and encountered a suspect-looking character from the Poorhouse (the
workhouseforconvictsandthedestitute):“TodayafellowfromthePoor-
housecameuptomeoutbyGrønningenandhandedmealetterheasked
me to read. It began as follows: ‘I fall upon my knees before you in the
mostprofoundhumility,etcetera.’InvoluntarilyIlookedupfromthepaper
to see whether he was doing so, but he wasn’t. Would it have been more
comical if he had done so? Does the comic consist in this contradiction
betweenaconventionofspeechandreality?”
Once in a while it was not reality that provided his gaze with poetic
material;rather,itwashisgazethatinspectedrealityinordertotestoutan
artistic principle: “It might be interesting to employ examples in order to
investigate what is meant by eternal images, in both the aesthetic and the
artistic senses, specifyingthe fundamentalrelationships of mood thatmust
obtain between the various individual component parts of an image in
order for it to cohere as an eternal image.—A boat off Kallebro Strand, a
boatwithonemanonboard,standingallthewaybackinthestern,spearing
eels, thus lifting the other end of the boat up in the air—finely nuanced
greyweather:Thisisaneternalimage....EsromLakecallsforasailboat,
butwithladiesonboard.”Inothercaseswegetamereglimpseofaworld
thatslipsintothejournalonagentlebreeze:“Thesplendidlydressedlady
whoon Sunday afternoonwas sailingabout inthecanalin oneofEskild-
sen’s boats, alone.” Kierkegaard was practically bewitched by these situa-
tions that captureeternity in a photographic instant, andthat, happily, al-
most always include a woman: “This is anothereternal image(cf. a passage
somewhere in the middle of Journal NB 4)—shrubbery forms the far
boundary of a park, a brook runs through it—it is morning,a young lady
inahousedressstrollsalone/TherewillbeaviewbythePoorhouseBrook
whichexpressesthiscompletely.”
“People Bath”
Fromhischildhoodon,Kierkegaardtookpleasureinwalking,andheloved
todisappearintothecrowdorwendhiswaythroughunfamiliarstreetswith
no particular goal in mind. In mid-July 1837 he ironized about the bour-
geois philistineswhose “moralityis abrief summary of variouspolice ordi-
nances” and who have never “felt homesickness for something unknown
andfaraway,neverfelttheprofundityofbeingnothingwhatever,ofstroll-
ingoutofNørreportwithfourshillingsinone’spocketandaslenderwalk-
ingstickinone’shand.”