dom convergence of a variety of factors: a sudden death, a disquieting
dream, and a typesetter who had more space in his calendar than he had
counted on.
The Sealed Letter to Mr. and Mrs. Schlegel
On July 1, 1849, the Sunday after Councillor Olsen’s death, Regine was in
Holy Spirit Church with her entire family. Kierkegaard was also there. He
always left church immediately after the sermon, while Regine usually re-
mained seated. But this Sunday, accompanied by her husband, she also left
shortly after Pastor Kolthoff said “Amen”: “And she also contrived things
so that we more or less met as I passed beneath the choir loft. Perhaps she
even expected me to greet her. I kept my eyes to myself, however....
Perhaps it is just at well that I had had all that trouble at the printer’s at
that time, because otherwise I might perhaps have gone over and made an
overture—flying directly in the face of my previous understanding, that her
father was the only person with whom I might wish—and dare—to get
involved. Perhaps she has the opposite view, perhaps she thinks that he was
the very person who stood in the way of my making any sort of approach.
God knows how much I myself feel the need to be gentle to her—humanly
speaking—but I dare not. And yet in many ways it is as though Governance
wants to prevent it—perhaps in the knowledge of what would follow.” On
July 22, the next time Kolthoff preached, Kierkegaard was again seated in
Holy Spirit Church, but that Sunday Regine did not show up.
Holy Spirit Church was not the only place they encountered each other.
They also saw each other frequently in the Castle Church, wherehehad
his regular seat andshewould sit quite nearby. At one point in January 1850
there was a sort of repetition of the previous awkward situation: Regine
left immediately following the sermon and thus ended up in the company
of Kierkegaard, who noted the situation in his journal, including in his
account one of his few portraits of himself as seen from without: “Outside
the church door she turned and saw me. She stood in the curve of the path
to the left of the church. I turned to the right as always, because I like to
walk through the arcade. My head naturally inclines somewhat to the right.
As I turned, I bowed my head perhaps a little more markedly than usual.
Then I went my way and she went hers. Afterwards I really reproached
myself, or rather I worried that she might have noticed this movement and
interpreted it as a nod indicating that she should walk with me. Probably
she did not notice it at all, and in any case I would have had to leave up to