Volume 25, Number 7 · May 4, 1978
Gothic Sibyl
By Rosemary Dinnage
Silence Will Speak: A Study of the Life of Denys Finch Hatton and His Relationship with Karen Blixen
by Errol Trzebinski
University of Chicago Press, 348 pp., $15.00
Isak Dinesen's Art: The Gayety of Vision
by Robert Langbaum
University of Chicago Press, 309 pp., $4.95 (paper)
The Angelic Avengers
by Isak Dinesen
University of Chicago Press, 304 pp., $8.95
Carnival: Entertainments and Posthumous Tales
by Isak Dinesen
University of Chicago Press, 338 pp., $10.00
In 1931, when she had lost her lover, husband, home, income, and health, Karen Blixen—she tells us in Out of Africa—went out to look for a sign to tell her the meaning of the losses, of all that had gone so wrong. 'It seemed to me that I must have, in some way, got out of the normal course of human existence, into a maelstrom where I ought never to have been…. All this could not be, I thought, just a coincidence of circumstances, what people call a run of bad luck, but there must be some central principle within it. If I could find it, it would save me.' She went outside on her African estate. A white cock strutted on to the path; at the same moment, from the other side, a chameleon ran on to it. The chameleon, frightened, stood its ground opposite the cock and darted out its tongue in defiance. The cock bit the tongue out.
Review, 3439 words
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