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Danish writer, whose stories incorporate the erotic, supernaturalism
and dreams. As a storyteller Blixen draws her inspiration from the
Bible, the Arabian Nights, the works of Homer, and the Icelandic
sagas. Her tales have inspired such film makers as Orson Welles
and Sydney Pollack.
'Are you sure,' she asked, 'that it is God whom you serve?'
The Cardinal looked up, met her eyes and smiled very gently.
'That,' he said, 'that, Madame, is a risk which the artists and
the priests of this world have to run!'
(from 'The Cardinal's Fist Tale')
Baroness Karen Blixen was born in Rungsted, Denmark, into a well-to-do
patrician family. She was the daughter of Ingeborg Westenholz Dinesen
and the writer and army officer Wilhelm Dinesen, whose adventuresome
spirit and storytelling talents deeply influenced Blixen's imagination.
She spent her childhood on the family estate in Rungsted, and throughout
her life Blixen's outlook and manner were unabashedly aristocratic.
At early age, Blixen showed an artistic inclination. She attended
the Royal Academy of Art in Copenhagen, and also studied in England,
Switzerland, Italy, and France. Blixed made her debut as a writer
in 1907 with several short stories.
"I first began to tell tales to delight the world and make
it wiser..."
(From Anecdotes of Destiny, 1958)
In 1914 she married her cousin Baron Bror Blixen-Finecke, and travelled
with him to Kenya, where they managed a coffee plantation. They
were divorced in 1921. Blixen ran the plantation by herself but
in 1931 she returned to Denmark, after fruitless stuggles with mismanagement,
drought, and the falling price of coffee. Blixen's years in Kenya
are depicted in OUT OF AFRICA (1937) - "I had a farm in Africa..."
The book was adapted into an Oscar-winning film in 1985, directed
by Sydney Pollack. Blixen's work is considered by many to be a masterpiece,
but it ignores her unhappy marriage, and her affair with the English
game pilot Denys Finch-Hatton. Later she returned to her African
experiences in the autobiographical SKYGGER PÅ GRÆSET (1960, Shadows
on the Grass). Blixen's description of her servants and the indigenous
African population is understanding, but a more overtly patrician
outlook is revealed in her posthumous LETTERS FROM AFRICA (1981).
Blixen's first major work, the short story collection SEVEN GOTHIC
TALES (1934), was proclaimed a masterpiece by critics in England
and the Unites States. The elaborate, deliberately unrealistic tales,
mostly set in the old aristocratic Europe of the 18th and 19th centuries,
combines the themes of love and dreams with elements of fantasy.
The opening tale, 'The Deluge at Norderney', is an account of a
night passed in a hayloft by four strangers, who tell the story
of his or her life, while waiting for rescue. As in several other
Blixen's works, the stories meld into other stories. The central
theme in the collection is that, only through an understanding of
one's true God-given role in life,is one able to reach a lasting
inner balance. The Danish edition published in 1935, Syv fantastiske
fortællinger, received mixed reviews: the author was accused
of elitism.
"What is man, when you come to think upon him, but a minutely
set, ingenious machine for turning, with infinite artfulness,
the red wine of Shiraz into urine?"
(from 'The Dreamers' in Seven Gothic Tales, 1934)
During WW II, when Denmark was occupied by the Nazis, Blixen started
to write her only full-length novel, the introspective GENGÆLDELSENS
VEJE (The Angelic Avengers), published in 1944 under the pseudonym
Pierre Andrézel. In 1942 appeared VINTER-EVENTYR (1942), which refers
to Shakespeare's play, but also contains an allusion to the situation
of Denmark. ANECDOTES OF DESTINY (1958) contains five tales, of
which the most famous is 'Babette's Feast', in which Babette, a
famous French chef, changes the lives of the members of an obscure
and puritanical religious sect living on a Norwegian fjord. The
story was filmed in 1987.
In the 1950s Blixen's health deteriorated, and writing became impossible.
However, Blixen appeared as a lecturer on the radio and made one
record. Her name was mentioned several times in the context of Nobel
Prize awards - Hemingway himself said that the Prize should have
been given to Dinesen, not to him. In 1959 she made a lecture tour
in the United States, which gained a huge success. Such American
writers as Truman Capote and Carson McCullers acknowledged their
debt to Blixen.
Though Danish, Blixen wrote in English and then translated her
work into her native tongue. Her English has unusual beauty and
great technical skill. Blixen's later books usually appeared simultaneously
in both languages. She died in Rungsted on Septmber 7, 1962.
For further reading: The World of Isak Dinesen by E.O.
Johannesson (1961); The Gaiety of Vision by R. Langbaum (1964);
Titania: The Biography of Isak Dinesen by P. Migel (1968); The
Life and Destiny of Karen Blixen by C. Svendsen and F. Lasson
(1970); Isak Dinesen and Karen Blixen: The Mask and the Reality
by D. Hannah (1971); Isak Dinesen's Aesthetics by T.R. Whissen
(1973); My Sister, Isak Dinesen by T. Dinesen (1975); Isak Dinesen:
The Life of a Storyteller by J. Thurman (1982); The Power of Aries:
Myth and Reality in Karen Blixen's Life by A. Westenholz (1987);
The Witch Goddess in the Stories of Isak Dinesen: A Feminist Reading
by S. Stambaugh (1989) - Note: In her late years, Blixen occassionaly
dressed as the commedia dell'arte character Pierrot - also her
works with multi-voice narrations presenting material in a complex,
dancelike pattern, reflects the influence of this theatre tradition
from the 16th-century. - Blixen's story Tempest from Anecdotes
of Destiny is based on William Shakespeare's play. - See also:
Karen Blixen Museet
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