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Karen BlixenDanish writer, pen name - Isaac Dinisen
Date of Birth: 17.04.1885
Country:  Denmark |
Content:
Karen Blixen: A Danish Writer and Adventurer
Karen Christine Blixen, also known by her pseudonym Isak Dinesen, was a Danish writer who captured the hearts of readers around the world. Born in Denmark and later living in Africa, she led a fascinating and adventurous life, becoming both Baroness Karen Blixen-Finecke and the acclaimed author Isak Dinesen. Her books became bestsellers in both the New and Old World, and a film based on her life received numerous Academy Awards. Her life became a myth, a mystery, and a legend.
Early Years
Karen Christine Dinesen was a talented child, displaying early abilities in languages, painting, and literature. She had much to inherit from her family. Her grandmother, who was half English, taught her the English language from a young age, and as a young girl, Karen would read Shakespeare in the original. Her father, Baron Wilhelm Dinesen, a retired captain, participated in several wars and spent a considerable amount of time among Native American tribes in America. When his passion for adventure and escapades waned, he settled in the family estate of Rungstedlund and dedicated himself to literary pursuits, gaining significant recognition. He was also a magnificent storyteller, often captivating children's imaginations with his fantastical tales from his youth.
Karen's own literary abilities did not immediately manifest. They were suppressed for a long time due to a tragic event that occurred in the family home – her beloved father took his own life. While others in the family condemned and reproached him, Karen never judged or blamed her father. She accepted what had happened with a maturity beyond her years. However, the scar in her soul remained forever, and perhaps this event influenced her entire life, subtly shaping and directing her development.
Years of Wanderlust
The years of wandering began when Karen left Denmark for the first time at the age of thirteen. Little did she know that it was just a "trial" of her future long absence. She spent a year studying in Switzerland, later attending an art school and then the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen. Karen was a multi-talented young woman, and perhaps it was because of this that she struggled to find a definitive outlet for her abilities. She painted, wrote poetry and plays, and even had three stories published in Danish magazines under the pseudonym Osceola (the name of her father's beloved dog). However, these activities did not extend beyond charming feminine pastimes; they remained on the periphery, noble accomplishments for a charming girl with delicate, refined features.
Karen Blixen was preparing for the traditional path of a woman's fate. In the Danish ancestral estates, where marriage and motherhood were the destiny of women, notions of shaved emancipation might have been heard but were likely disregarded as passing trends. Meanwhile, Coco Chanel had already donned men's clothing. The 20th century unleashed the genie of female emancipation, though its echoes barely reached the quiet Denmark. In 1913, Karen married her cousin, Baron Bror Blixen-Finecke. In 1914, the couple moved to Kenya, purchasing a farm with a coffee plantation near Nairobi. The decision to move to Africa probably had practical reasons. However, with the hindsight of Karen Blixen's life story, it appears to rhyme with the events of her father's life – his immersion in a world of people who had not severed their connection with nature.
Much later, reflecting on her impressions of Africa, Karen wrote: "Imagine a person with an innate love for animals growing up where there are no wild beasts and finally encounters them many years later. Or someone who enters a forest for the first time at the age of twenty, or a musician who only hears music in their mature years. This is comparable to my state of being. When I encountered Africans, I had to change the rhythm of my entire life."
In Africa, the dormant forces within Karen awakened. She felt an almost feverish thirst for activity and her brain worked with ten times the energy. She wrote a letter to the British Prime Minister, Lloyd George, outlining her own program for reforms in the administration of Kenya as a British colony and ways to improve the relations between the black and white populations. Lloyd George replied with polite gratitude for her "desire for good and order," but history did not develop. It was only thirty years later that Blixen read in an English newspaper a plan to achieve national reconciliation in the colonies, discovering a list of all her proposals there. Her capacity for socio-political activism preceded its time and never found an outlet. Life in the African colonies followed the laws of old, good England, and it was not fitting for women to give practical advice to British statesmen.
Soon, Karen found herself in the company of the English aristocracy led by Lord Delamere and wholeheartedly embraced the refined charm of aristocratic living. She marveled at these people. She admired their upbringing and culture. She was astounded by their manners. In them, she saw herself. However, her personal life was not happy. Her relationship with her husband deteriorated, and it was further complicated by a venereal disease she contracted from him, which permanently robbed her of the ability to have children. Recovery was long and painful. In 1922, the couple divorced.
Africa, Love, and Writing
With the responsibilities of the farm and the black population working on it on her shoulders, the young woman found a common language with these people due to her character. Her relationship with them was built on mutual trust and complete acceptance of one another. She worked alongside them, acted as an arbiter in their disputes, participated in their heartfelt matters, and constantly learned from them. For example, the ability to "sit on the ground and simply live," to accept the trials of fate without complaint, and to find pleasure and joy in the most mundane things. But life on the farm was far from easy. Karen had to struggle with weather adversities and her own incompetence in running the business. However, no matter the droughts, rains, or hurricanes that ravaged her home, she always remembered those years as the happiest.
In Africa, Karen found her true love. She became involved with Dennis Finch Hatton, a member of an ancient English aristocratic family. He was an explorer, hunter, aviator, and naturalist. Karen and Dennis had it all: an insatiable passion, all-consuming love, a trusting friendship, but they never became husband and wife. They both possessed strong wills and a masculine character, and such individuals could hardly settle for being mere spouses. Often, Dennis would fly alone, and Karen would wait. "When I was there, in Africa, alone at night, shadows circled around the lamp, faces appeared, voices could be heard. It was during those times that I began to compose and wrote the first two of the 'Seven Gothic Tales.' And when Dennis returned, he would ask, 'Is the next tale ready?'" One day, he did not return.
Perhaps it was this event that gave birth to the writer Isak Dinesen. Of course, Karen would have continued to write her beloved tales if history had unfolded differently, if they had accepted the impossibility of being together. In that case, one or two books might have remained as personal treasures, to be read to other people's children and grandchildren on quiet African evenings. Fate, however, had other plans. In Africa, Karen's spiritual powers and passions were unleashed, while in Denmark, her talent crystallized. Karen became a writer. Researchers of her work still wonder why she began writing in English rather than her native Danish. The answer is simple: she wrote in the language of love, the language of passion, understanding, and shared reality. She wrote so that the one she silently addressed could hear her. Another question, more interesting but left unanswered, was why she adopted a masculine pseudonym. Why did she become Isak Dinesen? Karen turned out to be a fabulous storyteller like her father. Her fantastic and fateful stories always existed on the brink of time – the present and the long past. In the situations she described, extremes always merged: life and death, love and betrayal, everyday life and poetry. Isak Dinesen's prose was strong and determined, yet delicate and refined like a woman. Her works featured both aristocrats and common people, and in both, she sought courage and wisdom, strength and tenderness, the ability to love and endure. Her first book, "Seven Gothic Tales," published in 1934 in the United States and England, became a bestseller within a month. It captivated the imaginations of readers and critics alike with the almost forgotten aroma of old, beautiful Europe.
Three years later, Blixen completed her memoir about life in Kenya, dedicating the chapter "Wings" to Dennis. She went on to write several more collections of stories, including "Winter's Tales," "Last Tales," and "Anecdotes of Destiny." Critics referred to her as the "lonely lady of Danish literature," highlighting the uniqueness of her writing and the incomparable nature of her literary gift. When Ernest Hemingway received the Nobel Prize in 1954, he remarked that it should have been awarded to the "beautiful writer Isak Dinesen."
Before her death, Blixen dedicated one more book to Africa, "Shadows on the Grass." After returning to Denmark, Karen suffered from a long and agonizing illness. She continued to write, enduring unimaginable pain while sitting at her desk or dictating the final stories from her bed to her friend and secretary, Clara Svendsen. Each of these stories became a unique incantation: "In Africa, all old women are witches to some extent; they can all do magic, and it can be learned." She had learned. Karen Blixen wrote only a few books, but each one was a revelation and a testament. Her works were passionate messages, her wreath on the beloved's grave. Karen Blixen passed away in 1962 at the age of eighty. She died as a laureate of numerous literary awards, a member of the Danish Academy of Literature, an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. But what did it all mean... Every evening at sunset, Karen would step onto the porch and gaze southward, towards Africa, where Dennis was buried at the foot of Mount Ngong. Her solitude was warmed by a single legend in which Blixen fervently believed. According to legend, at sunset, a pair of lions would come to the burial site of her beloved and rest on his tombstone.
