Soren Kierkegaard

But this was not the end of the bizarre scene .Kierkegaard had his own
quite peculiar way of having coffee: Delightedly he seized hold of the bag
containing the sugar and poured sugar into the coffee cup until it was piled
up above the rim .Next came the incredibly strong, black coffee, which
slowly dissolved the white pyramid .The process was scarcely finished be-
fore the syrupy stimulant disappeared into the magister’s stomach, where it
mingled with the sherry to produce additional energy that percolated up
into his seething and bubbling brain—which in any case had already been
so productive all day that in the half-light Levin could still notice the tin-
gling and throbbing in the overworked fingers when they grasped the slen-
der handle of the cup.
Just under the facade of the servility that he was compelled to adopt when
dealing with the well-to-do Kierkegaard (whose daily cup-and-saucer exer-
cises he had to endure), Levin trembled with profound irritation at the psy-
chological idiosyncrasies of his genius employer .This included Kierkegaard’s
pyrophobia, his hysterical fear of fire and of things related to fire .If Kierke-
gaard lit a candle or a cigar, he was very careful to put the matchstick in the
wood stove .So when Levin once tossed a match into a spittoon, there was
an immediate reaction .“Are you mad?” Kierkegaard shouted .“You might
set the whole house on fire!” Whereupon Kierkegaard got down on all fours,
picked up the offending matchstick, called for water, placed the little splinter
of wood in the middle of the spittoon, and drowned it to the best of his
abilities, so much so that water ran onto the floor .“It took more than a
quarter of an hour,” Levin recalled, “before Kierkegaard was calm enough
that he stopped shaking and the sweat disappeared from his forehead.” Simi-
larly, when he blew out a candle he did so with peculiar care and at a safe
distance, because he believed that the smoke from the smoldering candle
was dangerous to inhale and could injure his delicate chest.
This disproportionate nervousness was bad enough, but when ferocious
demons and dark spirits took hold of Kierkegaard, things could really become
quite terrifying .“His imagination was so lively that it was as if he saw the
images right before his eyes .It was as though he lived in a spirit world,” Levin
fearfully related, recalling with a shudder how Kierkegaard could “evoke the
most frightful things with an explicitness that was terrifying.” Levin, who was
not delicate in other respects, had nearly been nauseated when Kierkegaard
described a Greek pedophile, bringing to his description “a meticulousness
that was indecent and demonic.... His soul burned with desire, even
though his body was calm .With respect to his writings, it was his intention
that only lewd thoughts but not daring expressions were to be avoided.”
Kierkegaard spoke, and Levin listened with amazement .He was con-
fronted with a person whose linguistic gifts were almost beyond compre-