Mysteries by Knut Hamsun

Inside the erratic mind of an eccentric outsider

Norwegian author Knut Hamsun’s literary career spanned seven decades, during which time he produced a plethora of novels, plays, stories, poetry, and essays, not all of which have been translated into English. Hamsun, who won the 1920 Nobel Prize in Literature, was an innovative literary pioneer who had a profound influence on modernist literature, not just in Norway but worldwide. His first novel, Hunger, published in 1890, is probably still his most renowned and widely read work. His second novel, Mysteries, published in 1892, is not as well known.

The title Mysteries is as generic as it sounds. It could pertain to anything or nothing going on in the story. Like many of Hamsun’s novels, it is difficult to summarize the plot of Mysteries in a couple of sentences. The plot just kind of meanders from scene to scene, without any overt agenda, much like real life itself. The novel follows Johan Nagel, an eccentric outsider who shows up one day at a small coastal Norwegian town and decides to settle there. Nagel states his profession as agronomist, but although only about thirty years of age, he seems to have inherited a sufficient sum of money so as to be no longer required to work for a living. Upon arriving in the unnamed town in which the novel is set, he takes a room at a main-street hotel and decides to stay indefinitely, as something of a retiree.

Nagel may be a stranger, but he’s no recluse, and he soon becomes involved in the social life of the town. He gets to know some of the citizens, both the fashionable set and some of the lower classes. He attends parties, where he is both a popular attraction and a gauche curiosity. Nagel has a habit of saying whatever’s on his mind, whether it’s socially appropriate or not. He talks a mile a minute and often runs on into extended stories and soliloquies. He will regale a crowd of partygoers, for example, by recounting the details of a dream he has had. This hardly seems realistic among polite society, but his audience listens enrapt while the dream goes on for several pages. Being socially active in his new hometown, it’s not surprising that Nagel would fall in love. His choice of soulmate is a complicated one, however, and their relationship is anything but easy and smooth.

Early in his literary career, Hamsun had an antipathy towards realist and naturalist literature. He is considered the leader of a neo-Romantic resurgence in Norwegian and Western European fiction. Mysteries is realistic in the sense of this is what provincial Norway was like in the 1890s. The story touches on political and social issues of the time, but not so much as to be obtrusive to ignorant outsiders unfamiliar with Norwegian history. The novel is predominantly Romantic, however, because it’s almost entirely concerned with what’s going on inside Nagel’s noggin: his struggle for love and self-actualization. Through the love story that arises, Nagel eventually develops into a modern variation on Goethe’s Young Werther.

In addition to Nagel’s extensive and revealing blatherings, Hamsun employs some early use of stream of consciousness narrative. Such interior monologues do not venture into the abstract excesses of later modernist authors but rather quite brilliantly capture the authentic imaginary conversations that we all engage in from time to time. Hamsun’s work reads as if influenced by the psychological studies of Sigmund Freud, but Mysteries actually precedes by a few years almost all of Freud’s published works. Nagel’s dreams and interior monologues show that Hamsun is clearly interested in the power of subconscious thought on human behavior. By exploring both the subconscious and conscious components of Nagel’s mind, Hamsun constructs a character that is much deeper and more multidimensional than the typical literary protagonists of his era.

Hamsun’s writing was years ahead of its time, and his work is still far and above most of today’s literature. He has become one of my go-to authors. I’ve never read a bad book by him, I can always count on him for a thought-provoking read, and I intend to eventually read my way through his complete output of novels. Growth of the Soil is my favorite thus far.   

Wayfarers by Knut Hamsun

Workingman’s blues, Norwegian style

Wayfarers, a novel by Norwegian Nobel laureate Knut Hamsun, was published in 1927 (Norwegian title: Landstrykere). Be careful not to confuse this with another Hamsun book, Wanderers, or his novel A Wanderer Plays on Muted Strings, part of his Wanderer trilogy. (Only the English titles are confusing, not the Norwegian titles). Wayfarers, on the other hand, is the first book in Hamsun’s August trilogy, the second and third books being August and The Road Leads On.

Edevart Andresen lives with his parents and siblings in Polden, the small Norwegian coastal village where he grew up. Like most men in his village, he makes his living primarily from fishing. Every winter the Polden men go on a fishing expedition to the Lofoten Islands and then return to dry their fish on the rocks of their hometown shore. One day, Edevart meets another young man, August, who has been away from Polden, traveling the world as a sailor, and has now returned. August, with his gold teeth and boastful talk, is frequently the object of ridicule from his neighbors. Edevart and August strike up a fast friendship. August is a big-idea man who’s always looking for a scheme to make a fast buck. He convinces Edevart to enter into various business enterprises with him. The two travel up and down the Norwegian coast like vagabonds, engaging in assorted occupations. Sometimes flush with cash and sometimes hard-up for a meal, the two traveling companions form a share-and-share-alike, what’s-mine-is-yours bond. The dynamic between the two is often comical, sometimes calling to mind the two tramps from Waiting for Godot. Though not much different in age, Edevart is still an inexperienced, naive young man while August is more a shrewd man-of-the-world. Edevart is still very much a “good boy,” but he begins to fall under the corrupting influence of August’s looser morals. Their relationship is not without conflict, and sometimes they separate for months, only to reunite for another adventure..

The story takes place in the late 1860s. Judging by the fickle fortunes of the characters in this book, Hamsun depicts a time of economic hardship in Norway. While much of Europe has transitioned into an industrial economy, the denizens of these small villages on the Norwegian coast still live a subsistence lifestyle not much changed from many generations past. No source of income, not even the fish, can be relied upon, so Edevart and August must turn to other avenues of income, including itinerant peddling, storekeeping, farming, and thievery, among others.

This novel meanders just as much as its two protagonists. The story often proceeds at a lackadaisical but pleasant pace. As you become involved with these characters, you are content to take life as it comes, just as they do. If there is a message to this story, it isn’t hammered home. This book is about the journey, not the destination. Hamsun considers the question of whether it is better to accept one’s lot in life and be whom one was born to be, or to venture afar, forge one’s own path, and try to determine one’s own destiny. This novel shows both the positive and negative aspects of wanderlust and vagrancy. Another issue that’s discussed is emigration to America. No doubt Hamsun saw many of his countrymen leave Norway for the United States during hard times. Here he questions the milk-and-honey, rags-to-riches image of America and asserts that crossing the Atlantic is no happily-ever-after panacea.

After completing this book, I was pleased to find out that it’s part of a trilogy. I enjoyed following the lives of these two men, and I look forward to catching up with Edevart and August in the second and third novels of the August series. Because these books were published late in Hamsun’s career, however, there are no English translations in the public domain, and paper copies of August are not cheap.   

Victoria by Knut Hamsun

Love stinks in semi-feudal Norway

Norwegian author Knut Hamsun (1859-1952) won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1920. He was a pioneering modernist whose style has been extremely influential in world literature. Norway basically disowned him when he became a Nazi sympathizer during World War II, but after a few decades it again became acceptable to appreciate his work. Hamsun’s novel Victoria was published in 1898. Though not one of his better-known works, Victoria has been adapted into film a half dozen times, more than any other of his novels.

Johannes is the son of a miller in a rural town on the coast of Norway. Nearby stands the Castle, where dwell the Master and his family. The Miller and his family are essentially servants to the Master. They not only mill the grain produced on the Master’s lands but also perform odd jobs when asked, such as rowing boating parties on an afternoon outing. As a youth, Johannes becomes playmates with the Master’s daughter Victoria, who is a few years his junior. Playing outdoors amid the idyllic landscape, Johannes and Victoria develop an innocent love for one another. When they grow into young adulthood, the two admit their love for one another. Victoria makes it clear, however, that she and Johannes are not of the same social class, and her father would never approve of a union between them.

As the years go by, the two go on with their lives while their love steadfastly simmers below the surface. This is not, however, simply a melodramatic tale of two saintly lovers pining away for one another. Victoria entertains other suitors and encourages Johannes to woo another woman. The unsatisfied longing between the two sometimes poisons their interactions, resulting in outbursts of resentment and hurtful exchanges. Victoria repeatedly makes it clear to Johannes that he is beneath her station, yet she unfairly resists letting him go completely and sometimes plays a cruel coquette. Though the novel begins as a very idyllic romance, it soon turns into an unconventional love story with a rather pessimistic view of love and fate.

Hamsun was a neo-Romanticist who rebelled against the trends of realism and naturalism that prevailed in world literature in the late-nineteenth century. He felt that modernism should aspire to more than just the relation of reality. Literature should delve into the psyche and soul as Romanticists had done before, but through the lens of modern philosophy and psychology. Here Hamsun accomplishes that through the use of stream of consciousness and interior monologue, literary techniques of which he was one of the world’s pioneers.

With its Castle and the Miller and so on, this novel has a very fairy-tale atmosphere to it, but I suspect it depicts the reality of Norway at a time when some vestiges of feudalism still existed in land ownership and social strata, particularly in rural areas. The psychological drama between the characters is anything but a fairy tale. Their behavior bears the authenticity of real relationships, which is what makes this story timelessly compelling more than a century later. Hamsun may have shunned realism, but I think there is still a naturalistic aspect to this novel in the way that the characters are shaped and restricted by their social environment and the class system of their time. All lit-crit terminology aside, I liked Hamsun’s delicate balance between romance and realism here, and more importantly he made me truly care about these characters and feel what they felt.  

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Literature of the “Soil”

Agrarian epics from around the world
As an enthusiast of classic literature, Old Books by Dead Guys loves to review epic novels. Just because a story is epic, however, doesn’t mean it has to be set in ancient Rome, a war-torn battlefield, or outer space. Some of the best epics take place right at home on the farm. In these “peasant” epics, hard-working multigenerational families carve a living from the soil while contending with poverty, family conflicts, and the unforgiving elements. Such books often bear a strident message of social justice, the dignity of labor, and in some cases perhaps even hints of socialist revolution. Every nation’s literature has got to have at least one great agrarian epic. Realist writers of all nations have captured the heroic drama in the daily life of their homeland’s agriculturalists. Today at Old Books by Dead Guys, we celebrate the literature of “earth,” “soil,” and “dust,” listed below in chronological order. Click on the titles below to read the full reviews.

  

Sons of the Soil (Les Paysans, 1855) by Honoré de Balzac (France) - 3.5 stars
This is Balzac’s final novel, also known as Les Paysans or The Peasantry. The story takes place in the Burgundy region of France and focuses on the antagonism between a land-owning count and the peasants of his district. Rather than glamorizing farming life, Balzac approaches the story from an aristocratic perspective that makes the poor farmers the villains of the story. The plot is like a comical chess game in which the peasants try everything they can think of to rob, cheat, or swindle their landlord. Not exactly the message one usually looks for in an agrarian epic, but it does make for one entertaining novel.

Virgin Soil (1877) by Ivan Turgenev (Russia) - 4 stars
Virgin Soil is Russian realist Ivan Turgenev’s final novel. This is not really a peasant epic, but it does deal with agricultural life. The narrative takes place in the 1860s, at a time when a populist movement was gaining influence in Russia. Urban middle-class intellectuals venture out into the farmlands to preach socialist ideas to workers and the rural poor, hoping to inspire a revolution against the feudal system maintained by the Tsarist government. Like Balzac above, however, Turgenev’s depiction of these revolutionaries is quite unflattering and satirical. Though the main focus of the novel may be political, it does provide a vivid depiction of rural life in Russia.

The Earth (La Terre, 1887) by Emile Zola (France) - 5 stars
The official opinion of Old Books by Dead Guys is that Emile Zola is the world’s greatest novelist, and this is his second greatest novel, after Germinal. The Earth takes place in the Beauce, an agricultural region between Chartres and Orleans, where families have cultivated the same plots of land for generations. When one of these veteran farmers, Old Fouan, feels himself ready for retirement, he divides up his holdings among his three children. Not one of them, however, is happy with the portion he receives, which leads to animosity and treachery. Zola’s depiction of farm life is gritty and unglamorized. He captures both the dirty, exhausting toil and the spiritual satisfaction of agriculture in a range of moods from the terrifying to the hilarious. A masterpiece.

Emanuel, or Children of the Soil (1896) by Hendrik Pontoppidan (Denmark) - 4.5 stars
This is one of only a few works available in English by Pontoppidan, a Nobel Prize winner. The story takes place in rural Denmark in the late nineteenth century. As in Turgenev’s Virgin Soil, discussed above, the proliferation of liberal democratic ideals has begun to undermine the authority of the conservative aristocracy and the Church. A new young priest arrives in a seaside parish in rural Denmark. Rather than adopt the party line of his church, he sympathizes with the peasants and bears a romantic image of the farming life as a more honest and natural way of living. Such liberal ideals infuriate his superiors and threaten his career in the clergy. Through expert descriptive prose, Pontoppidan delivers an authentic slice of Danish rural life.

The Octopus (1901) by Frank Norris (California, USA) - 5 stars
Although it doesn’t have “Earth” or “Soil” in its title, The Octopus is one of America’s greatest agricultural epics. It concerns the lives of wheat farmers in Tulare County, California. Based on a real-life incident, the Mussel Slough Tragedy (1880), this novel tells the story of a violent conflict between the farmers of this community and an all-powerful railroad corporation (the “octopus” referenced in the title). In his portrayal of the rural landscape and agricultural life, Norris displays an extraordinary faculty for natural description and an exceptional talent for drawing gripping scenes of ordinary people faced with extraordinary circumstances. If you’re looking for the Great American Novel, this is it. 

The Peasants (four volumes, 1904-1909) by Wladyslaw Reymont (Poland) - 5 stars
This lesser-known Polish novel just might be the gold standard by which all peasant epics must be measured. The Peasants (Polish title: Chlopi) was published in four volumes, one for each of the seasons of the year: Autumn, Winter, Spring, and Summer must be read in order. Over the course of that fictional year, the reader becomes intimately involved in the lives and loves of the residents of the rural town of Lipka. The children of the village’s most prosperous farmer, Mathias Boryna, want him to step down and divide his land among his descendants, but he scoffs at them by marrying a young bride, thus inciting family conflict. Similar in style and subject matter to Zola’s The Earth (see above)—it’s a toss-up as to which of these two epics is the greater work of literature.

Growth of the Soil (1917) by Knut Hamsun (Norway) - 5 stars
This is a masterful peasant epic from Nobel laureate Hamsun. A solitary figure, heavily laden with supplies, trudges into the Norwegian wilds, a day’s walk from the nearest village. He selects a plot of land, cuts the timber, and begins turning the soil. One day a woman comes. Together as man and wife they carve out a living from the earth and build a home, a farm, and a family around which a community forms. Bad influences from the city, however, threaten the peace of their agrarian life. This novel is a truly powerful and moving reading experience.

Dust (1921) by Marcet and Emanuel Haldeman-Julius (Kansas, USA) - 5 stars
Written by Mr. and Mrs. Haldeman-Julius, who ran America’s largest publisher of socialist literature from a little town in Southeastern Kansas. Dust is set in that very region and depicts agricultural life in hard-scrabble, unromantic terms. The novel’s primary concern, however, is a dysfunctional marriage between a husband who believes hard work, livestock, land, and profits are all that’s valuable in life and a wife who longs for love, happiness and beauty while condemned to a life of unrelenting toil. The setting may be reminiscent of Willa Cather, but the story bears the brutal naturalism of one of Frank Norris or Emile Zola’s darker works. A Kansas classic!

The Good Earth (1931) by Pearl S. Buck (USA, raised in China) - 5 stars
Pearl S. Buck, though born in America, was raised by missionary parents in China. Her second novel, The Good Earth, took the Western world by storm, for it was the first authentic literary peek behind the silk curtain of Chinese life. Wang Lung and his wife O-Lan start out as poor farmers in a mud-brick house, but through hard work, personal sacrifice, and a little luck, their family gradually rises from humble beginnings to a position of security and status. The story spans the first few decades of the early twentieth century, including scenes of the Chinese Revolution of 1911 that overthrew the Qing Dynasty. Though steeped in Chinese culture, The Good Earth transcends time and place with universal themes of love, family, pride, and greed. This is the first volume in a trilogy, followed by Sons and A House Divided.

Of course, you can’t really talk about peasant epics without mentioning John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath (1939). I have not read that book in the last eight years, so it hasn’t been reviewed at Old Books by Dead Guys. I do have a copy and hope to get to it in 2020.

False Alarms
Judging from their titles, these books might sound like agrarian epics, but in fact they are not:

Shallow Soil (1893) by Knut Hamsun (Norway) - 4.5 stars
Although this is a very good novel by Hamsun, it is not about “soil” or anything remotely agricultural. It is a story of modern urban life in late-nineteenth century Kristiania (present-day Oslo). I believe Hamsun uses the title Shallow Soil as a critical metaphor for the lack of national spirit necessary for Norway to develop into a great nation. (His opinion, not mine.)

Children of the Soil (1894) by Henryk Sienkiewicz (Poland) - 1 star
This is a terrible novel and again has very little to do with farming. Some of the characters do own agricultural lands, which peasants farm for them. This is a book about rich people’s problems, however, and a depressingly grueling examination of the institution of marriage.

The Native Soil (1957) by Alan E. Nourse (USA)
This is actually a science fiction novel about a planet made of mud. Definitely not a peasant epic.

Look Back on Happiness by Knut Hamsun

This wanderer should have wandered further
Look Back on Happiness, a novel by Nobel laureate Knut Hamsun, was originally published in 1912 under the Norwegian title Den sidste Glæde, and is also known in English as The Last Joy. Some critics place this novel as the third book in a “Wanderer Trilogy,” following Under the Autumn Star (1906) and A Wanderer Plays on Muted Strings (1909), but I don’t know if Hamsun ever designated it as such. Though the three books are similar in style and subject matter, there’s no concrete evidence in the text that the narrator in this book is the same character who featured in those two earlier novels, and Hamsun wrote a lot of books with wandering protagonists.

Here the unnamed narrator, a writer in his early seventies, is successful enough and wealthy enough to live his life as he pleases. Though a man of means, he chooses to leave city life behind and live a nomadic existence in the country. When the novel opens, he is spending the winter in a primitive hut and living off the land like Henry David Thoreau in a Norwegian Walden. The solitude gives him time for philosophical reflection and gives Hamsun the opportunity to indulge in some truly beautiful nature writing. Like Thoreau, however, the narrator is not a total recluse, and he does occasionally entertain visitors in his humble abode. The novel thus becomes less about his life in nature and more about the people he encounters in his travels.

When Spring arrives, the wanderer walks to a farm that operates a country inn for tourists who come to enjoy the mountain scenery. Here he gets to know the staff and the guests and becomes intimately involved in their affairs. From this point, very early on, the narrative veers away from the narrator’s personal journey to focus on these other characters’ lives. This is very much in keeping with Under the Autumn Star and A Wanderer Plays on Muted Strings, in that the narrator is almost more of a passive observer than a participant in the narrative. Even after he leaves this tourist retreat, he continues to coincidentally and unrealistically run into the inn’s guests wherever he roams. One woman in particular, a Miss Torsen, strikes his interest, and although he is too old for romantic involvement, he concerns himself in her affairs almost to the point of stalking her.

The picture Hamsun paints of this female character is not very flattering. At first she is depicted as a coquette who toys with men to boost her own self-esteem, though she does grow and become a more sympathetic character as the book goes on. As a schoolteacher, she is an educated woman, but the narrator denigrates her education, and Hamsun indicates that she can only find fulfillment through marriage and childbirth. Sexism should hardly be surprising in a century-old book, however, and Hamsun may just be espousing the joys of simpler family values, as his male narrator likewise represents an ignorance-is-bliss and back-to-nature attitude towards life. There is no doubt a fair amount of social and political commentary in the book that a Norwegian in 1912 might have found very insightful, but much of it was likely lost on this 21st-century reader. For example, one character goes off on an anti-Switzerland tirade that falls somewhere between good-natured ribbing and an international incident.

Look Back on Happiness is one of Hamsun’s less successful works. The fact that he so soon abandons the natural and nomadic aspects of the story in favor of a sort of modern novel of manners is a disappointment. He keeps the reader interested enough to want to move from one chapter to the next, but in the end one wonders what the point is and whether it was all just a waste of time.
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Pan by Knut Hamsun

A Nordic Eden corrupted
Norwegian Nobel laureate Knut Hamsun’s novel Pan was first published in 1894. The story begins in 1855 in the Norwegian county of Nordland. The narrator, a Lieutenant Glahn, is spending the better part of a year in a cabin in the woods, living alone with his dog Aesop and hunting for his food. In the opening passages of the book, Hamsun vividly describes the beautiful natural environment and Glahn’s intimate relationship to it through his primitive way of living. Glahn brings to mind other nomadic woodsmen in Hamsun’s body of work, such as the narrator of Under the Autumn Star and A Wanderer Plays on Muted Strings, or the hero Isak from Growth of the Soil. At first the book reads like it’s going to be a variation on Thoreau’s Walden set in a Norwegian wood. Glahn is never far from civilization, however. He socializes with citizens of a nearby town and even attends parties, though when he does he can’t help but display a marked social awkwardness that often leaves him feeling ashamed. He falls in love with Edwarda, the daughter of a local landowner, and the two embark on what would appear to be an innocent love, the ideal union of wilderness and civilization.

As the relationship develops, however, it becomes less idyllic and more and more twisted. If the two are at a party, for example, and don’t speak to each other for 15 minutes, petty jealousies arise and resentments fester. Hamsun starts to paint Edwarda as a manipulative and fickle coquette, and Glahn proves to be no saint himself. Competition for Edwarda’s affections comes in the form of other suitors, which threatens Glahn’s fragile self-esteem. One can’t help but admire the realism with which Hamsun details the twists and turns in this relationship, yet the relentless pettiness, verbal cruelty, and spiteful retaliations make for an unpleasant read. It is hard to tell whether Hamsun meant this as an authentic portrait of the romantic histrionics of his age, like a modernist version of Goethe’s Sorrows of Young Werther, or as a study of mental illness, since Glahn is clearly unhinged. In Pan, Hamsun speaks of nature with a romanticist’s voice, but he takes a bluntly realistic approach to human psychology. He details the landscape of the human mind with the same stark, brutal, yet sensitive insight with which he describes the landscape of the earth.

Pan, the titular Greek god of the wild, is only referred to in passing in a couple of instances. Glahn himself is the real Pan of the story, a dichotomous embodiment of the wisdom of the forest and the lustful abandon of the wild beast. The narrative is interrupted on two occasions by the retelling of folk legends which parallel the main plot. Early in the book the narrator states that he’s writing his thoughts in a notebook, but really the tale is told mostly as stream of consciousness from inside Glahn’s mind, which is not always the most comfortable vantage point for the reader. An epilogue is written in the third person by a new character, who provides us an exterior perspective of Glahn’s appearance and behavior.

Pan is a rather disturbing and depressing work of art, but one can’t deny the masterly hand with which it was created. Hamsun’s novels prove time and again that he is a profound observer of the natural world, yet he could also write keen commentary on the morals and conventions of urban life, as seen in his novel Shallow Soil. Here in Pan those two worlds come together. Looking out over the landscape, Glahn remarks that he may be “seeing now the inner brain of the earth.” Through Hamsun’s expert prose, the reader sees it too, coupled with the sometimes ugly inner soul of humanity.
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A Wanderer Plays on Muted Strings by Knut Hamsun

Witness to a dying marriage

Knut Hamsun

Knut Hamsun’s 1909 novel A Wanderer Plays on Muted Strings is the sequel to 1906’s Under the Autumn Star and the second book in a trilogy of works by the Norwegian Nobel laureate. In English translation, the two books have been published together in one volume entitled Wanderers or The Wanderer. The third book in the trilogy, The Last Joy (or, Look Back in Happiness) was published in 1912.

While Under the Autumn Star was little longer than a novella, A Wanderer Plays on Muted Strings is a more substantial work, about twice as long as its predecessor. In both books, the narrator is a man named Knud Pedersen, which also happens to be Hamsun’s birth name. Pedersen has previously lived a life of means in a big city, but later in life he chooses to live as an itinerant laborer, traveling from farm to farm over the rural countryside to find work as a handyman. This second book opens roughly six years after the conclusion of the first. The narrator, still wandering, returns to seek employment at the estate of Captain and Fruen (Mrs.) Falkenberg, one of his temporary residences in Under the Autumn Star. Some of the supporting characters from that volume also return, including his coworkers Grindhusen and Lars Falkenberg and the servant woman Emma.

While the first book had the feeling of an autobiographical novel or memoir, this one concentrates more on the Falkenbergs, with the narrator playing the role of an outside observer. Much of the goings-on in the Falkenberg house are related through the conversations of their servants and workmen. The Captain and his wife are having marital troubles, and both are fooling around with other people. Frankly, I found this direction less compelling than the previous novel. Under the Autumn Star was more of a personal examination of the narrator: his wanderlust, his personal growth, his inner conflicts, and his time spent working amidst the natural environment of rural Norway. Here, the focus on the Falkenberg’s marriage is more melodramatic, and, since there’s little trace of autobiographical content, reveals little about the author himself. In the first novel, the narrator had a special connection to Fruen that is largely glossed over here. The attraction or obsession he felt for her is minimized as he seems to be content with playing the role of observer and benevolent servant. The marital power struggle of the Falkenbergs becomes repetitive as they engage in numerous squabbles and attacks.

There is no denying Hamsun’s power as a writer, however, and despite my disappointment in the choice of subject matter I can’t help but admire what he does with it. The ending is very powerful and redeems much of the shortcomings of the earlier portions of the novel. As in the first book, there are some incredibly beautiful passages of poetic prose in which Hamsun paints pictures of nature with a seductive lyricism and an acute eye for detail. Compared to the first book, however, such passages are few and far between, and one wishes there were more of them.

The resolution of this second book feels complete, to the point where I’m not sure how Hamsun is going to make a trilogy out of this, but I’m looking forward to finding out when I read The Last Joy. Though not on a par with his masterpiece Growth of the Soil, Hamsun’s trilogy—thus far, anyway—often displays the same degree of power and beauty that characterizes this exceptional author’s work.
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Under the Autumn Star by Knut Hamsun

Reflections on a vagabond life
Under the Autumn Star, a short novel by Nobel Prize-winning author Knut Hamsun, was originally published in 1906 under the Norwegian title of Under Høststjærnen. It is the first volume in a trilogy, the second book of which is entitled A Wanderer Plays on Muted Strings. The third and final volume has been published in English as either The Last Joy or Look Back in Happiness. In English-language editions, the first two volumes are often confusingly lumped together into one book entitled Wanderers or The Wanderer.

Under the Autumn Star is narrated by an educated man who comes from a “good family.” As the book opens, he has taken up residence at a rented country cottage. He has spent time in the city and has cultivated sophisticated manners, but he has grown tired of urban life and has decided to live a quieter and more solitary existence. Before long, however, he decides rather than stay put at this seaside retreat, he will wander the countryside as an itinerant handyman, passing himself off as a common laborer and earning his living with his hands. Often in partnership with other wandering workmen he meets along the way, he stops at various farms, looking for work and requesting shelter. While digging wells, cutting wood, or excavating trenches, he and his fellow workmen often have their eyes on the wives, daughters, or servant girls of the landholders that employ them.

As the story develops, we learn the name of this narrator—Knud Pedersen—which also happens to be the birth name of the author, thus indicating that this is an autobiographical work. If indeed this is a faithful representation of Hamsun’s own life then it is an unusually candid one that delves deeply into his psychological state and reveals memories of past love affairs. The book has the wistfully nostalgic feeling of a memoir, sometimes humorous and often touching. Like many of Hamsun’s works, the narrative has a very meandering feeling, seemingly following a course of unconnected observations as the protagonist moves from place to place. Though the subtle plot may create the illusion of haphazardness, Hamsun gradually builds an emotional tension that drives the reader forward to each successive chapter. Though the narrator possesses a youthful wanderlust, he is no longer a youth. There are indications that he may have suffered some psychological trauma in his former life. Despite his penchant for manual labor, he possesses a sensitive soul and takes matters of the heart seriously, perhaps too seriously. Towards the end of the book the narrator exhibits behavior that verges on creepiness, at least by today’s standards, but you nevertheless feel strongly for him because of the uncompromising realism and sensitivity with which Hamsun renders his emotional state.

The English translation by W. W. Worster presents some difficulties. The translator retains Norwegian titles like Fruen (lady, wife, Mrs.) and Frøken (Miss), and the less common praestefruen (minister’s wife, I assume). One awkward aspect of the text is the repeated reference to the “thumbnail” of a smoking pipe that Knud is crafting. Not only is the use of this term in reference to the pipe unclear, it also takes on a bizarre and unexpected meaning later in the book.

The conclusion of Under the Autumn Star is sufficiently resolved for it to stand alone as a complete novel, but it also anticipates the next volume in the trilogy. After having enjoyed this first installment, I look forward to following this wanderer into book two.
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Shallow Soil by Knut Hamsun

Modern love in fin de siècle Norway

Knut Hamsun

Shallow Soil, a novel by Knut Hamsun, was originally published in 1893 under the Norwegian title of Ny Jord. Hamsun, a prolific writer with a long career, would later go on to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1920. Though generally regarded as Norway’s pre-eminent modernist, Shallow Soil is a book that harkens back to a naturalistic style of storytelling that bears more resemblance to earlier writers like Emile Zola or Norway’s own Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson than to Hamsun’s more experimental works.

The story takes place in Kristiania (present-day Oslo). Hamsun depicts cosmoplitan urban life in early modern Norway through the lives of a clique of young city-dwelling artists and professionals. Included among this group are a few prominent upstart writers and painters, as well as working men such as merchants, a lawyer, and a journalist. While the artistic members of the coterie strive for recognition and compete for public funding, their bills are often paid by their friends the businessmen, who seem happy to support their comrades as a way of contributing to their nation’s artistic development. These young gentlemen, along with their wives and mistresses, meet and socialize at cafes, restaurants, theatres, and offices, arguing over politics and debating the merits of the latest literary productions. When Ole Henriksen, who runs his father’s shipping and trading company, gets engaged to Aagot, a girl from the country, he brings her to the city where she is welcomed into the group. This beautiful young woman, with her small-town innocence and wide-eyed enthusiasm, is a rare commodity in the cynical city, and soon Ole is not the only gentleman who hopes to win her heart.

There is a political element to the novel as well. These young people clamor for radical reform and constantly complain about the weakness and indecision of their country’s parliament. A mysterious stranger named Coldevin arrives from the country, however, and criticizes the whiney indolence of Norway’s youth. Instead of gushing over the latest poets and playwrights, he suggests Norway’s young people should invest their energies in science and industry. Instead of whining about their government, they should take pride in their nation and encourage its development. I don’t know much about Hamsun’s politics, except that later in life he supported the Nazis. Here in Shallow Soil, one gets a taste of his conservative, nationalistic views. Nevertheless, the novel is primarily a love story—actually two or three love stories—and a very good one. Surprisingly forward and frank in its depiction of what would have been called “loose morals” in the 19th century, this book still holds a great deal of appeal for audiences of the 21st. Despite the book’s antiquity, the scenes of human drama that Hamsun portrays here—falling in love, seduction, rejection, betrayal, breakup, heartache—are ones that readers will recognize from their own lives. Here they are eloquently rendered with sensitivity, authenticity, and pathos.

To American audiences, Hamsun is perhaps best known for his novel Hunger, a work that’s a little too angst-ridden and self-consciously modernist for my tastes. Shallow Soil, coming out a few years later, feels more mature and less pretentiously artsy. This work should not be confused with Hamsun’s 1917 novel Growth of the Soil, which is a totally different book and a true masterpiece. As explained above, however, Shallow Soil is also exceptional, so if you find yourself reading either one of Hamsun’s “Soil” novels, you really can’t go wrong.
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Growth of the Soil by Knut Hamsun

An epic saga of Man and Earth
In spite of the fact that I did not grow up on a farm, or perhaps because of it, I’ve always been a sucker for a good peasant epic. As soon as I heard of Growth of the Soil I wanted to read it. Once I dove into chapter one it quickly earned a spot among my all-time favorites.

Growth of the Soil was written in 1917 by Norwegian novelist Knut Hamsun, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1920, due largely to the magnificence of this great work. The novel opens with a solitary figure, heavily laden with supplies, trudging across the wilds of Norway. A day’s walk from the nearest village, he selects a spot to call his home, and begins cutting timber and turning the soil. He erects a sod house which is visited once every few months by the occasional nomadic herder, and he makes it known to those who come by that he is looking for a woman to help him with the chores around the place. One day that woman comes. The very night of her arrival they begin living together as man and wife. They are simple folk, not particularly smart and far from beautiful, but they work hard, relentlessly, like two beasts of burden, to carve a living from the earth. Together Isak and Inger build a home, a farm, and a family in this deserted wasteland.

Eventually a community forms around them, and their isolation diminishes. Their estate, dubbed Sellanraa, increases in size, wealth, and conveniences. Yet this is no rural Utopia. Evil influences invade their bucolic idyll. When residents of this rural outpost venture into the villages and cities, they return with unhealthy ideas that foster a disillusionment with their agrarian life and lead them toward sin. An undercurrent of stoic and pantheistic morality pervades the book. The more the characters surrender themselves to the will of nature, the greater their contentment and reward. The more they stray from the natural order of life on the land, the greater their disappointment and ruin.

Growth of the Soil bears some resemblance to another well-known work of literature, The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck. Both novels chronicle the lives of farming families. Hamsun’s work, however, is darker in tone, more psychologically complex, and, despite being written 15 years earlier, a touch more modernistic in style. Hamsun presents a naturalistic slice of rural life in Norway, just as Buck tells a realistic story of farmers in China, yet both books transcend the spatial and temporal limits of their settings to make universal statements on the themes of family, work, and the relationship of man to his environment. Both books use deceptively simple language to tell their tales, exhibiting an elegant economy of words evocative of the stark and simple lives of the characters being depicted. In Hamsun’s case, I’m not sure if I have him to thank for this beautiful prose, or the English translator W. W. Worster, but every sentence of this work is as pithily poetic as a carefully crafted haiku.

Reading Growth of the Soil is a powerful and moving experience. From the opening lines of the first page one immediately becomes intimately engaged in the lives of these vividly drawn characters. When the book comes to an end it’s difficult to say goodbye. Unlike The Good Earth, unfortunately, Growth of the Soil has no sequel, so enjoy every page while you can.
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Hunger by Knut Hamsun

Groundbreaking but not earth-shattering
This novel by Nobel Prize-winning Norwegian author Knut Hamsun relates the thoughts and actions of an unnamed, unemployed, and starving narrator who ekes out a meagre existence in the city of Kristiania (known today as Oslo). Besides selling an occasional philosophical article to the local newspapers, this man has no means of reliable income and does not put forth much effort into acquiring any. Though apparently well-educated, he exhibits obvious signs of mental illness. It’s unclear, however, whether his psychological problems are the result of his hunger and unemployment, or vice versa. He considers himself to be singled out for persecution by God, and curses the Almighty defiantly. While he recognizes his own wretchedness, his preoccupation with personal dignity and civilized propriety often results in him turning down money or food that may be of valuable use in prolonging his life. Through this first-person account of a troubled and delusional mind, Hamsun provides a sometimes bleak, sometimes comical vision of the frustrating insignificance of an individual lost within the framework of modern civilization.

Hunger was first published in 1890, but in style and substance it is decades ahead of its time. It demonstrates one of the first uses of the stream of consciousness narrative mode, and in its preoccupation with internal human psychology as opposed to concrete plot events, it is a precursor to much of the modernist literature of the early 20th century.

Unfortunately, one of the characteristics of modernism evident in this book is the lack of a satisfying plot. Hamsun’s primary concern is providing a psychological profile of his character, and little attention is paid to the structure of the story. The narrator wanders the streets, running into friends, acquaintances, and strangers, pathologically lying to them about his wretched condition. Sometimes he lucks into money which he self-destructively squanders. There’s no progression forward towards a finality. The scenes of this novel could be shuffled like a deck of cards with little consequence to its overall effect. A few paragraphs of conclusion are tacked onto the back end of the book, but the ending is such a convenient resolution that it seems a little silly in its disregard for the preceding tone of the overall narrative.

Hunger is an important novel, but that doesn’t necessarily make it an enjoyable read. While I appreciate its influence on the history of world literature, the book itself is good but not great. It did produce a profound enough effect on me, however, that I hope to read more of Hamsun’s work in the future.
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