Out of Africa

Out of Africa (#847) by Isak Dinesen is considered a classic memoir.  It was made into a movie starring Meryl Streep as Baroness Karen Blixen, the author's real name, and Robert Redford as her love interest Denys Finch Hatton.  I have vague recollections of seeing it when it came out, but we were unable to find a copy of the movie to see, so I got the book instead.  (They always tend to be better than any cinema version, anyway!)  It was recommended reading before our upcoming trip to Copenhagen, as we will be visiting her home.

It was interesting reading on many different levels.  For the time period, think Katherine Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart in The African Queen.  Isak Dinesen went out to Africa to get married prior to World War I.  Curiously, she only uses the word "husband" twice in her memoir, more than halfway through, once to note that he had volunteered to serve with the British forces in Africa, and once that he had sent back to the farm for supplies during the war.  Otherwise, the reader would assume that the Baroness ran the coffee farm completely on her own, managing with a staff of Natives, and enjoying  an active social life in and around Nairobi.

Of course, her many anecdotes of her interactions with those Natives read oddly to the modern mind.  It was still the age of Colonialism when her memoirs came out in the 30s.  In her era, I imagine Karen Blixen was regarded as rather progressive in her attitudes.

That also seems to be the case in her relationship with Denys Finch Hatton.  He was away leading Safaris most of the time, so he had no set home except with Karen Blixen on her farm, where he kept his books and mementos.  Together, they would fly over the hills and plains of the vast country in his small airplane.  He only refused to take her up with him once; as it turned out, it was prescient.  He was killed in a crash on that flight.  When Karen went into Nairobi for a lunch date just after it happened, no one would talk to her; no one had the courage to tell her that Finch Hatton had been killed.  She spends much time in her memoir on her mourning of this man, yet not a single word about her husband; not even his name or what happened to him!

She was eventually forced to leave Africa when her coffee farm failed and the debts mounted to such an extent her farm and belongings were sold out from beneath her.  She might have left Africa physically, but Africa never left her.

This memoir relies on its readers having a broad classics background, and a good knowledge of Scripture to keep up with her many metaphors and allusions, something not as common in today's world as it would have been when first published.  It is a unique glimpse into a world long gone.