Karen Blixen - Isak Dinesen home

Question 31: Pact with the Devil?

Q. Did Karen Blixen make a pact with the Devil?


A. Karen Blixen's friend, Thorkild Bjornvig, reports in his memoir, The Pact (referring to his pact with Karen Blixen, not a pact with the Devil), that she had said, "I promised the Devil my soul, and in return he promised me that everything I was going to experience hereafter would be turned into tales."

This anecdote has been misinterpreted and exaggerated by romantically-inclined writers. Karen Blixen was speaking metaphorically about her syphilis; she was not claiming that she had had a face-to-face encounter with the Devil. What Karen Blixen meant was, that she had recognized the hand of Fate: she was never to lead the life of a normal human being; something greater would be required of her. She would suffer greatly but her experiences would allow her to become an artist.

She expresses this philosophy well in her story "Tempests" in Anecdotes of Destiny. The artist remains on the fringe of life, observing and interpreting it for posterity. She was destined not to have a normal family life as a wife and mother--her life became a performance, outside the bounds of normal society. This is the meaning of the "Devil," or "Lucifer," in her writing--a person who sets herself apart to perform a role more original and daring than the average person. The price for being an artist was loneliness, but the reward was immortality.


--Nietzsche, Will to Power: "What is noble?--That one constantly has to play a part. That one seeks situations in which one has constant need of poses. That one knows how to make enemies everywhere, if the worse comes to the worst even of oneself. That one constantly contradicts the great majority not through words but through deeds."


Copyright © 2001 by Linda Donelson. All rights reserved