JP/7/hamsun

Knut Hamsun, Norway's well of inspiration

By Marianne Katoppo [10 pts ML]

JAKARTA (JP): Norwegian writers have made a major contribution to literature - the works of Henrik Ibsen, Knut Hamsun and Sigrid Undset are widely read in many countries.

The most controversial among Norwegian authors is undoubtedly Hamsun (1859-1952). It is true that Hamsun was much admired by such writers as Berthold Brecht and Henry Miller, to name a few.

Pablo Picasso also admitted that Hamsun's freedom of spirit influenced him.

Hamsun's most memorable book is undoubtedly Sult (Hunger), with which he made his debut in 1890.

It describes the struggle of a young writer to survive in the cold cruel city of Christiania (the former name of Oslo) on his own terms.

Literally starving, he is kept alive only by his dreams and his fierce desire to identify with the hero and his quest.

The book has now been translated by this writer into Indonesian (Lapar, published by Obor Foundation), thus making it the 33rd language into which Hamsun has been translated.

It is the first time that a translation into Indonesian has been made directly from the original. Previous translations of Norwegian oeuvres, such as Ibsen's Doll's House and Three Plays have all been done from an English translation.

It has sometimes been said that the nice thing about knowing Norwegian is being able to read Hamsun in the original. His magnificent style is definitely difficult to reproduce.

Yet despite excellent relations between Norway and Indonesia, literature is not one of their priorities. Generating support for the translation and publication of Sult seemed almost as foolish as trying to save whales from extinction.

Bondage

Born Knut Pedersen on Aug. 4, 1859, in Garmostraet, a remote village in the mountains west of Lake Vaagaa, Hamsun's parents were simple folk, although his mother, Tora Olsen, was descended from King Harald Haarfagre, or Harald the Fairhaired.

When Knut was three, the whole family moved northwards, and settled at a little farm called Hamsund, which the young writer later took for his nom de plume.

An editor inadvertently dropped the "d" at the end, and Knut thought it actually looked better that way.

Although the family was poor, Knut initially had a happy childhood, until age nine, when a cruel uncle appeared and took the young boy with him because his parents could not repay their debts.

For one so young, he happened to have beautiful handwriting, so he was pressed into service as secretary and bookkeeper, and sometime postman at his uncle's general store cum post office.

Given the rough conditions of the area and the inclement weather, the child would refuse to go, at which his uncle would beat him into submission.

It was at this time that the spirit of sult (hunger) first began to gnaw at Hamsun.

At 14, he graduated from elementary school and had also grown to be bigger and taller than the uncle, and so was finally released from his bondage.

He spent the next few years as a cobbler's apprentice, a traveling salesman, and a school principal. At 17, he wrote his first little book, Den Gaadefulde (The Enigmatic One), followed by others which brought him at least local fame.

Rejected

However Hamsun suffered repeated rejection, his style considered obscure, only interesting for specialist writers, as Norwegian literary critic Lars Frode Larsen once said.

Even the great laureate Bjornstjerne Bjornsen, whom he had always admired, told him kindly, "You are tall and handsome, why don't you become an actor?"

Difficult years followed, and Hamsun even sailed to America twice where his jobs included working as a lay preacher, a pig farmer and a tram conductor.

His only constant urge was to write - "his spiritual respite from the cold and materialistic world around him," writes Frode Larsen.

Returning from America the second time in the autumn of 1888, he booked passage on a Danish steamer to Copenhagen, vowing that he would not set foot again in his native land until he had gained recognition as a writer.

The ship, however, stopped in Christiania overnight, where Hamsun stubbornly refused to go ashore.

According to his son, Tore Hamsun, in his biography, it was at that moment, sitting on the deck and looking out over the beautiful fjord and the city, that the senior Hamsun took pen and paper and started writing furiously, "It was in those days that I was going round and starving in Christiania"...The famous first line of Sult.

And he never stopped writing, all the way across to Copenhagen and the next three weeks, forgoing eating, bathing or sleeping.

At the end of the journey he eventually took his manuscript to Edvard Brandes, the well known editor of the daily Politiken.

Brandes wanted to refuse the manuscript as it was too long for a newspaper feature, but after one look at the gaunt Norwegian he did not have the heart to do so.

He took the manuscript home, and was fascinated by the unknown writer's style - "This is a new Dostoyevsky!" he exclaimed.

This was the beginning of Knut Hamsun's success. He took first the North, then the rest of Europe and finally the world by storm.

People used to queue in the streets in front of the bookstores when "a new Hamsun" was due. To quote Frode Larsen again, "In novels such as Pan (1894) ...he took as his subject the experiences and emotions of distinctive characters."

Message

In 1920 Hamsun was awarded the Nobel Prize for Markens Groede (The Growth of the Soil) written in 1917. At that time he had already changed from his earlier style which focused on the individual to a broader, socio-historical format.

Hamsun's basic message to the world was, "return to the soil and to basic values."

On the occasion of his 70th birthday in 1929, an anthology was issued in which leading authors such as Thomas Mann, Maxim Gorki and H.G. Wells saluted the great master.

Between 1920 and 1945 the Gyldendals publisher sold 2 million copies of Hamsun's books, as compared to 135,000 of Bjornsen's.

However, today "official Norway" takes very little visible notice of Hamsun.

It is ironic that he, who made Christiania world-famous, has no street, square, nor building named after him in all of Norway.

Wrong side

In Oslo, a bronze bust of Hamsun stands rather forlornly in the Gyldendal building. It was to have been put up in Grimstad, where he had lived since 1918, but there were so many protests that the project had to be abandoned.

The reason? Hamsun was regarded as having sided with the enemy during the German occupation of Norway.

In fact, he was forced to undergo a harsh mental examination after the 1945 liberation of Norway, and was also tried in court and sentenced to pay a ruinous sum to the government for his support of the occupying power.

In his last book, Paa gengrodde Stier (On overgrown paths), 1949, which displays his resignation and sadness, Hamsun hit back at the director general of public prosecutions and the psychiatrists for their treatment of him. He died three years later.

More than 40 years after his passing, there seems to be a glimmer of hope for Hamsun-enthusiasts. Small museums have been established in Garmostraet and Hamaroey, and "Hamsun Days" are held every other year to celebrate him.

Later this year, there will even be a Hamsun Festival in Paris to commemorate the centenary of the publication of Pan, another of his well-known works which tells of love of people and nature.

Hamsun would have taken heart at this renewed interest in him and his works, and retract the words he wrote in his last book, "One, two, three, four - thus I sit and ...write little pieces for myself...just an old habit. I leak muted words. I am a dripping tap, one, two, three, four ..."

Rather than a dripping tap, Hamsun is certainly a well of inspiration. His words may hopefully bring more space for dreams to blossom, to our increasingly arid modern society.

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