thinking in conjunction with the frail physique. Were he to go on living,
he would have to continue his religious battle, but then people would tire
of it. Through his death, on the other hand, his struggle will retain its
strength, and, as he believes, its victory.”
After the examination Kierkegaard was sent to the hospital’s administra-
tive offices to sign himself in as a paying patient. From there he went to
medical department A, where head physician Seligmann Meyer Trier, who
had reigned for thirteen years, was still in charge. The patient was shown
to a private room in one of the small pavilions located in the front building.
The hospital had fourteen such private rooms, which unlike the common
wards were relatively nicely appointed, with good, soft blankets, a bed,
wardrobe, mirror, chairs, and tables, as well as a corner cabinet containing
fine china tea and dining service. On the side facing Bredgade there were
storm windows that dampened the worst of the wind and noise. Kierke-
gaard was on “one-half best meal service,” which was not a qualitative but
a quantitative halving of “best meal service,” and one could only have this
by “special order” and by paying for it. Every day of the week, lunch con-
sisted of thirty-two grams of wheat bread, eight grams of butter, and one
half deciliter of milk. Like all other patients, Kierkegaard had a little food
scale in his room, so that he could check to make sure that the hospital
personnel had not pilfered a bit of his food in the corridor.
Kierkegaard’s private room was situated on the second floor—his peren-
nially preferredbelle e ́tage—thank God for that. But he might certainly have
wished that the corridor on which the room was located had had another
name, because it was called—of all things—Mynster’s Corridor! At the elev-
enth hour, the irony of the world thus seemed to want to play a trick on
Kierkegaard, and a nasty one at that, because the room into which they
trundled the broken-down man was number 5; in its day, about three-
quarters of a century earlier, it had served as the children’s room for the
chief physician’s two stepsons, Ole Hieronymous and Jakob Peter Mynster.
Here it was that the two brothers had planned their fabulous futures.
And here it was that Kierkegaard would pass the final forty-one days of
his life.
THURSDAY,OCTOBER4. The weakness of the legs increased. When the
patient was supported, he could certainly move his legs fairly well, but he
could not place his feet on the floor properly; they would flop down, heel
first. When he sat up in bed, he swayed somewhat, finally settling on his
left side, where it hurt. When he lay down, he could pull his legs up under
himself a little, but he could not lift them. His chest was examined, but
nothing unusual was found. His spinal column was also examined, and here