Poul Møller is dead.”10

The second and even more important activating occasion was the death of his father, Michael Pedersen Kierkegaard. In September 1837, the twenty-four-year-old Søren had taken private quarters and lived somewhat estranged from his father. In the spring of 1838, there was a reconciliation11 and for Søren an experience of “indescribable joy.”12 At the end of that summer, M. P. Kierkegaard died. Kierkegaard was profoundly shaken by his father’s death and resolved to fulfill his father’s hope and expectation for him. He decided to resume and complete work required for a degree, “a pursuit that does not interest me in the least and that therefore does not get done very fast,”13 as he wrote in June 1835. But now he thought that he had no alternative.14 Even though he felt as unfitted for the task as Sarah and Abraham were for parenthood,15 he decided to take the plunge of disciplined preparation16 in order to fulfill his father’s wish.17 In a conversation with an old friend, Hans Brøchner, Kierkegaard related that his father had once said to him, “‘It would be a good thing for you if I were dead. Then you might still perhaps become something. But as long as I live you will not.’”18 Brøchner also records Kierkegaard’s decision recounted in the same conversation: “‘So long as father lived, however, I was able to defend my thesis that I ought not to take it [the examination]. But when he was dead, I had to take over his part in the debate as well as my own, and then I could no longer hold out, but had to decide to read for the examination.’ He did so, with great energy.”19 This decision meant that the work and the writing under way on irony were set aside until after the examination July 3, 1840, and a pilgrimage of filial piety to Sæding, his father’s birthplace, July 19-August 6, 1840.

Having made the decision to prepare for the examination, Kierkegaard wrote with some pathos in his journal:

And you, too, my lucida intervalla [bright intervals], I must bid farewell, and you, my thoughts, imprisoned in my head, I can no longer let you go strolling in the cool of the evening, but do not be discouraged, learn to know one another better, associate with one another, and I will no doubt be able to slip off occasionally and peek in on you—Au revoir!

S. K.
formerly Dr. Exstaticus20

Another entry from the same time also reflects Kierkegaard’s deliberate shift to the arduous task of completing his studies: “For a period of a year, a mile in time, I will plunge underground like the river Guadalquibir—but I am sure to come up again!”21 What he came up to again after the examination and the Sæding pilgrimage was assiduous application to his work on the dissertation on irony.

In the absence of a dated manuscript of The Concept of Irony at any stage of writing and in the absence of dates in the few scattered notes, it is not possible to be precise about the time of the writing of Irony. Quite likely, however, a fair portion of the first part was written in 1838-1839 following discussions with Poul Martin Møller and before the clear decision to prepare for the degree examination. The rather complicated style of the first part is reminiscent of the style of From the Papers of One Still Living (1838). It is unlikely that the entire work could have been written in the eleven months between the Jutland pilgrimage and submission of the dissertation on June 3, 1841, a period that also coincides almost exactly with the engagement period with its attendant claims upon Kierkegaard’s time and attention. In addition, Kierkegaard was enrolled in the Royal Pastoral Seminary during the winter semester 1840-1841.22

On June 2, 1841, Kierkegaard sent a petition to the king requesting permission to submit his dissertation in Danish rather than in Latin. In the petition, he points out that Martin Hammerich and Adolph Peter Adler had been permitted the use of Danish in their dissertations submitted in 1836 and 1840. No mention is made of the permission granted in 1840 to Hans Lassen Martensen, whose name was omitted probably because he would participate in the faculty judgment of Kierkegaard’s dissertation and because Martensen had been granted an honorary doctor’s degree by Kiel University and therefore did not defend his dissertation for a Danish degree. In his petition, Kierkegaard stated that the discussion of irony in the modern period made Latin inappropriate. He pointed out in addition that he had taught Latin and that the public defense would be in Latin.

On September 16, 1841, copies of the dissertation were ready at the print shop, and on September 29 Kierkegaard defended it in a public colloquium for seven and one-half hours, from ten to two o’clock and four to seven-thirty. The official opponents were philosophy professor Frederik Christian Sibbern and Greek professor Peter Oluf Brønsted. The seven speakers from the audience included Kierkegaard’s brother Dr. Peter Christian Kierkegaard, the official advocate, and Dr. Andreas Frederik Beck, who later wrote a review of Irony.23 Very little is now known of what was said during that long discussion, but one member of the audience wrote home that Kierkegaard “played toss-in-a-blanket with the faculty.”24 Kierkegaard’s public defense was his first and last participation in the official academic life of the University of Copenhagen.

The criticism of the work by faculty readers prior to the public defense was more or less anticipated by the writer. “The ease of style will be censured,” Kierkegaard wrote. “One or another half-educated Hegelian robber will say that the subjective is too prominent. . . .