Book Review: "Seven Gothic Tales" by Karen Blixen

I was interested in reading Gothic short stories and so, I read things like the gothic tales of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and the stories written by Karen Blixen. However, I did not always find they were to my liking. I love stories with heavy atmospheric description. It was something that I enjoyed like there was no tomorrow. Reading about the atmosphere, the weather, the interior design, the various description of tons of gothic scenery was something that relaxed my mind and yet, made me think about what was coming next in the story. I was gobsmacked when I read the stories of Karen Blixen because the atmosphere was amazingly described - it was done with such greatness and poise, such amazing brilliance and noir, such death and disaster. Even though the writing of the atmosphere was amazing, brilliant and had all the things that were expected and even revered of the gothic, the story itself had no substance. I feel like the storylines did not reflect the brilliance of the atmosphere and when I was reading it for the first time around, I definitely realised this more than when I read it around for the second time, concentrating on the way in which the atmosphere influenced the way in which the audience think about the story.

There are, however, various quotations which meant a lot to me. This means that if you love atmospheric tension then you should definitely check this book out right now because it is done brilliantly and I mean, brilliantly. The atmosphere is something to be admired and god forbid if Blixen ever wrote nature fiction, we would all die of brilliance and overwhelming emotions related to great writing, like a Stendhal syndrome:

“This has happened, I suppose, to many young men down through the ages without the total sum of their experience being much use to the young man who finds himself in the same position today. I began to wonder what the relations between those two were really like and what strange forces there might be in here or in him to toss me about between them in this way, and I think that I began to be afraid. She was jealous of me, too, and would scold me with a sort of moral indignation as if I had been a groom failing his duties. I thought that I could not live without her, and also that she did not want to live without me, but exactly what she wanted me for I did not know. Her contact hurt me as one is hurt touching iron on a winter day: you do not know whether the pain comes from the heat or from the cold.”

Quotations like this obviously have some hold over not just the atmosphere but the character personality as well. But when it comes to personality, the only thing missing is the way in which the story develops and it is a shame that it does not develop in a way that I think is suitable for a particular modernist gothic tale.

“On their way to him they were proud of being, according to Doctor Faust, always as between Adam and Lilith, a noble striving. So there you would find not only the old witches of Macbeth of whom one might have expected but even young ladies with faces smooth as flowers, wild and mad with jealousy of their lovers’ mustachios. All this they got from reading in the orthodox witches’ manner - the book of Genesis backwards. Left to themselves they might have got a lot out as warlocks always will, a miserable figure at the sabbath. who spoiled the style and flight of the whole thing by bringing it down to earth and under laws o earthly reason…”

As we know though the creation of atmosphere is great, the story seems to suffer beneath it, striving to feel free whilst the atmosphere of the story takes over and becomes the centre of attention and therefore the best know work of Karen Blixen is praised not for its incredulity but because of its style, prose, mention of biblical figures, criticism and most importantly, pathetic fallacy above all of the substance it may be going for.