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...

.

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.
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

 
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