Knut Hamsun

“ After supper, when he has lit his pipe, Hamsun generally selects a chair near the sofa where he has placed his visitor, and then he unbends. Quietly and naturally, the conversation turns on many things. He can ask questions, and he can tell a story well, vividly and entertainingly, in a vein all his own. His comments are often startling, full of cut and thrust, never malicious, but instinct with kindliness and understanding. As he talks, the listener is deeply conscious of the fact that he is a good man, a sensitive nature, with a heart and a spirit open to the weal and woe of humanity. ”

“ The man rose abruptly; at the same instant his dark soul was illumined as if by torch-light. "You are so kind to every one," he said bitterly. "You even come to me." She made no answer, simply stood looking at him and her face turned dark red. "What do you want?" he asked as bitterly as before; "have you come to remind me of the past? If so, it is for the last time, my lady, for now I am going away for ever." And still the young mistress of the Castle made no answer, but her lips were trembling. ”

“ This is the Hamsun of Pan. But Hamsun now is a greater soul than in the days when Glahn, the solitary dweller in the woods, picked up a broken twig from the ground and held it lovingly, because it looked poor and forsaken; or thanked the hillock of stone outside his hut because it stood there faithfully, as a friend that waited his return. He is stronger now, but no less delicate; he loves not Nature less, but the world more. He has learned to love his fellow-men. ”

“ Through my helf-sleep I heard a cock crowing down at Sirilund.
“Iselin, hear! A cock is crowing for us too!” I cried joyfully, and reached out my arms. I woke. Æsop was already moving. “Gone!” I said in burning sorrow, and looked round. There was no one—no one there. It was morning now; the cock was still crowing down at Sirilund.
By the hut stood a woman—Eva. She had a rope in her hand; she was going to fetch wood. There was the morning of life in the young girl's figure as she stood there, all golden in the sun. ”

“ Well, I must be off. Goddag, Goddag, Doctor. Pleased to see you again. Well and fit, I hope? Excuse my running off...”
Once down the steps outside, I turned round. Edwarda was standing at the window watching me; she stood holding the curtains aside with both hands, to see; and her look was thoughtful. A foolish joy thrilled me; I hurried away from the house light-footed, with a darkness shading my eyes; my gun was light as a walking-stick in my hand. If I could win her, I should become a good man, I thought. ”

“ No one waiting for me at home. Free as a lord, a ruler, I could ramble about there in the peaceful woods, just as idly as I pleased. All the birds were silent; only the grouse was calling far away—it was always calling.
I came out of the wood and saw two figures ahead, two persons moving. I came up with them. One was Edwarda, and I recognized her, and gave a greeting; the Doctor was with her. I had to show them my gun; they looked at my compass, my bag; I invited them to my hut, and they promised to come some day. ”

“ Knut Hamsun began life in one of the deep Norwegian valleys familiar to English readers through Björnson's earlier stories. He was born in August, 1860. When he was four years old his poverty-stricken parents sent him to an uncle, a stern, unlovely man who made his home on one of the Lofoten Islands—that "Drama in Granite" which Norway's rugged coast-line flings far into the Arctic night. Here he grew up, a taciturn, peculiar lad, inured to hardship and danger, in close communion with nature ”

“ Inger is a matchless woman, after all; and with a full heart, "I've not been as I ought towards you," she says, "and I'm that sorry about it."
The simple words move him; this barge of a man is touched, ay, he wants to comfort her, knowing nothing of what is the matter, but only that there is none like her. "Naught to cry about, my dear," says Isak. "There's none of us can be as we ought."
"Nay, 'tis true," she answers gratefully. Oh, Isak had a strong, sound way of taking things; straightened them out, he did, when they turned crooked. "None of us can be as we ought." ”

“ In his great novels picturing the life of whole communities, Hamsun has thrown the glamour of his art over a big gallery of insignificant people. Mere puppets for his amusement they seem at first, and yet, as we penetrate more deeply into his work, we feel behind the smile a great sweetness, a broad humanity, and at bottom a faith that life fashions its own ends out of all this human dross and fashions not badly. ”

“ Hamsun was born on Aug. 4, 1860, in one of the sunny valleys of central Norway. From there his parents moved when he was only four to settle in the far northern district of Lofoden--that land of extremes, where the year, and not the day, is evenly divided between darkness and light; where winter is a long dreamless sleep, and summer a passionate dream without sleep; where land and sea meet and intermingle so gigantically that man is all but crushed between the two--or else raised to titanic measures by the spectacle of their struggle. ”

“ There is only one whom I care for: what does that one say of the look in my eyes? And I asked her:
“Who was that, your friend?”
“I will not tell you,” she said. “But it was one of those that were out on the island that day.”
“Very well, then.”
And then we spoke of other things.
“My father is going to Russia in a few days,” she said. “And I am going to have a party. Have you been out to Korholmerne? We must have two hampers of wine; the ladies from the vicarage are coming again, and father has already given me the wine. And you won't look at her again, will you? My friend, I mean. ”

“ No one to stick up impertinent photographs on the piano, but no one to play on that piano, either; dumb now, it stands, since the last note sounded. No, for Fru Falkenberg is not here now; she can do no more hurt to herself or any other. Nothing of all that used to be here now. Remains, then, to be seen if all will be flowers and joy at Øvrebø hereafter.
“If only he doesn't take to drinking again,” I said to Nils.
“No, surely,” he said. “And I don't believe he ever did. It was just a bit of foolery, if you ask me, his going on like that just for the time. ”

“ You don't know anything that's any sense. But you know all about ploughing in standing crops, don't you? There's not many can beat you at that.”
But here Nils grew angry for once, and his cheeks paled.
“What an utter fool you are, Lars! Can't you keep your mouth shut with that nonsense?”
“Fool, eh? Hark at the silly goat!” said Lars, turning to me. “Thinks himself mighty fine, doesn't he? 'Utter'” he says—and goes white about it. “I've been more years than you at Øvrebø, and asked in to sing up at the house of an evening more than once, let me tell you. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Then, with Growth of the Soil, Hamsun achieves his greatest triumph. Setting aside all that mattered most to himself, he turns, with the experience of a lifetime rich in conflict, to the things that matter to us all. Deliberately shorn of all that makes for mere effect, Isak stands out as an elemental figure, the symbol of Man at his best, face to face with Nature and life. There is no greater human character—reverently said—in the Bible itself. ”

“ The settlers from the holdings farther down began to come up, all anxious to see the marvel for themselves. Axel Ström, — the neighbour from Maaneland, the man who had no wife, and no woman to help him, but managed for himself, — he came too. He was in a good humour that day; he told them how he had just got a promise of a girl to help through the summer — and that was a weight off his mind. He did not say who the girl was, and Isak did not ask, but it was Brede's girl Barbro who was to come. It would cost the price of a telegram to Bergen to fetch her ”

“ And I went up into the hills, to my mining. Nothing, nothing should make me lose my self-possession any more. I met Eva. “There, what did I say?” I cried. “Herr Mack cannot drive me away. He has burned my hut, and I already have another hut...” She was carrying a tar-bucket and brush. “What now, Eva?”
Herr Mack had a boat in a shed under the cliff, and had ordered her to tar it. He watched her every step—she had to obey.
“But why in the shed there? Why not at the quay?” ”

“ And with closed eyes she throws her arms about my neck. A quiver passes through her. The horse stands waiting.
XXVIII
I sit up in the hills, mining. The autumn air is crystal about me. The strokes of my drill ring steady and even. Æsop looks at me with wondering eyes. Wave after wave of content swells through my breast. No one knows that I am here among the lonely hills.
The birds of passage have gone; a happy journey and welcome back again! Titmouse and blackcap and a hedge-sparrow or so live now alone in the bush and undergrowth: tuitui! ”

“ Outside his doorway a man was walking up and down, an old acquaintance, the former Tutor at the Castle.
Johannes greeted him.
He was dressed in a long, warm overcoat which was carefully brushed and there was a brisk and decided air about him.
"Here you see your friend and colleague," he said. "Give me your hand, young man. God has guided my ways marvellously since we last met; I am married, I have a home, a little garden, a wife. The days of miracles are not yet past. ”

“ A most superbly delicate delineation of the feminine soul is here given in the drawing of Hanka and Aagot; nowhere else is woman's love in its dawn and growth described with such mastery, with a deftness and sureness of touch which reminds one of the very greatest passages in that Danish classic, 'Niels Lyhne.'"
Hamsun is now in his fifty-fourth year. The expectations aroused by his first book have been more than fulfilled; the star that was born overnight still shines with undimmed brilliance—nay, with a purer, warmer, steadier flame. ”

“ Knut Hamsun Since the death of Ibsen and Strindberg, Hamsun is undoubtedly the foremost creative writer of the Scandinavian countries. Those approaching most nearly to his position are probably Selma Lagerlöf in Sweden and Henrik Pontoppidan in Denmark. ”

“ Throughout these early works, Hamsun is striving to find expression for his own sensitive personality; a form and degree of expression sufficient to relieve his own tension of feeling, without fusing the medium; adequate to his own needs, yet understandable and tolerable to ordinary human beings; to the readers of books. The process, in effect, is simply this: Hamsun is a poet, with a poet's deep and unusual feeling, and a poet's need of utterance. To gain a hearing, he chooses figures whom he can conveniently represent as fools. Secretly, he loves them, for they are himself. ”

“ I'm not a vicious man, really; queerly enough, I've never really cared about drinking and playing the fool. And yet I suppose I did, in a way. But there's an end of it now.' 'So much the better for you,' she answered sullenly. 'Quite so,' says he again. 'Though it would have been better if you'd been a bit glad to hear it.' 'You can get Elisabet to do that,' says she. 'Elisabet,' says he—just that one word—and shakes his head. Then they said nothing for quite a while. 'What are you going to do now?' asks the Captain. 'Oh, don't trouble yourself about me,' said Fruen very slowly. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I've got hold of some white paint.”
“Have you, though? That's good. You've brought another man up with you, I hear?”
“Yes. I don't know what Captain thinks....”
“He can stay. Nils has got him to work out in the fields already. And anyhow, you all seem to do as you like with me,” he added jestingly. “And you've been working with the lumbermen, have you?”
“Yes.”
“Hardly the sort of thing for you, was it?” Then, as if anxious not to seem curious about my work with Engineer Lassen, he broke off abruptly and said: “When are you going to start painting the house?” ”

“ Hamsun's humor is all-pervasive it is the yeast that lightens his loaf. When Albert Engström, the Swedish humorist, ended an appreciation of Hamsun by saying, "And finally I love you for the gleam in your left eye," he found an apt expression for the personality that shines through Hamsun's works. His humor has less of wit than of comicality, less of the laugh than the smile with a gleam in his eye; and he is as ready to smile at his own intensities as at the weaknesses of humanity. ”