CHAPTER XIII

KNUT HAMSUN AND HIS NOVELS OF NORWEGIAN LIFE

The prize of 1920 has been awarded:

Hamsun, Knut, Norway, born 1859: “for his monumental work, _The Growth of the Soil_.”[125]

It was characteristic of a type of journalism in the United States that the announcement of the Nobel award in literature for 1920, to Knut Hamsun, should have been featured in a digest of news thus: “The Horse-Car Conductor Who Wins the Nobel Prize.” A passing incident in the life of this author--a few months of service on street cars in Chicago--but they loom large in minds that cherish trivialities. His works in fiction and drama, more than twenty-five in number, have been translated into a score of dialects; he is an outstanding and unique figure in the literary life of to-day; his development of personality and fame vies in interest with the challenging quality of his writings. Few authors have been so self-revelatory as he has been in his plays and novels. Except for statistical facts and side lights, to be found in other sources, one can make almost a complete picture of his background, his early struggles and revolts, his innate poetry and growing idealism, by reading in succession _Hunger_, _Mysteries_, _Pan_, and _Munken Vendt_, followed by _Dreamers_, _Benoni_, _Children of the Age_, and _Growth of the Soil_.

Although Knut Hamsun’s parents were of peasant stock, the boy, born August 4, 1860, at Lom, in Gudbrandsdalen, in eastern Norway, inherited strains of artistic craftsmanship. His grandfather was a worker in metals (sometimes called a blacksmith) but fortunes were low and, when the lad was four years old, the family moved from the Gudbrandsdalen mountain valley to the Lofoden Islands, Nordland. Here, amid wild, awesome scenery and simple fisherfolk with sordid tasks, the youth grew to young manhood. For a time he lived with an uncle who was a preacher, of the state church; he was a severe man. In his short story, “A Spook,” Hamsun recalls those days with their floggings and work and hours of escape to the cemetery or the woods.[126] Before he could satisfy his cravings for an education, he was apprenticed to a shoemaker in Bodö, in Nordland. He managed to get his first writings published; in 1878 appeared the serious poem, that showed appreciation of the glowing colors and wild aspects of nature, _Meeting Again_, and the story _Björger_ with the pseudonym, Knud Pederson Hamsund. While there were interesting bits of autobiography, this initial fiction was imitative of Björnson and has not been revived by its author among his books.

[Illustration:

_By courtesy of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc._

KNUT HAMSUN]

Restless and unwilling to spend his days at Bodö as a shoemaker, he worked for a short while as coal heaver, and later as road-maker and school-teacher and sheriff’s assistant. Then, like so many Scandinavian youths, he decided to emigrate to America. Some of these earlier experiences are recalled in his novels, _A Wanderer Plays on Muted Strings_ and _Under the Autumn Star_ (in the English edition united as _Wanderers_). In the United States he drifted from one occupation to another and covered a wide range of pursuits as street-car conductor, farm laborer, clerk in grocery store and lecturer. He cherished hopes of literary chances in this country but the lack of them, and the misfortunes that came upon him, made him bitter for a time, in retrospect. Those who recalled him on the Halstead street-car line in Chicago, and later on a cable line, affirmed that he had “a perpetual stare into the horizon,” that he was “out-at-elbows” and had small volumes of classic poets sticking out of his pockets.[127] They add that he would forget to ring the bell for passengers or would fall over their feet in his reverie. One is skeptical of such detailed memories of famous men. In the summer of 1885, he was back in Christiania, doing some journalistic work and lecturing. Hanna Arstrup Larsen in her authoritative study of Knut Hamsun[128] says that he had been at the University of Christiania, before he went to America; but that he found he was a misfit and went back to his “old life on the road.”[129]

In 1886, says Professor Josef Wiehr,[130] he returned to the United States as correspondent for _Current Events_ (_Verdens Gang_) but he was obliged to undertake manual work to get a living wage; for a time he was with a Russian fishing vessel off the Newfoundland banks. For about a year he was secretary to Kristoffer Janson, a Norwegian clergyman in Minneapolis; he was then twenty-eight years old, and had been working on a farm in North Dakota. He wanted a chance to lecture in Minneapolis on literary topics but his ambitions were unrealized and he left America with some bitter feelings and the manuscript of his satirical book, _The Spiritual Life of Modern America_ (or _Intellectual Life in Modern America_), sometimes entitled _Of American Culture_. In a copy of this book, owned by Edwin Björkman, Hamsun wrote an inscription, dated 1905, thus, “A youthful work. It has ceased to represent my opinion of America.”[131] He scoffs at “American patriotism, engendered by means of tinfifes”; he asserts, “There is an enormous gap in American liberty, a chasm which is kept open by the thick-headed democracy”; he finds no cultural life but coarse materialism and “prudishness” and “self-satisfied ignorance.”[132] The book justifies a critic’s comment that it is “a masterpiece of distorted criticism.”[133] His short story, “Woman’s Victory,” in the collection, _Struggling Life_, is based on his experiences in Chicago; in the Preface, he tells of his life as car conductor. “Zacchæus,” in the collection, _Brushwood_ (1903), is reminiscent of the days upon the North Dakota farm.

In Copenhagen, on his return from America, he enlisted the interest of Edward Brandes, then editor of a daily newspaper there. Through his influence, place was found for the manuscript of _Hunger Sult_ in a Copenhagen magazine, _New Soil_, in 1888, to appear anonymously; two years later it came out as a book, with the author’s name on the title-page. It was immature and subjective, but it gripped readers everywhere by its sincerity and whimsicality. Miss Larsen makes a true criticism of this book when she says it is “without beginning and end and without a plot but it has a series of climaxes.” Antithetical to such passages of poetic and dramatic power there are pages of naturalism that cause a revulsion of emotion and seem to some readers an insult to taste. It is absolutely true and relentless; perhaps, as Professor Wiehr suggests, “By the production of this work, Hamsun sought to free his mind from terrible memories of the past that were haunting him” (p. 13). Two years later the same mixture of poetic high lights and crass realism characterized _Mysteries_. Johan Nagel is the restless hero who falls in love with Dagny Kielland, daughter of the pastor, and meets with tragic experiences and suicide. Like his author, “Nagel is at odds with life” and finds peace only in nature. Like Hamsun he tries vainly to adapt himself to conventions of society and becomes embittered. “The Hamsun ego,” as Miss Larsen calls the _motif_ of these earlier tales, recurs in _Editor Lynge_, the drama, _Sunset_, and _Pan_ (1894). Lieutenant Glahn, the hunter in this last book, is happy in his hut and outdoors but is proudly unhappy in contact with humanity; the tale ends in tragedy. Edvarda, the woman of this story, is erotic and capricious to the point of disgust yet she has a pathetic element in her nature.

_Victoria_ shows an advance away from the “Hamsun ego” of revolt and naturalism towards that of poetry: Johannes, the hero, the miller’s son, is in harmony with nature; even loss in love cannot blight his soul. There are sentences of poetic diction in this novel and in _Munken Vendt_ (1902), the dramatic poem which embodies the character of a lovable, simple vagabond. One recalls the words of Edwin Björkman, in the Introduction to his translation of _Hunger_; “The artist and the vagabond seem equally to have been in the blood of Hamsun from the very start.”[134] Before he attained to the second type of novel--the less subjective and more idealistic group--(if idealism may be so expanded in meaning) Hamsun wrote a trilogy of plays, beginning with _At the Gates of the Kingdom_ (1895) with Kareno, a philosophical student and writer, as hero, and a wife of sexual domination. The author’s tenets about life and government are voiced by Kareno in this drama and _Life’s Play_, ten years later in setting; the third in the cycle, _Sunset_ (1898) shows Kareno at fifty, full of scientific doubts and reactions from earlier aspirations for liberty and truth. The author indulges his satire against professional “moralists” in these plays; sometimes, he indulges, also, his unvarnished frankness of sensual portrayals, and his lack of deference for old age. The play, _In the Grip of Life_, was translated by Graham and Tristan Rawson and issued in 1924 (Knopf). The women in his plays are, generally, animalistic, or erotic, lacking diversity in types.

With the appearance of _Children of the Age_ (or _Children of the Times_) in 1909, followed by _Segelfoss Town_ and _Growth of the Soil_, the reader of persistent interest in Hamsun realized that the author had orientated himself, that he was “finding his place” in literature. He was still defying society, “the group,” still disclaiming belief in democracy, but he had gained “a social vision.” In method characteristic of many novelists, he has chosen a family, with strong racial traits, the family of Willatz Holmsen, for the expression of his sociological ideas. The despotic, anxious Willatz III, a retired Lieutenant, is a character that lingers in memory; he is vitally real in his relations with his wife, of higher social rank, and with his son, the musicianly boy; he is dramatic and pathetic in his defiance of Tobias Holmengraa, the industrial “king” from South America. The last days of stubborn pride and loneliness are scenes of artistic fiction. _Segelfoss Town_, written before _The Growth of the Soil_, but translated afterwards by J. S. Scott (Knopf, 1925), continues the story of this family and the departure of Holmengraa, after a financial collapse, leaving behind his daughter, Mariane, half Mexican in blood, who marries the commercial “leader of the small town. Segelfoss Town has been called a ‘Norwegian Main Street.’” There is much irony and reiterated sordidness in the tale. The telegraph operator, Baardsen, is a daring, strong character.

In the Introduction to _Dreamers_, W. W. Worster (New York, 1922) calls _The Growth of the Soil_ Hamsun’s “greatest triumph.” It is the _one_ book thus far appearing in American edition, that seems to win wide reading. It is localized in setting, objective in theme, and universal in human appeal. Isac (or Isak) is a convincing character of elemental type. He symbolizes man, when face to face with nature. Inger is a coarse Lapp woman in her physical nature yet she seeks expression for finer feelings, even as she strangles the third baby girl that would bear, through life, the mother’s curse of a hair lip. “Back to the soil!” is the message of this masterpiece of Norwegian fiction. It has a large group of Norwegian characters, and a challenging tone regarding many moral issues, but it maintains artistic unity.

That Knut Hamsun has grown steadily in literary skill, that he has written novels of vigor and photographic effects, cannot be denied. That he has a philosophical attitude towards humanity and the driving forces behind society (especially as applied to Norway), is also evident. His self-education, his persistence, and his assimilated judgment, together with caustic wit and grotesque humor, are other qualities that must be accounted to his credit. On the other hand, he is often slothful and diffuse in structure and offensive to æsthetic minds because of his stress of sexual impulses and his coarseness. He does not condone immorality but he seems indifferent to its existence. In his personal convictions, however, he realizes the need of a basic morality. Says Professor Wiehr: “It is just this absence of ‘the triumph of a moral idea’ which will stand most in the way of any popularity of Hamsun’s works with the great majority of American readers.” Other explanations of Hamsun’s attitude towards Christianity and “constructive ideas” are given in this excellent study by Professor Wiehr.[135] He thinks that his countrymen, and “all backward nations,” are in a much better position to follow his advice than the millions that populate the countries leading the world in industries. Some critics affirm that Hamsun’s compatriot, Johan Boyer, in his condensed, dramatic novels, _The Great Hunger_, _The Last of the Vikings_, _A Pilgrimage_, and _The Emigrants_ is more gifted as a novelist and shows more evidences of idealistic vision. In his personal life, Hamsun has revealed the traits of the wanderer, “vagabond” if you will, combined with the deep-rooted love of home and devotion to his countrymen in their industrial needs and their educational struggles. He is not an optimist but he advocates persistent work and the preservation of spiritual freedom and courage.

FOOTNOTES:

[125] Inscription with the Nobel Prize Award in Literature, 1920.

[126] _Knut Hamsun: His Personality and His Outlook upon Life_ by Josef Wiehr, _Smith College Studies in Modern Languages_, Vol. III, Nos. 1 and 2, pp. 2, 3.

[127] _Literary Digest_ 67: 35, November 20, 1920.

[128] _Knut Hamsun: A Study_ by Hanna Arstrup Larsen, Knopf, New York, 1922.

[129] _Ibid._, p. 19.

[130] _Knut Hamsun: His Personality and His Outlook upon Life_, Northampton, 1922.

[131] Introduction to _Hunger_ by Knut Hamsun, translated by Edwin Björkman, New York, 1920. By permission of Alfred A. Knopf.

[132] _Knut Hamsun: His Personality and His Outlook upon Life_ by Josef Wiehr, Northampton, 1922, pp. 8, 9. By permission of Prof. Wiehr.

[133] Introduction to _Hunger_, translated by Edwin Björkman.

[134] _Hunger_, translated by George Egerton, New York, 1920. By permission of Alfred A. Knopf.

[135] _Knut Hamsun: His Personality and His Outlook upon Life_ by Josef Wiehr, Northampton, 1922.

##