Master Kierkegaard: Summer 1847. Ellen Brown
never ordained. He is too honest to be a minister. Most Christians are not comforted by truth. How ironic, when our Lord taught us that he is the great liberator by being the embodiment of truth. Perhaps people do not wish to be liberated from falsehood. And I cannot blame them, really, when I consider that our choice is between being sacrificed and being punished, unless, as ordinary people who are neither entirely innocent nor inveterately wicked, we repent and seek the narrow path of faith and love.
When I find myself overcome with evil, I think on our Lord’s mother and what she must have felt, and I pray to her that all the innocent may be allowed to live free and happy, as I am sure she would have them do, and the wicked may be relieved of their impulses, and the rest of us may live in peace. Why this machinery of good and evil, in which all creation is ground to a pulp? To teach us forgiveness?
Matt 13:44–46. Or to teach us what is truly of value—like the treasure in a field or the precious pearl, buried or locked away in nature’s vaults, which only great effort and expense will secure? The heavenly kingdom has its own resources and economy so unlike our own, and seemingly so unjust at times. It is the injustice that makes me angry, and the anger that stays with me. Mother Mary help me!
June 4
I woke up this morning with a heavy head and went down to the kitchen to help, but Mrs. H. sent me right back up to my room with a bit of bread and a cup of steaming broth telling me to keep my cold to myself. She has learned from her midwife-friend that colds and fevers can pass from one person to another, even through a healthy person, though she says doctors do not seem to know this. They go from the bed of a patient who is seriously ill to the bed of a healthy woman in labor and soon the mother is dead of childbed fever. Midwives attend to only one mother at a time. Mrs. H. says the midwives have long noticed that the doctors lose many more mothers than they do, but neither the doctors nor the fathers who hire them seem to notice or care. “The arrogance of men,” she said with some heat, and I thought, “the bitterness of women,” but kept that to myself.
Along with the dinner left at my door this afternoon there appeared the volume I looked into a few days ago containing Faust. My master’s contribution, as neither Emil nor Mrs. H. would recommend such reading. He does not wish me to be lonely or bored. I feel a fever coming on and wonder how this fantastic seduction is likely to affect my addled brain. Perhaps this is an experiment on the part of my master. He is so curious about everything, and to me, likewise.
My mother died of childbed fever soon after giving birth to me. In addition to being something of an orphan and, one might say—metaphorically, at least—a widow, I am also an alien. Like Ruth, I meet all the criteria for the mercy which does not seem at all characteristic of the northern European Christian temperament. This is not self-pity, but honest self-appraisal, along with an unflinching indictment of my brothers and sisters in Christ. I find the Danish not that different from Berliners. I say not self-pity, but then illness does cause one to feel a bit sorry for oneself, as it heightens ongoing affliction. I have never felt I held a proper place in this world, and being ill I feel it more strongly. “A small death” I have heard illness called. The advantage of deadly disease is twofold: one’s self-cherishing is no longer exaggerated when it quite suddenly becomes short-lived. The dying person has a moral superiority and even spiritual acumen that no sane person could possibly envy, and yet the benefit is real—perhaps a recompense for what is to be lost. Most dying people do not know how to use it, however. I like to think that if I were dying I would know all the right things to say to my father. And I would greet our Lord with the deepest gratitude for having released me into the hands of my mother.
Faust confesses to his attendant Wagner5 that his perseverance in medieval medicine, in keeping with the training provided him by his father, actually did more harm than good to the simple people he tried to help—the cure worse than the disease. The magic coat Faust wishes might carry him to unfamiliar lands, to be singled out from humanity as Joseph was from his brothers, who then sold him into slavery—another mad dash out of the rain into the gutter.6 What does this two-souled man, panting after heaven and earth in the same breath, really want, and whom will he not harm to get it?
June 5
A little better this morning.
Matt 13:47–51. The scribe who becomes a disciple of the kingdom of heaven is like the head of a family who hauls out of his storehouse both new and old provisions. Jesus liked scribes better than Pharisees. There was hope for the scribes, men of letters, but no hope for the Pharisees, men of the cloth (Matt 12:38–45), that they could be renewed by a new set of writings, a new teaching.
Faust is a tragedy of failed covenants and false promises. I wonder what sort of writing my master is doing at this moment.
I dreamt last night that I was a prisoner and that my guards (or guardians—I am not sure which) were dogs. I rarely remember my dreams, but I awoke in the middle of the night when the fever broke and the dream was fresh in my mind. So I made a mental note of it before I fell back asleep and did not recall it until a few minutes ago. Mrs. H. has sent word to keep to myself until tomorrow, when I can be useful again. In the meantime, more Faust.
June 6
This morning’s sermon: a ramble on everything to do with God. The minister, a young man, prides himself on his ability to preach without notes or an outline in front of him. As a result, though, he manages to repeat himself endlessly without, however, establishing a focus, which makes it impossible to stay on topic. Such argument as manifests is familiar and predictable to the point of utter banality. My master’s elder brother is a pastor, but he (my master) has little use for the clergy due to some past disappointment—so many in this family!
We Christians are called upon to put our faith in one another as well as our Lord (though not to the same extent, I trust), and particularly when it comes to the ordained. This can result in tremendous expectation and letdown. As a woman I have an advantage; it is evident to us that men set things up for their own edification, and so I would never imagine that my spiritual growth is their objective (the clergy’s, I mean). But my master, being a man, believes he has every right to expect utter sincerity from Bishop So-and-So, whose interest lies in the wealth rather than the wellbeing of my master’s family.7 Most servants are of a better sort than religious authorities, I find, though there is rot in every profession.
Matt 13:53–58. “A prophet is nowhere worth less than in his fatherland and his own house.” Jesus’ works are dependent on the faithfulness of those on whom he works. Those who do not take him seriously never really know him. My master has the brilliance and daring (and anger) of a prophet, and so people fear him mostly, but with fear comes the need to discount. Perhaps he has a tendency to discount himself, being the youngest. No one expects anything of the youngest, so that when they do make a mark, it is an affront, to be dismissed as effrontery.8 I prattle on here worse than a preacher. The Lord’s Day is not set aside to be filled up with words.
The clouds this afternoon look like the flow of a glacier in spring, white opening into blue. The birds sing so sweetly in the trees. I never learned the names of birds and trees in my youth. This puts me before (or behind?) Adam, who could not rest easy until he had named everything, including Eve, I suppose. Now it clouds over; the contrast is lost.
June 7
My strength comes back through honest effort, washing woodwork and windowpanes. One must be well to read Faust and not succumb to its seductions. The language, the variety of verse forms, the subject matter, any of these things alone is enough to make one swoon.
June 8
I see little of my master. He stays to himself while he works or else goes out. He has a reputation for witty, even brilliant conversation—maybe monologue would be more accurate. He entertains sophisticated Danes with satirical talk, but they would not be his friends. His only friend is Emil. There are no ladies in his circle, as far as I can tell, though there was once an engagement, of which we are forbidden to speak in this house or on the street. Part rake and part saint, he is a lonely man. The one thing my master is not is the self-interested Bürger, obsessed with war and taxes, casually ridiculed by Faust,9 and so familiar to me from my youth. As a girl, however, I did not realize how dangerous this Bürger-mentality is, all blood