Seven Gothic Tales (Modern Library) [Hardcover]

Isak Dinesen (Author)

Book Description

Series: Modern Library | Publication Date: March 15, 1994

Originally published in 1934, Seven Gothic Tales, the first book by "one of the finest and most singular artists of our time" (The Atlantic), is a modern classic. Here are seven exquisite tales combining the keen psychological insight characteristic of the modern short story with the haunting mystery of the nineteenth-century Gothic tale, in the tradition of writers such as Goethe, Hoffmann, and Poe.


From the Trade Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"These tales are a modern refinement of German romanticism. ...They are peopled, or haunted, by ghosts of a past age, voluptuaries dreaming of the singers and ballerinas of the operas of Mozart and Gluck, young men who are too melancholy to enjoy love or too perverse to profit by it, maidens dedicated to chastity and others hopeful of a gentlemanly seduction; their generally fantastic adventures are exquisitely played."

-- The New York Times

"[Seven Gothic Tales is] in that special realm in which artistry is more real than reality" -- Time


From the Trade Paperback edition.

From the Publisher

11 1.5-hour cassettes --This text refers to the Audio Cassette edition.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 522 pages
• Publisher: Modern Library (March 15, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0679600868
• ISBN-13: 978-0679600862
• Product Dimensions: 7.4 x 4.6 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,298,735 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

33 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best 19th Century Stories written in the 20th Century, May 15, 2003

By 

L. Stearns Newburg "LSN" (CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Seven Gothic Tales (Modern Library) (Hardcover)

Years ago, I wrote a review on Amazon for Karen Blixen's _Winter's Tales_, where I observed that it was the equal of this book. I have no reason to revise that estimate, but feel I should point out that this book is extremely fine, and should not be ignored by people who like good writing and aren't scared off by a bit of melodrama.

The title of this review tries to make a small point: Blixen didn't write her stories with notions of the prevailing literary fashions in mind. She wrote them as she felt them, and she used a style and technique that harken back to earlier writers. In her introduction to the book, Dorothy Canfield, attempting to characterise this style, made reference to an array of writers from E.T.A. Hoffmann to Robert Louis Stevenson and Thomas Mann. Although I think the reference to Mann has merit, the truth is Blixen was genuinely unique. She doesn't really have any real imitators, either, although I've seen a number of writers allude to being influenced by her.

Back to this book: it was her first volume of short stories. Not many writers hit gold on their first book, but Blixen managed it. There was no 'prentice work as prelude, just a stream of mature works of art from this book onward.

And, goodness, she could *write*. The prose is eloquent, forceful, and full of striking phrases, images, and observations. The stories are all set in the 19th Century, and many contains elements of the gothic (hence the title) and sometimes the gruesome, as well as modernist irony and psychological insight. When it comes to characters, plots, and situations, virtually everything in the book seems beyond the ordinary. Clearly, the writer wasn't afraid to take chances. The amazing thing is that she wins most of her fictional gambles.

The first story in the book is "The Deluge at Norderney," where we have a cast of characters that seem out of Hoffmann by way of Byron, put into an extreme situation, and forced to come to terms with questions of illusion and reality in life. This story is my absolute favorite; it may not be the "best." It certainly sets the tone.

Besides "The Deluge...", the stories I'd single out for special praise are "The Monkey," "The Poet," "The Supper at Elsinore," and "The Roads Round Pisa." The remaining 2 stories in the book are a pleasure to read, although I don't feel that "The Dreamers" entirely comes off; Blixen reused the heroine of this story later in ways that lead me to think she was invested with some sort of personal significance for the author; perhaps that's why it seems less well controlled. The shortest story, "The Old Chevalier," is pleasant but feels slighter both in size and content than its companions.

Blixen's other books of stories are interesting-to-fascinating. Each book has its attractions. Admirers of this book might find _Winter's Tales_ worth their time. _Anecdotes of Destiny_, which contains "Babette's Feast" and "Tempests," is a fine collection, too, and has grown on me with the years. It isn't quite at the level of achievement of _Seven Gothic Tales_ or _Winter's Tales_, but then, how many books of stories are?

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fired out of the canon?, March 20, 2005

By 

Victor Valentine "V Valentine" (Gallup, NM, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Seven Gothic Tales (Paperback)

Why isn't I. Dinesen's work more widely known and accepted in the modernist pantheon? Her reputation seems to have settled into that of oddball literary personality and vehicle for Meryl Streep, however the work itself would have eluded me, despite a decent education in high school and university (for example, I was given Hesse and Camus to read in 10th grade, why not Isak?)had I not been attracted to this title in a dusty library. The work is about as anti-Hollywood as I could possibly imagine. Perhaps the answer is, she is not really a modernist but some sort of high baroque romanticist belonging more in the 19th century world of German prose; the "layering of stories" effect, especially in "Roads to Pisa", reads like she is channeling the world of Jan Potocki, enigmatic author of "The Saragossa Manuscript," who like Casanova moved in that incredible world of the international bohemian intellectual elite that Rexroth describes so well somewhere in one of his essays; that world of post-chaises and midnight rendezvous and military officers with seemingly endless resources of money, brains, education and cunning ... in fact "Saragossa" and Casanova's "Memoirs" were the books that came to my mind as I read her...reading this stuff is like eating a chocolate eclair with a brain more powerful than yours will ever be...why aren't there writers like this anymore? Was it all only a dream?

20 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Magic in the Attic, January 9, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Seven Gothic Tales (Modern Library) (Hardcover)

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