Kierkegaard Page 3

  If anyone present noticed the irony that the events surrounding the funeral of Denmark’s most articulate champion of individuality had largely been dictated by an awkward, shuffling mob, they kept their counsel to themselves. Newspaper comment in the days following was muted, treating the affair briefly and carefully. “As if,” said one of Søren’s friends, “they were afraid of getting their fingers burnt.” The most scathing assessments were reserved for private consumption. They centred less on brother Peter’s prayer that Søren’s words would not be misunderstood, and more on brother Peter’s ham-fisted preparations and on Søren’s gauche supporters.

  Bishop Martensen had adroitly kept himself from public engagement with the Kierkegaard clan, but that did not stop him commenting archly in a private letter, “Today, after a service at the Church of Our Lady, Kierkegaard was buried; there was a large cortège of mourners… . I understand the cortège was composed primarily of young people and a large number of obscure personages. There were no dignitaries, unless one wishes to include R. Nielsen… . We have scarcely seen the equal of the tactlessness shown by his family in having him buried on a Sunday, between two religious services, from the nation’s most important church.” The presumptuous Dr. Lund did not escape notice either. “I still have not been informed about this through official channels, but it has caused a great offence, which as far as I can see must be met with serious steps.”

  The next year, on June 5, 1856, Henrik Lund was fined 100 rixdollars for this illegal speech. He also had to apologise to Dean Eggert Tryde and the congregation of Our Lady for his egregious assault upon the honour of the nation’s most important church.

  Henrik Lund was concerned about more than just preserving the truth of his uncle’s spiritual and literary reputation. The vexed matter of Søren’s reputed riches would not go away either. Some of the public may have been reticent to pick sides in Søren’s war on Christendom, but they were not shy in speculating about what might have happened to the wealth of this middle-class bachelor. In the weeks following Søren’s death there was a rumour going about that all his money was to be given to the poor. Others wondered whether pots of coins were left lying under the mounds of papers and books in his literary abode.

  The fact was that no one had yet discovered what Kierkegaard wanted done with his possessions, as Henrik knew full well. As a self-proclaimed guardian of his uncle’s legacy, Lund had accompanied the probate secretary on a visit to the house, where he claims to have found a “great quantity of paper, mostly manuscripts, located in various places.” They found a lot of books but no will and no money. Indeed, from inspecting his accounts, it seems that Søren had spent all his living on these books, on household expenses, and on people in need. There was nothing left over. In a letter to his brother, Lund wrote with exasperation, “If anyone wants to talk about the great fortune he left behind, just let them talk.”

  Peter Kierkegaard also made a visit to the house. If he was looking for a plain document that would clear up any confusion, or perhaps a letter that would heal brotherly wounds, he too was sorely disappointed. In a locked drawer of Søren’s writing desk, Peter found not one will and testament, but two. Both letters came with firm instructions that they were to be opened only after Søren’s death. Both letters were addressed to Peter, yet neither had Peter as their subject. One letter was dated four years previous. It did not contain a single word of rapprochement, but instead read simply: “ ‘The unnamed person, whose name will one day be named’ to whom the entirety of my authorial activity is dedicated, is my former fiancée, Mrs Regine Schlegel.” The other undated letter, doubtlessly opened with fear and trembling, was similarly terse. It was a will, of sorts, which left all of Søren’s possessions to his former fiancée. If Regine refused to accept it for herself, then everything was to go to her so she could distribute it to the poor as she saw fit. “What I wish to express,” wrote Søren, “is that for me the engagement was and is just as binding as a marriage.”

  Søren had left behind another set of instructions, this time regarding his burial site. These papers, dated 1846, listed a set of elaborate details about the placement and decoration of the memorial stone in the family plot. Of particular interest was the poem Søren wished to have engraved on his headstone:

  In a little while

  I shall have won,

  Then the entire battle

  Will disappear at once.

  Then I may rest

  In halls of roses

  And unceasingly,

  And unceasingly

  Speak with my Jesus.

  Here was a double curiosity. Of all the chatter in the newspapers, all the talk of the town, the wishes of his family, the statements of his friends and the pronouncements of his enemies, none had settled quite so clearly and simply on the legacy the man himself wished to leave behind. It would seem that this scourge of Christendom died loving Jesus, and the champion of individuality died loving Regine. Let the people say what they wanted about the meaning and purpose of Søren Kierkegaard; no one could deny that his life, indeed, was a singular one.

  CHAPTER 2

  School Life

  “I don’t know when S.K. entered the Borgerdyd School …” Pastor Frederik Welding sits back and sucks on his pen. Was this a good way to start? How to answer the elegantly phrased—but still rather impertinent—request for information before him? Elegant, because the young man of letters Hans Peter Barfod was always unfailingly polite to his elders and solicitous of their time. Impertinent, because it was clear to Welding, as it was clear to the other men who had received similar letters, that Barfod was staking his claim, seeking to connect his name to that of that old scamp Søren Kierkegaard.

  It is 1869. Interest in Kierkegaard has not waned since his notorious burial fourteen years earlier. If anything, thanks to Barfod’s recent publication of Kierkegaard’s old letters and journals, interest was ramping up. Welding snorts. It seemed to be the way of the world these days that the wrong men got celebrated. Where was the flurry of activity for Welding’s own mentor, the late Bishop Mynster? Kierkegaard certainly hadn’t done anything to preserve the memory of that gentle, civilised man. Why should Søren be treated any differently?

  Nevertheless, here it was lying on his desk. Barfod’s request for schoolboy memories of Søren from their old days at the Borgerdyd School. How ironic that the most famous graduate of the “School for Civic Virtue” was the one man who seemed to do all he could to offend and reject civilised Christendom! Ah well, Frederik thinks to himself, it wouldn’t do to speak too ill of the dead hero.

  “I don’t know when S.K. entered the Borgerdyd School. When I entered the second form—the first form is the highest—in 1826, I met S.K. there… . He was always number two or number three in the various classes in which we were students until we were graduated in 1830.” There, thinks Welding with grim satisfaction. Let that set the record straight about Søren’s brilliant mind. “If he was number one in the class, it was only for a few short periods of time.” Then, with a pang of grudging honesty: “I was often surprised by his work, but did not really understand why the teachers were pleased with his written compositions.”

  Welding pauses to consider next how to best describe the character of the blue-eyed, pinched faced, shock-headed boy who was always running about the schoolyard. What word encapsulates the strange mix of reserved inwardness punctuated by unexpected bursts of laughter and taunting that one experienced when around Søren? How to explain to Barfod the way the other boys instinctually kept their distance from the lad and that he too “went his own way, almost self-contained, never spoke of his home”? Fremmed. That was it. “Foreigner.” Søren was an alien, a refugee. He moved through his world like a stranger exiled to a strange land. “To the rest of us, who knew and lived a more genuinely boyish life, S.K. was a stranger and an object of pity… . In most of his contacts with us he showed that he was so foreign to our interests that we quickly broke off contact with him and he often displa
yed a superior and teasing attitude, which made it clear that he was always a source of the unexpected.”

  “It seems to me,” concludes Welding, “as a boy S.K. usually had a good eye for people’s weak points, for the incoherent and offensive features of their behaviour. He therefore pounced upon tall fellows who were intellectual midgets … in general upon those who were quick to develop physically but slower intellectually.” Frederik sighs as he dips his pen for more ink. “I myself belonged to this latter group.”

  Barfod would receive a lot of other replies in a similar vein. For instance, “I have now read Welding’s letter several times, I doubt that any of S.K.’s schoolmates could do better or write anything more complete about him,” wrote Edward Anger, now a pastor, adding, “Despite many battles, it remained an undecided question whether he or I was the weakest and the least capable in sports.” The author Hans Holst was keen to point out the regular practice he had with Kierkegaard whereby he would write Søren’s Danish composition assignments and Søren would write the Latin ones. “In his boyhood S.K. was not the object of great expectations.” Peter Lind (who would one day go on to succeed Søren’s brother Peter as bishop of Aalborg) confessed, “We did not have the least suspicion that he would one day come forth as a great opponent of his times. He seemed to be very conservative, to honour the king, love the Church and respect the police.”

  All the letters were from men who had taken their rightful positions in Danish society for which the School for Civic Virtue had prepared them. Some men recount small moments of friendship. Some, like Welding, remember the teasing wit, designed to exploit weaknesses. Some remember a quiet, aloof boy who never spoke of home or asked for help. Some attest to Kierkegaard’s intellect, others cast aspersions on his ability. “Fremmed” pops up a lot, which might explain the idiosyncratic memoirs. The pen portraits are inconsistent in minor details, but all agree that Søren struck an odd figure. His character was alien to the other boys, as was his appearance. As a physical specimen Søren seems to have been gangly and fidgety. All of Søren’s school contemporaries also allude to Professor Nielsen, usually with a quizzical note acknowledging the preference but failing to account for what the old headmaster saw in the son of Copenhagen’s canniest merchant.

  This young man, who has thus been raised and educated in this manner, in keeping with the customs of our forbears and with the discipline that will promote the welfare of the state—and not in the rash and rebellious spirit of the times—I recommend to you, learned men, in the highest fashion.

  With these words on September 29, 1830, Professor Michael Nielsen launched his charge into the bourgeois society for which he had been prepared. Nielsen was the principal of Copenhagen’s premier training ground for the sons of the city’s merchants, clergy, and civil servants. Søren entered the school in 1821. Nielsen was evidently a better educator than he was a predictor of civic virtue, as Søren’s entire life project would eventually amount to an attack on civilised Denmark! Nevertheless, there can be no doubt that the scrawny lad was something of a favourite of Prof. Nielsen, who enlisted Søren to help teach the younger boys Latin and to mark their compositions.

  Nielsen’s favour is all the more valuable because he was no easy pushover. A dedicated teacher and notoriously imposing figure, Nielsen wanted the boys to tremble when they walked down the street towards the school. He was known to have relaxed his discipline only once in class, and that during a thunderstorm: “When God speaks, I keep silent! But when I speak, you keep silent.” Why was Søren so well liked by the old professor?

  It couldn’t have been because Søren was adept at ingratiating himself with the teaching staff. We are told by former school chums that by and large the teachers “believed [Søren] lacking in diligence, and he sometimes treated them with impudence.” Prof. Blindesbøll, the Danish teacher, would complain about Søren to the other students: “Kierkg. is really annoying, because he is ready with an answer before he has got the question.” Søren would often finish his Danish compositions earlier than anyone else, having only written a page or two of not very extraordinary prose and claim he was finished.

  Poor Mr. Storck, the writing teacher, set himself up for an open goal when, in a test of the students’ maturity, he proposed an assignment on any subject. Søren wrote a composition about the area of Charlottenlund—a palace and gardens north of Copenhagen—extolling its fine physical features, amusements, and pleasant places of play. Charlotte Lund just also happened to be the name of Storck’s fiancée.

  Prof. Mathiessen, a notoriously weak man with no control over his pupils, presided over classes that usually descended into chaos. Fellow students relate how once all the boys set out an entire picnic meal in his classroom—complete with a set table, sandwiches, and small beer—and began to tuck in. Mathiessen threatened to report them to Prof. Nielsen, which set the boys in a whirl of pleading and promises of good behaviour. Søren, however, merely said, “Will you also tell the professor that we are always like this in your class?” Mathiessen did not report to the boss.

  Even Søren’s obedience could have an air of impudence. Once, when Mr. Muller, the Hebrew teacher, tried to discipline Søren, he was met with laughter. Muller, with great anger and a show of gathering his stuff to quit the room, said, “Either you leave or I will.”

  Søren thought for a bit, then said, “Well, then, it’s best that I leave.” And he did.

  Søren would frequently satirise teachers who were not there, such as Mr. Warnecke, the history professor who had trouble asserting himself. (“Søren had a good eye for people’s weak points.”) When supposedly reciting passages and poetry from memory, it was not unknown for the cheeky chap to read from a text hidden on his lap.

  In the upper years, Søren had his brother Peter as his teacher in Greek. Here, he “deliberately made things difficult” by teasing his brother and bringing their relationship into the classroom.

  Perhaps it was something like these moments of independence of mind and sharpness of wit which impressed Nielsen when he reported of Søren:

  When he was entrusted to our care at the age of nine he did not permit himself to be confused by those who are ignorant of how they should act and who are like those who swim into a strong current and are swept along with bad companions as if by a powerful river.

  The independence of mind certainly did not endear Søren to many of the other boys. As Barfod discovered, by all accounts Søren had few friends at school. As an adult, his diary entries and autobiographical writings also bring to mind a lonely younger self who relied on his wit:

  Slight, slender, and frail and, compared to others, with practically none of the physical qualifications making for a whole man, melancholy, sick at heart, profoundly and inwardly ravaged in various ways, I nevertheless was given one thing: eminent sagacity, presumably to keep me from being completely worthless. Already as a young lad I was aware of my intellectual gifts and that they constituted my power over these far stronger companions.

  A pre-emptive attack is often the best defence. Søren was an inveterate teaser. Although the “least and weakest at sports,” Søren especially targeted the bigger, taller, and more powerful boys and had a knack for making them look ridiculous. When his classmate Hans (he of the Danish homework help) attempted to read his poetry aloud in his halting schoolboy manner “SK was always one of the first to interrupt his reading by throwing a book at his head.” Besides suggesting an early and highly attuned appreciation for poetry, the incident reinforces the idea that Søren was adept at exploiting weak points to get the best of a room. Søren’s teasing sometimes caused boys to cry. Once, when a teacher heard about this, he said to the bigger boy, “So what? You could easily put him in your pocket.”

  Søren may have been a stranger in a strange land, but he did not enjoy diplomatic immunity. His language was “annoying and provocative, and he was aware that this had this effect even though he was often the one who paid for it.” He would pull faces and give nicknames to oth
er boys “even though it often earned him a beating.” One day, some of the boys decided to teach this strange little upstart a lesson. Throwing him over a desk, two held down his legs while others pinned Søren’s thrashing arms. Then they set to his britches “with rulers, book straps, etc.”

  They were not stylish britches. All Barfod’s sources agreed that Søren’s wiry frame sported a deeply old-fashioned rough tweed jacket with short tails, shoes, and knee-high woollen stockings. “Never boots” like all the other boys wore. “Søren Sock” he was called, or “Choir Boy,” in connection to his anachronistic uniform and his hosier father.

  In a roundabout way this leads to the main reason for Professor Nielsen’s appreciation. Michael Pedersen Kierkegaard was a notoriously sensible man, tight with money and stern in outlook. Although one of Copenhagen’s most successful merchants, and an importer of wool, linen, and silk to boot, he did not permit any of his seven children to dress with panache. His daughters were shabby. His sons utilitarian. Although a leading public figure in commerce and religious circles, Michael only allowed himself to turn his reversible coat inside out when the original side was fully worn out. The strict stance against spending money on frippery spoke of a serious man, heading up a home of true civic virtue. Thus it is that Prof. Nielsen’s school leaver’s report appears to be less about Kierkegaard and more about the Kierkegaards:

  From the very beginning [Søren] was steeped in his parents’ seriousness and in the good example of their strong sense of religious reverence, devotion to God, and moral responsibility, and this was subsequently nourished in early childhood with instruction provided by teachers who had been carefully chosen with this goal in mind… . One may certainly hope that he will be his brother’s equal, since he is his equal in talent.

  The root of these virtues is the pure devotion to God that was implanted in his character from the very beginning of his life. Indeed, his father has conducted his business in accordance with the precepts of philosophy, and he has united his business life with the reading of works of theology, philosophy and literature… . Because his father’s home is thus such a model … and is arranged in conformity with the principles by which children are trained in virtue and in the wisdom which is given by God, he has enjoined his son to view all things in the light of the fear of God and a sense of duty … And he has done everything to awaken the boy’s love for scholarly culture, which is the foundation of all praiseworthy endeavours.