“Babette’s Feast” is certainly such a tale, recounting the story of two sisters, Martine and Philippa, from girlhood to old age, and preparing these characters for one remarkable feast bestowed on them and their friends by their mysterious French housekeeper and cook, Babette Hersant. She could easily follow her characters across decades of their lives, to arrive at the moment that crystallized their destiny.
Notably, Dinesen wrote in English and then translated her own works into Danish (so you won’t see any translator credited).Īs a teller of tales, Dinesen did not restrict herself to any brief time interval. “Babette’s Feast” first appeared in a magazine, the Ladies’ Homes Journal, in 1950, and it was again published in 1958 in a story collection called Anecdotes of Destiny. Anyone who has read that book, or seen the 1985 film of it, knows that, at the end of her time in Africa, she returned to her native Denmark where she would live out her days crafting her famous memoir as well as an impressive host of short stories. In Isak Dinesen's life-affirming short story, two elderly sisters living in a remote, god-fearing Norwegian community take in a mysterious refugee from Paris one night - and are rewarded for their kindness with the most decadent, luxurious feast of a lifetime.“Babette’s Feast” is a short story by Isak Dinesen ( Karen Blixen), the Danish author whose real life experiences managing a farm in British East Africa (colonial Kenya) led her to write Out of Africa (1937). At such moments, they realised that Babette was deep, and that in the soundings of her being there were passions, there were memories and longings of which they knew nothing at all.'īabette's Feast is a sublime celebration of eating, drinking and sensual pleasure.
Orshe would sit immovable on the three-legged kitchen chair, her strong hands in her lap and her dark eyes wide open, as enigmatical and fatal as a Pythia upon her tripod. 'And it happened when Martine or Philippa spoke to Babette that they would get no answers, and would wonder if she had even heard what they said.
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