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Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks Introduction to the English Language Edition Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks is based on Søren Kierkegaards Skrifter (hereafter, SKS) [Søren Kierkegaard’s Writings] (Copen hagen: Gad, 1997– ), which is a Danish scholarly, annotated edi tion of everything written by Søren Kierkegaard (1813–55). When completed SKS will comprise fifty-five volumes. SKS divides the entirety of Kierkegaard’s output into four categories: 1) works published by Kierkegaard during his lifetime (e.g., such wellknown titles as Either/Or, Fear and Trembling, and The Sickness unto Death); 2) works that lay ready—or substantially ready—for pub lication at the time of Kierkegaard’s death, but which he did not publish in his lifetime (e.g., titles such as The Book on Adler, The Point of View for My Work as an Author, and Judge for Yourself!); 3) journals, notebooks, excerpts, and loose papers, collectively en titled Kierkegaard’s “journals and notebooks”; and 4) letters and biographical documents. Clearly, Kierkegaard was not only a pro lific author, he was also a prolific writer, and his literary activity found expression not only in his published works but also in the mass of writings that were not published in his lifetime. It is these writings, the third category listed above, collectively entitled Kier kegaard’s Journals and Notebooks (hereafter, KJN) that constitute the material of the present English language edition.
I. Danish Editions of Kierkegaard’s Posthumous Writings In November 1855, shortly after Kierkegaard’s death, his nephew Henrik Lund visited his apartment accompanied by a clerk named Nørregaard from the Copenhagen Probate Court. What Lund and Nørregaard encountered when they entered Kierkegaard’s apart ment was “a great quantity of paper, mostly manuscripts, located in various places.”1 Lund viewed himself not merely as a relative 1
Flemming Christian Nielsen, Alt blev godt betalt. Auktionen over Søren Kierkegaards indbo [Everything Fetched a Good Price: The Auction of Søren Kierkegaard’s Personal Effects] (Viborg: Holkenfeldt, 2000), p. 7.
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