TYRPLAGERI?

Resumé

Klaus Rifbjerg: Tor(o)menting

Written as “reflections on the strange sport

of bull-fighting by a relatively civilised Dåne”,

the article begins by discussing the unavoidably

heated character of arguments,

used by any reasonable person against cruelty

to animals. Therefore it would be impossible

to defend bull-fighting if it did not, as its

core, have other meanings, albeit meanings

hard to grasp. At least one has to notice the

subtle aesthetic aspects - the stylistic variations

of movements, the improvisations exploitable

under an invariable observation of

very strict mies, etc. - that combine to make

the fight between man and beast into a very

serious ritual of life and death. If one can’t

appreciate this playing on forms inside

forms, one will never get close to the symbolic

content of one man’s playful slaughter of

the prototypical animal of natural power: allowing

us vicariously to experience a ritual

escape from what we most dreadfully fear,

the death in death.