Customer Reviews

Seven Gothic Tales

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Such melancholy has been portrayed in these stories, so dark, yet exquisitely sweet. The characterisation is incredible, I could feel the emotions of the characters - loss, frustration, hope and fear as I read, the mood of the book enveloped me. The tales are almost timeless, set in a dark and dreary Europe, moving slowly yet they were not laborious, rather they were sensual. I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to curl up by a fire, in the middle of winter, and wants to be alternately delighted and dismayed.

I loved these stories by an expert storyteller. The way she wove tales inside tales, intertwined and yet clear is simply amazing. There was definitely a mystical side to these stories that left me spellbound. I cannot reccommend this book enough.

If only the fiction writers of the moment displayed as much generosity towards their readers as the Baroness Blixen did, there might be more freshman efforts out there as satisfying and enriching as this. She shared so much of herself in nearly everything she wrote -- a deep, respectful love of literature, of the odd folk of the remoter corners of the world, of Europe's waning aristos, and always with that supremely ironic fundament to her character: one foot (bare) wriggling its toes in the Id's squishy mud, and the other (impeccably shod) pacing the red carpet. "The Dreamer" is especially memorable.

When I was a teenager, I found a copy of Seven Gothic Tales in my grandparens attic. It was a rather worn hardcover copy and was inscribed to my father, who had recently died by someone who was a stranger to me. I could not ignore the magic of the circumstance and I have been equally unable to forget the magic of the narratives. The grace and cadance of the language still is with me.

"....'Well,' he said, 'there are only two courses of thought at all seemly to a person of any intelligence. The one is: What am I to do this next moment?--or tonight, or tomorrow? And the other: What did God mean by creating the world, the sea, and the desert, the horse, the winds, woman, amber, fishes, wine? Said thinks of the one or the other.'"

When we read Dinesen, we are thrown into bothe story and "the other."

Isak Dinesen, Seven Gothic Tales

I'm in love with the author, only a beautiful, wonderfully dreamy and imaginative person could write such stories. There is so much in her every thought. When I read her words, I'm in a different place. She is a true romantic...

After you read this collection of short stories, other books will be seem dull. Not an "easy read" but well worth the effort. There are not many story-telllers in this category. Each story has a twist - and something to think about. Enjoy!

Surprised no one has reviewed this one yet. Talk about a classic. Dinesen's book is like nothing else I've ever read; great, great stories brilliantly told, populated with bizarre, richly memorable characters. Unequivocably recommended.

This is a demanding work of seven multilayered and esoteric stories in this, Dinesen's first book.

We know of Dinesen more commonly by way of Meryl Streep, who played Dinesen, or the Baroness Karen Blixen, in "Out of Africa." But the woman we find here as the author of these stories is no easily-understood, Hollywood character. Her stories within stories are rich in symbolism, imagination, and a "long ago and far away" feeling that is carefully, carefully, controlled by the author. Dinesen wrote some of these tales in Africa, and finished others along with ordering the book back home in Denmark, after her farm had failed. She wrote, interestingly, in English (and did her own translations back into Danish later on). Many books follow this one, including LAST TALES and, of course, OUT OF AFRICA. Dinesen, while the heroic, strong, individualist of Streep's portrayal, is also kind of strange, introspective, and fabulously bizarre. She uses her stories' plot lines as a means, one feels, to work out her life philosophies, reshape and recast ideas and symbolic imagery, and impart creative insights. After getting to about the fourth or fifth story, one can see that she uses the same imagery repeatedly and even the same turns of phrase.

I have read this volume at least once before, and wanted to go through it again knowing just that much more literature and biblical references. (It helps to be well read in the classics when reading Dinesen.) Anything is up for her use, and if you don't see it, something will be lost to you as you interpret the stories and what they meant, or even, what happened. She loves Shakespeare (OUT OF AFRICA was written in five sections, after the five-act structure of Shakespearian drama), and Don Giovanni, she has interesting ideas about femininity and independent women, and symbolizes these issues with women who are doll-like, women who seem as if they can fly, women who are witches in some way or another, etc. She likes to toy with the mind of God, as well, having characters pronounce his proclivities, likes and dislikes, etc., quite often. I found these to be some of the most interesting passages, after some of the gender-defining ones, that is. (She chose her pseudonym, "Isak," as it is Hebrew for "He who laughs" and she definitely plays with many ideas here, many humorously.)

Of the seven tales (The Old Chevalier, The Roads Round Pisa, The Monkey, The Supper at Elsinore, The Dreamers, The Poet, and The Deluge at Norderney), The Roads Round Pisa is my favorite, and I have studied it for a graduate class. In the book, a mistake is the central event, and we learn of it only at the end. Our main character, Count Augustus Von Schimmelmann, is writing a letter to a friend, when a carriage accident occurs in front of him. An old woman, who seemed at first to him to be a man, is injured and asks that he go and seek out her granddaughter so that she may forgive her for an estrangement before she dies, as she believes she will do shortly. Augustus sets out for Pisa and in an inn meets a young man, with whom he engages in an interesting conversation. Soon, however, he finds out that this man is a woman, and whereas before he had been asking "him" for help in finding his way into the city, now he offers her his assistance as a gentleman. Their subsequent conversation holds a particularly compelling passage I have never forgotten. In it, Dinesen explicates a concept of women's differences, physically, psychologically and societally, from men through the artful use of the host and guest metaphor.

This passage is a key to the story's mood when toward the end the mistake around which the characters swirl is revealed. But the passage is also an interesting philosophical and societal analogy that provokes thought and discussion. This is, then, quintessential Dinesen.

The other stories deal with identity and loss (The Dreamers), a ghost who is allowed to rise up from hell whenever the sound between Denmark and Sweden freezes over (Supper at Elsinore), the mirage of lost love (The Old Chevalier), poetry and power (The Poet), the societal roles of women (The Monkey), and identity (The Deluge at Norderney), but these are very brief and basic categorizations. One could safely say that all the stories deal with many of the others' main themes. The book as a whole is an excellent study of the power of fiction to suggest and manipulate, with beautiful, evocative writing and deep and stirring underlying meanings. I recommend it.