#154 The Ring- Isak Dinesen
Lise and Sigismund are newlyweds, married juts a week ago.
He is a sheep farmer and takes Lise out around his farm to show her the sheep.
They seem happy and content.
“The landscape around her was still, as if full of promise,
and it was hers. Even the swallows cruising in the air was hers, for they
belonged to him, and he was hers.”
When it is discovered that there is a sheep thief about,
Lise is ordered by her new husband to follow the path back home. She obeys, she
says she likes to obey (I can’t tell how much of her thoughts are ironic).
She plans a little game of hiding for her husband as she
walks back and walks quietly to a secluded spot where she runs into an unkempt,
knife-wielding man. They have several unspoken meaningful moments. She offers
him, her ring, he kicks it away, then leaves. Something has changed inside of
Lise.
“The movement was definitive and unconditional. In this one
motion, he did what she had begged him to do: he vanished and was gone. She was
free.”
She doesn’t retrieve the ring and pretends not to know where
it fell off. Perhaps the thief has stolen one more sheep.
“With this lost ring she had wedded herself to something. To
what? To poverty, persecution, total loneliness. To the sorrows and sinfulness
of this earth.”
Notable Passage: “Their distant paradise had descended to
earth and had proved, surprisingly, to be filled with the things of everyday
life.”
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