“The Juices of the Body”: Ecomasculine Fluidification in Two Stories by Isak Dinesen

Gender is a key factor in shaping perceptions of environmental relationships, and moving toward sustainability requires that we rethink dominant ideas about both femininity and masculinity. Danish bilingual author Karen Blixen (1885–1962) wrote cryptic and convoluted stories under the male pseudonym Isak Dinesen, and while there is an abundance of feminist scholarship on Dinesen, her critique of masculine identity and her relevance to the emergent field of ecomasculinity studies have so far gone unnoticed. In this essay, I draw on feminist scholarship and cultural histories of male embodiment, as I analyze fluid masculine corporeality in “The Monkey” (1934) and “Ehrengard” (1962). In both her early and late narratives, I argue, Dinesen pushes back against the 20th century “metallization” of male bodies with baroque narratives and characters whose trajectories begin to produce novel and fruitful understandings of masculinity and the male body in relation to other bodies and the more-than-human world. More specifically, what I label “fluidification” designates recurring moments in Dinesen’s writing when corporeal boundaries are breached and male characters find themselves re-manned and re-environed by their bodies’ all-too-human participation in “transcorporeal” flows. The male bodies that populate Dinesen’s fiction, I find, diverge strikingly from the seamlessly solid, statuesque, and self-enclosed men of steel fantasized by contemporary fascists, communists, futurists, militarists, and machine-age modernists. While the hegemonic ideal of hard, dry, anti-ecological masculinity has persisted and even flourished to the present day, I approach Dinesen’s fictions as counterhegemonic sites where alternative earth-friendlier meanings of masculinity can become visible.

A subversão pela tradição de Isak Dinesen: animismo, bruxas e storytelling em “The Deluge at Norderney”

O presente artigo tem como objetivo investigar de que modo a autora Isak Dinesen (pseudônimo e personagem viva de Karen Blixen) utiliza certos recursos para invocar a memória das tradições pagãs europeias. Entre eles, há o animismo, em que a natureza, especialmente o mar, tem agência e intenção, interferindo com e manipulando o enredo - remetendo ao sistema ontológico animista, que caracteriza o modo de pensar do paganismo. Há também o emprego do storytelling, modo como os conhecimentos são transmitidos entre as gerações por essas populações, e a presença constante da figura da bruxa. Ao empregar esses elementos em sua escrita, Dinesen cria um tipo peculiar de modernismo que subverte as leis da composição literária clássica através da retomada de outro tipo de tradição, que há séculos questiona e resiste ao status quo.

»The Whole World«

The bilingual oeuvre of Karen Blixen/Isak Dinesen contains many traces of inescapable connections and distant reverberations from the entire world: relations to far-off places, figures of mobility and foreignness; a ‘global mix’ of literary forms; innumerable references to intertextual works from world literature; and provocative perceptions of the world. Drawing upon globalisation theories, this study is the first to focus on this hitherto neglected aspect of Blixen’s/Dinesen´s relationship to the world, which runs right through the anecdotes, figures and tropes in her work. In their engagement with the world as a whole, her narratives reflect models and dynamics of globality, while aesthetically representing connectivity and an awareness of foreignness.

The Banquet as a Feast of Reconciliation.

Using the guise of a simple supper of commemoration of the hundredth anniversary of the birth of a charismatic Protestant pastor, who had gathered around him a community of devoted disciples in a small village in Norway, Babette’s Feast by Isak Dinesen shows us a banquet in which, through the food prepared with the eye of an artist, the senses are awakened for the first time to a kind of experience where what is corporal and what is spiritual cease to be at odds with each other. Thus, a reconciliation of a lost unity between the body and the soul, matter and spirit, is celebrated and achieved. From this first step, with which the fundamental internal fragmentation is overcome, the other levels of unity (unity with others, with the cosmos, and with God) occur in a chain sequence, so to speak. As in all religious situations, there occurs here the coming together of two orders that seem unreconciliable: the temporal and the eternal, the limited and the infinite, the profane and the sacred. The mediator between both orders is Babette, who takes on a genuine sacerdotal function. However, there is an unexpected inversion, and paradoxically what is profane and mundane comes to the rescue of what is spiritual and sacred.

Effective Learning Strategies in the Homes of Famous Artists and Writers Converted to Museums

<p class="Normal1"><em>Homes of writers and artists that have been converted into museums are powerful frameworks for a wide range of both individual and group learning experiences. The museums have a unique ability to engage the learners on a deeper level by piquing their curiosity, and also by encouraging participative creative activities. The foundation is that of experiential learning, with an emphasis on authentic and content-based learning. Each visit to an artist’s home museum is a springboard for more universal learning experiences, particularly if the learner follows up and builds on memories of the visit, or to the museum’s website. Meta-cognitive development of analytical skills and creative techniques can enrich the learner, particularly when accompanied by both individual and collaborative online activities. Each artist or writer’s home provides a unique experience, which provides an opportunity for the museum’s educational and creative staff to be very creative. </em><em>The homes in this article include those of Pablo Neruda, Alexander Pushkin, Ilya Repin, Carson McCullers, Isak Dinesen, and Juan José Arreola.</em><em></em></p>

Ação e Narrativa: Reflexões a partir de Hannah Arendt e Karen Blixen

Neste artigo analiso alguns aspectos dos conceitos de ação e narrativa no pensamento de Hannah Arendt. Enfatizo a metamorfose operada pela narrativa que, na retrospectiva e por meio da imaginação, transforma a ação em estórias. Em especial, busco compreender por que Arendt afirma que as estórias são posteriores à ação e que é um equívoco tentar inverter essa ordem, sob a pena de eliminar a liberdade da ação. Baseio-me no capítulo sobre ação na obra “A condição humana” de Arendt e apresento alguns aspectos de seu texto sobre Karen Blixen, sob o pseudônimo de Isak Dinesen, publicado em “Homens em tempos sombrios”. Para aprofundar e ilustrar minha análise inicial, apresento e discuto, no final, o conto “A estória imortal”, de Karen Blixen, cujo enredo trata da tentativa pretensiosa de fabricar uma estória no mundo.