Soren Kierkegaard

architecture: “Youshalllove .You shall loveyour neighbor.Youshall love
your neighbor.” During their previous conversation the king had declared
that Kierkegaard was too profound for him .Kierkegaard had responded to
this with unfortunate amiability: “Of course, Your Majesty does not have
time to read books, nor is what I write intended for you.” The king had
been surprised at such breeziness, so in an attempt to make up for his clumsi-
ness, Kierkegaard on this occasion read aloud a beautiful and easily compre-
hensible passage about love as a matter of conscience, which very appropri-
ately mentioned a king .So everything seemed to be all right again.
When the reading was over, the king directed their conversation to the
matter of his government and wished to hear what Kierkegaard thought a
king’s role ought to be .Having learned from his mistakes, Kierkegaard
asked whether he should speak plainly, and the king answered in the affir-
mative .“So I said to him that he had permitted himself to be seduced by
his personal gifts and that in this respect a king’s situation was something
like that of a woman, who ought to conceal her personal talents and simply
be the mother of the house.” Kierkegaard meant that the king had done
himself injury by granting audiences to just about anybody, and in so doing
had rendered difficult his relations with the upper reaches of the civil ser-
vice, who could not tolerate letting the king be influenced by more or less
random individuals .The king had to understand that it would not be possi-
ble to govern in royal fashion if he felt responsible for every single one of
his subjects .And he was also to bear in mind that everyone who had an
audience with him went around spreading all sorts of complete nonsense
about it.
The king was not entirely delighted with Kierkegaard’s judgment of him
and he therefore wanted to know what an ideal regent would be like .There
was no need to ask Kierkegaard twice about this, and it soon became clear
that his ideas were more royal than those of the king himself: “First of all,
it would be good if he were ugly .Next, he should be deaf and blind, or at
least act as if he were, because this would get him out of many difficul-
ties.... Finally, a king must not say much but must have a proverb he
utters upon every occasion, and which is therefore meaningless.” The king
enjoyed this description heartily, and when Kierkegaard added that a king
also ought to remember to be sick once in a while because it aroused sympa-
thy, the king exulted with mischievous laughter: “Aha, that is probably why
you say that you are sickly—you want to make yourself interesting.”
Just as Kierkegaard was about to remark on the king’s quick sense of
humor, the door to an adjacent room opened .The king disappeared for a
moment and reappeared with the queen, Caroline Amalie, on his arm .She
looked oddly unprepossessing, Kierkegaard thought, almost disheveled .But