The Creative Dialectic in Karen Blixen’s Essays – On Colonialism, Feminism, and War is topic of the lecture by Professor Stecher-Hansen regarding her recently completed book manuscript about the essays and broadcast orations of Karen Blixen (“Isak Dinesen”), a widely celebrated literary figure in Scandinavia and the Anglo-American world. Overlooked in existing critical studies of Blixen’s literary fiction is the fact that the author functioned as a sage contributor to contemporary debates in Denmark, particularly during the 1950s when her distinct voice on the Danish radio became familiar to a nation of listeners. Blixen’s essays were often aired as readings on Danish radio, contributing her voice to the public debates of the day. European Colonialism and its devastating legacy on the African continent, Feminism and its new significance for modern midcentury women, Hitler’s Germany and totalitarian regimes governed by repressive ideologies; these are among the major concerns of twentieth-century Scandinavians and central questions to which Karen Blixen makes provocatively philosophical contributions that deserve further scholarly attention. Stecher-Hansen’s study is framed by the concept of a “creative dialectic;” the title refers to the dialectic method in the essays, a dialogue between two or more different points of view, as well as to Blixen’s aesthetic principle that a meeting of opposing forces is necessary to form a creative synthesis.

Marianne Stecher-Hansen, Associate Professor (UC Berkeley, Ph.D. 1990), is celebrating this autumn her twentieth year as a faculty member in the Department of Scandinavian Studies at UW where she has taught the works of Karen Blixen in undergraduate and graduate courses in Scandinavian literature and published numerous articles in scholarly journals, including two recent articles on Blixen’s essays in Scandinavian Studies, a monograph on Thorkild Hansen’s documentary works entitled History Revisited, and served as volume editor for two substantial reference works in Danish literature. Marianne is recently appointed the College of Arts and Sciences Term Professor in Danish.