Knut Hamsun. in Life and Letters

KNUT HAMSUN IN LIFE AND LETTERS 337 All the emphasis upon the dual na —in certain moods. And unable to ture of the humorist loses its point be feel confident hope in the reunion with cause it is true of him only as it is true his beloved beyond the grave, his great, of all of us. To show Mark Twain as loving heart bled, and he suffered so special in this, is misleading; the con much as to break out savagely at times tradictions in his character are those in protest against such a world. That to which homo sapiens has always been is the clue to his so-called pessimism. subject. And' the theory built up upon I end as I began: personality is a it, that his was a "frustrate" spirit, mystery and we are all guessing about has behind it the explanation that in a each other. Mr. Brooks is guessing in sense we are all frustrate, since we fall a very interesting way about a great short of our ideals, and the fall is man, Mark Twain; but just because greater in proportion as the ideals he is a guesser, and lacks the correc are higher. What "frustrated" Mark tive of personal contact, his view is Twain, so far as that is true of him, not altogether satisfactory. But let was not some women holding on to his the guessing go on, for even in our im coat-tails, but the melancholy sadness pressionistic day, there may be a vision that came to him in beholding a uni of objective reality,—if it be only a verse that held beauty, truth, honor, composite of all the guesses, gathered kindness, and love, if only as concepts, into organic proportion by somebody and yet also held the tragic antinomies who has the godlike trick of guessing of meanness, cruelty, unfaith, and ha right! tred. Seeing this, he challenged God, The Ordeal of Mark Twain. By Van Wyck Brooks. E. P. Dutton and Co. KNUT HAMSUN. IN LIFE AND LETTERS • BY JULIUS MORITZEN NUT HAMSUN joins the ranks of novels, plays, and essays; that his K Nobel prizewinners almost un European fame was established long known to American readers. To be before the Nobel prize committee sure, his "Hunger", "Shallow Soil", sought him out for the 1920 award, it and "The Growth of the Soil" are is rather a wonder that only now the available in their English translations, western hemisphere takes any special and there is promise that "Pan" will interest in a personality unique among soon appear to afford a fresh oppor those that make up the writing world. tunity here for judging the literary It is perhaps a natural thing for the craftsmanship of this Norwegian daily press to seize upon such features writer. But when it is considered that of a man's rise to fame as produce the Hamsun's productivity covers a period strongest contrast between early dep of thirty-four years; that in that time rivations and latter-day prosperity. he has written more than twenty-five Hence it is not surprising that we are PRODUCED BY UNZ.ORG ELECTRONIC REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED 338 THE BOOKMAN now being told how Knut Hamsun ger", that tells about a poor farmer toiled and proved a total failure as a boy left an orphan. Here, perhaps, we conductor on one of the old Chicago have the earliest effort of Knut Ham horse-cars;' how previous to that ex sun at self-portrayal; for it goes with perience he labored behind the plough out saying that "Bjdrger" is autobio in the northwest; how he subsequently graphical to the core, plus the imagina went to Newfoundland and became a tions that already then revealed the fisherman,—all this during the early born poet. 'eighties after reaching America in Leaving the shoemaker's bench to search of adventure and good fortune. roam afield, Knut Hamsun became a That he was sorely disappointed here, coal-heaver in Bodo harbor. Self-edu he set forth later in more than one of cated as he was, he next managed to his books, but that probably was as try his hand as a private school teach much because of the Hamsun tempera er. The spirit of adventure seized him ment as because he failed to embrace further, and in succession he was his opportunity. At any rate, one of stone-cutter, lumber-jack, a student in his first literary ventures after his re Christiania, without attaining his goal. turn to Norway, "Intellectual Life in Then off he went to America, the land Modern America", is not to be taken of great promise. In addition to his un too seriously. Rather, impressionistic lucky experience as conductor of a Chi as it is and reflecting a mood that har cago horse-car, and his previous labors bored some real or imaginary griev as a ploughboy in North Dakota, he ance, Hamsun himself said in later added to his vocations that of lecturer years that the picture may not be as in Minneapolis. Tiring of it all, Ham true as he believed it to be in 1889, sun finally reached Newfoundland when the book was written. However where, far from civilization, with only we may disagree with "Intellectual a few companions among the native Life in Modern America", yet it con fishermen, he spent three long years in Tnpln virtual solitude, Carl Morburger, one tains mer suggest?iv e to a degree of a mind of great receptiv of the keenest critics of Knut Ham ity. sun's literary activity, gives it as his Born in Gudbrandsdalen, the smil opinion that it was the desolation of ing valley of central Norway, taken at the Newfoundland fishing banks that the age of four years to the Lofoten furnished the Norwegian author with islands, Knut, the farmer boy, did not that background for his development relish the life of the fisher folk of that as a writer which gave it the stamp of forbidden part of the country. Mak realism, a psychological perception of ing his home with .a stern relative, as the rarest kind. soon as he had been confirmed he was Hamsun is a true son of the Scan placed in apprenticeship, to a shoe dinavian north. While many of his maker. But scribbling, not cobbling writings breathe the atmosphere of the shoes, was the early ambition of Knut east, and its barbaric splendor of the Hamsun. In secret he wrote verses time gone by, it is ever the Northland and a story, and just as secretly saved to which he returns as his first love. It his money so as to have his literary is not for nothing that the spirit of labors appear in print. He was only independence prevails throughout all seventeen when he blossomed forth Norwegian literature. The only aris with a long poem, and a story, "Bjor- tocracy that the Norseman acknowl- PRODUCED BY UNZ.ORG ELECTRONIC REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED KNUT HAMSUN IN LIFE AND LETTERS 339 edges is the nobility of man himself. ugly scars. Nagel in "Mysteries" is a To an analyst like Knut Hamsun this scoffer who enlists but little sympathy. freedom from highborn masters is Critics have believed that they find bound to assert itself in whatever he some kinship between Knut Hamsun produces. While battling against the and the Russian realists—particularly elemental obstacles that prevent them it is Dostoyevsky that they have in from reaching their goal, his heroes fit mind. so fully into their environment that But Hamsun, after all, believes in the Hamsun climax seems a matter of the regeneration of mankind. He is providential accuracy. Self-conscious not in despair because of the misery as they are, the men and women that that exists, but rather makes events make up Knut Hamsun's gallery of run their race and lets the beauty of characters are yet possessed of that old age make up for youth's folly. That larger outlook on life without which he fully considers man as dependent on their existence would be nothing more the years placed to his credit, is as evi than a mockery. dent as is the fact that in his own case It is of course true that Knut Ham Knut Hamsun at the age of sixty sun does not cleave close to the niceties shows no sign of deterioration. To ex of the conventionalities. Frequently plain this paradox is not an easy mat he administers a rude shock to the sen ter. Perhaps it is one of his purposes sibilities. He lets his characters lead to state what are the inexorable laws their own lives, merely acting as inter of nature and then give his characters preter and making them appear in a an opportunity to rid themselves of certain order. Nagel, in "Mysteries", their handicaps, with what success or Lieutenant Glahn in "Pan", Vendt the otherwise is best seen as we scrutinize Monk, in the play of that name, Ka- his company of performers. reno, Rosa, Benoni, or whatever they Viewing Knut Hamsun in retrospect, are called, in almost every instance the desire is strong to divide his lit have complete liberty of action, if only erary career into three parts. The they remember that just because they first period logically takes in such pro are frequently figments of the imag ductions as "Hunger", "Intellectual ination they must be the more true to Life in Modern America", "Mysteries", form. To Hamsun fiction is but an in "Pan", "Victoria", and thef three plays, strument for the better delineation of "At the Gate of the Kingdom", "The reality as it is.

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