Hope you enjoyed this little taste of work-in-progress. However no one realizes it except Babette. For the last supper of Babette’s Feast is not a liturgical rewriting of silent sacrifice but rather a sadly misunderstood celebration of a lost era. Rather she transforms them into the ultimate beau geste of a consummate artist and an unrepentant radical. Dinesen’s character does not forget the past or the utopian hopes she once harbored for La Commune. In my work-in-progress, these elements are juxtaposed to the film and show how much stronger and more menacing the heroine is in the original text (especially in Dinesen’s Danish version). This rendition makes a startling contrast with the tasteful and cleaned-up rendition presented by Gabriel Axel, no? – Third, tucked in the stacks of Hesburgh Library at ND, I found a copy of the 1952 Danish translation by Jørgen Claudi with the fabulous cover illustration featured here. WD was very sympathetic to the ideals of La Commune, and this book should be a “must” for anyone seeking a thoughtful eye-witness account of the terrible events. The 2003 translation of the 1891 history of La Commune by Isak Dinesen’s father, Wilhelm Dinesen Paris sous la Commune, Translated from the Danish by Denise Bernard-Folliot, provides the historical subtext that was hugely important to Dinesen: a fact that has been ignored by most readers.

– On “Babette’s” Sympathy to La Commune and its Ideals Fantastic linguistic analysis! Thanks FLH!* Hansen proves that Dinesen, in rewriting the tale for Danish audiences, reinforced the revolutionary tone and threatening aspect of her heroine. Thanks to the great book by Frantz Leander Hansen, The Aristocratic Universe of Karen Blixen (2003), nowadays a more bracing and sober accounting is available to English-language readers. – On the feisty spirit that emerges in Danish! And the need for a remake!Ī few thoughts on my discoveries, to intrigue you: And now, with some recent discoveries, I am more convinced than ever of its debt to revolution. As an epicurian (married to a chef-de-cuisine, how could I not be in love with food?) “Babette’s Feast” continues to haunt my thoughts.

Babette's feast dinesen