who, in spite of the prohibition, finds the volume the subject of a notice in the Intelligensblade or in Fædrelandet, is requested to consider the notice as the unauthorised act of a reviewer who has procured the volume by other means than the publisher's mailing list, and to attach to the notice the weight which such an act deserves. I do not undertake that no such notice will appear; I undertake only that the publisher's hand has not been in the placing of it.
Fourth. The pieces are addressed, throughout, to that single reader whom the author calls hiin Enkelte — the single reader, the hidden reader, the reader who closes his door and reads in stillness. The address is consistent and serious, and the publisher begs the reader, before opening the pieces, to ask himself whether he is the reader to whom they are addressed. If he is, the pieces are his, and he will know it. If he is not, the publisher does not press the matter; the volume has been printed in fifteen hundred copies, and even on the most modest reckoning of how few in our city are the Enkelte, the edition cannot fail to be larger than its proper audience.
Fifth and last. The publisher has been authorised, by the author, to receive from the reader such payment for the volume as the reader, having read, considers appropriate. No price is fixed. The publisher has set down, on the title page, only the notice that the price is not fixed. The reader who sends the publisher one Rigsdaler will receive the publisher's acknowledgment; the reader who sends two will receive the same acknowledgment; the reader who sends nothing will likewise receive nothing in the way of reproach, since the publisher does not regard himself as keeping accounts in respect of the present volume, and has agreed with the author to consider the publication as having been undertaken at the publisher's own risk and for the publisher's own satisfaction.
The reader will now turn the page and read the pieces. The publisher steps aside.
Nicolaus Notabene
FORFATTERENS BREV TIL HIIN ENKELTE
Følgende Brev er af Forfatteren bleven anbragt i Spidsen af Stykkerne. Udgiveren trykker det, som han modtog det.
Min Ven, hvem jeg ikke kjender,
Jeg har i nogle Aar ønsket at skrive til Dem. Ønsket har været det eneste, jeg har kunnet beholde klart i en By, hvori alt andet er blevet holdt larmende. De sidder, i min Forestilling, i et Værelse med Døren lukket; Lampen er lav; Aftenen er langt fremme; De har en Bog i Deres Hænder, som De ikke har valgt, fordi den blev anmeldt, men fordi Noget i Dem søgte efter den. Bogen er maaskee ikke min. Men De læser paa den Maade, hvorpaa min Bog, om den kunde finde Dem, vilde ønske at blive læst.
Jeg har i tidligere Aar skrevet for et Publikum. Publikum bestod, i min Forestilling, af Dem selv — af de Faa, jeg nu henvender mig til — og af Ingen andre. Jeg havde endnu ikke forstaaet, at et Publikum i vor By ikke er Dem selv; det er Læseverdenen, den synlige Læseverden, der er saa meget anderledes end Dem selv som at constituere næsten en anden Art; og at man ikke kan henvende sit Skrift til Dem selv og faae det til at naae Dem, idet Skriftet maa gaae gjennem den synlige Læseverden først, og fortæres i Gjennemgangen. Jeg har omsider forstaaet det. Jeg har forstaaet det paa den eneste Maade, paa hvilken man forstaaer saadanne Ting, hvilken er ved langsomt at fortære sig selv paa dem og langsomt at formindskes, indtil Formindskelsen ikke længere kan benægtes. Jeg skriver her ikke i nogen Bitterhed. Jeg skriver alene for at fortælle Dem, hvad jeg har forstaaet, idet De er den, hvem jeg vilde have ønsket at fortælle, hvadsomhelst jeg havde at fortælle.
De Stykker, der følge, ere de Stykker, jeg i tidligere Aar var ude af Stand til at udgive i den Form, de fordrede. Jeg udgiver dem nu i den eneste Form, de ville taale: et lille Bind, uden mit Navn, uden Indbydelse til Anmeldelse, uden den sædvanlige Forberedelse af Publikum til at modtage dem. De ere Stykker, der ikke indeholde Argumenter. De fremsætte ingen Theser. De bekjendtgjøre ingen Stilling. De ere i Form lyrisk-æsthetiske Productioner; i Indhold ere de Breve til Dem, skrevne, før jeg vidste, at De var den Person, jeg skrev til.
Jeg tager min Afsked med Forfatterskabet i at udgive dem. Afskedstagningen er ikke dramatisk; den er tværtimod fuldkommen stille, idet Drama hører til den synlige Læseverden, og Afskedstagningen er min Maade at trække mig tilbage fra den. Der vil ikke komme et andet Bind. Udgiveren er bleven underrettet; han har samtykket i Vilkaaret; nærværende Stykker ere alt, hvad jeg skal tilbyde.
Læs dem, min Ven, paa den Maade, hvorpaa De læser. Jeg beder ikke om noget andet. Finder De blandt dem noget, der har bistaaet Dem i en Time, da er det et tilstrækkeligt Vederlag; jeg har ikke for Vane at vente meer. Finder De intet, læg Bindet til Side uden Bebreidelse mod nogen af os; Mødet, selv naar det ikke fanger, har været Forsøget værd.
Jeg skal ikke underskrive dette Brev, idet jeg ikke underskriver Bindet. Men De vil, mener jeg, forstaae, at et usigneret Brev i dette Tilfælde ikke er et anonymt Brev; det er et Brev signeret paa en Maade, der alene er læselig for Dem.
Deres trofaste,
—
The following letter has been placed by the author at the head of the pieces. The publisher prints it as he received it.
My friend, whom I do not know,
I have wished, for some years, to write to you. The wish has been the only thing I have been able to keep clear, in a city in which everything else has been kept noisy. You sit, in my imagining, in a room with the door shut; the lamp is low; the evening is far gone; you have a book in your hands which you have not chosen because it was reviewed, but because something in you was looking for it. The book is not, perhaps, mine. But you read in the manner in which my book, if it could find you, would wish to be read.
I have written, in earlier years, for an audience. The audience consisted, in my imagining, of yourselves — of the few I am now addressing — and of nobody else. I had not yet understood that an audience, in our city, is not yourselves; it is the Læseverden, the visible reading-world, which is so very different from yourselves as to constitute, almost, another species; and that one cannot address one's writing to yourselves and have it reach you, since the writing must pass through the visible reading-world first, and is consumed in the passing. I have understood this, at last. I have understood it in the only way in which one understands such things, which is by spending oneself slowly upon them, and being slowly diminished, until the diminishment can no longer be denied. I do not write here in any bitterness. I write only to tell you what I have understood, since you are the one to whom I would have wished to tell anything I had to tell.
The pieces which follow are the pieces I was unable, in earlier years, to publish in the form they required. I publish them now in the only form they will tolerate: a small volume, without my name, without invitation to review, without the customary preparation of the public to receive them. They are pieces which do not contain arguments. They do not advance theses. They do not announce a position. They are, in form, lyrical-aesthetic productions; in content, they are letters to you, written before I knew that you were the person I was writing to.
I am taking my leave of authorship in publishing them. The taking-leave is not dramatic; it is, on the contrary, perfectly quiet, since drama belongs to the visible reading-world, and the taking-leave is my way of withdrawing from it. There will not be another volume. The publisher has been informed; he has agreed to the condition; the present pieces are all I shall offer.
Read them, my friend, in the manner in which you read. I do not ask anything else. If you find, among them, anything which has assisted you in some hour, that is a sufficient return; I am not in the habit of expecting more. If you find nothing, set the volume aside without reproach to either of us; the encounter, even when it does not take, has been worth the attempt.
I shall not sign this letter, since I am not signing the volume. But you will understand, I think, that an unsigned letter is not, in this case, an anonymous letter; it is a letter signed in a manner which is legible only to you.
Yours faithfully,
—
I. AFTEN
Det første Stykke. Prosa-Digt.
Lamperne tændes langs Vimmelskaftet. Dagen har været klar, og Kjølen er kommen ind fra Sundet før Solnedgang; Lygtetænderens Aandedræt er synligt ved Foden af hver Lampe, idet han hæver den lille Flamme til Vægen. Bag Vinduerne tændes Husenes Lamper ogsaa, een for een, og gjennem de nedre Stokværks Gardiner seer man hist og her en Skikkelse bevæge sig mellem Værelser. Ovenfor det andet Stokværk ere Vinduerne mørke, idet de øvre Værelser ere kolde og sjeldent benyttede.
De er gaaet ud for Aftenluften. De vil ikke gaae langt. De gaaer til Hjørnet og staaer et Øieblik under Lampen; Aandedrættet af Deres Gang viser sig som Lygtetænderens mod den lille Flamme. Fra et Vindue paa den anden Side af Gaden kommer Lyden af et Klaver, der spilles, ikke for et Publikum: Skalaer, langsomme Skalaer, dernæst en Phrase, dernæst atter Skalaer. Spillerinden underviser et Barn, eller er selv Barnet, der lærer. Phrasen, naar den kommer, er een, De ikke gjenkjender; Skalaerne, naar de komme, ere de Skalaer, der bleve lærte Dem, dengang De var Skala-Spilleren.
De staaer et langt Minut. De træder ikke ind i Huset, hvorfra Musiken kommer; De kjender ikke Folkene deri; De har ingen Forretning med dem. Men Musiken er for Minuttets Varighed Deres Musik; Lampen, hvorunder De staaer, er Deres Lampe; Aftenkjølen, der er kommen ind fra Sundet, er Deres Aftens Kjølighed. De er ikke ensom. De er tværtimod meer solid i Verden, end De har været paa noget Punkt af Dagen. Hele Deres Liv synes at samles og staae under Lampen med Dem, og hele Byen synes for Phrasens Længde at være et eneste Hus med mange Vinduer, i hvert af hvilke en eneste Person nu i Aftenens Privathed atter bliver sig selv.
Phrasen ender. Skalaerne gjenoptages. De vender Dem og gaaer tilbage ad den Vei, De kom.
Jeg veed ikke, om der er noget videre at sige.
The first piece. Prose-poem.
The lamps are being lit along Vimmelskaftet. The day has been clear, and the cold has come in from the Sound before sunset; the breath of the lamplighter is visible at the foot of each lamp as he raises the small flame to the wick. Behind the windows the lamps of the houses are also being lit, one by one, and through the curtains of the lower stories one sees, here and there, a figure moving between rooms. Above the second story the windows are dark, the upper rooms being cold and seldom used.
You have come out for the evening air. You will not go far. You walk to the corner and stand a moment under the lamp; the breath of your walking shows, like the breath of the lamplighter, against the small flame. From a window across the street comes the sound of a piano being played, not for an audience: scales, slow scales, then a phrase, then scales again. The player is teaching a child, or is herself the child, learning. The phrase, when it comes, is one you do not recognise; the scales, when they come, are the scales which were taught to you when you were the player of scales.
You stand a long minute. You do not enter the house from which the music comes; you do not know the people there; you have no business with them. But the music is, for the duration of the minute, your music; the lamp under which you stand is your lamp; the cold of the evening which has come in from the Sound is the cold of your evening. You are not lonely. You are, on the contrary, more solid in the world than you have been at any point in the day. The whole of your life seems to gather and stand under the lamp with you, and the whole of the city, for the length of the phrase, seems to be a single house with many windows, in each of which a single person is now, in the privacy of the evening, becoming again himself.
The phrase ends. The scales resume. You turn and walk back the way you came.
I do not know that there is anything further to say.
II. EN FORTALE
Det andet Stykke. Indføiet som det blev fundet; Forfatteren har ikke givet det nogen Underoverskrift; Formen er en Fortales, men Fortalen er til ingen Bog.
Jeg havde til Hensigt at skrive en Fortale til en Bog, jeg havde til Hensigt at skrive. Jeg satte mig ned paa en Tirsdag i October. Lampen var tændt; Papiret var forberedt; jeg havde i Pennens Sag endog udvist nogen Discrimination. Jeg skrev den første Sætning. Det var en Sætning, der havde tiltrukket sig ved Mellemrum gjennem de foregaaende tre Maaneder, og som ved hver Forekomst havde forekommet mig at være den Sætning, hvormed Fortalen til Bogen burde begynde. Sætningen var nu paa Papiret.
Jeg sad og saae paa den. Jeg havde formodet, at idet den første Sætning var betroet Papiret, vilde den anden Sætning følge. Den anden Sætning fulgte ikke. Den første Sætning sad paa Papiret og saae tilbage paa mig med den Slags Fatning, som en Sætning vinder, naar den har ventet i tre Maaneder, og er omsider blevet tilladt at blive skrevet. Fatningen var ikke uvenlig. Den var imidlertid fuldkommen selv-tilstrækkelig. Sætningen behøvede ingen anden Sætning; den var complet i sig selv, og havde foretrukket at forblive saaledes.
Jeg sad med Sætningen i nogle Timer. Mod Midnat forstod jeg, at Fortalen, jeg havde til Hensigt at skrive, var Fortalen til ingen Bog; at Sætningen, jeg havde betroet Papiret, var hele Fortalen; og at Bogen, jeg havde til Hensigt at skrive, var den Bog, Sætningen vilde have indledet, om nogen Bog havde været fornøden. Idet ingen Bog faktisk havde været fornøden, stod Fortalen alene, hvilket efter min bedste Dom var den for den rette Form.
Jeg optegner dette ikke i nogen Beklagelses Aand. Jeg optegner det alene, fordi jeg er kommen til at mistænke, at hvad jeg havde taget for min Manglende-paa-at-skrive Bogen, faktisk var Bogens Fuldendelse i sin Fortale; og at hvad jeg havde taget for min Manglende-som-Forfatter, faktisk var min Ankomst, ad en omveis Rute, til den eneste Form, hvori jeg har noget at sige.
Jeg burde tilføie, at jeg ikke har bevaret Sætningen. Jeg tabte den paa den Maade, hvorpaa man taber en lille Gjenstand i et bekjendt Værelse: ved at sætte den ned et eller andet Sted bevidst om at have sat den ned, og finde, naar man vendte tilbage til Stedet, at Stedet var tomt. Sætningen er derfor ikke tilgjengelig at reproduceres; den Læser, der ønsker at læse den, maa selv construere den af saadanne Materialer, som ere ham tilgjengelige; han vil maaskee finde, at Constructionen er samme Arbeide i Miniature som at skrive en Bog.
The second piece. Inserted as found; the author has not given it a sub-title; the form is that of a preface, but the preface is to no book.
I had intended to write a preface to a book I had intended to write. I sat down on a Tuesday in October. The lamp was lit; the paper was prepared; I had even, in the matter of pens, exercised some discrimination. I wrote the first sentence. It was a sentence which had occurred to me at intervals over the preceding three months, and which had appeared to me, in each occurrence, to be the sentence with which the preface to the book ought to begin. The sentence was now on the page.
I sat looking at it. I had supposed that, the first sentence being committed to paper, the second sentence would follow. The second sentence did not follow. The first sentence sat on the page, looking back at me with the kind of composure that a sentence acquires when it has been waiting for three months and has been at last permitted to be written. The composure was not unfriendly. It was, however, perfectly self-sufficient. The sentence did not need a second sentence; it was complete in itself, and would have preferred to remain so.
I sat with the sentence for some hours. Toward midnight I understood that the preface I had intended to write was the preface to no book; that the sentence I had committed to paper was the whole of the preface; and that the book I had intended to write was the book which the sentence would have prefaced, had any book been required. Since no book had, in the event, been required, the preface stood alone, which was, in my best judgment, the form proper to it.
I do not record this in any spirit of regret. I record it only because I have come to suspect that what I had taken to be my failure to write the book was, in fact, the book's completion in its preface; and that what I had taken to be my failure as a writer was, in fact, my arrival, by an indirect route, at the only form in which I have anything to say.
I should add that I have not preserved the sentence. I lost it, in the way that one loses a small object in a familiar room: by setting it down somewhere conscious of having set it down, and finding, when one returned to the place, that the place was empty. The sentence is therefore not available to be reproduced; the reader who wishes to read it must construct it for himself, from such materials as are available to him; he will perhaps find that the construction is the same labour, in miniature, as the writing of a book.
III. SCENE: BARSELSTUEN
Det tredie Stykke. Et kort dramatisk Mellemspil i tre Taler.
Et Værelse. Fem Damer, hvoraf fire ere Besøgende og een — Forfatterinden — ligger paa en Sofa, havende nyligt nedkommet med et tyndt Bind. De Besøgende have bragt smaa Gaver: en Krukke Sylttøi, en trykt Notits fra Fædrelandet, et Stykke Bomulds-Baand, et Exemplar af forrige Maaneds Intelligensblade.
FØRSTE BESØGENDE. Og hvorledes har den kjære Forfatterinde det denne Morgen?
FORFATTERINDEN. Jeg har ikke sovet.
ANDEN BESØGENDE (ikke havende hørt). Vi ere komne strax, det Øieblik vi læste Notitsen. Har De seet Notitsen? Den er meget venlig. Hr. Heiberg selv, siges der, blev raadspurgt. Anmelderen er i det Hele ikke enig med Bindet, men han tillader det at have sine Fortrinligheder; han priser særligt Dristigheden. Jeg har selv endnu ikke læst Bindet, men jeg har læst Notitsen tre Gange.
TREDIE BESØGENDE. Jeg var hos Reitzel i Gaar og saae et Exemplar paa Bordet. Jeg havde ikke Tid til at see i det, men Fru — — stod ved Siden af mig og saae i det for mig; hun siger, det er ikke i den forrige Stil, men er i det Hele dybere.
FJERDE BESØGENDE. Min Mand har mødt en Herre fra Roskilde, der har læst det. Han er, mener jeg, ikke i den litterære Linie, men hans Mening er sund. Han fandt i det visse Udtryk, der, om jeg husker ret, han ikke kunde billige. Han har skrevet til en Ven i Aarhus, der vil skrive til en Ven i Aalborg; vi skulle ved Maanedens Slutning vide, hvad Landet meiner.
FORFATTERINDEN. Jeg har ikke sovet.
FØRSTE BESØGENDE. Den stakkels kjære. Det er Forfatterskabets Anstrengelse. Jeg har altid sagt det. (Til de andre.) Naar man netop har nedkommet, er det ikke andet at vente, end at det skal mærkes. (Til Forfatterinden.) De maa hvile. De maa, naar De er stærkere, skrive os en anden. Vi skulle ikke trænge paa Dem, men vi skulle ikke lade Dem slippe. Der er et lille Stykke i nærværende Nummer af Intelligensbladene, der synes mig at angive den Retning, hvori De bør udvikle Dem. Jeg har bragt Dem et Exemplar. (Lægger det paa Sofaen.) De vil see, naar De er stærkere, hvad der er meent.
ANDEN BESØGENDE. Fremfor alt, maa De ikke lade Dem nedslaae. Notitsen er, som jeg har sagt, i det Hele ikke gunstig, men den er Opmærksomhed. Det er langt værre ikke at bemærkes. Forfatteren af Enten/Eller, der mener jeg er en Ven af Dem, vilde sige Dem det. (De Besøgende ere enige.) Jeg har altid sagt det.
FORFATTERINDEN. Jeg har ikke sovet.
TREDIE BESØGENDE (til de andre). Den stakkels kjære. Hun gjentager sig selv. Det er Anstrengelsen.
De Besøgende samle deres Schaler; love at vende tilbage imorgen; afgaae samlet. Forfatterinden ligger paa Sofaen. Efter et Øieblik tager hun den trykte Notits, Intelligensbladene og Stykket Bomulds-Baand og sætter dem paa det lille Bord ved Siden af sig. Hun læser dem ikke. Hun lukker sine Øine.
FORFATTERINDEN (til sig selv, stille). Jeg har ikke sovet. Jeg skal ikke skrive en anden. Jeg skal slet ikke skrive. (Efter en Pause.) Om hun kommer tilbage, skal jeg sige hende, at jeg er gaaet ud.
Lampen er lav. Tæppet, var der et Tæppe, vilde falde.
The third piece. A short dramatic interlude, in three speeches.
A room. Five women, of whom four are visitors and one — the Author — lies on a couch, having lately delivered a slim volume. The visitors have brought small gifts: a jar of preserves, a printed notice from Fædrelandet, a length of cotton ribbon, a copy of the previous month's* Intelligensblade.
FIRST VISITOR. And how is the dear Author this morning?
AUTHOR. I have not slept.
SECOND VISITOR (not having heard). We have come at once, the moment we read the notice. Have you seen the notice? It is very kind. Mr. Heiberg himself, they say, was consulted. The reviewer does not, on the whole, agree with the volume, but he allows it to have its merits; he praises in particular the boldness. I myself have not yet read the volume, but I have read the notice three times.
THIRD VISITOR. I was at Reitzel's yesterday and saw a copy on the table. I did not have time to look in it, but Mrs. — — was beside me and looked into it for me; she says it is not in the manner of the previous one, but is, on the whole, deeper.
FOURTH VISITOR. My husband has met a gentleman from Roskilde who has read it. He is not, I believe, in the literary line, but his opinion is sound. He found in it certain expressions which, if I remember correctly, he could not approve. He has written to a friend in Aarhus, who will write to a friend in Aalborg; we shall, by the end of the month, know what the country thinks.
AUTHOR. I have not slept.
FIRST VISITOR. The poor dear. It is the strain of authorship. I have always said so. (To the others.) When one has just delivered, one is bound to feel it. (To the Author.) You must rest. You must, when you are stronger, write us another. We shall not press you, but we shall not let you off. There is a small piece in the present number of the Intelligensblade which seems to me to indicate the direction in which you ought to develop. I have brought you a copy. (Lays it on the couch.) You will see, when you are stronger, what is meant.
SECOND VISITOR. Above all, you must not be discouraged. The notice is, as I have said, not on the whole favourable, but it is attention. It is far worse to be not attended to. The Author of Either/Or, who is, I believe, a friend of yours, would tell you so. (The visitors agree among themselves.) I have always said so.
AUTHOR. I have not slept.
THIRD VISITOR (to the others). The poor dear. She repeats herself. It is the strain.
The visitors gather their wraps; promise to return tomorrow; depart in a body. The Author lies on the couch. After a moment, she takes up the printed notice, the Intelligensblade, and the length of cotton ribbon, and sets them on the small table beside her. She does not read them. She closes her eyes.
AUTHOR (to herself, quietly). I have not slept. I shall not write another. I shall not write at all. (After a pause.) If she comes back, I shall tell her I have gone out.
The lamp is low. The curtain, if there were a curtain, would fall.
IV. SENDEBREV TIL HIIN ENKELTE
Det fjerde Stykke. Et Brev, henvendt som Overskriften angiver.
Min Ven,
Jeg skriver til Dem en anden Gang, havende naaet Slutningen af det lille Bind; jeg skriver for at fortælle Dem, hvad der ikke kunde siges i Produktionerne selv.
Det vil maaskee have slaaet Dem, at de fire Stykker — Aftenen paa Vimmelskaftet, Fortalen til ingen Bog, Barselstuens Scene, og dette Brev, De nu læser — ikke ere meget aabenbart de lyriske Productioner, Titelbladet lovede. Det første er nærmere et Prosa-Udkast; det andet er i Form en Fortale; det tredie er et dramatisk Mellemspil; det fjerde er et Brev. Intet af dem er i den rette Forstand en Lyrik. Titelbladet er i denne Henseende bedragerisk.
Jeg skal tilstaae Bedrageriet, eftersom De er kommen saa langt og er berettiget til Tilstaaelsen. Jeg havde formodet, da jeg udkastede Titelbladet, at Bindet vilde være en Samling af lyriske Productioner. Jeg havde Udkast til Lyrikker i min Notitsbog; jeg havde til Hensigt at revidere dem; jeg havde endog i Henseende til to af dem gjort nogen Fremskridt. Lyrikerne overlevede dog ikke Revisionen. De vare ved Inspektion Lyrikker for det Publikum, hvis Existens jeg nu er ophørt med at tro paa; de vilde have været, om jeg havde revideret og trykt dem, Lyrikker for Læseverdenen. Det Publikum, for hvem jeg omsider skrev — for hvem jeg nu skriver — fordrede ingen Lyrikker; fordrede snarere, hvadsomhelst jeg havde at sige, i hvilkensomhelst Form jeg havde det at sige; og de fire Stykker ovenfor ere faktisk, hvad jeg havde at sige i de Former, hvori det kunde siges.
Jeg har ladet Titelbladet staae uforandret. At have forandret det vilde have været at tilstaae paa Titelbladet, hvad Stykkerne selv tilstaae i deres Uregelmæssighed. Jeg dømte, at Titelbladet ved at love lyriske Productioner vilde tiltrække en særlig Slags Læser, hvoraf De er een, og vilde sætte til Side en anden Slags Læser, hvoraf De ikke er. Bedrageriet er i denne Forstand en Sorterings-Indretning; det er ikke rettet mod Dem, der er skreden videre trods Titelbladet, og ikke er blevet bedraget. Jeg beder om Deres Overbærenhed i Sagen.
Jeg har i dette Brev to videre Ting at sige.
Det første er, at jeg, som jeg allerede har underrettet Udgiveren, ikke skal skrive et andet Bind. Jeg skal ikke, fordi jeg intet videre har at sige; eller snarere, hvad videre jeg har at sige, retfærdiggjør efter min Dom ikke et Binds Apparat — Omslaget, Titelbladet, Wrapper'en, Boghandleren, Anmelderen, den Besøgende i Barselstuen, Vennen i Roskilde, Vennen i Aarhus, Vennen i Aalborg. Apparatet er for stort for, hvad der bliver tilbage for mig. Jeg skal i Henseende til det Tilbageblevne tale med Dem personligt — ikke bogstaveligt med Dem, eftersom jeg ikke veed, hvem De er, men med de Faa af Dem, jeg kjender, og hvem det Tilbageblevne kan siges over et Bord uden Mellemled. Resten vil ikke blive sagt.
Det andet er at takke Dem. Jeg har i nogle Aar skrevet i Forestillingen om Dem, men jeg har ikke havt Anledning før nærværende Bind til at henvende mig direkte til Dem. Forestillingen har næret mig gjennem nogle Sæsoner, hvori Nærelse ellers ikke var tilgjengelig. Stykkerne ovenfor ere en lille Betaling i Restance paa en Konto, jeg har ført med Dem i lang Tid. Jeg smigrer mig ikke med, at Betalingen dækker Kontoen; Kontoen er for stor til det. Jeg sender den, som man mod en gammel Gjeld sender, hvad man har — den eneste, der kan sende, hvad der fordres, værende den, der er skyldig.
Jeg lukker Bindet her. Udgiverens Efterskrift, der følger, er Udgiverens; jeg har ikke seet den. De og jeg have mellem de lyriske Productioner og dette Brev sagt, hvad vi havde at sige til hinanden. Jeg tager min Afsked med Dem med den Taknemmelighed, der sømmer sig et langt Bekjendtskab, hvori ingen af os hidtil før nærværende Time har talt.
Deres trofaste,
—
The fourth piece. A letter, addressed as the title indicates.
My friend,
I write to you a second time, having reached the end of the small volume; I write to tell you what could not be said in the productions themselves.
It will perhaps have struck you that the four pieces — the evening on Vimmelskaftet, the preface to no book, the lying-in scene, and this letter which you are now reading — are not very obviously the lyric productions which the title page promised. The first is more nearly a prose-sketch; the second is, in form, a preface; the third is a dramatic interlude; the fourth is a letter. None of them is, in the proper sense, a lyric. The title page is, in this respect, deceitful.
I shall confess to the deceit, since you have come this far and are entitled to the confession. I had supposed, when I drafted the title page, that the volume would be a collection of lyric productions. I had drafts of lyrics in my notebook; I had intended to revise them; I had even, in respect of two of them, made some progress. The lyrics, however, did not survive the revision. They were, on inspection, lyrics for the audience whose existence I have now ceased to credit; they would have been, if I had revised and printed them, lyrics for the Læseverden. The audience for whom I was at last writing — for whom I am writing now — did not require lyrics; required, rather, whatever I had to say, in whatever form I had to say it; and the four pieces above are, in the event, what I had to say in the forms in which it could be said.
I have left the title page unchanged. To have changed it would have been to confess, on the title page, what the pieces themselves confess in their irregularity. I judged that the title page, in promising lyric productions, would attract a particular kind of reader, of whom you are one, and would set aside another kind of reader, of whom you are not. The deceit, in this sense, is a sorting device; it is not directed against you, who have proceeded despite the title page, and have not been deceived. I beg your indulgence in the matter.
I have, in this letter, two further things to say.
The first is that I shall not, as I have already informed the publisher, write another volume. I shall not because I have nothing further to say; or rather, what further I have to say does not, in my judgment, justify the apparatus of a volume — the cover, the title page, the wrapper, the bookseller, the reviewer, the visitor in the lying-in chamber, the friend in Roskilde, the friend in Aarhus, the friend in Aalborg. The apparatus is too large for what remains to me. I shall, in respect of what remains, speak to you in person — not literally to you, since I do not know who you are, but to those few of you whom I do know, and to whom what remains can be said over a table without intermediary. The rest will not be said.
The second is to thank you. I have been writing, for some years, in the imagining of you, but I have not had occasion before this volume to address you directly. The imagining has sustained me through some seasons in which sustenance was not otherwise available. The pieces above are a small payment, in arrears, upon an account which I have run with you for a long time. I do not flatter myself that the payment discharges the account; the account is too large for that. I send it as one sends, against an old debt, what one has — the only one who can send what is required being the one who is owed.
I close the volume here. The publisher's afterword, which follows, is the publisher's; I have not seen it. You and I have, between the lyric productions and this letter, said what we had to say to each other. I take my leave of you with the gratitude proper to a long acquaintance in which neither of us has yet, until the present hour, spoken.
Yours faithfully,
—
EFTERSKRIFT AF UDGIVEREN
Jeg føier alene følgende.
Forfatterens Brev, hvormed den trykte Text afsluttes, blev lagt i mine Hænder sammen med de fire Stykker og Indledningsbrevet til hiin Enkelte. Jeg har trykt alle sex Stykker i den specificerede Orden; jeg har gjort ingen Forandring. Læseren vil opfatte, at hvad Forfatteren har gjort i det afsluttende Brev, er at gjøre sin Udgivers videre Virksomhed unødvendig. Bindet fordrer ingen Notice; det har anmeldt sig selv i Indledningsbrevet. Det fordrer ingen Bekjendtgjørelse; det har bekjendtgjort sig selv i Titelen. Det fordrer ingen Udredning; de fire Stykker ere deres egen Udredning. Og det fordrer ingen Efterskrift; det afsluttende Brev er dens Efterskrift. Efterskriften, som Udgiveren ved lang Skik nu skriver, er derfor — ved Bindets egen Structur — overflødig. Udgiveren tilstaaer Overflødigheden. Han skriver de nærværende Sider hovedsageligt for at optegne Tilstaaelsen.
Jeg skal derfor alene optegne dette. Bindet er bleven udgivet. Det vil paa den Maade, hvorpaa alle udgivne Bind i vor By gjøre det, finde sin Vei i Hænderne af dem, hvem Forfatteren ønskede det ikke skulde naae, saa vel som i Hænderne af dem, hvem han ønskede det skulde naae. De første ville gjøre med det, hvad de gjøre. De andre — hiin Enkelte, ved hvilket Navn og i hvilket Qvarteer — ville modtage det, som det blev sendt, og ville, tiltro jeg, sende Forfatteren hvilketsomhelst Vederlag deres Læsning lægger i deres Hænder at sende, ad de Kanaler, som et lille Bind af denne Slags opretter mellem Forfatter og Læser uden Udgiverens Mellemkomst. Udgiverens Del er endt ved Trykkerens Dør.
Jeg føier eet videre Ord til, og lægger Pennen ned. De fire Stykker ovenfor ere ikke lyriske Productioner i den strenge Forstand, som Forfatteren selv har indrømmet. De ere heller ikke i den rette Forstand et æsthetisk Værk. De ere noget stillere, hvilket vor Litteratur endnu ikke har lært at navngive, og som den synlige Læseverden i ethvert Tilfælde ikke vil tage Notice af. Den synlige Læseverden vil ikke tage Notice af dem, fordi de ikke have gjort nogen af de Lyde, hvorved den synlige Læseverden tiltrækkes: ingen Skandale, ingen Polemik, ingen Bekjendtgjørelse af et System, ingen Strid med en Anmelder, intet Navn paa Titelbladet at gjette over og sladre om over Hovedstadens Tee-borde. Stykkerne ere ikke skrevne for at gjøre disse Lyde. De ere skrevne, som Forfatteren siger, til Dem — til den, der nu er ved at lukke Bindet og maaskee allerede har lukket det, og som sidder i det Værelse, hvori han er vant til at sidde, naar han læser, med Lampen paa det Niveau, hvorpaa han er vant til at sætte den, i den Stilhed, han holder om sig i den Deel af Aftenen, der er hans.
Bindet har naaet Dem. Udgiverens Konto er derfor afgjort.
Nicolaus Notabene
Faaes hos Universitetsboghandler C. A. Reitzel. Prisen er ikke fastsat. Anmeldelse frabedes.
I add only the following.
The author's letter, with which the printed text closes, was placed in my hands together with the four pieces and the opening letter to hiin Enkelte. I have printed all six pieces in the order specified; I have made no alteration. The reader will perceive that what the author has done, in the closing letter, is to render the further activity of his publisher unnecessary. The volume requires no notice; it has reviewed itself in the opening letter. It requires no announcement; it has announced itself in the title. It requires no exposition; the four pieces are their own exposition. And it requires no afterword; the closing letter is its afterword. The afterword which the publisher, by long custom, now writes, is therefore — by the volume's own structure — superfluous. The publisher confesses the superfluity. He writes the present pages chiefly to record the confession.
I shall therefore record only this. The volume has been published. It will, in the manner of all published volumes in our city, find its way into the hands of those whom the author wished it not to reach, as well as into the hands of those whom he wished it to reach. The first will do with it what they do. The second — hiin Enkelte, by whatever name and in whatever quarter — will receive it as it was sent, and will, I trust, send the author whatever return their reading puts into their hands to send, by the channels which a small volume of this kind sets up between author and reader without the publisher's mediation. The publisher's part is at an end at the printer's door.
I add one further word, and lay down the pen. The four pieces above are not lyrical productions in the strict sense, as the author himself has admitted. They are also not, in the proper sense, an aesthetic work. They are something quieter, which our literature has not yet learned to name, and which the visible Læseverden will not, in any case, take notice of. The visible reading-world will not take notice of them because they have not made any of the noises by which the visible reading-world is attracted: no scandal, no polemic, no announcement of a System, no quarrel with a reviewer, no name on the title page to be guessed at and gossipped over the tea-tables of the capital. The pieces have not been written to make those noises. They have been written, as the author says, to you — to the one who is now closing the volume, and has perhaps already closed it, and is sitting in the room in which he is accustomed to sit when he reads, with the lamp at the level at which he is accustomed to set it, in the quiet which he keeps about him in the part of the evening which is his.
The volume has reached you. The publisher's account is therefore settled.
Nicolaus Notabene
Faaes hos Universitetsboghandler C. A. Reitzel. Prisen er ikke fastsat. Anmeldelse frabedes.
Editor’s Introduction
Editor's Introduction
Volume II
Lyriske Productioner for hiin Enkelte
Lyric Productions for that Single Reader
by MADS FEDDER HENRIKSEN
I. The bibliographical singularity of Volume II
Of the eight phantom volumes Notabene published between 1844 and 1847, the Lyriske Productioner for hiin Enkelte is the only one for which the present editor has been unable to consult an uncorrupted copy of the original printing. The volume appeared, according to the Reitzel firm's records (Reitzel-arkivet, Kgl. Bibl., NKS 4° 2989-A, fasc. 1845-46, fol. 211r), in May 1846 in a print run of 1,500 copies, each hand-numbered in dark blue ink on the inside front cover by the publisher's clerk. The print run was distributed in three ways: through the Reitzel retail establishment (an unrecorded number); through the Boghandlerlauget's wholesale channel to provincial booksellers (an unrecorded number); and, in a manner highly unusual for the period, by direct post from the publisher to addresses supplied by the author at the time of delivery (244 copies, per the publisher's records). The author's distribution list has not survived.
No copy of the first state of the printing, as it left Bianco Luno's press in early May 1846, has been traced in any public or private collection known to the present editor. Of the 1,500 copies known to have been printed and distributed, the present editor has located only twelve, all of which appear to belong to a second state of the printing, identifiable by a small typographical correction on p. 47 (line 8: "stille" for the first state's "stilte"). The Reitzel records do not document a second state, and the present editor proposes — though without independent corroboration — that the correction was made on the press during the May 1846 print run itself, and that the first-state copies were withdrawn by the publisher (perhaps at Notabene's request) before public distribution.
The twelve copies known to the present editor are listed in the apparatus (Appendix C). Of these, the most significant for the establishment of the present text is the copy designated witness A: copy no. 0837 of the second state, donated to the Kongelige Bibliotek in 1958 by the heirs of Frøken Ulla Bruun de Neergaard.
II. Witness A: the Bruun de Neergaard copy
Frøken Ulla Bruun de Neergaard (1881–1957) was a private collector of mid-nineteenth-century Danish literature whose library, donated in 1958 to the Kongelige Bibliotek, contained — among more conventional holdings — copy no. 0837 of the Lyriske Productioner. The provenance of the copy before its entry into Bruun de Neergaard's library cannot be definitively traced; an inscription on the inside front cover, in a hand which has not been identified, gives the date Julen 1846 but no recipient. The Bruun de Neergaard family archive (Kgl. Bibl., NKS 4° 3017) records her purchase of the volume in 1923 from the antiquarian Carl Andersen of Vesterbrogade for the sum of nineteen Kroner.
The principal scholarly interest of witness A lies in the pencilled annotations its reader has entered, by her own hand, throughout the volume. The annotations consist almost exclusively of the words ja and nej in pencil, entered in the right-hand margin against passages of varying length. Across the volume's ninety-two pages of body text, the present editor has counted 173 such annotations: 81 ja, 92 nej. The annotations are reproduced in the apparatus to the present edition (Appendix A) by line reference, in their two distinct forms; their distribution by section is set out in the apparatus introduction.
The interpretive significance of the annotations has been debated. Holm (2011, pp. 167–78) reads them as expressions of agreement and disagreement with Notabene's particular formulations; Lindhardt (1969, pp. 121–24) reads them as records of recognition and non-recognition by an addressee who supposed herself to be the hiin Enkelte to whom Notabene's volume was directed. The present editor offers no judgement between these readings. The reader of the present edition is invited to consult Appendix A and to draw such inferences as the distribution and placement of the annotations permit.
It is worth noting, in this connection, that Bruun de Neergaard's family papers contain no other indication of an interest in the Notabene corpus, and that the copy of the Lyriske Productioner appears to have been the only Notabene volume in her library. This circumstance has been taken by some — notably Holm (2011, p. 173) — to suggest that the volume reached Bruun de Neergaard's possession through a route distinct from her ordinary collecting interests; the present editor records the suggestion without endorsing it.
III. Reception 1846–1957
The volume received no notices in the periodical press of 1846 known to the present editor. Notabene's express request that no review copies be distributed, communicated to Reitzel in writing (NKS 4° 2989-A, fasc. 1845-46, fol. 208v), was honoured by the publisher. Three brief mentions in private correspondence of 1846–48 have been traced (Pap. X 2 A 387, Pap. X 2 A 412, and a letter from Henriette Wulff to Hanne Mynster of 11 June 1846 in the Mynster-arkivet, Add. 1846, fasc. III, fol. 14r); none rises to the level of a review, and all three suggest that the volume was understood, in such limited circles as encountered it, as a private communication rather than a public literary act.
The volume passed into obscurity after 1850. No reprinting appeared during Notabene's lifetime; no foreign-language translation was attempted in the nineteenth century. Brandes, whose 1883 Det moderne Gjennembruds Mænd gave such substantial attention to Smaastykker (Vol. VII), passes over the Lyriske Productioner in a single sentence: "the Anonymous's Lyric Productions of 1846 are a curiosity of the same author's biography, of which the volumes of 1844 and 1847 are the substance" (Brandes 1883, p. 178). The Det moderne Gjennembrud writers showed no interest. Heidegger does not refer to the volume; Wahl mentions it only in a footnote.
The volume's first sustained twentieth-century reception coincided with the donation of the Bruun de Neergaard copy to the Kongelige Bibliotek in 1958. A short notice by Aage Henriksen in Kierkegaardiana (vol. II, 1959, pp. 84–88), occasioned by the donation, drew attention to the ja/nej annotations and proposed the first sustained reading of the volume. Henriksen's reading — that the Lyriske Productioner should be understood as one of the most personal documents in the Notabene corpus, and possibly as a document with a specific addressee whose identity the volume's anonymity protects — has shaped subsequent scholarship.
A German translation by Hans Wagner appeared in 1962 (Klett, Stuttgart) under the title Lyrische Produktionen für jenen Einzelnen; Wagner's translation, while serviceable, is now generally judged to over-Heideggerise certain key terms (notably hiin Enkelte as "jenen Einzelnen," with the Heideggerian resonance of Einzelner). The present edition supplies the first English translation.
IV. The question of the addressee
Notabene's preface and closing letters address the volume to hiin Enkelte — "that single reader" — whose identity Notabene's own text refuses to specify (see Vol. II, Notabene's Forord, § 1, and Brev til hiin Enkelte). The question whether hiin Enkelte is to be understood as a general literary form (the singular reader, conceived as an ideal of reception) or as a specific person (an actual individual whom Notabene knew and to whom the volume was directed) has been debated throughout the volume's modern reception.
The present editor records the question and offers no resolution. The arguments on each side are summarised in the apparatus, note 3, with reference to the principal scholarly literature: Holm (2011, ch. 9), Lindhardt (1969, pp. 121–34), Cappelørn (1997, "Hiin Enkelte: et notabeniansk spørgsmål"), Aage Henriksen (1959). The reader is referred to the biographical companion volume (Vol. IX, ch. 7) for such circumstantial considerations as the present editor has been able to bring to bear on the question.
It may be observed, in passing, that the volume's structure — Forfatterens Brev til hiin Enkelte at the head, four pieces in the middle, Sendebrev til hiin Enkelte at the close — is unusual in the literature of the period and does not correspond to any of the established gift-book or anthology forms. The structure has been read variously as a sequence of letters interrupted by enclosures (Henriksen 1959), as a quasi-liturgical form with two prayers framing a triptych (Lindhardt 1969), and as a private correspondence transformed by publication into a literary work (Holm 2011). The present editor has, in the apparatus, set out the textual evidence for each reading and left the question for the reader.
V. Editorial principles for the present edition
The text is based on witness A (Kgl. Bibl., 17,-201 8°, copy no. 0837), in its second-state form, collated against the eleven other copies of the second state known to the present editor (witnesses B through L; complete listing in Appendix C). No first-state copy having been traced, the present edition can offer no report of first-state readings beyond what may be inferred from the second-state corrections.
The pencilled annotations of witness A are reproduced in Appendix A in their position by line; they are not, however, allowed to influence the establishment of the text, which is based on the printed witness alone. The reader is referred to the apparatus introduction for the editor's reasons.
The Danish facing-page text retains the orthography and punctuation of witness A. The English facing-page text is a new translation; Wagner's 1962 German is cited where it bears on the present translator's choices.
A final editorial note: Notabene's Sendebrev til hiin Enkelte (the closing letter in the volume) is unsigned in witness A, ending with a single em-dash where a signature would conventionally appear. The present edition reproduces the dash exactly as it appears in witness A. The variant readings in the apparatus do not include any candidate for the unsigned position; the dash is taken to be authorial.
— M.F.H. Forskningscentret, December 2024
Textual Apparatus
Textual Apparatus
Volume II — Lyriske Productioner for hiin Enkelte
Selected Notes
Model spread; the full apparatus is in the electronic edition at `forskningscentret.ku.dk/notabene/ii`.
Conventions
Sigla:
— A. Lyriske Productioner for hiin Enkelte. Efterladte af en Forfatter, der ikke mere ønsker at være Forfatter. Udgivne med Forord af Nicolaus Notabene. Kjøbenhavn: C. A. Reitzel, May 1846. Edition of 1,500 copies. Each copy hand-numbered in dark blue ink on the inside front cover. The present apparatus distinguishes two states: A¹ (the first state, of which no copy has been traced) and A² (the second state, distinguished by the typographical correction on p. 47 reported at line 8 of the relevant entry below). Textual basis: A², copy no. 0837, Kgl. Bibl., 17,-201 8°.
— A²-copies. Twelve copies of the second state are known to the present editor. Their locations are: Kgl. Bibl. (no. 0837, 17,-201 8°); University of Copenhagen, Filosofisk Institut (no. 0124); Aarhus Universitetsbibliotek (no. 0489); Karen Blixen Museet (no. 0742); Royal Library, Stockholm (no. 0091); British Library (no. 0301); Princeton University Library, Hong Kierkegaard Library (no. 1422); Yale University Library, Beinecke (no. 0667); and four copies in private collections (nos. 0019, 0234, 0851, and 1239). The textual situation of the present edition rests on collation across all twelve copies; the principal variants are reported below.
— N. The pencilled annotations of Frøken Ulla Bruun de Neergaard (1881–1957) in copy no. 0837, the Royal Library copy. The annotations are 173 in number, consisting almost exclusively of the words ja and nej in the right-hand margin. N is not a textual witness to A in the conventional sense — Bruun de Neergaard had no knowledge of A's earlier states — but is a reception document of unusual interest, recording one early-twentieth-century reader's responses to the volume in a notation system entirely her own. N is reproduced in the apparatus to Appendix A by line reference.
— L. No Anglophone or French translation of Vol. II exists.
— G. Lyrische Produktionen für jenen Einzelnen. Translated by Hans Wagner. Stuttgart: Klett, 1962. The only existing translation of Vol. II into any language other than Danish. Wagner's translation is reported in the apparatus where it bears on the present translator's choices.
— M. Notabene-arkivet, Kgl. Bibl., NKS 4° 3204, fascicle 12 ("Lyriske Productioner-Stykkerne"). Seven leaves in Notabene's hand, comprising drafts of the Forfatterens Brev til hiin Enkelte, of the four prose-pieces of the volume's body, and of the Sendebrev til hiin Enkelte. M does not preserve a draft of Notabene's own Forord to the volume (which appears, on internal evidence, to have been composed in the final week before publication). The M drafts of the prose-pieces are in close agreement with A; the substantive variants are reported below.
Cross-reference conventions follow those established in the apparatus to Vol. VII.
I. The first-state question
General note. The principal textual situation of Vol. II is the absence of any traced copy of the first state. The Reitzel firm's records (NKS 4° 2989-A, fasc. 1845-46, fol. 211r) indicate that the print run was begun in the third week of April 1846 and completed in the first week of May; the firm's records do not, however, document a correction of standing type within the print run. The collation of the twelve surviving copies indicates that all twelve are of a single state, distinguishable from a supposed earlier state by the reading at p. 47, line 8: A² reads "stille" (still); the inferred A¹ reading is "stilte" (mute, silenced).
The reasoning for inferring A¹ from A² is the following: the A² reading "stille" makes idiomatic Danish ("and she heard the music in stille" = "and she heard the music in stillness"); the inferred A¹ reading "stilte" would be unidiomatic and presumably a compositor's error. The most economical explanation is that the compositor's error was caught during the press-run, the type adjusted, and the unsold copies of the first state withdrawn before public distribution.
The withdrawal hypothesis has no direct documentary support — the Reitzel records preserve no withdrawal-order or related correspondence. The hypothesis rests entirely on the inference from the surviving copies. Lindhardt (1969, p. 187) accepts the hypothesis; Holm (2011, p. 168) accepts it with reservations; Bjørn (2018, p. 102) proposes the alternative that no A¹ ever existed, that the "stille"/"stilte" ambiguity is irrelevant to the textual situation, and that the surviving twelve copies simply represent the entire 1,500-copy print run as it left the press. The present editor inclines to Lindhardt; the apparatus reports the disagreement.
II. The hand-numbering
General note. Each of the 1,500 copies of A was hand-numbered in dark blue ink on the inside front cover, in a numerical sequence from 0001 to 1500. The numbering was performed by the publisher's clerk; Reitzel's records (NKS 4° 2989-A, fasc. 1845-46, fol. 213v) indicate that the numbering occupied two days of the clerk's time.
The principal interest of the hand-numbering is that it produces, for each copy, a unique identifying feature — that is, each copy is, by its own physical character, individuated in a manner the eight other phantom volumes' productions did not produce. The individuation is consistent with the volume's principal rhetorical strategy: that the Lyriske Productioner address themselves to hiin Enkelte, the single reader; the hand-numbering provides the physical correlate of the single-address.
The numbering of the twelve surviving copies indicates that the distribution of the 1,500 copies was not uniform: of the copies traced, none has a number below 0019; the numbers cluster between 0091 and 1442. The clustering may indicate that copies in the higher-numbered range (1443–1500) were not distributed at all and that the earliest numbers (0001–0018) were retained by Notabene himself or by the publisher; the absence of definitive evidence prevents the present editor from advancing the hypothesis with confidence. The matter is treated in Bjørn (2018, ch. 4).
III. The Bruun de Neergaard copy (no. 0837) and the ja/nej annotations
General note. Frøken Ulla Bruun de Neergaard's copy of the Lyriske Productioner, no. 0837 of A², is the principal physical witness on which the present edition rests. The copy was purchased by Bruun de Neergaard from the antiquarian Carl Andersen of Vesterbrogade in 1923 for the sum of nineteen Kroner (the receipt is preserved in the Bruun de Neergaard family archive, Kgl. Bibl., NKS 4° 3017, fol. 12r); she retained the copy in her library until her death in 1957, and her heirs donated the volume to the Kongelige Bibliotek in 1958.
The copy bears, on the inside front cover, an inscription in a hand that has not been identified, reading "Julen 1846" but without a recipient's name. The inscription's hand is not Bruun de Neergaard's (she was born in 1881, thirty-five years after the inscription); the inscription belongs to the copy's earlier history, between the 1846 publication and the 1923 purchase. The most plausible reconstruction is that the copy was a Christmas 1846 gift from one party to another, with the recipient's name omitted at either the giver's or the recipient's preference; the recipient is presumed to have entered the copy into the Copenhagen antiquarian market at some point between 1846 and 1923, possibly through inheritance.
The principal scholarly interest of the copy lies in Bruun de Neergaard's pencilled annotations. The annotations consist almost exclusively of the words ja and nej in the right-hand margin against passages of varying length. Across the volume's 92 pages of body text, 173 annotations have been counted: 81 ja, 92 nej.
The annotations are reproduced in their position by line in Appendix A of the present edition. The interpretive question — what Bruun de Neergaard meant by her ja and nej — has been debated since the donation became publicly known in 1958. Three principal readings have been advanced:
- The agreement-disagreement reading (Holm 2011, pp. 167–78): the annotations record Bruun de Neergaard's agreement and disagreement with Notabene's particular formulations. Ja = "yes, this is right"; nej = "no, this is wrong."
- The recognition-non-recognition reading (Lindhardt 1969, pp. 121–24): the annotations record passages Bruun de Neergaard recognised as applying to her own life (ja) versus passages she recognised as not applying (nej). The reading takes the volume's address to hiin Enkelte literally: Bruun de Neergaard supposed herself to be the single reader to whom the volume was addressed, and her annotations record her acceptance or rejection of particular passages as descriptions of her own state.
- The reading-rate reading (Aage Henriksen, 1959 in Kierkegaardiana II, pp. 84–88): the annotations record the speed of Bruun de Neergaard's reading; ja marks a passage she read quickly (with agreement carrying her forward); nej marks a passage she paused over. The reading takes the annotations as a kind of prosodic notation rather than as substantive judgement.
The present editor offers no settled judgement among these readings. The reader of the present edition is invited to consult Appendix A and to draw such inferences as the distribution and placement of the annotations permit.
IV. The hiin Enkelte question
General note. The principal interpretive question of Vol. II — to whom is Notabene's volume addressed, and what is the relation of that addressee to Notabene? — has been the dominant question of Vol. II scholarship since the donation of the Bruun de Neergaard copy in 1958.
Notabene's preface and closing letters address the volume to hiin Enkelte — "that single reader." The Danish hiin (archaic for "that") combined with Enkelte (the single one, the individual) produces a construction that the broader Kierkegaardian pseudonymous prose deploys repeatedly. Vigilius Haufniensis uses hiin Enkelte in Begrebet Angest (SKS 4, p. 366); Anti-Climacus in Sygdommen til Døden (SKS 11, p. 119) and in Indøvelse i Christendom (SKS 12, p. 134); S. Kierkegaard's own To Opbyggelige Taler and the subsequent Opbyggelige Taler deploy the construction systematically as a form of authorial address. The construction is, by 1846 (the date of the Lyriske Productioner), an established feature of the Copenhagen Kierkegaardian-Notabenian literary vocabulary.
The principal scholarly question is whether hiin Enkelte in Notabene's Vol. II is to be understood as a general literary form (the singular reader, conceived as an ideal of reception) or as a specific person (an actual individual whom Notabene knew and to whom the volume was directed). The two readings are reported in the apparatus below at the relevant entries; the principal scholarly contributions are summarised here.
The general-form reading (Cappelørn 1997, "Hiin Enkelte: et notabeniansk spørgsmål"; Pattison 2014, ch. 7) holds that the addressee is conceptual throughout: the volume addresses itself to whatever reader will receive it in the manner Notabene's prose specifies (in stillness, behind a closed door, in private), and the Enkelte is therefore every reader who reads in that manner. The reading has the advantage of consistency with the broader Kierkegaardian usage; it has the disadvantage of leaving the volume's intense rhetorical particularity (the unsigned letters; the closing dash for a signature; the explicit refusal of public reception) without a particular addressee for whom that particularity would be especially appropriate.
The specific-person reading (Holm 2011, ch. 9; Vibskov 1958, pp. 198–202) holds that the addressee was a particular person whom Notabene knew and to whom the volume was directed. The reading is consistent with the volume's rhetorical particularity but does not name the addressee; no candidate has been definitively established. Vibskov (1958, p. 200) considered three principal candidates: (a) Notabene's wife herself, on the supposition that the volume was an attempt at private literary address from husband to wife within the conditions of the prohibition; (b) Notabene's aunt Vibeke Bentzon, who died in January 1845 and to whom Notabene had directed substantial literary correspondence during the years 1839–44; (c) an unidentified third party, perhaps within the Kierkegaard circle, with whom Notabene had some literary relation we cannot now reconstruct. Vibskov inclined to (b), on the strength of the volume's elegiac tone; Holm (2011) inclines to (a), on the strength of the volume's framing in terms of private address.
The matter has been re-examined in light of the 2019 Notabene-arkivet acquisitions, particularly in light of the Reitzel-firm correspondence preserving Notabene's letters of 1845–46. The correspondence indicates that the Lyriske Productioner was composed during the period autumn 1845 through spring 1846 — that is, before the wife's August 1846 departure but during a period in which (on Vibskov's reading, p. 199) the marriage was visibly under strain. The chronological consistency is suggestive but not decisive.
The present editor takes no settled position. The reader is referred to Holm (2011, ch. 9), Vibskov (1958, ch. 7), Cappelørn (1997), and the apparatus to the relevant passages of Vol. II below.
V. The four prose-pieces of the body
General note. The body of the Lyriske Productioner comprises four prose-pieces (titled in A: Aften; En Fortale; Scene: Barselstuen; Sendebrev til hiin Enkelte). The four pieces are of unequal length and of distinct generic character — a prose-sketch, a preface, a dramatic interlude, a letter — and are not lyric productions in the strict sense the title-page promises. Notabene's own Sendebrev til hiin Enkelte (Section IV) acknowledges the divergence and indicates that the title page's "lyric productions" was deliberate: a sorting device by which a particular kind of reader would be attracted to the volume and another kind of reader set aside.
The textual situation of the four prose-pieces is straightforward: A preserves all four; M (fols. 2r–6v) preserves drafts of all four in close agreement with A; G (Wagner 1962) renders all four, with the principal interpretive variants reported below.
§ I (Aften). the lamps are being lit along Vimmelskaftet ] A: Lamperne tændes paa Vimmelskaftet. G: Die Laternen werden auf Vimmelskaftet entzündet. — The reference to the Vimmelskaftet (the street on which Reitzel's establishment was located) is the volume's only mention of the publisher's address. The proximity has been read by Cappelørn (1997, p. 218) as a small biographical signal: the volume's narrator is, in the opening prose-sketch, near the publisher's establishment, where the volume the reader is reading is being printed. The reading is consistent with the volume's broader recursive structure.
§ II (En Fortale). a preface to a book I had intended to write ] A: en Fortale til en Bog jeg havde tænkt at skrive. — Section II of the body is a preface; the volume's title page is a Forfatterens Brev; Notabene's framing in the Forord makes the volume "letters to you, written before I knew that you were the person I was writing to" — the volume is, accordingly, all preface: every piece is in some form a preface to a work that does not exist within the volume. The structural fact has been read as Lyriske Productioner's contribution to the broader Forord programme: the volume is the corpus's most extreme expression of the all-preface, no-book form that the eight phantom volumes elaborate in distinct ways.
§ III (Scene: Barselstuen). A room. Five women, of whom four are visitors and one — the Author — lies on a couch ] A: Et Rum. Fem Kvinder, hvoraf fire er Besøgende og en — Forfatteren — ligger paa en Chaiselong. — The dramatic interlude's setting is a Barselstue (lying-in chamber), the conventional setting of the Holbergian play Barselstuen (1724) which the volume's title evidently invokes. The Holberg-reference is consistent with Notabene's broader use of Holberg as a literary source throughout the corpus (cf. Vol. I, Fortale, line 14; Vol. VII, § 4, line 22; Vol. V, Tale, line 38).
The Holbergian reference produces a structural figure: the female "Author" of the dramatic interlude is a writer in confinement, surrounded by visitors who discuss her work without consulting her, who exhausts her by their conversation. The figure has been read as Lyriske Productioner's most concentrated statement of the volume's principal theme: that authorship in the conditions Notabene's volumes address is a form of confinement, and that the writer's principal experience is not of having said something but of being talked about. The reading is endorsed by Pattison (2014, p. 162).
§ IV (Sendebrev til hiin Enkelte). (unsigned, ending with an em-dash) ] A: ends with: "Yours faithfully, — ". M (fol. 6v): ends with: "Yours faithfully, N. C. B." — that is, with Notabene's actual initials. — The substitution between M and A removes Notabene's signature and replaces it with the em-dash. The substitution is one of the most important editorial decisions visible in the M-to-A transition: the M draft was signed; the A printing is unsigned. The substitution is consistent with Notabene's broader practice of the period (the Vol. II is, of the eight phantom volumes, the only one in which Notabene's authorial role is not even acknowledged on the title page; he is identified there only as the volume's editor-publisher).
The em-dash is not a typographical accident; A is consistent across all twelve surviving copies, and the dash is the deliberate substitute for the signature. The dash has been read as the volume's most precise structural emblem: the volume that addresses hiin Enkelte declines to identify its Anden (the other, the addressing party); the address operates by leaving the other unspecified, so that any single reader may, in receiving the volume, be the other. The reading is reported in Cappelørn (1997, p. 222).
The complete apparatus to Vol. II addresses all sections of the volume's body in comparable detail. Appendix A reproduces the Bruun de Neergaard ja/nej annotations by line; Appendix B reproduces the Wagner 1962 German translation in full as the volume's only existing translation. The full electronic apparatus supplies the secondary apparatus of typographical and minor variants which the printed edition does not report.
— M. F. H. Forskningscentret, December 2024