KSRK: Frater Taciturnus

They're cranking up the Reading Klub over at Korrektiv. I added some comments, which I'm including here because I can't think of anything else to write. I don't think this is bad blog manners.

Concercing the prognostication and the public and peerless prediction, I guess the verdict is "Guilty". Probably unredeemable, too, but I'll soldier on and see if I can add anything here.

Questions:

Does the frater's 'owning up' about he himself being the author necessarily lead to the conclusion that the whole thing is a fiction? It certainly seems obvious now that the 'fictionalization' is rather thin. Even with his comments about the 'thought experiment', the mere instance of such improbable names as 'Quidam' and 'Frater Taciturnus' makes it look like a cover. To me, anyway. I recall reading somewhere that neither Regina nor anybody else guessed the identity of the author. That's pretty incredible. Or maybe they didn't make it two-thirds of the way through.

Is it also possible that, being a 'frater', Taciturnus could also be the young man looking for a sideways path to the monastery at the beginning of the diary? That seems to me an almost unavoidable conclusion. I don't have it in front of me, so maybe this is pretty obvious. I guess that's the incentive to go back and read more.

How close is Quidam's diary to the one Kierkegaard kept? And does the portrait of the girl resemble Regina? How closely? Especially concering those 'religious scruples'.

It's also somewhat interesting that SK is here concerned with being exposed to ridicule. No to long afterwards he would deliberately set himself up for "The Corsair Affair".

Nice observation about the music box.

Thanks for picking up the ball.