Journal One
(May 29–July 13, 1847)
May 29
I, Magda, a servant in the house of Kierkegaard, answer to the younger living son, who is my master. As I am slight of build and not raised up to do the work of a charwoman, my household duties are light, though not supervisory in nature. Mrs. H. holds the keys. I would be a mere chambermaid had my master not taken an interest in my peculiar circumstances and temperament. His inquisitiveness into these matters is most surprising for two reasons. Before coming to work here three months ago, I had heard unkind things said about him in particular, who is known to have a razor-like tongue, while the whole family, though quite wealthy, seems to have lived and died under a curse of some sort. Copenhagen is not so large and sophisticated a town as not to indulge itself in village gossip of a superstitious and petty nature. I know better than to trust entirely in such reports, therefore. More surprising is my master’s capacity for taking an interest in one such as me, not the most unfortunate of women, but fallen in rank and esteem sufficiently to have suffered rudeness and indifference from previous masters. An afflicted person (particularly an unmarried woman) becomes an easy target for those enamored of their little bit of power, but for those possessing both wealth and nobility of mind, a stinting meanness holds no appeal. He is more generous in every way than most people realize. And more kind.
My own pride and memory of my former prospects impel me to make plain the fact that I have not sought the sympathy of my master. He has found me out, not through embarrassing questions that might cause me to dissemble, but through sheer attentiveness—no, I mean attention. He has a way of looking at me that feels as though he is looking through me, though not beyond me as in a vacant stare, but with a piercing gaze that picks up my essence and drives it deeper within, yet also out into the light, where I may see it for what it is, without boasting or shame. I hear he is a terrific critic of others, however, especially intellectuals who pretend to lead the elect to enlightenment by means of the catchphrases2 of the day. I am not surprised. The sharpness of his tongue (or pen) is matched only by the sharpness of his gaze, which cuts through me quite painlessly. But enough of that.
Tonight’s Holy Scripture3 is Matt 13:24–30. Allowing the weeds to grow alongside the wheat until the harvest—what patience this requires! One of my favorite activities is helping the gardener pull weeds. Imagine if we house servants were to let the dirt run its course—alongside the cleanliness?—what nonsense! The weeds, like the dirt, will overtake everything. But I suppose patience looks like foolishness, imprudence, naiveté, to the impatient. The last parable was about a sower sowing seeds. That is my master. This parable is about the servants tending the crop. This is I. And yet we are the seeds and the crop as well. Blessed be God forever!
May 30
Moving about the house today, accomplishing little, wanting to be out of doors, I finally told Mrs. H. I would go for a walk. She consented of course, not being my jailor, but with a worried look. Too much freedom for a servant leads to no good, she has told me before in dark tones. I have heard gossip—not from Mrs. H., who is all discretion, as a person in her position must be—that the freedom of a servant was the cause of this family’s supposed curse. I do not subscribe to primitive notions of cause and effect, though I think if there had been any grievous wrongdoing, the personal guilt attached to it could bring about any manner of unhappiness, illness, even death. Humanity is so deeply moral that it finds ways to punish itself one might not think possible. My master seems bent on some form of penance, though for whose sins is not quite clear to me. And yet he never takes the tone of a preacher with regard to either morality or religion—he is quite clear on the difference between the two. He seems to believe God could command a person to behave immorally and that person would have no choice but to comply. Such thinking frightens me, I confess. I believe my master takes Holy Scripture to heart in a manner most of us would never dare to do, the Old as much as the New Testament, maybe even more so.
Matt 13:31–32. Birds sheltering in the tree that grows from the tiniest of seeds, the mustard. The kingdom of heaven is not the tree, but the seed. Our souls are the birds. Our souls are the fruition of our bodies, in the same way that the tree is the fruition of the seed. When our bodies complete themselves, they will be at ease in the sky. The man who plants the seed is our Lord Jesus Christ. He grows a home for our souls that is rooted in the earth.
I sometimes help the gardener plant seeds and wonder how something that looks so dead could bring forth life. The gardener tells me the seed contains within it not only the pattern of its future life but also all the food it needs until it can take in the nutrients of soil, water, and light. I imagine what it would be like to be the seed, buried in the ground, straining toward the surface. How do people who live crowded together in large cities make sense of these parables, I wonder? Do they have little gardens of their own, at their windows or on their rooftops?
On my walk, feather-like seeds, a steady stream in the sky, followed by a yellow-green wave of finer particles, barely discernible yet pervasive. The whole a flow for long enough to suggest that with stronger vision I might see everything that way. I wish my master would walk out more. Mrs. H. wishes I would stay in more. I asked my master what sort of plant the mustard is and he said, “Irrepressible—a weed, essentially.”
June 1
The Sunday before last was Pentecost. We were called to the altar to renew our baptismal vows and confirmation. I touched the hem of the altar linen and felt a current pass through me, then returned to my seat and wept for all my losses. Was this my healing miracle? No one noticed anything I did, which in our small church is a miracle in itself. My boldness often gets me into trouble, but just as often it is my salvation. My master, who knows Greek, tells me the Gospel word for faith or belief can also mean trust or confidence. It seems different words speak to different situations.
I am reluctant to write about my master. He is a mystery to me and would not wish to be written about, I feel, whether I understood him or not. When he first found me, in the library looking into one of his German books (I cannot read Danish)—I was supposed to be dusting but became curious—he was not angry with me. He did not seem the least annoyed, in fact, at the liberty I had taken. It was Faust, which had fallen open to the garden scene. With a slight smile, my master gently took the volume from my hands, casting a quick glance onto the pages before closing the book and returning it to its place on the shelf. I have remarked already on his manner of looking, accentuated by his awkward posture (unfortunate in such an otherwise elegant man), which makes him seem to stoop to peer at the world from a discomfiting elevation, rather like a vulture, I am sorry to say.
Matt 13:33–35. The kingdom is like yeast that a woman mixes with three measures of flour. Jesus speaks only in parables. This woman4—I identify with her. I help in the kitchen too—all I do here is help because I have no real housekeeping skills of my own, not having been raised to this kind of work. What I was raised to is a good question—for dependence on men, but with sufficient education to make them entirely wary of me. I can learn about this yeast by working with it. Its growth is mysterious, miraculous to the ancient mind, but not the modern (though while I believe science can explain the growth of yeast under certain conditions, I myself do not understand what happens). What is important is the experience, the handling, of warm, soft dough with the expectation of the desired result: bread. Maybe ein Weib understands this better than eine Frau.
June 2
Matt 13:36–43. One minute Jesus speaks only in parables and the next he is explaining his own parable (the one about weeds). But he is at home in this scene. Maybe he only speaks in parables in public, so that those who would kill him cannot quite be sure what he is talking about. Goethe has his Doctor Faust say that those few who knew something of the goal of knowledge who were foolish enough to bare their hearts to the people have always been crucified and burned5