Daily Dialogue — August 3, 2013
KAREN
The time you won your town the race
We chaired you through the marketplace
Man and boy stood cheering by
And home we brought you, shoulder-high.
Today, the road all runners come
Shoulder-high we bring you home
And set you at your threshold down
Townsman . . of a stiller town.
PAN the mourners. Brave men swallow. Women are crying. tears flow furiously from Bror’s eyes; he will not wipe them. Delamere is trembling.
KAREN (O.S.) (cont’d)
Smart lad, to slip betimes away
From fields where glory does not stay
Early though the laurel grows
It withers quicker than a rose.
Felicity buries her face on her father’s shoulder. Lady Macmillan’s chin is very high. Lady Byrne turns away to stare up the hill.
And Wasili, alone at distance, watches.
KAREN (O.S.) (cont’d)
Now you will not swell the rout
Of lads that wore their honors out
Runners whom renown outran
And the name died fore the man.
Not a tear. She no longer needs the book.
KAREN
So set, before its echoes fade
The fleet foot on the sill of shade
And hold to the low lintel up
The still-defended challenge cup.
And round that early-laureled head
Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead
And find unwithered on its curls
(unsteady)
A garland . . briefer than a girl’s.
Moment. Her voice steadies. She looks up at the hills.
KAREN (cont’d)
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.
(beat)
He was not mine.
— Out of Africa (1985), screenplay by Kurt Luedtke
The Daily Dialogue theme for the week is eulogy. Today’s suggestion by Femme_Mal.
Trivia: It took director Sydney Pollack and writer Kurt Luedtke two years to find the spine of Karen Blixen’s stories upon which they could hang the elements of the plot.
Dialogue On Dialogue: Commentary by Femme_Mal: “
Like Richard Curtis’ use of Auden in Four Weddings and Funeral, much of this eulogy is an excerpt from A. E. Housman’s poem, To An Athlete Dying Young. The scriptwriter, Kurt Luedtke, is highly efficient in deploying this work; the poem says very crisply that which we would expect from Karen of her lover Denys while in a public venue. The poem helps maintain the feel of the period and location while furthering characterization.
Luedtke focuses his punch on the last two lines of Karen’s eulogy; when delivered by Meryl Streep the impact is utterly gut-wrenching. With these last words over the grave, Blixen’s cool Danish reserve is shattered and the heart of Karen’s and Denys’ conflicted love is exposed.
He was not hers — nor she his.
And Africa was not theirs or ours.”
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