Soren Kierkegaard

For older people, an invitation to the Heiberg family home at number 3
Brogade in the Christianshavn section of the city was an honor, and for
younger people it held the promise of bliss on the “Parnassus” of Copenha-
gen. This was a gathering place for theater people, for actors and actresses
who, like Heiberg, viewed the resurrection of the Royal Theater and the
establishment of an independent Danish drama as one of the major chal-
lenges confronting the cultural life of the day. The brilliant actors Carl
Winsløw and C. N. Rosenkilde, whose accomplishments Kierkegaard
would later praise to the skies, were among the earliest regular guests. The
author and playwright Henrik Hertz made his entrance in April 1832,
quickly established a rapport with the Heiberg couple, and shortly thereafter
translated portions of Goethe’sFaustin collaboration with the man of the
house. In June of the same year Hertz accompanied the couple on their
vacation in northern Zealand and fell madly in love with Heiberg’s wife,
who beguiled him with songs by Carl Bellman whenever Ludvig’s back
was turned. Hertz understood the art of self-control, however, and he re-
mained the house poet and a friend of the family for twenty-five years,
bringing with him his own little clique, P. V. Jacobsen and C. A. Thortsen,
the former a jurist, the latter an educator, and both of them extraordinary
aesthetic dreamers with a natural ability to flatten every impulse with the
deadening caution that passed for good taste. Their tastes were fussy, almost
burnt-out. They hated any display of emotion, fanatically cultivated poetic
formalism, and became physically ill if they stumbled upon a broken meter
or a failure of rhyme. Steen Steensen Blicher’s famous qui pabout “the
Copenhagen cookie-cutter guild” fit these disciples better than it did Hei-
berg himself. Among the younger lights were Frederik Paludan-Mu ̈ller,
H. P. Holst, and P. E. Lind, while the older generation of the day included
poets such as Christian Winther, Carl Bagger, and not least, Poul Martin
Møller, at present serving as professor of philosophy at the University of
Copenhagen and with whom Heiberg shared happy memories of the
“Lycæum” debating society to which they had belonged as young men.
And finally there was Søren Aabye Kierkegaard, the hosier’s son, who ap-
parently, thank God, knew a bit more than what he had learned from the
theologians. If anyone had said at the time that it would be because of
young Kierkegaard and the gangling Hans Christian Andersen that later
generations would concern themselves with the Heiberg family and its flock
of retainers, it would have been regarded as an unusually bad joke.
It is uncertain when Kierkegaard made his initial entrance into the Hei-
berg home. Mrs. Heiberg mentioned in her memoirs that Kierkegaard
would turn u pin the evening every once in a while without having been
invited. And Henrik Hertz’s diary makes it clear that Kierkegaard was pres-