The Ring | Tragedy in "The Ring"
Bertonneau is a Temporary Assistant Professor
of English and the humanities at Central Michigan
University and Senior Policy Analyst at the Mackinac
Center for Public Policy. In the following essay,
he maintains that Dinesen’s story ‘‘The Ring’’ is an
example of art describing tragedy.
Isak Dinesen, who owed much philosophically to the German philosopher and poet Friedrich Nietzsche, would certainly have agreed with Nietzsche’s Twilight of the Idols (1888) that ‘‘whatever does not kill me makes me stronger.’’ For this precept is simply a concise statement of the meaning of tragedy— that wisdom stems from pain and sorrow—and Dinesen’s art always displayed an orientation towards the tragic. Just as Nietzsche’s vision of tragedy can help readers to understand Dinesen’s art, however, so can instances of Dinesen’s art help readers to understand the...
[The entire page is 1853 words long]
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