what he would most like to be: “A fork,” the freckled little boy had an-
swered. “Why?” “Well, then I could ‘spear’ anything I wanted on the din-
ner table.” “But what if we come after you?” “Then I’ll spear you.” And
the name “the fork” stuck to him because of “his precocious tendency to
make satirical remarks.”
The Kierkegaard family was struck by two great misfortunes, which
probablyhadtheunintendedconsequenceofencouragingspecialtreatment
for the youngest child, who was given a number of the sort of privileges
thatchildrenareseldomslowtoturntotheirownadvantage.OnSeptember
14, 1819, Søren Michael, only twelve years old, died at Vartov Hospital of
a brain hemorrhage caused by a collision with another boy in the school-
yard. And on March 15, 1822, Maren Kirstine died at age twenty-four. To
judge fro mthe obituary her grieving parents published in theAdresseavisen,
however, it appears that her death was not entirely unexpected: “We will
notfailtoannounceherewithtoourfamilyandfriendsthatonthefifteenth
of this month it has pleased God, by means of a quiet and peaceful death,
tocallhometoHisheavenlyKingdomoureldestdaughter,MarenKirstine,
in the twenty-fifth year of her life, after fourteen years of illness.” Maren
Kirstine, who had been the result of the merchant Kierkegaard’s terrible
blunder, had thus been sick no fewer than fourteen years before she de-
partedwitha“quietandpeacefuldeath”—which,incidentally,cannothave
been entirely peaceful inasmuch as the cause of death given on the burial
certificate was “convulsions.”
ShewasburiedonMarch21inthefamilyplotoutsidethecityatAssistens
Cemetery where her younger brother already lay. The two children were
given a common gravestone of flat, reddish sandstone, which was placed in
frontoftheverticalmonumentthatMichaelKierkegaardhadplacedonthe
grave of his first wife, Kirstine Nielsdatter Røyen, engraved with the dates
of her birth and death in December 1798. On the gravestone for the two
children, however, the birth and death dates were given only for Maren
Kirstine, which was scarcely the result of mere forgetfulness. Rather, it is
more likely that Michael Kierkegaard wished to have his family grave serve
as a sort of public confession so that everyone could see that the pious
merchant’s daughter had been born less than a year and a half after the
departure of Kirstine Nielsdatter Røyen, and that he had thus begotten the
child a mere nine months after his first wife’s death.
Sickness and death burdened the spirits of a household in which there
werefewdiversionsinanyevent.Toyswereseenassuperfluous,andSøren
Aabye had to make do with his mother’s yarn spindle as his only toy. Out-
side on the market square, on the other hand, there was plenty of activity.
On market days the windows of the family house looked out on farmers
{1813–1834} 9