ABSTRACT
The Norwegian painter and pictorial artist Edvard Munch (1863-1944) repeatedly expressed an interest in and even a close relationship to Søren Kierkegaard. It is, however, difficult to determine the exact nature of this relation. The primary source of information is some scattered statements in Munch’s notes,1 which he produced throughout his life. Many of the notes are autobiographical fragments, describing various incidents from Munch’s life, often with pseudonymous characters which, however, usually are easy to identify. Munch has a peculiar literary style, apparently spontaneous, fragmented, unconcerned about grammatical rules, and often with his own spellings which stick closely to how the words were pronounced orally. This style is of course untranslatable, and the English translation of the text fragments is (and must necessarily be) a normalized version. A second source of information is Munch’s library, which contains indications of what he read of Kierkegaard. The last source is indirect evidence, based on the content of Munch’s art and Kierkegaard’s general influence among contemporary artists and intellectuals.
