After reading this article, I was astounded at the almost identical person Hamsun and the protagonist of “Hunger” seemed to be. Throughout this article, many of Hamsun’s beliefs and qualities were commented on and I realized how evident this was incorporated into his writing.
Firstly, Hamsun was born into poverty. He struggled through a tormenting childhood yet grasped the opportunity and managed to become a great writer, Kudos. I can understand how daunting it must have been because his writing really allows the reader to connect and be the character/protagonist. For example, the incomplete endings to some sentences with the three dots: “. . .” stir up the reader’s imagination and lets the reader absorb and react to the situation.
Secondly, Hamsun contained another quality similar to the protagonist: pride. Hamsun was very self-conscious about his peasant origins and so was the protagonist. To society, he carried himself with heaps of confidence yet to himself he was an unstable, anti-social wreck. His mind is a distraction, it is his audience and all the self-dialogue that the protagonist has is exhausting.
What I enjoy about Hamsun’s style of writing is his inconsistency. It gives the overall piece a mysterious edge that makes me ponder over his inventive sentences. The unpredictability of his writing makes Hamsun’s style altogether very unique.
In addition, Hamsun portrays “how our charity rides on gusts of egotism and self-flattery.” This is absolutely true! It is human nature to feel good about one when you help someone else in need. And what gives Hamsun’s writing a twist is the irony he allows the character to make. For example, the protagonist in “Hunger” gives all the money to the cake lady without having any money leftover for himself.
Lastly, I found the Christianity perspective and Hitler references very interesting. Hamsun claimed that he had no religious beliefs yet he created a similar imaginative relationship as established through the protagonist in “Hunger”. I also found his relationship with Hitler quite frightening. Personally, I label Hitler to be the murderer with a moustache and this article states that “his Nazism was a kind of anarchism”. And then when he meets Hitler, he thwarts him. I cannot figure Hamsun out at all. He is as complex a character as he writes his protagonists to be.
I can understand how perhaps his tormenting childhood and very strong beliefs enabled him to write the way he did. The lack of consistency, the irony and contradicments, the self-dialogues, the rhetorical questions and many more elements creates an inquisitive aura of the character that the reader cannot figure out because the character himself cannot figure himself out.
Today we are infected by what might be characterised as a "clinical attitude" in everything: literary criticism, interpersonal relationships - even scientific viewpoints. This is the result of our embracing post-modern views while remaining incapable of seeing the irony of persisting in analysis which, though entirely relative, is expected to be understood as inter-subjectively valid!
ReplyDeleteWhile one may agree with your assessment (that is the wonder of opinion), I cannot help feeling that you should forget about Knud Peterson the man (aka Knut Hamsun) and, in the spirit of the "old" New Criticism, look at the text and simply reflect on the impressions you receive from it. I, too, find Hamsun's life interesting, but see his support of Nazism as quite understandable with but a little reflection and recognition of the times - especially in Norge; his suspicious attitude toward religion (including pantheism) is equally transparent given that privation, isolation and a taciturn nature drives the delusions of the protagonists in Hunger and Pan - or seems to.
It is the integrity of great literature (and Hamsun is a great writer, his political and social views notwithstanding) that stands firm against the kind of analysis you comment on. The article you remark upon is fanciful - much worse than the maundering of an art or music critic.
In our provenance as humans we were all peasants once, and this is a point being driven home by Hamsun in all his work; the urban is suspect, but the land is known and will provide what is necessary in every instance (Markens Groede, 1917, eg.)
As a final remark, and probably non sequitur, what is up with this interest - suddenly - in Hamsun? And more to the point - how does this rapture relate to our current attitudes about the historical relevance of the Second World War?
Cheers. I enjoyed your blog entry.