Soren Kierkegaard

Nielsen has begun to hold twice-weekly lectures on Kierkegaard, the author
and the man; they are very well attended.” Solicitude for the deceased sud-
denly knew no bounds. Even Goldschmidt, who had once been equally
busy in both satiric and satyric activity, drew in his hooves and ended up
making penitential and gently lugubrious gestures: “Whoever would speak
ill of S. Kierkegaard commits a sin of the sort the ancients callednefas.
Despite his flaws, there was about him a certain inhuman loftiness and also
something quite moving—yes, in the deepest sense, something tragic....
That at a certain moment I wrote about him in hostile fashion, or aroused
his anger, or caused him any suffering—is outside of and beyond all regret.”
The only thing lacking was a sympathy card and some funeral flowers from
the expatriate P. L. Møller!
Quite understandably, Martensen was irritated at Kierkegaard’s posthu-
mous success, and toward the end of the year he asked Gude to write a
“piece about the Kierkegaardian tendency,” in which he must not spare the
“polemical salt.” Gude did not really want to do it, however, and a mere
three weeks later Martensen had become almost indifferent about the mat-
ter, for Kierkegaard was lying out there under a couple of yards of earth
and the worms had begun to do their work. By mid-February 1856, the
tranquil bishop could write to Gude that “there is nothing here worth com-
menting on.”
Kierkegaard had not said what he wanted done with his worldly posses-
sions. The day after the funeral, Peter Christian went to Mrs. Borries’ house
with Israel Levin and the antiquarian book dealer H.H.J. Lynge to inspect
the household furnishings and books in the home of the deceased. Levin
would later remember that everything had been left in the best order, as
though Kierkegaard had simply gone off to spend a few days in the country
and was not the least bit dead. Had Kierkegaard prepared his own exit as
elegantly as all this? This possibility cannot be excluded, but it is more likely
that the order that characterized his home was the result of the work of a
private secretary named Nørregaard, representing the Copenhagen probate
court, and Henrik Lund, who had visited the apartment during the previous
week to draw up a list of the household property belonging to the deceased.
What Lund and Nørregaard had encountered when they entered the apart-
ment was a “great quantity of paper, mostly manuscripts, located in various
places,” and they placed these piles of paper “in a writing desk, which was
sealed by the Court, as well as in a chest of drawers and a cabinet.”
Nonetheless, on the occasion of his visit, Peter Christian still had to look
for quite a while before finding the key to the locked desk, but at length
he found it, and shortly thereafter he stood holding a pair of small, sealed
envelopes. Both bore the same inscription on the outside: “To Reverend