page_title: Eugene Haynes
section_title: On Karen Blixen
hierarchical_section_title: Eugene Haynes / On Karen Blixen
caption_attribution_description: English: Eugene Haynes with Karen Blixen in Rungstedlund, Denmark, ca 1957
context_page_description: Eugene Haynes was an American classical pianist, composer and music pedagogue. After graduation from Lincoln High School in 1944, where he played piano to classmate Miles Davis' trombone. He studied music at the Juilliard School in New York and with Nadia Boulanger in Paris from 1951 to 1954. He worked as a radio presenter in East St Louis, as Artist in Residence at Lincoln University, and as leader of Centre for Performing Arts at University at Southern Illinois University. He published his memoirs in 2000 which documents his many stays in Denmark during the 1950s and his friendship with writer Karen Blixen. His first and only CD came out in 2004 and his life in Denmark was documented in a temporary exhibition at Museum Amager outside Copenhagen in 2012
context_section_description: On the difficulties of achieving a break through as a classical pianist, Eugene Haynes wrote in one of his letters home that for his high school classmate and friend, the Black jazz musician Miles Davis, the situation was different. As Haynes said to him once in France, "He (Miles) was entering a world where no one would question his right to function. This is still far from true where black African instrumentalists are concerned (in the States) which is why I spend as much time away from home as possible"(letter to brother, 1957, page 76)
  The letters and diaries reveals the warmness of his friendship with Blixen.  In a diary entry titled "First meeting" Haynes writes about a walk with Blixen: "Along the way she talked about the many discussions she and Finch-Hatton had had on music. I asked if she had the gramophone he gave her in Africa. She was happy to show it to me when we returned to the house . . . As we said good bye, I made a quip about being a 'bit of Africa sent out' to her". (p. 28–29)
  Haynes wrote in his diary about his first meeting with Blixen: "I have seldom been so curious about anyone." He further writes of Blixen, "She was a lady of La Belle Époque, one of the last of the great femmes du monde ... Had she said she had dined at the Café Procope with Diderot and the Philosophes (public intellectuals of The Enlightenment), I would have believed her". (p 28)
  Haynes further quotes Blixen, who told him, "You'll have to be patient while you grow into your grace" (p. 104).  Haynes was a young man of around thirty and working for a breakthrough. By her embracing him (as a matron?), despite obvious differences, she also grounded them in a shared experience: "In some ways we are both outsiders. I in Denmark, you in the land of your birth." Haynes reflects on his relationship with her: "When Karen Blixen is interested in what you are saying, she can fix you with an almost hypnotic gaze and you are then convinced that you are at that time the most important person she knows, and what you are saying is of great moment. It is her most endearing trait" (p63).
  Haynes found Denmark open and hospitable, but he also encountered stereotypes and racism. A university professor from America visiting Blixen referred to "the accent of our nigras" while at the table, and Haynes describes the situation and his discomfort in detail. Blixen had not heard the remark, but detected something was wrong. When she later asked about what happened, she was "enraged" about the guest's behaviour after Haynes had explained (p. 201–2).
  Nevertheless, there were many other much more enriching gatherings and conversations, and Haynes' delight in these meetings with Blixen shines through. At a dinner in 1961, Blixen suggests a game where each guest is assigned a famous intellectual, writer, or actor/actress. Haynes had given Blixen the witty French philosopher, Voltaire, and a woman with the name Birthe got Casanova. Haynes reveals fragments of the discussion in the diaries: Casanova had insisted on superstition as necessary, whereas Voltaire (The Enlightenment man) had favoured to free men of the "monster of superstition," arguing that liberty and superstition could not go hand in hand" (p180).
  In between dinners like these, Haynes could be found in blue overalls and blue trainers among the geese of Dragør and occasionally hanging out with fishermen at the harbour.
  The connection to Dragør and a suitcase belonging to Haynes found at Selborn's house in 2008 leads to a local museum exhibition and another exposition of Haynes early life.
caption: Eugene Haynes with Karen Blixen at her home in Rungstedlund, Denmark, ca 1957
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