If you've read Out of Africa, or seen the movie, then you probably understand when I say Karen Blixen was probably the best promotion that the African tourism industry has ever gotten. The Danish author, through that publication about her life in Africa, and Kenya in particular, captured the romance, adventure and delight of the African wilderness. Yet most people know very little about her.
In 1913 Karen Dinesen, born and raised in Denmark, became engaged to her second-cousin, the Swedish Baron Bror von Blixen-Finecke, after a failed love affair with his brother. The couple moved to Kenya, where in early 1914 they used family money to establish a coffee plantation, hiring African workers, predominantly the Kikuyu tribes people who lived on the farmlands at the time of their arrival.
About the couple's early life in Africa, Karen Blixen later wrote: "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 two were quite different in education and temperament, and Bror Blixen was unfaithful to his wife. She was diagnosed with syphilis toward the end of their first year of marriage, which, although eventually cured, created medical anguish for years afterward. The Blixens separated in 1921, and were divorced in 1925.
During her early years in Kenya, Karen Blixen met the English big game hunter Denys Finch Hatton, and after her separation she and Finch Hatton developed a close friendship which eventually became a long-term love affair. Finch Hatton used Blixen's farmhouse as a home base between 1926 and 1931, when he wasn't leading one of his clients on safari. He died in the crash of his de Havilland Gipsy Moth biplane in 1931. At the same time, the failure of the coffee plantation, as a result of the worldwide economic depression and the unsuitability of her farm's soil for coffee growing, forced Blixen to abandon her beloved farm. The family corporation sold the land to a residential developer, and Blixen returned to Denmark, where she lived for the rest of her life.
Karen used the pseudonym Isak Dinesen form most of her literary works, and was among the first authors to describe Africans as individuals rather than as stereotypes. She has been criticized for participating in the colonial intrusion into Africa, and also for making poetic comparisons of various personalities--both Kenyans and white settlers--to birds and animals. She has often been labeled racist for her frank depiction of the power differences between Whites and Blacks in early twentieth century Africa.
She went on to write more collections of tales, a few essays, a novel, and another short memoir. Her stories emphasize the power of "the mask"--the public persona that reveals the hidden personality and draws attention to the talent of the artist. "By thy mask I shall know thee" was her credo. She made well-received readings on Danish radio, she was photographed wearing elaborate costumes, and she made a dramatic visit to the United States--home of her most enthusiastic reading public--where she related to audiences, in her deeply accented, sonorous voice, stories she had learned by heart.
Karen Blixen made an indelible mark on African, and especially Kenyan tourism, through the exposure her work gave on the beauty of the land. The entire suburb of Karen in Nairobi is named after her, and here former residence near the Ngong Hills is now a museum.
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