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Charlotte Amalie
Friday, March 29, 2024
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Virgin Islands Has Romantic Tie to Great Philosophy

Dear Source:

I took a course from the University of Copenhagen on Soren Kierkegaard for two reasons. I was attracted to the guy’s philosophy. He was known for his attacks on the established church, for being the father of existentialism and for saying that a “leap of faith” was needed for Christian belief.
Also, he was the second most famous author of Denmark when my present hometown, Christiansted, was part of the Danish West Indies. Following the trail leading from this reason, the course rewarded me with a mystery.
I have been through the graveyards on St. Thomas and on St. Croix and have seen the name Kierkegaard on the stones. (The name Kierkegaard can be translated – church garden.) I was hoping to connect the Virgin Islands with this famous philosopher: maybe one of his brothers came here or at least a cousin. What I found was much more intriguing.
People might debate over Kierkegaard’s philosophy, but no one will debate that he was an odd gentlemen.
In 1841 he was engaged to Regine Olsen. Each of the two portraits I have seen of her show a lovely woman. At the time of the engagement he was 27 and she was still a teenager. At first her family resisted the engagement of their daughter to this philosopher who was so bold to say that Socrates was a Christian even though Socrates was born and died before Christ arrived.
But, it appears because of Regine’s love for Soren, the family gave in and gave the relationship its blessing. Then Soren, inexplicably, broke it off. In his notebooks he continued to express love for Regine, and his reasons for the break were never clear.
Before I follow up with what the broken-hearted Regine did, I have to mention something Kierkegaard did in the 1840s besides writing many of his books. He was rebuffing King Christian. Yes, the same line of royalty that Christiansted is named after. Downtown Christiansted even has a fine hotel named King Christian.
King Christian VII liked some of Kierkegaard’s writings and invited him to the palace. At first Kierkegaard tried to avoid the audiences by saying that he did not have the appropriate clothes to wear. But the King insisted and Kierkegaard came. After some conversation the King told his staff that Kierkegaard would be staying for dinner. Kierkegaard corrected him saying that he had business to attend to and could not have dinner with the King.
Kierkegaard was actually a Royalist. He believed that democracy would cause a “leveling” or what we refer to as a “dumbing down” of society. Yet, he refused dinner with the King. It is hard to imagine even the president of a labor union today declining an invitation to dinner with a king on principle.
But back to Regine. She married John Frederik Shlegel in 1847. He was appointed Governor-General of the Danish West Indies and the couple departed for the Virgin Islands in 1855. Kierkegaard died eight months after Regine’s departure. I can find nothing about the five years she lived in the Virgin Islands. Instances of her running into Kierkegaard in Copenhagen parks and supposedly exchanging longing glances, but never a word before her departure are documented more than her life in the Virgin Islands
Wikipedia tells us that, Regine and Schlegel read aloud to each other Kierkegaard’s writings, which tells me, who has fallen asleep over many of Kierkegaard’s writings, that the couple was having trouble sleeping in the Virgin Islands. Kierkegaard’s writing can be difficult at times; a classmate of mine accused Kierkegaard of torturing the language, but Kierkegaard’s insights into why people do what they do are often profound and worth the work of finding.
Kierkegaard’s work has had great influence on modern literature and modern philosophy. Judith Thurman, writing in the New Yorker earlier this year about Kierkegaard, said, “We can see that ironic, angst-ridden modern literature begins with him. Strindberg, Ibsen, Nietzsche, Kafka, Borges, Camus, Sartre, and Wittgenstein are among his heirs—and without him, where would Woody Allen be?”
This is what makes thinking about Regine (her name has different spellings in different sources) and her time in the Virgin Islands so interesting. Critics have said that Kierkegaard’s entire body of work grew out of his relationship with Regine. Kierkegaard himself alludes to her great influence on his writing.
She left him for the Virgin Islands. What did she find? What did she think about the Virgin Islands? Anybody know where she lived?

Don Buchanan
St. Croix

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