Regine Olsen - Engagement To Kierkegaard

Engagement To Kierkegaard

Regine was born on January 23, 1822, in Frederiksberg, a district of Copenhagen, Denmark. She first met Kierkegaard on a spring day in 1837 when she was 14 and he 24. Regine later recalled that upon this first meeting Kierkegaard had made "a very strong impression" upon her. A mutual infatuation developed between the two while Regine was being tutored by Schlegel, her future husband.

Regine had also made a strong impression on Kierkegaard, who began to pursue her over a long period of time, ingratiating himself first as a friend and later attempting to court her. On 8 September 1840 Kierkegaard finally revealed his feelings to Regine when she was playing the piano for him at her family's house. He recounted the events years later in his journal: "'Oh! What do I care for music, it's you I want, I have wanted you for two years.' She kept silent." Kierkegaard proceeded to plead his case to Etatsraad (Councilman) Olsen, Regine's father, immediately. Her father granted Kierkegaard his blessing, and the two became engaged to be married.

Almost immediately, however, Kierkegaard began to have doubts about his ability to be a husband. Throughout the following year, Kierkegaard threw himself into his work. He began his seminarian studies, preached his first sermon, and wrote his dissertation for his magister degree. Regine sensed that Kierkegaard's ostensibly busy schedule was a pretence for avoiding her. They did maintain a voluminous correspondence; for a time he wrote her cryptic letters every Wednesday. Kierkegaard's letters have survived, but, aside from a few lines, Regine's letters seem to have been destroyed. On August 11, 1841, Kierkegaard broke off the engagement, sending Regine a farewell letter along with his engagement ring. Regine, heartbroken, immediately went to Kierkegaard's house; when he wasn't there, she left a note pleading for him not to leave her.

Kierkegaard seems to have genuinely loved Regine but was unable to reconcile the prospect of marriage with his vocation as a writer, his passionate, introspective Christianity and his constant melancholy. Regine was shattered by his rejection of her, and was unwilling to accept Kierkegaard's breaking of their engagement, threatening to kill herself if he did not take her back. Kierkegaard attempted to quell this through actions which made it appear that he did not care for her at all and make it seem that Regine had broken it off. As he later wrote, "there was nothing else for me to do but to venture to the uttermost, to support her, if possible, by means of deception, to do everything to repel her from me in order to rekindle her pride." He wrote her cold, calculated letters in order to make it seem that he didn't love her anymore, but Regine clung to the hope that they would get back together, desperately pleading to him to take her back. On October 11, 1841, Kierkegaard met with her and again broke off the engagement in person. Her father tried to persuade him to reconsider after assessing his Regine's desperate condition, claiming that "It will be the death of her; she is in total despair" Kierkegaard returned the next day and spoke with Regine. To her query as to whether he would ever marry, Kierkegaard icily responded: "Well, yes, in ten years, when I have begun to simmer down and I need a lusty young miss to rejuvenate me." In reality, Kierkegaard had no such plans, and would remain a celibate bachelor for the rest of his life.

Regine was crushed by the whole affair, as was Kierkegaard, who described spending his nights crying in his bed without her. The story of the engagement became a source of gossip in Copenhagen, with Kierkegaard's flippant dismissal and apparently cruel seduction of Regine becoming wildly exaggerated. Regine's family reacted with a mixture of confusion, finding Kierkegaard's actions incomprehensible, to outright hatred for causing Regine such pain. Kierkegaard would later beg for Regine to forgive him for his actions. In a famous letter, he wrote, "Above all, forget the one who writes this; forgive someone who, whatever else, could not make a girl happy."