The young Hamsun objected to realism and naturalism. He argued that the main object of modernist literature should be the intricacies of the human mind, that writers should describe the "whisper of blood, and the pleading of bone marrow".[5] Hamsun is considered the "leader of the Neo-Romantic revolt at the turn of the 20th century", with works such as Hunger (1890), Mysteries (1892), Pan (1894), and Victoria (1898).[6] 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.[7] Hamsun only published one poetry collection, The Wild Choir, which has been set to music by several composers.
Knut Hamsun was born as Knud Pedersen in Lom in the Gudbrandsdal valley of Norway.[16] He was the fourth son (of seven children) of Tora Olsdatter and Peder Pedersen. When he was three, the family moved to Hamsund, Hamarøy in Nordland.[17] They were poor and an uncle had invited them to farm his land for him.
At 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. For the next five years he did any job for money; he was a store clerk, peddler, shoemaker's apprentice, sheriff's assistant, and an elementary-school teacher.[18]
At 17 he became a ropemaker's apprentice; at about the same time he started to write. He asked businessman Erasmus Zahl to give him significant monetary support, and Zahl agreed. Hamsun later used Zahl as a model for the character Mack appearing in his novels Pan (1894), Dreamers (1904), Benoni (1908) and Rosa (1908).[19]
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).
Early literary career
Working all those odd jobs paid off,[20] and he published his first book: Den Gaadefulde: En Kjærlighedshistorie fra Nordland (The Enigmatic Man: A Love Story from Northern Norway, 1877). It was inspired from the experiences and struggles he endured from his jobs.
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).[21]
As of 1898 Hamsun was among the contributors of Ringeren, a political and cultural magazine established by Sigurd Ibsen.[22]
Major works
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, Rosa, 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 ("No one knows God," he once wrote, "man knows
only gods.").[23] 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.[24]
World War II, arrest and trial
During World War II, Hamsun put his support behind the German war effort. He courted and met with high-ranking Nazi officers, including Adolf Hitler. Nazi Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels wrote a long and enthusiastic diary entry concerning a private meeting with Hamsun; according to Goebbels Hamsun's "faith in German victory is unshakable".[25] In 1940 Hamsun wrote that "the Germans are fighting for us".[26] After Hitler's death, he published a short obituary in which he described him as "a warrior for mankind" and "a preacher of the gospel of justice for all nations."
After the war, he was detained by police on 14 June 1945, for treason, then committed to a hospital in Grimstad (Grimstad sykehus) "due to his advanced age", according to Einar Kringlen (a professor and medical doctor).[27] In 1947 he was tried in Grimstad, and fined.[28] Norway's supreme court reduced the fine from 575,000 to 325,000 Norwegian kroner.[29]
After the war, Hamsun's views on the Germans during the war were a serious grief for the Norwegians, and they tried to separate their world-famous writer from his Nazi beliefs. At the trial Hamsun had pleaded ignorance. Deeper explanations involve his contradictory personality, his distaste for hoi polloi, his inferiority complex, a profound distress at the spread of indiscipline, antipathy toward the interwar democracy, and especially his Anglophobia.[30]
Death
Knut Hamsun died on 19 February 1952, aged 92, in Grimstad. His ashes are buried in the garden of his home at Nørholm.[31]
A fifteen-volume edition of Hamsun's 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.[33] 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."[34]
Three of Hamsun's homes (Hamsund gård in Hamarøy, Hamsunstugu in Garmo, and Nørholm in Grimstad) are open to the public as museums, in addition to the Knut Hamsun Centre in Hamarøy.
The whereabouts of Hamsun's medal remain unknown.[35]
In 1898, Hamsun married Bergljot Göpfert (née Bech), who bore daughter Victoria, but the marriage ended in 1906. Hamsun then married Marie Andersen (1881-1969) in 1909 and she was his companion until the end of his life. They had four children: sons Tore and Arild and daughters Ellinor 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 they bought Nørholm, an old, 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).
Racism and admiration for Hitler
From his youth onward, Hamsun espoused anti-egalitarian and racist beliefs. In The Cultural Life of Modern America (1889), he expressed his firm opposition to 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."[37]
Hamsun wrote several newspaper articles in the course of the Second World War, including his notorious 1940 assertion that "the Germans are fighting for us, and now are crushing England's tyranny over us and all neutrals".[26] In 1943, he sent Germany's minister of propagandaJoseph 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.[38] Hamsun was eventually invited to meet with Hitler; during the meeting, he complained about the German civilian administrator in Norway, Josef Terboven, and asked that imprisoned Norwegian citizens be released, enraging Hitler.[39]Otto Dietrich describes the meeting in his memoirs as the only time that another person was able to get a word in edgeways with Hitler. He attributes the cause to Hamsun's deafness. Regardless, Dietrich notes that it took Hitler three days to get over his anger.[40] Hamsun also on other occasions helped Norwegians who had been imprisoned for resistance activities and tried to influence German policies in Norway.[41]
Nevertheless, a week after Hitler's death, Hamsun wrote a eulogy for him, saying “He was a warrior, a warrior for mankind, and a prophet of the gospel of justice for all nations.”[34] 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 ($65,000 or £16,250 at that time) 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, Swedish filmmaker Jan Troell based the movie Hamsun on Hansen's book. In Hamsun, Swedish actor Max von Sydow plays Knut Hamsun; his wife Marie is played by Danish actress Ghita Nørby.
Studies on Hamsun's writings
Hamsun's writings have been the subject of numerous books and journal articles. Some of these writings explore the dialectic between Hamsun's literary works and his political and cultural leanings expressed in his non-fiction.
Hamsun produced a voluminous correspondence during his lifetime. Norwegian scholar and Hamsun expert Harald Næss spent four decades tracking these letters down in both the United States and Europe, producing a collection of thousands of letters.[42] He would publish a selection in various volumes between 1994 and 2000.
Bibliography
Non-fiction
1889 Lars Oftedal. Udkast (Draft) (11 articles, previously printed in Dagbladet)
1889 Fra det moderne Amerikas Aandsliv (The Cultural Life of Modern America) - lectures and criticism
Prime among all of Hamsun's works adapted to film is Hunger, a 1966 film starring Per Oscarsson. It is still considered one of the top film adaptations of any Hamsun works. Hamsun's works have been the basis of 25 films and television mini-series adaptations, starting in 1916.[43]
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 Dreamers (Sværmere, also published in English as Mothwise).
^Contemporary Authors Online. Farmington Hills, Michigan: Gale. 2009. ISBN978-0-7876-3995-2.
^Citation: [...] dobbeltromanen Benoni og Rosa fra 1908. I skikkelse av oppkomlingen BenoniHartvigsen tegner Hamsun her for første gang et portrett av en allmuens mann i full skikkelse, med ironisk distanse, men også med betydelig sympati.
^The Goebbels Diaries, 1942–1943, translated, edited, and introduced by Louis P. Lochner, 1948, pp. 303–304. Goebbels also claimed that "from childhood on he [Hamsun] has keenly disliked the English".
^Reinhard H. Friederich. "Hamsun's and Kafka's Mysteries". Comparative Literature Vol. 28, No. 1 (Winter, 1976), Pp. 34-50. Duke University Press.
^Sjølyst-Jackson, Peter. Troubling legacies: migration, modernism and fascism in the case of Knut Hamsun. Continuum International Publishing Group. p. 16.
Nergaard, Siri. 2004. La costruzione di una cultura: la letteratura norvegese in traduzione italiana. Guaraldi.
Shaer, Matthew. 2009. Tackling Knut Hamsun. Review of Kollen 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.
Žagar, Monika. 2009. The dark side of literary brilliance. University of Washington Press.