Soren Kierkegaard

was drenched and had to stay in bed for the next couple of days .There was
talk of calling Nutzhorn, the family physician, but Peter Christian and
Nanna, who was on a little summer visit, agreed that Maria was most likely
merely suffering from “too much pampering.”
Maria’s father-in-law took a completely different view of the situation,
and without informing Peter Christian he contacted Bayer, the family attor-
ney .On the morning of July 5, at Bayer’s suggestion the couple signed wills
in which they designated one another as their sole heirs .Recalling his fa-
ther’s financial coolheadedness, an appalled Peter Christian later noted:
“Would that it had never happened.” The next day was his thirty-second
birthday, and a febrile Maria made him a present of Grundtvig’sLays, which
she had purchased long in advance .Late in the afternoon a “gastric fever”
turned into a “nerve typhus with violent convulsive episodes” that contin-
ued the next couple of days .They sent for the physician, who saw no reason
for concern, but soon Maria lay there unconscious, shaking with chest con-
vulsions .At night, delirious with fever, she sang at the top of her voice, and
the songs were so eerie and “terrifyingly lovely” that people would some-
times stand quietly out on Gammeltorv, listening, while others in the stair-
well made plans to “write down this strange music.” At about four o’clock
one morning she suddenly came to consciousness and asked after her hus-
band and her mother, saying: “Now the ice has broken .Now I must go
into the Kingdom of God.”
Peter Christian heard this from the night attendant .During the past week
he himself had been spending the night in a room over on Vestergade,
while Maria’s two brothers, Lars and Peter, had slept in his room .“Unfortu-
nately”—that is the word that introduces the account in his diary where he
explains this arrangement, which he attempted to justify with reference to
external, practical circumstances, while in reality it had been occasioned by
his fear of coming too close to Maria .When he came in to pay her a rather
short visit on July 13, she begged “so imploringly” for a kiss, just a single
kiss, and—as he writes with a revealing reserve—this was something he
could not “neglect to do.”
Neglecttodo!The kiss was their last in this life .Maria died on the morning
of July 18 and was buried four days later in Assistens Cemetery in a family
plot that was becoming more and more packed with young dead.
A week later, on Tuesday, July 25, theAdresseavisencarried, under the
heading “Deaths,” the following message: “Tuesday, the 18th of this
month, with a gentle and peaceful death after eighteen days’ suffering from
typhus, God called from this life my beloved wife, Elise Maria, ne ́e Boisen,
in the thirty-second year of her life and the first year of our marriage....
P .Chr .Kierkegaard .”