Soren Kierkegaard

other. This was a sort of guilty guilelessness that had its own internal set of
rules, sometimes bordering on ritual and always in accordance with the
carefully calculated group of gestures on which it was based. Kierkegaard
described their encounters in almost painful detail, noting times of day,
distances, variations in route, wind direction, and general weather condi-
tions. It was as if he wanted to be sure that the encounters could always be
repeated, so that the two mute figures would eternally be able to glide
slowly past each other on the same narrow little path along the lake, each
disappearing in his or her own direction without looking back. “During
the latter part of 1851 she encountered me every day,” he wrote retrospec-
tively in May 1852. “It was during the period that I would walk home by
way of Langelinie at ten o’clock in the morning. The timing was exact and
the place merely shifted further and further up the road in the direction of
the lime kiln. She came walking as if from the lime kiln. I never went one
step out of my way and always turned off at the Citadel Road, even when
one day she happened to be a few steps further along on the Lime Kiln
Road, and Iwould therefore have encountered her ifI hadn’t turned aside.
That was how it went, day after day.”
As time passed, Kierkegaard had become “so frightfully well-known”
that these encounters with a “solitary lady” in the early morning hours
outside the city ramparts could have attracted attention and given rise to
tongue wagging and gossip. He noted that another couple, who also en-
countered each other regularly and who “recognized both of us,” had
begun to look at them with a little too much curiosity. On the other hand,
he did not consider what Fritz Schlegel would think if he learned that his
lawfully wedded wife was once again up and dressed and out of the house
to take a walk so unusually early in the morning. Nor did he consider how
hewould have reacted if it had been Fritz who had regular encounters
with—RegineKierkegaard!Insteadhepermittedhimselftoslideintoalittle
self-deception: Perhaps Regine was taking these little walks in order to
arriveata“reconciliation”withhim,“inwhichcaseIwouldnaturallyhave
to insist that she have her husband’s consent.” Especially in the light of the
fiasco over the episode of the sealed letter, which had merely requested
something as innocent as a conversation, Kierkegaard ought to have said to
himself that Fritz would never have given his “consent” to these far more
intimate encounters. And indeed, after a certain point Kierkegaard could
sense thatthese encountershad lostmore and moreof theirinnocence, and
that he was ethically obligated to take action: “So I had to make a change.”
On the first day of the new year he would choose a new route. “And I did
so. On January 1, 1852 I changed my route and went home by way of
Nørreport. Then there was a period when we did not see each other. One