“In one sense you really don’t know much about my life, its intentions
and aims,” Søren Aabye wrote on Wednesday, May 19, 1847, in a letter to
Peter Christian (nineteen of which survive), but well up into the 1840s the
relationship between the two nonetheless remained more than just tolerable
and their discourse was even characterized by a certain frankness and inti-
macy .In early May 1844, when the younger brother had arrived in Roskilde
and had purchased a “short-trip ticket” to Sorø, he suddenly became so
fatigued that he gave up his visit, drove home, and dove into bed .“I regard
going to bed as one of the most splendid inventions,” he later wrote Peter
Christian, “to say ‘Good day’ to the whole world—or ‘Good night.’ ” So
if Aristotle was right in defining the human being as a social animal, then,
Kierkegaard reasoned, he himself must be a veritable “nonhuman.” In his
letter he recalled that this species also includes an elderly, well-to-do coun-
cillor over on Stormgade who liked to stand by an open window or door,
smoking his evening pipe .When the night watchman would walk past and
shout “Ten o’clock,” the councillor had the habit of calling him over to
learn what he had just shouted .“Ten,” answered the night watchman,
whereupon the councillor confided in him that he would now go to bed,
so if anyone asked for him the night watchman should just tell that person
to “lick m— a——.” The last bit of the councillor’s reply was not entirely
spelled out because it was a bit rude, for it means: “Lick my arse.”
To Have Faith Is Always to Expect the Joyous,
the Happy, the GoodIt was not exactly stories of this sort with which Søren Aabye diverted his
sister-in-law Sophie Henriette .Jette, as she was called, was a delicate and
refined woman with an endearing gentleness of soul, but she was also weak
and spent long periods confined to her bed .Her condition was greatly
worsened in March 1842, when after four months’ bed rest she gave birth
to the couple’s only son, Paskal Michael Poul Egede Kierkegaard—a rather
burdensome nomenclature, but for everyday use they made do with Poul.
“I very much cherish my position in life as an uncle,” the younger brother
wrote in a letter dated May 16, 1844 and addressed to Peter Christian,
who was asked to greet Poul from “Uncle Søren.” A heartier salutation is
contained in the postscript to a letter dated February 18, 1845, where Søren
Aabye states with reference to his nephew, who was not quite three years
old, that he “in the final analysis will better secure the immortality of the
family name than the esteem in which people may hold you or the sum