Seven Gothic Tales by Isak Dinesen - Book Review
 First edition | |
| Writer | Karen Blixen |
|---|---|
| Land | Denmark |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Harrison Smith and Robert Haas |
| Publication engagement | 1934 |
| Media blazon | |
| Pages | 420pp (1972) |
7 Gothic Tales (translated past the writer into Danish equally: Syv Fantastiske Fortællinger) is a drove of short stories by the Danish author Karen Blixen (under the pen name Isak Dinesen), commencement published in 1934, three years before her memoir Out of Africa. The collection, consisting of stories set mostly in the nineteenth century, contains her tales "The Deluge at Norderney" and "The Supper at Elsinore".[1]
Background [edit]
In 1933, Blixen had completed a manuscript of Seven Gothic Tales, which was rejected by several publishers in Great Uk.[2] With the assistance of her brother Thomas, Blixen brought Seven Gothic Tales to the attention of Book of the Month Club selection committee fellow member Dorothy Canfield, who convinced Random House to publish the book.[iii]
Contents [edit]
- "The Deluge at Norderney"
- "The Old Chevalier"
- "The Monkey"
- "The Roads Circular Pisa"
- "The Supper at Elsinore"
- "The Dreamers"
- "The Poet"
In the British and Danish editions, "The Roads Circular Pisa" is the first tale and "The Deluge at Norderney" is the 4th, which was the writer'due south intended gild. The order was reversed in the American edition because "The Deluge at Norderney" was the publisher's favorite story.[iv]
"The Deluge at Norderney" [edit]
In the summer of 1835, a massive storm floods the Northward Sea island of Norderney, which is home to a bath popular amidst Northern European nobility. The elderly Central Hamilcar von Sehestedt, who is living on the island with his valet Kasparson while working on a volume about the Holy Ghost, is rescued from his cottage by a grouping of fishermen (Kasparson is killed in the building's plummet). The Cardinal works to rescue the island's peasants, and offers to sail out to the bath to rescue patrons trapped there. Upon arriving, he finds iv people: the elderly and somewhat delusional Miss Malin Nat-og-Dag and her maid; Nat-ot-Dag'south companion, the teenage Countess Calypso von Platen; and the melancholic Jonathan Maersk.
The grouping boards the ship and begins to sail back, but meet a grouping of peasants trapped in a granary on their way back. Considering the boat is also small to acquit them all, all just Nat-og-Dag's maid agree to trade places with the peasants and wait for help to get in. While stuck in the granary, the group exchanges stories. Maersk describes how he came to be at Norderney: as a teenager, he traveled from the pocket-sized town of Assens to Copenhagen, where he befriended the wealthy Baron von Gersdorff over their mutual love of botany. He becomes a successful court singer, but eventually learns that he is the Baron's son. Maersk is disillusioned, and repeatedly rejects the Baron's offers to legitimize him so that he tin can inherit the Businesswoman'due south enormous estate. Suicidal, Maersk is visited by his female parent's married man, who convinces him to travel to Norderney for his health.
Miss Nat-og-Dag then relates the story of the Countess Calypso: the daughter of the poet Count Seraphina, who disliked femininity, she was brought up in an abbey entirely among men, where she was ignored by anybody around her. At 16, she decides to chop off her own breasts, but stops herself at the last second upon seeing a painting of nymphs in the reflection of a mirror. Calypso escapes from the abbey and walks through the night, happening upon the house of Miss Nat-og-Dag, who is on her mode to Norderney.
At this point, Miss Nat-og-Dag convinces the immature duo to marry. With the assist of the Cardinal, they complete the anniversary in the granary. The Cardinal then tells a grouping a parable virtually an encounter between Saint Peter and Barabbas in a Jerusalem inn, and the newly married couple falls asleep. At this point, the Cardinal reveals to Miss Nat-og-Dag that he is non, in fact, the Cardinal Hamilcar von Sehestedt, merely his valet, Kasparson. Kasparson relates his life story to Nat-og-Dag, describing his fourth dimension as an actor, a barber in Seville, a revolutionary in Paris, and a slave trader in Algiers. According to Kasparson, he is also the bastard older brother of Louis Philippe I, and killed the real Cardinal in lodge to accept on some other "part" in life. The story ends with Kasparson and Miss Nat-og-Dag kissing as h2o begins to enter the granary.
The story, at nigh eighty pages, is close to novella-length.
"The Sometime Chevalier" [edit]
The narrator listens to his male parent'southward friend Businesswoman von Brackel tell a convoluted story about an come across with a prostitute he had in his younger years:
In 1870s Paris, the Baron is approached past a drunken girl on a rainy night, having just survived an attempt on his life through toxicant by his mistress, the jealous wife of a prominent Parisian statesman. The Businesswoman and the girl, who tells him her proper name is Nathalie, become dorsum to the Baron's home, he not realizing that she is a prostitute. Throughout his business relationship, the Baron frequently digresses to discuss the changing nature of women over time, concluding, to the younger narrator: "Where we talked of woman—pretty cynically, we liked to think—you talk of women, and all the difference lies there."
The Baron and Nathalie practise the usual, though with groovy reverence on his part, and autumn asleep, later which she wakes him in the small hours, asks for xx francs, and leaves. Too belatedly, the Businesswoman realizes that he loves Nathalie and chases subsequently her, just cannot detect her. The narrator asks the Baron whether he ever plant her, to which he responds with a cursory anecdote well-nigh visiting an artist friend nearly a decade and a half later and seeing him painting a still life of a immature woman's skull—a skull which bears remarkable physical similarity to Nathalie's face.
References [edit]
- ^ "7 Gothic Tales". Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 31 August 2014.
- ^ Atwood, Margaret (29 November 2013). "Margaret Atwood on the evidence-stopping Isak Dinesen". The Guardian . Retrieved 31 Baronial 2014.
- ^ Updike, John (23 Feb 1986). "'SEVEN GOTHIC TALES': THE DIVINE SWANK OF ISAK DINESEN". The New York Times . Retrieved 31 August 2014.
- ^ Riechel, Donald C. (1991). "Isak Dinesen's "Roads Circular Nietzsche"". Scandinavian Studies. 63 (3): 326–350. ISSN 0036-5637.
External links [edit]
- 7 Gothic Tales at Faded Page (Canada)
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Gothic_Tales
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