Karen Blixen (1885-1962) - in full Karen Christence Dinesen, Baroness Blixen-Finecke - wrote as Isak Dinesen, Pierre Andrézel, other pseudonyms Tania Blixen, Osceola, etc.

Danish writer, who mixed in her work supernatural elements, aestheticism, and erotic undertones with an aristocratic view of life. Blixen always emphasized that she was a storyteller (fortaellerske) in the traditional, oral sense of the word. She drew her inspiration from the Bible, the Arabian Nights, the works of Homer, the Icelandic sagas, and the fairy tales of Hans Christian Andersen, her great countryman. Blixen's stories have inspired such film makers as Orson Welles and Sydney Pollack. She wrote in English and in Danish.

'Are you sure,' she asked, 'that it is God whom you serve?'
The Cardinal looked up, met her eyes and smiled very gently.
'That,' he said, 'that, Madame, is a risk which the artists and the priests of this world have to run!'
(from 'The Cardinal's Fist Tale')

Baroness Karen Blixen was born in Rungsted, Denmark, into a well-to-do patrician family. She was the daughter of Ingeborg Westenholz Dinesen, and the writer and army officer Wilhelm Dinesen, whose adventuresome spirit and storytelling talents influenced deeply Blixen's imagination. She spent her childhood on the family estate in Rungsted. Throughout her life Blixen's outlook and manner were unabashedly aristocratic.

At early age, Blixen showed an artistic inclination. She attended the Royal Academy of Art in Copenhagen, and also studied in England, Switzerland, Italy, and France. In 1907 Blixen made her debut as a writer with several short stories. In 1914 she married her cousin Baron Bror Blixen-Finecke, and went with him to Kenya, where they directed coffee plantation. They were divorced in 1921. Blixen ran the plantation by herself but in 1931 she returned to Denmark, after fruitless struggles with mismanagement, drought, and the falling price of coffee. Blixen's years in Kenya are depicted in OUT OF AFRICA (1937) - "I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong Hills." This opening also sets the tone of the autobiobragphy - nostalgic, calm, and stoic. The book ends with a view to the same hills: "The outline of the mountain was slowly smoothed and levelled out by the hand of distance." On the coffee-farm Blixen started to write her first book, Seven Gothic Tales (1934), but it appeared three years after African memoir.

"White people, who for a long time live alone with Natives, get into the habit of saying what they mean, because they have no reason or opportunity for dissimulation, and when they meet again their conversation keeps the Native tone." (from Out of Africa)

Out of Africa was adapted into an Oscar-winning film in 1985, directed by Sydney Pollack. Blixen's work is often considered a masterpiece, but it did not reveal intimate details her unhappy marriage and her affair with the English game pilot Denys Finch-Hatton, as in the film. Later she returned to her African years in the autobiographical SKYGGER PÅ GRÆSET (1960, Shadows on the Grass). Blixen's description of her servants and Africans is understanding, but a more overtly patrician outlook towards them is revealed in her posthumous LETTERS FROM AFRICA (1981).

Blixen's first major work, the short story collection Seven Gothic Tales, was proclaimed a masterpiece by critics in England and in the Unites States. In Denmark the critics were more reserved - her stories were considered too exotic, and they did not fit in any literary movement. The elaborate, deliberately unrealistic tales, mostly set in the old aristocratic Europe of the 18th and 19th centuries, combined the themes of love and dreams with elements of fantasy. The opening tale, 'The Deluge at Norderney', is an account of a night passed in a hayloft by four strangers, who tell the story of his or her life, while waiting for rescue. In 'The Old Chevalier' a Danish nobleman and a French prostitute, Natalie, spent a night together. Years later the nobleman sees a human skull, which features are similar to those of the girl. As in several other Blixen's works, one story lead into other. The Danish edition published in 1935, Syv fantastiske fortællinger, received mixed critics: the author was accused of elitism. Especially Blixen's characters annoyed critics. The stories were set in the era of Romanticism and dealt with cosmopolite Bohemians, artists, and aristocracy. After a rebellious youth they often understand the value of traditional roles and cultural heritage.

"What is man, when you come to think upon him, but a minutely set, ingenious machine for turning, with infinite artfulness, the red wine of Shiraz into urine?" (from 'The Dreamers' in Seven Gothic Tales, 1934)
During WW II, when Denmark was occupied by the Nazis, Blixen started to write her only full-length novel, the introspective GENGÆLDELSENS VEJE (The Angelic Avengers), which was published in 1944 under the pseudonym Pierre Andrézel. The horrors experienced by the young heroines in the novel were interpreted as an allegory of falling Nazism. In 1942 appeared VINTER-EVENTYR (1942, Winter's Tales). Its title derived from Shakespeare's play, but the tales also contained references to folktales. 'The Pearl' was a variant on the Brother Grimm's 'The Boy Who Set Out to Learn How to Shudder'. Winter's Tales was smuggled out of the occupied country through Sweden. In the United States a pocketbook edition was printed for soldiers fighting in different parts of the world. The setting of the stories were prediminantly Nordic, but not exactly the present time. LAST TALES (1957) were set in the Mediterranean world. "I first began to tell tales to delight the world and make it wiser..." (From Anecdotes of Destiny, 1958)

ANECDOTES OF DESTINY (1958) contained five tales. The most famous is 'Babette's Feast', about an old cook, who has not been able to show her true skills. Babette, a famous French chef, finally has her opportunity at a memorial celebration. The surprise ending takes the story in the realms of fairy tales, but is also Blixen's answer to her critics. The story was filmed in 1987. 'An Immortal Story', in which an elderly man tries to by himself his youth, was adapted into screen by Orson Welles (1968).

"That when soon I sail from here, I may again run into such a storm as the one in Kvasefjord. But this time I shall clearly understand that it is not a play in the theatre, but it is death. and it seems to that then, in the last moment before we go down, I can in in all truth be yours..." (from 'Tempest' in Anecdotes of Destiny, 1958)

In the 1950s Blixen's health was deteriorating, and writing became impossible. However, Blixen appeared as a lecturer in radio and made one record. Her name was mentioned several times in the context of Nobel Prize awards - Hemingway himself said that the Prize should have been given to Dinesen, not to him. In 1959 she made a lecture tour in the United States which gained a huge success. Such American writers as Truman Capote and Carson McCullers acknowledged their admiration of her work.

Though Danish, Blixen wrote her books in English and then translated her work into her native tongue. Her English had unusual beauty and great technical skill. Blixen's later books usually appeared simultaneously in both languages. She died in Rungsted on September 7, 1962. Her last great work, ALBONDOCANI, was not finished, but parts of its appeared in LAST TALES (1957).

For further reading: The World of Isak Dinesen by E.O. Johannesson (1961); The Gaiety of Vision by R. Langbaum (1964); Titania: The Biography of Isak Dinesen by P. Migel (1968); The Life and Destiny of Karen Blixen by C. Svendsen and F. Lasson (1970); Isak Dinesen and Karen Blixen: The Mask and the Reality by D. Hannah (1971); Isak Dinesen's Aesthetics by T.R. Whissen (1973); My Sister, Isak Dinesen by T. Dinesen (1975); Isak Dinesen: The Life of a Storyteller by J. Thurman (1982); A History of Scandinavian Literature, 1870-1980 by Sven H. Rossel (1982); The Power of Aries: Myth and Reality in Karen Blixen's Life by A. Westenholz (1987); The Witch Goddess in the Stories of Isak Dinesen: A Feminist Reading by S. Stambaugh (1989) - Note: In her late years, Blixen dressed some times as commedia dell'arte character Pierrot - also her works with multi-voice narrations presenting material in a complex, dancelike pattern, reflected the influence of this theatre tradition from the 16th-century. - Blixen's story 'Tempest' from Anecdotes of Destiny is based on William Shakespeare's play. - Muita suomennoksia: Kohtalotarinoita, Ehrengard ja muita kertomuksia, Neljä tarinaa, Suuret tarinat. - See also: Karen Blixen Museet
Selected works:

SEVEN GOTHIC TALES - Syv fantastiske fortællinger, 1934 - Seitsemän salaperäistä tarinaa
OUT OF AFRICA - Den afrikanske farm, 1937 - Eurooppalaisena Afrikassa - film 1985, dir. by Sydney Pollack, starring Robert Redford, Meryl Streep, Klaus Maria Brandauer. "When the Gods want to punish you, they answer yout prayers."
WINTER'S TALES - Vintereventyr, 1942 - Talvisia tarinoita
GENGÆLDELSENS VEJE, 1944 (under name Pierre Andrézel) - The Angelic Avengers - Koston tie
DAGUERROTYPIER, 1951 - Daguerrotypes
BABETTES GÆSTEBUD, 1952
KARDINALENS TREDIE HISTORIE, 1952
EN BÅLTALE, 1953
SPØ GELSESHESTERNE, 1955
LAST TALES - Sidste fortællinger, 1957 - includes chapters from unfinished novel Albondocani - Viimeiset tarinat
ANECDOTES OF DESTINY, 1958 - film adaptations: 'Babette's Feast' dir. by Gabriel Axel, starring Stephane Audran, Jean-Philippe Lafont, Gudmar Wivesson (1987); 'The Immortal Story', dir. by Orson Welles, starring Orson Welles, Jeanne Moreau, Roger Coggio (1968)
SKYGGER PÅ GRÆSET, 1960 - Shadows on the Grass
SANDHEDENS HÆVN, 1960
OSCEOLA, 1962
EHRENGARD, 1963
ESSAYS, 1965
EFTERLADTE FORTÆLINGER, 1975
CARNIVAL: ENTERTAINMENTS AND POSTHUMOUS TALES, 1977
DAGUERREOTYPES, AND OTHER ESSAYS, 1979
LETTERS FROM AFRICA, 1914-31, 1981 (2 vols.) - Breve fra Afrika

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