Erin Wasson as Karen Blixen
"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 danish author Karen Blixen or Isak Dinesen the pseudonym that she wrote under, is one of Denmarks most famous authors.
Karen was born April 17, 1885 into a rich family in Denmark, and was schooled in art in Copenhagen, Paris, and Rome.
In 1895 her father hanged himself because he was diagnosed with syphilis.
The second man in Karen’s life was her Swedish cousin, Baron Bror von Blixen-Finecke, whom she married in 1914 and from whom she herself might have gotten syphilis. The couple moved to Kenya where they operated a coffee plantation. However the bliss was short lived and the couple separated in 1921 and were divorced in 1925.
Still it was in Africa that Karen found true happiness and true love. Africa was a place of freedom and dreams. During the time she spent in Africa she met and fell in love with the English big game hunter, Denys Finch Hatton, who she lived from 1926 to 1931.
Still death seemed to follow Karen wherever she went and during the time she lived with Denys she suffered two miscarriages. And in 1931 Denys himself was killed in a plane crash.
This was the end of Karen’s life in Africa. The coffee plantation was failing, Denys was gone and she was forced to leave Africa.
As a writer Karen was very successful and was nominated for the Nobel Prize twice. Still it was not the great critical esteem but her life in Africa that Karen treasured most of all. And of course the memory of Denys of whom she once wrote: ”I am, I think, for now on and ever connected to Denys, to love the ground that he walks upon, to be beyond happy when he is near, and suffer a fate worse than death when he is gone.”
Karen died September 7, 1962, the cause of death was malnutrition. She left behind no children, but an impressive collection of beautiful stories.
*herfamedgoodlooks.com