To paint with words: about the realization of visual art in Karen Blixen’s stories

Abstract

Кaren Blixen was one of the artists with two talents who are able to express themselves in both literature and painting. Although Blixen gave up her childhood dream of becoming a painter in her later years, we can assume that the theoretical knowledge and practical experience in painting left particular traces in her writing. Most intermedial analyses of Blixen’s work focus on the thematic reflection of visual art in her texts (cf. studies by Charlotte Engberg or Ivan Ž. Sørensen). This article deals with a topic that has been relatively overlooked in the analyses so far — the realization of painting techniques in Blixen’s stories. Besides the thematic reflection of visual art, one can also trace an effort to imitate the technical side of painting in her texts, for example the use of colours according to colour theory, deliberate positioning of light and dark surfaces and the depiction of shadows in a way similar to painting. The analysis reveals whether Blixen prefers the coloristic principle of building mental images, as she does in her famous African paintings, or whether it is light that becomes the dominant phenomenon in her text world.