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Most of the stories in this collection kept me spellbound. Most stories are set in Dinesen’s native Denmark, with occasional ventures into France, Germany, Norway, and other European countries. One story-with-in-a-story is set in Tehran. Dinesen was a master of short story literature. I happened to read this collection as I reached the end of a months-long read of Ralph Manheim’s translation of Grimms’ fairy tales, so I noted the influence of fairy tales and legends on Dinesen’s work. ( )

‘’You have drunk with Sunniva now,’’ she said. ‘’You have drunk down a little wisdom, so that in the future all your thoughts shall not fall like raindrops into the salt sea.’’

The Sailor - Boy’s Tale: A sailor-boy meets a strange falcon, kisses a girl and kills a man for love. A mystical tale of a boy reaching manhood.

The Young Man with the Carnation: A young writer in search of inspiration comes across a company of sailors whose tale of a woman’s search for the perfect Blue opens his eyes and understands that his wife is his Muse.

The Pearls: A pearl becomes a metaphor for the wonder, insecurity and fragility of marriage.

The Invincible Slave-Owners: The sorrows of young love through misunderstandings and secrecy.

The Heroine: A myseterious woman becomes the symbol of pride, resilience and dignity as the Franco-Prussian war unfolds…

The Dreaming Child: Life brings a lonely woman and an abandoned child together in a story that starts as a Dickensian tale that turns rather eerie until its powerful closure.

Alkmene: The arrival of a young girl in a parsonage turns the household upside down and seals the fate of a boy who desperately searches for affection.

The Fish: King Erik of Denmark muses on Religion and the unattainable, seeing himself as the old Wanderer without knowing that he is soon to meet his end at the hands of a jealous husband. A haunting story for a midsummer’s night that reminded me of Oscar Wilde’s tales.

Peter and Rosa: The wind and the North Sea become the scenery of a young couple’s star-crossed love.

‘’The low, undulating Danish landscape was silent and serene, mysteriously wide-awake, in the hour before sunrise. There was not a cloud in the pale sky, not a shadow along the dim, pearly fields, hills and woods. The mist was lifting from the valleys and hollows, the air was cool, the grass and the foliage dripping wet with morning dew. Unwatched by the eyes of man, and undisturbed bu his activity, the country breathed a timeless life, to which language was inadequate.’’

Sorrow-Acre: A lyrical ode to the nature, history and legends of Denmark, told through the bitter story of a woman and her son.

A Consolatory Tale: This story could have been narrated by Scheherazade to the ones who long to open the caskets of Life and Death…

Blixen’s characters search for love, for a place to belong, for the great unknown. The seam the wind, the Northern land, the mysticism and lyricism echo through her hauntingly unique writer. Although much more earthly than her Seven Gothic Tales, this collection is a fable for daily life and the proof that the physical and the spiritual are one.
‘’I have now reconciled the heart of man with the conditions of the earth. I have persecuted, I have shown him how to get himself spat upon and scourged, I have taught him how to get himself hung upon a cross. I have given to man that solution of his riddle, that he begged of me, I have consigned to him his salvation.’’

My reviews can also be found on https://theopinionatedreaderblog.wordpress.com/ ( )

Due i racconti al suo livello (Pranzo di Babette, per capirci)
Entrambi ambientati in Danimarca (quelli in altri Paesi la fanno sempre scadere un po', per quel che mi riguarda, ma forse sono io che cerco il Nord nei suoi racconti, non so, può essere), più precisamente si tratta di:- Peter e Rosa
- Il campo del dolore Poi vedete un po' voi ;-)
Ciao ( )

These short stories are thoughtful, romantic in the old sense of the word, and very introspective. Slow going- the style is very different from modern narrative prose- a lot about each character's inner thoughts and perceptions of the world and their past relationships to other people and their half-formed dreams of the future and so on- there is very little conversation and nothing much seems to happen until you get to the end when there is a often a sudden inexplicable connection to something else, which makes you sit up and take notice. The endings can be very odd, and often leave the reader with more questions- I frequently had a wait, what? type of response.

There is a story about an adopted child who naturally assumes himself to be from a grand family, even though he was raised in squalor, and the gracious airs he puts on affects everyone around him. There is a story about a pastor's daughter who helps her orphaned cousin (adopted into the household) fulfill his wish to run away to sea- meeting their disaster together. A young sailor rescues a falcon that tangled itself in the rigging, and later his compassionate act is repaid in a strange manner, when he runs afoul of some drunken men while trying to court a young girl in a town their ship stops at. A king muses on his past actions and friendships, rides down to the sea to speak to a hermit who used to be in his service, and finds something unexpected when a fish is presented to him for a meal. A young man falls in love with a beautiful lady at a resort (such establishments were called "the watering place" in these stories, which sounded quaint) only to find out all his assumptions about her position in life were wrong. And so on.

It's hard to describe the stories. They feel very old-fashioned, they are often solemn. The viewpoints in them sometimes baffled me- not just the stern religious feeling, but also the rather stereotypical notion that poor people felt content with their lot in life and were simple, dull folk and that on the other hand folk born into high station felt an inherent nobility- even if they had not been raised in a grand household. Hm.

I'm not sure if I can say I enjoyed them all, but they certainly made me think and the mood in them is very tangible, like a dark landscape that presses on you. Many of them have a fantastic element just a bit removed from normalcy, which is more unsettling and surprising than delightful or wondrous. I feel like I ought to read them all over again just to puzzle out the characters' separate motives and try to understand what was the point.

from the Dogear Diary ( )