The Roads Round Pisa by Karen Blixen — a play with a plot and a form

Abstract

The article focuses on specific structural features of tales written by Karen Blixen, now considered to be the main Danish writer of the 20th century. Her first book, Seven Gothic Tales, was published in English in 1934. The Roads Round Pisa and other tales from this book are not only full of symbols and metaphors, but also have complex structures at the level of composition and of plot. The narration in Blixen’s writings contains intense action; it is a dramatization of the text. The concept of “theatricality” constantly exists in many her tales and it is important for the interpretation of ideas in The Roads Round Pisa: but this concept generally determines a form of the text and its composition, which has some similarity to the composition of 5-acts drama. The motive of a play becomes the important structural component in this text; it is also connected to the plot and to images. Personages in this tale play different roles and change many masks. There are two types of heroes: heroes — actors on the stage and heroes — members of audience in the tale. The motive of a play creates also a particular subtext — required for understanding hidden matters, which a plot is built on. Theatricality of a text, on the one hand, brings more complicity, diversity; clarity of perception often is lost, because there is a certain coded meaning in the narration. On the other hand, it forces a reader to search for ways to comprehend the text. It looks like a reader is involved in a play, and only if he accepts rules of this play, he can understand hidden meaning of all circumstances. Karen Blixen uses the concept of theatricality to create absolutely original narratives inherent only in her poetic manner.