Soren Kierkegaard

within me, as soon as anyone is present, every sigh is instantly transformed
into something ironic, a witticism, et cetera....Here [in Berlin] a sigh,
which might in fact signify something entirely different, could reach the ear
of a Dane, and he could write home about it. She would perhaps hear of
it, and it could have a harmful influence.” And a little further on in the
same letter: “I have been sick. That is, I have had a great many rheumatoid
headaches, often have not slept at night....IfIcalled a doctor, the Danes
would know of it immediately. Perhaps it would occur to one of them to
write home. It would reach her ears, it could disturb her. Therefore I do
not call a doctor, and by not doing so I feel better, because I remain true
to my principles.”
Boesen was not the only one receiving letters from Berlin. Sibbern re-
ceived a dutifully written one, Pastor P. J. Spang a jovial one, and Peter
Christian three fraternal letters of which two have been lost, a circumstance
that comes close to symbolizing the development of their relationship. And
then there are the letters—ten in all—to the nieces and nephews, his sisters’
children: Carl, Henrik, Michael, Sophie, Henriette (known as Jette), and
Wilhelm, all bearing the surname Lund, the eldest age fifteen, the youngest
ten. If we can rely on what Jette recollected in her memoirs shortly before
her death in 1909, this frequent correspondence was the fruit of a promise
made at a little evening gathering at the family home on Nytorv a couple
of days prior to Kierkegaard’s departure, when he suddenly burst into a
severe fit of crying that soon spread to the children, who then ceremoni-
ously promised Uncle Søren that they would certainly write regularly.
None of their dutifully penned epistles survive, but we can see from
Kierkegaard’s replies that they really did not know what to say. And the
letters they cobbled together often left much to be desired. So eleven-year-
old Carl, for example, would learn with a mixture of surprise and discomfi-
ture that the uncle who was so unhappy that evening had now regained his
composure to the point that he not only could quote German and Latin,
but was also coolly capable of correcting Carl’s spelling mistake when he
wrote “spew” instead of “spa.” Nonetheless Uncle Søren ended his letter
with the words: “Just go ahead and write about whatever comes into your
head, don’t be bashful. Your letters are always welcome.” An utterly selfish
motive was concealed behind this ostensibly generous gesture, for if Kier-
kegaard took the trouble to correspond with an illiterate like Carl, it was
because he wanted to know how things were with Regine! This becomes
clear when one reads his second letter to Boesen, which was written more
than three weeks before the first letter to his sisters’ children: “Of all the
things you write about, there is only one item that alarms me a little, and
that is that she has Henrik, Michael, et cetera, visit her. She is clever, and a