Escritoire

This deserves more research and/ or thoughtful consideration than I am able to give it, but the discussion of the escritoire (writing desk) at the opening of Either/ Or struck me as a mediation on, or metaphor for, the attraction writing held for Kierkegaard –why he felt the need to do it– how he was surprised by what happened when he tried it– though I don’t know if that squares with accepted views of the passage.

This is the part where the narrator (having secured and lived with the escritoire for a while) now smashes it with a hatchet:

I unlocked the escritoire to pull out my money drawer and take with me what the house could afford. What do you think! The drawer wouldn’t budge. All expedients were in vain. It was all as unfortunate as could be. To stumble just at that moment, when my ears were still ringing with the postilion’s inviting tones, on such difficulties! The blood rose to my head, I became indignant. As Xerxes had the sea whipped, I resolved to take a terrible revenge. A hatchet was fetched. With it I dealt the escritoire a tremendous blow. Whether in my wrath I missed or the drawer was as obstinate as I, the drawer was closed and the drawer remained closed. But something else happened. Whether my blow fell just on that point, or the overall shock to the whole framework of the escritoire was what did it, I don’t know; but what I do know is that there sprang open a secret door which I had never noticed before. This enclosed a recess which naturally I hadn’t discovered either. Here to my great surprise I found a mass of papers, the papers that form the content of the present work.

The narrator concludes a few sentences later:

In my heart I begged the escritoire forgiveness for the harsh treatment, while my mind found its doubt corroborated — that the outward after all is not the inward, and my empirical proposition confirmed– that luck is needed to make such discoveries.

Translation, Alastair Hannay.

Tags: drawer, escritoire, hatchet, hidden compartment, secret drawer, smashing desks, struck drawer