Notes from a Room

The following quotes are plucked from entries in Encounters with Kierkegaard: A Life as Seen by His Contemporaries (ed. Kirmmse, tr. Kirmmse and Laursen), an extremely well-researched collection of reminiscences from people who knew Kierkegaard. The book is made up of English translations of Danish letters, diaries and memoirs dug up by the editor, not a translation of an existing Danish book.

CHILDHOOD AND SCHOOL

Frederik Welding

We all viewed S.K. as someone whose home was shrouded in mysterious shadows of strictness and eccentricity. S.K.’s school days passed quietly and, it seemed, without joy. He worked more out of fear and compulsion than out of desire or any happy industriousness. He never helped his classmates nor asked for any help from them. Not infrequently he could be seen making use of his position behind the professor’s chair, which stood in front of the first two or three desks, in order to cheat or peek, as it was called in the jargon of the school. He resorted to this especially in history and geography. Grades were very important to him. As far as I can remember, he was not friends with any of the other boys. Although we were often together, and although S.K. was very fond of the baked goods I occasionally gave him at school—my father was a baker—when we were boys, I was never close to him as I was to others in the class. In most of his contacts with us he showed that he was so foreign to our interests that we quickly broke off contact with him, and he often displayed a superior and teasing attitude, which made it clear that he was always a source of the unexpected. He was a skinny boy, always on the run, and he could never keep from giving free rein to his whimsy and from teasing others with nicknames he had heard, with laughter, and with funny faces, even though it often earned him a beating. I do not recall that his language was ever genuinely witty or cutting, but it was annoying and provocative, and he was aware that it had this effect even though he was often the one who paid for it.

These outbursts of his passion for teasing seemed to be absolutely unconnected with the rest of his otherwise silent and unspeaking existence among us, with the withdrawn and introverted character he displayed the rest of the time. During these outbursts his most remarkable talent was the ability to make his target appear ridiculous, and it was especially the big, tall, and powerfully built boys whom he chose as the objects of his derision. In the more advanced classes, he regularly assumed another role in this drama, and he thus became even more estranged and isolated from most of us. When he was a boy and a youth, I doubt that his teachers—it would have been Bindesbøll in religion and in Danish—saw in him the great powers which he later developed. It was a surprise to all of us, his peers, when he eventually made his appearance as a fully developed and unusually gifted person.

[…]

When I look back on things, it seems to me that, in general, as a boy S.K. usually had a good eye for people’s weak points, for the incoherent and offensive features of their behavior. He therefore pounced upon tall fellows who were intellectual midgets, upon those who were heavyweights only in the physical sense, and in general upon those who were quick to develop physically, but slower intellectually.

[…]

After I left the university, S.K. visited me frequently in the summer at Frederiksborg. On these trips, which he made on a momentary whim, he drove out with a man who was a charcoal-burner. On these trips he found it amusing to encourage his peasant traveling companion to reveal his innermost thoughts. He mentioned this once in a remark to me: “Peasants and children are the only reasonable human beings with whom it is relaxing to spend time.”

Edvard J. Anger

Søren would not infrequently borrow money from me, sometimes two rixdollars, sometimes five, because his father was strict with him in this respect as in others. I always got the money for him from my mother, and he repaid honestly. But in 1839, when he had become a wealthy man and I asked him to lend me two hundred rixdollars because I was to get married that year, he replied that he had no ready cash and that he would take a loss if he had to sell some securities. Søren was a tease, and his “foul mouth” cost him many bloody noses.

Peter Engel Lind

S.K. was viewed by his fellow students as a witty fellow with whom it was dangerous to quarrel, because he knew how to make his opponent appear ridiculous. They also viewed him as a fundamentally good boy, religious and moral, and they did not tease him about this.

H. P. Hoist

It is undoubtedly true that the article “Literary Quicksilver” is by S. Kjerkegaard, with whom I was on very intimate terms in my younger days. I literally rewrote his first written work on Andersen—or rather, I translated it from Latin to Danish. It was quite natural that he turned to me for this help, because at the Borgerdyd School we had a regular practice whereby I wrote the Danish essays for him and he wrote the Latin ones for me. It is strange that he, who ended up writing such excellent Danish, had absolutely no grasp of it in his youth, but wrote a Latin-Danish, which was crawling with participials and the most complexly punctuated sentences.

THE UNIVERSITY YEARS

Vilhelm Birkedal

Later, he [Prof. H. N. Clausen] lectured on dogmatics and published a volume on the subject. With his biting mockery S. Kierkegaard characterized the book as follows: “The author follows the custom of the king of the Persians when he went into battle against the Egyptians. He placed their [the Egyptians’] sacred animals in front of his army in order to terrify the enemy because he believed it would paralyze them. Prof. Clausen places a host of sacred scriptural passages in front of every paragraph of his dogmatics, in the belief that by presenting his version of dogma from behind these scriptural passages he can gain acceptance for his views, for he thinks that all this array of holy scripture will terrify people, who will quietly allow him and his views to triumph.”

Holger Lund

Many of those who had studied with him have said that he was an extraordinarily capable teacher, who understood how to interest pupils in their work. He was very amusing, though occasionally somewhat teasing or irritating. Once in a while he would let his mind wander and be lost entirely in his thoughts, apparently pursuing some intellectual problem. Such digressions often concluded with him bursting into hearty laughter, but the students never found out what it was that was so funny.

Jakob Knudsen

Yes, it had been the loveliest June sunshine; now she remembered it well. But it had also been unpleasant that the younger brother sat up there, in front, next to the driver’s seat, and sort of teased Uncle Peter. And she could remember that she had heard him do it before. To be sure, relations between the two brothers were not very good, but this was certainly Magister Søren’s fault, because Uncle Peter was an exceptionally pleasant person. Whenever he wasn’t sitting there and teasing his brother that day, Søren was constantly humming an aria from Don Giovanni, an aria that she knew well. It was “Wenn Du fein fromm bist.” Yes, or perhaps he whistled it: the three identical notes with which the melody begins and which recur so often—she remembered that they had reminded her of the song of the thrush. Yes, there had been something about temptation and something about the weather that the two brothers talked about, and also something about driving a carriage. Søren had certainly made fun of Uncle Peter for wanting to drive by himself and for having had the coachman remain in Lyngby. Uncle Peter had surely said something about how Danish this sort of weather was—or even that it was Scandinavian: it was so light and so bright and so fine; there was no wilderness or heath; it was almost childlike in its purity. But the younger brother had replied that such weather was perfectly suited to conceal the Eternal. It was a temptation—he had said that many times—it tempted the mind to dream and to wander. Who could keep hold of a serious thought while enjoying that smooth, billowing grass? Either one had to let one’s mind billow and dream like the grass, or one had to surrender to one’s thoughts, but in that case all this bright, transient lushness became painful. The whole thing was a quaking bog, he had said. Of course it looked as if that green, open plain was solid ground, but the entire thing was a bog, you know. It quaked and quaked, and Eternity lay beneath. He couldn’t imagine how his brother could want to be a coachman for so many people across such dangerous ground. And then he had laughed and hummed the aria and looked around at those sitting behind. She of course had believed that he had said the part about the land they drove across being a bog only in order to scare her, but in spite of the fact that she had thought this, she became frightened just the same, because it was as though he in fact believed it. Yes, of course he had believed it, she thought now, because his brother had indeed said something quite similar many years later. But the first time she simply hadn’t understood it correctly—she had been frightened that the carriage might actually sink in. Uncle Peter hadn’t really contradicted him. He had only said that for him there was something other than the green of springtime that covered over anxiety about Eternity, and that was the word of God. Then Magister Søren had laughed and said something in German, which he repeated two times: “Da stellt ein Wort zur rechten Zeit sich ein.”

Hans Christian Andersen

For a short time the novel Only a Fiddler engrossed one of the brilliant young men of our country. This was Søren Kierkegaard. When we met on the street he told me that he would write a review of it and that I would surely be more satisfied with it than with earlier reviews, since, he granted, I had been misunderstood! A long time passed. He read the book again, and his first good impression was obliterated. I must assume that the more seriously he considered the composition, the more faulty it became. When the review appeared I could not be pleased with it. It was an entire book (the first, I believe, that Kierkegaard wrote), and somewhat difficult to read with its heavy Hegelian style. It was said in jest that only Kierkegaard and Andersen had read the whole book. Its title was From the Papers of One Still Living. At that time this is what I got out of it: that I was no writer but a fictitious character who had slipped out of his category, and that it would be the task of some future writer to put me back into it or to use me as a character in a work in which he would create a supplement to me! Later I better understood this author, who has obliged me along my way with kindness and discernment.

Rector Hans Christian Ørsted [discoverer of electromagnetism]

On Kierkegaard’s Dissertation, On the Concept of Irony: Despite the fact that I certainly see in it the expression of significant intellectual strengths, I nevertheless cannot deny that it makes a generally unpleasant impression on me, particularly because of two things, both of which I detest: verbosity and affectation.

SØREN AND REGINE

Regine Schlegel (as told to Hanne Mourier in 1896)

To Regina Schlegel: In accordance with your wishes I have summarized what you told me. I have tried to reproduce your own words, together with my own impressions, as reliably as possible, though this was not originally done with any intention of publishing what I wrote down. However, since you have been disturbed by the idea that after your death there might appear inaccurate accounts of your own and your husband’s attitudes toward, and views of, Søren Kierkegaard, I know you will find it reassuring now to read a faithful version of your own words, which can serve as a full explanation should the need arise.

After the death of your husband, interest in the story of your youth, of your engagement to Søren Kierkegaard, has again surfaced. There have been many direct appeals to you regarding this matter. At first you felt overwhelmed by this and had to force yourself to speak of it, since during the many years of your life of perfect intimacy and happiness with your husband virtually no one had dared to approach you with indiscreet questions. Now, however, it is clear to you that it is your duty to give an account of what only you can tell: the views you and your husband had of S. Kierkegaard. Your wishes are that future generations should know about S. Kierkegaard and your noble husband, about their relationship to you, and that they should be seen in the true and beautiful light in which you knew both of them. It must be said and affirmed that S. Kierkegaard never misused your love to torment you or to carry out spiritual experiments on you, as has been commonly but incorrectly assumed. It was his serious intention to marry you when he became engaged. In recent years you have spoken of this relationship with a number of people with whom you have contact, because you want it to be understood that S. Kierkegaard’s life was not in conflict with his activity as a religious author. For over fifty years your husband was your only confidant in this matter; he knew and understood completely what you had suffered. During your engagement [to Schlegel] he [Schlegel] helped you with his gentle and reasonable conversation—on the basis of complete mutual confidence and honesty—to talk about everything that had so distressed you, and so helped you regain your peace and happiness. He had been your teacher in school and consequently had known you from your earliest youth and had your welfare at heart.

You remember having seen S. Kierkegaard for the first time when you were somewhere between fourteen and sixteen years old. You met him at the home of the widowed Mrs. Rørdam (mother of the well-known pastor Peter Rørdam) where you had been invited as company for a girl of the same age who was there as a houseguest (Thrine Dahl from Roskilde). Kierkegaard called on the family, and the liveliness of his intellect made a very strong impression on you, which you did not reveal, however. You remember that he spoke unceasingly, that his speech practically poured forth and was extremely captivating; but after the passage of so many years you no longer remember its content. You believe that perhaps the lines in the Posthumous Papers: 1833-1843 [SKEP 1833-1843], p. 123 (May 8 [1837]) [cf. Pap. II A 68 (SKJP 5220)], “My God, why should this tendency awaken just now? Oh, how I feel that I am alone! etc.” refer to this meeting with you, when he received his first impression of you, as you did of him. You do not remember at what point or on what occasion Kierkegaard first had himself introduced at your home, since it was only later, after you yourself were married, that your parents had open house one evening a week for your family and friends. Kierkegaard gave you sheet music but must otherwise not have paid you any conspicuous attention, since when he met you on the street one day and wanted to accompany you home, you hardly noticed that he ignored your reply that no one was home and followed along with you. On arrival at home you suggested playing for him. You were used to doing this, since he loved music; but after a short time he closed the book of music in front of you and declared that that was not why he had come. When he then confessed to you his love, you were struck completely speechless, and, without a single word or any explanation, but only by gesture, you ushered him out the door as quickly as possible! Your singular reaction disquieted Kierkegaard concerning you; so he immediately visited your father at his office and related the whole scene to him. Your father mentioned nothing to you, but on the next day, when Kierkegaard returned, you gave him your consent, though not before you had mentioned that there was a teacher from your school days of whom you were very fond, and whom you believed was also fond of you [cf. Kierkegaard’s version in Pap. X5 A 149:5, p. 160 (SKJP6472, p. 192)]. This, however, did not bother Kierkegaard in the least, for he later said: “You could have talked about Fritz Schlegel until Doomsday—it would not have helped you at all, because I wanted you!” [not found in Pap. or B&A]. You were then eighteen years old.

You have told me that while you were still a child, your mother took you with her to the “gathering of the Holy” (The Moravians?) in Stormgade; and, as was she, you too were by nature religiously inclined. You found it satisfying to read The Imitation of Christ by Thomas á Kempis, and you sought your refuge in God. It was evidently your healthy, straightforward nature that had made such a deep impression on Kierkegaard that he could not but love you! But when he writes of you, in one of his diary entries, that “she was not religiously inclined” [not found in Pap. or B&A, but cf. Pap. X1 A 24, p. 18 (SKJP 6304), and IV A 142, p. 54 (SKJP 5689)], this must have been based on a passing impression of you, perhaps because it was not in your nature to carry on profound conversations about your relationship to God, out of a reluctance to cause the very best in a person to vanish, as it were, through overmuch talk about it. But in relation to these questions you were the listener, the one seeking to apprehend. You were happy and glad, and surely expressed this in an innocent and charming way; you were a young girl with both enthusiasm and imagination; and you still clearly remember from before your engagement how your heroine was Joan of Arc, and how for a number of months you had dreamed of a similar task for yourself. You felt that Kierkegaard understood you, but the two of you did not have profound religious conversations; however, the fact that he dedicated the whole of his work as an author to you, notwithstanding the preceding quote from his diary, indicates that he must have regarded you as religious. He was exceedingly different from you! Though he himself was not “the most simply constructed sundial, that tells the hour exactly, granted only that the sun’s rays are permitted to shine upon it” [SVW 158 (KWV 276)]— this dialectician loved and admired the immediate, the shortest path to God. Kierkegaard understood that “every holy feeling which in its most profound depth is good, is silent. . . since the lips are closed and only the heart is opened” [SVW 144 (KWW 370)]. He understood and loved you as though you were an expression of this truth. His spiritual contact with you, of which you were unaware at the time, inspired him and emerges in his writings in numerous passages and in a great variety of forms, but embellished by his own rich imagination, so that it is in no way justifiable to conclude or to assume that the various passages in his writings have direct reference to his actual relationship to you (with the exception of the Posthumous Papers). Kierkegaard recommended that you attend the church services of Paulli (b. 1809, then catechist at the Church of the Holy Spirit, later archdeacon). Paulli was an excellent preacher, and Kierkegaard said that his preaching was just the thing for you. Kierkegaard visited your home several times a day during the period of the engagement. He also spent much time in conversation with your father. But it was not long before you became acquainted with his deep melancholia; he poured out his troubles to you and always reproached himself over his relationship to his deceased father. Your own father suffered from melancholia, so that when Kierkegaard was beside himself with sorrow and self-accusation, his mental state was not unfamiliar to you. Therefore, when after a few months he began to have scruples with regard to his relationship to you, you thought that if you allowed him to release you, then he would surely become truly unhappy and despairing with self-reproach. That you one day should marry Kierkegaard was actually quite foreign to your thoughts; the thought occurred to you quite briefly and only once; but you loved him and were captivated by his spirit. When he sent you his letter breaking off the engagement, it was clear to you that it was a consequence of his melancholia and nothing else. You therefore asked him to retract his decision, and he willingly did so for the time being—so much the more, he said, because he was writing his doctoral dissertation. He then asked you if you would bear with him until that was finished. This happened three months later. You had continually struggled with him during this difficult period, but when it was over, you said to him: “Now I can bear it no longer; kiss me one last time and then have your freedom!” [not found in Pap. or B&A]. These words and the impression they made on Kierkegaard are recorded in his diary from this period. You felt no bitterness, anger, or reproach against him, but sorrow and pain. Kierkegaard’s motivation for the break was his conception of his religious task; he dared not bind himself to anyone on earth in order not to be obstructed from his calling. He had to sacrifice the very best thing he owned in order to work as God demanded of him: therefore he sacrificed his love for you for the sake of his writing. Kierkegaard continued to keep track of you and sent you his first religious discourses through F. C. Sibbern, another visitor in your home, who had been a frequent guest on your carriage rides with Kierkegaard. For some time after the engagement was broken off, you were ill; it was feared that your lungs were affected. At your young age, the tension and sorrow you had experienced were too great and too heavy a burden for you. You have related to me that Schlegel bore his sorrow over your engagement to Kierkegaard quietly and with good grace. But when you were free again and had regained your health he approached you, and he proposed to you about two years after the hard blow. You were received by his relations lovingly and with the greatest joy, since, despite his quiet, reserved bearing, his parents and sisters had understood what he was experiencing during the time that he knew you were engaged to someone else. Your late sister-in-law, Mrs. Emma Nansen (nee Schlegel), in particular, made it clear to you how hard his parents and sisters took the sorrow of their son and brother. Even in your eightieth year you can still exclaim to me: “Oh, that he could forgive me for being a little scoundrel, for becoming engaged to the other one!” But your beloved Fritz was not just any ordinary person. When you became engaged to him, he not only accepted your love but also took upon himself to help you to bear all the sorrow and pain you had experienced. He had a rare sense of delicacy; he did not pass judgment on Kierkegaard, nor did he harbor any petty resentment against him, but read Kierkegaard’s writings with you in the parlor when you visited his parents’ home in the evenings. Your husband’s letters, both from the time of your engagement and afterward, as well as a couple of your own, bear witness beautifully to the true confidence and love you had for each other, combined with the most complete understanding. You have also described many small details of your life together in the same vein. You, for your part, had promised yourself, with God as your witness, to do everything in your power to make your husband happy! You did not overtax his love for you by plaguing him with constant references to the Kierkegaard affair, but occasionally, when overwhelmed by thoughts of the past, you confidently approached your husband about it. For example, when the Posthumous Papers were published you were able to ask your husband to buy the book, and he fulfilled your wish immediately, the very same day. But after having read the first volume you asked your husband not to purchase the rest, since what you had read of the first volume touched too closely upon personal topics.

You were married on November 3, 1847, and two years later your father died. His death made a deep impression on Kierkegaard, who had been very fond of your father from the times he had frequented his house. He felt a desire to see you and speak with you again, and he wrote to your husband on that occasion with the thought that it would be good, both for you and for him, to meet again. A letter to you was enclosed; but your husband replied to this with a written, polite but definite refusal [for Kierkegaard’s version, see Pap. X2 A 210, p. 162 (SKJP6538), and B&A I 253-64 (KWXXV 322-37)]. He showed you Kierkegaard’s letter and his own answer, and you were in complete agreement with him. This answer, however, could hardly please Kierkegaard, who gave vent to his displeasure in his diary.

Seven years after your marriage, your husband was named to the governorship of the West Indies, and on the day of your departure (March 17, 1855), you saw Kierkegaard for the last time by purposely meeting him in the street. As he passed you, you said quietly to him: “God bless you—may all go well with you!” [not found in Pap. or B&A]. He seemed to retreat a step and greeted you for the first time since the break, and for the last time here on earth!

You saw the loving hand of God in the fact that you and your husband were so far away during the whole of the intense reaction elicited by Kierkegaard’s Moment pamphlets and his subsequent death. But he, for his part, was happy that his “little governess” [not found in Pap. or B&A, but cf. Kierkegaard’s hospital conversations with Emil Boesen in chapter 8 of this book] (as he referred to you after your husband became governor) was not there during all the strife. In his will he left to you the remainder of his fortune—you never asked whether it was a lot or a little—but you and your husband refused to take it. Insofar as I have understood you, as the motive for this bequest Kierkegaard mentioned that he had never felt himself unengaged from you. You accepted your own few letters, which you burned, and Kierkegaard’s diaries. These latter, together with his letters to you, are preserved, sealed until after your death, at the University Library. Among Kierkegaard’s belongings was found a package for you which contained some of his writings, bound in pale calf with gilt edges, which you still have. You know that Kierkegaard approved of your marriage to your husband from the letter in which he wrote to you, “Thank you for having married, but especially for having married Schlegel!” (he whom you in fact loved from the very first!) [for Kierkegaard’s version, cf. e.g., B&A I 261 (KWXXV 333)]. Another written message to you from Kierkegaard read: “You see, Regina, in eternity there is no marriage; there, both Schlegel and I will happily be together with you” [not found in Pap. or B&A].

You informed me of an opinion regarding Kierkegaard expressed by your husband in his response to a remark made by Inspector Ottesen at Refsnæs, on whose wall portraits of Grundtvig and Kierkegaard hung side by side. When Ottesen remarked that he owed his spiritual development exclusively to Kierkegaard, your husband pointed his finger at the picture of Kierkegaard and replied: “Long after Grundtvig’s influence is over and done, his [Kierkegaard’s] will still be alive!”

What continually strikes me first and last in every piece of information you give me from times past is this: your intense love for and admiration of your husband, who was such a noble, unselfish person. He did not wear his heart on his sleeve, but he had profound, heartfelt, and loyal feelings. He was a good son to his parents and his country; he was forthright, just, and never petty; he was sincere, wise, sensitive, and kind. But neither are there any dark shadows on the memories you have about S. Kierkegaard’s relationship to you. You have assured me that “he was good and kind to me!” You were also able to say that “the pain he was forced to cause himself and me was inexpressibly difficult and burdensome and left its lifelong mark; my life has not been easy, but happy!”

March l, 1902

I have achieved what I set out to do with the present brief notes of these memories, which have become sacred and valuable to me through your account of them. This is because you have told me that you are satisfied with the present version of your report, inasmuch as I have succeeded in reproducing them in complete agreement with what you have told me.

Henriette Lund

Shortly thereafter the two of them were sitting alone in the parlor. He asked her to play for him, which she had done previously. But he rather quickly interrupted the music himself by proclaiming what was in his heart. “Moreover,” he says, “I did nothing to deceive her; I even warned her against myself—against my melancholia.” She fell silent; and soon afterward he said goodbye. He was afraid, in fact, that he might have overwhelmed her and was also averse to their being found alone together. He went directly up to the councillor. Though Kierkegaard got the impression that he was very willing, he did not give a definite answer, either. He requested and was granted an interview with the daughter on the 10th, and she said: yes! [for Kierkegaard’s account, see Pap. X5 A 149:5, p. 160 (SKJP 6472, p. 192)]. And thus he took the step from the kingdom of fantasy, where thought is mighty, into the world of reality, a place where, despite all his excellent wit and external liveliness, he was less well suited.

He quickly got on equally good footing with the other members of the family, since he had a unique ability to establish rapport with whomever he wished and thereby to control the situation…

Mrs. Schlegel has related how she met him in the arched passageway of the palace riding ring shortly after the engagement, and that it had been as if he were completely changed—absent and cold! Her youthful pride felt wounded by this; this may in turn have manifested itself in a brief period of arrogance, which he mentions specifically. In contrast to his own doubts and scruples he says of her: “She did not seem to notice anything; on the contrary, she became at last so arrogant that she even declared that she would break off the engagement if she believed that I was visiting her out of mere habit. This became, in one sense, something dangerous. If she does not get too upset, then I will be well served. Thus I regained my composure” [cf. a slightly different version in Pap. X5 A 149:5, p. 161 (SKJP6472, p. 193)].

Shortly after this, however, a decisive change took place in her. Since, as she has said, melancholia was hardly an unknown factor in her family, it gradually became evident to her that his behavior of this sort stemmed from that source. Her love for him thus took on a stronger and more conscious character, because it seemed to her that he now must need it all the more. For his part, Kierkegaard, in discussing this change from haughtiness to a devotion that appeared to him almost to be worship, remarks: “I am myself to some degree responsible for, or guilty of, this, because—seeing only too clearly the difficulties of the relationship and having the insight that the greatest strength had to be used, in order, if possible, to gain the upper hand over my melancholia—I had said to her: surrender! Your pride will make it easy for me. Thoroughly true words, sincerely said to her and depressingly treacherous to myself [cf. a slightly different version in Pap. X5 A 149:5, p. 161 (SKJP 6472, p. 193)]. Because her complete devotion has the effect of placing the responsibility back on him, thereby rekindling his depression with renewed strength…

As alluded to earlier, instead of scaring away his fiancée, this insight into the power that melancholia exercised over Kierkegaard’s soul had in fact increased her sensitivity, so that she felt the need to make every effort to remain with him—precisely for his sake. At the same time, she made no secret of the fact that in addition to this motive there was a quite natural fear of loss of self-esteem if she should lose him. But the result of these feelings was so powerful and the desperation so apparent that Kierkegaard went back to her—not to remain with her, but, as he himself says, “to repel” [Pap. X5 A 149:10 (SKJP 6472, p. 194)], thereby helping her, insofar as possible, to pull herself together in confronting their separation.

In these hard days of deception he sought to detach her with all his strength by, among other methods, pretending that he no longer cared for her. By his own account, he observed the cautionary solicitude of saying directly to her at intervals: “Give in, let me go! You will not be able to endure it” [Pap. X5 A 149:11 (SKJP 6472, p. 194)]. To this she answered passionately that she would rather endure anything than abandon him. In order to avoid injuring her honor he also suggested that the matter should be made to look as if it were she who broke the engagement. She would not hear of this, either, but merely answered that if she could endure the rest of it then she could also endure that. “Besides,” she said, “there is certainly no one who would make anything of this in my presence, and what they may say in my absence hardly matters” [ibid.].

He was similarly touched, indeed impressed, by a statement from one of her sisters. When aspects of his strange behavior during this period leaked out in many ways and became known to the friends and acquaintances of the family— and when, in his own words, “All the clever people easily understood that I was a villain, and every clever person flattered himself that he could surely understand that”—then she [Regine’s sister] merely remarked quietly: “I do not understand Magister Kierkegaard, but I nonetheless believe that he is a good person!” [cf. a slightly different version in Pap. X5 A 149:30, pp. 170-71 (SKJP 6472, p. 200].

He himself exclaims: “It was a frightfully agonizing time—to have to be cruel like that, and then to love as I did. She struggled like a lioness; had I not believed that I had a divine defense, she would have prevailed” [Pap. X5 A 149:10, p. 163 (SKJP 6472, p. 194)].

“It collapsed,” he continues, “about two months later. She despaired. For the first time in my life I quarreled. It was the only thing to do” [Pap. X5 A 149:12, p. 163 (SKJP 6472, p. 195)].

One evening, in order to meet his friend Boesen, whom he knew to be attending a play and with whom he wanted to have a talk that very evening, Kierkegaard went directly from Regine’s home to the theater. From this incident arose the story, which for a while circulated around town, that Kierkegaard had said to the family, as he removed his watch from his pocket, that if they had anything more to say they had better hurry, since he wanted to go to the theater!

But at the theater he chanced to meet someone else whom he had not expected to see: her old father, who again sought him out to plead his daughter’s case. “I am a proud man,” he said. “It is not easy for me to come to you like this; but I beg of you, do not leave her! It will be the death of her!” She herself had hinted of precisely this latter possibility in the days of their parting, and the extent to which this shook Kierkegaard became apparent later. Nonetheless, at this point he answered merely that he would calm her down but that the matter was settled. Then he accompanied her father home and spent the evening with the family. The next morning he got a letter with a request that he visit her. He came but consistently maintained the character that he had assumed. There was nothing further to be done. At their parting she asked him to remember her once in a while [for Kierkegaard’s account, see Pap. X5 A 149:12, pp. 163-64 (SKJP 6472, p. 195)]…

Opinion was heavily against him, and gossip circulated around the town unceasingly. A letter he sent to the councillor was returned unopened [cf. Pap. X5 A 149:17 (SKJP 6472, p. 196)]. His brother, Peter Kierkegaard, was moved and wanted to approach the family in order to protest against Søren being viewed as a wicked or irresponsible person. But S. Kierkegaard forbade this emphatically [ibid.]. For her sake, it was exactly in this light that he wanted to be viewed…

From time to time, Mrs. Schlegel encountered him on familiar streets. They never spoke and only rarely greeted one another. But of course the unrest of a soul can reveal itself in a glance and without a word. She could be beset by these feelings even after her marriage, when her loving husband, who knew what was in her soul, stood by her side. And the Posthumous Papers testify to the fact that these meetings always made a powerful impression on Kierkegaard [for Kierkegaard’s accounts of these encounters, see Pap. X3 A 769 and 770 (SKJP 6713 and 6714); X4 A 540, p. 359 (SKJP6800, p. 443) (“I have never exchanged a word with her”); X5 A 21, p. 26 (SKJP 6826); 59, p. 64 (SKJP 6835)]. In his papers he imagines that by getting married she may have thought of the possibility of establishing a friendly relationship with him, and he is therefore almost surprised that she makes no overtures in this direction. Because she does know him, after all, and so she knows that for him everything depends upon responsibility, which is why things would have been much easier if it had been she who had wished to break off the engagement. “This does not occur to her, however, so I must certainly give up [the idea of reestablishing friendly relations],” he adds [Pap. X5 A 149:25 (SKJP 6472, p. 199)].

In the summer of 1849 Councillor Olsen died, however, and the sad memories that assaulted Kierkegaard finally made him decide to take the decisive step: to write and tell her what was on his mind and to enclose the letter in a note to Schlegel, who could then decide whether he wanted her to see it or not [for Kierkegaard’s account of this, see Pap. X2 A 210 (SKJP 6538), and B&A I 253-64 (KWXXV 322-37)]…

According to Mrs. Schlegel’s account, in the spring of 1855, when Schlegel had been appointed governor of the West Indies, and they were both to travel there, Mrs. Schlegel tried to meet him [Kierkegaard] to say goodbye, and on this occasion she greeted him in passing. Apparently not aware of their departure, he tore off his hat with an extremely startled expression as he walked past. That was their last meeting in this life. When the Schlegels returned from the West Indies, Kierkegaard had already been dead for many years, and Mrs. Schlegel had already received the package with the letters.

Regine Schlegel [letter concerning SK’s will, 1856]

Dear Henrik,

You must absolutely not think that I have allowed your letter of June 11 to lie about unanswered because I was not thankful for receiving it. No, on the contrary, I have thanked you for it many times in my heart, and now I send you my thanks today in words. It is always a rule with me to answer every letter by the next post, but of course there is no rule without an exception, and I have made yours such an exception, in part because we probably will not have any regular correspondence, so that a little pause of course does not make any difference— and in part because I have both something to ask you about and something to say to you that I wanted to consider quite carefully. I have not been well recently. I do not tolerate the very hot weather well, and it has been particularly weakening to my nerves. But because I have recently had some boils, which are very healthful out here, I feel healthier, and am therefore in a better condition to write letters. You say that you almost regret that you did not come out to St. Jean, etc. [the letter is illegible at this point] Søllerød, etc. Thank you for the books you are sending me. If they haven’t already been sent, and if it doesn’t cause you too much inconvenience or even sacrifice, I would also like to request that you send me some of his theological writings. I have some of them, especially the later works. That is what I wanted to ask you for. Now to what I wanted to question you about: you wrote that he mentioned me in his final illness, and I would so very much like to know what he said about me. Of course it is true that I have received information about our relationship from his posthumous papers, which places our relationship in a different light, a light in which I myself have sometimes seen it. But I don’t know if you will understand me when I add that my modesty frequently forbade me to see things in that light—a light to which, however, my unshakable faith in him repeatedly led me back. You see, it was an uncertainty, but on the other hand, what that uncertainty led me to feel was that there was an unsettled issue between us, which some day would have to be cleared up. Shortsighted person that I was, I assigned this task to the peaceful time of old age, and because of a remarkable thoughtlessness [on my part] it never occurred to me that he might die. His death came to me all the more unexpectedly, and filled me not only with sorrow but also with regret, as if by putting things off I had seriously wronged him. It was in connection with this that I hoped to be able to come to conclusions by hearing what his last words about me were, because as far as I can see, his papers were all written a number of years ago, and of course the years were accompanied by great changes. Among his papers I found a sealed document in which the only thing written was: “It is my will that my writings be dedicated to my late father and to her” [cf. Pap. Xs A 149:25, p. 169 (SKJP6472, p. 199)]. How strange, that the first time I saw the dedication to “An Unnamed Person” which precedes a small volume containing three discourses [actually, the Two Discourses at the Communion on Fridays, SVXll 265], I believed that it referred to me. I also want to ask you whether you can give any information about this matter. His intention at the time was to make me happy, to honor me, because it was of course his famous name. And to that extent I can, in a way, be at peace, because I have received both of them [the happiness and the honor] in equal measure, as if the entire world shared them with me—despite the fact that no one is able to share this with me. Because I have always had a fearful feeling with respect to all publicity—a feeling I especially have out here, where I am so very exposed and therefore feel this fear of publicity very strongly. Therefore, as far as I was concerned, there could never be any possibility except that I would renounce it. But since his death things have come to me from another point of view: as though it were out of cowardice that I was neglecting a duty not only to him but to God, to whom he sacrificed me—whether it was due to an innate tendency toward self-torture (a doubt that he himself had) or whether it was an inner call from God (which I believe has been demonstrated by time and by the results of his actions). All the same, for the time being, whatever information you might be able to provide for me will not change my decision—which you can also surely understand with respect to my husband and his position. But I feel a need to have it cleared up for myself. I will no longer postpone it in silence. I have done enough of that in this life. I have something else to explain to you. (Note how unhesitatingly I attribute to you the deepest interest in me, in that I reveal my innermost doubts to you. But isn’t it true that I can rely on you?) You write that you can see from my letter that I am not really satisfied, and you are perhaps correct in drawing that conclusion from the letter you received at that time, because you know well enough from experience that people are subject to moods. But I would be very ungrateful if I did not call myself happy—yes, indeed, happy as very few are happy. [The fact that] a happy marriage is the main thing in life has of course been often repeated, and Schlegel and I are so much to one another that we mutually enrich each other. In a way, I also owe him this [here the letter breaks off].

THE YOUNG WRITER

Holger Frederik Rørdam

I remember having seen Søren Kierkegaard at the home of my old grandmother in Frederiksberg when I was a child. At that time he made an impression on me because of his zeal and his strident tone in debate; his hair, which stood on end; and finally, what touched upon me the most, and which I found unpleasant, was the fact that he made fun of my Jutland dialect…

Hother Ploug

But in addition to this, the office of Fædrelandet became a kind of club for Giødwad’s more personal circle of friends. As the eldest and most experienced, Giødwad was a sort of “housemother of the Danish press” and the real host of the office, and he was visited by many who really had no particular relationship to the newspaper but who liked to stop by in the morning and strike up a conversation with him. Among these friends can be named the brothers Carl and Ernst Weis, Christian Winther, and finally Søren Kierkegaard. Kierkegaard came there daily, and in the winter of 1843 [i.e., 1842-43] the proofreading of Either/Or took place, so to speak, in the offices of Fædrelandet, a situation that was partially responsible for the fact that [Carl] Ploug never entered into any relation of personal friendship with the famous thinker. One must imagine what it is like to have to have a newspaper ready at a definite time—and in those days it was early in the afternoon, because the police inspector had to look at the issue before it could be distributed—and to have an impractical and very self-absorbed man sitting in the office, ceaselessly lecturing and talking without the least awareness of the inconvenience he is causing. However captivating Ploug found him, and however often he might have felt an urge to sit and listen, he nonetheless had to leave the room and go into his own cubicle in order to carry out his thankless daily task, while Giødwad reverently sat listening at the master’s feet. Kierkegaard who, as is known, had his petty side, did not appreciate people taking leave of a conversation with him, and must surely have nourished a private disdain for Ploug as a philistine who devoted himself to the nonsense of daily existence. The personal relationship between them was certainly very cool, and Ploug subsequently resented Kierkegaard because he had commandeered his co-worker in such an inconsiderate fashion and had made him his audience all morning long, which cannot fail to have influenced Giødwad’s interest in the routine drudgery of the office…

C.J. Brandt

[September 1, 1843]

This evening I had a conversation with Magister Søren Kierkegaard, and despite the fact that he is not exactly the person with whom one finds tranquility, it just so happened—as often happens—that his words made clear to me precisely what I have recently been thinking about so often. He had come to the conclusion that from now on he was going to read only “writings by men who have been executed.”

Hans Brøchner

I remember that one evening, when I was on my way to a rehearsal for the play, I met Kierkegaard on Højbroplads and spoke with him. He said to me in a joking tone: “Well, so you are going to play me in Hostrup’s comedy?” I related the contents of the role to him and told him my understanding of it. At that time I had no impression that Hostrup’s joke affected him, although I later heard that it had done so. With K. it frequently happened that when he reflected on some minor matter, he could make it into a little piece of world history. His sense of reality did not always keep pace with his expertise at reflection, and he therefore came to view facts oddly displaced or transformed to abnormal dimensions. This may have happened with him in the case in question. He never again mentioned it to me, by the way…

W. I. Karup

In that occupation [working in a bookshop] I became acquainted with Søren Kierkegaard, and it was partly because of him that I left it. He often came into the bookshop. One day he encountered me alone and began a conversation with me. “Tell me, now, are you a Jew or a Christian?” he asked, while he fixed his penetrating gaze upon me. “I am a Christian,” was my answer. “Yes, I certainly thought so,” he continued. “But why, then, are you working for a Jew?” “Because he can use me,” I answered. “Oh, so that’s the reason,” he exclaimed, and laughed with a sarcastic smile. “The Devil can also use you. Thus you would also enter his service, isn’t that true?” “But,” I objected, “there is a great difference, however, between the Devil and a Jew.” “Yes, certainly,” answered Søren Kierkegaard, “but your position is nonetheless very dangerous. You stand on the brink of going to hell.” “Why so?” I asked, amazed. “You are in the service of someone who is on the way there,” he answered. At that instant my employer came into the bookshop, and Søren Kierkegaard pointed out to him the perilousness of my situation, because he was a Jew. “It’s all the same whether one is a Jew or a Christian,” said the insulted book dealer, “as long as one gives everyone his due and does justice to one’s fellow men.” “It’s all the same,” repeated Søren Kierkegaard and burst into mocking laughter. “Yes, you are right. One is not thrown into jail by the police because of it, but if one is and remains a Jew, then one will in the end go straight to hell anyway! Adieu!” Søren Kierkegaard went his way and slammed the door behind him. My employer assured me that that man was completely full of crazy ideas and that one ought not pay attention to his talk. But a couple of days later, however, I left that “perilous position.”

GOLDSCHMIDT AND THE CORSAIR AFFAIR

Mei’r Aron Goldschmidt

It surprised me that he talked so much about his own book, but doing so did not make him ridiculous, because he remained quite superior to me. There was a long pause, and he suddenly took a little hop and struck himself on the leg with his thin cane. There was something jaunty about it, although it was completely different from the sort of jauntiness one usually sees in the world. The movement was peculiar and seemed almost painful. I am very much aware that I am in danger of remembering that scene with an admixture of knowledge from a later period, but I am sure that there was something painful in it, something of the following sort: it was the fact that this learned, thin man wanted to be a part of the joys of life but felt himself either unable or not permitted to do so…

[…]

The moment one encountered him, one was under pressure, one was being examined, while he himself was quite reserved.

[…]

K.’s unhappiness gradually emerged from the circumstance that his involvement in sensual existence lacked sufficient firmness or depth, and the central point was his engagement and the end of that engagement. Had K. become a married man, life would have given him troubles enough—yes, unhappiness—but not despair.

[…]

S.K. was much more of an aesthete than P.L.M. Life’s either/or was extraordinarily clear to him, and if he had had the natural strength to do so, he would have been able to carry out the aesthetic; he would have taken up life as a task of beauty and would have broken himself upon it. He chose “or,” but he did so fully as much in his capacity as an author as he did as a person. He took up the entirety of ethics and everything connected with it, as a problem of knowledge; it could never become a question for his personality so simply and completely that it was a source of peace to him, because passage through the natural bliss and woe of life is a part of life and of life’s peace. One might be tempted to say that if he had not been born wealthy but had been forced at an early age to battle against financial worries, it would have been his salvation not as an author but as a human being. This is because he was endowed with an idealistic tendency that, however, when all is said and done, is more profound and complete when it is divorced from materialism.

[…]

He looked like a person who was elevated above many or most of the ordinary conditions and temptations of life, though not in such a way that he seemed enviable or happy. The shape of his body was striking, not really ugly, certainly not repulsive, but with something disharmonious, rather slight, and yet also weighty. He went about like a thought that had got distracted at the very moment at which it was formed. According to what one generally heard about him and saw of him, he seemed to live only as a thought and to concern himself with human beings only insofar as they were the objects of thought. There was a sort of unreality about him. I cannot, of course, know how he was viewed by the very few who were intimately connected with him, but for myself and for the others who saw him “in his salon on the street,” he was the sort of person to whom one could tell one’s sorrows, not in order for him to feel them and share them but in order for him to investigate them. The result would nonetheless be a certain comfort, because his “unreality” was not so much dead cold or stone cold but was the coolness of the higher regions, of the starry heavens. Very often he was superior and ironic by means of the slightest bit of contrariness, so that one felt it as arrogance and mockery, but one also felt that there was a vast background that justified it. He could make one [feel] very small, but in that crushing experience there was finally something uplifting, if one could stand being uplifted in that manner. One of K.’s contemporaries, a very gifted attorney, now deceased, who practiced before the Supreme Court and who needed all his strength and self-confidence in order to maintain himself in his work, once said to me: “I cannot endure K.’s arrogance. He leads one into problems with which he has the time to concern himself, but which we others have had to give up for the sake of living, and then he leaves one standing there, naked, as it were, and despondent… And then he [Kierkegaard] conclude[s] by saying: ‘The others can entrust their ideas to me; I cannot use them, and I will not use them. I can also entrust my ideas to them; they would like to use them, but they cannot.’ One must not be so arrogant, even if one is a genius—because that he is.”

AFTER THE CORSAIR

Frederik Nielsen

It was still in the period of the pseudonyms although everyone knew who the author was, and the thin little man, whom you could meet one moment at 0sterport and the next on the entirely opposite side of town, apparently a carefree peripatetic, was recognized by everyone.

Frederik Hammerich

During the time that he [Kierkegaard] deliberately arranged his personal life so as to counteract his writings, like so many people in Copenhagen I regularly ran into him on the street and on the promenade atop the ramparts of the city. Then he would take me by the arm, as though he had no other use for his time. While he walked, he of course thought up the words for other things, which he subsequently wrote down. How words could pour forth from him, now profound thoughts, now humorous whimsy! One afternoon, I remember, I was going for a walk in the woods with my father, and he [Søren Kierkegaard] met us and his brother out near Bellevue. The weather was lovely. The sun played with the leaves, and the shadows were doubly dark in contrast to the clear, green light that shone through the leaves. I said something about it. “Oh yes, you know,” he said, “it’s pretty enough, but you get bored with that sort of soulless beauty. Do you think that’s why I came here? No. I have to take a bath, and in Copenhagen, of course, it’s swarming all over with Jew-boys. So I took a coach and got my bath, and now I’m finished and I’m driving right home again.” When his brother later became pastor at Pedersborg-by-Sorø, he [Søren] could behave in the same fashion on the rare occasions when he thought of going out there. He rented a coach all for himself, rode ten miles on the dusty country road, stayed at his brother’s for a couple of hours, gave his best wishes to his sister-in-law, ate dinner, and immediately thereafter drove back to Copenhagen. “Such an odd fellow,” they said about him and laughed, which is exactly what he wanted at that point in order to scare off everyone except “that individual.” At home in his hermitage he almost never saw anyone; only poor people and my nephew Emil Boesen had access to him. When I walked with him I heard him talk about his writings in terms that practically overflowed with hubris. Was it meant sincerely, or was it to be understood dialectically, spoken as pretense? Of all the pastors in Copenhagen, there was none he would rather hear than Visby, and once again I had to ask him if he was serious about this or not. When you are dealing with an ironist, an “observer,” you never really know: he wants to have the run of you; you are to be pumped and used. That is the only thing you can figure out, and it most definitely repels you.

Otto Zinck

Aside from my parents, among those who resided at number 37 in Nørrebro was a Councillor of Justice Lund, who was department head in the National Bank. He was married to a sister of Søren Kierkegaard, who often visited the family when he was a young student. I met him many times down in the large, shared garden and ultimately became very good friends with him. We remained acquaintances, and I can remember having visited him several times many years later, when he lived on Nørregade. One evening, when I came by, I found that the rooms that fronted on the street were brightly illuminated, and that he himself was dressed as though for a party. I wanted to leave right away, but he asked me to stay and chat. When I asked if he expected others, he answered, “No, I never have parties, but once in a while it occurs to me to pretend that I am having one, and so I walk to and fro through the rooms, mentally entertaining my imagined guests.” I found this explanation rather peculiar, but I endured an hour with him; he was very charming and sometimes uncontrollably amusing. I heard him preach one morning at the Church of Our Lady, but this had less appeal for me, especially because his speaking voice was thin and weak.

Georg Brandes

My earliest recollection of Kierkegaard is that when, as a child, I failed to pull my trousers down carefully and evenly over my boots, which in those days were serviceably long, the nurse would admonish me, saying: “Søren Kierkegaard!” This was how I first heard spoken the name that also echoed so strongly in the ears of the grownups. The caricature drawings in The Corsair had made Kierkegaard’s legs known in circles where his genius had not penetrated. His trousers had achieved a fame with us that paralleled that achieved ten years earlier in France by Theophile Gautier’s red vest. In Copenhagen this curious man was known as a street eccentric. The externals of his life were bizarre and routinized. One could meet him in the early morning hours on the out-of-the-way paths along the city moat, where, comically enough, he had taken out a fishing license in order to be able to think and compose undisturbed. In Repetition, he has sketched such wanderings in the damp morning fogs, in the dew-covered grass, at the hour when nature shakes with the cold shudder that announces sunrise. One could see him ride alone in his hired coach, flying along the country roads of north Zealand or at a slow trot through the woods of north Zealand on one of his frequent drives, which lasted at least an entire day, and often several days. He took a couple of such trips every month during the winter and six or seven such trips each summer month. He stayed variously at the Kongelund on Amager, or at Lyngby, Frederiksborg, Fredensborg, Hirschholm, Roskilde. In Grib Forest he sought out his beloved Corner of the Eight Roads, the name of which was in itself appealing to him— the self-contained person whom everyone knew and spoke with—because of the contradiction contained in the notion that a place where eight roads meet could be said to form a corner. He sat there, and it seemed to him as if an entire people had migrated along the eight roads and had only forgotten one person, as if the eight roads had led all people away from him, only to bring him back to his own thoughts. He, who had such difficulty forgetting himself, could not lose himself entirely in nature, the study of which he disdained; never in history, which he, the great philosophical talent, lacked sense for; scarcely in music, in which he sought only his own ideals; even here in isolation he liked to feel himself as the midpoint. On other days, in the crowd on 0stergade around dinnertime, between two and four o’clock, one could follow the slight, thin form with the drooping head and with an umbrella under his arm. He was almost invariably to be found here on that “Route,” which is the Corso of the upper-middle class in Copenhagen. He was constantly greeting people, and was seen in conversation first with one person, then with another. On one occasion he would hear a little street urchin shout “Either/Or!” after him. He would engage himself with anyone and everyone, just as accessible to everyone on the street as he was inaccessible in his home, just as profligate with his person here as he was protective of it elsewhere. Here he apparently squandered his time, as if to make up for the fact that when he was at home, he always stubbornly refused to admit that he was in. But if one went past his house on a winter evening and glanced at the long row of lighted windows, which gave the floor on which he lived the appearance of being illuminated for a celebration, one could get a glimpse, or a sense, of a suite of beautifully furnished and heated rooms in which the strange thinker walked to and fro in a silence broken only by the scratching of pen on paper when he would stop to jot down an idea in his manuscript or to make a notation in his journal. Because in every room there was pen, paper, and ink. That was how he lived: walking, riding in carriages, conversing, and above all writing, always writing. He was diligent as few are, and his entire diligence consisted in writing. With the help of his pen he conversed not only with his times but with himself. In few human lives has ink played so large a role. At his death he left about thirty printed volumes, which taken together constitute almost (as he called it) a literature within literature, and he left equally many large volumes of handwritten journals. And almost all this was written during the final twelve years of his life. Such was the odd and drab external appearance of the life of one of the most inwardly agitated lives that has ever been lived here in Denmark.

THE MOMENT COMES: FINAL OPPOSITION

Bernhard Severin Ingemann

[B. S. Ingemann to J. Paludan-Muller, January 13, 1833]

What you wrote in defense of Mynster’s reputation against the master sophist of our Athens was true and just, worthy of both a pastor and a theologian… As far as Søren Sophist is concerned, I have never believed that the truth was in him; with his brilliant dialectics, he has always seemed to me to be a sleight-of-hand artist who plays hocus-pocus with the truth and with Christianity, letting it appear and disappear under his shells. Meanwhile he plays first Simeon Stylites then Mephistopheles, and is himself fundamentally a hollow character who has in a way sold both his heart and his reason for a double portion of brilliant wit—without, however, having had the sense to conceal the hollowness from which a boundless vanity, pride, an unloving spirit, and a great many other sorts of wretchedness constantly peer forth. His brother is at heart sincere with regard to truth and Christianity, but though unable and unwilling to defend his brother [Søren] in full, he is tempted to agree with him in part—he refuses to consider Mynster a true witness to the truth (because of the weaknesses he supposedly had with respect to power and position and because of his opposition to “freedom of belief’).

[B. S. Ingemann to H. L. Martensen, January 28, 1855]

I have been greatly angered and offended by Søren Sophist’s unseemly antics on Mynster’s grave. Your rebuke was harsh, but just and fitting. The only part of it that I would have hesitated to cite was Jacobi’s phrase about a “thrashing,” because opponents will take it in a vulgar physical fashion. In other respects, I think he fully deserves that sort of treatment—if it were not for the fact that such well-deserved punishment would make him into a martyr and eo ipso into a “witness to the truth” in his own imagination. He is a hollow, dialectical sleight-of-hand artist, who permits the truth to show itself and then disappear under a monk’s cowl, which is really a clown’s hat. In my view, unbounded pride and vanity and a great deal of other baseness peep out through the ascetic rags and holes with which he adorns himself—and meanwhile he deepens and deepens the gulf between himself (together with his admirers) and the Christianity he preaches. It is a shame that his talent made it impossible to ignore the scandal in the graveyard! The most painful punishment for him would have been to have taken no notice of it.

H. C. Rosted

For many years Seven Kierkegaard was a frequent guest at the mailcoach inn [in Horsholm]. In the summer he liked to come a couple of times a month. Sometimes he hired a coach for twenty rixdollars and rode to Horsholm, where he would spend the entire day. Everyone out here knew “the magister,” as he was called. He had a special ability to talk with ordinary people, and they liked having conversations with him. Often he stood out in the cow barn and chatted with the herdsman, and sometimes he could be seen sitting out by the road with an old stone breaker. He talked especially with the stone breaker a good deal, and when the latter met people from the inn he would always ask, “When is the magister coming?”—and he liked to add that the magister was such a fine man to talk with.

But Kierkegaard set greatest store by Miss Regine Reinhard, or Tagine, as Hvidberg’s children had dubbed her. She directed the household and was an extraordinarily splendid person. Everyone looked up to Tagine, and she also took special care of Søren Kierkegaard. She roasted the wild fowl he sometimes brought with him, and she understood how to prepare roast veal the equal of which he could not find anywhere. She made sure that there was always a supply of the Rhine wine he liked best, and when he was finished eating she herself brought him the twelve boiled prunes he required for his stomach. She always received copies of the writings he published. One day, when one of Hvidberg’s sons saw her sitting and reading The Moment, he asked her whether she understood what she was reading. Miss Reinhard took offense. “Do I understand it? Yes, you can believe I understand every word.”

She was very religious, and she and Søren Kierkegaard often had long conversations together about religious questions. The family sometimes teased her and called Søren Kierkegaard her infatuation. And she did concede that she thought extraordinarily highly of him.

Tycho E. Spang

I was of course only a boy at the time, but I have preserved a clear memory of S.K. from the period in the early 1840s when he frequently came to my parents’ house. He generally came in the evening to fetch my father for a walk. We were usually sitting at the table for tea. He joined us but didn’t take anything. On the other hand, with his quite remarkable and unusual talent for talking to people of every age and from every walk of life, he was always a lively participant in conversation. It is certainly beyond doubt that on occasions like this he was also conducting his studies. Frequently, when the conversation was in full swing, S.K. could break off in midsentence with the words, “Shouldn’t we take this occasion to go for a walk?” And then he went. If our father’s aged father was there, S.K. was able to address him in a manner so plain and straightforward that it was as though Grandfather were talking with one of his peers. As for us children—he could joke and laugh so heartily with us and at us. He prepared food with my sister, tasted the children’s food, and was so happy and merry that one could be tempted to think that he was a very happy person with easygoing, hilarious spirits. Then, during this happy, delighted laughter his head could sink way down between his shoulders while he leaned back in his chair and rubbed his hands so that the diamond in his ring would sparkle so much that it rivaled his deep, soulful eyes, which were blue and gentle. We delighted in that ring, and when we improvised our little comedies in the doll theater, it always had to be arranged so that it could play a role in the piece. We all liked him, and an old aunt often said to us, “My, but isn’t that S.K. a truly nice person!”

We had an eccentric in the house, a serving girl of the genuine Copenhagen type, a real character. S.K., who of course liked to talk with all sorts of people, continually amused himself by talking with her and getting her to say what was on her mind. He often had a good chat with her down in the courtyard, which he then recounted in the parlor to the delight of us children. Once he was particularly delighted when she said, “Don’t you know, Mr. Magister! Every proper girl ought to have two sweethearts. Carpenters are of course the nicest in the summer, but cobblers hold the best balls in the winter.”

A beautiful and precious memory that we children gratefully preserve is the time [1846] when he became a part of our circle after the death of my father, when he strengthened my mother very much with his great sympathy. For quite a while, he now came to visit us very frequently. After having a conversation with all of us, he generally went alone with Mother into a room where they could sit in peace, and where he could properly speak comforting words to her. We could clearly tell what a blessing his words must have been to her during these quiet hours, how much she benefited from them, and how deeply she missed him when he was away longer than usual. He was, in the best sense of the term, the widow’s friend and comforter, and he also helped her in purely practical things (with minor money matters, purchase of bonds, etc.).

But finally he stopped coming entirely, giving as his reason, “Now, dear lady, you have again regained peace and equilibrium. You have renewed strength, and now you can do without me. Now you must become accustomed to standing on your own feet. In addition, everyone I come into contact with thereby comes into the public spotlight, and this is not good for your daughters who are now growing up.”

But he still continued to write to Mother, and we never encountered him on the street without his coming back home with us. Then, when we left him, we (and especially my sister) were often amazed that we had dared to talk with him the way we had—his eyes had now taken on a very strangely penetrating gray glint instead of the mild blue spark we had known in our childhood. On the other hand, I do have a clear memory from my home of the satirical smile and look with which he could greet people who insistently sought to become personally acquainted with him and who bothered him with their self-important worship of a great man. How he loved spring flowers, especially lily of the valley! Every spring we would pick him a large bouquet from the parsonage garden in Taarnby, and one of my sisters, a little girl, would bring them to his home. Then he became happy, rubbed his hands together, paced up and down the room, and said, “Now let me just see. If only I had a lump of sugar—I don’t have one, but perhaps my housekeeper has.” Then he laughed and the sack of sugar was produced, and she went away happy. I have preserved memories of several aspects of S.K.’s peculiarities from some of his best years, but these are presumably known by everyone. He lived in a large elegant apartment with a series of furnished rooms which in winter were heated and illuminated, and in which he did a good deal of pacing back and forth. As best I can remember, in each room there was ink, pen, and paper, which he used during his wanderings to fix an idea by means of a few quick words or a symbol. He had a difficult time putting up with visitors, and to everyone except a very few individuals his servant had to deny that he was home. When he felt a need to be with people, he sought them out, and it was also for the sake of his health that he liked to spend several hours a day in the open air, either on his famous walks through the busiest streets in the most various humors (with the inevitable umbrella under his arm) or on his even more famous carriage rides. Sometimes he drove all night—in order to conquer the insomnia from which he suffered, I believe. His body was frail, but was sustained by enormous spiritual strength. We were told that he often had powerful attacks from his ailments when he was with G., so that he would fall to the floor, but he fought the pain with clenched hands and tensed muscles, then took up the broken thread of the conversation again, and often said, “Don’t tell about this. What use is it for people to know about what I must bear?” He never denied his old friendship with my parents, but always said a few words to us children in later years whenever he met us. Thus as a young university student I met him on the street one time. He was in his humorous, arrogant mood at the time, and perhaps he wanted to sound me out; he said, “Yes, you see. Well, Denmark has had its greatest sculptor in Thorvaldsen, its greatest poet in Oehlenschlaeger, and now its greatest prose stylist in me. Denmark won’t last long now!” In his later and final years, he was noticeably transformed by illness. True, he still walked in the streets a good deal, but I don’t think he had his earlier delight in talking with people. At any rate, he never gave me an opportunity to exchange words with him in those days.

Peter Christian Zahle

Hardly anyone can congratulate himself on having letters from K., but on the other hand there are few among Copenhagen’s eminent figures who have not walked arm in arm with K. on his many walks. Statesmen, actors, philosophers, poets, old and young—in brief, the most various sorts of people—can pride themselves on having known Søren Kierkegaard, if from nowhere else then from Mini’s, where he used to eat stewed prunes every evening for his weak stomach. On the other hand, he had close friendships only with very few… With respect to a permanent position, there was once a rumor that he had offered to serve as university pastor, a position that first had to be created… K. almost resembled a caricature. Under the low-crowned, broad-brimmed hat one saw the big head with the coarse, dark brown hair; the blue, expressive eyes; the pale yellow color of his face and the sunken cheeks, with many deep wrinkles down the cheeks and around a mouth that spoke even when it was silent. He frequently carried his head tilted a little to one side. His back was a bit curved. He had a cane or an umbrella under his arm. The brown coat was tight and snugly buttoned around the thin body. The weak legs seemed to bear their burden uncertainly, but for a long time they served to carry him from the study out into the open air, where he took his “people bath.” Perhaps an all too strenuous use of the brain had damaged the spinal meninges, thereby paralyzing the lower body. After several weeks in a hospital sickbed, where he distinguished himself by bearing great pains without complaint, he died, prepared for death, to which the physician’s journal could indeed also testify…

At present no [portrait] of K. exists, but his contemporaries will not forget how Søren Kierkegaard looked. And in particular no one who has heard him preach will forget that extremely weak, but wonderfully expressive voice. Never have I heard a voice that was so capable of inflecting even the most delicate nuances of expression…

It is said that a number of spiritual counselors and religious quacks privately turned to K. and pointed out to him what enormous perils were to be feared for the Established Church if he continued his activities in this manner. Free thinkers, Mormons, and Catholics would break into the preserves of the Folkekirke [literally, “People’s Church”], and the confusion would be without end.

He is said to have replied that he knew very well what he was doing and that he had clearly foreseen the consequences, but that it was necessary.

ILLNESS, DEATH AND BURIAL

Mathilde Reinhardt

MRS. B. occupied a very large apartment in Klasdeboderne, and for many years she rented out blocks of three or four connected rooms, often to young men who later attained important positions… Among those people who looked at the apartment in 1849, there was one person whom she quickly and quietly vowed was not to have it. This was Magister Søren Kierkegaard, of whose work she can scarcely have read much, because that sort of thing was beyond her sphere of interest, at least at that time. But she had perhaps heard that he had made it his business to “create difficulties.” Naturally, he was received politely, and after having inspected the rooms he sat on the sofa with her, looked around, and said, “Yes, I will stay here.” And then he spoke in such a winning fashion, with such remarkable eyes and with a voice that reminded her of her late friend Rosenvinge, that he not only was permitted to take the rooms but also received a promise that she would arrange for service, which she otherwise did not do. For this servant she chose one of her former housemaids, a working-class widow in difficult economic circumstances, who was very trustworthy and capable, but slow-witted and extremely fussy.

Carsten Hauch

[Carsten Hauch to B. S. Ingemann, October 6, 1855]

In these times, when an acute but ice-cold spirit whose words are as sharp as icicles loudly proclaims that he is more or less the only person who can see what true Christianity is, and bluntly declares that God hates people (even though it is merely people’s impure and sinful nature that he hates and even though it is written that God is love, and that he who remains in love remains in him); in these times, when a false prophet comes forth like this with great gifts but with a heart so hollow that he plainly says that it really makes no difference to him whether the world is Christian or not, while he also pronounces the judgment of hatred and condemnation upon everything alive; in these times, I say, it is certainly a good thing when a nobler, milder spirit speaks up for once, a spirit in which love is still alive, even toward those who for the time being are lost in the abyss…

Just recently Søren Kjerkegaard is said to have been stricken with an attack of apoplexy, of which death is the likely consequence. Most likely illness, nervous stress, and a sort of convulsive irritability have played a large role in his bitter and negative activities, during which he displayed to the entire world his face, marked as it was by hatred of humanity. This is of course a sort of excuse for him, but he will certainly be called to account quite strictly for the passionate desire to be noticed, which is the root cause of this illness and which misled him into playing the role of a false prophet and into giving support to the most ferocious unbelief. To be consistent, Kjerkegaard ought also to declare Christ to be un-Christian, because Christ, of course, says, “Go forth and teach and baptize all people,” but Kjerkegaard declares that it is unreasonable to baptize large numbers of people, because it is impossible for Christianity to reach more than a very few. Thus not only is it the Apostles who are in error, which he says quite straightforwardly, but, to be consistent, Christ himself is also in error. Thus Christ himself is not a real Christian. Only Kjerkegaard has got it right.

But then, since according to his own admission he is not a Christian either, Christianity really does not exist. Thus unbelief is correct in rejecting it, because it is really only a phantom and is not suited for human beings. This is where hair splitting and the desire to come up with striking paradoxes have brought him. And now, in the midst of his hope of disrupting everything that has been established over the centuries and of casting everything back into chaos, from which only some undefined new arrangement will emerge—in the midst of his efforts to cast the teachers of the Church down into the dust, he is reminded that he himself is dust, and that all this activity based upon hatred and spiritual pride is just as perishable as dust.

Hansine Andrae

[Diaries, October 18, 1855]

Søren Kierkegaard lies in the hospital… very sick—paralysis of the legs as a consequence of tuberculosis of the spine marrow. This awakens concern doubly at this time, because, with his writings against Mynster, Martensen, and the clergy—or, perhaps to express it better, against the whole outer form of the worship of God—he has aroused a great sensation, and it is certain that his writings, which have a large readership, including many young theologians, will sooner or later have a revolutionary impact upon matters concerning the Church.

Emil Boesen’s account of his hospital conversations with Kierkegaard
[October 14 and 16, 1853]

How is it going?

“Badly. It’s death. Pray for me that it comes quickly and easily. I am depressed. I have my thorn in the flesh, as did St. Paul, so I was unable to enter into ordinary relationships. I therefore concluded that it was my task to be extraordinary, which I then sought to carry out as best I could. I was a plaything of Providence, which cast me into play, and I was to be used. Then several years went by. Then flip, flop!—and Providence reaches forth its hand and takes me aboard the ark. This is always the existence and the fate of a special messenger. And that was also what was wrong with my relationship to Regine. had thought that it could be changed, but it couldn’t, so I dissolved the relationship. How strange. The husband became Governor. I don’t like that. It would have been better if it had happened quietly. It was the right thing that she got Schlegel, that had been the earlier understanding, and then I came in and disturbed things. She suffered a great deal because of me.” (And he spoke about her lovingly and sadly.) “I was afraid that she would become a governess. She didn’t, however, but now she is governess in the West Indies.”

Have you been angry and bitter?

“No, but sad, and worried, and extremely indignant, e.g., with my brother Peter. I did not receive him when he last came to me after his speech in Roskilde. He thinks that as the elder brother, he must have priority. He played schoolmaster, when I was still being caned on my a… I wrote a piece against him, very harsh, which is lying in the desk at home.”

“Have you made any decisions about your papers?”

“No. That will have to be as it may. It depends upon Providence, to which I submit. But in addition to this is the fact that I am financially ruined, and now I have nothing, only enough to pay the expenses of my burial. I began with a little, twenty-some thousand, and I saw that that amount could last for a certain amount of time—ten to twenty years. It has now been seventeen years, that was a great thing. I could have sought an appointment. As a veteran theological graduate, it would have been possible for me to obtain one, but I could not accept it—my thorn in the flesh prevented me—so the matter was decided. Suddenly, I understood it. What matters is to get as close to God as possible. There are those who have need of others, the many, all that nonsense about large numbers of people. There is someone who has need of only one. He stands highest among those who need anyone; he who needs most stands lowest. Only one person is needed to say this.”

Miss Fibiger had sent him flowers, which he had put away in a cabinet. It seemed that he wanted to talk with me about his strange thorn in the flesh.

“The doctors do not understand my illness. It is psychical [psychisk], and now they want to treat it in the usual medical fashion. It’s bad. Pray for me that it will soon be over.”

He looked at the flowers that Miss Fibiger had sent him, but he did not want them put in water: “It is the fate of flowers that they must bloom and give off a scent and die.”

If he were able to believe that he could live, it would happen. He could go home if he had a glass of water and put his boots on, and then perhaps he would get out of here and not be in the hospital. Nonetheless, it was quite appropriate that he should die on ordinary terms, since he had lived as an exception. He began to think about whether it was not thus a sort of suicide to remain out there, but when I said that in the final analysis it did not depend on him, he was entirely in agreement with me.

[Thursday, October 18, 1855]

He was very weak. His head hung down on his chest and his hands trembled. He dozed off and was awakened by coughing. He sometimes took a nap in the daytime, especially after he had eaten.

“Now I have eaten, and everything is ready to receive you, which I am now doing with open arms.”

I asked him if he could gather his thoughts, or if everything was confused for him. Most of the time he could think clearly; sometimes they were a bit confused at night. Whether he could pray to God in peace.

“Yes, that I can do!”

Whether there was anything he still wanted to say?

“No. Yes, greet everyone for me, I have liked them all very much, and tell them that my life is a great suffering, unknown and inexplicable to other people. Everything looked like pride and vanity, but it wasn’t. I am absolutely no better than other people, and I have said so and have never said anything else. I have had my thorn in the flesh, and therefore I did not marry and could not accept an official [ecclesiastical] position. I am of course a theological graduate; I was publicly qualified and enjoyed private favor. Of course I could have had it [a position] if I had wanted it, but I became the exception instead. The day went by in work and excitement, and in the evening I was put aside—that was the exception.”

Then I asked if he could pray in peace: “Yes, I can do that. So I pray first for the forgiveness of sins, that everything might be forgiven; then I pray that I might be free of despair at the time of my death, and I am often struck by the saying that death must be pleasing to God. And then I pray for something I very much want, that is, that I might be aware a bit in advance of when death will come.”

It was beautiful weather that day, and I said, When you sit and talk like that you look as healthy as if you could stand up and walk outside with me.

“Yes, there is only one thing wrong. I am unable to walk. But there is another method of transport, however. I can be lifted up. I have had the feeling of becoming an angel, of getting wings, and that is of course what will happen: to straddle a cloud and sing, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah. Any fool can say this, but it depends on how it is said.”

And all that, of course, is because you believe in Christ and take refuge in him in God’s name? “Yes, of course, what else?” About whether he would change anything of what he said? His words, of course, did not correspond to reality, but were more stringent.

“That is how it is supposed to be, otherwise it does no good. I certainly think that when the bomb explodes it has to be like this! Do you think I should tone it down, by speaking first to awaken people, and then to calm them down? Why do you want to bother me with this!”

He did not want Gjødwad to visit him: “He did favors for me in private and disavowed me publicly. I don’t like that. You have no idea what sort of a poisonous plant Mynster was. You have no idea of it; it is staggering how it has spread its corruption. He was a colossus. Great strength was required to topple him, and the person who did it also had to pay for it. When hunters go after the wild boar they choose a certain dog and know very well what will happen: the wild boar will be trapped, but the dog who gets him will pay for it. I will gladly die. Then I will be certain that I accomplished the task. Often people would rather hear what a dead person has to say than someone who is alive.”

I would prefer that you live a while longer. You have been so stringent, and you have gone so far, that there must be something left for you to say. “Yes, then I wouldn’t die. I have had to forget all The Moments and the other things in order to find peace, and I think I have had a task that was sufficiently appropriate, important, and difficult. You must take note of the fact that I have seen things from within the innermost center of Christianity, that everything is procrastination, pure procrastination. Things have certainly been pretty hot for you because of your association with me, haven’t they?”

Yes, but I haven’t talked about it, and in the places where it was known and talked about, it was respected.

“Well, is that so! I am pleased that you came. Thank you, thank you.”

[Friday, October 19, 1855]

He had slept a couple of hours the evening before and was in good spirits. His brother had been there but had not been permitted to come in. S.K. said that he [Kierkegaard’s brother, Peter Christian] could be stopped not by debate but by action, and in this manner he had taken action and stopped him. Won’t you take Holy Communion?

“Yes, but not from a pastor, from a layman.”

That would be quite difficult to arrange.

“Then I will die without it.”

That’s not right!

“We cannot debate it. I have made my choice. I have chosen. The pastors are civil servants of the Crown and have nothing to do with Christianity.”

But that is not true, of course. It is not in accord with truth and reality.

“Yes, you see, God is sovereign, but then there are all these people who want to arrange things comfortably for themselves. So they get Christianity for everybody, and there are the thousand pastors, so that no one in the country can die a blessed death without belonging to it. Then they are the sovereign, and God’s sovereignty is finished. But he must be obeyed in all things.”

Then he fell asleep. His voice became weak and he was having physical difficulties, so I soon left. I was worried. If he takes a layman [i.e., accepts the Eucharist from a layman], a definite step will have been taken, and it could easily be subject to great abuse by a layman. There would be a great temptation to do so, because then a layman would be [called] a good Christian—because he is not a pastor.

[Saturday, October 20, 1855]

Two women attendants carried him from the one chair to the other. He was entirely without strength. His head hung down on his chest, and he quickly dozed off. He said that his entire illness was now a death struggle. He asked me to hold his head, and for a while I stood and held his head up. When I wanted to leave, I said that I would see him again the next day.

“Yes,” he answered, “you do that, but no one knows, and we might as well say goodbye to one another right now.”

God bless you, and thanks for everything!

“Goodbye. Thank you. Forgive me for involving you in difficulties you would otherwise have been spared.”

Goodbye. Now repose in the peace of God until Our Lord calls you. Goodbye!

[Sunday, October 21, 1853]

I was in with him only for a moment. He said that it was an inconvenient time. He spoke about Thurah and Martensen.

[Monday, October 22, 1833]

You should have a little better view from your room. You could see out to the gardens. “What good can it do to fool oneself like that? Things are different now. Now it is self-torment. That sort of an idea is now torture. No, when one is to suffer, one must suffer.”

[Thursday, October 25, 1855]

“I become weaker every day, and my hands and my body tremble.” He looked dubiously for a moment at Fenger’s farewell sermon, which I had brought him. Then he said, “Send it back to him. I will not accept it.”

It was not for you to read, but he does think kindly of you.

“He has spoken publicly. Now he wants to send me this privately, and then it is supposed to be as if it were nothing—approaching me privately, and yet there is such a great difference.”

Your brother Peter was there on his journey back.

“So the fact that I would not receive him is well known, and people were quite scandalized over it?”

No, I cannot say that. They really think of you with great sympathy. You should really not be surprised that they have said what they have. It was all only in self-defense, and we are all entitled to defend ourselves. For all that, they are still really quite capable of thinking of you with great sympathy.

“Believe me, this is the sort of thing of which Christ says, ‘Get thee behind me Satan, for you are a stumbling block to me! You think only of earthly things and have no sense for that which is above.’”

No, they speak as they do because they are convinced that they are right and that your sort of attack on existing conditions is wrong. It is possible, of course, that there is a way to salvation that leads through the Established Church.

“I cannot stand talking about this. It is too much of a strain on me.”

Was there bad air in the bedroom you had before?

“Yes. I get very irritated when I think about it. I certainly noticed it.”

Then why didn’t you move?

“I was under too much strain to do it. I still had several issues of The Moment that I had to get out and several hundred rixdollars left to be used for that purpose. So I could have set it aside and spared myself, or I could continue and then fall. I rightly chose the latter; then I was finished.”

Then you got out the issues of The Moment that you wanted to?

“Yes!”

How strange that so many things in your life have just sufficed!

“Yes. And I am very happy about it, and very sad, because I cannot share my joy with anyone.”

[Friday, October 26, 1853]

He kept the women attendants with him, and there was talk about only insignificant things.

[Saturday, October 27, 1835]

Just the same. His head hung down, and he felt himself burdened. There were larger crowds than usual in the street.

“Yes, that [crowds in the street] was what used to agree with me so much.”

You never came to visit me in Horsens.

“No. Where would I have found the time for it!”

The last time I saw him he was lying down and was nearly incapable of speaking.

I had to leave town, and he died shortly thereafter.