Soren Kierkegaard

SUNDAY,OCTOBER21. Boesen only just managed to enter the room when
Kierkegaard let him know that this was not a convenient time, though he
did mention the names of Thurah and Martensen. On the following day,
Monday, the visit was also rather brief. Boesen remarked that Kierkegaard
ought to have had a room with a better view, so that he could see the
gardens outside, but Kierkegaard brushed off the suggestion: “What good
can it do to fool oneself like that? Things are different now. Now it is self-
torment. That sort of an idea is now torture. No, when one is to suffer,
one must suffer.”
That same day Boesen called on Pastor E. V. Kolthoff, who had once
been Kierkegaard’s pastor and was now an associate of Martensen. Years
later, there would be additional incidents that would put Boesen’s relation
to Martensen in a somewhat ambiguous light. In 1869, when he had be-
come archdeacon in Aarhus, Boesen wrote the following to H. P. Barfod,
who was then in the process of preparing Kierkegaard’s posthumous papers
for publication: “If you should find attacks upon Martensen in S. K.’s pa-
pers, I think Martensen would be sorry to see them published; and of course,
whatever S. K. himself wanted to say publicly by way of attacking him is
already in print.” Was Boesen’s visit to Kolthoff an attempt to bring about
a reconciliation between the wounded Martensen and the dying Kierke-
gaard? Had Boesen, as we sense reading between the lines, attempted to
induce Kierkegaard to change his views?
In any case, it would have been too late. Kierkegaard felt weaker and
weaker and was visibly wasting away in his bed. He had pain in his hip, and
one leg was turned sideways. His pulse was 100. He passed water involun-
tarily, especially at night. He continued to be bothered by his cough, and
the hospital journal noted: “The expectorant consists of purulent clots, some
of which are thoroughly mixed with light red blood.” On Tuesday, Octo-
ber 23, Boesen came by again, but they had only spoken briefly about Miss
Fibiger’s flowers before Kierkegaard felt quite ill. Later that same day, Kier-
kegaard’s brother-in-law Henrik Ferdinand Lund paid a visit. He had heard
that Peter Christian had been turned away, and he wanted to attempt to
mediate and to alleviate the situation a little. He therefore asked if he might
be permitted to convey a “friendly and brotherly greeting” to Peter Chris-
tian. The patient had nothing against this, just as long as such a greeting was
not linked to the two brothers’ “literary dispute.” On Wednesday, October
24, the twenty-five-year-old nephew Carl Lund, whom Kierkegaard had
once held on his lap and told of his new apartment, sent Peter Christian a
harrowing account of his visit with his uncle, now so greatly changed: “He
was sitting in an armchair wearing a robe, but bent over, with his head
fallen forward, and was totally unable to help himself. His hands trembled