 |
KAREN
BLIXEN ¥ ISAK DINESEN by Christian Egesholm Until her death in 1962, Karen Blixen was a dominant figure in the cultural life of post-war Denmark - principally by virtue of her status as an internationally-renowned author, but also thanks to her charismatic personality and her frequently controversial contributions to the Danish discussion of cultural issues. She first published under the pseudonym Isak Dinesen in 1934 with Seven Gothic Tales, which she wrote in English, but published in Danish the following year in her own rewriting as Syv fantastiske Fortællinger. The pseudonym was part of a literary strategy the aim of which was to conceal herself. She also wanted release from the contemporary demand for realism, and this she achieved by using a classical-romantic narrative form and thus being able to deliver her critique in symbolic form whilst maintaining her distance. In Seven Gothic Tales Blixen introduced her outlook on life with its strong reliance on fate. To give oneself up to fate is, to Blixen, to model fate oneself via insight into and recognition of one's individual potential and possibilities. The characters in Seven Gothic Tales seem to move like puppets guided by an invisible hand of fate. They encounter one another in various different role-plays, with special focus on how women are forced into and held in tragic roles. In Vinter-Eventyr (Winter's Tales 1942) and Sidste Fortællinger (Last Tales 1957) the fate- and puppet-theme continues and through it she not only settles her account with the favoured genre of the period, realism, but also with the whole bourgeois narrative tradition. This tradition placed the individual at the centre, to the detriment of the story, and the characters shape the sequence of events. The governing mechanisms of life are, according to Blixen, compelled by fate, and the sequence of events is the story. For Blixen, the story is therefore a divine art form. If there are answers to our questions, then they will be found in the story. It is characteristic of Blixen's stories that they take place in the past, but within an historical framework she deals with contemporary themes. The framework is allegoric-symbolic and her narrative technique uses the Chinese-box principle, putting minor stories inside the major story. The result is a fabulous universe which, by playing with masks, presents a critique of both the aristocracy's repression of sensuality and the bourgeois tradition's preoccupation with morality, guilt and ethics. |