Out of Africa: And Shadows on the Grass
Read Out of Africa: And Shadows on the Grass Online
Authors: Isak Dinesen
Tags: #Biography & Autobiography, #Women
Also by Isak Dinesen, available from Vintage Books
Anecdotes of Destiny
and
Ehrengard
Babette’s Feast and Other Anecdotes of Destiny
Ehrengard
Last Tales
Seven Gothic Tales
Winter’s Tales
Vintage International Edition, October 1989
Out of Africa
copyright 1937, 1938 by Random House, Inc.
Copyright renewed 1965 by Rungstedlundfonden
Shadows on the Grass
copyright
©
1960 by Isak Dinesen
Copyright renewed 1988 by Tore Dinesen
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. Originally published in the United States as two separate books:
Out of Africa
originally published by Random House, Inc., in 1938, and by Vintage Books in 1972.
Shadows on the Grass
originally published by Random House, Inc., in 1961, and by Vintage Books in 1974.
Poem by Otto Gelsted translated by Isak Dinesen.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Dinesen, Isak, 1885–1962.
Out of Africa; and, Shadows on the grass.
Reprint. (1st work). Originally published:
New York: Random House, 1938, c1937.
Reprint. (2nd work). Originally published:
New York: Random House, 1961.
1. Kenya-Social life and customs.
2. Country life-Kenya.
3. Kenya-Description and travel.
4. Dinesen, Isak, 1885–1962.
I. Dinesen, Isak, 1885–1962. Shadows on the grass.
1985.
II. Title: Out of Africa
III. Title: Shadows on the grass.
DT433.54. D56 1985 967.6′2 85-7640
eISBN: 978-0-307-79409-3
v3.1
CONTENTS
The Savage in the Immigrant’s House
2. A SHOOTING ACCIDENT ON THE FARM
4. FROM AN IMMIGRANT’S NOTEBOOK
The Wild Came to the Aid of the Wild
Farah and the Merchant of Venice
“I Will Not Let Thee Go Except Thou Bless Me”
The Naturalist and the Monkeys
Equitare, Arcum tendere, Veritatem dicere
O
UT
OF
A
FRICA
From the Forests and Highlands we come, we come
.
1
THE NGONG FARM
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.
The geographical position, and the height of the land combined to create a landscape that had not its like in all the world. There was no fat on it and no luxuriance anywhere; it was Africa distilled up through six thousand feet, like the strong and refined essence of a continent. The colours were dry and burnt, like the colours in pottery. The trees had a light delicate foliage, the structure of which was different from that of the trees in Europe; it did not grow in bows or cupolas, but in horizontal layers, and the formation gave to the tall solitary trees a likeness to the palms, or a heroic and romantic air like fullrigged ships with their sails clewed up, and to the edge of a wood a strange appearance as if the whole wood were faintly vibrating. Upon the grass of the
great plains the crooked bare old thorn-trees were scattered, and the grass was spiced like thyme and bog-myrtle; in some places the scent was so strong, that it smarted in the nostrils. All the flowers that you found on the plains, or upon the creepers and liana in the native forest, were diminutive like flowers of the downs,—only just in the beginning of the long rains a number of big, massive heavy-scented lilies sprang out on the plains. The views were immensely wide. Everything that you saw made for greatness and freedom, and unequalled nobility.
The chief feature of the landscape, and of your life in it, was the air. Looking back on a sojourn in the African highlands, you are struck by your feeling of having lived for a time up in the air. The sky was rarely more than pale blue or violet, with a profusion of mighty, weightless, ever-changing clouds towering up and sailing on it, but it has a blue vigour in it, and at a short distance it painted the ranges of hills and the woods a fresh deep blue. In the middle of the day the air was alive over the land, like a flame burning; it scintillated, waved and shone like running water, mirrored and doubled all objects, and created great Fata Morgana. Up in this high air you breathed easily, drawing in a vital assurance and lightness of heart. In the highlands you woke up in the morning and thought: Here I am, where I ought to be.
The Mountain of Ngong stretches in a long ridge from North to South, and is crowned with four noble peaks like immovable darker blue waves against the sky. It rises eight thousand feet above the Sea, and to the East two thousand feet above the surrounding country; but to the West the drop is deeper and more precipitous,—the hills fall vertically down towards the Great Rift Valley.
The wind in the highlands blows steadily from the North-North-East. It is the same wind that, down at the coasts of
Africa and Arabia, they name the Monsoon, the East Wind, which was King Solomon’s favourite horse. Up here it is felt as just the resistance of the air, as the Earth throws herself forward into space. The wind runs straight against the Ngong Hills, and the slopes of the hills would be the ideal place for setting up a glider, that would be lifted upwards by the currents, over the mountain top. The clouds, which were travelling with the wind, struck the side of the hill and hung round it, or were caught on the summit and broke into rain. But those that took a higher course and sailed clear of the reef, dissolved to the West of it, over the burning desert of the Rift Valley. Many times I have from my house followed these mighty processions advancing, and have wondered to see their proud floating masses, as soon as they had got over the hills, vanish in the blue air and be gone.
