cup of this every morning and evening, but because of involuntary urination
when he coughed, the tea was soon stopped. “He continues to assert that
he is near death,” the physician noted on Friday, October 12. A couple of
days earlier, Hans Christian Andersen had informed Henriette Wulff of the
situation: “Kierkegaard is very sick. They say the entire lower part of his
body is paralyzed, and he has to be in the hospital. A theologian named
Thurah has written acoarsepoem against him.”
Emil Boesen had also heard that Kierkegaard had been admitted to the
hospital, and he made the journey from Horsens to Copenhagen. On Sun-
day, October 14, he paid his first visit to Kierkegaard. Ten years later, at
the request of H. P. Barfod, the first editor of Kierkegaard’sPosthumous
Papers, Boesen would produce a written account of these visits. To his wife
Louise, back in Horsens, Boesen recounted the powerful impression made
on him by seeing Kierkegaard once again, and he also touched on the odd
fact “that I, who was his confidant for many years and was then separated
from him, have now come here almost to be his father confessor.”
“How is it going?”“Badly. It’s death. Pray for me that it comes quickly and easily. I
am depressed. I have my thorn in the flesh, as did Saint Paul, so I was
unable to enter into ordinary relationships. I therefore concluded that
it was my task to be extraordinary, which I then sought to carry out
as best I could. I was a plaything of Governance, which cast me into
play, and I was to be used....Andthat was also what was wrong with
my relationship to Regine. I had thought that it could be changed,
but it couldn’t, so I dissolved the relationship....Itwastheright thing
that she got Schlegel; that had been the earlier understanding, and then
I came in and disturbed things. She suffered a great deal because of
me.” (And he spoke about her lovingly and sadly.) “I was afraid that
she would have to become a governess. She didn’t, however, but now
she is Governess in the West Indies.”“Have you been angry and bitter?”“No, but sad, and worried, and extremely indignant, with my
brother Peter, for example. I did not receive him when he last came
to me after his speech in Roskilde. He thinks that as the elder brother,
he must have priority. He was playing schoolmaster when I was still
being caned on my a____. I wrote a piece against him, very harsh,
which is lying in the desk at home.”