Before anything, take a look in this documentary (better with subtitles in English besides the ones there)
Her Legacy
The Pact and the men behind it
The Pact intends to detail how Karen Blixen‘s relationship was with her, how to say, last passion, supposedly platonic, where she is presented unilaterally by the object of her love, the poet Thorkild Bjørnvig.
She was 64 years old while he was 32 and didn’t get there without having experienced other approaches with the opposite sex and since this always occurs within a pattern for human beings, it deserves a discussion, not to absolve her of having supposedly manipulated Thorkild, but to present better her side, which seems to me not that of a witch with a pact with the devil as Thorkild has put it.
Taking into account that she initially married the twin brother of the person she fell in love with and he ended up giving her syphilis, her second companion, who may have been her true and greatest passion, portrayed in the movie Out of Afrika by Robert Redford, also betrayed her, besides having lived with her only two years and the third is this story that needs no comment .
Her witchcraft, if it existed, worked against her…
I thought of something along the lines that Jung proposes in his discussion of psychological relationships in marriage, where he presents the idea of Animus and Anima.
Animus and Anima
Carl Gustav Jung, a Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, developed the concepts of animus and anima as part of his theory of the collective unconscious and individuation process. These concepts are central to his understanding of psychological dynamics, including relationships and marriage.
- Anima: The anima is the feminine aspect of the male psyche. It represents the inner feminine qualities and aspects that reside within a man’s unconscious mind. It encompasses emotions, intuition, receptivity, and other qualities typically associated with the feminine. In the context of marriage, a man’s relationship with his anima is important for his psychological development and growth. Integrating and acknowledging his anima can lead to a more balanced and complete sense of self.
- Animus: The animus is the masculine aspect of the female psyche. It represents the inner masculine qualities and attributes within a woman’s unconscious mind. It includes rationality, assertiveness, logic, and other qualities traditionally associated with the masculine. For a woman, recognizing and integrating her animus can lead to a deeper understanding of herself and a more balanced sense of identity.
In the context of psychological relationships in marriage, Jung’s concepts of anima and animus play a significant role:
- Projection and Shadow: Jung believed that individuals often project their anima or animus onto their partner. This means that people may unconsciously attribute qualities or traits of their anima or animus to their spouse, both positive and negative. This projection can lead to unrealistic expectations, misunderstandings, and conflicts in the relationship.
- Individuation: Jung’s ultimate goal was individuation, which is the process of becoming one’s true self and achieving a balanced and integrated personality. In a marriage, the recognition and integration of one’s anima or animus contribute to this process. As individuals work on understanding and integrating these unconscious aspects, they can develop a more harmonious relationship with themselves and their partner.
- Balance and Wholeness: Jung emphasized the importance of balancing and harmonizing the anima and animus within oneself. This internal balance can have a positive impact on marital relationships, fostering understanding, empathy, and effective communication between partners.
Jung’s ideas about anima and animus in marriage highlight the psychological complexity of relationships and the potential for personal growth and transformation within the context of partnership. It’s worth noting that Jung’s theories have been influential in psychology, but they are also subject to various interpretations and criticisms.
We have two opportunities here: How Karen Blixen entered in the minds of her companions, in this case her counterparts, as their Anima and they entered her mind as her Animus.
Curiously, the example Jung uses to demonstrate what is the Anima for mankind, is exemplified in a romance which takes place in Afrika and can be better understood in the post Rider Haggard’s She – Animus Anima and although it is centered on Jung, it is perfect to our objetives.
Another coincidence (if there is such a thing…) is the similarity of suggested persona in these two pictures of Karen Blixen and Lou Andreas-Salomé:
Compare these two fotos with those Jung had in mind when defining Men’s Anima
Women (any) know that their appearance is fundamental to their acceptance, if not dominance, by men, and why not by women too. Those images above tell a lot about how they perceive that and why they look alike, what I will discuss this in the sequence.
Thinking on Jung’s perception of Animus, and reading perhaps the best biography of Karen Blixen, by Judith Thurman, when she composes the influence that her father had in the conformity of several basic things which defined her personality, examining her biography looking for clues to figure out where she was along Jung’s ideas, we have a list of clusters which can orient us.
Judith Thurman starts elaborating Karen Blixen yearning for life in the way of being able to enjoy it, be herself, individuate as Jung would say, bears a lot in similarity with her father’s hunting experiences which resemble with what would be the main activity or her first husband, Bror von Blixen, which is Safari.
What is Safari?
Although the following documentary is of a Safari Eduard VIII (England’s future King Edward VIII -later the Duke of Windsor) in 1928 and is tunned up to be politically correct, it gives an idea what Safari was all about. It is importante to notice that it was organized, or the company he worked with, Bror von Blixen, the first husband of Karen Blixen. It is excellent to set the pace we have to dive in if we want to get some idea of what Karen Blixen was like and, above all, what moved her.
In her biography of Karen Blixen, (Isak Dinesen: The Life of a Storyteller), the author Judith Thurman initially proposes that besides her penchant for hunting and exploring wilderness, she was gifted by the father of a “noble feeling” that the perversity of the mind brings in the way Nietzsche discusses it and it is a good starting point about something that bothers me.
My God! How can something be noble whose basis appears in Nietzsche through Schopenhauer and the best example is the anti Christ… how can a little girl not even without having reached puberty think about something like this? What about what was behind these safaris? She is indeed a challenge when you think about the refinement and delicacy of the proposals she puts in her writings.
Anyway, despite a little overwritten, Thurman’s biography is the best biography of Isak Dinesen there is.
What bothers me, besides this paradox of her taste vs her aesthetics, are the recurrent subjects present in all discussions about Karen Blixen, for example, in The Pact, and they are: Syphilis and rebellious behavior, or in defiance or disagreement with the conventional norms that govern good manners, melancholy, death, loss of love, unrequited love, unfulfilled love. It seems sine qua non and basic to enter this select club of those who “saw life from above” and supposedly burned their candle on both sides and smeared everything to exhaustion and are in a position to tell ordinary beings what it is all about and what they have to do to achieve the supreme enjoyment that they supposedly achieved. What definitely must be searched similarly to the beds they frequented, or in the intellectual proposals that range from the “sensible” ones of Goethe or Rilke or nonsense like those of Nietzsche. The favorite character is Nietzsche, because he lost his mind for having contracted syphilis, is perhaps the kingmaster or patron saint of mistrust and author of the most famous phrase about God, ending up a perfect picture of the utmost misery that a human being can get into.
It is interesting ot observe that her work is not very extensive, partly because she started writing, or rather publishing, very late, after the age of 40 and I take the opportunity to register a complete list as of today, August 2023(as a starting point, because there might be out there letters, essays and articles besides that):
Novels:
- “Seven Gothic Tales” (1934)
- “Out of Africa” (1937)
- “Winter’s Tales” (1942)
- “The Angelic Avengers” (1946) – Written under the pen name Pierre Andrézel
- “Last Tales” (1957)
Short Story Collections:
- “Seven Gothic Tales” (1934) – Also a novel
- “Winter’s Tales” (1942) – Also a novel
- “Last Tales” (1957) – Also a novel
- “Anecdotes of Destiny” (1958)
Autobiographical Works:
- “Out of Africa” (1937) – Also a novel
- “Shadows on the Grass” (1960) – A companion volume to “Out of Africa”
- “Letters from Africa, 1914-1931” (1981)
Essay Collections:
- “Ehrengard” (1963) – A novella included in this collection
- “On Modern Marriage and Other Observations” (1966)
- “The Silence of the Sea and Other Essays” (1987)
- “Daguerreotypes and Other Essays” (1979)
Poetry:
- “Anecdotes of Destiny” (1958) – Includes both short stories and poetry
Under the Pen Name Pierre Andrézel:
- “The Angelic Avengers” (1946) – Also published as “The Angelic Avengers: A Novel”
Collections and Anthologies:
- “The Collected Stories of Isak Dinesen” (1971) – A comprehensive collection of her short stories
Authoritative books which offer insights and understanding of Karen Blixen’s life and legacy, with various perspectives on her personality, experiences, and contributions to literature. Toghether they enable a critical analysis:
- “Out of Africa and Shadows on the Grass” by Karen Blixen: These memoirs provide a firsthand account of Karen Blixen’s experiences living in Kenya and managing a coffee plantation. “Shadows on the Grass” is a companion volume with additional essays and reflections.
- “Isak Dinesen: The Life of a Storyteller” by Judith Thurman: This comprehensive biography delves into Karen Blixen’s life, her creative process, and the influences that shaped her as an author. It offers a detailed examination of her relationships and literary contributions.
- “Tania Blixen: A Portrait” by Frans Lasson: Written by a close friend of Blixen, this book offers personal insights and anecdotes about her life, providing a more intimate perspective on the person behind the author.
- “Isak Dinesen and Karen Blixen: The Mask and the Reality” by Hanna Astrup Larsen: This biography explores the dual identity of Karen Blixen as both Isak Dinesen, the storyteller, and Karen Blixen, the private individual. It delves into her personal struggles, creativity, and the interplay between her life and her narratives.
- “Karen Blixen: The Mysterious Baroness” by Peter Englund: A historical perspective on Blixen’s life, this biography examines her experiences in the context of her time, delving into her relationships, travels, and literary achievements.
- “Karen Blixen: The Life Behind Her Stories” by Ole Wivel: This biography offers insights into Karen Blixen’s life and work, focusing on her relationships with family, friends, and fellow writers. It explores her influences and the cultural milieu in which she lived.
In the development of this work I will add other publications about people or from people who lived with her and were very important to her and that help us to understand the context.
I don’t know where to put this, because it was one of the conclusions I drew from these researches and readings, but when looking on the Internet, or even when it’s something that was published, one should be careful because a lot of information about Isak Dinesen and all these people in her universe, is not supported by reality, or rather, are false or impossible to prove. On such example, is in a creativity manual that rudely informs that she would have had sexual relations with the natives and eventually this was what caused her to be infected with syphilis. (Encyclopedia of Creativity by MARK A. RUNCO and STEVEN R. PRITZKER vol 2, pages 554/557 )On top of that this same manual informs that her husband Bror Blixen was cynical and accepting of her relationship with the love of her life, Denys Finch-Hatton. Everything should be taken with a grain of salt, including the writings she did herself, because she has a tendency to create narratives on everything, including her life.
Wilhelm Dinesen
Father of Isak Dinesen (Karen Blixen) alas Boganis as author of a minor classic of Danish literature, Hunting Letters and other publications.
He came from a wealthy family, the youngest son of Adolph Wilhelm Dinesen (1807-1876), a Danish army officer and landowner, and his wife Dagmar von Haffner, a general’s daughter. He was brought up in the great castle of Katholm , surrounded by an estate of 1,170 hectares in the Djursland peninsula in Jutland . Wilhelm Dinesen is both the enfant terrible and the romantic hero of his six sisters . He is also a great hunter, and a loving heart.
His adventures in the USA
He was a colorful character himself, a soldier-of-fortune and adventurer who lived and worked as a fur trapper among the Sokaogan Chippewa in North America. There is an English translation of his report about that staying in the USA: A DANE’S VIEWS ON FRONTIER CULTURE: “NOTES ON A STAY IN THE UNITED STATES,” 1872-1874, BY WILHELM DINESEN.
The first seventeen pages of the forty-one page travelogue, describing the stay in Platte County, Nebraska, contail) the bulk of Dinesen’s insights into the cultural incompatibility which, as he saw it, doomed the American Indian to extinction. The Dane’s sensitive and moving assessment of the intrinsically unjust but unavoidable contest between the two cultures echoes Alexis de Tocqueville to a remarkable extent.
Of the many reports about the American Indians and life on the frontier that were published in Scandinavia in the nineteenth century, Dinesen’s essay is one of the most accurate with regard both to descriptive details and to a general appreciation of the role that economic necessity plays in shaping different cultures. The flood of immigrants to the trans-Missouri West in the 1870’s, combined with the apparent complete dependence of the Plains Indians on the buffalo, no doubt led Dinesen to forecast the extinction of the peoples and cultures he valued so highly
A short biography in this report about him:
Since the soldier, writer, and politician Wilhelm Dinesen is virtually unknown outside Scandinavia, a word about his life is appropriate. Born in 1845, Dinesen belonged to a family of gentry in which distinguished military careers were repeated in successive generations. He outdid his father and grandfather in the eagerness with which he served, first in the Dano-Prussian War (1864), then in the French army against Prussia (1870-1871). Later, after his two-year stay in America, he participated in the Russo-Turkish War on the Turkish side. Dinesen oversaw his properties after his return and actively participated in both local and national political life until his death in 1895. Called Boganis by the Chippewa, Dinesen used this name as a pseudonym when his Jagtbreve (“Hunting Letters,” 1889, 1892) were published. Like Paris under Communen (“Paris during the Commune,” 1872, 1891 ), Dinesen’s other writings consistently reflect his active life as a soldier, hunter-naturalist and political observer. He is not least known as the father of the writer Karen Blixen-better known in English-speaking countries as Isak Dinesen-and Thomas Dinesen, whose recent biography of his father contains entries from the diary kept during the years in America.
A glimpse of Wilhelm Dinesen by himself
“It was in the late summer of 1872 when I traveled to America. I was sick of soul. I had participated in the Franco-Prussian War, had seen my hopes for redress of [ the Danish defeat of] 1864 shattered, and had then been a witness to the civil war in Paris. I was nauseated by both sides, had then lived in both Denmark and France, but I felt uncomfortable, restless, tired, worn out, weak. I doubted my own ability to achieve anything whatever, and then came some personal problems-and I gave up everything and went to America. What I thought I needed was work, compulsory, daily labor, physical exertion. At that time, it was not so clear to me as it is now that what I really needed most of all was rest, otherwise I would have headed right straight out to the flat, endless prairies under a cloudless, blue sky, where everything was grass, grass, and only grass, as far as the eye could see, or I would have found refuge in the deep, heavy, dark forests, where one can roam for days without seeing a single creature, without hearing a sound, not even a puff of wind through the trees. Someone who has not tried it, who has not been alone-all alone-many, many miles from the nearest person, does not know how beneficial the peace of the forest primeval can be. It was up in the virgin forests of Wisconsin that I settled down for a couple of years, but I only got there after taking some detours, which I shall now allow myself to tell about.”
If an image which was eventually imprinted in the soul of Isak Dinesen could be described in words, probably it would be something like what the took out of his chest above specially if you compare to the prosaic life he left behind (please read carefully the embedded archives The Dinesen family and Women’s First Choice and if you want to know where he embarked when he came back, press Politics)
Files in Danish can be automatically translated at the pressing of your right button of your mouse
Bror von Blixen
(I will take loosely information from Wikipedia and Internet above adequating to our subject)
He was her first husband, but actually she was in love with his twin brother, Hans at the age of 24 (1809). After 5 years they headed to Kenya, Africa, where she had bought a coffee farm in 1914.
The Blixen’s marriage, based on the idea of sharing an adventure together, did not last. Bror, gregarious and outgoing, was frequently away for long periods on safaris or military campaigns. His nomadic lifestyle was at odds with the demands of a married gentlemen farmer. It was during this first year of marriage that Karen may have contracted syphilis from Bror. Although she never exhibited the extreme late stages of the disease, such as loss of mental acumen, its diagnosis and subsequent treatments would plague her. In those times, syphilis, greatly dreaded and feared, was treated with arsenic and mercury; treatments that most likely contributed to the decline in her health over the years. The couple separated in 1921 and were divorced in 1925 with Karen being left to run the coffee plantation as it went through misfortune and mishap. Although there are reports blaming on him the failure, the fact of life is coffee does not get well at the altitude of her farm and and the straightening of their tap-roots to financial ruin caused by locusts, poor management, the devaluation of the rupee, labour problems and squatters’ rights. The crash of 1929 did the rest of it.
There is a tendency to look down to Bror, because he infected her syphilis and was blue blood. Nothing further from the truth… He was a character…. immortalized by Ernest Hemingway as Robert Wilson in his “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macumber” and also in Beryl Markham‘s West with the Night. A good question, which lingers and insists in our minds is that Bror married again and had other lovers and there is no notice of them being infected also with syphilis.
Another question which lingers even above this one is that Karen Blixen might not have Syphilis, or at least if she had, it was cured and her treatment, which was arsenic, might be the cause of her poor health as she got older
In his time he was considered the best Safari provider and the reference to which all the other hunter or safari organizers were measured. His clients included Hemingway, the Vanderilts, Edward VIII, the Prince of Wales, to name a few.
Bror took Isak Dinesen on safari with him, teached her to shoot and any ideation she had taken from her father about hunting or exploring wilderness were fulfilled by him. On top of that, she became “Baroness” which she pleased very much.
Thirty years after their first safari, Karen was quoted as saying, “If I should wish anything back of my life, it would be to go on safari once again with Bror Blixen
Blixen after divorcing Bror, took up professional hunting from 1922 to 1928, with time out in 1927 to accompany Charles Markham in crossing Africa east to west, first in The Vagrant from Stanleyville to Kano, then 2,818 miles (4,535 km) via International Harvester truck to Paris across Sahara Desert.
She really fulfilled her father’s idea that when you do something, do it big. Curiously, she thought that her adventures in Africa were something big, but she really excelled writing stories about her experiences.
Bottom line: Rose Cartwright stated that Blix was, “An excellent shot, a meticulous organizer, and very good teacher. He was on a par with the best African trackers, and they admired him greatly for his skills and stamina.”
Bror von Blixen-Finecke was a talented writer; his best-known book was his autobiography African Hunter (1938), long regarded as a fine Africana since its translation from Swedish in 1938 by F. H. Lyon. In 1988, St. Martin’s Press published a collection of von Blixen-Finecke’s letters to family and friends in a book titled Bror Blixen: The Africa Letters
Aage Westenholz, Tanne’s maternal uncle and family trustee after her father died, turned the farm into a company in 1918 with Aage as the chairman, blaming the farm’s losses on Bror Blix, but the fact is that coffee cannot be raised at that altitude. After years of mounting debts attributed to Bror’s mismanagement, Karen’s family called in their loans and the farm had to be sold. Bror also gave Karen syphilis.
For the record:
On 1 August 1928, Bror Blixen married the British aristocrat Jacqueline Harriet “Cockie” Alexander. They managed Singu, a 5,000 acres (2,000 hectares) property at Babati, owned by Blixen’s first hunting client Dick Cooper. In 1929, Blixen concentrated on his safari business and became Cooper’s East Africa agent. The safari work enabled the Blixens to purchase their own farm at Ndasagu. When he was visited in Kenya by the Swedish adventurer and aviator Eva Dickson in 1932, while “Cockie” was visiting her mother in England, the marriage quickly ended, as he and Eva became lovers. In 1935, he and “Cockie” divorced, and the following year he married Eva in New York, and they spent their honeymoon together with Ernest Hemingway and his wife Pauline Pfeiffer sailing around Cuba and the Bahamas. Cockie was quoted by Ulf Aschan as saying, “I have never regretted anything — except leaving Blix. He was the love of my life.”
After their divorce, Bror von Blixen-Finecke continued to live in Kenya and became associated with the Happy Valley community, a group of British and European expatriates known for their extravagant and often scandalous lifestyles. This community was characterized by its parties, affairs, and unconventional behavior.
Finch Hatton was part of the same social circles as the Happy Valley Set, although he wasn’t as deeply involved in the hedonistic and scandalous lifestyle that characterized the group. He was known for his love of adventure, hunting, and safaris.
Karen Blixen didn’t belong to the Happy Valley Set and that information in Wikipedia is wrong.
The Wanjohi Valley, actually the Happy Valley, is not near Karen Blixen’s coffee plantation in the Ngong Hills. The Wanjohi Valley is located to the north of Nairobi, Kenya, while Karen Blixen’s coffee plantation, also known as the Karen Blixen Coffee Garden, is situated in the Ngong Hills to the southwest of Nairobi.
The approximate distance between the Wanjohi Valley and the Karen Blixen Coffee Garden is around 100 kilometers (62 miles) by road and back in the 30’s when those events took place, it was very difficult to travel and sometimes impossible depending on the weather.
While Denys Finch Hatton had connections to the Happy Valley community and shared some similarities in terms of his lifestyle, he wasn’t considered one of the central figures of the set.
It seems that Denys Finch Hatton had an erratic relationship with Karen Blixen, aggravated by the fact that after they gave up their romance, they continued to be friends and he would sometimes be at Karen Blixen’s farm, sometimes elsewhere.
Whether or when their relationship was effective, platonic or just friendship or when and for how long each happened is to this date a mystery.
In March 1938, Eva Dickson von Blixen-Finecke died in a car crash outside Baghdad, on her way back from Calcutta after having been forced to give up her big dream of driving the Silk Road to Beijing. Bror von Blixen-Finecke didn’t learn about her death until 28 July 1938, and he was devastated by the news.
Bror Blixen left Africa for good in 1938, eventually returning to his native Sweden. Bror Blixen died in a 1946 car accident, in which he was a passenger. Von Blixen-Finecke’s identical twin, Hans, had died in a plane crash in 1917
Denys Finch Hatton
While still in Africa, she met and fell in love with English big game hunter Denys Finch Hatton, with whom she lived from 1926 to 1931. In her memoir Out of Africa he is simply described as a friend. They never married, most likely due to Karen’s health issues, and after suffering two miscarriages, she was never able to have children. Their intimate, but sometimes volatile relationship, was prematurely ended by Finch Hatton’s death in a plane crash in 1931. This tragedy, compounded by the failure of the coffee plantation (due partly to the Great Depression’s worldwide effects), took its toll upon Dinesen’s health and finances. She was forced to abandon her beloved farm in 1931 and return to Denmark. In saying goodbye to Africa, a place where she experienced both tremendous love and wrenching loss, she reflected:
- If I know a song of Africa, – I thought, of the Giraffe, and the African new moon lying on her back, of the ploughs in the fields, and the sweaty faces of the coffee-pickers, does Africa know a song of me?
Although, she tried to visit on a few occasions, Karen Blixen was never able to return to Africa.
The hallmark of her memories from Africa is Denys Finch-Hatton and he is a difficult figure to biographers or whoever may be interested in him. He is known to carefully erase any trace about him, coming to a point of asking the receivers of his letters to destroy them.
Most impressions about him came from Karen Blixen writings and the aura of nature lover and animal protector, for having absorbed the idea that came to be defended by his friend Edward VIII Prince of Wales, who after going on safaris coordinated by Finch Hatton, came to the conclusion that instead of rifles it would be better hunt animals with cameras or camcorders.
There is a lot of romanticism about hunting and safaris in Africa and the literature is full of accounts of these experiences and their authors, or the characters they describe, appear as heroes, or enviable for going through experiences that, frankly, beats the hell out of me, because deep down, what happened or may be still happens, is this: (with the smallest fire gun allowed to hunt lions)
If really lions eventually got to Denys Finch-Hatton grave to wander, it seems to me they should have the previous possibility in mind… Anyway, I didn’t make the world, I just live in it…. Since Denys Finch-Hatton persona and person is sort of unavailable and reality is quite elusive, specially when it comes to these subjects, perhaps his obituary is the most adequate, or the best, image of who he was and it can be seen here ate the obituaries of the New York Times and The Times of London:
Following this pattern there are two sources of information, West by Night by Beryl Markham, which although mostly about her own adventures, she includes Denys Finch-Hatton because they were close friends and she was habitué of Karen Dinesen farm and the other is Too Close To The Sun : The Audacious Life And Times Of Denys Finch Hatton, by Sara Wheeler, and the presentantion of the book is very similar to the obituary of The Times of London:
“Denys Finch Hatton was adored by women and idolized by men. A champion of Africa, legendary for his good looks, his charm, and his prowess as a soldier, lover, and hunter, Finch Hatton inspired Karen Blixen to write the unforgettable stories in Out of Africa. Now esteemed British biographer Sara Wheeler tells the truth about this extraordinarily charismatic adventurer.Born to an old aristocratic family that had gambled away most of its fortune, Finch Hatton grew up in a world of effortless elegance and boundless power. Tall and graceful, with the soul of a poet and an athlete’s relaxed masculinity, he became a hero without trying at Eton and Oxford. In 1910, searching for novelty and danger, Finch Hatton arrived in British East Africa and fell in love–with a continent, with a landscape, with a way of life that was about to change forever.Wheeler brilliantly conjures the mystical beauty of Kenya at a time when teeming herds of wild animals roamed unmolested across pristine savannah. No one was more deeply attuned to this beauty than Finch Hatton–and no one more bitterly mourned its passing when the outbreak of World War I engulfed the region in a protracted, bloody guerrilla conflict. Finch Hatton was serving as a captain in the Allied forces when he met Karen Blixen in Nairobi and embarked on one of the great love affairs of the twentieth century.With delicacy and grace, Wheeler teases out truth from fiction in the liaison that Blixen herself immortalized in Out of Africa. Intellectual equals, bound by their love for the continent and their inimitable sense of style, Finch Hatton and Blixen were genuine pioneers in a land that was quickly being transformed by violence, greed, and bigotry.Ever restless, Finch Hatton wandered into a career as a big-game hunter and became an expert bush pilot; his passion that led to his affair with the notoriously unconventional aviatrix Beryl Markham. But Markham was no more able to hold him than Blixen had been. Mesmerized all his life by the allure of freedom and danger, Finch Hatton was, writes Wheeler, “the open road made flesh.”In painting a portrait of an irresistible man, Sara Wheeler has beautifully captured the heady glamour of the vanished paradise of colonial East Africa. In Too Close to the Sun she has crafted a book that is as ravishing as its subject.”
Conclusion
Isak Dinesen, alias Karen Blixen
Extensive tests were unable to reveal evidence of syphilis in her system after 1925, although she did suffer a mild but permanent loss of sensation in her legs that could be attributed to use of arsenic as a tonic in Africa. The source of her abdominal problems remained unknown but such flareups often coincided with stressful events in Blixen’s life, such as the death of her mother. She also reportedly suffered from “panic attacks” which she describes as “… a sensation like walking in a nightmare.” Blixen’s health continued to deteriorate into the 1950s.
In 1955 she had a third of her stomach removed due to an ulcer and writing became impossible, although she did do several radio broadcasts. In her letters from Africa and later during her life in Denmark, Blixen speculated as to whether her pain and illness could be psychosomatic in origin. However, publicly she did nothing to dispel the impression that she was suffering from syphilis—a disease that afflicted heroes and poets, as well as her own father. Whatever the veracity was in regards to her various diagnoses, the stigma attached to this illness suited the authoress’ purpose in cultivating a mysterious persona for herself—she insisted on being called “Baroness,” – writer of esoteric tales. [2]
Unable to eat, Blixen died in 1962 at Rungstedlund, her family’s estate where she was born, at the age of 77.
Ideas which go through and impregnate Isak Dinesen/Karen Blixen writings
She appeals to so many millions of readers because she has the ability to tell stories in a very attractive, pleasant and exciting way, but because those who listen feel that what she says reflects what the person has inside, which is how reality reflects on them. Since we’re all different to a certain extent, in our beliefs and perceptions of reality, that’s where her genius lies. She manages to integrate opposites, as for example in the Feast of Babette, composing a story with strong pagan connotations and intending to create a metaphor for Christ and Christianity that can perfectly be criticized as anti-Christ but which has turned to be one of the best religious narratives there is. In her Out of Africa, she manages to make a hero out of a lover who not only betrayed her but in a way ended her marriage due to the obvious implications of her infidelity. In Out of Africa, her love for nature and natives borders to pantheism.
In her love for Africa and nature, she manages to tell an attractive story of barbarities that her European countrymen did in Africa with animals and with black people.
Her recurring themes are Melancholy, death, pain, loss of love, unrequited love, which are put in such a delicate and poetic way, that they provoke affection in those who read it.
The paradox that intrigues me the most is her approach to misery and poverty and stingy behaviour, as she did in Babette’s Feast, in a country which is by any means one of the richest country in the world even though originally she set it up in Norway and in the movie it moved to Denmark.
Last, but not least, most definetely, she is not a witch teamed up with the devil and if she manipulated and controlled Thorkild Bjørnvig, as he pretends in his narratives in The Pact, or the film shows, she didn’t do that at all with all the other men in her life, quite the contrary…
Someday I will read and check Out of Isak Dinesen Karen Blixen’s untold story It seems to have many things which deserves to be explored.
O Sentido da Vida - The Meaning of life 