islandofLolland,stayingatthehomeofBishopP.O.Boisen,aGrundtvig-
ian. Peter Christian was good friends with Boisen’s sons, also theologians;
nor did Boisen’s twenty-year-old daughter, Elise Marie, escape the young
graduate’snotice.ElineBoisen,whowassevenyearsyounger,observedthe
advances of their summer guest, describing with a peculiarly hesitant preci-
siontheironywithwhichtheintellectualalwaysattemptedtoshieldhimself
when confronted by too much unabashed sensuality: “He loved her ear-
nestly, and yet a day never went by when he did not offend her grossly, as
if to defy her, to put her to the test, or whatever it was.”
Peter Christian’s stay was abruptly broken off in mid-July, however,
when he became seriously ill with typhus. His fever reached dangerous
heights and he lay close to death, but by the latter part of the summer
he had recovered sufficiently to begin studying philosophy: “drowned in
Kantianism,” his diary reports. During the following year he continued his
studies, with Hume and Spinoza on the agenda, but he also found time to
take “a great many journeys on foot,” and in the summer of 1827 he made
his first journey to Jutland, where he climbed Himmelbjerget and visited
A ̊rhus.
AfterreturninghomeheappliedforaresidentfellowshipatBorch’sCol-
lege but he was turned down, and a surprising journal entry fro mlate De-
cemberinformsusthathehad“beguntolearnhowtofence.”Hisfourteen-
year-old little brother was busy with his confirmation lessons. The big day
was Sunday, April 20, 1828, when Søren Aabye was number twenty in a
group of forty-eight boys who mMynster blessed in Trinity Church. Søren
Aabye’sproficiencyearnedhimthegradeof“verygood,”whichwasnoth-
ing to brag about, but Peter Christian nonetheless presented hi mwith his
pocket watch, while he himself received their father’s watch. After writing
the name of the last boy in the parish registry of confirmations, the sexton
wrote across the entire page, “Here Ends Doctor Mynster’s Period of Ser-
vice at the Church of Our Lady.” The events of slightly less than a genera-
tion later would make these words strangely prophetic.
After serving as an opponent at his friend Johannes Ferdinand Fenger’s
publicdefenseofhisdissertationinMay1828,PeterChristianandJohannes
Ferdinand embarked on a lengthy grand tour that took them to Berlin,
where they attended lectures by Hegel and Schleiermacher, among others.
The following year Peter Christian continued on to the university in Go ̈t-
tingen, where he defended a philosophy dissertation on lying—De notione
atque turpitudine mendacii[Latin: “On the idea and the moral baseness of
lying”]—and the dialectical aplomb he displayed on that occasion earned
himthenickname“DerDisputierteufelausNorden”[German:“Thedevil-
ish debater fro mScandinavia”].24 {1813–1834}