life is the theatre of the gods. on isak dinesen. of africa

1wrestling with the gods

amma birago

"When the gods wish to punish us, they answer our prayers."

On ISAK DINESEN. Of Africa. Of the indigenous ones, the stoics.

Life is the theatre of the gods.

WRESTLING WITH THE GODS a staged reading

written by

AMMA BIRAGO

“The cure for anything is saltwater: sweat, tears, or the sea.”

a staged reading contextualizing Ancient Greek philosophy and highlighting Isak Dinesen’s biographies, the memoir and film Out of Africa.


amma birago



amma birago

READER #1: The dead to bury the dead. Life is the theatre of the gods.

The indigenous. The indigenous wield an attitude of mourning. In their attitude is the acknowledgement that the gods have and will win. To the indigenous, there is to be no efforting. To them the gods have and will always win. Life is the theatre of the gods. There is nothing to be won, nothing to be gotten, nothing to be fought for.

The Kikuyu leave the dead to bury the dead. Lived with this attitude, the gods do not find the indigenous exciting. Where there is nothing at stake, or to be staked: where there is nothing expected in life, where it is accepted that the gods have and will always win out in this venture called life, this theatre of the gods, … This the gods do not like. By this the gods feel paralyzed. The wind taken out of their sails. The gods abandon the Old World for the New. The gods abandon the Old for the New, for the New World and those who like Jacob will wrestle with the angel, the ones who will wrestle for a new name and a new destiny manifest, those who will wrestle with the gods. The sons of Abraham turn their eyes away from the southern lands of AEgypt to the plains of the New World, the level playing fields of the New World, and there to encounter the gods, and there wrestle for a new identity, identity and destiny, destiny to be made manifest.

If I get eaten up some time, bury me here, will you? Whatever’s left.

Just there, at the crest of the hill.

I am expecting Denys, perhaps today, anyway this week, and so you will know that:

Death is nothing, winter is nothing …

TOWN CRIER: DRUMMING; 10 SECONDS. MOURNFUL.

What is Africa to the gods?

When the old mapmakers got to the edge of the world, they used to write ...”Beyond this place there be dragons.”



amma birago


Africa. It’s another world. Not just the people and the cultures but the land, the colors you see at dawns and dusks -- and the life there. It charges every molecule of air. … It’s tangible -- the moment to moment of life and death, the co-habitation of man and beast, of beast and beast, who’ll survive, who won’t -- and there’s no judgment about it. No right or wrong or imposed morality. It’s just life. It’s a voyeur’s paradise really because those animals don’t want anybody in their business. You can watch but at a distance. Robert James Waller.


And he said, Let me go, for the day breaketh. And he said, I will not let thee go, except thou bless me.

On ISAK DINESEN. Of Africa. WRESTLING WITH THE GODS. BY AMMA BIRAGO

In the night I hear a cry like: help me, my God! I rise, listen, cannot sleep. Who am I? How do I look? Holger Drachmann


KAREN BLIXEN: “I have come to the conclusion that it is deeds that keep a nation, and individuals, alive; without action everything stagnates, -and so it is best to give one’s blessing to those who seek achievement actively.”

READER #1: I think that you had better get up, memsahib. KAREN BLIXEN: What? READER #1: I think that you had better get up, memsahib. I think that God is coming.



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ISAK DINESEN: I have paid a price for everything I own. READER #2: What is it, exactly, that’s yours? We’re not owners here. We’re just passing through.”


READER #5: “The truth is that we are all taking part in a puppet play. What is particularly important in a puppet play is to keep the author’s idea very clear.” “Be careful. When the old mapmakers got to the edge of the world, they used to write ... Beyond this place there be dragons.”

ISAK DINESEN: “I had a farm in Africa at the foot of the Ngong Hills. The Equator runs across these highlands, a hundred miles to the north, and the farm lay at an altitude of over six thousand feet. In the day-time you felt that you had got high up; near to the sun, but the early mornings and evenings were limpid and restful, and the nights were cold.”

KAREN BLIXEN: “Coffee-growing is a long job. It does not all come out as you imagine, when, yourself young and hopeful, in the streaming rain, you carry the boxes of your shining young coffee plants from the nurseries ... patiently, awaiting coming bounties.”

ISAK DINESEN: “All gone. - How did it start? - I think God had a hand in it. He gave me my best crop ever, and then He remembered. ... - Insurance? - That’s for pessimists.”

READER #1: Whose ox is being gored, memsahib?

KAREN BLIXEN: It was my ox being gored. My ox, its meat grounded and corned. Fiery and cancerous, the war first broke and took hold in my body, in my gut, the lower and near upper spine ... The war. The war in my gut, the lower and near upper spine even before it started. Even before the war started. The War. The



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War. The Great War. … Before I left Europe behind, I was engaged to my lover’s brother and in Africa we were married in Mombasa. Was it I who started the war? Fiery and cancerous this disease, igniting fire in the cold depths of a heart imperial, ... This war ignited within and consumed me up and for the heartlands of the native, The heart of Africa. ... Fiery and cancerous, this war from which I exited bloody into literature.

ISAK DINESEN: For in all the world only the story has the power to answer the human heart’s deepest cry of distress, which is: “Who am I?” … On wrestling with the gods, the heart of darkness, beasts and wannabes. ... “No one came into literature more bloody than I.”

READER #3: “They bought you a title, Baronessa. They didn’t buy me.” “Is there something we can call you that gets around this baroness?”

KAREN BLIXEN: The earth bears witness, witness, witness, and so does the moon. The earth and her moon bear witness to what the sun imperial has done. The moon is witness. Witness to what the sun imperial has done. What the sun has done; scorched the earth and siphoned the water from the storehouses of heaven.


ISAK DINESEN: “ … now we have caught sight of Africa on the horizon, and I hope that the dearly beloved country will greet me with the same friendliness that I feel for it. I do feel that it is there that my life lies; the nearer I get to it, the closer seem the bonds that bind me to it.”

“We were a kind of Mayflower people, you see? Mayflower people. - Although all we settlers who had come out before the War looked upon ourselves as one family, a kind of Mayflower people - ...”



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READER #2: Going Native. ... Why are we here? Who are we? Who are we? And why? Why are we here? ... Of the stoics. Of the indigenous peoples. Who are we? And why? Why are we here? ... Africa. Terra Nullius. There be dragons. There be dragons. The gods, the winds taken out of their sails, they abandon ship. It is the reason the New World. It is the reason.


READER #3: Barua-a Soldani. There is life in a look at the Crucified.

ISAK DINESEN: ‘‘I have paid a price for everything I own.’’


There is life in a look at the Crucified. I told her to beware of the warrior-like and fierce Masai on the plains. The Masai on the plains. But no, my wife, my Baronessa, overnight, my Baronessa is become Nyama, African hunter. Nyama, my Baronessa.

My wife, barefoot and pregnant, she thought, barefoot and pregnant, and in her nightgown, she whipped the lions ferociously. My wife, the Baronessa herself, she whipped lions into submission. In the dark, in the middle of the night, in the middle of an African jungle, obeying my orders to deliver ammunitions and whatnots to the border. … My wife, alone, she stood in the jungle by lantern light, lantern and no spot light, she whipped two lions into sheep. Her hand on her hip, the other one wielding the whip, barefoot, and with her hair uncovered, wild and on end, she whipped them, those two lions, she whipped like eggs into submission with her stock whip. The tips of the whip plucking the skin on her arms and back, self-flagellating she won the war civil and the war jungle, native men and lions into submission. My wife, the Baronessa herself, self-flagellating, single-handedly, she won the war. Yes! There is life in a look at the Crucified. Self-flagellating, the Baronessa, by her stripes the natives are healed. Or are they?



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I told her to beware of the warrior-like and fierce Masai on the plains. The Masai on the plains. But no, my wife; Nyama. My very Baronessa, overnight, my Baronessa is become the African hunter. Self-flagellating, single-handedly, she won the war. … There is life in a look at the Crucified. Hand on hip, hands down, she won the war. Singlehandedly, she won the war. And I looked in her face, in her eyes, and saw in them, the brave and ignoble villain that I am. Yes, son of a gun.

ISAK DINESEN: ‘‘I have paid a price for everything I own.’’ READER #3: “They bought you a title, Baronessa. They didn’t buy me.” “Is there something we can call you that gets around this baroness?”

Barua-a Soldani. There is life in a look at the Crucified. At the Hills of Ngong, there are no crowns of forget-me-nots: There is life in a look at the Crucified. She was the Christ amongst the natives, this our Baronessa; The throngs of derelicts and the beggarly through which she moved, the throngs which moved her, the throngs which the hem of her cloak did find, touch and the throngs which, their sins forgiven, did receive their healing. Or are they? …. Yes! There is life in a look at the Crucified. … the Baronessa, by her stripes the natives are healed.

ISAK DINESEN: ‘‘I have paid a price for everything I own.’’ READER #3: “They bought you a title, Baronessa. They didn’t buy me.” “Is there something we can call you that gets around this baroness?”

Barua-a Soldani. Barua-a Soldani. Everywhere she went, she did good. Everywhere she went, amongst the natives, the throngs of them, derelicts and the beggarly, they waited for her. The derelict and beggarly natives awaited her coming and her going. By the pools, the lakes and the goddamned dams of the region ... Derelicts and beggarly they waited for her shadow, her voice, her gracious hand;

Barua-a Soldani, Barua-a Soldani. Mighty healer. She toed the aristocrat line, this our Baronessa, and worked her way up to the ranks of those favored by the gods. She worked her way up and looked down looking down on the native, derelicts and beggarly, looking down on them with grace and favor.

ISAK DINESEN: ‘‘I have paid a price for everything I own.’’



amma birago


Barua-a Soldani. There is life in a look at the Crucified. At the Hills of Ngong, there are no crowns of forget-me-nots: There is life in a look at the Crucified. She was the Christ amongst the natives, this our Baronessa; The throngs of derelicts and the beggarly through which she moved.

ISAK DINESEN: You cannot come where I am going. READER #1: There is no cooking where you are going? ISAK DINESEN: You would not like it there. You must trust me about this.

READER #3: Barua-a Soldani. Barua-a Soldani. Everywhere she went, she did good. By the law and the letter of the king, by the spirit and letter of it, be healed. Barua-a Soldani. Barua-a Soldani. Your sins are forgiven, rise up and walk. By the pools, the lakes and the goddamned dams of the region ... Derelicts and beggarly they waited for her shadow, her voice, her gracious hand; Barua-a Soldani, Barua-a Soldani.





On wrestling with the gods, the heart of darkness, beasts and wannabes. ... “No one came into literature more bloody than I.”

READER #2: We think we’ll tame them... but we won’t. If you put them in prison, they die. ISAK DINESEN: Why?



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READER #2: Because they live now. They don’t think about the future. They can’t grasp the idea that they’ll be let out one day. They think it’s permanent. So they die. They’re the only ones out here that don’t care about us... and that is what will finish them. ISAK DINESEN: What did the two of you ever find to talk about? READER #2: Nothing.

READER #4: Of the Old World. Of the coming of the Mayflower people. Of gods, lesser men, beasts and wannabes. “This love of adventure and experience is particularly in evidence in my Somalis; every member of that race is happy, whatever happens as long as something is happening; the thing that makes them quite desperate is an uneventful life, - actually, the same can be said about almost all natives.”

“Be careful. When the old mapmakers got to the edge of the world, they used to write ... Beyond this place there be dragons.”

ISAK DINESEN: “The natives of Africa I had not met before; all the same they came into my existence as a kind of answer to some call in my own nature, to dreams of childhood perhaps, or to poetry read and cherished long ago, - or to emotions and instincts deep down in the mind, for I have always felt that I resembled the Natives more than did other white people in the Protectorate.”

“If I know a song of Africa ... of the giraffe ... and the African new moon lying on her back ... of the plows in the fields ... and the sweaty faces of the coffee pickers ... does Africa know a song of me? Will the air over the plain quiver ... with a color that I have had on? Or will the children invent a game ... in which my name is? Or the full moon throw a shadow ... over the gravel of the drive ... that was like me? Or will the eagles of the Ngong Hills look out for me?”

KAREN BLIXEN: “There are so many hyenas about, they come right up to the house at night; I have become really fond of their long howls and screams that are a part of Africa.”

READER #2: “Don’t forget to come home.”



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KAREN BLIXEN: Who a gentleman is? … ‘’A gentleman is one who has the concepts of honor of his age and his milieu in his blood, and in whom they have become instinct, in the same manner as the rules of the game have become instinct with the true cricket of football player.’’

ISAK DINESEN: “He even took the Gramophone on safari. Three rifles... supplies for a month and Mozart. He began our friendship with a gift. And later... not long before Tsavo... he gave me another. An incredible gift. A glimpse of the world through God’s eye. And I thought ... Yes, I see. This is the way it was intended.”

Denys. Till in death, as he promised. Till in death, he promised, joking that in death my house, my home, my bosom, at the foothills of the Ngong, joking that he will come to stay, bringing me companionship unsurpassed. He often brought a friend along for my story-telling. Denys Finch Hatton ... It is he who made me recognize, nurture and embrace the writer within. He began our friendship with a gift. He brought me such marvelous companionship, and when he was gone, none. When he was gone, he was gone. Smart lad. It was he my teacher ... Denys. Denys who shared his mind and learning, his library and body of work, his body also, his body and soul with me, and in the end, at the very end giving me his word, his word which to me was the world. Denys Finch Hatton. Icarus to the sun. ... Denys. ... Icarus. He went to the sun so he could come to me with the warmth of it while I lay in the heart of the cold, cold earth under imperial trees of elm and oak on Ewald’s Hill.

Denys Finch Hatton. “Smart lad, to slip betimes away... from fields where glory does not stay.”

… But it was Farah the pillar of cloud by day and by night. By day and by night. I remember my Farah, the lonely silhouette unarmed, the lonely silhouette disarming, regal and standing in the middle of the vast grass plains ... The vast grass plains and in the distance, the hills in the distance, like the seats or footrests of the gods ... The mountains. He was my Somali servant, Farah and chief of all the gentlemen after my heart. He Farah is chief of all the gentlemen after my own heart. The finest horse of Arabia, the finest of the finest horses in all of the world; Grand, gallant and very gentleman, my Farah.



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“It is clear to me by now that my black brother here in Africa had become the great passion of my life, and that this cannot be changed. Even Denys, although he makes me tremendously happy, carries no weight in comparison.”

ISAK DINESEN: I want to hear you say my name. READER #5: You are Karen, Msabu.

ISAK DINESEN: Farah Aden. My African servant who met me at Aden. Like an ambassador of the land he was. Aristocrat. My Farah who got me at Aden, at Aden and at hello ... His hello guttural, rich with culture and the gallantry of wild game. At Aden, his hello, Jambo Memsahib, this revering Mohammedan, his respectful bow, respectful, well-cloaked and endowed hello. He was my black brother, husband of my house and my affairs, public and at times private, this my Farah and his inborn, inbred and instilled sense of aristocracy. His was the eyes and mind, the spectacle through which voyeuristically, I came to understand the life and living, the death and dying of the indigenous ... Farah, the gods and the gallant beasts of the wild who dealt stakes and made destiny manifest to humans. … Through my Farah’s eyes, I came to understand fate, fate, destiny made manifest and why never tranquil, never tranquil and always afraid of coming to no consequence, we wrestle with the gods.

ISAK DINESEN: On wrestling with the gods, the heart of darkness, beasts and wannabes. ... “No one came into literature more bloody than I.”

READER #5: How can it be now with me and yourself? ISAK DINESEN: You will have some money. Enough, I think. READER #5: I do not speak of money. ISAK DINESEN: Do you remember how it was... on safari? In the afternoons I would send you ahead to look for a camp... and you would wait for me. READER #5: You can see the fire... and come to this place. ISAK DINESEN: Yes. Well, it will be like that. Only this time I will go ahead and wait for you. READER #5: It is far, where you are going? ISAK DINESEN: Yes. READER #5: You must make this fire very big ... so I can find you. ISAK DINESEN: This is very dear to me. It has helped me to find my way. READER #5: Thank you, Msabu.



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ISAK DINESEN: I want to hear you say my name. READER #5: You are Karen, Msabu.

KAREN BLIXEN: On wrestling with the gods, the heart of darkness, beasts and wannabes. ... “No one came into literature more bloody than I.”

ISAK DINESEN: “We Nations of Europe, I thought, who do not fear to floodlight our own inmost mechanisms, are here turning the blazing lights of our civilization into dark eyes, essentially different to ours. If for a long enough time we continue in this way to dazzle and blind the Africans, we may in the end bring upon them a longing for darkness, which will drive them into the gorges of their own, unknown mountains and their own, unknown minds.”


READER #4: Of the Old World. Of the coming of the Mayflower people. Of gods, lesser men, beasts and wannabes. ‘’Of course it is rather tiresome that in present-day society adventures almost always mean “adventures of the heart”, when far from everyone has the inclination for that kind of experience; in our way of life that sort of adventure has gradually come to be about the only one people have the chance of getting. But I think that most people have an unconscious feeling that there is more nourishment for soul and spirit in danger and wild hopes, and in this: in hazarding everything, than in a calm and secure existence, and that they are extremely undernourished in this respect, and would give almost everything to the one who can get them this nourishment.

“This love of adventure and experience is particularly in evidence in my Somalis; every member of that race is happy, whatever happens as long as something is happening; the thing that makes them quite desperate is an uneventful life, - actually, the same can be said about almost all natives.”



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READER #2: Lady of the Deep. Her hair is like the Musi-o-Tunyi. Lady Godiva. Fig leaves for her quotidian crown and we stood all six of us, fig leaves to our groins. And soon, fig leaves for aprons.

Memsahib will call her Godiva. The Old Memsahib. Her hair was like the Musi-o-Tunyi: The Smoke That Thunders. And their eyes of them all were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves aprons.

The Old Memsahib. We came to tea to see her hair, her hair which near reached the soles of her feet and very much worked as a blanket about her shoulders, under her arms, covering her breasts and crisscrossing their way over her loins, her groins and roundabout to the small of her back, if she chose to step out of her black robes and preserve her innocence in the matter.

Lady Godiva. We watched as Godiva at tea emerged from the sea of our dreams. Lady of Deep. Godiva goddess arranging her hair. She removed the pin and her hair came like the walls of Jericho tumbling down, cascading victorious like the Musi-o-Tunyi and there all six of us, we each became mermaids, handmaidens of the Old Memsahib. Lady of Deep. Lady Godiva.


KAREN BLIXEN: Trailblazing and lion rising in my palm at birth. ... Help me! Help me! ... Help me! Help me, my God! ... Help me! ... The yearning in in my gut and the knots that lie there, they blaze a trail which from above look like the dots connected to form a stork. Looking from up, do the gods see the dots connecting to form a lion in the design imprinted in my palm at birth? In my palm, both palms at birth, a lion rising.



amma birago

READER #3: “They bought you a title, Baronessa. They didn’t buy me.” “Is there something we can call you that gets around this baroness?” ISAK DINESEN: ‘‘I have paid a price for everything I own.’’


KAREN BLIXEN: ‘‘ ... I was here in contact with the African Natives and with the African big game. I have always much loved animals, now to meet them on their own ground, not important into human existence, -to ride straight into a herd of zebra or eland and to hear from your bed the distant, mighty roar of the hunting lion-was felt as a returning to those happy days when Adam gave names to the beasts of Eden.’’

ISAK DINESEN: Letters from Ngong to Thomas Dinesen. “I have spent four weeks in the happy hunting grounds and have just emerged from the depths. Of the great wide open spaces, from the life of prehistoric time, today just as it was thousand years ago, from meeting with the great beasts of prey, which enthrall one, which obsess one so that one feels that lions are all that one lives for - strengthened by the air of the high mountain region, tanned by its sun, filled with its wild, free, wild, free, magnificent beauty in heat-dazzling days, in great clear moonlight nights. I must humbly apologize to those hunters whose delight in the chase I failed to understand. There is nothing in the world to equal it.

I have never seen a more beautiful or free place than Lake Naivasha in the whole world, and I think the life out there, especially there where it is cooler and more open than here, would appeal more to you than anywhere on earth, - your trench excepted, that is …

I have bought an island in Lake Naivasha for you … I believe the island can be made into something unique, out there if not in the whole world. It is true that it is not large, it is very small, - about the same size as the piece of garden between the canal and the shore road at home!!! - but high, formed rocks descending steeply to the clear blue water, with big trees everywhere. One could have a windmill for pumping water, and plant roses and rhododendrons everywhere. Then one could have a



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swimming place and a little harbor for one’s motor boat, and go out in the mornings before it gets hot, and shoot duck and geese, there are millions and millions of them, and sometimes an old hippo.

I have just returned from a splendid safari during Christmas and New Year at Greswolde-Williams at Kedong … I shot a lion that we were tracking and following all day….

We hastily dismounted and could see him moving about in the bushes where he was raging and growling, but could not really see him clearly and one does not want to risk shooting at random; but at length when I saw his silhouette with swinging tail in the thorn, I shot and hit him in the shoulder, - but it was only a small bullet for such a large animal, and out he came right at us, straight as a cannonball, and believe me a charging lion has an expressive face. I managed to give him a bullet right in the chest; he fell almost at our feet. The skin is not particularly good; I was going to ask if you would like the head, but perhaps you want only your own lions.”

READER #3: There is life in a look at the Crucified. I told her to beware of the warrior-like and fierce Masai on the plains. The Masai on the plains. But no, my wife, my Baronessa, overnight, my Baronessa is become Nyama, African hunter. Nyama, my Baronessa.

KAREN BLIXEN: ‘’From the very first day an understanding sprang up between them and me, so that I may say that my love of them, of both sexes and all ages, as of all tribes, - with the Masai, the warrior-tribe, who were my neighbors when I rode across the river, as the first was as strong a passion as I have ever known. The dark figures round me answered me, even without speaking, in their noiseless, gentle movements and quiet, keen glances. Where we were alone together the echo grew stronger. I have been out of safari, a hundred miles from another white person, with native companions only, and have become one with my surroundings, with the landscape, animals and human beings and with the hours of the day and night. This feeling was enhanced by the natives giving us white people native names, characterizing us in words of their own language.’’

READER #3: “Be careful. When the old mapmakers got to the edge of the world, they used to write ... Beyond this place there be dragons.”a staged reading contextualizing Ancient Greek philosophy and highlighting Isak Dinesen’s biographies, the memoir and film Out of Africa.


amma birago

KAREN BLIXEN: Of lesser men. The coffee is too high. “To feel free and happy, that is to say, free to develop his nature to the utmost of which it is capable.” ... “Everywhere I am, I will be wondering if there is rain at Ngong.”

ISAK DINESEN: Coffee at this height?

KAREN BLIXEN: “-- and yet I think that for each separate individual there are outward conditions that more or less determine these feelings for them. Just as, for instance, coffee can grow, - and presumably feel free and happy, - under 7,000 and cedar over 7,000 [feet], I think that every human being requires a certain type of soil, temperature and altitude, very narrowly defined for some, almost universal for others, - in order to feel free and happy, that is to say, free to develop his nature to the utmost of which it is capable.” ... “Everywhere I am, I will be wondering if there is rain at Ngong.”

Of the Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Day after day, day after day, We stuck, nor breath nor motion; As idle as a painted ship Upon a painted ocean. Water, water, everywhere, And all the boards did shrink; Water, water, everywhere, Nor any drop to drink.

ISAK DINESEN: Bless you, fool! I shall set your sail, and I shall turn your wheel, and I shall have you sailing straight into Life.

KAREN BLIXEN: “With every day, in which we now waited for the rain in vain, prospects and hopes of the farm grew dim, and disappeared. The ploughing, pruning and planting of the last months turned out to be a labor of fools. The farm work slowed off, and stood still.”


KAREN BLIXEN: Your beloved Ngong is too high above the level playing fields upon which the gods come to assemble, dance, provoke and lure humans into transactions eden-esque … There where they assemble, men, lesser men, each one dispossessed, now assembled and possessed by this desire unyielding for god-a staged reading contextualizing Ancient Greek philosophy and highlighting Isak Dinesen’s biographies, the memoir and film Out of Africa.


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likeness. Men, many of them lesser men, seeking favors and fortunes, decked with implacable desires to be up and above the rest of the men, up and above the best of them. Decked with unappeasable yearnings to be king, in their turn, so that like they gods, they achieve and exercise influence over other men, over men, husbandry over the entire earth and resources natural.


KAREN BLIXEN: How in heavens name can the gods bless you? …. At this height? How in hell will your receive your blessing from the gods? Come down to the level playing fields upon which the gods come to assemble, dance, provoke and lure humans into transactions eden-esque. There is where like Jacob you will present yourself and the gods also … there is where you will wrestle with the gods for destiny desired and fate usurped.


KAREN BLIXEN: Your beloved Ngong is too high above the level playing fields upon which the gods come to assemble, dance, provoke and lure humans into transactions eden-esque … There where they assemble, men, lesser men, each one dispossessed, now assembled and possessed by this desire unyielding for god-likeness. There where the gods in their turn invoked, assemble to seduce men, seducing them to sacrifice themselves, upon a silver platter place their best parts and watch as mirage-like their bodies scorch at zenith, their best parts gone up in flames, a dying and rising offering to the gods, their best parts in flames, aflame and given up in exchange for a transaction illusive, a most cruel blessing, an utopia of sorts, a dream which soon nightmarish ... Eden-esque. That ye shall be as like unto the gods, as like unto the gods and ye shall know all things.


KAREN BLIXEN: I am one of Africa’s favorite children. “Of all the idiots I have met in my life, and the Lord knows that they have not been few or little, - I think that I have been the biggest. But a certain love of greatness, which could not be quelled, has kept a hold on me, has been 'my daimon.' And I have had so infinitely much that was wonderful. She may be more gentle to others, but I a staged reading contextualizing Ancient Greek philosophy and highlighting Isak Dinesen’s biographies, the memoir and film Out of Africa.


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hold to the belief that I am one of Africa’s favorite children. A great world of poetry has revealed itself to me and taken me to itself here, and I have loved it. I have looked into the eyes of lions and slept under the Southern Cross, I have seen the grass of the great plains ablaze and covered with delicate green after the rains, I have been the friend of Somali, Kikuyu, and Masai, I have flown over the Ngong Hills,- “ I plucked the best rose of life, and Freja be praised.” - I believe that my house here has been a kind of refuge for wayfarers and the sick, and to the black people has stood as a center of a friendly spirit. Lately it has been somewhat more difficult. But that is so all over the world.”


READER #4: Birds of prey from upon the rhinoceros gather among the heliconia.

Birds of prey from upon the rhinoceros gather among the heliconia. They gather among the gallant and gentlemanly heliconia where to feast upon the delicious wet baby frogs ... The baby frogs, their gullible and sweet wide eyes ... The frogs … Whose idea was it that they use the heliconia, their boat-like leaves bright and wildly painted for habitat? … Their boatlike leaves from where by the birds of prey they are splayed by a hunger very unmerciful and siphoned between cloaca-like beaks: the deliciously wet baby frogs splayed out and in total shock; they are gulped down without a fuss by the soldier-like , tall and gallant birds of prey.

ISAK DINESEN: The pillar of cloud and that of fire. The night’s journey.

READER #2: Going Native. ... Why are we here? ... And who are we? Who are we? And why? Why are we here? ... Of the stoics. ... Of the indigenous. ... Who are we? Why are we here? ... Africa. ... Terra Nullius. There be dragons.

KAREN BLIXEN: “Everywhere I am, I will be wondering if there is rain at Ngong.” “With every day, in which we now waited for the rain in vain, prospects and hopes of the farm grew dim, and disappeared. The ploughing, pruning and planting of the last months turned out to be a labor of fools. The farm work slowed off, and stood still.”a staged reading contextualizing Ancient Greek philosophy and highlighting Isak Dinesen’s biographies, the memoir and film Out of Africa.


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My fault that the rains were late and the nights cold. “It is a heavy burden to carry a farm on you. My Natives, and my white people even, left me to dread and worry on their behalf, and it sometimes seemed to me that the farm-oxen and the coffee-trees themselves, were doing the same. It appeared to be agreed upon, then, by the speaking creatures and the dumb, that it was my fault that the rains were late and the nights cold. And in the evening, it did not seem right that I should sit down quietly to read...”

“Coffee-growing is a long job. It does not all come out as you imagine, when, yourself young and hopeful, in the streaming rain, you carry the boxes of your shining young coffee plants from the nurseries ... patiently, awaiting coming bounties.”

On wrestling with the gods, the heart of darkness, beasts and wannabes. “No one came into literature more bloody than I.”

READER #2: Nzige. Bright yellow cloth. Gypsy Moth. An eclipse of the sun. A swarm of locusts in the shape of a mechanical bird toward the sun.

KAREN BLIXEN: In excelsis Deo. The skyward ones in excelsis Deo. The Flying Dutchman. Gypsy Moth. “That such a person as Denys does exist compensates for everything else in the world, and other things cease to have any significance.” Denys Finch Hatton. He was not mine till in death, ... Till in death as he promised, jokingly that then, ... that then he will come to me, to my home, to my bosom, that then he will be still, he will be mine, next to me where I will lay on the hills of Ngong. “There is such magic in the people and the land here.

READER #2: “The magic is not in the people and the land but in the eye of the beholder.’’ ... “Don’t forget to come home.”

ISAK DINESEN: “An incredible gift. A glimpse of the world through God’s eye. And I thought ... Yes, I see. This is the way it was intended.”

KAREN BLIXEN: “It is so beautiful here, a paradise on earth, when there is enough rain. I have a feeling that wherever I may be in the future, I will be wondering whether there is rain at Ngong.”

“Even I, who at heart hate the soil in its primitive state, have come to feel that there is something totally fascinating about clearing and ploughing and cultivating it.”



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I will not let thee go, except thou bless me.

KAREN BLIXEN: Je responderay. Je responderay. On Mottoes of My Life. Je responderay. ... Je responderay. ... Plant a seed in my womb. ... Make me a woman. Make me a mother, Finch Hatton. ... A seed in my womb. I want nothing more than to be your woman, your seed in my womb and the mother of your progenitor, a participant; My womb and my life a custodian of those who came before and those who are to come after you.


ISAK DINESEN: “I think so often of those worlds in the Bible: “I will not let thee go before thou blesses me.” … I think there is such deep meaning, something glorious in them; I almost take it to be my “motto” in this life. I feel that it applies so profoundly to all circumstance, to everything that one experiences: even where this farm and this land are concerned, …”

“But I do consider also that when one says these words, he one must agree and consent to let go of that which really has given one its blessing. For it happens almost every day of one’s life that a time, a circumstance is past; one cannot struggle against that. But when one has received a blessing, one has that to keep that can never be lost.”

Bless this tract of land, this womb of mine, bless me and I will let go of you.

READER #5: To the attention of Von Lettow. Three score and ten. Ghost horses: Love, hard-won, is never lost.

I remember my Farah, the lonely silhouette unarmed, the lonely silhouette disarming, regal and standing in the middle of the vast grass plains ... The vast grass plains and in the distance, the hills in the distance, like the seats or footrests of the gods ... The mountains. He was my Somali servant, Farah and chief of all the gentlemen after my heart. He Farah is chief of all the gentlemen after my own heart.



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The finest horse of Arabia, the finest of the finest horses in all of the world; Grand, gallant and very gentleman, my Farah.

Who a gentleman is? … ‘’A gentleman is one who has the concepts of honor of his age and his milieu in his blood, and in whom they have become instinct, in the same manner as the rules of the game have become instinct with the true cricket of football player.’’

To the attention of Von Lettow. Three score and ten. Ghost horses: Love, hard-won, is never lost.

Who a gentleman is? … Etonite gentleman Farah. This Farah is Finch Hatton in native clothing, the finest animal skins for accessories, the lion say, or the rare okapi. My Finch Hatton in native skins, the wealth of game, always here, … My Farah, like my shadow and mine in all of the world; Grand, gallant and very gentleman, my Farah. My Somali servant, Farah is chief of all the gentlemen after my heart. He Farah is chief of all the gentlemen after my own heart. The finest horse of Arabia, the finest of the finest horses in all of the world. Etonite Aristocrat, Farah. Farah, ... Farah, my Somali servant. Mine in all of the world, he stands unmovable between the unyielding Masai statuesque on the plains and the Icarus Finch Hatton, Denys whose heart and mind, mine like an ancient harp pursues.

KAREN BLIXEN: “It is clear to me by now that my black brother here in Africa had become the great passion of my life, and that this cannot be changed. Even Denys, although he makes me tremendously happy, carries no weight in comparison.”


Threescore and ten I can remember well: Within the volume of which time I have seen Hours dreadful and things strange; but this sore night Hath trifled former knowings. a staged reading contextualizing Ancient Greek philosophy and highlighting Isak Dinesen’s biographies, the memoir and film Out of Africa.


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KAREN BLIXEN: Vorbeck, most distinguished ambassador of his countrymen, Von Lettow-Vorbeck, who won the war of diplomacy, surpassing them all, earning the highest admiration of the Englishmen who fought against him, his name most distinguished in the annals despite the broken face of German volk. This our Vorbeck, who till even well past the threescore and ten, issues letters, special alphabets, letters most private to me, … But Farah’s measured gestures, the distant thoughts and blink of his eyes, won me over so that Von Lettow-Vorbeck, most distinguished ambassador, was no match for my Farah: My Farah who got me at Aden, at Aden and at hello ... His hello guttural, rich with culture and the gallantry of wild game. At Aden, his hello, Jambo Memsahib, this revering Mohammedan, his respectful bow, respectful, well-cloaked and endowed hello.


“Tis unnatural, Even like the deed that’s done. On Tuesday last, A falcon, towering in her pride of place, Was by a mousing owl hawk’d at and kill’d. “Tis said they eat each other.

KAREN BLIXEN: ‘’It’s an odd feeling ... farewell. There is some envy in it. Men go off to be tested for courage. If we’re tested at all, it’s for patience... for doing without... for how well we can endure loneliness. But I had always known that. It didn’t require a war.’’

ISAK DINESEN: The King’s African Rifles. ... Son of a gun. The war ravaging from within, ravaged also from without. It ravaged my reputation, gnawing from both sides, biting way more than it could chew.

KAREN BLIXEN: And was it not the day war broke out in Europe? That very day, at noon, the imperial sun at zenith, the war broke out and up the pipeline of my spine. And suddenly, eyes askance, my rank of foreigner sank even lower amongst a staged reading contextualizing Ancient Greek philosophy and highlighting Isak Dinesen’s biographies, the memoir and film Out of Africa.


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the sedentary talk-shop hausfraus of the settlement near and far. Eyes wide and askance, eyes talking-shops, eyes balking at the thought of my already sudden otherness, their eyes, the looks in them, the balking within, the weight of it all I felt sitting on my chest …

ISAK DINESEN: The King’s African Rifles. ... Son of a gun. The war ravaging from within, ravaged also from without. It ravaged my reputation, gnawing from both sides, biting way more than it could chew.

KAREN BLIXEN: ‘’It’s an odd feeling ... farewell. There is some envy in it. Men go off to be tested for courage. If we’re tested at all, it’s for patience... for doing without... for how well we can endure loneliness. But I had always known that. It didn’t require a war.’’

READER #3: There is life in a look at the Crucified. I told her to beware of the warrior-like and fierce Masai on the plains. The Masai on the plains. But no, my wife, my Baronessa, overnight, my Baronessa is become Nyama, African hunter. Nyama, my Baronessa. Self-flagellating, single-handedly, she won the war. … There is life in a look at the Crucified. Hand on hip, hands down, she won the war. Singlehandedly, she won the war. And I looked in her face, in her eyes, and saw in them, the brave and ignoble villain that I am. Yes, son of a gun.

READER #1: A seal upon thine heart and upon thine arm: A seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm: for love is strong as death; jealousy is cruel as the grave: the coals thereof are coals of fire, which hath a most vehement flame.

Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it: if a man would give all the substance of his house for love, it would utterly be contemned.

ISAK DINESEN: Farah. A man after my own heart. READER #5: How can it be now with me and yourself?



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KAREN BLIXEN: And he said, Let me go, for the day breaketh. And he said, I will not let thee go, except thou bless me.

Je responderay. Je responderay. On Mottoes of My Life. Plant a seed in my womb. ... Make me a woman. Make me a mother, Finch Hatton. ... A seed in my womb. I want nothing more than to be your woman, your seed in my womb and the mother of your progenitor, a participant; My womb and my life a custodian of those who came before and those who are to come after you. And if it be that my body and mind, this woman and womb is not capable of holding the gift, this blessing, ... Then enough. ... Enough. Enough is enough.

Your eyes. You will lend me your eyes, Finch Hatton. ... You will lend me your eyes, ... You will lend me your eyes that I may weep. Weep, weep. Between the porch and the altar, weep. Pluck my eyes out. Pluck them out before other and yonder fields are flagrant white with harvest.


READER #3: What is Africa to the gods? The gods, the winds taken out of their sails, they abandon ship. It is the reason the New World. It is the reason.

ISAK DINESEN: It must feel amazing. It’s how I imagined America to be. READER #2: Do you know what they’re made of? … Cloth. ISAK DINESEN: Where will he land? READER #2: Trick is not to. ISAK DINESEN: It must feel amazing. It’s how I imagined America to be. READER #2: - Have you been to America? ISAK DINESEN: - No, but my father was there. He told me stories about it when I was a little girl. READER #2: - Are you still close? ISAK DINESEN: - He died. He killed himself when I was ten years old.



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READER #4: The reason for the New World. ... The New World and not the Old. ... The gods are disinterested in the Old World. It is the reason the New World. The gods, the winds are taken out of their sails. ... The indigenous live in submission to the gods, prostrate, no fig leaves, no science ... Nor science, nor trickery: The indigenous. The indigenous wield an attitude of mourning. In their attitude is the acknowledgement that the gods have and will win. To the indigenous, there is to be no efforting. To them the gods have and will always win. Life is the theatre of the gods. There is nothing to be won, nothing to be gotten, nothing to be fought for.


READER #3: “Be careful. When the old mapmakers got to the edge of the world, they used to write ... Beyond this place there be dragons.” ISAK DINESEN: I have paid a price for everything I own. READER #2: What is it, exactly, that’s yours? We’re not owners here. We’re just passing through. ISAK DINESEN: You were right, you know. The farm never did belong to me. I may have been wrong.



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READER #2: When they said they liked to read, how did they put that, exactly? Do they know they’d like Dickens? ISAK DINESEN: You don’t think they should learn to read? READER #2: I think you might have asked them. ISAK DINESEN: Did you ask to learn when you were a child? How can stories possibly harm them? READER #2: They have their own stories. They’re just not written down. ISAK DINESEN: And what stake do you have in keeping them ignorant? READER #2: They’re not ignorant. I just don’t think they should be turned into little Englishmen. ISAK DINESEN: I want my Kikuyu to learn to read. READER #2: My Kikuyu. My Limoges. My farm. It’s a lot to own. ISAK DINESEN: I have paid a price for everything I own. READER #2: What is it, exactly, that’s yours? We’re not owners here. We’re just passing through. ISAK DINESEN: Is life really so damn simple for you? READER #2: Perhaps I ask less of it than you do. ISAK DINESEN: You were right, you know. The farm never did belong to me. I may have been wrong.

READER #1: Of the gods, of masters and of the dispossessed. The Prince of Wales is at Ngong for dinner. All honor is due Kamante.

KAREN BLIXEN: Of the Rime of the Ancient Mariner. The Bridegroom’s doors are opened wide, And I am next of kin; The guests are met, the feast is set: May’st hear the merry din.

ISAK DINESEN: However, I think I can say that the dinner was a great success; the Prince of Wales said it was the best he had had in this country, and Denys, that he had never had a better one, so all honor is due Kamante.



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I gave them: clear soup with marrow, - fish from Mombasa, a kind of turbot, with sauce hollandaise, - ham, that Denys had given me, with Cumberland sauce, spinach, and glazed onions, - partridges with peas, lettuce, tomatoes with macaroni salad and cream sauce with truffles, - croustades with mushrooms, a kind of savarin and fruit, - strawberries and grenadillas.

… You cannot come where I am going.

READER #1: There is no cooking where you are going? ISAK DINESEN: You would not like it there. You must trust me about this.

READER #1: Who are you? What is your name, Kamante? Kamante. O! Kamante. Kamante. Kamante. O! Kamante. Kamante, where are your people? Wake up Kamante? Wake up! Cry! Cry! Cry! Kamante, cry! Cry! Cry murder. Murder! Murder! Kamante. O! Kamante. Kamante. Kamante. O! Kamante. Who are you, Kamante? ... Who are you and what is your name, Kamante? Where are your people? Who are they? How? How? How? How come you are forgotten, Kamante? How come you will dispossess yourself in such a manner? Why will you uproot who you are, your village, your land, your people, and come along with me to where I am going? There where there is no cooking? No cooking and no merry making? There were cold reigns the life, the mind and the time? Why? Why? Why, Kamante? Why?



KAREN BLIXEN: Of the Rime of the Ancient Mariner. The Bridegroom’s doors are opened wide, And I am next of kin; The guests are met, the feast is set: May’st hear the merry din.

READER #1: Of the gods, of masters and of the dispossessed. The Prince of Wales is at Ngong for dinner. All honor is due Kamante.



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ISAK DINESEN: Three dimensions, bliss and transfiguration, a kind of Ariel. “An incredible gift. A glimpse of the world through God’s eye. And I thought ... Yes, I see. This is the way it was intended.”

“Then, flying suits Denys so perfectly. I have always felt that he has so particularly much of the element of air in his makeup, - (sanguineous, wet, and warm, or how does it go?) - and was a kind of Ariel. There is a good deal of heartlessness in this temperament, - where the heart predominates, the character feels most at home on earth where things grow and blossom; a garden and a cornfield can be so full of heart, -and Ariel was in fact rather heartless, as you see if you read “The Tempest” again, but so pure, compared with the earthly beings on the island, clear, honest, without reservation, transparent, -in short, like air.” I think, too, that what partly appealed to me in Denys from the beginning was this: that he moves, spiritually in three dimensions.”

“… I definitely believe that people who think wings are of the attributes of the blessed are right, that is, the capacity for moving in three dimensions is a part of bliss, or at least of transfiguration.”

READER #2: In excelsis Deo. The skyward ones in excelsis Deo. There is life in a look at the Crucified.

At the Hills of Ngong, there are no crowns of forget-me-nots: There is life in a look at the Crucified. She was the Christ amongst the natives, this our Baronessa; The throngs of derelicts and the beggarly through which she moved, the throngs which moved her, the throngs which the hem of her cloak did find, touch and the throngs which, their sins forgiven, did receive their healing. The indigenous, now stoics, the



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gods, the wind thus taken out of their sails, the gods paralyzed, they wreck their ships and cause great and cyclical havoc. The gods, they abandon ship and moving on to higher stakes, the New World, there where more adrenalin rush and men, more adrenalin and more men desiring immortality, men who wrestle the gods.

What is Africa to the gods? To the gods? What is Africa to the gods when Abel raises a sacrifice to the gods, a sacrifice consuming, a sacrifice self-consuming, a sacrifice consumed on the one hand and on the other, Cain’s offering, back and firing, his offering back-firing, and one that the fire will not take, this offering one that the fire will not touch, when yet this offering, his very and own body, his own and very best self and parts raised up, on a silver platter, the body, his body, a most primordial and level playing field of the gods, this body, bending over and backwards, folded into sixteen parts, on a silver platter and raised up to pacify the gods at zenith.

Going Native. ... Why are we here? ... And who are we? Who are we? And why? Why are we here? ... Of the stoics. ... Of the indigenous. ... Who are we? Why are we here? ... Africa. ... Terra Nullius. There be dragons.

KAREN BLIXEN: In excelsis Deo. The skyward ones in excelsis Deo. It must feel amazing. It’s how I imagined America to be.

‘’We were a kind of Mayflower people, you see? A kind of Mayflower people.’’

Draw not nigh hither: put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground.

"As for me, from my first weeks in Africa, I had felt a great affection for the Natives. It was a strong feeling that embraced all ages and both sexes. The discovery of the dark races was to me a magnificent enlargement of all my world. If a person with an inborn sympathy for animals had grown up in a milieu where there were no animals, and had come into contact with animals late in life; or if a person with an instinctive taste for woods and forests had entered a forest for the first time at the age of twenty; or if a time when he was already grown up; their cases might have been similar to mine. After I had met with the Natives, I set out the routine of my daily life to the orchestra.”



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“We were a kind of Mayflower people, you see? Mayflower people. - Although all we settlers who had come out before the War looked upon ourselves as one family, a kind of Mayflower people - ...”

Cain and Abel. Cain and Abel. And Cain will decimate his brother Abel, decimate and annihilate him and by that never find peace, not himself nor peace because the gods have marked his brow. His brow. The gods have put a mark upon his brow indicating that he is the one who will forever not belong. That he and his will never belong. That he and his will forever roam the earth.

The sons of Abraham turn their eyes away from the southern lands of AEgypt to the plains of the New World, the level playing fields of the New World, and there to encounter the gods, and there wrestle for a new identity, identity and destiny, destiny to be made manifest.

And Cain will decimate his brother Abel, decimate and annihilate him and by that never find peace, not himself nor peace because the gods have marked his brow. His brow. The gods have put a mark upon his brow indicating that he is the one who will forever not belong.

At the Hills of Ngong, there are no crowns of forget-me-nots. No crowns of forget-me-nots, laurels of knots curlicued matrimonial or lynched crowns southern-fried, nor crowns of thorns or strange fruit. At the Hills of Ngong, the skyward ones in excelsis Deo; There is life in a look at the Crucified.

READER #4: What is Africa to the gods? The reason for the New World. ... The New World and not the Old. ... The gods are disinterested in the Old World. It is the reason the New World. The gods, the winds are taken out of their sails because the indigenous remain stoic. Proud and defiant, the indigenous are clothed in robes of mourning, bedecked with staunch sorrow, broken tears, and no attachments to the very earth on which they stand, no attachments and no cords umbilical to the very earth on which they stand; for this world is not their own. This world is not their own. Life is the theatre of the gods. The theatre of the gods. It is the reason the New World. It is the reason. …. The indigenous, now stoics, the gods, the wind thus taken out of their sails, the gods paralyzed, they wreck their ships and cause great and cyclical havoc. The gods, they a staged reading contextualizing Ancient Greek philosophy and highlighting Isak Dinesen’s biographies, the memoir and film Out of Africa.


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abandon ship and moving on to higher stakes, the New World, there where more adrenalin rush and men, more adrenalin and more men desiring immortality, men who wrestle the gods.


READER #2: We think we’ll tame them... but we won’t. If you put them in prison, they die. ISAK DINESEN: Why? READER #2: Because they live now. They don’t think about the future. They can’t grasp the idea that they’ll be let out one day. They think it’s permanent. So they die. They’re the only ones out here that don’t care about us... and that is what will finish them. ISAK DINESEN: What did the two of you ever find to talk about? READER #2: Nothing.

READER #1: The gods, the winds taken out of their sails, they abandon ship. It is the reason the New World. It is the reason.

ISAK DINESEN: It must feel amazing. It’s how I imagined America to be. READER #2: - Have you been to America? ISAK DINESEN: - No, but my father was there. He told me stories about it when I was a little girl. READER #2: - Are you still close? ISAK DINESEN: - He died. He killed himself when I was ten years old.



When the old mapmakers got to the edge of the world, they used to write ...”Beyond this place there be dragons.”a staged reading contextualizing Ancient Greek philosophy and highlighting Isak Dinesen’s biographies, the memoir and film Out of Africa.


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“To Denys Finch-Hatton I owe what was, I think, the greatest, the most transporting pleasure of my life on the farm: I flew with him over Africa. And now I understand everything. Later on, when I flew in Africa, and became familiar with the appearance of my farm from the air, I was filled with admiration for my coffee-plantation, that lay quite bright green in the gray-green land...”

I have paid a price for everything I own.

READER #2: What is it, exactly, that’s yours? We’re not owners here. We’re just passing through.

ISAK DINESEN: You were right, you know. The farm never did belong to me. I may have been wrong. On wrestling with the gods, the heart of darkness, beasts and wannabes. “No one came into literature more bloody than I.”


ISAK DINESEN: “If I know a song of Africa ... of the giraffe ... and the African new moon lying on her back ... of the plows in the fields ... and the sweaty faces of the coffee pickers ... does Africa know a song of me? Will the air over the plain quiver ... with a color that I have had on? Or will the children invent a game ... in which my name is? Or the full moon throw a shadow ... over the gravel of the drive ... that was like me? Or will the eagles of the Ngong Hills look out for me?”

“With every day, in which we now waited for the rain in vain, prospects and hopes of the farm grew dim, and disappeared. The ploughing, pruning and planting of the last months turned out to be a labor of fools. The farm work slowed off, and stood still.”



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Bless you, fool! I shall set your sail, and I shall turn your wheel, and I shall have you sailing straight into Life.

KAREN BLIXEN: What is Africa to the gods?

ISAK DINESEN: “All gone. - How did it start? - I think God had a hand in it. He gave me my best crop ever, and then He remembered. ... - Insurance? - That’s for pessimists.”

READER #1: Whose ox is being gored, memsahib?

KAREN BLIXEN: It was my ox being gored. My ox, its meat grounded and corned. Fiery and cancerous, the war first broke and took hold in my body, in my gut, the lower and near upper spine ... The war. The war in my gut, the lower and near upper spine even before it started. Even before the war started. The war took hold of my body, ravaged me, throwing me up, throwing me down and me throwing myself up as a living and dying sacrifice to the gods. Throwing myself up, looking to the salt-lick, looking to lick some salt, looking for salt water- sweat, tears, or the sea. Salt water, sweat, tears or the sea. The sea. The sea and ashore, acres and acres of sorrow, and I, thrown up and thrown down, like the moon, a waxing and waning sacrifice to the gods. High and higher up and below, acres of sorrow, acres upon acres of sorrow. ….


KAREN BLIXEN: On wrestling with the gods, the heart of darkness, beasts and wannabes. ... “No one came into literature more bloody than I.”

The earth bears witness, witness, witness, and so does the moon. The earth and her moon bear witness to what the sun imperial has done. The moon is witness. Witness to what the sun imperial has done. What the sun has done; scorched the earth and siphoned the water from the storehouses of heaven.



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READER #1: I think that you had better get up, memsahib. KAREN BLIXEN: What? READER #1: I think that you had better get up, memsahib. I think that God is coming.


READER #2: The Roads Round Pisa. Our pearls before swine. Be bold. Be bold. Be not too bold, though. For behold, as men desire to be as the gods, they the gods desire to be as men.

Where is Jacob? I am looking for Jacob. Prodigal son coming out from among the pigs, coming in from the cold, coming out of the cold into the tropics. I have to warn him, this Jacob, this supposed to be Hebrew now called Jew ... I have to let him know that the roads round Pisa are stairways to Vatican heaven where young boys, cherubim and seraphim, where young boys sit at the feet of Vatican Chiefs, god-like and pontificating, these chiefs, once angels from on high, now dethroned and thrones on earth in Vatican country, both men and country become sovereign, … Men, god-like and pontificating, holding sway on all of the earth, all things great and small ... These men, wielding high and unimaginable, immitigable power, these belts heavy weight and champions of charters, dispensing sovereignty, god-like and pontificating, condemning who and how they please, … These chiefs, holding court, dipping their quails in inkpots of blood siphoned from the indignant. ... These Chiefs, their inkpots of blood, bolstered by their markedly broken wings, they hold court. The body of Christ. The body of Christ. The blood and the body of Christ.

KAREN BLIXEN: Be bold. Be bold. Be not too bold, though. For behold, as men desire to be as the gods, they the gods desire to be as men. Be bold. For behold this, too, will pass.

READER #2: The Roads Round Pisa. Our pearls before swine. The Roads Round Pisa. are stairways to Vatican heaven where young boys, cherubim and seraphim, where young boys sit at the feet of Vatican Chiefs, angels dare-devil and big balls, angels the-devil-you-know, … Where is Jacob? I have to



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warn him: Be bold. Be bold. Be not too bold, though. For behold, as men desire to be as the gods, they the gods desire to be as men, they desire for us the adrenalin rush and men, men desiring immortality, men who wrestle the gods and our pearls before swine. Our pearls before swine. The dispossessed dispossessing, the disinherited, disinheriting and the banished, banishing.

KAREN BLIXEN: And Cain will decimate his brother Abel, decimate and annihilate him and by that never find peace, not himself nor peace because the gods have marked his brow. His brow. The gods have put a mark upon his brow indicating that he is the one who will forever not belong. That he and his will never belong. That he and his will forever roam the earth.

READER #2: The Roads Round Pisa. Our pearls before swine. Where is Jacob? … Ah! There he is. Good sport! I see Jacob, the twist in his gait, broken eye, Jacob on his way out to the ends of the earth, on his way out, trophy in hand, pontificating at the elements that cower before and after him, the elements standing away, cursing nature and vowing how he has just emerged victor in a bout with the chief god of the Vatican, and that he is dead. He is dead. That God is dead.

KAREN BLIXEN: Be bold. Be bold. Be not too bold, though. For behold, as men desire to be as the gods, they the gods desire to be as men. Be bold. For behold this, too, will pass.

ISAK DINESEN: What is Africa to the gods?

KAREN BLIXEN: ‘‘ ... I was here in contact with the African Natives and with the African big game. I have always much loved animals, now to meet them on their own ground, not important into human existence, -to ride straight into a herd of zebra or eland and to hear from your bed the distant, mighty roar of the hunting lion-was felt as a returning to those happy days when Adam gave names to the beasts of Eden.’’

READER #1: ‘Be careful. When the old mapmakers got to the edge of the world, they used to write... Beyond this place there be dragons.’

KAREN BLIXEN: ‘’From the very first day an understanding sprang up between them and me, so that I may say that my love of them, of both sexes and all a staged reading contextualizing Ancient Greek philosophy and highlighting Isak Dinesen’s biographies, the memoir and film Out of Africa.


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ages, as of all tribes, - with the Masai, the warrior-tribe, who were my neighbors when I rode across the river, as the first was as strong a passion as I have ever known. The dark figures round me answered me, even without speaking, in their noiseless, gentle movements and quiet, keen glances. Where we were alone together the echo grew stronger. I have been out of safari, a hundred miles from another white person, with native companions only, and have become one with my surroundings, with the landscape, animals and human beings and with the hours of the day and night. This feeling was enhanced by the natives giving us white people native names, characterizing us in words of their own language.’’

READER #3: ‘Be careful. When the old mapmakers got to the edge of the world, they used to write... Beyond this place there be dragons.’

ISAK DINESEN: “The natives of Africa I had not met before; all the same they came into my existence as a kind of answer to some call in my own nature, to dreams of childhood perhaps, or to poetry read and cherished long ago, - or to emotions and instincts deep down in the mind, for I have always felt that I resembled the Natives more than did other white people in the Protectorate.”



I am one of Africa’s favorite children. “Of all the idiots I have met in my life, and the Lord knows that they have not been few or little, - I think that I have been the biggest. But a certain love of greatness, which could not be quelled, has kept a hold on me, has been 'my daimon.' And I have had so infinitely much that was wonderful. She may be more gentle to others, but I hold to the belief that I am one of Africa’s favorite children. A great world of poetry has revealed itself to me and taken me to itself here, and I have loved it. I have looked into the eyes of lions and slept under the Southern Cross, I have seen the grass of the great plains ablaze and covered with delicate green after the rains, I have been the friend of Somali, Kikuyu, and Masai, I have flown over the Ngong Hills,- “ I plucked the best rose of life, and Freja be praised.” - I believe that my



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house here has been a kind of refuge for wayfarers and the sick, and to the black people has stood as a center of a friendly spirit. Lately it has been somewhat more difficult. But that is so all over the world.”


ISAK DINESEN: My Farah, ... Farah, my Somali servant. …

READER #5: How can it be now with me and yourself? ISAK DINESEN: You will have some money. Enough, I think. READER #5: I do not speak of money. ISAK DINESEN: Do you remember how it was... on safari? In the afternoons I would send you ahead to look for a camp... and you would wait for me. READER #5: You can see the fire... and come to this place. ISAK DINESEN: Yes. Well, it will be like that. Only this time I will go ahead and wait for you. READER #5: It is far, where you are going? ISAK DINESEN: Yes. READER #5: You must make this fire very big ... so I can find you.

ISAK DINESEN: My Farah, ... Farah, my Somali servant. … Farah whose shadow stood as a man amongst boys, boys once at Eton, boys become men, Farah whose nobility primus inter pares rendered of our diverse histories and intercourses a spiritual dimension and of our daily, menial encounters and tasks rivaling the primordial fineries I pondered at night, alone in the four poster ivory and silk tower of mosquito netting in which I and my mind, without the tranquil and respectful and loyal shadow of my Farah at the doorway, or even at the threshold, … I and my mind, alone in my bed and my head, I pillow-talked, exchanging asides and primordial monologues, alone, at night, in the middle of the night, … In this anti-malarial ivory and silk tower, I pondered and yearned for the very essence of this land and peoples.



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KAREN BLIXEN: Of my Farah, … Of my Somali servant, Farah. They have already heard that Farah, is with me and that Farah and I have been seen face to face, immersed in each other’s speech and mind, numerous times in tête-à-têtes considered incongruous, incongruous and in appropriate for an European lady and her male native servant.

There have been complaints lodged, numerous times, complaints about how Farah, of how his cloud stays over me. These complaints lodged and also complaints about how he goes before me in a pillar of cloud by day and in a pillar of fire by night.

READER #5: It is far, where you are going? ISAK DINESEN: Yes. READER #5: You must make this fire very big ... so I can find you.

ISAK DINESEN: Farah who went in the way before me, to search me out a place to pitch my tents in. He went before me in a pillar of fire by night, to show me by what way I should go, and in a pillar of cloud by day. It was he Farah who stood with me, at my side, gallant, pure, bright, in his essence because his heart could stand with all the sorrows of the world, stand with all the sorrows of the world and to withstand them all, both the sorrows and the joys did little to sway him. He stood proud, as when he came to meet me at Aden and escort me to Mombasa. Farah stood dignified in the throes of my immitigable losses, he stood as he was when I first saw him on the platform at the train station at Aden, … The moment he won my heart, my guards and my hand.







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Africa. It’s another world. Not just the people and the cultures but the land, the colors you see at dawns and dusks -- and the life there. It charges every molecule of air. … It’s tangible -- the moment to moment of life and death, the co-habitation of man and beast, of beast and beast, who’ll survive, who won’t -- and there’s no judgment about it. No right or wrong or imposed morality. It’s just life. It’s a voyeur’s paradise really because those animals don’t want anybody in their business. You can watch but at a distance. Robert James Waller.



And he said, Let me go, for the day breaketh. And he said, I will not let thee go, except thou bless me.

KAREN BLIXEN: “I have come to the conclusion that it is deeds that keep a nation, and individuals, alive; without action everything stagnates, -and so it is best to give one’s blessing to those who seek achievement actively.”

READER #4: Of the Old World. Of the coming of the Mayflower people. Of gods, lesser men, beasts and wannabes. ‘’Of course it is rather tiresome that in present-day society adventures almost always mean “adventures of the heart”, when far from everyone has the inclination for that kind of experience; in our way of life that sort of adventure has gradually come to be about the only one people have the chance of getting. But I think that most people have an unconscious feeling that there is more nourishment for soul and spirit in danger and wild hopes, and in this: in hazarding everything, than in a calm and secure existence, and that they are extremely undernourished in this respect, and would give almost everything to the one who can get them this nourishment.

“This love of adventure and experience is particularly in evidence in my Somalis; every member of that race is happy, whatever happens as long as something is



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happening; the thing that makes them quite desperate is an uneventful life, - actually, the same can be said about almost all natives.”

ISAK DINESEN: You cannot come where I am going. READER #1: There is no cooking where you are going? ISAK DINESEN: You would not like it there. You must trust me about this.


KAREN BLIXEN: At Rungstedlund, the windows like doors and avenues of my mind usher me to the Ngong Hills where there is again two months, almost three, without rain. “Everywhere I am, I will be wondering if there is rain at Ngong.’’ ... if there is rain and what the design of the gods is looking back, looking at the dwarfed shadows on the plains, the dwarfed shadows of the Masai far off and standoffish ... If there is rain and what the design of the gods is, looking back, looking at the dwarfed shadows and looking forward. If there is rain at Ngong and if the design of the gods will, by Hansel and Gretel, form a design which will give the game away ... which will give the game to me ... this game in my favor.

READER #4: Of the Old World. Of the coming of the Mayflower people. Of gods, lesser men, beasts and wannabes.

KAREN BLIXEN: Help me! Help me! ... Help me help me, my God! ... Help me! ... The yearning in in my gut and the knots that lie there, they blaze a trail which from above look like the dots connected to form a stork. Looking from up, do the gods see the dots connecting to form a lion in the design imprinted in my palm at birth?




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READER #4: Of the Old World. Of the coming of the Mayflower people. Of gods, lesser men, beasts and wannabes. “Be careful. When the old mapmakers got to the edge of the world, they used to write ... Beyond this place there be dragons.”

ISAK DINESEN: At Rungstedlund. … “The mail has come today... and a friend writes this to me: The Masai have reported to the district commissioner at Ngong ... that many times at sunrise and sunset... they have seen lions on Finch Hatton’s grave. A lion and a lioness have gone there... and stood or lain on the grave for a long time. After you went away, the ground around the grave... was leveled out into a sort of terrace. I suppose that the level place makes a good site for the lions. From there they have a view over the plain... and the cattle and game on it. Denys will like that. I must remember to tell him.”

READER # 2: If I get eaten up some time, bury me here, will you? ISAK DINESEN: Whatever’s left. READER #2: Just there, at the crest of the hill. ISAK DINESEN: I am expecting Denys, perhaps today, anyway this week, and so you will know that: Death is nothing, winter is nothing …

KAREN BLIXEN: Denys Finch Hatton. “Smart lad, to slip betimes away... from fields where glory does not stay.” … He was not mine till in death, ... Till in death as he promised, jokingly that then, ... that then he will come to me, to my home, to my bosom, that then he will be still, he will be mine, next to me where I will lay on the hills of Ngong.‘’There is such magic in the people and the land here.

READER #2: “The magic is not in the people and the land but in the eye of the beholder.’’ ... “Don’t forget to come home.”





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READER #2: We think we’ll tame them... but we won’t. If you put them in prison, they die. ISAK DINESEN: Why? READER #2: Because they live now. They don’t think about the future. They can’t grasp the idea that they’ll be let out one day. They think it’s permanent. So they die. They’re the only ones out here that don’t care about us... and that is what will finish them. ISAK DINESEN: What did the two of you ever find to talk about? READER #2: Nothing.


READER #4: Of the Old World. Of the coming of the Mayflower people. Of gods, lesser men, beasts and wannabes.

READER #2: What is it, exactly, that’s yours? We’re not owners here. We’re just passing through. ISAK DINESEN: You were right, you know. The farm never did belong to me. I may have been wrong.

READER #4: Of the Old World. Of the coming of the Mayflower people. Of gods, lesser men, beasts and wannabes. The reason for the New World. ... The New World and not the Old. ... The gods are disinterested in the Old World. It is the reason the New World. The gods, the winds



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are taken out of their sails. ... The indigenous live in submission to the gods, prostrate, no fig leaves, no science ... Nor science, nor trickery: The indigenous. The indigenous wield an attitude of mourning. In their attitude is the acknowledgement that the gods have and will win. To the indigenous, there is to be no efforting. To them the gods have and will always win. Life is the theatre of the gods. There is nothing to be won, nothing to be gotten, nothing to be fought for.


TOWN-CRIER: DRUMMING; 10 SECONDS. MOURNFUL.


ISAK DINESEN: “We Nations of Europe, I thought, who do not fear to floodlight our own inmost mechanisms, are here turning the blazing lights of our civilization into dark eyes, essentially different to ours. If for a long enough time we continue in this way to dazzle and blind the Africans, we may in the end bring upon them a longing for darkness, which will drive them into the gorges of their own, unknown mountains and their own, unknown minds.”


KAREN BLIXEN: What is Africa to the gods?

TOWN CRIER: What is Africa to the gods?



On wrestling with the gods, the heart of darkness, beasts and wannabes. ... “No one came into literature more bloody than I.”


Documents

life is the theatre of the gods. on isak dinesen. of africa