Happy birthday! It's always great to see someone talking about Dinesen/Blixen here on youtube -- doesn't happen very often. I'm pretty sure she's my favourite author, and I've read almost everything there is to read from her in English. All four short story collections published in her lifetime are well worth your time (can't speak about the posthumous one -- that's the one I haven't read yet), but to me Seven Gothic Tales is her masterpiece. My favourite from this is probably 'The Deluge at Norderney', though it's really hard to choose just one. 'The Monkey' is a great choice as well! It's probably her most straightforwardly Gothic story. Blixen is kind of on the fringes of the Gothic imo. I agree that she's closer to Radcliffe/the Brontes/etc than the more horror-adjacent kinds of Gothic, but even there I don't think she entirely fits in. In Denmark and elsewhere in continental Europe, Seven Gothic Tales was published as Seven Fantastic Tales, but I don't think she's really what you'd consider a typical writer of the European fantastic either in the way that some of her big influences (like Hoffmann) were. I also compare Blixen's writing to things like Canterbury Tales and The Thousand and One Nights whenever I have to pitch her to someone! The inspiration she drew from oral storytelling and 'the tale' (rather than the short story) is very obvious. Though I know some people have argued that her own stories are too complex/indirect/intertextual/etc. to work as oral tales themselves, which I think I agree with. Which ones did you feel were too long/not as good?
The only full tale by Isak Dinesen I've read is "Sorrow-Acre", which I found in an anthology, a masterful and subtly biting indictment of the old European aristocracy in its terminal stage of dominion before the era of revolution at the close of the eighteenth century. It's not at all Gothic, but I think stands with any of the great English-language short stories of the twentieth century. I've also perused the author's famous memoir 'Out of Africa', and was impressed by the powerful and supple prose communicated there. Though not completing the written tale itself, I have seen the film adaptation of "Babette's Feast", an interesting and quietly moving allegory of artistic vocation, and saw the Hollywood interpretation of 'Out of Africa', starring Meryl Streep and Robert Redford, a reasonably engaging though not fully satisfying gloss on the visionary power of the original. Incidentally, I've read that Isak Dinesen was the favorite writer of American director Orson Welles after William Shakespeare. And congratulations on your birthday anniversary this week!
I just bought this. Perfect timing.
Happy birthday! It's always great to see someone talking about Dinesen/Blixen here on youtube -- doesn't happen very often. I'm pretty sure she's my favourite author, and I've read almost everything there is to read from her in English. All four short story collections published in her lifetime are well worth your time (can't speak about the posthumous one -- that's the one I haven't read yet), but to me Seven Gothic Tales is her masterpiece.
My favourite from this is probably 'The Deluge at Norderney', though it's really hard to choose just one. 'The Monkey' is a great choice as well! It's probably her most straightforwardly Gothic story. Blixen is kind of on the fringes of the Gothic imo. I agree that she's closer to Radcliffe/the Brontes/etc than the more horror-adjacent kinds of Gothic, but even there I don't think she entirely fits in. In Denmark and elsewhere in continental Europe, Seven Gothic Tales was published as Seven Fantastic Tales, but I don't think she's really what you'd consider a typical writer of the European fantastic either in the way that some of her big influences (like Hoffmann) were.
I also compare Blixen's writing to things like Canterbury Tales and The Thousand and One Nights whenever I have to pitch her to someone! The inspiration she drew from oral storytelling and 'the tale' (rather than the short story) is very obvious. Though I know some people have argued that her own stories are too complex/indirect/intertextual/etc. to work as oral tales themselves, which I think I agree with.
Which ones did you feel were too long/not as good?
The only full tale by Isak Dinesen I've read is "Sorrow-Acre", which I found in an anthology, a masterful and subtly biting indictment of the old European aristocracy in its terminal stage of dominion before the era of revolution at the close of the eighteenth century. It's not at all Gothic, but I think stands with any of the great English-language short stories of the twentieth century. I've also perused the author's famous memoir 'Out of Africa', and was impressed by the powerful and supple prose communicated there. Though not completing the written tale itself, I have seen the film adaptation of "Babette's Feast", an interesting and quietly moving allegory of artistic vocation, and saw the Hollywood interpretation of 'Out of Africa', starring Meryl Streep and Robert Redford, a reasonably engaging though not fully satisfying gloss on the visionary power of the original.
Incidentally, I've read that Isak Dinesen was the favorite writer of American director Orson Welles after William Shakespeare. And congratulations on your birthday anniversary this week!