Since I don't plan on learning Norwegian but would like to read the best version of this book, can anyone, recommend a good translation? His personal strangeness was the real engine of his politics; there was almost no theoretical fuel. Translated from the Norwegian by Sverre Lyngstad, Hunger explores the daily life of one lonely and desperate man on the brink of starvation in a large city. In its original form, Hunger was merely a sketch, and as such it appeared in 1888 in a Danish literary periodical, New Earth. This done, he abruptly quit his apprenticeship and entered on that period of restless roving through trades and continents which lasted until his first real artistic achievement with Hunger, In 1888-90. I think not. This new edition of his letters, finely selected and edited by Harald Nss and James McFarlane, allows us to judge Hamsuns entire life and work. The mood of the dying day makes me despondent and sentimental. Apprenticed to a shoemaker, he used his scant savings to arrange for the private printing of a long poem and a short novel produced at the age of eighteen, when he was still signing himself Knud Pedersen Hamsund. //]]> He withdrew from the bounding radicalism of his early novels and began to draw characters who were entirely stable essences. . Thus it is that although these characters are tissues of fictionality, they are not tediously weightless, or unreal, in the way that we know from the Nouveau Roman or other avant-gardisms. He keeps up a continuous, muttering dialogue with himself as he walks through town. [3] Hunger portrays the irrationality of the human mind in an intriguing and sometimes humorous manner. Hunger, by Knut Hamsun, translated by Sverre Lyngstad Jetzt gibt es die Urfassung des grandiosen Werks auf Deutsch. For more information, please see our }, 1. Find out more about the London Review of Books app. Both it and Pan extend a parody of the Christian pieties, particularly the idea that proper devotion to Christ logically entails the abolition of the self, entails death. He never forgot the misery of his time with Hans, and claimed, in 1946, that he still bore the scars. (Chekhov, in his milder way, was opening literature up at the same time, and also attacking Ibsen. "https:" : "http:") + A.src = t; All rights reserved. What obstinacy and wickedness in an old man Ive never seen the likes of it. Fall has arrived and has already begun to put everything into a deep sleep; flies and other insects have suffered their first setback, and up in the trees and down on the ground you can hear the sounds of struggling life, puttering, ceaselessly rustling, laboring not to perish. When, in 1943, Hamsun made his infamous visit to Hitler, the meeting was a farcical disaster. He goes up to a policeman and tells the policeman that it is ten oclock. Nobody was ever very close to Hamsun. throw new Error("could not load device-specific stylesheet : " + err.message); During his second stay in America, between 1886 and 1888, he worked as a navvy and for nine months as a tramconductor in Chicago. Hamsun suggests that sin and punishment exist for each other. "CacheDetection.RequestID": "HYBCWD9FNQ052ZK49Q2Y", Knut Hamsun - Wikipedia In other words, Tangen wants to be punished. var ue_sid = "529-3820451-5555772"; In many ways, the protagonist of the novel displays traits reminiscent of Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment; the author, Fyodor Dostoevsky, being one of Hamsun's main influences. Knut Hamsun, pseudonym of Knut Pedersen, (born August 4, 1859, Lom, Norwaydied February 19, 1952, near Grimstad), Norwegian novelist, dramatist, poet, and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1920. var node = document.getElementsByTagName("script")[0]; Thoughts on Hunger by Knut Hamsun? : books - Reddit He vows not to succumb to this order and remains 'a foreigner in life', haunted by 'nervousness, by irrational details'. Alexis Lykiard (Letters, 10 December 1998) is quite right to point out that, in Knut Hamsuns novel Hunger, the narrator announces his name to a policeman only to tell the reader immediately that he is lying: I lied unnecessarily. I had written that the reader fumblingly learns that the narrators name is Andreas Tangen, with the hope that my wavering adverb might catch some thing of the ambiguity of this revelation. He gambled heavily, drank stormily (one binge lasted a week) and attitudinised wildly. All we know is that Hamsuns forebears were sturdy Norwegian peasant folk, said only to be differentiated from their neighbours by certain artistic preoccupations that turned one or two of them into skilled craftsmen. Hamsun was born into poverty. Compared to Hamsun, Ibsen was always tying the moral bootlaces of his subjects, correcting them and dressing them in the public themes of the moment. While the ending is one of hope and optimism, Hunger is a searing portrait of poverty and despair, as well as a biting social commentary on modern urban life and how desperate things can become for the poor in large cities. In Best Books Ever Listings. var useSSL = "https:" == document.location.protocol; Rebel Inc, 193 pp., 6.99, October 1996, 0 86241 625 6 A young man, hectic and dirty, sits on a park bench in a cold city. Boston: Twayne, 1984. } We are used to the idea that a contrarian politics, of the far left or right, is a deeply pondered, intellectual formation, or at least a bristle of fiercely held prejudices. Hunger has been translated into English several times: in 1899 by Mary Chavelita Dunne (under the alias George Egerton), in 1967 by Robert Bly, and in 1996 by Sverre Lyngstad, whose translation is considered definitive. The latter is counterbalanced in other Hamsun works, such as, This page was last edited on 2 February 2023, at 12:17. Why is he agreeing to these ridiculous lies? Put on the spot, facing authority (the police), the homeless young drifter promptly and purposefully reinvents himself. }); (function () { } Born poor in rural Norway, Hamsun was largely self-educated and lacked both the social and intellectual background usually associated with the European literati of his time. A subreddit for anything related to Norway! The writer who wrote the great books of the 1890s, the autodidact who won the Nobel Prize in 1920, and who, in the Twenties, was probably the worlds most admired living novelist, is now known mainly for being a Nazi, and for his painful trial in 1946 the 86-year-old man, who had argued that Norwegians should surrender to the friendly invading Germans, essentially on trial for treason, now almost completely deaf, but bonily imperious, his huge smooth head tilted angrily towards his defence lawyer, Sigrid Stray, a woman who had been arrested by the Germans during the Occupation, and for whose release Hamsun the Nazi had agitated. Today we know, however, that the pathological case represents nothing but an extension of perfectly normal tendencies. Born Barking at staff in Norwegian and refusing to tip, he was quickly the most unpopular guest in the hotel. In Hunger (1890), Mysteries (1892) and Pan (1894), the Norwegian writer founded the kind of Modernist novel which largely ended with Beckett of crepuscular states, of alienation and leaping surrealism, and of savage fictionality. After a long period of writing juvenilia and knocking about the world (he lived in the United States on two occasions), Hamsun hit upon in his voice in his early thirties - and it was unlike any that had come before. Beside him, an old man is holding a newspaper. His Nazism was a kind of anarchism, based more on his irrational hatred of England than on any natural Fascism; he and his wife may have been the only people in the whole of Norway who wanted Germany to bring England to its knees, as he madly implored in one wartime newspaper article. } When, in exasperation, she asks him why he persists in telling bad stories about himself, he says, calmly: To make an impression on you, Miss Kielland. But one also sees the ghostly tyranny of a Christian system of confession and absolution in Nagels compulsion to dirty his soul in public. None has disappointed me more.. To comment on crosswords, please, for which he was awarded the Nobel prize in 1920, switch over to the new version to comment. London, WC1A 2HN Hunger Analysis - eNotes.com As a last resource, I had applied for a place as debt collector, but I was too late, and, besides, I could not have found the fifty shillings demanded as security. for(var i=0; iHunger Quotes by Knut Hamsun - Goodreads for(var i=0; iHunger - Knut Hamsun - Google Books It caused a sensation in Denmark and Norway. Under the Autumn Star. But Hamsun, as ever, shows us his back parts, poses the rude negative. But why exactly me? Then I feel her arms around me, she breathes upon my face and whispers, Welcome, my love! . They invent the scenes through which they move, and thus invent themselves afresh on every page. His father, an impoverished tailor and smallholder, had moved north to Hamary with the hope of starting again. Do not sell or share my personal information. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions. Hamsuns collaboration with the Nazis seriously damaged his reputation, but after his death critical interest in his works was renewed and new translations made them again accessible to an international readership. Q&A. stylesheet.type = "text/css"; Hunger Knut Hamsun. [4] The influence of naturalist authors such as mile Zola is apparent in the novel, as is his rejection of the realist tradition. Hamsun shows us that, just as his hero invents his sins and therefore his punishments for those sins, so he also invents his relations with God: you do not exist, but if you did exist I would curse you. Religion is neurasthenic fantasy in Hamsun. The darkness had taken possession of my thoughts and didnt leave me alone for a moment. q("f", arguments) Dagny Kielland complains that she cannot tell whether Nagel is lying or not. The first play is laid in Christiania, the second in the Northland, and the third in Christiania again. [1], Hunger was first translated into English in 1899 by the writer and feminist George Egerton. He is wild, nervous, seems to fiddle with his soul. Review: Hunger by Knut Hamsun - Thoughts on Papyrus To skip the whole world in order to get to me that was a rather odd way of doing things; there was, after all, both Pascha the second-hand book dealer and Hennechen the steamship agent.
Dallas Isd Calendar 23-24, Certified Counselor Certification, Articles B