Soren Kierkegaard

remarks on a number of loose slips of paper and tucked them into his own
copy of the dissertation. In the middle of the whole affair the papers fell to
the floor, however, and to universal amusement the great man had to crawl
around on all fours, gathering them u pagain. Møller began each objection
with an authoritative “graviter vituperandum est” (it ought seriously be ob-
jected), but no sooner would he receive a reply to his objection than he
very good-naturedly said “concedo” (I yield) and went on to the next point.
After an unusually brief period of opposition he expressed his regrets, noting
with ill-concealed irony that considerations of time prevented him from
continuing this otherwise so interesting conversation. Then he left the po-
dium, made straight for Kierkegaard, and said in an audible whisper: “Shall
we go down to Pleisch’s?” So they went to Pleisch’s, on Amagertorv,
Møller’s favorite tearoom.
Kierkegaard related this incident to Hans Brøchner, who recalled how
Kierkegaard always spoke of Møller with “the most profound devotion.”
Brøchner continued: “Far more than his writings, it was Poul Møller’s char-
acter that had made an impression on him. He regretted that—after the
vivid memory of Møller’s personality had faded and judgments of him
would be based only on his works—the time would soon come when
Møller’s significance would no longer be understood.” Kierkegaard was not
the only one fascinated by Møller. The same was true of Emil Boesen, who
at one point compared Møller’s achievement with Martensen’s, with Møller
emerging the winner. Indeed, Møller was in fact “quite a bit superior”
because—as Boesen put it —“Poul of course has a much stronger personal-
ity and a firmer notion of the world; his worldview was much more pro-
foundly the product of his own soul.”
After the loss of Betty in 1835, however, Møller’s powers waned. He
could be seen in one of the city’s cafe ́s, sitting for hours, staring at the same
newspaper column, his coffee getting cold. The children—four sons—had
to take care of themselves, and a semblance of order was restored only after
Møller married one of Betty’s girlfriends. Not long afterward, however, he
fell ill, and in 1837 the wheezing, asthmatic professor had to give up lectur-
ing. In October of that year he moved into Henrik Hertz’s old apartment
at 17 Nytorv, where he began work on the essayThoughts on the Possibility
of Proofs of Human Immortality. The essay was scarcely concluded when the
author died in March of 1838, not quite forty-four years old.
“In the kingdom of thought, man may be grouped with the ruminant
animals,” noted Møller in one of his “random thoughts,” and this was par-
ticularly true of himself. Indeed, he worked extraordinarily slowly, con-
stantly rewriting, and often involuntarily ending u pwith fragments. A part
from his translation of the first six books of theOdyssey, Møller published