Pursuit and Confrontation: The Short Stories of Knut Hamsun
1998; University of Illinois Press; Volume: 70; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
2163-8195
Autores Tópico(s)Literature, Film, and Journalism Analysis
ResumoThe short stories of Knut Hamsun written between 1884 and 1905 present a disturbing pattern of pursuit and confrontation. In many of these stories, a significant number of which are written in the first person, a narrator obsessively pursues and persecutes someone or is pursued and persecuted himself. In some stories, the pursuit and confrontation are of an erotic nature and the process contains both sadistic and masochistic elements. Some of the pursuits may be interpreted symbolically as messages about the nature of artistic activity (Hemmelig Ve, Damen fra Tivoli Dronningen av Saba, and Pa Bankerne for example); some are simply expressions of fear (Raedsel); one shows the writer confronting his public (Paa turne); in one the boy Hamsun is pursued by a ghost (Et spokelse); and in the early story Onde dager nothing more specific than blinde magter [blind powers] haunts the hapless narrator.(1) Knut Hamsun is not known for his short stories, and it is only recently that they have begun to attract the attention they deserve. However, the stories contain much insight into how Hamsun perceived artistic activity, and they are of biographical interest, especially as reflections of Hamsun's realization of his isolation, and of what Robert Ferguson has called his borderline paranoia Indeed, several of the stories, in particular two very early ones recently discovered by Lars Frode Larsen, are respectively a serious depiction of and a comic reflection on paranoia. In this essay I would like to discuss the pattern of pursuit and confrontation in general terms and to show how the obsession with this kind of struggle is rooted in Hamsun's life. Hamsun began writing short stories in the early 1880s, and his first collection, Siesta, appeared in 1897. Kratskog, the second collection, came out in 1903, and the third and last, Stridende liv, was published in 1905. The most symbolic stories in which fear is most baldly exposed, however, appear in the first two collections as well as in the scattered stories recently discovered and published by Larsen.(2) The stories in Stridende lip are for the most part violent: the first two show how spurned lovers murder their ex-sweethearts and a childhood reminiscence recalls the boy Hamsun's efforts to kill a cat. It seems the fear of pursuing plageander (literally: tormenting spirits) had largely spent itself by the time the last collection appeared. Nevertheless, one must agree with Regis Boyer that, novellene er often morbide, om ikke makabre (80) [the short stories are often morbid, if not macabre]. The story Et livsfragment (1884) was written just after he returned from America to Norway because of illness and contains motifs that recur throughout his stories.(3) The appropriately-named narrator, Harald Storm, has been jilted by an actress and stalks her, wishing to exact revenge: skulde jeg engang mode dig, so vilde jeg kunne ydmyge dig, bringe dig pa knae og lade dig se, hvor meget du havde tabt (Livsfragmenter 15) [and if I should meet you sometime, then I would want to humiliate you, to bring you to your knees and let you see how much you had lost (emphasis is Hamsun's)].(4) This wish to humiliate occurs in other stories, notably in Hemmelig ve, Pa gaten, and Erobreren. Storm is ill, visits a doctor, and is told, De liar vaert for voldsom (13) [You have been too passionate] just as the Kommandoren in the novel Sult tells the writer-hero the same thing. The diagnosis the doctor gives Storm is one many other Hamsun protagonists will hear. Hamsun's troubled youth and his illness and his recent failure in America have combined to color Et livsfragment.(5) But the same themes persist in his stories, which present the narrator most often as an isolated and alienated figure, confronting threatening presences: individuals, particularly of the opposite sex, groups (the judging public, specters, and insane alter egos), and vague persecuting powers of fate. …
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