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diff --git a/36754-h/36754-h.htm b/36754-h/36754-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..4aa23e8 --- /dev/null +++ b/36754-h/36754-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,4911 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> + <head> + <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" /> + <meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css" /> + <title>Knut Hamsun, by Hanna Astrup Larsen; an eBook from Project Gutenberg</title> + <style type="text/css"> + /* <![CDATA[ */ +body { + margin: auto 10%; +} + +h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 { + text-align: center; + clear: both; +} +h2,h3 { + padding-top: 2em; +} +.trnote h2 { padding-top: .1em; } + +p { + margin: .75em auto; + text-align: justify; +} + +hr { + width: 33%; + margin: 2em auto; + clear: both; +} + +ol, ul { margin-left: 0; padding-left: 0; } +li { list-style-type: none; } +.inline li { display: inline; padding-left: 2em; padding-right: 2em; } +.hanging li { margin-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em; } +li ul { padding-left: 1em; } + +.pagenum { + /*visibility: hidden;*/ + color: #999; + position: absolute; + left: 92%; + font-size: smaller; + text-align: right; + font-style: normal; + font-variant: normal; + font-weight: normal; + text-transform: none; + text-decoration: none; + letter-spacing: normal; +} /* page numbers */ +a[title].pagenum:after { content: attr(title); } + +.center { text-align: center; } +.smcap { font-variant: small-caps; font-style: normal; } +.caps { text-transform: uppercase; } +.gesperrt { letter-spacing: .2em; margin-right: -.2em; font-style: normal; } +.italic { font-style: italic; } +.smaller { font-size: 85%; } +.larger { font-size: 115%; } +.oversize { font-size: 200%; font-weight: bold; } +.left2 { padding-left: 2em; } + +/* Images */ +img { border: 1px solid black; } +.nobord { border: none; } +.caption { text-align: center; } +.maincaption { font-weight: bold; } + +.figcenter { + margin: auto; + text-align: center; +} + +/***/ + +.trnote { + font-family: sans-serif; + font-size: 90%; + background-color: #ccc; + color: #000; + border: black 1px dotted; + margin: 2em 15%; + padding: 1em; +} +.trnote ul li { list-style-type: none; } + +.toc { margin: 0 25% auto 25%; } +.toc li { padding: 0 2em 0 0; } +.toc .num { position: absolute; right: 30%; top: auto; } + +.topmarg { margin-top: 3em; } + +hr.pagebreak { width: 65%; } +hr.chapbreak, .w45 { width: 45%; } +hr.tb, hr.secbreak { width: 25%; } +.w400 { width: 400px; } +hr.chapbreak, hr.secbreak { display: none; } + +a.corr { /*border-bottom: 1px dotted #333;*/ } + + /* ]]> */ + </style> + </head> +<body> + + +<pre> + +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) + + + + + + +</pre> + + +<div class="trnote"> +<h2>Transcriber's note</h2> +<p>Obvious punctuation errors have been repaired silently. +Word errors have been corrected and a <a href="#trcorrections">list +of corrections</a> can be found after the book.</p> +<p class="center"><a href="#Contents">The Table of Contents can be found here.</a></p> +</div> + + +<h1>Knut Hamsun</h1> + +<hr class="pagebreak" /> + +<p class="center"><i>MR. ALFRED A. KNOPF<br /> +has been appointed the sole authorized +American publisher of</i><br /> +<span class="larger gesperrt">KNUT HAMSUN</span></p> + +<p class="center"><i>The following books are now ready</i>:</p> + +<ul class="center"> +<li>HUNGER</li> +<li>GROWTH OF THE SOIL</li> +<li>SHALLOW SOIL</li> +<li>DREAMERS</li> +<li>PAN</li> +<li>WANDERERS</li> +</ul> + +<p class="center italic">The following are scheduled for later publications:</p> + +<ul class="center"> +<li>CHILDREN OF THE TIME [Spring, 1923]</li> +<li>VICTORIA</li> +<li>THE VILLAGE OF SEGELFOSS</li> +<li>BENONI</li> +<li>ROSA</li> +</ul> + +<hr class="pagebreak" /> + +<div><a name="frontispiece" id="frontispiece"></a></div> +<div class="figcenter w400"> +<img src="images/frontispiece.jpg" class="nobord" width="400" height="585" alt="Portrait" title="Knut Hamsun—Photo by Wilse" /> +<span class="caption"><span class="maincaption">Knut Hamsun</span><br /><i>Photo by Wilse</i></span> +</div> + +<hr class="pagebreak" /> + +<p class="center oversize topmarg">Knut Hamsun</p> + +<p class="center italic topmarg">by</p> + +<p class="center oversize">Hanna Astrup Larsen</p> + +<p class="center"><i>Editor "The American-Scandinavian Review"</i></p> + +<div class="figcenter topmarg"><img alt="Publisher's logo" src="images/logo.png" class="nobord" width="120" height="65" /></div> + +<p class="center topmarg">New York<br /> +Alfred · A · Knopf<br /> +Mcmxxii</p> + + +<hr class="pagebreak" /> + +<p class="center">COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY<br /> +ALFRED A. KNOPF, <span class="smcap">Inc.</span><br /> +<i>Published, October, 1922</i></p> + +<p class="center italic topmarg">Set up and printed by the Vail-Ballou Co., Binghamton, N. Y.<br /> +Paper furnished by W. F. Etherington & Co., New York.<br /> +Bound by the H. Wolff Estate, New York.</p> + +<p class="center">MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA +</p> + +<hr class="pagebreak" /> + +<p class="w45 italic">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.</p> + + + +<hr class="pagebreak" /> +<h2><a name="Contents" id="Contents"></a>Contents</h2> + + +<ul class="toc"> +<li><a class="larger" href="#THE_WANDERER">The Wanderer:</a> +<ul> +<li><a href="#EARLY_LIFE_IN_NORWAY">Early Life in Norway</a> <span class="num">3</span></li> +<li><a href="#FROM_THE_WHEATFIELDS_TO_THE_FISHING_BANKS">From the Wheatfields to the Fishing Banks</a> <span class="num">20</span></li> +<li><a href="#THE_AUTHOR_OF_HUNGER">The Author of <i>Hunger</i></a> <span class="num">32</span></li> +</ul></li> +<li><a class="larger" href="#THE_POET">The Poet:</a> +<ul> +<li><a href="#HIS_OWN_HERO">His Own Hero</a> <span class="num">45</span></li> +<li><a href="#THE_HERO_AND_THE_HEROINE">The Hero and the Heroine</a> <span class="num">58</span></li> +<li><a href="#GOD_IN_NATURE">God in Nature</a> <span class="num">76</span></li> +<li><a href="#WITH_MUTED_STRINGS">With Muted Strings</a> <span class="num">89</span></li> +<li><a href="#THE_LITERARY_ARTIST">The Literary Artist</a> <span class="num">104</span></li> +</ul></li> +<li><a class="larger" href="#THE_CITIZEN">The Citizen:</a> +<ul> +<li><a href="#HOLDING_UP_THE_MIRROR_TO_HIS_GENERATION">Holding Up the Mirror to His Generation</a> <span class="num">119</span></li> +<li><a href="#GROWTH_OF_THE_SOIL">Growth of the Soil</a> <span class="num">148</span></li> +<li><a href="#THE_WANDERER_ARRIVED">The Wanderer Arrived</a> <span class="num">163</span></li> +</ul></li> +</ul> + + + +<hr class="chapbreak" /> +<h2><a name="Portraits" id="Portraits"></a>Portraits</h2> + + +<ul class="toc"> +<li><a class="larger" href="#frontispiece">Knut Hamsun</a> <span class="num italic">Frontispiece</span> +<br /><span class="left2 smaller">Photo by Wilse</span></li> +<li><a class="larger" href="#i038">Hamsun as a Young Man</a> <span class="num">38</span> +<br /><span class="left2 smaller">From a drawing by Erik Werenskiold</span></li> +<li><a class="larger" href="#i086">Knut Hamsun</a> <span class="num">86</span> +<br /><span class="left2 smaller">From a painting by Henrik Lund</span></li> +<li><a class="larger" href="#i134">Hamsun and His Family</a> <span class="num">134</span> +<br /><span class="left2 smaller">Photo by Wilse</span></li> +</ul> + + + +<hr class="chapbreak" /><p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_1" id="Page_1" title="[Pg 1]"></a> +<br /><a class="pagenum" name="Page_2" id="Page_2" title="[Pg 2]"></a></p> +<h2><a name="THE_WANDERER" id="THE_WANDERER"></a>THE WANDERER</h2> + +<div><a class="pagenum" name="Page_3" id="Page_3" title="[Pg 3]"></a></div> + +<h3><a name="EARLY_LIFE_IN_NORWAY" id="EARLY_LIFE_IN_NORWAY"></a>EARLY LIFE IN NORWAY</h3> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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<a class="pagenum" name="Page_4" id="Page_4" title="[Pg 4]"></a> +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<a class="pagenum" name="Page_5" id="Page_5" title="[Pg 5]"></a> +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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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<a class="pagenum" name="Page_6" id="Page_6" title="[Pg 6]"></a> +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.</p> + +<p>At the very time when Hamsun was spending +his childhood in the Lofoten Islands, Jonas +Lie, the literary discoverer of Arctic Norway,<a class="pagenum" name="Page_7" id="Page_7" title="[Pg 7]"></a> +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.</p> + +<p>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<a class="pagenum" name="Page_8" id="Page_8" title="[Pg 8]"></a> +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.</p> + +<p>"There in the North popular fancy from<a class="pagenum" name="Page_9" id="Page_9" title="[Pg 9]"></a> +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 +<i>draug</i> 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.</p> + +<p>"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<a class="pagenum" name="Page_10" id="Page_10" title="[Pg 10]"></a> +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.</p> + +<p>"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<a class="pagenum" name="Page_11" id="Page_11" title="[Pg 11]"></a> +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."</p> + +<p>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,<a class="pagenum" name="Page_12" id="Page_12" title="[Pg 12]"></a> +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.</p> + +<p>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<a class="pagenum" name="Page_13" id="Page_13" title="[Pg 13]"></a> +the brightness predominates, the gloom is also +present, especially in his earliest, most personal +works.</p> + +<p>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 <span class="sic" title="[sic]">grave-digger</span> +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<a class="pagenum" name="Page_14" id="Page_14" title="[Pg 14]"></a> +to disobey the <span class="sic" title="[sic]">gravedigger</span> 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<a class="pagenum" name="Page_15" id="Page_15" title="[Pg 15]"></a> +things that made me grit my teeth and harden +myself. In my later experiences I have often +had need of it."</p> + +<p>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 <span class="sic" title="[sic]">Hamsund</span>," a gloomy, introspective +tale of an orphaned peasant boy and a lady<a class="pagenum" name="Page_16" id="Page_16" title="[Pg 16]"></a> +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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>The experiences of this period were the +foundation of his two novels "Under the +Autumn Star" and "A Wanderer Plays with<a class="pagenum" name="Page_17" id="Page_17" title="[Pg 17]"></a> +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."</p> + +<p>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<a class="pagenum" name="Page_18" id="Page_18" title="[Pg 18]"></a> +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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>The experiment was not a success. At that<a class="pagenum" name="Page_19" id="Page_19" title="[Pg 19]"></a> +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.</p> + +<div><a class="pagenum" name="Page_20" id="Page_20" title="[Pg 20]"></a></div> +<h3><a name="FROM_THE_WHEATFIELDS_TO_THE_FISHING_BANKS" id="FROM_THE_WHEATFIELDS_TO_THE_FISHING_BANKS"></a>FROM THE WHEATFIELDS TO THE FISHING BANKS</h3> + +<p>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.<a class="pagenum" name="Page_21" id="Page_21" title="[Pg 21]"></a> +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.</p> + +<p>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<a class="pagenum" name="Page_22" id="Page_22" title="[Pg 22]"></a> +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.</p> + +<p>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<a class="pagenum" name="Page_23" id="Page_23" title="[Pg 23]"></a> +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.</p> + +<p>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<a class="pagenum" name="Page_24" id="Page_24" title="[Pg 24]"></a> +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.</p> + +<p>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<a class="pagenum" name="Page_25" id="Page_25" title="[Pg 25]"></a> +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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_26" id="Page_26" title="[Pg 26]"></a> +"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<a class="pagenum" name="Page_27" id="Page_27" title="[Pg 27]"></a> +them who began to laugh, but others thought +I had spoken well, and they saw to it that +everybody paid."</p> + +<p>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,<a class="pagenum" name="Page_28" id="Page_28" title="[Pg 28]"></a> +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.</p> + +<p>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<a class="pagenum" name="Page_29" id="Page_29" title="[Pg 29]"></a> +his efforts in Minneapolis. During his +second sojourn in the United States he had +written some correspondences to Norwegian +papers.</p> + +<p>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 <a class="corr" name="TC_1" id="TC_1" title="resplendantly">resplendently</a> 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<a class="pagenum" name="Page_30" id="Page_30" title="[Pg 30]"></a> +New Englanders had been relegated to school +declamations, and the modern quickening of +liberal thought was yet far distant.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_31" id="Page_31" title="[Pg 31]"></a> +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.</p> + + +<div><a class="pagenum" name="Page_32" id="Page_32" title="[Pg 32]"></a></div> +<h3><a name="THE_AUTHOR_OF_HUNGER" id="THE_AUTHOR_OF_HUNGER"></a>THE AUTHOR OF "HUNGER"</h3> + +<p>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<a class="pagenum" name="Page_33" id="Page_33" title="[Pg 33]"></a> +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.</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>"Was it really so remarkable?" asked +<a class="corr" name="TC_2" id="TC_2" title="Lundegard">Lundegård</a>. "What was the title of it?"</p> + +<p>"Hunger."</p> + +<p>"And the author?"</p> + +<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_34" id="Page_34" title="[Pg 34]"></a> +"Knut Hamsun."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>In the intervening time Hamsun had +gained some notoriety in his own country by +the publication of "Intellectual Life in<a class="pagenum" name="Page_35" id="Page_35" title="[Pg 35]"></a> +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.</p> + +<p>"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<a class="pagenum" name="Page_36" id="Page_36" title="[Pg 36]"></a> +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.</p> + +<p>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<a class="pagenum" name="Page_37" id="Page_37" title="[Pg 37]"></a> +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.</p> + +<p>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<a class="pagenum" name="Page_38" id="Page_38" title="[Pg 38]"></a> +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.</p> + +<p>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<a class="pagenum" name="Page_39" id="Page_39" title="[Pg 39]"></a> +hand, he left me alone and did not touch me +any more."</p> + +<div><a name="i038" id="i038"></a></div> +<div class="figcenter w400"> +<img src="images/i038.jpg" width="400" height="515" alt="" title="Hamsun as a Young Man—From a Drawing by Erik Werenskiold" /> +<span class="caption"><span class="maincaption">Hamsun as a Young Man</span><br />From a Drawing by Erik Werenskiold</span> +</div> + +<p>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<a class="pagenum" name="Page_40" id="Page_40" title="[Pg 40]"></a> +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.</p> + +<p>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,<a class="pagenum" name="Page_41" id="Page_41" title="[Pg 41]"></a> +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.</p> + +<p>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."</p> + + +<hr class="chapbreak" /> +<div><a class="pagenum" name="Page_42" id="Page_42" title="[Pg 42]"></a> +<br /><a class="pagenum" name="Page_43" id="Page_43" title="[Pg 43]"></a></div> + +<h2><a name="THE_POET" id="THE_POET"></a>THE POET</h2> + + +<div><a class="pagenum" name="Page_44" id="Page_44" title="[Pg 44]"></a> +<br /><a class="pagenum" name="Page_45" id="Page_45" title="[Pg 45]"></a></div> + +<h3><a name="HIS_OWN_HERO" id="HIS_OWN_HERO"></a>HIS OWN HERO</h3> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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<a class="pagenum" name="Page_46" id="Page_46" title="[Pg 46]"></a> +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<a class="pagenum" name="Page_47" id="Page_47" title="[Pg 47]"></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.</p> + +<p>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<a class="pagenum" name="Page_48" id="Page_48" title="[Pg 48]"></a> +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 <a class="corr" name="TC_3" id="TC_3" title="and and">and</a> +thirty.</p> + +<p>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<a class="pagenum" name="Page_49" id="Page_49" title="[Pg 49]"></a> +the Soil," the garrulous wiseacre who "knew +what was right, but did not do it."</p> + +<p>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 <a class="corr" name="TC_4" id="TC_4" title="infinites">infinite</a> pains +to find opportunities of giving pleasure to the<a class="pagenum" name="Page_50" id="Page_50" title="[Pg 50]"></a> +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.</p> + +<p>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<a class="pagenum" name="Page_51" id="Page_51" title="[Pg 51]"></a> +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.</p> + +<p>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<a class="pagenum" name="Page_52" id="Page_52" title="[Pg 52]"></a> +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.</p> + +<p>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<a class="pagenum" name="Page_53" id="Page_53" title="[Pg 53]"></a> +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.</p> + +<p>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 <span class="sic" title="[sic]">accidently</span> 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.</p> + +<p>Between the appearance of "Pan" and "Victoria" +(1898) lay a period of productive work<a class="pagenum" name="Page_54" id="Page_54" title="[Pg 54]"></a> +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<a class="pagenum" name="Page_55" id="Page_55" title="[Pg 55]"></a> +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!'"</p> + +<p>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<a class="pagenum" name="Page_56" id="Page_56" title="[Pg 56]"></a> +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.</p> + +<p>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<a class="pagenum" name="Page_57" id="Page_57" title="[Pg 57]"></a> +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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + + +<div><a class="pagenum" name="Page_58" id="Page_58" title="[Pg 58]"></a></div> +<h3><a name="THE_HERO_AND_THE_HEROINE" id="THE_HERO_AND_THE_HEROINE"></a>THE HERO AND THE HEROINE</h3> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>The limitation may be less in the heroines +themselves than in the medium through +which we are allowed to see them. If it were<a class="pagenum" name="Page_59" id="Page_59" title="[Pg 59]"></a> +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.</p> + +<p>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<a class="pagenum" name="Page_60" id="Page_60" title="[Pg 60]"></a> +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<a class="pagenum" name="Page_61" id="Page_61" title="[Pg 61]"></a> +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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>A repellent creature in many ways is Edvarda, +and yet the author has managed to<a class="pagenum" name="Page_62" id="Page_62" title="[Pg 62]"></a> +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<a class="pagenum" name="Page_63" id="Page_63" title="[Pg 63]"></a> +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.</p> + +<p>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<a class="pagenum" name="Page_64" id="Page_64" title="[Pg 64]"></a> +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.</p> + +<p>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 <a class="corr" name="TC_5" id="TC_5" title="lose">loose</a> 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,<a class="pagenum" name="Page_65" id="Page_65" title="[Pg 65]"></a> +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.</p> + +<p>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<a class="pagenum" name="Page_66" id="Page_66" title="[Pg 66]"></a> +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?</p> + +<p>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<a class="pagenum" name="Page_67" id="Page_67" title="[Pg 67]"></a> +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<a class="pagenum" name="Page_68" id="Page_68" title="[Pg 68]"></a> +feeling which is forever alive and throbbing +because it is forever unsatisfied.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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<a class="pagenum" name="Page_69" id="Page_69" title="[Pg 69]"></a> +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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>The rebellion of a man against the monotony +of marriage has been presented again and<a class="pagenum" name="Page_70" id="Page_70" title="[Pg 70]"></a> +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.</p> + +<p>In "Wanderers" the <a class="corr" name="TC_6" id="TC_6" title="distintegrating">disintegrating</a> influence<a class="pagenum" name="Page_71" id="Page_71" title="[Pg 71]"></a> +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.</p> + +<p>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<a class="pagenum" name="Page_72" id="Page_72" title="[Pg 72]"></a> +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.</p> + +<p>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<a class="pagenum" name="Page_73" id="Page_73" title="[Pg 73]"></a> +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.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"Such was love.</p> + +<p>"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?</p> + +<p>"Oh, love it was like a summer night with +stars in the heavens and fragrance on earth.<a class="pagenum" name="Page_74" id="Page_74" title="[Pg 74]"></a> +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.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"Such was love.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_75" id="Page_75" title="[Pg 75]"></a> +"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."</p> + + +<div><a class="pagenum" name="Page_76" id="Page_76" title="[Pg 76]"></a></div> +<h3><a name="GOD_IN_NATURE" id="GOD_IN_NATURE"></a>GOD IN NATURE</h3> + +<p>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<a class="pagenum" name="Page_77" id="Page_77" title="[Pg 77]"></a> +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.</p> + +<p>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<a class="pagenum" name="Page_78" id="Page_78" title="[Pg 78]"></a> +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<a class="pagenum" name="Page_79" id="Page_79" title="[Pg 79]"></a> +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.</p> + +<p>"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,<a class="pagenum" name="Page_80" id="Page_80" title="[Pg 80]"></a> +and this faint stirring of life fills his soul with +contentment.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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<a class="pagenum" name="Page_81" id="Page_81" title="[Pg 81]"></a> +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."</p> + +<p>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<a class="pagenum" name="Page_82" id="Page_82" title="[Pg 82]"></a> +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."</p> + +<p>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<a class="pagenum" name="Page_83" id="Page_83" title="[Pg 83]"></a> +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.</p> + +<p>Even that glamour which redeems the littleness<a class="pagenum" name="Page_84" id="Page_84" title="[Pg 84]"></a> +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.</p> + +<p>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<a class="pagenum" name="Page_85" id="Page_85" title="[Pg 85]"></a> +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.</p> + +<p>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<a class="pagenum" name="Page_86" id="Page_86" title="[Pg 86]"></a> +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 <a class="corr" name="TC_7" id="TC_7" title="inaminate">inanimate</a>. 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<a class="pagenum" name="Page_87" id="Page_87" title="[Pg 87]"></a> +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."</p> + +<div><a name="i086" id="i086"></a></div> +<div class="figcenter w400"> +<img src="images/i086.jpg" width="400" height="650" alt="" title="Knut Hamsun--From a Painting by Henrik Lund" /> +<span class="caption"><span class="maincaption">Knut Hamsun</span><br />From a Painting by Henrik Lund</span> +</div> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_88" id="Page_88" title="[Pg 88]"></a> +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."</p> + + +<div><a class="pagenum" name="Page_89" id="Page_89" title="[Pg 89]"></a></div> +<h3><a name="WITH_MUTED_STRINGS" id="WITH_MUTED_STRINGS"></a>WITH MUTED STRINGS</h3> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>Kareno, a native of Nordland, has Lapp<a class="pagenum" name="Page_90" id="Page_90" title="[Pg 90]"></a> +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.</p> + +<p>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<a class="pagenum" name="Page_91" id="Page_91" title="[Pg 91]"></a> +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.</p> + +<p>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<a class="pagenum" name="Page_92" id="Page_92" title="[Pg 92]"></a> +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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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<a class="pagenum" name="Page_93" id="Page_93" title="[Pg 93]"></a> +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 +<em>see</em>!" 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.</p> + +<p>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.<a class="pagenum" name="Page_94" id="Page_94" title="[Pg 94]"></a> +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:</p> + +<p>"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<a class="pagenum" name="Page_95" id="Page_95" title="[Pg 95]"></a> +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."</p> + +<p>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<a class="pagenum" name="Page_96" id="Page_96" title="[Pg 96]"></a> +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.</p> + +<p>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<a class="pagenum" name="Page_97" id="Page_97" title="[Pg 97]"></a> +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.</p> + +<p>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<a class="pagenum" name="Page_98" id="Page_98" title="[Pg 98]"></a> +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.</p> + +<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_99" id="Page_99" title="[Pg 99]"></a> +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<a class="pagenum" name="Page_100" id="Page_100" title="[Pg 100]"></a> +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.</p> + +<p>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<a class="pagenum" name="Page_101" id="Page_101" title="[Pg 101]"></a> +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.</p> + +<p>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<a class="pagenum" name="Page_102" id="Page_102" title="[Pg 102]"></a> +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.</p> + +<p>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<a class="pagenum" name="Page_103" id="Page_103" title="[Pg 103]"></a> +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.</p> + + +<div><a class="pagenum" name="Page_104" id="Page_104" title="[Pg 104]"></a></div> +<h3><a name="THE_LITERARY_ARTIST" id="THE_LITERARY_ARTIST"></a>THE LITERARY ARTIST</h3> + +<p>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<a class="pagenum" name="Page_105" id="Page_105" title="[Pg 105]"></a> +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<a class="pagenum" name="Page_106" id="Page_106" title="[Pg 106]"></a> +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.</p> + +<p>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<a class="pagenum" name="Page_107" id="Page_107" title="[Pg 107]"></a> +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<a class="pagenum" name="Page_108" id="Page_108" title="[Pg 108]"></a> +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.</p> + +<p>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,<a class="pagenum" name="Page_109" id="Page_109" title="[Pg 109]"></a> +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.</p> + +<p>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<a class="pagenum" name="Page_110" id="Page_110" title="[Pg 110]"></a> +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.</p> + +<p>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,<a class="pagenum" name="Page_111" id="Page_111" title="[Pg 111]"></a> +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."</p> + +<p>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<a class="pagenum" name="Page_112" id="Page_112" title="[Pg 112]"></a> +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.</p> + +<p>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<a class="pagenum" name="Page_113" id="Page_113" title="[Pg 113]"></a> +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,"<a class="pagenum" name="Page_114" id="Page_114" title="[Pg 114]"></a> +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.</p> + +<p>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.<a class="pagenum" name="Page_115" id="Page_115" title="[Pg 115]"></a> +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.</p> + +<p>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<a class="pagenum" name="Page_116" id="Page_116" title="[Pg 116]"></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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + + +<hr class="chapbreak" /> +<div><a class="pagenum" name="Page_117" id="Page_117" title="[Pg 117]"></a></div> + +<h2><a name="THE_CITIZEN" id="THE_CITIZEN"></a>THE CITIZEN</h2> + +<div><a class="pagenum" name="Page_118" id="Page_118" title="[Pg 118]"></a> +<br /><a class="pagenum" name="Page_119" id="Page_119" title="[Pg 119]"></a></div> + +<h3><a name="HOLDING_UP_THE_MIRROR_TO_HIS_GENERATION" id="HOLDING_UP_THE_MIRROR_TO_HIS_GENERATION"></a>HOLDING UP THE MIRROR TO HIS GENERATION</h3> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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<a class="pagenum" name="Page_120" id="Page_120" title="[Pg 120]"></a> +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.</p> + +<p>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<a class="pagenum" name="Page_121" id="Page_121" title="[Pg 121]"></a> +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!"</p> + +<p>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<a class="pagenum" name="Page_122" id="Page_122" title="[Pg 122]"></a> +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.</p> + +<p>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<a class="pagenum" name="Page_123" id="Page_123" title="[Pg 123]"></a> +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.</p> + +<p>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<a class="pagenum" name="Page_124" id="Page_124" title="[Pg 124]"></a> +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.</p> + +<p>"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<a class="pagenum" name="Page_125" id="Page_125" title="[Pg 125]"></a> +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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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<a class="pagenum" name="Page_126" id="Page_126" title="[Pg 126]"></a> +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,<a class="pagenum" name="Page_127" id="Page_127" title="[Pg 127]"></a> +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.</p> + +<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_128" id="Page_128" title="[Pg 128]"></a> +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<a class="pagenum" name="Page_129" id="Page_129" title="[Pg 129]"></a> +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.</p> + +<p>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<a class="pagenum" name="Page_130" id="Page_130" title="[Pg 130]"></a> +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.</p> + +<p>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. <a class="corr" name="TC_8" id="TC_8" title="Lasssen">Lassen</a> 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 class="pagenum" name="Page_131" id="Page_131" title="[Pg 131]"></a> +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<a class="pagenum" name="Page_132" id="Page_132" title="[Pg 132]"></a> +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."</p> + +<p>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<a class="pagenum" name="Page_133" id="Page_133" title="[Pg 133]"></a> +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!"</p> + +<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_134" id="Page_134" title="[Pg 134]"></a> +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<a class="pagenum" name="Page_135" id="Page_135" title="[Pg 135]"></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.</p> + +<div><a name="i134" id="i134"></a></div> +<div class="figcenter w400"> +<img src="images/i134.jpg" width="400" height="536" alt="" title="Hamsun and His Family—Photo by Wilse" /> +<span class="caption"><span class="maincaption">Hamsun and His Family</span><br /><i>Photo by Wilse</i></span> +</div> + +<p>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 <a class="corr" name="TC_9" id="TC_9" title="aristrocracy">aristocracy</a> +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<a class="pagenum" name="Page_136" id="Page_136" title="[Pg 136]"></a> +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<a class="pagenum" name="Page_137" id="Page_137" title="[Pg 137]"></a> +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.</p> + +<p>"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"<a class="pagenum" name="Page_138" id="Page_138" title="[Pg 138]"></a> +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.</p> + +<p>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<a class="pagenum" name="Page_139" id="Page_139" title="[Pg 139]"></a> +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.</p> + +<p>Hamsun has a kindness for this merry +privateer and enjoys blowing the wind that +swells little Theodor's sails, but underneath<a class="pagenum" name="Page_140" id="Page_140" title="[Pg 140]"></a> +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.</p> + +<p>"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<a class="pagenum" name="Page_141" id="Page_141" title="[Pg 141]"></a> +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."</p> + +<p>What indeed would the little town have +been without Consul Johnson? What glory<a class="pagenum" name="Page_142" id="Page_142" title="[Pg 142]"></a> +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<a class="pagenum" name="Page_143" id="Page_143" title="[Pg 143]"></a> +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.</p> + +<p>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."<a class="pagenum" name="Page_144" id="Page_144" title="[Pg 144]"></a> +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.</p> + +<p>There is only one bright spot in the life of<a class="pagenum" name="Page_145" id="Page_145" title="[Pg 145]"></a> +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."</p> + +<p>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<a class="pagenum" name="Page_146" id="Page_146" title="[Pg 146]"></a> +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.</p> + +<p>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.<a class="pagenum" name="Page_147" id="Page_147" title="[Pg 147]"></a> +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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + + +<div><a class="pagenum" name="Page_148" id="Page_148" title="[Pg 148]"></a></div> +<h3><a name="GROWTH_OF_THE_SOIL" id="GROWTH_OF_THE_SOIL"></a>GROWTH OF THE SOIL</h3> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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<a class="pagenum" name="Page_149" id="Page_149" title="[Pg 149]"></a> +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.</p> + +<p>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<a class="pagenum" name="Page_150" id="Page_150" title="[Pg 150]"></a> +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.</p> + +<p>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.<a class="pagenum" name="Page_151" id="Page_151" title="[Pg 151]"></a> +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.</p> + +<p>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<a class="pagenum" name="Page_152" id="Page_152" title="[Pg 152]"></a> +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.</p> + +<p>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<a class="pagenum" name="Page_153" id="Page_153" title="[Pg 153]"></a> +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 +<a class="corr" name="TC_10" id="TC_10" title="abiliy">ability</a> 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,<a class="pagenum" name="Page_154" id="Page_154" title="[Pg 154]"></a> +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.</p> + +<p>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<a class="pagenum" name="Page_155" id="Page_155" title="[Pg 155]"></a> +that dwell in nature draw them back and hold +them.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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<a class="pagenum" name="Page_156" id="Page_156" title="[Pg 156]"></a> +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.</p> + +<p>Isak himself, a tiller of the soil by the +grace of God, is the one person in the book<a class="pagenum" name="Page_157" id="Page_157" title="[Pg 157]"></a> +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<a class="pagenum" name="Page_158" id="Page_158" title="[Pg 158]"></a> +not see it, Isak is conscious that he is perhaps +being punished for his overweening +pride.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>An act which has something of an almost<a class="pagenum" name="Page_159" id="Page_159" title="[Pg 159]"></a> +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.</p> + +<p>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<a class="pagenum" name="Page_160" id="Page_160" title="[Pg 160]"></a> +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.</p> + +<p>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<a class="pagenum" name="Page_161" id="Page_161" title="[Pg 161]"></a> +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.</p> + +<p>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<a class="pagenum" name="Page_162" id="Page_162" title="[Pg 162]"></a> +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."</p> + + +<div><a class="pagenum" name="Page_163" id="Page_163" title="[Pg 163]"></a></div> +<h3><a name="THE_WANDERER_ARRIVED" id="THE_WANDERER_ARRIVED"></a>THE WANDERER ARRIVED</h3> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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<a class="pagenum" name="Page_164" id="Page_164" title="[Pg 164]"></a> +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.</p> + +<p>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<a class="pagenum" name="Page_165" id="Page_165" title="[Pg 165]"></a> +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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"After a half hour's drive (from Grimstad) +we enter a lane of hazel nut bushes, +bending over the road weighted by their full,<a class="pagenum" name="Page_166" id="Page_166" title="[Pg 166]"></a> +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.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"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<a class="pagenum" name="Page_167" id="Page_167" title="[Pg 167]"></a> +of something veiled, wistful, almost hurt, +which suggests the tremendous mental strain +his intensive work has subjected him to for +many years past.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"After supper, when he has lit his pipe, +Hamsun generally selects a chair near the +sofa where he has placed his visitor, and then<a class="pagenum" name="Page_168" id="Page_168" title="[Pg 168]"></a> +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....</p> + +<p>"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<a class="pagenum" name="Page_169" id="Page_169" title="[Pg 169]"></a> +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.</p> + +<p>"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....</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p>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<a class="pagenum" name="Page_170" id="Page_170" title="[Pg 170]"></a> +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.</p> + + +<hr class="pagebreak" /> +<div><a class="pagenum" name="Page_171" id="Page_171" title="[Pg 171]"></a></div> + +<h2>Knut Hamsun's Works</h2> + +<ul class="hanging"> +<li><span class="smcap">Hunger</span> (<i>Sult</i>) 1890. Published in English</li> +<li><span class="smcap">Mysteries</span> (<i>Mysterier</i>) 1892</li> +<li><span class="smcap">Editor Lynge</span> (<i>Redaktör Lynge</i>) 1893</li> +<li><span class="smcap">Shallow Soil</span> (<i>Ny Jord</i>) 1893. Published in English</li> +<li><span class="smcap">Pan</span> (<i>Pan</i>) 1894. Published in English</li> +<li><span class="smcap">At the Gate of the Kingdom</span> (<i>Ved Rigets Port</i>) 1895</li> +<li><span class="smcap">The Game of Life</span> (<i>Livets Spil</i>) 1896</li> +<li><span class="smcap">Siesta</span> (<i>Siesta</i>) 1897</li> +<li><span class="smcap">Sunset</span> (<i>Aftenröde</i>) 1898</li> +<li><span class="smcap">Victoria</span> (<i>Victoria</i>) 1898. Published in English</li> +<li><span class="smcap">Munken Vendt</span> (<i>Munken Vendt</i>) 1902</li> +<li><span class="smcap">Brushwood</span> (<i>Kratskog</i>) 1903</li> +<li><span class="smcap">Queen Tamara</span> (<i>Dronning Tamara</i>) 1903</li> +<li><span class="smcap">In Fairyland</span> (<i>I Æventyrland</i>) 1903</li> +<li><span class="smcap">Dreamers</span> (<i>Sværmere</i>) 1904. Published in English</li> +<li><span class="smcap">The Wild Chorus</span> (<i>Det Vilde Kor</i>) 1904</li> +<li><span class="smcap">Struggling Life</span> (<i>Stridende Liv</i>) 1905</li> +<li><span class="smcap">Under the Autumn Star</span> (<i>Under Höststjernen</i>) 1906. Published +in English with <span class="smcap">A Wanderer Plays on Muted +Strings</span> under the title <span class="smcap">Wanderers</span></li> +<li><span class="smcap">Benoni</span> (<i>Benoni</i>) 1908</li> +<li><span class="smcap">Rosa</span> (<i>Rosa</i>) 1908</li> +<li><span class="smcap">A Wanderer Plays on Muted Strings</span> (<i>En Vandrer spiller +med Sordin</i>) 1909. Published in English with <span class="smcap">Under The +Autumn Star</span></li> +<li><span class="smcap">In the Power of Life</span> (<i>Livet Ivold</i>) 1910</li> +<li><span class="smcap">The Last Joy</span> (<i>Den siste Glæde</i>) 1912</li> +<li><span class="smcap">Children of the Age</span> (<i>Börn af Tiden</i>) 1913</li> +<li><span class="smcap">Segelfoss City</span> (<i>Segelfoss By</i>) 1915</li> +<li><span class="smcap">Growth of the Soil</span> (<i>Markens Gröde</i>) 1917. Published in +English</li> +<li><span class="smcap">Women at the Pump</span> (<i>Konerne ved Vandposten</i>) 1920</li> +</ul> + + +<div class="trnote"> +<h2><a name="trcorrections" id="trcorrections"></a>Transcriber's corrections</h2> +<ul> +<li><a href="#TC_1">p. 29</a>: after following resplendently[resplendantly] attired servant</li> +<li><a href="#TC_2">p. 33</a>: Lundegård[Lundegard]. "What was the title of it?"</li> +<li><a href="#TC_3">p. 48</a>: young, generally between twenty-five and[and and]</li> +<li><a href="#TC_4">p. 49</a>: him to cover up. He takes infinite[infinites] pains</li> +<li><a href="#TC_5">p. 64</a>: himself loose[lose] from the passion that binds his</li> +<li><a href="#TC_6">p. 70</a>: In "Wanderers" the disintegrating[distintegrating] influence</li> +<li><a href="#TC_7">p. 86</a>: and inanimate[inaminate]. He can sit for hours merely</li> +<li><a href="#TC_8">p. 130</a>: City," there is L. Lassen[Lasssen] who is unmade from</li> +<li><a href="#TC_9">p. 135</a>: thinks that from pride and will power an aristocracy[aristrocracy]</li> +<li><a href="#TC_10">p. 153</a>: ability[abiliy] that would insure him a career in the</li> +</ul> +</div> + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +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-h.htm or 36754-h.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. 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