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Title: Wanderers

Author: Knut Hamsun

Release Date: March, 2005 [EBook #7762]

[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]

[This file was first posted on May 14, 2003]

Edition: 10

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WANDERERS ***

Produced by Eric Eldred, Robert Connal

and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.

WANDERERS

Translated from the Norwegian of

Knut Hamsun

by W. W. Worster

With an Introduction

by W. W. Worster

CONTENTS

Under the Autumn Star

A Wanderer Plays on Muted Strings

INTRODUCTION

An autobiographical element is evident in practically everything that

Hamsun has written. But it is particularly marked in the two volumes now

published under the common title of "Wanderers," as well as in the

sequel named "The Last Joy." These three works must be considered

together. They have more in common than the central figure of "Knut

Pedersen from the Northlands" through whose vision the fates of Captain

Falkenberg and his wife are gradually unfolded to us. Not only do they

refer undisguisedly to events known to be taken out of Hamsun's own

life, but they mirror his moods and thoughts and feelings during a

certain period so closely that they may well be regarded as diaries of

an unusually intimate character. It is as psychological documents of the

utmost importance to the understanding of Hamsun himself that they have

their chief significance. As a by-product, one might almost say, the

reader gets the art which reveals the story of the Falkenbergs by a

process of indirect approach equalled in its ingenuity and

verisimilitude only by Conrad's best efforts.

The line of Hamsun's artistic evolution is easily traceable through

certain stages which, however, are not separated by sharp breaks. It is

impossible to say that one stage ended and the next one began in a

certain year. Instead they overlap like tiles on a roof. Their

respective characters are strikingly symbolized by the titles of the

dramatic trilogy which Hamsun produced between 1895 and 1898--"At the

Gate of the Kingdom," "The Game of Life," and "Sunset Glow."

"Hunger" opened the first period and "Pan" marked its climax, but it

came to an end only with the eight-act drama of "Vendt the Monk" in

1902, and traces of it are to be found in everything that Hamsun ever

wrote. Lieutenant Glahn might survive the passions and defiances of

his youth and lapse into the more or less wistful resignation of Knut

Pedersen from the Northlands, but the cautious, puzzled Knut has

moments when he shows not only the Glahn limp but the Glahn fire.

Just when the second stage found clear expression is a little hard to

tell, but its most characteristic products are undoubtedly the two

volumes now offered to the American public, and it persists more or less

until 1912, when "The Last Joy" appeared, although the first signs of

Hamsun's final and greatest development showed themselves as early as

1904, when "Dreamers" was published. The difference between the second

and the third stages lies chiefly in a maturity and tolerance of vision

that restores the narrator's sense of humour and eliminates his own

personality from the story he has to tell.

Hamsun was twenty-nine when he finished "Hunger," and that was the age

given to one after another of his central figures. Glahn is twenty-nine,

of course, and so is the Monk Vendt. With Hamsun that age seemed to

stand principally for the high water mark of passion. Because of the

fire burning within themselves, his heroes had the supreme courage of

being themselves in utter defiance of codes and customs. Because of that

fire they were capable of rising above everything that life might

bring--above everything but the passing of the life-giving passion

itself. A Glahn dies, but does not grow old.

Life insists on its due course, however, and in reality passion may sink

into neurasthenia without producing suicides. Ivar Kareno discovers it

in "Sunset Glow," when, at the age of fifty, he turns renegade in more

senses than one. But even then his realization could not be fully

accepted by the author himself, still only thirty-eight, and so Kareno

steps down into the respectable and honoured sloth of age only to be

succeeded, by another hero who has not yet passed the climacteric

twenty-ninth year. Even Telegraph-Rolandsen in "Dreamers" retains the

youthful glow and charm and irresponsibility that used to be thought

inseparable from the true Hamsun character.

It is therefore with something of a shock one encounters the enigmatic

Knut Pedersen from the Northlands, who has turned from literature to

tramping, who speaks of old age as if he had reached the proverbial

three-score and ten, and who time and again slips into something like

actual whining, as when he says of himself: "Time has worn me out so

that I have grown stupid and sterile and indifferent; now I look upon a

woman merely as literature." The two volumes named "Under the Autumn

Star" and "A Wanderer Plays on Muted Strings" form an unbroken cry of

regret, and the object of that regret is the hey-day of youth--that

golden age of twenty-nine--when every woman regardless of age and colour

and caste was a challenging fragment of life.

Something more than the passing of years must have characterized the

period immediately proceeding the production of the two volumes just

mentioned. They mark some sort of crisis reaching to the innermost

depths of the soul it wracked with anguish and pain. Perhaps a clue to

this crisis may be found in the all too brief paragraph devoted to

Hamsun in the Norwegian "Who's who." There is a line that reads as

follows: "Married, 1898, Bergljot Bassöe Bech (marriage dissolved);

1908, Marie Andersen." The man that wrote "Under the Autumn Star" was

unhappy. But he was also an artist. In that book the artist within him

is struggling for his existence. In "A Wanderer Plays with Muted

Strings" the artist is beginning to assert himself more and more, and

that he had conquered in the meantime we know by "Benoni" and "Rosa"

which appeared in 1908. The crisis was past, but echoes of it were heard

as late as 1912, the year of "Last Joy," which well may be called

Hamsun's most melancholy book. Yet that is the book which seems to have

paved the way and laid the foundation for "The Growth of the Soil"--just

as "Dreamers" was a sketch out of which in due time grew "Children of

the Time" and "Segelfoss Town."

Hamsun's form is always fluid. In the two works now published it

approaches formlessness. "Under the Autumn Star" is a mere sketch,

seemingly lacking both plan and plot. Much of the time Knut Pedersen is

merely thinking aloud. But out of his devious musings a purpose finally

shapes itself, and gradually we find ourselves the spectator of a

marital drama that becomes the dominant note in the sequel. The

development of this main theme is, as I have already suggested,

distinctly Conradian in its method, and looking back from the ironical

epilogue that closes "A Wanderer Plays on Muted Strings," one marvels at

the art that could work such a compelling totality out of such a

miscellany of unrelated fragments.

There is a weakness common to both these works which cannot be passed up

in silence. More than once the narrator falls out of his part as a tramp

worker to rail journalistically at various things that have aroused his

particular wrath, such as the tourist traffic, the city worker and

everything relating to Switzerland. It is done very naively, too, but it

is well to remember how frequently in the past this very kind of naiveté

has associated with great genius. And whatever there be of such

shortcomings is more than balanced by the wonderful feeling for and

understanding of nature that most frequently tempt Hamsun into straying

from the straight and narrow path of conventional story telling. What

cannot be forgiven to the man who writes of "faint whisperings that come

from forest and river as if millions of nothingnesses kept streaming and

streaming," and who finds in those whisperings "one eternity coming to

an understanding with another eternity about something"?

EDWIN BJORKMAN

WANDERERS

Smooth as glass the water was yesterday, and smooth as glass it is again

today. Indian summer on the island, mild and warm--ah! But there is no

sun.

It is many years now since I knew such peace. Twenty or thirty years,

maybe; or maybe it was in another life. But I have felt it some time,

surely, since I go about now humming a little tune; go about rejoicing,

loving every straw and every stone, and feeling as if they cared for me in

return.

When I go by the overgrown path, in through the woods, my heart quivers

with an unearthly joy. I call to mind a spot on the eastern shores of the

Caspian, where I once stood. All just as it is here, with the water still

and heavy and iron-grey as now. I walked through the woods, touched to the

heart, and verging on tears for sheer happiness' sake, and saying to

myself all the time: God in heaven. To be here again....

As if I had been there before.

Ah well, I may have been there once before, perhaps, coming from another

time and another land, where the woods and the woodland paths were the

same. Perhaps I was a flower then, in the woods, or perhaps a beetle, with

its home in some acacia tree.

And now I have come to this place. Perhaps I was a bird and flew all that

long way. Or the kernel in some fruit sent by a Persian trader.

See, now I am well away from the rush and crowd of the city, from people

and newspapers; I have fled away from it all, because of the calling that

came to me once more from the quiet, lonely tracts where I belong. "It

will all come right this time," I tell myself, and am full of hope. Alas,

I have fled from the city like this before, and afterwards returned. And

fled away again.

But this time I am resolved. Peace I will have, at any cost. And for the

present I have taken a room in a cottage here, with Old Gunhild to look

after me.

Here and there among the pines are rowans, with ripe coral berries; now

the berries are falling, heavy clusters striking the earth. So they reap

themselves and sow themselves again, an inconceivable abundance to be

squandered every single year. Over three hundred clusters I can count on a

single tree. And here and there about are flowers still in bloom,

obstinate things that will not die, though their time is really past.

But Old Gunhild's time is past as well--and think you she will die? She

goes about as if death were a thing did not concern her. When the

fishermen are down on the beach, painting their boats or darning nets,

comes Gunhild with her vacant eyes, but with a mind as keen as any to a

bargain.

"And what is the price of mackerel today?" she asks.

"The same as yesterday."

"Then you can keep it, for all I care."

And Gunhild goes back home.

But the fishermen know that Gunhild is not one of those that only pretend

to go away; she has gone off like that before now, up to her cottage,

without once looking back. So, "Hey" they call to her, and say they'll

make it seven to the half-dozen today, seeing she is an old customer.

And Gunhild buys her fish.

Washing hangs on the lines to dry; red petticoats and blue shirts, and

under-things of preposterous thickness, all spun and woven on the island

by the old women still left alive. But there is washing, too, of another

sort: those fine chemises without sleeves, the very thing to make a body

blue with cold, and mauve woollen undervests that pull out to no more than

the thickness of a string. And how did these abominations get there? Why,

'tis the daughters, to be sure, the young girls of the present day, who've

been in service in the towns, and earned such finery that way. Wash them

carefully, and not too often, and the things will last for just a month.

And then there is a lovely naked feeling when the holes begin to spread.

But there is none of that sort of nonsense, now, about Gunhild's shoes,

for instance. At suitable intervals, she goes round to one of the

fishermen, her like in age and mind, and gets the uppers and the soles

done in thoroughly with a powerful mess of stuff that leaves the water

simply helpless. I've seen that dubbin boiling on the beach; there's

tallow in it, and tar and resin as well.

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