Soren Kierkegaard

entrance, a woman came running, with her hat and shawl and parasol, a
rather silly woman. The sweat was pouring from her and she spoke to an
old lady who was walking a couple of steps away of me with a basket on
her arm: ‘Wherewereyou? We have now been waiting half an hour.’
(Thereaftertheconversation continued,butinsuchamanner thatsheran
about busily like a dog, first ahead, then a step behind.) ‘We have waited
halfanhour.Mysisterisreadytocry.Thehearsehasalreadyarrived.And
the whole cortege, and the trumpeters have arrived, et cetera.’ What low
comedy!Thesisterwhowasabouttocrywasonthevergeoftearsbecause
thetrumpetershadcomewhiletheladywiththebaskethadnot.—Iwalked
onanotherpath,andfortunatelytheydidnothavetocomeinthevicinity
of Father’s grave. It is really quite odd how it is precisely the most serious
ofmoodsintowhichthecomicinsinuatesitself.”Kierkegaardwasindignant
at the lack of respect for the seriousness of the place, but down along the
margin of the entry he nonetheless added: “This could be reworked in an
ironictonewiththetitle‘TearsataGrave.’”Nothingissobadthatitisn’t
good for something—if only one knows how to exploit chance events in
artisticfashion.
Fortunately, silly misses with hats and parasols were fairly uncommon,
andKierkegaardlikedtovisitthecemeteryandwalkamongtheweathered
monuments and overturned columns, gazing at the moss-covered grave-
stones whose silence was so eloquent. “Out there,” he wrote in a journal
entry from May 1844, “everything preaches a sermon. For just as Nature
proclaims God, so does every grave preach. There is a grave monument
that depicts the bust of a young girl. She must certainly have been lovely,
butnowthestonehasfallendownandthegraveissurroundedwithnettles.
Sheseemstohavehadnofamily.—Anothergraveconcealsasoldierwhose
helmet and sword lie upon his sepulcher; on the base it is written that his
memorywillneverbeforgotten.Butalas,thegateoftherailinghasalready
comeoffitshinges.Oneistemptedtotakehisswordanddefendhim—he
himself can no longer do so. And the mourners believed that his memory
wouldneverbeforgotten.”
It was also possible to be edified within the city itself, for in 1840 the
capital’schurches,chapels,foundations,hospitals,andpenalinstitutionsem-
ployedatotalofthirtypastors,chaplains,andcatechizers.Inadditionthere
were five German pastors and one French pastor. In accordance with his
wishes,theirsuperior,BishopMynster,preachedtwelveorfourteentimes
a year,almost always includingthe Christmas vespers service,and Kierke-
gaardrarelymissedtheoccasion.Hedid,however,hearotherspreach,for
example,theamiableandhonorableE.C.Tryde,whohadbeenarchdeacon
at the Church of Our Lady since 1838, serving as Kierkegaard’s confessor