Soren Kierkegaard

would be happy to send him a copy. She had recently read several pages of
Kierkegaard’s “The Cares of Lowliness,” which, in her, had found their
intended reader: “Thank you, good doctor, for every glimmering of light
you shed upon the darkened lives of your fellow beings.” In a letter to
Sibbern dated November 5, 1851, she told of the continuing joy she experi-
enced when reading Kierkegaard—and if he became too complicated for
her, she would simply lay the book aside and darn a stocking instead!
Ilia Fibiger, an elder sister of the Danish feminist Mathilde Fibiger, also
wrote to Kierkegaard. Toward the end of November 1851 she very humbly
asked if he would read several plays she had written and and sent to the
Royal Theater, where they had been rejected. She straightforwardly admit-
ted that she was not intellectual enough to follow Kierkegaard’s writing.
But when she put aside one of Kierkegaard’s books unread, she consoled
herself with the thought that he must find it just as easy to understand other
people as other people found it difficult to understand him. She requested
further that when he was done reading her plays, would Kierkegaard please
send the manuscripts and his reply to the mysterious cipher “S.S.M. No. 54”
at the local “postal delivery office,” which would forward the confidential
package in accordance with Fibiger’s instructions. It all came to nothing.
Kierkegaard never had the time to read Fibiger’s plays—nor, so far as is
known, did he even take the time to write a reply. When they were once
again brought into contact with one another it was much too late: Toward
the end of 1855, this same Ilia Fibiger served as a nurse at Frederik’s Hospi-
tal, where she attended to Kierkegaard as he lay dying.
The literary petitions did not only come from women. In an undated
letter we read that “a person completely unknown to you takes the liberty
of appealing to you, Good Sir,” and the anonymous gentleman requested
that Kierkegaard use his spare time to read through the enclosed manuscript
and perhaps write a foreword in which he would commend the work to its
readers. “For a number of different reasons I wish that the strictest anonym-
ity be observed in connection with publication,” the letter noted brusquely.
Kierkegaard was advised in the strongest terms against trying to discover
the identity of the letter’s author; he was simply to place the manuscript
and his reply in a sealed package to be returned as soon as possible to “219
Nørrevold, second floor, the door just opposite the stairway,” preferably
between noon and 1:00P.M. Most respectfully signed “C. R.”—presumably
the young C.F.T. Reitzel, the son of Kierkegaard’s publisher, who in fact
resided at the very address that was shrouded in such secrecy.
We might be tempted to smile a bit at these appeals, with their occasionally
naive exuberance, but they were in fact not entirely devoid of a certain under-
standing of the thirty-eight-year-old preacher and author Søren Kierkegaard.