WORDS by KATARINA MANCAMA | IMAGES SUPPLIED by CHRISTIE FYNN MORGAN
“I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong Hills.”
This is probably the first thing most people think about when they hear the name Karen Blixen. But there was so much more to one of Kenya’s most famous authors than ‘Out of Africa’.
As part of our women’s month celebration, we looked into the life and work of this fascinating woman, and found so much more than a wealthy baroness who had a love affair with (and in) Africa.
1. A letter from a King
“Barua a Soldani” means “letter from a King.” It is a story about a letter Karen Blixen received from Danish King Christian X as thanks for a lion-skin she had sent him. When inspecting her land one day, she found a young man from the Kikuyu tribe whose leg had been crushed under a felled tree. As she did not have any morphine with her, she decided to place the King’s letter on the young Kikuyu’s chest and tell him that a letter from a king “will do away with all pain.” It worked, and from that day onward the King’s “miracle-working” letter became part of her medicine stock. It was used so often that it gradually became, in Karen Blixen’s words, “brown and stiff with blood and matter of long ago.”
2. Her art is as good as her writing
Karen Blixen showed creative talent early in life, but it was not until later that she started writing. In 1902, at the age of 17, she took classes at the private drawing school of Charlotte Sode and Julie Meldahl in Copenhagen, and the following year she was accepted by the newly established women’s school at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts. Her most well-known artworks are: Young Kikuyu Girl and Abdullahi Ahamed.
3. Bogani House
Karen Blixen called her house in Kenya ‘Bogani’ or ‘Mbogani’ meaning ‘a house in the woods’.
4. Remembered in suburbia
The Nairobi suburb that stands on the land where Karen Blixen farmed coffee is now named Karen.
5. You mean ‘Tania?’
Karen Blixen was known to her friends not as ‘Karen’ but as ‘Tania’ (or ‘Tanne’ in Danish).
6. A failed career in coffee
When Karen Blixen left Kenya at the age of 46, she was penniless due to the failure of her coffee plantation. She returned to Rungstedlund, the house where she was born, and was dependent on her family for financial support for the rest of her life.
7. She never won a Nobel Prize for Literature, although nominated twice
Karen Blixen never received the Nobel Prize for Literature, although she was shortlisted a number of times. Peter Englund, permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, described it as “a mistake” that Blixen was not awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature and Ernst Hemingway famously once said that “I would have been happy, happier, today if the [1952] prize had been given to that beautiful writer Isak Dinesen.” * Blixen’s pen-name was Isak Dinesen.
8. Ill health
In her later life, Karen Blixen struggled with ill health, something that she attributed to having been infected with syphilis by her philandering husband (Baron von Blixen-Fineke) at the age of 29. It is believed that some of her symptoms were due to being treated with mercury and arsenic, the prescribed treatment for syphilis in her time. She eventually died of malnutrition, as a result of an unsuccessful gastric ulcer surgery in 1962.
9. Bank notes and postage stamps
Karen Blixen’s portrait was featured on the front of the Danish 50-krone banknote, 1997 series, from 7 May 1999 to 25 August 2005. She also featured on Danish postage stamps that were issued in 1980 and 1996.
10. What happened to Karen Blixen’s home in Kenya?
After Blixen left Kenya, Bogani House (her home) was sporadically occupied until it was purchased by the Danish government in 1964 and given to the Kenyan government as an independence gift. In 1985 the shooting of a movie based on Karen Blixen’s autobiography began and the National Museums of Kenya acquired the house for the purpose of establishing a Museum. The Museum was opened in 1986.
11. Two films based on Isak Dinesen stories won Oscars, in 1986 and 1987
The two films could not be more different in their achievements. ‘Out of Africa’ reinforced its appeal with a huge budget, big Hollywood stars, elaborate costumes, a big-name director, and a romanticized version of events. Contrastingly, ‘Babette’s Feast’ was made with unknown actors and a Danish director, an artistic masterpiece filmed with exquisite subtlety and authentic adherence to Isak Dinesen’s original story. Both ‘Out of Africa’ and ‘Babette’s Feast’ beautifully re-create an exotic time & place: colonial Kenya and a 19th century Scandinavian village. In both cases, the director has imagined and brought to life a time & place different from his own. (© Linda Donelson, 2010.)
12. Karen during WW1 & WW2
During the First World War, Karen Blixen once accompanied supplies for the colonial army. In the Second World War, she helped smuggle Jews out of German-occupied Denmark.
Other books by Karen Blixen
Famous mistakes published about Karen Blixen
