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

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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

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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 —