ABSTRACT
H.H. is neither a prominent nor a popular pseudonym in Søren Kierkegaard’s corpus-those designations are held by the likes of Johannes de silentio, Johannes Climacus, Anti-Climacus, and Vigilius Haufniensis. In fact, only two of Kierkegaard’s essays-“Does a Human Being Have the Right to Let Himself Be Put to Death for the Truth?” and “The Difference between a Genius and an Apostle”— are attributed to H.H., and these are published in a genre unique within the corpus: “ethical-religious essays.”1 H.H. shares, with the pseudonym A.F....2 the distinction of at least two initials, which is more than that allotted to A and B in Either/Or but significantly less than that allotted to A.B.C.D.E.F. Godthaab of the unpublished Writing Sampler. The impalpable identity of H.H. goes deeper: the particular choice of the letters H.H. to represent the author is unexplained and open to speculation; Kierkegaard did not consider these essays to “stand in the authorship”;3 and, going to the extreme to deny H.H. a vivid identity, the essays attributed to him are allegedly published posthumously.4
