March 18 | Ivan Grozny

August 25, 1530 – March 18, 1584: Age 53

In the immortal words of Malcolm Forbes, "Ivan the Terrible was as bad as he sounds." But that, of course is not the whole story.

Ivan was the first Russian monarch to rule as Tsar. He expanded and united the Russian kingdom and made many essential reformations, including the creation of sea ports and initiation of a trading relationship with England. This while fighting scheming aristocrats within his own kingdom who had no notion of a "Russia" that extended beyond the needs of their own immediate enrichment.

Ivan was called "Grozny", which means "terrible" in the sense of "terrifying" or "fearsome", because he had all the qualities necessary for the job: he was ruthless, suspicious, stubborn, and cruel. The first half of his reign went pretty well, but nearly dying in 1553 and the death of his wife his personality became more and more extreme. Some examples:

• When he had St. Basil's Cathedral constructed in Moscow, he was so moved by its beauty that he had the architects blinded so that they could never design anything as beautiful again
• He formed a secret police, the Oprichniks, who owed allegiance only to him and became a bunch of murderous thugs
• He ordered the Oprichniks to murder all the inhabitants of Novgorod; the exact death toll is unknown but estimates are they succeeded in killing about 30% of the population
• He beat his daughter-in-law for wearing immodest clothing, causing a miscarriage
  
• In a fit of rage at his son he clubbed him with a staff, accidentally killing him

This last deed was imagined and painted 300 years later by the great Repin, and the picture above is a detail from that. Ivan inspired many artists; he was a towering figure, a villain of such proportions that I find myself wishing Shakespeare had known more about him.

In 1584, a comet was spotted, and Ivan called together 60 astrologers to interpret the vision. They agreed that it was a sign he would die soon. Soon, Ivan's body became swollen from unknown causes. He seemed to recover, then on March 18, while playing chess with the statesman Bogdan Belsky, he suddenly collapsed and died.

In the 1960s his tomb was opened during renovations, and an examination of his remains revealed very high amounts of mercury. He was probably poisoned; the presence of mercury would explain his symptoms and, to some extent, his madness. Three days before his death he tried to rape his daughter-in-law, who was the sister of Boris Godunov, future tsar and star of Pushkin's play and Mussorgsky's opera. Modern suspicion falls on Godunov as his probably assassin.

We do, luckily, have Sergei Eisenstein's vision of him. During WWII, with morale in Russia low, Stalin (who admired Ivan) ordered the filmmaker to create a film of Ivan's life. The result is one of the greatest films of the era: It was filmed in three parts. The first part was released in 1944. The second part offended Stalin, as its depictions of Ivan's paranoia were a little too close to the mark. It was not released until after Stalin's death. The third part was seized and mostly destroyed.

Ivan Grozny himself is played brilliantly by Nikolai Cherkasov, marvellously creepy and impressive. But it is impossible to communicate anything about the film by talking about one performance, or one part. The whole structure, the costumes, all the performances, the sets, everything works together as a whole to create an unforgettable experience.

Here is an excerpt that dramatizes his struggle with Philip, a church patriarch who openly opposed him. The scene imagines the moment where he decided to become "the Terrible" as he was known by his enemies. This excerpt has French subtitles, but even if you can't read French (or understand Russian) the power of the film is palpable.

Sources: Wikipedia; Forbes, Malcolm, They Went That-a-Way, Simon and Shuster, New York, 1988.

December 31 | Commodus

August 31, 161 – December 31, 192: Age 31

"Not naturally wicked but, on the contrary, as guileless as any man that ever lived. His great simplicity, however, together with his cowardice, made him the slave of his companions, and it was through them that he at first, out of ignorance, missed the better life and then was led on into lustful and cruel habits, which soon became second nature." — Dio Cassius

Commodus was Emperor of Rome between the years 180 and 192 C.E. He was the son of Marcus Aurelius and, yes, he's the guy portrayed by Joachim Phoenix in Gladiator. Surprisingly, he was in real life almost as much of a bastard as Phoenix portrayed him to be.

His father was a sober, wise man who ruled during a difficult period in Rome's history. Commodus was not the first Roman emperor who inherited the title from his father, but he was the first to be "born to the purple", that is, born during his father's rule. Commodus was handsome, strong, athletic, but he was vain, impatient, cruel, and ultimately quite foolish. A shown in the movie, he really did like to fight gladiators in the Coliseum; he did it in the nude. He never lost, naturally, since the penalty for winning against the Emperor would be infinitely worse than being humbled by him in the ring. He was no coward: he also faced wild animals, incapable of faking submission — and he won. Publicly, he never killed his opponents, but privately he frequently did. He also charged the City of Rome a million sesterces for each appearance (to get a sense of the value, the average legionary was paid 1,200 sesterces per annum). His behaviour got even more eccentric: wounded soldiers would be placed in the arena for Commodus to kill with a sword. And people missing their feet due to accident or disease were taken to the arena where they were tethered together for Commodus to club to death while pretending they were giants.

There was more. He kept taking on new names, and when the number of his names reached 12 (Lucius Aelius Aurelius Commodus Augustus Herculeus Romanus Exsuperatorius Amazonius Invictus Felix Pius) he ordered that the 12 months of the year be renamed according to each of his names. So January became Lucius, etc. He also renamed Rome "Colonia Lucia Annia Commodiana", and renamed all kinds of institutions after himself too (for example, the Senate was renamed "Commodian Fortunate Senate", the legions were renamed "Commodianae", etc.).

It was all too much for his enemies, and the number of plots for his death increased. One group of conspirators, including his lover, Marcia, poisoned him on December 31, 192, but he vomited it all up again. They then sent a wrestler named Narcissus to Commodus in his bath to strangle him. This attempt succeeded. Upon his death the Senate immediate declared him a public enemy and changed the names of the months and the city and everything else back again.

Sources: Wikipedia, Roman Emperors

December 30 | Grigori Rasputin

January 22, 1869 – December 30, 1916: Age 47

Rasputin was a Russian mystic who had a considerable following among the nobility of early 20th century Russia. After an unexceptional childhood, he spent a few months in a monastery, married, and had three children. In 1901 he made a pilgrimage to various places, including Greece and Jerusalem. By 1903 he had arrived in St. Petersburg, where he began to develop a reputation for healing and prophesy. In 1905, he was in Siberia when he got word that the son of the Tsar, who was hemophilic, was bleeding after a fall from a horse. Rasputin was able to provide some relief through prayer and practical advice like "Don't let the doctors bother him too much, let him rest."

Every time the boy had an injury, the boy's mother called on Rasputin, and he got better. She came to believe that God spoke to her through Rasputin, and his influence over the royal household grew.

A group of Russian nobles, viewing this influence as too great a threat, invited Rasputin to dinner and served him cakes and red wine laced with cyanide. Although they put enough poison to kill many men in the food, Rasputin appeared unaffected. One of the assassins, panicking, pulled out a gun and shot him in the back. Then they ran out of the palace, leaving the body alone.

It was a cold night, however, so one came back to get a coat, and he leaned over to check on the body. Rasputin opened his eyes, grabbed him by the throat, whispered “You bad boy” in his ear, threw him across the room, and tried to run away. The other assassins, however, had returned, and they shot him three more times. He fell down but still wasn’t dead, so they hit him until he stopped moving, wrapped his body in a sheet and threw it in the freezing river.

When he body was recovered and autopsied it was found he had still been alive when thrown in the river: he either drowned or died of hypothermia.

No conversation of Rasputin can be complete without this: turn up the volume and click here.

Sources: Wikipedia

December 28 | Florence Lawrence

January 2, 1886 - December 28, 1938: Age 52

Florence Lawrence, born in Hamilton, Canada in 1888, was one of the most prolific film actors in history, but for most of her career was known simply as "The Biograph Girl". In the early days of movies, studios kept the identities of their stars secret, afraid that fame might lead to higher wages. In 1910 she was lured to the Independent Motion Company with the promise of a marquee, making her the first performer to be identified by name on screen and in film advertising.

Lawrence also loved cars. She was the first to invent a working turn signal for a car. It was a signalling arm attached to the rear fender of the car, that used electricity to raise and lower a sign indicating the turn direction. There was another signal for stop. Unfortunately she didn't patent it properly, so never received credit.

She retired in 1912, but was persuaded to return to work in 1915. During a shoot a staged fire got out of control and she was injured. The studio refused to pay for her medical expenses. It took her months to recover, and she never regained her position as a leading film star. She tried manufacturing a line of cosmetics, but it didn't pan out. In 1929 she lost a lot of money in the stock market crash. By this time she was in chronic pain from a bone marrow disease, myelofibrosis. In December 1938 she was found unconscious in her apartment after trying to commit suicide by eating ant poison. She died in hospital a few hours later. She was buried in an unmarked grave.

In 1991, actor Roddy McDowall paid for a memorial marker for her grave. It now reads:

FLORENCE LAWRENCE
"The Biograph Girl"
The First Movie Star
1890-1938

Source: Wikipedia, Northern Stars

November 23 | Alexander Litvinenko

August 30, 1962 - November 23, 2006: Age 44

Anyone who believed that Russia's social and political troubles might end with the collapse of the Soviet Union has been disillusioned many times over since 1990. The death of Alexander Litvinenko last year was particularly troubling. Litvinenko was a KGB officer who had been moved into a high position in their Military Counter Intelligence department. He, along with a number of peers, spoke out publicly against the corruption and dirty dealing in the department and in the Russian government, right up to the top, including links to organised crime. He was arrested, then released, and managed to escape the Soviet Union on a false passport, his wife and son travelling out legally through Turkey. They sought and received asylum and citizenship in the United Kingdom.

Litvinenko tried to publish a book in Russia outlining Putin's rise to power as a staged campaign that included fake bombings blamed on Chechnyan rebels being used as an excuse to bring military force into Chechnya. A common enemy, whether an external state or a terrorist group, has the effect of uniting people behind a perceived strong leader.

On November 1, 2006 Litvinenko met with some Russian businessmen, then later with an Italian KGB expert. Later that day he began to feel unwell, and by November 4 was admitted to hospital. By November 19 doctors confirmed that he had been poisoned with some kind of radioactive material, although at first they were unable to accurately identify what.

Meanwhile Litvinenko's condition deteriorated very rapidly. He knew, of course, that he had been poisoned, and spoke out very frankly to journalists about it. The photograph at right was taken less than three weeks after he fell ill, and just a few days before his death. His kidneys were damaged, he was vomiting almost constantly and had lost all his hair. His bone marrow was severely damaged and he had almost no white blood cells left. By November 20 the hospital confirmed that he was in ”serious but stable“ condition, under armed guard, was struggling to speak and had only a 50 percent chance of survival. His family was taken into protective custody.

Meanwhile a media storm was in process, with public accusations against the Russian government and matching denials. The Italian associate he met on November 1 announced that he had received threats on his life just before the meeting. The exact cause of the poisoning was still unknown. On November 22 Litvinenko suffered a heart attack during the night, and on November 23 he died.

By January 2007 British police had determined the exact poison (polonium-210, a highly unstable isotope) and knew a great deal about how it was brought in to the country and administered (in a cup of tea). In May 2007 they charged Andrei Lugovoi, one of the businessmen Litvinenko met with on November 1, with his murder. Lugovoi lives free in Russia and extradition requests have been denied.

The case is extremely complex but there are plenty of sources to read more about it. I will give the last word to Litvinenko himself, who issued a deathbed statement on the case.

I would like to thank many people. My doctors, nurses and hospital staff who are doing all they can for me, the British police who are pursuing my case with vigour and professionalism and are watching over me and my family. I would like to thank the British government for taking me under their care. I am honoured to be a British citizen.

I would like to thank the British public for their messages of support and for the interest they have shown in my plight.

I thank my wife Marina, who has stood by me. My love for her and our son knows no bounds.

But as I lie here I can distinctly hear the beating of wings of the angel of death. I may be able to give him the slip but I have to say my legs do not run as fast as I would like. I think, therefore, that this may be the time to say one or two things to the person responsible for my present condition.

You may succeed in silencing me but that silence comes at a price. You have shown yourself to be as barbaric and ruthless as your most hostile critics have claimed.

You have shown yourself to have no respect for life, liberty or any civilised value.

You have shown yourself to be unworthy of your office, to be unworthy of the trust of civilised men and women.

You may succeed in silencing one man but the howl of protest from around the world will reverberate, Mr Putin, in your ears for the rest of your life. May God forgive you for what you have done, not only to me but to beloved Russia and its people.

Sources: Wikipedia, The Litvinenko Justice Foundation, Axis News, ABC News

November 18 | Malcolm Carter

August 10, 1977 - November 18, 1978: Age 1

Malcolm Carter was the son of Tim Carter and Gloria Rodriguez, members of the Peoples Temple, led by the Reverend Jim Jones. They lived in Jonetown, a special compound in Guyana to which Jones had led his followers to escape unwanted media attention in the US. A number of former cult members had given extensive interviews to the media about some of the weird things going on in the group.

The weirdness came from Jim Jones. Charismatic (obviously) and passionate about issues relating to social justice, Jones attracted a large following of idealistic, educated, hard working people who believed in creating a better world, one without racism, greed, and social injustice. As his following grew, Jones relied more and more on underhanded methods of social control such as faking "healings", controlling the sexual lives of his followers, and extreme social censure, even punishment, for people who stepped out of line. Personally he relied more and more on drugs and alcohol to maintain the level of energy needed to control such large numbers of people and to feed his own delusions.

After a disasterous visit by a US Senator that ended in a shootout on the tarmac of the airport as the Congressional party was leaving, Jones persuaded his entire congregation to commit "revolutionary suicide" as a protest against the inhumane world. Most of them did. This was done by drinking a flavoured drink laced with cyanide. The children were dispatched first, some by their own parents. Infants like baby Malcolm were given the drink with a needle-less syringe in the mouth.

Malcolm's father, Tim Carter, was paralysed with shock as he saw his baby dead in his wife's arms, and then felt his wife die in his arms. Carter himself did not die. He was given a special job to do that took him out of the compound. In his own words:

It was about this time that Christy Miller is standing up and saying, "You know, I don't want to die." I'm just thinking, "Buy time, buy time, buy time." Then Maria Katsaris approached me from the radio room, and she said, "Come here. I think I have something for you to do." She said, "Mike Prokes has a mission. He has some suitcases that have to be delivered to the Soviet Embassy in Georgetown, but they're too heavy. He can't take them all by himself." It turned out to be a million and a half dollars.

She said, "If you make it that far," she goes, "Take what you need to live on, and have a good life." She says, "But under no circumstances are you to be caught." She goes, "If you are caught, then you are to kill yourself." Mike Prokes said, "You need to go ask Jim if he wants the truck to take us to the front gate."

As I walked up to the back of the pavilion, I looked to my right, and I saw my wife with our son in her arms, and poison being injected into his mouth. I felt, "This isn't happening. This can't be happening. This is unreal. I don't know to how to even process this. They're murdering my son."

And I took a step up on stage, and I asked the question that I was supposed to ask, "Do you want the truck to take us to the front gate?" I had a gun. I thought about shooting Jim Jones. He might die. I definitely will die. Will it stop everything that's going on?

And I just thought of Gloria and Malcolm. I stepped off the stage, and she was kneeling down. Malcolm was dead, and I held her and said, "I love you. I love you. I love you so much. I love you so much. I love you so much." And she died in my arms. And after she died, I really didn't care about anything at all, except I wasn't going to die there.

When I left Jonestown with those suitcases, my only goal was to get out alive. We dumped the money on the way to Port Kaituma. My days with Peoples Temple and Jim Jones were done. I wasn't going to carry out any mission.

More than 900 people, including Malcolm and his mother, died in the "revolutionary suicide". Most died of poisioning but some of gunshots, including Jim Jones, who was found dead of a single gunshot wound. It is not known whether he shot himself or not. Because of the unusual circumstances, most of the deaths were ruled murder, not suicides.

Click here to read some perspectives from Jonestown survivors. This is an extremely interesting and worthwhile site to visit as it seems to reflect in part the ongoing healing process of many of the survivors.

Click here for a YouTube excerpt from a PBS documentary about the cult. There are 5 parts uploaded on YouTube; this is Part 1. I encourage you to watch all 5 parts. You can see and hear Tim Carter speaking about his family's death in Part 5, but I suggest you watch the other parts first in order to have a larger sense of the story.

Sources: Wikipedia, NPR, PBS site about the documentary, ReligiousTolerance.org, Alternative Considerations of Jonestown & Peoples Temple

November 6 | Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

May 7, 1840 - November 6, 1893: Age 53

Tchaikovsky was arguably the greatest Russian composer of all time, and one of the greatest composers in history. Whether or not you realize it, you are probably quite familiar with many of his melodies: famous themes from ballets like Swan Lake, the Nutcracker, and Sleeping Beauty, for example, or the incredible finale of his 1812 Overture (the one that features live cannons). Going deeper into his oeuvre — symphonies, concerti, operas, and other pieces — many of his themes are instantly recognizable.

He was a hero of Russia. When news of his death reached the Tsar, he immediately offered to pay for the funeral. 60,000 people applied for tickets to Tchaikovsky's funeral (capacity was only 8,000) and many more lined the streets of St. Petersburg to pay respects to the procession.

But Tchaikovsky was a gay man living in a society that hated homosexuals. Tchaikovsky himself struggled with his orientation, attempting a marriage and then trying to kill himself by jumping into the cold Moscow River two weeks after the wedding. The marriage ended in six weeks.

The official cause of Tchaikovsky's death was cholera. There were outbreaks all over Russia at the time, and people were warned to boil their water before drinking it or even washing with it. According to reports, he asked for a glass of water in a restaurant and, informed they had no boiled water available, requested it unboiled. Two weeks later he was dead.

Even at the time there were doubts: a number of people noticed that his illness, treatment, and the handling of his body did not quite match the putative cause. In the 1970s a very different account was published, a story that had been kept secret for 80 years. According to this account, he was threatened by a secret "court of honour" with terrible reprisals, and was advised to kill himself as punishment for his homosexuality. Apparently he had fallen in love with his nephew, and the network of school alumni felt that any exposure would result in disgrace for the whole school. Here is biographer David Brown's version:

"The incident took place in the autumn of 1893. Tchaikovsky was threatened with terrible misfortune. Duke Stenbok-Fermor, disturbed by the attention which the composer was paying to his young nephew, wrote a letter of accusation to the Tsar and handed the letter to Jacobi. Through exposure Tchaikovsky was threatened with the loss of all his rights, with exile to Siberia, with inevitable disgrace. Exposure would also bring disgrace upon the School of Jurisprudence and upon all the old boys of the school, Tchaikovsky's fellow students. To avoid publicity Jacobi decided upon the following. He invited all Tchaikovsky's former schoolmates [he could trace in St. Petersburg], and set up a court of honour which included himself. Altogether there were eight people present. Elizveta Karlovna sat with her needlework in her usual place alongside her husband's study. From time to time from within she could hear voices, sometimes loud and agitated, sometimes dropping apparently to a whisper. This went on for a very long time, almost five hours. Then Tchaikovsky came headlong out of the study. He was almost running, he was unsteady, and he went out without saying a word. He was very white and agitated. All the others stayed a long time in the study talking quietly. When they had gone Jacobi told his wife, having made her swear absolute silence, what they had decided about the Stenbok-Fermor letter to the Tsar. Jacobi could not withhold it. And so the old boys [of the school] had come to a decision by which Tchaikovsky had promised to kill himself. A day or two later news of the composer's mortal illness was circulating in St. Petersburg."

As it happens his symptoms match arsenic poisoning much more closely than cholera. The day after the "glass of water" his brother found him in bed suffering from diarrhea and stomach pains. Tchaikovsky refused to call a doctor, and tried to carry on with his day, taking cod liver oil in an attempt to ease his stomach. Within days he was much worse, and a doctor diagnosed him with cholera. The mortality rate for cholera at that time was more than 40%, but he seemed to get better, then he would get worse again with more pains and cramps. Eventually his kidneys failed, a priest was called, and he died at 3am on November 6, 1893.

The movie, V for Vendetta, used the finale to the 1812 Overture to great effect. The Adagio from the Sixth Symphony is one of the most beautiful pieces of romantic music ever written: enjoy a rehearsal of it here.

Sources: Wikipedia article on Tchaikovsky, Wikipedia article on his death, Brown, David, Tchaikovsky: The Man and His Music (New York: Pegasus Books, 2007)

October 13 | The Emperor Claudius

August 1, 10 BC - October 13, 54: Age 64

Tiberius Claudius Drusus Nero Germanicus was the grandson of Mark Anthony and Octavia (Augustus Caesar's sister) on his mother's side, and of Livia (Augustus' third wife) on his father's side. His strong connections with the imperial family of Rome would have marked him for untimely death but for one thing: he was considered an idiot and a cripple.

Claudius had some kind of physical ailment — it may have been cerebral palsy, Tourette's syndrome, or polio — but there was nothing whatever wrong with his intellect. His knees were weak, his head shook, he stammered and slobbered when excited, and he had a peculiar voice. In materialistic Rome, beauty was thought to reflect inner virtue and intelligence, and physical defects reflected moral and intellectual lacks. This certainly saved Claudius from the many purges of eligible and well-connected males undertaken by Augustus, Tiberias, and Caligula and their allies. His own mother despised him, and made no secret of it. As a youngster his family hired a mule-driver to babysit him, on the assumption that his afflictions were the result of a stubborn and dull temperament.

But Claudius was by no means an idiot. In later life he admitted to having exaggerated his defects as the perfect disguise to defend himself; he could not, however, hide his intelligence from everyone: the historian Livy and the philosopher Athenodorus tutored him as a teenager. He undertook to write a history of the Civil Wars, and this nearly undid him: they were a bit too accurate. Fortunately his mother and his grandmother Livia saw the danger and put a stop to it. This incident presumably confirmed their assumption that he was unfit for public office.

Augustus died when Claudius was 24. The succeeding emperors, Tiberius (his uncle) and Caligula (his nephew), set about destroying every other male member of the imperial family in their purges — except Claudius. In 41, Caligula was assassinated, and the conspirators began to search Rome in order to kill members of the imperial family. Claudius took refuge in the palace, hiding behind some curtains, where a guard named Gratus found him and spirited him away to safety. After some debate, the Senate agreed to accept him as the new Emperor.

Then followed, contrary to nearly everyone's expectations, 13 years of sober and conscientious rule and a period of peace and expansion that must have been a great relief after the chaotic years of Caligula's mad rule. It would have been longer, but Claudius died, probably poisoned, in 54.

Accounts of the time agree that it was likely a dish of mushrooms that delivered the fatal dose. It is generally accepted that the instigator of the poisoning was his wife, Agrippina, whose son Nero was poised to succeed his stepfather. For several months before his death Claudius and Agrippina had argued a lot, and Claudius had been showing signs of raising his own 13-year-old son Britannicus to a status higher than that of Nero (in ancient Rome it was not uncommon for stepchildren to be favoured over natural children, particularly if there were residual bad feelings about the natural child's mother). To Agrippina and Nero, it was important that Claudius die before Britannicus grew any older.

Claudius was immediately deified by Nero. Seneca, an enemy whom Claudius had banished in 41, wrote the satire, Apocolocyntosis divi Claudii (The Pumpkinification of the Divine Claudius) a few months after his death ("apocolocyntosis" is a mangling of the word "apotheosis", meaning deification). Seneca writes of his last words as follows: "This was the last utterance of his to be heard among men, after he let out a sound from that part with which he found it easier to communicate, 'Oh I think I have shit myself.'" Seneca goes on to remark, "He certainly shat up everything else." On the whole, however, most of his contemporaries and virtually all historians judge Claudius to have been a popular and competent ruler.

Sources: Wikipedia, The Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine

September 7 | Karen Blixen

April 17, 1885 - September 7, 1962: Age 77

Better known today by her pen name Isak Dinesen, Karen Blixen contracted syphilis from her first husband, Baron Blixen, whom she married in Africa in 1914. Syphilis was at the time widely considered an incurable disease, although it wasn’t really, and for the rest of her life Blixen attributed her considerable health problems to it, although her doctors could find no trace of it in her after the 1920s.

The treatments for syphilis in early 20th century Africa included mercury and arsenic. It is likely that these treatments are what caused a permanent mild loss of sensation and reflex in her legs. She also suffered from chronic, intense abdominal pain. Nobody really knew or knows to this day what was causing the pain, but it plagued Blixen for her entire life. Her pain was so intense and frequent that by 1945 she had some of her spinal nerves severed surgically. It didn’t help; her symptoms returned.

In 1953 Blixen’s most famous short story, Babette’s Feast, was published in the Ladies Home Journal. It’s beautiful story whose climax describes in deep, sensuous, loving detail the preparation and consumption of an extraordinary meal, and the profound, magical effect the meal has on a community. It is a beautiful story and if you haven’t read it, go find it now and do so, or at least watch the 1986 film — best do both. This story the most vivid and soulful description food I have ever read.

By 1955 she had a third of her stomach removed to treat an ulcer. She visited America in 1959 and spent part of her 3 months there having in intravenous infusions. In her final years she was able to eat almost nothing, and weighed less than 80 pounds. She died of malnutrition.

Sources: Karen Blixen - Isak Dinesen Information Site, Wikipedia