The last entry was dated 25 September 1855. That was also the date of publication of the ninth issue of the Instant. A week later, on 2 October, Kierkegaard collapsed in the street. He was taken by carriage first to his home, then at his own request to Frederik’s Hospital, where his condition steadily worsened. He died six weeks later, on 11 November.
There are three characteristic records from that time. One is an account by his niece Henriette Lund,1 who, with her father, rushed to the hospital on hearing of Kierkegaard’s collapse. She recounts that she had heard someone say that, on being brought to the hospital, Kierkegaard had said he had come there to die. Yet on seeing him she saw radiating from his face, ‘mixed with the pain and sorrow’, a ‘blissful feeling of triumph’: ‘Never before have I seen the spirit break through the earthly sheath in such a way and convey to it a lustre as though it were itself the body transfigured in the luminous dawn of the resurrection.’ But on a later visit, ‘the pain of the illness had come more to the fore’.2
Of the body’s deterioration we have a detailed account in the hospital record. This begins by noting that the patient had suffered the usual childhood diseases but had, as a rule, been in good health since, except for a long period of constipation. Kierkegaard was unable to offer any specific reason for his present sickness. However,
he does associate it with drinking cold seltzer water in the summer, with a dark dwelling, together with the exhausting intellectual work that he believes is too taxing for his frail physique. He considers the sickness fatal. His death is necessary for the cause which he has devoted all his intellectual strength to resolving, for which he has worked alone, and for which alone he believes that he was intended; hence the penetrating thought in conjunction with so frail a physique. If he is to go on living, he must continue his religious battle; but in that case it will peter out, while, on the contrary, by his death it will maintain its strength and, he believes, its victory.3
The patient also recounted how, two weeks earlier at a party, he had slid off the sofa while leaning forward and had considerable difficulty getting up again. The occasion is recorded by Israel Levin:
He was sitting on the sofa and had been so gay, amusing, and charming, and then he slid to the floor; we helped him up, but, exhausted, he murmured: ‘Oh, leave it – let the maid sweep it up in the morning.’4
The same had happened the following day when he was about to get dressed but without any dizziness, cramp or loss of consciousness, ‘just a feeling of utter weakness’. So it went on until he collapsed in the street. Once in hospital, Kierkegaard became increasingly unable to stand on his own feet or get up, or to turn to either side when sitting up. He could not raise his legs when lying down. There was expectoration, difficulty in sleeping, and also in urination. Regarding the latter, Kierkegaard noted that he had always had an aversion to passing water in the presence of others, and whether flippantly or not, remarked that this defect may have had a decisive effect on him and have been a reason for his becoming an oddity. On 6 October he asked, for religious reasons, to go without his half-bottle of beer a day. A pain in his left hip developed and he lay with his left leg tilted over the right, bent at the hip and knee. They tried electric treatment of his legs but with only very slight results. Constipation was added to his inability to move his limbs, and by 4 November his condition had become aggravated by bed-sores. By the 9th his condition had visibly deteriorated and now he lay in a half coma, said nothing, and took no food. The pulse was ‘weak and unsteady’, having risen to 130. On the 10th he remained in a semi-coma, his breathing ‘rapid’. On the 11th the condition was much the same, the breathing ‘heavy and short’. He died at 9 p.m. He was forty-two years old. The tentative diagnosis was ‘paralysis-(tubercul?)’. There was no autopsy.
Two of Kierkegaard’s nephews were on hand during his final illness, employed in the hospital at the time as interns.5 One of them, Henrik, felt himself a close ally of Kierkegaard and his cause, and later caused a stir at the funeral by making a speech in which he was taken to be protesting at the Church’s insistence on officiating at the committal proceedings, though he later denied that this had been his intention.6 Several other members of the family paid him visits, but not his brother: Peter Christian, when he called at the hospital on 19 October after hearing of Søren’s worsening condition, had travelled from his parsonage in Pedersborg at Sorø, well south of the city. But at Kierkegaard’s request he was denied admittance. The only member of the Church allowed to talk with him was his lifelong friend Emil Boesen, who paid almost daily visits during the final illness and recorded their conversations.
In what is probably a résumé of the first two visits, Kierkegaard responds to Boesen’s opening question, ‘How are things going?’, by saying:
‘Badly; I am dying, pray for me that it comes quickly and well. I am in low spirits … I have my thorn in the flesh, like St Paul; so I couldn’t enter into ordinary relations, and I concluded that my task was out of the ordinary. I then tried to carry it out to the best of my ability, I was a pawn for guidance which made me an outcast and I was to be used; then several years went by, then bit by bit! guidance holds out its hand and takes me into the Ark; that is always the life and fate of the emissary extraordinary. That’s also what was wrong with Regine; I’d thought it could be changed, but it couldn’t, then I dissolved the relationship. How odd, the husband became Governor,7 I don’t like it … it would have been better if it had ended quietly. It was right that she got Schlegel, that was her first relationship, and I came along and disturbed it.8 She suffered a great deal with me.’9 […]
Boesen says that Kierkegaard spoke of her with great affection and sadness. To the question whether he had been angry and bitter, Kierkegaard said:
‘No, but to a great degree distressed and anxious and indignant, for instance at my brother Peter; I didn’t receive him when he last came to me, after his talk at Roskilde.10 He thinks that because he is the older he has to be ahead of me.’ […]
Boesen then asked him if he had made any decision about his papers. ‘No,’ replied Kierkegaard, ‘let it be as it may.’ He pointed out that he was ‘financially ruined’, that his fortune could only have lasted ‘so long, ten to twenty years’, and now ‘it is seventeen’. It had been a ‘big affair’, with his degree he ‘might have tried for a position’ but he couldn’t accept it: his ‘thorn in the flesh got in the way’. The matter was decided; he ‘understood that very clearly’.
It seemed that Kierkegaard wanted to talk about the thorn in his flesh. He said,
‘The doctors don’t understand my illness. It is psychological, now they want to treat it in the usual physician’s manner. – It is bad; pray for me that it is soon over.’
Miss Ilia Fibiger, the night nurse,11 had sent him some flowers and Kierkegaard had them put in a glass-fronted cabinet; he looked at them but wouldn’t have them put in water. ‘It is the fate of flowers to bloom, be fragrant, and die.’ But of himself he said that if he could have faith that he was to live, he would live; then he could go home. If he could have a glass of water and put on his boots he might be able to get up and leave the hospital. But for one who had lived as an exception it was all right to die within the category of the universal.
On Thursday, 18 October, Boesen records that Kierkegaard was very weak, his head hung down on his chest, and his hands shook. He fell into a doze, but was awakened by his own coughing. He kept dozing off, particularly after taking his meals.
‘Now I’ve eaten … and all is prepared to receive you; I do that with open arms.9
Boesen asked if he found it possible to collect his thoughts, or were they confused? Kierkegaard replied that for the most part he had them under control, but sometimes at night they got rather muddled. Did he have anything he wanted to say?
‘No; yes, greet everyone, I’ve been very fond of them all, and tell them my life is a big, and to others unknown and incomprehensible, suffering. It all looked like pride and vanity, but it wasn’t. I am no better than the others, I have said that and have never said anything else. I had my thorn in the flesh, and so I didn’t marry and couldn’t take on an official position. After all, I am a graduate in theology, and had a public title and private advantages, I could have got what I wanted, but I became the exception instead. The day went by in work and excitement, and in the evening I was sequestered – it was the exception.’
When Boesen asked him if he could pray in peace, Kierkegaard answered:
‘Yes, I can; and when I do I pray first for the forgiveness of sins, that everything may be forgiven; then I pray to be free of despair in death, and the saying frequently occurs to me that death must be pleasing to God; and then I pray for what I would so much like, to know a little in advance when death is to come.’
It was a fine day, that Thursday, and Boesen said: ‘When you sit and talk like that you seem healthy, as though you could just get up and leave with me.’ Kierkegaard replied:
‘Yes, there’s just one obstacle, I can’t walk. But then there is a different challenge: I can be lifted up. I have had a feeling of becoming an angel, getting wings. It’s going to happen, too, sitting astride heaven and singing “Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah!” I know any shepherd’s dog can do that; it all depends how you say it.’
Would he want to have changed anything he had said? After all, hadn’t he expressed himself in rather unrealistic and severe terms? ‘That’s how it should be, otherwise it doesn’t help.’ What good would it do to speak first for awakening and afterwards for pacification?
Kierkegaard would not receive Jens Gjøwad, journalist and editor of Kjøbenhavnsposten, who had been his go-between in publishing the pseudonymous works.12
‘He did me personal favours but disowned me in public. That I can’t stand. You have no idea what a poisonous plant Mynster has been, no idea; it’s monstrous how widely its corruption has spread. He was a colossus; it needed strong forces to topple him, and the one who did it had to pay. When they hunt wild boar, hunters have a specially chosen hound, and they know quite well what is going to happen: the wild boar is felled but it is the hound that pays the price. I am happy to die, so that I can be certain that I solved the problem I was set. People often listen to what someone who has died has to say, more than what comes from someone still living.’
Boesen said he would rather Kierkegaard lived a while yet; he had been so severe and gone so far; there must be something left for him to say.
‘Yes, but I won’t die, either. I have had to forget all the Instant and the rest, to get peace, and reflect on the fact that I’ve had a fitting, important and difficult enough task. Remember that I have seen things from the very core of Christianity; everything is postponement, postponement, all of it, simply putting things off. – You have probably had ups and downs enough from our acquaintanceship?’
‘Yes,’ said Boesen, ‘but I have said nothing about it to others, and even if people knew about it and discussed it, it was respected.’ Kierkegaard then said, ‘Now that does it for today. – It’s a pleasure for me that you came, thank you, thank you!’
On Friday, 19 October, Kierkegaard had slept for a few hours in the evening and later was wide awake. His brother had been at the hospital but had not been allowed in. This, according to Kierkegaard, was something to be resolved not by dispute but by action,13 and he had acted. Boesen asked Kierkegaard whether he would like to receive the last rites. ‘Yes, indeed,’ said Kierkegaard, ‘but from a layman, not a priest.’ ‘That can hardly be done,’ said Boesen. ‘Then I’ll die without.’ You can’t do that!’ said Boesen.
‘The matter is not in question, I have made up my mind. The priests are royal functionaries, and royal functionaries have nothing to do with Christianity.’
Boesen said that couldn’t be right.
‘Indeed; it is God, you see, who is sovereign, but then there are all these people who want everything to be arranged so comfortably, so they are all served up Christianity and there are the thousand priests, and so no one in the country can die blessed without belonging. So it is they who are sovereign and it’s all over with God’s sovereignty; but he must be obeyed in everything.’
Following this spirited defence, Kierkegaard collapsed and Boesen left, greatly concerned at the consequences if Kierkegaard’s wish to receive the final rites at the hands of a layman were acceded to. It would be a symbolic act of considerable significance and could easily be abused. What if the view gained currency that to be a good Christian the one thing you should not be is a priest?
When Boesen visited the following day, Kierkegaard was unable to hold his head up and asked Boesen to support it. On saying he would see him the next day, Kierkegaard said they might as well take leave of each other today and asked Boesen to forgive him for the problems he had brought upon him. The following days there was little response. On the 25th, in reply to Kierkegaard’s question of whether his refusal to see his brother had provoked a scandal, Boesen tried to convince Kierkegaard that people were genuinely concerned for him, and that those who did not agree with his total rejection of the established Church must be entitled to their view; and in any case was it not possible to reach salvation that way as well?
Kierkegaard said that he couldn’t bear to talk about it; it was a great strain. Then Boesen asked whether the air had been bad in the bedroom of his previous apartment. ‘Yes,’ said Kierkegaard, and the thought seemed to exasperate him. Then why hadn’t he moved?
‘I was under too great a strain. I still had some issues of the Instant to get out, and a few hundred rixdollars left to be used for that. So either I could let it be and conserve my energies or keep going and drop. And I rightly chose the latter; then I was through.’
Boesen then asked if he had got the issues out. He had. To which Boesen replied: ‘How remarkably so much in your life has worked out.’ ‘Yes,’ said Kierkegaard, ‘that is why I am very happy, and very sad because I cannot share my happiness with anyone.’
Boesen visited Kierkegaard again on the 26th, but nothing important was discussed, and likewise on the 27th. On that day, a Saturday, he told Kierkegaard there were larger than usual crowds on the street.
‘Yes, that’s what once made me feel so good.’
Boesen reproached Kierkegaard for never coming to visit him (in Horsens, south of Aarhus in the east of Jutland).
‘No, how could I find time for that!’
The last time Boesen saw his friend, Kierkegaard could scarcely talk. Boesen had to leave the city and Kierkegaard died soon after.
Already in 1846, as he was approaching his thirty-third birthday, Kierkegaard had detailed requirements for the repair, that spring, of the family burial site at the Assistents graveyard (Danish: Kirkegaard):14
The small upright support (with the text about Father’s first wife) is to be removed. The fence behind should be closed.
The fence should be nicely repaired.
Just inside the fence, where that small column stood, a carved gravestone with a marble cross should be placed. The face of this gravestone should carry the words that were formerly on the small column.
Leaning against the gravestone should be placed that slab with Father’s and Mother’s names together with the rest, which of course Father himself drew up.
Then another slab corresponding with this one should be made and on it written (but in smaller letters so that there will be more space left) what is now written on the large flat stone that covers the grave, and the said large stone be removed altogether. This slab too should lean against the gravestone.
The whole burial plot should then be levelled and seeded with a fine low grass, except for a very tiny spot of bare soil showing in the four corners, and in each of these corners should be planted a little bush of Turkish roses, as I believe they are called, some very tiny ones, dark red.
On the slab (on which is to be written what was on the large flat stone, that is, the names of my late sister and brother)15 there will thus be enough room for my name to be placed there as well:
Søren Aabye, born 5 May 1813, died
And then there will be enough space for a little verse which may be done in small type:
In yet a little while
I shall have won;
Then the whole fight
Will at once be done.
Then I may rest
In bowers of roses
And unceasingly, unceasingly
Speak with my Jesus.16
In his desk, under lock and seal, Kierkegaard’s brother found a will marked to be opened after his death. It is assumed to have been written in 1849 along with related correspondence.
Dear Brother,
It is, of course, my will that my former fiancée, Mrs Regine Schlegel, inherit unconditionally whatever little I may leave behind. If she will not accept it for herself, she is to be offered it on the condition that she be willing to administer it for distribution to the poor.
What I want to express in this way is that to me an engagement was and is just as binding as a marriage, and that therefore my estate is her due exactly as if I had been married to her.
Your brother.
S. Kierkegaard17
Regine declined the inheritance, asking only that her letters be returned along with a few personal items. However, it was reported, in an interview in 1896 with Regine, that it was Schlegel who had declined it on her behalf, wanting to avoid a stir. Although there was next to no capital, the inheritance did include a large collection of books, and of course author’s rights.18 In the event it was Peter Christian who became the recipient.