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Wikipedia Summary for Knut Hamsun
Knut Hamsun (August 4, 1859 – February 19, 1952) was a Norwegian writer who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1920. Hamsun's work spans more than 70 years and shows variation with regard to consciousness, subject, perspective and environment. He published more than 20 novels, a collection of poetry, some short stories and plays, a travelogue, works of non-fiction and some essays.
Hamsun is considered to be "one of the most influential and innovative literary stylists of the past hundred years" (ca. 1890–1990). 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, John Fante and Ernest Hemingway. 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". Since 1916, several of Hamsun's works have been adapted into motion pictures. On August 4, 2009, the Knut Hamsun Centre was opened in Hamarøy.
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". 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). 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. Hamsun only published one poetry collection, The Wild Choir, which has been set to music by several composers.
Hamsun had strong anti-English views, and openly supported Adolf Hitler and Nazi ideology. Due to his professed support for the German occupation of Norway, he was charged with treason after the war. He was not convicted, due to what was deemed psychological problems and issues with old age.
But what really matters is not what you believe but the faith and conviction with which you believe.
How conceited I was, and how mistaken!
God preserve me from growing wise! Yes, I intend to mumble toothlessly to my deathbed bystanders: God preserve me from growing wise!
The elderly remember bygone days and dates, they have a wonderful way of hoarding in their heads all manner of trifles as if they were valuable, as if they might one day stand them in good stead.
Earth and sea merged, the sea tossed itself in the air in a fantastic dance, into the shapes of men and horses and tattered banners. I stood in the lee of an overhanging rock and thought of many things.
When she opened her eyes, he gave a sudden cry and smashed his clenched fist a couple of times into her wet bottom. His joy was transformed into momentary fury. Otherwise, he never beat his children. That was the mother's job.
Small things and great occur; a tooth falls from the mouth, a man out of the ranks, a sparrow to the ground.
A word can be transformed into a coulour, light, a smell; it is the writer's task to use it in such a way that it serves, never fails, can never be ignored.
Growth of the soil was something different, a thing to be procured at any cost; the only source, the origin of all. A dull and desolate existence? Nay, least of all. A man had everything; his powers above, his dreams, his loves, his wealth of superstition.
It was in those days when I wandered about hungry in Kristiania, that strange city which no one leaves before it has set its mark upon him.
Truth is neither ojectivity nor the balanced view; truth is a selfless subjectivity.
A shaft of sweetness shoots through me from top to toe when the sun rises; I shoulder my gun in silent exaltation.
Love is every bit as violent and dangerous as murder.
Thus, he walks and walks in his wilderness, a futile, foolish trek made not in order to arrive somewhere but simply and solely in order to be one of those who walk in the wilderness. And this work of his is a life sentence.
No, I don't admire the genius. But I admire and love the result of the genius's activity in the world, of which the great man is only the poor necessary tool, only, so to speak, the paltry awl to bore with.
But has anything happened to you? Your face is so strangely distorted.
No, I'm smiling, he said. This is going to be my way of smiling. I want this grimace to be my hallmark.
There was a rock in front of my hut, a tall, gray rock. By its looks it seemed to be well-disposed toward me.
Deres KH
Deres KH menes Deres KH. Altsaa Knut Kongsberg. Deres Knut Kongsberg, Kongsbergknuten Deres, forstaar De.
If she only knew that all of his poems had been written to her and no one else, every single one, even the one to Night, even the one to the Spirit of the Swamp. But that was something she should never know.
Rather than admire the mediocre great men over whom passersby nudge each other in awe, I venerate the young, unknown geniuses who die in their teens, their souls shattered -- delicate, phosphorescent glowworms that one must see to know they really did exist.
The heavy red roses smoldering in the foggy morning, blood-colored and uninhibited, made me greedy, and tempted me powerfully to steal one -- I asked the prices merely so I could come as near them as possible.
His feeling for ivory was somewhat undeveloped.
The long, long road over the moors and up into the forest -- who trod it into being first of all? Man, a human being, the first that came here. There was no path before he came.
I love three things, I then say. I love a dream of love I once had, I love you, and I love this patch of earth. And which do you love best? The dream.
The whisper of the blood and the pleading of the bone marrow.
And the great spirit of darkness spread a shroud over me...everything was silent-everything. But upon the heights soughed the everlasting song, the voice of the air, the distant, toneless humming which is never silent.
But things worked out. Everything works out. Though sometimes they work out sideways.
I was drunk with starvation; my hunger had made me tipsy.
I have no murders to tell about, but I have joys and sufferings and love. And love is every bit as violent and dangerous as murder.
Mind you, they were not all that old, as people go. Suppose he was nineteen, that would make her a mere seventeen or so. Or if we were to tell the truth and say that he was only sixteen, that would make her still less--what age would that be? And there they stood.
Oliver was far from fretting: he was in good bodily health, the bad weather allowed him to remain in idleness, his industry had deserted him.
In his younger days Grindhusen had been as stubborn and awkward as they come; now he was mild and stupid.
It was not my intention to collapse; no, I would die standing.
And there by the pump stood a group of women with their hands under their aprons, watching the procession and discussing in hushed voices all this floral display and pomp.
I will exile my thoughts if they think of you again, and I will rip my lips out if they say your name once more. Now if you do exist, I will tell you my final word in life or in death, I tell you goodbye.
And looking at animals in cages doesn't interest me in general. They know we are standing there looking at them -- they sense the hundreds of inquisitive looks, and it has an effect on them.
I can't even make up a rhyme about an umbrella, let alone death and life and eternal peace.
Out in the fjord I dragged myself up at once, wet with fever and exhaustion, and gazed landwards, and bade farewell for the present to the town -- to Christiania, where the windows gleamed so brightly in all the homes.
By now both mother and daughter were in a good humor and able to joke, mother sat up in bed and chuckled from time to time; they were temperamentally akin and shared the blessed ability to suppress dark memories.
When good befalls a man he calls it Providence, when evil fate.
You are welcome to your intellectual pastimes and books and art and newspapers; welcome, too, to your bars and your whisky that only makes me ill. Here am I in the forest, quite content.
Were I more conversant with literature and its great names, I could go on quoting them ad infinitum and acknowledge my debt for the merit you have been generous enough to find in my work.
Today riches and honours have been lavished on me, but one gift has been lacking, the most important one of all, the only one that matters, the gift of youth.
No, what I should really like to do right now, in the full blaze of lights, before this illustrious assembly, is to shower every one of you with gifts, with flowers, with offerings of poetry -- to be young once more, to ride on the crest of the wave.
No worse fate can befall a young man or woman than becoming prematurely entrenched in prudence and negation.
It is as well perhaps that this is not the first time I have been swept off my feet. In the days of my blessed youth there were such occasions; in what young person's life do they not occur?
In my solitude, many miles from men and houses, I am in a childishly happy and carefree state of mind, which you are incapable of understanding unless someone explains it to you.
I have had much to learn from Sweden's poetry and, more especially, from her lyrics of the last generation.
However, I must not indulge in homespun wisdom here before so distinguished an assembly, especially as I am to be followed by a representative of science.
Heaven knows that there are plenty of opportunities in later life, too, for being carried away. What of it? We remain what we are and, no doubt, it is all very good for us!
There is nothing like being left alone again, to walk peacefully with oneself in the woods. To boil one's coffee and fill one's pipe, and to think idly and slowly as one does it.
For I mean to roam and think and make great irons red-hot.
In old age we are like a batch of letters that someone has sent. We are no longer in the past, we have arrived.
I have gone to the forest.