Karen Blixen - Isak Dinesen home

Question 49: "Je responderay"?

Q. Although I have a vague idea about Finch Hatton's motto "Je responderay" I would appreciate having your expertise about this profound sentence.

A. Karen Blixen writes about the motto "Je responderay" in her essay "On Mottoes of My Life" [The University of Chicago Press, 1979]. She explains that the motto appeared on the Finch Hatton coat-of-arms and that she asked Denys for permission to adopt the motto as her own. She says he gave her an engraved wooden seal with the words on it. (I'm unaware that such a seal actually exists, but it is possible that he gave her this seal after they had a falling out in 1926, when she had refused to write to him for some time.)

You have recognized the motto as written in Old French. Karen Blixen interprets the motto in three ways characteristic of her:
 

1. As a call to discourse or conversation, she exhorts one to reply in a meaningful way, to be honest, to understand, and to respond with thought and wit.
2. As a call to responsibility, she discusses in particular the colonial experience as the opportunity to return to one's roots and to give back good things.
3. As a call to writing, she tells how she embarked on relating her experiences.

The latter is perhaps the most important interpretation of the motto, because she responded to her experience by telling a story. Thus she rendered her experience immortal.

Copyright © 2001 by Linda Donelson. All rights reserved