Soren Kierkegaard

remember him every day, absolutely every day, since that ninth of August
1838, and I will remember him until our blessed reunion in the hereafter.
And that is how all my relationships have been.” Søren Aabye ended the
entry with a truly bitter astringency: “And then when I die, he will slink
forward and will be—my brother, my brother who followed my enterprise
with brotherly solicitude, who knows me so very well, et cetera.”
After 1849 the connection between the two brothers only became in-
creasinglychilly. Asingle incidentrecordedin PeterChristian’s diary,serves
as a microscopic but painful monument of the deterioration of the relation-
ship between the two brothers. In June 1849 Peter Christian had had his
“carriage remodelled into a one-horse caleche” so that his hypochondriacal spouse could get a little fresh air and have a look at something other than Pedersborg. His diary continues: “Søren came out with us, but returned to town the next morning.” He had apparently not wanted to drive around in a “one-horse caleche” with his difficult sister-in-law and his erratic
brother any more than absolutely necessary.
Takingstockoftheyear1849,itwasadreadfulyear,anannus horribilislike
1846, that could not but strengthen Kierkegaard’s sense of being a victim, a
martyr: Bremer’s report card, the mess with Rasmus Nielsen, Mynster’s
arrogance and oddly farcical behavior, Martensen’sDogmatics(which went
on to become a best-seller), Kierkegaard’s own problems publishing things
and his economic difficulties, the death of Councillor Olsen, the approach
to Mr. and Mrs. Schlegel and the painful disappointment of their rebuff,
andfinally—justintimefortheendoftheyear—PeterChristian’sscurrilous
lecture.
At one point during the depressing month of December, Kierkegaard
cited a couple of lines by the poet Hans Adolph Brorson, famous for his
hymns—“While the air is still so filled / With the shivering cold of winter
snow”—and then added some words of his own: “On a day when the
winterweatherissointimidatingthatyoudonotwanttogoout—andthen,
when an entire life like that lies before you, and the question is whether to
go out into it!”
Kierkegaard was not going out. Nor was he up to it: “I am so weak that
I have to use the strength of my spirit even with respect to the most insig-
nificant things.”