Kierkegaard’s Favorite Tobacco

Posted on June 30, 2008
Filed Under Help Wanted |

Please forgive me the sporadic posting around here recently. I have been a bit overwhelmed with events in my personal life. Things are definitely back on track now. On to the help wanted.

Michael writes in with an intriguing question:

Reading a biography of Kierkegaard recently, I found that he was an avid pipe smoker and “consummed 500 grams a month of…the Venezuelan variety called Varinas.” It was “a pure, unblended, top-quality product that was sold in rolls of six, staked in woven baskets of rushes.” (Joakim Garff: Soren Kierkegaard, A Biography p.102). Does anyone know anything about this variety?

If anyone could shed some light on this matter, Michael (and I) would much appreciate it.

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6 Comments »

Comment by Jeff
2008-07-01 20:43:46

I can’t really help you with the tobacco, but I just wanted to say how great it is to have found a fellow pipe smoker with the same interest in philosophers- That’s an excellent biography. I recommend ‘Friedrich Nietzsche’ by Curtis Cate if you haven’t already read it.

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Comment by Wittlesisup
2008-07-04 17:50:11

I’m still a little bemused by Garff’s biography - oddly passionless, I thought. And I still can’t make head nor tail of Kierkegaard. But he did have a wicked sense of humour, and a sharp pen. Not many philosphers can make me laugh - but he can. “Just strike out briskly with your arms”, he wrote, in respect of the Christians of his day. And I like this: “The unhappy man is at one moment close to his goal and at the same time some distance from it.” I’d like to find out what he smoked - perhaps it’ll turn me into a philospher. Or are all pipe smokers philosphically minded? I’m sure I read something somewhere about Einstein, and his comments that pipe smoking suits a ruminative turn of mind.

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Comment by Jon Tillman
2008-07-04 18:13:52

If you are of a philosophical bent and enjoy Kierkegaards writing style, I suggest you get your hands on some of the work of George Santayana. Truly, he will make you laugh out loud, and is a good bit less opaque than Kierkegaard.

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Comment by Johnson
2008-07-05 22:40:10

Apparently none of us can help Michael with his quest for this oddball tobacco so we opt to upgrade his reading habits.
So be it. I say, go back and read War and Peace again. With all that philosophy behind you your bound to get more out of it the second time around.
And I hope it would be the second time.

Don L. Johnson

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Comment by CapnStuby
2008-07-10 10:06:09

A pipe and flame connects Man to the Earth, sends His Soul into the Sky and burns clear the Darkness covering His Heart. In this pure cloud of cleansing smoke, does every Man become a Philosopher.

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