KAREN BLIXEN - ISAK DINESEN
INFORMATION SITE
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Karen Blixen (1885-1962), also known by her pseudonym, IsakDinesen, is famous for her memoir,Out of Africa,and for several works of fiction, includingSeven Gothic Tales (1934) andWinter's Tales(1942).A 2007 pollof opinion in her native Denmark lists Karen Blixen as one of the mostrepresentative personalities in Danish history. She was severaltimesnominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature. She wrote in English,after living on a coffee farm in Kenya from 1914 to 1931.
She married her second cousin, Baron Bror Blixen of Sweden, therebyacquiring the title Baroness. Following their separation and divorce,she had a long affair with the safari hunter, Denys Finch Hatton, sonof a titled English family. In 1931, after losing the coffee farminthe Great Depression, Karen Blixen returned to Denmark and embarked onthe writing career that lasted until her death in 1962. She was playedby Meryl Streep in the 1985 filmOutof Africa.
LITERATURE:Karen Blixen [Isak Dinesen] can be compared with no otherwriters. Hervoice was formed by her Scandinavian roots, and influenced by a widevariety of works of European literature. Her writing places emphasis onstory, rather than characters, and on the philosophical understandingof personal identity. Her stories underline a fascination with the roleof fate in controlling the lives of human beings. She believed that aperson's responseto the vicissitudes of fate offers a possibility for heroism and,ultimately, for immortality.
A small selection of her literary influences include:
- Soren Kierkegaard: at least thirteen of Isak Dinesen's talesare based, in part, on stories by the great Danish philosopher.
- The Viking sagas
- Shakespeare's plays
- Mary Shelley
- Percy Bysshe Shelley
- Lord Byron
- Homer'sIliad andOdyssey
- Mozart'sDon Juan
- Milton'sParadise Lost
- Charles Baudelaire
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
- Walt Whitman
- Goethe
- Nietzche
- Heinrich Heine
- Havamal, the bible ofthe pagan Scandinavian cosmos
- The Greek myths
- The Thousand and One Nights(The Arabian Nights)
- The Old andThe New Testament
Some of her famous characters:
- From "The Deluge at Norderney": MalinNat-og-Dag
- From "The Dreamers" and "Echoes":Pellegrina Leoni
- FromOut of Africa: Kamante Gatura,Farah Aden, Denys Finch Hatton, Berkeley Cole
PhotoKB age 29
PhotoKB age 43
ørnvig, but the relationship, based onmutual admiration, remainedplatonic. Young male writers, who at first came to Karen Blixen forsupport in their careers, later turned against her. Throughout her lifeshe had been a magnetic figure with a range of important friends, but,as her physical ills mounted, she became increasingly difficult.
Contactinfo:none.Thesite creator has retired.
The siteCreator is Linda G. Donelson MD, a 30-yearBlixen scholar and author of the award-winning biographyOutofIsakDinesen (Coulsong Press:1995 and 1998).