| …o autorze książki | Karen Blixen (17 kwietnia 1885 - 7 września 1962) - duńska pisarka, publikująca też pod pseudonimami Isak Dinesen, Pierre Andrezel i Osceola, poza Danią znana głównie ze wspomnień o swoim życiu w Kenii wydanych jako Pożegnanie z Afryką. Blixen urodziła się w Rungsted w Danii. Kształciła się w Kopenhadze, Paryżu i Rzymie. Pierwsze teksty literackie zaczęła publikować jako Osceola w duńskich czasopismach w 1905. W 1914 wyszła za mąż za swojego kuzyna, po czym wraz z mężem przeprowadziła się do Kenii, gdzie para zajęła się uprawą kawy. Liczne zdrady męża doprowadziły do separacji (1921) i rozwodu (1925). W rezultacie Blixen sama zajmowała się plantacją przez 10 lat (od 1921 do 1931, gdy z powodu załamania się rynku kawy powróciła do Danii). Po powrocie, w 1934 r. wydała Siedem niesamowitych opowieści. Później nadal tworzyła głównie opowiadania, po angielsku i duńsku, choć napisała także powieść Niewinne mścicielki. W 1952 roku odznaczona nagrodą literacka Złote Laury. Zmarła w 1962 w miejscu swego urodzenia, Rungsted. Pożegnanie z Afryką w 1985 roku sfilmował Sydney Pollack, Ucztę Babette w 1987 Gabriel Axel, a Nieśmiertelną opowieść z tego samego tomu opowiadań - w 1968 Orson Welles. Baroness Karen von Blixen-Finecke (April 17, 1885 – September 7, 1962), née Dinesen, was a Danish author also known under her pen name Isak Dinesen. Blixen wrote works both in Danish and in English. She is best known, at least in English, for Out of Africa, her account of living in Kenya, and one of her stories, "Babette's Feast", both of which were adapted into highly acclaimed motion pictures. The daughter of writer and army officer Wilhelm Dinesen, and Ingeborg Westenholz, (and sister of Thomas Dinesen), she was born into a Unitarian bourgeois family in Rungsted, on the island of Zealand, in Denmark, and was schooled in art in Copenhagen, Paris, and Rome. She began publishing fiction in various Danish periodicals in 1905 under the pseudonym Osceola, the name of the Seminole Indian leader, possibly inspired by her father's connection with American Indians. From August 1872 to December 1873, Wilhelm Dinesen had lived among the Chippewa Indians, in Wisconsin, where he fathered a daughter, who was born after his return to Denmark. (Wilhelm Dinesen hanged himself in 1895 when Karen was nine because he was diagnosed with syphilis). [edit] Life in Africa In 1914 Karen Dinesen married a distant Swedish cousin, Baron Bror von Blixen-Finecke, and the couple moved to Kenya, where they developed a coffee plantation, hiring African workers. Initially life in Africa for the pair was blissful as Karen 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 married couple were different in education and temperament and Bror Blixen was unfaithful to his wife. She developed syphilis toward the end of their first year of marriage, which, although eventually cured, created medical anguish for years afterwards. The Blixens separated in 1921 and were divorced in 1925. During this time she met and fell in love with the English big game hunter Denys Finch Hatton, who used her home as a base for his safaris from 1926 to 1931. She was pregnant by him twice but suffered miscarriages, probably due to her already fragile health. Finch Hatton died in the crash of his light airplane in 1931. At the same time, the failure of the coffee plantation (due partly to the world-wide Depression) forced the abandonment of her beloved farm and her permanent return to Denmark. [edit] Life as a writer She returned to Denmark and began writing in earnest. Her first book, Seven Gothic Tales, was published in the US in 1934 under the pseudonym Isak Dinesen. This first book, highly enigmatic and more metaphoric than Gothic, won great recognition, and further publication of the book in the UK and Denmark followed. Her second book, now the best known of her others, was Out of Africa, published in 1937, and its success established a firm reputation for her as an author. She was awarded the Tagea Brandt Rejselegat in 1939. During World War II, when Denmark was occupied by the Nazis, 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. Her writing during most of the 1940s and 1950s consisted of tales in the storytelling tradition. The most famous is "Babette's Feast", about a chef who spends her entire ten-thousand-franc lottery prize to prepare a final, spectacular gourmet meal. "The Immortal Story", in which an elderly man tries to buy youth, was adapted to the screen in 1968 by Orson Welles, a great admirer of Blixen's work and life. Her "tales"follow a traditional style of storytelling; most take place against the period background of the 19th century or even earlier. Concerning this deliberately "old-fashioned"taste, Blixen mentioned in several interviews that she wanted to express a spirit that no longer exists in modern times: the sense of destiny and courage. Indeed, many of her ideas, eloquently yet mysteriously expressed in her stories, can be traced back to those of Romanticism. Blixen’s concept of the art of the story is perhaps most directly expressed in the story "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, great skill, and precision.[citation needed] (Blixen's 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, if not of the mainstream, an inspiring figure in Danish culture. She was widely respected by her contemporaries, such as Ernest Hemingway and Truman Capote, and during her tour of the US in 1959, the list of writers who paid her visits includes Arthur Miller, E. E. Cummings, and Pearl Buck. Blixen was nominated for the Nobel Prize twice, in 1954 and 1957. [edit] Illness and death Although it was widely believed that syphilis continued to plague Karen 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 late 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 in Africa. Throughout the 1950s Blixen's health quickly deteriorated (in 1955 she had a third of her stomach removed due to an ulcer), and writing became impossible although she did several radio broadcasts. In her letters from Africa and later during her life in Denmark, Karen Blixen wondered if her pain was psychosomatic. Publicly she blamed her trouble on syphilis--a disease that afflicted heroes and poets, as well as her own father. Whatever her belief about her illness, the disease suited the artist's design for creating her own personal legend.[1] Unable to eat, Blixen died in 1962 at Rungstedlund, her family's estate, at the age of 77, apparently of malnutrition. The source of her abdominal problems remains unknown. |
