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 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 - from the movie Out of Africa
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| google image |
In my opinion, there’s no more romantic movie than Out of Africa (1985). It tells the story Danish author Karen Blixen's, pen name Isak Dinesen (1885-1962) nostalgic life as a settler on a coffee plantation in British East Africa, now Kenya.
The movie presents a lyrical depiction of life on a colonial farm, with deaths, drought and disappointments--as well as great and tragic friendships.
It’s the grand love story between Blixen (Meryl Streep) and Denys Finch Hatton (Robert Redford). The two met in 1918, after Karen’s marriage to the reckless Swedish Baron Bror Blixen had ended.
Who can forget two highly sensual scene when they go on safari?
Redford shampoos Streep’s hair:
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| destinationhollywood.com |
or their waltz under the stars, with Mozart on the gramophone?
Music, candlelight, white linen, crystal: what a way to go on safari!
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| hookedonhouses.net Karen's house in the film previously belonged to the widow of the first Prime Minister and President of Kenya. |
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| hookedonhouses.net Meryl Streep and Robert Redford having breakfast on the veranda. |
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| hookedonhouses.net Karen's dreamy bedroom with mosquito netting. |
Pictures and interesting information about the making of the movie.
Poetry in Out of Africa
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The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
As Redford shampoos Streep's hair during their Safari, he
recites to her lines at the end of the poem,
He prayeth well, who loveth well
Both man and bird and beast.
These words also appear on a simple brass plaque marker at his tomb in the Ngong Hills.
In the flyleaf of the copy of the poem owned by Karen Blixen, Denys drew a picture of a rhinoceros.
This drawing is reproduced in Isak Dinesen's Letters from Africa.
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by A.E. Housman
With rue my heart is laden
For golden friends I had,
For many a rose-lipt maiden
By brooks too broad for leaping
The lightfoot boys are laid;
The rose-lipt girls are sleeping
Toward the end of the film, Streep accepts a drink from the exclusive all men's club in Nairobi, before her final departure from Africa. She offers a toast with the phrase rose-lipped maidens lightfoot lads.
The toast also is repeated before the seduction scene on safari.
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A Stropshire Lad: XIX to an Athlete Dying Young
by A. E. Housman
(Karen reads the poem at Finch Hatton's burial)
The time you won your town the race
We chaired you through the market-place;
Man and boy stood cheering by,
And home we brought you shoulder-high.
Smart lad, to slip betimes away
From fields where glory does not stay
And early though the laurel grows
It withers quicker than the rose.
Now you will not swell the rout
Of lads that wore their honours out,
Runners whom renown outran
And the name died before the man.
Around that early-laurelled head
Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead,
And find unwithered on its curls
The garland briefer than a girl's.
Streep adds these words:
Now take back the soul of Denys George Finch Hatton, whom You have shared with us. He brought us joy...we loved him well. He was not ours. He was not mine.
Happy Valentine Day to You and Yours
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