Isak Dinesen on hunting

A. "The person who can take delight in a sweet tune without wanting to learn it, in a beautiful woman without wanting to possess her, or in a magnificent head of game without wanting to shoot it, has not got a human heart."--Shadows on the Grass (p. 439, New York: Vintage Books, 1985)

Also:
"Hunting is ever a love affair. The hunter is in love with the game, real hunters are true animal lovers." (p. 440)

"The shot was a declaration of love. . . an affair of perfect harmony, of deep, burning, mutual desire. . ."(p. 442).

But:
"When I first came out to Africa I could not live without getting a fine specimen of each single kind of African game. In my last ten years out there I did not fire a shot except in order to get meat for my Natives. It became to me an unreasonable thing, indeed in itself ugly or vulgar, for the sake of a few hours' excitement to put out a life that belonged in the great landscape and had grown up in it for ten or twenty, or--as in the case of buffaloes and elephants--for fifty or a hundred years" (p. 443).

Copyright © 2008 by Linda Donelson. All rights reserved. During the past quarter century, Linda Donelson has been the only author writing about Karen Blixen for an international audience. Her biography, Out of Isak Dinesen (1998), was the Number One Best-Selling Scandinavian / or related title at Amazon.com for five years.

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