Biography
Baroness Karen Christenze von Blixen-Finecke (born Dinesen on April 17, 1885) was a Danish author who wrote in both English and Danish. She is also known under her pen names Isak Dinesen, used in English-speaking countries; Tania Blixen, used in German-speaking countries; Osceola, and Pierre Andrézel.
She is best known for Out of Africa, an account of her life in Kenya, and for one of her stories, Babette's Feast. She is also noted, particularly in Denmark, for her Seven Gothic Tales. Among her later stories are Winter's Tales (1942), Last Tales (1957), Anecdotes of Destiny (1958) and Ehrengard.
Blixen was considered several times for the Nobel Prize in Literature, but did not receive it because judges were reportedly concerned about showing favoritism to Scandinavian writers, according to Danish reports.
Biography
Karen Dinesen was born in Rungstedlund, north of Copenhagen. Her father, Wilhelm Dinesen, was a writer, army officer, and politician. He served in the 1864 war by Denmark against Prussia, and also joined the French army against Prussia. He later wrote about the Paris Commune. He was from a wealthy family of Jutland landowners closely connected to the monarchy, the established church and conservative politics. He was elected as Member of Parliament.
Her mother, Ingeborg Westenholz, came from a wealthy Unitarian bourgeois merchant family of ship owners. Karen was the second oldest in a family of three sisters and two brothers. Her younger brother, Thomas Dinesen, served in the First World War and earned the Victoria Cross. Karen was known to her friends as "Tanne."
Biography
Dinesen's early years were strongly influenced by her father's relaxed manner and his love of the outdoor life and hunting. He wrote throughout his life and his memoir, Boganis Jagtbreve (Letters from the Hunt) became a minor classic in Danish literature. While in his mid-20s, her father lived among the Chippewa Indians in Wisconsin, and fathered a daughter.
On returning to Denmark, he suffered from syphilis which resulted in bouts of deep depression. He conceived a child out of wedlock with his maid Anna Rasmussen, and was devastated because he had promised his mother-in-law to remain faithful to his wife. He hanged himself on March 28, 1895 when Karen was nine years old.
Karen's life changed significantly after her father's death; it was dominated by her mother's Westenholz family. Unlike her brothers, who attended school, she was educated at home by her maternal grandmother and by her aunt, Mary B. Westenholz. They brought her up in the staunch Unitarian tradition. Her Aunt Bess had significant influence on Dinesen. They engaged in lively discussions and correspondence on women's rights and relationships between men and women.
Biography
During her early years, she spent part of her time at her mother's family home, the Mattrup seat farm near Horsens. In later years she visited Folehavegård, an estate near Hørsholm that had belonged to her father's family.
Longing for the freedom she had enjoyed when her father was alive, she found some satisfaction in telling her younger sister Ellen hair-raising good-night stories, partly inspired by Danish folk tales and Icelandic sagas.
In 1905, her literary talent began to emerge. Around this time, she also published fiction in Danish periodicals under the pseudonym Osceola, the name of her father's dog, which she had often walked in her father's company.
Biography
In 1898, Dinesen and her two sisters spent a year in Switzerland, where she learned to speak French. In 1902, she attended Charlotte Sode's art school in Copenhagen before continuing her studies at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts under Viggo Johansen from 1903 to 1906. In her mid-twenties, she also visited Paris, London and Rome on study trips.
While still young, Dinesen spent many of her holidays with her paternal cousin's family, the Blixen-Fineckes, in Skåne in the south of Sweden. She fell in love with the dashing equestrian baron Hans, but he did not reciprocate.
She decided to accept the favors of his twin brother, Baron Bror Blixen-Finecke, and they announced their engagement in December 1912, to the family's surprise. Given the difficulties both were experiencing in settling in Denmark, the family suggested they should move abroad. Their common uncle, Aage Westenholz who had made a fortune in Siam, suggested they should go to Kenya to start a coffee farm. He and his sister Ingeborg Dinesen invested 150,000 Danish crowns in the venture. Early in 1913, Bror left for Kenya. He was followed by his fiancée in December.
Biography
Soon after Dinesen arrived in Kenya, at the time part of British East Africa, she and Blixen were married in Mombasa in January 1914. After her marriage, she became Baroness Blixen, and used the title until her then ex-husband remarried in 1929.
Bror had attended agricultural college at Alnarp, and then managed the Stjetneholm farm, within the Nasbyholm estate. During her early years, Karen spent part of her time at her mother's family home, the Mattrup seat farm near Horsens. Karen and Bror planned to raise cattle on their farm, but eventually became convinced that coffee would be more profitable.
The Karen Coffee Company was established by their uncle, Aage Westerholz, who chose the name after his daughter Karen, Blixen's cousin, rather than to create an association with Karen Blixen. The couple soon established their first farm, Mbagathi, in the Great Lakes area.
Biography
During WWI fighting between the Germans and the British in East Africa, Bror served in Lord Delamere's patrols along Kenya's border with German-Tanganyika and Karen helped transport supplies. The war led to a shortage of workers and supplies. Nevertheless, in 1916, the Karen Coffee Company purchased a larger farm, Mbogani, near the Ngong Hills to the southwest of Nairobi. The property covered 6,000 acres of which 600 acres were used for a coffee plantation, 3,400 acres were used by the natives for grazing, and 2,000 acres of virgin forest were left untouched.
The land was not well-suited for coffee cultivation, given its high elevation. The couple hired local workers: most were Kikuyu who lived on the farmlands at the time of the couple's arrival, but there were also Wakamba, Kavirondo, Swahili and Masai. Initially, Bror worked the farm, but it soon became evident that he had little interest in it and preferred to leave running the farm to Blixen while he went on safari.
Biography
For the first time, English became the language she used daily. About the couple's early life in the African Great Lakes region, Karen Blixen later wrote:
Here at long last one was in a position not to give a damn for all conventions, here was a new kind of freedom which until then one had only found in dreams!
Blixen and her husband were quite different in education and temperament, and Bror Blixen was unfaithful to his wife. According to Peter Capstick, "It was not long after Blixen and his wife settled on their farm that he started womanizing." Capstick goes on to say, "His forays into town and his often wild socializing at the Muthaiga Club, coupled with a legendary indiscipline when it came to money and honoring his debts, soon gave the charming Swede a notorious reputation."
Biography
As a consequence, Karen was diagnosed with syphilis according to her biographer Judith Thurman. She herself attributed her symptoms, in a letter to her brother Thomas, to syphilis acquired at 29 years old from her husband toward the end of their first year of marriage in 1915. However, later in life, her medical records do not support that diagnosis. She had been locally prescribed mercury and arsenic, a treatment for the disease in her time. It is now believed that some of her later symptoms were the result of heavy metal poisoning.
At her farm, she also used to take care of local sick persons, including those suffering from fever, variola, meningitis and typhus.
She returned to Denmark in June 1915 for treatment which proved successful. Although Blixen's illness was eventually cured (some uncertainty exists), it created medical anguish for years to come.
In April 1918, Bror and Karen were introduced at the Muthaiga Club to the English big game hunter Denys Finch Hatton. Soon afterwards he was assigned to military service in Egypt.
Biography
By 1919, the marriage had run into difficulties, causing her husband to request a divorce in 1920. Bror was dismissed as the farm manager by their uncle, Aage Westenholz, chair of the Karen Coffee Company, and Karen took over its management in 1921.
On his return to Kenya after the Armistice, Finch Hatton developed a close friendship with Karen and Bror. He left Africa again in 1920. Against her wishes, Bror and Karen separated in 1921.
Finch Hatton often travelled back and forth between Africa and England, and visited Karen occasionally. He returned in 1922, investing in a land development company. After her separation from her husband she and Finch Hatton had developed a close friendship, which eventually became a long-term love affair.
In a letter to her brother Thomas in 1924, she wrote:
"I believe that for all time and eternity I am bound to Denys, to love the ground he walks upon, to be happy beyond words when he is here, and to suffer worse than death many times when he leaves..."
Biography
But other letters in her collections show that the relationship was unstable, and that Karen's increasing dependence upon Finch Hatton, who was intensely independent, was an issue.
Karen and Bror were officially divorced in 1925. Finch Hatton moved into her house, made Blixen's farmhouse his home base between 1926 and 1931 and began leading safaris for wealthy sportsmen. Among his clients was Edward, Prince of Wales (the future Edward VIII).
Biography
On safari with his clients, he died in the crash of his de Havilland Gipsy Moth biplane in March 1931. Blixen recorded their parting.
"When he had started in his car for the aerodrome in Nairobi, and had turned down the drive, he came back to look for a volume of poems, that he had given to me and now wanted on his journey. He stood with one foot on the running-board of the car, and a finger in the book, reading out to me a poem we had been discussing.
'Here are your grey geese,' he said.
I saw grey geese flying over the flatlands
Wild geese vibrant in the high air –
Unswerving from horizon to horizon
With their soul stiffened out in their throats –
And the grey whiteness of them ribboning the enormous skies
And the spokes of the sun over the crumpled hills. (Iris Tree)
Then he drove away for good, waving his arm to me."
Biography
At the same time, the failure of the coffee plantation, as a result of mismanagement, the height of the farm, drought and the falling price of coffee caused by the worldwide economic depression, forced Blixen to abandon her estate. The family corporation sold the land to a residential developer, and Blixen returned to Denmark in August 1931 to live with her mother.
In the Second World War, she helped Jews escape out of German-occupied Denmark. She remained in Rungstedlund for the rest of her life.
While still in Kenya, Blixen had written to her brother Thomas:
"I have begun to do what we brothers and sisters do when we don't know what else to resort to, I have started to write a book. . . . I have been writing in English because I thought it would be more profitable."
Biography
Returning to Denmark, at age 46, she continued writing in earnest. Though her first book, Seven Gothic Tales, was completed in 1933, she had difficulty finding a publisher and used her brother's contacts with Dorothy Canfield to help. The book was published in the US in 1934 under the pseudonym Isak Dinesen, though the publisher refused to give Blixen an advance and discouraged the use of a pseudonym.
When it was chosen as a Book-of-the-Month Club selection, sales skyrocketed. This first book, highly enigmatic and more metaphoric than Gothic, won wide recognition in the US, and publication of the book in the UK and Denmark followed, though with difficulty.
Unable to find a translator she was satisfied with, Blixen prepared the Danish versions herself, though they are not translations, but rather versions of the stories with differing details. Blixen's explanation for the difference was that she "very much wanted it to be published in Danish as an original Danish book, and not in any—no matter how good—translation." The Danish critics were not enthusiastic about the book and were annoyed, according to Blixen, that it had first been published abroad. Blixen never again published a book in English first. All her later books were either published first in Danish, or published simultaneously in Danish and English.
Biography
Her second book, now the best known of her works, Out of Africa, was published in 1937. Its success firmly established her reputation. Having learned from her previous experience, Blixen published the book first in Denmark and the United Kingdom, and then in the United States. Garnering another Book-of-the-Month Club choice, Blixen was assured of not only sales for this new work, but also renewed interest in Seven Gothic Tales. She was awarded the Tagea Brandt Rejselegat (a Danish prize for women in the arts or academic life) in 1939.
The work brought attention from critics who were concerned not only with literary appraisal of the book, but also with defining Blixen's intentions and morality. Post-colonial criticism has linked her with contemporary British writers and in some cases branded her as just another morally bankrupt white European aristocrat. Danish scholars have not typically made judgments about her morality, perhaps understanding that while elements of racism and colonial prejudices, given the context and era, are inherent in the work, her position as an outsider, a Dane and a woman made evaluating her, rather than the work, more complex.
Biography
Because of the war, she had to be creative about getting the manuscript published, travelling to Stockholm and meeting with employees at both the American and British embassies. The Americans were unable to ship personal items, but the British embassy agreed, shipping the document to her publisher in the US. Blixen did not receive further communication about Winter's Tales until after the war ended, when she received correspondence praising the stories from American troops who had read them in the Armed Services Editions during the conflict.
Blixen worked on a novel she called Albondocani for many years, with interwoven stories across several volumes. The main character was taken from One Thousand and One Nights. She worked on several collections at once, categorizing them according to their themes and whether she thought they were mostly to make money or literary. She jumped between writing the collections of stories for Albondocani to Anecdotes of Destiny to New Gothic Tales and New Winter's Tales.
Biography
Almost all of Blixen's tales from the 1940s and 1950s follow a traditional style of storytelling, weaving Gothic themes such as incest and murder with myth and bewitchment as a means of exploring identity, morality and philosophy.
Most also take place against the background of the 19th century or earlier periods. Concerning her deliberately old-fashioned style, Blixen mentioned in several interviews that she wanted to express a spirit that no longer existed in modern times, one of being rather than doing.
Her narratives hover between skillfully crafted illusion and romanticism, with a keen knowledge of the preferred tastes of her audience. Blixen crafted her English tales in a more direct manner and her Danish tales in a 19th-century writing style which she felt would appeal more to them.
Because she simultaneously worked on different collections, works written in this period were not published until almost a decade after they were originally written.
Publications
Eneboerne (The Hermits), August 1907, published in Danish in Tilskueren under the pen name Osceola)[104]
Pløjeren (The Ploughman), October 1907, published in Danish in Gads danske Magasin, under the name Osceola)[105]
Familien de Cats (The de Cats Family), January 1909, published in Danish in Tilskueren under the name Osceola)[105]
Sandhedens hævn – En marionet komedie, May 1926, published in Danish in Tilskueren, under the name of Karen Blixen-Finecke; an English translation by Donald Hannah titled The Revenge of Truth: A Marionette Comedy was published in Performing Arts Journal in 1986.
Seven Gothic Tales (1934 in the United States, 1935 in Denmark)
Out of Africa (1937 in Denmark and England, 1938 in the United States)
Publications
Winter's Tales (1942)
The Angelic Avengers (1946)
Last Tales (1957)
Anecdotes of Destiny (1958) (including Babette's Feast)
Shadows on the Grass (1960 in England and Denmark, 1961 in the United States)
Ehrengard, a novella written in English and first published in abbreviated form in December 1962 in The Ladies’ Home Journal as The Secret of Rosenbad. Published in full 1963 in several languages as Ehrengard.
Biography
Karen’s unbearable longing for Africa, her farm and her employees never faltered through all the long years; compelled by circumstances beyond her control, she was forced to leave Africa in 1931 and never return. In a letter to her mother she writes:
"I have a feeling that wherever I may be in the future, I will be wondering whether there is rain at Ngong."
End of the novel, Karen: The mail has come today, and a friend writes this to me:
“The Maasai have reported to the district commissioner at Ngong, that many times, at sunrise and sunset, they have seen lions on Finch Hatton’s grave. A lion and lioness have come here, and stood or lain on the grave for a long time. After you went away, the ground around the grave was levelled out into a sort of terrace. I suppose that level place makes a good site for the lions. From there, they would have a view over the plain, and the cattle and the game on it.
It was fit and decorous that the lions should come to Denys’s grave and make him an African monument. ‘And renowned be thy grave.’ Lord Nelson himself, I have reflected, in Trafalgar Square, has his lions made only out of stone."
Cast of characters—Karen Blixen
Narrator of the novel, Baroness Karen Blixen, well-educated, artistic, literary, and romantic, marries and moves to a coffee farm in Africa. In the preindustrial, pastoral setting of what is now Kenya, she finds a paradise where she can throw off European modernity.
She bonds with her new home through the natives, wild animals, and other immigrants. However, she also faces the harsh realities of life when she is left to manage the 6,000-acre farm on her own.
Over the course of 17 years, the naive young woman who came to Africa matures. Her world and her life expand. She discovers in herself deep reserves of strength, optimism, and tenacity she can draw on in times of need.
She eventually loses paradise when the farm fails, her lover Denys Finch-Hatton dies, and she must return to Denmark.
She never refers to Bror in the novel by name, only references as "husband" once in the novel—that he has written to her for supplies during the war
Cast of characters—Denys Finch Hatton
Karen's close friend, ultimately lover, although the novel doesn't mention it explicitly. [However, her biographers mention two miscarriages.]
Denys Finch-Hatton is the embodiment of gentility and aristocracy. He is handsome, athletic, and a good sportsman as well as a lover of fine music, wine, and art. He helps Karen learn more about literature by teaching her Greek, Latin, and the Bible. He gives her a gramophone that adds "new life on the farm."
He also takes her up in his plane, which allows her to look down on Africa with new eyes [see ca 213]
He's respected by the natives because he can transcend cultural boundaries.
His death is considered a tragedy by natives and Europeans alike.
Cast of characters–Berkley Cole
Cole was, like Finch Hatton, a British expatriate improvising a charmed life among the colony's well-to-do. Reginald Berkeley Cole, an Anglo-Irish aristocrat from Ulster (son of the 4th Earl of Enniskillen), was a veteran of the Boer War, with a sly wit who affected a dandy's persona in the Kenya colony. A brother-in-law to the 3rd Baron Delamere, he was also a founder of the Muthaiga Club, the legendary private Nairobi enclave of the colony's upper-crust.
Cole was a close friend of Finch Hatton and the two men supplied Blixen with much of the wine she served on her farm. She famously described him drinking a bottle of champagne every morning at eleven, and complaining if the glasses were not of the finest quality. He generally got along well with the native people.
Cole died in 1925 of heart failure, at age 43. “An epoch in the history of the Colony came to an end with him,” Blixen wrote. “The yeast was out of the bread of the land."
Cast of characters—Kamante Gatura
A young boy crippled by running sores when he enters Blixen's life, Kamante was successfully treated by the doctors at the “Scotch" Christian mission near the farm, and thereafter served Blixen as a cook and as a wry, laconic commentator on her choices and her lifestyle.
There is a strong suggestion that Blixen and Kamante were well suited as friends because both were loners and sceptics, who looked at their own cultures with the critical eye of the misfit.
Some of Kamante's own recollections and stories were later compiled by Peter Beard and published in a book entitled Longing For Darkness: Kamante's Tales from Out of Africa.
Cast of characters—Farah Aden
When Blixen first met Farah, she mistook him for an Indian. However, Farah was a Somali, from a tribe of fierce, handsome and shrewd traders and cattle-dealers. It was common among the British colonists of the early period to hire Somalis as major-domos. Most Somalis were, by the accounts of their employers, highly organized, effective managers.
In Shadows on the Grass, Blixen would describe the Somalis as aristocrats among the Africans, "superior in culture and intelligence" and well matched in terms of hauteur with the Europeans they chose to serve.
Farah had been recruited to work for Bror Blixen as a steward, and Bror sent him to Mombasa to greet Karen when she got off the steamer from Britain. According to Dinesen's biographer Judith Thurman, “it was upon meeting Farah in Mombasa that Dinesen’s Vita Nuova (new life) truly began.” Blixen entrusted Farah with the farm's cash flow, and eventually with her complete trust. Farah shared her daily life, mediated her relations with the Africans, and relieved her of many practical burdens. The two would grow exceedingly close, with Blixen herself describing their relationship as a "creative unity."
The chapter in which Blixen describes the sale of her farm is titled, “Farah and I Sell Out.” After Blixen and her husband divorced, Farah remained loyal to her, sometimes leaving Karen's service temporarily to work on one of Bror's safaris.
Cast of characters—Old Knudsen
An old Danish man who arrives on the farm sick and nearly blind. He asks for a place to stay, Karen gives him one, and he remains for only six months before he dies of a heart attack one afternoon as he is walking down a path.
The narrator frequently speaks of Old Knudsen, because he is true storyteller, as she longs to be. As a former seaman, he has been all around the world and seen disasters, plagues, and many cultures.
He spins tales all day long, heavy with exaggeration and contempt of many. He is a mythic character whose life has become its own legend because of his ability to tell stories.
Cast of characters—Emmanuelson
A local Swede who flees from Nairobi because he gets into trouble.
Another rather heroic, mythic figure who survives a difficult trek across the Masai reserve and who is able to define himself according to his ability to weave his life into a story.
She considers him a noble figure, although he is initially annoying, yet changes her opinion after she learns of his ability to identify fine wine.
His knowledge of literature, and life, gives him some of the aristocratic qualities she values.
In a literary context, he is a tragic figure because he is constantly being persecuted and judged. The reason for his persecution is only hinted at and may relate to him being gay, since the narrator points out that his tastes and ideas of life's pleasures differ from the customary.
Cast of characters—Kinanjui
Kinanjui was “the big chief” of Blixen's neighborhood – “a crafty old man, with a fine manner, and much real greatness to him,” Blixen writes.
British colonial authorities had appointed him the highest-ranking chief among the Kikuyu in Blixen's region because they couldn't get along with his predecessor; as such, he was a significant authority figure for the Kikuyu who lived on her farm and Karen often uses him to arbitrate disputes on her farm.
Upon Blixen's arrival in Kenya, it was Kinanjui who assured her that she would never lack for labourers. Although the book points out some of Kinanjui's vanities (such as the large car he buys from an American diplomat), Blixen depicts the king as a figure with a deep sense of his own dignity and royal presence. Kinanjui is also one of the figures in the story who dies toward the end of the memoir, leaving her – as do the deaths of Cole and Finch Hatton – ever more isolated and uncertain.
Cast of characters
Pooran Singh—the blacksmith on the farm. He is an Indian from Kashmir who has not seen his family in many years, but frequently sends money to them. Because of his trade as a blacksmith, the narrator pictures him as a mythic character, like one of the Gods who bends metal in beautiful ways. Although he is discussed infrequently, Pooran Singh is a sympathetic character. Tears run down his face and into his long black beard when he realizes that the farm is truly closing. This description of his sensitivity suggests that he is a gentle, hardworking man, despite the fierceness of his trade.
Esa—the narrator's original cook, later murdered by his wife. Esa is an older, gentler man, often taken advantage of by other people. After inheriting a cow, he takes a young wife, although Karen advises against it. She uses him, deserts him for other native men, although Esa repeatedly finds her and brings her back. Finally, she poisons him and flees. His lust for a younger wife may have led to his death, but overall he is a gentle, kind figure whose murder was simply a tragedy.
Cast of characters
Kabero—the Kikuyu boy who accidentally shoots the other boys during the shooting accident, and flees. Initially presumed dead, by lions or suicide, he is in fact alive and has been discovered living with the Masai. By becoming a Masai and returning to the farm, Kabero personifies the differences between the neighboring tribes.
As a Kikuyu boy, he was a slightly disobedient servant, but as a Masai he stands tall and noble. The two tribes live close together, but are very different as Kabero indicates.
Wanyangerri—the young Kikuyu boy who has his jaw blown off during the shooting incident. Little is known about him, except for his serious injury.
Wamai—the young Kikuyu boy killed during the shooting accident. Little is known about him as he dies from the gunshot.
Cast of characters
Jogona—father of Wamai, an upright, kind figure. He is poor, but appears to have worked hard to take care of his wife and adopted son.
During the legal disputes, Jogona is a contrast to Kinanu, the Kikuyu man held responsible for the shooting of Jogona's son. Jogona appears more honest and upright than Kinanu.
Although others accuse Jogona of misdeeds, after Jogona gives his account of the incident, he is able to establish that he is an honest, forthright figure and therefore is properly compensated.
Karomenya—deaf and dumb native boy who lives entirely in his own world because he lacks the ability to speak and hear. He befriends Karen's dogs after he learns to use a whistle, but tires of them and loses the whistle with no interest in getting it back.
Karen fears for Karomenya's future since he is a nomad in his own culture as well as the harsh colonial world.
Cast of characters
Ingrid Lindstrom—Karen's Swedish friend who helps her before the final move. She is a struggling farm owner like Karen who has tried several options to keep her land profitable, including growing flax and other kinds of produce. Her struggles with her farm are a tacit example of Karen's similar struggles and illustrate how difficult it is for farms to survive in Africa.
Belknap—the American mill-manager whose gun is used in the accidental shooting. Nothing else is known about him
Questions for discussion
Opening
I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong Hills. . . . In the day-time you felt that you had got high up, near to the sun, but the early mornings and evenings were limpid and restful, and the nights were cold.
The geographical position, and the height of the land combined to create a landscape that had not its like in all the world. . . . ; it was Africa distilled up through six thousand feet, like the strong and refined essence of a continent.
The colours were dry and burnt, like the colours in pottery. The trees had a light delicate foliage, the structure of which was different from that of the trees in Europe; it did not grow in bows or cupolas, but in horizontal layers, and the formation gave to the tall solitary trees a likeness to the palms, or a heroic and romantic air like fullrigged ships with their sails furled, and to the edge of a wood a strange appearance as if the whole wood were faintly vibrating.
Opening
Upon the grass of the great plains the crooked bare old thorn-trees were scattered, and the grass was spiced like thyme and bog-myrtle; in some places the scent was so strong, that it smarted in the nostrils. All the flowers that you found on the plains, or upon the creepers and liana in the native forest, were diminutive like flowers of the downs,—only just in the beginning of the long rains a number of big, massive heavy-scented lilies sprang out on the plains.
The views were immensely wide. Everything that you saw made for greatness and freedom, and unequalled nobility. (p. 1)
The chief feature of the landscape, and of your life in it, was the air. Looking back on a sojourn in the African highlands, you are struck by your feeling of having lived for a time up in the air. The sky was rarely more than pale blue or violet, with a profusion of mighty, weightless, ever-changing clouds towering up and sailing on it, but it has a blue vigour in it, and at a short distance it painted the ranges of hills and the woods a fresh deep blue.
Opening
In the middle of the day the air was alive over the land, like a flame burning; it scintillated, waved and shone like running water, mirrored and doubled all objects, and created great Fata Morgana. Up in this high air you breathed easily, drawing in a vital assurance and lightness of heart. In the highlands you woke up in the morning and thought: Here I am, where I ought to be. (p. 2)
A Fata Morgana is a complex form of superior mirage visible in a narrow band right above the horizon. The term Fata Morgana is the Italian translation of "Morgan the Fairy"—of Arthurian legend). These mirages are often seen in the Italian Strait of Messina, and were described as fairy castles in the air or false land conjured by her magic.
It is an Italian term named after the Arthurian sorceress Morgan le Fay, from a belief that these mirages, often seen in the Strait of Messina, were fairy castles in the air or false land created by her witchcraft to lure sailors to their deaths.
Opening
As for me, from my first weeks in Africa, I had felt a great affection for the Natives. It was a strong feeling that embraced all ages and both sexes. The discovery of the dark races was to me a magnificent enlargement of all my world. If a person with an inborn sympathy for animals had grown up in a milieu where there were no animals, and had come into contact with animals late in life; or if a person with an instinctive taste for woods and forest had entered a forest for the first time at the age of twenty; or if some one with an ear for music had happened to hear music for the first time when he was already grown up; their cases might have been similar to mine. After I had met with the Natives, I set out the routine of my daily life to the Orchestra. (p. 11)
Questions for discussion
This book is composed of five parts:
Kamante and Lulu
A Shooting Accident on the Farm
Visitors to the Farm
From an Immigrant's Notebook
Farewell to the Farm
Biographies, autobiographies, and memoirs often follow a chronological progression through time. Does this one?
How would you describe the structure of this novel?
Questions for discussion
Because we reviewed her biography, we know a little something about Karen Blixen. But, she is also the narrator of this memoir and reveals her personality only slowly and indirectly. Not until the end of Part 2 does she identify herself by name. In Part 1, we learn that Kamante calls her "Msabu."
Often in fact she hides behind observations, comments, descriptive passages that don't include the first person pronoun "I." Such sentences seem to be factual statements rather than personal remarks. It's the difference between
I think the movie is an accurate interpretation of the novel, AND
The move is an accurate interpretation of the novel.
What's is the significance of this absence of "I"?
How would you describe the Karen Blixen revealed through this narrative?
Questions for discussion
Early in the book, Blixen tells the story of Kamante, son of one of her tenant farmers, later her faithful servant. When she first sees him, he has running sores on his legs that she attempts to heal. When her treatments don't work, she takes him to the Scotch Mission hospital. Their treatment works, and he returns.
Why is this story important?
Questions for discussion
Part 1 also features Lulu, a young female antelope that lives in the narrator's house for a time. How is Lulu's story important?
Questions for discussion
Part 2 focuses on the accidental shooting on the farm. Kabero, seven-year-old house boy (Toto), son of Kaninu, has been handling the gun belonging to Belknap, mill manager on the farm, and it discharges, killing Wamai, and severely injuring Manyangerri. Karen is summoned.
The following morning, the old men of the Kikuyu tribe gather outside her house to start a Kyama, a gathering of the elders, authorized by the colonial government to resolve difficulties in the native community.
What's the importance of this story?
Questions for discussion
Throughout the novel, the narrator includes references to other works of literature, particularly The Odyssey, and includes passages in other languages. In her stories about Old Knudsen and the Swede Emmanuelson, she compares each of their life journeys to an Odyssey? Why? What does this tell you about Karen Blixen's thinking?
Questions for discussion
In one of the stories from Out of Africa, the Somali women, who value their "bride price" are shocked by the treatment of European brides who enter marriage by bringing a dowry.
What's the significance of this story?
Questions for discussion
At the end of the novel, Karen writes that she got a letter reporting that the natives had seen lions resting on Denys's grave. What's the significance of this.
Questions for discussion
In a couple of stories in this novel, the written word has a kind of magical signficance to the African characters. They carry letters or legal documents on their person. What does the written word represent to them?
Breakout room question
This is a book full of stories. What stories stood out to you? What's their meaning?
Questions for discussion
Last chapter, Karen is leaving, farm sold:
Now, my squatters were clinging to one another from the same instinct of self-preservation. If they were to go away from their land, they must have people round them who had known it, and so could testify to their identity. Then they could still, for some years, talk of the geography and the history of the farm, and what one had forgotten the other would remember. As it was, they were feeling the shame of extinction falling on them. (p. 279-280)
Is this “fear of extinction,” identity lost if no one remembers, the reason Isak Dinesen wrote this memoir?
Next week:
Spring break—no class
After that, the Epic genre (women's) and So Big, Edna Ferber