These past months I have been if not in the greatest danger, then in
the most terrifying tumultuous seas. My ship, which sails an ocean of sickness,
has rising water in every hold. It floats heavily and cuts through the ocean ever
so harshly. Strangely, I think lying
here just off of Cape of Good Hope that there is no symbolic imagery – for
hope? Hope nevertheless! However stone-grey the ocean and however dark the sky,
one must still remember that we are “born and raised amongst militants”, as
quartermaster Krak says in the opera
“The Steadfast Tin Soldier”. The thought sometimes creeps into my head in all
my weariness, that my cup is now full. One can feel etched into life’s nerve
and think: nunc libera me. That’s when one must go back to Kraks old aria on
Tórshavn’s Skansin field: The military with its canons does not fear the bayonets! In the least, Skansin should now be
credited. For Barbara is gaining recognition at a fairly good speed. Life’s
turbulence brings one further ahead.
This is what Jørgen-Frantz Jacobsen writes to his friend William
Heinesen in February 1938, one month before he died. His sixteen-year battle
with tuberculosis had come to an end. Jørgen Frantz was 37-years old.