I keep seeing this uncited or attributed to some kind of crappy self-improvement anthology, so let's fix that: this is from letter 150 (pp. 214-215) in Kierkegaard:Â Letters and Documents (translated by Henrik Rosenmeier; Princeton University Press 1978 ISBN: 0Â 691Â 07228Â 0). LRB on this collection can be found here & full text of letter 150 is under the cut.
150 S. K. -[1847]-Henriette Kierkegaard.
Dear Jette,
I am glad that you yourself have provided the occasion for
sending the book that accompanies this letter. So you yourself
are responsible and will all the more carefully see to it that
your reading of the book or any single part of it will not in
any way conflict with my brother's idea of what is beneficial
or harmful reading, for it would distress me to have that happen.
Please note, therefore, that I have arranged it so that
emphasis is in no way placed on whether or not you read it,
something I never oblige anyone to do, and especially not that
person whom I surely would not wish to burden with a complimentary copy.
This is my own copy, originally destined for myself: thus it
has a purely personal relationship to me, not in my capacity as
author as with other copies, but rather as if the author had
presented it to me. However, it now occurs to me that it has
not fulfilled its destiny and reaches its proper destination only
in being destined for you-the only copy in the whole printing
suitable for that. -The bookbinder has done a beautiful
job on the book (and in judging the bookbinder's craft I am
after all impartial). -It has been read through by me and is to
that extent a used copy. So please notice that everything is as
it ought to be now. For a brief moment you may admire the
bookbinder's art as you would admire any other art object;
then you may-for a longer moment, if you please, take
pleasure in the thought that it is a gift; and then you may put
the book down (-for it has been read-), put it aside as one
puts a gift aside, put it aside carefully-if it is a welcome gift.
But enough of this. I was sorry not to be able to take my
leave of you. I hope this little letter in which I take my leave
will find you as well as I found you when I arrived. Above all,
do not lose your desire to walk: every day I walk myself into a state
of well-being and walk away from every illness; I have walked myself into my best thoughts, and I know of no thought so burdensome that one cannot walk away from it. Even if one were to walk for one's health and it were constantly one station ahead -- / would still say: Walk!
Besides, it is also apparent that in walking one constantly gets as close to well-being as possible, even if one does not quite reach it-but by sitting still, and the more one sits still, the closer one comes to feeling ill. Health and salvation can be found only in motion. If anyone denies that motion exists, I do as Diogenes did, I walk. If anyone denies that health resides in motion, then I walk away from all morbid objections. Thus, if one just keeps on walking, everything will be all right. And out in the country you have all the advantages; you do
not risk being stopped before you are safe and happy outside
your gate, nor do you run the risk of being intercepted on
your way home. I remember exactly what happened to me a
while ago and what has happened frequently since then. I had
been walking for an hour and a half and had done a great deal
of thinking, and with the help of motion I had really become a
very agreeable person to myself. What bliss, and, as you may
imagine, what care did I not take to bring my bliss home as
safely as possible. Thus I hurry along, with downcast eyes I
steal through the streets, so to speak; confident that I am entitled
to the sidewalk, I do not consider it necessary to look
about at all (for thereby one is so easily intercepted, just as one
is looking about-in order to avoid) and thus hasten along the
sidewalk with my bliss (for the ordinance forbidding one to
carry anything on the sidewalk does not extend to bliss,
which makes a person lighter)--directly into a man who is
always suffering from illness and who therefore with downcast
eyes, defiant because of his illness, does not even think
that he must look about when he is not entitled to the sidewalk.
I was stopped. It was a quite exalted gentleman who
now honored me with conversation. Thus all was lost. After
the conversation ended, there was only one thing left for me
to do: instead of going home, to go walking again.
As you see, there really is no more space in this letter, and
therefore I break off this conversation-for in a sense it has
been a conversation, inasmuch as I have constantly thought of
you as present. Do take care of yourself!
Yours, S. KIERKEGAARD.
blakekathryn
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