Bertonneau is a Temporary Assistant Professor of English and the humanities at Central Michigan University and Senior Policy Analyst at the Macki-nac Center for Public Policy. In the following essay, he maintains that Dinesen's story "The Ring" is an example of art describing tragedy.

Isak Dinesen, who owed much philosophically to the German philosopher and poet Friedrich Nie-tzsche, would certainly have agreed with Nietzsche's Twilight of the Idols (1888) that "whatever does not kill me makes me stronger." For this precept is simply a concise statement of the meaning of tragedy—that wisdom stems from pain and sorrow—and Dinesen's art always displayed an orientation towards the tragic. Just as Nietzsche's vision of tragedy can help readers to understand Dinesen's art, however, so can instances of Dinesen's art help readers to understand the basic structures—the human anthropological essence—of tragedy. To the extent...