diff options
Diffstat (limited to '36754-8.txt')
| -rw-r--r-- | 36754-8.txt | 3389 |
1 files changed, 3389 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/36754-8.txt b/36754-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..dd87f07 --- /dev/null +++ b/36754-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,3389 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Knut Hamsun, by Hanna Astrup Larsen + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Knut Hamsun + +Author: Hanna Astrup Larsen + +Release Date: July 16, 2011 [EBook #36754] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK KNUT HAMSUN *** + + + + +Produced by Bryan Ness and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was +produced from images generously made available by The +Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries) + + + + + +Transcriber's note: Obvious printer's errors have been corrected. + + + + + KNUT HAMSUN + + + + + _MR. ALFRED A. KNOPF + has been appointed the sole authorized + American publisher of_ + + KNUT HAMSUN + + _The following books are now ready_: + + HUNGER + GROWTH OF THE SOIL + SHALLOW SOIL + DREAMERS + PAN + WANDERERS + + _The following are scheduled for later publications_: + + CHILDREN OF THE TIME [Spring, 1923] + VICTORIA + THE VILLAGE OF SEGELFOSS + BENONI + ROSA + + + + + Knut Hamsun + + _by_ + + Hanna Astrup Larsen + + _Editor "The American-Scandinavian Review"_ + + + New York + Alfred A. Knopf + Mcmxxii + + + COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY + ALFRED A. KNOPF, Inc. + + _Published, October, 1922_ + + Set up and printed by the Vail-Ballou Co., Binghamton, N. Y. + Paper furnished by W. F. Etherington & Co., New York. + Bound by the H. Wolff Estate, New York. + + MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA + + +_The author wishes to acknowledge her debt to The +American-Scandinavian Foundation for the Fellowship which +enabled her to study the works of Hamsun in Norway during +the winter of 1920-1921._ + + + + +Contents + + + The Wanderer: + + Early Life in Norway 3 + + From the Wheatfields to the Fishing Banks 20 + + The Author of _Hunger_ 32 + + The Poet: + + His Own Hero 45 + + The Hero and the Heroine 58 + + God in Nature 76 + + With Muted Strings 89 + + The Literary Artist 104 + + The Citizen: + + Holding Up the Mirror to His Generation 119 + + Growth of the Soil 148 + + The Wanderer Arrived 163 + + + + +Portraits + + + Knut Hamsun _Frontispiece_ + Photo by Wilse + + Hamsun as a Young Man 38 + From a drawing by Erik Werenskiold + + Knut Hamsun 86 + From a painting by Henrik Lund + + Hamsun and His Family 134 + Photo by Wilse + + + + +THE WANDERER + + +EARLY LIFE IN NORWAY + +Knut Hamsun has become identified in our minds with the lonely figure +that recurs again and again in his earlier books, the Wanderer who is +for ever outside of organized society and for ever pays the penalty +of being different from the crowd and unable to conform to its +standards. That this lonely creature is really himself in a certain +period of his life we know from the testimony of his own works. +Yet this vagabond and iconoclast sprang from the most conservative +stock of Norway. He is the descendant of an old peasant family in +Gudbrandsdalen, one of the interior mountain valleys in the heart of +the country. + +Gudbrandsdalen is a region of proud historical traditions. There, +nine centuries ago, King Saint Olaf struggled to foist the new +religion on a stiff-necked race of pagans, and not far from Hamsun's +birthplace one of the oldest churches in Norway proclaimed his +victory. There, six centuries ago, the Scotch invader Sinclair was +annihilated with all his force when "the peasants of Vaage and Lesje +and Lom their whetted axes shouldered," as the ballad tells us, and +the story is still cherished, still repeated to every traveller. In +this as in other secluded valleys in Norway a peasant aristocracy +developed, a hard, strong race, intensely proud of its family and +land, looking on any one who had been less than three generations in +the neighborhood as an interloper, and scorning the classes of people +who were not rooted to the soil by inherited homesteads. For the +Norwegian roving blood is strangely tempered by a passionate +attachment to inherited land, a trait that is perhaps a salutary +safeguard against the national restlessness. Artistic handicrafts +flourished in the valley. In the Open Air Museum at Lillehammer we +may see them even now, marvellous creations of hammered iron, +tapestries picturing scenes from the Bible, wood carvings in mellow +colors and with a Renaissance exuberance of design overflowing even +the commonest kitchen utensils, all of a rich yet disciplined beauty +as if built on age-old artistic traditions and standards. + +Hamsun counted among his forefathers many of the artistic craftsmen +who set their stamp of culture upon their community. His father's +father was a worker in metals. The arts did not bring wealth to those +who practised them, however, and his parents at the time of his birth +were in straitened circumstances. He was born, August 4, 1859, in +Lom, in one of the small well-weathered houses which look so bleak +and insignificant against the mighty Gudbrandsdalen uplands. When he +was four years old his family removed to the Lofoten Islands, +Nordland, in an effort to better their fortunes. + +Two strains may be traced in Knut Hamsun's personality. By virtue of +his blood and birth he had his roots in a community characterized by +an unusually firm and solid culture based on centuries of tradition, +and this heritage we shall find coming out in him more and more in +his later years. The moralist and preacher who wrote "Growth of the +Soil" is a true scion of the best old peasant stock. Through the +impressions of his childhood and early youth he became affiliated +with the volatile race of Nordland, a people as alien from the +heavier inland peasant as if they lived on different continents. The +fishermen who play with death for the wealth of the sea and depend +for their livelihood on the caprices of nature do not easily harden +into traditional moulds. Childish and improvident, witty and +sentimental, often fond of the melodramatic, simple and yet shrewd, +superstitious but brave beyond all praise, the native of Nordland is +a type unlike every other Norwegian. Wherever he may roam, he will +yearn for the wonderland of his youth. It is from this Nordland type +that Hamsun has created his Wanderer hero, and it was from the nature +of Nordland with its alternations of melting loveliness and stark +gloom that he drew his poetic inspiration. + +At the very time when Hamsun was spending his childhood in the +Lofoten Islands, Jonas Lie, the literary discoverer of Arctic +Norway, wrote his idyllic little story "Second Sight" in which he +has really delineated a "Wanderer" type, his hero being a gifted +Nordland lad who is set apart from ordinary people by his strange +mental malady and who, wherever he goes, feels himself an alien. In +this book, written at a time when not even fixed steamship routes +united Nordland with the southern part of the country (railroads are +even yet unknown), Jonas Lie has given us a classic description of +the country in its virgin state of isolation. It gives the key to +that mysterious, extravagant strain which belongs to the Nordland +type, and throws light on the sources from which Hamsun drew his +hero. + +The words that to other people convey only commonplaces become +magnified in the Nordland mind accustomed to the ecstatic moods of +nature, Lie tells us. Fish to a Nordlanding means Lofoten's and +Finmarken's millions, an infinite variety, from the spouting whales +that penetrate our fjords driving huge masses of fish like a froth +before them, to the tiniest minnow. When he speaks of birds, the +Nordlanding does not mean merely an eatable fowl or two, but a +heavenly host, billowing in the air like white breakers around the +bird crags, shrieking and fluttering and filling the air like a +veritable snow-storm over the nesting-places. He thinks of the +eider-duck and the tystey; the duck and the sea-pie swimming in fjord +and sound or perched on the rocks; the gull, the osprey, and the +eagle sailing through the air; the owl moaning weirdly in the +mountain clefts--a world of birds. A storm at sea to him means sudden +hurricanes that sweep down from the mountains and uproot +buildings--so that people at home often have to tie down their houses +with chains--waves rushing in from the Arctic Ocean fathoms high, +burying big rocks and skerries in their froth and then receding so +fast that a ship may be left high and dry and be smashed right in the +open sea; hosts of brave men sailing before the wind to save not only +their own lives but the dearly bought boatload on which the lives of +those at home depend. + +"There in the North popular fancy from mythical times has imagined +the home of all the powers of evil. There the Lapp has made himself +feared by his sorceries, and there at the outermost edge of the +world, washed by the breakers of the dark, wintry grey Arctic Ocean, +stand the gods of primitive times, the demoniacal, terrible, half +formless powers of darkness against whom even the Æsir did battle, +but who were not entirely vanquished before St. Olaf with his +cruciform sword 'set them in stock and stone.'--The terrors of nature +have created an army of evil demons that draw people to them, ghosts +of drowned men who have not been buried in Christian earth, mountain +titans, the sea _draug_ who sails in his half boat and in the winter +nights shrieks terribly out on the fjord. Many a man in real danger +has perished because his comrades were afraid of the draug, and we of +second sight can see him. + +"But even though the overwhelming might of nature bears down with +oppressive weight on everything living along that dark, wintry, +frothing coast, where nine months of the year are a constant twilight +and three of these are without even a glimpse of the sun, so that +people's minds become filled with fear of the dark, yet Nordland also +possesses the opposite extreme in its sun-warmed, clear-skied, +scent-filled summers with their endless play of infinitely varied +colors and tints, when distances of seventy or eighty miles seem to +melt away so that we can shout across them, when the mountain clothes +itself in brownish green grass to the very top--in Lofoten to a +height of two thousand feet--and the slender birch trees wreathe the +tops of the hills and the edges of the mountain clefts like a dance +of sixteen-year-old white-clad girls, while the fragrance of +strawberries and raspberries rises to you through the warm air as you +pass in your shirt sleeves, and the day is so hot that you long to +bathe in the sun-filled, rippling sea which is clear to the very +bottom. + +"The learned say that the intensities of color and fragrance in the +far North are due to the power of the light which fills the air when +the sun shines without interruption day and night. Therefore one can +not pick so aromatic strawberries and raspberries or so fragrant +birch boughs in any other clime. If a fairy idyl has any home, it is +certainly in the deep fjord valleys of Nordland in the summer. It is +as though the sun were kissing nature so much more tenderly because +they have such a short time to be together and must soon part again." + +Jonas Lie's description, which I have taken the liberty to quote in +abbreviated form, gives a picture of the surroundings in which Hamsun +spent his boyhood. It would have been impossible to find any spot in +the world more suited to nourish the fancy of an imaginative, +impressionable boy. Lonely as he was, he had little to interest him +or occupy his mind except what he could find for himself out of +doors. He was put to work herding cattle, and spent long dreamy hours +alone revelling in the loveliness of the light Nordland summer. It +was then he laid the foundation for his habit of roaming alone in the +woods and fields, and there he gained that intimate, tender knowledge +of nature which appears in his works. In telling of his childhood, +Hamsun says that the animals and birds became his friends. He speaks +also of the deep impression which the sea made upon him. His uncle's +house, where he spent some of his boyhood, was built above the ocean +stream, Glimma, which rushed over a rocky bottom, sometimes one way, +sometimes another, according to the tide, but always in motion. +Beyond it lay the open sea. + +The sharp contrasts of nature, its alternations between darkness and +light, are reflected in the temperament of the Nordland people who +are easily swung from one extreme to another. Underneath the +brightness and levity there is a consciousness of superstitions that +are felt sometimes as dark and sinister forces waiting to drag men +away from the light into the gloomy void where the evil powers reign. +The boy Knut Hamsun's nature was like a sensitive stringed instrument +vibrating to the faintest breath of nature's moods, and we find in +his works the nervousness, the quick transitions, and the swinging +between extremes of exaltation and despair which belong to the +Nordland type. While the brightness predominates, the gloom is also +present, especially in his earliest, most personal works. + +The years he spent with his clergyman uncle were not happy. The uncle +had no idea of how to handle a highstrung boy, and his method of +education consisted of many lickings, much hard work, and few hours +for play. So lonely and dreary was the boy's life that he found his +chief amusement in roaming about in the cemetery, spelling out the +inscriptions on crosses and slabs, making up stories about them, and +talking to himself, or listening to the wind rustling in the grass +that grew tall on neglected graves. Occasionally the old weather vane +on the church steeple would let out a terrible shriek when the wind +veered. It sounded like "iron gritting its teeth against some other +iron." Sometimes he would help the old grave-digger in his work, and +he had strict injunctions on what to do if bits of bone or tufts of +hair worked their way out to the surface. They were to be put back in +place and decently covered. Once, however, he ventured to disobey +the gravedigger and take with him a tooth which he thought he could +use for some little object he was fashioning. In the short story "A +Ghost" in the collection "Things that Have Happened to Me," where he +draws this dismal story of his childhood, he tells how the dead owner +appeared to him and threatened him at intervals for years afterwards, +even after he had left the house of his uncle and was living with his +parents, where he shared a room with his brothers and sisters. The +apparition froze him with fear and tortured him so that he was often +tempted to throw himself in the Glimma and end it all. Of the effect +that this incident had upon him he writes: "This man, this +red-bearded messenger from the land of death, did me much harm by the +unspeakable gloom he cast over my childhood. Since then I have had +more than one vision, more than one strange encounter with the +inexplicable but nothing that has gripped me with such force. And yet +perhaps the effect upon me was not all harmful. I have often thought +of that. It has occurred to me that he was one of the first things +that made me grit my teeth and harden myself. In my later experiences +I have often had need of it." + +In view of the high position clergymen hold in Norway, and especially +considering the prestige attached to the official class fifty years +ago, it seems odd that a clergyman's nephew, an inmate of his house +for years, should have been slated for a shoemaker, but evidently +there was no money with which to send Knut to school, and perhaps his +mental gifts were not of the caliber to promise that he would fit +easily into any one of the usual professional niches. After his +confirmation, which is the Norwegian boy's entrance to manhood, he +was therefore apprenticed to a cobbler in the city of Bodö on the +mainland. In his own mind, however, he was quite determined that he +was to be a poet, and it was while working for the cobbler that he +published his first literary venture, a highly romantic poem called +"Meeting Again." This was followed by the story "Björger, by Knud +Pedersen Hamsund," a gloomy, introspective tale of an orphaned +peasant boy and a lady of high degree who died for love of him--a +foreshadowing of the motif in "Victoria." In spite of its immaturity, +its absurdity even, the story, according to the judgment of critics +to-day, shows flashes of Hamsun's peculiar genius. Alas, there were +no critics wise and sympathetic enough to see its promise at the +time, if indeed any critics read it. The book was printed by the +nineteen-year-old author at his own expense, paid for by his +hard-earned savings, and was bought by a few people in Bodö, but +hardly circulated beyond the confines of the city. + +Naturally the cobbler's bench could not long confine his +restlessness, and, after a short experience as a coal-heaver on the +docks of Bodö--where his eye-glasses attracted amused attention as +out of keeping with his work--Hamsun set out on the wanderings that +were to last full ten years. He taught a little school, was clerk in +a sheriff's office, and crushed stones on the road. + +The experiences of this period were the foundation of his two novels +"Under the Autumn Star" and "A Wanderer Plays with Muted Strings," +bound in the English edition under the common title "Wanderers." +Written many years later from the standpoint of an elderly citizen +who leaves his home in the city to revisit the haunts of his youth +and play at being a vagrant laborer once more, they give his +adventures in the softening light of retrospect. A touch of personal +description may be found in the lines, "I taught myself to walk with +long, tenacious steps. The proletarian appearance I had already in my +face and hands." + +There is a lingering tenderness in the author's treatment of these +years which would indicate that at the time of writing he looked back +upon them almost with regretful longing. We do not find the smallest +trace of the acrid bitterness which he put into the short stories +from his American experiences or into the account of his struggles to +gain a foothold in Christiania. The roving life without fixed +habitation or routine had its charms for him and it gave him an +opportunity to be much out of doors. Strong and capable as he was, +the manual labor in itself held no terrors for him, and he was +rather proud of his inventive skill. "Under the Autumn Star" recounts +a number of small technical triumphs, chief among which was a +marvellous saw for cutting timber on the root--an actual invention of +Hamsun's. Not many years ago he replied in answer to a question in an +enquête that the proudest achievement of his life was the invention +of this saw, in the practicability of which he still had faith, +although I believe it has never been perfected for actual use. + +During the time when he ate and slept with servants and tramped the +road with other day laborers, while observing the upper class from +the vantage point of his own obscurity, Hamsun garnered a full sheaf +of those curious and startling incidents by means of which he keeps +his readers in a constant state of surprise. Meanwhile he did not +forget his old ambition to become a poet. He felt the need of an +education, and gradually worked his way southward to Christiania, +where he entered the University. + +The experiment was not a success. At that time the University was +much more than now under the influence of old academic traditions, +and did not welcome the rustic in search of knowledge as cordially as +perhaps it would have done to-day. Moreover, the former cobbler and +road-laborer was uncouth in his manner, bursting with loud-voiced +opinions, and by no means filled with the proper reverence for +authority. He soon realized that he was a misfit in University +circles, and gave up the attempt in disgust. Of more benefit to him +was a trip to the continent which he was enabled to make. After his +return he went back to his old life on the road, but his intellect +was more and more reaching out beyond the humble work by which he +earned his living. Finally he made his escape and took passage to +America. + + +FROM THE WHEATFIELDS TO THE FISHING BANKS + +In the early eighties, when Hamsun started out for America, the tide +of Norwegian immigration was at its height. Not only were thousands +and thousands of young men and women going across the sea to try to +better their worldly status, but America had come to be looked upon +as a spiritual as well as an economic land of promise. The poets, +Björnson, Ibsen, Kielland, Jonas Lie and others were busy sending +their heroes and heroines over there to find expansion of life or +perhaps to come back and be the fresh, salty stream in the back +waters of Norwegian narrowness and prejudice. We need only call to +mind Lona Hessel in "Pillars of Society." Knut Hamsun had, of course, +read these books, and when he started out for the New World he did +not go merely as an immigrant to seek his fortune. He hoped to find +those larger opportunities for leading his own life and using his +gifts which the poets had been telling him about. He had bruised +himself on Old World littleness; quite naturally he looked to the New +World for bigger visions, ampler spaces, and a saner estimate of a +man's worth. In this he was destined to be sorely disappointed. And +yet some of the things he sought, and even more those he learned to +value later in life, were there, but he failed to find them. + +His dream of being a poet was still alive in him, and when he came to +his countrymen in the Middle West he announced to a friend that he +was going to write poetry for the Norwegian people in America. To one +who knows the Middle Western settlements, there is something pathetic +in this youthful ambition. God knows that if any one needs a poet it +is the immigrant who is torn violently from his contact with the +spiritual life of the old country and has not yet taken root in the +new, but the Hamsun of that day had no message which his emigrated +countrymen cared to hear. Like other immigrants they were absorbed +in the task of building a new community, and when this work left them +any leisure they preferred to sing the old songs and dream the old +dreams of the fjælls and fjords. Immigrants are generally very +conservative, and cling with all the fibres of their affection to the +old melodies. They have little ear for any new voice that lifts +itself among them. But the Middle West has never at any time had much +use for the dreamer and visionary, and in Hamsun's day it was more +than now a country of absorption in material things by as much as it +was nearer pioneer times. + +Hamsun soon found that in order to make his living he would have to +work hard under conditions more distasteful to him than his old +roving life in Norway. For a while he cherished a hope that he might +be able to make his way in some manner more suited to his mental +equipment. He came under the influence of a Norwegian writer and +clergyman, Kristoffer Janson, of Minneapolis, who tried to make a +Unitarian minister of him. But the faith that tries to modernize +religion by eliminating its mystery could not long hold the +imagination of one who sees mystery as the very life and essence of +religion. In the diatribes on American intellectual life published +after his return to Norway he paid his respects to Unitarianism in an +essay on Emerson. He cared little for the Concord philosopher. Of the +American poets he "could bear to read" certain parts of Walt Whitman, +Poe, and Hawthorne, while he referred to our most beloved poet as +"the somnolent Longfellow." In Minneapolis he tried to express his +unflattering views on American literature in lectures, and hired +Dania Hall for the purpose, but Americans of Scandinavian extraction +are extremely quick to resent any attack on their adopted country, +and refused to listen to him. + +When we remember how sober and well draped was the verse of our great +New England poets, we can hardly wonder that it failed to satisfy the +young author who, a few years later, was to lay bare every quivering +nerve of his being in "Hunger." Nor can we wonder that a young +immigrant, forced to work hard in rough surroundings, should not +have discovered the finest flowers of American culture. It is more +remarkable that he who was destined to write the great epic of the +pioneer farmer in "Growth of the Soil" should have failed utterly to +see the real elemental soundness and vigor of the pioneer community +in which he found himself, and that he should never have had his eyes +opened to the many obscure Isaks toiling on Norwegian farms in the +Middle West. Yet this too can easily be understood when we remember +how he thirsted for the richer, subtler life of an old community and +how little his thirst had yet been satisfied. + +In his later books Hamsun has glorified any kind of work that has to +do with practical realities and is done with a will. In his youth he +learned by his own experience the deadening, brutalizing effect of +toiling under the lash. He was initiated on the wheatfields of North +Dakota, where production was carried on with swarms of day laborers. +In the winter, on the grip of a Chicago street car, he suffered the +hardships of long hours and low pay for uncongenial work. Finally he +plumbed the lowest depths he was fated to know when he spent some +miserable seasons on a fishing-smack off New Foundland. + +Reminiscences of these years are found in a few short stories and +sketches scattered through various volumes of his works. "Woman's +Victory" a story in "Struggling Life" (1905) is based on his +experiences in Chicago, and is prefaced by a paragraph which gives a +vivid picture of this phase of his American adventures. It begins: "I +was a street car conductor in Chicago. First I had a job on the +Halstead line, which was a horse car line running from the centre of +town to the cattle market. We who had night duty were not very safe, +for there were many suspicious characters passing that way at night. +We were not allowed to shoot and kill people, for then the company +would have had to pay compensation. However, one is seldom wholly +devoid of weapons, and there was the handle of the brake which could +be torn off and was a great comfort. Not that I ever had need of it +except once. + +"In 1886 I stood on my car every night through the Christmas +holidays, and nothing happened. Once there came a big crowd of +Irishmen out of the cattle market and quite filled my car. They were +drunk and had bottles along. They sang loudly and did not seem +inclined to pay, although the car started. Now they had paid the +company five cents every evening and every morning for another year, +they said, and this was Christmas, and they were not going to pay. +There was nothing unreasonable in this point of view, but I did not +dare to let them off for fear of the company's 'spies' who were on +the watch for lapses on the part of conductors. A policeman boarded +the car. He stood there for a few minutes, said something about +Christmas and the weather, and jumped off again when he saw how +crowded the car was. I knew very well that at a word from the +policeman all the passengers would have had to pay their fares, but I +said nothing. 'Why didn't you report us?' asked one of the men. 'I +thought it unnecessary,' said I, 'I am dealing with gentlemen.' At +that there were some of them who began to laugh, but others thought +I had spoken well, and they saw to it that everybody paid." + +The author's North Dakota experiences are the subject of several +short stories. "Zacchæus" in the collection "Brushwood" (1903) gives +a vivid picture of life on Billibony farm, where work began at three +in the morning and went on at a nerve-racking speed until the stars +came out at night, and the only comic relief was the serving up to +Zacchæus of his own finger in the stew. Yet Zacchæus who treasured +this severed member of himself, and the cook who played the gruesome +trick because Zacchæus had laid hands on his sacred "library" +consisting of one old newspaper and a book of war songs, these were +human compared to the creatures described in the sketch "On the +Banks" in "Siesta" (1897). Never before or since has Hamsun drawn a +picture of such stark and unrelieved hideousness as this description +of eight men who were herded together on the boat regardless of race +or color, whose chief pleasure was maltreating the fish they caught, +and whose obscene talk and lewd dreams rise from the crowded +forecastle like a loathsome stench. To the man of nerves and +imagination who tells the story, the horror of the situation was +deepened by the consciousness of the hostile powers of nature lying +in wait out there on the sea which closed around him everywhere and +of the unseen monsters in the deep trying to hold what is their own +while the men tug frantically at the nets. This sense of being +surrounded by hostile forces is very unusual with Hamsun, who +generally loves to dwell on the friendliness of nature. + +With these months on the fishing banks, the cup was full. Hamsun made +up his mind that his wanderings must end and his real work begin, no +matter at what cost. He took passage home on a Danish steamer, and +came to Christiania in 1888, determined to make his way by writing. +He was not wholly unknown in the editorial offices of the city. He +had been back in Norway between the years 1883 and 1886, when he had +attempted to give lectures on literature, though not with much more +success than that which attended his efforts in Minneapolis. During +his second sojourn in the United States he had written some +correspondences to Norwegian papers. + +Before beginning his serious literary work, Hamsun threw off at white +heat a book entitled "Intellectual Life in Modern America" (1889). It +is full of prejudice and misinformation: arraignment of American +culture after following resplendently attired servant girls on the +street and listening to their conversation (just as Kipling did); +moralizings about the divorce evil based on the stories in +sensational newspapers without the slightest knowledge of good +American home-life; condemnation of our art museums and opera houses +as temples of Mammon, and much more of the same kind. Yet the +scathing satire of the book, though biased, does not always miss its +mark. Hamsun's shrewdness had penetrated to the weakness of American +civilization, its externalism, its materialism, its dryness and +shallowness. We may also admit that his American experiences fell in +a period of little intellectual vitality, when the great New +Englanders had been relegated to school declamations, and the modern +quickening of liberal thought was yet far distant. + +One thing, at least, must be set down to Hamsun's credit. He did not, +like many lesser writers from across the sea, fall into the cheap and +easy task of ridiculing the simple people of the frontier or making +fun of his own countrymen in their uncouth efforts to Americanize +themselves. His shafts were always aimed at that which passes for the +highest in American civilization. Here as in his later onslaughts on +Ibsen and Tolstoy, his audacities loved a shining mark. + +There are only a few scattered references in the book to the +Norwegian immigrants in this country, and these are full of +sympathetic comprehension of their difficulties. This fact, however, +has not prevented "Intellectual Life in Modern America" from being a +stumbling block and an offense to Americans of Norwegian extraction. +It has been one of the main factors in preventing for many years the +recognition of his genius among them. + +In this connection I recollect the first and only time I have seen +Knut Hamsun. It was in 1896, on my first visit to Norway, when I met +him at the home of my relatives, and I can well remember how my own +youthful prairie patriotism resented his attacks on the country my +parents had made their own. As I think of him at this distance of +years, with tolerance for his views on America, with charity for +other things not acceptable to the staid household of which I was a +member, I remember him as a man of distinguished presence, still in +the flush of young manhood. He was distinctly of the fair, virile +type met in the eastern mountain districts where he was born, tall, +broad-shouldered, with a particularly fine profile and well-shaped +head which he carried in a regal manner. He was then at the height of +his early fame. + + +THE AUTHOR OF "HUNGER" + +Knut Hamsun, like more than one other Norwegian genius, won his first +recognition in Denmark, where he spent a few months after his return +from the United States. Edvard Brandes, at that time editor of the +Copenhagen daily "Politiken," has told a story of a young Norwegian +who one day presented himself at the office with a manuscript. The +editor was about to refuse it on the ground of unsuitable length, +when something in the appearance of the stranger made the refusal die +on his lips. It was the shabbiest, most emaciated figure that had +ever crossed the editorial threshold, but there was something in the +pale, trembling face and the eyes behind the glasses that moved the +editor in spite of himself. He took the manuscript home with him and +began to read it. As he read the story of the starving young genius, +it dawned on him with a sense of shame that the writer was probably +at that moment without the means of subsistence. Hastily he enclosed +a ten krone bill in an envelope, addressed it to the place the +unknown author had given as his residence, and ran to the station to +mail it. Then he returned and read on to the last paragraphs, where +the hero is stealthily crawling up to his room, afraid to rouse a +wrathful landlady, and is moved to a delirium of joy by the receipt +of a letter containing a ten krone bill sent him by an editor--ten +kroner being the highest pitch of opulence to which Hamsun ever +carries his hero. + +In telling the coincidence that same evening to a Swedish critic, +Axel Lundegård, who has published the story, Brandes spoke of how the +manuscript had impressed him. "It was not only that it showed talent. +It somehow caught one by the throat. There was about it something of +a Dostoievsky." + +"Was it really so remarkable?" asked Lundegård. "What was the title +of it?" + +"Hunger." + +"And the author?" + +"Knut Hamsun." + +"It was the first time I heard the name Knut Hamsun," writes +Lundegård, "and the first time I heard the phrase 'something of a +Dostoievsky' used about any of his books. Since then it has become a +commonplace, but applied to the first production of a young author by +a critic not at all given to over-enthusiasm, it was a tribute." + +Through the influence of Edvard Brandes the manuscript, which +contained the first chapters of the book "Hunger," was placed with a +new radical Copenhagen magazine, "New Soil." This was in 1888. The +story was anonymous, but it attracted attention by its exotic +brilliance of style and by the intensity which up to that time had +been unknown in Northern literature. Rumors of its authorship were +current, and were confirmed when, in 1890, the book "Hunger" burst +upon a startled Christiania and made its author instantly famous. + +In the intervening time Hamsun had gained some notoriety in his own +country by the publication of "Intellectual Life in Modern America." +Although he had thus trumpeted forth his failure to find any stirring +of the intellect whatever in the great American republic, the +Norwegian critic Sigurd Hoel attributes the style of "Hunger" to +American influence. It had a daredevil humor, a dash and verve, and a +feeling for effect that certainly had no precedent in the respectable +annals of Norwegian literature. + +"It was the time when I went about and starved in Christiania, that +strange city which no one leaves before it has set its mark upon +him,"--so runs the oft-quoted first sentence in "Hunger." There is no +reason why it should have been Christiania. It might as well have +been the American brain market, New York, or any other city where men +and women try to sell the product of their brains and learn that +their finest thoughts and highest efforts are not of the slightest +consequence to anybody. Hundreds of men and women have fought the +fight to which he has given classic expression. They will recognize +his astonishment as it dawned upon him that although he had "the best +brain in the country and shoulders that could stop a truck," there +was no place for him in the great machine that ground food for the +dullest and stupidest. They will know the bending of the neck and the +sagging of the spirit, the hysterical swinging between absurd pride +and shameless grasping at any opportunity, the agonized striving to +catch the eye and ear of an indifferent world by strained and +overwrought work, the impotent sense of never being able to begin the +fight on equal terms. + +Few, however, have dared to follow the experiment to the uttermost +ends of destitution. Few have explored the abysses of suffering +through which Hamsun leads his hero. At one time he tried to bully a +poor frightened cashier into stealing five öre (a little over a cent) +from the cash drawer so that he could buy bread with it. Another time +he refused the offer of an editor to pay him in advance for an +article not yet written. Once he suddenly decided to beg the price of +a little food from some big business man whose name had suddenly come +into his head with the force of an inspiration, and persisted, +humiliating himself to the depths, holding his ground till he was +practically thrown out. Another time, when he himself had starved for +days, he pawned his vest to get a krone to give a beggar. It is just +such absurdities and inconsistencies that people commit when the +starch of everyday habits has been washed out of them. + +He keeps back nothing in his story. He even relates with grim humor +an encounter with a girl of the streets who in pity offers to take +him home with her although he has no money, while he simulates virtue +to conceal his abject state: "I am Pastor So-and-so. Go away and sin +no more." But his realism does not consist merely in dragging out +into the light the acts that others commit in the dark. One need not +be a genius to do that. No, he plumbs below action, below even +conscious thought and feeling, to those erratic impulses that would +make criminals or maniacs of us all if we followed them, not only the +great overmastering passions that have their place in the Decalogue, +but all the fitful whims and inconsequential trifles that influence +conduct. It is as though the delirium of hunger had released all that +which is usually controlled by will or custom. Sometimes, when he has +starved for days, he can feel his brain as it were detaching itself +from the rest of his personality, going its own way, manufacturing +idiotic conceits, which he knows to be idiotic, but can not stop. Yet +all the time his other consciousness is sitting by, holding the pulse +of his delirious imagination and recording its antics. + +The light, whimsical touch rarely fails him, but occasionally there +are passages of a sombre and thrilling pathos, as the following: "God +had thrust His finger down into the tissue of my nerves and gently, +quite casually, disarranged the fibres a little. And God had drawn +His finger back, and behold, there were shreds and fine root +filaments on His fingers from the tissue of my nerves. And there was +an open hole after the finger which was God's finger and wounds in my +brain where His finger had passed. But when God had touched me with +the finger of His hand, he left me alone and did not touch me any +more." + +Once he cursed God. He had begged a bone of a butcher under pretense +of giving it to his dog, and hid it under his coat until he came to a +doorway where he could take it out and gnaw it. But the noxious bits +came up again as fast as he could swallow them, while the tears +streamed from his eyes, and his whole body shook with nausea. Then he +screamed out his imprecations: "I tell you, you sacred Ba'al of +heaven, you do not exist, but if you did I would curse you so that +your heaven should tremble with the fires of hell. I tell you, I have +offered you my service, and you have refused it, and I turn my back +on you forever, because you did not know the time of your visitation. +I tell you that I know I am going to die, and yet I scorn you, you +heavenly Apis, in the teeth of death. You have used your power over +me, although you know that I never bend in adversity. Ought you not +to know it? Did you form my heart in your sleep? I tell you, my +whole life and every drop of blood in me rejoices in scorning you +and spitting on your grace. From this moment I renounce you and all +your works and all your ways; I will curse my thought if it thinks of +you and tear off my lips if they ever again speak your name. I say to +you, if you exist, the last word in life or in death--I say +farewell." But the imp of irony, which in Hamsun is never far away, +is peeping over his shoulder as he writes, and the blasphemies are +hardly cold on the page before he tells himself that they are +"literature." He is conscious of forming his curses so that they read +well. This outburst stands alone in his works. It is as though in +"Hunger" he had once for all rid himself of all the accumulated rage +and agony of his youth. They never come again. + +The book is without beginning and end and without a plot, but it has +a series of climaxes. Each section describes some phase of hunger and +its attendant sufferings: the physical deterioration and weakness, +the rebellion of spirit, the hallucinations, the shame and +degradation. When the strain becomes intolerable, the tension +suddenly snaps with the receipt of five or ten kroner, and then +Hamsun instantly removes his hero from our sight. We never see him in +the enjoyment of this comparative opulence, but when the money is +gone, we meet him again beginning the old struggle, though each time +weaker and more unfit to take up the fight. He never achieves +anything; his small successes in occasionally selling a manuscript +never lead to anything. The book is a record of defeat and +frustration which have at last become inevitable because something in +himself has given way. Even his strange love affair with the girl +whom he calls Ylajali ends in baffled disappointment. + +Finally Hamsun simply cuts the thread of the story by letting his +hero ship as an ordinary seaman in a boat that is going to England. +He leaves the city he had set out to conquer. The city has conquered +him. "Out in the fjord I straightened up once and, drenched with +fever and weakness, looked in toward land and said good-bye for this +time to the city of Christiania, where the windows shone so brightly +in all the homes." + + + + +THE POET + + +HIS OWN HERO + +The most adequate idea of Hamsun's artistic personality can be gained +by reading his early works from "Hunger" to "Munken Vendt" and +preferably reading them in the order of their appearance. + +Through the medley of characters there emerges a distinct type that +can be traced in one after the other of his early books but +disappears in the later, more objective, pictures of whole +communities. This person is at first always the hero in whom +everything centres; later he steps into the background as an onlooker +who is sometimes the author's spokesman. He is always a dreamer and +one who stands outside of organized society; but this aloofness is +not self-sought. On the contrary, he often suffers in his loneliness, +and is longing and struggling to come within the circle of human +fellowship, but there is something in his own nature which unfits +him to be a cog in the common machinery. His pulses are differently +attuned from those of other people. The standards by which happiness +and success are usually measured mean nothing to him, but he can be +lifted to exaltation by the fragrance of a flower or the humming of +an insect. He is often a poet, if not in actual production at least +in his temperament, and has the poet's responsiveness to things that +more thick-skinned people do not notice. An ugly face, a jarring +noise can shiver his highest mood like crystal and plunge him to +the depths of despair. A sour look or an unkind word or even a +trifling mishap--the loss of a lead pencil when he is inspired to +write--can cast a gloom over his day. He is full of generous impulses +which sometimes take erratic forms and is capable of carrying +self-sacrifice to the most senseless extreme, but his nature has +never a drop of meanness. He revels in communing with nature and +finds pleasure in the society of some lowly friend or simple, loving +woman, but any happiness that life may bring him is never more than +a momentary gleam. He never lives to his full potentiality either in +achievement or in passion. The Swedish critic John Landquist puts the +question why we never tire of this oft-repeated Hamsun hero any more +than of his Swedish cousin Gösta Berling, and answers that it is +because he never gains anything and never turns any situation to his +own advantage. + +There is no doubt that this constantly recurring figure is Hamsun +himself in one incarnation after another. He has pointed the +connection by personal description, by reference to his authorship, +and once even by the use of his own name. He has to a greater extent +than most creative artists drawn for his subjects on his own varied +experiences, and though he has of course transmuted them in his +imagination, it is clear that he has at least been near enough to the +events he records to have lived through them very intensely in his +own mind. This is, of course, notably true of "Hunger," which was +written at the age of thirty, when his own experiences as a +journalistic free lance in Christiania were still fresh in his mind. +It is true also of "Mysteries," "Pan," and "Victoria," each one of +which corresponds to some phase in his own development. In "Munken +Vendt" and "Wanderers" there are reminiscences from his vagabond +days, and it is significant of the subjectivity with which he enters +into the person of his hero that in the latter he has chosen to make +the narrator a man of his own age at the time of writing rather than +reincarnate himself in the image of his youth. In the earlier books, +on the other hand, the hero is always young, generally between +twenty-five and thirty. + +The Hamsun ego as the critic of contemporary phenomena, the outsider +who is unable to fit himself into any clique or party, appears in +Höibro of "Editor Lynge," who is carried over into the drama +"Sunset," and in Coldevin of "Shallow Soil." He is absent from all +the author's later, more objective, novels, "Dreamers," "Benoni," +"Rosa," "Children of the Age," "Segelfoss City," and "Women at the +Pump," but we may perhaps find a shadow of him in Sheriff Geissler of +"Growth of the Soil," the garrulous wiseacre who "knew what was +right, but did not do it." + +The typical traits of the young Hamsun hero are found in the highest +degree in Johan Nagel. The central figure of "Mysteries" (1892) is a +reincarnation of the nameless narrator of "Hunger," a few years +older, gentler, but no less erratic, and even more sensitive. There +is about him a great lassitude, an indifference to his own +advancement in life, which might easily be the aftermath of great +suffering and terrible struggles. He seems to have no purpose of any +kind. He steps ashore one day in a small Norwegian seacoast town +simply because it looks so pleasant to a returned wanderer, and there +he remains, startling the inhabitants by his odd manners and freakish +garments. There is an exquisite goodness in Nagel. His attitude is no +longer that of the clenched fist. He tries to win his way into the +fellowship of his neighbors by acts of quixotic generosity--which +another impulse leads him to cover up. He takes infinite pains to +find opportunities of giving pleasure to the outcasts of the +community without letting them know whence the bounty comes. He loves +to decoy a beggar into a doorway and bestow a large sum upon him with +strict injunctions to secrecy. He has in the highest degree the +sweetness and longing for affection which is a leading trait in all +the Hamsun heroes, though least apparent in the youngest of them, the +narrator of "Hunger;" but he has also in a superlative degree their +unfitness for the common affairs of men. Consequently he suffers the +fate of those who would do good as it were from the outside without +being a part of the community for which they would sacrifice +themselves: his efforts fall fruitless to the ground. + +Into this book Hamsun has introduced a curious parody of the hero, a +little wizened cripple who is like a deformed reflection of Nagel. +This poor devil carries goodness, meekness, and long-suffering to a +point where it merely rouses the beast in the respectable citizens of +the small town and draws on himself brutal persecution; but +underneath his real goodness there is some abyss of evil which we +are not allowed to fathom, but which Nagel understands by a strange +intuition. His efforts to warn and save his protegé are unavailing. +Unsuccessful too are his efforts to win the confidence of Martha Gude +to whom he turns for consolation when Dagny rejects his love. Nagel +is an artist nature, and in the latter part of the book he is +revealed as a violinist with at least a touch of real genius, but he +has been thoroughly disillusioned regarding himself and his art. He +will not be one of the swarm of little geniuses or cater to the +beef-eaters. Whatever possibilities of achievement still lie dormant +in him are completely destroyed by his unhappy love affair. + +Written at a time when Hamsun from the lecture platform was carrying +on a campaign against the older poets and the established literary +standards, "Mysteries" is made the vehicle of many iconoclastic +opinions, and Nagel is to a greater extent than most of his heroes +made the mouthpiece of the author's views. In long rambling talks, +sometimes carried on with himself as sole audience, he attacks +Ibsen, Tolstoy, Gladstone, and other great names of the day. In the +books immediately following "Mysteries," "Editor Lynge" and "Shallow +Soil," Hamsun continues his attacks on the ideals of the day, though +in them he directs his blows rather at the small imitators of the +great. + +The Hamsun hero in his relation to nature appears in "Pan" (1894). +Lieutenant Glahn, the central figure of the book, is a hunter who has +lived in the forest until he has himself taken on something of the +nature of an animal in the look of his eyes and in his manner of +moving. He is supremely happy in his hut. His senses are saturated +with the warmth of summer days, the fragrance of roots and trees, the +soughing of the woods, and the tiny noises of all the things that +live in the forest. His spirit rests in the sense that in nature all +things go on, tiny streamlets trickle their melodies against the +mountainside though no one hears them, the brook rushes to the ocean, +and everything is renewed each year regardless of human fates. With +the outdoor life comes the primitive love of shelter which we lose +in cities; a warm sense of home ripples through his whole being when +he returns to his but in the evening, and he talks to his dog about +how comfortable they are. + +Glahn has found peace in the forest, but this peace is shattered as +soon as he comes in contact with his fellowmen. Awkward and uncouth, +he is unable to comport himself with dignity even in the little group +of merchants and professional men that constitute society in a +Nordland fishing village. He is too proud and simple to cope with the +caprices of the woman he has fallen in love with, and she soon tires +of him. Then Glahn, moved by a childish desire to make her feel his +existence even though it be only by a big noise, arranges a rock +explosion, and this foolish feat accidently kills the only person who +really loves him, the simple woman whom he has met in the forest. +Against his misery now nature, which a few weeks earlier was all in +all to him, has no remedy. + +Between the appearance of "Pan" and "Victoria" (1898) lay a period of +productive work resulting in the publication of the dramatic trilogy +centering in the philosopher Kareno and a volume of short stories +entitled "Siesta." The increasing success of Hamsun's own authorship +set its stamp on the next incarnation of his hero, Johannes, the +miller's son in "Victoria" who becomes a poet. Johannes is the only +one of all his youthful heroes who is fundamentally a harmonious +nature and the only one who masters life. The opening paragraph of +the book is like a happier reflection of Hamsun's own dreamy, lonely +boyhood. "The miller's son went around and thought. He was a big +fellow of fourteen years, brown from sun and wind and full of ideas. +When he was grown up he was going to be a match manufacturer. That +was so deliciously dangerous, he might get sulphur on his fingers so +that no one would dare to shake hands with him. He would be very much +respected by the other boys because of his dangerous trade." Johannes +knows all the birds and is like "a little father" to the trees, +lifting up their branches when they are weighed down by snow. He +preaches to a congregation of boulders in the old granite quarry, +and stands dreaming over the mill dam, following the course of the +bubbles as they burst in foam. "When he was grown up he was going to +be a diver, that's what he was going to be. Then he would step down +into the ocean from the deck of a ship and enter strange kingdoms and +lands where marvellous forests were waving, and a castle of coral +stood on the bottom. And the princess beckons to him from a window +and says, 'Come in!'" + +Just as Hamsun's own dreams are echoed in this boyish imagery, so his +own authorship in its happiest time when he felt all his powers in +full swing, is reflected in the later story of Johannes. Between the +rude hunter of "Pan" and the poet of "Victoria" there is a lifetime +of development. Johannes is just as impulsive and irrepressible as +the other Hamsun heroes he is quite likely to burst into loud song in +the middle of the night and disturb the neighbors, if a happy idea +strikes him, but he has really found himself in his work. Johannes is +loved by the young lady of the manor with a love that is strong +enough for death, but not strong enough for life. He loses her, but +the loss does not blight his life. The great emotion she has given +him remains with him to deepen and enrich his nature and to become +the life-sap of his blossoming genius. + +Very different from the miller's son and yet of the same family is +the happy-go-lucky swain who gives his name to the dramatic poem +"Munken Vendt" (1902). It is to some degree reminiscent of "Peer +Gynt" both in the verse form and in the chief character; but while +Ibsen wrote a bloody satire of the worst qualities in his race, +Hamsun has drawn a lovable vagabond. Munken Vendt is a student and +hunter whose adventures take place in some Norwegian valley at a +period not definitely fixed, but certainly much more romantic than +the present. He is something of a poet, is clever but unable to turn +his gifts to his own advantage, is clothed in rags but always with a +feather in his cap and ready to give away his last shirt, wins +sweethearts wherever he goes but fails the woman who should have been +his mate, and finally throws away his life in a senseless +extravagance of self-sacrifice. There is about Munken Vendt, for all +his foolishness, a proud defiance of suffering, a noble pathos, a +bigness and elevation of thought, which give his portrait a +distinctive place in the Hamsun gallery. + +The books I have mentioned here are generally regarded as the most +individualistic of Hamsun's works and as those that reveal his +personality most intimately. Among them should be counted also "The +Wild Chorus" (1904), a slender volume of poems which, with "Munken +Vendt," constitute all that he has written in metrical form. While +Hamsun is most at home in poetic prose, his poems have a wild, fresh +charm and are intensely personal expressions of his views on the two +subjects that engage him most deeply: love between man and woman and +love of nature. + + +THE HERO AND THE HEROINE + +A veritable Shakespearean gallery of women, drawn with subtle insight +and delicate sympathy, is found in Hamsun's works. Though infinitely +varied in their personalities, they move within certain limits and +have certain traits in common. They are intensely feminine with the +nervous fitfulness and spasmodic capriciousness that go with +overwrought sexual sensibilities. Occasionally he carries a woman +through this phase in her life into a warm and passionate +motherliness, but never into a finer and more complex individual +development. All his heroines have in the highest degree the +unfathomable lure of sex, but what they are above and beyond this we +never learn. + +The limitation may be less in the heroines themselves than in the +medium through which we are allowed to see them. If it were possible +to mention in the same breath two such antipodes as Jane Austen and +Knut Hamsun, I might recall what has been said of her that she never +attempts to tell us how men talk when they are away from the presence +of women. He never describes a woman when she is alone. We are never +allowed to be present when his heroines commune with their own +thoughts; we never see them from their own point of view and but +rarely from that of a mere observer. We glimpse only so much of them +as they reveal to their lovers, and while in this way they never lose +the glamour and mystery with which they are surrounded, it is +inevitable that they will seem members of a common sisterhood, +inasmuch as their lover, the Hamsun hero, is always the same. + +In the character of Edvarda in "Pan" the qualities of the Hamsun +heroine are heavily underscored. She is a wayward girl with erotic +instincts early awakened and with a flighty imagination which sets +her lovers absurd tasks, and yet there is a certain sweetness and a +primitive freshness about her that attract in spite of better +judgment. Her curiosity is roused by Glahn, the hunter with the "eyes +like an animal's"; she invites him to her father's house and draws +him into their social circle. At a picnic she suddenly flies at him +and kisses him in the presence of the assembled village, and after +this outburst she meets him constantly, circles around his hut by +night, and kisses his very footprints. But in a few days her violence +has exhausted itself; she stays away from their trysts; she insults +and ridicules him in her own home as publicly as she has formerly +favored him, and before many weeks have passed, she has engaged +herself to another man. Yet her love for Glahn is real, and presently +she makes frantic attempts to get him back. Glahn's stubborn +resistance is the measure of the suffering she has inflicted upon +him, and when at last she begs him to leave his dog Æsop with her +when he departs, he shoots his four-footed friend and sends her the +body. He seeks consolation with other women, and there is much +sweetness in his relation with Eva, the simple daughter of the +people, but in spite of her humble, unquestioning devotion and his +real tenderness for her, his feeling never touches the heights or the +depths. Even when he is with her, the thought of Edvarda is like a +constantly smarting wound. Yet he continues to resist Edvarda's +advances. When after the lapse of some years she tries to call him +back, he pretends to himself that he does not care, but he goes away +to the Indian jungle and seeks death. + +Edvarda reappears in a subsequent novel "Rosa," a torn and lacerated +soul, forever unsatisfied, with strange gleams of generosity +alternating with petty cruelty. She owns that there have been some +moments in life not so bad as others, and chief among these to her +was the time when she was in love with the strange hunter. In her +desperate longing for something that will take her out of herself, +she has spasms of religion, but at last sinks to the level of having +an erotic adventure with a Lapp in the forest and worshipping his +hideous little stone god. + +A repellent creature in many ways is Edvarda, and yet the author has +managed to make us feel her through the perceptions of her lover, +who sees--shall we say a figment of his imagination or the real +Edvarda? Behind her flagrant coquetries he discerns a fount of +purity: "She has such chaste hands." Her girlish affectations, even +her clumsiness, have for him a kind of appeal as of something naïve +and helpless. Glahn and Edvarda are both essentially and deeply +primitive though afflicted with a blight of sophistication. Each +answers to a profound need in the other; each has for the other that +one supreme thing which is higher and deeper than virtue and wisdom +and which no one can give in its full intensity to more than one +person out of the world of men and women. Both know that it is so, +and yet something in themselves prevents them from giving and +receiving that which both long for with undying fervor. Glahn's +passion is strong enough to ruin his life, but it is after all not +strong enough to hold fast through good and bad, in happiness and +unhappiness, and win from the relation the fullness of life which no +one but Edvarda could give him. The conflict of love which Hamsun so +often describes is here present in the most clearcut form because +there is nothing outwardly to divide the lovers. Their tragedy is +entirely of their own making. + +Dagny in "Mysteries" is superficially a much more attractive young +woman than Edvarda. She is the clergyman's daughter, sweet and +blithe, with a big blond braid and a habit of blushing when she +speaks. All the village loves her, and we can easily imagine her +visiting the sick and befriending the poor. But Dagny is a far more +inveterate coquette than Edvarda. While Edvarda was moved by her own +thirst for excitement and longed rather to be herself subjugated than +to subjugate others, Dagny is a deliberate flirt who can not bring +herself to release any man once she has him in her power. Whether she +loves Nagel or not he does not know, nor does the reader. She weakens +for a moment under the force of his passion, but she holds fast to +her purpose of marrying her handsome and wealthy fiancé, although she +intrigues to prevent Martha Gude from giving Nagel what she herself +withholds. That his death for her sake shakes her nature to its +depths we learn when we meet her again in "Editor Lynge," where she +owns to herself that at one word more she would have given up +everything and thrown herself on his breast. + +This one word Nagel never speaks. Like the hero of "Pan" he seeks the +haven of another woman's tenderness. He yearns toward Martha Gude +with all his heart, longs for the peace and rest and purity she could +have brought into his life, and yet he can not tear himself loose +from the passion that binds his soul and senses. Even while he is +pleading with Martha and tries to win her confidence in a scene drawn +with tender delicacy, his thoughts are with Dagny, and when at last +he has won Martha's shy promise, he rushes out into the night to +whisper Dagny's name to the trees and the earth. The love which +gushes forth irrepressibly from some unquenchable fountain in the +soul, which wells out again and again, warm and fresh, however often +its outlet is clogged and muddied, this love Hamsun has often +pictured and seldom with more tragic force than in the unhappy hero +of "Mysteries." And yet, great and real as his love is--great and +real enough to send him to his death--it is not perfect. It is +poisoned by a lingering doubt, which prevents him from putting forth +the one last effort that would have broken down Dagny's resistance. + +The lovers in Hamsun's books are never at peace. They never know the +quiet, gradual opening of heart to heart or the intimate communion of +perfect sympathy. With them the conflict always goes on. Gunnar +Heiberg, the Norwegian dramatist, has said that there is no such +thing as mutual love, because no two people ever love each other +simultaneously. When one has grown warm, the other has grown cold; +and when one advances, the other instinctively recoils. With Hamsun +the conflict is more fine-spun than that which Heiberg has painted +rather crassly. The mutual love is there, but it is a thing so wild +and shy and sensitive that it shrinks back into the dark at a touch +even from the hand of the beloved. Or is perhaps the human soul so +jealous of its freedom that it reacts against having another +individuality fasten upon it even in love? + +It is these intangible forces rather than the outer facts that divide +the lovers in "Victoria." Victoria is the patrician among Hamsun's +heroines, not only because of her birth and breeding, but by virtue +of her character. She is far too noble for deliberate coquetry, and +yet she tortures Johannes by an apparent capriciousness that seems +out of keeping with her frank, generous nature, while he answers with +coldness and hauteur. Why? Victoria has the secret, agonizing +consciousness of the promise she has given her father that she would +marry a wealthy suitor who can retrieve the fallen fortunes of the +family. Johannes feels his own humble birth and his distance from the +princess of his dreams. Yet these reasons seem hardly sufficient. It +is difficult to imagine that battered old aristocrat, Victoria's +father, forcing his daughter into an unhappy marriage to save his +home, still more difficult to picture the mother, who knows +everything, leading her daughter to the sacrifice. Moreover, +Johannes, though of humble birth, has won fame and has developed into +a man of substantive personality. He is not only Victoria's lover but +her playmate and oldest friend and a favorite of her parents. In fact +the sweetness in the relation between cottage and manor is one of the +things that entitle "Victoria" to its reputation as the most idyllic +among its author's works. Why then do not these four people face the +situation together? Why does not at least Victoria talk it over with +her lover? Afterwards she writes that she has been hindered by many +things but most by her own nature which leads her to be cruel to +herself. But the real reason is that Hamsun's art at this stage of +his development has no use for fulfillment. With fulfillment comes +indifference. It is his to paint the unslaked thirst and the +unstilled longing. Therefore the wonderful letter in which Victoria +lays bare her heart is not sent until after her death, and therefore +she leaves Johannes the legacy of a great tragic feeling which is +forever alive and throbbing because it is forever unsatisfied. + +Mariane Holmengraa in "Segelfoss City" belongs with Hamsun's young +heroines. She has some traits both of Edvarda and of Victoria. But in +this much later book the author has begun to take a godfatherly +attitude toward his young hero and heroine; their sparring is playful +rather than tragic, and he leaves them at the entrance to what +promises to be a happy-ever-afterwards. + +In "Munken Vendt" the man's waywardness and the woman's pride divide +the two who should have belonged to each other. When Iselin, the +great lady of Os, stoops to befriend the vagabond student, he tells +her brutally that he has no use for her kindness and does not love +her. Many years later, when he returns after a long absence, he again +rejects her advances. In revenge Iselin orders him to be bound to a +tree with uplifted arms until the seed in his hand has sprouted. +Munken Vendt bears the torture without a murmur and curses those who +would release him before she gives the word, but his hands are +crippled by the ordeal, and, partly in consequence of his +helplessness, he meets death not long after by an accident. Then +Iselin walks backward over the edge of a pier and is drowned. Here +the conflict, which appears more veiled in Hamsun's other books, is +clearly expressed in terms of savage, impulsive actions possible only +in a primitive state of society. + +A relation of perfect trust and harmony is that of Isak and Inger in +"Growth of the Soil." From their elemental community of interest +develops a really beautiful affection, which Inger's straying from +the straight path can not long disturb. It is almost as though the +author would say: So simple and so primitive must people be in order +to make a success of marriage for the complex and the sophisticated +there is no such thing as happiness in love. A similar lesson might +be drawn from "The Last Joy" where Ingeborg Torsen, a teacher, after +various adventures, marries a peasant and becomes happy in sharing +his humble work and bearing his children. + +The rebellion of a man against the monotony of marriage has been +presented again and again by writers great and small from every +possible angle. The inner revolt of a woman against the concrete fact +of marriage, even with the man she has herself chosen, has not often +been pictured, and rarely with the sympathetic divination that Hamsun +brings to bear on the subject. Puzzling and contradictory, but very +interesting is, for instance, Fru Adelheid in "Children of the Age." +She is a woman with a cold manner but with a warmth of temperament +revealed only in her voice. At first we do not know whether she is +attracted to her husband or repelled by him until she reveals that +she has simply reacted against his air of possession. Her husband, +the "lieutenant" of Segelfoss manor, knows that his wife has +enthralled his soul and senses and that no other woman can mean +anything to him, but he can not bring himself to try to patch up what +has been broken. Here we have the conflict between two people of +maturer years who wake up one day to the realization that it is too +late. Life has passed them by and can never be recaptured. + +In "Wanderers" the disintegrating influence in the marriage of the +Falkenbergs is habit that breeds indifference, and Fru Falkenberg, +one of Hamsun's most poignantly beautiful and most unhappy heroines, +is of too fine a caliber to survive the bruise to her self-respect. +In "Shallow Soil" Hanka Tidemand is drawn by the false glamour of +genius which surrounds the poet Irgens, and regards her husband as +nothing but a commonplace business man. Here, however, the strength +and depth of the man's love saves the situation. In its happy ending +their story is unique among the author's earlier works. + +Among his many wayward heroines Hamsun has painted one woman of calm +and benignant steadfastness, Rosa, the heroine of the two Nordland +novels, "Benoni" and "Rosa." She is so deeply and innately faithful +that she not only clings for many years to her worthless fiancé and +finally marries him, but even after she has been forced to divorce +him and has been told he is dead, she feels that she can "never be +unmarried from" the man whose wife she has once been. It is only +after he is really dead and after her child is born that she can be +content in her marriage with her devoted old suitor, Benoni. Then the +mother instinct, which is her strongest characteristic, awakens and +enfolds not only her child but her child's father. Quite alone in the +sisterhood of Hamsun heroines stands Martha Gude, a spinster of forty +with white hair and young eyes and a child heart. Her goodness and +her purity, which has the dewy freshness of morning, draw Nagel to +her, although she is twelve years older than he. + +Side by side and often intermingled with the ethereal delicacy of his +love passages, Hamsun has many pages of such crassness that often, at +the first reading of his books, they seem to overshadow and blot out +the fineness. He treats the subject of sex sometimes with brutal Old +Testament directness, sometimes with a rough, caustic humor akin to +that of "Tom Jones" or "Tristam Shandy," but never with sultry +eroticism or with innuendo under the guise of morality. There is in +his very earthiness something that brings its own cleansing, as water +is cleansed by passing through the ground. Probably most of us would +willingly have spared from his pages many passages in "Benoni" and +"Rosa," "The Last Joy," and more especially in his last book "Women +at the Pump," and even in "Growth of the Soil," but they all belong +to the author's conception of a true picture of life. + +"What was love?" writes Johannes in "Victoria." "A wind soughing in +the roses, no, a yellow phosphorescence. Love was music hot as hell +which made even the hearts of old men dance. It was like the +marguerite which opens wide at the approach of night, and it was like +the anemone which closes at a breath and dies at a touch. + +"Such was love. + +"It could ruin a man, raise him up, and brand him again; it could +love me to-day, you to-morrow, and him to-morrow night, so fickle was +it. But it could also hold fast like an unbreakable seal and glow +unquenchably in the hour of death, so everlasting was it. What then +was love? + +"Oh, love it was like a summer night with stars in the heavens and +fragrance on earth. But why does it make the youth go on secret +paths, and why does it make the old man stand on tiptoe in his lonely +chamber? Alas, love makes the human heart into a garden of +toadstools, a luxuriant and shameless garden in which secret and +immodest toadstools grow. + +"Does it not make the monk sneak by stealth through closed gardens +and put his eye to the windows of sleepers at night? And does it not +strike the nun with foolishness and darken the understanding of the +princess? It lays the head of the king low on the road so that his +hair sweeps all the dust of the road, and he whispers indecent words +to himself and sticks his tongue out. + +"Such was love. + +"No, no, it was something very different again, and it was like no +other thing in all the world. It came to earth on a night in spring +when a youth saw two eyes, two eyes. He gazed and saw. He kissed a +mouth, then it was as if two lights had met in his heart, as a sun +that struck lightning from a star. He fell in an embrace, then he +heard and saw nothing more in all the world. + +"Love is God's first word, the first thought that passed through his +brain. When he said: Let there be light! then love came. And all that +he had made was very good, and he would have none of it unmade again. +And love became the origin of the world and the ruler of the world. +But all its ways are full of blossoms and blood, blossoms and +blood." + + +GOD IN NATURE + +The fervent love of nature which vibrates through everything Hamsun +has written has endeared him to many of his countrymen who are +repelled by his eroticism and out of sympathy with his social +theories. The lyric rhapsodies in "Pan" minister to a deep and real +craving in the Norwegian temperament, and it is not for nothing that +this book has steadfastly held its own as the first in the affections +of the public. "Fair is the valley; never saw I it fairer," said +Gunnar of Hlidarendi in "Njal's Saga," when he turned from the ship +he had made ready to carry him away from his Iceland home, and went +back to face certain death there rather than save himself by +banishment. To the Northerner, whether he be Icelander, Swede, or +Norwegian, natural environment is the determining influence in the +choice of his home; and not only the poet and artist but the average +middle class individual, clerk, teacher, or store-keeper, will forego +social life and endure much discomfort in order to establish himself +in a place where he can satisfy the love of beauty in nature which is +one of the strongest passions in the Northern races. And yet, however +fair the valley of his home, he will yearn to get away from it +sometimes, to rove alone on skis over the snowfields or bury himself +in a forest hut far from the sound of a human voice. The vast +uncultivated stretches of Norway have enabled the people to follow +their bent and seek outdoor solitude, and while the habit has not +fostered in them the pleasant urban virtues of nations that live more +in cities, it has developed a richness and intensity of inner life +which has flowered vividly in their art and literature. + +The solitary hunter of "Pan" is perhaps the most typically Norwegian +among the Hamsun heroes, and in him love of nature has deepened into +a veritable passion. This book, which followed several novels of city +and town life and was written during a summer in Norway after a +sojourn abroad, is the first full-toned expression of Hamsun's +feeling for nature. It has a melting tenderness and a warm intimacy +of knowledge which can only come from much living out of doors, as +the author did when he herded cattle as a boy, and later when he +roved through the country as a vagrant laborer. To read it is like +nothing else but lying on your back and gazing up to the mountains +until you feel the breath of the forest as your own breath and sense +no stirring of life except that which sways the trees above you. The +feeling of being one with nature, of enfolding all things with +affection and being oneself enfolded in a universal goodness, is +typical of Hamsun's attitude. He never paints nature merely as the +scenic background for his human drama, and he never romances about +nature for its own sake. He rarely describes in detail; it is as +though he were too near for description. Like a child which buries +its face on its mother's breast and does not know whether her +features are homely or beautiful, he seems to be hiding his face in +the grass and listening to the pulse-beats of the earth rather than +standing off and looking at it. "I seem to be lying face to face with +the bottom of the universe," says Glahn, as he gazes into a clear +sunset sky, "and my heart seems to beat tenderly against this bottom +and to be at home here." Nothing is great or small to him. A boulder +in the road fills him with such a sense of friendliness that he goes +back every day and feels as though he were being welcomed home. A +blade of grass trembling in the sun suffuses his soul with an +infinite sea of tenderness. + +"Pan" is full of lyric outbursts. When Glahn revisits the forest on +the first spring day, he is moved to transports. He weeps with love +and joy and is dissolved in thankfulness to all living things. He +calls the birds and trees and rocks by name; nay, even the beetles +and worms are his friends. The mountains seem to call to him, and he +lifts his head to answer them. He can sit for hours listening to the +tiny drip, drip of the water that trickles down the face of the +rocks, singing its own melody year in and year out, and this faint +stirring of life fills his soul with contentment. + +Glahn follows the intense seasonal changes of Nordland. At midsummer, +when the sun hardly dips its golden ball in the sea at night, he sees +all nature intoxicated with sex, rushing on to fruition in the few +short weeks of summer. Then mysterious fancies come over him. He +weaves a strange tale about Iselin, the mistress of life, the spirit +of love, who lives in the forest. He dreams that she comes to him and +tells about her first love. The breath of the forest is like her +breath, and he feels her kisses on his lips, and the stars sing in +his blood. The women who meet him in the forest, Eva and the little +goat-girl, seem to him only a part of nature as they expand +unconsciously to love like the flower in the sun, and he takes what +they give him. Yet there is in him a spiritual craving which these +loves of the forest can not satisfy. + +Summer passes; the first nipping sense of autumn is in the air, and +the children of nature too feel the benumbing hand of coming winter, +as if the brief thrill of summer in their veins had already +subsided. But in the solitude of the dark, cold "iron nights" the +Northern Pan wins from Nature the highest she has to give him. As he +sits alone, he gives thanks for "the lonely night, for the mountains, +the darkness, and the throbbing ocean.... This stillness that murmurs +in my ear is the blood of all nature that is seething. God who +vibrates through the world and me." + +Though "Pan" is Hamsun's first great rapturous hymn to nature, his +earlier novel "Mysteries" contains some beautiful passages that may +be considered a prelude to it. Nagel is absorbed in the affairs of +men and smitten with the modern social unrest. He lives the life of +books and thoughts and is no half-savage hunter like Glahn, but he +seeks in nature the sense of vastness and infinity that his soul +longs for. He loves to lie on his back and feel himself sailing off +into the sea of heaven. "He lost himself in a transport of +contentment. Nothing disturbed him, but up in the air the soft sound +went on, the sound of an immense stamping-mill, God who trod his +wheel. But in the woods round about him there was not a stir, not a +leaf or a pine-needle moved. Nagel curled up with pleasure, drew his +knees up under him, and shivered with a sense of how good it all +was.... He was in a strange frame of mind, filled with psychic +pleasure. Every nerve in him was alive, he felt music in his blood, +felt himself akin to nature and the sun and the mountains and +everything else, felt himself caught up in a vibration of his own ego +from trees and hillocks and blades of grass. His soul expanded and +was like a full-toned organ within him. He never forgot how the soft +music literally rose and fell with the pulsing of his blood." + +As in "Pan" and "Mysteries," so in his other books Hamsun makes us +feel the moods of nature through those of his people. In "Victoria" +we are always conscious of the colorful background of heather and +rowan and sparkling blue sea because the minds of Johannes and +Victoria are steeped in the beauty of the land where they have played +as children. In the big Nordland novels, on the other hand, we meet +people who take no direct interest in their natural environments, +and here the author is more chary of his nature lyricism. The +careless, childish, volatile fisherfolk and day labourers in "Benoni" +and "Rosa" and in "Segelfoss Town" take the glory of the sea and the +cliffs with their swarms of white-winged birds very much for granted +and have nothing to say about them, but unconsciously their life +rises and falls with the seasons. "It was spring again" is the almost +invariable prelude to action in the Nordland novels. The warm nights +had come; the red sunlight was over sea and land; the boys and girls +went about singing and laughing and flirting the whole night long, +and even the old felt the stirring of youth in their blood, the +unquenchable old villain Mack got "the strong look" in his eyes +again, and poor old Holmengraa went on devious paths. There is a +glamour and a fairy-tale atmosphere always resting over Nordland +summers, but when autumn comes, a numbed torpor steals over +everything, as if people, like nature, were only lying dormant +waiting for spring to wake them again. + +Even that glamour which redeems the littleness in "Segelfoss City" +has died in "Women at the Pump," the author's latest book, in which +he depicts the petty mean, degenerate people of a small town that +seems afflicted with dry rot, and the total absence of feeling for +nature has much to do with the grey and rayless effect of this novel. +In "Growth of the Soil," on the other hand, there is a wonderful +sense of the nearness of nature. Isak could not put his reflections +into words, but a simple awe takes possession of him in the +loneliness of the forest and the moors, where he "meets God." As +Geissler expresses it, the plain people of Sellanraa meet nature +bare-handed in the midst of a great friendliness, and the mountains +stand around and look at them. + +Yet Hamsun's feeling for nature is by no means a mere primitive +emotion; it is rather the reasoned expression of a man who has found +his way back to the real sources of life. In its subtlest and most +artistic form it appears in the "Wanderer" books. The overemphasis +and extravagance which could, in "Pan," verge on the hysterical are +gone, and instead there is a mellow sweetness, a poignant tenderness +as of a man who knows that his own autumn has arrived and that winter +is on the way. It is Indian summer in the opening chapter of "Under +the Autumn Star." The air is mild and warm and tranquil, everything +breathes peace after the brief, intense effort of summer to put forth +growth. Round about stand the red rowans and the stiff-necked flowers +refusing to know that fall is here. In these paragraphs the keynote +of the book is given, and throughout this book and its sequel, "A +Wanderer Plays with Muted. Strings," the harmony with nature is +preserved. For all the charm of the story and the pungency of the +reflections on various themes, that which lingers in the reader's +mind is the long autumn road, the nights in the fragrant hayloft, the +smell of freshly felled trees, and the fire in the woods where the +Wanderer is alone at last with nature. + +Hamsun loves the warm, expansive moods of nature and has confessed to +a positive dislike of ice and snow. Descriptions of winter are rare +in his books, but the opening chapter of "The Last Joy" finds the +Wanderer snowbound in a hut far up in the mountains, and although he +watches the spring awakening of nature, he knows that in his own life +winter has come to stay. For that very reason he feels as never +before a great upwelling of affection for all things around him, +animate and inanimate. He can sit for hours merely watching the +course of the sun, or speculating about some tiny bug which was born +and will probably die on the one leaf it inhabits, or marvelling at +the wonder of reproduction in a little plant that is releasing its +seed. A lonely little path straggling through the forest affects him +like a child's hand in his own. A lacerated pine stump rouses his +pity as he stands gazing at it until his other, civilized self +reminds him that his eyes have probably acquired the simple animal +expression of people in the Stone Age. He walks over a hillside and +feels a tenderness emanating from it. "It is not really a hillside, +it is a bosom, a lap, so soft is it, and I walk carefully and do not +tramp heavily on it with my feet. I am filled with wonder at it: a +great hillside so tender and helpless that it allows us to use it +as a mother, allows an ant to crawl over it. If there is a boulder +half covered with grass, it has not just happened here; it lives here +and has lived here long." + +As he walks on, he begins to feel a strange influence about him. +"Something vibrates softly in me, and it seems to me as so often +before out of doors that the place has just been left, that some one +has just been here and has stepped aside. At this moment I am alone +with some one here, and a little later I see a back that vanishes in +the forest. It is God, I say to myself. There I stand, I do not +speak, I do not sing, I only look. I feel that my face is filled with +the vision. It was God, I say to myself. A figment of the +imagination, you will reply. No, a little insight into things, I say. +Do I make a god of nature? What do you do? Have not the Mohammedans +their god and the Jews their god and the Hindoos their god? No one +knows God, my little friend, men only know gods. Now and then it +seems to me that I meet mine." + +In one of his oriental travel sketches Hamsun has said that unlike +most people he never gets through with God, but feels the need of +brooding over him under the starry heavens and listening for his +voice in the breath of the forest. In "The Last Joy" the sense of God +in nature is always present in the background of the narrator's +thoughts. In the great stillness, where he is the only human being, +he feels himself expanding into something greater than himself, he +becomes God's neighbor. The last joy is to retire and sit alone in +the woods and feel the friendly darkness closing around him. "It is +the lofty and religious element in solitude and darkness that makes +us crave them. It is not that we want to get away from other people +because we can not bear to have any one near us--no, no! But it is +the mysterious sense that everything is rushing in on us from afar, +and yet all is near, so that we sit in the midst of an omnipresence. +Perhaps it is God." + + +WITH MUTED STRINGS + +The superiority of youth over age has been a cardinal doctrine with +Hamsun. How seriously he has taken it is best shown by the fact that +four of his plays and three of his novels are devoted to the theme. +First in point of time is the dramatic trilogy, "At the Gate of the +Kingdom" (1895), "The Game of Life" (1896), and "Sunset" (1898), +presenting three stages in the life of the philosopher Kareno. Of +later date are the three novels, "Under the Autumn Star" (1906), "A +Wanderer Plays with Muted Strings" (1909), and "The Last Joy" (1912), +each marking a milestone in the progress of the Wanderer toward the +land of old age. Quite alone stands "In the Power of Life" (1910), a +drama which shows an aging courtezan desperately trying to retain a +few shreds of her power over men. + +Kareno, a native of Nordland, has Lapp blood in his veins, which may +in part account for the latent weakness that comes out in him as soon +as the strong impetus of youth has died down. At twenty-nine he +rushes into print gallantly to attack the prevailing ideals of his +day, such as eternal peace, the apotheosis of labor, the humanitarian +efforts to preserve life however worthless, and in general the gods +of liberalism. Spencer and Stuart Mill, who were at that time names +to conjure with, he called mediocrities devoid of inspiration. His +most violent onslaughts were reserved for the doctrine that youth +should honor old age. For these theories he sacrificed wife and home, +career and friends. + +In the following play we find him, now thirty-nine, as tutor to a +rich man's children in Nordland. His intellect is already befuddled. +By means of a glass house provided with powerful lenses, which his +patron is helping him to build and equip, he is trying to achieve by +material, technical contrivances the clarity which, after all, he has +proved himself unable to evolve from within. His moral fibre too is +weakened. At twenty-nine he allowed his young wife to leave him +rather than temporize with his conscience; now he becomes absorbed in +a passion for his patron's daughter, Teresita, a wanton, capricious +woman of the Edvarda type but without Edvarda's sweetness. Formerly +he refused to save his home from impending catastrophe by a proferred +loan from his comrade Jerven, because the money was the fruit of +Jerven's apostacy from their common cause; now he is ready to accept +bounty from any source. + +A fire which consumes his house and manuscripts terminates his work +in Nordland, and we hear no more of him, before, in the last of the +three plays, we find him in Christiania again. He is now fifty, and +his deterioration is complete. He is settling down to a life of smug +Philistine contentment, enjoying the fortune which his wife has in +the meantime inherited, and accepting the daughter who is the fruit +of his wife's unfaithfulness rather than quarrel with the comforts +she provides for him. Kareno has somehow managed to preserve a +semblance of his former fire and with it a reputation for prowess as +a dauntless fighter, but in his heart he is already out of sympathy +with the cause of youth and ready to turn traitor at the first +beckoning of really substantial honors. + +The other characters have gone through the same process of +dissolution. Jerven has continued his inevitable downward course. His +one time fiancée, Miss Hovind, who broke with him because of his +apostacy, has become a silly old maid who glories in her former +connection with the famous professor. Only Höibro, the man outside +the parties who is still at variance with everything accepted, has +kept himself at fifty-one unspotted from the world. + +The weakness of the trilogy lies partly in the character of Kareno +which shows not so much the softening of fibre due to old age as the +revelation of a latent meanness, and partly in the nature of the +principles for which he is expected to sacrifice himself. It is true +that he feels in his youth the reality of the spiritual above the +temporal, and in the face of impending ruin he can say: "It is as +though I had been alone on earth last night. There is a wall between +human beings and that which is outside them, but this wall is now +worn thin, and I will try to break it down, to knock my head through +it and see. And _see_!" But what he sees is only temporalities, not +eternal verities. Granted that the liberal movement had become stale +and needed a renewal, there was nothing in that fact to create a +supreme issue. It was one of many movements that have run and will +run their natural course till the inevitable reaction sets in. There +was no great scientific truth or fiery religious passion involved, +nothing to call forth a Galileo or a Luther. As with Kareno, so with +Jerven and Miss Hovind. A girl who breaks with her lover because he +weakens in his denunciations of Spencer and Stuart Mill is a strain +on the reader's credulity. + +There is only one of the vaunted principles in the trilogy which has +a universal application, namely the doctrine that a man at fifty is +useless and should resign his place to the young, but this doctrine +Kareno can hardly be expected to hold with the same uncompromising +rigor at fifty as at twenty-nine. The whole situation therefore +becomes farcical, and we can hardly wonder that the middle-aged +philosopher wipes his brow when his young quondam admirer reads in +his ear the following quotation from his own early works: + +"What do you demand of the young? That they shall honor the old. Why? +The doctrine was invented by decrepit age itself. When age could no +longer assert itself in the struggle for life, it did not go away and +hide its diminished head, but made itself broad in exalted places and +commanded the young to do honor and pay homage to it. And when the +young obeyed, the old sat up like big sexless birds gloating over the +docility of youth. Listen, you who are young! Set a match under the +old and clear the seat and take your place, for yours is the power +and the glory for ever and ever.... When the old speak, the young are +expected to be silent. Why? Because the old have said it. So age +continues to lead its protected, carefree existence at the expense of +youth. The old hearts are dead to everything except hatred for the +new and the young. And in the worn-out brains there is still strength +left for one more idea, a sly idea: that youth shall honor +toothlessness. And while the young are hampered and thwarted in their +development by this cynical doctrine, the victors themselves sit and +gloat over their marvellous invention and think life is very fine +indeed." + +Written while Hamsun was yet under forty, the three Kareno plays are +an aftermath of his own struggles as a young man to break into the +ring of the accepted. They are an outcry against the older men who +had once been iconoclasts, but had standardized their iconoclasm, who +had once been advocates of free thought, but had forged free thought +into a weapon to strike down all who differed from themselves. It is +therefore no accident that Kareno's onslaughts are directed against a +stereotyped liberalism. The trilogy is significant as a subjective +expression of a certain phase in the author's development, but in +psychological interest it is far inferior to the Wanderer books. In +these Hamsun has rid himself of all bitterness and has found a sweet +and mellow tone that is singularly appealing. He is no longer a +theorist but a poet, that is he is himself at his best and highest. +He no longer vaunts a principle but portrays a human being. + +The Wanderer is a man who renounces the cafés and boulevards and, +after eighteen years of city life, revisits the haunts of his youth +disguised as a vagrant laborer. Thus he divests himself of whatever +pomp and circumstance surround a successful middle-aged man and well +known citizen, in order to meet youth on equal terms simply as Knud +Pedersen, a man whose muscles are a little stiff and whose beard is +getting grey. "Under the Autumn Star" and "A Wanderer Plays with +Muted Strings," bound together in the English edition under the +common title "Wanderers," relate experiences lying five or six years +apart. In the first the narrator is nearing fifty; in the second he +has passed the mark. The Wanderer in "Under the Autumn Star" is still +full of vim and vigor, loves to feel his contact with the soil again, +and glories in his prowess, notably in the invention of a wonderful +saw which absorbs him. He becomes enamored of Fru Falkenberg, wife of +the captain on whose estate he has taken service, and is young enough +to make frantic attempts to win her, even throwing off his disguise +and appearing in his own character; but when she begs him not to +pursue her, he desists. + +Some years later his longing drives him again to the Falkenberg +estate, but now he is in a different frame of mind. He "plays with +muted strings." He still works with his old energy, but his +invention, the marvellous saw, has become "literature" to him. Women +are "literature." He makes no attempt to approach Fru Falkenberg, but +from his obscure place among her other servants he watches mournfully +her gradual deterioration and philosophizes over the causes that led +to it. The captain and his wife have drifted apart from sheer +idleness, because they have no separate pursuits that might take them +away from each other and give their hours together the freshness of +reunions. In the earlier book, the wife, though she is drifting +hither and thither on the breath of longing and discontent, is so +essentially true that she feels even the homage of her humble admirer +as a danger which she must flee from. When the Wanderer comes back, +the idle years have done their work on her. "She had nothing to do, +but she had three maids in her house; she had no children, but she +had a piano. But she had no children," muses the Wanderer. But while +he himself keeps the distance she has imposed upon him, he sees a +younger, more brazen admirer pushing himself into her favor. The +scruples that bind the man past fifty have no existence for the youth +of twenty-two. The Wanderer feels no passion of jealousy, but only a +great weary lassitude and loneliness. He knows that for him it is +evening. He grieves over her ruin, but can do nothing to avert it. +All he can do is to put his whole heart into the humble task of +preparing her home against her possible return, helping the captain +to paint and refurnish the house. His efforts are of no avail; Fru +Falkenberg returns to her husband, but too many fine threads have +been broken, and their life together proves impossible. + +After her death the Wanderer seeks the solitude of a forest hut, and +there he sits looking over his life in retrospect after the fashion +of those who know that life is chiefly behind them. "I remember a +lady, she guarded nothing, least of all herself. She came to such a +bad end. But six or seven years ago I had never believed that any one +could be so fine and lovely to another person as she was. I drove her +carriage on a journey, and she was bashful before me, although she +was my mistress; she blushed and looked down. And the strange thing +was that she made me too bashful before her, although I was her +servant. Only by looking at me with her two eyes when she gave me an +order she revealed to me beauties and values beyond all those I had +known before. I remember it even now. Yes. I am sitting here and +thinking of it yet, and I shake my head and say to myself: How +strange it was, no, no, no! And then she died. What more? Then there +is no more. I am left. But that she died ought not to grieve me; I +had been paid in advance for that when, without my deserving it, she +looked at me with her two eyes." A middle-aged sigh breathes through +these words, the sigh of a man who has known life and felt it to be +good and who is not avid for more. He is a letter that has arrived +and is no longer on the way; that which matters is whether its +contents have brought joy or sorrow or whether they have fallen to +the ground without making any impression. He has come too late to the +berryfields, and there is no more to be said. His only hope is that +he may never become senile enough to imagine himself wise because he +is old. + +The two volumes contained in "Wanderers" are among the most finished +of Hamsun's production. I have already spoken of the harmony between +nature and the moods of men. In the human drama, too, the artistic +unity is always preserved. It is held throughout in low tones, and +while the Wanderer enters so well into his rôle that we sometimes +forget he is not really a common laborer, we are never allowed to +forget his age. We are always conscious of the gentle enervation +stealing over his faculties and the gradual loosening of his hold on +life. He becomes all the time less and less of a participant in the +story, more and more of an onlooker. + +In "The Last Joy" old age is no longer standing at the door; it has +come in and laid its hand upon him. "I am driven by fire and fettered +by ice," writes the Wanderer in the hut where he has retired to make +the big irons within him glow. In truth he is not sure whether he +still has any irons or whether he can still heat them. The ideas that +once rushed in upon him with overwhelming force now come only at the +cost of painstaking labor. Bodily work too has become irksome to him, +and when he begins to long for intercourse with other people, he does +not, like the Wanderer in the earlier books, hire himself out to +service, but goes to spend some idle months at a tourist hotel. There +he learns that his heart is not too old to give him trouble, when he +falls in love with Ingeborg Torsen. He is attracted by her brilliant +beauty and glowing vitality, and he looks at her waywardness with a +deep and tender comprehension which no young man could have given +her. No doubt he might have won her, but he is restrained by the +horror of being grotesque and indulging in antics unbefitting his +age. So he stands by, and again he is fated to see the woman he loves +ruining herself. But Ingeborg Torsen is of tougher fibre than Fru +Falkenberg, and she saves herself in a marriage which brings her +children and heavy household cares. The Wanderer has played the rôle +of her fatherly friend and confidant, but at last he realizes that +she does not need him any more even in this capacity. The knowledge +hurts, but not for very long, and not very severely. His feeling for +her has been real, the loss of her leaves him a little more sad and +lonely than before, but love with him is no longer the inexorable, +devastating passion that sent Glahn and Nagel to their death. + +Hamsun has essayed in "Wanderers" and "The Last Joy" to show the +enervating influence of the years. Again and again he tells us that +age can add nothing but only take away, that age is not ripeness, it +is just age--just toothlessness. Yet the impression left on the +reader's mind is that of a personality gradually being detached, +first from the fetters of its own passions, then from absorption in +other people, and finding at last freedom in loneliness. + + +THE LITERARY ARTIST + +The time immediately preceding Hamsun's authorship was, in Norway, a +period of revolt. All the established canons of public and private +morality were being questioned, and literature was made a platform of +debate in a manner never before known. No poet who respected himself +was content to be merely a songster. He felt it incumbent upon him to +be a thinker and a prophet, a moralist and a reformer. Hence every +new novel or drama that appeared propounded some opinion on free love +or marriage, the doctrines of the established church, the upheavel of +the social order, the position of women, the reform of the school +system, or other topic of timely discussion. To realize the change +that had come over literature we need only compare Ibsen in "Brand" +with Ibsen in "Ghosts." In the former he probed the human heart, laid +bare the weaknesses that are common to humanity under all +conditions, and gave poetic form to the ideals that are the same in +all ages. In the latter he took up a special pathological problem on +which his knowledge could be called in question by any medical +expert. In the same vein, Kielland, the creator of the inimitable +Skipper Worse, devoted his talents to demonstrating in a novel the +evils of silence regarding venereal diseases. Björnson was perhaps +the worst offender of all, and yet his preaching was salved by such a +broad and warm humanity that his pedantry could be forgiven. Among +his novels of the period, "The Kurt Family," which begins with +tremendous power, dribbles out into a treatise on hygiene and +morality, but happily the artist in Björnson is too big to be +confined within the limits he has set himself, and occasionally he +bursts out into delightful scenes. In the end, however, we leave +Thomas Rendalen and Nora clasping hands over a mission instead of +making love in the old-fashioned way. In "A Gauntlet" Björnson lets +Svava formulate the single standard of morality; in "A Bankruptcy" +he takes up the subject of business integrity, and so on. Among the +great creative writers, Jonas Lie and Garborg escaped comparatively +unscathed, Jonas Lie because he never could abandon his habit of +portraying life instead of reasoning about it, and Garborg because he +saved himself in time by going back to the soil and the peasantry, +where he discovered a fountain of poetic renewal. The lesser authors +followed the lead of Björnson and Ibsen in their less happy vein and +without their genius. The whole tendency, which, to begin with, had +had the freshness of revolt, of indignation, and of hope, was +becoming smug and standardized. + +A scapegoat had to be found for the ills from which the authors' +heroes and heroines were suffering, and Ibsen named it in "A Doll's +House," when he let Nora lay the blame for her foolishness on +"society"--reasoning so out of keeping with the character of the +childish, irresponsible Nora that we can not help wondering how Ibsen +ever made it sound plausible. It was accepted because it fell in with +the prevailing mood of the day. If only society could be reorganized +after a pattern on the reformers' nail all would be well! They forgot +what seems to us at this day obvious to the point of banality, namely +that when Nora had taken a full course in commercial arithmetic, and +Svava had vowed to die unwed, and all the little Millas and Toras and +Thinkas in good Fru Rendalen's school had learned all about the +pitfalls that awaited them, there would still be the devastating +power of love; and when everybody had a job so that young men could +marry at the natural time and young women need not marry except for +love, there would still be those sudden, erratic attractions and +repulsions which work havoc and create tragedies under the most +well-ordered conditions. Moreover, they forgot that, although the +wrongs which cry out for reform may be susceptible to artistic +treatment, the reforms themselves, circumscribing as they do ideals +by finite achievement, are not food meet for the imaginative writer. +A reformed Marshalsea would not have given us any Little Dorrit. In +Norwegian literature, Jonas Lie painted a gallery of splendid women +whose grandeur of outline is thrown into relief by the pettiness of +their surroundings; his Inger-Johanne and Cecilie are tragic figures +when they beat their wings against the bars of convention, but when a +later generation of writers attempted to send Inger-Johanne to normal +school and let Cecilie learn typewriting, the romance was dead. + +Against this whole school of literature with its absorption in types +and causes Hamsun protested with all his youthful vehemence and all +his power of drastic ridicule. It would not be correct to say that he +advocated a return to the principle of art for art's sake. Indeed he +has used his own literary work as the vehicle of any opinion that +pressed for utterance in him, from his reflections on the state of +Norwegian literature in "Mysteries" to those on the evils of the +tourist traffic in "The Last Joy." The truth is rather that his +poetic sensibilities recoiled from the smug sapience, the heavy +sententiousness that would rob life of its spontaneity and reduce it +to a pharmaceutical formula: so much democracy, so much popular +education, so much reform legislation, and a perfect state of society +would follow inevitably. He disliked the thinness and bloodlessness +of a literary art that substituted reasoning for inspiration. Poets, +he said, should not be philosophers; they usually philosophized very +badly, as witnessed Ibsen and Tolstoy when they departed from their +function as poets and began to prescribe remedies for the ills of the +world. As for Björnson, he revered him not because of his activities +as a preacher and a moralist, but in spite of them, because of his +humanness, his irrepressibility, his endless power of growth and +renewal. One of Hamsun's most beautiful poems is a homage to +Björnson. + +In his later years, Hamsun has himself essayed the rôle of the +preacher, or, as a Norwegian critic put it, he has assumed Björnson's +habit of occasionally chastising the Norwegian nation for its own +good in a fatherly fashion. There is a difference, however, between +him and his predecessors. They were sometimes institutional; he is +always personal. They sometimes attempt to construct the world from +a diagram of planes and angles; he always follows the flowing lines +of the artist. Even when he preaches, his message is in its essence a +part of his poetic impulse. His apotheosis of the man with the hoe +springs from his longing to get close to the soil and draw strength +from primal sources. His impatience with all the modern army of +semi-intellectual workers, the clerks and administrators who wind red +tape and spoil white paper, is in keeping with his craving to brush +aside all that cumbersome machinery which men interpose between the +human will and the physical realities. His strident condemnation of +the movements that are counted liberal in our day is a protest +against the levelling which robs life of its color and sharp +contrasts. His imagination demands the peaks and high lights and can +find no satisfaction in the modern cult of mediocrity or the dull +grey level of utilitarianism. + +To Hamsun the abstraction called society, which looms so large in the +liberal thought of to-day, has no existence. He sees only +individuals, and this is one of the reasons why, even when he waxes +didactic, he does not cease to be artistic. Isak, who is his ideal +type of citizen, is also one of his great poetic creations. In his +earlier and more personal work, however, the element of moralizing is +absent. The typical Hamsun hero, a Glahn or a Nagel, is not to be +measured with the yardstick of ordinary standards. What interests +their creator is not the patent virtues and vices which can easily be +catalogued, but the fugitive life-spark that defies analysis and yet +is what constitutes personality. To the poet the intangible and +elusive is the real, the evanescent is the stable. Why do people do +thus and so? "Ask the wind and the stars. Ask the dust on the road +and the leaves that fall, ask the mysterious God of life, for no one +else knows." + +The message of Hamsun's later works, which has swept them like a +life-giving stream over a world made arid by pseudo-civilization, is: +Back to nature! Back to the land! The message of his earlier works +was: Back to poetry! Away from problems and causes back to the dream +and the vision! There is no contradiction between the two; both are +equally genuine expressions of a personality which has the richness, +the many-sidedness and spontaneity of life itself. + +His method of artistic presentment is as fresh and unhackneyed as his +subject matter. It has always been regarded as the function of the +artist to separate the great from the small, the essential from the +unessential, and to make a character, a human life, or an event stand +out in sculptured clearness freed from the accidental and the +extraneous. With this ideal in view, writers have concentrated their +efforts on the great revealing scenes in the career of their heroes. +Hamsun breaks entirely with this tradition. To him nothing is small +or extraneous. His books are like broad surfaces rippled by many +points of light, and it is only gradually that these points of light, +the tiny but pregnant incidents and the flashing bits of description, +separate and converge to form images. It is a part of his method in +creating an illusion of life to draw his characters into the circle +of our acquaintanceship, not by great dramatic scenes leading up to +a climax, or by sudden opening of abysses as in Ibsen, still less by +long description, but by just such scattered and casual bits of +information as usually build up our knowledge of people and events in +real life. Some trifle is blown in on our consciousness and finds a +lodgement there; it may be a quotation or a word of comment that +stirs our expectancy and prepares us to meet an individual. We see +his shadow falling over the path of another person or feel his +presence like a breath of wind. Perhaps we hear no more of him at the +time, but in another book we meet him again, and now he is the hero, +whom we follow until we think we know him like a dog-eared +schoolbook--until some sudden turn upsets our theories, and we leave +him in the last chapter with a baffled sense of imperfect +understanding. But the author is not yet done with him. In some later +book, which is not a sequel in the ordinary sense but brushes the +fringes of the first, we come upon a passage that throws a backward +light over the ground we have traversed. When we close "Pan," for +instance, we know no more of Edvarda than her lover knows, but when +we read "Rosa" we find the clue to her nature. In the same manner, +Dagny, the heroine of "Mysteries," does not reveal her heart before +we meet her again as one of the subordinate characters in "Editor +Lynge." It is as though a figure that had once sprung from the +author's brain became imbued with such vitality that it continued to +live through his later works. J. P. Jacobsen once said that he was +forced to let all his people die, because death was the only real +end; nothing in life ever ended. Hamsun sometimes resorts to this +method, but even then the dead live on in the memory of those who +have known them. With him nothing is ever finished or finite. + +Hamsun's humor is all-pervasive it is the yeast that lightens his +loaf. When Albert Engström, the Swedish humorist, ended an +appreciation of Hamsun by saying, "And finally I love you for the +gleam in your left eye," he found an apt expression for the +personality that shines through Hamsun's works. His humor has less +of wit than of comicality, less of the laugh than the smile with a +gleam in his eye; and he is as ready to smile at his own intensities +as at the weaknesses of humanity. His flights of fancy are tempered +with irony, his real reverence with a playfulness that often takes +the guise of impish irreverence. He loves the far-flung paradox and +the sudden transition of thought by which he astonishes his readers. + +The quality of unexpectedness in his thought is well simulated in the +style he has evolved for himself. This style was fully developed when +Hamsun made his first appearance as an author, a fact which adds +interest to Sigurd Hoel's opinion that the dash and brilliance of +"Hunger" was due to American influence. Certainly Hamsun has never +improved upon this style, and it may even be questioned whether its +manner with the light staccato touch, the prevalence of interjections +and sentences consisting sometimes of a single word, has not in some +of his later works hardened into a mannerism that results in a slight +weariness of repetition. Taken as a whole, however, his style has +been a bath of rejuvenation to Northern literature. It has the +naturalness of the spoken word, following blithely the quips and +pranks of thought that give zest to conversation but are usually +flattened out before they reach print. The result is a light +whimsicality, a capriciousness which Hamsun cultivates with subtle +and conscious art, until he attains a sparkle and vividness, an ease +and flexibility never before known in the language of his country. + +As the literary artist Hamsun gives us apples of gold in pitchers of +silver, and the metal for both is entirely of his own forging. + + + + +THE CITIZEN + + +HOLDING UP THE MIRROR TO HIS GENERATION + +Very early in his career as an author Hamsun struck the keynote of +the message which in his most recent works he has preached with so +much power. The two novels "Editor Lynge" (1893) and "Shallow Soil" +(1893), satirizing certain journalistic and literary phenomena in +Christiania, showed the reverse side of the ideal in which he +believes, and by contrast pointed the way to new standards and new +goals. + +The main character in "Editor Lynge" is an intellectual parvenue, a +peasant lad who has risen to the position of editor-in-chief, not by +great and commanding qualities, but by a cheap smartness, a facility +for shoving himself in, and a brazen self-possession that never +deserts him. He is without real convictions and real courage, and yet +manages to hoodwink the public into thinking him a great moral +leader. A scandal-monger under pretence of defending virtue, he +impudently assumes the right to pry into other people's affairs and +spread them large over the pages of his paper. + +Some of the obnoxious sides of Lynge's activity we can, of course, +recognize as belonging to the dark side of daily newspaper work +everywhere, although they appear with more transparent naïveté in a +small country. In making him a peasant lad who had risen into another +class without assimilating its standards, who attempted to be a +leader without having inherited the traditions of leadership, Hamsun +had in mind certain phases of a transition period in his own country. +Popular education had opened the professions and government offices +to country lads, but could not in a single generation give them real +culture. They remained mentally homeless and rootless. In Lynge he +portrays a man who has suffered an injury to his soul by a +transplantation which could never be complete. Significantly enough, +Lynge's most ardent admirer is another transplanted country boy, +Endre Bondesen, whose origin is stamped on him in his name (Bondesen, +peasant's son). He too has lost his contact with the soil and thereby +lost the standards of conduct in his own class without acquiring +those in the class he has entered. Their attitude toward the new +possibilities that open before them Hamsun describes as a kind of +triumphant snicker: "Tee-hee-hee! what great fellows we are!" + +The author of "Hunger," who a few years earlier had described the +purgatory prepared for the young genius who is struggling to get into +print and to live on the proceeds of his work, did not have to go far +afield for the caustic sting with which he scourged the people who +make themselves broad in the inner courts of journalism and +literature. In "Editor Lynge" he parodied the vaunted power of the +press. In "Shallow Soil" he painted a picture of the small geniuses +who pose on street corners and in cafés and bask in the popular +admiration that is liberally bestowed on even the thinnest rinsings +from the wine-glass of genius. The little poets and artists regard +themselves as divinely exempted from all the sordid but necessary +work of the world, and believe their own slight productions are +sufficient excuse for a parasitical life in vice and idleness. There +is Öien who is so exhausted after squeezing out of his brain a few +small prose poems that he has to be sent to a sanitarium at the +expense of his friends, and there is Irgens, the only one who seems +actually to bring forth a real book occasionally, using his privilege +as a poet to live on the bounty of friends whom he is playing false +in the most dastardly way. With them is a crowd of idlers and +revellers whose chief ambition is to find some one who will pay for +their next meal. + +As a contrast to this despicable coterie Hamsun has not raised up a +real genius like his own alter ego in "Hunger," but two young +business men whom he uses to point the moral of regular work and +contact with actualities as the great salvation of modern +civilization. The keynote is struck in the opening chapter with a +finely-etched picture of the awakening city, when Irgens with waxed +mustache and patent leather shoes is strolling home from a night of +debauch and finds Ole Henriksen, alert and clear-eyed, already at his +desk in his father's big office on the dock, and fortunately able to +spare the ten krone bill which the poet needs. + +Ole Henriksen and his friend Andreas Tidemand, in their moral +cleanliness, their modesty and chivalry, their loyalty to each other +and generosity to their friends, are not unlike the ideal young +business hero of American novels, but they are afflicted with the +cult of genius which was prevalent in their country at the time. They +like to be seen dining at the Grand with poets and painters and +actors, and gladly assume the privilege of paying the bills for the +crowd, while, with a simplicity that borders on gullibility, they +allow the one his wife and the other his fiancée to be decoyed away +from them by the enterprising poet Irgens. Hanka Tidemand, a really +sweet and chaste nature, has accustomed herself to the rôle of +sympathizing with genius, and when she gives herself to Irgens it is +almost with a sense of being a pious burnt-offering on the altar of +his poetry. Aagot, a fresh, pretty country girl, one of Hamsun's +brightest and youngest heroines, is dazzled by the glamour of the +literary circle into which she is introduced, and becomes the poet's +next victim. Hanka awakens to a realization that it is her husband +whom she loves and returns to him. Aagot, with less stamina, is +completely demoralized, and Ole Henriksen shoots himself rather than +survive the old Aagot, the innocent Aagot, whom he had loved. + +"Shallow Soil" is perhaps to a greater extent than any of Hamsun's +other works based on certain local conditions and phases of +development in his own country. The cult of pseudo-genius which it +ridicules is not so prevalent among us that its satire can come home +to us as it did to the author's countrymen. The book will always +appeal, however, by virtue of its literary qualities. The critic Carl +Morburger calls it Hamsun's most finished literary masterpiece. The +subtle delineation of character, the vividness in the portrayal of +contrasting personalities, and the fresh, natural tone save it from +the sententiousness into which a novel with so evident a purpose +would have fallen in the hands of a lesser artist. + +The two friends Ole Henriksen and Andreas Tidemand, who are chosen to +illustrate the mental and moral tone acquired from practical work, +are both merchants. It is the occupation which, next to husbandry, +makes the greatest appeal to the author's imagination. He does not, +however, tell us much of the achievements of his heroes. His idea of +the merchant's business as the life-giving artery of a district is +not developed until many years later in the wonderfully ramified +pictures of whole communities, usually with a Nordland background, in +which the trading magnate nearly always occupies the centre of the +stage. + +In "Pan" we first encounter the great Mack family which pervades the +Nordland novels. Edvarda's father, the master of Sirilund, is +something of a fop with his diamond shirt studs and his pointed shoes +among the boulders, and rather more of a villain, a man to whom the +neighborhood pays its tribute of wives and maidens as a Zulu tribe to +its chieftain, but for all that a small superman by whose brains the +community exists. In "Dreamers" (1904) we see at close range his +still greater brother Mack of Rosengaard, who hovers like a +fairy-tale in the background of the other books. But Mack of Sirilund +is one of the characters that Hamsun has not been able to leave, and, +fourteen years after the publication of "Pan," we meet him again in +"Benoni" (1908) and "Rosa" (1908). He is a providence and a small god +to the simple people of the neighborhood. Whatever else falls, Mack +stands impregnable as a rock. His existence among them is an earnest +that somehow the world will go on, even if the fishing fails, and +boats are lost at sea. Whoever has no money goes to Mack for credit, +and who has money entrusts it to him; for banks are distant and +mysterious institutions, Mack is real and near. His business is in +fact built on the small sums thus put at his disposal, but he never +deviates from his attitude of conferring a favor upon the lender. His +self-possession, his elegance of dress, his polish of manner are +unfailing. There are ugly pages in Mack's history, ruined homes, and +neglected children who have the blood of the Macks in their veins, +but it is part of the man's mastery that, although every member of +his household knows of his orgies, he can yet command respect--and +Ellen the chambermaid loves him. The description of Mack's erotic +adventures, in spite of the humor Hamsun lavishes on the subject, +occupies an uncomfortably large amount of space in these books, but +they serve the author's purpose of throwing into relief the power of +the man who, in spite of everything, remained a ruler by divine +right. When his scandals became too rampant, his daughter Edvarda, +then in one of her religious moods, attempted to remove the cause of +offense and stirred up a revolt among her father's trusted people. +Mack went to bed and simulated illness, but the confusion resulting +from the absence of his directing hand was such that everybody was +glad to restore the old order and have Mack at his desk again. + +Hamsun likes to portray the patrician type to which Mack belonged by +inherited instincts, but he also enjoys seeking out those +tough-fibred people who are not descendants but become ancestors. +Among them Mack's partner Benoni occupies the first place. Hamsun's +playfulness has never been more delightful than when he traces the +evolution of Post-Benoni, who carries the King's mail, to Benoni +Hartvigsen and B. Hartvigsen, then to B. Hartwich, the partner of +Mack and the husband of the great man's niece, Rosa. A big hairy +creature, full of physical vim, strutting and vainglorious, wearing +two coats to church in summer to show that he can afford it, boasting +of his house and his furnishings patterned on Mack's, Benoni is with +all his absurdities sound at the core. He has a childlike goodness +and freshness that seems drawn from some unspoiled well of humanity. +Benoni has his reverses. Occasionally his divinity and patron Mack +finds it necessary to thrust him back into the nothingness from which +he has drawn him, and people begin to call him plain Benoni again. +Then his strutting waxes feeble for a while, but he soon rebounds +and rises higher than before. It is almost unfair that his fallen +fortunes are repaired by the ridiculous transaction of selling a +mineral mountain to a mad Englishman for a fabulous sum; we feel that +Benoni is quite capable of retrieving his losses by his own efforts; +but this is a part of the melodramatic strain which belongs to +Nordland, the country of sudden fortunes. When, in the last chapter +of "Rosa," the young wife, in the dignity of her first motherhood, +gently takes the reins of the household, we feel that Benoni in the +future will prance with spirit, but with discretion too. Benoni and +Rosa with the "prince" in the cradle are firmly rooted in their +environs and have the power of growth. In such people Hamsun sees the +future. They are the human stuff that endures. + +In contrast to Benoni we have Rosa's first husband Nikolai Arentsen. +He too is of humble birth, but while Benoni stays in the place where +he has vital contacts, Nikolai pushes himself into a class where he +will never be assimilated. Benoni applies his naturally good brain +to wrestling with the problems near at hand, those of the fish and +the sea. He is engaged in the productive work of helping to haul in +the harvest of the deep. Nikolai learns a great many things by rote. +He studies law and comes home to practise in his native place. At +first he does a thriving business on the easily stimulated mutual +distrust of primitive people, but when they learn that it costs more +to go to law than to make up their quarrels, their distrust is turned +on the lawyer. His income soon dwindles to nothing, and the small +world in which he has really no necessary function goes on without +him. He has entered one of the professions that Hamsun calls sterile. + +Hamsun frequently contrasts two brothers one of whom has stayed close +to the soil while the other has tried to work his way into a +supposedly higher sphere. In "Segelfoss City," there is L. Lassen who +is unmade from a good fisherman and not completed to a bishop, while +his brother Julius who has stayed in his natural environment and +become a shrewd hotel-keeper has at least some contact with the +realities. In "Growth of the Soil" Sivert on the farm is contrasted +with Eleseus in the office, and always to the advantage of the +former. In "Women at the Pump" there is a similar pair of brothers. +Abel, the younger, a sweet-tempered, sturdy urchin with a natural +pride in killing snakes, has had to shift for himself and make his +own decisions almost from the day he left the cradle, and has +developed into a fine young man. When the time is ripe, he slips +naturally into the place in the community where he belongs, as the +helper of an old blacksmith who needs a pair of young arms and a +bright young face in the smithy. Within a short time Abel is the +mainstay of the family. Frank, the elder, has been put through school +and has learned a number of languages which, whether living or dead, +will always remain dead to him. He is one of the children who are +being "prepared for farming, fishing, cattle-raising, trade, +industry, family life, dreams and religious worship" by learning "the +number of square miles in Switzerland and the dates of the Punic +wars" and similarly vital facts. He "knew nothing of red outbursts, +he never rose to the skies or fell down again, never went to the +bottom or floated up. He never exposed himself to anything and had +nothing to avoid. Instead of getting out of a scrape, he never got +into one. Cleverly done, meagrely done. God had prepared him for a +philologist." + +It seems curious that Hamsun the poet should never have reminded +Hamsun the sociologist that dreams have an intrinsic value, that the +aspirations which carried Frank and Eleseus and the future Bishop +Lassen out from their homes were in themselves a moral asset inasmuch +as they stimulated not only those who went out but also those who +stayed behind and had their horizons opened by contact with the +outside world. It is almost as though he denounced the circulation of +blood between the country and the city as bad in itself. The reason +is, of course, that he has in mind certain standards and valuations +which he combats as wrong and false. He ridicules the self-delusion +of those who imagine they are educated because they have learned a +number of things which they can repeat from books, and who suppose +that "culture" consists in certain inherited or acquired customs that +have nothing to do either with beauty or distinction, but are simply +an absence of the marked, the characteristic, the splendid, or the +primitive,--all that which is neither high nor low, but everlastingly +on the same dull grey level of respectability. He derides those +"whose hands are so sick that they can do nothing but form letters" +and who think there is something superior about that "slave's work" +writing. "It is finer to write and read than to do something with +your hands, says the upper class. The lower class listens. My son +shall not till the earth from which everything that crawls subsists; +let him live on other people's work, says the upper class. And the +lower class listens. Then one day the roar awoke, the roar of the +masses. The masses have themselves learned the arts of the upper +class; they can read and write. Bring here all the good things of the +earth, they are ours!" + +In "The Last Joy" Hamsun discusses modern education as it affects +women. Ingeborg Torsen has been put through the mill of normal school +together with a class of girls, some richer, some poorer than +herself, but all intent on graduation and a position where they can +put other girls through the same mill. She was educated away from the +simple, healthy life of her mother and became a teacher without +interest in her work, while her thwarted longing for marriage and +motherhood became perverted into morbid desire. In his estimate of +the so-called advancement of woman Hamsun reaches some of the same +conclusions as Ellen Key, but in his preoccupation with the physical +side of sex he fails to see what Ellen Key always insists on, that +motherhood consists not only in bearing but in rearing, and that +teaching is a profession which more than any other gives women who +are not mothers an outlet for the moral qualities of motherhood. He +fails to remember also that women as well as men may burn with the +pure fire of a thirst for knowledge. Nevertheless, as a satire of +a certain phase in the woman movement, when any other work was +considered superior to that of the home, Hamsun's attack contains a +kernel of bitter truth. + +As the only real aristocracy Hamsun sees the big landed proprietors +who ruled over their little world as kings. He does not idealize the +origin of the great families, but thinks that from pride and will +power an aristocracy may develop, provided there is money. "But it +must be wealth, not pennies. Pennies are only to coddle the race and +protect it from wet feet." In "Children of the Age" (1913), and its +big two-volume sequel "Segelfoss City" (1915) we follow the decline +of a big family who once owned all the land that Segelfoss city was +standing on. The first Willatz Holmsen was a lackey who acquired +money somehow and built a palace. The second Willatz Holmsen acquired +culture. He added white columns to the palace and filled it with +books and works of art. With him the rapid economic rise of the +family reached its height. The third acquired personal distinction +and a sense of noblesse oblige which his failing fortune could not +support. The lieutenant, as he is called, whose life we follow in +"Children of the Age," is a proud, lonely figure, unable to confide +to any one that a Willatz Holmsen might not be able to do all that +was expected of him, and mortgaging his house rather than disappoint +any one who looked to him for funds. The fourth is a musician. He is +an aristocrat in his personal habits and in his sense of obligation, +but he has lost his father's gift of command because he has no longer +the old faith in the divine right of his family to rule. He can knock +down an impudent workman, but he can not quell by his mere presence +as his father could. Democracy has seeped into his tissues. He still +flings gifts about in a lavish way as the Holmsens have always done, +but he avoids occasions where he would hold the centre of the stage, +and is at the same time a little hurt that he is not a wonder and a +fairy-tale to the people as his father and mother were. He has the +modern self-doubting habit of mind, and is glad to resign the +position of leadership to the new man, the captain of industry, +Holmengraa. Willatz Holmsen the fourth is, both in his fine, generous +personal character and in his real genius as a musician, an +illustration of Hamsun's theory that wealth in several generations +will produce culture of heart and mind, but the young man's +development carries him inevitably away from Segelfoss, and the +brilliant career which is foreshadowed for him falls outside the +frame of the story. As village potentates the Holmsens have had their +day. Their dynasty is ended. + +"King Tobias," as Holmengraa is called, appears in a golden cloud of +romance. He is a peasant's son who has acquired a fortune in South +America and comes back to his native place, turning the sleepy little +village into a small city overnight. His ships bring grain from the +Baltic; his mills grind day and night; he cuts timber; he establishes +a telegraph station, and has work and money for everybody. But +Holmengraa comes in contact with a new power which he is not strong +enough to resist, that of the rising proletariat. His men read the +"Segelfoss Times" which tells them that all the world rests on their +toil, that they are wage slaves, and their employer is an +extortioner. They make larger and larger demands; they become +insolent and scoff at King Tobias who has now sunk to be plain Tobias +to them. Unfortunately Holmengraa, who is a modest, fine-fibred man +and very sympathetically drawn, has his weakness. Like the great +Mack, he is unable to leave the girls alone, but he has not Mack's +brazen assurance, and his position is gradually undermined. It is +found that his fortune is not so great as first supposed, and his day +is short. + +So village dynasties rise and fall. At last comes one that is not too +fine-grained or sensitive. Theodor Jensen with the sobriquet "paa +Bua" (in the store) is a selfmade man like Benoni, apparently +slighter and frothier, more of a parody, but in reality possessed of +a harder and more slippery cleverness than that of the expansive +Benoni. Theodor rises out of the most malodorous surroundings, but, +like Benoni, is himself sound, on the whole. The village laughs at +his airs, his rings, his scarf pin made of a gold coin, his absurd +pretensions; but little Theodor has what the former dynasties lacked, +a faculty for meeting every situation as it arises. He has pluck and +shrewdness and is not entirely lacking in generosity. He builds a big +store, and all the affairs of the village revolve about him. He +extends credit, and servant girls are divided into two classes, those +who have credit at Theodor's and those who have not. He brings the +world to Segelfoss: silk dresses, canned goods, store shoes, +fireworks, a theatrical troupe--everything that can be named. In a +year of depression, when everybody was in a funereal frame of mind, +Theodor bethought himself of tomb-stones, and presently the graveyard +blossomed out with a sudden forest of slabs and crosses with "Rest in +Peace" and "Loved and Missed" on graves that had been neglected for a +quarter of a century. Theodor knows what the people want. The future +is his. + +Hamsun has a kindness for this merry privateer and enjoys blowing the +wind that swells little Theodor's sails, but underneath the froth +and sparkle there is a bitter didactic purpose in this book. It shows +the reverse side of modern progress, when a backward community learns +to use the material conveniences of the age without any corresponding +mental advancement. The workingmen have learned to make demands, but +while they refuse to yield the old submission to authority, they have +not learned any sense of responsibility to their own conscience, and +therefore grow more and more lazy and inefficient. The women forget +to cook and sew while they buy flimsy readymade clothes at the store +and feed their families on food that is bought ready cooked and +chewed and almost digested. Neither men nor women know what to do +with their leisure, and general demoralization is the result. + +"Segelfoss City," with its dying aristocracy, its captain of +industry, and its spoiled working class, is a miniature mirror of the +modern world as Hamsun sees it. In the same category belongs his last +book, "Women at the Pump" (1920), but there the deterioration is more +complete. The events recorded are only a grey dribble from a leaky +town pump. "People in big cities have no idea of standards and +dimensions in the small towns," so runs the opening paragraph. "They +think they can come and stand in the market-place and smile and be +superior. They think they can laugh at the houses and the pavements, +indeed they often think so. But do not old people remember the time +when the houses were still smaller and the pavements still worse? And +there at least C. A. Johnson has built himself a tremendously big +house, a perfect mansion. It has a veranda below and a balcony above +and scroll work all the way around the roof.... The small town too +has its great men, its solid families with their fine sons and +daughters, its immutableness and authority. And the small world is +absorbed in its great men and follows their career with interest. The +good small town folk are really acting to their own advantage in +doing this; they live in the shelter of authority, and it is good for +them." + +What indeed would the little town have been without Consul Johnson? +What glory would there have been in life without his silk hat and +his rotund face beaming on the crowds as they make way respectfully? +When the story opens, the village is assembled to watch the departure +of his steamer, the Fia, for foreign waters. While they wait, the +women at the village pump, standing with buckets filled and hands +under their aprons, are discussing a great event that happened six or +seven years ago, but is still undimmed in memories not over-burdened +with weighty affairs. It was the day when "Johnson on the Dock" was +made consul, and everybody who came into his store was treated with +sweet cakes and a drink. Since then other consuls had sprung up like +mushrooms; there was "Barley-Olsen" and Henriksen at the Works, but +Consul Johnson's glory outshone that of all others, and his scandals +only gave an added nimbus to his name. The measure of difference +between Hamsun's earlier books and "Women at the Pump" may be seen in +the distance between the really magnificent reprobate Mack and the +flabby Consul Johnson, a man who has become a village magnate by the +accident of owning the only store in the neighborhood. But village +dynasties rise and fall, and the Johnson dynasty seems tottering, +when it is saved by the consul's young, aggressive, thoroughly modern +son, Schelderup, who suddenly comes home and raises the house of +Johnson to its old glory. The consul's day is over, however, and it +is pathetic to see him shrink back into the obscurity from which +accident had drawn him. In his fall he appeals to us as never before, +and Hamsun makes us feel that the foolish old man is, in his +innermost nature, better than the hard-headed son. + +Schelderup brought order into his father's affairs, but into some he +brought disorder. He stopped various pensions that were being paid +for reasons known to Consul Johnson and sometimes to the women at the +pump. Among other drastic steps, he abolished the sinecure at the +Johnson warehouse held by the cripple Oliver, and the annual subsidy +paid to Oliver's son, the philologist Frank. It is Oliver who is the +"hero" of the book; in him "the little town sees itself realized." +Oliver was once a sailor with powerful arms, a dashing young blade +with a pretty sweetheart and his life before him. He goes away on +Consul Johnson's Fia and comes back a wreck. He has lost a leg and +has sustained another injury not yet the property of the village +gossips: he is unable to become a father. Oliver comes home to take +up his life on shore, to fish a little, to lie and cheat his way +through life, to starve sometimes, to "find" sometimes the property +of others, to marry his old sweetheart Petra as a screen for another +man, none less in fact than the great Consul Johnson himself, and to +buy back his mortgaged home as the price of her favors to another +great man of the village, the member of parliament and future cabinet +minister Fredriksen. He lives on the memories of the days when he +went to sea and on two events that have happened to him since his +return. He has once won a tablecloth in a lottery, and he has once +found a derelict ship and sailed it in, a deed which resulted in +putting his name in the paper. + +There is only one bright spot in the life of this human wreck, who +grows physically more repulsive as the years go on. Only one thing +unites him in a sweet and natural relation with our common humanity, +and that is his love for the children who are not his. Hamsun here +takes up an interesting psychological question and arrives at the +opposite conclusion from that of Strindberg in "The Father." + +He shows that fatherly affection is not a primitive instinct but a +growth of habit. Oliver cares for his wife's children while they are +small, and when they grow up they love him and have no interest in +attaching themselves to their actual fathers. Indeed Oliver's +importance in the community grows in the reflected light from his +successful children, although the truth about their origin has long +since leaked out at the town pump. There is, of course, irony in +this, but there is also a certain optimism. In his great novels +picturing the life of whole communities, Hamsun has thrown the +glamour of his art over a big gallery of insignificant people. Mere +puppets for his amusement they seem at first, and yet, as we +penetrate more deeply into his work, we feel behind the smile a +great sweetness, a broad humanity, and at bottom a faith that life +fashions its own ends out of all this human dross and fashions not +badly. + +Hamsun's social theories will be sufficiently evident from the above +recapitulation of the novels in which he is holding up the mirror to +his generation. He rebels against all that would cripple individual +effort and against all modern standardizing whether it applies to the +choice of a profession or to the cut of a garment. The levelling +process which, inasmuch as it can not make all great, must achieve +equality by making all small, he believes to be a disadvantage for +the small, who thus lose an ideal and an element of romance in their +lives. He abjures all modern shams and artificiality and particularly +the false standard that exalts the white collar job above the work +involving a little honest grime. He would like to see his people a +nation of farmers and fishermen with an aristocracy of big landed +proprietors and brainy business men, but with all the middle class of +administrators and clerical workers eliminated. With the latter he +would sweep away most professional men and those who hang on the +fringes of art and literature. The real genius, the poet by the grace +of God, he regards as above and outside of all classes. + +These theories, to which Hamsun lends the point of his whimsical, +paradoxical extravagance, must be seen against a background of +special conditions in a small country with a large number of brain +workers proportionally, and with, perhaps, a tendency to over-value +what passes for culture. Stated coldly and in detail they are, of +course, impracticable. No nation or group of people can detach itself +from the complications of modern civilization. Hamsun the sociologist +is not on a par with Hamsun the poet. But when he leads us back to +the deep, primeval well-springs without which our civilization must +wither and die, it is Hamsun the poet who speaks. + + +GROWTH OF THE SOIL + +In "Growth of the Soil" Hamsun has concentrated the message which, in +more or less fragmentary form lies scattered through his works: that +everything else is small compared with the one essential thing, to be +in unison with nature and to work with nature in "a great +friendliness." There he preaches with massive reiteration that the +salvation of the modern world lies in getting back to the land, and +by his poetic treatment he has linked the doctrine with the fight men +have waged since the beginning of human life on earth. + +Without the artifice of distant time and place, in the midst of +modern conditions painted with realism and often with humor, he has +created an illusion of the primeval. It is as though Isak, the man +without a surname, coming we know not whence, walking through the +forest in search of a place where he can begin to till the soil, +were the first man in a newly created world. "There goes a path +through the forest. Who made it? The man, the human being, the first +one who came." He walks all day over the moors in the great +stillness, turning the sod occasionally to examine its possibilities, +then walks again until night comes. Then he sleeps a while with his +head on his arm, and walks again until he finds the right place for +himself, and there he makes his first home on a bed of pine needles +under a projecting rock. + +After this prelude, which has a cadence like the first chapter of +Genesis, Hamsun allows us to follow the story of how the shelter +under a rock became a farm. There were no banks for lending money to +pioneer farmers and no societies for the reclamation of waste land, +or if there were, Isak knew nothing about them. He was only one man +who met nature alone. After a while a woman came to him out of +nowhere and did not leave him again. Inger was hare-lipped, and Isak +with his fierce beard and grotesque strength looked like a troll of +the forest; for Hamsun has scorned to throw even the glamour of +youth and rustic beauty over the pair. They were simply man and +woman, brought together by the most elemental needs, working +together, helping each other, meeting the demands of each day as they +arose, and resting when night fell. The picture of their early days +together, their delight in each other and their surprise at all the +wonders that happen to them, is full of innocent, primitive charm. + +There is an idyllic beauty about the first chapters of the book, but +"Growth of the Soil" is not primarily an idyl. It is the story of +human achievement centering in Isak's intense, never-ceasing effort +to subdue the small part of the earth which he has taken for his own. +It is almost as though he were really the first man without the +accumulated resources of civilization behind him. He sleeps under the +rock until he has completed a sod hut which gives him shelter against +the cold and rain, and by and by a window is added to let in the +daylight. In the course of time the sod hut gives place to a real +house of logs, and the sod hut can be left to the animals. One day +Inger disappears leaving Isak feeling very lost and lonely, but +presently she comes back leading a cow, an event so great and +wonderful that they spend their first wakeful night discussing it. +Isak can hardly believe that the cow is theirs, but he makes the +retort courteous by bringing a horse for his contribution. As for +goats and sheep, they are already a little herd. The meadows yield +grass, the grain ripens for harvest. Everything grows and thrives, +grain, animals, human beings. There is a fruitfulness, a teeming, a +bringing forth of everything that lives on the earth and by the +earth. It is like looking on at a bit of the creation of the world. +And there are Biblical parallels too with the man who came across the +moor with a bag of bread and cheese and became the patriarch of a +countryside. + +Isak's strong, unused brain is developed by the necessity for helping +himself. He invents various clever contrivances. He learns how to +plan his work and fit one task into another so that every month of +the year is utilized to the utmost advantage. He sows and reaps and +mows; he threshes the grain on a threshing-floor of his own +construction and grinds it in a mill which he has also made. He fells +and trims the logs for his house, cuts them in a saw-mill which he +has made with infinite effort and cogitation, and fits them together +in the expert fashion which he has learned by studying the methods +used in the village. The foundation has been laid of stones from his +own land, lifted with his own brawny strength. An especially huge +stone or an unusually big piece of timber put in its place is to him +as real a triumph as the honors and emoluments of the world are to +the more sophisticated. Isak revels in his work, and his powers grow +with his tasks. He is a happy man. + +The contrast between Isak's absorption in his work and the lazy, +discontented apathy of the industrial laborers in "Segelfoss City" +is, of course, evident. In the same manner the upbringing of his boys +is contrasted with the education of children who are put through the +usual school routine. While the latter are mere passive recipients of +a knowledge which is thrust upon them from the outside without +regard to their needs, the boys in the wilderness are allowed to +develop naturally and from within. Every bit of knowledge that they +acquire comes in response to the necessity for meeting a practical +situation. They are stimulated by their father's example, as they are +allowed to help him, and they exert their small brains to give the +right answer when he asks their advice in all seriousness. Hamsun +here returns to the subject of the transplanted country boy which has +engaged his interest from the publication of "Shallow Soil," and +allows the elder of Isak's boys, Eleseus, to attract the interest of +a visitor who takes him to town and puts him in an office. The result +is that the boy wilts like an uprooted plant. He is not bad, he is +simply futile. He has lost interest in country pursuits without +having any marked ability that would insure him a career in the city, +and he has been imbued with the idea that it would be a step downward +for him to go back from his poorly paid office job to the work of the +farm. When he comes home, he tries hard to please his father, for he +is a good, affectionate lad, but he has lost the poise of those who +have stayed on the land. He has been infected by the restlessness of +those who have no resources in themselves, but are for ever running +about to have their emptiness filled by the drippings from other +people's lives--from newspapers, moving pictures, street corner +gossip. Sivert, the younger brother, stays at home, and it is he who +continues to build on the foundation laid by the father. + +The people in the wilderness have not had their minds made a sieve +for the happenings of the outside world and have not inhaled the +mental atmosphere that has been breathed again and again by millions +of people. Their imaginations are fresh and strong, and they have +time to live to the full in whatever happens to them. From every +experience they draw the utmost that it contains of joy or sorrow. +There is stillness and breadth of vision. Everything has its +appointed place, and though human beings in their flightiness may +stray from their orbit, the great forces that dwell in nature draw +them back and hold them. + +There is bigness and simplicity in their joys and sorrows and even in +their sins. When Inger kills her hare-lipped baby to save it from the +suffering she has endured because of the blemish in her own face, the +story of how she buries the little body in the baptismal robe of her +firstborn and puts a cross on the grave is profoundly touching. Her +real grief and repentance, her meek submission to punishment and her +thankfulness that her life is spared, Isak's grief and unfailing +love, his loneliness and longing for her return from prison, all +these belong to people who meet life without evasion or subterfuge. + +While Inger's crime is raised to the level of tragedy, the story of +the girl Barbro who kills her two children in pure wantonness and is +acquitted in the new "humane" spirit after a parody of a trial, is a +hideous, sordid tale. Hamsun here contrasts the people who live among +the great realities, accepting the consequences of their deeds, with +those who have learned to play tricks with life and cheat the +Goddess of Justice. This to a certain extent justifies the inclusion +of Barbro's story in the book, although it mars the big epic lines of +the rest by its rather journalistic attacks on criminal procedure and +satire of a certain type of "advanced" woman who espouses Barbro's +cause. It was, as a matter of fact, an outgrowth of some polemical +articles with the keynote "Hang them!" which Hamsun wrote in the +Norwegian press, when the growing slackness in the treatment of women +indicted for child murder had roused his indignation. Ugly as the +story is, it ends on the note of optimism which runs like a golden +vein through "Growth of the Soil." There is a hint that Barbro and +her lover, the hard, grasping farmer, as they marry and settle down +to till the soil, may be reclaimed by their work in harmony with the +beneficent forces of nature. There is a suggestion that nature is +great enough to absorb even the vicious and take them into her +service. + +Isak himself, a tiller of the soil by the grace of God, is the one +person in the book who never deviates from the straight course. He +is immutably rooted in the eternal verities. As the story progresses, +his figure grows until it assumes a certain grandeur. He draws from +his humble work a deep and gentle comprehension. There is forgiveness +in him and strength to raise up what life has shattered. Isak has his +oddities, but they light up his character like sunbeams playing over +the face of a rock. How inimitable, for instance, the story, told +with Hamsun's gift of comicality without malice, of how Isak brings +home a mowing-machine, the first seen in the neighborhood; of how he +drives solemnly sitting on the machine in his best winter suit and +hat, as befits the importance of the occasion, although the sweat is +running down his face; how he swells under the admiration of his +womankind, and how he pretends that he has forgotten his spectacles, +because, in fact, he can make neither head or tail of the printed +instructions. When fate plays him the trick of letting the spectacles +slip out of his pocket, although the boys pretend they do not see +it, Isak is conscious that he is perhaps being punished for his +overweening pride. + +Isak's superstitions always take the form of thinking that when he +does what is required of him, fate will be merciful. His dim +religious sense, drawing all the small things of life in under the +shelter of a great fundamental rightness which rules the world and in +some mysterious way takes cognizance of his affairs, reminds me of +"Adam Bede." Isak never read any book except the almanac and could +not formulate his thoughts on religion, but he feels God in the +loneliness, under the starry heavens, and in the might of the forest. +He meets God one night on the moor and does not deny that he has also +met the devil, but he drives him away in Jesu name. When the children +grow large enough to ask questions, he can not teach them anything +out of books, and the Catechism is generally allowed to repose on the +shelf with the goat cheeses, but he tells them how the stars are made +and implants the dream in their hearts. + +An act which has something of an almost priestly function is the +sowing of grain. That newfangled fruit, the potato, could be planted +by women and children, but grain, which meant bread, had to be sown +by the head of the house, and Isak went about his task devoutly as +his forefathers had done for hundreds of years, sowing the grain in +Jesu name. Twice Hamsun repeats the description of Isak sowing, and +it is like a picture by Millet. With head religiously bared, he walks +in the setting sun, his great beard and bushy hair standing round him +like a wheel, his limbs like gnarled trees, while the tiny grains fly +from his hands in an arch and fall like a rain of gold into the +ground. + +It is difficult at this time to say how future generations will judge +"Growth of the Soil." We are still too near the events that made it +to us an epochal book. It would be easy to pick flaws, and I have +already mentioned what seems to me its most serious fault, the +inclusion of an arid waste of discussion on child murder and its +punishment. It would be easy, too, to say that its purpose was too +patent, its sermon too direct. Nevertheless, the very simplicity and +bigness of this purpose make it susceptible to artistic treatment, +and I think there can be no question but that Hamsun has produced a +great piece of literature which will stand the test of time. + +What matters, after all, is not what critics will say of its esthetic +merits. The supreme importance of the book lies in the fact that to +Hamsun's own generation it has given poetic form to a message for +which the world was thirsting. At a time when humanity was sick of +destruction he reminded us that nature's fountain of renewal is +inexhaustible. In an age which has been saddened by the pernicious +doctrine of competition, the survival of the fittest, and all the +slogans of false Darwinism, he preached the gospel of friendliness. +We have been told that nature is cruel; Hamsun says that nature is +friendly and beneficent. We have been told that all existence rests +on fierce competition in which the weaker must go under. He does not +deny that the battle is to the strong and the race to the swift; Isak +does what no weaker man could have compassed, but Isak treads down +no one on his way. On the contrary, his strength is the shelter under +which the weaker can grow and flourish. He made the first path, but +scores of people and hundreds of animals come to live in the +wilderness through which he walked alone. + +Competition with its fear and agony arises because people want to run +faster than life. Peace and happiness are found in keeping pace with +life. The modern business man is like the lightning which flashes +here and there, "But lightning as lightning is sterile," says +Geissler, the author's spokesman; and he speaks words of wisdom to +young Sivert of Sellanraa: "Look at you Sellanraa people: every day +you gaze at some blue mountains. They are not figments of the +imagination, they are old mountains sunk deep in the past; and you +have them for companions. You live here with heaven and earth and are +one with them, you are one with all the broad and deeply-rooted +things. You do not need a sword in your hands; you meet life +bare-headed and bare-handed in the midst of a great friendliness. +Look, there is nature, it belongs to you and to your people! Men and +nature are not bombarding each other, they agree. They are not +competing or running a race, they go together. In the midst of this +you Sellanraa people exist. The mountains, the woods, the moors, the +meadows, the heavens, and the stars--oh, nothing of this is poor and +grudging, it is without measure. Listen to me, Sivert, be content! +You have everything to live on, everything to live for, everything to +believe in, you are born and produce, you are the necessary ones on +earth. Not all are necessary on earth, but you are. You preserve +life. From generation to generation you exist in nothing but +fruitfulness, and when you die another generation carries it on. That +is what is meant by life eternal." + + +THE WANDERER ARRIVED + +Two tendencies war with each other in the temperament of the +Norwegians. One has made them vikings, explorers, seafarers, and +pioneers; the other has made them home-builders and tillers of the +soil. One is restless, impatient of restraint, avid for new +experiences and for ever-shifting forms of life; the other longs for +the homeland, and seeks to strike roots deep in the spot of earth +made sacred by the toil of the forefathers. + +In Knut Hamsun both these tendencies are present and are accentuated +by his double racial heritage, his birth in an old peasant family of +Gudbrandsdalen and his upbringing among the lively, adventurous +fisherfolk of Nordland. In his work, the two strains are evident, the +former predominating in his earlier, the latter in his recent books. +Glahn, the untamed hunter and nomad, is a true child of the author's +spirit, but so is Isak, the farmer and home-builder. The common bond +that unites them is that both are closely affiliated with nature, one +as the passionate lyrical worshipper of Pan, the other as the humble +servant of nature's fruitfulness. + +In the personal life of the author the same divergent tendencies may +be traced. He has been a wanderer on the face of the earth, a vagrant +laborer in Norway, a pioneer in America, a visitor to the capitals of +Europe, a traveller in the Orient. But deep inherited instincts have +always drawn him homeward. He has sought a place where his own life +could strike root. Since the year 1896 he has made his home in +Norway, and ever since the financial returns of his early books made +it possible, has lived on his own land and cultivated it. His first +home was in Nordland, at Hamaröy in Salten. There he lived for many +years, surrounded by the wild, majestic, yet ingratiating scenery +which impressed him in boyhood and which he has so often pictured. In +1917 he removed to the south of Norway, and, after a short residence +at Larvik on the Christianiafjord, chose his present home near +Grimstad, the small seaport town where Ibsen spent his unhappy youth +as an apothecary's apprentice. There he has bought the estate +Nörholmen with a fine mansion several hundred years old. + +Though Hamsun has lived as much as possible in the outskirts of human +settlement and has always kept in retirement, denying himself to +sightseers and above all to interviewers, the kindliness which +breathes from his work and, in spite of his nervous shyness, emanates +from his personality, has made him very much beloved in his own +country. A very sympathetic picture of his home life is presented by +the Norwegian newspaper writer, Thomas Vetlesen, who in the autumn of +1920 was admitted to Hamsun's home through the good offices of the +government. As it is the only authentic account we have, I will quote +here a portion of the article which appeared in the Norwegian press. + +"After a half hour's drive (from Grimstad) we enter a lane of hazel +nut bushes, bending over the road weighted by their full, heavy +clusters of nuts. Soon we catch sight of Hamsun's white, two-story +house at the end of a quiet bight of the sea, not far from the main +road. The automobile swings into the large yard with a quick, +accustomed motion, and stops in front of the kitchen steps. The noise +has announced my arrival, and presently the yard is full of people. +Fru Hamsun and the children receive the stranger and welcome him to +their home. There is Tore and Arild and Elinor and the lovely little +Cecilie--a pretty four-leaf clover at ages ranging from three to nine +summers. + +"Within the house the spacious rooms with their pleasant +old-fashioned style of building breathe a spirit of hospitality. +There is a garden room turning out toward the road, a dining-room, a +wide hall with a staircase leading to the upper story and on the +other side of it a series of smaller rooms. + +"Knut Hamsun comes in quickly from the hall, straight and tall, with +powerful shoulders and head unbent by time and mental labor. His +handclasp is firm and warm, but in his melodious voice there is an +undertone of something veiled, wistful, almost hurt, which suggests +the tremendous mental strain his intensive work has subjected him to +for many years past. + +"At the supper table Hamsun asks about mutual friends, touches +lightly on current events, but is not talkative. Occasionally he +seems to remember suddenly that he is getting too taciturn. But his +thoughts are in Hazel Valley where he has chosen for his work room an +ancient cottage built in the wilderness for herders. There he spends +the entire day outside of meal hours, surrounded by the great +stillness and by what seems a chaos of small bits of white paper +filled with writing. Here is his work room, here he can have peace. +Woe to him who would draw near to his circles! As yet no one has ever +done it with impunity. There are the wildest reports current about +the more than simple appointments of this Tusculum, where he has +conceived and written his books for some years past. + +"After supper, when he has lit his pipe, Hamsun generally selects a +chair near the sofa where he has placed his visitor, and then he +unbends. Quietly and naturally, the conversation turns on many +things. He can ask questions, and he can tell a story well, vividly +and entertainingly, in a vein all his own. His comments are often +startling, full of cut and thrust, never malicious, but instinct with +kindliness and understanding. As he talks, the listener is deeply +conscious of the fact that he is a good man, a sensitive nature, with +a heart and a spirit open to the weal and woe of humanity. And there +is music in his voice. Even when talks of everyday matters, there is +about everything he says an elevation that makes what he says +impressive. It is like a glimmer of northern lights, often fantastic, +always fascinating and strangely compelling. His sense of humor is +never far away, and his laughter has a wonderfully young note rising +from his healthy lungs.... + +"The interest that overshadows everything else in his mind is the +farm, the work on the fields, in the barn, and with the cattle. He +cares little for any other position and task than that of the +farmer--with the possible exception of the sailor and the aviator; he +willingly admitted that the latter might have a great future. +Nothing delights him more than when he finds in his children +proclivities for the work on the farm. + +"It is rare to see a man so fond of children as Hamsun is. He never +tires of hearing about the sayings and doings of his four fine +children. He pays attention to whatever they say and studies their +different aptitudes and their thoughts.... + +"Hamsun has a very large library containing many rare and curious +books. What he likes best to read is memoirs and books of travel. In +addition to his absorbing work on his new book 'Women at the Pump,' +he has of late been extremely busy developing his estate Nörholmen. +He has accomplished much, but much remains to be done. When in future +years it is completed, it will form an interesting Hamsun chapter in +itself." + + * * * * * + +While the author has been living his quiet, retired life, divided +between his prodigious industry as a writer and his concern for home +and farm, his fame has been spreading to the whole civilized world. +In his own country he has long been acknowledged king, the greatest +of living authors, the most widely read, the most beloved. In Sweden +critics have acclaimed him as the most popular writer in the +Scandinavian North, in spite of the fact that Sweden has among her +own authors now living several stars of the first magnitude. In the +autumn of 1920, Knut Hamsun received from the hand of the Swedish +king the greatest formal recognition that can come to any man of +letters, the Nobel Prize for literature. Outside of the Scandinavian +countries he first became known in Russia, where the people regard +him almost as one of their own. In Germany and Austria he has also +been widely read for many years past. In France he has only recently +become known, while in England and America it was the tremendous +impression made by "Growth of the Soil" which drew attention to his +earlier works and was the beginning of a popularity that promises to +become enduring fame. + + + + +Knut Hamsun's Works + + +HUNGER (_Sult_) 1890. Published in English + +MYSTERIES (_Mysterier_) 1892 + +EDITOR LYNGE (_Redaktör Lynge_) 1893 + +SHALLOW SOIL (_Ny Jord_) 1893. Published in English + +PAN (_Pan_) 1894. Published in English + +AT THE GATE OF THE KINGDOM (_Ved Rigets Port_) 1895 + +THE GAME OF LIFE (_Livets Spil_) 1896 + +SIESTA (_Siesta_) 1897 + +SUNSET (_Aftenröde_) 1898 + +VICTORIA (_Victoria_) 1898. Published in English + +MUNKEN VENDT (_Munken Vendt_) 1902 + +BRUSHWOOD (_Kratskog_) 1903 + +QUEEN TAMARA (_Dronning Tamara_) 1903 + +IN FAIRYLAND (_I Æventyrland_) 1903 + +DREAMERS (_Sværmere_) 1904. Published in English + +THE WILD CHORUS (_Det Vilde Kor_) 1904 + +STRUGGLING LIFE (_Stridende Liv_) 1905 + +UNDER THE AUTUMN STAR (_Under Höststjernen_) 1906. Published in +English with A WANDERER PLAYS ON MUTED STRINGS under the title +WANDERERS + +BENONI (_Benoni_) 1908 + +ROSA (_Rosa_) 1908 + +A WANDERER PLAYS ON MUTED STRINGS (_En Vandrer spiller med Sordin_) +1909. Published in English with UNDER THE AUTUMN STAR + +IN THE POWER OF LIFE (_Livet Ivold_) 1910 + +THE LAST JOY (_Den siste Glæde_) 1912 + +CHILDREN OF THE AGE (_Börn af Tiden_) 1913 + +SEGELFOSS CITY (_Segelfoss By_) 1915 + +GROWTH OF THE SOIL (_Markens Gröde_) 1917. Published in English + +WOMEN AT THE PUMP (_Konerne ved Vandposten_) 1920 + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Knut Hamsun, by Hanna Astrup Larsen + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK KNUT HAMSUN *** + +***** This file should be named 36754-8.txt or 36754-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/3/6/7/5/36754/ + +Produced by Bryan Ness and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was +produced from images generously made available by The +Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries) + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project +Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you +charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you +do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the +rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose +such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and +research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do +practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is +subject to the trademark license, especially commercial +redistribution. + + + +*** START: FULL LICENSE *** + +THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE +PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK + +To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free +distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work +(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project +Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at +https://gutenberg.org/license). + + +Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works + +1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to +and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property +(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all +the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy +all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession. +If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the +terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or +entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8. + +1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be +used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who +agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few +things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See +paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement +and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. See paragraph 1.E below. + +1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation" +or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the +collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an +individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are +located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from +copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative +works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg +are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project +Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by +freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of +this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with +the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by +keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project +Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others. + +1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern +what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in +a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check +the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement +before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or +creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project +Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning +the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United +States. + +1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: + +1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate +access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently +whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the +phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project +Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, +copied or distributed: + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + +1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived +from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is +posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied +and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees +or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work +with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the +work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 +through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the +Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or +1.E.9. + +1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted +with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution +must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional +terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked +to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the +permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work. + +1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this +work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. + +1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this +electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without +prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with +active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project +Gutenberg-tm License. + +1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, +compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any +word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or +distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than +"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version +posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org), +you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a +copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon +request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other +form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. + +1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, +performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works +unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing +access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided +that + +- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from + the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method + you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is + owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he + has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the + Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments + must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you + prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax + returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and + sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the + address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to + the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation." + +- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies + you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he + does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm + License. You must require such a user to return or + destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium + and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of + Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any + money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the + electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days + of receipt of the work. + +- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free + distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set +forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from +both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael +Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the +Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. + +1.F. + +1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable +effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread +public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm +collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain +"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or +corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual +property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a +computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by +your equipment. + +1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right +of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project +Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal +fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT +LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE +PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE +TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE +LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR +INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH +DAMAGE. + +1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a +defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can +receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a +written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you +received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with +your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with +the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a +refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity +providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to +receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy +is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further +opportunities to fix the problem. + +1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth +in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER +WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO +WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. + +1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied +warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. +If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the +law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be +interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by +the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any +provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions. + +1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the +trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone +providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance +with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production, +promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works, +harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, +that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do +or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm +work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any +Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause. + + +Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm + +Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of +electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers +including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists +because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from +people in all walks of life. + +Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the +assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's +goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will +remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure +and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations. +To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation +and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 +and the Foundation web page at https://www.pglaf.org. + + +Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive +Foundation + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit +501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the +state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal +Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification +number is 64-6221541. Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at +https://pglaf.org/fundraising. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent +permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. + +The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S. +Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered +throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at +809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email +business@pglaf.org. Email contact links and up to date contact +information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official +page at https://pglaf.org + +For additional contact information: + Dr. Gregory B. Newby + Chief Executive and Director + gbnewby@pglaf.org + + +Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation + +Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide +spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of +increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be +freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest +array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations +($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt +status with the IRS. + +The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating +charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United +States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a +considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up +with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations +where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To +SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any +particular state visit https://pglaf.org + +While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we +have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition +against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who +approach us with offers to donate. + +International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make +any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from +outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. + +Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation +methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other +ways including including checks, online payments and credit card +donations. To donate, please visit: https://pglaf.org/donate + + +Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. + +Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm +concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared +with anyone. For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project +Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support. + + +Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S. +unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + + https://www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. |