SOURCE: Wilkinson, Lynn R. “Isak Dinesen's ‘Sorrow-Acre’ and the Ethics of Storytelling.” Edda 1 (1996): 33-44.

In the following essay, Wilkinson views “Sorrow-Acre” as a rewriting of Paul la Cour's “Sorg-Agre” and elucidates Dinesen's authorial intent with the story.

Isak Dinesen's remarks to Robert Langbaum have served as a touchstone for almost all later interpretations of “Sorrow-Acre” or “Sorg-Agre”. Langbaum, who notes that his conversations with the Danish writer and storyteller took place in 1959 and 1961, reports:

Isak Dinesen told me that she read while in Africa a modern rendition of this tale by the Danish writer, Paul la Cour. She felt la Cour had made a mistake in establishing the boy's innocence, that the point ought to have remained ambiguous. The occasion for attempting her own version occurred many years later, after she had returned to Denmark. In the course of arguing with a socialist friend, she asked him whether...