Karen Blixen - Isak Dinesen home

Question 98: Was Karen Blixen happy?

Q.  I am struck by how much loss Karen Blixen endured during the first half of her life. Beginning at age 10, she lost her father, later, her lover (Hans), her health (syphilis), her marriage (Bror), her friend (Denys) and finally, her beloved farm. Since her Breve fra Denmark [Letters from Denmark] are not available in English, I would love to know if she was ever really and truly happy again, even though she finally experienced success as a writer.

 A.   Yes, it seems to the outsider that Karen Blixen's life was sad. Yet she insisted to everyone that she had a lot of joy in her life. Just a few days before her death she said this to her sister-in-law Jonna. She insisted that throughout her life people of all kinds, as well as nature and animals, had made her life joyful.

The second half of her life, after she left Africa, lacked the major losses you mention, and was interesting, despite the war in Europe and various personal struggles, disappointments and illnesses. The latter difficulties took place against the background of her living in Denmark, where, no matter what she says in her Letters from Africa, she found a haven and where she was much more comfortable than in Africa.

As James Bono points out:
"She claims in Out of Africa that she was perfectly happy there, but her brother Thomas relates that she often bitterly complained about her African existence and seriously considered leaving Africa on a number of occasions long before the failure of the farm. He often had his hands full attempting to assuage her despair. Her letters to him do contain expressions of her love of the farm such as one finds in Out of Africa; in general, though, it is the lamentation which outweighs everything  else. In 1923, to cite only one instance, she 'speculates constantly about leaving Kenya to begin a new life.' Frequently she asks him questions like: 'Will you help me to a new start in life, and if so with how much?' . . . Out of Africa contain no hint of such doubts. . . Yet throughout the twenties, when Out of Africa proclaims that she was a person exactly where she wanted to be, she writes to her brother such things as a telegram running, 'Will you help me to get to Europe; I shall die if remaining here', and a letter containing the sentiment that '. . . here I sit in an idyl, which is no idlyl at all unless it is because I would like to make it one'. Instead of getting on 'that damned ship' for Africa, she exclaims, she might have gone as a missionary to China, or taken the train for Paris 'and bought papers to sell on the streets.'"

In an interview published in the New York Times on November 3, 1957--where Karen Blixen wrote both the questions and the answers, according to the writer, Bent Mohn--this dialogue appears: