Soren Kierkegaard

beyond this lay a pantry. The apartment’s “retreat ”(in plain English, the
privy) was located near the back stairs, next to the bedrooms. The lease
agreement, which survives, states that the apartment also had cellars for
firewood and provisions. The annual rent for this larger apartment was
higher—four hundred rixdollars—but rent was far from the only expense;
there was also the cost of food and provisions, and it is plain that there were
many mouths to feed.
Kierkegaard himself had very particular tastes. His preferred dishes were
duck, either curried or salted; goose, also salted, served as ordinary roast
goose; breast of goose with spinach or French beans; squab; and salmon.
From Kierkegaard’s account book with Madame Andersen, who provided
food from April 6, 1847, until April 21, 1848, we see that in November
1847 Kierkegaard dined on roast duck four times, salmon twice, salted lamb
four times, plus more ordinary dishes. He often had bouillon both for lunch
and dinner; for example, during August 1847 he had bouillon on twenty-
nine of the month’s thirty-one days, and on twenty-two of those days he
had bouillon at two meals. Apart from expenses for beer, wine, coffee, and
lesser meals, his expenses for food during the period from May 1847 to the
end of March 1848 came to 269 rixdollars, 4 marks, and 6 shillings. It was
not without reason that Israel Levin, who dined with him for various peri-
ods, was of the opinion that “his way of life cost him astounding sums.”
Others in the neighborhood lived very differently. At the corner of
Aabenraa and Rosenborggade, directly across from Kierkegaard’s dwelling,
lay “the Castle of Rags, ”which housed a hopeless jumble of poor people,
alms recipients, and other miserable wretches, officially sixty-three in all.
Scattered around town there were another ten or so of these flophouses,
whose mere names reveal the depths of their hideousness: “Hell, ”“the Pit, ”
“the Thundercloud, ”“Danny Damned’s House, ”“the Lice Club, ”“the
Latrine, ”“Verminous, ”“the Hovel, ”“the Slave Port, ”and “the Scaven-
ger’s House. ”For a couple of shillings one could spend the night at one of
these places, perhaps on the stairs or in the attic, where ropes were stretched
out so that one could lean on them and sleep standing up, as best one could.
After it burned down in March 1850, the Castle of Rags became famous
all over the country when Adolph von der Recke wrote the broadsheet
ballad “The Burning of the Castle of Rags, ”with the chorus “Julia, Julia,
jump, jump. ”A month later the genius who lived across the street from
this establishment moved out of his five-and-a-half-room apartment.
“I almost never paid visits, and at home one rule was followed absolutely:
unconditionally never to receive anyone excepting the poor who desired
assistance, ”Kierkegaard writes inThe Point of View for My Work as an Author,
which he began writing in his new apartment at the beginning of the sum-