Soren Kierkegaard

found Møller reclining on a sofa, covered with a blanket, puffing away full
steam on a long pipe, full of tobacco. Student Nielsen explained his mission.
Møller smoked for a couple of minutes in thoughtful silence but then sud-
denly removed the pipe from his mouth and said: “Hegel! Yes, he is really
crazy. He thinks that concepts can unfold out of themselves—like this!,”
whereupon Møller blew a cloud of smoke into the room.
It was an irreverentphysicalgesture, but Møller did not give a damn for
philosophical systems, and instead of “unfeeling thinking” he emphasized
“personal interest.” He had his own quite unphilosophical reasons for this
because his life had often been beset with difficulties. Møller was born in
1794 in the village of Uldum, near the Jutland market town of Vejle, but
he grew u pin the village of Købelev, on the island of Lolland, where his
father served as a pastor. After passing his university entrance examinations
Møller studied theology. A secure position in the church would make it
possible for him to marry Grethe Bloch, his sweetheart from Lolland and
the sunshine of his youth, but when he proposed to her she turned him
down and chose an army lieutenant instead. In his despair Møller embarked
on a journey to the Far East, lasting from 1819 to 1821. He served as a
ship’s chaplain on the merchant vesselChristianshavn, on which it was said
that he would sometimes climb u pthe mast, perch there, and read Homer
and Cicero. While on board his floating monastery Møller began to jot
down his aphorisms (or “random thoughts,” as he preferred to call them in
plain Danish). And in the summer heat of Manila in 1820 he wrote the
poem “Roses Already Blush in Denmark’s Garden,” later to become one
of the most famous poems in the Danish language, under the title “Joy over
Denmark.” After his return home in 1821 he served for several years as a
teacher at the Metropolitan School, but he also delighted people with the
poetry and fiction he was writing. In 1824 Møller appeared at the Student
Association and read aloud a portion of hisTale of a Danish University Stu-
dent, about whimsical, curly-haired Fritz and his romantic escapades. From
1826 to 1831 he spent six miserable years in Norway at the University of
Kristiania, first as an assistant professor then as a professor.
Like his Fritz, Møller himself was a bit unpredictable, and his young wife
Betty had her hands full trying to get her unkempt husband, with his messy
hair, to look like the professor of philosophy he actually was. One day, as
he stood on Gammeltorv studying a poster, a street peddler asked him to
deliver a pair of geese to a customer across town, but Møller politely de-
clined: He was not a day laborer, and alas he had to go and give his lecture
at the university! Nor was Møller’s conduct always entirely proper. Toward
the end of October 1836 he served as an opponent at the defense of a
quite mediocre dissertation in Regensen Church. He had jotted down his