KNUT HAMSUN (1859-1952), Norwegian author of a number of novels, short stories and essays. Among his best-known works are Hunger, Victoria and Growth of the soil. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature in 1920. His politics were highly controversial.

This is a book published in the series NORWEGIAN HERITAGE. A series of books about a range of Norway’s best-known national icons. The respective titles deal with significant figures within arts and literature, science, sports and society, as well as the country’s many natural wonders, important historical periods and cultural topics. Each book offers the reader an updated introduction to readers who wish to familiarize themselves with a given subject.

See www.norwegian-heritage.no for more titles and information about the series.

The books are published in Norwegian and English.

LARS FRODE LARSEN

KNUT HAMSUN

– THE AUTHOR AND HIS TIMES

TRANSLATED FROM THE NORWEGIAN
BY ROBERT FERGUSON

FONT FORLAG

Contents

Introduction

Per the Tailor’s family

Life with uncle

On his own

The American Experience

The Breakthrough

On tour

The trouble with love

The Radical

My one true love on earth

Back in Hamarøy

The Master of Nørholm

Writer’s block and psychoanalysis

Quisling’s man

The Ring is Closed

War and Occupation

On trial for treason

On Overgrown Paths

In the service of words

Appendix

It is almost eight o’clock on the evening of Wednesday October 7 1891. The Hal’s Brothers Lecture Theatre in Kristiania is packed with journalists, artists and readers waiting for the rising new literary star Knut Hamsun to take the stage. He’s going to talk about the state of Norwegian Literature. A crowd of some 700 people has turned up. The audience includes a number of celebrities.

The thrill of anticipation is in the air. All eyes are on the stage. Then something happens that takes the tension up a notch: Henrik Ibsen – recently returned to Norway after 27 years abroad – arrives, accompanied by his young friend, the pianist Hildur Andersen. They take their seats on the front row next to Edvard Grieg and his wife, just a couple of yards from the stage. A sensation is in the offing. The lecture can begin.

And now, from a fearless young writer at the beginning of his career, the world famous Norwegian dramatist is told that that he – even more than his colleagues Bjørnson, Kielland and Lie – lacks subtlety in his descriptions of people and is a poor psychologist. All four of them have “contented themselves with the dullest and simplest forms of psychology for their characters”. According to Hamsun, Ibsen doesn’t describe real, living people but only symbols that represent “concepts and ideas”. The reason for this is Ibsen himself: he is “too much like a character, he feels and sees things too much in round numbers and not enough in fractions”.

Childhood home in Hamarøy.

The writer’s father: Peder Pedersen Hamsund (1825 - 1907).

The writer’s mother: Tora Pedersen Hamsund (1830 - 1919).

Hamsun has a note to himself written on a slip of paper: “Ibsen. Travels back home to Kristiania and establishes himself as an anarchist … to the best of my limited ability I will explain and deride him … he sits in Kristiania eating his porridge and playing the anarchist.”

If, on that October evening in 1891, Hamsun really did spice his discussion of Henrik Ibsen with provocative utterances such as these then the temperature in the lecture theatre must have risen to fever pitch. After the lecture Ibsen is supposed to have said to a journalist: “If this was a civilised country the students would have beaten that chap’s brains out tonight!”