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Karen Blixen

Karen Blixen

Overview
Baroness Karen von Blixen-Finecke (kʰɑːɑn ˈb̥leg̊sn̩), (17 April 1885 – 7 September 1962), née
NEE
NEE is a political protest group whose goal was to provide an alternative for voters who are unhappy with all political parties at hand in Belgium, where voting is compulsory.The NEE party was founded in 2005 in Antwerp...

Karen Christenze Dinesen, was a Danish
Denmark
Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...

 author also known by her pen name
Pen name
A pen name, nom de plume, or literary double, is a pseudonym adopted by an author. A pen name may be used to make the author's name more distinctive, to disguise his or her gender, to distance an author from some or all of his or her works, to protect the author from retribution for his or her...

 Isak Dinesen. She also wrote under the pen names Osceola and Pierre Andrézel. Blixen wrote works in Danish
Danish language
Danish is a North Germanic language spoken by around six million people, principally in the country of Denmark. It is also spoken by 50,000 Germans of Danish ethnicity in the northern parts of Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, where it holds the status of minority language...

, French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

 and English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

.
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Quotations

I have a feeling that wherever I may be in the future, I will be wondering whether there is rain at Ngong.

Letter to her mother (26 February 1919)

Man reaches the highest point of lovableness at 12 to 17 — to get it back, in a second flowering, at the age of 70 to 90.

Shadows on the Grass (1960)

God made the world round so we would never be able to see too far down the road.

As quoted in obituaries (7 September 1962)

The cure for anything is salt water — sweat, tears, or the sea.

As quoted in Reader's Digest (April 1964) Variant: I know a cure for everything. Salt water ... in one form or another, sweat, tears or the salt sea.

It is little silly to be a caricature of something of which you know very little, and which means very little to you, but to be your own caricature — that is the true carnival!

Carnival: Entertainments and Posthumous Tales (1971)

Real art must always involve some witchcraft.

Letters from Africa: 1914-1931 (1981) edited by Frans Lasson, translated by Anne Born.

I don't believe in evil, I believe only in horror. In nature there is no evil, only an abundance of horror: the plagues and the blights and the ants and the maggots.

As quoted in Voices: A Memoir (1983) by Frederic Prokosch|Frederic Prokosch
Encyclopedia
Baroness Karen von Blixen-Finecke (kʰɑːɑn ˈb̥leg̊sn̩), (17 April 1885 – 7 September 1962), née
NEE
NEE is a political protest group whose goal was to provide an alternative for voters who are unhappy with all political parties at hand in Belgium, where voting is compulsory.The NEE party was founded in 2005 in Antwerp...

Karen Christenze Dinesen, was a Danish
Denmark
Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...

 author also known by her pen name
Pen name
A pen name, nom de plume, or literary double, is a pseudonym adopted by an author. A pen name may be used to make the author's name more distinctive, to disguise his or her gender, to distance an author from some or all of his or her works, to protect the author from retribution for his or her...

 Isak Dinesen. She also wrote under the pen names Osceola and Pierre Andrézel. Blixen wrote works in Danish
Danish language
Danish is a North Germanic language spoken by around six million people, principally in the country of Denmark. It is also spoken by 50,000 Germans of Danish ethnicity in the northern parts of Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, where it holds the status of minority language...

, French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

 and English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

.

Blixen is best known for Out of Africa
Out of Africa
Out of Africa is a 1985 romantic drama film directed and produced by Sydney Pollack, and starring Robert Redford and Meryl Streep. The film is based loosely on the autobiographical book Out of Africa written by Isak Dinesen , which was published in 1937, with additional material from Dinesen's book...

, her account of living in Kenya
Kenya
Kenya , officially known as the Republic of Kenya, is a country in East Africa that lies on the equator, with the Indian Ocean to its south-east...

, and one of her stories, Babette's Feast
Babette's Feast
Babette's Feast is a 1987 Danish film directed by Gabriel Axel. The film's screenplay was written by Axel based on the story by Isak Dinesen , who also wrote the story which inspired the 1985 Academy Award winning film Out of Africa...

, both of which have been adapted into highly acclaimed, Academy Award-winning motion pictures. Prior to the release of the first film, she was noted for her Seven Gothic Tales, for which she is also known in Denmark.

Peter Englund
Peter Englund
Peter Englund is a Swedish author and historian, and the permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy since 1 June 2009.-Biography:...

, permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy
Swedish Academy
The Swedish Academy , founded in 1786 by King Gustav III, is one of the Royal Academies of Sweden.-History:The Swedish Academy was founded in 1786 by King Gustav III. Modelled after the Académie française, it has 18 members. The motto of the Academy is "Talent and Taste"...

, described it as "a mistake" that Blixen was not awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature
Nobel Prize in Literature
Since 1901, the Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded annually to an author from any country who has, in the words from the will of Alfred Nobel, produced "in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction"...

 during the 1930s.

Early years



Karen Dinesen was the daughter of writer and army officer Wilhelm Dinesen, and Ingeborg Westenholz, and was the sister of Thomas Dinesen
Thomas Dinesen
Thomas Fasti Dinesen VC was a Danish recipient of the Victoria Cross, the highest and most prestigious award for gallantry in the face of the enemy that can be awarded to British and Commonwealth forces...

. Her father's family, which she saw rarely, was of aristocratic background and held the lordship of Katholm. Her mother came from a wealthy Unitarian
Unitarianism
Unitarianism is a Christian theological movement, named for its understanding of God as one person, in direct contrast to Trinitarianism which defines God as three persons coexisting consubstantially as one in being....

 bourgeois merchant family. She spent her early years in the bourgeois environment of her mother's estate of Mattrup Manor near Horsens
Horsens
Horsens is a Danish city in east Jutland. It is the site of the council of Horsens municipality. The city's population is 53,807 and the Horsens municipality's population is 82,835 ....

. She was later schooled in art in Copenhagen
Copenhagen
Copenhagen is the capital and largest city of Denmark, with an urban population of 1,199,224 and a metropolitan population of 1,930,260 . With the completion of the transnational Øresund Bridge in 2000, Copenhagen has become the centre of the increasingly integrating Øresund Region...

, Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

, and Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...

.

She began publishing fiction in Danish periodicals in 1905 under the pseudonym
Pseudonym
A pseudonym is a name that a person assumes for a particular purpose and that differs from his or her original orthonym...

 Osceola
Osceola
Osceola, also known as Billy Powell , became an influential leader with the Seminole in Florida. He was of Creek, Scots-Irish and English parentage, and had migrated to Florida with his mother after the defeat of the Creek in 1814.Osceola led a small band of warriors in the Seminole resistance...

,
the name of the Seminole
Seminole
The Seminole are a Native American people originally of Florida, who now reside primarily in that state and Oklahoma. The Seminole nation emerged in a process of ethnogenesis out of groups of Native Americans, most significantly Creeks from what is now Georgia and Alabama, who settled in Florida in...

 leader, possibly inspired by her father's connection with Native Americans
Native Americans in the United States
Native Americans in the United States are the indigenous peoples in North America within the boundaries of the present-day continental United States, parts of Alaska, and the island state of Hawaii. They are composed of numerous, distinct tribes, states, and ethnic groups, many of which survive as...

. From August 1872 to December 1873, Wilhelm Dinesen had lived among the Chippewa Indians, in Wisconsin
Wisconsin
Wisconsin is a U.S. state located in the north-central United States and is part of the Midwest. It is bordered by Minnesota to the west, Iowa to the southwest, Illinois to the south, Lake Michigan to the east, Michigan to the northeast, and Lake Superior to the north. Wisconsin's capital is...

, where he fathered a daughter, who was born after his return to Denmark. Wilhelm Dinesen hanged himself in 1895, after being diagnosed with syphilis
Syphilis
Syphilis is a sexually transmitted infection caused by the spirochete bacterium Treponema pallidum subspecies pallidum. The primary route of transmission is through sexual contact; however, it may also be transmitted from mother to fetus during pregnancy or at birth, resulting in congenital syphilis...

 when Karen was ten.

Life in Africa


In 1913 Karen Dinesen became engaged to her second-cousin, the Swedish
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....

 Baron
Baron
Baron is a title of nobility. The word baron comes from Old French baron, itself from Old High German and Latin baro meaning " man, warrior"; it merged with cognate Old English beorn meaning "nobleman"...

 Bror von Blixen-Finecke
Bror von Blixen-Finecke
Baron Bror von Blixen-Finecke was a Swedish baron, writer, and African big-game hunter.Born to an aristocratic Swedish family, he married his Danish second-cousin Karen Blixen in 1913...

, after a failed love affair with his brother. The couple moved to Kenya
Kenya
Kenya , officially known as the Republic of Kenya, is a country in East Africa that lies on the equator, with the Indian Ocean to its south-east...

, where in early 1914 they used family money to establish a coffee
Coffee
Coffee is a brewed beverage with a dark,init brooo acidic flavor prepared from the roasted seeds of the coffee plant, colloquially called coffee beans. The beans are found in coffee cherries, which grow on trees cultivated in over 70 countries, primarily in equatorial Latin America, Southeast Asia,...

 plantation
Plantation
A plantation is a long artificially established forest, farm or estate, where crops are grown for sale, often in distant markets rather than for local on-site consumption...

, hiring African workers, predominantly the Kikuyu tribes people who lived on the farmlands at the time of their arrival. About the couple's early life in Africa, 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!


The two were quite different in education and temperament, and Bror Blixen was unfaithful to his wife. She was diagnosed with syphilis
Syphilis
Syphilis is a sexually transmitted infection caused by the spirochete bacterium Treponema pallidum subspecies pallidum. The primary route of transmission is through sexual contact; however, it may also be transmitted from mother to fetus during pregnancy or at birth, resulting in congenital syphilis...

 toward the end of their first year of marriage, which, although eventually cured (some uncertainty exists), created medical anguish for years afterward. The Blixens separated in 1921, and were divorced in 1925.

During her early years in Kenya, Karen Blixen met the English big game hunter Denys Finch Hatton
Denys Finch Hatton
Denys George Finch Hatton was a big-game hunter, and the lover of Karen Blixen , who wrote about him in her autobiographical book Out of Africa first published in 1937...

, and after her separation she and Finch Hatton developed a close friendship which eventually became a long-term love affair. Finch Hatton used Blixen's farmhouse as a home base between 1926 and 1931, when he wasn't leading one of his clients on safari
Safari
A safari is an overland journey, usually a trip by tourists to Africa. Traditionally, the term is used for a big-game hunt, but today the term often refers to a trip taken not for the purposes of hunting, but to observe and photograph animals and other wildlife.-Etymology:Entering the English...

. He died in the crash of his de Havilland Gipsy Moth biplane in 1931. At the same time, the failure of the coffee
Coffee
Coffee is a brewed beverage with a dark,init brooo acidic flavor prepared from the roasted seeds of the coffee plant, colloquially called coffee beans. The beans are found in coffee cherries, which grow on trees cultivated in over 70 countries, primarily in equatorial Latin America, Southeast Asia,...

 plantation, as a result of the worldwide economic depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...

 and the unsuitability of her farm's soil for coffee growing, forced Blixen to abandon her beloved farm. The family corporation sold the land to a residential developer, and Blixen returned to Denmark
Denmark
Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...

, where she lived for the rest of her life.

Life as a writer


On returning to Denmark, Blixen began writing in earnest. Her first book, Seven Gothic Tales, was published in the U.S. in 1934 under the pseudonym Isak Dinesen. This first book, highly enigmatic and more metaphoric than Gothic
Gothic fiction
Gothic fiction, sometimes referred to as Gothic horror, is a genre or mode of literature that combines elements of both horror and romance. Gothicism's origin is attributed to English author Horace Walpole, with his 1764 novel The Castle of Otranto, subtitled "A Gothic Story"...

, won great recognition, and publication of the book in the UK and Denmark followed. Her second book, now the best known of her works, was Out of Africa, published in 1937, and its success firmly established her reputation as an author. She was awarded the Tagea Brandt Rejselegat
Tagea Brandt Rejselegat
The Tagea Brandt Rejselegat is awarded annually, on the 17 March.The scholarship was created and endowed by Danish industrialist Vilhelm Brandt in honor of his wife, Tagea...

 (a Danish prize for women in the arts or academic life) in 1939.

During World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

, when Denmark was occupied by the Germans
Germans
The Germans are a Germanic ethnic group native to Central Europe. The English term Germans has referred to the German-speaking population of the Holy Roman Empire since the Late Middle Ages....

, Blixen started her only full-length novel, the introspective tale The Angelic Avengers, under another pseudonym, Pierre Andrezel; it was published in 1944. The horrors experienced by the young heroines were interpreted as an allegory of Nazism
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...

.

Her writing during most of the 1940s and 1950s consisted of tales in the storytelling tradition. The most famous is "Babette's Feast
Babette's Feast
Babette's Feast is a 1987 Danish film directed by Gabriel Axel. The film's screenplay was written by Axel based on the story by Isak Dinesen , who also wrote the story which inspired the 1985 Academy Award winning film Out of Africa...

", about a chef who spends her entire 10,000-franc lottery prize to prepare a final, spectacular gourmet meal. The Immortal Story
The Immortal Story
The Immortal Story is a 1968 French film directed by Orson Welles and starring Jeanne Moreau. The film was originally broadcast on French television and was later released in theaters. It was based on a short story by the Danish writer Karen Blixen...

, in which an elderly man tries to buy youth, was adapted to the screen in 1968 by Orson Welles
Orson Welles
George Orson Welles , best known as Orson Welles, was an American film director, actor, theatre director, screenwriter, and producer, who worked extensively in film, theatre, television and radio...

, a great admirer of Blixen's work and life. Welles later attempted to film The Dreamers
The Dreamers (unfinished film)
The Dreamers is an unfinished and unreleased film project directed and produced between 1980 and 1982 by Orson Welles.-Production history:...

, but only a few scenes were ever completed.

Blixen's tales follow a traditional style of storytelling, and most 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, that of destiny and courage. Indeed, many of her ideas can be traced back to those of Romanticism
Romanticism
Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...

. Blixen’s concept of the art of the story is perhaps most directly expressed in the story "The Cardinal’s First Tale" from her fifth book, Last Tales.

Though Danish, Blixen wrote her books in English and then translated her work into her native tongue. Critics describe her English as having unusual beauty. Her later books usually appeared simultaneously in both Danish and English. As an author, she kept her public image as a charismatic, mysterious old Baroness with an insightful third eye, and established herself as an inspiring figure in Danish culture, although shunning the mainstream.

Blixen was widely respected by contemporaries such as Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American author and journalist. His economic and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the...

 and Truman Capote
Truman Capote
Truman Streckfus Persons , known as Truman Capote , was an American author, many of whose short stories, novels, plays, and nonfiction are recognized literary classics, including the novella Breakfast at Tiffany's and the true crime novel In Cold Blood , which he labeled a "nonfiction novel." At...

, and during her tour of the United States in 1959, the list of writers who paid her visits included Arthur Miller
Arthur Miller
Arthur Asher Miller was an American playwright and essayist. He was a prominent figure in American theatre, writing dramas that include plays such as All My Sons , Death of a Salesman , The Crucible , and A View from the Bridge .Miller was often in the public eye,...

, E. E. Cummings
E. E. Cummings
Edward Estlin Cummings , popularly known as E. E. Cummings, with the abbreviated form of his name often written by others in lowercase letters as e.e. cummings , was an American poet, painter, essayist, author, and playwright...

, and Pearl Buck. She also met actress Marilyn Monroe
Marilyn Monroe
Marilyn Monroe was an American actress, singer, model and showgirl who became a major sex symbol, starring in a number of commercially successful motion pictures during the 1950s....

 with her husband Arthur Miller
Arthur Miller
Arthur Asher Miller was an American playwright and essayist. He was a prominent figure in American theatre, writing dramas that include plays such as All My Sons , Death of a Salesman , The Crucible , and A View from the Bridge .Miller was often in the public eye,...

. The socialite Babe Paley
Babe Paley
Barbara "Babe" Cushing Mortimer Paley was an American socialite and style icon. She was known by the popular nickname "Babe" for most of her life. She was named to the International Best Dressed List Hall of Fame in 1958....

 gave a lunch in her honour at St.Regis with Truman and Cecil Beaton as guests, and Gloria Vanderbilt
Gloria Vanderbilt
Gloria Laura Vanderbilt is an American artist, author, actress, heiress, and socialite most noted as an early developer of designer blue jeans...

 gave her a dress by Mainbocher
Mainbocher
Mainbocher is a fashion label founded by the American couturier Main Rousseau Bocher , also known as Mainbocher. Established in 1929, the house of Mainbocher successfully operated in Paris and then in New York...

. The photographer Richard Avedon
Richard Avedon
Richard Avedon was an American photographer. An obituary published in The New York Times said that "his fashion and portrait photographs helped define America's image of style, beauty and culture for the last half-century."-Photography career:Avedon was born in New York City to a Jewish Russian...

 took one of his famous pictures of her during her stay in New York. She was admired by Cecil Beaton
Cecil Beaton
Sir Cecil Walter Hardy Beaton, CBE was an English fashion and portrait photographer, diarist, painter, interior designer and an Academy Award-winning stage and costume designer for films and the theatre...

 and the patron Pauline de Rothschild
Pauline de Rothschild
Pauline de Rothschild was a writer, a fashion designer, and, with her second husband, a translator of both Elizabethan poetry and the plays of Christopher Fry...

 of the Rothschild family
Rothschild family
The Rothschild family , known as The House of Rothschild, or more simply as the Rothschilds, is a Jewish-German family that established European banking and finance houses starting in the late 18th century...

.

She was awarded the Danish Ingenio et Arti
Ingenio et Arti
Ingenio et Arti is a Danish medal awarded to prominent Danish and foreign scientists and artists. The honour, a personal award of the Monarch, was instituted by King Christian VIII in 1841 and could be awarded to women as well as men.The medal is awarded irregularly, on average less than twice per...

 medal in 1950.

Illness and death


Although it was widely believed that syphilis continued to plague Blixen throughout her lifetime, extensive tests were unable to reveal evidence of syphilis in her system after 1925. Her writing prowess suggests that she did not suffer from the mental degeneration of late stages of syphilis, nor from cerebral poisoning due to mercury treatments. She did suffer a mild permanent loss of sensation in her legs that could be attributed to chronic use of arsenic
Arsenic
Arsenic is a chemical element with the symbol As, atomic number 33 and relative atomic mass 74.92. Arsenic occurs in many minerals, usually in conjunction with sulfur and metals, and also as a pure elemental crystal. It was first documented by Albertus Magnus in 1250.Arsenic is a metalloid...

 in Africa.

Others attribute her weight loss and eventual death to anorexia nervosa
Anorexia nervosa
Anorexia nervosa is an eating disorder characterized by refusal to maintain a healthy body weight and an obsessive fear of gaining weight. Although commonly called "anorexia", that term on its own denotes any symptomatic loss of appetite and is not strictly accurate...

.

During the 1950s Blixen's health quickly deteriorated, and in 1955 she had a third of her stomach removed because of an ulcer. Writing became impossible, although she did several radio broadcasts.

In her analysis of Blixen's medical history, Linda Donelson points out that Blixen wondered if her pain was psychosomatic even though she blamed it in public on the emotive syphilis: "Whatever her belief about her illness, the disease suited the artist's design for creating her own personal legend."

Unable to eat, Blixen died in 1962 at Rungstedlund, her family's estate, at the age of 77, apparently of malnutrition
Malnutrition
Malnutrition is the condition that results from taking an unbalanced diet in which certain nutrients are lacking, in excess , or in the wrong proportions....

. The source of her abdominal problems remains unknown, although gastric syphilis, manifested by gastric ulcers during secondary and tertiary syphilis, was well-known prior to the advent of modern antibiotics.

Rungstedlund Museum


Blixen lived most of her life at the family estate Rungstedlund
Rungstedlund
Rungstedlund, also known as the Karen Blixen Museum, is a country house in Rungsted on the Øresund coast just north of Copenhagen, Denmark, notable for its association with the author Karen Blixen, who lived there for most of her life...

, which was acquired by her father in 1879. The property is located in Rungsted
Rungsted
Rungsted is a neighborhood in the city of Hørsholm in the Hørsholm Municipality of Øresund, north of Copenhagen, Denmark. The center of Hørsholm is located two kilometers west of Rungsted...

, 24 kilometres (14.9 mi) north of Copenhagen
Copenhagen
Copenhagen is the capital and largest city of Denmark, with an urban population of 1,199,224 and a metropolitan population of 1,930,260 . With the completion of the transnational Øresund Bridge in 2000, Copenhagen has become the centre of the increasingly integrating Øresund Region...

, Denmark's capital. The oldest parts of the estate date to 1680, and it had been operated as both an inn and a farm. Most of Blixen's writing was done in Ewald's Room, named after author Johannes Ewald
Johannes Ewald
Johannes Ewald was a Danish national dramatist and poet.-Biography:Ewald, normally regarded as the most important Danish poet of the 2nd half of the 18th Century, led a short and troubled life, marked by alcoholism and poor health...

. The property is managed by the Rungstedlund Foundation, founded by Blixen and her siblings. It was opened to the public as a museum in 1991.

Legacy and works


The Nairobi suburb that stands on the land where Blixen farmed coffee is now named Karen. Blixen herself declared in her later writings that "the residential district of Karen" was "named after me". And Blixen's biographer, Judith Thurman, was told by the developer who bought the farm from the family corporation that he planned to name the district after Blixen.

Blixen was known to her friends not as "Karen" but as "Tania." The family corporation that owned her farm was incorporated as the "Karen Coffee Company". The chairman of the board was her uncle, Aage Westenholz, who may have named the company after his own daughter Karen. However, the developer seems to have named the district specifically for its famous author/farmer, not for the name of her company.

There is a Karen Blixen Coffee House and Museum in the district of Karen, set near Blixen's former home.

Karen Blixen's portrait was featured on the front of the Danish 50-krone banknote, 1997 series
Banknotes of Denmark, 1997 series
Danmarks Nationalbank is issuing banknotes of the Danish Krone and is in the transition of replacing the 1997 banknote series. As of September 2010 the 200kr, 500kr and 1000kr from the 1997 series are the currently circulating notes....

, from 7 May 1999 to 25 August 2005.

Some of Blixen's works were published posthumously, including tales previously removed from earlier collections and essays she wrote for various occasions.
  • The Hermits (1907, published in a Danish journal under the name Osceola)
  • The Ploughman (1907, published in a Danish journal under the name Osceola)
  • The de Cats Family (1909, published in Tilskueren)
  • The Revenge of Truth (1926, published in Denmark)
  • Seven Gothic Tales (1934 in USA, 1935 in Denmark)
  • Out of Africa
    Out of Africa
    Out of Africa is a 1985 romantic drama film directed and produced by Sydney Pollack, and starring Robert Redford and Meryl Streep. The film is based loosely on the autobiographical book Out of Africa written by Isak Dinesen , which was published in 1937, with additional material from Dinesen's book...

    (1937 in Denmark and England, 1938 in USA)
  • Winter's Tales (1942)
  • The Angelic Avengers (1947)
  • Last Tales (1957)
  • Anecdotes of Destiny
    Anecdotes of Destiny
    Anecdotes of Destiny is a collection of tales by Danish author Karen Blixen. It was the last work put out during Karen Blixen's lifetime; it was published in Denmark on October 12, 1958....

    (1958)
  • Shadows on the Grass (1960 in England and Denmark, 1961 in USA)
  • Ehrengard (posthumous 1963, USA)
  • Carnival: Entertainments and Posthumous Tales (posthumous 1977, USA)
  • Daguerreotypes and Other Essays (posthumous 1979, USA)
  • On Modern Marriage and Other Observations (posthumous 1986, USA)
  • Letters from Africa, 1914–1931 (posthumous 1981, USA)
  • Karen Blixen in Danmark: Breve 1931–1962 (posthumous 1996, Denmark)

Family


Blixen's great-nephew, Anders Westenholz
Anders Westenholz
Anders Westenholz in Copenhagen was a Danish psychologist and writer.-Overview:Anders Westenholz became a student in 1955, and a psychologist in 1969. From 1969-76 he was employed by Dansk Arbejdsgiverforening...

, is also an accomplished writer, and has written books about her and her literature, among other things.

Karen Blixen was also, in addition to being depicted on a Danish banknote, featured on a Danish postage stamp, issued in 1980.

Quotes



“To be lonely is a state of mind, something completely other than physical solitude; when modern authors rant about the soul’s intolerable loneliness, it is only proof of their own intolerable emptiness.” – Out of Africa, 1937


"The cure for anything is salt water: sweat, tears or the sea." – Out of Africa, 1937


"When in the end, the day came on which I was going away, I learned the strange learning that things can happen which we ourselves cannot possibly imagine, either beforehand, or at the time when they are taking place, or afterwards when we look back on them." – Out of Africa, 1937



"He belonged to the olden days, and I have never met another German who has given me so strong an impression of what Imperial Germany was and stood for." -- About General Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck, German commander during the East Africa Campaign.



"Through all the world there goes one long cry from the heart of the artist: Give me leave to do my utmost!" – "Babette's Feast", 1953

See also

  • Asteroid 3318 Blixen
    3318 Blixen
    3318 Blixen is a main belt asteroid discovered by Poul Jensen and Karl Augustesen in 1985. It measures 23.5 km in diameter, and is named after Karen Blixen, the Danish novelist....

    , named after the author
  • Banknotes of Denmark, 1997 series
    Banknotes of Denmark, 1997 series
    Danmarks Nationalbank is issuing banknotes of the Danish Krone and is in the transition of replacing the 1997 banknote series. As of September 2010 the 200kr, 500kr and 1000kr from the 1997 series are the currently circulating notes....

  • Karen Blixen Museum
    Rungstedlund
    Rungstedlund, also known as the Karen Blixen Museum, is a country house in Rungsted on the Øresund coast just north of Copenhagen, Denmark, notable for its association with the author Karen Blixen, who lived there for most of her life...

    , Hørsholm
    Hørsholm
    Hørsholm Kommune is a municipality in the Copenhagen Capital Region in the northern part of the island of Zealand in eastern Denmark. The municipality covers an area of 31 km², and has a total population of 24,197...

    , Denmark
    Denmark
    Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...

  • Jurij Moskvitin
    Jurij Moskvitin
    Jurij Moskvitin was a classical pianist, composer, philosopher, mathematician and boheme....

    , friend of Blixen

Further reading

  • Langbaum, Robert
    Robert Langbaum
    Robert Woodrow Langbaum is an American Author and a University of Virginia James Branch Cabell prof. English and Am. lit., 1967—1999, prof...

     (1975) Isak Dinesen's Art: The Gayety of Vision (University of Chicago Press) ISBN 0226468712

External links