It's hard to believe Isak Denisen's book, Out of Africa, was released thirty year ago. I can't remember what drew me to the book. I’d never heard of the Danish author Karen Blixen, who wrote
under the pseudonym Isak Dinesen, but I do remember reading that first line:
"I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong Hills."
I
grew up
with two family farms at my disposal, and the book simply struck a cord with me. Never did I believe that one day, like Blixen's farm,
they
would belong to someone else. I spent Sunday afternoons fishing,
building forts in the woods,
playing in my grandfather's blacksmith shop, and gathering eggs under
the bellies
of ornery chickens. After school, before the days grew too short to
spend much time outside, my family would
pack up a basket and head to out to my father’s family’s farm. Dad would
fire
up the grill and my sisters and I would run wild among the cows and
cattails.
Eventually the farms were sold, the gravel roads leading to them were
bulldozed, and the houses that stood there were either moved or torn
down.
So when I
began reading Out of Africa, my heart
soared with childhood memories and left me with a longing for adventure and a
daring that eventually took me to Kenya in 1992. By that time, the movie had been out
several years and the Blixen home had been turned into a museum. While
standing on the lawn behind the house, I realized that Africa is more than a
farm at the foot of the Ngong Hills—I write this confident Ms. Blixen would
agree wholeheartedly—for Africa is a feeling that gets under you skin and
takes up residence in your soul.
Karen
Blixen she was nominated for the Noble Prize in Literature, in 1957 and again
in 1959 when she was up against Graham Greene, John Steinbeck and several
others. Blixen was expected to win when the committee at the last minute chose
to award the prize to Italian writer Salvatore Quasimodo. Their reasoning was
that too many Danish writers had recently won and it was necessary to be
diplomatic.
I’m all
for diplomacy, but great writing should be judged on merit alone. True, I’d
never read any thing Quasimodo wrote. Reading Blixen’s memories, it is clear
that this coveted literary award was to be a consolation prize to losing her
farm in Africa. I hate to think that this deserving writer died of a broken
heart.
"If I know a song
of Africa, of the giraffe and the African new moon lying on her back,
of the plows in the fields and the sweaty faces of the coffee pickers,
does Africa know a song of me? Will the air over the plain quiver with a
color that I have had on, or the children invent a game in which my
name is, or the full moon throw a shadow over the gravel of the drive
that was like me, or will the eagles of the Ngong Hills look out for
me?" Karen Blixen
Labels: Africa, book review, Karen Blixen, nonfiction
