Isak Dinesen (1885–1962)

This is a raw and elegiac look at the maelstrom of adolescence, distilled into the experience of Peter and Rosa over a couple of spring days in a mid 19th century Danish coastal village. They are cousins, aged 15, and Peter has lived in his uncle’s household since he was orphaned aged six.

“In the last days of March the Sound was ice-bound, and blind, from the Danish to the Swedish coast.”
Blind is a prescient metaphor.

You can feel and hear the cold and the thaw:
“The hard, inexorable show more sky over the dead landscape broke, dissolved into streaming life, and became one with the ground. On all sides the incessant whisper of falling water re-echoed, it increased and grew into a song.”
But Peter listens to other, magical voices: “the music of wandering life in the skies” reflects his own stream of longing to go to sea, rather than be a parson like his uncle.

Image: Detail from Boat Reflections (photo) by Maria Ruggieri (Source)

They were close companions as small children, but Rosa shot up in body and mind and so “came into possession of a world of her own, inaccessible to the others”.
When Peter later overtook her, “she could no longer, she felt, be sure of her dream-world. Peter might find the ‘Sesame’ which opened it, and encroach upon it.”.
The “mystic melancholy of adolescence” in three sentences.

Peter, comes up the garden path as Rosa lets a butterfly out of an attic window. He looks up and sees her like the figurehead of the fine ship he dreams of:
“Life and death, the adventures of the seafarer, destiny herself, here stood straight up in a girl’s form.”
Specifically, he wants to sail on the Esperance (French for “hope”), currently moored at Elsinore (Helsingør). He confides in Rosa, and the pair come to understand each other once again. It’s delicately, believably portrayed, with both of them, separately, trying to understand each other and themselves.

They go for a walk:
“The ice was breaking up… And outside the irregular, broken white line was the open sea, pale blue… still drowsy after its long winter sleep, but free, wandering on according to its own lustful heart, and embracing all the earth.”
The whole world has become fluid.

What happens in the rest of the story is beautiful, poignant, and perhaps inevitable.

Image: Sea ice in Denmark Straight, 3 July 2020, NASA Earth Observatory images by Lauren Dauphin (Source)

As Kafka said, “A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us”.

Quotes

• “Within the parson’s house, death was zealously kept in view and lectured upon, and Peter, in his survey of the future, also took the sailor’s end into consideration. His mind dwelt for some time on his last couch, at the bottom of the sea.”

• “It is often the adolescent, the being just out of childhood, who most deeply and sadly feels the loss of that simple and mystic world.”

• “High over their heads, the incessant, triumphant jingle of a lark’s shake, a drizzle of ecstasy.”

• “She felt as if… she herself, and Peter with her, might melt and dissolve into some unknown, salt flow of delight, and become absorbed into the infinite, swaying, wet world.”

Whole story

This was my first encounter with Isak Dinesan (aka Karen Blixen) since I watched the film, Out of Africa, in my teens.

Manguel’s anthology contains just one long paragraph: a fable that Peter tells Rosa, and fits the anthology’s label of "fantastic", but is otherwise unremarkable. I’m glad I read the whole story of Peter and Rosa (~40 pages). It’s a stunningly-told story, and the fable was enhanced by drowning in the dreamy writing around it.

All three main characters have tussles with faith, and there are Biblical references (resurrection, Judas, God’s plan for one’s life).

See also

• Carson McCullers' The Member of the Wedding has a different, longer, but equally poignant portrayal of the awkwardness of adolescence, in the totally different setting of southern USA in the mid 20th century. See my review, HERE.

• Jón Kalman Stefánsson is another Nordic author who captures the visceral beauty of the murderous power of sea and ice to reflect characters' emotions, especially in his Heaven and Hell trio. See my review, HERE.

Short story club

I read this in Black Water: The Anthology of Fantastic Literature, by Alberto Manguel, from which I’m reading one story a week with The Short Story Club, starting 4 September 2023.

You can read this story on Way Back Machine here and here.

You can join the group here. show less

Un breve racconto che è un capolavoro, letto in inglese.
Pubblicato in una raccolta con lo pseudonimo di Isak Dinesen, è una delle opere di Karen Blixen, la famosa scrittrice danese (Dinesen era il cognome da nubile) autrice de "La mia Africa".
Forse non la più famosa delle sue opere, ma di sicuro nota ai più per il film cult omonimo, del regista danese Gabriel Axel, che vinse l'Oscar nel 1988 cone miglior film straniero. Film bellissimo e fedelissimo tra l'altro, i dialoghi sono show more praticamente gli stessi del testo. Alla fine, dal film che adoro sono passata a leggere il racconto, che purtroppo non ho trovato in italiano on line a prezzi accessibili... mi sono quindi buttata sull'edizione inglese in ebook.
Breve ma intensissimo, narra la rinuncia e la gloria, l'amore e la passione, la grazia e il perdono, e tutto senza quasi uscire dalla cucina, che è il luogo delle donne, in una famiglia di sole donne, con il regale pranzo francese al centro del racconto. Babette ha speso il suo denaro non per generosità e basta, ma per poter di nuovo esprimere se stessa, per un'ultima volta forse. Con questo pranzo ha stupito il Generale, unico ad avere coscienza piena di quanto costi quel pranzo, e fatto felici tutti i commensali, per quanto inconsapevoli del reale valore del cibo e del vino gustato. Nonostante la paura del lusso delle due sorelle, che da sempre han rinunciato a ogni gioia mondana, anche le più piccole e innocue, Babette dimostra che non tutto il mondano è male.
L'Arte che cambia la vita delle persone, l'Artista che non sopporta di essere ridotto a materia di consumo, che deve sempre puntare al meglio, mai sedersi e accontentarsi della gloria momentanea... e infine la vanità di tutto di fronte a ciò che importa veramente, e che si trova nei momenti brevi di gioia e fratellanza che sono scaturiti dal pranzo (quindi dall'Arte) in una casa povera con tre donne, che pregano, aiutano, guidano, consolano e cucinano. Virginia Woolf diceva che le tavole dei ministri maschi dovranno un giorno essere sostituite dai tavoli delle cucine femminili. È quello che fa questo piccolo testo, un inno al femminile e al suo ruolo indispensabile nelle cose fondamentali dell'esistenza, che sono quelle piccole e per questo, proprio per questo, l'Artista che possiede la chiave del Fondamentale non sarà, mai, povero. show less

A further memoir of Danish author Baroness Karen von Blixen-Finecke (1885–1962), written in the 1950s and 1960, this is almost an epilogue to her earlier book Out of Africa. It consists of four short stories, the first featuring her majestic Somali major-domo Farah Aden. The second story is about “Barua A Soldani” or a letter from a king, which she has received and is seen to have healing properties. The third story is about her attempts to act as a doctor for her people, and their show more fear of going to the hospital. The final story features the correspondence she has with her former servants after she leaves Africa. I liked Abdullahi Ahamed, the very bright child who’s education she sponsors, who goes on to become a judge.

There is a significant dose of imperialism and white saviour complex going on here, but I found this book more relatable than the first as it tells the stories of people and relationships, and gives more insight into her ongoing sadness and nostalgia over having been forced to have given up the farm and her life in Africa. show less

This was my first time reading this classic which has remained in print for nearly a century. I noticed much protest that this lyrical a storyteller, while sensitive to Africa and Africans, must reflect apologetically on her role as feudal overlord in a land of European conquest and oppression. Maybe she _should_ that was not my thought. She economically and somewhat poetically describes in short vignettes life running a coffee plantation, native life including fierce loyalty and festive show more dances, fauna, and more. Giving over to the storytelling and remembrances is a comfortable and enthralling bargain - do the deal. As for the appendix Shadows On The Grass, not necessary. Looking back she goes discursive and nostalgic while not writing about what I would have appreciate more: her circumspect view applied to the Nazi occupation of her native Denmark at the time. show less