ABSTRACT
In the late 1830s, early in his writing career, Kierkegaard experiments with sketches of Faust in search of knowledge. He makes sketches of other fable-like figures, sketches of the Wandering Jew in search of home, of the prankster Til Eulenspiegel in search of laughs, the Master Thief in love with surreptitious gain – or perhaps in love with lawlessness itself, and of Don Juan in search of woman.1 These sketches might have been partial self-portraits, or explorations of trajectories his life might assume. They were also experiments in writing, but writing, for Kierkegaard, was always a way of questioning and consolidating what he felt to be the enigma of his existence.
