Soren Kierkegaard

donymous author and its mysterious publisher, the work was indebted to
Kierkegaard, whose appraisal of the work Boesen of course wanted to hear.
“When you left here today it seemed to me that you were out of sorts,”
Kierkegaard wrote in an undated letter in which he offered to help him
“with advice, ideas, assistance, and the like,” and then went on to protest
that Boesen must not let himself “be disturbed by my monologues when I
speak with you.” Encouraged, Boesen arrived on a subsequent occasion
with his manuscript under his arm, but when he came in there was an unfa-
miliar man in Kierkegaard’s apartment and Boesen crept away crestfallen.
“Perhaps you had intended to read something aloud to me,” Kierkegaard
wrote shortly afterwards, explaining to Boesen that if he had only waited,
“then the man who was visiting me would have left and I would have had
some time.” Now, on the other hand, this would be difficult to arrange, he
continued, because Levin was to arrive at a quarter past three and would
“remain as long as possible.” Kierkegaard was furthermore not merely
“enormously swamped” with his work, he was also “ill,” so Boesen would
have to excuse him .To compensate for his rebuff he added: “Now travel
and enjoy yourself and forget the whole world, including me, for a while,
and then come home again; then we will certainly have time and occasion.”
This was surely written with the best of intentions, but there is nothing to
indicate that Kierkegaard ever did have the time to listen to the development
of a religious life in letters from Cornelius; he received the book when it
was published in 1845, but he never mentions it in his journals.
Nor was there much time to visit Peter Christian, who had married So-
phie Henriette Glahn on June 12, 1841, and since September 1842 had
served as parish pastor for Pedersborg and Kindertofte down near Sorø in
central Zealand .The surviving bills for carriage service indicate that up until
September 1847 Søren Aabye traveled down there a couple of times a year,
typically staying for two or three days .He loved speed—“I take delight in
racing the wind”—and he needed rural diversion, air, light .His niece Hen-
riette Lund, who spent her summer vacation with the pastoral couple,
would later recall how he could suddenly come driving into the courtyard,
descend from his carriage and quickly set everything in motion: “Sunday
morning broke with a cloudless sky, and the dinner table was set in the
open on one of the little hills in the garden .I still remember with what
animation Uncle Søren spoke and the many funny stories and remarks with
which he obliged us .But in the evening, when we lay down in the grass
by the little lake, this brilliant merriment was cut off as if by a single stroke.
He only stared straight ahead in deep silence, dreaming .And not until the
moon, like a half-erased death mask, looked down on us from the dull June
sky, did he again break the silence.”