SOURCE: "The Bow of the Lord: Isak Dinesen's 'Portrait of the Artist,'" in Scandinavian Studies, Vol. 46, No. 1, Winter, 1974, pp. 47-58.

In the following essay, Whissen examines the theme of the artist in several of Dinesen's works. He contends that she sees the artist as God-like, but that the human artist "is not the master of the situation, for he has an adversary in the greater artist, God."

In a little play, The Revenge of Truth, written long before she was to achieve fame with her first collection of tales, Isak Dinesen expresses an idea that most critics have interpreted as the governing principle behind her attitude towards life and art. At the end of the play, the witch comes forth to state this idea in a speech which is also included in "The Roads Round Pisa" (Seven Gothic Tales) as the central motif of that story.

The...