Soren Kierkegaard

of course that did not keep him from bowing, true to form, in the wrong
manner .Things got no better when the king proudly showed her his copy
ofWorks of Love, thus putting Kierkegaard in an embarrassing position be-
cause he had not brought a copy for the queen .He begged to be forgiven
for this but the king simply made the genial reply that he and his wife
could certainly manage to share the one copy .The queen, too, wished to
demonstrate her amiability, and with a slight flutter of nervousness she said
that she knew him well, she had seen him strolling upon the ramparts.
Indeed, not only that: Even though she had found it difficult, she had also
read a bit of hisEither and Or.
Oh, what a blunder! “EitherandOr!” It was something a seamstress could
have said, Kierkegaard thought, while noting the king’s desperate attempt
to catch his eye .After a painful pause that seemed to last an eternity, the
king composed himself and asked his literary ignoramus of a wife whether
Juliane might not be wondering what had become of her .To this the queen
simply answered with a blank yes .And as quickly as she could, she took
leave of her spouse and of the genius.
All in all, however, the visits had a very beneficial effect on Kierkegaard,
who could even refer to them as a sort of “family visit.” Their effect on the
king is uncertain, however, for when we look in his diaries, which teem
with entries about the enormous numbers of stags, does, rabbits, and foxes
he felled on his hunting trips, the entry for Sunday, October 3, 1847, states
that the king went to church on that day to hear Bekker preach, after which
he had “audiences” and had then gone for a ride “in the Deer Park.” Thus
Kierkegaard is here entirely submerged into the undifferentiated “audi-
ences,” which would scarcely have pleased him, just as it would have an-
noyed him that the king’s favorite preachers were Mynster, Martensen, and
Paulli .But a king is not just anybody, and Christian VIII was not just an-
other king .He was clever, intellectual, and well-informed, and there was a
certain briskness to his repartee .Thus, during their first conversation, when
Kierkegaard had complained of being “a genius in a provincial town,” the
king had replied that he should not complain about that at all, for it made
it possible for him to do much more for the individual!
The king’s intellect could also build up a sort of tension that made Kier-
kegaard anxious .Never before had he seen an older man so fired up; indeed,
the king veritably seethed with passion like a young woman: “He was a sort
of voluptuary of the intellect and spirit.... Christian VIII was brilliantly
gifted but had in fact got lost in his great intelligence, which lacked a moral
background of corresponding proportions.” This latter remark is Kierke-
gaard’s polite way of referring to the circumstance that the king had not
been satisfied with Caroline Amalie alone and therefore had quite a number