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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 July 2009
It isn't just because of what they produce and survives them that biographies of significant figures don't end with the bios itself. The works of artists, especially great ones, can take on lives of their own that may eclipse those of their authors, to such an extent that they may even leave the latter in total biographical obscurity. The reason why biographies don't end with the deaths of their subjects is rather that the aftermath of a life can teach us more about the life itself. In this respect a life not illuminated by the death would be hardly worth recording. Not least of the clues to the meaning of a life, for instance, can be the light cast on it by the way in which surviving contemporaries responded to the death. This would be especially so in the case of a person who thought his death might help to give his life the meaning he meant it to have.
Hans Christian Andersen, in a letter dated 24 November, briefly summed up the events on the day of the burial.
Søren Kierkegaard was buried last Sunday, following a service at the Church of Our Lady, where the parties concerned had done very little. The church pews were closed and the aisles unusually crowded. Ladies in red and blue hats were coming and going; ditto dogs with muzzles. […]
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