HUNGER

This PG edition is based upon the eighth printing, published in September 1921by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
This edition is a bowdlerised version of the original 1899 translation, also byGeorge Egerton.

Knut Hamsun

Since the death of Ibsen and Strindberg,Hamsun is undoubtedly the foremost creative writer of theScandinavian countries. Those approaching most nearly to hisposition are probably Selma Lagerlöf in Sweden and HenrikPontoppidan in Denmark. Both these, however, seem to have less thanhe of that width of outlook, validity of interpretation andauthority of tone that made the greater masters what theywere.

His reputation is not confined to his owncountry or the two Scandinavian sister nations. It spread long agoover the rest of Europe, taking deepest roots in Russia, whereseveral editions of his collected works have already appeared, andwhere he is spoken of as the equal of Tolstoy and Dostoyevski. Theenthusiasm of this approval is a characteristic symptom that throwsinteresting light on Russia as well as on Hamsun.

Hearing of it, one might expect him to prove aman of the masses, full of keen social consciousness. Instead, hemust be classed as an individualistic romanticist and a highlysubjective aristocrat, whose foremost passion in life is violent,defiant deviation from everything average and ordinary. He fearsand flouts the dominance of the many, and his heroes, who arenothing but slightly varied images of himself, are invariablymarked by an originality of speech and action that brings themclose to, if not across, the borderline of the eccentric.

In all the literature known to me, there is nowriter who appears more ruthlessly and fearlessly himself, and theself thus presented to us is as paradoxical and rebellious as it ispoetic and picturesque. Such a nature, one would think, must be thefinal blossoming of powerful hereditary tendencies, convergingsilently through numerous generations to its predestined climax.All we know is that Hamsun's forebears were sturdy Norwegianpeasant folk, said only to be differentiated from their neighboursby certain artistic preoccupations that turned one or two of theminto skilled craftsmen. More certain it is that what may or may nothave been innate was favoured and fostered and exaggerated byphysical environment and early social experiences.

Hamsun was born on Aug. 4, 1860, in one of thesunny valleys of central Norway. From there his parents moved whenhe was only four to settle in the far northern district ofLofoden--that land of extremes, where the year, and not the day, isevenly divided between darkness and light; where winter is a longdreamless sleep, and summer a passionate dream without sleep; whereland and sea meet and intermingle so gigantically that man is allbut crushed between the two--or else raised to titanic measures bythe spectacle of their struggle.

The Northland, with its glaring lights andblack shadows, its unearthly joys and abysmal despairs, is presentand dominant in every line that Hamsun ever wrote. In that countryhis best tales and dramas are laid. By that country his heroes arestamped wherever they roam. Out of that country they draw theirprincipal claims to probability. Only in that country do they seemquite at home. Today we know, however, that the pathological caserepresents nothing but an extension of perfectly normal tendencies.In the