2, ENTERTAINMENT, THE HERALD, Wed. Aug. 18, 1976 Fact ~ SOUNDS LIKELY Karen, Baronéss Flixen, - was a tiny moth of a woman with a robust voice and a . husky, roaring laugh that _ seemed out of place in such - a frail body. She had the spunk of any of the big game she hunted in East Africa. But she was also a dreamer, a bittersweet romantic with an imagination straight out of Arabian Nights. Her sophisticated, elegantly- written books and stories in English are liberally dipped jn magic, the supernatural, the exotic and grotesque ... fairy tales, but not for - children. Although she was -amaster of tragic irony, she didn’t look back in anger, - and this is one of the most refreshing aspects of her books. You probably know her best by her pen-name, Isak Dinesen, and her most famous story, Out of Africa, an unforgettable account of the 17 years she spent running a 6,000 acre coffee plantation in Kenya — 10 of them by herself. There was something Promethean. about this little Danish . woman. Her friends said she wasn’t like anyone else, anywhere. She Isak as a pen-name because it was Biblical and she thought it meant “‘the world will laugh with me’’. When she discovered it meant laugh at me, the joke was so good that she wouldn’t change it. On August. 24 CBC Tuesday Night at 8:03 presents a reading of one of her short stories, The Caryatides, by actress Maria Coryin, who has. made a career of in- by JUNE GRAHAM terpreting Dinesen works on platforms and radio through Britain and North America. Miss Corvin's father was a farmer and lion hunter in Africa. _ Karen Blixen has a couple of strong links with this continent. Her brother served in the First World War with the Royal Canadian Highlanders. And her father spent three years trapping furs with the In- dians in Minnesota. His tales of adventure around the world gave his daughter a taste for the bizarre that | stayed with her all her life. Her family was both rich and cultivated. She was born in 1885 on their estate between Copenhagen and Elsinore, where she spent her early. and later life, studied art and did most of elpaabelsteceeterueabeoeaeisiebastoeaeeaneetaes ‘Appearing at the D'or Cabaret by popular domand ° wf apareeetion BEM it ORR RL . sonececes fa OO up her driveway her writing. When I visited Denmark in 1962, the month before she died, 1 wandered for a glimpse of her home, a former inn over 300 years old, and was struck by its fairytale appearance. It looked like something out of Hans Christian Andersen’s tales, with its uneven, age- rubbed walls, mellow colors and sturdy old beams. There was a pond, and a partly- sunken rowboat, green with age, snuggled against a grassy bank under a tree to form sucha pleasing picture in sun and shadow that I felt her artist’s eye had marked it to be left that way. In such a setting, and sparkled -by her father’s colorful yarns about his seafaring ad- ventures, it’s not surprising that she was romantic. and at Bets we, oe ee eo oa tet i rate re ie ms oat eS) us. = ee bs a oe Se. ae “ a BS 1 Soy = 4 2 imaginative. - es “There was quite a bit of — tragedy in her life. Her . father : committed suicide when she was young. She was educated privately in an extremely conservative family. Perhaps. to escape the narrowness of her life, she became engaged, ‘at 29, to her Swédish cousin, Baron Blor von Blixen- Finecke, a roving-eyed | extrovert whom she did. not love. Shortly after ‘her marriage she contracted a disease from which she never fully récovered: A mutual uncle just returned from East Africa inspired the young couple to buy a coffee farm in Mombasa. Karen Blixen fell in love with that part of Africa, but it was its sophistication rather than its primitive glamor that appealed to her. After divorcing the Baron seven years later, she stayed on to manage the farm alone. In 1919 she had met the one love of her life, Denys Finch-Hatton, a romantic English expatriate and safari expert who flew alone over the vast stretches of Kenya in search of big game. She was killed in a crash in 193. Meanwhile, falling coffee prices had made it impossible for the Baroness to keep up her beloved farm and-~shortly after Finch-Hatton’s death she returned, heartbroken, to Denmark. At her’ brother’s urging, she began to write, recreating the sweeping Jandscapes and magic of the Africa she loved, and the character of its people. Her brooks and steries were an * immediate success. Since 1914 she had been _— frequently ill, but pressed on -with her career, first as coffee-planter, later as world-renowned writer. She became a legend with the African people, who still remember her vividly and- lovingly, and with her adoring literary public. And she lived up to. her reputation as a. grande dame, with exotic clothes and an aristocratic hauteur — that demanded attention. Some people said she had become too much of a good thing! She- could “be capricious, but her wit was delightful. Once she turned the tables on two young women reporters by asking them which British poet they’d have chosen as a lover. They opted for Donne and Shakespeare. Then. she set them rearranging their . impression of her when she chose Robbie Burns. for herself. : Three years before her. - death she spent three-and-a- . - ' Beaton photographed this’ splendid, fiery little woman SS _? half months in the United States on a speaking tour. It — must have been exhausting - for her, because by then she | was emaciatingly thin, living mostly on oysters. But, in a stocking-cap, with -apurse almost.as big as she, and full-fig. make-up, she. was in her element being lionized, but giving good value for _money. Photographed with Marilyn: Monroe she looked like a wisp of gauze. A month . before she died, - Cecil’ in Denmark, drinking. a | toast to life. Peering out of a - heavily-wrinkled shell were |. the bright eyes of a proud,. vulnerable young dreamer. hauntingly —