Iration

W.'s always admired them — their sober spines, the varying colours against which the title appears, varying from volume to volume (Point of View in charcoal, The Book on Adler, bronze, Fear and Trembling in a handsome burgundy). And then there's the sheer bulk of them, spanning my office windowsill; it's quite moving. The collected works of Kierkegaard, with my improvised bookmarks sticking out! – ‘You mean you’ve actually read something!’, W.’s amazed.

And I have read them. The books look worn, tired. – ‘Is that blood?’, W. wonders of the blotches in the margins of Practice in Christianity. ‘Are those tears?’ There are even annotations, W. notices. What did you write?, W. says, turning the book sideways. He can hardly make out a line. Iration – what does that mean? Livity?

What is the attraction of Kierkegaard for lunatics?, W. says. He’s seen it before, with some of his more desperate students. In the half-wild ones, who’ve come off the streets after years on the streets. In the half-mad ones, who want only to lose themselves in some great task of scholarship, but who are made for everything but a great task of scholarship …

Still, I'm to be his guide into the mountains of Kierkegaard, W. says. His sherpa. I'm to carry his things. What should he bring? His learning. His years of study of the philosophy of religion.

He'll instruct me as we climb, he says. He'll point things out, and when he gets tired, I can give him a piggy-back. Kierkegaard: in truth, I know more about him than W. There's my Danish connection, of course. My half-Danishness should be a help.

Of course, I'm only half Danish. Half Danish and half Indian, a peculiar combination, W. says. He, of course, is Irish on one side of his family and from Ostjude stock — probably Ostjude stock — on the other. He's a mixture, too. He'll be able to bring his Jewish-Catholic approach to bear on our reading of Kierkegaard, he says, and I my Hindu-Protestant approach.

Kierkegaard's Danishness has always bothered W. He lacks a context for him. He can't grasp his place. Of course, this is doubly difficult for W. as a Catholic (and as a Jew). No doubt there is something Protestant in me (through my Danishness), alongside my Hinduism. No doubt I have some instinct for Kierkegaard that W. lacks.

But then, of course, my knowledge of Kierkegaard is confined to trivialities. Gossip about his life, for example. About his broken engagement, or his melancholic father. Gossip about his thought. The leap of faith this. Fear and trembling that.

I don't understand his place in the philosophical tradition or, for that matter, the theological tradition. I don't know his place in the great chain of thinkers.

That's what W. will bring to our collaboration: his sense of the broader landscape. His grasp of the whole sweep of European thought.