Hamsun’s “mal du siècle”

Eunike Nesby

doi:10.7557/13.5626

Abstract

My paper expands on several conference themes, specifically “geographical places” and “boundaries,” and will explore the elasticity and intertextual implications of both terms as they apply to national literatures and writers, as well as their porous nature in literary studies (including theory, history, and criticism, according to René Wellek’s classic and still widely accepted triptych of literary studies [Wellek x]). Specifically, I will examine the resonance of the Romantic malaise known in France as “le mal du siècle” and how it might inform a reading of Knut Hamsun’s novel Pan (1894) and shed light on the more than eccentric behavior of its main character, Lieutenant Glahn. The French Romantic writer Chateaubriand (1768-1848), whose slender novel René (1802), with which “le mal du siècle” is most closely associated, represents the epitome of the Romantic hero, who evidently had not drawn his last breath when Hamsun published Pan almost one century later. Upon a closer reading of the two novels, there is more than enough to warrant a comparison. Glahn and René are archetypes of a similar malady afflicting overly sensitive, generally upper-class young men of a nervous and indeed neurotic disposition.

Highlights

My paper expands on several of the conference themes of the Seventh International Hamsun Conference in 2019, “geographical places” and “boundaries” between countries and literary traditions
I will examine the resonance of the Romantic malaise known in France as “le mal du siècle” and how it might inform a reading of Knut Hamsun’s novel Pan (1894) and shed light on the more than eccentric behavior of its main character, Lieutenant Glahn
I have chosen to focus on René, the quintessentially Romantic novel in the French tradition and the finest example of “mal du siècle,” and a novel that inspires a fruitful comparison with Hamsun’s Pan

Summary

Introduction

My paper expands on several of the conference themes of the Seventh International Hamsun Conference in 2019, “geographical places” and “boundaries” between countries and literary traditions. The “Romantic hero” has been a fixture in Western literature since at least the eighteenth century and embodies many overlapping and even contradictory emotions; he (and it was usually a “he”), more often than not, was a self-made outcast and rebel against social conventions; at the same time, this self-centered and self-indulgent, overly sensitive and proud individual was given to bouts of melancholia, introspection, self-doubt, and even suicidal fantasies This readiness and willingness to suffer suggests that the Romantic hero is an exceptional if not superior human being (Philippe van Tieghem 106-117; Lagarde et Michard 40). I have chosen to focus on René, the quintessentially Romantic novel in the French tradition and the finest example of “mal du siècle,” and a novel that inspires a fruitful comparison with Hamsun’s Pan

The Problem With Comparative Literature

Rousseau and Hamsun

Chateaubriand and Hamsun

Conclusion