The innumerable travel routes of the day were thus merely the routes by
which a restless individual fled from himself .This was something that even
a figure like Aesthete A, from the early days of Kierkegaard’s career as a
writer, found amusing: “One is weary of living in the country and travels
to the capital .One is weary of one’s native land and travels abroad .One is
‘europamu ̈de’ [German: ‘weary of Europe’] and travels to America, et cetera.
One abandons oneself to the fanatical hope of endless traveling from star
to star.” Nothing but castles in the air. And then there were the practical
considerations that always presented themselves before a journey—not to
mention inconveniences of virtually every sort, including involuntary phys-
ical contact with the fellow passengers with whom one always had to share
a cabin or a carriage seat .Thus when Constantin Constantius wanted to
undertake a “journey of discovery” to satisfy himself about “the possibility
and meaning of repetition,” he traveled by steamship to Stralsund and trans-
ferred to the “rapid mail coach” to Berlin, describing his trip as follows:
“Among connoisseurs there are various opinions as to which seat is the most
comfortable in a stagecoach .My view is the following: The whole business
is miserable .On my last trip I had an end seat on the front bench inside the
coach (this is viewed by some as a great advantage) and was then so tossed
about with my close companions for thirty-six hours that when I arrived at
Hamburg I had not only lost my mind, but also my legs .For thirty-six hours
the six of us sitting inside the coach had become so kneaded together into
one body that I came to understand what had happened to the people from
Mols who had sat together for so long that they could not tell which legs
were their own.”
It never occurred to Kierkegaard that his art might have benefited from
a proper journey abroad, and his future readers might also have derived
advantages from such a journey.
“The Air Bath”
On August 2, 1847, Kierkegaard finished the printer’s manuscript ofWorks
of Love .When he was working on the eighth of the book’s ten sections, he
was so exhausted that he thought of taking a trip to Berlin, but out of fear
that this might affect his focus on the work at hand he subdued his desire
to travel abroad: “I stuck it out .God be praised, it went well .Oh, while
people mock and laugh at me for all the work I do, I sit and thank God
who grants me its success .Indeed, take everything else I ever had: What is
best is still an original—and, thank God, unfailingly blesse ́d—conception
that God is love .However dismal things have looked for me much of the