Selected Letters 1879-1898

by Knut Hamsun, Harald S. Næss

As a young man, Norwegian Knut Hamsun (1859-1952) winner of the 1920 Nobel Prize for literature, sojourned in America, where he worked and traveled widely -. In this first volume he feelingly describes his disdain for this `Philistine land,' its people and its customs - Once back home, his letters - discuss his desire to create a new literature, one that would break away from conventions and explore psychological motivations and experiences, `the mimosa of thought, the fine fragments of feeling'."" - Publishers Weekly. From his experimental novels of the 1890s to the broader narrative sweep of his later works, Hamsun's contribution to the development of the modern European novel is uniquely important. ""Well translated - informatively introduced."" - TLS.

304 pages, Paperback

First published January 31, 1990

About the author

Novels of Norwegian writer Knut Hamsun (born Knud Pedersen), include Hunger (1890) and The Growth of the Soil (1917). He won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1920.

He insisted on the intricacies of the human mind as the main object of modern literature to describe the "whisper of the blood, and the pleading of the bone marrow." Hamsun pursued his literary program, debuting in 1890 with the psychological novel Hunger.

Reviews

[Greg · Rating 3 out of 5]

The works of Knut Hamsun and V.S. Naipaul have fascinated me ever since I became acquainted with both in the mid-1980s. I’ve devoured all of Hamsun that I could find in translation and have likely read close to all of Naipaul’s published writings. As much as their writing grips me, they both seem to have been fairly awful people. Strangely, I find most of their political and social views repugnant. I guess that’s part of my odd obsession. One thing they shared was an inordinate self-confidence in their ability, even though early in their writing lives there was little-to-nothing that justified their bravado. But each knew he would be a writer, and not just a writer, but a great writer. Upon graduation from Oxford, Naipaul knew no other career. Hamsun was restless and without the benefit of a formal education. He toiled as a young man, self-taught—as a clerk in his uncle’s store and a rootless wanderer in two visits to the United States covering about four years working in fields, as a Chicago cable car driver, as a common laborer, and as a member of the Nordic artistic community in Paris—all the while convinced of his intellectual superiority over others.

This collection of Hamsun’s letters, which cover his time in the US, his return to Norway as a starving writer, the publication of his early and most well-known novels, and up until his first marriage in 1898 reveals a vain, touchy young man—one who never wavers in his self-belief and his art. Many of the letters are about his constant solicitation of loans, advances, and government grants to support himself. There is a pathetic nature to them, even as he feels entitled to the support. After all, he is becoming a great writer who will bring culture and letters to his young, small nation—or so he implies over and over again. Time would prove him right.

Most interesting were his letters from the period leading up to the publication of his first, and arguably most read, novel, Hunger. He knew—as we all now know, or at least should know—that he was writing in a style and viewpoint with no precedent. In the most telling excerpt of a letter to a friend, he wrote

What interests me is the infinite susceptibility of my soul, what little I have of it, the strange and peculiar life of the mind, the mysteries of the nerves in a starving body. The book deliberately plays on a single string, but attempts to draw a hundred notes from that string.

Anyone who has read Hunger can relate to this. And he delved even deeper into this style and substance with Mysteries and Pan, creating a genre of writing that gave birth to many branches of 20th century literature.

By the last letter of the volume, he seems sure that his material fortunes will soon change, something that will surely change his letter-writing compiled in the next volume. I would only recommend this book to those who, like me, have an unhealthy preoccupation with his life and writing. But since I’m a bit strange—much as Hamsun admitted about himself in his early correspondence—I’m confident that I’ll be one of the few who would want to read this collection.