CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 2
‘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.
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.