Soren Kierkegaard

backed” (Carl Brosbøll and Troels-Lund). In any case this back, subse-
quently so world-famous, was not straight, and its irregularities, according
to Henriette Lund and others, were perhaps owing to a fall he had once
taken from a tree in Buddinge Mark, a village a little north of Copenhagen.
“The shape of his body was striking, not really ugly, certainly not repulsive,
but with something disharmonious, rather slight, and yet also weighty,”
wrote Goldschmidt, whose physiognomic portrait trails off into an impres-
sionistic stroke of genius: “He went about like a thought that had got dis-
tracted at the very moment at which it was formed.” Touche ́.
Hertz also left some quite fine sketches for a portrait in one his notebooks
from the late 1840s, when he had the idea of writing a play that would
feature a certain Johannes Climacus, whose form, drawn “from nature,”
was as follows: “of middle height, with broad shoulders and a rather
rounded back, a thin lower body; a bit bent-over when he walks; thin,
rather long hair; blue? eyes; the voice often breaking into a treble or a bit
piping. Also quite easily provoked to laughter, but suddenly switching to
seriousness. There was something pleasing about him... something enter-
taining (he took his sweet time). He sits or lies down comfortably, with a
certain sense of physical ease. The certainty in him.”
For Kierkegaard the body was a necessary evil, a temporary earthly enve-
lope, which in his case had unfortunately been cut crooked across the shoul-
ders. In 1848 he wrote this pained journal entry: “To be a strong and healthy
person who could take part in everything, who had physical strength and a
carefree spirit—oh, how often in earlier years have I wished that for myself.
In my youth my agony was frightful.” After only four days’ service in the
Royal Life Guards he had been issued a physician’s “Certificate of Discharge
on Grounds of Unsuitability.” And when he took riding lessons in 1840 he
fell, not off the horse but, worse yet, into the category of the comical. “He
did not cut a particularly good figure on a horse,” wrote Hans Brøchner,
who followed the matter from a respectful distance. “He sat on the horse
stiffly and gave the impression that he was constantly recalling the riding
master’s instructions. He can hardly have had much freedom to pursue his
thoughts and fantasies on horseback. And so he soon gave up this sport.”
As can be seen from a drawing that appeared in the January 16, 1846, issue,
The Corsairstill had memories of the magister’s lack of balance as an eques-
trian. Nor was fencing, which Peter Christian enjoyed, something in which
the younger brother took any passionate interest. And there was no reason
whatever to mention dancing—the refusal was immediate and almost a mat-
ter of principle: “No, many thanks, I do not dance.” For a man whose
body was this intractable, it must have been excruciating to be the object
of Regine’s devotion, all the more because it was allegedly directed at his