Sorrow-Acre Study Guide

First published in Danish as part of the collection Winter's Tales, "Sorrow-Acre" is the most frequently anthologized of Dinesen's short stories. Written upon her return to Denmark after more than a decade in Africa, and during the darkest days of World War II, the collection's title has a double meaning, referring to both the cold, northern climate in which Dinesen found herself and to the war raging all around her. As Thomas Whissen writes, "[D]enied a sword, she took up the only weapon she had-her pen-and wrote Winter's Tales. Huddled behind blackout curtains in that draughty old house on the sound, cut off from the world, aware that she was being watched (German soldiers camped in her backyard), she began writing tales again, the first in nearly a decade."

However, it would be a mistake to read the collection, or "Sorrow-Acre," as nothing more than the effect of these causes.

Dinesen was one of the more gifted writers of an abundantly gifted era, and all of her gifts are on display in this collection. Donald Hannah gives one obvious example drawn from "Sorrow-Acre" when he observes that Dinesen's "life-long interest in painting is ... reflected by the way in which her imagination in the tales frequently operates in visual terms. She writes like a painter. The striking description of the countryside in the opening paragraphs of 'Sorrow-Acre' is but one example of this." Throughout "Sorrow Acre," Winter's Tales, and indeed, throughout her entire life's work, she demonstrates the power of her clear-sighted imagination and formal elegance to impressive, often stunning effect.