Soren Kierkegaard

a human being whom he has brought to the most extreme point of weari-
ness with life, God says to himself, ‘Here is the voice.’”
There is a special, unbearable irony in the fact that Kierkegaard wrote
these painfully autobiographical lines about being brought to the “most
extreme degree of weariness with life” precisely two days before Thurah
published hisRhymed Epistle. Thurah’s poem had certainly not helped
dampen Kierkegaard’s weariness with life during the last couple of weeks
of September, which had been more wretched than usual. In the middle of
the month, when Kierkegaard was sitting on a sofa and tried to lean a little
to the side, he slid down onto the floor and was scarcely able to get up.
The next day he fell again while trying to put his trousers on. He did not
suffer from dizziness, convulsions, or headaches, but when he walked, his
feet did not go where he wanted them to; it was as though his stride had
become a bit too short. At the same time he felt a creeping, tingling sensa-
tion in his legs, which buzzed or fell asleep; sometimes he felt shooting
pains from the small of his back all the way down. The old difficulties
with urination had returned; either he could not urinate at all or he did so
involuntarily. His stomach was in knots, but curiously enough there was
nothing wrong with his appetite. He had also had a cough for some time.
When it had been particularly bad, especially in the beginning, he had had
a pain in the front of his chest, and a creamlike substance would come up.
Now the secretion was serous, with yellow blobs. It did not hurt so much
any more, it was just very tiring. When he was out for a walk on one of
the last days of September, his legs failed him and he fell. A carriage was
called and he was taken to his rooms in Klædeboderne, but his condition
did not improve. Four days later, on Tuesday, October 2, he went to Royal
Frederik’s Hospital and asked to be examined.
The examination was undertaken by the medical graduate on duty, one
Harald Krabbe, who in accordance with the applicable procedures was also
responsible for Kierkegaard’s hospital journal. Krabbe had finished his medi-
cal education that year and was without much experience, which is clear
from the case history (the anamnesis) which—in a stroke of good fortune
for posterity—allowed the patient a greater than usual say in the evaluation
of his own illness. Thus Krabbe noted, with respect to Kierkegaard: “He
cannot cite any particular cause of his present illness. He does, however,
connect it with imbibing some cold seltzer water in the summer, with a
dark dwelling, as well as with strenuous intellectual work that he believes
[has been] too much for his frail physique. He considers his illness to be
fatal. His death is necessary for the cause upon the furtherance of which he
has expended all his intellectual energies, for which alone he has labored,
and for which alone he believes he has been intended. Hence the strenuous