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| The Works of Karen Blixen |
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"I think that one must have a certain amount of experience before one can assimilate one's personality in some kind of art, but I think that later one can then transform it again into the art," wrote Karen Blixen in 1917, in a letter from Africa to her mother. Another dozen years were to pass before she began serious work on the stories that were eventually published in 1934 in America as the collection Seven Gothic Tales and in 1935 in Denmark as Syv fantastiske fortællinger. By that time Karen Blixen had not just gained "experience", as she had written to her mother, but she had lived in two vastly different cultures and had personally lived through dramatic swings of fortune - from intense happiness and freedom to potentially fatal despair and deadlock. HUMOROUS AND PHILOSOPHICAL WRITINGS It is remarkable that Karen Blixen's tales fascinate millions of readers and at the same time challenge the most exacting literary scholars. Her books can be picked up and read with no prior knowledge or qualifications, and the reader is well entertained because she has the ability to tell a good - and that means, among other things, a gripping - story. At the same time, the stories are full of refined humour, awareness of the hidden motives behind people's actions, an understanding of longing and hope, of the difficulty in personal insight and of losing one's way but not realising until it is too late. In other words, it is also a philosophical canon, which is shaped by the fact that Karen Blixen was a mature and experienced woman of 48 when she published her first collection of tales. Moreover, she was intrepid in her disregard of contemporary taste and "correct" opinions in both the political and ideological sense. A MYSTERY ALWAYS REMAINS But even though the characters in the tales often debate philosophical and existential issues, they never reach definitive conclusions. The tales always remain somewhat enigmatic, and are therefore constantly open to new interpretations. There is - as in all great art - a parallel between that which is created and real life as it is lived: real life cannot be made to conform to watertight formulae either. Back to top |
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