Baroness Karen Blixen – Intro

Story time : 

Last October, I went to visit my younger sister N., a superstar studying Art in Brussels like a badass. We did all the things we enjoy doing at any given time anywhere : eating, visiting gardens, checking out cute concept stores, thrifting at the flea market and spending time in second hand bookshops.

In the first one we went to, I came across a book called Flowers into Art : Floral Motifs in European Painting and Decorative Arts. I was flicking through this exhibition book and came upon this paragraph :

« Karen Blixen often did justice to the feminity of the full blown tulip in her famous and much-praised flower arrangements. But not always. In the more modern English fashion – perhaps also the old Dutch – she would sometimes strip the green leaves from the flower. Technically, this practice extends the life of the cut flower, because it no longer needs the water for the leaves. Aesthetically, it allows the calyx to grow large on a stalk that remain stiff longer. Blixen alternated between tulips that were to remain straight and those that would look best when the stalks had become pliant, depending on what she wanted from her « flower paintings » – which is how she thought of them – and selected the flowers according to the role she wished them to play. » 

My conscious stream of thought, in order of appearance :

• Karen Blixen… 
• Who is SHE already…? 
• Why do I want to add a title before that name : Baroness…?
• Why are people talking about her FLOWER ARRANGEMENTS ? How amazing could these have been for people to still be talking about them ?!

An image had formed in my brain as I read the snippet : a woman, her back to the viewer, is arranging flowers in a massive vase. She’s just entered the hall of her whatever-ian mansion from the garden. I know exactly her state of mind, her focus. Her attention is one hundred percent on what she’s doing and she’s filled with the joy of manipulating beauty and the knowledge that however her arrangement turns out, the flowers themselves will always be perfection. The woman could be Karen Blixen or myself (minus the mansion).

Flower arrangement is such a Marie-Chantal-esque activity, I think my brain is always in the starting block, ready to latch on to any opportunity to create these images and attaching a vivid back story to them is a glittery bonus – the back story in this case being an actual person with a rather big life.

Anyways. I bought the book and told myself Karen B. was a subject to explore ASAP. And then we went into another bookshop and there, on the first shelf, was Out of Africa … by Karen Blixen. Duh. How could I have forgotten ??? This definitely felt like a sign that Karen Blixen was reaching out from beyond the grave – if you believe in that sort of thing, which I don’t – so I just thought « That’s a funny coincidence ».

A few months went by after I got home before I got around to exploring everything Karen Blixen. I think I wanted to see if I’d found a real of this world Marie-Chantal and to do so I had to deep dive into ,well ,anything related to KB that I could put my hands on. Am fully expecting to be disappointed : killing lions for sport in Africa alone makes her an imperfect candidate but my curiosity is piqued nonetheless. We’ve also established Marie-Chantal was flawed so there’s that too.

So I’ve searched the internet high and low looking for interviews, photos, anything, to make her feel more real, to try and determine what she was like as a person. Writing dead peoples biographies must be such fascinating work : getting immersed enough in who a person was that you feel you can write their life story without having ever met them…!

Biographies bring to mind a passage from Into the Forest by Jean Hegland where Nell, the main character, is sifting through her dead parents belongings and she says how sad and weird familiar objects become once their owner is no longer and how lifeless they seem compared to how significant they used to be. Belongings transform into stuff in death and don’t really say much anymore about their once owner. The only real testament to a persons « essence » is the written word of the deceased whether that be correspondences and novels in KB’s case or Instagram posts for the average person today…

Revenons à nos moutons : During my search, I came upon an interview from December 2023 of Connie Nielsen where the actress explains how doing a work junket in Copenhagen at the Karen Blixen Museum gave her the idea of making a movie about the writer’s life. The movie became a Danish mini series that premiered in March of 2023. Funny how when you start paying attention to something, all of a sudden it’s everywhere..!

NB The mini series begins when Karen B comes back to Denmark grieving the love of her life, (Robert Redford 😉 ), penniless, divorced, riddled with syphilis and suicidal. The series focuses on a 46 year old woman becoming a world renowned Artist and it’s not about MEN. I saw Connie Nielsen’s interview right after an umpteenth rant of mine about the male gaze in cinema and art in general. I could have screamed : « YES ! »

So I’ve got my work cut out for me. This is my TBR/TBW on the subject :

• Lionne – a graphic novel by Anne-Caroline PANDOLFO et Terkel RISBJERG
• Karen Blixen – Une odyssée africaine by Jean-Noël LIAUT
• The Dreamer – Becoming Karen Blixen – mini series by Dunja Gry JENSEN

I’m also on the lookout for a book titled Karen Blixen’s Flowers : Nature and Art at Rungstedlund that is out of print apparently. « When I am dead, you should make a book about my flower arrangements.» is what said the Danish baroness as Isak Dinesen (her nom de plume) told a friend in « Out of Africa ». Somebody, please, get me that book.

Episode 2 will be a worded portrait of the lady. In the mean time, have painted an actual portrait of her . As my sister C. would say : « Iconic ! » – not the drawing obvi, the subject.