Known for the extraordinary diversity as well as novelty of his writing, but for many an enigma whose outward life gave little indication of what moved him to write, Søren Kierkegaard has invited biography from many angles.

Philosopher of the Heart: The Restless Life of Søren Kierkegaard
CLARE CARLISLE
(ALLEN LANE, 368 PP, £25)
Tablet bookshop price £22.50 • Tel 020 7799 4064

Known for the extraordinary diversity as well as novelty of his writing, but for many an enigma whose outward life gave little indication of what moved him to write, Søren Kierkegaard has invited biography from many angles. There is a time dimension to biography: his first biographer had first-hand experience of the caricatured iconoclast. But impressed more by the writer, Georg Brandes advised readers to treat the works as inspirational rather than instructive. To prevent export of the insidiously secular readings in Europe to the US, Walter Lowrie made a path-breaking sales pitch for a saintly religious writer. This made a lasting impression in the US until Josiah Thompson’s anti-hero came along. The “ghostly” aspect Kierkegaard admitted in himself, and on which Thompson focused, has now been extensively exorcised in Joakim Garff’s comprehensive bodying forth of his still irksome fellow Dane in the many apartments, along with their desks, but with only a passing glance at what was written there. Hard upon Garff came another biographer, myself, trying to tease out a personal and intellectual context that could give the writings themselves a narrative. To this assorted array Clare Carlisle now contributes a refreshingly new category: it might be called the literary biopic.

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