It is November and it is to the point where many of the books in my library pile are meant to check off books remaining in yearly challenges in some capacity. Out of Africa by Isak Dinesen, the pen name for Karen Blixen, is highly regarded. As such, it was chosen as a buddy read in the group Retro Chapter Chicks this month. I also happened to have the book on my bingo card in the group Catching up on Classics so I could read to check off that box as well, and now I only have one box left to complete the full card. Besides being able to check off multiple boxes at a time, I enjoy memoirs and biographies so I was looking forward to reading a memoir of the classic variety. There is something about this book that I can not quite pinpoint that just does not do it for me.
Karen Blixen managed a coffee farm in the Ngong hills of Kenya during the interwar years. In her memoir she passionately describes the time and place where she lived. One could get a feeling that this memoir focuses on Blixen's love affair with Africa as she describes her farm, the relationships she forged with both natives and Europeans, the Kenyan way of life, and the luscious scenery. Yet, I need action. I need a narrator of a memoir to move quickly from one point to the other or I find myself bored. Despite my fascination with the African way of life during the 1920s, this memoir read slow. As Blixen described the daily life on her farm, the prose had me dosing off; however, when a car went to the bustling city of Nairobi or the natives held a festive dance or people decided to go on a safari, I had my interest piqued. Thus is the contrast between past and modern settings.
I do give Blixen credit for managing her farm alone with a delinquent husband for nearly ten years during an era when women were for the most part property of their husbands. Blixen was well respected by the natives and enjoyed a working relationship with government officials in Nairobi. She treated the native Kikuyu and Masai people with dignity and they in turn asked Blixen to intercede on their behalf in most government matters. Because of Blixen's position in Kenyan and Somali society, Out of Africa has remained a well read book among feminist circles. Critics laud Blixen's spirit of adventure and spunk during this bygone era. For that reason I was willing to read to the conclusion and give the memoir the benefit of the doubt.
While I got a feel for Kenya of ninety years ago, the prose moved too slow to rank Out of Africa among my favorite classics read. The subject matter makes it a worthy read and I would still urge people to give it a try on a lazy day especially as the scenery sounds breathtaking. Out of Africa aptly check off the classic I put off reading square on my bingo card as this was a book that felt like one that I wanted to give up on throughout; yet, I managed to endure Blixen's stay on African soil. A worthy read, just not completely my taste.
3 stars 0241262119 I had a farm in Africa at the foot of the Ngong Hills.
After finishing the book I turned back to read this opening line again, and in this first sentence one can sense the pride that Blixen felt for this place, and one can also feel the sadness, the disappointment in the word had, knowing that it slipped away from her at the end. Losing her farm and also losing her beloved Denys Finch Hatton must have been devastating.
This is one of those memoirs that is as compelling as good fiction. Blixen's stories of African life, of the people, of the culture, of her life on the farm, and the extraordinary events she experienced far exceed what most of us will ever encounter. 0241262119 Out Of Africa is the poignant memoir of Karen Blixen, a Danish woman, who lived on a coffee farm in Kenya for many years. It is not a strict chronological biography, more a rambling series of memories. Beautifully written, it portrays a life among the native peoples, wild vistas and animals. This one will stay with you for a long while. Recommended. 0241262119 “I had a farm in Africa at the foot of the Ngong Hills.”
From its first sentence Out of Africa captivated me. It was enchanting, old-fashioned, poignant, wistful and insightful. Karen Blixen’s story of her life in Africa, a series of reminiscences from 1914 to 1931, portrays her love for that country – the people, the land, the animals. It has a fairy tale quality at times. Blixen is a master story-teller; it’s easy to understand why Denys Finch Hatton loved to hear her recount her stories.
The book, however, is not without its issues. Of its time, the memoirs could disturb our modern sensibilities (such as when she talks of ‘whites’ and ‘coloured people’, or when she describes her lion hunting adventures). Remember that at the time it was written there was no banner of political correctness. I don’t read in her writings a sense of ethnic superiority, but she was unapologetically aristocratic. Nevertheless, the author's love of Africa and its people shines through. But that Africa she tells us about is no more.
With her coffee farm losing money, despite her desperate efforts to save it, her African adventure unravels at the end:
It was not I who was going away, I did not have it in my power to leave Africa, but it was the country that was slowly and gravely withdrawing from me, like the sea in ebb-tide. The procession that was passing here,--it was in reality my strong pulpy young dancers of yesterday and the day before yesterday, who were withering before my eyes, who were passing away for ever. They were going in their own style, gently in a dance, the people were with me, and I with the people, well content.'
Highly recommended! 0241262119 I chose to read this book in high school as one of those free-reading things for which you later have to give a presentation. This is a book about Africa for white people who want to go on a safari and see the cool animals, which is basically what the author did. I kinda hated Karen Blixen for her condescending attitude towards the natives and I felt the whole book was nothing but pretentious, self-aggrandizing bullshit. If I had had any courage, I would have done two things differently for my report: 1) I would have read a book about Africa written by someone who has a real respect for the land, not someone who writes of Africa as if it were an out of control child that needed to be brought in line, and compared the two. 2) I would have admitted to not liking the book (I thought that if I said I didn't like it, I would look stupid) instead of pretending to enjoy it. My pretending totally sucked and it came off looking like I didn't read the book. I think I may have failed the presentation, but I can't remember.
In case you were wondering, I added an extra star because I actually do like the author's writing style. 0241262119
'When you have caught the rhythm of Africa, you find that it is the same in all her music.'
From the moment Karen Blixen arrived in Kenya in 1914 to manage a coffee plantation, her heart belonged to Africa. Drawn to the intense colours and ravishing landscapes, Karen Blixen spent her happiest years on the farm and her experiences and friendships with the people around her are vividly recalled in these memoirs. Out of Africa is the story of a remarkable and unconventional woman and of a way of life that has vanished for ever.
A new series of twenty distinctive, unforgettable Penguin Classics in a beautiful new design and pocket-sized format, with coloured jackets echoing Penguin's original covers. Out of Africa
INCANTO E CAPRICCI DEL DESTINO
Durante il suo ultimo grande viaggio, in USA, Karen Blixen fu fotografata da Cecil Beaton. A Nyack, villaggio venti km a Nord di Manhattan, contea di Rockland, a casa dell’amica e collega scrittrice Carson McCullers, fu ritratta in compagnia di Arthur Miller e Marilyn Monroe, che la Blixen teneva molto a conoscere.
La prima volta che l’ho letto è stato nell’età in cui si ha bisogno di nemici, in cui l’odio sembra nobile e tonificante, in cui uccidere i genitori, soprattutto il padre, e la sua dannata autorità, è gesto vitale pur se meramente simbolico.
Karen Blixen incarnò per me il paternalismo del colonialista, e il colonialista era un nemico.
E allora non conoscevo ancora l’Africa e non ne ero ancora innamorato.
Poi, leggendo Capote mi sono imbattuto in questa frase:
Non c’è una sola pagina di quel libro che non tremi di vita come una foglia su un albero scosso dalla tempesta,
e m’è venuta voglia di dargli una seconda chance.
La tomba di Karen Blixen a Rungstedlund in Danimarca.
Ho fatto bene, perché è un libro stupendo, un puro intenso incanto dalla prima all’ultima pagina, e probabilmente dal primo all’ultimo rigo.
Non solo Blixen scrive magnificamente e i suoi racconti sono meravigliosi, ma è ben lungi dai preconcetti tipici dei bianchi. Al contrario, sente viva forte e penetrante la malia dell’Africa.
Al punto che ne sostiene la superiorità, rispetto all'Europa, in quanto più pura e più vicina a quanto Dio aveva preparato per gli uomini.
Le pagine che raggiungono vette toccando corde profonde sono tante: quelle in cui Blixen parla della natura del continente, dell’erba, dei colori e degli odori – indimenticabili quelle sulla notte africana, i cieli stellati, la luna – il racconto del piccolo cuoco Kamante – l’antilope Lulu, da cucciola ad adulta e poi madre – gli africani e la scrittura – la giustizia africana …
Meryl Streep e Robert Redford nel celebre film di Sydney Pollack, 1985. Nel film, data la presenza di una star come Redford, la parte dedicata a Denys Finch Hatton è enormemente dilatata rispetto al libro. Il film ha vinto 7 Oscar: film, regia, sceneggiatura non originale, fotografia, scenografia, soundtrack, e sonoro.
Il capitolo più lungo, Dal taccuino di un emigrante, è proprio quello che il titolo rivela, appunti divisi in corti paragrafi, quasi frettolosi, più slegati delle pagine che precedono e seguono, e dimostrano che Blixen riesce a rendere musicale e incantevole anche la disarmonia.
L’ultimo capitolo, un sesto del libro, è dedicato all’addio:
Non ero io ad andarmene, io non avevo il potere di lasciare l’Africa, ma era l’Africa che lentamente, gravemente, si ritirava da me, come il mare nella bassa marea.
E questo spiega il titolo originale, ‘Out of Africa’, un distillato di nostalgia.
Denys Finch Hatton negli anni 1910-1920.
Ma per una volta il titolo italiano mi sembra più azzeccato: perché questo libro, che non è certo un vero romanzo, che è molto diverso dal film che ne è stato tratto, che non racconta la storia d’amore tra Karen e Denys, questo libro è una meditazione lirica sugli anni che la Blixen passo in Africa Orientale (Kenya, parte dell’impero inglese) dal 1913 al 1931, è un tributo a quel continente che è la madre di ogni vita, alle genti che lo abitano, e a quelle persone, amici collaboratori viaggiatori, che hanno toccato la sua vita lasciando un segno.
Blixen procede per rievocazioni, senza un filo temporale, a volte senza neppure un filo logico, come se inseguisse ombre ricordi fantasmi fascinazioni… S’immerge nella strepitosa natura africana, circondata dalla sua fauna, e dai suoi popoli, i misteriosi guerrieri Masai, ma ancora di più i Kikuyu, l’etnia di quello che sarà il primo presidente del Kenya indipendente, Yomo Kenyatta.
Karen Blixen fotografata col fratello Thomas alla fattoria africana negli anni Venti.
Curiosità #1: i souvenir che si vedono al museo Blixen ai piedi dell’altopiano del Ngong - gli stivali, la macchina da scrivere, l’orologio, il grammofono - sono copie rifatte per il film di Pollack dell’85, con Meryl Streep e Robert Redford.
Curiosità #2: in Il giovane Holden il protagonista cita Out of Africa e chiama l'autrice con lo pseudonimo Isak Dinesen. Il romanzo viene descritto come bellissimo e Holden dice di rileggere più volte alcune frasi e che Isak Dinesen è un autore di quelli che lui chiamerebbe volentieri al telefono.
Curiosità #3: nell’ultimo grande viaggio in America che fece, la Blixen fu fotografata da Cecil Beaton. Lo scatto più famoso è una foto a casa dell’amica Carson McCullers, l’autrice di ‘Riflessi in un occhio d’oro’. Ci sono Arthur Miller e Marilyn Monroe, che la Blixen teneva molto a conoscere. Marilyn è biondissima, scollatissima, bellissima. Karen ossuta, una cuffia da folletto in testa, giri di sciarpa attorno al collo. Pare abbiano anche ballato insieme. A volte i capricci del destino, quelli che hanno dato il titolo al suo ultimo libro, accomunano le persone più diverse: Karen e Marilyn, pur con età molto diverse, sono uscite di scena nello stesso anno, il 1962.
La casa dove si presume abbia vissuto Kareb Blixen, ora adibita a museo. 0241262119 ”Up in this air you breathed easily, drawing in a vital assurance and lightness of heart. In the highlands you woke up in the morning and thought: Here I am, where I ought to be.”
Karen Blixen in 1913. Her whole life was before her.
When Karen Blixen married her second cousin Baron Bror Blixen-Finecke in 1914 and followed along as a devoted wife should to help him run a coffee plantation in Kenya, I’m sure she had an idea of what her life was to be, but the story of our lives generally deviates from the perceptions our youthful fancies conceive. Her marriage was in shambles. Her husband proved a poor manager of the farm, and his sexual indiscretions had left her with a parting gift of a case of syphilis. She let him live, which was touch and go, booted him off the farm, and took over the management of the Kenyan farming enterprise.
Baroness Blixen kept her title though.
Most people would have, given the nature of these events, thrown in the towel and made their way back to Denmark, battered and bruised and hoped that people had short memories of them ever being gone, but Blixen was made of sterner stuff. She decided she was going to turn this series of unfortunate events into a triumph, and for a decade and a half she did just that.
She created an oasis for her friends to visit. ”To the great wanderers amongst my friends, the farm owed its charm, I believe, to the fact that it was stationary and remained the same whenever they came to it. They had been over vast countries and had raised and broken their tents in many places, now they were pleased to round my drive that was steadfast as the orbit of a star. They liked to be met by familiar faces, and I had the same servants all the time that I was in Africa. I had been on the farm longing to get away, and they came back to it longing for books and linen sheets, and the cool atmosphere in a big shuttered room.”
I can imagine the thrill that they must have felt when they first spotted the red roof of her house and knew that they were about to step out of Africa and back into Europe for an evening of discourse, food, and wine.
She collected an eclectic group of friends, mostly lost Europeans who escaped to Africa from something or came in search of themselves. None made a bigger impression on her than Denys Finch Hatton (played by Robert Redford in the movie). ”He would have cut a figure in any age, for he was an athlete, a musician, a lover of art and a fine sportsman. He did cut a figure in his own age, but he did not quite fit in anywhere. His friends in England always wanted him to come back, they wrote out plans and schemes for a career for him there, but Africa was keeping him.”
Denys Finch Hatton
I certainly understand the dilemma of being a person out of time. I believe I’ve been born into one of the most boring eras ever in the history of the world. Fortunately for me, I have the ability to time travel and escape this world at will by simply opening the pages of a book. By the way, I’ve just returned from an expedition to a coffee plantation circa 1925 in Kenya where I drank wine with Baroness Blixen, listened to the lions roar, and luxuriated in the stillness that follows on the heels of such a proclamation of dominance.
There is the moment when Blixen witnessed giraffes being loaded on a ship to be sent to Hamburg. ”They could only just have room to stand in the narrow case. The world had suddenly shrunk, changed and closed around them.
They could not know or imagine the degradation to which they were sailing. For they were proud and innocent creatures, gentle amblers of the great plains; they had not the least knowledge of captivity, cold, stench, smoke, and mange, nor of the terrible boredom in the world in which nothing is ever happening.”
Will they dream of their country? Do I wish that they can? Or do I hope they forget the freedom they once had?
I’ve been to several zoos in my lifetime, and someone will have to hold a very large gun to my head to ever have me set foot in one again. When I go to a zoo, I don’t see the majestic animals or their beautiful fur or the pretty colors of their plumage. All I see is a deadness in their eyes, an accusation of, how can you do this to me? How can you let these smelly, noisy creatures mock me, yell at me, rattle my cage, and stare at me when they should be bowing their heads in reverence?
So do you free the giraffes and watch them gallop away? Do you shoot them in their alien looking heads so they die free? Or do you do what we all generally do in such circumstances, which is to watch them be hauled away in chains? We think about the sadness of it and then move our thoughts on to something else.
Blixen experienced the typical problems that afflict farmers everywhere, which is Mother Nature not cooperating.
Drought.
”One year the long rains failed.
That is a terrible, tremendous experience, and the farmer who has lived through it will never forget it. Years afterwards, away from Africa, in the wet climate of a Northern country, he will start up at night, at the sound of a sudden shower of rain, and cry, ‘At last, at last.’”
My father is a farmer, and though I’ve never seen him do a jig, there was one year, after months of drought, that a gully washer appeared over the horizon and dropped four inches of precious rain on us. His smile looked like he was capable of just about any expression of joy, even dancing, in that moment when the first drops began to fall.
Karen Blixen showing some of the elegance her visitors in Kenya must have enjoyed.
Drought, grasshopper plague, and being situated too high in altitude for coffee beans to grow as well as they should, all contributed to the final demise of the Blixen Kenyan farm. In 1931, the place was sold, and she moved back to Denmark. There was probably relief for a while from the stress and strain of the daily trials and tribulations of keeping a farm in working order, but I’m sure, within a matter of months and maybe even weeks, she felt the loss of her home as astutely as those giraffes missed their home from their cage in Hamburg. The only way she could return to it was to write about it. With pen in hand, her blood could move a bit more briskly about her body, her hands could remember the labor, and her mind could sift back through those conversations she had with the people she cared the most about. Highly Recommended!
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I also have a Facebook blogger page at:https://www.facebook.com/JeffreyKeeten 0241262119 I once had a crush on Karen Blixen, at the shores of Rungstedlund.
Travelling my life like Odysseus the mythical Mediterranean seas, I found myself in front of a majestic house on a strip of Danish coastline, some ten years ago, and in the company of my lively bunch of toddlers, aged approximately 4, 2.5 and 0.5 years. While I walked reverently in the footsteps of Karen Blixen, studiously scrutinising every single letter and photograph on display in the exhibition, my family ran wild outside, enjoying the closeness to the sea and the summer breeze, and a café just on the waterfront. A perfect set up. When I reluctantly left the museum, I carried with me a book bought in the gift shop, the only one by Blixen I had not borrowed in my local library because I wanted to own it myself.
My copy of Out Of Africa carries a sticker with the silhouette of Karen Blixen and a label of “Karen Blixen Museet Rungstedlund”. It also tells me that I paid 140 Danish crowns for it, marked in pencil inside the cover.
What you experience intensely becomes part of who you are. It changes your perception of the world and makes you different. When I read Karen Blixen’s stories, her biography, her letters, and now - finally - after a ten year long odyssey of reading other books - her Out Of Africa, something touches me deep inside, and I feel her happiness, sadness, excitement, boredom and disappointment almost physically. I don’t know why that is really. Maybe it has something to do with the Scandinavian heritage taken on a joyride into the big, big world? Maybe it has to do with her accepting that she was different, a stranger within her own environment, but still deeply engaged in it? That she was willing to sacrifice a lot to live according to her own rules, and never stopped fighting for what she considered worthwhile, however hopeless the fight seemed against conventions and world history in general?
She knew about her own flaws and prejudices, and weighed them against others, creating lucid comparisons between different people at a time when Europeans tended to see natives in Africa as mere tools or backdrop. Her language and behaviour are aristocratic in a way that reminds me of Virginia Woolf. It is a charming vanity, as she does not hide it at all.
What about the book itself, what did it add to my idea of Karen Blixen? It gave me the shivers, and a strong feeling of respect for her honest account of life in a country that works with completely different codes of conduct, myths and traditions.
When she describes how she starts writing during a drought, filling loose papers with stories, her servant comes in and doubts the success of her ambition, comparing her drafts to the heavily bound volume of the Odyssey she has in her possession. The European mind now smiles inwardly and thinks that it of course is hard to compete with Homer, but that is not the angle of the reflection of Blixen’s servant. He is worried that her book consists of loose paper, whereas the Odyssey is bound, sturdy, impressive, heavy. The conclusion is that Blixen’s work would be equally impressive if she managed to get it printed in hardcover, an expensive endeavour, but feasible!
Her literary soul is disclosed in every day-to-day reflection she makes. An old Danish adventurer, who comes to live and die on the farm, is compared to The Ancient Mariner or The Old Man and The Sea. A lion hunt turns into a Greek tragedy with all actors dead in the last act. A discussion of The Merchant Of Venice with her Somali servant Farah gives the Shakespearean story a new twist. All the time, the capability to read reality from different angles shines through. Karen Blixen understands not only the strangeness of the Kikuyu, Masai and Somali, but also of the French and Scottish missionaries, the English District Commissioner and the Scandinavian big game hunters. Hers is a universe apart, on a farm, in the Ngong Hills.
In her beautiful descriptions of a lifestyle lost forever, a European coffee plantation reality in Kenya during the Great War and Depression era, Karen Blixen captures the idea of global citizenship by taking traditions for what they are: inherited culture. Her own culture forbids her to talk too freely of her most passionate love during those years: her relationship to Denys Finch Hatton is never explained fully, never analysed with the sharp intelligence she is capable of in all other respects. But it can be sensed in her compulsive need to start sentences with “Denys and I”, followed by a simple anecdote. “Denys and I”, repeated over and over, establishes a connection that must have made her feel joy long after she lost her one true, wild love, and her farm as well.
As I read her letters first, it made me start when I saw the casual line in the novel, describing in shortest possible manner a long correspondence and pressure on Karen to give up her life:
“My people at home, who had shares in the farm, wrote out to me and told me that I would have to sell.”
And she did, eventually. She moved back to Denmark and spent her last years, in frail health, in that beautiful environment where I eventually made her acquaintance (figuratively speaking, of course), writing and dreaming of Africa:
“They [people who dream] know that the real glory of dreams lies in their atmosphere of unlimited freedom. It is not the freedom of the dictator, who enforces his own will on the world, but the freedom of the artist, who has no will, who is free of will.”
To me, it seems that Karen Blixen was a lucky woman, to be able to live according to her dreams for a long time, to enjoy great love, and to be able to sit down and write an opening line of unforgettable beauty:
“I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong Hills.”
And I had a crush on Karen Blixen, at the shore of Rungstedlund... 0241262119 4.5 stars
I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong Hills… Everything that you saw made for greatness and freedom, and unequalled nobility.
A beautiful and evocative memoir of Baroness Karen von Blixen-Finecke, Out of Africa is a tribute to that magnificent continent from a woman who truly loved both the land and its people. One must remember while reading this memoir that it was written during a period of colonialism, but I never sensed that Blixen felt herself superior to the native Kikuyu people of Kenya, where she worked tirelessly alongside them on her coffee plantation. The Kikuyu held much respect for Blixen and she in turn respected their values and traditions. She sympathized with various points of view, while at the same time admitting that the Kikuyu perhaps had a greater understanding of her than the other way round. I reconciled myself to the fact that while I should never quite know or understand them, they knew me through and through, and were conscious of the decisions that I was going to take, before I was certain about them myself.
The descriptions of the landscape and the wildlife of Africa are as stunning as one would expect. Everything comes to life with Blixen’s vivid and lovely prose. One can believe she really wanted to become a part of Africa herself, not just one that wanted to ‘claim’ a piece of it. I loved her story about little Lulu, a young bushbuck antelope that at one time became a member of the household in her own right. Lulu came in from the wild world to show that we were on good terms with it, and she made my house one with the African landscape, so that nobody could tell where the one stopped and the other began. Those who are sensitive to the topic should be warned that there are a couple of hunting scenes and mentions of safaris. These were unfortunately common events of the day, but quite regrettable nevertheless. They did not affect my overall enjoyment of this book. The majesty of the lion and lioness in his and her natural environment is something that I will always recall with a sense of awe.
I’m not sure what I liked most about this book – the country or the people that Blixen got to know over the twelve or so years she spent on her plantation. Both aspects are so very captivating. Throughout this time, many visitors came and went from her home. It was a place of refuge for Europeans traveling to the continent. They had been over vast countries and had raised and broken their tents in many places, now they were pleased to round my drive that was steadfast as the orbit of a star. They liked to be met by familiar faces, and I had the same servants all the time that I was in Africa. It was also a place of gathering for the ngomas, the Kikuyu’s great social dances. One of the most memorable visitors to the farm was Denys Finch-Hatton, a gentleman Blixen held in high regard and with whom she spent much time between his various safari outings. Denys had watched and followed all the ways of the African Highlands, and better than any other white man, he had known their soil and seasons, the vegetation and the wild animals, the winds and smells. He had observed the changes of weather in them, their people, clouds, the stars at night. One of her greatest joys was when she had the opportunity to fly over Africa with Denys and see its riches from above.
Parting with her coffee plantation, her servants, and the Kikuyu was a time of great sadness for Blixen, but she made sure to see that all of those who had depended on her and the farm for their own livelihood were taken care of to the best of her ability. Blixen will always stand out in my mind as a woman of courage, compassion and great dignity. Highly recommended to those that enjoy memoirs, Africa, and admirable women.
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? Would the air over the plain quiver with a colour that I had had on, or the children invent a game in which my name was, or the full moon throw a shadow over the gravel of the drive that was like me, or would the eagles of Ngong look out for me? 0241262119 Read this in 1985 after watching the movie. 0241262119
