Karen Blixen
Baroness Karen von Blixen-Finecke in Kenya, 1918. |
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Born: | April 17, 1885 , Zealand, Denmark |
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Died: | September 7, 1962 , Zealand, Denmark |
Occupation: | Writer |
Influences: | William Shakespeare |
Baroness Karen von Blixen-Finecke (April 17, 1885 – September 7, 1962), née Dinesen, was a Danish author also known under her pen name Isak Dinesen. Blixen wrote works both in Danish and in English. She is best known, at least in English, for Out of Africa, her account of living in Kenya, and one of her stories, Babette's Feast, both of which have been adapted into highly acclaimed motion pictures.
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Early Years
The daughter of writer and army officer Wilhelm Dinesen, and Ingeborg Westenholz, (and sister of Thomas Dinesen), she was born into a Unitarian bourgeois family in , on the island of Zealand, in Denmark, and was schooled in art in Copenhagen, Paris, and Rome.
She began publishing fiction in various Danish periodicals in 1905 under the pseudonym Osceola, the name of the Seminole Indian leader, possibly inspired by her father's connection with American Indians. From August 1872 to December 1873, Wilhelm Dinesen had lived among the Chippewa Indians, in Wisconsin, where he fathered a daughter, who was born after his return to Denmark. (Wilhelm Dinesen hanged himself in 1895 when Karen was nine because he was diagnosed with syphilis).
Life in Africa
In 1914 Karen Dinesen married a distant Swedish cousin, Baron Bror von Blixen-Finecke, and the couple moved to Kenya, where they established and ran a coffee plantation, hiring African workers. Initially life in Africa for the pair was blissful as Karen wrote, "Here at long last one was in a position not to give a damn for all conventions, here was a new kind of freedom which until then one had only found in dreams!"
The two were quite different in education and temperament and Bror Blixen was unfaithful to his wife. She developed syphilis toward the end of their first year of marriage, which, although eventually cured, created medical anguish for years afterwards. The Blixens separated in 1921 and were divorced in 1925.
During this time she met and fell in love with the English big game hunter Denys Finch Hatton, who used her home as a base for his safaris from 1926 to 1931. She became pregnant by him twice but suffered miscarriages, probably due to her already fragile health. Finch Hatton died in the crash of his light airplane in 1931. At the same time, the failure of the coffee plantation (due partly to the world-wide economic depression) forced the abandonment of her beloved farm and her return to Denmark, where she stayed for the rest of her life.
Life as a writer
On returning to Denmark Karen Blixen began writing in earnest. Her first book, Seven Gothic Tales, was published in the US in 1934 under the pseudonym Isak Dinesen. This first book, highly enigmatic and more metaphoric than Gothic, won great recognition, and publication of the book in the UK and Denmark followed. Her second book, now the best known of her works, was Out of Africa, published in 1937, and its success firmly established her reputation as an author. She was awarded the Tagea Brandt Rejselegat (a Danish prize for women in the arts or acedemic life) in 1939.
During World War II, when Denmark was occupied by the Germans, Blixen started her only full-length novel, the introspective tale The Angelic Avengers, under another pseudonym, Pierre Andrezel; it was published in 1944. The horrors experienced by the young heroines were interpreted as an allegory of Nazism.
Her writing during most of the 1940s and 1950s consisted of tales in the storytelling tradition. The most famous is "Babette's Feast", about a chef who spends her entire ten-thousand-franc lottery prize to prepare a final, spectacular gourmet meal. "The Immortal Story", in which an elderly man tries to buy youth, was adapted to the screen in 1968 by Orson Welles, a great admirer of Blixen's work and life.
Her "tales" follow a traditional style of storytelling; most take place against the period background of the 19th century or even earlier. Concerning this deliberately "old-fashioned" taste, Blixen mentioned in several interviews that she wanted to express a spirit that no longer exists in modern times: the sense of destiny and courage. Indeed, many of her ideas, eloquently yet mysteriously expressed in her stories, can be traced back to those of Romanticism. Blixen’s concept of the art of the story is perhaps most directly expressed in the story "Cardinal’s First Tale" from her fifth book, Last Tales.
Though Danish, Blixen wrote her books in English and then translated her work into her native tongue. Critics describe her English as having unusual beauty, great skill, and precision.[citation needed] (Blixen's later books usually appeared simultaneously in both Danish and English). As an author, she kept her public image as a charismatic, mysterious old "Baroness" with an insightful third eye, and established herself as an inspiring figure in Danish culture, although shunning the mainstream.
She was widely respected by her contemporaries, such as Ernest Hemingway and Truman Capote, and during her tour of the US in 1959, the list of writers who paid her visits included Arthur Miller, E. E. Cummings, and Pearl Buck. Blixen was nominated for the Nobel Prize twice, in 1954 and 1957.
Illness and death
Although it was widely believed that syphilis continued to plague Karen Blixen throughout her lifetime, extensive tests were unable to reveal evidence of syphilis in her system after 1925. Her writing prowess suggests that she did not suffer from late syphilis nor from cerebral poisoning due to mercury treatments. She did suffer a mild permanent loss of sensation in her legs that could be attributed to chronic use of arsenic in Africa.
During the 1950s Blixen's health quickly deteriorated, and in 1955 she had a third of her stomach removed due to an ulcer. Writing became impossible, although she did several radio broadcasts.
In her letters from Africa and later during her life in Denmark, Karen Blixen wondered if her pain was psychosomatic. Publicly she blamed her trouble on syphilis--a disease that afflicted heroes and poets, as well as her own father. Whatever her belief about her illness, the disease suited the artist's design for creating her own personal legend.[1]
Unable to eat, Blixen died in 1962 at Rungstedlund, her family's estate, at the age of 77, apparently of malnutrition. The source of her abdominal problems remains unknown.
Rungstedlund Museum
Karen Blixen lived most of her life at the family estate , which was acquired by her father in 1879. The property is located in , 24 kilometers (15 miles) north of Copenhagen, Denmark's capital. The oldest parts of the estate date back to 1680, and it had been operated both as an inn and as a farm. Most of Blixen's writing took place in Ewald's Room, named after author Johannes Ewald. The property is managed by the Rungstedlund Foundation, founded by Blixen and her siblings. The property opened to the public as a museum in 1991.
Legacy and works
Popular opinion holds that Karen, the suburb of Nairobi where Blixen made her home and operated her coffee plantation, was named after her - in actual fact, it was named after her cousin Karen Melchior. There is a Karen Blixen Coffee House and Museum, set near her former home.
Some of her works were published posthumously, including tales previously removed from earlier collections and essays she wrote for various occasions.
- The Hermits (1907, published in a Danish journal under the name Osceola)
- The Ploughman (1907, published in a Danish journal under the name Osceola)
- The de Cats Family (1909, published in Tilskueren)
- The Revenge of Truth (1926, published in Denmark)
- Seven Gothic Tales (1934 in USA, 1935 in Denmark)
- Out of Africa (1937 in Denmark and England, 1938 in USA)
- Winter's Tales (1942)
- The Angelic Avengers (1947)
- Last Tales (1957)
- (1958)
- Shadows on the Grass (1960 in England and Denmark, 1961 in USA)
- (posthumous 1963, USA)
- Carnival: Entertainments and Posthumous Tales (posthumous 1977, USA)
- Daguerreotypes and Other Essays (posthumous 1979, USA)
- On Modern Marriage and Other Observations (posthumous 1986, USA)
- Letters from Africa, 1914 – 1931 (posthumous 1981, USA)
- Karen Blixen i Danmark: Breve 1931 – 1962 (posthumous 1996, Denmark)
Trivia
Karen Blixen's grand nephew, Anders Westenholz, is also an accomplished writer, and has written books about her and her literature, among other things.
See also
- Karen Blixen Museum, Hørsholm, Denmark
- Asteroid 3318 Blixen, named after the author
- The Paris Review Interview