Six poèmes en prose

Klaus Rifbjerg

pp. 3-5

in: Nordal Åkerman (ed), The necessity of friction, Heidelberg, Physica, 1993

Abstract

Naval hero Tordenskjold died in a sword duel He spiked the Swedish cannon with cunning and took Marstrand. Tordenskjold won the battle of Dynekil. When still a boy, his father forced him to wear a pair of lederhosen. Peder Wessel — as he was called before he became a hero — always wore out the seat of his trousers. A stop had now been put to that. There were other children in the family and trousers cost money. But this did not stop the lad. He sat athwart a grindstone and asked a group of other scamps to turn it. In the end the inevitable occurred. He wore a hole in his trousers. How his father looked when the boy presented him with lederhosen with holes in has not been recorded. Nor what his mother looked like at the time. But Peder Wessel from then on wore ordinary clothes right up to the period he became a hero. Then he appeared in uniform and adopted his new name.