Enigma: The Life of Knut Hamsun

480 Pages·1987·67.934 MB·English

by  Robert Ferguson

FPT $30.00
MA
ENIG
Kmit Hamsun one of the founders of
is
modern European literature. His influ-
ence can be seen in the work of writers
Herman
as diverse as Hesse, Ernest
Hemingway, and Katherine Mansfield;
and Isaac Bashevis Singer said of him that
he was “the father of the modern school
of literature in his every aspect,” that “the
whole modern school of fiction in the
twentieth ce ttury stems from Hamsun.”
In 1920 he ’ rrs awarded the Nobel Prize
in Literatup /et, despite his importance
.
and the year lie spent in the United States
>
when he was young, very known,
little is
outside his native Norway, about Hamsun’s
life.
In an extraordinary writing career
spanning some seventy ofhis ninety-three
years, Hams un produced a wide variety of
—
work po try, plays, short-story collec-
tions, and travel sketches, as well as
renowned novels such es Hunger, Mysteries,
Pan, and T, the Soil. Hamsun
spent much _uily life in impover-
ished circu aiues, supplementing his
meager ear ngs as a writer by working as
pig minder shoemaker, peddler, builder,
and even Sunday school teacher.
In this fi ' t serious study of Hamsun to
be publish* outside of Norway, Robert
!
Ferguson has successfully captured the
rest less and enigmatic spirit of 1 lamsun as
author and man, to produce a major biog-
raphy of one of this century’s most impor-
tant and neglected writers. His vision of
1 lamsun’s polit ic al failings is clear-sighted.
SEXES
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BOSTON
PUBLIC
LIBRARY
Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2016 with funding from
Kahle/Austin Foundation
https://archive.org/details/enigmalifeofknutOOferg
Enigma
By the same author
Drama
Transfigured Night
Enigma
Hamsun
The Knut
Life of
Robert Ferguson
&
Farrar, Straus Giroux
New
York
©
Copyright 1987 by Robert Ferguson
All rights reserved
First American edition, 1987
First published in Great Britain by Century Hutchinson, Ltd, 1987
Library of Congress catalog card number:
86-82752
Contents
Introduction
1
1 Childhood, Restless Adolescence and the Start of a Mini-
Career
5
2 1879-1882: Bjornson and the End of the Mini-Career 27
1882-1884: The American Experience
3 I 47
4 1884-1886: Convalescence and Valdres 67
5 1886-1888: The American Experience II 81
6 1888-1890: The Breakthrough: Hunger
99
1890-1893: Controversy: Mysteries the Lecture Tour and
7
,
the 'Clenched Fist' Books 122
8 1893-1895: Paris, Pan and Strindberg 142
9 1895-1898: Persecution and Marriage: Victoria 163
10 1898-1906: Restless Middle Age, Depression and Divorce 182
11 1906-1911: The Sage: Retrospection, Introspection and
Marie
199
12 1911-1918: Marriage and the Return to the Roots: the
Segelfoss Books and The Growth of the Soil 220
13 1918-1927: The Quiet Years: Family Man and Psycho-
analysis 260
14 1927-1933: The Height of Fame: the August Trilogy 290
Hamsun's
15 1933-1940: Politics 324
16 1940-1945: Hamsun's War 350
17 1945-1948: Internment, Examination and Trial 387
18 1948-1952: The Last Years: On Overgrown Paths 411
Notes 2
4 3
References 424
Select Bibliography 434
Appendix: Knut Hamsun's Complete Works 438
Index 439