Rereading Dinesen

[poliphilo]

 I'm rereading Isak Dinesen's short stories. I love them very much, but find I can't remember what happens in any of them- with the exception of the Immortal Story- which has an exceptionally straightforward narrative and has been fixed in my mind by Orson Welles' movie. She's at the far end of the spectrum from a writer like de Maupassant where events follow one another in fated sequence-  A leading to B leading to C- with tragic, comic or ironic effect. Her narratives wander, drift, change focus and- and you're left with a sense of of something tremendous having been revealed- but you don't know exactly what. They're as elusive as dreams.