Karen Blixen/Isak Dinesen Home

Scandinavian Press, Winter, 1999 Vol.6 No.1 Pp 18-21

by Anders Neumueller, Editor

Copyright � 1999 by Scandinavian Press. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved

Author Karen Blixen, who wrote under the name of Isak Dinesen, was born in 1885 at Rungstedlund, her family's estate to the north of Copenhagen. In 1914 she emigrated to Kenya together with her husband, Swedish nobleman Bror von Blixen-Finecke, who she divorced in 1924. Karen Blixen returned to Denmark in 1931 to once again live at Rungstedlund.

Her first book Seven Gothic Tales was published in the USA in 1934 and became a huge success. It is however her book Out of Africa, 1938, that made her name known around the world. This wonderful story about Karen Blixen's life was made into a movie with the same title.

Blixen continued to write, in both English and Danish, until her death in 1962.

The latest biography about Blixen is Out of Isak Dinesen by physician Linda Donelson (Coulsong ISBN 0-9643893-9-8)who lived on a research farm in Kenya near Blixen's estate.

Scandinavian Press: Why are you fascinated by Karen Blixen?

Linda Donelson: From childhood when I read a story that I knew was true I needed to learn more about it. So when I read Out of Africa I immediately wanted to read more, and there was not much information available. I waited for a long time for someone to write a book about Karen Blixen; and in fact there was a book that came out shortly after I read Out of Africa, but it was an academic treatment and did not discuss Karen Blixen's life in Africa to any great extent. So I decided to write a book that, for example, my mother-in-law would enjoy--not an academic approach but a good, readable story.

SP: Why do you feel people in general are more fascinated by Karen Blixen than they are by regular authors?

LD: Certainly she tried to give herself an image even during her lifetime that would make people remember her. She made herself controversial. She wanted people to think of her as eccentric. But even without this her life was intrinsically fascinating. There are so many twists in it that make it almost more interesting than a novel. Her story attracts people. 50 million people in countries around the world went to see the movie Out of Africa--about Karen Blixen's life in Africa--and that's truly extraordinary. I think her story is fascinating because it is a woman's story--a courageous woman. She remains in the public consciousness--as she intended. It is interesting to note that she sold only about 100,000 copies of Out of Africa in her lifetime, but since 1980 a million and a half copies of the book have been sold.

SP: Would she be as fascinating if she were not a baroness, not lived in Africa, and not had syphilis?

LD: I haven't thought of it in those terms. I think that initially people are interested in her story not so much because she was a baroness. Certainly she wrote a bestseller (Seven Gothic Tales) before anyone knew she was a baroness. In her story she does not mention that she was a baroness and of course she does not mention in Out of Africa that she had syphilis. People are interested in a woman who had the courage to be a pioneer farmer in Africa at the turn of the century. I think probably that is one of the major elements in what drew people to her book Out of Africa in the first place, and then of course the way she wrote it was so poetic that it gripped their attention. In addition to that, I think there was an element of looking for a particularly romantic story in 1938 when so many tragedies were occurring around the world and everyone was oppressed by the Great Depression. It was an escape for them to think about the exotic paradise that she described in Africa.

SP: How would you describe the influence of the three men in her life--her father, her husband Bror von Blixen-Finecke and her lover Denys Finch Hatton?

LD: I would like to say first of all that Karen Blixen was born a person who needed to spend a lot of time in her imagination. Several things developed from this. First her imagination led to her creative life. Secondly she used her imagination to keep her very emotional character in a state of balance. Whenever she became upset she would retreat into her imagination. I'm approaching your question this way because throughout her life she seems to have idealized the men in her life, to make heroes of them. So her father became a hero to her, and throughout her life she would think about his spirit as a means of inspiration and support to her in times of great sadness. And the same was true of Denys Finch Hatton after his death. She frequently mentioned in letters and in her conversations with acquaintances that the spirit of Denys Finch Hatton was pushing her onward, and helping in her life. And that leaves her third man, Bror, who I believe she also idealized, and I think that this is one of the reasons she wanted to stay married to him even after he gave her syphilis. She sought him as a spiritual support, she relied on his energy and his inspiration to keep her in Africa and to keep the ideal of pioneer farming alive in her mind. And she idealized him even more after he left her. In fact it is quite interesting to read her letters and see that she refers to the years "when we were happy"--meaning the years when she was married to Bror. Yet if you follow the letters month by month and year by year you really can't find any period when they were happy. So she idealized these years after the divorce.

SP: What was the real Bror Blixen like?

LD: He really was a person that everyone liked. He was full of fun, he was energetic, he was very kind. Everyone mentioned kind things that he did and in fact it is quite striking that Karen Blixen said in her letters frequently that he was such a good nurse to her whenever she was ill and whenever she had an injury. He was very good at binding wounds and taking care of her and running the bath, and massaging. I think he was a goodhearted person, and this generosity spilled over in his being a womanizer. He shared his affections in every possible way. I found him a sympathetic figure. There are wonderful legends about Bror Blixen. The story goes that he had a double cot in his tent when he went hunting because the wife of every hunter who was travelling with him always wanted to sleep with Bror Blixen. He was praised by Ernest Hemingway and in fact I think for a while he stayed with Hemingway in the Bahamas. One of the main questions I wanted to ask when I started my book was why Karen Blixen remained married for nine years to a man who had given her syphilis.

SP: Was the romance between Karen Blixen and Finch Hatton aptly depicted in the movie Out of Africa?

LD: It is true for the movie that the first half of it is very close to real life, and they did a marvelous job of casting Bror Blixen and Berkeley Cole. But as soon as Robert Redford enters the story the film becomes fiction. The character should have been played by the English actor Charles Dance. In fact the biographer of Denys Finch Hatton begged the director Sydney Pollack to cast Charles Dance as Denys Finch Hatton. But it turned out that Charles Dance had been cast opposite Meryl Streep in a previous film, and it was felt that the chemistry was not good between them. It was of course a very wise decision from a financial point of view to give Redford the role and one of the reasons why the film was such a success. The movie is satisfying to the romantic mind but it isn't a true depiction of Karen Blixen's life.

I would have liked to see a more psychological portrayal of the evolution of her romance with Finch Hatton. We see in the film Finch Hatton portrayed as her inspiration, and more than that we are given to believe from the film that he was responsible for her writing career, that Karen Blixen would not have dreamed of writing anything before he entered the scene; and that is very far from true. She had been writing since she was a young woman, in fact from girlhood. A very important question is why they never married. She knew Denys Finch Hatton for 13 years and she was in love with him for that entire period. In fact Finch hatton lived in her house for at least six years, and yet there seemed to be no talk of making a marriage contract for this relationship. They had very similar interests and were of the same age. But I think Finch Hatton was homosexual, or perhaps today we would say bisexual. Karen Blixen refers to homosexuality in her letters. Denys certainly had a physical relationship with Karen Blixen. She thought she was pregnant on two occasions, but I think he was more interested in men than in women. He had a very strong friendship with Berkeley Cole and it was only after he died that Denys began spending more time with Karen Blixen. Also it is quite apparent that she starts talking about homosexuality in 1926. She mentions it several times in her letters to her family, something she has never done before that time. And she has a period when she is terribly upset about something but unwilling to tell her family what it is. She wants to leave Africa immediately; she is screaming in her heart.

SP: What about the syphilis, the true story and the myth?

LD: First of all, she got syphilis from her husband in 1915, one year after she was married, and it was a devastating diagnosis for her--quite similar to if one were to be diagnosed with AIDS today. In those days it was believed that once you had syphilis you would have a slow progression to madness, and of course this was the reason her father took his own life. He could not face the possibility of this, according to family legend. It is very likely she was quite frightened to have this diagnosis, and, unfortunately, one physician in Paris seemed to re-enforce the fear that she had, telling her that he doubted she would ever recover. Throughout her life she kept the words of the French physician in her mind and she really did doubt that she would ever recover, despite the fact that year after year of tests showed no evidence of syphilis. She was so convinced that she had symptoms that she really left doubts in the physicians who took care of her late in life. Finally in about 1955 when she was in her late 60s her physician wrote a report saying that he believed there was no evidence of syphilis and that any further symptoms she had would have to be attributed to something else. I think she was suffering from the chronic use of arsenic especially while she lived in Africa. We have no evidence that she took arsenic after she returned to Denmark. It is also possible that the symptoms were pyschosomatic. The abdominal pains may have been a symptom of panic attacks. She did have panic attacks when she was in Africa. She also had an ulcer that was removed in 1955.

SP: Was there anything in particular that she loved about Africa?

LD: She was attracted to the African way of life because there was a silence about Africans that contrasted with European society. In her writing, not just in Out of Africa but in her short stories also, she glorifies the primitive. She was part of the Romantic school that believed the native was wiser than industrial man.

SP: What was it about Karen Blixen that we did not get to see in the movie Out of Africa?

LD: That she was as strong as any of the men in her life. It was her way of dealing with life that was simply different from a man's approach. There were some key moments in her life when she could have avoided some of her unhappiness. For example, certainly many recognize that the decision to marry Bror was a time when she might have avoided some problems by not going through with it. However, she opened an entirely new world to herself by going into the experiment, and I think it was a courageous move to marry Bror, but much more to go to Africa at a time when very few women would have considered doing such a thing. They would have protested that they could not cope with the weather and the illness she was sure to encounter there and all the other trials. I think another major moment of decision for her was at the time she returned to Africa in 1920. Bror was convinced that the farm should be sold, that the economic conditions in the country were developing in such a way that they could sell the farm and make a profit, and use their money in some other endeavour. That was quite a significant moment and I think perhaps Bror was right.

I think she should have gone along with him, sold the farm, and maybe bought a smaller property or even a business that she later talked of in her letters--a restaurant or something that would have been more financially viable--and might have saved her marriage as well. So that was a significant moment. Then in 1925 she came for a long visit to Denmark, about one year, and she was quite unhappy about the idea of returning to Africa. Should she have gone back to face the loss of the farm and the death of Finch Hatton? Of course she could not have known that this was going to happen but she had premonitions all along. She frequently mentioned in her letters that she wished she knew how this story was going to end. So she had some moments when she could have reversed her course, and yet it makes a much more interesting story that she did what she did.

Karen Blixen was someone who lacked self-confidence. She had self-doubts throughout her life. She was preoccupied with the fact that she had not been born to a title, and in the time she grew up this was an important thing. It was the ultimate goal of the bourgeois class. I think it has been unfair to Karen Blixen that she was accused of being a snob because she was so preoccupied with the title; she was hardly alone in yearning for one.

She had many friends and she was greatly admired by her own family. She was a fascinating person in her own time even to her family. She loved to be playful. She kept people interested in life. She gave marvellous dinner parties. She had wonderful ideas for decorating, for flowers, for furniture, for conversation. Her family loved it when she was around. She was always getting people to dress up, and to do little skits. She had a dry wit, displayed in her short stories. Wit is of course very much part of the Danish character. Danes have a way of never taking tragedy too seriously. It is too bad that people have been left with the impression of a sickly, elderly woman. She was full of life until the end.

SP: There has been much written about Karen Blixen. How is your book different?

LD: First of all, it seems that the other biographies have been more interested in Karen Blixen as a literary figure; they emphasize her literary career. They have spent a small amount of their space on the African period. I find that unusual, because Karen Blixen herself felt that her years in Africa were the most important of her life. The other biographies have also missed an important aspect of Karen Blixen's life, that it is a wonderful story.