emptiness by which I am dominated... .[I]n brief, I don’t even feel like
writing what I have just written, nor do I feel like erasing it.”
This same indolent state continued for the rest of the year, and his journal
entries dwindled .On the same day that he complained about his lack of
indicative strength, he wrote of a possible explanation of this stagnation:
“How frightful it is when all history is displaced by morbid rumination
upon one’s own wretched history!” Just before Christmas 1837 he was so
listless that the only evidence of his earthly existence is loose slips and scraps
of paper .On one such scrap of paper he confessed: “I think that if I ever
become a serious Christian someday, what I will be most ashamed of will
be that I had not become one sooner, that I had wanted to try everything
else first.” This is one of the confessions that Søren Aabye—after he had
become a “serious Christian”—permitted to emerge from his official and
rather monolithic version of: Søren Kierkegaard.
It is not known how long the young theological student continued to
reside at Løvstræde .In a journal entry dated April 1, 1838, he writes: “I sat
with little Carl on my lap and told him that in the new apartment where I
intended to move there was an old sofa I was really looking forward to.”
So, Kierkegaard had plans of changing his place of residence .Carl was Carl
Ferdinand Lund, his eight-year-old nephew .This much is certain .But we
never hear anything more about the new address and the old sofa, presum-
ably because Kierkegaard changed his mind at the last moment.
“Dear Emil!! You, My Friend, the Only One”
It was during these years of drift that the acquaintance with Emil Boesen
developed into a genuine friendship .Boesen came from a cultivated home
and was the son of Councillor of Justice Johannes Boesen, who attended
the Moravian Congregation of Brethren, which was where the boys, close
in age, had first become acquainted with one another .After private tutoring
Emil entered the university in 1829, and following the usual period of study
he earned his theological degree in 1834 .Boesen continued to live in his
father’s house on Philosopher’s Alley, up in a garret apartment where he
would stand in the gloaming and gaze dreamily out the window and over
the ramparts, occasionally discerning the contours of the blue mountains of
poetry .Like Søren Aabye he nurtured dreams of literary fame, studying
the talented Heiberg and the beloved Poul Martin Møller, whose spirited
vocabulary (“would that our souls might have truly ruddy cheeks”) could
be found here and there in Boesen’s letters .Boesen also tried to adopt
Møller’s talent for the “random thought” that dealt so deftly and accurately