Soren Kierkegaard

so many people. In a few remarks he took up the thread from an earlier
conversation and carried it a step further, to a point where it could be
continued again at another opportunity.”
Kierkegaard’s psychological interrogations and his continual experimen-
tation were not the only sources of the eccentric pace of his walks; the
magister’s mercurial and crablike gait could also play a role. Brøchner re-
membered: “Because of the irregularity of his movements, which must have
been related to his lopsidedness, it was never possible to keep in a straight
line while walking with him; one was always being pushed, by turns, either
in towards the houses and the cellar stairwells, or out towards the gutters.
When, in addition, he also gestured with his arms and his rattan cane, it
became even more of an obstacle course. Once in a while, it was necessary
to take the opportunity to switch round to his other side in order to gain
sufficient space.” This was a mind that had gone out for a walk, a dialectical
mind, hence the unending zigzagging on the sidewalk. And thus as well,
perhaps, there might be a sudden diagonal movement to the other side of
the street, the shady side, because the genius was bothered by too much
light. In his long list of Kierkegaard’s idiosyncasies Levin thus notes: “Since
he avoided the sun, he always walked in the shade, and just as with trolls,
it was impossible to get him to walk through a sunny patch. He had a falling
out with Pastor Spang just because he [Kierkegaard] wanted to turn back
when a ray of sunshine fell across the road—and he did so, saying, ‘But I
don’t want to bother anyone. Go ahead, do just as you please.’ ”
In Copenhagen, walking, promenading, strolling, or merely drifting
along had become fashionable and so widespread that it had been necessary
to impose systematic regulations on pedestrian traffic and to promulgate
legal ordinances defining which pedestrians had the right-of-way on the
sidewalk. (According to the police ordinance of 1810, the pedestrian who
had the gutter on his right-hand side had the right-of-way.) Kierkegaard
walked and walked, sometimes beyond all boundaries. “No matter what,
do not lose the joy of walking,” he wrote to Henriette Kierkegaard in 1847.
“I walk my way to health and away from every illness every day. I have
walked my way to my best ideas, and I know of no thought so burdensome
that one cannot walk away from it....Ifaperson just continues to walk
like this, things will surely go well.” And perhaps they did, but in his haste
Kierkegaard had forgotten that his sister-in-law was bedridden for long peri-
ods and might therefore have difficulty following his well-meaning advice.
And there were also other occasions on which things went a bit too briskly.
Julie Thomsen, who in 1845 had been left a widow with five small children,
received this letter from him in 1848: “Dear Julie! It is alas quite clear that
we treated your little son unfairly today, that it was we who walked too