Dear Nathaniel,

Thank you for letting me read your essay about the epilogue
of Fear and Trembling. I hope your teacher agrees with me
that it should receive a very good grade. However neither
you nor I should be unduly disappointed if your teacher is
critical. An academic who presumes to arbitrate the message
of an author who makes a mockery of academia is on very
thin ice, if indeed the very presumption to arbitrate is
not already the sign that he/she had broken through and is
in deep, cold water, over his or her head.

I like your essay because I read it as incontrovertible
evidence that you have crossed the threshold into that world
of thought and feeling which I consider my home. I have
every confidence that you will find it a source of strength,
and when in need, a source of comfort. What you will learn
from day to day is less important than the circumstance
that you are there and learning.

It is obvious that the assignment to compose a critique of
Kierkegaard's writing as the ultimate criticism is difficult to
the stage of absurdity; and the circumstance that you have
recognized this absurdity is one of the strong arguments in
your essay. Rather than write about Kierkegaard, it is more
edifying (opbyggelig) to discourse about the topics, the issues,
the paradoxes that Kierkegaard discusses. In a separate e-mail
I sent you a URL pointing to one of my own interpretations of the
Moriah drama which I had forgotten: namely that it was not Isaac
who was sacrificed in the ram, but rather that the sacrifice was
of the objective god; that it was the vengeful cruel deity which
was sacrificed or sacrificed himself; the objective god was destroyed
to be resurrected in the burning bush as the subjective deity with
the unspeakable name. - I find it all very interesting, and to me
it seems very important.

Jochen