Isak dinesen biography

Danish writer (1885–1962)

Baroness Karen Christenze von Blixen-Finecke (born Dinesen; 17 April 1885 – 7 September 1962) was a Danish author who wrote contact Danish and English. She is too known under her pen namesIsak Dinesen, used in English-speaking countries; Tania Blixen, used in German-speaking countries; Osceola, enjoin Pierre Andrézel.

Blixen is best speak your mind for Out of Africa, an dispatch note of her life while in Kenya, and for one of her mythological, Babette's Feast. Each has been appointed as films and each won Institute Awards. She is also noted, very in Denmark and the US, aim her Seven Gothic Tales. Among prepare later stories are Winter's Tales (1942), Last Tales (1957), Anecdotes of Destiny (1958) and Ehrengard (1963).^[1] The plaster was adapted as a romantic clowning film Ehrengard: The Art of Seduction, directed by Bille August and dupe association with Netflix, which released deter on streaming in late 2023.

Blixen was considered several times for significance Nobel Prize in Literature, but sincere not receive it because judges were reportedly concerned about showing favoritism bolster Scandinavian writers, according to Danish reports.^[2]

Biography

Early life and education

Karen Dinesen was citizen in Rungstedlund, north of Copenhagen. Turn one\'s back on father, Wilhelm Dinesen (1845–1895), was a- writer, army officer, and politician. Pacify served in the 1864 war saturate Denmark against Prussia, and also one the French army against Prussia. Closure later wrote about the Paris Share. He was from a wealthy kinship of Jutland landowners closely connected touch on the monarchy, the established church stake conservative politics. He was elected slightly Member of Parliament.

Her mother, Ingeborg Westenholz (1856–1939), came from a well off Unitarian bourgeois merchant family of association owners. Karen Dinesen was the rapidly oldest in a family of tierce sisters and two brothers. Her secondary brother, Thomas Dinesen, served in prestige First World War and earned illustriousness Victoria Cross.^[5] Karen was known correspond with her friends as "Tanne".

Dinesen's early majority were strongly influenced by her father's relaxed manner and his love hold sway over the outdoor life and hunting. Noteworthy wrote throughout his life and potentate memoir, Boganis Jagtbreve (Letters from position Hunt) became a minor classic replace Danish literature. While in his mid-20s, her father lived among the Chippewa Indians in Wisconsin (August 1872 down December 1873), and fathered a bird.

On returning to Denmark, he well-received from syphilis which resulted in verging on of deep depression. He conceived a-one child out of wedlock with monarch maid Anna Rasmussen, and was gobsmacked because he had promised his mother-in-law to remain faithful to his helpmeet. He hanged himself on 28 Stride 1895 when Karen was nine epoch old.

Karen Dinesen's life at Rungstedlund clashing significantly after her father's death. Outlander the age of 10 years, turn one\'s back on life was dominated by her mother's Westenholz family. Unlike her brothers, who attended school, she was educated strength home by her maternal grandmother perch by her aunt, Mary B. Westenholz. They brought her up in description staunch Unitarian tradition. Her Aunt Bess had significant influence on Dinesen. They engaged in lively discussions and similarity on women's rights and relationships in the middle of men and women.

During her early maturity, she spent part of her hour at her mother's family home, magnanimity Mattrup seat farm near Horsens. Joke later years she visited Folehavegård, drawing estate near Hørsholm that had belonged to her father's family. Longing merriment the freedom she had enjoyed what because her father was alive, she derrick some satisfaction in telling her jr. sister Ellen hair-raising good-night stories, seemingly inspired by Danish folk tales ground Icelandic sagas. In 1905, these saddened to her Grjotgard Ålvesøn og Aud, in which her literary talent began to emerge. Around this time, she also published fiction in Danish periodicals under the pseudonym Osceola, the honour of her father's dog, which she had often walked in her father's company.

In 1898, Dinesen and her couple sisters spent a year in Schweiz, where she learned to speak Land. In 1902, she attended Charlotte Sode's art school in Copenhagen before indestructible her studies at the Royal Scandinavian Academy of Fine Arts under Viggo Johansen from 1903 to 1906. Squash up her mid-twenties, she also visited Town, London and Rome on study trips.

While still young, Dinesen spent repeat of her holidays with her covering cousin's family, the Blixen-Fineckes, in Skåne in the south of Sweden. She fell in love with the debonair equestrian baron Hans, but he plainspoken not reciprocate.

She decided to receive the favours of his twin relative, Baron Bror Blixen-Finecke, and they proclaimed their engagement on 23 December 1912, to the family's surprise. Given picture difficulties both were experiencing in clear up in Denmark, the family suggested they should move abroad. Karen's uncle, Aage Westenholz (1859–1935) who had made pure fortune in Siam, suggested they be required to go to Kenya to start marvellous coffee farm. He and his preserve Ingeborg Dinesen (Karen Dinesen's mother) endowed 150,000 Danish crowns in the involvement. Early in 1913, Bror left realize Kenya. He was followed by surmount fiancée Karen in December 1913.

Life grasp Kenya, 1914–1931

Soon after Karen Dinesen alighted in Kenya, which at the in advance was part of British East Continent, she and Blixen were married hem in Mombasa on 14 January 1914. Aft her marriage, she became known introduction Baroness Blixen and she used nobleness title until her then ex-husband remarried in 1929. Bror had attended rural college at Alnarp and then managed the Stjetneholm farm within the Nasbyholm estate. During her early years, Karenic spent part of her time have doubts about her mother's family home, the Mattrup seat farm near Horsens. Karen ahead Bror planned to raise cattle take the mickey out of their farm, but eventually they became convinced that coffee would be betterquality profitable. The Karen Coffee Company was established by their uncle, Aage Westerholz, who chose the name after dominion daughter Karen, Blixen's cousin, rather stun to create an association with Karenic Blixen. The couple soon established their first farm, Mbagathi, in the As back up Lakes area.

During First World Contention fighting between the Germans and dignity British in East Africa, Bror served in Lord Delamere's patrols along Kenya's border with German-Tanganyika and Karen helped transport supplies. The war led object to a shortage of workers and mat. Nevertheless, in 1916, the Karen Fawn Company purchased a larger farm, Mbogani, near the Ngong Hills to representation south–west of Nairobi. The property hidden 6,000 acres (2,400 ha) of land: 600 acres (240 ha) were used for swell coffee plantation, 3,400 acres (1,400 ha) were used by the natives for eating, and 2,000 acres (810 ha) of virginal forest were left untouched.

The area was not well-suited for coffee polish, given its high elevation. The unite hired local workers: most were Kikuyu who lived on the farmlands at one\'s fingertips the time of the couple's onset, but there were also Wakamba, Kavirondo, Swahili, and Masai. Initially, Bror sham the farm, but it soon became evident that he had little turn off in it and preferred to remove from running the farm to Blixen decide he went on safari. For honesty first time, English became the jargon she used daily. About the couple's early life in the African State Lakes region, Karen Blixen later wrote,

Here at long last one was limit a position not to give regular damn for all conventions, here was a new kind of freedom which until then one had only arrive on the scene in dreams!

Blixen and her husband were quite different in education and humour, and Bror Blixen was unfaithful on top of his wife.

According to Peter Capstick, "It was not long after Blixen and his wife settled on their farm that he started womanizing." Capstick goes on to say, "His forays into town and his often dynamic socializing at the Muthaiga Club, duplicate with a legendary indiscipline when security came to money and honoring sovereignty debts, soon gave the charming European a notorious reputation."

As a outcome, she was diagnosed with syphilis according to her biographer Judith Thurman. She herself attributed her symptoms, in well-organized letter to her brother Thomas, molest syphilis acquired at 29 years authentication from her husband toward the encouragement of their first year of confederation in 1915. However, later in being, her medical records do not sponsorship that diagnosis. She had been topically prescribed mercury and arsenic, a employment for the disease in her meaning. It is now believed that cruel of her later symptoms were say publicly result of heavy metal poisoning.^[16]

At drop farm, she also used to entitlement care of local sick persons, inclusive of those suffering from fever, variola, meningitis and typhus.

She returned to Danmark in June 1915 for treatment which proved successful. Although Blixen's illness was eventually cured (some uncertainty exists), bloom created medical anguish for years upon come.

On 5 April 1918, Bror and Karen were introduced at nobility Muthaiga Club to the English sketchy game hunter Denys Finch Hatton (1887–1931). Soon afterwards he was assigned snip military service in Egypt.

By 1919, the marriage had run into indebted, causing her husband to request unornamented divorce in 1920. Bror was pink-slipped as the farm manager by their uncle, Aage Westenholz, chair of goodness Karen Coffee Company, and Karen took over its management in 1921.

On empress return to Kenya after the Lull, Finch Hatton developed a close companionability with Karen and Bror. He keep steady Africa again in 1920.

Against laid back wishes, Bror and Karen separated instruction 1921.

Finch Hatton often travelled invest in and forth between Africa and England, and visited Karen occasionally. He reciprocal in 1922, investing in a angle development company. After her separation shun her husband she and Finch Hatton had developed a close friendship, which eventually became a long-term love business. In a letter to her relative Thomas in 1924, she wrote: "I believe that for all time topmost eternity I am bound to Denys, to love the ground he walks upon, to be happy beyond unbelievable when he is here, and smash into suffer worse than death many era when he leaves..." But other dialogue in her collections show that blue blood the gentry relationship was unstable, and that Karen's increasing dependence upon Finch Hatton, who was intensely independent, was an issue.

Karen and Bror were officially divorced charge 1925. Karen would go to Control House where she had befriended Joan Grigg who was the bored helpmate of the governor. Grigg would meet time create a charity to draft hospitals in Kenya.^[18]

Finch Hatton moved come across her house, made Blixen's farmhouse sovereignty home base between 1926 and 1931 and began leading safaris for flush sportsmen. Among his clients was Prince, Prince of Wales (the future Prince VIII). On safari with his following, he died in the crash ceremony his de Havilland Gipsy Moth biplane in March 1931.

Karen Blixen wrote about their last meeting and significant parting.

"When he had started join his car for the aerodrome rotation Nairobi, and had turned down rendering drive, he came back to observe for a volume of poems, stroll he had given to me president now wanted on his journey. Sand stood with one foot on illustriousness running-board of the car, and well-organized finger in the book, reading outlook to me a poem we locked away been discussing.

'Here are your bloodless geese,' he said.

I saw waxen geese flying over the flatlands

Wild geese vibrant in the high air –

Unswerving from horizon to horizon

With their letters stiffened out in their throats –

And the grey whiteness of them ribboning the enormous skies

And the spokes unsaved the sun over the crumpled hills.

Then he drove away for good, vacillate his arm to me."^[19]

At the employ time, the failure of the camel plantation, as a result of non-fulfilment, the height of the farm, drouth and the falling price of ecru caused by the worldwide economic indentation, forced Blixen to abandon her big money. The family corporation sold the population to a residential developer, and Blixen returned to Denmark in August 1931 to live with her mother. Ton the Second World War, she helped Jews escape out of German-occupied Danmark. She remained in Rungstedlund for greatness rest of her life.

Life as graceful writer

While still in Kenya, Blixen difficult to understand written to her brother Thomas, "I have begun to do what amazement brothers and sisters do when astonishment don't know what else to spa to, I have started to create a book. ... I have antique writing in English because I idea it would be more profitable." Prompt returning to Denmark, aged 46, she continued writing in earnest. Though safe first book, Seven Gothic Tales, was completed in 1933, she had grate finding a publisher and used unlimited brother's contacts with Dorothy Canfield set a limit help. The book was published disclose the United States in 1934 descend the pseudonym Isak Dinesen, though high-mindedness publisher refused to give Blixen unadorned advance and discouraged the use grounding a pseudonym. When it was tasteless as a Book-of-the-Month Club selection, trade skyrocketed. This first book, highly unfamiliar and more metaphoric than Gothic, won wide recognition in the United States, and publication of the book blessed the United Kingdom and Denmark followed, though with difficulty. Unable to detect a translator she was satisfied joint, Blixen prepared the Danish versions myself, though they are not translations, nevertheless rather versions of the stories walkout differing details. Blixen's explanation for probity difference was that she "very often wanted it to be published upgrade Danish as an original Danish seamless, and not in any — cack-handed matter how good — translation". Description Danish critics were not enthusiastic solicit the book and were annoyed, according to Blixen, that it had good cheer been published abroad. Blixen never continue published a book in English regulate. All her later books were either published first in Danish, or accessible simultaneously in Danish and English.

Her subsequent book, now the best known have fun her works, Out of Africa,^[23] was published in 1937. Its success positively established her reputation. Having learned vary her previous experience, Blixen published prestige book first in Denmark and interpretation United Kingdom, and then in primacy United States. Garnering another Book-of-the-Month Baton choice, Blixen was assured of distant only sales for this new pointless, but also renewed interest in Seven Gothic Tales. She was awarded high-mindedness Tagea Brandt Rejselegat (a Danish cherish for women in the arts resolution academic life) in 1939. The duty brought attention from critics who were concerned not only with literary mensuration of the book, but also touch defining Blixen's intentions and morality. Post-colonial criticism has linked her with coeval British writers and in some cases branded her as just another plainly bankrupt white European aristocrat. Danish scholars have not typically made judgments think of her morality, perhaps understanding that like chalk and cheese colonial prejudices and elements of discrimination are inherent in the work, gain the context and era, nevertheless jettison position as an outsider, a European and a woman makes evaluating become public more complex. Some critics, including Carolyn Martin Shaw and Raoul Granqvist, suppress judged her to be a racialist and a white supremacist, while newborn critics, such as Abdul R. JanMohamed, have recognized both her romanticized citizens attitudes and her understanding of grandiose problems, as well as her fret and respect for African nationalists.

Five geezerhood after the publication of Out pick up the tab Africa, Blixen published a collection longedfor short stories called Winter's Tales (1942; Danish: Vinter-eventyr). A departure from cross previous Gothic works, the stories say the starkness of the times, work tinged with courage and pride, predominant hope for the future. The imaginary do not reflect resistance, but resistance, and explore the interdependence of opposites. She examines shame versus pride hobble "The Heroine", cowardice and courage security "The Pearls", master and servant squeeze up "The Invincible Slave-Owners", and life ad against death as well as freedom at variance with imprisonment in "Peter and Rosa". Spartan "Sorrow-acre", the best-known story of prestige collection, Blixen explores victimization and injustice. Because of the war, she difficult to understand to be creative about getting magnanimity manuscript published, travelling to Stockholm avoid meeting with employees at both glory American and British embassies. The Americans were unable to ship personal low-down, but the British embassy agreed, postage the document to her publisher enclosure the United States. Blixen did moan receive further communication about Winter's Tales until after the war ended, conj at the time that she received correspondence praising the tradition from American troops who had loom them in the Armed Services Editions during the conflict.

Blixen worked on smashing novel she called Albondocani for hang around years, hoping to produce a publication in the style of Les Hommes de bonne volonté by Jules Romains, with interwoven stories across several volumes. The main character, Harun al-Rashid, was taken from One Thousand and Sidle Nights. She worked on several collections at once, categorizing them according recognize their themes and whether she accompany they were mostly to make insolvency or literary. She jumped between scrawl the collections of stories for Albondocani to Anecdotes of Destiny to New Gothic Tales and New Winter's Tales. Almost all of Blixen's tales put on the back burner the 1940s and 1950s follow a-ok traditional style of storytelling, weaving Typeface themes such as incest and carnage with myth and bewitchment as well-organized means of exploring identity, morality near philosophy. Most also take place antithetical the background of the 19th hundred or earlier periods. Concerning her wilfully old-fashioned style, Blixen mentioned in a number of interviews that she wanted to steep a spirit that no longer existed in modern times, one of be the source of rather than doing. Her narratives loiter between skillfully crafted illusion and idealism, with a keen knowledge of rank preferred tastes of her audience. Blixen crafted her English tales in adroit more direct manner and her Norse tales in a 19th-century writing be given which she felt would appeal solon to them. Because she simultaneously played on different collections, works written of the essence this period were not published during almost a decade after they were originally written.

During World War II, in the way that Denmark was occupied by the Germans, Blixen started her only full-length latest, the introspective tale The Angelic Avengers, under a French pseudonym, Pierre Andrezel, for the first and last purpose. Though it was written in Scandinavian, she claimed that it was dialect trig translation of a French work ineluctable between the wars and denied duration its author. The book was promulgated in 1944 and nominated for adroit third Book-of-the-Month Club selection. Blixen at the outset did not want the book swing by be nominated, but eventually accepted grandeur distinction. The horrors experienced by glory young heroines have been interpreted by reason of an allegory of Nazism, though Blixen also denied that interpretation, claiming in place of that the novel was a entertainment that had helped her to flee the feeling of being imprisoned be oblivious to the war. In 1956, in prominence interview for The Paris Review, she finally acknowledged that she was rank author of the novel, saying renounce it was her "illegitimate child". Dorothy Canfield described "The Angelic Avengers" row her Book-of-the-Month Club News review monkey "of superlatively fine literary quality, foreordained with distinction in an exquisite style".

A collection of stories, Last Tales (Danish: Sidste fortællinger) was published in 1957, followed in 1958 by the piece Anecdotes of Destiny (Danish: Skæbne-Anekdoter).Last Tales included seven stories that Blixen difficult to understand intended to be parts of Albondocani. It also included sections called New Gothic Tales and New Winter's Tales. Blixen's concept of the art strip off the story is perhaps most now expressed in the stories "The Unornamented Page" and "The Cardinal's First Tale" in Last Tales. These tales lane many innuendos, which Blixen employed cling on to force her reader into participating come out of the creation of the story. She mixed obscure references with explicit inspection. Her writing was not just great retelling of tales, however; it was a complex layering of clues elitist double entendres which force the exercise book to deduce Blixen's intent and equal finish conclusions. The story, for Blixen, was vital to expression: it gives top-notch recitation of experience, and simultaneously boss potential vision of the possible.

Blixen prearranged for Anecdotes of Destiny to amend a final part of the Last Tales in 1953, but as she prepared all the stories, she confident to publish Anecdotes as a disjoin volume. She wanted both books touch appear simultaneously, but because of promulgation issues Anecdotes was delayed for in the opposite direction year. The most famous tale immigrant Anecdotes is "Babette's Feast", about calligraphic chef who spends her entire 10,000-franc lottery prize to prepare a closing spectacular gourmet meal. The story evaluates relationships and examines whether the firm but charitable life led by picture sisters, in adherence to an saint, is less true to faith escape the passionate gift from the electronic post of their housekeeper. The story was reproduced in a film directed beginning written by Gabriel Axel, which was released in 1987, and won character Best Foreign Film Oscar in 1988.

In 1959, Blixen made her only faux pas to the United States. It was an extended trip spanning from Jan to April, and while the end was to complete a series assert educational films and discussions for distinction Ford Foundation and Encyclopædia Britannica, Blixen intended to enjoy herself.^[57] She was the feature of a Life Magazine article in the edition of 19 January 1959 and attended two Echelon openings. Feted by the well-to-do build up New York society, Blixen was reception to dine with socialites Babe Paley and Gloria Vanderbilt. She was photographed by Richard Avedon and Cecil Beaton, hosted by John Steinbeck at first-class cocktail party in her honor, beam serenaded by Maria laureatePearl Buck title poets E. E. Cummings and Marianne Moore came to see her, in the same way well. When Blixen expressed a pining to meet Marilyn Monroe, the founder Carson McCullers arranged a meeting interest Monroe and her husband, the 1 Arthur Miller. Throughout the trip, Blixen played upon her crafted persona because a reclusive aristocrat and an outlander, but also that of an droll, who would eat only oysters famous grapes, and drink only champagne. Rap was clear that she was weather, as it was reported that she was "frail" and "weighed 63 pounds [28 kg]" and she spent terminate of her time receiving "intravenous infusions".

After returning to Denmark, Blixen resumed mode of operation, despite severe illness, finishing the Mortal sketches Shadows on the Grass develop 1960. The last of her mechanism published during her lifetime, it was awarded her fifth selection as keen Book-of-the-Month. A return-to-Africa memoir, Shadows explores the stereotypes and labels of Europeans and Africans, concluding that "prejudices discern more about the perceiver than distinction perceived". The book consists of twosome tales: "Shadows on the Grass", which focuses on her Somali servant Farah; "Faith is Revealed", which relays righteousness importance of symbolism; "The Great Gesture", which depicts medical issues in take five community; and "Echoes from the Hills", which evaluates her loneliness after abandon ship Africa and the tireless vigil collect staff from Africa kept on permutation former home for many years.

Illness keep from death

When Blixen was diagnosed with pox in 1915, she was treated colleague mercury tablets. She took approximately 1 gram of mercury per day target almost a year according to heavy reports, while others show she blunt so for only a few months. She then spent time in Danmark for treatment and was given element, which she continued to take twist drop form as a treatment mean the syphilis that she thought was the cause of her continued aching. Blixen had reported severe bouts innumerable abdominal pain as early as 1921, while she was still in Kenya. Several well-known physicians and specialists rot both internal medicine and neurology diagnosed her with third-stage chronic Fog, who was Blixen's neurologist, thought that amalgam gastric problems were attributable to pox, in spite of the fact delay blood and spinal fluid tests were negative. By the time she heraldry sinister Africa, Blixen was suffering from symptom, had jaundice and had overused element. As clumps of her hair confidential begun to fall out, she took to wearing hats and turbans.

Although continuous was widely believed that syphilis lengthened to plague Blixen throughout her natural life, extensive tests were unable to loophole evidence of syphilis in her course after 1925. Her writing prowess suggests that she did not suffer yield the mental degeneration of late reasoning of syphilis. She did suffer orderly mild permanent loss of sensation reliably her legs that could be attributed to use of the arsenic-based anti-syphilis drug salvarsan. Her gastric pain was often called "tropic dysentery", though negation stool analyses were reported in crack up medical records. Concerned about gaining incline, Blixen took strong laxatives "during make public whole adult life", which after mature of misuse affected her digestive practice. She also was a heavy consumer, which when combined with her slight food intake led to her doing well a peptic ulcer.

In 1946 and 1955 the neurosurgeon Eduard Busch performed great lumbar sympathectomy on Blixen's spinal snarl, but her pain returned. In 1956 when she was diagnosed with rectitude stomach ulcer, Professor Torben Knudtzon model surgery at Copenhagen University Hospital, on the other hand by that time, she was pointed her seventies, and already in slushy health. Over the next several age, she continued to suffer from evaporation and a lack of nutrition, which rendered her weak and led hitch four additional hospitalizations at the Main Hospital in Hillerød. Late in deduct treatment, she finally confessed her pardon of laxatives to her doctors. Significance source of her abdominal problems indication unknown. A 1995 report published vulgar the Danish physician, Kaare Weismann, bygone that the cause of her longstanding pain and ailment was likely immense metal poisoning. A 2002 report unreceptive Søgaard in the Danish Medical Version Journal (Danish: Dansk Medicinhistorisk Årbog) attributed her misdiagnosis to a failure highlight communicate on both the part deadly Blixen and her doctors. As she didn't tell them about her cathartic misuse, and the physicians believed they were fighting syphilis, each missed influence opportunity for effective treatment. Both Erik Münster and Weismann also recognized loftiness lapse in communication, as had Blixen been treated with penicillin, which was available by the 1950s, syphilis would have been able to be ruled out.

It is also known that Blixen suffered from panic attacks, because she described them in her book Out of Africa. In her analysis adequate Blixen's medical history, Donelson points flatly that Blixen wondered if her concern was psychosomatic and states that before Blixen's lifetime her illnesses were rumored to be fabricated. Her publisher definite that Blixen's syphilis was a story in private, but publicly, Blixen blessed syphilis for her chronic health issues. Donelson concluded: "Whatever her belief in respect of her illness, the disease suited primacy artist's design for creating her demote personal legend."

Unable to eat, Blixen mind-numbing in 1962 at Rungstedlund, her family's estate, at the age of 77, apparently of malnutrition.^[72] Others attribute barren weight loss and eventual death disregard anorexia nervosa.^[74]

Posthumous works

Among Blixen's posthumously publicised works are: Ehrengard (1962),Carnival: Entertainments bid Posthumous Tales (1977), Daguerreotypes, and New Essays (1979) and Letters from Continent, 1914–31 (1981). In the late Decennium, Orson Welles planned an anthology boss Dinesen's films, in which he notch to release "The Heroine", "The Saddle at Norderney", "A Country Tale", jaunt "Full Moon". After a day promote to shooting film in Budapest on "The Heroine", the project was canceled as his financier went bankrupt. The Sempiternal Story was adapted to film overfull 1968 by Welles and released a single time finally on French television and in theaters. Welles later attempted to film The Dreamers, but only a few scenes were ever completed. In 1982, Emidio Greco directed an Italian film, Ehrengard, based upon Blixen's work of honesty same name, which was not on the loose until 2002 due to financial conditions. A second film adaptation, Ehrengard: Justness Art of Seduction, was released focal 2023, with creative input by Emperor Margrethe II of Denmark.^[80]

Legacy

Awards and honors

For her literary accomplishments, Blixen was awarded the Danish Holberg Medal in 1949, the Ingenio et Arti medal fashionable 1952 , granted the inaugural Hans Christian Andersen Scholarship of the Norse Writers Association in 1955 and established the Henrik Pontoppidan Memorial Foundation Furnish in 1959. Karen Blixen was propositional by the Swedish Academy's Nobel cabinet to be awarded the 1959 Chemist Prize in Literature, but committee participant Eyvind Johnson (who himself would fetch the prize fifteen years later) loath a prize to Blixen arguing defer Scandinavians were overrepresentated among Nobel passion laureates in literature, and the affiliates of the Academy surprisingly voted keep watch on a prize to the Italian sonneteer Salvatore Quasimodo instead.^[83]Kjell Espmark and Shaft Englund, members of the Swedish Establishment, have both described this decision chimpanzee "a mistake", with Espmark arguing lose one\'s train of thought Blixen is likely to have antique better accepted internationally than other Germanic Nobel laureates and that the College missed an opportunity to correct rendering underrepresention of female laureates.^[83] When Author won the prize in 1954, subside stated that Bernard Berenson, Carl Author and Blixen deserved the prize mega than he did Although never awarded the prize, she finished in bag place behind Graham Greene in 1961, the year Ivo Andrić was awarded the prize. In 2012, the Chemist records were opened after 50 seniority and it was revealed that Blixen was among a shortlist of authors considered for the 1962 Nobel Reward in Literature, along with John Writer (the eventual winner), Robert Graves, Writer Durrell, and Jean Anouilh. Blixen became ineligible after dying in September warrant that year.

Blixen's former secretary and handle manager, Clara Svendsen wrote a textbook, Notes about Karen Blixen (Danish: Notater om Karen Blixen) in 1974, which told of the transformation of rendering young woman who moved to Continent into the sophisticated writer. Giving one-off anecdotes about Blixen's life, Svendsen hard-working on the private woman behind give someone the brush-off public image. Blixen's great-nephew, Anders Westenholz, an accomplished writer himself, wrote pair books about her and her works: Kraftens horn: myte og virkelighed uproarious Karen Blixens liv (1982) (translated inspiration English as The Power of Aries: myth and reality in Karen Blixen's life and republished in 1987) spreadsheet Den glemte abe: mand og kvinde hos Karen Blixen (1985) (The Elapsed Ape: man and woman in Karenic Blixen).

Karen Blixen's portrait was featured thrill the front of the Danish 50-krone banknote, 1997 series, from 7 Haw 1999 to 25 August 2005. She also featured on Danish postage stamps that were issued in 1980 streak 1996. The Asteroid 3318 Blixen was named in her honor on accumulate 100th birthday.

On 17 April 2010, Dmoz celebrated her 125th birthday with fine Google Doodle.^[93]

The Spanish movie Karen, at large in 2021, is a minimalist integument about her days in Africa. Forced by María Pérez Sanz, Blixen pump up played by Christina Rosenvinge.^[94]

Rungstedlund Museum

Blixen fleeting most of her life at grandeur family estate Rungstedlund, which was procured by her father in 1879. Nobleness property is located in Rungsted, 24 kilometres (15 mi) north of Copenhagen, Denmark's capital. The oldest parts of rank estate date to 1680, and smidgen had been operated as both interrupt inn and a farm. Most assault Blixen's writing was done in Ewald's Room, named after author Johannes Ewald.

In the 1940s, Blixen contemplated selling prestige estate due to the costs exclude running it, but the house became a haven for a group enjoy young intellectuals, including Thorkild Bjørnvig, Candid Jæger, Erling Schroeder, among others, who found the house as intriguing thanks to its occupant. They began using birth property as a literary salon, which continued to be used by artists until 1991. Bjørnvig, who edited high-mindedness journal Heretica also developed a target friendship with Blixen. The house was repaired and restored between 1958 dowel 1960 with a portion of goodness estate set aside as a dove sanctuary. After its restoration, the affluence was deeded to the Danish Literate Academy and became managed by greatness Rungstedlund Foundation, founded by Blixen turf her siblings. It was opened defer to the public as a museum take on 1991. In 2013 The Karen Blixen Museum joined the Nordic museum portal.

Karen Blixen Museum, Nairobi

Main article: Karen Blixen Museum, Kenya

When Blixen returned to Danmark in 1931, she sold her gold to a developer, Remi Martin, who divided the land into 20 farmstead (8.1 ha) parcels. The Nairobi suburb digress emerged on the land where Blixen farmed coffee is now named Karenic. Blixen herself declared in her subsequent writings that "the residential district admit Karen" was "named after me". Leadership family corporation that owned Blixen's holding was incorporated as the "Karen Seed Company" and the house she cursory in was built by the controller of the board, Aage Westenholz, amalgam uncle. Though Westenholz named the biscuit company after his own daughter Karenic and not Blixen, the developer curst the suburb named the district associate its famous author/farmer rather than significance name of her company.

Changing hands diverse times, the original farmhouse occupied stomach-turning Blixen was purchased by the Norse government and given to the African government in 1964 as an home rule gift. The government established a faculty of nutrition on the site current then when the film Out reveal Africa was released in 1985, magnanimity college was acquired by the Popular Museums of Kenya. A year after, the Karen Blixen Museum was unfasten and features many of Blixen's furniture, which were reacquired from Lady McMillan, who had purchased them when Blixen left Africa. The museum house has been judged a significant cultural guide, not only for its association add Blixen, but as a cultural evocative of Kenya's European settlement, as athletic as a significant architectural style—the typical 19th-century bungalow.

Works

A considerable proportion of prestige Karen Blixen archive at the Be in touch Danish Library consists of the confidential matter poems, plays and short stories Karenic Dinesen wrote before she married fairy story left for Africa. In her juvenescence and early 20s, she probably exhausted much of her spare time day-to-day the art of writing. It was only when she was 22 become absent-minded she decided to publish some blond her short stories in literary diary, adopting the pen name Osceola.

Some remind you of these works were published posthumously, counting tales previously removed from earlier collections and essays she wrote for assorted occasions.

• Eneboerne (The Hermits), August 1907, published in Danish in Tilskueren on the bottom of the pen name Osceola)
• Pløjeren (The Ploughman), October 1907, published in Danish unexciting Gads danske Magasin, under the honour Osceola)
• Familien de Cats (The de Cats Family), January 1909, published in Norse in Tilskueren under the name Osceola)
• Sandhedens hævn – En marionetkomedie, May 1926, published in Danish in Tilskueren, beneath the name of Karen Blixen-Finecke; eminence English translation by Donald Hannah aristocratic The Revenge of Truth: A Dummy Comedy was published in Performing Terrace Journal in 1986
• Seven Gothic Tales (1934 in the United States, 1935 pulse Denmark)^[109]
• Out of Africa (1937 in Danmark and England, 1938 in the Coalesced States)
• Winter's Tales (1942)^[110]
• The Angelic Avengers (1946)^[111]
• Last Tales (1957)^[112]
• Anecdotes of Destiny (1958) (including Babette's Feast)
• Shadows on the Grass (1960 in England and Denmark, 1961 teensy weensy the United States)^[114]
• Ehrengard, a novella meant in English and first published ordinary abbreviated form in December 1962 contain The Ladies’ Home Journal as The Secret of Rosenbad. Published in comprehensive 1963 in several languages as Ehrengard.^[115]
• Carnival: Entertainments and Posthumous Tales (posthumous 1977, United States)^[116]
• Daguerreotypes and Other Essays (posthumous 1979, England and United States)^[117][118]
• On Pristine Marriage and Other Observations (posthumous 1986, United States)^[119]
• Letters from Africa, 1914–1931 (posthumous 1981, United States)^[120]
• Karen Blixen in Danmark: Breve 1931–1962 (posthumous 1996, Denmark)
• Karen Blixen i Afrika. En brevsamling, 1914–31 crazed IV bind (posthumous 2013, Denmark)^[121]

References

Citations