Shrouded in mystery, Isak Dinesen entered the literary world which she then confounded as the timeless seer of an age of transition. Paradox is her very nature. She wrote two kinds of books: detached, gentle and unique reminiscences of her life as a coffee-plantation owner in Kenya (Out of Africa and Shadows on the Grass), and the four books of tales, wild and grotesque, tragically striving for an impossible classical unity. She stands on the lonely threshold of modernism and the nouveau roman, clutching desperately to the vanishing ideal she comes to symbolize: that “deep and dangerous little figure, consolidated, alert and ruthless—the storyteller of all the ages.” (“A Consolatory Tale.”)¹

She is no Grimm nor Andersen—the fairy-tale genre is a means of preserving and communicating her dream world intact, with not a hint of compromise to “authenticity” or pain. Her characters are denied the privilege of feeling either profound misery or ecstatic joy. No one can read Grimm without a sense of horror, or Andersen without a touch of melancholy. Dinesen, by contrast, suffers the limitation of existing on only one plane—the plateau where conflict is not allowed. Her universe is a tiny mirror, reflecting the glorious lights and brilliant facets of Shakespeare, the prophets of the Old Testament, the Greek poets and Goethe, among others. With wisdom, discretion and taste, she conveys her own unique comprehension of the excitement and courage of these great writers, transforming and assimilating their philosophies and techniques into a strangely seductive, world-weary vision full of wit and wry humor that becomes her trademark. Dinesen echoes the timbre of genius, of immortality, and she cannot help but share its radiance:

She had in her the magnet, the maelstrom quality of drawing everything which came inside her circle of consciousness, into her own being and making it one with herself.

(“The Monkey”)

To enter the world of Isak Dinesen is to take part in an illuminating, imaginative game—perhaps much like chess, with a master—that deepens, mimics, distorts and enchants. We are traveling through a lotus-land, vivid and golden, desirable without touch, as is the world of dreams. She is an aristocrat in the pure, idealized sense. Her creations are peerless leading men and women emitting successive tragic emotions, sculptured representations of timeless moments already immortalized by the pen of Shakespeare or echoing the rolling thunder of the Old Testament prophets. They are tantalizing creatures, modelled as they are only on the masterpieces of literature that have survived the ages of the world, escaping from artifice to reality, and extending far outside the realm of books in order to directly affect the ways in which men interpret the mysterious and wild vagaries of Nature. Man is lost without them; they are his guides, giants, on a path trodden by midgets. And Dinesen, in glorifying and illuminating their wisdom, is showing how their philosophy can work: life can be reordered and channeled by the planned foreknowledge and perfection of Art.

She cannot drive reality “out of Africa” which, indeed, draws its inspiration from events in her own life. In her tales, however, Dinesen becomes the consummate artist who, modifying and transcending experience through the use of perspective and discrimination, attains the childlike wisdom and sibylline presence of “that fascinating and irresistible personage, perhaps the most fascinating and irresistible in the whole world: the dreamer whose dreams come true.” (“The Dreaming Child”) Her fantaisies macabres (a phrase she herself uses) are permitted to roam free of reality. The pattern is complete in her tales, viewed without the paralysis of insecurity about what is yet to come: the vivid mosaic has been pieced together in a way that is satisfactory to the author; life has been given meaning.

It is for this reason that I believe the most fruitful approach to the art of Dinesen is through her tales, where imagination reigns. And of all her tales, the most outstanding are the Seven Gothic Tales, which contain almost all her major themes and strengths without heavily indulging in her weaknesses which become more apparent in the later tales. The Gothics, toward which the reader who knows Dinesen's work feels a certain growing fondness and an almost dizzying reverence, are fearless, unrestrained, devastating and flamboyant. In her later tales, the storyteller's voice becomes more removed from his narrative, more impersonal and classically detached; the story wins at the expense of the characters.

In the Gothics however, her characters are still very much alive; this is perhaps nowhere so evident as in the first of the Seven Gothic Tales, “The Deluge at Norderney,” which will provide the central focus of this essay. In this tale, one has the unique privilege of witnessing the unforgettable performances of Miss Malin Nat-og-Dag, the last of a dying breed, true nobility, and Kasparson, the tragic actor. Rambling, grotesque and exciting, “The Deluge at Norderney” employs many of Dinesen's favorite themes. In this tale, the all-powerful sea is the impetus, the catalyst, spurring on the inevitable Moment with which we are concerned. There is a flood, a “grim joke” on the part of nature because it occurs in the middle of summer, later known as the Cardinal's Flood—because of that saintly man's legendary courage in the face of the deluge:

As he walked down to the boat, and the people from the bath dispersed before him, some of the ladies suddenly and wildly clapped their hands. They meant no harm. Knowing heroism only from the stage, they gave it the stage's applause. But the old man whom they applauded stopped under it for a moment. He bowed his head a little, with an exquisite irony, in the manner of a hero upon the stage.

The Cardinal's servant, Kasparson, has already been killed in the flood, and the old man does not hesitate upon being faced with the challenge of bringing heroism to real life—he stays behind in a barn with three other people, whom he has inspired with his courage and selflessness, in order that four peasants may be saved.

These elaborately contrived machinations are simply a prelude to the Moment: the reader may now begin his whirl inwards, led by Dinesen, into the heart of the tale. Outdoors, the roaring waters ceaselessly, relentlessly, approach the barn; it is here, in a hayloft with flickering candlelight, that the stage is set. This will be a night like no other night for the four saviours, aware that they will probably be dead by morning. But now, curiosity dominates: it is time to see with whom they will pass what may be the last night of their lives:

As if they had been four marionettes, pulled by the same wire, the four people turned their faces to one another.

The Cardinal is obviously the most important character in the piece; in describing him, Dinesen could be setting forth the precepts of her own literary style:

To his great power of imagination he joined a deep love of law and order. Perhaps in the end these two sides of his nature came to the same thing: to him everything seemed possible, and equally likely to fall in with the beautiful and harmonious scheme of things.

Balancing out the presence of the old man is that of a young man by the name of Jonathan Maersk. There are two women to complete the cast: the brilliantly unforgettable Miss Malin Nat-og-Dag, who is, without a doubt, equal to her fantastic name which belongs to Dano-Swedish nobility (translation: sly or witty night and day; her family motto is “the sour with the sweet”). “She was close to sixty years, and her mind had for some years been confused for she, who was a lady of the strictest virtue, believed herself to be one of the great female sinners of her time.” Miss Malin who is accompanied by her niece, the beautiful, silent Calypso, quickly recognizes her role, that of hostess, and makes it her own, as only a diva can:

During the night she performed her role, regaling her guests upon the rare luxuries of loneliness, darkness, and danger, while up her sleeve she had death itself, like some lion of the season, some fine Italian tenor, out of the reach of rival hostesses, waiting outside the door to appear and create the sensation of the night.

It is evident, however, that the Cardinal is in control; his strength is concealed for the greater part of the tale, but he is Dinesen's spokesman—he is the “Arbiter of the Masquerade,” God within the circle of art, the creator of the story, ultimately the creator within the creator, a variation on the eternal Chinese-box theme, one of Dinesen's favorite metaphors for the unraveling of mysteries in her tales. Similarly, it is the story that can be made out of the characters that is immortal, not the people alone. Until they have found their roles and are ready for their moments of glory, they are of no interest to the author. Dinesen further explores this theory in “The Cardinal's First Tale”:

… divine art is the story. In the beginning was the story … For within our whole universe the story only has authority to answer that cry of heart of each of them: ‘Who am I?’

While “the immortal story immortalizes its hero,” the personal anguish of modern literature demystifies the hero and leaves him alone, “all naked, turned into an individual.” Characters without a story are like a painting without a background—they roam sadly, drifting uselessly through a life that never seems to take them seriously or laughingly, but simply bored, vomits them up; quite the opposite of the lively company encountered in “Deluge” who are seen “clearly, as if luminous and on a higher plane, and at the same time they may not look quite human, and you may well be a little afraid of them.” Remote and inscrutable, Dinesen's characters awaken the reader's curiosity and admiration. The dialogue between the Cardinal and Miss Malin that continues almost nonstop until daybreak is constantly bewitching and unique. When the Cardinal offers the suggestion that God may want truth from human beings, Miss Malin, surprised, replies:

‘Why, he knows it already, and may even have found it a bit dull … I, on the contrary, have always held that the Lord has a penchant for masquerades. Do you not yourself tell us, my lord spiritual, that our trials are really blessings in disguise? And so they are. I, too, have found them to be so, at midnight, at the hour when the mask falls …’

All of Dinesen's philosophy circles around the “penchant for masquerades”; it is considered unsporting to end the game, to allow the curtain to fall, without fulfilling one's role, for this is the character's quest for immortality. The paradoxical clue to all of her tales can be found in the Revenge of Truth, “that most charming of marionette comedies,” written by Dinesen in her teens, that forms the core of the most frustrating, rambling Gothic Tale, “The Roads Round Pisa”:

Everybody will remember how the plot is created by a witch pronouncing, upon the house wherein all the characters are collected, a curse to the effect that any lie told within it will become true …

At the end the witch appears again, and on being asked what is really the truth, answers: ‘The truth, my children, is that we are, all of us, acting in a marionette comedy. What is important more than anything else in a marionette comedy, is keeping the ideas of the author clear. This is the real happiness of life, and now that I have at last come into a marionette play, I will never go out of it again. But you my fellow actors, keep the ideas of the author clear. Aye, drive them to their utmost consequences.’

The Cardinal, in “The Deluge at Norderney,” echoes the witch: “That alone is what we have ever longed for and named immortality.” Miss Malin, too, is representative of the entire Dinesenian gallery of extraordinary beings who find truth in the act of comedy: “No danger could possibly put fear into her, nor any anguish of conscience spoil her peace.”

One would certainly not expect second-rate performances from such characters; and indeed, on this night, after having judged God, they follow the lead of the Cardinal and proceed to judge themselves, unafraid to drive his ideas “to their utmost consequences.” With his cryptic remark,

‘So speaketh the Arbiter of the Masquerade: “By thy mask I shall know thee”’,

he sets the tone for the rest of the tale. The magic circle of art grows smaller and the reader enters the theater within a theater, multiple tales within a tale—Dinesen's art of rhythm a movement whirling us around in a dizzying pirouette.

The elimination of the supporting characters due to their whirlwind marriage—completely engineered by Miss Malin—causes a narrowing motion as the spiral nears the top; we spin through more conversation between Miss Malin and the Cardinal, until we reach the zenith, the innermost spiral, the Cardinal himself. Unwinding the bandages wrapped around his head, he drops his mask and reveals his true identity:

‘My name,’ said the man, ‘is Kasparson. I am the Cardinal's valet.’

He reminisces about the many, varied experiences of his life. He is gifted in ballon, that favorite Dinesenian symbol, implying those of her protagonists who are endowed with boundless imaginations, who never allow life to limit them to a mere single reality:

‘I had to an unusual extent what in the technique of ballet is termed ballon, which means the capacity for soaring, for rising above the ground and the laws of gravitation.’

He also confides that he is the bastard son of that Duke of Orleans “who changed his name to that of Egalité” (thus making him the brother of Louis-Philippe, the essence of bourgeoisie). “The bastard of Egalité! Can one be more bastard than that, Madame?”

The Malin tactfully changes the subject, inquiring both about his motives for killing the Cardinal and the reason for deceiving her until this moment. Kasparson explains that if the Cardinal had sacrificed his life for him, he would have been deprived of his raison d'être. Through that favorite Dinesenian strategem, the inset tale, the Cardinal-Kasparson illustrates that there are “worse things than perdition.” The paradoxical results of the doctrine of redemption form the contents of this tale that he names, “The Wine of the Tetrarch.” It is the account of a moving encounter between the Apostle Peter, “so deeply absorbed in the thought of the resurrection that he did not know whether he was walking upon the pavement or was being carried along in the air” and a melancholy stranger who complains bitterly that all wines have lost their flavor since the death of Jesus. Angry and perplexed, the man feels that Jesus, sacrifice has deprived him of the right to bear his own burden. Lost in his sorrow, Peter is curious about the stranger's belligerent complaint that he has been deprived of his cross to bear. He asks the man his name:

‘The stranger was already standing in the door. He turned around and looked at Peter with hauteur and a slight scorn. He looked a magnificent figure. “Did you not know my name?” he asked him. “My name was cried all over the town. There was not one of the tame burghers of Jerusalem who did not shout it with all his might. ‘Barabbas,’ they cried, ‘Barabbas! Barabbas! Give us Barabbas.’ My name is Barabbas. I have been a great chief, and, as you said yourself, a brave man. My name shall be remembered.”

‘And with these words he walked away.’

As in all of Dinesen's tales, the central motif here, too, concerns the problem of identity. Without his cross, Barabbas has been forced to renounce his destiny, an impossible dilemma for a character seen through Dinesen's eyes:

As the song is one with the voice that sings it, as the road is one with the goal, as lovers are made one in their embrace, so is man made one with his destiny, and he shall love it as himself.

(“Sorrow-Acre”)

Christ died for Barabbas, a bitter pill for a proud man to swallow. Thief or prophet—these are only labels masking reality. To Dinesen, the life of Jesus is a manifestation of the Lord's “penchant for masquerades”: He played the role of a man for thirty years, after which he took the burden of every man on his back and by his mortal death, freed them from their sins. Barabbas has been robbed of his role by God.

Kasparson likens himself to Barabbas in the tale, except that he did not allow his destiny to escape him; the moment when he murdered the Cardinal was his moment of illumination. “In regard to the world, mankind in general and his own fate, he was from now on the conqueror. They would have to give themselves up to him …” (“Peter and Rosa”) Kasparson justifies his action to Miss Malin:

‘I told you: I am an actor. Shall not an actor have a role? If all the time the manager of the theater holds back the good roles from us, may we not insist upon understudying the stars? The proof of our undertaking is in the success or fiasco. I have played the part well. The Cardinal would have applauded me, for he was a fine connoisseur of the art’ …

‘The only thing,’ he went on after a pause, ‘which he might have criticized is this: he might have held that I overdid my role. I stayed in this hayloft to save the lives of those sottish peasants, who preferred the salvation of their cattle to their own. It is doubtful whether the Cardinal would ever have done that, for he was a man of excellent sense. That may be so. But a little charlatanry there must needs be in all great art, and the Cardinal himself was not free from it.’

Kasparson is not a man to shun multiple roles. He has followed the advice of Pellegrine Leoni in “The Dreamers”: “Be many people.” He tells Miss Malin about some of his masks: he has been, at various times, a courtesan, a barber, a printer of revolutionary papers in Paris, a dog-seller in London, a slave-trader, a murderer, Kasparson, and today, the Cardinal. The irony underlying his sacrifice to save the peasants reveals yet another layer, another mask. Kasparson has been playing God as well: he has manipulated fate and made of it this tale, “The Deluge at Norderney.” He has offered his life, the other three following his heroic example, in order to save other lives, and possibly deprive others of their crosses. The doctrine of atonement is being re-enacted once again. Kasparson has played the role of Barabbas as well as that of Christ; to his great repertoire of roles, he has added the part of God by echoing the act of Christ in redeeming all mankind.

‘Well,’ said Miss Malin after a pause,’and did you enjoy playing the role of the Cardinal when you had your chance at last? Did you have a pleasant time?’

‘As god liveth, Madame, I had that,’ said Kasparson, ‘a good night and day. For I have lived long enough, by now, to have learned, when the devil grins at me, to grin back. And what now if this—to grin back when the devil grins at you—be in reality the highest, the only true fun in all the world? And what if everything else, which people have named fun, be only a presentiment, a foreshadowing, of it? It is an art worth learning then.’

Dinesen's characters welcome with open arms the sublime challenge “that eternity could become their everyday.” Though many of her characters are based on real people that she met in her crowded life, her literary portrayals of them are so undeviating and idealized that they remain statues, forever frozen in the power of their roles, in the excitement of the moment, eyes glittering with inhuman fire through the tiny holes of a mask. Kasparson and Miss Malin are as unforgettable as their story; in fact, they are their story. But their omnipotence on stage, within the magic circle of art, which has immunized them from the degradation of reality, is nearing an end:

A dark figure, like that of a long thick snake, was lying upon the boards, and a little lower down, where the floor slanted slightly, it widened to a black pool which nearly touched the feet of the sleeping girl. The water had risen to the level of the hayloft.

Dinesen releases her hold on them with the break of dawn:

The old woman slowly drew her fingers out of the man's hand, and placed one upon her lips.

‘A ce moment de sa narration,’ she said,’ Scheherazade vit paraître le matin, et, discrète, se tut.’

With these words, the tale ends, and Miss Malin proves herself an outstanding member of the immortal commedia dell' arte troupe populating the pages of Dinesen. Miss Malin's allusion to Scheherazade serves a double purpose. First of all, Scheherazade is perhaps the ultimate Dinesenian heroine, barricading herself, as she does in the Arabian Nights, seeking refuge within the “magic circle of poetry,” for not just one night, but for a thousand and one nights. Secondly, her reference to silence indicates both the characters' impotence in the face of the dawning reality and Dinesen's final goal as a storyteller. Where the storyteller is loyal, eternally and unswervingly loyal to the story, there, in the end, silence will speak. Theatrical and otherworldly as Kasparson and Miss Malin Nat-og-Dag are, somehow, miraculously, they live. Dinesen has been true to her characters, and they have repaid her in kind: in the end, silence speaks.

Note

1. All of Isak Dinesen's tales quoted in this essay refer to the following editions:

   ———Seven Gothic Tales (New York: Harrison Smith and Robert Haas, 1934). “The Deluge at Norderney,” “The Monkey,” “The Roads Round Pisa,” “The Dreamers.”

   ———Winter's Tales (New York: Random House, 1942). “The Dreaming Child,” “Peter and Rosa,” “Sorrow-Acre,” “A Consolatory Tale.”

   ———Last Tales (New York: Random House, 1957). “The Cardinal's First Tale.”