Soren Kierkegaard

He was a practical man to the last. Else never did get to write about the
harvest, however, and the harvest wasn’t good that year; it rained too much,
especially in the latter part of July. The water did not merely ruin the grain.
It also got into the old house on Nytorv; it seeped through chimneys and
stovepipes and suddenly began running across the floor of Peter Christian’s
room. It so annoyed the old man that he wanted to sell the house. Peter
Christian dissuaded him from doing this, however, and on August 5 they
went to church together, and, for the first time since the death of Maria,
Peter took communion. Søren Aabye had moved back home again. When
he did so is uncertain, but it must have been before July 10, because the
journal entry for that day reads: “I hope that my contentment with living
here at homewill be like that of a man I once read about. He, too, was tired
of his home—and he wanted to ride away from it. When he had traveled
a little way his horse stumbled and he fell off. And when he got to his feet
he chanced to see his home, which now looked so beautiful to him that he
immediately remounted his horse, rode home, and remained there. If only
one views it from the right angle.” On Monday, August 6, Søren Aabye
dined together with his father and brother. He and his father had argued
earlier in the day—Peter Christian had heard the raised voices and noted it
in his diary—but the dispute had apparently been smoothed over and the
old man was suddenly in excellent spirits. Peter Christian, on the other
hand, was feeling a bit dispirited after dinner and sought to divert himself
by going out to call on the Hahn family.
The next morning, shortly after the housekeeper had served coffee to the
master of the house, he rang for her again, complaining that his head was
spinning. Shortly thereafter he had “nausea and many urgent bowel move-
ments,” and for a moment Peter Christian feared that his father had perhaps
been attacked by the cholera that was present in Denmark at the time. Bang,
the family physician, was out of town, so they sent instead for Nutzhorn,
who upon arrival prescribed an emetic. When this started to take effect the
old man became strikingly weak; he refused to drink anything, and between
bouts of vomiting he fell into a strange, snoring sleepiness. The house-
keeper, however, thought that this was quite normal, so the others went to
the dining table to have their coffee.
But a little before two o’clock that afternoon the sick man began hawking
with an unprecedented ferocity. They rushed in and found him lying un-
conscious on the floor, his mouth full of vomit. Peter Christian poured cold
water on his head without effect, and even though Nutzhorn was due to
return at three o’clock, Peter Christian decided to send for Dr. Dørge, who
showed up half an hour later. Like Nutzhorn, who soon rushed back into
the thick of things, Dørge was a decisive man who understood that powerful