and weak it was frightful....Then I became really sick.” One of those in
the Citadel Church that Sunday was Peter Christian Zahle, an author and
subsequently a pastor himself, and he had not been the least bit dissatisfied
with Kierkegaard’s voice; on the contrary: “No one who has heard him
preach will forget that extremely weak, but wonderfully expressive voice.
Never have I heard a voice that was so capable of inflecting even the most
delicate nuances of expression.”
And indeed, immediately after the church service Kierkegaard himself
had felt fine, almost elated, but his plans of preparing and delivering several
sermons in the course of the summer seemed unrealistic to him, for he
realized that this sort of thing required “an abnormal amount of time.”
Instead, he considered that he might perhaps preach extemporaneously,
without a written text, which not only would save him time but would
provide him the opportunity to put an absolute emphasis on existential
matters. The more powerfully he pushed this idea, however, the weaker he
became: “Then I understood things differently, that I had once again
wanted to venture beyond my limits. And now, I repose in this thought:
‘Let My grace be sufficient for you’ [see 2 Corinthians 12:9]. My task is
that of inward appropriation.”
Fan Mail
Fredrika Bremer had called Kierkegaard a “ladies’ author,” an epithet that
had caused him to snort in contempt, but when we read the letters that
arrived in response to his sermon in the Citadel Church, we are tempted
to conclude that there was something to Bremer’s description. The erotic
rhetori cthat had been intended for Regine also had its effe ct on others.
There was, for example, a letter, dated May 21, from a Miss “e-e” who
called herself a “grateful reader and listener.” “I have heard that you are
courteous and friendly to young people and indulgent with those who have
gone astray, and I therefore turn to you confidently,” confessed e-e, who
did not hesitate to tell her life’s story to the recipient of her letter. In keeping
with the foolish spirit of the times, she had long failed to take God seriously.
This, however, soon turned out to be a very bad idea. She had therefore
sought “consolation in prayer,” but she nevertheless did not feel that God
would listen to her. When she went to church she was unable to collect
her thoughts and remain focused on the pastor’s sermon, and she also found
it difficult to find peace for her soul in the available philosophical literature.
“I had readEither/Orwith profound admiration and I tried to borrow sev-
eral of your works, because I could not afford to buy them. I obtained the