Soren Kierkegaard

you leave with a ray of sunshine in your heart. He is the only improviser
of them all.” Kierkegaard continued to hear Visby preach in the ensuing
years and often took joy over felicitous remarks in his sermons but—like
most pastors, in Kierkegaard’s view—Visby got worse and worse as time
passed. Thus on New Year’s Day 1849, Visby preached “complete non-
sense,” just as toward the end of September the same year he served up a
“reallymaunderingburialpieceontheGospelstoryaboutthewidow’sson
inNain.”
P.J.SpangheldanappointmentatHolySpiritChurch.Intheearly1840s
Kierkegaard often went on long evening walks with him, and he knew
SpangwellenoughtobeabletowritehimfromBerlin,recountingenter-
tainingnewsaboutthatcity’sterribleshortageofpublictoilets.Kierkegaard
was a guest in the Spang home, and Spang’s son Tycho remembered that
“withhisquiteremarkableandunusualtalentfortalkingtopeopleofevery
ageandfromeverywalkoflife,hewasalwaysalivelyparticipantinconver-
sation.”Kierkegaardcouldjokeandlaughheartilywiththechildrenofthe
house, preparefood with Tycho’ssister, and ingeneral be socheerful and
merrythatone“couldbetemptedtothinkthathewasaveryhappyperson
witheasygoing,hilariousspirits....Wealllikedhim,andanoldauntoften
saidtous,‘My,butisn’tthatSørenKierkegaardatrulyniceperson!’”After
P.J.Spang’sprematuredeathin1846,hiswidowwasvirtuallyinconsolable
(despite her elegant name, Christiane Philippine), but Kierkegaard called
on her frequently and managed to “speak comforting words to her.” He
alsoconsidereddedicatinga“littlebook”toSpang,butneveractedonthe
idea, and in a subsequent retrospective consideration of Spang he main-
tained that in later years Spang had been much too preoccupied with the
figurehecutwhileinthepulpit.
ThishadbeenthecaseonSunday,May12,1844,whenSpangstoodand
“gesticulatedallovertheplace”with“aplombandunctuousness.”Kierke-
gaardsoonhadenoughofthisself-satisfiedparson,butthenheobserveda
serving maid sitting directly below the pulpit: “She had sung the hymn
quiteserenely,butassoonasthesermonstartedshecommencedtoweep.
Now, it is extraordinarily difficult to come to the point of weeping over
Spang,andinparticularitwasabsolutelyimpossibletoweepoverthebegin-
ning of that sermon; from this I conclude that she had come to church in
ordertoweep.Itwasterrible:Inthepulpittherewereallthesepretentious
airs and gestures; directly beneath it was a serving maid who heard not a
word of what he was saying—or only occasionally caught a word of it—
and who regarded God’s house not as a house of prayer but as a house of
weeping,whereshecouldhaveherselfarealweepforallthemanyindigni-