Knut Hamsun

Constantinople around 1900 as a Literary World. A Cultural Semiotic Analysis of Scandinavian Examples

Constantinople, today’s Istanbul, was in the early 20th century a multiethnic, multireligious, and multilingual city with a diversity of writing systems. It was also an important and influential hub for international trade and politics, for Europe and the Western world. This essay is part of the research programme World Literatures – Cosmopolitan and Vernacular Dynamicsat Stockholm University. It aims to demonstrate how the vernacular (the local) depends on and interacts with the cosmopolitan in literary works on Constantinople during the decades around 1900, with a focus on Scandinavian languages and nationalities. For analysis and discussion I have chosen one poem in Danish by J. P. Jacobsen (1870), and travelogues and short prose texts in Swedish by Birger Mörner (1906) and Stéphanie Beyel (1919), and in Norwegian by Knut Hamsun (1903; 1905). Yuri M. Lotman’s concept of the semiosphereis used in combination with Eric Hayot’s study On Literary Worlds (2012) in order to explore the worldmaking capacity of the selected literary works – that is, how literary worldsare created as immanent aspects of literature. It is demonstrated that the literary world of Constantinople cannot be defined as either peripheral within a Western semiosphere or central within the Ottoman semiosphere. Rather, the city functions in these literary works as a threshold between East and West, or as the multilingual, intermediating and ambivalent border between the semiospheres, characterised by its simultaneously separating and uniting features. Unexpected connections between the vernacular elements of the cosmopolitan city are established. The literary world of Constantinople is not only portrayed in the languages of Scandinavian readers; their languages are also a part of the Constantinopolitan multilingual mix.

The article presents a critical reading of Knut Hamsun’s På turné – the collection
of Hamsun’s three polemic lectures entitled: “Norsk litteratur”, “Psykologisk
litteratur” and “Modelitteratur”. These texts constitute Hamsun’s theoretical and
literary manifesto (1891), which up to this day has remained an important
introduction to his early and most acclaimed work. In two first sections of the text
I follow Hamsun’s scornful arguments against Norwegian realistic literature (as
represented mainly by “the great four” writers: Bjørnson, Ibsen, Lie and Kielland)
in an attempt to concisely present Hamsun’s reformatory plan according to which
Norwegian literature should be freed from its entanglement in didacticism and
social bias and redirected onto a path of a deeper psychology. The final part of the
article involves a critical assessment of Hamsun’s endeavor. I argue that some of
Hamsun’s opinions concerning the function and the mode of making literature are still up-to-date and thought-provoking. These insights, however, have to be separated from Hamsun’s hasty generalizations concerning the work of Bjørnson, Lie, Kielland, and Ibsen which I defend against Hamsun’s malicious argumentation. In the final part of the paper "På turné" is evaluated with regard to the ways of how Hamsun’s own oeuvre has evolved in time. This approach enables one to grasp some of its paradoxes, e.g.: the discrepancy between Hamsun’s early literary stance (neo-romanticism and
militant, anti-bourgeois views) and the shape his work assumed later on
(didacticism, the tendency to morally judge his heroes, support for the vulgar
ideology of fascism, etc.).

Keywords:

Knut Hamsun, På turné, critique, Norwegian literature, “the great four”, realism,
psychology

This essay will examine the actions leading to the downfall of the protagonists Jean-Baptiste Grenouille of Perfume, set in eighteenth century France, and the supposed Knut Hamsun of Hunger, set in nineteenth century Norway. Grenouille possesses a super-human ability; an acute sense of smell. Those in his presence sense a strange aura from him; oblivious that this is a product of his lack of scent, which repels mankind. This isolation strengthens his resentment towards humans, induced by the rejection of his mother at birth. Hamsun appears out of touch with his true character. His pride resists the urge to embrace it, and he is forever creating fantasies in which he indulges in grandeur, possessing luxuries and powerful acquaintances-the opposite of his true self. Reality dictates his squalor and poverty. The subject of the characters’ downfalls can be considered a vital aspect to these novels because it was never within their intentions to clash in society. They vouched for the complete opposite, what with Grenouille viewing himself as superior to mankind but at the same time possessing an extreme craving for their love, and Hamsun constantly articulating the importance of maintaining his pride and dignity. Yet, society would frown upon the characters’ escapades. In essence, the protagonists long for the embracement of their respective cultures, but in turn this desire leads to their anticlimax.

В статье обозреваются связи Кнута Гамсуна с русской литературой XIX — на­чала XX в. Анализируются «образы России» в его наследии, факты вовлеченности писателя в отечественный литературный процесс. Выявляются случаи зависимости его творчества от сюжетов, поэтики и идейных построений Достоевского, Толстого и др. Анализируются стратегии рецепции наследия Гамеуна в России «серебряного века» на фоне общей увлеченности литера­турой Скандинавии. Особое внимание уделяется сопоставлению ролей Кнута Г амсуна и Лео­нида Андреева в литературном процессе Роесии начала XX века, анализируются черты типо­логического сходства поэтик двух писателей и случаи сближения их имен в критике эпохи, выявляются следы непосредственного воздействия художественной системы норвежcкого классика на русского автора.

The Aesthetics of Hunger: Knut Hamsun, Modernism, and Starvation’s Global Frame

Exhibiting formal characteristics of works published decades later, Knut Hamsun’s Hunger (1890) has long occupied a central position in genealogies of modernism. Its status in the modernist canon, however, has often come at the cost of disregarding the cultural and economic conditions of Hamsun’s Norway, which was one of Europe’s least developed nations in the nineteenth century. Where critics have tended to treat the hunger that drives Hamsun’s novel in terms of the desires and affects of metropolitan modernity, this article instead reads starvation as a transnational historical phenomenon, one that informed wide swaths of the global periphery in the late nineteenth century. In Hunger, Hamsun invoked a history of economic development that endowed the starving body with transnational political significance. Restaging the naturalist novel’s own approach to hunger, Hunger reflects the transnational reconfiguration of economic forms, which depended centrally on the leveraging of bodily needs of entire populations for productive ends. In Hamsun’s novel, the body stands as a primary site upon which the transformation of macroeconomic structures are made legible as well as an object of political struggle. In making this argument, this article restores the historically specific quality of starvation to readings of modernism and places Hamsun within a history of hunger that informed the formal projects of successive generations of novelists.

Η Ελληνική διάρκεια, Β΄ (1953-1962), με 154 «εφήμερα» κείμενα του Ηλία Βενέζη, απευθύνεται όχι μόνον σε ειδικούς μελετητές αλλά και στο «ευρύτερο κοινό»· τα κείμενα του τόμου αξίζει να μελετηθούν ως δείκτες γενικότερων θεμάτων και προβληματισμών· ενταγμένα στην περιρρέουσα ατμόσφαιρα και στο συλλογικό γίγνεσθαι αποκτούν το πλήρες νόημά τους.

Αναμφίβολα, στο κέντρο της σκέψης και του έργου του Βενέζη βρίσκεται η «ελληνικότητα». Τί όμως σημαίνει «ελληνικότητα»; Η παρατήρηση του Γιώργου Σεφέρη, στον διάλογό του με τον Κωνστ. Τσάτσο, το 1938, διατηρεί και σήμερα την ισχύ της: «Είναι μεγάλος λόγος να μιλάει κανείς για την “ελληνικότητα”. Μεγάλος και ωραίος. Όταν θελήσουμε όμως να καθορίσουμε τί πράγμα είναι αυτή η “ελληνικότητα”, θα ιδούμε πως είναι και δύσκολος και επικίνδυνος.» Πράγματι, η «ελληνικότητα» είναι έννοια πρωτεϊκή και, την ίδια στιγμή, πολυπρόσωπη: έχουμε όχι μία αλλά πολλές «ελληνικότητες», με ουσιώδεις μεταξύ τους διαφορές. Ως αίτημα και ως πολιτισμικός προσανατολισμός, επαναδιατυπώνεται από τον Διαφωτισμό έως τις μέρες μας. Αν ο 19ος αιώνας είναι ο αιώνας της διαμόρφωσης εθνικών συνειδήσεων και της «κατασκευής» συμπαγών εθνικών ταυτοτήτων, ο Μεσοπόλεμος είναι η περίοδος αναρρίχησης στην εξουσία του ακραίου εθνικισμού (φασισμού, ναζισμού κ.ά.). Ο πολιτικός εθνικισμός της 4ης Αυγούστου εκφράζεται και με τον πολιτισμικό εθνικισμό που περικλείεται στον όρο «τρίτος ελληνικός πολιτισμός». Όμως, αυτή ακριβώς η «ελληνικότητα», που, κατά τις περιστάσεις, ντύνεται με χλαμύδα ή με φουστανέλα (ή με φράκο), βρίσκεται στους αντίποδες άλλων μορφών «ελληνικότητας» του Μεσοπολέμου. Οι κιτς εκδηλώσεις της στα στάδια και η αρχαιολατρία της δεν συμπορεύονται με τις Δελφικές Εορτές του Σικελιανού, ούτε με το «Μυθιστόρημα» του Σεφέρη· ο λαϊκισμός της δεν ταυτίζεται με την «ανακάλυψη» του Θεόφιλου. Αν δεν μείνουμε σε εξωτερικές, σε επιφανειακές, ομοιότητες και συγκλίσεις, θα διαπιστώσουμε ότι η ισότητα εθνικισμός = ελληνικότητα δεν είναι σωστή, διότι δεν ισχύει με αντεστραμμένους τους όρους: ελληνικότητα = εθνικισμός. Χωρίς την παραδοχή ότι οι διαφορετικές «ελληνικότητες» δεν είναι ποτέ αμιγείς αισθητικές αναζητήσεις, αλλά, σε τελευταία ανάλυση, αποτελούν έκφραση διαφορετικών κοσμοθεωριών και πολιτικών ιδεολογιών, τότε, παρακάμπτοντας και τη συνακόλουθη διαφορετική ιδεολογική χρήση των εννοιών, οδηγούμαστε σε γενικεύσεις και σε παρερμηνείες ― τότε ο λόγος περί «ελληνικότητας» γίνεται «επικίνδυνος».

The article proposes a
reading of Knut Hamsun’s
Nobel Prize winning
novel
Growth of the Soil
that will
simultaneously follow the interpretive inspirations provided for it by the philosophical thought of
Martin
Heidegger. The “eco
-
critical” reading of Hamsun with Heidegger is en
couraged by some intriguing
similarities to be found between Heidegger’s and Hamsun’s perspectives of seeing the world and the
relations human beings
enter with it.
It is argued that both Heidegger and Hamsun hoped for an
existence that would be sensitive
to the significance of the everydayness (both to the things created by
man, and those brought forth by nature), but also open to receiving the world as a mysterious and
extraordinary gift which exceeds human  comprehension. I believe Hamsun’s famous novel
provides the
reader with a fine model of a
“poetic dwelling”
–
the paramount idea late Heidegger was trying to
illuminate.

English:
The thesis “But Life goes on. Hamsun’s vitalism from Pan to The Ring is Closed” focuses on what is commonly referred to as the «Hamsun-problem»: how should we respond to the fact that one of Norway’s greatest writers was also a prominent Nazi? What is the relationship between the politician and the author Knut Hamsun? Are there any Nazi elements in the fiction he wrote – and if so, is a political discourse only present in his late writings or can it also be found in his early works? By taking its point of departure in these questions, the thesis positions itself in the middle of an ongoing discussion about the relationship between literature and politics and in the current research on Hamsun. The thesis argues against the traditional understanding of Hamsun as a genial writer and political idiot and, through a historical perspective, shows how Hamsun can be understood as a vitalistic author. Vitalism is defined as a complex idea of “life force” articulated in philosophical, scientific, pragmatic and artistic contexts. The thesis shows that this vitalism changes the literary landscape in the period of Hamsun’s authorship. It thus offers a new reading of Hamsun’s writings in which politics and literature meet in a vitalism whose aim is to break down the barriers between the cultural man and Life. While the vitalism is characterized by an expressive insistence on the individual’s self-expression in the early texts, the thesis highlights how the later works are characterized by an epic vitalism centred on life’s own self-preservation. The thesis thus explains how Hamsun’s politics becomes increasingly problematic in the literary texts, while it also identifies vitalism as a key condition for the formal and stylistic development in Hamsun’s writings.

Norsk:
Avhandlingen Men Livet lever. Hamsuns vitalisme fra Pan til Ringen sluttet tar utgangspunkt i det som ofte kalles «Hamsun-problemet»: Hvordan skal vi forholde oss til at en av våre største forfattere også var nazist? Hva er forholdet mellom politikeren og forfatteren Knut Hamsun? Finnes det nazistiske innslag i skjønnlitteraturen han skrev? Er de i så fall bare til stede i det sene forfatterskapet eller finner vi kimen allerede i Hamsuns tidlige tekster? Ved å ta sats i disse spørsmålene plasserer avhandlingen seg midt i en pågående diskusjon om forholdet mellom litteratur og politikk og i forlengelsen av nyere Hamsun-forskning. Avhandlingen argumenterer mot den tradisjonelle forståelsen av Hamsun som genial forfatter og politisk idiot og viser gjennom historiske og idéhistoriske analyser hvordan Hamsun kan forstås som en vitalistisk forfatter. Vitalisme defineres som en kompleks forestilling om livskraft som kommer til uttrykk i filosofiske, naturvitenskapelige, hverdagskulturelle (pragmatiske) og kunstneriske sammenhenger. Avhandlingen viser at vitalismen endrer det litterære landskapet i Hamsuns periode. Slik tilbyr avhandlingen en nylesning av forfatterskapet hvor politikk og litteratur møtes i en vitalisme der målet er å bryte ned barrierene mellom mennesket som kulturvesen og livets egen kraft. Mens denne vitalismen kjennetegnes av en ekspressiv insistering på individets livsutfoldelse i det tidlige forfatterskapet, peker avhandlingen på hvordan den får en stadig bredere episk karakter i det sene, hvor ikke individet, men livets egen selvoppholdelse blir kjernen alt kretser rundt. Avhandlingen forklarer med dette hvordan Hamsuns politikk blir stadig mer problematisk også i Hamsuns litterære tekster, samtidig som den fremstiller vitalismen som en sentral forutsetning for forfatterskapets formelle og stilistiske utvikling.

This essay will compare a range of texts in which various forms of hunger operate as a metaphor for man’s existential longing for meaning. I will call this inescapable longing “Hunger” (with a capital ‘H’). The texts that I will compare, in which this metaphorical trend can be found, are Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot (1953), Knut Hamsun’s Hunger (1890), Bret Easton Ellis’ American Psycho (1991), and Franz Kafka’s ‘A Hunger-Artist’ (1920). Within these texts, man hungers for the material (objects, wealth, people, food etc.) and for the immaterial (recognition, status, identity, religious transcendence etc), and pursues the object(s) of his hunger. When I speak, therefore, of “hunger” (with a lower-case ‘h’) I may be speaking of it either as a lack of (or longing for) food or as a lack of (or longing for) something, be it tangible or otherwise. Man’s attempts to reconcile his hunger will be read as metaphors for the ways in which man tries to reconcile his existential longing. In comparing these texts I will analyse four different ways in which man tries and fails to bring an end to his Hunger: searching, waiting, submission and revolt. These responses are not meant to cover the vast philosophical understandings of and approaches to the question of meaning; rather, they are what I maintain that these literary texts elicit. I will argue that the complete failure to reconcile hunger within these texts mirrors the impossibility of the reconciliation of our Hunger for meaning.

Sultan II. Abdülhamid (1876-1909) devrinde Osmanlı ülkesine gelen Norveçli yazar ve seyyah Knut Hamsun (1859-1952) seyahatnamesinde İstanbul'a dair müşahedelerini ve tespitlerini samimi bir surette yazmaktadır. Biz de bu makalemizde Knut Hamsun'un üzerinde müessir olduğu görülen Oryantalizm nokta-i nazarından yazdıklarını tenkid ve tahlil etmeye gayret ettik.

The novel Hunger by Knut Hamsun, published in 1890, marks a crucial phenomenon for the literature of the 20th Century. The essay aims at showing the central role of the hunger in the novel’s conception and writing. The phenomenology of hunger and disgust displayed by the Norwegian writer plays several symbolic functions: it appears as a physical sensation, a process of the life of the mind, a symbol of artistic creation and an ethical choice in front of the modern social disorder.

In this essay I will examine the factors of similarity within the novels One Day in the Life… and Hunger. Knut Hamsun wrote Hunger in 1890. The nameless first-person protagonist reflects the psychological effects of starvation and obsession. Set in Kristianna, Norway in the 19th century, the anonymous male faces challenges when his unwillingness to find proper employment jeopardizes his psychological health, nourishment and dignity. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote One Day in the Life… in 1962. The protagonist is that of Ivan Shukhov Denisovich, and the novel follows a single day of the ordinary prisoner’s life in a Soviet camp. The setting is in Siberia in the former USSR, and explores the effects that Stalinist repression and the choice to survive has on the inmates within the camp. It is an outcry by the author against Stalinism.

The article presents a philosophical and psychological interpretation of two spectacular Hamsunian protagonists: Thomas Glahn (Pan) and Johan Nagel (Mysterier). In it I propose to take Rolf N. Nettum’s argument concerning Nagel’s “inability to compromise” as a reason of his failure/death, add to it the opinion of Nils M. Knutsen according to which it is Glahn’s “pride” that refrains him from coming back to Edvarda and becomes a “cage” in which he is willingly locked and in which he will “eventually perish”, and interpret them AGAINST themselves, that is, to the advantage of the Hamsunian protagonists. Perhaps then, this “uncompromising nature” would be the proof of the sublime (for F. Nietzsche both fascinating and terrifying, both positively and negatively valued by him) carelessness towards their life, their truly “higher morality”? Perhaps this “pride” we deal here with would mean being able to die for one’s irrational ego, accept death where it is the consequence of an arbitrary psychological impulse which cannot be explained by reference to any lucid reasons and motivations?
I claim that in early Hamsun we stand face to face with some kind of a dark morality; a morality fundamentally tragic in its acceptance of life’s chaotic maelstrom, a morality demanding that one never flees from any moment that it introduces to us. Maybe to have a courage to live through all one’s moments, means solely to live freely? Acting spontaneously and impulsively, or, as I argued before, irresponsibly, Glahn and Nagel pay a great tribute to the ideal of not falsified life, the life that neither looks back at other people, nor does it care for itself, but presses ahead, ready to meet either its further development and intensification, or its disdain, derision and fall.
If we agree to regard Hamsun as a great observer of the most subtle quiverings of the human psyche, if we see in his early heroes the dreamers characterized by “a poet’s responsiveness to things that more thick-skinned people do not notice” (H.A. Larsen) or romantic visionaries, who, like their creator, are able to “delve into scenery in all its being and make it appear in images which pulsate with life, with eroticism and with mood” (N.M. Knutsen), then we should also acknowledge that “underneath these flights of fancy, absorbed in listening to the beauty of passing moments one can feel a tragic, resilient, terrifying force” (S. Brzozowski). This force makes of the Hamsunian protagonists characters in a way gruesome, inhuman. The creations of Glahn and Nagel incline one to as much of a romantic fascination, as an awe and pure horror. The greatness of the Norwegian writer, I believe, manifests itself in that he left his readers clueless in the face of this engrossing ambivalence.

This book ursues the hypothesis that fictional literature has been instrumental in the development and dissemination of European anti-Americanism from the early 1800s to today. Focusing on Britain, France and Germany, it offers analyses of a range of canonical literary works in which resentful hostility towards the United States is a predominant feature.

This paper examines Knut Hamsun's perception of the American way of living as depicted in his Fra det moderne Amerikas aandsliv (The Cultural Life of Modern America, translated into English in 1969 by Barbara Gordon Morgridge), published in Copenhagen 1889, and in one of his short stories, Raedsel (Fear, translated by Sverre Arestad), which he has published fifteen years after his return from America. Hamsun's American experience was rather different than the one of most immigrants in America, but this article demonstrates that the Norwegian writer's insights into the life in the New World, though bitter and inclined to criticism, must be studied in order to achieve a broader perspective upon the immigrant experience in the land of opportunities.

Un amore impossibile quanto tenace lega fin dall’infanzia Victoria, la figlia del castellano, e Johannes, il figlio del mugnaio. Divisi dalle circostanze e dall’estrazione sociale, riescono nondimeno a condividere fugaci momenti di libertà, giocando assieme nel bosco, sull’isola degli uccelli e nella cava di granito. Poi le loro strade si separano quando Johannes si trasferisce in città per proseguire gli studi, ottenendo presto successo come scrittore e poeta. Ma nulla è mutato tra i due innamorati, che continuano a vivere ogni loro pensiero, ogni emozione, ogni evento della loro esistenza attraverso la lente di questo sentimento invincibile, così radicato che neppure da adulti riescono a tacitarlo, macerandosi in un tormento che impedisce loro di vivere a pieno la giovinezza e di crearsi un futuro con altri. Le esigenze della famiglia di Victoria sembrano infine decidere il destino dei due, quando la giovane viene fidanzata al figlio del ciambellano. Un incidente di caccia impedirà questo matrimonio, ma metterà anche in moto una concatenazione di eventi che si concluderà con un tragico epilogo.

In the late 19th and early 20th century, Russia and the Slavic world were considered by some Western poets and intellectuals as a part of Europe where human society had not (yet) been spoiled by the industrial revolution, and whose people, therefore, kept more primitive, genuine and vital values and customs alive. Russia was visited by the Norwegian Knut Hamsun in 1899 and by the German-speaking Rainer Maria Rilke in 1899 and 1900, and their experiences are recorded in significant works and letters. This paper examines aspects of their travels and highlights similarities and differences in their relationship with the places, peoples and cultures they described, pointing out Hamsun’s mythical approach and Rilke’s mystical attitude.

Knut Hamsun's novel Markens grøde has been interpreted as advocating a simple and sustainable life in harmony with nature. However, when read retrospectively against the background of human-made environmental changes that have brought the planet into a new geological epoch, the Anthropocene, Markens grøde cannot be considered an ecological text. What the novel actually delivers is a narrative of constant progress and growth, without consideration of potential limits or unintended detrimental side-effects. In Markens grøde, human nature is assumed to create desires that can only be fulfilled through permanent increases in production and consumption, irrespective of material environmental restraints. In combination with an ideology of human population growth, the novel, instead of conveying »green values«, constitutes a literary expression of precisely the ideas and processes that led to the transition into the Anthropocene.

Knut Hamsun è universalmente conosciuto per capolavori della narrativa quali Fame, Pan e Germogli della terra, che gli valse il premio Nobel per la letteratura nel 1920. Non tutti sanno, però, che nel 1904 pubblicò anche una raccolta poetica, in cui affronta i temi che gli sono cari, gli stessi dei suoi romanzi e dei suoi drammi. Innanzitutto il ruolo fondamentale, mitigatore e liberatorio, della natura: la campagna, con le sue tradizioni e i suoi cicli stagionali, è un rifugio dalla confusione e dalla grettezza della città, e il bosco, di cui Hamsun si sente figlio, è il luogo a cui tornare per rigenerarsi dalle delusioni e dalla durezza della vita. E poi l’amore, visto sempre come una passione dolorosa e irrefrenabile, quasi mortifera, che obbliga lo scrittore a una lotta costante tra dubbi, speranze, rabbia e ripensamenti.

Hamsun lavorò tutta la vita a questa raccolta, come si evince dalle numerose edizioni che si susseguirono negli anni, inseguendo un ideale di compiutezza che, stando alle sue stesse parole, non si concretizzò mai del tutto. Ora per la prima volta il pubblico italiano potrà accedere a una scelta dei componimenti più significativi, che rivelano in particolare il lato intimistico, a volte onirico, del grande autore norvegese.

By tracing an alternative aesthetics of decomposition and fragmentation, this article offers a new understanding of the literary and poetological strategies Knut Hamsun uses to create a disintegrating text cosmos wherein the idea of 'creation out of nothing' (creatio ex nihilo) is one key to artistic originality. The article explores the interdependence of different notions of decline and shows that the image of the (biblical) fall is particularly important to the poetics and aesthetic structure of Hamsun's Hunger (Sult, 1890). Around 1900, ideas of wholeness crumble, a decomposition which is reflected in the well-established philosophical and anthropological experiments of Nietzsche, Bourget and Simmel. Taking some of their aesthetic assumptions as a point of departure, the present paper argues that Hamsun's novel offers an aesthetic variation on the decline of unity-based concepts, ranging from the subject to religious belief as well as to traditional storytelling.

This article (in Norwegian) examines Hamsun’s The Ring is Closed (1936) through the lens of modernity and modernism.  A common notion has been that The Ring is Closed is an exception from the division between an early modernist phase and a later realist phase in Hamsun’s oeuvre.  This article argues that Hamsun deals with modernity in a fundamentally different way in 1936 than he did in the 1890s.  Today we should be able to see Abel Brodersen’s fatalism, cynicism, and lack of drive as an expression of 1930s modernism. What are the characteristics of such modernism? To which of his contemporary modernist characters can we compare Abel Brodersen? What literary techniques does Hamsun employ, and how can we characterize the language and the narrative structure? How does the modernist Hamsun in 1936 compare to Hamsun in 1890? These are some of the questions posed in this article.

http://septentrio.uit.no/index.php/nordlit/article/view/3750

Året er 1948. Norge er midt i gjenoppbygningsarbeidet etter annen verdenskrig. Det er mange prosesser mot landsforrædere, som støttet Tyskland under krigen. En av prosessene er rettet mot Knut Hamsun (1859-1952), Norges største levende skjønnlitterære forfatter på daværende tidspunkt. Det er denne prosessen som spiller en hovedrolle i Hamsuns siste bok, På Gjengrodde Stier (1949). Prosessen danner en ramme om en større fortelling, som strekker seg tilbake til Hamsuns ungdom. Mens Hamsun, eller førstepersonsfortelleren i boka, av og til kommer tilbake til prosessen og dens kontekst, består boka for det meste av memoarer, strøtanker, historieskrivning og fiktive passasjer. I tillegg er det et dikt, et brev og en tale som er satt inn i boka; de siste to er historiske dokumenter. Det er denne blandinga av sjangre i På Gjengrodde Stier jeg er opptatt av og skriver om i denne bacheloroppgaven.

Gissing's "New Grub Street" (1891) and Hamsun's "Sult" (1890) depict distinctive voices of outcast young artists suffering from urban poverty, displacement and isolation, and reveal a deeper insight into wider questions on urban modernity, passive resistance and a fragmented identity. The plots and semi-autobiographical accounts of these texts locate them specifically in late-nineteenth century Kristiania (Oslo) and London by focusing on changing standards of literary culture in the 1880s and 1890s. Hamsun's emphasis on the subjective individual and Gissing's emphasis on representing realist social groupings offer us complementary accounts of the experience of rootlessness, the self-division of outcast emigrant writers and the difficulty of survival by sticking to their own terms in creating and presenting their works of art in the capital. A comparative reading of these texts helps us to see not only their city-specific contexts, but also a transnational understanding of the commercialisation of art and the passive resistance of the artists that spanned the national borders of England and Norway. These urban novels, I suggest, perform a critical resistance to the assimilating forces of late-nineteenth-century modernity and changing economic conditions with the aim of preserving artistic integrity and freedom.

Vi certa vez num sarau uma jovem apaixonada. Seus olhos se coloriam de um azul em dobro e luziam de um brilho em dobro, ela simplesmente não conseguia ocultar seus sentimentos. Mas a quem ela amava? Aquele jovem mancebo ali junto à janela, filho dos anfitrões, trajando uniforme e com uma voz imponente. Minha nossa! Como os olhos dela amavam aquele jovem e como ela estava irrequieta na sua cadeira!