Soren Kierkegaard

deaths perhaps due to an infectious disease that leapt from body to body if
one surrendered to life and to sensuality and forgot the great prohibition?
Søren Aabye wanted out, and his journal speaks its own clear language:
“I will turn away from those who merely lay in wait in order to learn that
one has transgressed in one way or another—and turn toward Him who
rejoices more over one sinner who repents than over the ninety-nine wise
ones who have no need of repentance.” Thus, on July 28, when he wrote
in his father’s account book, acknowledging the receipt of twenty rixdollars,
he appended the following, not exactly cordial sentence: “On the first day
of this coming September 1837, when I move out of my father’s house and
cease to be a part of his household, he has promised me, until further notice,
five hundred rixdollars per year for my maintenance.” One gets the impres-
sion that this had not come about entirely unproblematically .Later, Peter
Christian would confide to Vilhelm Birkedal how “Søren had often had
heated clashes with the father, and that, on Søren’s side, the relationship
between the two of them was far from being so full of pious devotion as
one might believe if one judges from the way he speaks of his father in his
writings.” Only the sentimental can doubt the veracity of this statement.
On September 1, 1837, Søren Aabye brought his few possessions and his
many books to an apartment at number 7 Løvstræde .As a part of his eco-
nomic arrangement he had agreed to teach Latin at the Borgerdyd School,
where he was responsible for instructing the next-to-the-highest classes .It
is not known how long he continued in this, his first and only real job,
but for the better part of a year his journals regularly contain entries about
grammatical relationships in which the despondent Latin teacher apparently
recognized his own situation—for example, this entry from October 7:
“Unfortunately my life is all too subjunctive .Would to God I had some
indicative strength.” And this indicative strength kept him waiting. True,
he did attend Martensen’s series of lectures on “Prolegomena to Speculative
Dogmatics,” but only from November 15 until December 23, after which
he no longer felt like continuing .In general, he was listless: “I don’t feel
like doing anything .I don’t feel like walking, it is strenuous .I don’t feel
like lying down, because then I would either remain lying down for a long
time, and I don’t feel like doing that, or I would get right up again, and I
don’t feel like doing that either .I don’t feel like going riding, it involves
motion that is too strenuous for my apathy .I just want to go for a drive in
a carriage and let a great many objects glide by while I experience a steady,
comfortable, rocking motion, pausing at each beautiful spot merely in order
to feel my own lassitude .My ideas and impulses are as fruitless as the lust
of a eunuch .In vain do I seek something that might stimulate me .Not
even the pithy language of the Middle Ages is capable of dispelling the