Multimedia Mania/abacus-multimedia-mania.iso/dp/0015/00157.txt

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$Unique_ID{bob00157}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{Denmark
Karen Blixen}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Isak Dinesen}
$Affiliation{Press and Cultural Relations}
$Subject{karen
blixen
life
danish
dinesen
tales
human
isak
africa
copenhagen}
$Date{1988}
$Log{}
Title:       Denmark
Book:        Fact Sheets on Denmark
Author:      Isak Dinesen
Affiliation: Press and Cultural Relations
Date:        1988

Karen Blixen

     In 1935 a book was published in Denmark that caused quite a sensation and
was greeted with both enthusiasm and indignation. The book was Syv fantastiske
Fortoellinger by Karen Blixen, which had met with great success following
publication in the USA and England the previous year as Seven Gothic Tales.

     The author found one of the Danish reviews particularly hurtful, for it
seemed to her to show that her fellow countrymen neither understood nor cared
about her. Sometimes when bitterness overcame her she would show this article
to friends and acquaintances, one of whom has reported that as late as 1948
when her reputation had long been assured she mentioned it to him "deeply
aggrieved and with a dark lament in her voice".

     The review had been written by a very distinguished newspaper critic, Dr.
Frederik Schyberg, who called the book "a brilliant piece of pastiche by a
talented but wildly affected authoress". However, while Frederik Schyberg was
expressing righteous indignation over the air of decadence, the aristocratic
characters, the stylised speech and specific symbols such as, for instance,
the marionette, there was another Danish newspaper critic and writer, Tom
Kristensen, who had a better understanding of the book's inherent meaning.
What he had to say about Seven Gothic Tales was that it was "so amoral that it
could seem to argue for a paranormal level of morality", and with this comment
he heralded the opinion of modern Blixen scholars, who are not deterred by the
specialised literary setting but who realise that it is not the end but merely
the means for Karen Blixen. Tom Kristensen understood that Seven Gothic Tales
consists of much more than the empty rhetoric Frederik Schyberg considered it
to be. In fact, this book and Karen Blixen's other works symbolise a highly
developed, personal view of life, or, otherwise expressed, a philosophical
system of great profundity.

Baroness at Rungstedlund

     Another reason for the Danish people not immediately taking Karen Blixen
to their hearts was that she not only wrote about the aristocracy in approving
terms but was also herself a baroness. Moreover she let it be known that she
wished to be addressed by her title in conversation as well as correspondence,
and this was construed as snobbery or arrogance. Her elegance and her
fastidiously correct, slightly old-fashioned idiom gave her the aura of a
woman of the world that did nothing to further her popularity in an often
almost demonstratively democratic Denmark.

     However, in the course of time her image has undergone considerable
change as so much more has come to be known of her life and thus of her
motives. Many people have become interested in her writings after reading
Breve fra Afrika 1914-1931 (Copenhagen 1978; Letters from Africa 1914-1931,
New York/London, 1981). This unique correspondence reveals much about her
development during the years, so vitally important to her, that she spent in
Kenya as a coffee farmer.

     Her marriage to a Swedish relative, Baron Bror von Blixen-Finecke, and
their emigration to Africa may in many respects be likened to an escape. What
she may well have wished to get away from was her childhood home, the country
house of Rungstedlund, where she was born on 17 April 1885. The environment
she grew up in here was strongly characterised by the bourgeois standards she
was to react against in her writings. Her artistic talents were revealed when
she was still a child. She had dreams of becoming a painter, but she also
wrote stories and plays from her earliest youth. Her training as an artist was
never systematically pursued, but three early stories were published under her
first pseudonym Osceola. But although her artistic aspirations were satisfied
to a certain extent, her urgent need of freedom and the expression of
vitality was frustrated by the extremely narrow limits set to what a well-bred
young girl could do. Ever since her father, the writer and politician, Captain
Wilhelm Dinesen, had committed suicide in 1895, her mother, with her own
mother and an unmarried sister, had been in charge of the upbringing of the
five Dinesen children. Little Karen had been very close to her father, whose
artistic talents she had inherited, and whose adventurous life as a trapper
among the Indians in North America and as a volunteer on the French side in
the war of 1870-71 appealed to her enormously with her passion for adventure
and exciting experiences. After his death she felt herself alone in an
increasingly detested, conventional environment. An unhappy love affair did
not improve the situation, but her marriage with the twin brother of the
beloved must have been something of a liberation. Her new life as a farmer in
Africa provided her with far greater freedom of movement.

     She developed a great attachment both to Kenya and to its native peoples,
and neither when her marriage was dissolved in 1925, nor when the farm went
downhill at a disastrous rate, did she feel any desire to return to Denmark.
This was partly a result of her relationship to an Englishman, Denys
Finch-Hatton, a son of the Earl of Winchilsea and Nottingham. He was
tremendously dear to her, and it was to him that she first told the stories
she wrote during the years in Africa. But apparently their relationship had
come to an end when financial difficulties forced her to give up the farm in
1931 and settle down at Rungstedlund. Shortly before her departure from Africa
Denys had been killed in a crash while flying his own small airplane over
Kenya.

     Once more in a similar "daughter of the house" position to that she had
left seventeen years before, Karen Blixen managed to complete the writing of
Seven Gothic Tales, and it was successfully followed by Den afrikanske Farm
(1937; English version: Out of Africa, 1937), Vinter-Eventyr (1942; English
version: Winter's Tales, 1942), Gengoeldelsens Veje (1944; under the
pseudonym of Pierre Andr*ezel; English version: The Angelic Avengers, 1946),
Sidste Fortoellinger (1957; English version: Last Tales, 1957), and
Skoebne-Anekdoter (1958; English Version: Anecdotes of Destiny, 1958), etc.
She became a celebrity both in Denmark and abroad and was constantly
surrounded by a circle of admirers or fellow artists. Her highly cultivated
and intelligent personality attracted many people to her.

     The one thing that cast a shadow over her triumph was illness. Karen
Blixen herself ascribed her long periods of ill health to the syphilis with
which her husband had infected her at the start of their marriage. But despite
her frailty she travelled a good deal, including making a demanding lecture
tour of the USA in 1959 accompanied by her secretary for eighteen years, Clara
Svendsen, MA (now Selborn), when she was feted everywhere she went. That she
returned home alive could almost be called a miracle, as by that time she was
extremely ill and weak; but she did in fact live for another three years
before she died at Rungstedlund, whose mistress she had been since the death
of her mother in 1939, on 7 September 1962. In accordance with her own wishes
she was buried in the grounds, that she had arranged to be made into a bird
sanctuary. The Danish Academy, instituted in 1960, two years before Karen
Blixen's death, also in accordance with her wishes have the use of the main
wing of Rungstedlund for their various meetings and functions.

Themes and motifs

     Karen Blixen always maintained that she was a "storyteller" and not an
"author". This may seem like splitting hairs, but only until one takes a
closer look at her technique. She deliberately distanced herself in her works
from the psychological and social depiction of reality of modern literature,
because she found this literary form deficient as a means of expression. Of
paramount importance to her were the "eternal" existential problems: "What is
a human being?", "What is God's intention with creation?" and so on. Since
modern literature limits actuality to a definite historical reality that can
be analysed, she was obliged to turn to myth, fantasy and the classics that
have almost achieved the status of myth, in order to say what she wanted. She
explains the reasons behind this choice in, for example, The Cardinal's First
Tale from Last Tales, in that this story can be regarded as a metaphor story.

     If her style is marked by stylised speech, long artificial pauses and a
cast of characters consisting rather of types than psychologically defined
individuals as in modern literature, this is a result of her interest in
archetypal patterns. As types her characters can also become symbols, which
may seem confusing to the reader who does not realise this. For instance, we
know very well that she had relations in both Danish and Swedish noble
families, and that she not only was a baroness but also liked to be addressed
by this title, which may cause her particular use of "the aristocrat" as a
literary figure to be seen as an expression of the most affected snobbery. But
this is completely wrong, since the "nobleman", just like the "proletarian",
but in total contrast to the middle class person that she despises, is more of
a psychological than a sociological phenomenon. What he represents is the
daring and the acceptance of life and adventure that the staid bourgeois
citizen is too thinskinned and jealous of his reputation to venture on.

     The image of this figure is in harmony with her representations of wild
animals, that in contrast to domestic animals live in complete accord with
God's plan for them, because they are guided by him through their instincts.
Since it is not possible for domestic animals to live in accord with their
true nature, as their instincts have been inhibited and diverted in the
interests of human society, they have lost their direct connection with God.
Thus they come to resemble the bourgeoisie, who according to Karen Blixen live
rather in agreement with the desire for security and comfort than with their
true, God-given nature. But the aristocrat, the proletarian, and also native
peoples like those of Africa, resemble the wild animals, and this places them
in a far higher position than that of the over-civilised, conventional person.

     The comparison of the Africans with wild animals was one of various
causes of many serious misunderstandings, and Karen Blixen has been accused of
racism despite the fact that during her time in Kenya she was known to be
"pro-native". Just for this reason it is important to remember that for her
the natives represented an ideal, and that they stood for a higher form of
humanity. Thus she frequently talks about the destructive effect of
civilisation on human beings, for she also cultivates the irrational, but
firmly repudiates everything that seems to her to be subjected to too much
consideration. It was her opinion that the natives of Africa had preserved the
capacity to rest in themselves in a way that enabled them to live fully and
for instance to accept good and evil, God and Satan, as two sides of the same
principle. This particular aptitude was lost to the western world when the
rational principle, that she despises, got the upper hand. She humorously
traces this right back to the Fall, when the human being to its own misfortune
acquired a soul and thereby an independent will, so that thenceforth it was no
longer guided directly by God through instinct.

     Another of her favourite symbols is the marionette, in its situation of
complete dependence on the puppet-master's control of the strings that make
it move and that are tied to its centre of gravity. This system corresponds to
God's control over wild animals through their instincts, which we have seen is
an ideal for Karen Blixen. Even though the human being too has a centre of
gravity, this has been displaced by the Fall, and because he is now dependent
on something so imperfect as his own will, he is of far less worth. It is
quite simply impossible for the marionette to go against the nature implanted
in it, but this, sadly, is what the human being does repeatedly. For he thinks
instead of feeling, reflects instead of acting by instinct.

     Karen Blixen naturally had her own view of the artist, although hers
parallels that of Romanticism to a great extent. Thus she considers that
both in his being and in his creative power the artist is directly related to
God. As set out, for instance, in the story The Young Man with the Carnation
in Winter's Tales, it is the task of the artist to apprehend and communicate
his special knowledge of human circumstances and perspectives that is not
revealed to others. Unfortunately however this special capacity deprives the
artist of the power to participate actively in life. This aspect of Karen
Blixen's view of the artist resembles that of Freud, but for her there is no
question of any kind of ennoblement, rather of a stunting of growth. So that
to her the artist is analogous to a dreamer standing on the outside of life.
This type is the subject of detailed treatment in many of the stories, and it
is clear that in her interpretation the dreamer is a human being who is
deprived of his destiny.

     It is this motif of destiny, that runs like a scarlet thread throughout
the writings from the earliest juvenilia onwards, that has proved difficult
for Karen Blixen's readers to accept. This is probably due to the fact that
they misunderstand her view of destiny, that is not so much a fatalistic
belief in destiny as a demand made on life to give the human being a destiny.
The person who like a good marionette follows the innermost desires of his own
nature and thus does not go against it will receive a destiny, but the one who
dares not risk adventure and danger in a life actively lived loses this
privilege and becomes a dreamer. For instance, in The Dreamers from Seven
Gothic Tales, she directly compares this kind of dreaming, that is nothing but
unlived life, with suicide. So one can say that her view of humanity places
great demands on the individual. No excuses of conventional norms, the desire
for security or other such reasons will do. There is no self-indulgence in her
philosophy, but time after time she surprises us with the extent of her
penetration and wisdom.
Else Cederborg

Bibliography

Biographies

     Thorkild Bjornvig: Pagten (The Covenant. In Danish. English translation
in preparation), Copenhagen, 1974.

     Thomas Dinesen: Tanne, Copenhagen, 1974: London/New York, 1975.

     Frans Lasson and Clara Svendsen: The Life and Destiny of Karen Blixen
(Isak Dinesen). Chicago, 1976.

     Parmenia Migel: Titania. The Biography of Isak Dinesen, New York, 1967.

     Clara Svendsen: Notater om Karen Blixen (Notes on Karen Blixen. In Danish
only), Copenhagen, 1974.

     Judith Thurman: Isak Dinesen: The Life of a Storyteller, London/New York,
1982.

     Errol Trzebinski: Silence Will Speak. A Study of the Life of Denys
Finch-Hatton and his Relationship with Karen Blixen, London, 1977.

     Anders Westenholz: Kraftens horn. Myte og virkelighed i Karen Blixen liv
(The Horns of Powers. Myth and Reality in the Life of Karen Blixen. In Danish
only), Copenhagen, 1982.

Monographs

     Pia Bondesson: Karen Blixens bogsamling pa Rungstedlund. En katalog
(Karen Blixen's Book Collection at Rungstedlund. A Catalogue. In Danish only).
Copenhagen, 1982.

     Hans Brix: Karen Blixens eventyr (Karen Blixen's Tales. In Danish only),
Copenhagen, 1949.

     Donald Hannah: "Isak Dinesen" and Karen Blixen. The Mask and the Reality,
London, 1971.

     Aage Henriksen: Det guddommelige barn og andre essays om Karen Blixen
(The Divine Child and Other Essays on Karen Blixen. In Danish only),
Copenhagen, 1965.

     Eric Johannesson: The World of Isak Dinesen, Seattle, 1961.

     Marianne Juhl and Bo Hakon Jorgensen: Dianas hoevn (Diana's Revenge. In
Danish only), Odense, 1981.

     Kamante: Longing for Darkness, New York/London, 1975.

     Robert Langbaum: The Gaiety of Vision. A Study of Isak Dinesen's Art,
London/New York, 1964.

     Thomas Reid Whissen: Isak Dinesen's Aesthetics, New York, 1973.

     Karen Blixen's pseudonyms: Peter Lawless, Osceola, Nozdref's Cook, Isak
Dinesen, Tania Blixen, Pierre Andr*ezel.