‘A love affair ’: S. Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript to the Philosophical Crumbs, ed. and trans. Alastair Hannay (Cambridge University Press, 2009), p. 222.
‘During the daytime one sees him walking ’: Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Volume 6: Journals NB11–NB14, ed. and trans. Niels Jørgen Cappelørn, Alastair Hannay, David Kangas, Bruce H. Kirmmse, George Pattison, Joel D. S. Rasmussen, Vanessa Rumble and K. Brian Söderquist (Princeton University Press, 2013), p. 550.
‘This evening I had a conversation with Magister Søren Kierkegaard ’: Encounters with Kierkegaard, ed. Bruce Kirmmse, trans. Bruce Kirmmse and Virginia Laursen (Princeton University Press, 1998), p. 59.
‘grasp the secret of suffering ’: Concluding Unscientific Postscript, p. 372.
‘because the humblest expression ’: ibid, p. 413.
‘You are getting on, I said to myself ’: ibid, pp. 156–7.
‘silence ’: See Niels Jørgen Cappelørn’s ‘Postscript’ to Søren Kierkegaard, The Lily of the Field and the Bird of the Air: Three Godly Discourses, trans. Bruce Kirmmse and illustrated by Maja Lisa Engelhardt (New York: Elizabeth Harris Gallery, 2013), pp. 69–72. See also S. Kierkegaard, The Book on Adler, ed. trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton University Press, 1998), p. 280.
‘To be able to fall down in such a way ’: S. Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, ed. C. Stephen Evans and Sylvia Walsh, trans. Sylvia Walsh (Cambridge University Press, 2006), p. 34.
a ‘marvellous armchair ’: S. Kierkegaard, Letters and Documents, ed. and trans. Henrik Rosenmeier (Princeton University Press, 2009), p. 152 – letter from S. Kierkegaard to A. F. Krieger, May 1843.
railways straight through Christendom: the first Prussian railway opened in 1838, from Berlin to Potsdam. The Berlin–Stettin line, which Kierkegaard travelled on in 1843, opened in the early 1840s; the first Danish railway opened in 1844. In 1850 Kierkegaard wrote in his journal: ‘The railroad mania is altogether an attempt a la Babel. It is also connected with the end of a cultural era, it is the final dash. Unfortunately, something new began at almost the same moment: 1848. Railroads are related to the idea of intensification of centralization.’ Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Volume 7: Journals NB15–NB20, ed. and trans. Niels Jørgen Cappelørn, Alastair Hannay, Bruce H. Kirmmse, David D. Possen, Joel D. S. Rasmussen, Vanessa Rumble and K. Brian Söderquist (Princeton University Press, 2014), p. 112.
Søren Kierkegaard will be back in Copenhagen: on the details of Kierkegaard’s journey home – by train, stagecoach and steamship – see Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Volume 2: Journals EE–KK, ed. and trans. Niels Jørgen Cappelørn, Alastair Hannay, David Kangas, Bruce H. Kirmmse, George Pattison, Vanessa Rumble and K. Brian Söderquist (Princeton University Press, 2008), p. 491.
‘He who explains the riddle of Abraham ’: ibid, pp. 154–5: JJ 87 (1843).
‘In the morning I go out for a while’: S. Kierkegaard, Letters and Documents, ed. and trans. Henrik Rosenmeier (Princeton University Press, 2009), p. 154 – letter to Emil Boesen, 25 May 1843.
‘Then suddenly a thought stirs ’: Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks 2, pp. 158–9: JJ 99 (1843).
‘If I had had faith, I would have stayed with Regine ’: ibid, p. 164: JJ 115 (17 May 1843).
the high medieval ramparts: see Niels Thulstrup, The Copenhagen of Kierkegaard, ed. Marie Mikulová Thulstrup, trans. Ruth Mach-Zagal (Reitzel, 1986), pp. 24–6. Kierkegaard’s favourite philosophy teacher, Poul Møller, wrote a poem about the ramparts, which begins:
The hedge of spring is verdant,
The cloak is cast away,
Maidens sun themselves upon the ramparts.
The air is so lovely,
Their sighs of longing
Known by their silk dresses.
Socrates devoted himself to the question: for Kierkegaard’s clearest exposition of Socrates’s devotion to ‘the problem of what it is to be a human being’, see Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Volume 10: Journals NB31–NB36, ed. and trans. Niels Jørgen Cappelørn, Alastair Hannay, Bruce H. Kirmmse, David D. Possen, Joel D. S. Rasmussen and Vanessa Rumble (Princeton University Press, 2018), p. 371: NB35 2 (December 1854).
‘Imagine a cave,’ says Socrates: my reading of Plato’s cave is indebted to Jonathan Lear: see ‘Allegory and Myth in Plato’s Republic ’ and ‘The Psychic Efficacy of Plato’s Cave’, in Jonathan Lear, Wisdom Won from Illness: Essays in Philosophy and Psychoanalysis (Harvard University Press, 2017), pp. 206–43.
‘While I live, I shall never give up philosophy’: Plato, Apology, 29d–31a.
Any ironic utterance calls itself into question: as Kierkegaard put it in his dissertation, ‘the quality that pervades all irony [is] that the phenomenon is not the essence but the opposite of the essence’: in other words, the surface meaning is the opposite of the true meaning. See S. Kierkegaard, The Concept of Irony with Continual Reference to Socrates, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton University Press, 1992), p. 247.
‘surveys everything and rises infinitely above ’: Friedrich von Schlegel, Schlegel’s Lucinde and the Fragments, trans. Peter Firchow (University of Minnesota Press, 1971), p. 148. On Kierkegaard’s response to Romantic irony, see Joel Rasmussen’s excellent Between Irony and Witness (T&T Clark, 2005).
‘no genuinely human life is possible without irony ’: The Concept of Irony, p. 326. My grasp of Kierkegaard’s conception of irony is deeply indebted to Jonathan Lear’s A Case for Irony (Harvard University Press, 2014).
‘a living, restless thing ’: cited by Roland Bainton in Here I Stand: A Life of Martin Luther (Abingdon-Cokesbury Press, 1951), p. 331, and by S. Kierkegaard in For Self-Examination / Judge For Yourself!, ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton University Press, 1991), pp. 17–18. In his lectures on Romans (1515–16) Luther emphasized that faith is a continuous inward movement. Commenting on Romans 12:2, for example, Luther notes that Paul ‘is addressing those who have begun to be Christians, whose life is not at rest [in quiescere] but in movement [in moveri] from good to better’; that the different phases of spiritual growth in a human being are ‘always in motion’; that the Christian must always ‘press on’ in prayer, so that praying is ‘a continuous violent action of the spirit,’ like ‘a ship going against the stream’. Commenting on Romans 4:7, he argues that when ‘people are confident that they are already justified, they come to ruin by their own sense of security’.
‘It is quite true what philosophy says ’: Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Volume 2: Journals EE–KK, ed. and trans. Niels Jørgen Cappelørn, Alastair Hannay, David Kangas, Bruce H. Kirmmse, George Pattison, Vanessa Rumble and K. Brian Söderquist (Princeton University Press, 2008), p. 179: JJ 167 (1843). In his 1838 essay on Hans Christian Andersen, Kierkegaard cited the German theologian Carl Daub, who, according to Kierkegaard, observed that ‘life is understood backward through the idea’: see From the Papers of One Still Living, in S. Kierkegaard, Early Polemical Writings, ed. and trans. Julia Watkin (Princeton University Press, 2009), pp. 78, 255.
‘managed to get out to R ’: Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Volume 1: Journals AA–DD, ed. and trans. Niels Jørgen Cappelørn, Alastair Hannay, David Kangas, Bruce H. Kirmmse, George Pattison, Vanessa Rumble and K. Brian Söderquist (Princeton University Press, 2007), p. 47: AA, 54 (1837). ‘R—’ might mean Regine, or the Rørdams; if the latter, it may indicate that at this time Kierkegaard was most interested in Bolette Rørdam – or that he was by then visiting the Rørdams with the hope of seeing Regine there. In another entry in this journal, Kierkegaard mentions ‘going out to Rørdam’s to talk to Bolette’: see p. 47: AA 53. In 1849 he acknowledged that he felt a certain ‘responsibility’ to Bolette: they had made an ‘impression’ on one another, though this attraction was ‘in all innocence’ and ‘purely intellectual’: see Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Volume 3: Notebooks 1–15, ed. and trans. Niels Jørgen Cappelørn, Alastair Hannay, David Kangas, Bruce H. Kirmmse, George Pattison, Vanessa Rumble and K. Brian Söderquist (Princeton University Press, 2010), p. 431: Notebook 15, 4 (August to November 1849).
‘My God, why should these feelings awaken ’: Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Volume 1: Journals AA–DD, p. 47: AA54 (1837).
When Socrates was asked this question: see Plato’s Meno.
‘how sad it would be if human beings could only find peace in what lay outside themselves ’: Søren Kierkegaard’s Journals and Papers, eds. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1970), p. 528: Pap. III A 5 (July 10, 1840).
Kierkegaard was obsessed with Mozart’s Don Giovanni: on Kierkegaard’s interest in Don Giovanni and his discussion of Don Juan in his writings, see Jacobo Zabalo, ‘Don Juan (Don Giovanni): Seduction and its Absolute Medium in Music’, in Katalin Nun and Jon Stewart (eds.), Kierkegaard’s Literary Figures and Motifs, Tome I: Agamemnon to Guadalquivir (Ashgate, 2014), pp. 141–57.
A human being’s ‘true life’: Søren Kierkegaard’s Journals and Papers, pp. 213–14: Pap. III A 1 (July 4 1840).
travelled out to the west coast of Jutland: Kierkegaard kept a journal during this trip; see Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Volume 3: Notebooks 1–15, pp. 187–98; pp. 567–73. One entry in this Jutland journal, marked with a small cross, reads as follows: ‘To you, O God, we turn for peace … but give us also the blessed assurance that nothing could take this peace from us, not we ourselves, not our poor, earthly wishes, my wild desires, not the restless craving of my heart!’ – p. 189: NB6, 6 (July to August 1840).
‘On 8 September I left home ’: see ibid, pp. 431–2: NB15, 4 (August to November, 1849). In the margin by this entry Kierkegaard wrote: ‘It must have been on the 10th that she first mentioned Schlegel, for she said not a word on the 8th.’
‘beside himself with sorrow ’: Encounters with Kierkegaard, ed. Bruce Kirmmse, trans. Bruce Kirmmse and Virginia Laursen (Princeton University Press, 1998), p. 36 – from Regine Schlegel’s account of her relationship with Kierkegaard, told to Hanne Mourier in 1896 following her husband’s death that year, subsequently published in Hjalmar Helweg, Søren Kierkegaard: En psykiatrisk-psykologisk Studie (H. Hagerups Forlag, 1933), pp. 385–92.
‘whom he had loved so much ’: Encounters with Kierkegaard, p. 40.
‘what he himself wanted to do ’: ibid, p. 29 – from a letter from Emil Boesen to H. P. Barfod, May 22 1868.
lily of the valley cologne: see S. Kierkegaard, Letters and Documents, ed. and trans. Henrik Rosenmeier (Princeton University Press, 2009), p. 64. Kierkegaard owned a German book on the ‘language’ or symbolism of flowers, Die neueste Blumensprache, published in 1838; see Niels Jørgen Cappelørn, Gert Posselt and Bent Rohde, Tekstspejle: Om Søren Kierkegaard som bogtilrettelægger, boggiver og bogsamler (Rosendahls Forlag, 2002), p. 155.
‘is not used for tobacco ’: Letters and Documents, p. 74 – letter to Regine Olsen, 30 December 1840.
Each week Kierkegaard read aloud to Regine: see Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Volume 2: Journals EE–KK, p. 174: JJ 145 (1843).
‘Although your playing may not be perfect ’: Letters and Documents, pp. 78–9 – letter to Regine Olsen, undated.
‘Know that every time you repeat that you love me ’: ibid, p. 65 – letter to Regine Olsen, undated.
‘Now I am safe, now I will settle down ’: ibid, pp. 67–8 – letter to Regine Olsen, undated.
‘she fought like a lioness’: see Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Volume 3: Notebooks 1–15, p. 434: NB15, 4 (August to November 1849)
a ‘sense of foreboding ’: Encounters with Kierkegaard, p. 162 – from Henriette Lund, Eringringer Fra Hjemmet (Gyldendal, 1909).
‘So after all, you have played a terrible game with me ’: see Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Volume 3: Notebooks 1–15, p. 434: NB15, 4 (August to November 1849).
‘Uncle Søren immediately arrived ’: Encounters with Kierkegaard, pp. 162–3 – from Henriette Lund, Eringringer Fra Hjemmet (Gyldendal, 1909).
‘It was an insulting break ’: ibid, pp. 177–8 – from Troels Frederik Troels-Lund, Et Liv. Barndom og Ungdom (H. Hagerups Forlag, 1924). Troels-Lund, born in 1840, was an infant at the time of the break-up, so his account was based on family legend.
‘In my attack I am beginning to close in on her gradually ’: S. Kierkegaard, Either/Or, Part I, ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton University Press, 1988), pp. 355–6.
‘I shall very likely manage things ’: ibid, pp. 367–8, 377.
‘Never will I call you “my Johannes”, for I certainly realize that you have never been that ’: ibid, p. 312.
he has had a tall cabinet made from rosewood: see Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Volume 3: Notebooks 1–15, p. 438: NB15, 6 (August to November 1849).
‘one for her, and one for me ’: ibid.
a crown of thorns rising from a field: I saw this ‘crown of thorns’ when I took a train from Berlin to Angermünde in the spring of 2016, following Kierkegaard’s journey in May 1843.
remarkable blue eyes, ‘deep and soulful’: see Encounters with Kierkegaard, p. 111. Here Tycho Spang, the son of Kierkegaard’s friend Peter Johannes Spang, pastor of Copenhagen’s Church of the Holy Spirit, recalls Kierkegaard’s visits to his childhood home: ‘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 rivalled his deep, soulful eyes, which were blue and gentle … We all liked him, and an old aunt often said to us, “My, but isn’t that S.K. a truly nice person!”’ Similarly, Otto Wroblewski, who worked in Reitzel’s bookshop during the 1840s, recalled Kierkegaard’s ‘deep blue, melancholy eyes’: see Encounters with Kierkegaard, p. 110.
‘a mixture of good nature and malice ’: from Meïr Aron Goldschmidt’s autobiography: see Encounters with Kierkegaard, p. 65; see also ibid, pp. 111, 116.
‘There is a difference of opinion among the learned as to which seat in a stagecoach is the most comfortable ’: S. Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling / Repetition, ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton University Press, 1983), pp. 150–51.
Simeon Stylites, the celebrity recluse: on the title page of the manuscript of Fear and Trembling, Kierkegaard wrote ‘Simon Stylites, Solo Dancer and Private Individual’, but crossed this out and replaced it with the pseudonym ‘Johannes de silentio’.
‘My goodness, what a thick book ’: Corsaren [The Corsiar], 10 March 1843. The Corsair was published weekly in Copenhagen between 1840 and 1846.
Johan Ludvig Heiberg: for a summary of Kierkegaard’s relationship to J. L. Heiberg, see Jon Stewart, ‘Johan Ludvig Heiberg: Kierkegaard’s Criticism of Hegel’s Danish Apologist’, in Kierkegaard and His Danish Contemporaries, Tome I: Philosophy, Politics and Social Theory, ed. Jon Stewart (Ashgate, 2009), pp. 35–76.
‘bolts of intellectual lightning’: see J. L. Heiberg, ‘Litterær Vintersæd’, Intelligensblade 24 (1 March 1843), pp. 285–92.
‘The Lord bless thy coming in’: see S. Kierkegaard, Either/Or, Part II, ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton University Press, 1988), p. 407.
‘I shall never forget to employ the passion of irony ’: S. Kierkegaard, Letters and Documents, ed. and trans. Henrik Rosenmeier (Princeton University Press, 2009), p. 155 – letter to Emil Boesen, 25 May 1843.
‘With Hegel on my table and in my thoughts ’: this autobiographical account was first published in an 1840 article entitled ‘Johan Ludvig Heiberg’, by Christian Molbech, in Dansk poetisk Anthologie, edited by Molbech. See Jon Stewart (ed.), Johan Ludvig Heiberg: Philosopher, Littérateur, Dramaturge, and Political Thinker (Museum Tusculanum Press, 2008), pp. 222–3.
He followed Martensen’s influential courses on theology and the history of philosophy: see George Pattison, ‘How Kierkegaard Became “Kierkegaard”: The Importance of the Year 1838’, Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia, 64 (2008), pp. 741–61. We do not know for sure how conscientiously Kierkegaard attended Martensen’s lectures on philosophy and theology in 1837–8 and 1838–9, for although he owned notes taken from these lectures, the notes may have been copied or borrowed from another student.
‘Dear Peter, Schelling talks the most insufferable nonsense ’: Letters and Documents, p. 141 – letter to P. C. Kierkegaard, February 1842.
‘What philosophers say about actuality ’: S. Kierkegaard, Either/Or, Part I, ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton University Press, 1988), p. 32.
‘in the world of ideas’: S. Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, ed. C. Stephen Evans and Sylvia Walsh, trans. Sylvia Walsh (Cambridge University Press, 2006), p. 3.
‘every blessing upon the System’: ibid, p. 6.
De omnibus dubitandum est: Kierkegaard took this Latin phrase as the title of a semi-fictional treatise attacking Martensen, and the phrase also featured in his satirical play The Battle of the Old and New Soap-Cellars, which he wrote five years earlier. Johannes Climacus, or De Omnibus Dubitandum Est was begun in 1842 but left unfinished in 1843. The phrase ‘de omnibus dubitandum est’ appears in Scenes 2 and 3 of The Battle of the Old and New Soap-Cellars. This play’s character Herr von Springgaassen, ‘a philosopher’, is a caricature of Martensen; his name has been translated as ‘Jumping Jack’, and one of Kierkegaard’s journal entries from 1837 describes Martensen as ‘leap-frogging’ over his philosophical predecessors: see Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Volume 1, Journals AA–DD, ed. and trans. Niels Jørgen Cappelørn, Alastair Hannay, David Kangas, Bruce H. Kirmmse, George Pattison, Vanessa Rumble and K. Brian Söderquist (Princeton University Press, 207) p. 189, and Pattison, ‘How Kierkegaard Became “Kierkegaard”’, p. 760.
‘Whatever one generation learns from another’: Fear and Trembling, p. 107.
‘I did not come with lofty words or human wisdom ’: 1 Corinthians 2:1–5.
‘While Abraham arouses my admiration’: Fear and Trembling, p. 53.
Fear and Trembling will respond to Immanuel Kant’s reading of Genesis 22: the extent of Kierkegaard’s reading of Kant is debated by scholars; the most forceful case in favour of his serious engagement with Kant’s works, and particularly The Conflict of the Faculties, is made by Ronald M. Green in Kierkegaard and Kant: The Hidden Debt (State University of New York Press, 1992), and summarized in Green’s essay ‘Kant: A Debt Both Obscure and Enormous’, in Kierkegaard and His German Contemporaries, Tome I: Philosophy, ed. Jon Stewart (Ashgate, 2007), pp. 179–210.
the ethical critique of religious dogmatism: see Dominic Erdozain, The Soul of Doubt: The Religious Roots of Unbelief from Luther to Marx (Oxford University Press, 2016), pp. 69–172.
‘the whole existence of the human race’: Fear and Trembling, p. 59.
Without God, human beings will be left alone in a world with no divine order, no cosmic justice: at the end of the nineteenth century Friedrich Nietzsche announced the ‘death of God’, declaring himself the prophet of a new nihilistic age – but Kierkegaard saw it coming four decades earlier.
‘If there were no eternal consciousness in a human being ’: Fear and Trembling, p. 12.
‘What did Abraham achieve?’: S. Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, ed. C. Stephen Evans and Sylvia Walsh, trans. Sylvia Walsh (Cambridge University Press, 2006), p. 106.
Abraham’s faith seemed impossible: see Fear and Trembling, p. 13: ‘No one who was great in the world will be forgotten, but each became great in proportion to his expectation. One became great by expecting the impossible, another by expecting the eternal, but the one who expected the impossible became greater than all.’
‘a guiding star ’: ibid. p. 18.
‘The important thing is to be able to have faith in God with respect to lesser things ’: Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Volume 2: Journals EE–KK, ed. and trans. Niels Jørgen Cappelørn, Alastair Hannay, David Kangas, Bruce H. Kirmmse, George Pattison, Vanessa Rumble and K. Brian Söderquist (Princeton University Press, 2008), p. 168: JJ 124 (1843).
‘He headed home joyously, cheerfully, with trust in God ’: ibid, pp. 121–2: HH8 (1840).
Abraham ‘had faith for this life’: Fear and Trembling, pp. 7, 17.
he receives this gift secretly, in silence: Kierkegaard returned to this account of an incognito person of faith, contrasted with the person who withdraws to a monastery, in Concluding Unscientific Postscript (1846): see S. Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript to the Philosphical Crumbs, ed. and trans. Alastair Hannay (Cambridge University Press, 2009), e.g. pp. 344–5, 396–8, 413, 419–20.
‘I examine his figure from head to foot ’: Fear and Trembling, p. 32
‘worldly wisdom’, not ‘genuinely religious consolation’: Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Volume 2: Journals EE–KK, p. 153: JJ 82 (1843).
‘Is it not also true here that the one whom God blesses he curses in the same breath?’: Fear and Trembling, p. 57.
‘I have looked the frightful in the eye’: Fear and Trembling, p. 28.
‘It is harder to receive love than to give it’: ibid, p. 91.
‘the first thing the religious does is close its door and speak in secret ’: Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Volume 2: Journals EE–KK, p. 158: JJ 96 (1843).
‘Inwardness is incommensurable with outwardness ’: ibid, p. 158: JJ 96 (1843).
‘I sit and listen to the sounds in my inner being ’: ibid, pp. 159–60: JJ 103 (1843).
‘After my death, no one will find in my papers ’: ibid, p. 157: JJ 95 (1843).
‘so many a marriage conceals little histories ’: ibid, p. 165: JJ 115 (17 May 1843).
‘On Easter Sunday at evensong ’: ibid, p. 161: JJ 107 (April 1843).
sailed to Greenland, to North America, to China, to Brazil: as a child, Kierkegaard heard stories about Danish missionaries in Greenland; in 1841 he wrote to Emil Boesen, who was suffering from his love for a woman, ‘Get into your kayak (surely you know those Greenland boats), put on your swimming suit, and be off with you to the ocean of the world. But that is certainly no idyll. If you cannot forget her, cannot write poetry about her, all right then, set all sails’ (S. Kierkegaard, Letters and Documents, ed. and trans. Henrik Rosenmeier (Princeton University Press, 2009), p. 103). Poul Møller, Kierkegaard’s favourite philosophy teacher at the University of Copenhagen, sailed to China after a romantic disappointment. Peter Wilhelm Lund, the brother of Kierkegaard’s two brothers-in-law, went to Brazil to study meteorology, biology and zoology: see Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Volume 1: Journals AA–DD, ed. and trans. Niels Jørgen Cappelørn, Alastair Hannay, David Kangas, Bruce H. Kirmmse, George Pattison, Vanessa Rumble and K. Brian Söderquist (Princeton University Press, 2007), p. 319.
‘descend into dark waters ’: Letters and Documents, p. 93 – letter to Emil Boesen from Berlin, 16 November 1841.
‘Everything churns inside me ’: ibid, p. 122 – letter to Emil Boesen from Berlin, 16 January 1842.
‘Assigned from childhood to a life of torment ’: S. Kierkegaard, The Point of View, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton University Press, 2009), p. 162.
‘one for her, and one for me ’: see Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Volume 3: Notebooks 1–15, ed. and trans. Niels Jørgen Cappelørn, Alastair Hannay, David Kangas, Bruce H. Kirmmse, George Pattison, Vanessa Rumble and K. Brian Söderquist (Princeton University Press, 2010), p. 438: NB15, 6 (August to November 1849).
‘a forgotten remoteness in a rural parsonage ’: see S. Kierkegaard, The Point of View, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton University Press, 2009), p. 157 (journal entry, 1847).
He has remained here as a tenant: Kierkegaard and his brother Peter Christian Kierkegaard inherited the house, 2 Nytorv, when their father died in 1838, and in 1843 Kierkegaard bought his brother’s share.
‘which had tempted me in a quite curious way ’: Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Volume 5: Journals NB6–NB10, ed. and trans. Niels Jørgen Cappelørn, Alastair Hannay, David Kangas, Bruce H. Kirmmse, George Pattison, Joel D. S. Rasmussen, Vanessa Rumble and K. Brian Söderquist (Princeton University Press, 2012), p. 144: NB7, 114 (1848). In 1849 Kierkegaard reflected in his journal that ‘My home has been my consolation, having a pleasant home has been my greatest earthly encouragement’: see Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Volume 6: Journals NB11–NB14, ed. and trans. Niels Jørgen Cappelørn, Alastair Hannay, David Kangas, Bruce H. Kirmmse, George Pattison, Joel D. S. Rasmussen, Vanessa Rumble and K. Brian Söderquist (Princeton University Press, 2013), p. 234: NB12, 143 (July to September 1849).
‘the whole movement would not touch kings at all ’: Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Volume 5: Journals NB6–NB10, p. 230: NB9, 42 (1849).
‘miserable to be a genius in a market town ’: ibid, p. 228: NB9, 41 (1849)
on the morning of 21 March 1848, thousands gathered: this summary of Denmark’s peaceful (and lasting) ‘revolution’ is drawn from the longer accounts in Bruce H. Kirmmse, Kierkegaard in Golden Age Denmark (Indiana University Press, 1990), pp. 64–8, and Joakim Garff, Søren Kierkegaard: A Biography, trans. Bruce Kirmmse (Princeton University Press, 2005), pp. 493–5.
‘the new ministry needs a war in order to stay in power ’: Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Volume 4: Journals NB–NB5, ed. and trans. Niels Jørgen Cappelørn, Alastair Hannay, David Kangas, Bruce H. Kirmmse, George Pattison, Vanessa Rumble and K. Brian Söderquist (Princeton University Press, 2011), p. 348: NB4, 123 (1848).
‘Out there everything is agitated ’: Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Volume 4: Journals NB–NB5, pp. 347–8: NB4, 118 (27 March, 1848).
There are paper, pens and ink in every room: See Niels Jørgen Cappelørn, Joakim Garff and Johnny Kondrup, Written Images: Søren Kierkegaard’s Journals, Notebooks, Booklets, Sheets, Scraps, and Slips of Paper, trans. Bruce H. Kirmmse (Princeton University Press, 2003), pp. 159–72; Encounters with Kierkegaard, ed. Bruce Kirmmse, trans. Bruce Kirmmse and Virginia Laursen (Princeton University Press, 1998), p. 112: here Tycho Spang recalls Kierkegaard’s ‘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.’
‘There is so much talk about wasting a life ’: S. Kierkegaard, The Sickness unto Death, ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton University Press, 1983), pp. 26–7.
‘Is despair an excellence or a defect?’: ibid, pp. 14–15.
‘Just as a physician might say ’: ibid, p. 22.
‘The greatest hazard of all, losing the self ’: ibid, pp. 32–4.
‘imagine a house ’: ibid, p. 43.
‘Very often the person in despair probably has a dim idea of his own state ’: ibid, p. 48.
‘I love my native land ’: Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Volume 5: Journals NB6–NB10, p. 101: NB7, 41 (1848).
‘That enormous productivity, so intense that it seems to me as if it must move stones ’: ibid, p. 95: NB7, 31 (1848).
‘She was especially gratified when she could get them peacefully into bed ’: Encounters with Kierkegaard, p. 153.
‘a spoiled and naughty boy ’: ibid, p. 228. This remark was reportedly made by a cousin of Hans Brøchner, who was a friend of Kierkegaard from his student days.
‘I never had the joy of being a child ’: Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Volume 5: Journals NB6–NB10, p. 211: NB9, 8 (January or February 1849).
‘His build was powerful ’: see Encounters with Kierkegaard, p. 151: this is from Henriette Lund’s account of Michael Pedersen Kierkegaard. See also descriptions by Peter Brun (ibid, p. 6) and Frederik Welding (ibid, p. 7).
‘Oh, how frightful it is when for a moment I think of the dark background of my life ’: Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Volume 5: Journals NB6–NB10, p. 166: NB8, 36 (November or December 1848).
tended the parish churchyard (kirkegaard): See Thorkild Andersen, ‘Kierkegaard – Slægten og Sædding’, Hardsyssels Aarbog, 27 (1933), p. 26; cited in English in Christopher B. Barnett, Kierkegaard, Pietism and Holiness (Ashgate, 2011), pp. 47–8.
By the close of the eighteenth century he had made a substantial fortune: see Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Volume 1: Journals AA–DD, ed. and trans. Niels Jørgen Cappelørn, Alastair Hannay, David Kangas, Bruce H. Kirmmse, George Pattison, Vanessa Rumble and K. Brian Söderquist (Princeton University Press, 2007), p. 533.
That was how Kierkegaard always knew his father: see Encounters with Kierkegaard, p. 3 – from Frederik Hammerich’s (b. 1809) autobiography Et Levnedsløb, vol. I (Forlagsbureaet i Kjøbenhavn, 1882), pp. 58–9.
‘very intriguing to hear the old man debate with the sons ’: see Encounters with Kierkegaard, p. 137 – from the account of Eline Heramb Boisen, who visited the Kierkegaard household several times in the winter of 1833–4.
Kierkegaard’s view of the world as a battlefield: on ‘martial music’, see S. Kierkegaard, Letters and Documents, ed. and trans. Henrik Rosenmeier (Princeton University Press, 2009), p. 124 – letter to Emil Boesen, 16 January 1842; S. Kierkegaard, Either/Or, Part 1, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton University Press, 1988), p. 349.
‘When I can’t sleep, I lie down and talk with my boys ’: see Encounters with Kierkegaard, p. 6. This account comes second- or third-hand from Peter Munthe Brun (b. 1813).
he did the family’s daily shopping himself: ibid, p. 3 – from Frederik Hammerich’s autobiography.
His own nature was free-spirited: see Letters and Documents, pp. 4–5 – Kierkegaard’s school report, written by his headmaster Michael Nielsen.
he ‘did not reveal his character in the way that young people usually do ’: see Encounters with Kierkegaard, p. 7 – from a letter written by Frederik Welding (b. 1811) to H. P. Barfod in 1869. On the clothes Kierkegaard wore as a boy, see Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks Volume 5: Journals NB6–NB10, p. 344: NB10, 153 (spring 1849).
‘to cloak this life with an outward existence of joie de vivre ’: Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Volume 5: Journals NB6–NB10, p. 259: NB9, 78 (1849); p. 166: NB8, 36 (winter 1848); pp. 368–9: NB10, 191 (spring 1849).
‘He made my childhood an unparalleled torture ’: Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Volume 4: Journals NB–NB5, pp. 401–2: NB5, 68 (May to July 1848).
‘I acquired such an anxiety about Christianity ’: Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Volume 5: Journals NB6–NB10, p. 166: NB8, 36 (winter 1848); p. 259: NB9, 78 (1849); pp. 368–9: NB10, 191 (spring 1849).
‘But under his “rustic cloak” manner he concealed an ardent imagination ’: S. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments / Johannes Climacus, or De omnibus dubitandum est, ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton University Press, 1985), p. 120f. In this passage from Johannes Climacus, the Danish phrase en enkelt Gang – here translated ‘once in a while’ – can also mean ‘on one occasion’. The virtual excursion with his father almost certainly occurred in Kierkegaard’s childhood at least once, since he refers to an imagined trip to Frederiksberg in an 1844 letter to his brother Peter Christian’s wife Henriette: see Letters and Documents, p. 174: ‘Often in my childhood I was not permitted by my father to walk out to Frederiksberg, but I walked hand in hand with him up and down the floor – to Frederiksberg.’ In an 1847 letter to Peter Christian, Kierkegaard wrote that ‘a curious thing about Father was that what he had most of, what one least expected, was imagination, albeit a melancholy imagination … However little I otherwise agreed with Father, in a few singular ideas we had an essential point of contact, and in such conversations Father was always almost impressed with me, for I could depict an idea with a lively imagination and pursue it with a daring consistency’: see Letters and Documents, p. 211.
The Mysterious Family: Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Volume 2: Journals EE–KK, ed. and trans. Niels Jørgen Cappelørn, Alastair Hannay, David Kangas, Bruce H. Kirmmse, George Pattison, Vanessa Rumble and K. Brian Söderquist (Princeton University Press, 2008), p. 174: JJ 147 (1843). For an intriguing philosophical and psychological exposition of Kierkegaard’s journal entry on ‘The Mysterious Family’, see George Pattison, ‘The Mysterious Family or Why Kierkegaard Never Wrote a Play: An Old Question Revisited’, in Kierkegaard and the Nineteenth Century Religious Crisis in Europe, ed. Roman Králik, Abrahim H. Khan, Peter Sajda, Jamie Turnbull and Andrew J. Burgess (Acta Kierkegaardiana, vol. 4, 2009), pp. 187–201.
‘A guilt must rest upon the entire family ’: Søren Kierkegaard’s Journals and Papers: Autobiographical, 1829–48, eds. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, assisted by Gregor Malantschuk (Indiana University Press, 1978), p. 141: Pap. II A 805, 806 (1838).
we first learn to love: Kierkegaard’s niece Henriette Lund once saw for herself how highly Kierkegaard esteemed the ability to love: ‘One day, when I met Uncle Søren in my early youth, he teased me by being unwilling to admit my right to have an opinion about some subject or other that was currently popular. In the ensuing debate, in which I attempted to demonstrate my dignity and maturity, there was just one argument that instantly overpowered him. I said “Yes, because I have learned to appreciate love.” With a changed expression, and with a serious tone of voice, he replied: “That is another matter. Then you are right. I realize now that you really are grown up!” I still remember it. It was as if he had taken off his hat and bowed to me with enormous respect’: Encounters with Kierkegaard, p. 170 – from Henriette Lund, Eringringer Fra Hjemmet (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1909).
No, a Christian’s task is to follow Jesus, to imitate him: see S. Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton University Press, 1991), 201–32.
Michael Pedersen helped to guide the Society’s financial affairs … he was regarded as one of the group’s most faithful members: in a letter dated 28 August 1838 (shortly after Michael Pedersen Kierkegaard’s death), the leader of the Copenhagen Society of Brethren wrote that, ‘Our society loses in him one of the most faithful members, both for the outer and for the inner … He has certainly done in the quiet more good than many have thought, who declare and take him for a miser … In him I lose a faithful brother in the true sense of the word, who at each opportunity told me his opinion openly, but in a very plain way, and who in our society’s affairs, which he covered with particular love and took to heart, has given us good advice for many a year.’ Quoted in Christopher B. Barnett, Kierkegaard, Pietism and Holiness (Ashgate, 2011), pp. 60–61.
‘We know we are sinners, great is our imperfection ’: from a discourse by J. C. Reuss, quoted in Barnett, Kierkegaard, Pietism and Holiness, p. 52.
Mynster’s presence ‘inspired reverence ’: see Andrew Hamilton, Sixteen Months in the Danish Isles, Vol. 2 (Richard Bentley, 1852), p. 187.
Michael Pedersen Kierkegaard went to Mynster for confession and communion: see Niels Jørgen Cappelørn, ‘Die ursprüngliche Unterbrechung’, in Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook 1996, ed. N. J. Cappelørn and Hermann Deuser (Walter de Gruyter, 1996), pp. 315–88.
So it was Mynster who confirmed Kierkegaard in the Church of Our Lady: on Kierkegaard’s confirmation in 1828 and his mature view of confirmation, see Niels Thulstrup, ‘Confirmation’, in Theological Concepts in Kierkegaard, ed. Niels Thulstrup and M. Mikulová Thulstrup (Reitzel, 1980), pp. 247–53.
Kierkegaard remembers how, when he was a boy, his father promised him a rix-dollar if he would read one of these sermons aloud: see Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Volume 5: Journals NB6–NB10, ed. and trans. Niels Jørgen Cappelørn, Alastair Hannay, David Kangas, Bruce H. Kirmmse, George Pattison, Joel D. S. Rasmussen, Vanessa Rumble and K. Brian Söderquist (Princeton University Press, 2012), p. 299: NB10, 59 (1849).
‘The most fashionable place of worship in Copenhagen ’: Hamilton, Sixteen Months in the Danish Isles, p. 180.
In 1834, following the death of his father-in-law: Mynster’s father-in-law died in 1830 and was replaced by Peter Erasmus Müller; Mynster then replaced him in 1834.
For Luther, it was words like these that expressed the clear certainty of faith: see Richard Rex, The Making of Martin Luther (Princeton University Press, 2017), for an analysis of certainty in Luther’s theology.
Yet for Kierkegaard they contain endless questions: Kierkegaard discussed this verse from Matthew several times in his authorship: see, for example, S. Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript to the Philosophical Crumbs, ed. and trans. Alastair Hannay (Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. 361, 367, as well as S. Kierkegaard, Christian Discourses / The Crisis and a Crisis in the Life of an Actress, ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton University Press, 2009).
‘The truth that divine governance embraces everything ’: J. P. Mynster, Betragtninger over de christelige Troeslærdomme [Observations upon the Doctrines of the Christian Faith], 3rd edn, vol. I (Deichmanns, 1846), p. 311; quoted in Bruce H. Kirmmse, Kierkegaard in Golden Age Denmark (Indiana University Press, 1990), p. 107.
‘certainty for the doubter, strength for the struggling, comfort for the sorrowful ’: J. P. Mynster, Prædikener paa alle Søn-og Hellig-Dage i Aaret, vol. 2 (3rd edn, Gyldendal, 1837), p. 403. For more discussion of this sermon and Kierkegaard’s response to it, see Christian Fink Tolstrup, ‘“Playing a Profane Game with Holy Things”: Understanding Kierkegaard’s Critical Encounter with Bishop Mynster’, in International Kierkegaard Commentary, Volume 20: Practice in Christianity, ed. Robert L. Perkins (Mercer University Press, 2004), pp. 245–74.
‘happiness and blessing ’: Mynster, Prædikener paa alle Søn-og Hellig-Dage i Aaret, p. 414.
‘Though he possessed the blessing, he was like a curse for everyone who came near him ’: S. Kierkegaard, Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits, ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton University Press, 1993), p. 254.
‘Christianity has been taken in vain, made too mild ’: see Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Volume 5: Journals NB6–NB10, p. 57: NB6, 74 (July or August 1848).
‘How quieting, how soothing – alas, and how much danger in this security!’: Christian Discourses, pp. 163–5.
On the first occasion he preached on Matthew 11:28: this first sermon was not documented, but it probably took place on 18 June 1847. See Niels Jørgen Cappelørn, ‘Søren Kierkegaard at Friday Communion in the Church of Our Lady’, trans. K. Brian Söderquist, in International Kierkegaard Commentary, Volume 18: Without Authority, ed. Robert L. Perkins (Mercer University Press, 2007), pp. 255–94.
‘I do not know what in particular troubles you ’: Christian Discourses, p. 266.
‘like a flautist entertaining himself ’: Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Volume 9: Journals NB26–NB30, ed. and trans. Niels Jørgen Cappelørn, Alastair Hannay, Bruce H. Kirmmse, David D. Possen, Joel D. S. Rasmussen and Vanessa Rumble (Princeton University Press, 2017), p. 419: NB30, 41 (1854).
his ‘exceedingly weak but wonderfully expressive voice’: P. C. Zahle, Til Erindring om Johan Georg Hamann og Søren Aabye Kierkegaard (Copenhagen, 1856), pp. 9–10, quoted in Cappelørn, ‘Søren Kierkegaard at Friday Communion in the Church of Our Lady’. Cappelørn suggests that Zahle did not hear Kierkegaard’s first sermon in Vor Frue Kirke, and thinks it ‘more likely that he heard Kierkegaard preach in the Citadel Church on Sunday May 18th, 1851’: see ibid, pp. 285–6.
‘openly before everyone’s eyes, and yet secretly, as a stranger ’: Christian Discourses, pp. 269–70. This is from the second Friday communion discourse that Kierkegaard preached in Vor Frue Kirke, on 27 August 1847.
‘with my father in mind I would very much like to do it ’: see Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Volume 4: Journals NB–NB5, ed. and trans. Niels Jørgen Cappelørn, Alastair Hannay, David Kangas, Bruce H. Kirmmse, George Pattison, Joel Rasmussen, Vanessa Rumble and K. Brian Söderquist (Princeton University Press, 2011), p. 263: NB3, 36 (November or December, 1847).
‘never been closer to stopping being an author ’: Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Volume 5: Journals NB6–NB10, p. 262: NB9, 79 (9 February 1849): ‘Stopping being an author was an idea that occurred to me from my earliest days; I have often said that there was still a place available for the author who knew when to stop. In fact, I actually had already thought of stopping as early as Either/Or. But I was never closer to stopping than I was with the publication of Christian Discourses [in April 1848].’
‘Let us pay tribute to Bishop Mynster ’: see Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Volume 4: Journals NB–NB5, p. 252: NB3, 16 (November or December 1847).
he thinks that, for Jesus, becoming a monk or a hermit was a temptation: see Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Volume 5: Journals NB6–NB10, p. 164: NB8, 29 (November or December 1848).
he wonders whether Jesus wanted his followers: see Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Volume 4: Journals NB–NB5, p. 377: NB5, 14 (May to July 1848).
‘an extremely unhappy man ’: see Practice in Christianity, p. 275; Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Volume 5: Journals NB6–NB10, p. 57: NB6, 74 (July or August 1848).
‘alas, I would rather write a folio than publish a page ’: Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Volume 5: Journals NB6–NB10, ed. and trans. Niels Jørgen Cappelørn, Alastair Hannay, David Kangas, Bruce H. Kirmmse, George Pattison, Joel D. S. Rasmussen, Vanessa Rumble and K. Brian Söderquist (Princeton University Press, 2012), p. 19: NB6, 24 (July or August 1848).
this ‘idolized’ actress learned that her fame was ‘empty’: S. Kierkegaard, Christian Discourses / The Crisis and a Crisis in the Life of an Actress, ed. trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton University Press, 2009), pp. 304–5.
‘When it comes to the feminine ’: ibid.
When Luise Pätges gave her first performance as Juliet: on the life of Johanne Luise Heiberg and her connection to Kierkegaard, see Katalin Nun, Women of the Danish Golden Age: Literature, Theater and the Emancipation of Women (Museum Tusculanum Press, 2013), pp. 62–84.
He became a familiar figure in Reitzel’s bookshop: see Niels Thulstrup, The Copenhagen of Kierkegaard, ed. Marie Mikulová Thulstrup, trans. Ruth Mach-Zagal (Reitzel, 1986), pp. 41–60; Encounters with Kierkegaard, ed. Bruce Kirmmse, trans. Bruce Kirmmse and Virginia Laursen (Princeton University Press, 1998), p. 110–11: a translated extract from Otto B. Wroblewski’s Ti Aar i C. A. Reitzels Boglade [Ten Years in C. A. Reitzel’s Bookshop] (1889). Wroblewski, a bookseller at Reitzel’s shop from 1843 to 1853, recalled that ‘The peculiar figure of Søren Kierkegaard is the sort one does not forget even if one has seen it only once – even more unlikely that we would, we who saw him so regularly in the bookshop. He wasn’t very forthcoming. With Reitzel, of course, he spoke only about press business, and with us at the bookshop only about buying books. But I, at any rate, was strangely moved by a friendly smile from the deep blue, melancholy eyes with which he could look at you, a look that occasionally was coupled with a satirical line near his mouth when a remark amused him.’
he took his new books, in their plain paper covers: many of the books Kierkegaard owned are now in the Kierkegaard Archive at the Royal Danish Library in Copenhagen. A beautifully illustrated account of Kierkegaard as a lover and collector of books is presented in Niels Jørgen Cappelørn, Gert Posselt and Bent Rohde, Tekstspejle: Om Søren Kierkegaard som bogtilrettelægger, boggiver og bogsamler (Rosendahls Forlag, 2002), pp. 105–219. On Kierkegaard’s preference for Møller’s bookbinding, see Niels Jørgen Cappleørn, Joakim Garff and Johnny Kondrup, Written Images: Søren Kierkegaard’s Journals, Notebooks, Booklets, Sheets, Scraps, and Slips of Paper, trans. Bruce H. Kirmmse (Princeton University Press, 2003), pp. 163–4.
‘the demon debater from the North ’: see Thorkild C. Lyby, ‘Peter Christian Kierkegaard: A Man with a Difficult Family Heritage’, in Kierkegaard and His Danish Contemporaries, Tome II: Theology, ed. Jon Stewart (Ashgate, 2009), pp. 189–209.
every man, the poet Novalis urged in 1798, ‘should become an artist ’: Novalis, Glauben und Liebe [Faith and Love] (1798), in Novalis Schriften, ed. Paul Kluckhohn and Richard Samuel, vol. 2 (Kohlhammer, 1981), p. 497. Novalis was the pseudonym of Friedrich von Hardenberg.
Modern life had become ‘prosaic’ and ‘irreligious’: Henrik Steffens, Indledning til philosophiske Forelæsninger [Introduction to Philosophical Lectures] (Gyldendals Trane-Klassikere, 1968), pp. 6, 134–5, 143; quoted in Bruce H. Kirmmse, Kierkegaard in Golden Age Denmark (Indiana University Press, 1990), pp. 82–4.
‘the development of man’s capacity for feeling ’: Friedrich Schiller, Essays, ed. Walter Hinderer and Daniel O. Dahlstrom (Continuum, 1993), pp. 107, 131–2.
‘a feeling that is not sensual, but spiritual ’: Friedrich von Schlegel, Dialogue on Poetry and Literary Aphorisms, trans. Ernst Behler and Roman Struc (Pennsylvania State University Press, 1968), p. 99.
the ‘unconscious poetry that moves in the plant’: ibid, p. 54.
a ‘feeling for that eternal and holy being ’: Friedrich Schleiermacher, On Religion: Speeches to its Cultured Despisers, trans. Richard Crouter (Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 3.
‘the quiet disappearance of one’s whole existence in the immeasurable ’: ibid, p. 23
‘strive to awaken the slumbering kernel of a better humanity ’: ibid, p. 7.
everything ‘is in God’: see The Collected Works of Spinoza, vol. I, trans. Edwin Curley (Princeton University Press, 1985), pp. 420–24 (Ethics, Part I, Proposition 15). Spinoza is more properly described as a panentheist (everything is in God) than as a pantheist (everything is God) – but pantheism is the version of Spinozism that the Romantics seized upon.
H. C. Ørsted pursued research into ‘the Spirit in Nature’: Aanden i Naturen [The Spirit in Nature] was the title of the collection of papers H. C. Ørsted published just before his death in 1851. He discovered electro-magnetism in 1820. On Kierkegaard’s relationship to H. C. Ørsted, see Bjarne Troelsen, ‘Hans Christian Ørsted: Søren Kierkegaard and The Spirit in Nature,’ in Kierkegaard and His Danish Contemporaries, Tome I: Philosophy, Politics and Social Theory, ed. Jon Stewart (Ashgate, 2009), pp. 215–27.
in 1833 Heiberg set out his own manifesto: see Heiberg’s On the Significance of Philosophy for the Present Age and Other Texts, trans. and ed. Jon Stewart (Reitzel, 2005), which follows the scholarly debate prompted by Heiberg’s essay.
his philosophy professors Poul Møller and Frederik Christian Sibbern: on Kierkegaard’s relationships with these two important philosophy teachers, see Finn Gredal Jensen, ‘Poul Martin Møller: Kierkegaard and the Confidant of Socrates’, and Carl Henrik Koch, ‘Frederik Christian Sibbern: “the lovable, remarkable thinker, Councilor Sibbern” and “the political Simple-Peter Sibbern”’ – both in Kierkegaard and His Danish Contemporaries, Tome I, pp. 101–67 and 229–60.
an ‘unforgettable’ teacher: in his memoirs, Hans Lassen Martensen remembers ‘the genial, unforgettable Poul Møller, to whom we looked up with admiration, and who, without trying, exerted such a fruitful influence on us’, in Af mit Levnet [From My Life], vol. 1 (Gyldendal, 1882), p. 16.
When she confided her ‘deep indignation’ at how Kierkegaard had ‘mistreated her soul’: see Encounters with Kierkegaard, ed. Bruce Kirmmse, trans. Bruce Kirmmse and Virginia Laursen (Princeton University Press, 1998), pp. 213–16.
‘the enthusiasm of my youth ’: S. Kierkegaard, The Concept of Anxiety, trans. Reidar Thomte (Princeton University Press, 1981), p. 178.
He wrote to Regine of the ‘genie of the ring’ within him: see S. Kierkegaard, Letters and Documents, ed. and trans. Henrik Rosenmeier (Princeton University Press, 2009), p. 66 – letter to Regine Olsen, 28 October 1840. On Kierkegaard’s connection to Oehlenschläger, see Bjarne Troelsen, ‘Adam Oehlenschläger: Kierkegaard and the Treasure Hunter of Immediacy’, in Kierkegaard and his Danish Contemporaries, Tome III: Literature, Drama and Aesthetics, ed. Jon Stewart (Ashgate, 2009), pp. 255–71. On the figure of Aladdin in Kierkegaard’s own writing, see Jennifer Veninga, ‘Aladdin: The Audacity of Wildest Wishes’, in Katalin Nun and Jon Stewart (eds.), Kierkegaard’s Literary Figures and Motifs, Tome I: Agamemnon to Guadalquiver (Ashgate, 2014), pp. 31–40.
‘Never in her life had she seen a human being so deeply distressed ’: Encounters with Kierkegaard, p. 196: from Martensen’s autobiography Af mit Levnet, vol. I, p. 79.
His first literary journal entries were on the master-thief: on Kierkegaard’s interest in the master-thief, see F. Nassim Bravo Jordan, ‘The Master-Thief: A One-Man Army against the Established Order’, in Katalin Nun and Jon Stewart (eds.), Kierkegaard’s Literary Figures and Motifs, Tome II: Gulliver to Zerlina (Ashgate, 2015), pp. 111–20.
One day Kierkegaard tried out this ‘youthful, romantic enthusiasm’: Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Volume 1: Journals AA–DD, ed. and trans. Niels Jørgen Cappelørn, Alastair Hannay, David Kangas, Bruce H. Kirmmse, George Pattison, Vanessa Rumble and K. Brian Söderquist (Princeton University Press, 2007), pp. 128–30: BB 42 (1837).
‘I have seen the sea turn blue-grey ’: ibid, pp. 7–8: AA 4 (1835).
‘for I could spare it, and she needed it ’: ibid, p. 9: AA 5 (1835).
‘the church bells call to prayer ’: ibid, p. 12: AA 7 (25 July 1835).
Still in character as a Romantic poet, Kierkegaard took an evening walk: see ibid, p. 9: AA 6 (July 29, 1835).
‘I have often stood there and pondered my past life ’: ibid, pp. 9–10: AA 6 (29 July 1835); citation abridged.
‘What I really need is to get clear about what I must do ’: ibid, pp. 19–20: AA 12 (1835); citation abridged.
Kierkegaard explored themes from the old legend of Faust: on Kierkegaard’s interest in Faust, see Leonardo F. Lisi, ‘Faust: The Seduction of Doubt’, in Nun and Stewart (eds.), Kierkegaard’s Literary Figures and Motifs, Tome I, pp. 209–28.
‘the unhappy relativity in everything ’: Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Volume 1: Journals AA–DD, p. 223: DD 30 (14 July 1837).
‘Søren these days is perhaps more than ever weighed down by brooding ’: see Encounters with Kierkegaard, pp. 142–3 – from P. C. Kierkegaard’s journal, August 1837.
‘If an author who neither has a considerable fund of ideas nor is very industrious ’: Christian Discourses / The Crisis and a Crisis in the Life of an Actress, p. 316.
nor does he want people to think that he started out as a daring aesthete, and then became a religious writer: see Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Volume 5: Journals NB6–NB10, ed. and trans. Niels Jørgen Cappelørn, Alastair Hannay, David Kangas, Bruce H. Kirmmse, George Pattison, Joel D. Rasmussen, Vanessa Rumble and K. Brian Söderquist (Princeton University Press, 2012), pp. 17–18: NB6, 24 (July or August 1848); pp. 45–6: NB6, 64 (July or August 1848); pp. 56–7: NB6, 74, 75 (July or August 1848); p. 66: NB6, 87 (July or August 1848).
he tries to console himself with the thought of Rasmus Nielsen’s friendship and loyalty: for an excellent summary of Kierkegaard’s complex relationship with Nielsen, see Jon Stewart, ‘Rasmus Nielsen: From the Object of “Prodigious Concern” to a “Windbag”’, in Kierkegaard and His Danish Contemporaries, Tome I: Philosophy, Politics and Social Theory, ed. Jon Stewart (Ashgate, 2009), pp. 179–213.
‘But what is the worst thing about this is that I have managed to get the whole matter so muddled in reflection ’: Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Volume 5: Journals NB6–NB10, p. 24: NB6, 28 (July or August 1848).
‘it is reflection that wants to make me extraordinary ’: ibid, p. 19: NB6, 24 (July or August 1848).
Orla Lehmann: on Kierkegaard’s relationship to Lehmann, see Julie K. Allen, ‘Orla Lehmann: Kierkegaard’s Political Alter-Ego’, in Kierkegaard and His Danish Contemporaries, Tome I, pp. 85–100.
‘Modern philosophy is purely subjunctive ’: Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Volume 1: Journals AA–DD, ed. and trans. Niels Jørgen Cappelørn, Alastair Hannay, David Kangas, Bruce H. Kirmmse, George Pattison, Vanessa Rumble and K. Brian Söderquist (Princeton University Press, 2007), p. 230: DD 51 (September 1837); p. 233: DD 62 (7 October 1837).
he was casting about for a new project: see ibid, p. 231: DD 55 (20 September 1837), p. 232: DD 58 (25 September 1837), pp. 240–41: DD 87, 90 (7 and 10 December 1837).
‘Why I so much prefer autumn to spring ’: ibid, p. 236: DD 74 (29 October 1837).
‘Again such a long time has passed ’: ibid, p. 243: DD 96 (April 1838).
Hans Christian Andersen’s new novel: the literary novel was still a relatively new genre in Denmark in the 1830s, and H. C. Andersen was one of a few authors who – encouraged by the success of translations of Walter Scott’s historical novels – tried their hand at prose fiction. On Kierkegaard’s relationship to Andersen, see Lone Koldtoft, ‘Hans Christian Andersen: Andersen was Just an Excuse’, in Kierkegaard and His Danish Contemporaries, Tome III: Literature, Drama and Aesthetics, ed. Jon Stewart (Ashgate, 2009), pp. 1–32.
the heavy, convoluted prose: Kierkegaard’s schoolfriend H. P. Holst later described Kierkegaard’s prose style as a ‘Latin–Danish’ full of participles and complicated sentences, and claimed to have helped Kierkegaard rewrite the review of Only a Fiddler: see S. Kierkegaard, Early Polemical Writings, ed. and trans. Julia Watkin (Princeton University Press, 2009), p. xxxi.
‘My father died on Wednesday, the 8th, at 2:00 a.m.’: Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Volume 1: Journals AA–DD, p. 249: DD 126 (11 August 1838).
‘Our opinions nearly always differ and we are perpetually in conflict ’: Early Polemical Writings, p. 55.
‘You know very well, said he, that I consider writing books to be the most ridiculous thing a person can do ’: ibid, p. 57.
‘an egg that needs warmth ’: ibid, p. 81.
‘for genius is not a rush candle that goes out in a puff of air ’: ibid, p. 88.
‘A life-view is more than experience ’: ibid, p. 76.
‘It is only this dead and transfigured personality ’: ibid, pp. 75–85.
he found it ‘difficult to read with its heavy Hegelian style’: see Encounters with Kierkegaard, ed. Bruce Kirmmse, trans. Bruce Kirmmse and Virginia Laursen (Princeton University Press, 1998), p. 28.
‘an individual depressed by the world ’: see Early Polemical Writings, pp. 202–4.
Kierkegaard’s preaching was judged to be: see S. Kierkegaard, Letters and Documents, ed. and trans. Henrik Rosenmeier (Princeton University Press, 2009), pp. 19–20 – from the records of the Pastoral Seminary, winter semester 1840/41. On the pastoral seminary and Kierkegaard’s time there, see Niels Thulstrup and Marie Mikulová Thulstrup, Kierkegaard and the Church in Denmark, trans. Frederick H. Cryer (Reitzel, 1984), pp. 107–11.
He focused his critique of Romanticism on Friedrich von Schlegel’s experimental novel: on Kierkegaard’s analysis of Lucinde, see Fernando Manuel Ferreira da Silva, ‘Lucinde: “To live poetically is to live infinitely”, or Kierkegaard’s Concept of Irony as Portrayed in his Analysis of Friedrich Schlegel’s Work’, in Katalin Nun and Jon Stewart (eds.), Kierkegaard’s Literary Figures and Motifs, Tome II: Gulliver to Zerlina (Ashgate, 2015), pp. 75–83.
‘Just as scientists maintain that there is no true science without doubt ’: S. Kierkegaard, The Concept of Irony, with Continual Reference to Socrates, ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton University Press, 1992), p. 326.
Kierkegaard’s examiners: see Encounters with Kierkegaard, pp. 29–32 – from the archives of the University of Copenhagen.
the magister degree: Danish ‘Magister’ degrees became doctoral degrees in the 1850s.
‘The only thing I can say I miss now and then are our colloquia ’: Letters and Documents, p. 102 – letter to Emil Boesen, 14 December 1841.
‘I do not turn her into a poetic subject ’: ibid, p. 93 – letter to Emil Boesen, 16 November 1841.
‘In the course of these recent events my soul has received a needed baptism ’: ibid, p. 93 – letter to Emil Boesen, 16 November 1841.
‘Whether my soul is too egotistical or too great ’: ibid, p. 95 – letter to Emil Boesen, 16 November 1841.
He sent Henriette a sweet, funny letter: ibid, pp. 100–101 – letter to Henriette Lund, 13 December 1841.
‘that her family hates me is good ’: ibid, p. 102 – letter to Emil Boesen, 14 December 1841.
In his letter to Sibbern he became a deferential, diligent student: ibid, p. 106 – letter to F. C. Sibbern, 15 December 1841.
the big dogs which pulled carriages transporting milk: ibid, p. 99 – letter to Carl Lund, 8 December 1841.
Wilhelm, aged ten, received an elegant letter: ibid, p. 110 – letter to Wilhelm Lund, autumn 1841.
‘We especially tried to cheer ourselves up ’: ibid, p. 111 – letter to Michael Lund, 28 December 1841.
‘just write freely about whatever occurs to you ’: ibid, pp. 112–13 – letter to Carl Lund, 31 December 1841.
‘I hold my life poetically in my hand ’: ibid, pp. 121–2 – letter to Emil Boesen, 16 January 1842.
‘Cold, some insomnia, frayed nerves ’: ibid, pp. 134–5 – letter to Emil Boesen, 6 February 1842.
‘My dear Emil, Schelling talks endless nonsense ’: ibid, p. 139 – letter to Emil Boesen, 27 February 1842.
‘An inexplicable presentiment took me there ’: Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Volume 5: Journals NB6–NB105, p. 83: NB7, 10 (August 1848).
‘At some point I must give a clear explanation of myself as an author ’ ibid, p. 50: NB6, 69 (July or August 1848).
‘I have been brought up and developed in the process of my work ’: ibid, pp. 48–9, 56: NB6, 66, 74 (July or August 1848).
‘How often haven’t I had happen what has just now happened to me again?’: ibid, p. 47: NB6, 65 (July or August 1848).
the spiritual life of ‘the single individual … diametrically opposite to politics ’: S. Kierkegaard, The Point of View, ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton University Press, 2009), p. 121.
‘Now I can see my way to writing ’: Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Volume 5: Journals NB6–NB10, ed. and trans. Niels Jørgen Cappelørn, Alastair Hannay, David Kangas, Bruce H. Kirmmse, George Pattison, Joel D. S. Rasmussen, Vanessa Rumble and K. Brian Söderquist (Princeton University Press, 2012), p. 85: NB7, 13 (late August or early September 1848).
‘Christianity is not a doctrine ’: ibid, p. 39: NB6, 56 (July or August 1848).
‘every human being is equally near to God ’: ibid, p. 45: NB6, 63 (July or August 1848).
‘Compel a person to an opinion, a conviction, a belief – in all eternity, that I cannot do ’: The Point of View, pp. 47, 52, 50.
the kind of reader who ‘thinks he is a Christian’: ibid, p. 54.
‘there is nothing that requires as gentle a treatment as the removal of an illusion ’: ibid, p. 43.
‘not to comprehend Christianity, but to comprehend that they cannot comprehend it ’: Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Volume 5: Journals NB6–NB10, p. 70: NB6, 93 (July or August 1848).
‘One does not begin directly with what one wishes to communicate ’: The Point of View, p. 54.
‘One can deceive a person out of what is true ’: ibid, p. 53.
‘the world has a thousand evasions and illusions ’: Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Volume 5: Journals NB6–NB10, p. 45: NB6, 63 (July or August 1848).
‘Life isn’t like a romantic novel ’: S. Kierkegaard, Either/Or, Part I, ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton University Press, 1988), p. 45.
‘Marry or do not marry, you will regret it either way ’: ibid, pp. 38–9.
‘I have often sat beside a little running stream ’: S. Kierkegaard, Either/Or, Part II, ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton University Press, 1988), p. 144.
‘earnestness of spirit … you will miss out on the highest ’: ibid, pp. 6, 168.
‘Writing in the wake of the long revolutionary struggle in Haiti ’: see Susan Buck-Morss, Hegel, Haiti, and Universal History (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2009).
‘My mind roars like a turbulent sea in the storms of passion ’: Either/Or, Part I, pp. 324–5.
‘There I go on Saturdays to prepare my sermon, and everything widens out before me ’: Either/Or, Part II, p. 338.
Another powerful figure was Henrik Nicolai Clausen: on H. N. Clausen and Kierkegaard’s relationship to him, see Hugh S. Pyper, ‘Henrik Nicolai Clausen: The Voice of Urbane Rationalism’, in Kierkegaard and His Danish Contemporaries, Tome II: Theology, ed. Jon Stewart (Ashgate, 2009), pp. 41–8.
‘Grundtvig looks on the development of Christian understanding ’: Søren Kierkegaard’s Journals and Papers: Autobiographical, 1829–48, ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, assisted by Gregor Malantschuk (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978), p. 19: Pap. I A 62 (1 June 1835).
standing for election to Denmark’s Constitutional Assembly: In October 1848 Grundtvig won a seat on Denmark’s Constitutional Assembly, where he sat alongside his old adversary Clausen, who was one of the unelected members of the Assembly appointed by the Crown. On Kierkegaard’s relationship to Grundtvig, see Anders Holm, ‘Nicolai Frederik Severin Grundtvig: The Matchless Giant’, in Kierkegaard and His Danish Contemporaries, Tome II, pp. 95–151.
‘Every once in a while a religious enthusiast appears ’: The Point of View, pp. 47, 42.
‘Perhaps my voice does not possess enough strength and heartiness to penetrate to your innermost thought ’: Either/Or Part II, p. 354.
‘One must imagine what it is like to have to have a newspaper ready ’: Encounters with Kierkegaard, ed. Bruce Kirmmse, trans. Bruce Kirmmse and Virginia Laursen (Princeton University Press, 1998), p. 56 – this is from Hother Ploug, son and biographer of Carl Ploug: see Carl Ploug. Hans Liv og Gerning, vol. I (1813– 48), pp. 110ff. On Kierkegaard’s relationship to Giødvad, see Andrea Scaramuccia, ‘Jens Finsteen Giødwad: An Amiable Friend and a Despicable Journalist’, in Kierkegaard and His Danish Contemporaries, Tome I: Philosophy, Politics and Social Theory, ed. Jon Stewart (Ashgate, 2009), pp. 13–33.
‘I think that no book has caused such a stir … all holy feelings ’: see Encounters with Kierkegaard, pp. 57–8.
‘there is much that must be forgotten’: see S. Kierkegaard, Discourses at the Communion on Fridays, trans. Sylvia Walsh (Indiana University Press, 2011), p. 119f.
‘My listener, you, to whom my discourse is addressed!’: ibid, p. 125f.
‘When the sea exerts all its might ’: S. Kierkegaard, The Sickness unto Death, ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton University Press, 1983), p. 82, and see also pp. 14, 49, 131; S. Kierkegaard, Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses, ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton University Press, 1992), p. 399; S. Kierkegaard, Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits, ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton University Press, 2009), p. 121.
he leased another ‘fine and expensive apartment’: Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Volume 5: Journals NB6–NB10, ed. and trans. Niels Jørgen Cappelørn, Alastair Hannay, David Kangas, Bruce H. Kirmmse, George Pattison, Joel D. S. Rasmussen, Vanessa Rumble and K. Brian Söderquist (Princeton University Press, 2012), pp. 144–5: NB7, 114 (September to November 1848); see also pp. 450–51.
‘when all the furniture of the town is exchanging quarters ’: see Andrew Hamilton, Sixteen Months in the Danish Isles, vol. 2 (Richard Bentley, 1852), p. 170.
‘Here, too, Governance came to my assistance ’: Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Volume 5: Journals NB6–NB10, ed. and trans. Niels Jørgen Cappelørn, Alastair Hannay, David Kangas, Bruce H. Kirmmse, George Pattison, Joel D. S. Rasmussen, Vanessa Rumble and K. Brian Söderquist (Princeton University Press, 2012), p. 145: NB7, 114 (September to November 1848).
‘What is most important often seems so insignificant ’: S. Kierkegaard, The Point of View, ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton University Press, 2009), pp. 36–7.
that single individual: see ibid, pp. 37, 69.
P. G. Philipsen, who ran a fairly new bookshop: see Niels Thulstrup, The Copenhagen of Kierkegaard, ed. Marie Mikulová Thulstrup, trans. Ruth Mach-Zagal (Reitzel, 1981), pp. 50–51. Philipsen published Kierkegaard’s dissertation On the Concept of Irony with Continual Reference to Socrates in 1841, and five collections of Kierkegaard’s discourses during the 1840s.
One sermon was on ‘The Expectancy of Faith’: ‘The Expectancy of Faith’ is based on Galatians 3: 23–end, and ‘Every Good and Every Perfect Gift’ on James 1: 17–22. See Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses, pp. 1–48.
‘that single individual whom with joy and gratitude I call my reader ’: ibid, p. 5.
‘Quite strange, really. I had decided to change that little preface ’: Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Volume 2: Journals EE–KK, ed. and trans. Niels Jørgen Cappelørn, Alastair Hannay, David Kangas, Bruce H. Kirmmse, George Pattison, Vanessa Rumble and K. Brian Söderquist (Princeton University Press, 2008), p. 157: JJ 93 (April 1843).
‘I have a room looking out on the water’: ibid, p. 162: JJ 109 (10 May 1843).
‘But the owner has married and therefore I am living like a hermit ’: S. Kierkegaard, Letters and Documents, ed. and trans. Henrik Rosenmeier (Princeton University Press, 2009), pp. 151–2 – letter to Emil Boesen, 15 May 1843.
Since they parted he had prayed for her every day, often twice a day: See Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Volume 3: Notebooks 1–15, ed. and trans. Niels Jørgen Cappelørn, Alastair Hannay, David Kangas, Bruce H. Kirmmse, George Pattison, Vanessa Rumble and K. Brian Söderquist (Princeton University Press, 2010), p. 435: NB15, 4 (August to November 1849).
‘better coffee than in Copenhagen, more newspapers, excellent service ’: S. Kierkegaard, Letters and Documents, p. 97 – letter to P. J. Spang, 18 November 1841.
‘When one does not have any particular business in life, as I do not ’: ibid, p. 151 – letter to Emil Boesen, 15 May 1843.
He used a notebook, labelled ‘Philosophica’: this is Notebook 13, which seems to date from December 1842, though in 1846 Kierkegaard added notes on Spinoza; see Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Volume 3: Notebooks 1–15, pp. 731–9. The notes from Tenneman’s Geschichte der Philosophie continue in Notebook 14 (see ibid, pp. 767–8), which dates from the first months of 1843, and in Journal JJ (see Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Volume 2: Journals EE–KK, pp. 453–66), part of which was written during the spring of 1843.
a series of unanswered questions: see Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Volume 3: Notebooks 1–15, pp. 409–11.
‘The secret of all existence: movement ’: ibid, p. 307: NB13, 34.
his small, slanting hand: Kierkegaard’s handwriting was unusually variable: it changed not only over the years, but over the course of single texts. Annelise Garde provides a graphologist’s analysis of Kierkegaard’s handwriting (in Danish, with an English summary and some interesting specimens), in ‘Grafologisk undersøgelse af Søren Kierkegaards håndskrift i årene 1831–1855’, Kierkegaardiana, 10 (1977), pp. 200–238.
‘The question of repetition will play a very important role in modern philosophy ’: S. Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling / Repetition, ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton University Press, 1983), pp. 131, 148.
the new tunnel under the Thames: the first tunnel under the River Thames opened on 25 May 1843, just before Kierkegaard left Berlin.
‘the possibility and meaning of repetition ’: Fear and Trembling / Repetition, p. 150.
‘Gendarmenmarkt is certainly the most beautiful square in Berlin ’: ibid, pp. 151–2.
‘My mind was sterile, my troubled imagination constantly conjured up ’: ibid, pp. 169–70.
‘handsome appearance, large glowing eyes, and flippant air ’: ibid, pp. 133–5.
‘It was obvious that he was going to be unhappy ’: ibid, p. 136.
‘A poetic creativity awakened in him ’: ibid, pp. 137–8.
‘Transform yourself into a contemptible person ’: ibid, p. 142.
‘for there was no trace of anything really stirring ’: the first part of this passage was deleted from the margin of the manuscript, and did not make it into the published version. See ibid, pp. 184, 277.
‘Humanly speaking I have been fair to her ’: Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Volume 2: Journals EE–KK, pp. 164–5: JJ 115 (17 May 1843).
‘quite irritable, like any melancholic ’: Fear and Trembling / Repetition, p. 180.
‘I am at the end of my tether. My whole being screams in self-contradiction ’: ibid, p. 201.
‘Make me fit to be a husband ’: ibid, p. 214.
That year he noted in his journal Socrates’s ‘very fine’ remark: see Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Volume 2: Journals EE–KK, p. 169: JJ 131 (1843).
‘the main thing is that one is truly forthright with God ’: ibid, p. 171: JJ 141 (1843).
‘Because I would otherwise die ’: Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Volume 5: Journals NB6–NB10, p. 189: NB8, 87 (November or December 1848).
‘are too wordy for me ’: ibid, p. 25: NB6, 29 (July or August 1848).
‘I am still very exhausted, but I have almost reached my goal ’: Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Volume 5: Journals NB6– NB10, ed. and trans. Niels Jørgen Cappelørn, Alastair Hannay, David Kangas, Bruce H. Kirmmse, George Pattison, Joel D. S. Rasmussen, Vanessa Rumble and K. Brian Söderquist (Princeton University Press, 2012), p. 98: NB7, 36 (August to November 1848).
‘After becoming an author, I actually have never once experienced ’: S. Kierkegaard, The Point of View, ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton University Press, 2009), p. 75.
‘Then I become completely calm ’: ibid, pp. 71–3.
‘the world, if it is not evil, is mediocre … this humanness ’: ibid, pp. 71–2, 88.
‘It was my plan as soon as Either/Or was published ’: ibid, p. 162.
‘I understood that my task was to do penance ’: ibid, p. 162.
he has felt such a ‘driving need’ for penance: see Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Volume 4: Journals NB–NB5, ed. and trans. Niels Jørgen Cappelørn, Alastair Hannay, David Kangas, Bruce H. Kirmmse, George Pattison, Joel D. S. Rasmussen, Vanessa Rumble and K. Brian Söderquist (Princeton University Press, 2011), pp. 139–40: NB2, 9 (1847).
‘this is how I serve Christianity ’: Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Volume 5: Journals NB6–NB10, p. 44: NB6, 62 (July or August 1848).
‘I showed the girl my confidence in her ’: Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Volume 2: Journals EE–KK, ed. and trans. Niels Jørgen Cappelørn, Alastair Hannay, David Kangas, Bruce H. Kirmmse, George Pattison, Vanessa Rumble and K. Brian Söderquist (Princeton University Press, 2008), p. 174: JJ 145 (1843). The entry was deciphered by modern scholars using a microscope.
‘An individual with a sense of humour meets a girl ’: ibid, p. 176: JJ 155 (1843).
‘It amused him every day to see the sugar melt ’: Encounters with Kierkegaard, ed. Bruce Kirmmse, trans. Bruce Kirmmse and Virginia Laursen (Princeton University Press, 1998), p. 208. On Israel Levin, see also Niels Jørgen Cappelørn, Joakim Garff and Johnny Kondrup, Written Images: Søren Kierkegaard’s Journals, Notebooks, Booklets, Sheets, Scraps, and Slips of Paper, trans. Bruce Kirmmse (Princeton University Press, 2003), pp. 150–58.
Kierkegaard ‘did not cut a particularly good figure on a horse ’: Encounters with Kierkegaard, p. 232 – from Hans Brøchner’s recollections on Kierkegaard, written in 1871–2.
True Christianity … went through more than a hundred editions: see Christopher B. Barnett, Kierkegaard, Pietism and Holiness (Ashgate, 2011), p. 12.
Arndt urged generations of Protestant Christians to purify their souls: see Johann Arndt, True Christianity, trans. Peter Erb (London: SPCK, 1979), pp. 70–82 and passim.
‘A Christian is truly in the world but not of the world ’: ibid, p. 75. On Kierkegaard’s reading of Arndt, see Joseph Ballon, ‘Johann Arndt: The Pietist Impulse in Kierkegaard and Seventeenth-Century Lutheran Devotional Literature’, in Kierkegaard and the Renaissance and Modern Traditions, Tome II: Theology, ed. Jon Stewart (Ashgate, 2009), pp. 21–30.
Within his lifetime Copenhagen has acquired the features of urban life: see George Pattison, ‘Poor Paris!’ (Walter de Gruyter, 1998), pp. 21–46.
‘a variety of black silk capes ’: see Niels Thulstrup, The Copenhagen of Kierkegaard, ed. Marie Mikulová Thulstrup, trans. Ruth Mach-Zagal (Reitzel, 1981), pp. 53–8. In her little book Lif i Norden [Life in Scandinavia], the Swedish writer Fredrika Bremer recounted her experience of walking along Østergade in 1849, and described the street as ‘a kind of inferno’, ‘entirely hostile to humankind’.
he recalls how he played the role of flâneur on the streets of Copenhagen: see The Point of View, p. 61.
‘nothing other than a very talented and well-read feuilleton writer ’: see George Pattison, Kierkegaard, Religion, and the Nineteenth-Century Crisis of Culture (Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 30–49.
‘No Grand Inquisitor has such dreadful torments in readiness as anxiety has ’: S. Kierkegaard, The Concept of Anxiety, ed. and trans. Reidar Thomte (Princeton University Press, 1981), pp. 115–16.
‘And this is the wonderful thing about life ’: ibid, pp. 78–9.
‘This is an adventure that every human being must go through ’: ibid, p. 155.
‘The more profoundly a human being is in anxiety ’: ibid, p. 156.
When a human being ‘passes through the anxiety of the possible’: ibid, p. 158.
‘Then anxiety enters into his soul ’: ibid, p. 159.
‘With K. it frequently happened that when he reflected on some minor matter ’: see Encounters with Kierkegaard, p. 61 – from a letter from Hans Brøchner to H. P. Barfod, 10 November 1871.
a character called Søren Kirk in Gjenboerne: ‘I remember that one evening,’ wrote Hans Brøchner, ‘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 the time I had no impression that Hostrup’s joke affected him.’ In his 1891 memoir, Hostrup recalled meeting Kierkegaard with Emil Boesen: ‘the strange thing about this meeting was that he proved to be extremely friendly toward me, despite the fact that – according to his journals – he was extremely embittered about Gjenboerne. I looked at this strange man with the greatest of interest, and both before and since I have been deeply moved by several of his books.’ See Encounters with Kierkegaard, pp. 61, 287.
he deleted his own name from the title pages and gave each book a pseudonym: see S. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments / Johannes Climacus, ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton University Press, 1985), pp. 176–7 (Pap. V B 39), The Concept of Anxiety, p. 177 (Pap. V B 42).
‘You are in a cocoon of thoughtfulness ’: S. Kierkegaard, Prefaces / Writing Sampler, ed. and trans. Todd W. Nichol (Princeton University Press, 1997), p. 9.
‘a book that does not owe its origin to an inexplicable inner need ’: ibid, p. 13.
‘for it would indeed be too bad if the public’s gossip were to go to waste ’: ibid, p. 19.
‘lofty endeavour to restore lost souls to society ’: ibid, p. 178.
‘To be an author in Denmark is almost as troublesome as having to live in public view ’: ibid, p. 15.
he decided to stop writing upbuilding discourses: see Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Volume 2: Journals EE–KK, pp. 194, 203: JJ 220, 255 (1844).
In his discourse ‘To Need God is a Human Being’s Highest Perfection’: see S. Kierkegaard, Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses, ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton University Press, 1992), pp. 321–5.
‘only the one who was in anxiety finds rest ’: S. Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, ed. C. Stephen Evans and Sylvia Walsh, trans. Sylvia Walsh (Cambridge University Press, 2006), p. 21.
‘you gather everything together all at once and surround yourself with it ’: S. Kierkegaard, Letters and Documents, ed. and trans. Henrik Rosenmeier (Princeton University Press, 2009), p. 164 – letter to Emil Boesen, undated.
‘See to it that you love yourself ’: ibid, p. 236 – letter to Henriette Kierkegaard, December 1847.
‘He understood as few do ’: Encounters with Kierkegaard, p. 242 – from Hans Brøchner’s recollections of Kierkegaard, written in 1871–2.
‘1848 has raised me to another level ’: see S. Kierkegaard, The Point of View, ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton University Press, 1998), p. 207: Pap. X2 A 66 (1849). This entry is titled ‘On the Year 1848’.
‘some of the best things ’: Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Volume 5: Journals NB6–NB10, ed. and trans. Niels Jørgen Cappelørn, Alastair Hannay, David Kangas, Bruce H. Kirmmse, George Pattison, Joel D. S. Rasmussen, Vanessa Rumble and K. Brian Söderquist (Princeton University Press, 2012), p. 144: NB7, 114 (August to November, 1848). In 1849 Kierkegaard wrote in his journal that ‘My home has been my consolation, having a pleasant home has been my greatest earthly encouragement’ – see Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Volume 6: Journals NB11–NB14, ed. and trans. Niels Jørgen Cappelørn, Alastair Hannay, David Kangas, Bruce H. Kirmmse, George Pattison, Joel D. S. Rasmussen, Vanessa Rumble and K. Brian Söderquist (Princeton University Press, 2013), p. 234: NB12, 143 (1849).
‘Conditions are so wretched here in Denmark ’: Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Volume 5: Journals NB6–NB10, pp. 196–7: NB8, 106 (December 1848).
‘it is perhaps my duty to God ’: ibid, p. 321: NB10, 105 (February to April 1849).
‘in relation to God as a child to a father (mother)’: ibid.
‘nearly all my life has been so terribly wasted ’: ibid, p. 211: NB9, 8 (January or February 1849).
Kierkegaard was sitting in that church on the Sunday when the marriage banns were read: see Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Volume 3: Notebooks 1–15, ed. and trans. Niels Jørgen Cappelørn, Alastair Hannay, David Kangas, Bruce H. Kirmmse, George Pattison, Vanessa Rumble and K. Brian Söderquist (Princeton University Press, 2010), p. 436: Notebook 15, 4 (August to November 1849).
‘The keystone of her marriage is and will continue to be that I am a villain ’: Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks Volume 5: Journals NB6–NB10, p. 83: NB7, 10 (August to November 1848).
‘The moment I die (which I have constantly expected will happen soon)’: ibid, p. 91: NB7, 20 (August to November 1848).
‘What a constant torment it has been to me ’: ibid, p. 90: NB7, 20 (August to November 1848).
‘it remains my guilt nevertheless ’: ibid, p. 91: NB7, 20 (August to November 1848).
he was ‘already betrothed’ to Christianity: see ibid, pp. 368–9: NB10, 191 (February to April 1849).
‘the Christmas festival ’: ibid, p. 192: NB8, 97 (December 1848).
‘there is an infinite difference between her and myself ’: ibid, p. 184: NB8, 76 (December 1848).
‘I am constantly re-writing parts of it, but it does not satisfy me ’: see S. Kierkegaard, Stages on Life’s Way, ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton University Press, 1988), p. 515.
‘By now I have learned not too need night time in order to find stillness ’: ibid, pp. 16–17.
‘Just one minute, my beloved, just one moment ’: ibid, pp. 183–4.
‘a plain gold ring with an engraved date ’: ibid, pp. 189–90.
He also reproduced word for word the note he sent to Regine: see ibid, pp. 329–30; also Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Volume 3: Notebooks 1–15, p. 433: Notebook 15, 4 (August to November 1849). Here Kierkegaard writes, ‘If she should happen to see the book, what I want is precisely that she should be reminded of it.’
‘June 18th. Midnight. Am I guilty, then?’: Stages on Life’s Way, p. 381.
‘with all my power to remain faithful to my spiritual experience ’: ibid, p. 397.
‘Only the one who seeks worthily finds it ’: ibid, pp. 16–17.
‘He is, in truth, my body ’: Encounters with Kierkegaard, ed. Bruce Kirmmse, trans. Bruce Kirmmse and Virginia Laursen (Princeton University Press, 1998), p. 232 – from Hans Brøchner’s recollections of Kierkegaard, written in 1871–2.
‘One would think that Magister Kierkegaard possessed a kind of magic wand ’: see S. Kierkegaard, The Corsair Affair, ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton University Press, 1982), pp. 274–5.
‘When it is the legitimate leader in Danish literature ’: ibid, pp. 24–7.
Inspired by the republican and socialist satirical press in Paris: Honoré de Balzac’s Illusions perdues, written between 1837 and 1843, gives a vivid account of Parisian journalism in the 1820s.
the Greek myth of Nemesis: J. L. Heiberg published an essay on Nemesis in 1827. On Kierkegaard’s own interest in the myth of Nemesis, see Laura Liva, ‘Nemesis: From the Ancient Goddess to a Modern Concept’, in Katalin Nun and Jon Stewart (eds.), Kierkegaard’s Literary Figures and Motifs, Tome II: Gulliver to Zerlina (Ashgate, 2015), pp. 155–62.
Peder Ludvig Møller: see Roger Poole, ‘Søren Kierkegaard and P. L. Møller: Erotic Space Shattered’, in International Kierkegaard Commentary, Volume 13: The Corsair Affair, ed. Robert L. Perkins (Mercer University Press, 1990), pp. 141–61; Troy Wellington Smith, ‘P. L. Møller: Kierkegaard’s Byronic Adversary’, The Byron Journal, 42.1 (2014), pp. 35–47. P. L. Møller is sometimes cited as Kierkegaard’s model for Johannes the Seducer: Roger Poole describes this theory as ‘semi-canonical’ in Kierkegaard research.
a review of Stages on Life’s Way: see The Corsair Affair, pp. 96–104.
‘Would that I might only get into The Corsair soon!’: ibid, p. 46.
He met Goldschmidt on the street, and they discussed these literary hostilities: from an account in Goldschmidt’s autobiography Livs Erindringer og Resultater (Gyldendal, 1877): see The Corsair Affair, p. 146.
‘It is really strange that a man does not have control of the book he buys and pays for ’: ibid, pp. 132–3 (extract abridged).
‘In the bitterness of that glance ’: from Goldschmidt’s autobiography: see ibid, p. 149.
‘my beloved capital city and place of residence ’: Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Volume 2: Journals EE–KK, ed. and trans. Niels Jørgen Cappelørn, Alastair Hannay, David Kangas, Bruce H. Kirmmse, George Pattison, Vanessa Rumble and K. Brian Söderquist (Princeton University Press, 2008), pp. 172–3: JJ 143 (1843).
‘Out there in quiet activity, I shall breathe easier ’: Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Volume 4: Journals NB-NB5, ed. and trans. Niels Jørgen Cappelørn, Alastair Hannay, David Kangas, Bruce H. Kirmmse, George Pattison, Joel D. S. Rasmussen, Vanessa Rumble and K. Brian Söderquist (Princeton University Press, 2011), p. 17: NB, 7 (9 March 1846).
‘as correctly situated in literature as possible ’: ibid, p. 12: NB, 7 (9 March 1846).
‘in this way I can still avoid becoming an author ’: see S. Kierkegaard, Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits, p. 356: Pap. VII1 A 9 (February, 1846).
Thomasine Gyllembourg, Heiberg’s mother: see Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks Volume 5: Journals NB6–NB10, p. 38: NB6, 55 (July or August 1848): ‘then I took [Heiberg’s] mother and celebrated her’. On Thomasine Gyllembourg’s anonymity, see Katalin Nun, Women of the Danish Golden Age: Literature, Theater and the Emancipation of Women (Museum Tusculanum Press, 2013).
Lusard is struck by the bright lights … in Tivoli Gardens: see To Tidsaldre, in J. L. Heiberg (ed.), Skrifter, vol. XI (Reitzel, 1851), pp. 156–8. These translations are by George Pattison: see his Kierkegaard, Religion and the Nineteenth-Century Crisis of Culture (Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 54–61.
Heiberg’s 1842 essay ‘People and Public’: see J. L. Heiberg, ‘Folk og Publicum’, Intelligensblade 6, 1 June 1842, p. 137. Translation by George Pattison: see his Kierkegaard, Religion and the Nineteenth-Century Crisis of Culture, p. 65.
‘not for aesthetic and critical readers of newspapers but for rational creatures ’: S. Kierkegaard, Two Ages, ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton University Press, 1978), p. 5.
‘I cannot agree with that at all ’: ibid, pp. 95–6. The biblical reference is to Luke 23:28.
He thought Adler was confused, but he felt inclined to support him: on Kierkegaard’s relationship to Adler, see Carl Henrik Koch, ‘Adolph Peter Adler: A Stumbling-Block and an Inspiration for Kierkegaard’, in Kierkegaard and His Danish Contemporaries, Tome II: Theology, ed. Jon Stewart (Ashgate, 2009), pp. 1–22.
‘The merely human idea of self-denial ’: S. Kierkegaard, Works of Love, ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton University Press, 1998), p. 194.
‘persecution by the mob, the people, the public ’: Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Volume 4: Journals NB–NB5, p. 317: NB4, 62 (1848).
‘a form of evil ’: ibid, p. 111: NB7, 63 (September to November 1848).
Denmark’s ‘demoralization’, ‘disintegration’: see ibid, pp. 102–3: NB7: 46 (September to November 1848); p. 177: NB8, 57 (December 1848).
‘I feel no bitterness at all ’: Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Volume 4: Journals NB–NB5, p. 398–9: NB5, 61 (May to July 1848).
in this life his trousers have received too much attention, and his authorship too little: Kierkegaard felt that his writings were ignored: it is true that, whereas Either/Or, Fear and Trembling, Repetition and Works of Love were reviewed extensively, other works – such as The Concept of Anxiety, Two Ages: A Literary Review and Christian Discourses – were not reviewed. See Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Volume 6: Journals NB11–NB14, p. 453.
because ‘they are envious ’: Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Volume 5: Journals NB6–NB10, p. 197: NB8, 106 (December 1848).
he recalls how Peter responded to him: see ibid, p. 198: NB8, 108 (December, 1848).
‘They must be permitted to trample me down ’: ibid, p. 200: NB8, 110 (December, 1848).
He imagines his future readers, ‘who will be able to sit in peace and quiet’: ibid, p. 191: NB8, 97 (December 1848); see also Kierkegaard’s entry from early 1849 on his ‘martyrdom of laughter’ – ibid, pp. 289–90: NB10, 42 (February to April 1849).
‘Dying is the only thing that can clear the air ’: ibid, p. 11: NB6, 9 (July or August, 1848).
‘truly unselfish ’: ibid, p. 181: NB8, 69 (December 1848).
‘How many times have I said that a warship doesn’t receive its orders until it’s out on the deep?’: Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Volume 5: Journals NB6–NB10, ed. and trans. Niels Jørgen Cappelørn, Alastair Hannay, David Kangas, Bruce H. Kirmmse, George Pattison, Joel D. S. Rasmussen, Vanessa Rumble and K. Brian Söderquist (Princeton University Press, 2012), p. 300: NB10, 60 (February to April 1849).
‘The question is: When should all the latest works be published!’: Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Volume 5: Journals NB6–NB10, ed. and trans. Niels Jørgen Cappelørn, Alastair Hannay, David Kangas, Bruce H. Kirmmse, George Pattison, Joel D. S. Rasmussen, Vanessa Rumble and K. Brian Söderquist (Princeton University Press, 2012), p. 242.
‘Humanly speaking, there is something pleasant about having secure employment ’: ibid, p. 14.
‘a special ability to talk with ordinary people ’: see Encounters with Kierkegaard, ed. Bruce Kirmmse, trans. Bruce Kirmmse and Virginia Laursen (Princeton University Press, 1998), p. 109 – from H. C. Rosted, Den gamle Postgaard in Hørsholm (O. Cohn and E. Hasfeldt, 1925), p. 27. See also Encounters with Kierkegaard, p. 111, where Tycho Spang recalls Kierkegaard’s ‘quite remarkable and unusual talent for talking to people of every age and from every walk of life’.
in relation to The Corsair, a martyr: on Kierkegaard’s martyrdom at the hands of The Corsair, see for example Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Volume 5: Journals NB6–NB10, p. 349: NB10, 166 (February to April 1849): ‘I am feeling indescribably weak and it seems to me that it can’t be long until death makes an end of the matter. And truly a dead man is just what Copenhagen and Denmark need if there is to be any end to all this mean, envious, grimacing baseness.’ Kierkegaard considered that he had offered himself as a sacrifice ‘to guarantee that P. L. Møller and Goldschmidt were kept in line’, though he thought it ‘a heavy fate’ that instead of earning wealth and renown for his art, ‘as a result of being born in a demoralized market town’ he was ‘insulted by every street urchin, which envy followed behind and gloried in its victory’.
‘It is certainly true that I have been unspeakably unhappy ’: ibid, pp. 259: NB9, 78 (February 1849).
‘It is difficult to decide whether it is more humiliating ’: ibid, p. 300: NB10, 60 (February to April 1849).
What should he do with The Book on Adler?: on Kierkegaard’s reworking of The Book on Adler, see ibid, p. 525.
‘to introduce Christianity into Christendom ’: ibid, p. 242: NB9, 56 (January or February 1849).
‘Just as a cabinet minister steps down ’: ibid, p. 237: NB9, 45 (January or February 1849).
a petitionary prayer: see S. Kierkegaard, The Lily of the Field and the Bird of the Air: Three Godly Discourses, trans. Bruce Kirmmse (Princeton University Press, 2016), p. 5.
‘in the place assigned ’: ibid, p. 52.
‘That you came into existence, that you exist ’: ibid, pp. 78-9.
‘the self runs away from itself ’: S. Kierkegaard, The Sickness unto Death, ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton University Press, 1983), pp. 35–6.
he repented the ‘melancholia’ and ‘hypochondriacal evasion’: see Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Volume 6: Journals NB11–NB14, ed. and trans. Niels Jørgen Cappelørn, Alastair Hannay, David Kangas, Bruce H. Kirmmse, George Pattison, Joel D. S. Rasmussen, Vanessa Rumble and K. Brian Söderquist (Princeton University Press, 2013), p. 8: NB11, 8; p. 55: NB11, 105 (May to July 1849). On how Kierkegaard’s devotional reading influenced his decision to publish The Sickness unto Death, see Peter Sajda, ‘“The Wise Men Went Another Way”: Kierkegaard’s Dialogue with Fénelon and Tersteegen in the Summer of 1849’, in Kierkegaard and Christianity, ed. Roman Králik, Abrahim H. Khan, Peter Sajda, Jamie Turnbull and Andrew J. Burgess (Acta Kierkegaardiana, vol. 3, 2008), pp. 89–105.
‘I wanted to secure a comfortable future ’: Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Volume 6: Journals NB11–NB14, pp. 8–14: NB11, 8–20 (May to July 1849).
‘What makes my life so difficult is that I’m tuned an octave higher ’: ibid, p. 101: NB11, 174 (May to July 1849).
The Danish State Church became the Danish People’s Church: see Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Volume 8: Journals NB21–NB25, ed. and trans. Niels Jørgen Cappelørn, Alastair Hannay, Bruce H. Kirmmse, David D. Possen, Joel D. S. Rasmussen and Vanessa Rumble (Princeton University Press, 2015), pp. 679–81.
Privately he now believed Mynster to be: see Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Volume 6: Journals NB11–NB14, pp. 17, 35, 42, 45, 47: NB11, 25, 59, 61, 77, 80, 87 (May to July 1849).
He told Kierkegaard to come ‘another time’: see ibid, pp. 113: NB11, 193 (May to July 1849); p. 488.
He spent a restless night: see Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Volume 8: Journals NB21–NB25, pp. 356–7: NB24, 54 (April to November 1851).
‘I’ve been willing to ask God to free me ’: Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Volume 6: Journals NB11–NB14, pp. 138–9: NB11, 233 (May to July 1849) – passage abridged.
‘We are not twins, we are opposites ’: ibid, p. 124: NB11, 204 (May to July 1849); S. Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton University Press, 1991), p. 282: Pap. X B 48 (1849).
‘Whereas from his central standpoint the brilliant Martensen ’: see Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Volume 6: Journals NB11–NB14, pp. 550–51. Like Kierkegaard, Fredrika Bremer renounced marriage in the 1830s to become a writer; she was inspired by modern German philosophy and by English utilitarianism. When she left Copenhagen in 1849 Bremer sailed to New York and toured America: she wrote about slavery, prisons, Quakers and Shakers, and the Scandinavian communities of the Midwest. On her way back to Sweden she spent a few weeks in Britain, visiting Liverpool, Manchester and London, and meeting George Eliot and Elizabeth Gaskell.
Fredrika Bremer’s account of Kierkegaard was echoed by her English contemporary Andrew Hamilton, who travelled to Denmark around 1849 and later published a lengthy, two-volume travelogue. He did not meet Kierkegaard, but often saw him walking the streets, usually deep in conversation: ‘He is a philosophical Christian writer, evermore dwelling, one might almost say harping, on the theme of the human heart. There is no Danish writer more in earnest than he, yet there is no one in whose way stand more things to prevent his becoming popular. He writes at times with an unearthly beauty, but too often with an exaggerated display of logic that disgusts the public … I have received the highest delight from some of his books … Kierkegaard’s habits of life are singular enough to lend a (perhaps false) interest to his proceedings. He goes into no company, and sees nobody in his own house, which answers all the ends of an invisible dwelling; I could never learn that any one had been inside of it. Yet his one great study is human nature; no one knows more people than he. The fact is he walks about town all day, and generally in some person’s company; only in the evenings does he write and read. When walking, he is very communicative, and at the same time manages to draw everything out of his companion that is likely to be profitable to himself.’ Andrew Hamilton, Sixteen Months in the Danish Isles, vol. 2 (Richard Bentley, 1852), p. 269.
Martensen, the Professor of Theology, Court Preacher, Knight of the Dannebrog: Martensen had followed Mynster’s footsteps to become Court Preacher in 1845 and a Knight of the Dannebrog in 1847.
‘Cruel I was, that is true. Why?’: see S. Kierkegaard, Letters and Documents, ed. and trans. Henrik Rosenmeier (Princeton University Press, 2009), pp. 335–6 – letter to Regine Schlegel, 1849. For the series of draft letters to Regine and her husband, see ibid, pp. 322–37.
he was acquiring imitators and adherents: see Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Volume 6: Journals NB11–NB14, p. 658. Peter Christian Kierkegaard also cited as one of Kierkegaard’s ‘imitators and adherents’ the pseudonym H. H., under which Kierkegaard published Two Minor Ethical-Religious Essays – a drastically abridged version of his unpublished Book on Adler– in May 1849. As with his earlier pseudonymous works, Kierkegaard’s friend Jens Giødvad had taken the manuscript to the printer to protect its author’s identity. Two Minor Ethical-Religious Essays offered ‘a point of view’ on Kierkegaard’s authorship by comparing the figures of poetic genius, apostle and martyr, and exploring their different relationships to the truth. It was much less personal than The Point of View for My Work as an Author, revealing only ‘that I am a genius – not an apostle, not a martyr’: see S. Kierkegaard, Without Authority, ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton University Press, 1997), p. 238.
a journal entry headed ‘Protest Against Bishop Mynster’: see Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Volume 6: Journals NB11–NB14, p. 385: NB14, 63 (November 1849 to January 1850).
‘a little, cooped-up place, the homeland of nonsense ’: Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Volume 7: Journals NB15–NB20, ed. and trans. Niels Jørgen Cappelørn, Alastair Hannay, Bruce H. Kirmmse, David D. Possen, Joel D. S. Rasmussen, Vanessa Rumble and K. Brian Söderquist (Princeton University Press, 2014), pp. 120–21: NB16, 38 (February to March 1850).
St Augustine, he noted: see ibid, p. 158: NB16, 92 (February to March 1850). Augustine was commenting on Matthew 5:39.
He found ammunition in Luther’s sermons: on Kierkegaard’s reading of Luther and Tersteegen, see David Yoon-Jung Kim and Joel D. S. Rasmussen, ‘Martin Luther: Reform, Secularization and the Question of His “True Successor”’, and Christopher B. Barnett, ‘Gerhard Tersteegen: Kierkegaard’s Reception of a Man of “Noble Piety and Simple Wisdom”’, both in Kierkegaard and the Renaissance and Modern Traditions, Tome II: Theology, ed. Jon Stewart (Ashgate, 2009), pp. 173–217 and 245–58.
‘it is the great, unreasonable fool who runs out of the world ’: see Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Volume 7: Journals NB15–NB20, p. 528; see Martin Luther, En christelig Postille, trans J. Thisted (Wahlske Boghandling, 1828), vol. II, pp. 242; 246.
Emil was keen for him to visit Louise, but he was reluctant: see Letters and Documents, pp. 344–6 – letter from Emil Boesen to S. Kierkegaard, 7 March 1850; and pp. 357–8 – letter from S. Kierkegaard to Emil Boesen, 12 April 1850.
he quarrelled with Rasmus Nielsen: see Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Volume 7: Journals NB15–NB20, pp. 219–22: NB17, 71 (March to May 1850). Kierkegaard wrote several journal entries on Nielsen’s book, which in his view ‘battled mediocrity – in part with borrowed weapons’ and ‘spoiled the whole thing with all that scholarly apparatus and detail’: see Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Volume 5: Journals NB6–NB10, p. 271: NB10, 9; p. 283: NB10, 33; Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Volume 6: Journals NB11–NB14, p. 28: NB11, 46.
‘Each of us possesses the faith only to a certain limited degree ’: see Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks Volume 7: Journals NB15–NB20, p. 681. Martensen’s book came out in May 1850.
a cheaper apartment on Nørregade: see ibid, p. 695.
‘In the afternoons I suffer so much from reflected sunlight ’: ibid, pp. 287, 324: NB18, 48, 92 (May to June 1850).
Most Danes ‘longed and prayed for summer’: see Andrew Hamilton, Sixteen Months in the Danish Isles, vol. 2 (Richard Bentley, 1852), p. 138. Hamilton also observed that ‘Autumn is a glorious season, but the Danes scarcely seem to set the same value on it which we do in England’ (p. 141).
an old man’s ‘noble wisdom’ and a young girl’s ‘loveable foolishness’: Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Volume 6: Journals NB11–NB14, ed. and trans. Niels Jørgen Cappelørn, Alastair Hannay, David Kangas, Bruce H. Kirmmse, George Pattison, Joel D. S Rasmussen, Vanessa Rumble and K. Brian Söderquist (Princeton University Press, 2013), p. 41: NB 11 (May to July 1849). On Kierkegaard’s annual struggle between 9 August and 10 September, see ibid, p. 159: NB12 (July to September 1849).
it explored the difference between rigorous and lenient Christianity: see S. Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton University Press, 1991), pp. 233–57.
‘Ah, a person can certainly proclaim leniency ’: Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Volume 7: Journals NB15–NB20, ed. and trans. Niels Jørgen Cappelørn, Alastair Hannay, Bruce H. Kirmmse, David D. Possen, Joel D. S. Rasmussen, Vanessa Rumble and K. Brian Søderquist (Princeton University Press, 2014), pp. 271–2: NB18, 27 (May to June 1850).
Kierkegaard visited Mynster: see Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Volume 8: Journals NB21–NB25, ed. and trans. Niels Jørgen Cappelørn, Alastair Hannay, Bruce H. Kirmmse, David D. Possen, Joel D. S. Rasmussen and Vanessa Rumble (Princeton University Press, 2015), pp. 68–9. See also Martensen’s comment in a letter to his friend Pastor Gude, 26 Nov November 1850: ‘This book has now caused the bishop to give up totally on K’s work; naturally, the shameless pronouncements concerning the Church’s sermons have made him indignant’ – p. 787.
‘You became a sword through the heart of your mother ’: Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Volume 7: Journals NB15–NB20, pp. 271–2: NB18, 27 (May to June 1850).
‘For my part, I love being a human being ’: ibid, p. 276: NB18, 33 (May to June 1850).
Tersteegan – who gave away his inheritance and lived as a hermit: see Christopher B. Barnett, ‘Gerhard Tersteegen: Reception of a Man of “Noble Piety and Simple Wisdom”’, in Kierkegaard and the Renaissance and Modern Traditions. Tome II: Theology, ed. Jon Stewart (Ashgate, 2009), pp. 245–57.
‘Luther certainly possessed the inner truth ’: Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Volume 7: Journals NB15–NB20, pp. 329–30: NB18, 101 (May to June 1850).
‘Shall we continue to force all members of the People’s Church to undergo church wedding ceremonies ’: see Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Volume 8: Journals NB21–NB25, p. 682.
‘defying Satan, the pope, the whole world ’: see ibid, pp. 371–2: NB24, 75 (April to November 1851).
‘a clever and prudent man ’: Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Volume 7: Journals NB15–NB20, p. 376: NB19, 58 (June to July 1850).
‘Surely the deepest and highest interest of the Church in our day ’: see S. Kierkegaard, The Corsair Affair, ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton University Press, 2009), p. 51.
‘Simply because I have from the beginning understood Christianity to be inwardness ’: ibid, p. 53.
‘For him it has long been settled that he is a Christian ’: Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Volume 8: Journals NB21–NB25, p. 212: NB23, 20 (January to April 1851). On Kierkegaard’s connections to Rudelbach, see Søren Jensen, ‘Andreas Gottlob Rudelbach: Kierkegaard’s Idea of an “Orthodox” Theologian’, in Kierkegaard and His Danish Contemporaries, Tome II: Theology, ed. Jon Stewart (Ashgate, 2009), pp. 303–33.
‘one of our most talented authors ’: J. P. Mynster, Yderligere Bidrag til Forhandlingerne om de kirkelige Forhold i Danmark [Further Contribution to Negotiations Concerning the Ecclesiastical Situation in Denmark] (Reitzel, 1851), p. 44; see Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Volume 8: Journals NB21–NB25, p. 759.
‘I repeated again and again’: Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Volume 8: Journals NB21–NB25, pp. 337–9: NB24, 30 (April to November 1851); p. 759.
Towards the end of the summer he was back on Mynster’s doorstep: see ibid, pp. 402–4: NB24, 121 (April to November, 1851).
Kierkegaard preached a Sunday sermon on ‘The Unchangingness of God ’: Kierkegaard published this sermon in August 1855 under the title ‘The Changelessness of God: A Discourse’: see S. Kierkegaard, The Moment and Late Writings, ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton University Press, 1998), pp. 263–81.
He had planned his sermon ‘with the thought of “her”’: see Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebook, Volume 8: Journals NB21–NB25, pp. 370–71: NB24, 74 (April to November, 1851).
‘No one, either in life or in death ’: The Moment and Late Writings, pp. 277–81.
‘When I went home, I felt well, animated ’: Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Volume 8: Journals NB21–NB25, pp. 370–71: NB24, 74 (April to November 1851).
‘I have been told that you are gracious and kind to the young ’: S. Kierkegaard, Letters and Documents, ed. and trans. Henrik Rosenmeier (Princeton University Press, 2009), pp. 379–80.
‘I have pricked up my ears and listened ’: ibid, pp. 381–4.
‘You know that faith is a restless thing ’: S. Kierkegaard, For Self-Examination / Judge for Yourself!, ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton University Press, 1991), pp. 17–18.
‘And this way, which is Christ, this narrow way ’: ibid, pp. 58–9.
gentle comfort, new life: see ibid, pp. 75–85.
When Emil called on him they talked late into the night: see Encounters with Kierkegaard, ed. Bruce Kirmmse, trans. Bruce Kirmmse and Virginia Laursen (Princeton University Press, 1998), pp. 100–101 – from a letter from Emil Boesen to Louise Boesen, autumn 1851.
sometimes ‘every blessed day’: see Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Volume 8: Journals NB21–NB25, p. 177: NB22, 146 (November 1850 to January 1851).
‘Perhaps it was coincidence ’: ibid, p. 532: NB25, 109 (May 1852).
‘Then came my birthday ’: ibid, pp. 532–3: NB25, 109 (May 1852).
‘New “Fear and Trembling”’: see Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Volume 9: Journals NB26–NB30, ed. and trans. Niels Jørgen Cappelørn, Alastair Hannay, Bruce H. Kirmmse, David D. Possen, Joel D. S. Rasmussen and Vanessa Rumble (Princeton University Press, 2017), p. 250: NB28, 41 (1853).
‘quite literally letting go and giving up ’: ibid, p. 29: NB26, 25 (June to August 1852).
‘whether it was not all a fantasy ’: ibid, p. 290: NB28, 99 (1853).
‘Christianity is suffering to the end ’: ibid, p. 52: NB26, 51 (June to August 1852).
‘The closer to God, the more suffering ’: ibid, p. 151: NB27, 39 (August 1852 to February 1853).
For two years he has published nothing and written little: apart from his journals, Kierkegaard’s only substantial piece of writing between 1852 and 1854 was Judge for Yourselves!, a collection of discourses similar to For Self-Examination, which he left unpublished.
‘an enormous productivity ’: Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Volume 9: Journals NB26–NB30, p. 230: NB28, 16 (Easter Monday 1853).
‘almost like foolishness ’: ibid, pp. 261–2: NB28, 54 (1853).
‘something like a plague to Bishop M.’: ibid, pp. 262–3: NB28, 55 (2 November 1854).
‘Now he is dead ’: ibid, pp. 264–6: NB28, 56 (1 March 1854).
‘Now it must happen ’: ibid, p. 264: NB28, 56 (1 March 1854).
Martensen included a eulogy to the late Bishop in his Sunday sermon: see Hans Lassen Martensen, ‘Sermon Delivered in Christiansborg Castle Church on the Fifth Sunday after Epiphany, February 5th, 1854, the Sunday Before Bishop Dr. Mynster’s Funeral’, in S. Kierkegaard, The Moment and Late Writings, ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton University Press, 1998), p. 359.
‘Bishop Mynster a truth-witness!’: ibid, pp. 3–6; see 1 Corinthians 4: 10–13.
He blamed women for imposing on men ‘all the nonsense of finitude’: Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Volume 9: Journals NB26–NB30, pp. 353–4: NB29, 92 (May to June 1854).
‘He leads a withdrawn existence ’: ibid, p. 358–9: NB29, 95 (May to June 1854).
a ‘martyrdom of laughter’: Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Volume 5: Journals NB6–NB10, ed. and trans. Niels Jørgen Cappelørn, Alastair Hannay, David Kangas, Bruce H. Kirmmse, George Pattison, Joel D. S. Rasmussen, Vanessa Rumble and K. Brian Söderquist (Princeton University Press, 2012), pp. 289–90: NB10, 42 (February to April, 1849).
Kierkegaard still held fire: around this time, April 1854, Kierkegaard received a copy of Mynster’s memoirs, Meddelelser om mit Levnet [From My Life], published posthumously by his son F. J. Mynster, a pastor. Kierkegaard returned the book to Pastor Mynster, explaining that he could not accept it: ‘My relationship with your late father was of a very special kind. From the first time I spoke with him I told him privately … how much I disagreed with him. Privately I have told him again and again – and I shall not forget that he had so much good will that he listened to me with sympathy – that my principal concern was the memory of my late father. Now [Mynster] has died, I must stop. Now I must and intend to have the freedom, whether or not I want to use it, to speak out without having to take any such thing into consideration … As you in sending [this book] to me declare (and that was noble of you!) that everything is as it used to be, so, in accepting it, I would declare that everything is as it used to be – but that is not the way it is.’ Kierkegaard also thanked Pastor Mynster for his ‘affectionate’ note, which he found ‘in all sincerity, most touching’. See S. Kierkegaard, Letters and Documents, ed. and trans. Henrik Rosenmeier (Princeton University Press, 2009), p. 417 – letter to F. J. Mynster, 1854; Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Volume 9: Journals NB26–NB30, p. 672. We do not know whether Kierkegaard looked at Mynster’s memoirs before he returned the book; if he did, he found no mention of his own name, and plenty of praise for Martensen.
In 1855 Schlegel would take up this post – and Regine would leave Denmark: see Joakim Garff, Kierkegaard’s Muse, trans. Alastair Hannay (Princeton University Press, 2017), p. 24.
Kierkegaard’s article denounced him as a fraud: see The Moment and Late Writings, pp. 3–8.
Martensen published a lengthy, supercilious response: Hans Lassen Martensen, ‘On the Occasion of Dr S. Kierkegaard’s Article in Fædrelandet, no. 295’; see ibid, pp. 360–66.
tore it into little pieces: see Encounters with Kierkegaard, ed. Bruce Kirmmse, trans. Bruce Kirmmse and Virginia Laursen (Princeton University Press, 1998), pp. 116–17 – from Mathilde Reinhardt, Familie-Erindringer 1831–1856, published privately in 1889.
‘makes no impression on me at all ’: The Moment and Late Writings, pp. 9–10.
Martensen’s ‘blasphemy’: see ibid, p. 25.
Rasmus Nielsen wrote in defence of Kierkegaard: Nielsen’s article was published in Fædrelandet on 10 January 1855: see The Moment and Late Writings, p. 651.
Kierkegaard encountered Regine on the street near his home: see Garff, Kierkegaard’s Muse, p. 9.
‘kept up a brisk fire against official Christianity ’: ibid, p. 60.
‘silk-and-velvet pastors ’: ibid, p. 43.
‘A Thesis – Just One Single One ’: ibid, p. 39.
‘In what did Socratic irony consist?’: Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks: Volume 10, Journals NB31–NB36, ed. and trans. Niels Jørgen Cappelørn, Alastair Hannay, Bruce H. Kirmmse, David D. Possen, Joel D. S. Rasmussen and Vanessa Rumble (Princeton University Press, 2018), p. 371: NB 35, 2 (December, 1854).
beginning the first issue with an elegant preface: see The Moment and Late Writings, pp. 91–2.
the ‘enormous illusion’ of contemporary Christianity: ibid, p. 105.
‘to glue families together more and more egotistically ’: ibid, pp. 248–9.
‘One cannot live on nothing ’: ibid, pp. 204–5.
he no longer went himself: see Niels Jørgen Cappelørn, ‘Søren Kierkegaard at Friday Communion in the Church of Our Lady’, trans. K. Brian Söderquist, in International Kierkegaard Commentary, Volume 18: Without Authority, ed. Robert L. Perkins (Mercer University Press, 2007).
These explosive pamphlets ‘aroused a great sensation’: see Encounters with Kierkegaard, p. 119 – from the diary of Hansine Andræ, October 18, 1855.
‘I am in complete agreement with your judgement of Kierkegaard’s behaviour ’: ibid, pp. 103 – from a letter from Carsten Hauch to B. S. Ingemann, 25 March 1855.
he regretted that Kierkegaard’s ‘one-sidedness’ now dominated his philosophy: ibid, pp. 103–5 – from a letter from F. C. Sibbern to Petronella Ross, 26 March 1855.
Pastor Birkedal, felt ‘the strong words cast a profound shadow’: ibid, p. 107 – from Vilhelm Birkedal, Personlige Oplevelser i et langt Liv, vol. 2 (Copenhagen: Karl Schønbergs Forlag, 1890).
‘it has been a continuing source of sorrow to me ’: ibid, p. 106 – from a letter from Magdalene Hansen to Elise Stampe, 20 June 1855.
‘quite his usual self in conversation ’: ibid, p. 111 – from Otto B. Wroblewski, Ti Aar i C. A. Reitzels Boglade (1889).
When Hans Brøchner met him out walking one summer evening: see ibid, pp. 247–8 – from Hans Brøchner’s recollections of Kierkegaard, written in 1871–2.
‘Until now it has not been clear whether or not K. was a noble character ’: see ibid, pp. 108–9 – from Nord og Syd [North and South], 15 September 1855.
‘The only analogy I have before me is Socrates ’: The Moment and Late Writings, p. 341.
‘with a charming look ’: see Encounters with Kierkegaard, p. 117 – from Mathilde Reinhardt, Familie-Erindringer 1831–1856.
‘The patient cannot offer any specific reason for his present illness ’: see Letters and Documents, pp. 28–32 – from the medical record at Frederiks Hospital. This record indicates the cause of his death as ‘Tuberculosis?’.
‘a feeling of victory ’: see Encounters with Kierkegaard, p. 172 – from Henriette Lund, Eringringer Fra Hjemmet (Gyldendal, 1909).
‘his eyes shone like stars ’: ibid, p. 157.
‘To be opened and read after my death ’: Letters and Documents, pp. 33, 450. Kierkegaard’s will was undated, but the editor of his Letters and Documents suggest that it was written in 1849, around the same time as Kierkegaard’s letters to Regine and J. F. Schlegel.
‘It seemed as though he wanted me to come so that he could say something ’: see Encounters with Kierkegaard, p. 121 – from a letter from Emil Boesen to Louise Boesen, 17 October 1855.
‘I therefore concluded that it was my task to be extraordinary ’: ibid, pp. 121–8 – from Emil Boesen’s account of his hospital conversations with Kierkegaard, originally published in Af Søren Kierkegaards Efterladte Papirer, 1854–55 (Reitzel, 1881), pp. 593–9.
he had alluded to this ‘thorn in the flesh’ several times in his journals: see, e.g., Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Volume 9: Journals NB26–NB30, p. 207: NB 27, 88 (August 1852 to February 1853). The phrase ‘thorn in the flesh’ comes from 2 Corinthians 12: 2–7; Kierkegaard mentioned this in Concluding Unscientific Postscript, where he describes the thorn in the flesh as a ‘religious suffering [that] becomes the mark of blessedness’. See S. Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, ed. and trans. Alastair Hannay (Cambridge University Press, 2009), p. 381.
a fierce debate about the Christian doctrine of immortality: see Ludwig Feuerbach, Thoughts on Death and Immortality, ed. and trans. James A. Massey (University of California Press, 1980); István Czakó, ‘Becoming Immortal: The Historical Context of Kiekegaard’s Concept of Immortality’, in Kierkegaard and Christianity, ed. Roman Králik, Abrahim H. Khan, Peter Sajda, Jamie Turnbull and Andrew J. Burgess (Acta Kierkegaardiana, vol. 3, 2008), pp. 60–65.
‘strangely enough, while this is taking place, certitude declines ’: S. Kierkegaard, The Concept of Anxiety, trans. Reidar Thomte (Princeton University Press, 1981), p. 139.
Anders Westergaard once asked him: this conversation was reported by Andreas Ferdinand Schiødte, who knew Westergaard, in a letter to H. P. Barfod in 1869: see Encounters with Kierkegaard, ed. Bruce Kirmmse, trans. Bruce Kirmmse and Virginia Laursen (Princeton University Press, 1998), p. 195. See also Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Volume 7: Journals NB15–NB20, ed. and trans. Niels Jørgen Cappelørn, Alastair Hannay, Bruce H. Kirmmse, David D. Possen, Joel D. S. Rasmussen, Vanessa Rumble and K. Brian Söderquist (Princeton University Press, 2014), p. 433: NB20, 58 (July to September 1850): ‘A Socrates in Christendom. Socrates could not prove the immortality of the soul; he simply said: this matter occupies me so much that I will order my life as though immortality were a fact – should there be none, oh well, I still do not regret my choice, for this is the only matter that concerns me. What a great help it would already be in Christendom if there were someone who spoke and acted like that: I do not know whether Christianity is true, but I will order my whole life as though it were, stake my life on it – then if it proves not to be true, oh well, I still do not regret my choice, for it is the only matter that concerns me.’
Søren A. Kierkegaard Collection: Kierkegaard’s possessions were sold by auction after his death. A list of the 280 items and the names of their purchasers can be found in Flemming Chr. Nielsen, Alt Blev Godt Betalt: Auktionen over Søren Kierkegaards indbo (Holkenfeldt 3, 2000).
‘for fear that too many people ’: see Niels Jørgen Cappelørn, Joakim Garff and Johnny Kondrup, Written Images: Søren Kierkegaard’s Journals, Notebooks, Booklets, Sheets, Scraps, and Slips of Paper, trans. Bruce H. Kirmmse (Princeton University Press, 2003), p. 19.
he appointed a former newspaper editor, H. P. Barfod: see ibid, pp. 22–9. Barfod found a slip of paper on which Kierkegaard stated his wish that Rasmus Nielsen edit his posthumous writings, in collaboration with Jens Giødvad and Israel Levin, which caused Barfod much concern.
The first volume of Søren Kierkegaard’s Posthumous Papers appeared: ibid, pp. 53–6.
a verse from an eighteenth-century hymn by Brorson: see Christopher B. Barnett, ‘Hans Adolph Brorson: Danish Pietism’s Greatest Hymn Writer’, in Kierkegaard and the Renaissance and Modern Traditions. Tome II: Theology, ed. Jon Stewart (Ashgate, 2009), pp. 63–79; Andrew J. Burgess, ‘Kierkegaard, Brorson, and Moravian Music’, in International Kierkegaard Commentary, Volume 20: Practice in Christianity, ed. Robert L. Perkins (Mercer University Press, 2004), pp. 211–43. There is no documentary evidence to show that Kierkegaard sang these (or any other) hymns, but he knew Brorson’s hymns well and often referred to them in his writings.
‘the whole burial plot ’: S. Kierkegaard, Letters and Documents, ed. and trans. Henrik Rosenmeier (Princeton University Press, 2009), pp. 26–7.
‘The most dangerous part of his actions ’: see Encounters with Kierkegaard, p. 130 – from Nord og Syd, 15 November 1855.
‘The crowd in the aisles was large ’: see ibid, p. 136 – from a letter from Hans Christian Andersen to August Bournonville, 24 November 1855.
‘Today, after a large service at the Church of Our Lady ’: see ibid, p. 135 – from a letter from H. L. Martensen to L. Gude, 18 November 1855.
‘There was an enormous crowd present ’: see ibid, p. 132–3 – from a letter from F. Sodemann to P. M. Barfod, 18 November 1855.
Henrik Lund’s graveside speech: see ibid, pp. 133–5 – from Fædrelandet, 22 November 1855.
‘To me, the entire affair is a distorted picture of Søren K.’: see ibid, p. 136 – from a letter from Hans Christian Andersen to August Bournonville, 24 November 1855.
Bishop Martensen made sure Lund was prosecuted: see Cappelørn, Garff and Konderup, Written Images, p. 10.
the birthday festivities: reported in Kristeligt Dagblad on Monday, 6 May 2013.
Joakim Garff … spoke about the peculiar task: I am grateful to Joakim Garff for showing me the text of his lecture. For a much earlier reflection on similar themes, see Garff’s ‘The Eyes of Argus: The Point of View and Points of View with Respect to Kierkegaard’s “Activity as an Author”’, Kierkegaardiana, 15 (Reitzel, 1991), pp. 29–54.