Monday, June 16, 2008

Blixen's influences

I'm watching Out of Africa. Here is a list of Karen Blixen's literary influences from her website (karenblixen.com). I seem to remember that my grandmother knew her. I must investigate.
A small selection of her literary influences include:
  • Soren Kierkegaard: at least thirteen of Isak Dinesen's tales are based, in part, on stories by the great Danish philosopher.
  • The Viking sagas
  • Shakespeare's plays
  • Mary Shelley
  • Percy Bysshe Shelley
  • Lord Byron
  • Homer's Iliad and Odyssey
  • Mozart's Don Juan
  • Milton's Paradise Lost
  • Charles Baudelaire
  • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
  • Walt Whitman
  • Goethe
  • Nietzche
  • Heinrich Heine
  • Havamal, the bible of the pagan Scandinavian cosmos
  • The Greek myths
  • The Thousand and One Nights (The Arabian Nights)
  • The Old and The New Testament

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