SOURCE: Leonard, John. “Children of the Panopticon.” Nation 261, no. 17 (20 November 1995): 642–45.

In the following review, Leonard explores the theme of child abuse in The History of Danish Dreams and Borderliners.

You have to work hard to find Kierkegaard in the city where he died, of fear and trembling, at age 42. There's a single room devoted to his memory (letters, snapshots, book jackets, pipe), upstairs at the Kobenhavns Bymuseum. Whereas they will haul you by air-conditioned bus all over Copenhagen on a daylong tour of the habitats and artifacts of Kierkegaard's contemporary, Hans Christian Andersen, ending with a visit to a statue of the Little Mermaid. At the statue you will be told that Hans was his own imaginary mermaid, as well as an Ugly Duckling.

In 1964, vandals decapitated the Little Mermaid. That severed head is still missing. Until recently, I had imagined that some Soren cult had done this...