some ones and the less gruesome ones—we are thus directed to examine
these writings, suspiciously and unremittingly, once again.
Søren Sock
“I arrived at school, was presented to the teacher, and then I received my
assignment for the next day, the first ten lines of Balle’s catechism, which I
was to learn by heart. Every other impression was now banished from my
mind; only this task stood vividly before it. As a child I had an extremely
good memory, and I quickly finished my assignment. My sister heard me
recite it several times and assured me that I had learned it. I went to bed,
and before I fell asleep I recited it to myself one more time. I fell asleep
with the fir mintention of reading it over again the next morning. I woke
up at five o’clock in the morning, got dressed, took hold of my catechism
and read it again. It is all still as vivid to me right now as if it happened
yesterday. It seemed to me that heaven and earth would collapse if I didn’t
domyhomework,andatthesametimeitseemedtomethatevenifheaven
and earth collapsed, that catastrophe would in no way exempt me from
what I had been assigned to do—my homework....Itwasowing to my
father’s earnestness that this incident made such an impression on me, and
evenifIowedhimnothingelse,thiswouldbeenoughtomakemeeternally
indebted to him. This is what matters in raising a child, not that the child
learns one or another specific thing, but that the spirit is matured, that en-
ergy is aroused.”
The story of this good little pupil who learns the first ten lines of Bishop
Balle’s catechis mby heart is fro mthe second part ofEither/Or, in which
JudgeWilliamusesthisexampletoinstructthedistractedaestheteaboutthe
importance of duty. And since Kierkegaard was just as taciturn concerning
his school years as Judge Willia mwas talkative, it is no surprise that people
have—once again—fallen for the temptation to close their eyes to the his-
torical facts and have transformed Søren Aabye into the main character in
William’s poetic tale. Reality, however, was far more prosaic.
In 1821, when Søren Aabye had completed the necessary preliminary
instruction and was enrolled in the Borgerdyd [Danish: “civic virtue”]
School, Niels Andreas was also a pupil at the school but in a much higher
grade, and Peter Christian was about to become a university student. Thus
the teachers were familiar with the name Kierkegaard, and thanks to Peter
Christian’s impressive performance they probably had rather great expecta-
tions. The school, situated on the second floor of publisher Søren Gylden-
{1813–1834} 17