Soren Kierkegaard

ined me very strictly, but gradually became a bit more friendly, and then
finally... permitted me to preach next Sunday.” It is not so easy to break
free from traumatic experiences.
Two days after having had these dreams, Peter Christian received a letter
from Cultus Minister C. C. Hall, informing him that—at the suggestion of
Martensen, among others—he had been nominated for the episcopal chair
in Aalborg. Peter Christian traveled to Copenhagen, where he spent the
night of November 14–15 at the home of his brother-in-law, the merchant
Johan Christian Lund, in the “same chalet room where I spent the sleepless
nights in conjunction with Søren’s funeral exactly a year ago.” As usual, he
could not make up his mind about the bishopric. He looked for omens,
and he saw it as the finger of Governance at work that he had come to visit
Martensen precisely eleven months after he had found a lily in theBook of
Common Prayer, left there by the book’s previous owner, marking Psalm 75:
3, which is about postponing things. At the Church of Our Lady, on Febru-
ary 22, 1857, Martensen consecrated him a bishop. That evening there was
a dinner party at Bishop Martensen’s residence, and a couple of days later
it was Royal Confessor Tryde’s turn to wine and dine the new bishop. The
witnesses to the truth were convened once again.
Under the date March 8, 1857, Peter Christian’s diary reports the follow-
ing: “finally reached Aalborg at five o’clock.” The newly appointed bishop
still had thirty-two years of life ahead of him, years that would be spent in
“the Siberia of northern Jutland,” as his wife Henriette called the place.
During the final twenty years of her joyless life, she herself would remain
sitting, partially paralysed, staring into the quiet rooms of the episcopal resi-
dence. Sometimes she would scream, presumably because some kidney
stones were rummaging about inside her pale, thin body. The local physi-
cian had no idea whatever of what to do, and he prescribed one ineffective
water cure after another. “A pious, lovable wretch,” Eline Boisen called
her, “for she was sick—but she had to be sick—if her husband was to be
happy. Yes, there really are some peculiar people—I think he was jealous
of everyone.”
Things also went completely awry with their son Poul. After passing his
university matriculation examinations, he had traveled to Copenhagen and
taken a degree in theology, receiving high honors. But then he had come
into bad company in a group that included such literati as Hans Sofus
Vodskov and Jens Peter Jacobsen, whose radicalism and naturalistic view of
life formed a glaring contrast to the pious belief in Providence that had
characterized his ancestral home. He drank and fornicated and ran up debts
all over the place; it was terrible. He refused to become a pastor but instead
translated Ludwig Feuerbach’sThe Essence of Christianity, which argues that