Out of Africa: The movie and the life TRIVIA #79 (reprise): Hired farm workers have often led a hard life. Following is information about workers in a certain country. Can you guess the country and why this meant something to Karen Blixen?: "They bargained with a farmer for the chance to set up homes of their own, with or without some scrap of land belonging to the farm, in return for a rent payable in farm labour or by handicraft earnings . . . their rent normally included about twenty-five days' free labour, other labour on demand at fixed wages, and some payment in money."  (Answer at the bottom of the page.) 

KAREN BLIXEN - ISAK DINESEN

INFORMATION SITE

For questions or suggestions: Write to
GraceJames [all one word] at karenblixen.com


 

LINKS || YOUR QUESTIONS ||  HER LIFE BY DATES || MORE ABOUT HER LIFE || BOOKS SHE WROTE || BOOKS ABOUT HER ||  THE AFRICA HOUSE  || HER MEDICAL HISTORY || OUT OF ISAK DINESEN, BIOGRAPHY || OUT OF AFRICA MOVIE || MOVIE POEMS || DENYS FINCH HATTON || SEVEN GOTHIC TALES || BABETTE'S FEAST ||  FAMOUS MISTAKES || EVENTS || SPECIAL RESOURCES || LINKS

Kazuri Beads manufactured on Karen estate by Sarah Wyatt
48 hours of enjoyment around Nairobi
The Ring by Isak Dinesen

Ngong Hills: "I had a farm in Africa..."

Photo © Michael Steeves

Karen Blixen (1885-1962), also known by her pseudonym, Isak Dinesen,  is famous for her memoir, Out of Africa, and for several works of fiction, including Seven Gothic Tales (1934) and Winter's Tales (1942). A 2007 poll of opinion in her native Denmark lists Karen Blixen as one of the most representative personalities in Danish history.  She was twice nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature. She wrote in English, after living on a coffee farm in Kenya from 1914 to 1931.

She married her second cousin, Baron Bror Blixen of Sweden, thereby acquiring the title Baroness. Following their separation and divorce, she had a long affair with the safari hunter, Denys Finch Hatton, son of a titled English family. In  1931, after losing the coffee farm in the Great Depression, Karen Blixen returned to Denmark and embarked on the writing career that lasted until her death in 1962. She was played by Meryl Streep in the 1985 film Out of Africa.

LITERATURE: Karen Blixen  [Isak Dinesen] can be compared with no other writers. Her voice was formed by her Scandinavian roots, and influenced by a wide variety of works of European literature. Her writing places emphasis on story, rather than characters, and on the philosophical understanding of personal identity. Her stories underline a fascination with the role of fate in controlling the lives of human beings. She believed that a person's response to the vicissitudes of fate offers a possibility for heroism and, ultimately, for immortality.

A small selection of her literary influences include:
  • Soren Kierkegaard: at least thirteen of Isak Dinesen's tales are based, in part, on stories by the great Danish philosopher.
  • The Viking sagas
  • Shakespeare's plays
  • Mary Shelley
  • Percy Bysshe Shelley
  • Lord Byron
  • Homer's Iliad and Odyssey
  • Mozart's Don Juan
  • Milton's Paradise Lost
  • Charles Baudelaire
  • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
  • Walt Whitman
  • Goethe
  • Nietzche
  • Heinrich Heine
  • Havamal, the bible of the pagan Scandinavian cosmos
  • The Greek myths
  • The Thousand and One Nights (The Arabian Nights)
  • The Old and The New Testament
Some of her famous characters:
  • From "The Deluge at Norderney": Malin Nat-og-Dag
  • From "The Dreamers" and "Echoes": Pellegrina Leoni
  • From Out of Africa: Kamante Gatura, Farah Aden, Denys Finch Hatton, Berkeley Cole

Photo KB age 29Photo KB age 43

MAP of Karen Blixen's World

Recent Events

  1. SASS:  The annual meeting of SASS (Society for the Advancement of Scandinavian Study), Fairbanks, Alaska, March 13-15, 2008, included: (1.) "Avedon--Blixen--Capote: A question of style," Ivan Z. Sørensen, Roskilde Gymnasium. (2.)"Reworking the Gothic: Isak Dinesen's 'The Supper at Elsinore,'" Kirstine Kastbjerg, University of Washington.
  2. Speakers, Teachers, Reading, and Discussion Groups: If you present classes, courses, lectures, discussion and/or reading groups about Karen Blixen/Isak Dinesen, please tell us about them.
  3. University scholars will be interested in SASS, the Society for the Advancement of Scandinavian Studies, and the American Scandinavian Foundation. See also Canadian Institute for Nordic Studies and the Canadian-Scandinavian Foundation.
  4. 2006 publication of Danish Culture, Past and Present: The Last Two Hundred Years. Proceedings of an international conference sponsored by The Danish American Heritage Society. Des Moines, Iowa: October 13-16, 2005. Edited by Linda M. Chementi and Birgit Flemming Larsen. [The Bridge:  Journal of the Danish-American Heritage Society, Index: Vol 29, No. 2, 2006.] Contents include: "Picturing Karen Blixen --Artist, Charlatan, Heretic, and Iconoclast: European Storyteller in the American Marketplace"  by Marianne Stecher-Hansen, University of Washington, Seattle; and "Karen Blixen: The Quintessential Dane" by Linda Donelson, Independent Scholar, Iowa City. 
  5. 2005 release of the documentary film Karen Blixen: Out of this World, directed by Marcus Mandal and Anna von Lowzow.
  6. 2005 publication of Jørgen Stormgaard: Blixen og Bjørnvig. Pagten der blev brudt [Blixen and Bjørnvig. The Pact is Broken]. Efterskrift af Frans Lasson. P. Haase & Søn, 182 sider, ill., 198 kr.  This new book offers a juicy analysis of Karen Blixen's platonic love affair with the poet Thorkild Bjørnvig.
  7. 2005 publication of Grethe Rostbøl: Mod er svaret. Karen Blixens udgivelser i USA og England. Museum Tusculanums Forlag, 2005. Described as a discussion of Karen Blixen's battle to promote her books, this work sheds light on the process all authors face once the easy part--the writing--of a book ends, and the marketing begins.
  8. 2005 publication of Frank Egholm Andersen: Karen Blixen som ung. Bogforlaget Her & Nu, 2005. An analysis of Karen Blixen's youth, emphasizing how her early drive to perfectionism revealed itself as a personal characteristic that would shape her literary life.
  9. 2004 publication of Isak Dinesens 'Drømmerne' by Lars Nilsson. Forlaget Systime, 2004, 310 sider.
  10. 2003 publication of Karen Blixens gæstebud - billeder fra Rungstedlund af Ebbe Mørk med Jens Lindhes fotografier. Politikens Forlag. 300 sider rigt illustr. i sort/hvid og farve.
  11. 2002 publication of Karen Blixen's Letters from Denmark: 1931-1962 in French.
  12. 2002 publication of Seven Gothic Talesin Danish in a special de luxe edition (495 Danish Kroner) with decoupages made by HM Margrethe II of Denmark.
  13. 2002 publication of Understanding Isak Dinesen by Susan C. Brantly. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2002.
  14. 2001 publication of Omvejene til Pisa by Ivan Z. Sørensen and Ole Togeby. En fortolkning af Karen Blixens Vejene til Pisa, Copenhagen: Gyldendal.
  15. 2001 publication of To Soar with Eagles by Eugene Haynes, Jr: an African-American musician's memoir of his friendship with Karen Blixen. 224 pgs:ill. Xlibris.
  16. 2001 publication of Karen Blixens Kunst/ The Art of Karen Blixen. Includes essays of academic interest by Mark Mussari, Charlotte Engberg, and Bente Scavenius, with an introduction by Marianne Stecher-Hansen.
  17. 2000 publication of Samtaler med Karen Blixen [Interviews with Karen Blixen]/ udgivet af Else Brundbjerg. 409 sider. Copenhagen: Gyldendal.
  18. 2000 publication of Billedets ekko : om Karen Blixens fortællingeraf Charolotte Engberg/  fotograf: Erwitt Elliott; 2000. 250 sider:ill. Copenhagen: Gyldendal.
  19. 1999-2000 Touring Exhibit (Currently in hiatus in North America.)
  20. 1999 publication of Siden hen: - om Karen Blixen by Bo Hakon Jørgensen: Odense : Odense Universitetsforlag, 323 s. - (Odense University Studies in Scandinavian Languages and Literatures, ISSN 0078-3331 ; 40). Summary in English, pp. 320-323. - Diss. Odense, 2000 ISBN 87-7838-492-3. A highly praised critical overview of Karen Blixen's oeuvre. In Danish.
  21. 1999 publication of Ariadne (in Danish) by Tone Selboe.
  22. 1998 publication in Danish of Blixikon by Liselotte Henriksen. Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1999. 359 p., ill. (An A to Z guide to the Life and Works of Karen Blixen / Isak Dinesen.) Contains some lovely, little known photographs of Karen Blixen. Sample.
  23. 1998 publication of Babette og det aristokratiske univers by Frantz Leander Hansen, Copenhagen: C. A. Reitzels Forlag. "Original and essential...exquisite and noble. Babette og det aristokratiske univers is simply one of the best all-round presentations of Karen Blixen´s work."--Søren Schou, Weekendavisen.
  24. 1998 publication of Africa's Song of Karen Blixen by Tove Hussein. A well-illustrated account which reviews the fate of Karen Blixen's African friends. Available in larger American libraries.
  25. 1998 publication of Drommen om Ngong by Lennart Hagerfors (in Danish, a novel: "Dreaming about Ngong"), Copenhagen:Gyldendal.
  26. 1998 edition of Longing for Darkness by Peter Beard and Kamante Gatura.
  27. 1998 edition of Out of Isak Dinesen : Karen Blixen's untold story by Linda Donelson.
  28. 1998 edition of Karen Blixen i Afrika (in Danish) by Linda Donelson.
  29. 1997 International Colloquium at Rungstedlund (Did you attend? Please tell us about your impressions!)
  30. 1997: Karen Blixen et l'art du récit. Edité par René Rasmussen. Odense University Press, Odense, Denmark.
  31. 1996 publication of Karen Blixen i Danmark, Breve 1931-1962 (Karen Blixen's letters in Danish) The University of Chicago Press (which published Letters from Africa) has no plans at present to bring out an English translation.
  32. 1995 release of the documentary film Karen Blixen - Storyteller directed by Christian Braad Thomsen.

Out of Africa: