"Han er for stor og aparte! Og saa skal han nøfles", hedder det i eventyret Den grimme Ælling. Og nøflet blev han, store Andersen, blandt andre af den aparte Kierkegaard, som tog ham ved vingebenet i sin første bog Af en endnu Levendes Papirer fra 1838, et lidt studentikost værk, fuld af alenlange sætninger. Man sagde da også, at det kun var Kierkegaard og Andersen, der havde læst den til ende. Et par år senere udgav Andersen en Comedie i det Grønne, hvori han indlagte et længere citat fra Kierkegaards bog. Modsætningsforholdet afholdt dem ikke fra at sende hinanden dedikationseksemplarer, men til nogen dybere forståelse mellemde to genier kom det aldrig.		"He is too big and peculiar! And he must be given what for," as it says in the tale of the Ugly Duckling. And given what for, that he was, big Andersen, among others by the peculiar Kierkegaard, who seized him by the scruff of the neck in his first bookAf en endnu levendes Papirer {From the Papers of One Still Living], a somewhat sophomoric work, full of yard long sentences. It was also said that only Kierkegaard and Andersen had read the whole book. A few years later Andersen published a Comedie i det Grønne [Comedy on the Green], in which he quoted a long passage from Kierkegaard's book. The confrontation between them did not keep them from sending each other dedication copies, but no more profound understanding between these two geniuses ever arose.

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