The dedicated humanist and literary scholar Aage Henriksen is honored at
Rungstedlund, where he met his fate in the domineering Karen Blixen.
Interview with Ebbe Mørk—11 April 2003
Humanist and literary scholar, mystic and student of eroticism, an
opponent of Marxism when it was in fashion, and the soulmate of
the
baroness at Rungstedlund. The now 82-year-old professor emeritus has
not been there in many years, but yesterday he was invited back to the
scene of the crime to be honored with the Rungstedlund Prize.
For thirty-five years, up until 1990, Aage Henriksen was affiliated
with the University of Copenhagen, where his charismatic personality
and insight into literature elevated him to the center of an almost
religious following, even while others severely observed that the
literature in his world was an existential concept, a territory where
he had placed himself in a domain of his own invention.
When he first became a professor in the heated years leading up to and
after 1968, political figures were sometimes sentenced to solitary confinement for the
excesses typical of the educational institution.
He placed his own body and soul at stake in order to reach deeper
understandings of life’s mysteries through literature, not least
through the erotic.
In a way Henriksen had less against his opponents than they had against
him, for, as he says today, he saw a kernel of humanism in socialism.
“The obvious thing was that I ran an apolitical educational program.
The approach used today at the university has become very specialized
and characterized by method. Before, the university was a kind of
center for literary life. Now it’s a ghetto for literary understanding.
“When I started out many years ago, literature was the stamp of general
culture. Then, the text was its own method, which satisfied the
cravings of the reader, who had to apply himself to understand the
text.
"That point of view is now without value. Now the reader’s attitude is
part of the text. Jakob Knudsen used the expression, which Karen Blixen
also believed in, that art is inextricably bound to fantasy. It was a
law accepted in her time. The author lays the ground rules, and the
reader has to determine through the author’s approach to the subject
what she is trying to say. That’s an antiquated notion today, when we
are heading off in an entirely different direction.”
How is that?
“Into a more European environment. Therefore, a national literature is
on the brink of being passé, and I don’t know if I’m sorry, for
my interests have always been in regional consciousness. The conditions
for experiencing literature have been altered with the whole
technological revolution from kitchen appliances to birth control and
free abortion. Appliances have made it pointless to sit in a
two-bedroom apartment and look after a child and a home.
“The pill and legal abortion have taken a great risk out of life and
relieved it somewhat of consequences, and the whole environment has
been demythologized, as has religion. With this an entire dimension of
culture disappeared. Some will maintain that this is a good thing. My
grandchildren have a great deal more self-assurance than we had in my
youth with its repressions and restrictions.”
Cruise missile
The meeting with Karen Blixen became a turning point in the life of
Aage Henriksen, a new beginning--but also a friendship that wounded him
with a scar never healed. He was a lecturer in Lund in the years from
1949 to 1955, where he interpreted her oeuvre with decisive influence.
"I had naturally come across Karen Blixen's fiction earlier, but
got little out of it. At that time I had a highly ponderous
design for socialistic art and wanted to write about the Clarte
movement [sic: international association of socialists, especially of
intellectuals], and just then Karen Blixen entered my life like a
cruise missile.
This opened up my life to a new course, which I have pursued ever
since. Gradually this new course became for me a kind of spiritual
philosophy, and it enabled me to understand Goethe, who underwent the
same psychological dilemmas, which he described, but gave them a
different interpretation and meaning.
This was in 1951. I composed at that time a few radio talks about Karen
Blixen, which Ole Wivel wanted to publish—this was certainly Denmark's
shortest book—but Karen Blixen found something in my interpretation
that she hadn't discovered herself. This piqued her interest, and I was
invited to Rungstedlund. We began a friendship that lasted with a few
interruptions until the beginning of 1961.
"That was a terrible year. Just ask my wife. Karen Blixen couldn't
stand wives, because they placed strings on men, with financial burdens
that could hinder them from fulfilling their destiny. Anything erotic
in the usual sense was out of the question.
"She had a grand design. Karen Blixen held a vision beyond anything I
had seen before, because she was familiar with the common personal
traps that can extinguish physical energy. She could see deep inside
you, and that could result in some euphoric moments, where you lost
your sensible grip on reality. This could also trigger a crisis of
confidence. But I must emphasize that the censorship Karen Blixen
inflicted upon me, which you call a wound, never caused me any anger
against her.
"I had permitted her such a great amount of influence and authority
that I considered it my own fault; I leaped in and there was no
pressure at all from her. I could certainly feel bitter, but I've
never felt that way. She opened one up to great insights. She could be
so low and talk about swamps and jungles where she ought to disappear;
and soon afterwards she was on top of the world again, rising up from
an impossible situation, with magical power.
"I sensed the last time we were together that it was the last time, but
I was also in a frame of mind--which as a rule fails--when you manage
to say farewell. However, that day I managed to say what I wanted
to--that it was the greatest piece of luck in my life that I had met
her, because I was nothing then like the person I had been before.
"Well, she wanted to kiss me, but I refused. There in that kiss could
be a magic spell that I didn't foresee, didn't dare accept, didn't want
at all.
"'So, be on your way, Mr. Stingy,' she said.
"Yes. Stingy, I went."
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