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The Whisper of the Blood: A Study of Knut Hamsun's Early Novels

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

J. W. McFarlane
J. W. McFarlane*
Affiliation:
King's College, University of Durham, Newcastle Upon Tyne
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Extract

With that little stump of prose, twenty-nine magazine pages long, Knut Hamsun had laid the foundation of a new literature in the North.’ This assessment, so near in time to the event and yet so far-sighted, was that of Carl Naerup writing in 1895; the ‘stump of prose’ was the fragment of Hamsun's first novel Hunger, which appeared anonymously in the Danish periodical Ny Jord in 1888, two years before the publication of the completed work. At that time it took vision to see the real achievement behind the extravagance; the eye was too easily caught by the uninhibited exuberance of Hamsun's literary début to perceive the high seriousness behind it, his vehemence was misinterpreted as the antics and posturings of one whose chief object was self-advertisement; even the sympathetic Bjørnson, who acknowledged the greatness of some of Hamsun's early work, could not suppress an attitude of tolerant amusement: ‘In the field of literature,’ he wrote in 1896, ‘Hamsun began by committing just about all the stupidities that it is possible for a gifted madcap to get away with in a civilized society. … It seems the belief that no young author can any longer win his place without first trying to sweep away all the others is something that must be called typically Norwegian.’

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 71 , Issue 4-Part-1 , September 1956 , pp. 563 - 594
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1956

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References

1 ‘Knut Hamsun,‘ in Kringsjaa, vi, 222.

2 Quoted in Francis Bull, ‘Knut Hamsun og Bj⊘mstjerne Bjørnson,‘ in Hamsun, Festskrift til 70 aarsdagen, 4 august 1929 (Oslo, 1929), p. 25.

3 See Marie Hamsun, Regnbuen (Oslo, 1953), pp. 167, 181; Tore Hamsun, Mein Vater Knut Hamsun (Leipzig, 1940), p. 171.

4 In Vor Verden (1929); quoted in Francis Bull, Frederik Paasche, and A. H. Winsnes, Norsk litleratur historié (Oslo, 1937), v, 281.

5 So we learn indirectly from Hamsun himself; see Walter A. Berendsohn, Knut Hamsun: das unbandige Ich und die menschliche Gemeinschaft (Munich, 1929), p. 59, who gives as his source ‘Nach briefiichen Mitteilungen Hamsuns.‘ See also the account given by Harald Hansen, who reported that before beginning work on Hunger, Hamsun had read only Turgeniev of the Russians, and remembered particularly Smoke; after the first fragment of Hunger had appeared, Hamsun was told that it was reminiscent of Dostoïevski, whereupon he began reading the latter, but completed Hunger before he was halfway through Crime and Punishment (Freie Biihne, i [1890], 694 f.).

6 ‘Lidt om Strindberg’ (1894), rptd. in Hamsun, Artikler, ed. Francis Bull (Oslo, 1939), p. 14. Although the article took final form in 1894, most of it was based on two articles earlier published in Dagbladet, 11 and 12 Dec. 1889.

7 Samlede Skrifter (Copenhagen, 1906), xvii, 281.

8 In Tjanstekvinnans son.

9 ‘Fra det ubevidste Sjaeleliv’ (1890), rptd. in Artihler, p. 60.

10 Brevsamling nr. 64, Universitetsbiblioteket, Oslo.

11 Quoted in Francis Bull, etc., Norsk lit. hist., v, 285.

12 In Ny J ore, Nordisk Tidskrift for Literatur, Videnskab og Kunst (Copenhagen), Oct. 1888, pp. 371 ff.

13 In Samtiden, i, 325 ff.

14 Ibid., pp. 8 ff.

15 Artikler, p. 44.

16 The policy that Hamsun advocates here and also follows in his novels of this period is one that in more recent years the existentialist writers of France have made their own. The following could, with the appropriate substitutions, easily be read as a gloss on the early Hamsun: “As a rule, in consequence of our intellectual training, we [i.e., non-existentialists] notice in individuals those things that they have in common, that by which they conform to their type; what is peculiar to themselves escapes us. We approach them with preconceived categories, and our knowledge prevents us from noticing what we see. Similarly, instead of observing our inner life in its originality as it springs up within us, we force it, in order to have a clearer knowledge, into the categories of academic psychology and gain clarity at the price of verity. The existentialist takes the opposite attitude. He sets out to reproduce faithfully the flux and reflux of his inner life before intelligence intervenes to introduce into it a logic that it does not inherently possess. … Existentialist literature … restricts itself, at least at first sight, to the particular which alone exists, and attempts to examine it mentally, in its singularity, in its existence. For this reason some works of existentialist inspiration create an impression of strangeness or ambiguity; they confront us with situations that appear unreal through an excess of realism, improbable because they are so true” (Paul Foulquié, Existentialism, tr. Kathleen Raine, London, 1948, pp. 42 ff.).

17 The other 2 novels of this period, Ny Jord (1893) and Redaktjr Lynge (1893), seem rather to belong, in style and theme if not in time, to a different period of Hamsun's development.

18 Josef Wiehr, Knut Hamsun: His Personality and His Outlook upon Life, Smith Coll. Stud, in Mod. Lang., iii, i–ii (Northampton, Mass., Oct. 1921–Jan. 1922).

19 Francis Bull, Knut Hamsun på ny (Oslo, 1953), p. 12.

20 Einar Skavlan, Knut Hamsun (Oslo, 1929), p. 164.

21 Janko Lavrin, ‘The Return of Pan,‘ Life and Letters, vi (Jan. 1931), 19 ff.

22 A concern for character analysis, a predilection for looking at these heroes with the deprecating eye of organized society, finds its way into even the best criticism of Hamsun and results in the passing of moral judgements that are very often less than crucial in the business of interpreting the novels. Thus Josef Wiehr writes: ‘They are without home or definite place in society, the conventions and restrictions of which they disregard, chiefly because their lack of polish, resulting from social contact, makes adjustment impossible for them.… The inhibitions of the normal individual do not exist for them, though regret frequently follows almost immediately upon their erratic conduct. It results from the fact that, in spite of all outward disdain, they cannot dispense with social contact. Since they are entirely governed by impulses, originating from the ever changing environmental influences, the permanent in their personalities, i.e. character, is often obscured to such a degree that it seems to be lacking’ (op. cit., pp. 120 f.). And Alrik Gustafson: ‘These “outcasts from society” in Hamsun's early novels could therefore efficiently conceal, perhaps even from themselves, that fundamental spiritual emptiness, that barrenness of mind and soul, which seems to be the distinguishing deficiency in a thoroughly rootless, wandering human spirit’ (Six Scandinavian Novelists, New York, 1940, p. 272).

23 One might with some justification point to a certain similarity here with Kierkegaard; as Marjorie Grene has said: ‘A favorite character with Kierkegaard is the ironic individual, in whom appearance and reality are at theextremest odds with each other’ (Dreadful Freedom, Chicago, 1948, p. 29).

24 Hamsun, Festskrift 1929, p. 152.

25 To Kristofer Janson, quoted in Skavlan, p. 137.

26 Peilinger (Oslo, 1950), p. 54.1 prefer this explanation to that of Eduard Hitschmann: ‘Es fällt auf, dass in “Hunger,” dessen leidender Held einen ganzen Band hindurch “nichts zu beissen” hat, der Geliebten Briiste entblosst werden, worauf sie den Wunsch äussert, dort geküsst zu werden. 1st “Hunger” vielleicht das Epos “oraler Enttäuschung”!?‘ (Ein Gespenst ans der Kindheit Knut Bamsuns, Leipzig, 1926, p. 27).

27 Incidentally, the autobiographical element in this, as indeed in the whole novel, is evident; it was at one time Hamsun's intention to publish the work anonymously, feeling that giving this novel to the public was like exposing a nakedness: ‘But it will appear anonymously,’ he wrote after the publication of the fragment in Ny Jord and before the appearance of the completed novel, T don't want to admit publicly that I have written it. It is one's own affair if one bares oneself so nakedly as I have done there' (quoted in Tore Hamsun, Knut Hamsun min far, Oslo, 1952, p. 129). He was experiencing the same feelings as D. H. Lawrence was to experience when he wrote: ‘It is so much one's naked self. I give myself away so much, and write what is my most palpitant, sensitive self, that I loath the book, because it will betray me to a parcel of fools. Which is what any deeply personal or lyrical writer feels, I guess’ (letter to Edward Garnett, 21 Jan. 1912, The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, ed. Aldous Huxley, London, 1934, p. 21).

28 Knut Hamsun (Tubingen, 1927), p. 60.

29 Op. cit., p. 53.

30 Brevsamling nr. 64, Umversitetsbiblioteket, Oslo.

31 Nagel's attitude to life reminds one also of Lawrence's remark in 1912: ‘My great religion is a belief in the blood, the flesh, as being wiser than the intellect. We can go wrong in our minds. But what the blood feels, and believes, and says, is always true’ (Letters, p. xiv).

32 Philosophy of the Unconscious, tr. W. C. Coupland, 2nd ed. (London, 1893), i, 363.

33 Die fröhliche Wissenschaft (1882), p. 61 (Werke, hsgb. Nietzsche-Archiv, Leipzig, 1926–28).

34 I am however not altogether convinced by the argument Trygve Braat⊘y advanced for his view that Nagel and Minutten represent the same person (Livets cirkel: Bidrag til analyse av Knut Eamsuns diktning, 2nd ed., Oslo, 1954, pp. 63 f.).

35 Artikler, p. 38.

36 Cf. Letters, p. xxii.

37 Brevsamling nr. 130, Universitetsbiblioteket, Oslo. The letters to this correspondent are available in German translation only; ‘Abenteuer’ is here possibly a translation of Norwegian ‘eventyr,’ i.e., ‘folk-tales.’

38 Hjalmar Christensen felt that Hamsun's work had taken colour from Nordland in much the same way as Kipling's had from India (Vort litterœre liv, Kristiania, 1902, p. 38).

39 Like Pan who went to India in the company of Dionysos, Glahn also rather surprisingly finds himself in India in the last section of the novel. That the natives of the region habitually chew the betel leaf (Hindustani ‘pan‘!) is, if it is in any way intentional, surely nothing more than a quiet and obscure joke.

40 Brevsamling nr. 130, Universitetsbiblioteket, Oslo.

41 Philosophy of the Unconscious, ii, 271.

42 Wiehr, p. 32.

43 Edvarda marks a new departure among Hamsun characters, a thing that Hamsun himself was not unaware of; cf. his letter of 19 Aug. 1894 to Albert Langen: ‘The girl in my book will be something new; her name is Edvarda … ‘ (Brevsamling nr. 130, Universitetsbiblioteket, Oslo).

44 Gudernes Tungemaal (Copenhagen, 1911), pp. 183 ff.

45 Brevsamling nr. 130, Universitetsbiblioteket, Oslo.

46 Knut Hamsun (New York, 1922), p. 59.

47 Artikler, p. 29.

48 The only mention I have come across that places Hamsun unambiguously in this tradition—and even then only by a passing reference—is that of Erich Auerbach: ‘Sie [Virginia Woolf] halt sich an kleine, unscheinbare, beliebig herausgegriffene Vorgänge: das Messen des Strumpfes, ein Gesprächsfragment mit dem Dienstmädchen, ein Telefonanruf. Grosse Veränderungen, äussere Wendepunkte des Lebens oder gar Katastrophen kommen nicht vor, und auch sonst in dem Leuchtturmroman werden sie nur schnell, ohne Vorbereitung und Zusammenhang, beiläufig und gleichsam nur informatorisch envahnt. Die gleiche Neigung zeigt sich auch bei anderen, untereinander sehr verschiedenen Schriftstellern, etwa bei Proust oder bei Hamsun’ (Mimesis: Dargestellte Wirklichkeit in der abendlandischen Literaiur, Bern, 1946, p. 487).

49 Cf. Hamsun's own definition: ‘Veracity is neither impartiality nor objectivity; veracity is no more nor less than disinterested subjectivity’ (Preface to Fra del moderne Amerikas Aandsliv, Copenhagen, 1889).

50 Thomas Mann has commented in similar terms on the strange compounding of apparently irreconcilable elements in Hamsun's work: ‘Und etwas Verwirrendes ist ja in der Tat für den, der nur im gröblich Gesunden und groblich Kranken Erfahrungen hat, in dem Phänomen des gesunden Raffinements und der raffinierten Gesundheit, das Hamsun zauberhaft darstellt; in dem organisch versöhnten Zwiespalt zwischen der Spätheit, Köstlichkeit, Ausgepichtheit seiner Mittel und dem bäuerlichen Konservatismus seiner Gesinnungen, zwischen der demokratischen Modernität und Internationalität, der hochentwickelten Fortgeschrittenheit seines Kunstlertums und dem Aristokratismus seiner Erd- und Naturverbundenheit, aus welchem sich ailes ergibt, was die Welt sich an antigesellschaftlichen, antipolitischen, antiliterarischen, antidemokratischen und antihumanen Vorstössen und Willenskundgebungen von ihm hat gefallen lassen mussen’ (Hamsun. Festshrift 1929, pp. 129 f.).

51 Ibid., pp. 68 f., 127.