IS SCAN S D N 3 I N E A N V L I I S V T I A C Centre of Scandinavian Studies Faculty of Philology Vilnius University Ieva Steponavi)i*t+ Texts at Play Te Ludic Aspect of Karen Blixen’s Writings Vilnius University 2011 UDK / UDC 821.113.4(092) St-171 Te production of this book was funded by a grant (No MOK-23/2010) from the Research Council of Lithuania. Reviewed by Charlote Engberg, Associate Professor, Lic Phil (Roskilde University, Denmark) Jørgen Stender Clausen, Professor Emeritus (University of Pisa, Italy) Editorial board for the Scandinavistica Vilnensis series Dr Habil Jurij K. Kusmenko (Institute for Linguistic Studies under the Russian Academy of Sciences, Saint Petersburg / Humboldt University, Germany) Dr Phil Anatoly Liberman (University of Minnesota, USA) Dr Ērika Sausverde (Vilnius University) Dr Ieva Steponavičiūtė-Aleksiejūnienė (Vilnius University) Dr Aurelijus Vijūnas (National Kaohsiung Normal University, Taiwan) Approved for publishing at the meeting of the Council of the Faculty of Philology of Vilnius University (17 06 2011, record No 7) Designer Tomas Mrazauskas © Ieva Steponavičiūtė, 2011 © Vilnius University, 2011 ISSN 2029-2112 ISBN 978-9955-634-80-5 Vilnius University, Universiteto g. 3, LT-01513 Vilnius Tel. +370 5 268 7260 · www.leidykla.eu Centre of Scandinavian Studies · Faculty of Philology · Vilnius University Universiteto g. 5, LT-01513 Vilnius Tel. +370 5 268 7235 · www.skandinavistika.ff.vu.lt To my family Much is demanded of those who are to be really profcient at play. Courage and imagination, humor and intelligence, but in particular that blend of unselfshness, generosity, self-control and courtesy that is called gentilezza. " from Isak Dinesen’s (Karen Blixen’s) “On Modern Marriage and Other Observations” Acknowledgments Tere have been many wonderful people in my life who, in one way or another, have helped to make this book a reality, and I am grateful to them all. I wish, however, to express my special gratitude to four very special ladies: my teacher of literature and former supervisor Prof Galina Baužytė Čepinskienė for her professionalism and the beauty of her spirit, Prof Pil Dahlerup for opening a door for me into the international forum of Scandinavian studies, Dr Charlote Engberg for her inspiration and encouragement, and Dr Ērika Sausverde for her unsurpassable tal- ent as an organiser. I would also like to thank Mr Tomas Solupajev- Ronlev, chairman of the Danish Chamber of Commerce in Lithuania, the printing house “Baltijos kopija” for helping bring the book to reali- sation, and last but not least Tomas Mrazauskas for the book’s quality artistic design. Contents Acknowledgments 9 INTRODUCTION Chapter One Dealing with Blixen 15 Chapter Two Some Aspects of Play Teory 25 1. ‘Game’ vs. ‘play’: Te problem of distinction 27 2. Literature as play and game: A short history of the long way towards confuence 33 3. Te concept of play in the present book 43 PART I. “THIS IS PLAY” Chapter One Game as Model for Narrative Structure 49 Chapter Two Play and Game as Metaphysical Metaphors 59 Chapter Tree Te Poetics of Art as Play in Karen Blixen’s Essay “On Modern Marriage and Other Observations” 71 Chapter Four Play as an Aspect of Character Construction 83 1. Te art of Councillor Mathiesen. Goethe as a matrix 85 2. Miss Malin – an artist of carnival 91 PART II. ARCHITEXTUAL PLAY Chapter One Generic Simulation or the Relationship Between Karen Blixen’s Texts and the Oral Tale 101 1. Te terms ‘story’ and ‘tale’ in studies of Blixen’s work 103 2. “Scheherazade of our times” – truth or illusion? 105 3. Oral narrative as an enacted genre 117 Chapter Two Te Dancing Novella: Between the Canon and its Carnivalesque Subversion 123 1. Teoretical background 125 2. Some paterns of architextual transformations in Blixen’s novellas 131 3. “Babete’s Feast” – a model novella or its parody? 147 Chapter Tree Challenging the Precursor 167 1. “Babete’s Feast” vs. James Joyce’s “Te Dead” 169 2. Surprises of the surprise ending: Blixen’s “Te Heroine” vs. “Boule de suif” by Guy de Maupassant 175 CONCLUDING CHAPTER Summing up 187 Notes 191 List of Karen Blixen’s texts mentioned in the book 237 Selected bibliography 245 Santrauka lietuvių kalba 257 Index 261 Introduction Chapter One Dealing with Blixen 1 A literary scholar who sets out to study a particular writer’s oeuvre will ofen dream of fnding the key – some fnal ‘truth’ or ‘essence’ – that could unlock the writer’s texts and even enable her to mediate them to others.1 In her pursuit, she will be likely to reduce the multifaceted artis- tic universe to a system of dominant themes, images, narrative paterns, generic or ideological schemes that can be accessed and processed by her own mind. Even being aware of the pitfalls of logocentric thinking, such scholar will certainly not stop looking for the meaning of things and organising her experience of the texts into an orderly and conceiv- able shape; for, to quote Catherine Bates, “[t]here’s no escape from the mind, from its wheedlingly pleasing cogitations, its promises to under- stand and control.”2 Te Danish author Karen Blixen (1885–1962), known to an English reading audience by her pseudonym Isak Dinesen, is an author in whose respect the natural human drive ‘to understand and control’ is far from easily fulflled, as her writing seems to defy generalisation. It is already problematic (and maybe not really necessary) to locate Blixen within the framework of a single cultural tradition or geographic space. Although a Dane by birth, she spent 17 years in East Africa – an experience record- ed in her leters from Africa3 and refected in her autofction – the books Out of Afica / Den afikanske Farm (1937) and Shadows on the Grass / Skygger paa Græsset (1960). Blixen’s African ‘background’ has ofen been referred to both by herself and by others when explaining her certain peculiarities as an author: her independence of the mainstream Danish literature of her time,4 and especially her Weltanshauung as a result of her encounter with Islam.5 Yet Islam and the culture related to it, as anyone reading Blixen’s texts will agree, is only part of the writer’s multicultur- al frame of reference which draws on a diverse range of sources of the world’s philosophical, literary and artistic enterprise. Te linguistic situation of Blixen’s authorship enhances the ambiguity even further. Blixen wrote most of her texts frst in English and then in Danish, and at times she was working on two manuscripts simultaneous- ly, as in the case of Out of Afica and Winter Tales / Vinter-Eventyr (1942).6 18 Introduction Tis was no translation: according to Susan Brantly, “she allowed herself much more creative liberty than a translator would claim. Occasionally, she inserted new phrases and paragraphs into the Danish version.”7 Tis situation raises the issue of originality: should we call the original the text writen frst – which is usually the English one – or the later one, composed in the writer’s mother tongue and the more nuanced stylis- tically and semantically?8 No less ambiguous is Blixen’s relation to the Danish literary tradi- tion, which is refected in the practice of introducing her in histories of literature by way of contrasting her writing to her contemporaries.9 Mogens Brøndsted felicitously sums up this situation by the metaphor he borrows from their fellow countryman Hans Christian Andersen: “Belonging to far-away times and countries, she appeared as a foreign bird in the Danish duck-yard, exceptional and fne, and was right away met with due reverence and fascination.”10 When Blixen’s frst book Seven Gothic Tales (1935) appeared in Danish as Syv Fantastiske Fortællinger a year afer its publication and great success in the USA, the dominat- ing literary form in Denmark was the long novel of social and psycho- logical realism, ofen containing a political agenda and concentrating on the confict between man and his social environment. Blixen had chosen a shorter narrative form, which she called the tale or the story, thus stressing her afnity with the ancient tradition of oral storytelling. Tese stories were set about 100 years in the past, the action taking place in old monasteries (“Te Monkey”) or deserted mansions (“Supper at Elsinore”), and portraying decadent aristocrats who advocated such outdated romantic values as the power of imagination, chivalry, or rec- onciliation with destiny. Te obvious incompatibility of Blixen’s frst book with the Danish lit- erary and social climate of the time evoked a great deal of negative recep- tion in the writer’s homeland – quite the opposite of what Brøndsted afrms in the second part of the above quote. Tere were critics who ‘prophesied’ that Blixen would never come to occupy a prominent place in Danish literature.11 One of the frst reviewers, now a ‘classic’ in Blixen’s criticism – Frederik Schyberg – called the book “A piece of dazzling artistic simile by a talented but hysterical writer” who “creates efect but produces no point.”12 Ironically, Schyberg’s words are now ofen quoted as a proof of the provocative and challenging nature of Blixen’s texts, which Blixen’s readers have come to appreciate.13 19 Dealing with Blixen For the sake of fairness, however, it should be noted that the atitude of the Danes towards Blixen’s authorship changed quickly. Te book Out of Afica which followed Seven Gothic Tales was considered to be more realistic in style and was well received in Denmark.14 Blixen was already a celebrated national author when her later collections Winter Tales, Last Tales / Sidste Fortællinger (1957) and Anecdotes of Destiny / Skæbne- Anekdoter (1958) were published.15 Nevertheless, the question of Blixen’s place within the history of Danish literature has remained open.