Knut Hamsun

Knut Hamsun
Knut Hamsun in July 1939, 79 years
Born	Knud Pedersen August 4, 1859(1859-08-04) Lom, Gudbrandsdal, Norway
Died	February 19, 1952(1952-02-19) (aged 92) Grimstad, Nørholm, Norway
Occupation	Author, poet, dramatist, social critic
Nationality	Norwegian
Period	1877–1949
Literary movement	Neo-romanticism Neo-realism
Notable award(s)	Nobel Prize in Literature 1920
Influences Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Friedrich Nietzsche, Henrik Ibsen, Arthur Schopenhauer, Magdalena Thoresen, Georg Brandes, Henrik Wergeland, Lord Byron, August Strindberg
Influenced Ernest Hemingway, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Thomas Mann, Maxim Gorky, Charles Bukowski, John Fante, Lars Saabye Christensen, Gabriel Scott, Henry Miller, Franz Kafka, Stefan Zweig, Hermann Hesse

Knut Hamsun (August 4, 1859 – February 19, 1952) was a Norwegian author, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1920. He was praised by King Haakon VII of Norway as Norway's soul.^[1]

Hamsun's work spans more than 70 years and shows variation with regard to the subject, perspective and environment. He published more than 20 novels, a collection of poetry, some short stories and plays, a travelogue, and some essays.

The young Hamsun objected to realism and naturalism. He argued that the main object of modern literature should be the intricacies of the human mind, that writers should describe the "whisper of blood, and the pleading of bone marrow".^[2] Hamsun is considered the "leader of the Neo-Romantic revolt at the turn of the century", with works such as Hunger (1890), Mysteries (1892), Pan (1894), and Victoria (1898).^[3] His later works—in particular his "Nordland novels"—were influenced by the Norwegian new realism, portraying everyday life in rural Norway and often employing local dialect, irony, and humour.^[4] The epic work Growth of the Soil (1917) earned him the Nobel Prize.

Hamsun is considered to be "one of the most influential and innovative literary stylists of the past hundred years" (ca. 1890–1990).^[5] He pioneered psychological literature with techniques of stream of consciousness and interior monologue, and influenced authors such as Thomas Mann, Franz Kafka, Maxim Gorky, Stefan Zweig, Henry Miller, Hermann Hesse, and Ernest Hemingway.^[6] Isaac Bashevis Singer called Hamsun "the father of the modern school of literature in his every aspect—his subjectiveness, his fragmentariness, his use of flashbacks, his lyricism. The whole modern school of fiction in the twentieth century stems from Hamsun".^[7] Ernest Hemingway stated that "Hamsun taught me to write".^[6]

On August 4, 2009, the Knut Hamsun Centre was opened in Hamarøy.^[8] Since 1916, several of Hamsun's works have been adapted into motion pictures.

Biography

Hamsun in 1890, the year he published his first major work, Hunger.

Early life

Knut Hamsun was born as Knud Pedersen in Lom, Norway in Gudbrandsdal.^[9] He was the fourth son (of seven children) of Peder Pedersen and Tora Olsdatter. When he was three, the family moved to Hamsund, Hamarøy in Nordland.^[10] They were poor and an uncle had invited them to farm his land for him.

At age nine, Knut was separated from his family and lived with his uncle Hans Olsen, who needed help with the post office he ran. Olsen used to beat and starve his nephew, and Hamsun later stated that his chronic nervous difficulties were due to the way his uncle treated him.

In 1874, he finally escaped back to Lom, Norway. In the next five years, he would pick up any job just for the sake of the money. That included being a store clerk, peddler, shoemaker's apprentice, an assistant to a sheriff, and an elementary school teacher. ^[11]

At 17, he became an apprentice to a ropemaker, and at about the same time he started to write. He spent several years in America, traveling and working at various jobs, and published his impressions under the title Fra det moderne Amerikas Aandsliv (1889).

Literary career

Working all those odd jobs paid off^{[citation needed]}, and he published his first book about it: Den Gaadefulde: En Kjærlighedshistorie fra Nordland (The Enigmatic Man: A Love Story from Northern Norway, 1877).

In his second novel Bjørger (1878), he attempted to imitate Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson's writing style of the Icelandic saga narrative. The melodramatic story follows a poet Bjørger and his love for Laura. This book was published under the pseudonym Knud Pedersen Hamsund. This book later served as the basis for Victoria: En Kærligheds Historie (1898; translated as Victoria: A Love Story, 1923).^[12]

Arrest

He was detained by police on June 14, 1945 (for the commission of acts of treason) and was committed to a hospital (Grimstad sykehus) "due to his advanced age", according to Einar Kringlen (a professor and M.D.).^[13]

Trial

In 1947 he was tried in Grimstad, and fined.^[14] Norway's supreme court reduced the fine — from Norwegian kroner 575 000 to 325 000^[15].

Death

Knut Hamsun died on February 19, 1952, aged 92, in Grimstad, Norway. His ashes are buried in the garden of his home at Nørholm.^[16]

Legacy

Thomas Mann described him "as a descendant of Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Friedrich Nietzsche". Arthur Koestler was a fan of his love stories. H. G. Wells praised Markens Grøde (1917) for which Hamsun was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Isaac Bashevis Singer was a fan of modern subjectivism, use of flashbacks, his use of fragmentation, and his lyricism^[12] And Charles Bukowski called him the greatest writer to have ever lived.

Work

Hamsun first received wide acclaim with his 1890 novel Hunger (Sult). The semiautobiographical work described a young writer's descent into near madness as a result of hunger and poverty in the Norwegian capital of Kristiania (modern name Oslo). To many, the novel presages the writings of Franz Kafka and other twentieth-century novelists with its internal monologue and bizarre logic.

A theme to which Hamsun often returned is that of the perpetual wanderer, an itinerant stranger (often the narrator) who shows up and insinuates himself into the life of small rural communities. This wanderer theme is central to the novels Mysteries, Pan, Under the Autumn Star, The Last Joy, Vagabonds, and others.

Hamsun’s prose often contains rapturous depictions of the natural world, with intimate reflections on the Norwegian woodlands and coastline. For this reason, he has been linked with the spiritual movement known as pantheism ("There is no God," he once wrote. "Only gods."). Hamsun saw mankind and nature united in a strong, sometimes mystical bond. This connection between the characters and their natural environment is exemplified in the novels Pan, A Wanderer Plays on Muted Strings, and the epic Growth of the Soil, "his monumental work" credited with securing him the Nobel Prize in literature in 1920.^[17]

A fifteen-volume edition of his complete works was published in 1954. In 2009, to mark the 150-year anniversary of his birth, a new 27-volume edition of his complete works was published, including short stories, poetry, plays, and articles not included in the 1954 edition. For this new edition, all of Hamsun's works underwent slight linguistic modifications in order to make them more accessible to contemporary Norwegian readers.^[18] Fresh English translations of two of his major works, Growth of the Soil and Pan, were published in 1998.

Hamsun’s works remain popular. In 2009, a Norwegian biographer stated, "We can’t help loving him, though we have hated him all these years ... That’s our Hamsun trauma. He’s a ghost that won’t stay in the grave."^[19]

Writing techniques

Along with August Strindberg, Henrik Ibsen, and Sigrid Undset, Hamsun formed a quartet of Scandinavian authors who became internationally known for their works. Hamsun pioneered psychological literature with techniques of stream of consciousness and interior monologue, as found in material by James Joyce, Marcel Proust, and Virginia Woolf.

Personal life

In 1898, Hamsun married Bergljot Göpfert (née Bech), who bore him the daughter Victoria, but the marriage ended in 1906. Hamsun then married Marie Andersen (b. 1881) in 1909 and she was his companion until the end of his life. With Marie Hamsun he had four children, the sons Tore and Arild and the daughters Elinor and Cecilia.

Marie wrote about her life with Hamsun in two memoirs. She was a promising actress when she met Hamsun but ended her career and traveled with him to Hamarøy. They bought a farm, the idea being "to earn their living as farmers, with his writing providing some additional income".

After a few years, they decided to move south, to Larvik. In 1918, the couple bought Nørholm, an old and somewhat dilapidated manor house between Lillesand and Grimstad. The main residence was restored and redecorated. Here Hamsun could occupy himself with writing undisturbed, although he often travelled to write in other cities and places (preferably in spartan housing).

Political sympathies

In younger years, Hamsun had anarchist leanings of an anti-egalitarian, racially conscious bent. In The Cultural Life of America (1889), he expressed his fear of miscegenation: "The Negros are and will remain Negros, a nascent human form from the tropics, rudimentary organs on the body of white society. Instead of founding an intellectual elite, America has established a mulatto studfarm."^[20]

Following the Second Boer War, he adopted increasingly conservative views. He also came to be known as a prominent advocate of Germany and German culture, as well as a rhetorical opponent of British imperialism and the Soviet Union. During both the First and the Second World War, he publicly expressed his sympathy for Germany.

His sympathies were heavily influenced by the impact of the Boer War, seen by Hamsun as British oppression of a small people, as well as by his dislike of the English and distaste for the USA. During the 1930s, most of the Norwegian right-wing newspapers and political parties were sympathetic to various degrees to fascist regimes in Europe, and Hamsun came to be a prominent advocate of such views. During WWII, he continued to express his support for Germany, and his public statements led to controversy, in particular in the immediate aftermath of the war. When WWII started, he was over 80 years old, almost deaf and his main source of information was the conservative newspaper Aftenposten, which had been sympathetic to Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany from the beginning. He suffered two intracranial hemorrhages during the war.

Hamsun wrote several newspaper articles in the course of the war, famously stating in 1940 that "the Germans are fighting for us, and now are crushing England's tyranny over us and all neutrals".^[21] In 1943, he sent Germany’s minister of propaganda Joseph Goebbels his Nobel Prize medal as a gift. His biographer Thorkild Hansen interpreted this as part of the strategy to get an audience with Hitler.^[22] Hamsun was eventually invited to meet with Hitler; during the meeting, he complained about the German civilian administrator in Norway, Josef Terboven, and ask that imprisoned Norwegian citizens be released, enraging Hitler. Otto Dietrich describes the meeting in his memoirs as the only time that another person was able to get a word in edgewise with Hitler. He attributes the cause to Hamsun's deafness. Regardless, Dietrich notes that it took Hitler three days to get over his anger.^[23] Hamsun also on other occasions helped Norwegians who had been imprisoned for resistance activities and try to influence German policies in Norway.^[24]

Nevertheless, a week after Hitler's death, Hamsun wrote a eulogy for Hitler, saying “He was a warrior, a warrior for mankind, and a prophet of the gospel of justice for all nations.”^[19] Following the end of the war, angry crowds burned his books in public in major Norwegian cities and Hamsun was confined for several months in a psychiatric hospital.

Hamsun was forced to undergo a psychiatric examination, which concluded that he had "permanently impaired mental faculties", and on that basis the charges of treason were dropped. Instead, a civil liability case was raised against him, and in 1948 he had to pay a ruinous sum to the Norwegian government of 325,000 kroner for his alleged membership in Nasjonal Samling and for the moral support he gave to the Germans, but was cleared of any direct Nazi affiliation. Whether he was a member of Nasjonal Samling or not and whether his mental abilities were impaired is a much debated issue even today. Hamsun stated he was never a member of any political party.^{[citation needed]} He wrote his last book Paa giengrodde Stier (On Overgrown Paths) in 1949, a book many take as evidence of his functioning mental capabilities.^{[citation needed]} In it, he harshly criticizes the psychiatrists and the judges, and in his own words proves that he is not mentally ill.

The Danish author Thorkild Hansen investigated the trial and wrote the book The Hamsun Trial (1978), which created a storm in Norway. Among other things Hansen stated: "If you want to meet idiots, go to Norway," as he felt that such treatment of the old Nobel Prize-winning author was outrageous. In 1996 the Swedish director Jan Troell based the movie Hamsun on Hansen's book. In Hamsun, the Swedish actor Max von Sydow plays Knut Hamsun; his wife, Marie, is played by the Danish actress Ghita Nørby.

Bibliography

Hamsun bibliography 1879–2009 : literature on Knut Hamsun. This bibliography database is made by the National Library of Norway and the University library of Tromsø. The National Library maintains and updates it, and currently it includes about 10 000 articles, books and references.

Nobel Prize-winning writer Isaac Bashevis Singer was also greatly influenced by Hamsun and translated some of his works.

Author Henry Miller discusses a letter received from Knut Hamsun in Sexus (The Rosy Crucifixion)

Filmatization of literary works

Hamsun's works have been the basis of 25 films and television mini-series adaptations, starting in 1916.^[25]

The book Mysteries was the basis of a 1978 film of the same name (by the Dutch film company Sigma Pictures), directed by Paul de Lussanet, starring Sylvia Kristel, Rutger Hauer, Andrea Ferreol and Rita Tushingham.

Landstrykere (Wayfarers) is a Norwegian film from 1990 directed by Ola Solum.

The Telegraphist is a Norwegian movie from 1993 directed by Erik Gustavson. It is based on the novel "Mothwise" (of which the American title is "Dreamers").

Pan has been the basis of four films between 1922 and 1995. The latest adaptation, the Danish film of the same name, was directed by Henning Carlsen, who also directed the Danish, Norwegian and Swedish coproduction of the 1966 film Sult from Hamsun's novel of the same name.

Filmatized biography

A biopic entitled Hamsun was released in 1996, directed by Jan Troell, starring Max von Sydow as Hamsun.

References

Bibliography

• New York Times. 27 February 2009. Norwegian Nobel Laureate, Once Shunned, Is Now Celebrated.
• Žagar, Monika. 2009. The dark side of literary brilliance. University of Washington Press.
• Næss, Harald (2007), Nobel Prize Laureates in Literature, Part 2, Farmington Hills, Michigan: Gale, ISBN 978-0-7876-8148-7 .

Further reading

• Ferguson, Robert. 1987. Enigma: The Life of Knut Hamsun. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
• Haugan, Jørgen. 2004. The Fall of the Sun God. Knut Hamsun - a Literary Biography Oslo: Aschehoug.
• Humpal, Martin. 1999. The Roots of Modernist Narrative: Knut Hamsun's Novels Hunger, Mysteries and Pan. International Specialized Book Services.
• Kolloen, Ingar Sletten. 2009. Knut Hamsun: Dreamer and Dissident . Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-12356-2
• Larsen, Hanna Astrup. 1922. Knut Hamsun Alfred A. Knopf.
• Shaer, Matthew. 2009. Tackling Knut Hamsun. Review of Sletten, Dreamer and dissenter and Žagar, The dark side of literary brilliance. In Los Angeles Times, 25 October 2009.
• D'Urance, Michel. 2007. Hamsun. Editions Pardès, Paris, 128 p.

External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Knut Hamsun

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Knut Hamsun

Biographical

• National Library of Norway Commemoration Page
• Biography, from the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs
• Hamsun bibliography 1879–2009 : literature on Knut Hamsun (National Library of Norway)
• Knut Hamsun, at Nobel Prize website
• Biography and bibliography, at Books and Writers
• "Knut Hamsun: Dreamer and Dissenter", bio and review at The New Republic, September 2010
• Knut Hamsun Online, fan-supported website

Works

• Works by or about Knut Hamsun at Internet Archive (scanned books original editions color illustrated)
• Works by Knut Hamsun at Project Gutenberg (plain text and HTML)
• Audio works by Knut Hamsun, at Internet Archive (includes LibriVox)
• Works by or about Knut Hamsun in libraries (WorldCat catalog)

Other

• Wood, James, Addicted to Unpredictability, an essay. Retrieved 8 October 2006.
• Chelsea on the Edge: The Adventures of an American Theater, Davi Napoleon. Includes discussion of Ice Age, a controversial production in which Hamson is the protagnist. Iowa State University Press. ISBN-0-8138-1713-7, 1991.