CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 15
‘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1852 and 1854 was Judge for Yourselves!, a collection of discourses similar to For Self-Examination, which he left unpublished.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 Mynster’: 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‘He leads a withdrawn existence’: ibid, p. 358–9: NB29, 95 (May to June 1854).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.