Soren Kierkegaard

All this sort of thing is a torment to me .I would much rather take on any
task, the most trivial sort of work as a copyist, provided only that I am
permitted to do it by myself .Because then I could at any rate do it properly
and precisely .But this beastly indeterminacy is a nightmare for me .” If we
were to think he was projecting, we would not be far off the mark.
Two days later Kierkegaard had wrenched himself out of his indetermi-
nacy .He remained home and the next day he would go to the press with
the completed manuscript ofWorks of Love .His fickleness about travel
would not go unpunished, however, and he thus devised and carried out a
peculiar bit of self-chastisement that proved to be very effective: “In order
to assure myself that what had prevented me from traveling had not been
any possible distaste for all the fuss associated with getting ready for a jour-
ney, I have—with my usual mistrust of myself—commenced a bath cure
that I knew was very repulsive to me.” First plans about Berlin, then Stettin,
then a little vacation in Denmark .None of it came to anything, and the
whole matter ended in a penitential bath cure.
The seventy thousand foreign fathoms had to wait .Instead, the ethereal
intellect took an “air bath,” which was what he called his gently undulating
carriage rides—in 1847 alone, he went on no fewer than thirty-seven of
these outings .They did not require all sorts of odds and ends and compli-
cated trappings; he merely had to reserve some time with Søren Lassen, the
hired coachman in Lille Helligejststræde, who was also known as the aca-
demic carriage man because he specialized in serving the well-to-do .The
destination might be somewhere in northern Zealand, Fredensborg or
Frederiksborg; when he was in high spirits it might be a two-day journey,
but as a rule Lassen set out for more local destinations such as Nyholte,
Lyngby, Rudersdal, the Deer Park, Bellevue, the Hermitage, Fortunen, or
wherever else a good restaurant was to be found.
Secretary Israel Levin, who sometimes went along on these trips, has
provided us with the following vignettes that are both connected and sepa-
rated by a series of breathless dashes: “The drives up to Northern Zealand
had to go at an extremely fast pace; the ‘air bath’ did him good.—The
carriage arrived precisely on time, and he himself was always punctual to
excess.—And then off we drove.—We arrived in Fredensborg.—The
coachman hurried into the inn and merely said, ‘the magister.’—This started
everything in motion.—Kierkegaard stepped inside and in his thin voice
said only, ‘Good mor-ning,’—and then disappeared into the forest.—After
we returned we had soup and chicken or duck.—Then Kierkegaard took
out 10 rixdollars and said, ‘Here my little girl, be so kind as to pay every-
one.’—Home again in a rush.—The coachman laughed because he got a 5
rixdollar tip.—On these trips he could be amiability itself, so engaging,