Zitate von Tania Blixen

„Wahre Kunst enthält immer etwas Hexenzauber.“

—  Tania Blixen

zitiert zum Beispiel von Fritzi Busch in Konkret 2006, S.61 books.google https://books.google.de/books?id=qD08AQAAIAAJ&q=blixen
(Original dänisch: „Stor Kunst synes jeg ikke det er; jeg synes som [Oscar] Levertin at det, jeg søger i Digtning, er en Belysning af det, som Goldschmidt kalder: Livets Magi, - og det findes ikke hos Sigrid Undset, i det hele taget ingen Belysning; det er som et stort Landskab i bestandigt Graavejr og Garveløshed; Tryllestaven mangler, det er „kein Hexerei", og jeg siger sorn Otto Benzon (tror jeg), at virkelig Kunst er altid noget Hexerei.“ - nach Bernhard Glienke: „Fatale Präzedenz“ 1986, S.202 books.google https://books.google.de/books?id=e7IrAAAAMAAJ&q=seger
Englisch: „Although I do not consider it great art: I think with Levertin that what I am looking for in imaginative writing is an illumination of what Goldschmidt calls: the magic of life,—and that is not to be found in Sigrid Undset, where there is really no illumination; it is like a great landscape that is constantly overcast and colorless; the magic wand is missing, it is "kein Hexerei," and I say with Otto Benzon (I think), that real art must always involve some witchcraft.“ - „Letters from Africa, 1914-1931“, edited by Frans Lasson, translated by Anne Born. Chicago UP 1981. p.181 books.google https://books.google.de/books?id=OKhQAQAAIAAJ&q=Iexerei)

„Das Pendel schlägt nicht zurück und ändert die Richtung, weil seine Richtung für falsch befunden worden ist, sondern die Uhr geht, weil das Pendel sich hin und zurück bewegt.“

—  Tania Blixen

„Moderne Ehe und andere Betrachtungen“, Übersetzung Walter Boehlich, in: „Mottos meines Lebens“, Verlag: Rowohlt, ISBN 3-499-13190-0
(Dänisch: "Pendulet slaar ikke om og skifter Retning, fordi dets Retning er fundet at være forkert, men Uhret gaar, fordi Pendulet bevæger sig frem og tilbage." - „Moderne ægteskab og andre betragtninger“. Hier nach Caroline Carlsen, Frans Lasson: „Erindringer om Karen Blixen“ 1976, p.13 books.google https://books.google.de/books?id=7UbkAAAAMAAJ&q=pendulet; in neuer Rechtschreibung in: „Samlede essays“, Gyldendal 1985, p.8 books.google https://books.google.de/books?id=EDXkAAAAMAAJ&q=pendulet
Englisch: "The pendulum does not turn round and change direction because its direction is found to be the wrong one, but the clock works because the pendulum moves to and fro." - On Modern Marriage and Other Observations. Translated by Anne Born. Fourth Estate, 1987. p.34 books.google https://books.google.de/books?id=3cEiAQAAMAAJ&q=pendulum)

„Reiten, Bogenschießen, die Wahrheit sagen.“

—  Tania Blixen, buch Jenseits von Afrika

Motto des autobiographischen Romans „Afrika - dunkel lockende Welt.“ Aus dem Englischen von Rudolf von Scholtz.
(in der englischen Originalausgabe „Out of Africa“ lateinisch: "Equitare, Arcum tendere, Veritatem dicere." - Penguin, PT7 books.google https://books.google.de/books?id=UY67prSIuogC&pg=PT7
in der dänischen Originalausgabe „Den afrikanske Farm“: "At ride, at skyde med Bue og at tale Sandhed" - Gyldenhal, p.11 books.google https://books.google.de/books?id=acxP5wBrv5oC&pg=PA11; zur Herkunft p.326 books.google https://books.google.de/books?id=acxP5wBrv5oC&pg=PA326&dq=ride und Herodot 1,136.2)

„I start with a tingle, a kind of feeling of the story I will write. Then come the characters, and they take over, they make the story.“

—  Karen Blixen

„We must leave our mark on life while we have it in our power.“

—  Karen Blixen

„All sorrows can be borne if you put them into a story or tell a story about them.“

—  Karen Blixen

As quoted in The Human Condition (1958) by Hannah Arendt. This appears as part of a statement in a 1957 interview where she speaks of a friend's comments about her:
I am not a novelist, really not even a writer; I am a storyteller. One of my friends said about me that I think all sorrows can be borne if you put them into a story or tell a story about them, and perhaps this is not entirely untrue. To me, the explanation of life seems to be its melody, its pattern. And I feel in life such an infinite, truly inconceivable fantasy.
Interview with Bent Mohn in The New York Times Book Review (3 November 1957)
Paraphrased variant : All suffering is bearable if it is seen as part of a story.

„Write a little every day, without hope, without despair.“

—  Karen Blixen

„There is a particular hapiness in giving a man whom you like very much, good food that you have cooked yourself.“

—  Karen Blixen, buch Jenseits von Afrika

Quelle: Out of Africa

„No domestic animal can be as still as a wild animal. The civilized people have lost the aptitude of stillness, and must take lessons in silence from the wild before they are accepted by it.“

—  Karen Blixen, buch Jenseits von Afrika

Quelle: Out of Africa

„Here I am, where I ought to be.“

—  Karen Blixen, buch Jenseits von Afrika

Quelle: Out of Africa

„Africa, amongst the continents, will teach it to you: that God and the Devil are one, the majesty coeternal, not two uncreated but one uncreated, and the Natives neither confounded the persons nor divided the substance.“

—  Karen Blixen, buch Jenseits von Afrika

Out of Africa (1937)

„I think Marilyn is bound to make an almost overwhelming impression on the people who meet her for the first time. It is not that she is pretty, although she is of course almost incredibly pretty, but she radiates, at the same time, unbounded vitality and a kind of unbelievable innocence. I have met the same in a lion-cub, which my native servants in Africa brought me. I would not keep her, since I felt that it would in some way be wrong…I shall never forget the almost overpowering feeling of unconquerable strength and sweetness which she conveyed. I had all the wild nature of Africa amicably gazing at me with mighty playfulness.“

—  Karen Blixen

Written of her experience with actress Marilyn Monroe in a letter to the American author, Fleur Cowles Meyer, in 1961. As quoted in Fragments, by Stanley Buchthal and Bernard Comment (2010)

„There is something about safari life that makes you forget all your sorrows and feel as if you had drunk half a bottle of champagne — bubbling over with heartfelt gratitude for being alive.“

—  Karen Blixen, buch Jenseits von Afrika

Out of Africa (1937)

„Real art must always involve some witchcraft.“

—  Karen Blixen

Letters from Africa: 1914-1931 (1981) edited by Frans Lasson, translated by Anne Born.

„White people, who for a long time live alone with Natives, get into the habit of saying what they mean, because they have no reason or opportunity for dissimulation, and when they meet again their conversation keeps the Native tone.“

—  Karen Blixen, buch Jenseits von Afrika

Out of Africa (1937)

„It never has happened, and it never will happen, and that is why it is told.“

—  Karen Blixen, buch Anecdotes of Destiny

"The Immortal Story"
Anecdotes of Destiny (1953)

„I have a feeling that wherever I may be in the future, I will be wondering whether there is rain at Ngong.“

—  Karen Blixen

Letter to her mother (26 February 1919)

„A visitor is a friend, he brings news, good or bad, which is bread to the hungry minds in lonely places. A real friend who comes to the house is a heavenly messenger, who brings the panis angelorum.“

—  Karen Blixen, buch Jenseits von Afrika

Quelle: Out of Africa

„When you have a great and difficult task, something perhaps almost impossible, if you only work a little at a time, every day a little, suddenly the work will finish itself.“

—  Karen Blixen